Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous)/Archive 56

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This page contains discussions that have been archived from Village pump (miscellaneous). Please do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to revive any of these discussions, either start a new thread or use the talk page associated with that topic.

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Gaming dead-links for SEO

Has this been brought to the attention of people?

• https://www.shivarweb.com/3632/how-to-use-wikipedia-for-seo/

Essentially what is being argued for here is to replace dead-links with your own page in order to drive traffic. I'm bringing this up following a discussion at WT:MED where a user was doing just that.

An especially troublesome quote:

Plus, you can often take a bit of a shortcut building this content and doing outreach. For dead links specifically, you can take the (now dead) URL, head over to the Internet Archive Wayback Machine, and look to see what the linked-to resource used to look like. Build something better, then reach out to everyone else who linked to the old page.

I interpret this to be essentially advocating WP:CIRCULAR and potentially very damaging. Worth a heads up. Carl Fredrik ^talk 20:00, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

Ping MPS1992, PaleoNeonate, RexxS, Beetstra, WhatamIdoing, Adrian J. Hunter -- Carl Fredrik ^talk 20:02, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

This is seriously problematic, and I'm not even sure this venue is the correct one to raise the issue.

Check out the following from the update section:

EDIT 9/4/14 – GrowthAddict came out with a new tool called WikiGrabber, which can quickly find some of the dead link & citation needed opportunities. Be sure to check it out.

This is recent (Edit: or not, there are conflicting dates on that article — one from 2014, one from 2017???) and may help explain some issues we've seen over the past months. Site is https://www.webpagefx.com/seo-tools/wikigrabber/

Carl Fredrik ^talk 20:09, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

@CFCF: For what it's worth, this has been going on for a long while but a reminder wouldn't hurt - just need to be cautious of users changing links (which realistically we normally pick up on rather quickly) -- There'sNoTime ^{(to explain)} 20:16, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

I agree that this is seriously problematic although I also accept that it may have been going on for a long time. I have the following rather vague ideas based on my own recent experience and report which prompted this thread:

I saw the very odd behavior involving replacing dead links with apparently top-level or higher-level links to some website -- as an editor largely unfamiliar with the topic I then visited the spammed website to try to work out whether the new link might be relevant -- the website looked to me like a possibly reliable source (apologies for my gulllibility in this respect, but that may not be unusual and in fact is perhaps key to the technique recommended by the spammers) -- I raised the issue on a relevant wikiproject talk page -- quite quickly the website was blacklisted -- the alleged spammer then became very upset across a number of venues.

My observation is that if people who write guides to spamming Wikipedia see the above process repeated, and perhaps even are made aware that the above sequence of events is the most common result of trying to spam Wikipedia in this way, then sensible writers of guides to spamming Wikipedia will stop recommending this technique, because having your website blacklisted is a much worse penalty than your website just not being used as a source or external link very much.

Therefore, perhaps what should be done is to make as many editors as possible aware of this method of fraudulently linking, and encourage them to report it to places -- like active wikiproject noticeboards -- where blacklisting action is likely to be taken. The slightly more unusual possibility is advertising more widely that fraudulent links to websites tend to get the websites involved blacklisted. MPS1992 (talk) 20:32, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

Obligatory link to Wikipedia:WikiProject Spam -- There'sNoTime ^{(to explain)} 20:35, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

@There'sNoTime: are you suggesting that we are already doing everything necessary, since such activities are already undertaken via that WikiProject? Or are you suggesting something else? Or just providing a wikilink -- perhaps implying that the WikiProject you have linked is failing to deter this sort of behavior? MPS1992 (talk) 23:13, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

@MPS1992: Apologies, I should have been clearer - I meant it in a "here's something interested editors may find helpful" sort of way. We're barely managing to keep these "SEO experts" in check, let alone being anywhere near doing everything necessary -- There'sNoTime ^{(to explain)} 08:04, 22 June 2017 (UTC)

Well, at least he encouraged people to "actually be helpful and improve Wikipedia instead of treating it like a graffiti board". And I'm willing to believe that some of the dead links being replaced were barely reliable at best, so we might end up no worse than before in those cases. I wish that he'd added a section to warn against stupid stuff, such as replacing links to the official website for a business with a link to your own business".

It might be useful to add information about this practice (but not necessarily a link to the SEO consultant's page) to the Template talk:Dead link page, as that's one place where people might look if they had a question about an edit. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:34, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for the ping. We have WP:REFSPAM too which perhaps could be improved (adding some information about dead-link substitution and stressing that target sites are likely to get blacklisted if more than one editing account was involved). We also have WP:PROMOTION. We could ensure that common welcome messages like {{welcome}} and {{welcome ip}} include links to those (if they don't already). As for other means of public awareness I don't know. In some cases like for the "Burger King scandal" an open public letter was sent to the press. If someone wants to be ready for the next time a popular enough site gets blacklisted for dead-link refspam, it may be an opportunity for news to remind the public that Wikipedia is not for spamming... Smallbones? —PaleoNeonate - 00:18, 22 June 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for the ping. I don't know where the open letter could be sent. Certainly not to the Shivar website - it would just be ignored. My feeling is that the general public has almost never heard of SEO and wouldn't get excited about it. Ad folks might just say "oh, we ought to try that." So I looked for an SEO organization with a code of ethics - of course there isn't one. I did find something under "SEO code of ethics" at "SEO for Dummies" (truth is stranger than fiction). About the only thing I can think of is to make clear at WP:PAID that SEO employees are paid editors and need to disclose. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 01:42, 22 June 2017 (UTC)

WP:REFSPAM has been a problem for a long time, and SEO chatter about dead links has been discussed, but spammers are getting cheeky as they see it as their right to edit Wikipedia, just like everyone else. It's tricky—here is my recent revert at E-commerce. Of course the user just re-added the links. Another recent example is in these contribs—I had to write a polite note on their talk, and that takes time. Those resisting spam should know how to find links to a particular site in other articles—see LinkSearch and https (permalink). If the tool mentioned there does not suit, {{LinkSummaryLive}} may be helpful if used in a sandbox (just preview the edit). Johnuniq (talk) 00:41, 22 June 2017 (UTC)

Combating this sort of spamming is an additional benefit of measures that help fight WP:LINKROT. The good news is that in the top-voted item in the 2016 Community Wishlist Survey was support for a bot that is replacing dead links with links to the Internet Archive, as well as archiving live pages to guard against future linkrot. Adrian J. Hunter^{(talk•contribs)} 12:40, 28 June 2017 (UTC)

• This problem was brought to WP:COIN by Bluerasberry a bit over two years ago. The discussion is in archive 84 now. Bri (talk) 03:06, 29 June 2017 (UTC)
• Also 2014 ANI thread in which Nyttend mentioned blocking with comment "you've been blocked for following Matthew Woodward's advice, and your site has been blacklisted". - Bri (talk) 14:22, 29 June 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for the information. After reading those related threads, I looked at the edit filters, and found Special:AbuseFilter/711 and Special:AbuseFilter/752 which appear to be related (I can't access their code to audit it however). Also related to spamming (those are visible): Special:AbuseFilter/80 and Special:AbuseFilter/657. All those filters are enabled, with logs also appearing at Special:AbuseLog for patrollers. I think that some bots also react to those events. Those must help a lot. One thing I wonder is if one of those filters works using a sites whitelist, which would be a great idea. If that already exists, how those sites are updated would be another matter; it may be possible, if that's not already done, to use existing usage statistics to fill and update most of them dynamically. I noticed that filter 80 explicitly matches "http:" which would fail for other protocols, but we can probably assume most spam destinations to not have valid SSL/TLS certificates and to not be FTP, IRC, Torrent, etc... —PaleoNeonate - 05:42, 29 June 2017 (UTC)

Anyone know what right is needed to read and audit the code of hidden filters? "Edit filter editor" possibly? Or Sysop? Thanks, —PaleoNeonate - 05:47, 29 June 2017 (UTC)

I just found related WP:EFM. —PaleoNeonate - 05:50, 29 June 2017 (UTC)

I block accounts doing this indefinitely. Ping me if you see any. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 16:56, 29 June 2017 (UTC)

Since someone mentioned my actions, I'll chime in. I believe it important both to block and to blacklist in this kind of situation. Someone doing this is obviously doing it in bad faith, so {{uw-spamblock}} is immediately appropriate, and since they're willing to take actively devious steps to promote their website and creating a hoax in the process (the information to which the broken-link citation is appended didn't come from their website), it's highly likely that they'll create a sock or edit as an IP to re-add such a link in some way. Plus, I've read (can't point you anywhere, unfortunately) that Google and/or other major search engines will downgrade a website if it's on our spam blacklist, so after blacklisting links, I've informed the blocked editors what's happened, in order to make sure they're aware of the effect that it had on their website's future search results; the goal is to spread the word of what happens if you get caught. I acknowledge that this sounds like I'm disagreeing with the good principle expressed at WP:PUNISH — yes, I'm advocating for punishing the spammers — but first off, the point is deterrence, i.e. being preventive overall, and secondly, WP:PUNISH is meant for people who are part of the community, not people who are here only to get free advertising. Final note: refspam such as what's given at e-commerce I think ought to be treated as normal spam; first off, maybe it does support the content (the problem being that it's advertising, not that it's advertising and a hoax), and secondly, someone could do it just out of a "normal" inappropriate situation ("oh, my website mentions this, and it will help my website too"), so let's just treat it like adding spam to the ELs section. Nyttend (talk) 22:49, 29 June 2017 (UTC)

Re above comment "Google and/or other major search engines will downgrade a website if it's on our spam blacklist", see Forbes (2007): Spin Me Softly, citing Jonathan Hochman. - Bri (talk) 00:49, 30 June 2017 (UTC)

Interesting, thanks for the link. I have no idea if some search engines really use it, but it seems that MediaWiki:Spam-blacklist allows search engine indexing, meaning that it's also probable that a search for the site's domain also returns this page (many people search on search engines instead of using their address bar or bookmarks), which is probably not good for PR... —PaleoNeonate - 04:46, 30 June 2017 (UTC)

Yep, 711 is the one you're after. It tracks any unconfirmed editor replacing a dead link. That makes it quite broad, and will miss any users who have done so much of this that they're now confirmed (we could adjust that if desired), but it should be comprehensive otherwise. Let me know if you'd like any changes made to it, it's quite basic right now. Sam Walton (talk) 10:27, 30 June 2017 (UTC)

Are we too nice to the PR/marketing/seo industry?

In the ten years that I've been a Wikipedian I've seen numerous attempts to constructively engage with the marketing & pr industry, all to no avail, the problem just gets worse. Perhaps the time has come for us to openly declare the entire industry personae non grata and treat them as hostile by default? No more AGF or CIVIL - block and ban on sight, no discussion, no appeals, just f##k off - or am I just too angry right now? Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 09:36, 30 June 2017 (UTC)

• Support. We did a similiar thing with Scientology. Undisclosed paid editors are worse than normal COI editors and radical inclusionists combined. KMF (talk) 01:14, 3 July 2017 (UTC)
  • KATMAKROFAN What did we actually do about the Scientology issue? I'm interested in figuring out the actual mechanism of excluding these undesirable editors. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 09:27, 4 July 2017 (UTC)

Redirecting drafts to namespace

I've been part of a discussion on a user talk page, about the user gaining the page mover rights, and one editor stated that a draft should be speedy deleted after it is moved to the mainspace under CSD R2. However, I mentioned how R2 is actually only for the mainspace to other namespaces. I recalled that there was a RfC discussion a while back that ended up with the result of allowing redirects from the draft space to the mainspace after the former was moved to the latter. I'm not sure where to look for it, though - can anybody provide the link for it? Thanks. -- Alex^TW 03:56, 4 July 2017 (UTC)

• Wikipedia:Village_pump_(proposals)/Archive_135#Draft_Namespace_Redirects. Cheers! bd2412 T 03:58, 4 July 2017 (UTC)

@BD2412: You're a lifesaver. Thanks! -- Alex^TW 04:30, 4 July 2017 (UTC)

WMF's closing projects policy under discussion

The meta:Closing projects policy is discussed at meta:Talk:Closing projects policy#This is not working. Please share your thoughts there. Thanks. --George Ho (talk) 07:14, 4 July 2017 (UTC)

Deletion proposal on already closed Moldovan Wikipedia

The Moldovan Wikipedia, already closed for years, is proposed to be deleted and then transferred to Romanian Wikipedia. The proposal has gone on for three years, so please feel free to comment there. Thanks. --George Ho (talk) 22:56, 4 July 2017 (UTC)

Help to update template to gl.wikipedia

Hi!, I'm from gl.wiki and I need help to update Template:GeoGroup to our wiki. I have updated it at here (test version), and I tested it here, but the problem is that the tool to view coordinates at Google Maps doesn't work. If you try it, you get an error because the tool tries to get coordinates from the article at en.wiki instead of the article of gl.wiki. Can somebody help me? Thanks!, --Elisardojm (talk) 12:34, 30 June 2017 (UTC)

I do not see any errors. Works perfectly. Ruslik_Zero 20:43, 30 June 2017 (UTC)

Ruslik, here at en.wiki it works ok, but at gl.wiki it doesn't works because it tryes to access (at the test page) to "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usuario:Elisardojm/Castros", and that makes an error because the page doesn't exist, the page that should be accesed should be "http://gl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usuario:Elisardojm/Castros". Bye, --Elisardojm (talk) 23:18, 30 June 2017 (UTC)

I tested it in glwiki, of course. Ruslik_Zero 13:52, 1 July 2017 (UTC)

Ruslik, are you trying the option of Google Maps? The option to Openstreetmap works ok, but I wanted to fix the option to Google Maps, and when I try it, I get an error because it tries to access to "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usuario:Elisardojm/Castros". --Elisardojm (talk) 08:51, 3 July 2017 (UTC)

I certainly do not see any such error. Can you show some screenshots? Ruslik_Zero 18:31, 3 July 2017 (UTC)

@Elisardojm:  Fixed [1] – kmlexport defaults to English Wikipedia if the project isn't set. - Evad37 [talk] 04:13, 6 July 2017 (UTC)

@Evad37: Great! Thank you very much! I owe you one :) Bye, Elisardojm (talk) 07:45, 6 July 2017 (UTC)

Parliament Challenge

Let me invite you to participate in a new edition challenge: Parliament Challenge. This is a writing contest to create or improve articles about Spanish parlament members. This year Spain celebrates the 40th anniversary of the first democratic elections after the dictatorship. More information at the page on meta. Thanks! --Millars (talk) 23:25, 6 July 2017 (UTC)

Age?

How old do I have to be to edit WɪᴋɪᴘᴇᴅɪA? From User:HotelFurbyFan1 (talk • contribs • d. contribs) at 16:48, 9 July 2017 (UTC)

@HotelFurbyFan1: You should read Wikipedia:Guidance_for_younger_editors which starts off with the answer to your question, "there is no age restriction", but then goes on to give very useful advice which may be helpful for you.--S Philbrick(Talk) 17:29, 9 July 2017 (UTC)

About password audit

Greetings from zh-wiki.

Recently we are trying to implement the Wikipedia:Password strength requirements, and would like to enforce the password auditing like en-wiki. Where can I find information about that?

--Temp3600 (talk) 17:57, 9 July 2017 (UTC)

I nominated myself for BAG

Hello everyone!!! I just nominated myself for BAG membership. Your participation would be appreciated.

Wikipedia:Bot Approvals Group/nominations/Cyberpower678 3—CYBERPOWER (Message) 23:50, 9 July 2017 (UTC)

Accessible editing buttons

The MediaWiki developers have been slowly improving the accessibility of the user interface. The next step in this transition will change the appearance of some buttons and may break some outdated (non-updated or unmaintained) user scripts and gadgets.

You can see and use the old and new versions now. Most editors will only notice that some buttons are slightly larger and have different colors.

• Comparison of old and new styles
• 
  Buttons before the change
• 
  Buttons after the change

However, this change also affects some user scripts and gadgets. Unfortunately, some of them may not work well in the new system. If you maintain any user scripts or gadgets that are used for editing, please see mw:Contributors/Projects/Accessible editing buttons for information on how to test and fix your scripts. Outdated scripts can be tested and fixed now.

This change will probably reach this wiki on Tuesday, 18 July 2017. Please leave a note at mw:Talk:Contributors/Projects/Accessible editing buttons if you need help.

Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 22:22, 10 July 2017 (UTC)

Strategy discussion, cycle 3. Let's discuss about a new challenge

Hi! It's the second week of our Cycle 3 discussion, and there's a new challenge: How could we capture the sum of all knowledge when much of it cannot be verified in traditional ways? You can suggest solutions here. You can also read a summary of discussions that took place in the past week. SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 12:28, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

Use of the word "attack" in various article titles

Alfred Nemours seems to have a problem with this word being used in various article titles (see [2], [3], [4], [5], [6], and [7], for examples). Rather than have the discussion in 20-30 different locations, I'm moving it here for convenience and to perhaps get more eyes on the discussion. Have at it. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 04:58, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

Thanks but it might be better to revert all those walls-of-text from an account created on on 5 July 2017 with the single purpose of fixing the attack articles. Anyone wanting to argue that "attack" should be removed from titles needs to make the case at one central page (here, for example) without the distraction those comments will cause on the 26 talk pages commented on so far (1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 5 + 6 + 7 + 8 + 9 + 10 + 11 + 12 + 13 + 14 + 15 + 16 + 17 + 18 + 19 + 20 + 21 + 22 + 23 + 24 + 25 + 26). Some have already been cleaned. Johnuniq (talk) 05:41, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

@Johnuniq: You're welcome to do some of that if you wish. I've already done a fair amount of it, pointing people to this page instead of having the discussion scattered to the four winds and back. I think he's treading on very thin ice right now, as he doesn't seem interested in working with anyone. Instead, he seems to want to post those TL;DR walls of text that make very little sense, and then berate people who try to point out why his discussions make little to no sense. I've about had it with him. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 06:47, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

I've checked them all now and see that you have handled nearly all of them, with the others being handled by others. Thanks! Johnuniq (talk) 07:18, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

Along with various other users, I explained at Talk:2017_Manchester_Arena_bombing#Use_of_the_noun_.22attack.22_to_describe_the_event why it is unlikely that the word "attack" will be removed. This is part of a more general issue of Alfred Nemours using talk pages for discussion/commentary.--♦IanMacM♦ ^{(talk to me)} 06:01, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

To the point, as I said here [8] not onlt do RS use the term in exactly the same way we are but (as I says here [9]) his definition of the work "attack" seems unique to him.Slatersteven (talk) 09:29, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

My question is... what word does Alfred think we should use, instead of "attack"? Blueboar (talk) 10:21, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

Who knows? He seems full of questions that actually have very little to do with improving the articles he posts at. He's going off about "Newspeak" over on Talk:Nineteen Eighty-Four, too. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 14:35, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

Seems to be context-dependent (probably on who answers his posts). At Talk:Louvre machete attack he wanted to change it to a "stabbing" despite it not being a stabbing. However, he then immediately said he hadn't actually read the article, so I'm guessing this is more a case of trying to fix a problem that isn't there. Primefac (talk) 17:01, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

I've noticed it's only ever articles covering domestic Islamic terrorism that brings about these sorts of accusations of bias. Note the articles above. Never domestic far right, Marxist, or foreign Islamic terrorism. I suspect this has something to do with Western political ideologies, and as such, to remove the word "attack" would be to impose an ideological viewpoint on Wikipedia. Harizotoh9 (talk) 22:14, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

Well, despite being pointed here multiple times, Alfred Nemours doesn't seem interested in engaging in discussion about this topic. I can therefore only assume that he isn't interested in addressing the concerns raised and only wanted to post unsourced original research and synthesis about the topic (this one, and the one on Talk:Nineteen Eighty-Four). If he doesn't respond within the next day or two, I recommend this issue be dropped. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 20:33, 12 July 2017 (UTC)

Renaming

Should be renamed articles:

• Aramaean (disambiguation) in only Aramaean
• Aramaic (disambiguation) in only Aramaic

--SrpskiAnonimac (talk) 15:56, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

@SrpskiAnonimac: Feel free to make your case over at Wikipedia:Requested moves. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 00:05, 13 July 2017 (UTC)

Anybody know what this documentary on Cambodia war is?

