Jump to content

Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous)/Archive 64

Add links
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Village pump (miscellaneous) archive  

This page contains discussions that have been archived from Village pump (miscellaneous).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.

< Older discussions · Archives: A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V, W, X · 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, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80

Wikimedia 2030 community discussions: Last week begins

We are entering the last lap of the discussions on the Wikimedia 2030 strategic recommendations. Until next Friday, February 21, you can share your feedback, questions, concerns, and other comments.

In my last 2 messages on this village pump, I described how the recommendations were created, the role of your input, and the next steps. This time, let me describe just one selected recommendation, one that sounds to be particularly close to the activities on wiki: 'Improve User Experience'.

It states that anyone, irrespectively from their gender, culture, technological background, or physical and mental abilities, should enjoy a fluid, effective, and positive experience during both the consultation and contribution to knowledge. This recommendation is, among others, about the design improvements, user interface, but also training and support programsdedicated resources for newcomers, and, what I personally find especially interesting, mechanisms that allow finding peers with specific interests, roles, and objectives along with communication channels to interact and collaborate.

Please comment on the recommendations' talk pages. What do you think about this and other recommendations? Should some points be improved, removed, or added?

If something is not clear, please ping me. I will write back as soon as I can.

SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 14:36, 15 February 2020 (UTC)

I made a clumsy visual representation of the connections between the recommendations (data taken from the sections called Connection to other recommendations). I didn't take into account the cases when a recommendation is connected to all the others. Anyway, I leave making the conclusions to you. In addition, I'm sharing a cloud with the most frequently used words in the recommendations. SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 23:54, 15 February 2020 (UTC)
Sorry to be blunt but a link to a specific page that contains information rather than market-speak would be helpful. I can't tell what it's all about. There are glorious sentiments such as "So that everyone – those already within our movement and anyone who wishes to join – can play an effective role in capturing, sharing, and enabling access to free knowledge." However, having everyone join would give very bad results—Wikipedia already has too many people dedicated to pushing their favorite topic such as anti-science nonsense, nationalistic POV pushing, and righting-great-wrongs advocacy. I don't see anything showing an understanding of what actually happens when articles are edited. Johnuniq (talk) 00:32, 16 February 2020 (UTC)
@Johnuniq: that page does contain information :) I think it's just challenging to write complex and abstract thoughts in an accessible style, especially when you have an international team where most of its members prefer to communicate using well-defined, specific terms. SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 15:00, 17 February 2020 (UTC)
@Johnuniq: - given that one of the most raised issues with the consultations has been an inability to comprehend the recommendations due to the level of complexity, coupled with a very abstract level of recommendation (plus the other wikis have translation on top of that), it's not a unique problem. Quite a few of us had asked that the consultation be extended/tolled until they'd been rewritten, but that seems to have been ignored. Nosebagbear (talk) 14:00, 18 February 2020 (UTC)
And the bits that are understandable or concrete are too often wrong or misguided. I don't really get how, after two years of writing, rewriting, consultations, group meetings in Tunis, ... we still get things[1] like "Even if Wikipedia remains relevant as a text-based repository, we have the opportunity to serve knowledge consumers better if we widen our scope and diversify by offering different types of free knowledge. These could include a recombination of audiovisual and textual content, dimensional and geospatial content, augmented reality in context, computer-generated avatars, procedures for the user to test their knowledge acquisition, simulation scenarios, or so-called serious games as new project formats compatible with peer curation workflows" (emphasis mine). Since when are "computer generated avatars" a type of knowledge?Reading this recommendation, the conclusion seems to be "by 2030, text-based Wikipedia will probably no longer be relevant, but who cares, we will have computer-generated avatars and 'dimensional content' (sic)". Fram (talk) 14:41, 18 February 2020 (UTC)
I guess, compare, Computer generated imagery, with Social constructionism (or, "Socratic method" in text, with computer generated Socratic method [2].) Alanscottwalker (talk) 15:28, 18 February 2020 (UTC)

Leigh Rayment

Leigh Rayment's peerage pages (and MP pages, and various other pages) are widely used as a source in related parts of Wikipedia, see Category:Wikipedia articles incorporating a Leigh Rayment's Peerage Pages template. I learn from this discussion that Mr Rayment died a year ago, and that his website is scheduled to go the same way later this month. We probably need to do something... Chuntuk (talk) 21:27, 12 February 2020 (UTC)

@Chuntuk: As one of the participants in that discussion mentions, much of his site has been archived by the Wayback Machine. See WP:Citing sources#Preventing and repairing dead links for information on how to make use of that resource for our references. — Aᴋʀᴀʙʙıᴍ talk 19:23, 20 February 2020 (UTC)
You could also try reaching out to the community at WP:WikiProject Peerage and Baronetage. — Aᴋʀᴀʙʙıᴍ talk 19:25, 20 February 2020 (UTC)

Abbreviated "citation needed" tag?

In some situations, a {{Citation needed}} → [citation needed] tag can be unreasonably disruptive to appearance. I know the idea is to draw attention, but sometimes it's just excessive, like in table cells that cause a whole column to stretch. Does anyone know of an abbreviated form that accomplishes the same thing but maybe appear something like this:[CN!]?

Alternatively, how about doing something like this:<ref>{{Citation needed}}</ref> , which puts the [citation needed] in the references list instead,similar to what we do with {{Dead link}}? —[AlanM1(talk)]— 09:04, 20 February 2020 (UTC)

I agree we should have something of this sort. Perhaps a question mark would work.[?] Would an abbreviation be less understandable or would readers be quick to figure it out?[cn] Placing the tags in the reflist would make it difficult to see which statements are unsourced.[🤔] – Thjarkur (talk) 10:37, 20 February 2020 (UTC)
The real solution is to put the citation that's needed. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 15:53, 20 February 2020 (UTC)
^^^This. I don't think obscuring a problem is a good idea. Also this would be equivalent to prominent display of tags at the top of articles which the community equally rejected calls to move them to talk pages, when similar argument as yours were brought on various occasions in the past. – Ammarpad (talk) 05:49, 22 February 2020 (UTC)

Hello. Russian tax code contains a tax deduction allowing natural persons to reduce their taxable income by the total amount they donated to nonprofit organizations including educational ones (more precisely, this means they can refund themselves up to 25 % of the tax their employers and other Russian-based tax agents paid for them in the year when they made the donations).

I'm thinking about suggesting in my Russophone Wikimedia community that a page be created on the Wikimedia Russia website with information about the said tax deduction. So, what I want to ask is would such a page be acceptable at all under the Wikimedia-wide legal disclaimer and if yes, what it appropriate format could be (e. g. one paragraph with short information about the deduction, and another with a phrase containing a link to the Legal disclaimer and an advice to contact the Russian tax service for any inquiries, and possibly the latter's hotline for taxpayers which is toll-free when called from any Russian phone number)?

Wikimedia Russia has been refusing foreign donations to avoid being classified as a foreign agent after Russia enacted that law in 2012. Since the chances of it reversing its position or the law being repealed are pretty low, I think that a page about the tax deduction could be an incentive potentially increasing donations from Russian citizens to the chapter. P.S. Sorry for being too wordy. --Синкретик (talk) 20:38, 23 February 2020 (UTC)

@Синкретик: I suggest you contact the WMF meta:Legal for this question, it is not something that the English Wikipedia editors would be best at answering for you. — xaosflux Talk 04:22, 24 February 2020 (UTC)

How often does the article count on wikipedia.com get updated?

Sorry if this isn't the right place to ask, but this didn't seem like a question that would fit in with the WP:HD or WP:RD. Wikipedia.com states that the English Wikipedia has 5,994,000+ articles and since it's been a while since the six millionth article was reached, I was wondering if there's any available information on how often this is updated? I usually type in wikipedia.org and see the article-counter on the main page. I'm asking this question out of curiousity. Clovermoss (talk) 03:52, 24 February 2020 (UTC)

@Clovermoss: wikipedia.com is a redirect to wikipedia.org. It gets updates usually every few weeks see also phab:T128546. — xaosflux Talk 04:19, 24 February 2020 (UTC)

Local notice for NYC Women's History Month events

I have put in a request for a local banner notice for the New York metropolitan area to share the numerous Women's History Month / Art+Feminism events in March at m:CentralNotice/Request/Women's History Month and Art+Feminism NYC 2020.--Pharos (talk) 21:44, 24 February 2020 (UTC)

Article in french newspapers about a politician who "self improved" his page (on fr.wiki, en.wiki and likely others) since years

Hi, I hope that I posted at the right place (I am usually more active on wikidata or the french wikipedia). For french speaking folks, there was a article a few days ago titled "Sur Wikipédia, les vies rêvées de Juan Branco" ("On Wikipedia, the dreamed lives of Juan Franco"), in Le Figaro on the Juan Branco page. The french community have been discussing that on the talk page of the article among others, and a warning was placed on the english talk page. While self promotion is nothing new, that has been going on since a long time, with sock puppets allegations, repeated edit warring, push to create page since years, and even a story of email to a employer to get a contributor fired. So we figured this would warrant a more visible communication to the community as well, since the english and spanish Wikipedias were also impacted. If people can't access the article, we have a dedicated page for that fr:WP:ASPP, so folks should be able to contact someone who has. Also, my spanish skills are not good enough to write in spanish, but if someone could relay the info on es:Wikipedia:Café, that would be appreciated. --Misc (talk) 15:49, 25 February 2020 (UTC)

@Misc: I copied most of your message above to the conflict of interest noticeboard. - Bri.public (talk) 16:40, 25 February 2020 (UTC)

Shameless New Page Patrol Advertisement

New Page Patrol needs experienced volunteers
  • New Page Patrol is currently struggling to keep up with the influx of new articles. We could use a few extra hands on deck if anyone has time available.
  • Reviewing/patrolling a page doesn't take much time but it requires a good understanding of Wikipedia policies and guidelines; and Wikipedia needs experienced users to perform this task, even 2 or 3 a day can make a huge difference.
  • If you would like to join the project and help out, please see the granting conditions and review our instructions page. You can apply for the user-right HERE. — Insertcleverphrasehere (or here)(click me!) 19:50, 1 March 2020 (UTC)

Official Social Media Handles of Urdu Wikipedia

Hello, I feel happy to announce on behalf of the Urdu Wikipedia community that we have today launched our social media handles for the betterment of Wikipedia. We shall work on these platforms to promote the ethos of Wikipedia. I request the Wikipedia brethren to help Urdu Wikipedia by following us on social platforms.

Aaqib Anjum Aafī (talk) 11:12, 3 March 2020 (UTC)


that is great news. Thank you for letting us know. Congratulations!! Welcome!!

بڑی خوشخبری ہے۔ ہمیں بتانے کا شکریہ۔ مبارک ہو !! خوش آمدید!!

thanks! --Sm8900 (talk) 17:49, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

This is so nice of you. Aaqib Anjum Aafī (talk) 02:33, 4 March 2020 (UTC)

Learning how to write a good FAQ section for a talk page

It seems that FAQ sections are added on a case-by-case basis for questions or topics that are constantly recurring in talk pages. I'd like to learn how to add a fair, productive FAQ section for a topic and understand what the community thinking is on this.

What's the best way of contacting people who've done this before?

--ProbablyAndrewKuznetsov (talk) 05:43, 26 February 2020 (UTC)

ProbablyAndrewKuznetsov, I don't know if it's the best way, but you could check the edit history of talk pages with FAQ:s, figure out who added/contributed to the FAQ, and talk to them at their talk page if they are still around. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 07:55, 26 February 2020 (UTC)
Maybe Talk:Chemtrail_conspiracy_theory#Draft_FAQ can give you a little inspiration. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 07:57, 26 February 2020 (UTC)
On mobile, that draft FAQ collapsible box gets shoved into a separate “about this page” view. Pelagic (talk) 19:52, 28 February 2020 (UTC)

What needs to be in my talk page archives?

When making talk page archives, do I need to put in things like a GOCE newsletter or the signpost, or just the main stuff? Is there a policy page for making talk page archives? Emicho's Avenger (talk) 21:39, 28 February 2020 (UTC)

@Emicho's Avenger: so policy-wise, unless you are making your archives by "moving" your talk page to a subpage you don't have to put anything at all in there. The standard convention is that if you use an archive page by copying your text to it, you keep all the discussions that include a real person - so it is safe to leave out anything that is bot-only like a newsletter if you want. — xaosflux Talk 21:45, 28 February 2020 (UTC)

Any place I can upload a 1 Gb, CC NC 1.0, PDF?

Hello. Is there a place or a way I can upload a 1 Gb PDF released under the CC NC 1.0 license on a Wiki-related website? I cannot upload it on Commons since the license is non-commercial only, and Wikipedia is limited to files of max. 100MB. Veverve (talk) 05:11, 1 March 2020 (UTC)

Dear Veverve, the CC NC licence is non-free, so such files are not allowed in the Wikimedia projects. You should better use another website to publish the file. --NaBUru38 (talk) 20:58, 1 March 2020 (UTC)
Veverve: The non-profit Internet Archive (upload page: https://archive.org/create/) would be a good fit, I'd say. Their mission is educational, and their licensing requirement boils down to things "you have the right to share", for which CC-NC should do just fine. —{{u|Goldenshimmer}} (they/them)｜Talk｜Contributions 12:12, 2 March 2020 (UTC)

WMF's summary of our feedback on recommendations posted

We may have until March 6, 2020 to respond to this: m:Strategy/Wikimedia movement/2018-20/Reports/Summary of Movement Conversations 2020. George Ho (talk) 01:13, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

In the meantime... could someone explain what a “shareholder” is? I assume they are not using the term in its financial sense... Is it just a fancy way of saying “editors”? Blueboar (talk) 01:50, 3 March 2020 (UTC)
The term "shareholder" does not appear in the document? --Yair rand (talk) 01:56, 3 March 2020 (UTC)
Perhaps "stakeholder" was the intended term. – Teratix ₵ 02:23, 3 March 2020 (UTC)
Yes... sorry... stakeholder. Whatvis a “steakholder”... This seems to be jargon. Are they referring to what we call Editors? Someone else? Blueboar (talk) 14:16, 3 March 2020 (UTC)
Peter, I think you accidentally self-reverted your comments about "stakeholder", explained in the Glossary. The string of symbols, which you intended to remove, were already removed (or self-reverted). -- George Ho (talk) 16:11, 3 March 2020 (UTC)
Link: m:Talk:Strategy/Wikimedia movement/2018-20/Reports/Summary of Movement Conversations 2020. --George Ho (talk) 03:36, 3 March 2020 (UTC)
Thanks George Ho. Something very odd happened there, but I don't know exactly what it was. It all looked right on the page after my last edit. Cheers, · · · Peter Southwood (talk): 18:18, 3 March 2020 (UTC)
I suspect that you hit the 'Back' button in your browser window. If you're not using the 2017 wikitext editor (VisualEditor's wikitext mode; because it loads pages differently), then it appears that the edit-conflict software will effectively produce a self-revert. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 04:23, 6 March 2020 (UTC)

Wikiredia?

Hi, I recently found my user page appearing in a Google search via "en.wikiredia.com/wiki/..." (with an "r" instead of the "p"). I can't find anything about this site online and thought user pages should not appear in web searches. I'd be grateful for any further information please. Thanks.  ~ RLO1729💬 08:45, 6 March 2020 (UTC)

@RLO1729: As far as I can see, it's not only "r" but also the domain suffix ".com" instead of ".org" in the URL you gave. --CiaPan (talk) 09:05, 6 March 2020 (UTC)
True. You seem to be there too: add your user name to "https://en.wikiredia.com/wiki/User:". Is it an unauthorised mirror site and what can be done about restricting access to user pages? Or do we just put notices on the genuine pages?  ~ RLO1729💬 09:23, 6 March 2020 (UTC)

I've just been reading Wikipedia:Mirrors and forks and will add the site to the list. But do other mirror sites also mirror user pages?  ~ RLO1729💬 09:43, 6 March 2020 (UTC)

There is certainly no reason why they shouldn't, as long as the attribution requirements of our licence are met. User page content is released under the same terms as article content. At the bottom of every editing window are the words, "By publishing changes, you agree to the Terms of Use, and you irrevocably agree to release your contribution under the CC BY-SA 3.0 License and the GFDL. You agree that a hyperlink or URL is sufficient attribution under the Creative Commons license." Phil Bridger (talk) 12:57, 6 March 2020 (UTC)
Thanks Phil, I guess my concern/surprise is more at seeing my user page in Google results when Wikipedia sets user pages by default to "no indexing" by search engines.  ~ RLO1729💬 13:43, 6 March 2020 (UTC)
And there is no attribution at all on this mirror site, it seems to be a remote loading site.  ~ RLO1729💬 13:46, 6 March 2020 (UTC)
Yes, I see. That site just seems to copy Wikipedia pages without providing any of the required attribution, and messing up the format while doing so. I doubt that there is in practice much that you can do about it, but you could try the procedures outlined at Wikipedia:Mirrors and forks. Phil Bridger (talk) 14:16, 6 March 2020 (UTC)
It seems everyone's user pages are being mirrored. I've added the site to the list of mirrors but there doesn't seem to be a way to contact the owner directly. Unfortunately I don't have the technical skills to take it any further.  ~ RLO1729💬 14:56, 6 March 2020 (UTC)
{{userpage}} can be a useful addition to your user page. That way, those viewing your page at mirror sites will at least know they're doing so. Sdkb (talk) 02:18, 8 March 2020 (UTC)

Salehabad County And Sar Yazd Castle

Hi Sar Yazd Castle is a castle, not a fortress And the Salehabad District has turned into a county Please move both articles. Thank you M.k.m2003 (talk) 20:07, 9 March 2020 (UTC)

I'm sorry, These two categories should also be created for the Salehabad County:Category:Salehabad County And Category:Populated places in Salehabad County M.k.m2003 (talk) 20:19, 9 March 2020 (UTC)
I'm not quite sure what the difference is between a castle and a fortress. Surely nearly all castles are fortresses and nearly all fortresses are castles? Phil Bridger (talk) 20:30, 9 March 2020 (UTC)

Internet Archive Bot and archive.org

Recently, InternetArchiveBot has replaced a few links to sources at Google Books in articles I created with links to the same sources at archive.org. The Google Books links were for publications that are free full-text online, and the links currently work. What's the reason for this? Should I preferentially search archive.org to find sources instead of Googling the information? RobDuch (talk·contribs) 06:41, 10 March 2020 (UTC)

@RobDuch: For works in the public domain due to age, some assholes like to spam Google with claims that the book Google scanned was really one of their reprints and then sell (sometimes corrupted) copies of Google's PDF (or just selections thereof!) at jacked up prices. Archive.org don't play that shit, they know better. Ian.thomson (talk) 06:53, 10 March 2020 (UTC)

New Counties

Hi these districts are now county:Zarqan District, Beyza District, Evaz District, Khafr District, Sarchehan District, Abadeh Tashk District And Chenar Shahijan District[3] (Islamic Republic News Agency) Please move articles. Thank you M.k.m2003 (talk) 14:08, 10 March 2020 (UTC)

WP:RM details how you can request page moves. Iffy★Chat -- 14:20, 10 March 2020 (UTC)
@Iffy: It's a little difficult for me, You can apply? M.k.m2003 (talk) 15:16, 10 March 2020 (UTC)
Done, see Talk:Zarqan District. Iffy★Chat -- 15:32, 10 March 2020 (UTC)

Statistics of Lsjbot

How can I see the global contibutions of user:Lsjbot?