Can anybody tell what this documentary's name is, who made it and when? It has James Gerrand in it (a journalist who dedicated his life to documenting the Cambodian and Vietnamese wars).

It's not listed in the category:Documentary films about Cambodia or in category:Documentary films about the Cambodian genocide. It is clearly one sided, not showing the attrocities by the north and time and again hammering the US and its allies attrocities. But still it has the following important sections in it:

[22:44] James Gerrand [Journalist and film maker]: When we had film of Cambodians cutting open bodies and ripping out the litter and eating them, western opinion was pretty shocked by the Lon Nol forces doing that. But this is what Cambodians are doing, were doing by tradition. It is said that its getting in the spirit, the strength of your enemy. It's a ritual. Quite frequently in the early years of the war, as a mark of friendship they would ask you to come and join them in the eating of the liver of the dead.

[24:20] Nixon: This is NOT an invasion of Cambodia.

[24:26] Cambodian man from border village: You might not know the guns and artillery you are sending, you know, they don't know you are innocent people or you are the Viet Cong. You know, they kill everyone. Into my village my neighbor house were burning and kill the people injured the people... but uh you can do nothing.

[24:52] Southia Chan, Cambodian woman from border village: I ran with my grandmother and aunt. My grandmother was too slow. I let go of her hand and ran with the Viet Cong. The planes shot: chong chong chong chong! And the tanks behind them. We kept running. I was safe when we reached the next village. I returned to my village, and my uncle and aunt, and two cousins were dead. South Saigon soldiers came and slaghtered them.

[28:38] Chhay Yiheang: Advisor of the Royal Government of Cambodia: Saigon troups came pillaging and killing people. Raping women. Raping young girls. Some fathers couldn't stand it and tried to stop it. They were shot on the spot.

[28:57] Southia Chan (then Cambodian village girl): The Saigon troups were more vicious than the Viet Cong. They terrorized the people and the Viet Cong never did that. Girls made themselves ugly so the Saigon troups wouldn't like them. Putting charcoal on their face and in their hair, ching ching ching like that. My aunt had one child and was still pretty. They tied her husband in the middle of the house, and raped her in front of him. No one dared do anything.

Thanksפשוט pashute ♫ (talk) 22:37, 12 July 2017 (UTC)

@Pashute: I recommend asking over at the Reference Desk. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 00:04, 13 July 2017 (UTC)

Thanks! Will do.פשוט pashute ♫ (talk) 23:39, 13 July 2017 (UTC)

Survivorship?

I have authored 2 articles, and I wonder who will become the "owner" of those articles when I die?

Do I have the duty (or the right) to appoint someone to become the principle editor?

Dcj3616 (talk) 00:32, 14 July 2017 (UTC)

I highly suggest you have a gander at WP:OWN. Hopefully it will allay your fears, but perhaps not. Thanks! Dumuzid (talk) 00:47, 14 July 2017 (UTC)

Wrong armenian Wikipedia logo

The SVG armenian Wikipedia logo have truncated letters. Please, fix it.

--2001:B07:6442:8903:F156:DA41:5FE:5283 (talk) 13:45, 12 July 2017 (UTC)

The logo is located in Wikimedia Commons, not in English Wikipedia. You should ask at Commons:Help desk. Ruslik_Zero 20:03, 12 July 2017 (UTC)

Move to Help desk on Commons, please. Rowan03 (talk) 21:07, 13 July 2017 (UTC)

@Rowan03: Just copy what you originally posted over to that page. You already know how to get there. Your same account will let you post there, too. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 21:22, 13 July 2017 (UTC)

Trying to find a page, but not knowing title or author

Recently, a user page was nominated for deletion at MFD. I assume it was deleted. I didn't record the name of the page or the user. I happen to remember that it was approximately 300 K. The subject matter was ambitious — an attempt to document the history of everything. I'd like to take a look at it. Does anyone recall the name or have a suggestion on how to find it. I tried reviewing recent deletions in MFD but there's hundreds.--S Philbrick(Talk) 15:29, 15 July 2017 (UTC)

Would you mean User:Emijrp/All Human Knowledge? —PaleoNeonate - 15:35, 15 July 2017 (UTC)

Exactly, thanks. (I assumed it had been deleted because I found some page that listed all large pages and I didn't see it on the list. Oh well my goal was to find it and you found it for me so thanks again)--S Philbrick(Talk) 16:06, 15 July 2017 (UTC)

You're welcome. —PaleoNeonate - 16:10, 15 July 2017 (UTC)

Geography : I don't get something about this landmark

Geography : I don't get something about this landmark:

The article Architecture of Uzbekistan#Minaret of Kutlug-Timur reads this minaret is located in: "Another example of architectural work of 11th century is Minaret of Kutlug-Timur, located in Nukus city"...

Nukus city is located in Uzbekistan indeed but the minaret is located at 42.308593° 59.141729°, in Turkmenistan, in the city of Konye-Urgench, article where the minaret is mentioned! BlueChip — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A02:AA13:6200:1080:7176:FFC9:571B:56F3 (talk) 12:28, 16 July 2017 (UTC)

I removed it from Architecture of Uzbekistan. Ruslik_Zero 20:28, 16 July 2017 (UTC)

Strategy discussion, cycle 3. A new challenge

Hi! It's the third week of our Cycle 3 discussion, and there's a new challenge: As Wikimedia looks toward 2030, how can we counteract the increasing levels of misinformation? You can suggest solutions here. Earlier challenges can be discussed as well. SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 19:22, 16 July 2017 (UTC)

Strategy discussion, cycle 3. Challenge 4

Hi! The movement strategy discussion is still underway, and there are four challenges that you may discuss:

1. How do our communities and content stay relevant in a changing world?
2. How could we capture the sum of all knowledge when much of it cannot be verified in traditional ways?
3. As Wikimedia looks toward 2030, how can we counteract the increasing levels of misinformation?
4. and the newest one: How does Wikimedia continue to be as useful as possible to the world as the creation, presentation, and distribution of knowledge change?

The last, fifth challenge will be released on July, 25.

If you want to know what other communities think about the challenges, there's the latest weekly summary (July 10 to 16), and there's the previous one (July 1 to 9).

SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 14:53, 20 July 2017 (UTC)

Browsing offline sources affecting health?

I don't know which venue to discuss health benefits and/or risks of searching for offline sources, like books and microfilms. Nonetheless, I'll post here in case of doubt. I browsed offline sources, including old newspapers, to improve Cheers (season 1). I'll put it in another way: the 1982–83 Nielsen ratings were posted on originally newspapers, yet the Nielsen ratings either are poorly or are not replicated or republished online. Therefore, I had to search for the ratings on microfilm. I spent hours and days in local libraries all alone to search for them. Fortunately, I wrote notes based on my findings. Consequently, I just inserted information and offline sources done mostly by myself.

I've been thinking. What are health benefits and risks of browsing offline sources all by myself in order to improve Wikipedia? What about browsing them in collaboration with other people? --George Ho (talk) 15:16, 20 July 2017 (UTC)

Why would it affect health? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 16:06, 20 July 2017 (UTC)

(edit conflict) George, we're not supposed to give medical advice, either to the public or to users, see MEDICAL. But I'd note that people have been working alone in libraries since at least the 7th Century BCE and working alone on microfilm since the 1920's. Since I go back into the pre-personal-computer era (much less the pre-Internet era) and since I'm a lawyer, bibliophile, and genealogist (or, more precisely, a genealogy helper), I've spent hundreds if not thousands of hours alone in libraries and hunched over microfilm/microfiche readers. There's no doubt that it will cause you temporary discomfort, both bodily and visually, but I've not ever suffered any permanent harm. And going there to do it, and the getting up and down to collect materials it involves, at least gets you out from behind the keyboard and monitor. While you can collaborate to some degree, the research itself is necessarily solitary. Your partner can take microfilm roll B or book B while you work on roll A or book A, but that only cuts down on the time, not the isolation. (And if it's your project you really have to trust your partner's skills and work ethic.) Just my experience and thoughts and best regards, TransporterMan (TALK) 16:08, 20 July 2017 (UTC)

Teahouse host

I've been answering questions at the Teahouse for a long time and finally got around to formally signing up as a host on the nineteenth. I can't see my profile on the host page, though. Even weirder, the page history doesn't show me having edited it, even though my edit history does. Can you just not see your own profile? Or is some kind of bug at play? White Arabian Filly ^Neigh 19:10, 22 July 2017 (UTC)

I see you as #177 at Wikipedia:Teahouse/Hosts, but the linked image/file does not seem to exist. —PaleoNeonate - 19:18, 22 July 2017 (UTC)

Oh, also the actual page is Wikipedia:Teahouse/Host_landing which is transcluded in that above one, I see your edit in its history there... I hope this helps, —PaleoNeonate - 19:20, 22 July 2017 (UTC)

@White Arabian Filly: I fixed the image issue, it only had an extra File: prefix (which was already implicit). Also, thank you for joining the hosts, I'm actually one of the editors you once helped there. —PaleoNeonate - 03:41, 23 July 2017 (UTC)

PaleoNeonate, thank you for your help. I remember talking to you at the Teahouse, too. White Arabian Filly ^Neigh 20:49, 23 July 2017 (UTC)

Racism?

I fixed an error in an article and someone reverted me, knowing that my father is a Black African, could this be racism? How should I handle it? Φράγκος Στάθης (talk) 05:25, 26 July 2017 (UTC)

Reading through the comments next to all the edits, I'd say the more likely scenario is that the person who reverted that edit of yours probably didn't know about your ethnicity, even if they cared. An astonishingly large number of reverts happen before the reverter has even looked over the other person's user page. Rhialto (talk) 10:09, 26 July 2017 (UTC)

Yeah, you can not assume that another editor looked at your user page to discover your ethnic heritage. Most editors won't. Indeed (given your user name) it is more likely that other editors will assume you are of Greek heritage rather than of African heritage.

As for how you should handle being reverted... first, never take being reverted personally (being reverted is something that happens all the time - even very experienced editors get reverted from time to time). The way to deal with it is to go to the article's talk page and ask the other editor why he/she reverted your edit... and then discuss it politely. Blueboar (talk) 10:26, 26 July 2017 (UTC)

@Φράγκος Στάθης: If you see an obvious problem like "/_help" for no reason in an article then please check the page history before just removing the bad text like in [10]. The previous edit [11] had bigger problems and should have been reverted completely. The page was better right after than right before your edit but you inadvertently helped hide the bigger problem. It has now been reverted completely. The editor who reverted you was apparently unaware of this so I'm not saying that revert was justified. PrimeHunter (talk) 12:34, 26 July 2017 (UTC)

I can speak with absolute certainty that the editor in question did not know your racial background nor did they care. You have been here for 24 minutes and am already accusing people of racism against you; you dearly need to read WP:AGF. --Golbez (talk) 16:34, 26 July 2017 (UTC)

Why do you assume it wasn't because you have a Welsh mother? GangofOne (talk) 20:24, 26 July 2017 (UTC)

Disestablishment date

"American Viscose operated from 1910 to 1976, when it was renamed Avtex. Avtex closed in 1990." What disestablishment date should be used in the category, 1976 or 1990? --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 19:34, 26 July 2017 (UTC)

?

How to article „Former Yugoslavia“ leads on article „Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia“ to the part „12 Legacy“ not „2.8 Legacy“? --SrpskiAnonimac (talk) 14:13, 27 July 2017 (UTC)

You'll need to either rename the sections so that they are unique within the article or use {{anchor}} to create a named anchor to use in the redirect. older ≠ wiser 14:41, 27 July 2017 (UTC)

I have removed the first one-sentence section.[12] PrimeHunter (talk) 14:54, 27 July 2017 (UTC)

RFC open concerning use of Cultural warning and advisory templates.

There is currently an RFC open at Template_talk:Recent_death_Aboriginal_Aus concerning the use of templates and notices to comply with cultural sensitivities. Please feel free to drop by if interested. Thanks! Dane|Geld 21:07, 27 July 2017 (UTC)

Net neutrality banner

Hi all,

Copied from Wikipedia:Help desk:

Hi all,

Could we please put a net neutrality banner for all readers to see, similar to the fundraising banner?

FCC is considering a law to allow US Internet providers to censor bandwidth price and slow down certain websites you visit.

Please stop this by writing a letter to your representative today! (If you're outside of US, share with a friend.)

I am a foreigner; if you're able to word this more concisely, please do.

--Gryllida (talk) 00:15, 27 July 2017 (UTC)

Hello Gryllida, hope you're well. As the Help Desk is for resolving issues related to editing, I should recommend that you may consider the Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous) forum for posting your suggestion. Thanks. Lourdes 03:01, 27 July 2017 (UTC)

--Gryllida (talk) 05:15, 27 July 2017 (UTC)

Please read this, which will help explain why it's unlikely we will have a banner as there appears to be no clear consensus of opinion regarding support or opposition.--S Philbrick(Talk) 19:38, 27 July 2017 (UTC)

WMF's Wikipedia Zero initiative is firmly anti-Net Neutrality. — Dispenser 13:41, 28 July 2017 (UTC)

Strategy discussion, cycle 3. Challenge 5

There are only three days left (plus today) to take part in Cycle 3 of the Wikimedia strategy discussion. Insights to the last challenge our movement is facing has just been published. The challenge is: How does Wikimedia meet our current and future readers’ needs as the world undergoes significant population shifts in the next 15 years?

The previous challenges are:

1. How do our communities and content stay relevant in a changing world?
2. How could we capture the sum of all knowledge when much of it cannot be verified in traditional ways?
3. As Wikimedia looks toward 2030, how can we counteract the increasing levels of misinformation?
4. How does Wikimedia continue to be as useful as possible to the world as the creation, presentation, and distribution of knowledge change?

On this page, you may read more, and suggest solutions to the challenges. Also, if you're interested in related discussions that are taking place on other wikis, please have a look at the weekly summaries: #1 (July 1 to 9), #2 (July 10 to 16), #3 (July 17 to 23).

In August, a broad consultation will take place, but it'll differ from what we've been conducting since March. This is your last chance to take part in such a discussion! SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 13:33, 28 July 2017 (UTC)

The first edit?

• I tried looking at address https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Back_to_You_(TV_series)&oldid=1 , to try to find when was the first Wikipedia edit of them all. This Edit 1 proved to have been made to page Wikipedia:Wikipedians by Luis Oliveira at 14:25, 26 January 2002; but page Wikipedia:Wikipedians had about 60 edits before that. That page's edits after that Edit 1 have small numbers increasing with time, as expected; but that page's edits before that Edit 1 have high numbers, and that page's oldest edit has number 332199963. Anthony Appleyard (talk) 13:36, 28 July 2017 (UTC)

That edit happened after the transfer to the new wiki software. In fact it is the first edit recorded using the Wikimedia software. But some of us were editing away in 2001 on the original software. Not all of those edits survived the transition but here's the oldest edit of mine that did. The actual oldest edit took place early in 2001. -- Derek Ross | Talk 14:56, 28 July 2017 (UTC)

Graham87 is a goldmine of information for this kind of query. Johnuniq (talk) 23:23, 28 July 2017 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Wikipedia's oldest articles for information about Wikipedia's first edits, and this explanation in my userspace about revision ID numbers and how they work. Graham87 23:37, 28 July 2017 (UTC)

On becoming a reader

A few days ago, I posted a link here referring to an article where someone tried to goad people into posting self-qdvertising articles. I called this "interesting", but thought it an insult to (experienced) colleagues to point out how detrimental such practices are to Wikipedia. Apparently, I was wrong. Ironically, someone has accused me of "blatant advertising", while, as stated, my concern was of course the very opposite.

In my view, reading is not a superficial activity: it is the retrieval of meaning. Bessel Dekker (talk) 11:16, 29 July 2017 (UTC)

Never assume that others will understand the motivations behind your comments. The problem was that you did not spell out why you found the link "interesting". Blueboar (talk) 13:31, 29 July 2017 (UTC)

Notice: DVD release dates as air dates discussion

I have started a discussion about the use of English DVD release dates as a substitute for English air dates at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Anime and manga#Another issue with DVD release dates as air dates do to an issue that has cropped up on the Naruto: Shippuden episode lists. To summaries, an IP is inserting DVD release dates onto the lists as English air dates because the series stop airing on television midway through its original run. The last episode that was broadcast was episode 312, which aired on the linear Internet television service Neon Alley on September 26, 2015 before the service shutdown. All episodes afterward that point are only available in DVD box sets. —Farix (t | c) 12:42, 2 August 2017 (UTC)

Free images from the British Library

I'm not sure where to post this so I might as well do it here then others who are more familiar with such matters can take it further. Some might of course already know about this. "The British Library is offering over 1 million free vintage images for download". Digital Arts.. Hope it's useful. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 18:44, 2 August 2017 (UTC)

I thank you for the link, Dodger67. However, when I clicked on the link, so many ads or pop-ups show up. I had to close the browser and then click the link. Same results: so many ads or spamming ads. Are you sure that the link is safe to click? --George Ho (talk) 19:24, 2 August 2017 (UTC)

George Ho Its ok on my Samsung Android tablet with Chrome browser, the page does have quite a lot of adverts but no actual popups - maybe there's a popup blocker on my browser... Anyway, I've followed the links in the article and arrived at the British Library's "albums list" on flikr.com - https://www.flickr.com/photos/britishlibrary/albums/with/72157638544764936 It appears that the images were all published more than 100 years ago and their copyright statement "No known copyright restrictions" is a link to https://www.flickr.com/commons/usage/ What I personally find interesting is the more than 12,000 maps! Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 20:17, 2 August 2017 (UTC)

Oh... I was using a desktop PC with IE11 and popup blocker disabled. Ooh... At least the Flickr link is safer. --George Ho (talk) 20:21, 2 August 2017 (UTC)

Cross-wiki transcribing

Hi! I saw some people transcribing pages from other wikis. How is this done, if even possible? Thank you. Cheers, FriyMan ^{Per aspera ad astra} 07:18, 3 August 2017 (UTC)

Help:Import can be used. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 09:11, 3 August 2017 (UTC)

You may be referring to WP:CXT. --Izno (talk) 13:47, 3 August 2017 (UTC)

Discussion about moving the Genderqueer article

Opinions are needed on the following matter: Talk:Genderqueer#Requested move 1 August 2017. A permalink for it is here. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 00:59, 4 August 2017 (UTC)

Deletion of BLPs whose subject is children

Yuma Soerianto, an article about a currently living child, was deleted ([13]) via PROD because of the concern "I'm never comfortable on having articles on living children and I think this needs to be reviewed closely". Has this issue been discussed before? I know that Wikipedia:Minors and persons judged incompetent applies, but because the page is only an essay, more perspectives should be considered. I also wish to ask that because the topic appears notable and should be restored if there is no significant disagreement over its inclusion. 211.100.57.166 (talk) 10:56, 2 August 2017 (UTC)

I'm of the opinion that this person is notable (see the Google); although WP:BLP1E or WP:15MOF may apply, I'm not aware of any policy prescribing deletion only because an article subject is young. Sure, articles on living persons of any age should bear higher standards, that's standard WP:BLP, but I don't think this is a special case. @Ritchie333, KDS4444, and Ks0stm: would you mind if this was restored and taken through AfD? Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 12:41, 2 August 2017 (UTC)

Not at all. And I am fully of the opinion that any newborn might be notable simply by virtue of birth (i.e., the royals, Christ, etc.), meaning age should be no barrier in and of itself— only that older people have greater time in which to establish their notability than most kids do, and any youngsters who are going to qualify for a Wikipedia article are going to have their notability claims examined very closely! (also, I have seen too many articles written by parents or by the kids themselves that are immediate cases for CSD). KDS4444 (talk) 23:46, 2 August 2017 (UTC)

Even outside of royal families, there are other children who attain notabiliy. For example, Daniel Radcliffe was notable at age 12 due to his role in the Harry Potter series. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 03:37, 6 August 2017 (UTC)

Page Previews A/B test

Hello,

Page Previews (aka Hovercards) is currently the most popular beta feature on all desktop projects. It provides a preview of an article upon hovering over a wiki link for users interested in gaining more context on a subject.