I tried https://xtools.wmflabs.org/sc/ceb.wikipedia.org/Lsjbot but it seem there are too many to display... Thanks,--Javiermes (talk) 18:55, 10 March 2020 (UTC)

Request for Information: Public Access to Peer-Reviewed Scholarly Publications

  • "Request for Information: Public Access to Peer-Reviewed Scholarly Publications, Data and Code Resulting From Federally Funded Research". Federal Register. 19 February 2020. Please note the bolded portions below for instructions on the deadline, email address, and question/answer format in which comments are requested.

For those who are in the US, the Office of Science and Technology Policy is taking public comment on making unclassified published research, digital scientific data, and code supported by the U.S. Government open to the public. Email to comment please. This aligns with our mission. GMGtalk 23:20, 27 February 2020 (UTC)

This is profoundly important, so I am quoting the (public domain US federal) solicitation in full:


Please comment by March 16! EllenCT (talk) 11:10, 2 March 2020 (UTC)
@Doc James: is there any way to get the Wikimedia Foundation and/or board to make an official comment (ideally in support)? — Wug·a·po·des​ 00:05, 3 March 2020 (UTC)
Sending responses as individual Wikipedians I believe would be helpful as well. User:Katherine (WMF) would be the one to make the call on it from a WMF perspective. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 00:13, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

I'll be the no-fun brigade here, but two points:

  • I question how much this will matter. I suppose if nobody comments at all, that'd be bad, but we shouldn't delude ourselves these requests for comment are susceptible to such campaigns. See the 2017 Net Neutrality debate with the FCC for example: https://www.wired.com/story/bots-broke-fcc-public-comment-system/ , where the site crashed with legitimate complaints from people who watched John Oliver, as well as having a ton of bot and bot-aided comments. None of it mattered, Ajit Pai & co. smashed up net neutrality anyway.
  • With the current administration... be careful what you wish for. See the article Attorney General of Virginia's climate science investigation for a taste of what this proposal is actually likely to accomplish (usual disclaimer: some Wikipedians may be happy with an outcome like this, of course). If this proposal does go through, I'd fully expect that it'll be less about funding scientists to help them post data in easily accessible web databases, and more about threatening to defund any federal research that doesn't send over every single email sent ever so that the most embarrassing / blunt ones can be sent over to the Washington Examiner and made into tabloidy headlines about how scientists are biased and making up a climate change hoax.

I would be happy to be wrong on both counts, of course, but realistically the prospect of the above two scenarios should be considered - your emails might be ignored, and if they aren't and succeed, they might not have the impact you're expecting. SnowFire (talk) 22:50, 8 March 2020 (UTC)

Maxvals & inverted

Hi, I have two question :

First question :

{{#invoke:wd|properties|normal+|Q55|P1082}} display :"17,942,942, 17,590,672, 17,407,585, 17,282,163, 17,181,084, 17,081,507, 17,000,000, 16,829,289, 16,779,575, 10,026,773",

how can I display just three first number for to have just : "17,181,084, 16,829,289, 16,779,575" ?

I have unsuccessfully tested "maxvals" and "numval" :

{{#invoke:wd|properties|normal+|Q55|P1082|maxvals=3}} (display ever :"17,942,942, 17,590,672, 17,407,585, 17,282,163, 17,181,084, 17,081,507, 17,000,000, 16,829,289, 16,779,575, 10,026,773")

and

{{#invoke:wd|properties|normal+|Q55|P1082|numval=3}} (display ever :"17,942,942, 17,590,672, 17,407,585, 17,282,163, 17,181,084, 17,081,507, 17,000,000, 16,829,289, 16,779,575, 10,026,773")


Second question :

{{#invoke:wd|properties|normal+|Q55|P1082}} display :"17,942,942, 17,590,672, 17,407,585, 17,282,163, 17,181,084, 17,081,507, 17,000,000, 16,829,289, 16,779,575, 10,026,773",

how can I to reverse the chronological order for to display : "17,132,854 17,000,000, 10,026,773, 16,779,575, 16,829,289, 17,181,084" ?

I have unsuccessfully tested "sorttype = inverted" :

{{#invoke:wd|properties|normal+|Q55|P1082|sorttype = inverted}} (display ever :"17,942,942, 17,590,672, 17,407,585, 17,282,163, 17,181,084, 17,081,507, 17,000,000, 16,829,289, 16,779,575, 10,026,773")

Thanks, Viruscorona2020 (talk) 01:36, 8 March 2020 (UTC)

Viruscorona2020, you might have better success asking this question at Wikipedia:Village pump (technical). Expect people to want to know why you want to do this. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 16:02, 12 March 2020 (UTC)
Thank you Whatamidoing (WMF), I'm gonna try over there. Viruscorona2020 (talk) 16:14, 12 March 2020 (UTC)

Medical (best) practices of countries during the COVID-19 outbreak

Hello,

I have an idea for a new article. I would like to see a single article outlining the different lessons medical practitioners and the system have learned during the COVID-19 outbreak with sections for each affected country and region where information is available. This could include hospital triage systems, unique practices (like drive-thru testing in South Korea), and country-specific medical research on vaccines, etc. For example, BBC has good coverage on South Korea: At least two patients died waiting for a hospital bed in Daegu, the worst affected city. The initial reaction was to quarantine everyone infected with the virus in a hospital bed, but now the doctors have learned to treat those with mild symptoms in residential centres and leave the clinical beds for those needing critical care.

I propose one distinct article for this because:

  • The main article on the outbreak will get too long if all this detailed information is included there.
  • The medical advances are in and of themselves, notable and interest worthy.
  • The country-specific articles are full of statistics and someone would have to click on each article to compare and contrast.
  • The article would make a good addition to the template we have at the bottom of all COVID-19-related articles.

2607:FEA8:1DDF:FEE1:81AE:8E3C:BF30:D275 (talk) 06:04, 12 March 2020 (UTC)

Anyone can start a new article at anytime. There's no requirement to propose it first. I'd advise you to make use of WP:YFA and start a draft, or you can request it at Wikipedia:Requested articles if you prefer someone else to write it. The latter way is notably slower though. – Ammarpad (talk) 08:33, 12 March 2020 (UTC)
@2607:FEA8:1DDF:FEE1:81AE:8E3C:BF30:D275: - I'd suggest asking at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Medicine - medical articles have extra rules, and many of the pros at handling them can be found there. Nosebagbear (talk) 12:58, 13 March 2020 (UTC)

COVID-19 map in Main Page

Hi, could the current coronavirus map in the main page (File:COVID-19 Outbreak World Map.svg) be replaced for now by File:COVID-19 Outbreak World Map (33).svg or any version suitable? File:COVID-19 Outbreak World Map.svg is cascade protected by the main page, and it is affecting users at Commons who want to update the map. Thanks, Pandakekok9 (talk) 09:29, 15 March 2020 (UTC)

Map image on main page has been switched so the protections can be removed. --Masem (t) 10:45, 15 March 2020 (UTC)
Pandakekok9 In the future, this kind of request is suitable for Talk:Main page and WP:AN. --Izno (talk) 12:53, 15 March 2020 (UTC)
Thanks, noted just in case I need to start a request like this again. :) Pandakekok9 (talk) 12:54, 15 March 2020 (UTC)
@Pandakekok9: Is there a centralized discussion on Commons about this? Trying to figure out if there are maps for individual days and if there are any that are continuously being updated. For ITN here it might be best if we just add a cascade protected copy of the previous day's map. Kees08 (Talk) 17:50, 16 March 2020 (UTC)
@Kees08: Discussion started at commons:Commons:Administrators' noticeboard/Blocks and protections#Downgrade protection request.. Now that you said it, I realize we haven't uploaded an individual map showing the most current one. I made a 17 March copy here. Pandakekok9 (talk) 09:42, 17 March 2020 (UTC)

Downloading the topo names plus geocoordinates

Hello Wikimakers,

How can I download a geographical names with their coordinates ?

I have something like this for example. This is a list of summits in one mountain group. Their coordinates are in subpages:

https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kategoria:Szczyty_Tatr_Bielskich — Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.101.26.52 (talk) 16:52, 15 March 2020 (UTC)

You might first check to see whether what you want has been uploaded to Wikidata. If it has, then you can run a pretty easy query to extract the information. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:28, 17 March 2020 (UTC)

Linking to off-wiki photos

There's a historical photo I want to use that's on another website. I don't know the exact date, but I'm guessing it's not old enough to be PD yet, so I can't upload it to Commons, and for the sake of argument, I'm going to assume it wouldn't pass the WP:FAIRUSE requirements. Is there any reason I can't link to it in a footnote, and discuss it in the text of the article. Any stylistic recommendations for how one would phrase that? The goal is to support the statement, The area to the west of the press building, along Tiffany Street and Garrison Avenue, originally had manicured lawns, a curved driveway, and a pedestrian walk flanked by lampposts. The lawns have since been turned into a paved parking lot -- RoySmith (talk) 21:48, 15 March 2020 (UTC)

See Template:External media as an option. As Template:External media/doc#Where to use says, "This template is normally placed in the main body of the article, in the same place that you would normally have placed the image". Zzyzx11 (talk) 23:57, 15 March 2020 (UTC)
Yeah, that's what I had in mind. Unfortunately, reading the docs, I've come to the conclusion that this would probably violate WP:ELNEVER. -- RoySmith (talk) 00:35, 16 March 2020 (UTC)
I don't see why WP:ELNEVER would be a problem, although some like to remove all possible external links. However, that image cannot be used to verify the statement in the OP. Johnuniq (talk) 04:06, 16 March 2020 (UTC)
ELNEVER would be a problem if the other website doesn't have a license to post the copyrighted material. WP:LINKVIO is banned on all pages, including this one. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:27, 17 March 2020 (UTC)

Sad news

As a rule, I never post messages here, at the Village Pump, as I am mostly active on the French WP. However, I felt appropriate to mourn here the death of Robert Ferrieux, a long-standing and notable French WP editor, holder of an Agrégation degree in English, and who, as such, contributed to many featured articles on English litterature on the French WP.

Robert died day before yesterday in Perpignan, aged 89. We had first met on WP some twelve years ago, when trying to improve the article about Robert Browning. He had been married for some sixty years to Helen, his British wife. Many years ago, he had been a French resident at Eton College, and retained an interest for all things British ever since. Beyond his deep knowledge of British litterature, Robert was warm and friendly, always ready to help along.

We mourn for him, Cédric Boissière, Eymery, myself, and many others on the French WP; we will never forget our happy collaboration for all these years. Azurfrog (talk) 16:17, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

About EISP redirecting to Orgasm

While editing Orgasm, I noticed EISP somehow redicts to it. I can understand why it would do so, historically, because there they were probably talking about exercise induced orgasm in females, at one time. Fine. But however it may lie, the current redirection structure is not conducive to a readable encyclopedia. EISP in that sense is peripheral enough to not even warrant its own Wikipedia page under a different name, yet now for some reason the page on The Big O—of all things, amongst us sexually reproducing animals, motivated by the very thing—brings in disambiguation words relating to English International School Prague.

Please somebody mop up that mess, because I don't know how. While disambiguation with regard to "orgasm" is probably going to be necessary till the end of days, it's completely frivolous and counter-productive wrt "EISP" in the orgasmic context. Decoy (talk) 20:32, 14 March 2020 (UTC)

It would be enough to change a redirect to the school and move the explaining {{redirect}} there to expand EISP and link to the article about orgasm. --CiaPan (talk) 21:39, 14 March 2020 (UTC)
It's being discussed at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2020 March 16#EISP. --CiaPan (talk) 12:38, 17 March 2020 (UTC)

We made the big-time!

Today's NY Times Crossword. 50A clue: "Dispute between Wikipedia page updaters". -- RoySmith (talk) 13:16, 17 March 2020 (UTC)

Four letters, starts with L? – Teratix ₵ 13:42, 17 March 2020 (UTC)
Wikipedia:The impending doom of Wikipedia GMGtalk 13:58, 17 March 2020 (UTC)

Hello

Please note that Betty Williams died on 18 march according to sources. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 109.185.175.84 (talk) 11:51, 18 March 2020 (UTC)

Her death is already in Betty Williams (Nobel laureate). PrimeHunter (talk) 12:53, 18 March 2020 (UTC)

Toolbox/Gadgets for adding wikiproject at talk pages?

IW. (talk) 16:33, 21 March 2020 (UTC)

@ImmortalWizard: User:Evad37/rater. --Izno (talk) 16:50, 21 March 2020 (UTC)

Thanks! IW. (talk) 16:53, 21 March 2020 (UTC)

MediaWiki 1.35

I happened to see the Tech News notice on someone else’s talk page. And I saw a mention that "MediaWiki 1.35" is supposed to be rolled out over the next week. I do not follow the tech news so this is the first I have heard about it. Where can I learn more about this? Is it a minor tweak or a whole new editing system? Will we be able to revert to the current system if we don’t like it? Sorry if failure to know about this make me out to be a clueless luddite, but there are lot of us out here. And I have been through times before when the WMF suddenly imposed a change that only the technically tuned-in knew was coming. What’s it about? -- MelanieN (talk) 19:09, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

​Wikipedia has been on 1.35 since October, there were very few user facing changes. There's a minor update published almost every week, the update Tech News is referring to ("1.35.0-wmf.25") doesn't yet have a changelog as far as I can tell, but it's usually just various tweaks. – Thjarkur (talk) 21:50, 23 March 2020 (UTC)
Thanks for the helpful reply, Thjarkur. -- MelanieN (talk) 22:15, 23 March 2020 (UTC)
These are all the same kinds of changes that happen almost every WP:THURSDAY year-round. For the next while, Tech has asked the devs to only post "low-risk" changes (bug fixes, small improvements, things that can be easily reverted, etc.). Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 01:15, 24 March 2020 (UTC)

Reply tool

Please see Wikipedia:Talk pages project if you're interested in testing a future tool for adding quick reply to a discussion. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 01:29, 24 March 2020 (UTC)

American FactFinder (factfinder.census.gov) goes down permanently at the end of this month (March 31, 2020). What should we do with those references?

The text on that site says

AFF will be offline permanently March 31, 2020.

Go to data.census.gov for new data releases.

Questions? Click Here.

I'm not sure how to count our references to that site; I estimate it's between 1,730 and 22,444.

How should we go about fixing those?