Over the past year, we have been improving our code and incorporating community feedback in the changes to the design and functionality of the feature. Currently, the feature is rolled out on all Wikipedias, except for English and German. Before proceeding with rollout discussions on these two wikis, we would like to schedule an A/B test of the feature to ensure that we can replicate the positive quantitative results from other wikis on this Wikipedia.

The test will be three weeks in length starting August 14. During the test, 1% of anonymous users would receive the feature by default. We will compare their usage to a control group of 1% of anonymous users who do not have the feature enabled. For logged-in users, no changes in functionality will be expected.

Please, let us know if you have any comments or concerns on the test. Thank you! CKoerner (WMF) (talk) 16:22, 7 August 2017 (UTC)

Share your thoughts on the draft strategy direction

• 
• 

At the beginning of this year, we initiated a broad discussion to form a strategic direction that will unite and inspire people across the entire movement. This direction will be the foundation on which we will build clear plans and set priorities. More than 80 communities and groups have discussed and gave feedback on-wiki, in person, virtually, and through private surveys. We researched readers and consulted more than 150 experts. We looked at future trends that will affect our mission, and gathered feedback from partners and donors.

In July, a group of community volunteers and representatives from the strategy team took on a task of synthesizing this feedback into an early version of the strategic direction that the broader movement can review and discuss.

The first draft is ready. Please read, share, and discuss on the talk page. Based on your feedback, the drafting group will refine and finalize this direction through August.

SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 16:11, 8 August 2017 (UTC)

Filing a RM when you don't support the move

I do dispute resolution and have stumbled onto a case in which a move war was under way and a RM would go a long way to settling the problem, but the party wanting to change the title seems reluctant to file it and the other party does not, of course, want to do so. I'd like the community's view on this question: Would it be acceptable for me, as a neutral party, to start the RM without supporting or objecting to it and leave it up to the warring parties to either support or defend it? It could, of course, fall apart if the move proponent doesn't come in to support it, but that's probably unlikely. Let me note that the RM process, linked above, is clearly set up to be filed by an editor who wants the move. What do y'all think? Best regards, TransporterMan (TALK) 17:08, 4 August 2017 (UTC)

I've done so here in the past got no complaints and no obvious reason why it should be disallowed, so I think it's fine. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 17:17, 4 August 2017 (UTC)

Something's wrong here if an editor has the energy to participate in a move war (against policy) but not to open an RM (per policy). If they can't do that, the dispute is resolved in my view. No move. ―Mandruss ☎ 17:19, 4 August 2017 (UTC)

Helping a user who doesn't know what (s)he's doing (including an anon who you maynever see again here) is, IMO, acceptable. However, if a user is involved in a move war and unwilling to file an RM, they should be blocked for warring and no one else should open the RM for them. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 20:52, 6 August 2017 (UTC)

My general rule of thumb is that people who actively oppose an action should not propose doing it (e.g., filing a request to move a page when you don't want the page moved), but anyone else (i.e., neutral or supportive) is free to do so. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:09, 9 August 2017 (UTC)

Page not showing up in Google results

Hello! I created this entry almost a month ago: Mosul liberation yet it doesn't show up in Google search results at all. What's the problem? --Expectant of Light (talk) 07:45, 7 August 2017 (UTC)

@Expectant of Light: Your page has not been new page reviewed, so it is NOINDEXed--this prevents (compliant) search engines from listing web pages. --Izno (talk) 12:11, 7 August 2017 (UTC)

Thank you! But how do I apply this entry to be reviewed? --Expectant of Light (talk) 14:38, 7 August 2017 (UTC)

@Expectant of Light: You wait, mostly. There is a large backlog for reviewers to get through. --Izno (talk) 14:46, 7 August 2017 (UTC)

No need to apply, just sit and wait. There are 15868 in the queue and 1626 pages have been reviewed this week. - X201 (talk) 14:48, 7 August 2017 (UTC)

Or wait 90 days. All articles are indexed after 90 days, regardless of whether they are still in the New Pages Feed. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:11, 9 August 2017 (UTC)

Multiple English articles should link to one German article

The German Primetals Technologies links to the English Primetals Technologies. However, Voest-Alpine Industrieanlagenbau links to a German article which redirects to the German Primetals article. The content in the German article is essentially the same as the content of both English articles, but there was a discussion of sorts that led to most of the information being moved from the English Siemens VAI article to Voest-Alpine Industrieanlagenbau. For the German Siemens Vai article there was a redirect to Primetals instead. I don't believe the Primetals article in English should have the historical information because it's essentially a merger of two companies. Is there some way to link to the English Voest-Alpine Industrieanlagenbau from German?— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 19:19, 7 August 2017 (UTC)

I don't entirely understand what you're trying to do, but if you mean you want to insert a link here that goes to German Wikipedia, the way to do that (for example) is [[:de:Primetals Technologies]], which produces de:Primetals Technologies. You can pipe that link like so: [[:de:Primetals Technologies|Primetals Technologies]] = Primetals Technologies. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 21:31, 7 August 2017 (UTC)

My objective is to link a German article on the left side of the page and vice versa. It's sort of misleading when German Wikipedia has one article on a topic where English Wikipedia has two.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 21:34, 8 August 2017 (UTC)

Okay, no one seems interested in helping. I do know that the content which appears in the German article is divided between two English articles and the English article that the German article links to directly has a link to the other article because I removed content that was duplicated and replaced it with a link.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 14:58, 9 August 2017 (UTC)

I can't even do it manually. It asks me for the language but then it never lets me enter the name of the article I am linking to. And the box to click on when I am finished doesn't work.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 16:33, 9 August 2017 (UTC)

Ah, they've changed the interlanguage links menu again. In order for it to work you have to enter the language as "Deutsch" or "dewiki". Then the article box should populate with articles that you can link to, or maybe you have to start typing the name of the article before it will populate. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 13:13, 10 August 2017 (UTC)

Okay, thanks. Now my real question is how to have a German article link to Voest-Alpine Industrieanlagenbau, because at this time no article does. From the English article, there is a link to a redirect resulting from a move. The redirect target links back to its English equivalent, as I mentioned above.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 17:39, 10 August 2017 (UTC)

Ah, I'm starting to see your issue. Our Voest-Alpine Industrieanlagenbau interlinks to German de:Siemens VAI, which is a redirect to de:Primetals Technologies, which itself is interlinked to our Primetals Technologies. I think what you want to do is go to the German article that you want to interlink to Voest-Alpine Industrieanlagenbau and then create a new interlink from there which will overwrite the interlink to de:Siemens VAI. That should be fine, nobody will be trying to use the interlink from the redirect, and you'll be making an improvement.

If you want the German article to interlink to two English articles, I don't think there is a way to do that, unfortunately, the links are 1:1. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 19:39, 10 August 2017 (UTC)

The problem, of course, is that de:Primetals Technologies has all the content in Voest-Alpine Industrieanlagenbau and the German article with the name closest to that also redirects to the same German article.

I don't think we really want that in English and I question whether it was the right way to go in German, because Primetals is a new company that combined two other companies. Someone who is now blocked (leading me to wonder if I did the right thing) suggested all the history from Siemens VAI go to the other article, and then Siemens VAI merged with the other company to form Primetals. I made the change, which means the Siemens article has very little actual content. I proposed a merger which would supposedly solve the problem, but I'm not sure what is the right thing to do.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 15:25, 11 August 2017 (UTC)

The one way to get to the English article is from the "History" section of the Primetals article. It consists entirely of a link to the other article for now. Someone repeated nearly all the content, but that's probably because they used the same source. By the way, I did this in German. I don't know that it's really meaningful, but the name is spelled differently there.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 15:31, 11 August 2017 (UTC)

I did something wrong. The box let me enter an English article to link to from the German redirect I just created. Then it wouldn't complete the change.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 15:35, 11 August 2017 (UTC)

Editing Archives

When did Wikipedia change to allow editors to post in Archives? What was the rationale for this? Is there a protocol or etiquette to follow when adding to or editing archived discussions???--Jack Upland (talk) 18:28, 8 August 2017 (UTC)

@Jack Upland: Do you have examples? ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 18:39, 8 August 2017 (UTC)

I meant Talk page archives; for example, recently at Talk:Joseph Stalin. I don't have a great problem with what the other editor did, but (unless I'm mistaken) it wasn't possible for editors like me to do that until recently (???) but now it is... There seems to have been a change with the permissions, and I was wondering if anyone could enlighten me when and why???--Jack Upland (talk) 20:19, 8 August 2017 (UTC)

It's possible that some archives are protected, or that there's an edit filter for new editors which checks for that, but I reverted edits to archives multiple times and have sometimes unarchived discussions. —PaleoNeonate – 20:28, 8 August 2017 (UTC)

As far as I know, there's no policy or guideline which restricts editing archives per se. The {{aan}} archive page header template says not to do so, but neither templates nor template documentation create policy. It is, of course, a idea which varies from bad to futile for several different reasons but to my knowledge there's nothing that authoritatively says that you can't do it. That doesn't mean, on the other hand, that it couldn't be seen as being disruptive depending on the apparent intent and circumstances and, of course, it could also violate the talk page guidelines depending on what is done. Regards, TransporterMan (TALK) 20:49, 8 August 2017 (UTC)

And if you're talking about the edits here, I'd say that they fall in the futile category, that is, edits by a newcomer who doesn't realize that they'll probably never be seen since they're on an archive page. — TransporterMan (TALK) 20:55, 8 August 2017 (UTC)

I've undone those edits and left a message on that user's talk page. That's generally the best way to deal with it (at least in my experience). ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 21:02, 8 August 2017 (UTC)

The usual protocol is to un-archive the discussion, and then reply. (Cut the old discussion out of the archive, paste it onto the regular talk page, and then reply as you normally would.)

There's never been a technical restriction beyond suppressing the section editing links, and sometimes edits are very helpful. For example, I've corrected links to other discussions (e.g., Archived Discussion #1 links to the now-archived Discussion #2) and added links to Phab tasks. It's not usually worth it, but sometimes the archived discussion is being actively discussed (e.g., at WP:DRV or in an WP:ARBCOM case). WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:18, 9 August 2017 (UTC)

The Teahouse archives don't have section links, which makes it harder for me, but the Help Desk archives do. Every now and then I see a link to a section on the Teahouse and because everything was archived, the link doesn't work, so given that there is a chance someone will find the discussion, I make sure the link works. There are other times when information just has to be corrected, or perhaps there was a response on a talk page and I just want to make clear the question was resolved.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 15:06, 9 August 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for all those responses. It appears that I naively assumed that editing archives was undoable, not just "not done" (inappropriate). You learn a new thing every day! I want to stress that I did not object to what Sein und Zeit did; I was just surprised that it was possible. Clearly it's better to post your comments in live discussions rather than comment in archived ones that other people are unlikely to read... The previous and more serious example I saw was that Sagecandour had peppered the archives of Talk:Whataboutism with comments re-asserting the opinion that he amply explained on the current Talk page. Putting this together with the Stalin edits by Sein und Zeit, I wrongly assumed that there'd been a change in policy... Evidently, I was wrong... Thanks once again to all who have responded.--Jack Upland (talk) 17:30, 9 August 2017 (UTC)

AFD nominations of "Sport at X games" and "Country at X games" articles

Lately, I have noticed an increased number of such articles being nominated for deletion, mostly for failing WP:GNG (examples include Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Denmark at the 2017 World Championships in Athletics, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Tennis at the 2017 Commonwealth Youth Games and Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Three-cushion billiards at the 2017 World Games – men's singles). While I personally have no strong feeling about such articles, I think such nominations are possibly problematic, since we literally have thousands of articles, all of them in the same format and usually with the same amount of sources (or lack thereof). There is WP:NOLY as a guideline already but it only applies to Olympic Games, not others. Should we have an RFC on whether such articles should exist? Again, no real interest, just bringing it to wider attention to avoid a potential overwhelming of AFD. Regards SoWhy 11:05, 9 August 2017 (UTC)

Such "event/team at multi-nation multi-sport tourament" articles only exist because it is impractical to cover every aspect of the entire tournament in a single article. An Olympic, Paralympic or Commonwealth Games spawns several hundred such articles - merged into one it would probably end up several megabytes long. Similarly, continental or world athletics championships result in dozens of articles. If the tournament as a whole is notable then every team, medallist, race/match at such a tournament is almost by default also notable because the media of every participating country will report on their team's performance. How often do such AFDs end in deletion? Excessive subdivision of articles should be avoided - sometimes a separate stubby article for every permutation of men's/women's singles/doubles heavy/middle/light is not justified, then merging is a solution. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 10:25, 11 August 2017 (UTC)

"If the tournament as a whole is notable then every team, medallist, race/match at such a tournament is almost by default also notable because the media of every participating country will report on their team's performance." Not at all. While this is true for the major things like the Olympics, it is not true at all for small tournaments (like many youth tournaments or regional tournaments), where there are e.g. some articles about the tournament in the press of the organizing country ("Belgium welcomes young athletes from 12 countries in the 2017 U-17 Korfbal tournament"-style articles), but not enough coverage by far to warrant more detailed articles on "Luxemburg at the 2017 U-17 Korfbal tournament" or some such.

The above example is imaginary, but we have e.g. Gibraltar at the 2011 Commonwealth Youth Games, which is a "Good Article" but one that should be deleted anyway. It has at the moment "zero" independent sources (and yet it is a Good Article? GA assessment is an area in serious trouble...). Fram (talk) 10:47, 11 August 2017 (UTC)

I have started the GAR process for that article. The user listing it should be investigated to see if he made similar errors in judgement with other pages. --Izno (talk) 13:18, 11 August 2017 (UTC)

Here are sampled articles deleted per AfD: Hockey at the 2013 East Asian Games, Aquatics at the 1983 Southeast Asian Games, Lists of soccer matches at <venue>, Weightlifting at the 2015 Commonwealth Youth Games (redirected), etc. More at Wikipedia:WikiProject Deletion sorting/Sports/archive or Wikipedia:WikiProject Deletion sorting/Events/archive; type Ctrl+F (i.e. use your browser's "Find" tool) and then type " at " to narrow down results. Seems to me that such topics are subject to notability rules. --George Ho (talk) 15:17, 11 August 2017 (UTC)

Renaming

Should be renamed articles:

• Aramaic (disambiguation) in only Aramaic
• Old German (disambiguation) → Old German
• Español (disambiguation) → Español

--SrpskiAnonimac (talk) 14:23, 9 August 2017 (UTC)

@SrpskiAnonimac: This is the wrong venue for requesting renaming. WP:RM has instructions for requesting page moves (and these move are not uncontroversial and need discussion to establish consensus to change the existing primary topic redirect arrangements. older ≠ wiser 14:34, 9 August 2017 (UTC)

@Bkonrad: If they are similar articles (English, Spanish, Scandinavian, German, etc) why the debate is needed?--SrpskiAnonimac (talk) 14:43, 9 August 2017 (UTC)

@SrpskiAnonimac: While superficially similar, the context is quite different. For example, English and German have never been anything other than a disambiguation page while Spanish and Scandinavian have been disambiguation pages since 2001 and 2002 respectively. Putting aside that both Scandinavian and Spanish are currently pretty poor examples of a disambiguation page, English, Spanish, and German are inherently ambiguous in that they may refer to the language or to the people. Scandinavian arguably should be a redirect to Scandinavia as nearly all the entries are partial title matches, but that would be a separate matter. Español, at least as used in English, pretty unambiguously refers to the language. Even in Spanish, the term for people is Españoles, not Español. Except for relatively short periods, Español has consistently and mostly uncontroversially been a redirect to Spanish language. Old German is perhaps a weaker case. It was first created in 2004 as a redirect to Old High German, then almost immediately changed to be a disambiguation page. Then in 2006 it was moved to Old German (disambiguation) with the edit summary This title should redirect to "Old High German." The other usages are far less common and Old German has been a redirect to Old High German until your recent edit. Looking at the page, I'm inclined to agree with the edit summary for the 2006 move, but perhaps there is some evidence to indicate otherwise. Similarly, Aramaic (disambiguation) is nothing but a list of partial title matches and the Aramaic language article is clearly the primary topic. older ≠ wiser 15:37, 9 August 2017 (UTC)

The Wikipedia Library Card platform

The Wikipedia Library team are happy to announce the migration of our free research access signups to the Library Card platform! The Library Card is a centralised location for signing up to all of the free resources available through the library - now totalling over 60 publishers and databases offering access to more than 80,000 paywalled periodicals to help you research and find citations for Wikipedia articles. On-wiki signup pages have been archived, and all future signups will be coordinated on the platform.

Log in directly with your Wikipedia account via OAuth, and if you find resources that would be useful to you, please sign up! Ongoing development will be occurring for the site, so please let us know if you run into any error messages or unexpected behaviour. You can flag bugs directly on Phabricator.

Later this year we'll be integrating an authentication system, enabling direct access to resources using your Wikipedia login. No more need to remember separate logins for each website! We'll also be using this system to allow automated no-application-required access to a subset of partners, and integrating it with a search tool to make it easier to figure out which aggregator or publisher has the content you need! Samwalton9 (WMF) (talk) 20:28, 9 August 2017 (UTC)

RfC about references and airport articles

Hello, your input would be appreciated at this RfC about how we should give references for the "Airlines and destinations" tables of articles about airports. Thank you. — Sunnya343✈ (háblame • my work) 11:44, 19 August 2017 (UTC)

RfC about 2017 solar eclipse

Please go to Talk:2017#Eclipse and respond to the discussion of whether or not the eclipse should have an entry in the main article. Thank you.  — Myk Streja ^(beep) 21:21, 21 August 2017 (UTC)

Request for Input at WT:DRN

I am requesting discussion at the dispute resolution noticeboard talk page about advice for how to deal with editors who have difficulty in English. The question in particular is about editors who are involved in a content dispute but cannot explain clearly what they want changed. Robert McClenon (talk) 21:23, 21 August 2017 (UTC)

Strange edit summaries

I honestly have no idea where to take this, plus it is probably not really important. But I noticed on Sheng Siong a series of minor edits by anon accounts with some really odd edit summaries. Just wanted to get some opinions on wtf is going on? Bakilas (talk) 12:54, 24 August 2017 (UTC)

@Bakilas: The place to take it is generally the user talk page of the editor writing the edit summaries. I understand that can be difficult when the editor is unregistered and their IP address keeps changing; that is one of the well-known downsides of allowing unregistered editing. If you see the edits or their edit summaries as sufficiently detrimental to the encyclopedia, the place is WP:ANI. I see that some of that is in Chinese; while I feel that foreign-language edit summaries should be expressly forbidden, warranting warnings and potential blocks, I'm not aware of such a policy (I could be wrong on that). ―Mandruss ☎ 13:03, 24 August 2017 (UTC)

@Bakilas: Upon closer look: (1) Those aren't what I would call "minor edits" but rather dummy edits, and constitute a significant abuse of that technique. (2) This has been going on, on and off, for many months. Therefore I have requested temporary semi-protection at that article. ―Mandruss ☎ 13:30, 24 August 2017 (UTC)

Request granted for 3 months semi-protection. If the games resume after that (and you happen to be aware of it) feel free to use WP:RFPP. I don't plan to monitor the article. ―Mandruss ☎ 02:26, 25 August 2017 (UTC)

Just so you know, it's advertising a TV channel or show or something like that which is run by the company...I've requested revdel, but I don't know how that will go. ansh666 20:21, 28 August 2017 (UTC)

If there's a particular spam link which is added and restored, please consider reporting it at WT:WikiProject Spam. Thanks, —PaleoNeonate – 02:05, 29 August 2017 (UTC)

Page not showing up in Google results 2

Hello! 16 days ago I got a notification that this page that I had created months ago was reviewed. But despite that, the page still doesn't show up in google results. What might be the problem? --Expectant of Light (talk) 09:34, 26 August 2017 (UTC)

You would have to ask the good folks at Google... the article shows up on our internal search results. Blueboar (talk) 10:33, 26 August 2017 (UTC)

@Expectant of Light: I'd be at WP:VPT with this question. Higher concentration of tech knowledge there. I'd be interested to know the answer. ―Mandruss ☎ 13:06, 26 August 2017 (UTC)

Thank you guys! --Expectant of Light (talk) 14:04, 26 August 2017 (UTC)

Call for papers: IWSC International Wikipedia Scientific Conference

Event Poster

Call for papers deadline extended

• Submissions until September 11 2017
• Approval notification Setember 30
• Event date: November 8-10 2017

More info: http://www.wikibrasil.org/projetos/iwsc_en/

Registration: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/i-international-wikipedia-scientific-conference-tickets-36418854775

Rodrigo Padula (talk) 12:10, 1 September 2017 (UTC)

IP editors making large edits and then immediately reverting them without edit summary: is it disruptive?