--mathieu ottawa (talk) 22:26, 19 March 2020 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:US Census Migration -- RoySmith (talk) 23:37, 19 March 2020 (UTC)
See, this is something that perhaps someone working at Wikimedia should be able to help us with: making a connection at the USGov and discussing how to best transition links. cc:user:Whatamidoing (WMF). Killiondude (talk) 03:11, 24 March 2020 (UTC)
That type of work has historically been done by interested volunteers. I'll ask around, but I don't expect to find a team that considers this to be within their scope. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 16:31, 24 March 2020 (UTC)
Whatamidoing (WMF), speaking from experiencing maintaining URLs (see WP:URLREQ) it does not scale at the volunteer level. The reasons are many and happy to discuss with anyone at WMF. I have become expert at it including tool development. I don't want a job, want to pass along information of what I have discovered after years of doing this work. -- GreenC 20:31, 24 March 2020 (UTC)
Just want to chime in here to say that while a sustainable solution to make AFF data accessible is being considered, we can likely support the costs of server space or other associated costs through Rapid Grants to maintain this data temporarily so it is not lost. I JethroBT (WMF) (talk) 03:24, 25 March 2020 (UTC)

FWIW, I did make contact with somebody at "Dissemination Outreach Branch, Census Enterprise Dissemination Services and Consumer Innovation (CEDSCI), U.S. Census Bureau". The gist of my most recent communication (about a week ago) was that all their available bandwidth is being consumed by the migration project and they are unable to provide custom assistance to wikipedia. -- RoySmith (talk) 17:12, 24 March 2020 (UTC)

I'm checking to see if, at least, Internet Archive can crawl all these pages and restore the links with InternetArchiveBOT. Cheers, Ocaasi t | c 18:32, 24 March 2020 (UTC)

I sent the complete list of Census URLs (from every wiki language including wikidata and commons) to archive.today and they have been slowly archiving them so we will have them captured, assuming their batch job completes. The Census JavaScript is FUBAR so Wayback won't save the page correctly most of the time, but archive.today saves them OK. -- GreenC 20:16, 24 March 2020 (UTC)

More from IA (see above comment, he's the source):
We know about this and have worked a long time on it. We roped in a couple programmers to help out: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:US_Census_Migration. Problem is that the census site is so deeply problematic we may only be able to switch the links to archive versions, and only to archive.today as Wayback doesn't really capture the pages due to US Census messed up JS code. We sent the complete list of every URL from every wiki language to archive.today and they were slowing archiving them but have not checked in recently to check on status. Ocaasi t | c 18:24, 25 March 2020 (UTC)
The batch save at archive.today is done, about 54k links. Now working to update the IABot database. -- GreenC 23:19, 25 March 2020 (UTC)

Public service announcement about RFCs

I've been looking at the large number of RFCs about COVID-19. There seems to be some confusion about the Wikipedia:Requests for comment process, in ways that paralleled the large number of RFCs about e-cigarettes. I therefore offer the following reminders:

  1. An RFC is a way to request comments, not votes. If the result you want is a binding vote, then you're in the wrong place entirely.
    • Don't be fooled by the popularity of a ===Survey=== section among inexperienced editors: what matters is the quality of the discussion, not the word at the start of each comment. (Also, see Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Example formatting if you want to figure out which format you ought to use for your question.)
  2. An RFC is a way to request comments from outside editors. If the people already on the page can settle the question without an RFC, then please don't spam a bunch of uninvolved editors.
  3. An RFC is a resource-intensive method of holding a discussion. RFCs use a lot of other editors' time, energy, and attention. Unnecessary RFCs waste those precious resources. Please don't start an RFC until you've actually tried to answer the question.
  4. If someone starts an RFC every time editors want a decision made, or if you're personally starting more than two or three RFCs per month, then you are screwing up.
    • If your real problem is that you can't figure out what the Wikipedia:Consensus is in a discussion unless you can count up "support" and "oppose" words and assume that the consensus is the same as a majority vote, then ask just an editor with more experience (e.g., almost any admin) to summarize the result for you.

If you have questions about the RFC process, then please feel free to ask those questions at WT:RFC, or to ping me (or any of the long-time editors on that page) to any discussion. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:39, 27 March 2020 (UTC)

If anything can be said to be widespread at enwiki, it's the use of the Survey format to clarify editors' positions. It's incorrect to say it's used among inexperienced editors, implying that experienced editors know better. What's wrong, per Wikipedia-is-not-a-democracy, is to vote without an argument; that's why the now-ubiquitous term !vote (not-vote) was coined. ―Mandruss ☎ 18:12, 27 March 2020 (UTC)
I find that some less experienced editors gravitate towards the ===Survey=== format, possibly because they saw someone else do it (and therefore thought that was the "right" or more "official" way to do it), possibly because they struggle to interpret consensus in a discussion if the comments don't come with a label (this was likely the case in many of the ecig RFCs), or possibly because they actually want a majority vote instead of a discussion. I find that more experienced editors use a variety of formats, depending upon the nature of the question they're asking, the number of responses they expect, and the result they're hoping to produce (sometimes including, in the case of some of the ecig RFCs, an easily counted super-majority vote whose main purpose was to convince one particular editor that the consensus achieved in the prior discussion really did disagree with that editor's beliefs).
As for it being "widespread", I just looked at 30 current RFCs. Only three (10%) had a ===Survey=== section heading, and three others had something similar (including one that said ===Comments===, which mightn't be considered entirely similar, depending upon your POV). That means that 80% of RFCs don't use it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:06, 28 March 2020 (UTC)

Free use in Wikipedia has a different meaning than on Commons

Not sure where I should post this, so I'm posting it here.

I just noticed that a number of images AbysinniaGuard uploaded to Commons but are used here on en.wikipedia have been nominated for deletion there because they violate their rules for inclusion. (Yes, this is another iteration in an ongoing saga.) Some, however, don't violate our rules, & had they been uploaded for use solely on en.wikipedia probably would not be at risk of deletion under our rules -- I'm thinking specifically of examples like File:West Gojjam.png. Rather than arguing over there to keep them -- honestly, if Commons doesn't want to store files for some reason, what should it matter to us? -- it might make better sense to simply avoid uploading files to Common in the first place & keep them here. Or instead of arguing with the folks at Commons, move such files over here, thus keeping the peace between the projects.

But to the immediate problem. Is there a way to download that portion to our space in one action, versus doing it one at a time, while worrying about keeping the chain of authorship intact? (Someone tries to do a good deed & ends up running afoul of our sometimes arcane & confusing rules. As if this has never happened before.) This appears to be the issue with these files over there, & in the case of maps like the example I provided any problem can be solved by either WP:FAIRUSE or WP:IAR. -- llywrch (talk) 04:31, 29 March 2020 (UTC)

AFAIK there isn't really one beyond downloading the Commos file and reuploading it locally with appropriate information. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 09:03, 29 March 2020 (UTC)
At a quick glance at c:Commons:Deletion requests/Files uploaded by AbysinniaGuard and c:User talk:AbysinniaGuard, it looks like the "their rules for inclusion" in question are "accurately reflects the source and license of the work". We have that rule too. For WP:FAIRUSE to apply, you'd need to include the original source of the images rather than the seemingly-bogus "own work" used on all of them. And if you want to apply WP:IAR to ignore rules about copyright and media attribution, you'll need an extremely convincing argument. Anomie⚔ 14:45, 29 March 2020 (UTC)
Yeah, the issue is that the uploader at commons is "license washing" which is no way acceptable. The West Gojjam image, if it was created by a Wikepdian and uploaded otherwise appropriately, would be fine both here and commons. This is not a discontinuity issue between media aspects here. --Masem (t) 14:53, 29 March 2020 (UTC)
(edit conflict) For the maps in particular, the ones I looked at seem extremely similar to File:Ethiopia zones.png or File:Ethiopia districts.png, slightly altered and with the relevant zone colored in red. Commons would likely be happy to keep such images if they were correctly attributed with the source of the base map. You might want to talk to WikiProject Maps about recreating them, particularly whether they have a better SVG source to derive from instead of coloring in PNGs. Anomie⚔ 15:05, 29 March 2020 (UTC)
We all know that newbie & less devoted contributors have a problem understanding copyright & Wikipedia processes: it is not special pleading to assume that in this case a mistake was made. Further, having stared at more than my share of maps, I can attest that most details on maps are fungible -- especially administrative boundaries, which is this case. About the only way one can prove a given map has been plagiarized is by identifying errors, either accidental or intentional. Maps are composed of facts, & facts cannot be copyrighted.
My assertion that there is a difference in policy between en.wikipedia & Commons is based on the goals of the two projects: Commons is a repository of free (as in speech) files, so the burden of proof that a given file is not unfree lies on the contributor; in contrast, Wikipedia is a free encyclopedia, where the goal is to provide information that is free, but to do so we sometimes must compromise by using non-free files. (This should not come as a surprise to anyone.) Where Commons think it a good thing to check & double-check every qualification for inclusion, Wikipedia is willing to be less strict; there was a case a few years back that led to much disagreement over how strict to be on this point, which emphasizes that the community's consensus on creating an encyclopedia is stronger than the consensus on ideological purity. (I admit there were other factors involved, but they effected the passion of the disagreement, not its fundamental points.) Further, people who engage in this double-checking are often perceived to be wasting time that should be spent on improving content. (IMHO, in some cases they are.) Hence my assertion of a disagreement, & the corollary that sometimes even with free files, we should not unthinkingly upload them to Commons. By keeping those cases over here, friction between projects is reduced & we have more time to focus on our core mission - writing an encyclopedia. -- llywrch (talk) 21:30, 29 March 2020 (UTC)

Months

Hi! When I translated one Template:Interactive COVID-19 maps/Cumulative confirmed cases to Ukrainian I had a problem. System "translated" 12/03/20 as Mar 12. But March in Ukrainian won't be March. So I want to ask you in which page in English wiki I can find this process and fix it in Ukr. wiki. Thanks!--Dimon2712 (talk) 16:18, 29 March 2020 (UTC)

@Dimon2712: Your question is being addressed at WP:VPT. Please don't post questions in multiple places, that way the discussion is all in one place. RudolfRed (talk) 20:00, 29 March 2020 (UTC)

National Emergency Library

National Emergency Library. Internet Archive is making available 1.4 million modern books during the Coronovirus crisis, or end of June whichever is longer. The books are full-view no limits with unlimited checkout (but no d/l). Books can be searched like with Google Books on key words across the entire library. It works globally. -- GreenC 17:53, 24 March 2020 (UTC)

GreenC, FYI, I used this successfully recently to add several references. S Philbrick(Talk) 22:00, 28 March 2020 (UTC)
Wonderful! I will let them know you said so. If you are interested, check out the New Yorker article about the NEL which is pretty good. -- GreenC 22:22, 28 March 2020 (UTC)
Sphilbrick, Fantastic. I work with the Internet Archive-- please give us feedback on how we can make that easier and easier (I bet it is not easy now). Brewsterkahle (talk) 23:51, 28 March 2020 (UTC)
Brewsterkahle, I dropped a note on your talk page. S Philbrick(Talk) 02:10, 29 March 2020 (UTC)
Was coming to post this as just learned about this, and glad to see it was posted already. --Masem (t) 18:29, 30 March 2020 (UTC)

I think this is an excellent resource that deserves to get wider publicity. I've posted about this to my local community organizations, and encourage others to do the same. -- RoySmith (talk) 18:32, 30 March 2020 (UTC)

User:HermioneJapardi

Hi! I've got some issues with a user called HermioneJapardi. She's been adding recently a lot of links in Chinese zodiac related articles about peoples and celebrities born under each zodiac sign. Some of those celebrities are mentioned in correct articles but there's also plenty of those that are not. Because of this I warned her not once but twice about her edits in those articles. She didn't listen and instead of doing something for it she removed my second warning from her talk page. What do you think we should do with this situation? Santtu37 (talk) 19:37, 29 March 2020 (UTC)

Santtu37, those articles seem to contain a lot of unsourced WP:BLPs' names. As zodiac stuff is quasi-religious/superstition, that probably counts as "contentious matter" under the BLP policy. I suggest that you ask for help at WP:BLPN.
On a side note, I wonder whether a Wikidata query might not be a suitable replacement. An external link to "List of Wikipedia articles about people born in this year" sounds feasible. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:10, 31 March 2020 (UTC)
This behavior is inappropriate. The Chinese zodiac is also trivially derived from the year, meaning it is duplicate information. I would recommend reverting and warning the user. If, as you say, she's been warned, you need to go to WP:ANI for help. --Izno (talk) 18:27, 31 March 2020 (UTC)

Message to readers from Wikimedia Foundation regarding Covid-19

Given the unfolding global events, the Wikimedia Foundations feels it is important to reassure readers across the globe.

We'll be displaying a short message at the top of the projects reaffirming our commitment to keep Wikipedia and the Wikimedia projects online, open and free for all. Readers often turn to Wikipedia for neutral information in times of stress. This is a critical moment for students who can't go to school, people who have to stay home with their families, and anyone who needs a trusted source of unbiased information.

We also want to take a moment to acknowledge the invaluable work of all the medical contributors on Wikipedia. Thank you for keeping a close watch and keeping misinformation at bay. Coronavirus topics have received tens of thousands of edits by thousands of editors since the start of the pandemic. The article has been read more than 30 million times, in English alone.

The message will be displayed just once to readers, and you can preview the banner. The draft is in English but we want this message to be multilingual. If you have a moment, please help translate this banner into your language. Thank you all, for your work and efforts.

Stay safe, and wash your hands! Seddon (WMF) (talk) 20:33, 19 March 2020 (UTC)

...Throughout these troubling times... GMGtalk 20:35, 19 March 2020 (UTC)
That's still not how this works, no matter how many places you post it. You don't get to forgo the CentralNotice proposal process just because you feel like it. --Yair rand (talk) 20:44, 19 March 2020 (UTC)
@Yair rand: As I said to you on the m:Wikimedia Forum, as operators of the website, and given the extraordinary stress that a significant percentage of the world is currently feeling, and given that many of them are turning to Wikipedia for information, and given that many contributors are spending extra time dealing with the increased attention and activity that results from millions of people being isolated at home, we believe it necessary and important to reaffirm our commitment to being here for people in a time of need and to acknowledge contributors in their role in making it all happen. Seddon (WMF) (talk) 20:56, 19 March 2020 (UTC)
Responded there. --Yair rand (talk) 22:04, 19 March 2020 (UTC)
Should there be a campaign to encourage the curious, bored, and not working or studying, to improve articles here? T3g5JZ50GLq (talk) 04:19, 1 April 2020 (UTC)
@T3g5JZ50GLq: I think that is a good idea, but this thread is probably not the best place for it, unless you are specifically suggesting that this be added to the Foundation's message. BD2412 T 04:33, 1 April 2020 (UTC)
@BD2412: That sounds like a better first smaller step, I was thinking about PR to to BBC, DW, NPR, etc. T3g5JZ50GLq (talk) 05:20, 1 April 2020 (UTC)


CentralNotice about coronavirus (threads merged)

Please note, staffer User:SPatton (WMF) has enabled a central notice, for only logged out users, and for only here on enwiki. The way Sam built this makes it somewhat hard to reference, the text of it is spread across the following files: meta:Special:PrefixIndex/MediaWiki:Centralnotice-Programmatic_translations_2020-covid. Ping in to User:Seddon (WMF) who normally manages these types of things. The notice is "signed" by User:Katherine (WMF). It is a bit unusual that this was forced out without even participating in our discussion to add this as a site notice (c.f. current discussions at Wikipedia talk:In the news) and that while it is sending thanks to the "contributors" it is hidden from logged in editors as well. These are WMF servers, so they can certainly do as they please, but some additional discussion would have been less jarring. — xaosflux Talk 02:40, 20 March 2020 (UTC)

Note: you can see what readers see by using this link. — xaosflux Talk 02:50, 20 March 2020 (UTC)
Note: There was a short discussion on this at meta in meta:Wikimedia_Forum#Message_to_readers_from_Wikimedia_Foundation. — xaosflux Talk 02:51, 20 March 2020 (UTC)
Those banners go to ALL projects, not just en.wiki, and the Foundation is in full authority to add them when they fell appropriate (that's the same with the donation request banner) So they do not need to consult with us on that. --Masem (t) 02:50, 20 March 2020 (UTC)
@Masem: agree, it is their servers, this is mostly just informational in case our editors are trying to figure out what is going on. Note, in this specific banner, at this time it is only enabled for enwiki (see settings) - though I expect it will be going to more projects in the future. — xaosflux Talk 02:53, 20 March 2020 (UTC)
Note this is informative, especially in regards to discussions where we might put up additional site notices or main page content - since this CN is hidden from logged in editors (use the link above to see it) it can be easy for us to miss - so we should be sure to take it in to consideration before adding redundant messaging. — xaosflux Talk 03:40, 20 March 2020 (UTC)

Really? This PR stunt is an embarassing piece of self-adulation. Please takt hat down. --Matthiasb (talk) 21:58, 20 March 2020 (UTC)

@Matthiasb: I suppose you wanted to type "take that down", didn't you? --SI 14:37, 28 March 2020 (UTC)

Controversies about WMF corona banner

What the WMF banner looks like

Facts collected and posted here by --SI 18:30, 26 March 2020 (UTC)

updated --SI 14:32, 28 March 2020 (UTC)

Android (robot) needs maintenance templates

This is not something I can do

—§— T3g5JZ50GLq (talk) 04:49, 1 April 2020 (UTC)

10 edit limit, April Fools' Day, does it exist?

Happy April Fools day. Recently I got this. That got me confused. The rules don't state anything about a 10 edit limit, so I found it to be strange. Yeah the reply was from an administrator, but I did not get a reply back, so. Where is this apparently 10 edit limit rule stated regarding April Fools' Day? {{SUBST:replyto|Can I Log In}}PLEASE copy and paste the code to reply(Talk) 02:02, 1 April 2020 (UTC)

TIL Natureium is an admin. SQLQuery me! 02:52, 1 April 2020 (UTC)
FWIW, if you're making more than 10 april fools jokes on-wiki, you're either a great stand-up comedian, or an asshole. At least, in my opinion. SQLQuery me! 03:25, 1 April 2020 (UTC)
@Can I Log In: It likely falls under the rules for disruptive editing, rather than a hard edit count limit. RudolfRed (talk) 01:37, 2 April 2020 (UTC)

Good Article Backlog Drive

Want to help improve content on Wikipedia? Consider joining the two month Good Article backlog drive. The link has lots more details and you can ask any questions on the talk page. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 00:11, 3 April 2020 (UTC)

Harvard style

Hello, I suggest to add Harvard style to Special:CiteThisPage ([4]) Because it is a standard rule for citation and referencing. (Please ping me when you replied) Thanks! ⇒ AramTalk 15:04, 30 March 2020 (UTC)

THe page content is generated from MediaWiki:Citethispage-content. I think the right place to suggest additions is on the talk page. – Ammarpad (talk) 07:53, 4 April 2020 (UTC)

Minsk Metro

Navigation in Minsk Metro: Uručča, Barysaŭski trakt, Uschod, Maskoŭskaja, Park Čaliuskincaŭ, Akademija navuk, Plošča Jakuba Kolasa, Plošča Pieramohi, Kastryčnickaja, Plošča Lienina, Instytut kuĺtury, Hrušaŭka, Michalova, Piatroŭščyna, Malinaŭka

The template and articles about the Minsk metro use transliteration, which is not used anywhere else. Thus readers see false information, which does not coincide with reality. For whom is this done? How to use it?

English Wikipedia Reality
Uruchcha Uručča
Barysawski trakt Barysaŭski trakt
Uskhod Uschod
Maskowskaya Maskoŭskaja
Park Chalyuskintsaw Park Čaliuskincaŭ
Akademiya Navuk Akademija navuk
Ploshcha Yakuba Kolasa Plošča Jakuba Kolasa
Ploshcha Pyeramohi Plošča Pieramohi
Kastrychnitskaya Kastryčnickaja
Ploshcha Lyenina Plošča Lienina
Instytut Kultury Instytut kuĺtury
Hrushawka Hrušaŭka
Mikhalova Michalova
Pyatrowshchyna Piatroŭščyna
Malinawka Malinaŭka

--Чаховіч Уладзіслаў (talk) 11:59, 27 March 2020 (UTC)

According to WP:BELARUSIANNAMES the 1979 standard described at BGN/PCGN romanization of Belarusian is used on the English Wikipedia. If you think this should be changed to a more recent standard, or that an exception should be made for Minsk metro stations, then the best place to discuss would probably be Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (Cyrillic). Phil Bridger (talk) 12:17, 27 March 2020 (UTC)
WP:TITLE:
  • Recognizability – The title is a name or description of the subject that someone familiar with, although not necessarily an expert in, the subject area will recognize.
  • Naturalness – The title is one that readers are likely to look or search for and that editors would naturally use to link to the article from other articles. Such a title usually conveys what the subject is actually called in English.
A tourist sees the name "Park Čaliuskincaŭ" in the subway, but will he look for "Park Chalyuskintsaw"? Not --Чаховіч Уладзіслаў (talk) 12:42, 27 March 2020 (UTC)
I'm not disagreeing with you, but just saying what current guidance is on the English Wikipedia. Phil Bridger (talk) 12:50, 27 March 2020 (UTC)
See also current move discussions at Talk:Uruchcha (Minsk Metro), Talk:Park Chalyuskintsaw (Minsk Metro), Talk:Barysaŭski trakt and possibly others. A centralized discussion might be a better idea. In fact, User:Phil Bridger (above) has proposed having a single discussion at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (Cyrillic)#Problem with transliteration of Belarusian geographical names. EdJohnston (talk) 19:43, 3 April 2020 (UTC)

All names should be moved according to Instruction on transliteration of Belarusian geographical names with letters of Latin script as it's the only system in use for now. System is in use [5], [6] on official level so all road signs and maps are made according to this instruction. --Red Winged Duck (talk) 15:31, 4 April 2020 (UTC)

We have an article at Instruction on transliteration of Belarusian geographical names with letters of Latin script but that is an instruction from the Belarusian government, not from Wikipedia. The closest thing we have to a Wikipedia convention is what is written at WP:Naming conventions (Cyrillic). Take a look at the section on Belarusian. It is common for languages to have more than one Latin script. For example see Romanization of Greek. EdJohnston (talk) 16:35, 4 April 2020 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Cyrillic) says "This proposal has become dormant through lack of discussion by the community", so it cannot be used as reference. If we look one level up at Wikipedia:Naming conventions (geographic names) for Belarus it says: "Major cities (voblast capitals) are named according to the most common English usage. All other settlements are named according to national rules (exceptions may be discussed case by case)". And the only national system for now is Instruction on transliteration of Belarusian geographical names with letters of Latin script. I think new guidelines for Belarusian should be discussed and accepted. --Red Winged Duck (talk) 18:12, 4 April 2020 (UTC)
Yes, and, as you have taken part in the discussion you must be aware, discussion of changes has been proposed at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard#I am fed up with edit-warring against consensus in Eastern European articles and should be taken forward by an interested party in the form of a neutrally-worded RFC. Not the pre-judging of the issue implied by "discussed and accepted". This particular thread should be closed as a particular case of the general issue that needs to be discussed. Phil Bridger (talk) 18:28, 4 April 2020 (UTC)
W already created RfC, so we can continue there. Ping, EdJohnston, Phil Bridger. --Red Winged Duck (talk) 19:52, 5 April 2020 (UTC)

Wierdness in preview to Francis Willughby on main page

And elsewhere. The article states that Francis Willughby was "an English ornithologist and ichthyologist, and an early student of linguistics and games", but in the preview on the Main Page it says "a psychological condition" regarding the perception of body odor. Whaaat? Bug or maybe vandalism? Alricb (talk) 15:57, 1 April 2020 (UTC)

There was a series of vandalism on the page, and that Preview box is well known for its infamous ability to keep displaying cached vandalism longer than reasonable. There are various discussions about that if you search WP:VPT or phabricator. – Ammarpad (talk) 07:45, 4 April 2020 (UTC)

Wikipedia at 20

I have mentioned the forthcoming anniversary before, but could WP make use of the lockdowns to encourage people to get involved in development as part of the run-up to the anniversary? Jackiespeel (talk) 10:46, 7 April 2020 (UTC)

Article not indexed by Google

Hello! Can anyone help me figure out why this article is not indexed by Google during search? I believe this has been done on purpose because of the sentitivity of the article, but according to Wikipedia policies, no content should be censored. Thank you in advance.--▸ ‎épine talk♬ 15:58, 3 April 2020 (UTC)

I tried a Google search for ھاوڕەگەزخوازی from here in the UK and the very first result was the Sorani Wikipedia article that you mention. Maybe this depends on where you are searching from? Phil Bridger (talk) 16:08, 3 April 2020 (UTC)
The Google search algorithm tunes the results it gives you based on your past search history, your location, and a gazillion other things. So, just because you don't see the page in your search results doesn't mean Google hasn't indexed it. You can always use the "site:" modifier to narrow down your search to just a specific wiki, or even a specific article, as I've done with this search. -- RoySmith (talk) 16:33, 7 April 2020 (UTC)

Thank you to GreenC

I'm posting here to acknowledge the amazing effort put in by User:GreenC to avoid a major case of bit-rot. The details are at WP:USCENSUSLINKS, but the short version is that he observed a while ago that the U.S. Census Bureau's website is being replaced, which would break (literally) tens of thousands of external links to their database. So, he and rolled up his sleeves and put in an huge amount of work to keep the data alive. The encyclopedia is in his debt. -- RoySmith (talk) 00:36, 13 April 2020 (UTC)

Thank you for the recognition. Fixed in time for the 2020 census results.. and Roy, this was not awk ;) We should also thank Archive.today for their help saving links en masse even with broken JS. And User:AntiCompositeNumber for putting together a Python program for URL transform which might still be used in the future if/when the census site becomes stable. And your help also contacting the Census. -- GreenC 01:37, 13 April 2020 (UTC)
Many many thanks to all of you who saw the problem coming and did all the work to ward off impact to the encylopedia! Schazjmd (talk) 14:05, 13 April 2020 (UTC)

English Fundraising system tests

Hi all. I just wanted to give a heads up that we are going to run a banner & backend system test on the English Wikipedia in the USA this Wednesday, April 15 at 16:00 UTC for a few hours. We may run a couple of additional brief tests in the next few weeks. As always:

  • If you have specific ideas to share, please feel invited to add them to our fundraising ideas page.
  • If you need to report a bug or technical issue, please create a phabricator ticket.
  • If you see a donor on a talk page, OTRS, or social media having difficulties in donating, please refer them to donate@wikimedia.org.

Many thanks. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 16:31, 13 April 2020 (UTC)

Book project, request for input - How to Build a Fact: The Wikipedia Paradox and the Perilous Future of Knowledge.

Greetings, Wikipedians! I hope this finds you well, despite our challenging circumstances. My name is Nathaniel James, and I’m researching and writing a book that I hope will be of interest to the community and which will require some participation by lots of community members to be a success.

The working title for my book is How to Build a Fact: The Wikipedia Paradox and the Perilous Future of Knowledge. Is it a book about Wikipedia? I prefer to say that Wikipedia is a central character (or even setting) in a story I want to tell about the history of factual knowledge going back to The Enlightenment; how we produce, distribute, and protect factual knowledge now; and the multiple crises and opportunities factual knowledge faces as we march towards the future. The first part will be about the French Encyclopédie of the period leading up to their Revolution; the second will look closely at Wikipedia, with a special emphasis on the Global Warming article (and now, likely, COVID-19 related articles); and the final part will look at Wikidata and efforts like MIT’s Knowledge Futures Group, contrasting them with corporate initiatives like Google’s Knowledge Graph and others.

While I’m very likely to request interviews with some of the publicly known figures of the movement, I think the book will be most successful when it gives readers a really solid snapshot of the community, so I want to privilege the stories of more “everyday” contributors as much as possible.

If you have experience/expertise with any of the broad areas outlined above and want to be in touch early, I’ll be keeping an eye on this Village Pump thread, and you can also reach out to me on the user page I set up for this project. I will do my very best to be responsive; please just know that I’m doing this on top of paid work, and each stage of the project will require a different particular focus.

I am in the proposal writing stage, which means two things. 1) I’m at the “framing the narrative arc” level of research, rather drilling into details (more on those details below). 2) For my first sample chapter for the proposal, I am drilling into the details on the effort to put a copy of English Wikipedia on the Moon. I believe that story will capture the imagination of a broad audience and allow me to touch on all or most of the major themes I’m developing. I may use it as a prologue.

FYI, my intention for now is to go the traditional agent-publishing house route.

Over time, I will be reaching out to editor groups via talk pages on the Global Warming, Encyclopédie, and COVID-19 (once they are less slammed) articles, and I suspect I’ll come back to Village Pump with more specific requests for comment over time.

If all goes very, very well (fingers crossed), it’s possible this book could come out as Wikipedia turns twenty next year. While I will do my best to represent criticism and concerns (which is made easier by how transparent and frank Wikipedians are about the project’s challenges), I expect to show Wikipedia in a very strong light, providing context that places Wikipedia at the heart our global civilization’s attempt to preserve the best of the Enlightenment project in the face of uncertain futures. Wikipedia is already in the spotlight now because of coronavirus (here’s Wired’s article, and more recently Haaretz’s, if you haven’t seen them), and it would be really meaningful to me personally to be part of the storytelling wave I expect next year.

A little about me: I've been working in the do gooder tech space most of my career, including national-international tech policy work and with groups like IEEE, Black Girls CODE, Mozilla, and also recently The Wikimedia Foundation (a very brief writing contract). I wrote my master's thesis on the social networks of Wikipedia talk pages back in 2006, so I've been tracking the project for a while. I also find the Wikimedia universe so vast that it forces me into beginner's mind whenever I dive into it. I hope that balance of knowledge and humility makes me an interesting guide for audiences that use Wikipedia but don’t think about its inner workings much. I live in Seattle, though for now I’m spending most of my days social distancing in a cabin well outside Bellingham, Washington, USA.

Thanks for reading this far, and I look forward to learning and connecting with you over the course of this project.

Cheers,

NJ — Preceding unsigned comment added by HowtoBuildaFact (talk • contribs) 19:42, 14 April 2020 (UTC)

Ill-formed categories

Hello. I've been dealing with categories for a little while now, but still a little green with some things. What am I supposed to do when I run across a newly created category such as this: Category:Rock music groups from Georgia (U.S. state ? --DB1729 (talk) 01:04, 15 April 2020 (UTC)

WP:CFD, in this case Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Speedy. Johnbod (talk) 01:42, 15 April 2020 (UTC)
Someone got to it before I could tag it, but now I know how. Thank you! --DB1729 (talk) 01:55, 15 April 2020 (UTC)

Differences in collaborative software with Slack et al.

Hello there, being a long time editing here, and thought of making a suggestion. Considering that some of us are working at home for the first time and had recently being provided with the means to contact and coordinate coworkers were once one usually spoke directly to them, had meetings, telephoned and emailed then I was reading out of curiosity Slack and specially collaborative software. The later, besides being too broad in its definition, makes its confusing in services and software like Slack, Microsoft Teams, Workplace by Facebook, Flock, Mattermost, Chanty, Zulip, Fleep, HipChat, and the now deleted Rocket.Chat to be considered as or categorized collaborative given this ambiguous broad definition. A good example of this is the even more confusing List of collaborative software in the examples of software that it provides.

I think there is difference between Slack et al that are more like Collaborative working environment with social interaction tools and that can aggregate application tools, with other softwares and services like the electronic mailing list, wiki, bulletin board, Internet forum, instant messaging, Lotus Notes, Wrike and various others that are more stand alone collaborating project management and document editing tools. I also considered Discord, that is more like Twitch in its purpose, in a different league.

Just some thoughts, regards, --JorgeGG (talk) 16:03, 19 April 2020 (UTC)

Hi @JorgeGG: - your discussion might be worth having, but you probably won't have much luck here: it's relatively rarely viewed, but more critically, you really want to discuss it with those with the most interest in the field. As such, I'd suggesting raising it at the article's talk page. Nosebagbear (talk) 08:18, 20 April 2020 (UTC)

List_of_Wikipedias#Number_of_wikipedia_by_language_families_and_gruppes

Help me please to check number and others.--Kaiyr (talk) 12:08, 22 April 2020 (UTC)

Suggestion for New WikiProject

I would like to make a proposal for a new WikiProject. I believe there is somewhere in Wikipedia where people can put in proposals for new WikiProjects, but I shall have to be reminded where it is. Many thanks in advance for your co-operation. Vorbee (talk) 20:58, 23 April 2020 (UTC)

One of the subpages of WP:WikiProject Council. --Izno (talk) 21:17, 23 April 2020 (UTC)

Thank you for that. I have now put in my proposal there. Vorbee (talk) 08:07, 24 April 2020 (UTC)

Surnames

Hello fellow Wikipedians,

There are many Wikipedia pages acting as disambiguation pages for common surnames. Some of these, such as https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darbo, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ateak, and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karlowa have just the surname as the title of the page. Others, including https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koretz_(surname), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapallo_(surname), and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esaw_(surname), have the word "surname" attached to the end for clarity.

Which one is correct here? I can't seem to find a policy on it, and I'm not sure whether or not to correct pages either way.

I apologise if this is the incorrect location, I didn't know where to put this. Thank you Heyoostorm (talk) 15:26, 24 April 2020 (UTC)

Hello Heyoostorm, as far as I know the (surname) is only appended if there already is an article or redirect with that name. (I don't know about a policy either) - Flori4nKT A L K 15:39, 24 April 2020 (UTC)
@Heyoostorm:, see WP:ATDAB, especially, If the article is about the primary topic to which the ambiguous name refers, then that name can be its title without modification, provided it follows all other applicable policies. If the article is not about the primary topic, the ambiguous name cannot be used and so must be disambiguated. ST47 (talk) 22:35, 24 April 2020 (UTC)

Planned maintenance operation on 30th April

Hi, Just wanted to inform that there's a planned maintenance operation on Thursday 30th April at 05:00 AM UTC. It impacts all wikis and is supposed to last a few minutes. During this time, new translations may fail, and Notifications may not be delivered. For more details about the operation and on all impacted services, please check on Phabricator: phab:T250733 -- Kaartic correct me, if i'm wrong 19:04, 27 April 2020 (UTC)

IP edits done without following Wikipedia sourcing style

Moved to WP:ANI. Please comment there. --Jayron32 16:40, 28 April 2020 (UTC)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Moved to WP:ANI § IP edits done without following Wikipedia sourcing style
 – SemiHypercube 15:31, 28 April 2020 (UTC)

Cheers! I would like some advice on a problem with some IP edits that I have no idea how to address. There are some IPs, apparently based on Tunisia, who constantly edit the numbers of religious (often Jewish) demographics of North African countries. Examples of those articles are Religion in Algeria, History of the Jews in Algeria, Religion in Tunisia, History of the Jews in Tunisia, History of the Jews in Libya, Religion in Morocco, Tunisian people, Tunisia, Maghrebi Jews, and a single one in American Jews. It's not like they are necessarily done in bad faith, but the MO is to simply edit a number, leaving the source in the comment, sometimes editing the same number twice in a row using different, conflicting sources, with some of those of poor quality. I ended up following all the pages above to try to keep an eye on those edits and although some of those edits proved to be constructive (like correcting numbers badly cited from the source), most of them go against the editing style of Wikipedia, ignore the already present sources, and end up making the History and even the displayed data of those pages a complete mess. I (and other users) have tried to contact those IPs in the Discussion page to explain how sources should be handled, but to no avail, as the active IPs eventually stop editing and new similar ones appear with the same MO already described. I don't want to simply revert these edits, but it's getting hard to follow them and check every time how reliable the new numbers might be. I would appreciate if someone could advise me what's the best course of action on how to deal with this. Thank you for your time. - Sarilho1 (talk) 15:23, 28 April 2020 (UTC)

@Sarilho1: I think WP:ANI might be the best pick, since this is a conduct issue (I might even move this thread there) SemiHypercube 15:27, 28 April 2020 (UTC)
@SemiHypercube: Hi! I was unsure what was the best place to place this. If that's indeed the best pick, please do move it. I'm sorry for the hassle. - Sarilho1 (talk) 15:30, 28 April 2020 (UTC)
Check out Special:Contributions/196.229.0.0/16 for more examples. Playing with the numbers while giving sources only in the edit summaries is not going to have a good result. Since the user won't respond, it might be worth doing a one-week block of the /16. EdJohnston (talk) 15:53, 28 April 2020 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

MfD Wikipedia:Poles are evil

Please see the deletion discussion at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:Poles are evil. Johnuniq (talk) 09:34, 30 April 2020 (UTC)

Local notice for NYC Symposium on Wikipedia and COVID-19

I have put in a request for a local banner notice for the New York metropolitan area to share at m:CentralNotice/Request/WMNYC Symposium on Wikipedia and COVID-19 The COVID-19 pandemic in New York City is currently considered the global epicenter, and this Symposium on Wikipedia and COVID-19 aims to answer questions the public may have about Wikipedia and Wikimedia's coverage of the pandemic. Four speakers are presenting, all of whom are active contributors to the topic area on Wikimedia projects, but bring different perspectives, backgrounds, and interests..--Pharos (talk) 03:00, 4 May 2020 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Village pump (WMF)

I created , or, more exactly, moved this page out of Alsee's userspace. Please start using it. It might need some popularization. I also have not set the archivation, I do not know how to do it. (Not that we currently need to archive anything).--Ymblanter (talk) 18:47, 2 May 2020 (UTC)

@Ymblanter: Thanks! I was wondering when the result of that RfC was going to be implemented. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 03:07, 5 May 2020 (UTC)

Bot to send users scheduled reminders

Hi. Per Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/DannyS712 bot 68, my bot can now send users reminders that they schedule for themselves. If you would like to opt-in to bot-provided reminders, just transclude {{PleaseRemindMe}} on your user page, and add reminders to the /RemindMe.json subpage of your userspace. To schedule a reminder, I suggest using User:DannyS712/RemindMe.js - just specify the date and the text, and the bot will automatically post on that day (reminders are public and stored in the json subpage). The bot was approved for an extended trial, and will be running for the next 3 weeks. Hope this is useful and let me know if the instructions were confusing. Thanks, --DannyS712 (talk) 06:03, 5 May 2020 (UTC)

Flickr import on Commons is now available for all users

If you weren't already autopatrolled on Commons, you might have noticed a new button on c:Special:UploadWizard to import media from Flickr. (see Phabricator for technical details, thanks Kaldari) Flickr is a great resource with freely licensed material and importing media from there is now easier than ever!