Recently, I noticed that a few IP editors were making edits to pages such as Wall Street, Midtown, BRICS, and Moscow International Business Centre. Then these IP editors would almost immediately undo their own edits without any edit summary or explanation whatsoever for either of these edits. All these edits are invariably major edits with >500 bytes being modified and complex edits to tables, citations, and templates, so it's probably not just some newbie testing stuff. Is this considered disruptive editing? Because if so, I intend to report it to either WP:AIV or WP:RPP.

The users in question are 79.69.137.195 (talk · contribs · WHOIS), 79.69.128.4 (talk · contribs · WHOIS), and 92.22.162.164 (talk · contribs · WHOIS). epicgenius (talk) 15:13, 8 September 2017 (UTC)

Yes, warn them for editing tests. See the section Editing tests by experimenting users at this page (nb. even if it's probably not "newbie testing" it's worth assuming good faith and going through the warnings) -- There'sNoTime ^{(to explain)} 15:16, 8 September 2017 (UTC)

Thanks. I've warned the most recent IP, the one beginning with 92, but the other ones haven't edited in a week. epicgenius (talk) 17:47, 8 September 2017 (UTC)

I have a question...

Hello... I am a user editor in Arabic Wikipedia and I sorry for disturbing you but I have a question...

Can you tell me why the article named "Persian Gulf"? because the Arabian Coast is much longer than Persian Coast, and the Arabs have a very long history with this Gulf; where the Arabs put oil and gas fields more than the Persians, and that its coastal population is more than the population of the Persian coast. It is true that the ancient maps are written in the Persian Sea, but the Arabs benefited from it more than the Persians, and even put the name of the "Arabian Gulf" on Google Maps, and a vote was taken to change the name of the "Arabian Gulf" to the "Persian Gulf" on Google's maps, and the majority vote was rejected.

I ask any administrator or anyone to read my message, thank you and I wish you good luck --A3bdula3ziz (talk) 19:30, 7 September 2017 (UTC)

@A3bdula3ziz: You may be interested in previous discussion already located at Talk:Persian Gulf. I expect there is quite a bit to read. --Izno (talk) 19:46, 7 September 2017 (UTC)

@A3bdula3ziz: I would also recommend reading Persian Gulf naming dispute. "Persian Gulf" has been the standard term for that body of water in English for centuries and our general approach to naming articles supports using the most common name. Eggishorn (talk) (contrib) 23:19, 7 September 2017 (UTC)

Google maps actually uses the name "Persian Gulf" in English, so the statement that it uses "Arabian Gulf" is untrue. 86.17.222.157 (talk) 16:52, 9 September 2017 (UTC)

Draft strategy direction. Version #2

• 
• 

In 2017, we initiated a broad discussion to form a strategic direction that will unite and inspire Wikimedians. This direction will be the foundation on which we will build clear plans and set priorities. More than 80 communities and groups discussed and gave feedback. We researched readers and consulted more than 150 experts. We looked at future trends that will affect our mission, and gathered feedback from partners and donors.

A group of community volunteers and representatives from the strategy team synthesized this feedback into an early version of the strategic direction that the broader movement can review and discuss.

The second version of the direction is ready. Again, please read, share, and discuss on the talk page on Meta. Based on your feedback, the drafting group will refine and finalize the direction.

SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 10:07, 11 September 2017 (UTC)

Hurricane Irma & The Wikipedia servers

Some of us who are in desperate need of a life have been active on Wikipedia for a long while may remember that the servers are located in Tampa, Florida. And we may also be aware that the latest projections for Hurricane Irma predict its course directly over Tampa, Florida. So if you're concerned about some serious downtime, you have reason to be.

Fortunately, if you are concerned about the servers in Tampa, it's because you are a bit behind on the news. (Between Gamergate & WMF crises, you can be excused for missing this bit of information. I know I hadn't heard of this news.) The Foundation servers moved to Ashburn, Virginia back in January 2013.[14] Which means that Wikipedia has a better chance of staying up 99.999% of the time. And safe from hurricanes. -- llywrch (talk) 06:36, 9 September 2017 (UTC)

There's also a second datacenter in Carrollton, Texas. Which has at least twice now (in 2016 and 2017) been used to serve all traffic, as a test of the ability to quickly switch configuration to do so. Anomie⚔ 01:57, 11 September 2017 (UTC)

Just out of curiosity, what would it cost to set up a few more backups? Maybe in Canada or in Europe, Asia, Africa, South America, to be covered for all disasters short of something worldwide? bd2412 T 03:31, 11 September 2017 (UTC)

I note that finances aren't the only concern, a datacenter location also needs good global connectivity and a good legal environment. Anomie⚔ 00:12, 12 September 2017 (UTC)

Wonderful, so we exchanged hurricane country for tornado alley. =P Ks0stm ^{(T•C•G•E)} 00:18, 12 September 2017 (UTC)

Tampa has not been used since 2014 according to [[15]]. Also Amsterdam has been a site for many years already. Rmhermen (talk) 14:07, 11 September 2017 (UTC)

The servers are in Virginia (primary) and Texas (secondary – it would take a few minutes to switch over, but probably faster than m:Tech/Server switch 2017 was), and the other two clusters are more about readers than about editing. I don't know if we can say that Virginia is entirely "safe from hurricanes"; it's about 30 miles west-northwest from Washington, DC, which appears to have occasionally been affected by hurricanes. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 22:39, 11 September 2017 (UTC)

Sci-Hub

Do we have a policy on linking to Sci-Hub in citations? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 20:30, 12 September 2017 (UTC)

This is a pirate website, so no, all sci-hub links must be purged.--Ymblanter (talk) 20:32, 12 September 2017 (UTC)

Can you please refer to an actual policy? ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 20:43, 12 September 2017 (UTC)

WP:COPYVIOCITE point 1?--Ymblanter (talk) 20:49, 12 September 2017 (UTC)

Not an office

Looking up Brigitte Macron recently, I see that her article has an {{Infobox officeholder}} for the "office" of "Spouse of the President of the French Republic", in which she is shown as the "Incumbent". Similarly for Philip May and Melania Trump, whereas Sophie Grégoire Trudeau has an ordinary {{Infobox person}}. Those are the ones I thought to check; I have not attempted to see which one is more commonly used throughout Wikipedia. I also don't know if there is an easy way to determine all the offices that {{Infobox officeholder}} is being used for.

Anyway, I suggest that "spouse of the head of government" is not an office, should not use {{Infobox officeholder}}, and should not have the word "incumbent" applied to it. Either the regular {{Infobox person}} should be used for these articles or else there should be a separate type of infobox specifically either (1) for spouses of officeholders, or else perhaps (2) for all positions that are held by one person at a time but are not offices.

I am not interested in pursuing this issue myself; I hope that someone else reading this will be. Feel free to copy this message to a more appropriate project page if there is one. --69.159.60.147 (talk) 03:45, 14 September 2017 (UTC)

While "Spouse of the Head of Government" isn't an officeholder in general, First Lady of the United States arguably is. And indeed, template:Infobox first lady is a redirect to template:Infobox officeholder. Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 07:29, 14 September 2017 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Rough guide to extended confirmed protection

People may be interested in the new information page Wikipedia:Rough guide to extended confirmed protection, which has been created by a number of users.

The feeling was that consensus had built up around use of ECP but this had not been documented anywhere, causing confusion. This page could be seen as a parallel for Wikipedia:Rough guide to semi-protection.

Being an information page, the aim is to document the consensus that has developed, not to set out anything new. If editors don't like certain aspects of that consensus then I would see this information page as a useful prompt for discussion.

I have only just moved the page into WP space, so any comments or edits will be gratefully received.

Yaris678 (talk) 10:46, 14 September 2017 (UTC)

What if you can't edit a talk page?

This help desk question explains the problem. The person wasn't merely asking how to edit a protected article. The heading of the question makes it clear even the talk page is protected.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 21:21, 15 September 2017 (UTC)

@NuclearWarfare:--Ymblanter (talk) 21:28, 15 September 2017 (UTC)

• Talk page protection is pretty rarely done, but sometimes it's necessary, usually for BLP reasons. the header at the top of the talk page says they can ask for protection to be lifted at RFPP, or create an account. In this particular case, the user has since become autoconfirmed, so they can edit the talk page now. Finally, I'm not sure indef protection was what NW had in mind; it's been semi'd since April 2016. I'd be inclined to unprotect and see what happens. --Floquenbeam (talk) 21:41, 15 September 2017 (UTC)

Thanks. I'm not asking for the one user, but in general.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 22:11, 15 September 2017 (UTC)

In general, talk pages should not be protected indefinitely. For short-term protection (which can be justified against high-intensity sock-puppetry or vandalism), non-autoconformed users should just wait until the protection expires.--Ymblanter (talk) 22:25, 15 September 2017 (UTC)

Deletion discussion which may be of broad interest

There is a deletion discussion for {{Cite_Q}} which would benefit from having high participation. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 10:57, 15 September 2017 (UTC)

RfC regarding "Interlinking of accounts involved with paid editing to decrease impersonation"

There is currently a RfC open on Meta regarding "requiring those involved with paid editing on Wikipedia to link on their user page to all other active accounts through which they advertise paid Wikipedia editing business."

Note this is to apply to Wikipedia and not necessarily other sister projects, this is only to apply to websites where people are specifically advertising that they will edit Wikipedia for pay and not any other personal, professional, or social media accounts a person may have.

Please comment on meta. Thanks. Send on behalf of User:Doc James.

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 21:06, 17 September 2017 (UTC)

Links to Wiktionary

I recently (11 September) made two internal Wiktionary links, thinking this was correct. The reverting editor (13 September) failed to give reasons/guidance at the edit summary, and has failed to respond to a polite request for reasons at their talk page, but has logged-in since and I want to get on top of it without waiting further.

Apologies if approaching the Pump seems a cop-out instead of doing lengthy research on a minor point, but if someone could confirm what the issue is here - for example - are Wiktionary links becoming deprecated - then I would be obliged. I admit the links look clumsy, but I didn't write the template, and I was thinking of the readers, including non-English first speakers when writing the original prose with Wiktionary links. Many thanks! Semperito (talk) 09:25, 14 September 2017 (UTC)

No problems, false alarm I hope - I've learned it's easy to pipe-link to Wiktionary, avoiding the clumsy appearance, that I assumed would not be possible. I have re-established the links and invited the reverting editor to comment at the article Talk page, if necessary. Semperito (talk) 13:31, 15 September 2017 (UTC)

In my personal opinion, it would be better not to link to Wiktionary inline. In the examples you provided, if you feel that a word in your prose needs to be linked to a definition for an English audience, you should probably rewrite in more accessible language (WP:TECHNICAL covers this, albeit for a different case). For example, you could wikilink to remonstrance, and you could use "affluent" or even simply "wealthy" or "rich" rather than well-heeled, and could link that to affluence or wealth if those meanings are close enough to what you intended. Although you also don't have to link everything. If you feel you absolutely must use these words which require definition, it would be better to insert a redlink anyway, and then create a soft redirect to Wiktionary with the {{Wiktionary redirect}} template - this way we have the ability to link to that redirect from other articles, and track if readers are really clicking through for additional information. See instructions at the template for how to use it, and when you should and should not create a redirect - you definitely shouldn't create them for every dictionary word. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 13:59, 15 September 2017 (UTC)

Thank you - I will research this further, as you suggest. Wikipedia gets - IMO - too-disparate and too-technical with the available options that need expertise in understanding, and is not time-effective for something I don't recall using previously, and may not use again.

In the case of well-heeled, the film character is a well-established scrap-metal dealer, historically notorious in UK society for business practices using cash and having large disposable incomes; the character has a good, well-groomed appearance, an expensively accessorised motor scooter and fine clothing including a long, tailored leather overcoat, whereas the lead film character is young, with a base-level office job and pays weekly in advance towards a new, tailored cloth suit, covered with an ex-army Parka, as was the vogue at the time; well-heeled covered all aspects of what I needed, as did remonstrated.

I couldn't think of anything better at the time of writing, and I would've preferred to know the deleting editor's motivations, who chose not to replace the words. I am always conscious of the needs of, for example, people in, or originating from, near-Europe who may have a good grasp of English language but may need assistance that a wiktionary link could provide. I'll try to find synonyms to 'dumb it down'. Semperito (talk) 14:48, 15 September 2017 (UTC)

Inline links to Wiktionary are permitted (see Wikipedia:External_links#cite_note-body-2 for the official guideline). I don't usually see it used for "technical" things; it's usually more common for what you might call "fancy vocabulary words". Since one of our goals is Wikipedia:Brilliant prose, then "dumbing it down" is not usually the right choice. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:32, 19 September 2017 (UTC)

christopher gikas

sadly, Wiwaxia passed away on February 25, 2017. http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/name/christopher-gikas-obituary?pid=1000000184323976&view=guestbook. he will be missed
— Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:644:101:2c0e:20c2:48e1:7c38:d9d3 (talk) 23:29, 18 September 2017 (UTC)

Search Relevance Survey on diff page of MoS

Not quite sure where to put this, so I figure here is better than nowhere. I was viewing a Difference between revisions on the MoS when a bubble appeared in the top right with the question "Would you click on this page when searching for 'half adder truth table'?" and the options "Yes", "No", and "I don't know", as well as a link to wmf:Search Relevance Survey Privacy Statement. This was the first time I'd ever seen something like this, and I was confused by the wording. While copying the text, I accidentally clicked inside the bubble but outside the options, dismissing it, but now that I understand what it was asking, I want to say for the record that I highly doubt I would click on a diff page of the MoS when searching for 'half adder truth table'. ReGuess (talk) 16:11, 14 September 2017 (UTC)

@ReGuess: Sorry no one responded sooner. This seems like a weird glitch. There shouldn't be surveys on diff pages. I don't think there should be a survey on the MoS page, either. I know it's been almost a week, but do you have any recollection of what you were doing right before that? The survey should have popped up 30 to 60 seconds after you started reading a targeted page. Any chance you were reading a page, jumped to the MoS page, and then jumped to a diff, all within 30 seconds (or maybe a few seconds)? Even then it sounds like a strange browser glitch, which are the hardest to reproduce. If you have any info, though, it might help. This was a small scale test, and we want to make it better if we proceed with a larger implementation. Reply here, or on Phabricator if you like. Thanks. TJones (WMF) (talk) 14:30, 20 September 2017 (UTC)

@TJones (WMF): Power users use search outside of content space, so I would appreciate machine learning to help me find not-the-endless-pages-of-articles-for-deletion. You might reasonably have different tuning there, I guess... :) --Izno (talk) 14:40, 20 September 2017 (UTC)

@Izno: Can you message me or comment on this Phabricator ticket with more details and examples for what you are looking for as a power user? Not sure what to make of "not-the-endless-pages-of-articles-for-deletion". Thanks! TJones (WMF) (talk) 14:50, 20 September 2017 (UTC)

@TJones (WMF): I can't recall exactly what I was doing, or how quickly I was switching between tabs, but I don't think it was anything special, and it didn't have anything to do with logic gates (a subject that, while I do have great interest, if you dig deep through my contribs, you'll probably see I might have a contributed a copyedit here or there). I happened to have kept the browser tab open, so here it is in case it's of any interest: [16] ReGuess (talk) 19:23, 20 September 2017 (UTC)

@ReGuess: Thanks for the link. It may help track down what happened—but this one is pretty weird. For better or worse, a lot of the survey questions end up not being terribly relevant to the page they are on. See this blog post for more info on what we're trying to do and why, if you are curious. TJones (WMF) (talk) 20:07, 20 September 2017 (UTC)

Discussion on synced reading lists

Discussion on synced reading lists

Hello,

The Reading Infrastructure team at the Wikimedia Foundation is developing a cross-platform reading list service for the mobile Wikipedia app. Reading lists are like bookmark folders in your web browser. They allow readers using the Wikipedia app to bookmark pages into folders to read later. This includes reading offline. Reading lists do not create or alter content in any way.

To create Reading Lists, app users will register an account and marked pages will be tied to that account. Reading List account preferences sync between devices. You can read the same pages on different mobile platforms (tablets, phones). This is the first time we are syncing preference data between devices in such a way. We want to hear and address concerns about privacy and data security. We also want to explain why the current watchlist system is not being adapted for this purpose.

Background

In 2016 the Android team replaced the simple Saved Pages feature with Reading Lists. Reading Lists allow users to bookmark pages into folders and for reading offline. The intent of this feature was to allow "syncing" of these lists for users with many devices. Due to overlap with the Gather feature and related community concerns, this part was put on hold.

The Android team has identified this lack of synching as a major area of complaint from users. They expect lists to sync. The iOS team has held off implementing Reading Lists, as syncing was seen as a "must have" for this feature. A recent technical RfC has allowed these user stories and needs to be unblocked. Initially for Android, then iOS, and with web to potentially follow.

Reading lists are private, stored as part of a user's account, not as a public wiki page. There is no sharing or publishing ability for reading lists. No planned work to make these public. The target audience are people that read Wikipedia and want to bookmark and organize that content in the app. There is a potential for the feature to be available on the web in the future.

Why not watchlists

Watchlists offer similar functionality to Reading Lists. The Reading Infrastructure team evaluated watchlist infrastructure before exploring other options. In general, the needs of watchlists differ from Reading Lists in a few key ways:

• Reading lists focus on Reading articles, not the monitoring of changes.
• Watchlists are focused on monitoring changes of pages/revisions.
  • The Watchlist infrastructure is key to our contributor community for monitoring content changes manually and through the use of automated tools (bots). Because of these needs, expanding the scope of Watchlists to reading purposes will only make the project harder to maintain and add more constraints.
• By keeping the projects separate it is easier to scale resources. We can serve these two different audiences and prioritize the work accordingly. Reading Lists are, by their nature, less critical to the health of Wikipedia/MediaWiki.
• Multi-project support. Reading Lists are by design cross-wiki/project. Watchlists are tied to specific wikis. While there have been many discussion for making them cross-wiki, resolution is not in the near term.

More information can be found on MediaWiki.org where feedback and ideas are welcome.

Thank you

CKoerner (WMF) (talk) 20:35, 20 September 2017 (UTC)

Zimbabwe_African_National_Liberation_Army

This is probably the wrong place but I've had enough find Permit A 38 for today.

Anyway, someone knowledgable with a neutral POV should probably have a look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zimbabwe_African_National_Liberation_Army and its sources and at least delete the unsourced parts. --2A02:8071:B693:BE00:D814:5296:7CAE:AD4F (talk) 17:43, 17 September 2017 (UTC)

The text looks like it was copied from somewhere. Ruslik_Zero 19:06, 17 September 2017 (UTC)

Possibly from the "dominant" source: Ndlovu-Gatsheni, Sabelo J. (18 October 2013). "Rethinking Chimurenga and Gukurahundi in Zimbabwe: A Critique of Partisan National History". African Studies Review. 55 (03): 1–26. doi:10.1017/S0002020600007186. Why do editors cite sources that are available online as if they are not? Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 13:54, 22 September 2017 (UTC)

men's assistant coach or assistant men's coach?