Here are a few pointers to help you add useful images to articles:

  • Go to Flickr.com and search for your subject. The images you now see you probably can't import. Go to the drop-down menu that says "any license" and pick "Commercial use & mods allowed". The page will reload and you'll see, in this example, free images of marathons. These images you can import.
  • If you scroll down a bit on the image page, you'll often see "This photo is in x album(s)". If you copy-paste the album link into the Upload Wizard, you can upload up to 4 images from that album at once.
  • Be aware of the various Commons policies. In particular:
    • Freedom of panorama: not every country, in particular the US, has it. A photograph of a non-antique statue in the US is typically not allowed. (upload it locally as fair use instead if applicable)
    • Derivative works: a photo of a magazine cover, packaging that includes a photo of the product or other non-utilitarian design or a photo of a big screen at a live concert includes the work of another and is thus a derivative work. Unless that other work is also freely licensed or out of copyright, don't upload it.

That's probably the most important stuff to remember. You may want to browse Category:Wikipedia requested images by subject for a bit. - Alexis Jazz 13:10, 5 May 2020 (UTC)

Page Title in visual editor

I wonder why do we have a "Page Title" option in visual editor when it is not used in any article. It rather ruins the layout of an article, especially the table of content. Why don't we delete this option from wikipedia? Lightbluerain (talk) 10:55, 7 May 2020 (UTC)

The item labeled "Page Title" creates a =Level 1 section heading=. The feature exists in the visual editor because it exists in wikitext, and the visual editor is supposed to be able to do nearly any edit that can be done in wikitext. This is not commonly used in articles, but you will find it on some other pages. c:Commons:Village pump might be the most famous use of it; all sections are organized by date, and each date is marked as a level 1 section heading, e.g., =May 9=. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 23:36, 9 May 2020 (UTC)

Odd cluster of drafts

Recently, while clearing some pages from Category:Pages with broken reference names, I noticed a cluster of odd drafts, basically the same content with the same errors, but by different editors.

This is the list:


The same content was first posted at the talk page of Draft:African Legal Philosophy (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) I'm not sure what this is. It might be a sockfarm or a school assignment. I wasn't sure where to post this, so I put it here.--Auric talk 19:55, 9 May 2020 (UTC)

@Auric: Wonder if there should be a consistent comment added under the template on each draft, so reviewers know about this cluster should they be submitted for approval. GoingBatty (talk) 00:31, 11 May 2020 (UTC)
Update: found 2 more

A list could be good, but I'm unsure of how to format it. The drafts aren't exact duplicates, but roughly the same.

--Auric talk 11:49, 11 May 2020 (UTC)

Update: more have been created, all today.

--Auric talk 22:59, 12 May 2020 (UTC)

Auric, Please open a case at WP:SPI. -- RoySmith (talk) 23:09, 12 May 2020 (UTC)
Will do. Thanks.--Auric talk 23:27, 12 May 2020 (UTC)

There is a discussion at the Village Pump Technical on when to use IABot to archive links. Interested editors are invited to join the conversation. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 04:23, 13 May 2020 (UTC)

WikidataLab XXIII: Wiki-Education and Data Literacy

Hi! Next Thursday (May 21st - 1pm - 7pm UTC) we'll have a WikidataLab, an online event that may interest you. This is the 23rd edition of this technical training that intends to explore the potentialities of Wikipedia and Wikidata integration. This time, the theme will be wiki-education and data literacy. The event is organized by Wiki Movement Brazil User Group and will be hosted by Shani Evenstein, in English. It consists on a webinar followed by a practical activity online. Join us! Here's the event page in which we'll provide the link for the live broadcast on YouTube and upload the resources for the activity. EAzzellini (WMB) (talk) 02:25, 14 May 2020 (UTC)

RfC on inclusion of lab-accident theory of Covid origin

There is an Rfc at Talk:COVID-19_pandemic#RfC_on_inclusion_of_lab-accident_theory regarding the inclusion of the lab-accident theory to the Cause section of the article on Covid-19 pandemic. A dozen editors have vigorously participated over many weeks reaching no consensus or anything resembling one.

I request that external editors comment on whether we should omit any mention of the theory.

Please take a look at the Rfc to help us reach a consensus.Forich (talk) 12:46, 23 May 2020 (UTC)

"You can help by expanding it" needs to go

Not sure if it's been brought up before but I created a discussion here: Template_talk:Incomplete_list#Request_to_remove_"you_can_help_by_expanding_it"--Prisencolin (talk) 23:25, 23 May 2020 (UTC)

Ikarus 280 is nearing end-of-life, this is a great opportunity for a challenge to hunt for sources and expand the article

The last cities to use Ikarus 200 series, which includes 260 and 280, Budapest and Győr, are ending routine (non-heritage) usage of these buses this Sunday. After these, we will only be able to ride these in expensive heritage rides or occasional events. Can we start a translation and expansion challenge for this article accordingly? Erkin Alp Güney 20:57, 25 May 2020 (UTC)

Erkinalp9035, you might ask this question at WT:WikiProject Buses or WT:WikiProject Hungary. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:14, 27 May 2020 (UTC)

How to propose re-categorisation of multiple articles in a WikiProject

I am considering getting a group of articles relating to "mobile devices" rearranged in categories. However, there are at least 1000 articles and there are also at least two ways to categorise some articles (by company, then by feature, and even by OS), so I want to get the rearrangement approved through consensus. Is there a place where I can propose these complex moves (which I’m unable to find for some reason) or should I go to the relevant WikiProject? RedBulbBlueBlood9911|Talk 10:03, 28 May 2020 (UTC)

You should start a discussion at WP:CFD, with notes at any relevant projects directing people to that. I'd propose "test case" examples, making it clear that that is how they are being regarded. Johnbod (talk) 10:11, 28 May 2020 (UTC)

Moving a page from article space to draft space

On 19 May user:Flalf moved Baron Cobham to Draft:Baron Cobham. On 25 May I moved it back into Article space.

My primary reason for doing this is because a redirect existed from article space to draft space and this is clearly inappropriate. Rather than delete the redirect I decided to return the article to the status quo, and opend this discussion here.

This article was created on 27 July 2019 by user:GorgonaJS there have been about a score of edits by half a dozen editors of whom user:Alekksandr and user:Lobsterthermidor are the most prolific (revision history).

What is the guidance on moving articles from article space? Is it appropriate to make such a move without attempting to gain a consensus, for example by using Wikipedia:Requested moves?

-- PBS (talk) 07:49, 25 May 2020 (UTC)

Some further information: This specific article has a deleted history in Draft:Baron Cobham. An earlier version of this article was moved from article space to draft space without leaving a redirect behind by user:I dream of horses on 26 April 2019 with the comment "Undersourced, incubate in draftspace". In addition that article suffered persistent attack by sockpuppets of User:G.-M. Cupertino -- PBS (talk) 08:03, 25 May 2020 (UTC)
Hello PBS! Thank you for bringing this up. Despite being an article that is lengthy, I don't think it is appropriately written. It fails Wikipedia:Manuel of Style and after discussing it with a few other editors we came to the conclusion the page would have to be redone and until then would be best left to incubate in draft space. I did not think there would be a need for a request as I didn't think the move would be controversial. Per WP:MOVE I thought it was more fit for the draftspace. FlalfTalk 08:00, 25 May 2020 (UTC)
Please provide a link to your discussion about what to do with the article. What part of WP:MOVE do you think covers this type of move? -- PBS (talk) 08:08, 25 May 2020 (UTC)
PBS, WP:MOVE is not a policy nor guideline; it's a how-to guide per the template at the top of the page. I'm not sure why Flalf cited that as a reason to move a page; perhaps they meant another page that does describe page move policy.
Current consensus allows editors to move articles to draftspace if they feel it's not ready to be allowed to remain in mainspace. The reasoning behind this is that the alternative is frequently deletion, which is even more confronting. I dream of horses (talk page) (Contribs) Remember to notify me after replying off my talk page. 10:45, 25 May 2020 (UTC)
@User:I dream of horses It is not good practice to link from article space into other spaces (such as user space or draft space). I mentioned WP:MOVE only because User:flalf stated "Per WP:MOVE I thought it was more fit for the draftspace". I think that WP:EDIT is a relevant policy. -- PBS (talk) 10:56, 25 May 2020 (UTC)
PBS, if moving articles into draftspace helps us comply with the spirit of don't bite the newcomers and other civility policies by avoiding a deletion discussion, but the letter of WP:EDIT prevents us from doing so, then "ignore all rules" would apply.
But, then again, "This article is imperfect!" isn't what motivates me to move an article into draftspace. It's "This article has at least a minute amount of potential (that is, speedy deletion isn't advisable), but it absolutely shouldn't remain in mainspace". The alternative is often an AfD discussion. An imperfect, "mainspacable" article might get some cleanup, or otherwise get cleanup templates, and possibly a stub tag. A "perfect" article, for lack of a better term, gets a nomination at autopatrolled. I personally don't expect a new article to be perfect; therefore, I believe my new page patrolling is WP:EDIT complaint. I dream of horses (talk page) (Contribs) Remember to notify me after replying off my talk page. 11:08, 25 May 2020 (UTC)
WP:Drafts#During new page review and WP:Drafts#Requirements for page movers make interesting reading. I haven't looked at the page in question here, but my experience has been that new page patrollers, who are often less acquainted with Wikipedia norms than the people who have written the articles that they are passing judgement on, frequently move pages to draft space and refuse to move them back in defiance of those sections. The claim made at WP:Drafts#Moving articles to draft space that moving to draft space is not a backdoor route to deletion is clearly false, given that drafts get deleted after 6 months without proper checking if they are about notable topics. Phil Bridger (talk) 11:47, 25 May 2020 (UTC)
If an article is moved to draft without a RM and someone objects to the move, then AFAICT they can are free to move it back under the WP:RMUM process (a process designed to prevent move wars and first move advantage). -- PBS (talk) 17:02, 25 May 2020 (UTC)
The move was improper since draftifying is really only for brand new articles with severe problems. I do have some concerns about the lack of oversight when it comes to draftifications, I would encourage admins to take a look at the articles in question before deleting the leftover redirects. I have on several occasions (usually by chance) come across draftifications of ten year old articles, where a relatively new editor has just assumed that imperfect articles need to be moved to drafts. – Thjarkur (talk) 12:23, 25 May 2020 (UTC)
I apologize if it was improper. At the time I didn't think the article belonged in mainspace. If that was a mistake, then I'm sorry. I made an error in judgement and I won't do it again. I'm so sorry. FlalfTalk 17:43, 25 May 2020 (UTC)
  • Inviting DGG into this conversation, as he and I both occasionally move mainspace pages to draftspace for repair. BD2412 T 16:09, 25 May 2020 (UTC)
  • Howdy hello folks! Flalf is one of my adoptees, and asked if I could take a look here, they were understandably stressed about being the subject of a VP discussion. If I'm reading things right, this is more of a general policy discussion, and less of a contributor discussion, correct? Flalf's actions seem merely to have been the catalyst of a policy question, which is why I assume its at the pump. Otherwise, I would expect that this would have been discussed with Flalf on their talk, or at ANI, am I right? CaptainEek Edits Ho Cap'n!⚓ 18:14, 25 May 2020 (UTC)
    • Yes, the broad question is, "when is it appropriate to move an article to draft space?" BD2412 T 19:28, 25 May 2020 (UTC)
    • Indeed, sorry to see this disussion presented this way, Flalf, and I hope I didn't sound like I was scolding you.
      I once ran a Quarry query to find draftifications of old articles, there was an improper one about every other day. All were meant in good faith, but could have lead to unintentional loss of content since nobody noticed them. (This is the Quarry query, for some reason it's timing out for me now, maybe someone can see what I'm doing wrong). Maybe we should consider an editfilter warning for when old articles are being moved into other namespaces, that would also catch all these student editors moving established articles into their userspace to work on them. – Thjarkur (talk) 21:52, 25 May 2020 (UTC)
      Here you go. —Cryptic 10:49, 26 May 2020 (UTC)

@User:flalf and User:CaptainEek as User:BD2412 and User:Þjarkur imply I started the conversation here is to review this area in general and more specifically to review my actions rather than flalf's. I am a very experianced editor, but this is the first time I have reverted such a move. If found during this conversation that I was in breach of some guidence somewhere, then I would revert my revert, and then ask if that guidence was sensible. As an administrator I could have removed the link left behind in article space and I would have done so if I could have found guidance on that (it may exist for all I know) and then started this conversation.

flalf my reason for asking you how you came to your decision is not to criticise you, but to try to understand how you came to the decision to move this article into draft space.

I would also like so someone with more familiarity with this area to explain what is usually done with the redirects left behind after such a move and if is it documented.

-- PBS (talk) 09:50, 26 May 2020 (UTC)

Another area that needs thinking about which is thrown up by this particular article (Baron Cobham), is that moving an article with an edit history to drafts name space may inadvertently create a copy violation as happens with cut and past moves. This article was moved to drafts on 26 April 2019 and deleted on 27 October 2019 (six months and a day later) with the comment "Abandoned draft or Articles for Creation submission – to retrieve it, see WP:REFUND/G13" it had an edit history of 151 edits. Meanwhile on 27 July 2019‎ the article was recreated in article space with the comment "It's restoration of the page data" diffing the restored version against the now deleted history in drafts shows it is a copy (with minor changes) of the last non soc version on 25 April 2019 by user:Favonian with an edit comment of "rv sock of User:G.-M. Cupertino". -- PBS (talk) 09:50, 26 May 2020 (UTC)

Re the idea that things "incubate in draft space". It was a great theory that things would improve in a less deletionist environment, but the place where we actually get collaborative editing is in mainspace. OK I fix a few typos in draftspace, but I'm an exception, for the most part it is a place where reviewers say what would be needed to get an article to the standard that they work to, and some newbies persist in trying to attain that standard - often a far higher standard than NPP or even AFD. If you move existing articles to draftspace it takes them out of the category system that some editors work through, out of people's mainspace searches and hides them from readers. Worse it puts them on a conveyor belt to deletion, even if they would have survived AFD. I'm OK with really spammy stuff being moved from mainspace to draft, but I don't see the case for it otherwise except as an AFD outcome. ϢereSpielChequers 10:12, 26 May 2020 (UTC)

It is 100% inappropriate to move an article that has existed in mainspace for nearly a year to the draft space except as an outcome of AFD. Any article outside the NPP queue even, I think it is entirely inappropriate and the correct approach would be one of the existing deletion mechanisms. (I might be even more to the point that anything which has managed to survive in article space for greater than 30 days probably also should use an appropriate deletion mechanism for removal.) --Izno (talk) 02:43, 27 May 2020 (UTC)

We don't have good documentation in this area, so what happens seems to depend upon personal preferences/philosophy: Alice says that this is a notable subject that will m:eventually turn into a decent article, and moves it into mainspace, and Bob says the page looks "embarrassing" and moves it back to Draft: space to hide it from readers. If it weren't for our usual rules against edit warring, they could keep doing this all day long, and each would believe that they're "right" and that "the community" does it their way and "the rules" say that the page should be in the place of their choice.
For people who are doing this, I think that a long look at the very short WP:AFCPURPOSE might be useful. That's what it takes (or what it's supposed to take) to get an article out of draftspace via the AFC process. So if you look that over, and you decide that the page in question meets AFC's standard for moving a page out of draftspace, then you shouldn't move the page into draftspace in the first place. Similarly, if you find something in the mainspace that doesn't meet AFC's one-important-question standard, then you get to decide whether to have its failings settled in draftspace (where it will probably get neglected and deleted in a few months) or at WP:AFD (where it will probably get neglected and deleted next week).
More generally, I think we need to have a few large-scale discussions about what should be done, and whether we're willing to make both Alice and Bob follow the standards that we settle on, including, if truly necessary, topic bans. I have been thinking about two areas for discussion:
  • Wikipedia's goal is to make knowledge available. Moving pages out of the mainspace hides that knowledge. Is it more important to provide knowledge – including knowledge on incomplete, "embarrassing" pages – or more important to protect our reputation? This is a "spectrum" question: you might say that you were 60% this and 40% that.
  • Should drafts on possibly non-notable subjects be handled at WP:AFD (which is where the notability experts are), or should they continue to be held at WP:MFD (which is mostly intended for Wikipedia's internal pages), or should they be moved to their own page ("WP:DFD")? Choosing the venue does not increase or decrease the amount of work involved, but it does partially determine who's involved in the discussion. Similarly, should there be a limit to the number of times AFC and NPP can reject a page before they have to hand it over to the larger community for a notability-related discussion? The general theme here is "Are drafts (sort of) articles, whose existence depends upon notability rather than quality, or are they something else?" WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:11, 27 May 2020 (UTC)

So that there is no question about the copy right of the article, I have restored the previous history which was lost when the article was first moved to draft space and then six months later deleted while simultaneously existing as a cut and past move into article space. -- PBS (talk) 15:20, 30 May 2020 (UTC)

Could someone create Wiki article for me?