Hello, I'm not sure it's the right place to ask, but here it is anyway. English is not my mother tongue and I didn't find by myself. I have a seen 2605:E000:9161:A500:34F4:4D6D:1063:30AF (talk · contribs) is repeatedly making the same change (see title), and out of curiosity I would like to know fore sure which one is correct. Google has hits for both ([17], [18]). Maybe an american/british english difference? Does anybody have a definitive explanation about this?

Kiwipidae (talk) 05:57, 20 September 2017 (UTC)

Kiwipidae You might find Adjective#Order helpful. I think assistant men's coach is preferred. Men's coach is more specific than coach and assistant men's coach is even more specific than that. Men's assistant coach is confusing; is it a men's assistant? No such confusion is possible with assistant men's coach. Mduvekot (talk) 15:50, 25 September 2017 (UTC)

I noticed that the change here https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Clearview_High_School&diff=prev&oldid=801244052 is from assistant men's basketball coach to men's basketball assistant coach and that does make sense, because it's men's basketball not men's assistant. Mduvekot (talk) 15:55, 25 September 2017 (UTC)

Thank you! I thought the two might be correct, but was not able to see the subtle difference. Kiwipidae (talk) 17:03, 25 September 2017 (UTC)

Invitation to participate in a discussion about building tools for managing Editing Restrictions

The Wikimedia Foundation Anti-Harassment Tools team would like to build and improve tools to support the work done by contributors who set, monitor, and enforce editing restrictions on Wikipedia, as well as building systems that make it easier for users under a restriction to avoid the temptation of violating a sanction and remain constructive contributors.

You are invited to participate in a discussion that documents the current problems with using editing restrictions and details possible tech solutions that can be developed by the Anti-harassment tools team. The discussion will be used to prioritize the development and improvement of tools and features.

For the Wikimedia Foundation Anti-harassment tools team, SPoore (WMF), Community Advocate, Community health initiative (talk) 15:05, 25 September 2017 (UTC)

Wikimedia Conference Russia 2017 (Oct.14-15) banner

Dear colleagues, please comment on CentralNotice banner proposal for Wikimedia Conference Russia 2017 announcement (Russian globally + other languages for readers from Russia). Thank you.--Frhdkazan (talk) 16:29, 27 September 2017 (UTC)

Interlanguage link problem

Maproom said in responding to this help desk question that only one English language article can link to the corresponding article in another language. I asked about this before but from the point of view of the other language. I thought I had found the solution but the German article Siemens VAI does not link to the English article Siemens VAI. I have proposed, but gotten no response, that because the German Siemens VAI is a redirect to Primetals Technologies, and the English Siemens VAI has no content that seems worthwhile, the English article should redirect to Voest-Alpine Industrieanlagenbau (in German, a redirect to the German Primetals) and content from the Siemens article should go there or in the English Primetals Technologies. This would be the only solution since it doesn't seem possible for the German Wikipedia to link to the current English Siemens VAI.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 20:00, 27 September 2017 (UTC)

The results are in for the Administrator Confidence Survey

The Wikimedia Foundation Anti-Harassment Tools team Wikipedia English Administrator Confidence Survey results are in. Thank you to the 117 participants who filled out the survey. :-)

A copy of the raw results can be found on the results page. Initial impressions of the raw results are welcome on this talk page.

On Monday, October 2, 2017, the Anti-Harassment Tools team will share further results from the comments section of the survey and our preliminary analysis. The team wants to work with the community to identity significant findings and how that it could influence our team's work on tool development.

Later in October, we will have second discussion that will focus on the finding in the survey comments sections that are directed towards policy changes or different ways of reporting and managing cases.

Again, thank you for participating in the survey. And look forward to discussing the results on Monday. For Wikimedia Foundation Anti-Harassment Tools team, SPoore (WMF), Community Advocate, Community health initiative (talk) 20:05, 28 September 2017 (UTC)

PD-textlogo on Freightliner's 1996+ logo?

Hello!
The PD-textlogo banner was already present in the permission field of the infobox for the 1996+ Freightliner logo, so I reused it as main banner for the license section (although it appears to be an old version of the template?): the logo was formerly misdated as a 1942 version, giving it then the PD-US-not renewed banner. Was it the right way to go about it? -- BarnCas (talk) 11:10, 30 September 2017 (UTC)

Wikimedia Movement Strategy phase 2, and a goodbye

Hello,

As phase one of the Wikimedia movement strategy process nears its close with the strategic direction being finalized, my contractor role as a coordinator is ending too. I am returning to my normal role as a volunteer (Tar Lócesilion) and wanted to thank you all for your participation in the process.

The strategic direction should be finalized on Meta late this weekend. The planning and designing of phase 2 of the strategy process will start in November. The next phase will again offer many opportunities to participate and discuss the future of our movement, and will focus on roles, resources, and responsibilities.

Thank you, SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 12:29, 30 September 2017 (UTC)

Discussion about Admin Confidence survey results related to tech tools

Hello :-)

The Anti-Harassment Tools team reviewed the feedback from the Admin Confidence Survey and did a preliminary analysis of the comments related to tech tools. We are sharing these results today so that the English Wikipedia community can begin discussing the results.

In two weeks the Anti-Harassment Tools team will release more preliminary analysis about the survey comments related to policy, training, and reporting methods.

Again, thank you to everyone who participated in the survey. Whether you participated in the survey or not, we are interested in your thoughts about the results.

If you still would like to provide comments privately to the Anti-Harassment Tools team, you can email the Anti-Harassment Tools team.

For the Anti-Harassment Tools Team, SPoore (WMF), Community Advocate, Community health initiative (talk) 01:01, 3 October 2017 (UTC)

Help us decide the best designs for the Interaction Timeline feature

Hello all! In the coming months the Anti-Harassment Tools team plans to build a feature that we hope will allow users to better investigate user conduct disputes, called the Interaction Timeline. In short, the feature will display all edits by two users on pages where they have both contributed in a chronological timeline. We think the Timeline will help you evaluate conduct disputes in a more time efficient manner, resulting in more informed, confident decisions on how to respond.

But — we need your help! I’ve created two designs to illustrate our concept and we have quite a few open questions which we need your input to answer. Please read about the feature and see the wireframes at Wikipedia:Community health initiative on English Wikipedia/Interaction Timeline and join us at the talk page!

Thank you, — CSinders (WMF) (talk) 19:43, 3 October 2017 (UTC)

A tool to see usage of all files in a category across languages

It seems there was in the past a dashboard system which allowed to see in one glance the use of an image across wikipedia linguistic version, with a display providing results across an entire category. We can not find that tool anymore, nor an equivalent. Does that suggest anything to anyone ? Any tool to suggest that would provide something a bit similar ? Thanks Anthere (talk)

There is commons:Help:Gadget-GlobalUsageUI. Ruslik_Zero 20:26, 4 October 2017 (UTC)

UTM coordinates

The project is centred on UTM coordinates 510,000 E 7,350,000 N (UTM WGS 84). Where is this in lat/long coordinates?--Dthomsen8 (talk) 15:15, 30 September 2017 (UTC)

I don't know what "the project" is, but this page should be able to do the calculation for you: http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/utm-latitude-longitude-d_1370.html Note that you need to specify the UTM zone as well as the east/north values. Chuntuk (talk) 19:28, 2 October 2017 (UTC)

How do I find the UTM zone?. The Green Giant mine is located in south‐central Madagascar, 145 km southeast of the city of Toliara, in the Tulear region/Fotadrevo. That is the place I want coordinates. --Dthomsen8 (talk) 02:24, 4 October 2017 (UTC)

Africa UTM zones

Does this look right? 38K 510175 7351306 is 23.95°S 45.10°E / -23.95; 45.10. You may find pages 4-3 and 4-4 of this report useful. They use the term "zone 38 south" which is completely incorrect. Bri.public (talk) 04:10, 5 October 2017 (UTC)

New global ban RfC on user INeverCry

Please share & contribute to: m:Requests for comment/Global ban of INeverCry. --78.53.71.61 (talk) 11:00, 5 October 2017 (UTC)

Using a tool to archive live links

When archiving references in an article, should ALL the references (live and dead) be archived, or only the dead ones? I raised this question at Wikipedia:Bots/Noticeboard#Archiving live links - Redux, and referenced an earlier discussion at Wikipedia:Bots/Noticeboard/Archive 11#Archiving links not dead - good idea?. There was not much response at the bots talk page, so I thought Village Pump might be a more appropriate place to discuss this; after all it involves Wikipedia-wide practices. Here's the issue: The default setting of a tool like IABot v1.5.2 is to archive only the dead links, but some people are choosing the option to archive all the references. This practice came to my attention with this edit to the article Barack Obama: someone using the IABot v1.5.2 archived 392 references, adding 74,894 bytes to the article, and increasing its already huge size by 22.6%, from 330,241 to 405,135 bytes. (The user reverted at my request.) Do people think this kind of outcome is a good thing? Should some kind of consensus be developed, as to when and whether to use the "rescue all" option? --MelanieN (talk) 15:38, 4 October 2017 (UTC)

I'm also concerned. It's a useful feature to have in some instances. But it's a powerful feature that should have had a consensus discussion beforehand, like a talk page discussion for Barack Obama. Not everyone wants to have the references section populated with "archived version" links, and the increase in size and complexity of the wikitext. Personally I believe this feature should be made known, but a limited number of editors (admins?) have access, similar to edit requests for locked articles or template changes. -- GreenC 15:43, 4 October 2017 (UTC)

I just did such an edit to Sacramento River before seeing this discussion. Personally I don't think the added complexity to wikitext is a big deal, while the archived links immediately appearing on the ref list possibly is. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 15:46, 4 October 2017 (UTC)

And that edit increased the size of the article by 20.7%, from 98,062 bytes to 118,364 bytes. That's what I am asking about here: is that kind of result a good thing or a problem? --MelanieN (talk) 16:45, 4 October 2017 (UTC)

Ok and the bot made a mistake. Let's remember, bots are not perfect and never will be (the bot has to make trade-offs). They are still very good and required for the scale of the problem (fixing millions of dead links) but at the end of the day, someone should be checking. This is why there are talk page notices for manual verification, and why there is a database to modify. This aspect of verification and imperfection gets lost in the excitement of adding 60+ links. -- GreenC 16:09, 4 October 2017 (UTC)

Good point. If the bot only modified the dead links - in other words, a manageable number of changes - there's a chance someone might respond to the talk page notice and verify them. If almost all the links on the page were modified, it is very unlikely that anyone will do a followup check. --MelanieN (talk) 16:48, 4 October 2017 (UTC)

My understanding is that by default (1) all live links are archived to archive.org if thay are not already to be found on an archive site – no changes are made to the article. Also, (2) dead links have an archiveurl added to the citation, if possible. If this is what happens it seems to me to be an uncontrovertial action. Where the problem can arise is when the additional option is taken to add an archiveurl to all links, even those that are live. Thincat (talk) 17:43, 4 October 2017 (UTC)

User:Cyberpower678, is that an accurate description of how the bot works? --MelanieN (talk) 19:56, 4 October 2017 (UTC)

@MelanieN: Pretty much. The default behavior of the tool is how the bot is setup to normally run on Wikipedia. It is currently setup to add archive URLs to all dead links, inside and outside of references. To trigger the behavior of adding archives to all links, the user has to actually check the box that says "Add archives to all non-dead references (Optional)" which changes the behavior. That option restricts the analysis of the page to references only, adds archives to all references, if possible, and in doing so proactively save the live pages to the Wayback Machine that are still missing so the archive URL can be added to the article.—CYBERPOWER (Around) 20:18, 4 October 2017 (UTC)

Here's another example: Someone did a total archiving of the 79 references at 2017 Las Vegas Strip shooting - an article which is only five days old and had no dead links. [19] Half an hour later, someone reverted as "unnecessary archiving".[20] This is a practice that is not generally accepted and is a source of annoyance to many. --MelanieN (talk) 05:29, 6 October 2017 (UTC)

Yes, I did the same for Grenfell Tower fire[21] and it added 24,134 bytes. I ran the bot because I anticipated the news sites would be changing frequently. At the time no one complained or reverted me but think now it would have been better not to have added archiveurl to the live links. However, I do think the actual archiving action can be very helpful when there is fast developing news. Much later someone remarked at Talk:Grenfell Tower fire/Archive 4#Ref Audit that some pages on news web sites had been changed in the interim and so the current versions were no longer verifying the article content. As well as a guideline we should have documentation as to what the bot actually does. The edit comment "(Rescuing 120 sources and tagging 0 as dead. #IABot (v1.4beta))" gives a misleading impression when none of the links are dead since everything was by way of archive rather than rescue. Thincat (talk) 08:16, 6 October 2017 (UTC)

PS, in case some people haven't realised, the bot can be accessed from "Fix dead links" in the header of each history page. Thincat (talk) 08:29, 6 October 2017 (UTC)

Wikimania userboxes

Some years ago I created a set of Wikimania attendee userboxes. It occurs to me that I should let people know these exist!

This user attended Wikimania 2005 in Frankfurt, Germany.

This user attended Wikimania 2006 in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

This user attended Wikimania 2007 in Taipei, Taiwan.

This user attended Wikimania 2008 in Alexandria, Egypt.

This user attended Wikimania 2009 in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

This user attended Wikimania 2010 in Gdańsk, Poland.

This user attended Wikimania 2011 in Haifa, Israel.

This user attended Wikimania 2012 in Washington, D.C., United States.

This user attended Wikimania 2013 in Hong Kong, China.

This user attended Wikimania 2014 in London, United Kingdom.

This user attended Wikimania 2015 in Mexico City, Mexico.

This user attended Wikimania 2016 in Esino Lario, Italy.

This user attended Wikimania 2017 in Montreal, Canada.

Cheers! bd2412 T 04:33, 3 October 2017 (UTC)

Also, introducing the "plans to attend" userbox for Wikimania 2018 through 2025.

This user attended Wikimania 2019 in Stockholm, Sweden.

Cheers again! bd2412 T 13:28, 8 October 2017 (UTC)

Oh good...more useless userboxes! Blueboar (talk) 15:20, 8 October 2017 (UTC)

I really wish one day in the not too distant future, infoboxes will all be unified into one magical "Template:Userbox", with various parameters to generate various outcomes, including opening portals to other universes... Oh well... (no offense intended to BD2412, as this is a site-wide problem). Rehman 15:42, 8 October 2017 (UTC)

How does WP choose related articles in Mobile View

I am confused by how Wikipedia chooses its "related articles" to link to in mobile view ... and I can not figure out how to edit them.

To give the specifics that bring me here: I was reading our article on the actress Molly McGreevey (who happens to be a relative of mine). At the bottom of the page (in mobile view) are several links to "related articles". Included are links to the articles on her husband (the Actor Earl Hindman, and her Grandfather (the businessman Augustus G. Paine, Jr.)... both of which seem appropriate ... But there is also a link to the article on former NJ Governor Jim McGreevey... and there is absolutely no connection between Jim and Molly.

I tried to edit the link, but can not figure out how to do so. These "related articles" don't appear anywhere in edit mode (neither in desktop view nor mobile view) ... and I don't think this is another Wikidata insertion (it isn't there either). So... two questions: 1) how does mobile view determine what articles are "related" (and thus linked)? 2) and how does one edit "related articles" that may be inappropriate? Blueboar (talk) 14:12, 3 October 2017 (UTC)

You can't edit them and they're not based on Wikidata. I believe there is a phabricator task to be able to edit them. --Izno (talk) 14:21, 3 October 2017 (UTC)

so how does a user gain access this "phabricator task"? Blueboar (talk) 14:38, 3 October 2017 (UTC)

They are determined by a search feature but it's already possible to override with {{#related:}}. See mw:Extension:RelatedArticles. PrimeHunter (talk) 14:40, 3 October 2017 (UTC)

Thank you... that helped.

I am not happy that this is a default function operated by a bot... the fact that this particular bot is listing unrelated articles under the heading of "related articles" is a problem. I have fixed the issue at the specific article by suggesting better links... but I have to wonder how many other completely unrelated articles this bot is connecting. Blueboar (talk) 15:02, 3 October 2017 (UTC)

Howdy, It's not a bot that's generating the related articles. The feature is using the search backend to generate suggested articles. Not exactly the same articles you would see if you searched for the title of the article, but close. More information on the project (a little out of date) can be found on MediaWiki.org Technical documentation as well.. CKoerner (WMF) (talk) 18:23, 3 October 2017 (UTC)

Still confused as to how this feature works... here is another example (from an article on another relative of mine)... can you explain how the "related articles" feature came up with C. P. H. Gilbert as a "related link" for the article on Augustus G. Paine, Sr.? Blueboar (talk) 19:53, 3 October 2017 (UTC)

As mw:Extension:RelatedArticles says, it uses the morelike feature of CirrusSearch: "Find articles whose text is most similar to the text of the given articles." Indeed, morelike:Augustus G. Paine, Sr. has C. P. H. Gilbert in the top-3 results. I don't know whether the precise reason for morelike results can be seen but a quick manual comparison of the articles for example show that C. P. H. Gilbert mentions Augustus G. Paine, Jr (not Sr.), and both articles have these references:

• Doane, Ralph Harrington (May 1919). "The Residence of Augustus G. Paine, Esq". The Architectural Review. VIII (5). New York: The Architectural Review, Inc.: 123–126.
• "History". Paine Memorial Library. 2010. Retrieved November 14, 2010.

PrimeHunter (talk) 23:29, 3 October 2017 (UTC)

Yup.... while there is a relationship between Paine Jr. and Gilbert, there is no connection between Paine Sr. and Gilbert. The function is not picking up on that, and so is creating a connection that does not actually exist. Looks like the only way to fix that is to "force" more appropriate related articles into the Sr. article. Easy enough... but annoying. thanks for explaining. Blueboar (talk) 15:18, 8 October 2017 (UTC)

What word or name has the most redlinks?

Where at Wikipedia can one find what word or name has the most redlinks, and second-most, and third-most, etc. Anythingyouwant (talk) 04:32, 9 October 2017 (UTC)

Special:WantedPages was originally supposed to do that, but WP:WANTED is more updated. Killiondude (talk) 04:41, 9 October 2017 (UTC)

Thanks. It looks like WantedPages was updated a couple weeks ago, but WP:Wanted was last updated in May 2016. Right? Anythingyouwant (talk) 04:47, 9 October 2017 (UTC)

Presenting the project Wikipedia Cultural Diversity Observatory

Hello everyone,

My name is Marc Miquel and I am a researcher from Barcelona (Universitat Pompeu Fabra). 

While I was doing my PhD I studied whether an identity-based motivation could be important for editor participation and I analyzed content representing the editors' cultural context in 40 Wikipedia language editions.

Few months later, I propose creating the Wikipedia Cultural Diversity Observatory in order to raise awareness on Wikipedia’s current state of cultural diversity, providing datasets, visualizations and statistics, and pointing out solutions to improve intercultural coverage.

I am presenting this project to a grant and I expect that the site becomes a useful tool to help communities create more multicultural encyclopaedias and bridge the content culture gap that exists across language editions (one particular type of systemic bias).

For instance, this would help spreading cultural content local to English Wikipedia into the rest of Wikipedia language editions, and viceversa, make English Wikipedia much more multicultural.

Here is the link of the project proposal: meta:Grants:Project/Wikipedia Cultural Diversity Observatory (WCDO)

I am searching for a volunteer in each language community: I still need one for the English Wikipedia. If you feel like it, you can contact me at: marcmiquel *at* gmail.com

I need a contact in your every community who can (1) check the quality of the cultural context article list I generate to be imported-exported to other language editions, (2) test the interface/data visualizations in their language, and (3) communicate the existance of the tool/site when ready to the language community and especially to those editors involved in projects which could use it or be aligned with it.

Communicating it might not be a lot of work, but it will surely have a greater impact if done in native language! :).

If you like the project, I'd ask you to endorse it. In any case, I will appreciate any feedback, comments,... Thanks in advance for your time!

Best regards,

--Marcmiquel (talk) 13:19, 9 October 2017 (UTC)

Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona

Creating an introduction and guide for using Wikidata data in other Wikimedia projects

Hi all

I've started a first draft of an document on Wikidata explaining how and why Wikidata data can be used on other Wikimedia projects e.g as a way to organise work on a subject, or in infoboxes. Please can you take a look and add any thoughts to the talk page. I very much want to get the perspectives of both Wikidata contributors and people who are unfamiliar with Wikidata.

Many thanks

John Cummings (talk) 09:04, 10 October 2017 (UTC)

Speaking of Wikidata...

...which I'll never understand, I'm afraid: can one of you link our Monte Cassino to the German de:Abtei Montecassino? Thank you. Drmies (talk) 16:07, 10 October 2017 (UTC)

You can't (through Wikidata at least): The German page is linked to a Wikidata item about the abbey while the enwiki page links to a Wikidata item about the hill the abbey rests on. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 16:11, 10 October 2017 (UTC)

Requesting layman input on RfC

There has been a Request for Comment for a discussion regarding the technical level of pages that wall into the Dinosaur and Paleontology WikiProjects. All editors who have currently commented are regular editors of the projects and probably have a higher level of technical knowlegde than the average reader or editor. Any discussion of input from a more layman on the topic would be appreciated. RfC Discussion:

• Talk:Jianianhualong#(Long-belated) Rfc for level of anatomical detail in dinosaur articles

Thanks, IJReid ^{{{T - C - D - R}}} 04:01, 12 October 2017 (UTC) on behalf of WP:DINO

Does anyone know what https://wp.fr33tux.org is?

https://wp.fr33tux.org

It takes me to a facsimile of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page. Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 13:56, 12 October 2017 (UTC)

I’m not going to click on the link but it sounds like a WP mirror. Such as very common due to WP’s policies on reusing content (anyone can). They are done for a variety of reasons, from 'because we can', to attempts to generate traffic from web searches, to more dubious reasons such as dodgy advertising, stealing account credentials & spreading malware.--JohnBlackburne^words_deeds 14:12, 12 October 2017 (UTC)

It's a live mirror. This page says more about it, and there's some links at the top of that page to explore who runs it. -- zzuuzz ^(talk) 14:13, 12 October 2017 (UTC)

Interesting. Thanks. It seems wrong that they look exactly like Wikipedia. If you click "log in" it takes you to a log-in page that is exactly like ours, so I can imagine someone inadvertently surfing onto it from Google (how I got there) and entering their user name and password. I'll drop a note to WMF legal. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 15:42, 12 October 2017 (UTC)

The good thing is these things are so common that Google’s algorithms must surely rank them very very low, based on e.g. page views. The chance of someone finding it through a search instead of en.wp should be vanishingly small. The only thing to look out is malicious scripts, inserting links here, which has happened before. See Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Archive289#magic282 malicious links.--JohnBlackburne^words_deeds 15:52, 12 October 2017 (UTC)

Actually, I just tried to enter a username into the log-in text box and it immediately sent me to en.wikipedia's log-in page, so that's cool. Seems like a legitimate attempt to provide a mirror for Turkey. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 15:58, 12 October 2017 (UTC)

Just be careful doing that – entering your username on another site as that’s exactly how they might capture your login credentials for nefarious purposes. Even if it looks like it’s doing the right thing it might be running scripts in the background you are not aware of, or might be subverting your login in some other way. See e.g. the report I posted of another site which caused a user to inadvertently insert links to the other site on en.wp, presumably though Javascript trickery.--JohnBlackburne^words_deeds 16:54, 12 October 2017 (UTC)

Wow, that's devious. On this site, the username text box doesn't let you enter a username. The moment you click in the box it takes you to en.wikipedia to log in. So, I think it's cool. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 09:05, 13 October 2017 (UTC)

A science experiment run on Wikipedia without notification

This issue has sought a forum at ANI (introduced by Antimanipulator: permlink) and the conflict of interest noticeboard (introduced by me, Bri: permlink) without effect. It's an issue I think the wider community should have a chance to weigh in on. A summary of the circumstances is a not-yet-peer-reviewed working paper coming from academics at MIT and University of Pittsburgh. In a nutshell, the paper involved graduate students creating new Wikipedia articles over a period of years and observing the results on other media. It is not clear to me what was the source of funding for the experiment, whether or not the graduate students were compensated explicitly for the articles, and which individual or individuals operated the account (Carolineneil) that appears to have introduced the material to Wikipedia. My concerns are as follows.

1. This appears to be psychological behavioral research on uninformed experimentees.
2. Undisclosed, yearslong research projects on Wikipedia concerning introduction of material in and of itself could undermine confidence in Wikipedia content.
3. We don't know what the arrangement between Thompson and Hanley and their staff was; was it coerced? paid? cooperative? This is important.
4. Was the material introduced through one account, as appears to be the case? if so this is a violation of no role account policy.
5. Copyright attribution and Creative Commons licensing since the paper explicitly states that "PhD students drafted articles", which is related to issue 4 on role accounts but an additional legal-ethical violation if one individual attested to license consent granted by the others.

I'm closing the COIN discussion so that things can continue here with wider participation, and wider consideration of concerns beyond conflict of interest. ☆ Bri (talk) 15:42, 3 October 2017 (UTC)

It seems to me that we should be contacting the ethics boards of the universities involved, particularly if they are violating our TOS. bd2412 T 16:53, 3 October 2017 (UTC)

Regarding point 3 I would like to emphasize that they use exclusively research published in Elsevier journals and I found at least one article, Mesembrine, that nearly exclusively cited research published in such journals. They should be asked if Elsevier funded their research. Regarding point 4, they did use a single account for more than one individual, which can be seen from the fact that articles both from chemistry and econometrics were added from that account although the groups of PhD students that wrote them were clearly distinct. Another point is that the PhD students were paid to edit, and did not disclose this, which is explicitly forbidden by Wikipedia rules, and they were rightly blocked for this. I agree that the ethics boards of their institutions should be informed about this. Antimanipulator (talk) 22:36, 3 October 2017 (UTC)

At COIN it has been argued that it is not psychological research, but simply contributing high-quality content to Wikipedia. Tgeorgescu (talk) 23:01, 3 October 2017 (UTC)

Just to clarify 3 and 4 - the Mesembrine article had five references where the DOI links to Elsevier articles before it was added to as part of this project, and six after, along with three new non-Elsevier articles. There's no sign of any problem. In regard to the role account, a role account is one that is used by multiple people - in this case, it would appear that the account was only used by the one person, and was only intended for one person, so it doesn't fall into that category.

As to the more serious issue about it involving psychological research on uninformed experimentees - it wasn't. The study looked at the use of information from Wikipedia in journal articles, and didn't involve any psychological research.

I do agree that there is an issue regarding non-disclosure of paid edits, although this isn't really the sort of issue that the disclosure requirements were intended to address. It's possibly a concern, but the account has been blocked, and it was unrelated to any accusations of advocacy and promotion. It would have been best if they removed all possible issues by disclosing, but this was never raised with the editor (probably because there was no cause to suspect a problem), and it seems to have been an error on their part rather than a major problem. - Bilby (talk) 23:07, 3 October 2017 (UTC)

Their draft of "Total synthesis of mesembrine" (overly specific lemma as in most article attempts) cited three journal articles, all from Elsevier. The current Mesembrine article cites 4 times Journal of Ethnopharmacology, twice Tetrahedron Letters, once Arch. Pharm. and once Food and Chemical Toxicology, all Elsevier. J. Chem. Soc. B is the only non-Elsevier citation I can see. Ok, apparently not only due to the experiment, but worrisome.

I agree this is not a psychological experiment in the traditional sense. You could call it behavioral economics, they look at how researchers react (by using the same words as can be read here) on what they call a randomized experiment on Wikipedia articles. I do not know what ethics committees would say about disclosure rules of such experiments. They do not mention that they contacted any such committee for approval.

One account was used to add articles created by at least two groups of people and this was not disclosed. I do not think this is allowed here. Their constant refusal to follow citation rules and proper lemmas in spite of numerous attempts of volunteers to help them with advise caused a lot of work here. In addition, they grossly misrepresent what they did in their paper, e.g., by moving the null results from econometrics to the appendix and by leaving out the information that most of their control group articles never made it to Wikipedia for lack of encyclopedic quality. I aslo do not see any proper documentation which articles were control group and which were not. Antimanipulator (talk) 23:26, 3 October 2017 (UTC)

Some people do not understand the difference between writing a scientific article and writing a Wikipedia article. The contributions might have been ok as scientific information, but they totally failed WP:OR and this is why they were rejected. Tgeorgescu (talk) 23:40, 3 October 2017 (UTC)

The Mesembrine article is a distraction - it uses articles from journals published in Elsevier, but didn't make a significant difference from the situation before the project, and those links were added by another editor. - Bilby (talk) 00:06, 4 October 2017 (UTC)

Through the experiment draft three Elsevier citations were added, none that was from another publisher. Why do you repeatedly misrepresent what happened? I didn't see any original research. What they did was violating the rules for disclosure of paid editing, and prohibition of role accounts. In addition, it is unclear whether the publisher Elsevier that was associated with the project also funded it and there is at least one article in which there is an unusual use of citations from that publisher. Antimanipulator (talk) 20:03, 4 October 2017 (UTC)

I see the problem - I missed that one of the three was also Elsevier, but unlinked. Only one of those three has a DOI, and that was added by V8rik rather than by Carolineneil. Archiv der Pharmazie is carried by Wiley, not Elsevier. Thus prior to this being added, there were six references in the article, all of which linked to Elsevier. After the new content was added there were nine references, one of which was Wiley, and one of which was to a journal carried by Elsevier but which wasn't linked.

If the change is just adding two references from journals carried by Elsevier, and one carried by Wiley, with no direct links added by Carolineneil, there doesn't seem to be a significant issue. - Bilby (talk) 21:16, 4 October 2017 (UTC)

• A user, using the same username has also contributed many images to Wikimedia Commons:See Special:Contributions/Carolineneil. Are the diagrams (all claimed to be own work) even accurate or just a few students OR? If this account is a shared/paid account, should it not be blocked on WC also - to prevent further uploads? Hasn't this experiment crossed the Rubicon of academic ethics and those responsible needing to be reined in and kept on a shorter leash? Aspro (talk) 23:00, 4 October 2017 (UTC)

Commons does not require disclosure of paid edits. - Bilby (talk) 23:12, 4 October 2017 (UTC)

WC doesn't allow multi user accounts unless they are ROLE. Aspro (talk) 23:40, 4 October 2017 (UTC)

Fair enough, although there's no reason to think that multiple people used that account. - Bilby (talk) 02:16, 5 October 2017 (UTC)

Comments, and Next Step

I don't entirely understand the concern about this incident as paid editing, although I consider myself to be a strong opponent of commercial paid editing. The phrase "paid editing" is sometimes thrown around idly when the real target should be more precisely promotional paid editing. There is one type of "paid editing" that is actually desirable, and that is editing by professors in their areas of expertise, in order to incorporate existing knowledge into Wikipedia. The only times that paid editing by professors is problematic is if the professor is either promoting their university, or also receiving a grant that makes the professor non-neutral (e.g., a biology professor who is also receiving a grant from a pharmacological or agri-chemical company). This does not appear to be a case of promotional paid editing, and I think the use of the phrase "paid editing" distracts from the fact that this is a different problem than paid editing. Robert McClenon (talk) 00:37, 5 October 2017 (UTC)

By the way, the chemistry articles appeared to me to be valid chemistry, and I have a degree in chemistry. I declined some of them because they were inadequately referenced and seriously underlinked. The underlinking may mean that they were written off-line as papers, not originally intended for Wikipedia, and only needed working for Wikipedia. The statistics content also appeared to be valid statistics, and I have studied statistics. What struck me as peculiar was that the author never replied to any comments, and that the author never even appeared to be reviewing the state of the drafts. Drafts were being submitted, and declined as already in Wikipedia, with the suggestion that the existing article be updated if appropriate, and new copies of the drafts were being submitted again exactly as they had been. I did wonder whether there was some sort of experiment in the use of Wikipedia, and there was, although not exactly what I thought. Robert McClenon (talk) 00:37, 5 October 2017 (UTC)

I think that the next step should be to revise the policy on what Wikipedia is not to include "Wikipedia is not a laboratory". I will propose specific wording for an addition, and it will state that the use of Wikipedia for any sort of experiment is forbidden, and that editors who are using Wikipedia as any sort of experiment will be banned. (We have had occasional breaching experiments in vandalism or the inclusion of patent nonsense, and those editors have been indeffed as not here constructively, but this is a more subtly improper experiment.) Robert McClenon (talk) 00:37, 5 October 2017 (UTC)

Voluntary editing by professors in their area of expertise is welcome in WP, and that the professors are paid by someone for the general university and societal role as experts does not make them paid editors. Paying a professor from whatever source specifically to make entries in WP is paid editing. We have a right to know who is doing the paying, so people can evaluate the edits. (I imply a reference here to the previously widespread practice of directly or indirectly paying academic experts to write scientific papers promoting corporate or social interests.) This is not in that category exactly--the professor, for the purposes of his own research, have paying other people to edit WP. According to the note on the title page of the working paper The authors would like to thank MIT for research funding and for the provision of a ridiculous amount of computing resources, Elsevier for access to full-text journal data (not for citing in the articles--MIT already had access for this, but for being able to mirror the Elsevier's database of their content to look for matches), Dario Taraborelli at the Wikimedia Foundation for guidance, and Caroline Fry for excellent research assistance. The funding is therefore from their university,which would not ordinarily be a problem in the area they're working, access to journals was provided by a commercial entity interested in promoting the use of their journals, which is a problem, and Dario is the Head of Research at the Foundation, who I hope did not actually approve this and I hope gave them the advice that they needed approval. We've had related occurrences a few times previously, where the payment was made by a non-profit organization for ostensibly neutral and helpful edits, but which were oriented or slanted or simply selected as topics to promote the view of that organization.

I had previous noticed many of these articles, which seemed unusual, and I should have followed up at the time. DGG ( talk ) 05:28, 5 October 2017 (UTC)

The problem is not paid editing per se, it is lack of neutrality. The Polish Institute offered prizes for ro.wiki editors who wrote articles on Polish towns or Polish history or something like that. It was stated that the articles have to comply with the rules of Wikipedia, so it was not gaming the system. Of course, this is a way of promoting their country, but it is not contrary to the purpose of writing a reliable encyclopedia. Otherwise, giving some editors access to Elsevier journals is not contrary to the purpose of writing a reliable encyclopedia. Tgeorgescu (talk) 07:04, 5 October 2017 (UTC)

I realize I'm coming into this conversation out of the blue but I had some questions after reading the exchanges here. I am applying for a WMF grant for the funding of a Wikimedian in Residence and 'contests' are a regular part of the routine to encourage new contributors. It is even encouraged because it is believed to be working. Also, I met with a Pitt professor who admitted to paying people, I don't know who, to add chemistry content. I let him know that this kind of research is not welcomed by many. He was testing his hypothesis that subsequent research on a chemistry topic is influenced by the wikipedia entry on the same topic. He believes that it is. I'll let him know that is probably a no-no. Barbara (WVS) ✐ ✉ 19:04, 5 October 2017 (UTC)

User:DGG, I find your statement confusing. The text says Elsevier for access to full-text journal data (not for citing in the articles--MIT already had access for this, but for being able to mirror the Elsevier's database of their content to look for matches) (emphasis added). But you say "access to journals was provided by a commercial entity interested in promoting the use of their journals, which is a problem". How do you get from "We already had access to all the journals we could want for citing, and we only used the Elsevier access so we could shame them for being connected to journals that plagiarize Wikipedia" to "They got special access from Elsevier, and that's a problem"? WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:43, 13 October 2017 (UTC)

Delete as copyright violations?

Above, it is said that only one account was used, by one person, but that the texts were written by different people (from different scientific backgrounds). is there any evidence that these people agreed to have their text published on Wikipedia, with the Wikipedia license and so on? Without evidence of such permission, the person posting this here has violated the copyright of the individual authors, meaning that all contributions should be deleted. Fram (talk) 10:13, 5 October 2017 (UTC)

Personally, I'm inclined towards giving the uploader the benefit of the doubt on this issue. If the graduate students were paid for writing the articles, then the uploader may well own the copyright (e.g. work for hire). Even if the graduate students weren't paid, any reasonable degree of informed consent would still require that the graduate students have been told in advance that their work would be submitted to Wikipedia and agree to that before participating. By posting the material on Wikipedia, the posting account asserted that they had the appropriate permissions to do so. As far as I can tell, the description of the experiment doesn't clearly contradict that. It would be a different situation if one of the original authors had come forward to complain that something was done without their permission, but right now I'm inclined to give the uploader the benefit of the doubt (as we do for most people that submit text to Wikipedia). Dragons flight (talk) 11:43, 5 October 2017 (UTC)

Process

In my view the worst thing that happened here, was

• a) the tremendous waste of the editing community's time trying to figure out what was going on, and its time dealing with the articles (many of which were poor, and were uploaded multiple times)

• b) the blowing off of the editing community by the people running the experiment. I checked the edit count for Carolineneil, and they used a talk page exactly once back in November 2015, here at WT:CHEM, and they wrote These articles aren't class assignments. They're part of a project, with Dario Taraborelli at Wikimedia, to bring more advanced scientific content to Wikipedia. There were extensive discussions with Dario before the creation of these articles. -- User: Carolineneil. That is the definition of NOTHERE not to mention arrogant as hell. If they would have taken a different approach, a bunch of the time of the editing community would not have been wasted, and their contribs would have been more productive. (the whole section that snippet is from, is here)

• c) that per this note from User:Dario (WMF) which includes As a general rule, the Foundation is not in a position to "approve" or "decline" individual research proposals, unless there are security or legal reasons to escalate them. Editorial decisions about content, in particular, are not an area the Foundation has any say about. The authors reached out at the time of the proposal to ask about best practices to follow in setting up the proposal and two WMF staffers (Aaron Halfaker and I) advised them on discussing and documenting it in the appropriate spaces.... -- the WMF was indeed aware of this. What Dario wrote in that note is pretty different from Carolineneil wrote, but .. whatever. Whatever was said in those "extensive discussions" didn't translate to any kind of respect for the editing community's time and work, nor any effort to get prior consensus, and Dario didn't communicate the information to the editing community either.

What happened is frankly stupid and completely avoidable (and in my view, another expresssion of WMF staffers' apparent lack of understanding of the work the editing community does maintaining content and of the importance of consensus here). I am hopeful that the effort to establish WP:NOTLABORATORY will succeed, but we also need to commmunicate clearly to WMF what it should do with this kinds of requests, and what they should do with information they have about people's intentions. (It kills me that the people doing the experiment tried to reach out to what they thought was someone "here" but it took two years, three ANIs, and the paper being published for the editing community to finally understand on its own what had been happening.