I don't really know where this should go so let me just drop it here anyway I'm not Wiki-Wizard like most of the registered users here I know how to edit but that's it so could someone create new article for me if I provide all the little informations there is about 1 musical artist who's not so well known thanks — Preceding unsigned comment added by Wiki-Tieto (talk • contribs) 14:41, 26 May 2020 (UTC)

Wiki-Tieto, English Wikipedia has notability criteria for musicians. "not so well known" can mean different things, but I would guess that this musical artist won't meet the criteria. —⁠andrybak (talk) 15:03, 26 May 2020 (UTC)

Wiki-Tieto, if you go to the box in the top right-hand corner of Wikipedia page (the one that says "Search Wikipedia") and type in the name of an article you want to create, you will find that you will get the name of an article in red letters, which means that Wikipedia does not currently have an article on that subject. Click on the red letters, and you will be able to start an article. Vorbee (talk) 05:51, 30 May 2020 (UTC)

Hello

Please note that Wajid Khan died on 1 june according to Google news. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 109.185.175.84 (talk) 07:59, 1 June 2020 (UTC)

Thank you. I see that our article Sajid–Wajid has been updated. Phil Bridger (talk) 08:19, 1 June 2020 (UTC)

Clean day

Hi! Climate change will kill us and our planet, that much is certain. Unless we do something about it, but it only happens half-heartedly. In order to make people more environmentally conscious, I propose one working day a year on which we all stay at home, on which we do not consume, do not travel, do not drive, do not go to work, nothing except emergency services and so on.

In my opinion, Wednesday would be the most suitable day for this. For example, it could be called »clean day«, »clean wednesday« or »climate day« etc.

On this day, the environment is advertised in the media, suggestions are made about what we humans can do about the climate crisis. This day, which should be an official, worldwide public holiday, not an unofficial strike. However, it would make sense to always organize this day off on a Wednesday in order not to initiate a weekend extension. Perhaps it would be possible to launch this as an official Wikipedia initiative. What do you think?Enbua8 (talk) 21:11, 3 June 2020 (UTC)

@Enbua8: That's not really what this site is or is for, we're just an encyclopedia that doesn't add new stuff. Wikipedia's effort against climate change is to allow discretionary sanctions that rather quickly allow us to remove anyone who wants to add denialism or other disinformation. Ian.thomson (talk) 21:58, 3 June 2020 (UTC)
I'm sorry, I thought this would be the same here as for example on the German Wikipedia Café site, there you can talk about everything, no matter what topic.
This is also possible on the Spanish site, on the Arabic site, on the Polish site and so on. Why isn't it possible on the English Wikipedia site of all places? Would be nice. Greetings Enbua8 (talk) 11:14, 4 June 2020 (UTC)
We ask users not to use Wikipedia as a forum. There are some users, such as User talk:Jimbo Wales, who specifically allow it, but even those users are allowed more-or-less out of respect, rather than because they are following the rules. --Izno (talk) 16:42, 4 June 2020 (UTC)
Enbua8, Each project has it's own policies, cultures, etc. Just because something is appropriate on dewiki, spwiki, arwiki, etc, doesn't mean it's appropriate for enwiki. -- RoySmith (talk) 16:48, 4 June 2020 (UTC)

Qualified immunity and the Ending Qualified Immunity Act

Hi all

Given the protests in the US and around the world I've been trying to improve Qualified immunity and have started Ending Qualified Immunity Act. It seems like there is significant political work being done to repeal/change qualified immunity which is well documented in recent news articles, I just don't understand the subject well enough to do a good job of adding the information. I'd really appreciate some help in improving them.

Best

John Cummings (talk) 15:28, 4 June 2020 (UTC)

No article for Science Times (sciencetimes.com)

Moved from Wikipedia talk:Community portal
 – —⁠andrybak (talk) 18:36, 4 June 2020 (UTC)

Friends are quoting articles from this site (sciencetimes.com) but it’s impossible to find Wikipedia articles about the site. Who runs it? Who funds it? What editorial slant or point of view? Journalistic standards? I’m new to Wikipedia as a community member so I’m not comfortable creating articles. If someone can get one started that would be a good thing. G30338 (talk) 07:41, 26 May 2020 (UTC)

@G30338: Hmm, it's a little hard to tell how popular that site is, and I'm not seeing any immediate red flags, but not seeing anything that'd cause me to trust it either. You could add it to WP:Requested articles, but it likely won't get written until it's popular enough to meet our definition of WP:Notability. You could also ask at WP:Reliable sources noticeboard. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 08:07, 26 May 2020 (UTC)
I haven't looked into this yet, but can see that there are two separate issues here. Firstly, whether it is notable, so we can have an article about it, and secondly, whether it is reliable, so we can use it as a source. Phil Bridger (talk) 19:01, 4 June 2020 (UTC)
Though this is not a rule, I tend to be of the opinion that any media which we cite as a reliable source should be notable enough to have an article (and, ideally, should have an article). How can we know that a source is reliable if there is not even enough information about it to meet our notability standards? BD2412 T 19:06, 4 June 2020 (UTC)
Note: see Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Cinema Today for a nomination inherently raising exactly this issue. BD2412 T 00:56, 7 June 2020 (UTC)

Lode Runner Online: The Mad Monks' Revenge

Is the link to the fan-made remake even legal? The original game was released as freeware, but the linked page in the article for the fan-made remake says, to wit: "[w]e do not have permission from the Lode Runner rights holder (Tozai) or from the owners of Lode Runner Online: The Mad Monks' Revenge (Activision/Sierra)".

Can someone look into this and see if that project is legal, and (if not) remove the link to it in the Lode Runner Online: The Mad Monks' Revenge article, and perhaps consider removing from the page history any record of that link? Tharthan (talk) 11:12, 5 June 2020 (UTC)

BUMP. Tharthan (talk) 04:14, 12 June 2020 (UTC)

It is a complex problem because fan made games can be fair use see [7]. The more professional-looking the fan game becomes the less grounds for fair use there are, because it might be thought to be a product of the original company and impact sales. It is up to the IP holder to enforce their rights against what they see as an infringement. As for the link in the article, is there any evidence the IP holder of the game cares? Because if they don't care probably we shouldn't either. -- GreenC 14:50, 12 June 2020 (UTC)

Request for neutral opinions

I originally posted this as a request on Wikipedia:Third opinion, but as Rhododendrites pointed out this wasn't the right place. The issues is an ongoing AfD nomination, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Anna Gifty Opoku-Agyeman. From what I understand, a Twitter personality asked her followers to create a Wikipedia article about her, one of whom obliged. Shortly after, the article was nominated for deletion, and apparently two camps have been canvassing votes on Twitter and elsewhere to flood the discussion, so ultimately the AfD went haywire. In the end, this is all about whether this person meets our notability criteria, and I feel like the AfD desperately needs input from uninvolved, seasoned Wikipedians. --bender235 (talk) 01:01, 7 June 2020 (UTC)

Update: the same situation is now going on at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Corina Newsome and Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Earyn McGee, after the respective subjects sent their Twitter followers our way. --bender235 (talk) 02:25, 7 June 2020 (UTC)
Update 2: the issue lead to a WP:AN. --bender235 (talk) 12:31, 7 June 2020 (UTC)

Can't change the language on www.wikipedia.org anymore

I am not sure if this is the right place to ask this but whatever. I have www.wikipedia.org as one of my pages on my speed dial. Until today, I had English as my language set, because the English wikipedia is the largest wikipedia. As of today, the search is set in Dutch (I live in the Netherlands) and there is no way to search in any other language, you would have to go to the specific home page of English in order to search in English. Could you please change it back, it is annoying as hell.Merijn2 (talk) 09:27, 7 June 2020 (UTC)

@Merijn2: This is a known issue (phab:T254540) and the fix will be deployed on Monday I think. the wub "?!" 09:56, 7 June 2020 (UTC)
@Merijn2: This is now fixed. the wub "?!" 11:45, 8 June 2020 (UTC)

Map edit request

I have requested for a image edit, but it is not yet done.

Have you see my request?

Wikipedia:Graphics_Lab/Illustration_workshop#Palaces_in_San_Polo,_Venice

Thanks!!!

--2001:B07:6442:8903:94A0:3027:61A:BAF2 (talk) 15:11, 8 June 2020 (UTC)

People working on files might be very limited on this wiki. You should consider asking at Commons:Commons:Graphic_Lab/Illustration_workshop as Commons is also the canonical source of the file. – Ammarpad (talk) 08:38, 10 June 2020 (UTC)

Mr. Wrestling II: Sex offender or not? (RfC)

Heyo editors! There's recently been an edit dispute over a highly controversial topic regarding the recently-deceased Mr. Wrestling II where editors have been both claiming and refuting that the wrestler was a registered sex offender.

This could get heated very quickly, and I encourage all readers to come to a consensus on this issue at the RfC. dibbydib boop or snoop 09:05, 11 June 2020 (UTC)

Am I the only BFDI wiki user that uses Wikipedia?

The title says it all. We need to start noticing the OSC. Please, Another Wiki User the 2nd (talk) 16:56, 11 June 2020 (UTC)

What is BFDI and OSC? thanks. Schazjmd (talk) 17:03, 11 June 2020 (UTC)
My thoughts exactly. The title actually says nothing, as does the following content. Phil Bridger (talk) 17:34, 11 June 2020 (UTC)
The links BfDI and OSC don't get me any closer to understanding what on Earth this post is supposed to be about. Phil Bridger (talk) 17:39, 11 June 2020 (UTC)
I believe for the first one he's referring to Battle for Dream Island, a YouTube web series that doesn't even have an article here (nor do I think it ever will). Definitely clueless as to what the second one is supposed to be. Namcokid47 (Contribs) 16:34, 12 June 2020 (UTC)
Google-foo suggests it is something called Object Show Community, but I'm not spending any more time researching it. In any case to Another Wiki User the 2nd there is no way we'd know - I suggest you ask at a discussion board for one of those things elsewhere. It is very likely that if by "uses" you also mean "reads" that if there is a sizable population of people in those groups then someone besides you will have been exposed to us. — xaosflux Talk 23:18, 12 June 2020 (UTC)

Update request

On Meta:Requests for new languages please change “Wikipedia Awadhi“ from approved to created. Thanks!!! --151.49.47.168 (talk) 18:45, 11 June 2020 (UTC)

You need to make that request on Meta. We have no jurisdiction here on the English Wikipedia over other language projects. Phil Bridger (talk) 19:37, 11 June 2020 (UTC)

Help expand List of police violence incidents during George Floyd protests?

There have been some 400+ documented incidents of police violence in the past days, according to one attorney's data. We need help finding reliable sources and generating NPOV text describing them. Please help, it's a large project. Feoffer (talk) 22:20, 11 June 2020 (UTC)

Former Stubs

I am not sure where to ask this, if this is even a question. Occasionally I come across an article that has a stub template at the bottom, but the article is no longer a stub. What I have done is, first, to remove the stub template by manual editing. I understand that the stub template populates some categories, so that I am depopulating the non-stub from the stub categories. Second, the article is now Start Class. (Well, it might actually be C-class, but that is rare.) I can use the Rater gadget to add the article to any appropriate WikiProjects and to rate it at Start-Class. Is this the recommended way to deal with a former stub that has been expanded to a non-stub? Is there a different idea? Robert McClenon (talk) 23:30, 13 June 2020 (UTC)

That's basically how it works. --Izno (talk) 18:56, 14 June 2020 (UTC)

The Wikipedia Library: Authentication-based access and the Library Bundle now available!

The Wikipedia Library is pleased to announce the implementation of authentication-based access and the Library Bundle! These new features will help improve your research workflow by minimizing the number of individual logins you need to remember, and by providing on-demand access to a set of partners to all qualifying users without the need for manual application and approval. Along with the launch of Bundle/EZProxy, we are happy to announce several major new partnerships are now available, including large multidisciplinary collections from Springer Nature and ProQuest. Check out your Bundle eligibility and the new available collections by logging in at https://wikipedialibrary.wmflabs.org/. Please let me know if you have any questions, and feedback on the new systems can be left at the project page. Samwalton9 (WMF) (talk) 08:40, 10 June 2020 (UTC)

Sam, thanks for letting us know about this, and for all your hard work making it happen. SarahSV (talk) 00:54, 13 June 2020 (UTC)
SlimVirgin, Same here. TWL is one of the most amazing resources and this recent update made it even more useful by several fold. Thank you. -- RoySmith (talk) 01:10, 13 June 2020 (UTC)
Thanks for the kind words, glad you're finding it useful! :) Samwalton9 (WMF) (talk) 10:34, 15 June 2020 (UTC)

Request for Opinions for a Consensus

Greetings. I recently opened a discussion on the Famke Janssen talk page regarding whether rowspans should be included in the article's tables, specifically concerning the years column of said tables. WP:FILMOGRAPHY clearly states "Use of rowspan formatting in 'Year' columns is acceptable", but the opposing editor has reverted my edits twice, claiming rowspans as "unnecessary". More opinions for a consensus would be greatly appreciated. Armegon (talk) 23:30, 14 June 2020 (UTC)

Hello

Note that Eden Pastora died on 16 june according to Google. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 109.185.175.84 (talk)

Thanks. La República reported that he died on 13 June but the New York Times says 16 June. The best place to resolve matters would be at Talk:Edén Pastora. Phil Bridger (talk) 17:07, 16 June 2020 (UTC)

Awkward

Hi everyone, I find myself in an awkward situation, and would be grateful if one of you could take it under your wing to save me embarrassment. As User:Doric Loon, I have been an active Wikipedia editor for 15 years. In real life I am the academic Graeme Dunphy. Now, a couple of days ago User: Oskosst began a poorly-researched article about me at Graeme Dunphy. I don’t know this user, and he or she obviously does not know me, and I certainly did not request this. As a dedicated wikipedian it is important to me to avoid any impression of self-promotion, and so I do not intend to edit this article, and would prefer not to influence it in any way. However, it contains so much misinformation about me that I fear it would be detrimental to my academic career not to have it corrected. You see the bind. I left a message about this on Oskosst’s talk page on Saturday, but so far this has been ignored. I would be very grateful if some of you would re-examine the question of notability (I want no part in that discussion) and then either propose the article for deletion or write it up properly. The errors I find in the article as it stands are:

  1. I am not a historian. My subject is modern languages.
  2. I specialize in the LITERARY analysis of medieval historiography, not in the history itself
  3. I am professor of Translation at the FHWS in Würzburg, not professor of history in Regensburg. See university website (I was formerly lecturer in English in Regensburg, from 1993 till 2013.)
  4. My work on chronicles led to me editing the Encyclopedia of the Medieval Chronicle (see publisher’s listing), not the Encyclopedia of Early modern history. (It is true that I also edited five volumes of the latter work, but that was a translation project, and had nothing to do with the chronicles.)
  5. The six randomly selected chronicles listed under “career” are not all ones I worked on. I assume Oskosst has simply scanned Wikipedia and found chronicles with the EMC in the citations.
  6. I am STILL general editor of The Year's Work in Modern Language Studies. See publisher’s listing
  7. The bibliography is incorrect, with the wrong title for the Annolied edition and no distinction between works I wrote, works I edited and works I merely translated. A rather out of date but at least accurate publication list is on-line here.

I am available to answer any questions, but I would prefer for someone to take this up and deal with it without me being involved any further. I hope it was OK for me to raise it. Thanks in advance. --Doric Loon (talk) 11:41, 1 June 2020 (UTC)

Yes, this is an awkward situation, I'll do what I can to address this on the basis of reliable sources. The easiest starting point seems to be the bibliography. Phil Bridger (talk) 12:12, 1 June 2020 (UTC)
I've made a start with cleaning up the bibliography, but will have to leave this for a few hours before doing any more on it. I am going to see my grandson now (in the garden with social distancing) as today is the first day since before he learned to walk that I am allowed to do any more than see him on Skype and wave through the window. Phil Bridger (talk) 12:44, 1 June 2020 (UTC)
Thanks, Phil. Enjoy the day with the family. --Doric Loon (talk) 13:00, 1 June 2020 (UTC)
Doric Loon, I just want to point out WP:NOTPUBLICFIGURE, WP:BIOSELF and WP:AUTOPROB may provide some useful guidance. -- RoySmith (talk) 19:52, 4 June 2020 (UTC)
I think Doric Loon perfectly well dealt with those potential problems in his original statement here. I haven't had as much time as I thought I would to do enough on this article, so it would be good if someone else could do so. Phil Bridger (talk) 20:38, 4 June 2020 (UTC)
I've been getting concerned about Oskosst's editing for a while now. Their articles tend to have a lot of dodgy sourcing (although with proper defsort, authcon and reference sections, they're far from the worst) and their most recent article, despite the only source being the subject's heartfelt 2016 obituary, continuously referred to him as alive throughout. Unfortunately, they're one of these pure content contributors (I've run into a few like them) who never say anything on talk pages, never talk about themselves under any circumstances and never acknowledge suggestions for improvement. Such contributors often stagger on creating inaccurate content, their talk pages covered with the same suggestions, until they get blocked under CIR; Oskosst's articles generally are good enough for them to not quite reach that point. Encouraging such contributors to develop social skills and take on board concerns and points for improvement is often a challenge, and I don't have any suggestions about how to do it. Blythwood (talk) 22:28, 9 June 2020 (UTC)
Thank you, everyone. All the issues I had here have now been dealt with. And I see Oskosst has been banished from the realm, so there will be no more problems from him for a while. So all's well that ends well. --Doric Loon (talk) 12:17, 15 June 2020 (UTC)
  • Oskosst was the latest incarnation of a long-term problem user Novonium - see SPI archive - and has now been blocked. It's a shame that we took two years to spot this latest occurrence. I have checked through all their article creations, and nominated for speedy deletion G5 all those where no other editor had made a substantial contribution, which I took to mean more than just rearranging the text, formatting references, adding ISBNs to publications, adding categories, and similar. I may have been a bit generous in leaving some, or cavalier in nominating others for deletion. This editor seems desperate to create new articles, regardless of whether they have any understanding of the content (the latest howler being some "fl." dates interpreted by them as birth and death dates). They never reply to comments on their talk page, though a few years back declared their approach to the formatting of references in this exchange: User_talk:Novonium#Can_we_chat?. I wonder how many of their other articles are as painfully inaccurate as we know Graeme Dunphy to have been: a worrying thought. Perhaps at least their BLPs need another check, as subsequent editors will have WP:AGF'd, incorrectly, that the creating editor was competent. PamD 11:44, 17 June 2020 (UTC)
The list of their remaining article creations is here. PamD 11:51, 17 June 2020 (UTC)
@Doric Loon, Blythwood, and Phil Bridger: In case you're no longer watching. PamD 14:38, 17 June 2020 (UTC)

Small seal size

Hi all. At Seal of Zion, Illinois, I've included the old seal in the infobox but it comes up very small on my Chrome browser, so small that you can't see the details. Is there a way we can make it larger but still keeping it in the infobox? The C of E God Save the Queen! (talk) 08:24, 16 June 2020 (UTC)

I am using Chrome, and I could clearly see the details. I have increased the size nonetheless, is it OK now?– Ammarpad (talk) 09:04, 18 June 2020 (UTC)
@Ammarpad: It is though it seems to be coming out larger now than the lead image. The C of E God Save the Queen! (talk) 14:56, 18 June 2020 (UTC)
It's displaying normally for me. The first seal is bigger. It's using frameless and upright parameters via the infobox template. These parameters in turn are affected by what you set as 'Thumbnail size' in your preferences. Mine is 220px, which is the default. – Ammarpad (talk) 10:40, 20 June 2020 (UTC)

see Template_talk:Dablinks#Broken_links. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 01:26, 18 June 2020 (UTC)

See VPT Johnuniq (talk) 01:53, 18 June 2020 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Aurat (word)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Aurat (word) has been relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.

Bookku (talk) 07:36, 18 June 2020 (UTC)

Article name help

While doing WP:WCW work I ran across Akim Tafo. The issue is that both references and others suggest the name is New Tafo, as opposed to Old Tafo. New Tafo is a redirect to another town. I can't think of what the correct rename would be, especially given that Akyem (from the Old Tafo article) seems to be the common spelling, but Akem, Akim, and Aki are all stated to be correct. Jerod Lycett (talk) 17:30, 18 June 2020 (UTC)

You can open move request so that people interested can discuss. See Wikipedia:Requested move. – Ammarpad (talk) 10:42, 20 June 2020 (UTC)
@Ammarpad: I know how to move it, I just literally can't figure out what the correct name should be. I'm thinking of just going with its district: New Tafo, Abuakwa North Municipal Assembly. Jerod Lycett (talk) 18:27, 20 June 2020 (UTC)
I didn't say you should move it. Reread my comment. – Ammarpad (talk) 18:32, 20 June 2020 (UTC)

Mismatched redirects needing cleanup

For a few years now, AnomieBOT has been creating redirects to help navigating to pages with titles containing en-dashes, since en-dashes are hard to type so people will type an ASCII hyphen-minus instead. I recently noticed that a few thousand of these had since become outdated due to page moves of the en-dashed titles and the like, so I had the bot start updating the ones it originally created when the target should change.

However, there are a few thousand where others have created similar redirects, and which probably require context to properly resolve. I've generated a list of these at quarry:query/45784. Probably in most cases the "asciiTitle" should be updated to redirect to "fancyTarget" or "fancyTitle", but it'll need someone to actually look through them to make sure. Don't forget to add {{R avoided double redirect}} as appropriate so they can get updated in the future too. Any takers? Anomie⚔ 20:06, 20 June 2020 (UTC)

Invitation to participate in the upcoming WPWP Campaign

Hello Wikipedians,

This is to invite you to join the WPWP Campaign to help improve Wikipedia articles with photos and win prizes. The campaign will run from 1st July 2020 to 31st August 2020.

The campaign primarily aims at using images from Wikimedia Commons on Wikipedia articles that are lacking images. Participants will choose among Wikipedia pages without photo images, then add a suitable file from among the many thousands of photos in the Wikimedia Commons, especially those uploaded from thematic contests (Wiki Loves Africa, Wiki Loves Earth, Wiki Loves Folklore, etc.) over the years.

Please visit the campaign page to learn more about the WPWP Campaign.

With kind regards,

Thank you,

Deborah Schwartz Jacobs, Communities Liaison, On behalf of the Wikipedia Pages Wanting Photos Organizing Team

21:43, 20 June 2020 (UTC)

People's Mujahedin of Iran

Hello all. This article has always been a source of dispute and two admins have helped resolve issues almost on a full-time basis. (Thanks to both User:Vanamonde93 and User:El_C). The talk page was always a battle-ground for presenting sources of too opposite sides. But all of a sudden the talk page is flooded with RfCs to remove contents from the article that are somehow detrimental to the face of the group. I have been involved in the discussions of the article for more than a year now and things did not used to be like this. May be I am wrong, but this seems to me like a new phenomenon that does not sound normal. Specially with all the fuss going around about the US government thinking of this group as a replacement for Iran's current regime. Any thought on this topic is appreciated. --Kazemita1 (talk) 10:42, 22 June 2020 (UTC)

What are you hoping to achieve here, Kazemita1? RfCs are meant to attract outside participation; why is that a bad thing? Having a large number of RfCs on a single talk page is indeed unusual, but it's necessitated by the fact that none of the editors there are willing to budge from their positions on content, and so RfCs are the only ways to reach agreement. Other equally contentious topics also have lots of RfCs about them. Vanamonde (Talk) 14:24, 22 June 2020 (UTC)
I am precisely hoping to attract more users in a rather "natural" way by posting here. The way it is in the talk page right now -and I hope you noticed that- is that user proportions are skewed. --Kazemita1 (talk) 06:00, 23 June 2020 (UTC)
Possibly you've already seen WP:APPNOTE, but if not, it may have something helpful. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 08:58, 24 June 2020 (UTC)

Two articles for the same person

Hyman Witcover and Hyman Whitcover each say that they are not to be confused with the other, but they certainly seem to be the same person. Can someone fix this? Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 04:50, 24 June 2020 (UTC)

This one Hyman Witcover (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) was created Dec 11, 2013 while this one Hyman Whitcover (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) Dec 21, 2013. Both were created by Candleabracadabra (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) who was blocked as a sock of ChildofMidnight (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log). The second one has slightly more sources and a pic. Merges are beyond my skills tho. MarnetteD|Talk 05:27, 24 June 2020 (UTC)
I added the photo a short time ago. I don't know which is the correct spelling - references have both. But I found "Witcover" more often. Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 06:02, 24 June 2020 (UTC)
WP:COMMONNAME I think covers it, but you should use the name found more commonly. Jerod Lycett (talk) 06:24, 24 June 2020 (UTC)
Witcover seems to be in more of the sources: I've added a "mergeto" tag. Was the now-blocked user trying to make a point about reliability of sources, I wonder, or just getting muddled? PamD 08:07, 24 June 2020 (UTC)
Whee ~ --Izno (talk) 12:35, 24 June 2020 (UTC)

 Fixed, thanks. Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 19:34, 24 June 2020 (UTC)

How do I request changes to Policies?

The title says it all. –User456541 18:48, 26 June 2020 (UTC)

You go to the talk page of the policy of interest and then explain what you would change and why. Then you wait to see if someone disagrees. --Izno (talk) 18:54, 26 June 2020 (UTC)
@User456541: broader changes can also be made at the village pump policy page or you can get extra feedback on your ideas at the village pump ideas page. Nosebagbear (talk) 10:08, 29 June 2020 (UTC)

Annual contest Wikipedia Pages Wanting Photos

Wikipedia Pages Wanting Photos (WPWP)
Wikipedia Pages Wanting Photos (WPWP)

This is to invite you to join the Wikipedia Pages Wanting Photos (WPWP) campaign to help improve Wikipedia articles with photos and win prizes. The campaign starts today 1st July 2020 and closes 31st August 2020.

The campaign primarily aims at using images from Wikimedia Commons on Wikipedia articles that are lacking images. Participants will choose among Wikipedia pages without photo images, then add a suitable file from among the many thousands of photos in the Wikimedia Commons, especially those uploaded from thematic contests (Wiki Loves Africa, Wiki Loves Earth, Wiki Loves Folklore, etc.) over the years.

Please visit the campaign page to learn more about the WPWP Campaign.

With kind regards,

Thank you,

Deborah Schwartz Jacobs, Communities Liaison, On behalf of the Wikipedia Pages Wanting Photos Organizing Team - 08:24, 1 July 2020 (UTC)

feel free to translate this message to your local language when this helps your community

The Book

Screenshot "The Book" with an english page (300+ language available)

Hello, I want to inform the english community about my new project "The Book". This project shows the Wikipedia like a old lexikon in a multicolumn page. You can turn to the next or previouse page. All article are in alphabetic order and "The Book" shows only the first text section and the first image. Also you can go to a specific title or random page.

It is fun to explore our Wikipedia with this new way. You will find many interessting articles on your way in "The Book". -- sk (talk) 14:50, 2 July 2020 (UTC)

Stefan Kühn, this is really cool! Must have taken a lot of work. Thanks for sharing. Schazjmd (talk) 16:39, 2 July 2020 (UTC)
Uh oh...it's gone down (503 Service Unavailable). Schazjmd (talk) 19:27, 2 July 2020 (UTC)
Schazjmd This was my mistake. It is back again. Sorry. :-) -- sk (talk) 20:02, 2 July 2020 (UTC)
Stefan Kühn, I like the inclusion of redirects. This is a really interesting way to view the encyclopedia. Schazjmd (talk) 20:05, 2 July 2020 (UTC)

Purpose of Category:Wikipedia article lists

You are invited to join the discussion at Category talk:Wikipedia article lists. —⁠andrybak (talk) 20:23, 3 July 2020 (UTC)

RfC on tagging BLP with template messages signaling COI and OWN

There is an RfC on the following link: Talk:Boris_Malagurski#RfC_on_Template_messages_and_Article_sections. It concerns dispute over tagging the BLP article with template messages which point to the possible COI and OWN issues that plagues the article for more than a ten years.--౪ Santa ౪99° 01:40, 5 July 2020 (UTC)

Fixing WP:FANCRUFT

Jazmin Chaudhry has been tagged with {{FanPOV}}. I have been trying to edit the article to be a genuine article and not fancruft. But since BLPs are by default contentious subject and porn is by default disreputable subject, it is difficult for me to say how much I succeeded. Please, take a look at the article and let me know what it needs to have the tag removed. Aditya(talk • contribs) 07:06, 5 July 2020 (UTC)

Unintelligible syntax of family tree templates

I want to add Hideo Hatoyama to {{Hatoyama family tree}}, but the template's syntax is completely impenetrable; it is in effect read-only to non-expert editors. Do we have an automated process for editing such templates? If not, should we even allow them, given that we aim to be a work that anybody can edit? Sandstein 10:23, 7 July 2020 (UTC)

Sandstein a noticeboard for template update help: Wikipedia:Requested templates. A collection of these technical help noticeboards is at the top of WP:BOTREQ (wiki templates, lua templates, SQL queries, etc..). There are areas of Wikipedia that are technical enough not everyone can or even should edit, but everyone can ask for help. -- GreenC 13:36, 7 July 2020 (UTC)
I have added him.[8] I just placed him to the right without moving others in the row. It may not be the prettiest solution but it wasn't that hard. PrimeHunter (talk) 14:07, 7 July 2020 (UTC)

Reorganization of Category:Wikipedia administration

Category:Wikipedia administration is the top-level maintenance category in the category system of English Wikipedia. You are invited to join the discussion at Category talk:Wikipedia administration#2020 July overhaul. —⁠andrybak (talk) 22:38, 7 July 2020 (UTC)

2020-07 help need at Youtube

Hello, I need your help to report and deplatform the following videos at Youtube, which support the Eurabia theory, a conspiracy theory very similar to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion: Visite fortuitement prolongée (talk) 09:05, 5 July 2020 (UTC)

Inappropriate Youtube content can be reported on https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/2802027?hl=en&ref_topic=9387085 – if you phrase a substantiated report I'd be glad to add a submission. --Zac67 (talk) 09:40, 5 July 2020 (UTC)
Pinging Beetstra for a spam check WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:41, 7 July 2020 (UTC)

@Visite fortuitement prolongée, Zac67, and WhatamIdoing: the only thing we can do here is blacklist them (possibly on meta) if they are demonstrably abused or 'very bad links', but a better solution is removing them at the source (if possible). --Dirk Beetstra T C 06:16, 8 July 2020 (UTC)

Sylvia Acevedo

Sylvia Acevedo is the president of Girl Scout of America, and there's a member of that organization requesting an evaluation of their change at Talk:Sylvia Acevedo#Updating Sylvia's Wikipedia article. Some help would be nice. Thank you, Comte0 (talk) 07:39, 9 July 2020 (UTC)

Feedback on movement names

Hello. Apologies if you are not reading this message in your native language. Please help translate to other languages. if necessary. Thank you!

There are a lot of conversations happening about the future of our movement names. We hope that you are part of these discussions and that your community is represented.

Since 16 June, the Foundation Brand Team has been running a survey in 7 languages about 3 naming options. There are also community members sharing concerns about renaming in a Community Open Letter.

Our goal in this call for feedback is to hear from across the community, so we encourage you to participate in the survey, the open letter, or both. The survey will go through 7 July in all timezones. Input from the survey and discussions will be analyzed and published on Meta-Wiki.

Thanks for thinking about the future of the movement, --The Brand Project team, 19:44, 2 July 2020 (UTC)

Note: The survey is conducted via a third-party service, which may subject it to additional terms. For more information on privacy and data-handling, see the survey privacy statement.

Thanks Elitre for the notification, though five days isn’t long. It would be instructive to compare the responses before and after announcement: will the Brand Project Team (or whomever analyses the submissions) have the ability to slice up the results based on date?
Thanks also for acknowledging that there have been "concerns" over the rebrand. For the benefit of those reading this who don’t already know: there have also been concerns over the structure of the survey, which prevented an earlier announcement via CentralNotice. I’m not bringing this up to rehash that discussion here, just to let people know that there are reasons they mightn’t have seen a link to the live survey before now.
Pelagic ( messages ) Z – (11:21 Sat 04, AEST) 01:21, 4 July 2020 (UTC)
I am disappointed that this survey occurred too quietly for many of us to respond in time. Expect to drive away a lot of valuable (but perhaps not valued) editors if it is imposed. Certes (talk) 11:11, 9 July 2020 (UTC)

Request for comments

Greetings to all,

A Request for comment has been initiated regarding RfC about whether to allow use of honorofic 'Allama' with the names or not?

Requesting your comments to formalize the relevant policy @ Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Islam-related articles

Thanks

Bookku (talk) 18:07, 9 July 2020 (UTC)

Announcing a new wiki project! Welcome, Abstract Wikipedia

Moved to Wikipedia:Village pump (WMF)/Archive 1 § Announcing a new wiki project! Welcome, Abstract Wikipedia

Hi all,

It is my honor to introduce Abstract Wikipedia, a new project that has been unanimously approved by the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees. Abstract Wikipedia proposes a new way to generate baseline encyclopedic content in a multilingual fashion, allowing more contributors and more readers to share more knowledge in more languages. It is an approach that aims to make cross-lingual cooperation easier on our projects, increase the sustainability of our movement through expanding access to participation, improve the user experience for readers of all languages, and innovate in free knowledge by connecting some of the strengths of our movement to create something new.

This is our first new project in over seven years. Abstract Wikipedia was submitted as a project proposal by Denny Vrandečić in May 2020 [1] after years of preparation and research, leading to a detailed plan and lively discussions in the Wikimedia communities. We know that the energy and the creativity of the community often runs up against language barriers, and information that is available in one language may not make it to other language Wikipedias. Abstract Wikipedia intends to look and feel like a Wikipedia, but build on the powerful, language-independent conceptual models of Wikidata, with the goal of letting volunteers create and maintain Wikipedia articles across our polyglot Wikimedia world.

The project will allow volunteers to assemble the fundamentals of an article using words and entities from Wikidata. Because Wikidata uses conceptual models that are meant to be universal across languages, it should be possible to use and extend these building blocks of knowledge to create models for articles that also have universal value. Using code, volunteers will be able to translate these abstract “articles” into their own languages. If successful, this could eventually allow everyone to read about any topic in Wikidata in their own language.