So, should we advise the WMF to inform us when they learn about planned experiments like this and if so how? And Dario - when you say "appropriate spaces", which spaces are those, exactly? What advice did you give them? thx Jytdog (talk) 19:41, 5 October 2017 (UTC)

@DGG and Jytdog: I posted a brief explanation of WMF's role in this project, referenced above. Epochfail also posted a note here in a volunteer capacity. I'd like to reiterate here that this is not a project the Wikimedia Foundation sponsored, participated in, or followed through its execution. I agree Carolineneil's words may be misconstrued as suggesting otherwise. As I noted over the years as part of efforts by the (now defunct) RCom, there's no "stamp of approval" the Foundation can provide to every individual research initiative that involves Wikimedia projects, given their fundamentally open nature. There are on average 1.6 published studies or research updates per day on Wikimedia projects and we just don't have the capacity to monitor what all these studies are about. We continue to invest substantial efforts in outreach among researchers to help them understand how to work with communities of volunteers, to align their research goals to the needs of these communities and to make sure their work complies with community norms. Unfortunately this doesn't always happen, and researchers not responding to warnings, or failing to follow up when notified of violations of community norms or expectations should be called out, and blocked when appropriate. The advice Aaron and I – as well as others (both on WMF staff or in the academic community) who happen to be members of the Wikimedia movement – regularly give to other researchers is to provide full disclosure of accounts used for research purposes, to familiarize themselves with the relevant community policies, and most importantly to actively seek consensus on recruitment strategies or the design of any experiment involving interventions in appropriate community spaces. Jytdog: what counts as an "appropriate space" varies as a function of the project and I am not sure I can give you a comprehensive answer. There are research initiatives that target specific WikiProjects, or editors of specific Wikipedia language editions, and there's no single place across all Wikimedia projects where all these discussions happen. On English Wikipedia, the typical place we point researchers to is the Village Pump. Additionally, I created years ago the research index on Meta in an effort to provide a centralized place where research projects are documented consistently and can be discussed. Creating a page documenting a research project on Meta, though, is not a surrogate for community consensus, nor does it imply any kind of official endorsement. Other than reminding researchers who seek our advice that they should follow it, or they may run the risk to see their efforts frustrated and volunteers' time wasted, there's not much WMF staff can do at scale to prevent these issues (I actually disagree with you it is a responsibility for Wikimedia staff to notify the community on behalf of every research teams who contacts us of their proposals and methods, it is the research team's responsibility to seek community consensus and to act accordingly). The formal collaborations the Wikimedia Foundation runs are subject to strict policies and legal agreements, and are announced in a variety of places (see this example), but they represent a minuscule fraction of all research that happens on Wikimedia projects. I hope this helps clarify the scope and limits of what we can do at the Wikimedia Foundation, based on our policies and resources. I'd be happy to hear of any proposal that can help better address these concerns (which I invite you to announce on wiki-research-l if you want to get input from researchers who care about best practices and norms in the Wikimedia movement).--Dario (WMF) (talk) 01:47, 6 October 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for your note. The thing that killed all this was the failure of the investigators. If you told them that they should reach out to WP:CHEM and to make sure that the editor who was actually doing the work was engaging with the community, then I agree that there is nothing more you could have done -- even if you had taken the time to notify WP:CHEM of the research plan once it was posted at meta -- as it was at m:Research:Impact of Wikipedia on Academic Science - the editor is not named there, so there would have been no way to connect the Carolineneil account with that research project in particular. One cannot legislate or build process that protects against people who won't listen and just do whatever the hell they want. Thanks again for your explanation. Jytdog (talk) 01:57, 6 October 2017 (UTC)

• The user was recently blocked for "undisclosed paid editing" [22]. Am I the only one who finds this disconcerting? Fundamentally, that's not what the policy on paid editing is about: do we really mind people creating quality articles when they've received payment for doing so in a way that can't compromise the neutrality of the result? But even if we stick to the letter of the rules, how have we concluded there's paid editing involved? Yes, the research project received funding, but I don't see any indication that the user who submitted the articles (presumably the first co-athor of the paper) has received any remuneration for doing so. Or does the crux of the matter lie in the fact that the PhD students who wrote the articles could have been paid to write these articles? – Uanfala 21:54, 6 October 2017 (UTC)

I wouldn't put too much weight on the exact reason given there. If you read the ANI that lead to that it was clear that the community had had enough of this person dumping crap into WP and not talking with the community. Jytdog (talk) 22:21, 6 October 2017 (UTC)

Well, that would make more sense. Although I did skim through one of the ANI threads (probably the first one, if there are more than one), and I got the impression that a block was unanimously recommended against. And it's also a bit odd to block a user deemed disruptive if that user hasn't edited for months. – Uanfala 22:26, 6 October 2017 (UTC)

No, I don't think that a block was "unanimously recommended against". I among others thought that a block was in order. Several editors thought that we had tried hard enough to engage the editor in conversation, and that they were not responding. I still don't entirely understand the nature of the experiment, and why they kept submitting the same articles without responding to my and other comments. It is certainly not a case where there was strong sentiment against a block. In my opinion, the problem was and is that technical accuracy is important, but is not the only thing. The chemistry and the statistics were good, but they just weren't listening. Robert McClenon (talk) 18:48, 8 October 2017 (UTC)

Lob (haircut)

Hi for Lob (haircut) could you help me to expend the article ? --Panam2014 (talk) 13:08, 8 October 2017 (UTC)

@Panam2014: expansion request can be done by applying a stub template. --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 01:16, 14 October 2017 (UTC)

Need a physics expert to verify the article.

Moved to Talk:Observable universe § Need a physics expert to verify the article.

 – ―Mandruss ☎ 22:50, 13 October 2017 (UTC)

Font for Wikipedia Logo

Please tell me the font for "Wikipedia" below the globe.--Dthomsen8 (talk) 01:02, 14 October 2017 (UTC)

Linux Libertine Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 10:48, 14 October 2017 (UTC)

Help design a new feature to stop harassing emails

Hi there,

The Anti-Harassment Tools team plans to start develop of a new feature to allow users to restrict emails from new accounts. This feature will allow an individual user to stop harassing emails from coming through the Special:EmailUser system from abusive sockpuppeting accounts.

We’re inviting you to join the discussion because it is important to hear from a broad range of people who are interested in the design of the tool.

You can leave comments on this discussion page or send an email to the Anti-Harassment Tools team.

We hope you join the discussion.

For the Anti-Harassment Tools team, SPoore (WMF), Community Advocate, Community health initiative (talk) 22:43, 11 October 2017 (UTC)

One of our own is safe again

In the news today Joshua Boyle, a prolific wikipedia contributor, who was kidnapped and imprisoned by the Taliban, for five years, was rescued earlier this morning.

Boyle made something like 70,000 edits, from late 2004 to late 2010, his focus including topics related to terrorism and counter-terrorism.

During the course of his research he met, and later married, Omar Khadr's sister Zaynab Khadr. After their divorce Boyle married an American, Caitlin Coleman, and the pair embarked on a trip around the world, stopping off to work for non-governmental organizations. In October 2012 the pair were kidnapped by the Haqqani Network. Their kidnappers demanded the release of members of their family and other leaders of their network, who faced death sentences, in Afghanistan.

Several videos of Boyle and Coleman were released. Family members found it chilling that they could hear the sounds of the shackles they were wearing, in the video. Coleman bore three children, during their time in captivity, Boyle helping deliver his children, in the dark, with the aid of a flashlight. In his letters to his family Boyle described trying to play the game of "Beautiful Life", with his children -- referring to the Italian film where a father tries to hide the horror of living in a Nazi death camp from his young son, by pretending all the horrific elements were part of a game.

At one time Boyle, Coleman, and several other American captives were part of the negotiation that saw Bowe Bergdahl swapped for the Taliban Five. Former special forces leader Jason Amerine testified before a Congressional Committee over his frustration over his superiors losing interest in rescuing them.

Boyle was injured by shrapnel, during the rescue.

So, one of our own is safe again. Geo Swan (talk) 18:51, 12 October 2017 (UTC)

They are a Wikipedian...? Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 19:18, 12 October 2017 (UTC)

Yes. The Globe and Mail quoted him, in 2009, saying he had written much of the wikipedia's coverage of terrorism and counter-terrorism, and I can conform that. Geo Swan (talk) 21:27, 12 October 2017 (UTC)

I believe the film is titled Life Is Beautiful. Aditya^{(talk • contribs)} 06:22, 16 October 2017 (UTC)

Subscription transfer

I have a couple of resource subscription that came through Wikipedia (High beam, British Library etc.). But, since I am pretty inactive these days and free subscriptions are a rare commodity, is it possible to transfer my subscription to somebody else? Somebody who could do more justice to the subscriptions. There's a long waiting list, if I am not wrong.

p.s. I will be applying again for the subscriptions when I come back in my full capacity. Aditya^{(talk • contribs)} 06:08, 16 October 2017 (UTC)

Wiki Loves Emirates

Hi, I will be organising a Wikipedia photo competition "Wiki Love Emirates" in the UAE from 20th October to 20th November. We are planning to run a CN banner for the users/visitors on English Wikipedia from the UAE during the competition period. If anyone have any suggestion or concerns, please raise here. --Saqib (talk) 08:54, 17 October 2017 (UTC)

When I first read the title I thought that it was about this Emirates. Ruslik_Zero 20:08, 18 October 2017 (UTC)

Help classify, please

Can an uninvolved editor please classify the article on Fur bikini of Raquel Welch? Aditya^{(talk • contribs)} 19:18, 18 October 2017 (UTC)

Ok, I assigned it to C-class. Ruslik_Zero 20:09, 18 October 2017 (UTC)

Thanks. Aditya^{(talk • contribs)} 01:59, 19 October 2017 (UTC)

Challenge: 100 years of Finland

On December 6th 2017 Finland will celebrate her 100th birthday. To mark the occasion, Wikimedia Suomi organises a public editing competition during November. The goal of this is to improve and translate articles from a list of 100 topics related to Finland into as many languages as possible. Subjects range from Jari Litmanen to Finnish sauna, from Tove Jansson to Maternity package. The list is here.

To participate, create an account in Wikipedia (if you do not have one yet), and register on this page. Winners will receive prizes, other participants may be granted other levels of recognition.

Welcome to participate ! --Tappinen (talk) 15:35, 22 October 2017 (UTC)

Viz.

Should we allow Viz., as in ... three major Indian science academies viz. Indian Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Sciences, India and Indian National Science Academy, in the article A. M. Jayannavar? I initially thought it should be changed, but perhaps there is Wikipedia advice on it. I know Ibid. and Op. Cit. are discouraged.--Dthomsen8 (talk) 02:16, 26 October 2017 (UTC)

Is there a way to cite for this?

In Architecture of Seattle, I really want to be able to say that Seattle's Columbia Center is the second-tallest building on the U.S. West Coast, surpassed only by the U.S. Bank Tower (Los Angeles). Looking at List of tallest buildings in the United States, this is obviously true, but under our rules against original research and synthesis, I don't see how to cite for it. (I have a couple of other similar citation issues, but this one seems the most clearcut.) - Jmabel | Talk 06:45, 26 October 2017 (UTC)

You need to find a source that says just that. Or use a comparison that there are sources for. Emporis is useful for this since it does comparisons. The Emporis entry on the Columbia Center is already cited in the article and says "Tallest high-rise on the Pacific Coast from 1985 to 1989, surpassing Aon Center and surpassed by US Bank Tower." Also, both List of tallest buildings in the United States and Emporis show the Wilshire Grand Center as taller than the US Bank Tower, so Columbia Center would be the third tallest. StarryGrandma (talk) 19:22, 26 October 2017 (UTC)

Endorsement Day at Meta-wiki

You are invited to endorse the finalized strategic direction at Meta-wiki. --George Ho (talk) 03:42, 27 October 2017 (UTC)

Where can I get help with tables?

I am working on an article on Mustang, Nepal here. I have some tables, and I have the data for more tables. But, I am afraid I need some help to format those tables. Where can I go and ask for some help? Aditya^{(talk • contribs)} 05:16, 27 October 2017 (UTC)

It is often easiest to have a look at source code of similar tables in other articles. Is for example Manang District, Nepal what you want ? --Tappinen (talk) 06:52, 29 October 2017 (UTC)

Hi Aditya Kabir. See Help:Table and Help:Introduction to tables with Wiki Markup for useful information. StarryGrandma (talk) 20:16, 29 October 2017 (UTC)

Thanks Tappinen. Thanks Grandma. @Tappinen:, I need to turn a complex series of data into tables, my be two tables. The other problem - floating tables to align them to the right - has been solved with @StarryGrandma:'s links. Aditya^{(talk • contribs)} 02:49, 30 October 2017 (UTC)

Categories for college sports

Hoi, currently the practice at en.wp is to have the categories for college sports as a subcategory for the category of the alumni of that college. However, there is no one on one relation between the two. It is better when the categories for college sports are subcategories of the category of the college. It also follows that any athlete that is also an alumni should be included in both categories.

At Wikidata we do harvest these categories. Personally I am interested in the alumni and sports is not what I am interested in. Thanks, GerardM (talk) 10:19, 31 October 2017 (UTC)

Can you give some examples where people are in the college sports players categories (these are the one you are talking about, right?) who are not alumni? I.e. some examples where the current situation is wrong (on enwiki, the result for the "harvest" at Wikidata is not really our concern)? Fram (talk) 12:22, 31 October 2017 (UTC)

It depends on one's definition of alumni. Some people see alumni as "graduate of" or "received degree from" and others who see it as meaning "attended". Those are not identical. I would conclude that the best definition to use is the broadest, however, which would make all college athletes by default alumni of their university. --Jayron32 13:56, 31 October 2017 (UTC)

Thanks. If that strict interpretation was the intention of GerardM, then the problem is of course not restricted to sportspeople, but applies to everyone who attended but didn't finish. Fram (talk) 14:18, 31 October 2017 (UTC)

Participate in Dispute Resolution Focus Group

The Harvard Negotiation & Mediation Clinical Program is working with the Wikimedia Foundation to help communities develop tools to resolve disputes. You are invited to participate in a focus group aimed at identifying needs and developing possible solutions through collaborative design thinking.

If you are interested in participating, please add your name to the signup list on the Meta-Wiki page.

Thank you for giving us the opportunity to learn from the Wikimedia community. We value all of your opinions and look forward to hearing from you. JosephNegotiation (talk) 22:03, 1 November 2017 (UTC)

How do we deal with naming of two people with the same name and profession?

Hi

Is there some kind of guidance available on delaing with two people who have the same name and have the same profession (who are both notable for their profession)? I'm specifically interested in this for David Pratt (footballer) and David Pratt (footballer).

Thanks

John Cummings (talk) 13:15, 3 November 2017 (UTC)

@John Cummings: WP:NCPDAB says you may have to resort to "David Pratt (footballer, born YYYY)". -- John of Reading (talk) 13:22, 3 November 2017 (UTC)

And the more specific guidelines are at Wikipedia:Naming conventions (sportspeople)#Association football (soccer). – Uanfala 13:37, 3 November 2017 (UTC)

Perfect, thanks Uanfala and John of Reading. John Cummings (talk) 14:52, 3 November 2017 (UTC)

I don't think this is an issue because I would question if the more-recent John Pratt is notable. Having earned the fastest red card in a seventh-tier match doesn't sound like it'd pass any notability criteria I can think of. Eggishorn (talk) (contrib) 19:00, 3 November 2017 (UTC)

Photo appears to be reversed

The photo of Alla Rakha appears to be reversed. In fact, the person posting the photo added a caption saying, "(he was right handed unlike shown here)". I did some checking and, indeed, the position of his hands in relation to drums is opposite to every other photo of him on the web. If somebody knows how to fix this, be my guest.--Toploftical (talk) 18:26, 5 November 2017 (UTC)

@Toploftical: Fixed. Thanks. ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 21:43, 5 November 2017 (UTC)

Edit summaries when creating or redirecting - automatic vs manual

Today I learnt that the automated edit summaries for redirecting and creating articles are usually quite informative (some examples) - more so than edit summaries I've used in the past (iirc, for creation, I usually just type "create" or "creating"). Two issues/questions:

1. Are these edit summaries considered "good" edit summaries in the eyes of currently used edit counters?
   1. If not, why not, and should this be changed?
2. Would leaving the edit summary blank in instances of article creation or de novo redirect creation therefore be safe to recommend to an admin hopeful? (NB: I'm not "asking for a friend", I'm asking free of any particular current context, and merely to satisfy my own curiosity, and to stimulate positive ideas if possible.)

Thanks for any incoming info and opinions,

Samsara 14:49, 5 November 2017 (UTC)

• I really have no idea how the various edit summary counters do their counting, but my impression has been that they don't care whether the summary was penned by the user, or automatically generated (by Twinkle, the revert function, the automatic summary when redirecting, the automatic summary when editing a section etc.). – Uanfala 21:56, 6 November 2017 (UTC)

An RfC on pronunciation (IPA, Respell) is open

• An RfC is open at Infobox element. Proposed is to remove {{Respell}} wholesale, leaving IPA. -DePiep (talk) 23:13, 7 November 2017 (UTC)

English grammar

Hi fellas. I'm not fluent in English at 100% but I'm not sure if one particular sentence is actually correct. Anonymous IP 75.172.71.60 introduced the sentence "which it also was named as" in the article Prehistoric Beast (there's the diff) and I was wondering if it is proper English. Is it? Thank you in advance. Kintaro (talk) 22:26, 7 November 2017 (UTC)

It's correct, but unwieldy. A simple "(also called Centrosaurus)" would read better. Brightgalrs (/braɪtˈɡæl.ərˌɛs/)^[1] 12:40, 8 November 2017 (UTC)

Thank you Ser Brightgalrs, I brought some corrections and completed the article. Should you find that my own English is not correct, please do not hesitate to bring your own corrections to it. Regards, Kintaro (talk) 14:21, 9 November 2017 (UTC)

Would it be appropriate to propose deferred changes in the Community Tech Survey?

Wikipedia:Deferred changes is a proposed feature that has received unanimous support for implementation. While development appeared to be active in December last year, the project appears to have been abandoned. The main developer, Cenarium, has not edited Wikipedia since April and the page tracking the development of the project has not been edited since December last year. Would it be appropriate to propose the completion of this project in the m:2017 Community Wishlist Survey? Thanks, Darylgolden^(talk) Ping when replying 13:52, 9 November 2017 (UTC)

@Darylgolden: I think this would be a valid proposal, and if it isn't valid then it will be removed in the review process anyway so there's no harm in posting it. Jc86035 (talk) 14:04, 9 November 2017 (UTC)

Changes to the global ban policy

Hello. Some changes to the community global ban policy have been proposed. Your comments are welcome at m:Requests for comment/Improvement of global ban policy. Please translate this message to your language, if needed. Cordially. Matiia (Matiia) 00:34, 12 November 2017 (UTC)

Self-nominations for the 2017 ArbCom elections are now open

Self-nominations for the 2017 English Wikipedia Arbitration Committee elections are now open. The nomination period runs from Sunday 00:00, 12 November (UTC) until Tuesday 23:59, 21 November 2017 (UTC). Editors interested in running should review the eligibility criteria listed at the top of Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee Elections December 2017/Candidates, then create a candidate page by following the instructions there. Mz7 (talk) 06:58, 12 November 2017 (UTC)

Main page grammar

On the Main page, "In the Icelandic parliamentary election, the Independence Party win the most seats." That should be ...wins... or ...won..., but I don't know how that can be fixed.--Dthomsen8 (talk) 16:21, 3 November 2017 (UTC)

@Dthomsen8: Reported at WP:ERRORS; please place Main Page error reports there in future. Jc86035 (talk) 16:33, 3 November 2017 (UTC)

Thank you for the information. Errors on the main page are rare, but it is good to know how to report them promptly.--Dthomsen8 (talk) 01:04, 6 November 2017 (UTC)

Nothing wrong with "the Independence Party win...". See notional agreement. DuncanHill (talk) 15:01, 9 November 2017 (UTC)

It depends on which variety of English is in use. See American and British English grammatical differences#Subject-verb agreement. Anomie⚔ 03:49, 13 November 2017 (UTC)

Interaction Timeline alpha demo is ready for testing

Hello all,

The Interaction Timeline alpha version is ready for testing. The Anti-Harassment Tools team appreciates you spending a few minutes to try out the tool and let us know if there is value in displaying the interactions in a vertical timeline instead of the approach used with the existing interaction analysis tools.

Also we interested in learning about which additional functionality or information we should prioritize developing.

Comments can be left on the discussion page here or on meta. Or you can share your ideas by email.

Thank you,

For the Anti-Harassment Tools Team, SPoore (WMF), Community Advocate, Community health initiative (talk) 20:34, 15 November 2017 (UTC)

North American season categories only for winters

Why is there Category:North American winters but not Category:North American springs, Category:North American summers, or Category:North American autumns? 98.197.198.46 (talk) 00:22, 16 November 2017 (UTC)

No such articles exist specifically for springs. Same for summer and autumn. So if you are organizing articles called "(year) North American (season)" then there's a purpose for these winter categories. Further, it transitions over a year boundary.

• Special:Search/intitle: north american spring
• Special:Search/intitle: north american springs
• Special:Search/intitle: north american summer
• Special:Search/intitle: north american summers
• Special:Search/intitle: north american fall
• Special:Search/intitle: north american falls
• Special:Search/intitle: north american autumn
• Special:Search/intitle: north american autumns
• Special:Search/intitle: north american winter
• Special:Search/intitle: north american winters

-- 70.51.45.76 (talk) 06:11, 16 November 2017 (UTC)

Self Advertising

We are supposed to be a reference source, not a self-promoting Business.

So it is inappropriate to force information on people, particularly as self-advertising.

Last month it was 'Wiki loves monuments', now it is 'Wiki loves Asia'.

Who is doing it? Who wants it? Can it be stopped? — Preceding unsigned comment added by JohnWheater (talk • contribs) 08:43, 13 November 2017 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you mean by "forcing information on people", but you seem to have misunderstood something. One of the things Wikipedia is is a reference work. It is also an open collaborative project. Such contests and activities seem to be helpful in getting people to improve the content. Isn't that a good thing? Ntsimp (talk) 17:44, 13 November 2017 (UTC)

Wikimedia's goal is to share knowledge around the world, and to encourage people to do it. Wiki Loves Asia fits that goal. --NaBUru38 (talk) 21:57, 18 November 2017 (UTC)

Wondered why this site is blacklisted

I noticed that fivebooks.com is on a Wikipedia blacklist. I know not a great deal about this site, but it looks OK to me. How do I find out the reason for the blacklist? ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 18:03, 11 November 2017 (UTC)

@ThoughtIdRetired: It was added to the blacklist in this 2011 edit. The edit summary suggests it was being mis-used by certain editors. -- John of Reading (talk) 18:40, 11 November 2017 (UTC)

Thanks - given my dislike of spammers, I think I have revised my opinion of the site - even though it produces useful results of related books and the possibly unexpected reasons for picking them. ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 19:17, 11 November 2017 (UTC)

On reconsideration, now with my brain in gear: the page I looked at was an interview of Prof James Hunter, an expert on Scottish History and particularly the Highland Clearances. Some of the views expressed in the interview are particularly relevant to the modern view of the subject (which needs to be inserted in the article - it's a part of Wikipedia that really needs some work!!). If this is the only source of Prof Hunter expressing these views, how would I get to use the interview as a reference? I have little doubt that the words of an expert in the field qualify the interview as a WP:RS.ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 19:23, 11 November 2017 (UTC)

You can post a request at MediaWiki talk:Spam-whitelist for the specific link to be whitelisted. That would keep the entire domain blacklisted except for that one. --Majora (talk) 19:28, 11 November 2017 (UTC)

I don't grok why the site as a whole is blacklisted just because "some editors" misused it? Surely that is an editor behaviour problem? It seems like the site itself is actually useful, but is being "punished" for problems not related to the content of the site itself. How can the blacklisting then even be valid? Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 09:47, 13 November 2017 (UTC)

That happens. On the other hand, when they are blacklisted it's usually that blocking a single spamming user was not enough, this then becomes the next technical solution. —PaleoNeonate – 11:35, 13 November 2017 (UTC)

Getting the page whitelisted was not a problem. I am guessing that the same procedure could be applied to the whole site - but if that's inappropriate, a page by page basis seems to work fine.ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 13:54, 13 November 2017 (UTC)

Perhaps a solution is to blacklist specific links within the site that are being abused instead of the entire site? Does Wikipedia support a link by link, or subdomain, blacklist, or is it only based on entire sites? -- 70.51.45.76 (talk) 04:16, 20 November 2017 (UTC)

Technically? Yes that is possible. Just like whitelisting individual URLs is possible. In practice? No. If a site needs to be blacklisted it needs to be done for a very good reason. We don't blacklist sites willy-nilly. Sites that are blacklisted needed to be blacklisted. If a site no longer needs to be blacklisted there are protocols to request its removal. --Majora (talk) 04:30, 20 November 2017 (UTC)

New print to pdf feature for mobile web readers

New print to pdf feature for mobile web readers

The Readers web team will be deploying a new feature this week to make it easier to download PDF versions of articles on the mobile website.

Providing better offline functionality was one of the highlighted areas from the research done by the New Readers team in Mexico, Nigeria, and India. The teams created a prototype for mobile PDFs which was evaluated by user research and community feedback. The prototype evaluation received positive feedback and results, so development continued.

For the initial deployment, the feature will be available to Google Chrome browsers on Android. Support for other mobile browsers to come in the future. For Chrome, the feature will use the native Android print functionality. Users can choose to download a webpage as a PDF. Mobile print styles will be used for these PDFs to ensure optimal readability for smaller screens.

The feature is available starting Wednesday, Nov 15. For more information, see the project page on MediaWiki.org.

Thank you!

CKoerner (WMF) (talk) 22:07, 20 November 2017 (UTC)

Possibly sexist disambiguation/redirect muddle

I have discovered a confusing situation for anyone who searches Wikipedia for "Duchess of Sutherland". The intended target of my search was Elizabeth Leveson-Gower, Duchess of Sutherland, notable for her role in the Highland Clearances, but instead you get a redirect to Duke of Sutherland. There is a disambiguation page for people with this title: Duchess of Sutherland (disambiguation), but the redirect means that you never find it (unless you make a typing mistake, as I did).

(Another notable Duchess of Sutherland was Harriet Sutherland-Leveson-Gower, Duchess of Sutherland - notable for her position of influence, not just having a title.)

Sutherland (disambiguation) does not mention any females with a "Sutherland" title - one would expect, perhaps, to see "Countess of Sutherland", "Duchess of Sutherland" and, since many contemporary and historical sources talk about both these 2 titles in this way, "Lady Sutherland".

I note that "Countess of Sutherland" redirects to Earl of Sutherland. This is not helpful if you do not know that a Countess is the female counterpart of an Earl.

Two thoughts on this:
(1) It is difficult to use Wikipedia to find anyone with one of these female titles (because you have to search through each article that you arrive in to find what you want - and note the Countess/Earl situation mentioned above).
(2) It seems to be a sexist policy to refer those with a Wikipedia article on them to the page of their husband or a male holder of the equivalent title.

I am guessing that there is some biography convention on dealing with this. Has it been applied in this case? If yes, are the rules appropriate? Is this a matter that should be in the "policy section"? ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 23:03, 20 November 2017 (UTC)

The only potential "sexism" here is the fact that the articles about the titles themselves are titled using the masculine form of the titles. Is there any reasonably common convention for referring to the title "Duke of Sutherland" (rather than to any particular holder of that title) that is more gender neutral?

As for improving navigation from the article about the title itself to a list of articles on specific individuals who've held that title, feel free to make proposals on the appropriate talk pages for the articles and/or relevant WikiProjects. Anomie⚔ 16:19, 22 November 2017 (UTC)

I think an important part of the solution is this [[23]] and some better content on Sutherland (disambiguation)#People - i.e. putting the women with Sutherland-related titles and their own article in the list. Once the move is complete, it is probably appropriate for the Duchess of Sutherland page to have a "see also" directing to Duke of Sutherland, just as Duke of Sutherland should have a link to the Duchess page.

The sexism problem is repeated with Earl/Countess of Sutherland, with everything directed at Earl of Sutherland - which is a little bizarre as (a) probably the most (in)famous holder of this title was habitually referred to as the Countess of Sutherland by her tenants and (b) the current holder is a Countess. Looking at the remarks of User:Anomie, I think there is a choice: either the article title that covers the (hereditary) title needs to be clearly gender neutral - which would give some horribly clumsy article titles, or there is a page for each gender version (presuming that there are notable persons of each gender) with appropriate links between the two.

I am no expert on all this sexism stuff, but if something seems wrong to me (I'm normally the person getting it wrong!!), I suggest that it needs a bit of looking at by someone who does have a good understanding of the subject. ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 20:32, 22 November 2017 (UTC)

Please, particpate

Probably this is not the forum to seek such help, but Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Isa ali pantami has been lying around for sometime without any hope of further participation. Please, people, take a look at the discussion. Aditya^{(talk • contribs)} 19:04, 23 November 2017 (UTC)

Looking for a Greek speaker

Currently we're down to the last several thousand Neelix redirects (we just passed the 2 year mark!) and a small chunk of those remaining are Greek language. If someone who knows Greek would care to take a look through them, they're here; if you're not familiar with redirects and/or the ongoing Neelix cleanup efforts, read over the instructions at RfD and WP:X1. It'd be hugely appreciated. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 02:31, 24 November 2017 (UTC)

Worth noting that the redirects appear to be in Ancient Greek. – Uanfala 18:06, 25 November 2017 (UTC)

The largest number of articles that will be affected by an event

I remember asking in village pump a long time ago what would happen if the Queen dies but I can't find it in the archives. Anyway, the reason I asked this is because she would most likely be succeeded by a male monarch, but many articles use "the Queen" (including article titles like Queen's Counsel) to refer to the monarch and a lot of changes will have to be done (probably manually because bots can't tell where the word has to be substituted for "King"). Now though my question is what foreseeable event will cause the most trouble for Wikipedia and would require the largest number of manual changes to articles. The Average Wikipedian (talk) 02:53, 25 November 2017 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Village pump (idea lab)/Archive 19#What if the Queen dies? Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 10:04, 25 November 2017 (UTC)

• There's definitely going to be a lot of fussy work if a major country split up in two. – Uanfala 17:46, 25 November 2017 (UTC)

Category:Entertainment events by year and category:Events by year

Category:Entertainment events by year has been newly created. It already existed earlier in some other wikis such as the German and Dutch version. By the way I was really amazed that category:Events by year has actually been deleted - what's the idea behind this? It exists on all other wikis, see d:Q7214926. The Wiki ghost (talk) 17:39, 25 November 2017 (UTC)

@The Wiki ghost: Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2017_September_24#Events_by_year ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 17:41, 25 November 2017 (UTC)

Sorry but in my opinion this decision is crazy and should be reconsidered. Who would mark for example Category:Art museums and galleries by year as an event? Even worse, Category:Technology by year is now categorized as an event too. The Wiki ghost (talk) 17:56, 25 November 2017 (UTC)

Agreed. There are a lot of CfDs that I think are wrong-headed. ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 04:54, 26 November 2017 (UTC)

Women in Red World Contest spam

I, and judging from my watchlist a lot of other people, have just been spammed with a mess age about the "Women in Red World Contest". No indication who sent it or why it was sent to me. The only link is to Wikipedia:WikiProject Women in Red/The World Contest which does not tell me why I received it. I would normally as the sender but the message was unsigned, and I can hardly complain to the bot (and the bot offers no way to find out who is sending these messages).--JohnBlackburne^words_deeds 03:25, 26 November 2017 (UTC)

You can check the mass message log. This one was sent by Ser Amantio di Nicolao. — JJMC89 (T·C) 03:42, 26 November 2017 (UTC)

Also, the wikitext delivered to your user talk included a hidden comment, tweaked to:

Message sent by User:Ser Amantio di Nicolao using the list at permalink

where the permalink is the 03:04, 26 November 2017 revision of WiR list 2 which appears to be in the wrong namespace, and which apparently came from a massive list at User:Ser Amantio di Nicolao/sandbox.

That doesn't explain how you got on the list, but it is a step closer. Johnuniq (talk) 03:48, 26 November 2017 (UTC)

Ah, thanks. I did not think of checking for hidden comments. I would have seen it if I replied but there was neither a sender or bot to reply to.--JohnBlackburne^words_deeds 05:28, 26 November 2017 (UTC)

@JohnBlackburne: You're a member of one of the WikiProjects I targeted to let know: one of the subprojects of WikiProject England. As for the signature, my apologies about that...I had thought that the MediaWiki message system autopopulates that without prompting. --Ser Amantio di Nicolao^{Che dicono a Signa?}_{Lo dicono a Signa.} 03:51, 26 November 2017 (UTC)

Apart from your sig there was no indication why I was selected in the message. I am a member of WP NE England: searching the linked page (as it’s far too long to read - it takes a while to display) I see mentions of Welsh, West Country and SE England but nothing on NE England. I think you are thinking of sub-projects the wrong way – being interested in local history does not mean I would be interested in any other area of England.--JohnBlackburne^words_deeds 04:55, 26 November 2017 (UTC)

@Ser Amantio di Nicolao: You also somehow ended up targeting subpages like User talk:Koavf/Userboxes. You should look over your edits. ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 04:56, 26 November 2017 (UTC)

That's interesting, as I followed the procedure I've done before, which is how I was told it should be done. I'll look into it for future, certainly. --Ser Amantio di Nicolao^{Che dicono a Signa?}_{Lo dicono a Signa.} 06:36, 26 November 2017 (UTC)

Net neutrality

The FCC here in the US is about to change the net neutrality regulations. What does this mean for Wikipedia and our access to it? Jcwf (talk) 05:37, 22 November 2017 (UTC)

probably not much. Fairly low bandwidth, limited commercial competitors and popular with customers. We're the kind of site you give people free to try and look good.©Geni (talk) 08:54, 22 November 2017 (UTC)

We are doing everything we can to make sure Wikipedia and her sister projects reach as many people as possible. This includes partnerships with ISPs to be included in all package levels. Additionally, we have incredible support from launching and running the zero rated Wikipedia Zero initiative from users. In many places where Wikipedia Zero operates Internet access is expensive, generally costing in PPP$ 50% of an equivalent US plan. (ITU 2015)

We are looking forward to bringing Wikipedia to more people in the coming years. Cheers, — Dispenser 16:06, 22 November 2017 (UTC)

Well there are pros and cons. While it is true that most operators in the US would have no reason to restrict people's access to Wikipedia regardless of states related to net neutrality registrations, and in other countries WMF have gained from cooperating with carriers that welcome positive data discrimination, lack of net neutrality could also mean if someone wrote something on wikipedia that are not favorable to network operator then the network operator might want to throttle people's access to the site or some particular pages. Internationally, if net neutrality can become a standard, while projects like wikipedia zero would be affected, perhaps it might also make Wikipedia less likely to be banned by states or operators.C933103 (talk) 19:50, 26 November 2017 (UTC)

RFC: Overuse of "stop hand" images

I find File:Stop hand.svg, File:Stop hand nuvola.svg, and their derivatives overused and bitey. Can we try to replace them with more appropriate images? KMF (talk) 04:15, 15 November 2017 (UTC)

• No. Most of the time it takes multiple attempts to get their attention with lower level warnings before a "stop hand" warning is applied. The situations that warrant a stop hand earlier definitely deserve it. Attack articles being a great example. It is supposed to get their attention as a last ditch effort to avoid having to block them. The whole point is to get them to STOP. --Majora (talk) 04:44, 15 November 2017 (UTC)
• No for context, this conversation where I gave KMF a level 4 warning for using homophobic slurs in edit summaries while reverting vandals is likely what caused this RfC. I'm very much a DTTR type, but I consider usage of slurs to be one of the few occasions where it *is* warranted and the exact opposite of bitey. Especially when a user had already been given an NPA warning in the last month mentioning that blocks could be in the future. The final warning is meant to make a point and draw attention to behavior in order to prevent a block and stop disruption. TonyBallioni (talk) 04:53, 15 November 2017 (UTC)
• No. The stop symbol is only used on the higher level warnings. It is used as a last resort and is perfectly appropriate. --‖ Ebyabe ^talk - Union of Opposites ‖ 04:56, 15 November 2017 (UTC)
• No As it is not used until other warnings have been issued it is entirely appropriate. MarnetteD|Talk 05:04, 15 November 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose - ^[Humor] I agree that it is best not to send level3-4 warnings immediately, but when required I think that it is appropriate. —PaleoNeonate – 05:17, 15 November 2017 (UTC)
• No It's only used when the person is nearing a block, it's almost bitey not to have it. Btw, PaleoNeonate barely beat me to the joke :P Drewmutt (^ᴥ^) talk 05:19, 15 November 2017 (UTC)
• No I also agree with the previous comments, especially with Drewmutt. --Daniele Pugliesi (talk) 06:32, 18 November 2017 (UTC)
• Support, not any undesired action requires a red card. --NaBUru38 (talk) 22:01, 18 November 2017 (UTC)
• No. It's misleading and therefore harmful in trying to be polite when the action in question has very serious consequences. --A D Monroe III^(talk) 02:33, 19 November 2017 (UTC)
• No. The suggested replacement is less clear and less appropriate. --Pipetricker (talk) 22:21, 23 November 2017 (UTC)
• It might well be that we are sometimes too quick to escalate up to warnings containing a hand stop image... however, once warnings DO get to that point, the image is appropriate. Blueboar (talk) 22:32, 23 November 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose: I've always been a fan of Commons Emblems, e.g. File:Commons-emblem-hand.svg, but clearly, this is an abolition RFC. The overuse, if indeed exists, is wrong. Abolition of the emblem is also wrong. And unlike the mathematical negative signs, two wrongs don't cancel each other out. FleetCommand (Speak your mind!) 06:35, 27 November 2017 (UTC)

Editing character boxes need tooltips with character descriptions

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T5550

The other day I was editing a section and I wanted to insert an "e" with an acute mark, so I selected "Latin" from the drop down list below the editing textbox, and I saw a bunch of various letters. That's good. But I found it hard to distinguish between certain letters, like an "e" with a grave mark versus an "e" with an acute mark, for example. So I idly hover the mouse cursor over the letters, and I then noticed that all of them have the same alt text that reads "Click on the character or tag to insert it into the edit window". It would be really nice to have each show exactly what it is, like "Click on this character to insert a lower case e with an acute accent" for example. I would imagine this would be helpful to those with some vision problems as well. By the way, I had to use the magnifier program to view the characters in question and picked the right one. So...what do you think of that? I expect it to be a fairly easy fix, say one week top :-) --TheBlueWizard (talk) 18:27, 26 November 2017 (UTC)

Agreed--that is much more helpful text. Something like "Click here to insert [description of character] ([actual character])" is much more useful. ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 21:59, 26 November 2017 (UTC)

This concerns the CharInsert extension and gadget. Terminology: What you call "alt text" is what's commonly called "tooltip" (which is defined by the HTML title attribute, not the alt attribute) (topic title changed accordingly).

See: T5550: Character insertion box should have titles for the characters (open since 2005)

--Pipetricker (talk) 01:48, 27 November 2017 (UTC)

IMDB character entries

I don't know where to report this, but IMDB is discontinuing (most) of their character entries on December 6. A quick survey shows that there are at least 2000 links, at least some of them (probably incorrectly) used as references. I don't know what we can do. A bot marking all of them in article-space as dead? In any case, I don't know what board to report this to. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 06:41, 27 November 2017 (UTC)

Use archived links. The Rambling Man (talk) 07:38, 27 November 2017 (UTC)

Go drop a note on User talk:InternetArchiveBot (may redirect). --Izno (talk) 13:07, 27 November 2017 (UTC)

Nagware

The way the current donation drive is being handled is very annoying. After closing the large donation-request banner at the top of the Main Page, I have had to close smaller versions that slide in from the side on four other occasions (basically, every time I visit a new page). Dismissing the side-box once should be sufficient to get the point across that the user does not wish to donate at this time. We should not be hounding users incessantly about donating, otherwise they might elect to avoid Wikipedia entirely (at least while donation drives are under way). - 72.182.55.186 (talk) 21:25, 27 November 2017 (UTC)