As you can imagine, this work will require a lot of software development, and a lot of cooperation among Wikimedians. In order to make this effort possible, Denny will join the Foundation as a staff member in July and lead this initiative. You may know Denny as the creator of Wikidata, a long-time community member, a former staff member at Wikimedia Deutschland, and a former Trustee at the Wikimedia Foundation [2]. We are very excited that Denny will bring his skills and expertise to work on this project alongside the Foundation’s product, technology, and community liaison teams.

It is important to acknowledge that this is an experimental project, and that every Wikipedia community has different needs. This project may offer some communities great advantages. Other communities may engage less. Every language Wikipedia community will be free to choose and moderate whether or how they would use content from this project.

We are excited that this new wiki-project has the possibility to advance knowledge equity through increased access to knowledge. It also invites us to consider and engage with critical questions about how and by whom knowledge is constructed. We look forward to working in cooperation with the communities to think through these important questions.

There is much to do as we begin designing a plan for Abstract Wikipedia in close collaboration with our communities. I encourage you to get involved by going to the project page and joining the new mailing list [3]. We recognize that Abstract Wikipedia is ambitious, but we also recognize its potential. We invite you all to join us on a new, unexplored path.

Yours,

Katherine Maher (Executive Director, Wikimedia Foundation)

  1. ^ Abstract Wikipedia
  2. ^ User:Denny
  3. ^ Abstract Wikipedia mailing list

Sent by m:User:Elitre (WMF) 20:06, 9 July 2020 (UTC) - m:Special:MyLanguage/Abstract Wikipedia/July 2020 announcement

I don't know much about wp internals but i just remembered that deletionism is a thing and it made me sad

It's okay to have pages for niche interest groups! Those are the people that need our help the most, right? Every human being and thing made by a human being on Earth has someone who cared about them enough to create them. People who don't want to see an article on niche things can just not look at them. Anyway I won't be checking back on this, so if you delete it I won't know. Just like, try to remember that people think things are awesome that you don't care about and vice versa, okay? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:184:4600:8780:AD79:39D5:DF11:912D (talk) 20:10, 12 July 2020 (UTC)

I find meta:Deletionism#Rationale for deletion fairly persuasive, and I think most other editors do, too. I don't take joy in removing content other people have worked on, but the credibility of the project is of top importance, and it's only possible to maintain articles at a minimum standard of quality when the project has a defined scope. Sometimes it's better to have no article than a bad article; there is plenty of room elsewhere on the internet for the things that don't belong on Wikipedia. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 20:53, 12 July 2020 (UTC)

Temporary restore List of parliamentary speakers in Africa in 1965

Moved to WP:AN § Temporary restore List of parliamentary speakers in Africa in 1965

--Izno (talk) 14:14, 13 July 2020 (UTC)

Who is MrOllie?

He seems to undo many people's edits, including mine, to the dissatisfaction of many editors, as seen on his talk page. He is one of the top editors of Wikipedia, although he is not an admin. Who is he, and why does he keep undoing edits? Félix An (talk) 16:27, 13 July 2020 (UTC)

This is not the place to discuss other editors. The place to ask this question is User talk:MrOllie. The only person who can answer that question, or decide whether it should be answered per WP:OUTING, is that editor. Phil Bridger (talk) 16:56, 13 July 2020 (UTC)

In review of: Light

In review of: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light, in the fourth paragraph, I found a sentence I don't understand.

What does this sentence mean?: "However, the energy imparted by the waves is absorbed at single locations [the way particles are absorbed]."

My understanding of physics is that particles collide, but are not absorbed. Is the sentence using the word "particles" as a description of a photon of light? Or in other words, is it just saying that photons are particles? If so there is something wrong with the English. How are particles absorbed if they are say, electrons or protons? don't they bounce off? Why are we asked to envision particles being "absorbed" and how does that work? Is it really the same as photon absorption? Isn't particles-being-absorbed more like cold fusion?63.228.106.40 (talk) 01:45, 15 July 2020 (UTC)login wont work so signature stuff dont either

"The equation to relate energy to mass is Einstein’s famous E=mc2 and the equation for photon energy is Planck’s E=hf. There is no method in physics to describe the energy change from particles to photons or vice versa." - https://energywavetheory.com/photons/photon-interactions/ — Preceding unsigned comment added by 63.228.106.40 (talk) 01:27, 15 July 2020 (UTC)

68... this would be better addressed at Wikipedia:Reference desk. — xaosflux Talk 01:57, 15 July 2020 (UTC)

Look for extremely long HTML comments

I'm not sure where to suggest this, but: it was recently discovered (see Talk:Fascism#Long_section_of_material_commented_out) that an extremely long section of the aforementioned article (10,000+ bytes!) had been hidden in an HTML comment in 2012(!) and thus went unnoticed for 8 years(!). I would like to suggest that someone with just a bit more technical skill than me should make a list of articles with extremely long HTML comments, say ones longer than 1,000 bytes (or some other cutoff), on the grounds that such comments probably represent material like this that should either not be hidden or not be in the article. -sche (talk) 18:37, 11 July 2020 (UTC)

@-sche: please post at Wikipedia:Request a query - someone may create that for you. — xaosflux Talk 15:40, 15 July 2020 (UTC)

RfC on the article regarding Santa Claus

Please see: Talk:Santa Claus#RfC about the wording lead section of the article. Félix An (talk) 15:55, 15 July 2020 (UTC)

Proposed small tweak to Special:Statistics

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T258095

At Special:Statistics, the "uploaded files" line is slightly misleading, since it refers only to locally hosted files, not the vast majority of files used in articles, which are hosted on Wikimedia Commons. I propose to add a clarification line (similar to the clarification line already beneath the pages statistic just above it) that reads (Includes only locally hosted files, not the 110,777,204 files hosted at Wikimedia Commons) or something similar. Would there be support for that change?

Apologies for bringing something so minor here — the page is full-protected (although it receives only ~1000 views/day) and I've been informed by Izno that my edit request cannot be actioned until there is demonstrated consensus for the change, and I don't know of another better forum. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 00:50, 12 July 2020 (UTC)

You refer to your proposal at MediaWiki talk:Statistics-files#Protected edit request on 11 July 2020. qqx shows there is no MediaWiki message for a description in that field. It could be requested at phab: but that may take a long time or be ignored or rejected. MediaWiki:Statistics-files says Uploaded files which is merely the link text for the automatically added link to Special:MediaStatistics. If we added an explanation then it would become part of the link text and couldn't contain other links, e.g. this for your proposal:
Uploaded files
(Includes only locally hosted files, not the 110,777,204 files hosted at Wikimedia Commons).
That may be a bit much for a link text. Special:MediaStatistics displays MediaWiki:Mediastatistics-summary where we can write any wikitext and it may be better to give information about Wikimedia Commons. Then the link text could just add "(Includes only locally hosted files)", and interested readers can click the link for more information. PrimeHunter (talk) 07:42, 12 July 2020 (UTC)
I don't think trying to add the count of uploads in the sharedrepository to the local statistics is useful, just like we don't count revisions on wikidata. — xaosflux Talk 02:00, 15 July 2020 (UTC)
@Xaosflux: We should be careful to avoid assuming that others are the same as ourselves here. If Special:Statistics were only accessed by power users, then yeah, we could assume people know, but the page is linked from places like WP:About, so I don't think that's a safe assumption. There are many many people (basically everyone who's not a power user) who get confused by Commons files vs. local files. Fixing this would be a very small step toward making ourselves less opaque to newcomers, but it seems it may not be worth the trouble. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 15:17, 15 July 2020 (UTC)
@Sdkb: the local statistics page shows local statistics, so it is accurate. You could request a software update to add a description to that line such as as seen on the other lines, something like:
(parentheses: (statistics-uploads-desc: ))
this could initialize a new message, MediaWiki:statistics-uploads-desc - perhaps with default text, "All uploads in this wiki, not including shared repositories". This can be requested at phab. — xaosflux Talk 15:24, 15 July 2020 (UTC)
 Done. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 18:51, 15 July 2020 (UTC)
A message to add this description already exists for a long time; MediaWiki:Statistics-summary. It's empty string by default. However, only the message key exists but it's not really implemented by the special page and that's a bug. – Ammarpad (talk) 19:47, 15 July 2020 (UTC)
@Ammarpad: wouldn't that be a summary for the entire page, not for that line item? — xaosflux Talk 20:46, 15 July 2020 (UTC)
@Xaosflux:, yes, I conflated two related issues here. I have responded on the phab task. – Ammarpad (talk) 07:58, 16 July 2020 (UTC)

Wiki Loves the Olympics 2020

Hello, although finally 2020 is not an Olympic year, you can replace some of that nostalgia by editing about the Olympic and Paralympic Games (in any language) between 15 July and 15 August. There are many articles to create and improve. You can find more information on Meta page. Greetings. --Rodelar (talk) 11:15, 16 July 2020 (UTC)

Inactive stadiums

Hello! I ask the administrator to help me protect the List of football stadiums in Belarus from entering inaccurate information by other users.

I am working on articles about football stadiums in Belarus (Belarusian and English versions). In the last month, I had to deal with persistent attempts by an unknown user which lists information about the stadium in disrepair. The list of stadiums contains only operating facilities. Stadiums under construction in Belarus, stadiums under reconstruction, stadiums in disrepair and closed stadiums are not included in this list (description to the list).

However, this user ignores my edits and stubbornly continues to mislead the readers of Wikipedia with his edits. The Torpedo Stadium in Minsk is not allowed by the Football Federation to host official matches as it is in disrepair. Moreover, the Torpedo Minsk football club does not exist, it has been disbanded! Instead of editing articles about the above stadium and club, an unknown contributor continues to mislead people on the football stadiums list.

In the discussions for the article, I separately asked users from outside the Republic of Belarus not to enter information about which they do not have reliable sources. I also suggested that he create a separate article on stadiums in disrepair and include this sports facility there. This user ignored them too! Therefore, I ask the administrator to help me protect the list from such edits by a member of the Wikipedia project unknown to me.

If I added my message to the wrong section, I apologize. Thanks for your attention! --Football Beetle (talk) 12:58, 17 July 2020 (UTC)

Why not just have a separate section of the list for inactive stadiums? – Teratix ₵ 13:40, 17 July 2020 (UTC)
Information about inactive stadiums in the Republic of Belarus is not interesting for Wikipedia readers. I have already suggested creating a separate list of inactive football stadiums in Europe. Let users add stadiums there even built in 1890. --Football Beetle (talk) 18:21, 17 July 2020 (UTC)
The best way to present content is a matter for talk page discussion, but please bear in mind that this is an encyclopedia, and as such it includes historical as well as current information. Phil Bridger (talk) 19:51, 17 July 2020 (UTC)

History according to the Catholic Church

I am not sure what to make of this article, isn't there already articles covering this type of thing? Govvy (talk) 18:54, 14 July 2020 (UTC)

Yes Govvy, looks like a WP:POVFORK of Human history. What's going on here, Oct13? – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 19:47, 14 July 2020 (UTC)
You can see who created a page and when on its history, or in the page information such as here. — xaosflux Talk 01:58, 15 July 2020 (UTC)
I've PRODed the article. – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 18:08, 19 July 2020 (UTC)

Đerdap national park

Article "Đerdap national park" should be renamed to "Đerdap National Park" --SrpskiAnonimac (talk) 16:30, 16 July 2020 (UTC)

See Help:Moving a page as well as WP:RM about how to request someone do it. – Ammarpad (talk) 05:50, 20 July 2020 (UTC)

List of sources for the Crusades

Please see Talk:List of sources for the Crusades where I have initiated two discussions:

  1. Is this an encyclopaedic article?
  2. Article size (now at >230k and what to do about it).

-- PBS (talk) 17:12, 19 July 2020 (UTC)

sv wikipedia

why articles in sv Wikipedia decrease

Amirh123 (talk) 05:18, 23 July 2020 (UTC)

@Amirh123: Most articles in the Swedish Wikipedia were created by the automated Lsjbot which hasn't edited there since 2016. Kitayama has recently deleted a lot of articles as non-notable. PrimeHunter (talk) 07:41, 23 July 2020 (UTC)

Could anyone help making the categories of Wikipedia and of Wikimedia Commons the same?

I have noticed many differences between the categories of Wikipedia and of Wikimedia Commons, like Category:Religious objects and c:Category:Religious items and their sub-categories. This situation has influenced Wikidata very much. Could anyone help?--迴廊彼端 (talk) 08:29, 18 July 2020 (UTC)

迴廊彼端, my more neurotic side is very ready to agree with you that it'd be nice to have some consistency. But upon reflection, I'm not sure what the actual harm is from having them be different, other than perhaps some duplicated editor effect when it comes to renaming debates. There are also enough differences between here and Commons that I could see there being need for different category names/structures in a few instances. Overall, I'm going to need to see evidence of something WP:BROKEN before I'd be able to get behind this, and even then, it seems like it'd be a daunting task. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 06:48, 19 July 2020 (UTC)
@迴廊彼端: I know Commons. It'll never happen. For an example, just look at this proposal to rename Category:Automobiles to Category:Cars, an excellent suggestion as "automobiles" is a regional word, is less common than car, its use in the countries that do use it has been steadily declining over the years and "automobiles" makes subcategories much harder to find because anyone searching for c:Category:Turquoise cars will find nothing as that category is located at c:Category:Turquoise automobiles. And if you hear anyone say "police automobile, they need help. So long story short, the proposal was rejected. The category will be renamed in the future because "automobile" will die out eventually, so really all that happened was they kicked the can down the road. 迴廊彼端, I admire your positivity and innocence. But forget about it. - Alexis Jazz 08:54, 19 July 2020 (UTC)
After years of trying, I've never found an actual procedure for renaming Commons cats that functions. There doesn't seem to be any automated way of actually moving items to the new name. If you empty a cat & fill up a new one nobody will notice in small cats, but otherwise the thousands of appallingly-named categories (misspellings, wrong language etc etc) will be with us forever. This is why there are so few Cfd discussions, with some still open since 2013 - even if a move were agreed it can be a huge amount of messy work to actually do it. Johnbod (talk) 12:13, 19 July 2020 (UTC)
It isn't just a difference between Commons and here, we also have differences between different versions of Wikipedia, and that's fine. We are a group of crowd sourced wikis operating in a decentralised unplanned way, that's overall a much more efficient way to do things, but it does sometimes mean that there are differences between projects. So {{Commonscat}} enables you to link to a commons category with a different name to your article, but then if we were to try and synchronise Commons to at least one version of Wikipedia we quickly hit the issue that there are 300 language versions of Wikipedia, and that's before we point out something more basic. Most of the time we are linking Wikipedia to the Wikimedia Commons category system we aren't linking category to category; we are linking article to category so we can put a link in an article to say that we have more images available, whilst categories on wikipedia are for organising groups of articles..... ϢereSpielChequers 12:41, 19 July 2020 (UTC)
All true, but not all that relevant. By their own standards (generally use English, with correct grammar & spelling) vast numbers of Commons categories are wrong, but effectively they can't be changed. Johnbod (talk) 12:55, 19 July 2020 (UTC)
I have quite a few categorisation edits on commons, and it hasn't been my experience that categories on commons can't be changed, especially where the reason is clearcut and within commons policy. There must be thousands of images that I have recategorised where the category was ambiguous, and while I haven't done nearly as much typo fixing there as here, I don't get pushback when I do. ϢereSpielChequers 13:23, 19 July 2020 (UTC)
Yes, you can move images, but you can't just rename a category & get the contents moved automatically (as on WP) - or if you can, how and where? I have 163,000 edits on Commons btw - it wouldn't be so many if you could just rename categories. Johnbod (talk) 16:06, 19 July 2020 (UTC)
Ah, yes it can be done, but not particularly quickly, even if you use catalot that only works in batches of 200, and changing subcategories is a faff. Mind you much of the problem is the reluctance to do category redirects. If commons was as relaxed about category redirects as Wikipedia was about redirects then issues about automobiles v cars would become irrelevant. ϢereSpielChequers 17:26, 19 July 2020 (UTC)
  • I'm not sure that there's any point in continuing this discussion here, both because there is nothing we can do on the English Wikipedia without coordinating this with the other language Wikipedias (for example, I am told that the the German Wikipedia's category system is very different from ours) and that this seems to have morphed into a discussion purely about Commons categories, which should be discussed on Commons. Phil Bridger (talk) 17:47, 19 July 2020 (UTC)
  • Indeed, though that is how it began. Compatibility with a Commons category I think never appears as an argument at our Cfd, & I'm sure would be given no weight if it did. Johnbod (talk) 01:08, 20 July 2020 (UTC)

Thank you all for the responses. I'm an editor who mainly work on categorization of Chinese Wikipedia and multi-language pages linking on Wikidata. Considered that the main language of Commons is English and English Wikipedia takes a leading position, I have tried to create Wikidata links according to Commons and English Wikipedia. However I got totally confused when I found that stove links to commons:Category:Heating stoves and kitchen stoves links to commons:Category:Stoves. I know It's not broken, but it could be a barrier for creating meaningful links on Wikidata, especially Wikidata needs consistency between the categories of Commons and of English Wikipedia. So that's why I proposed this problem here. Please help. Don't be afraid that new categories don't correspond to other 300 language versions of Wikipedia. The consistency between Commons and English Wikipedia would helps a lot because Commons mainly works in English. And if we don't start now, I'm afraid there will be more and more similar however different categories in both places. I'm going to proposed this on Commons, and it seems more easily to create, move, and delete categories on Commons.

@Johnbod:Maybe Cat-a-lot and the templates of Commons like{{category redirect|the category you want direct to‎}}, {{Move|New name|Reason|2020-07-20}}, {{SD|the criterion code of speedy deletetion}}helps? I have used these templates lots of times to deal less-used or unuseful categories. --迴廊彼端 (talk) 12:07, 20 July 2020 (UTC)

I use both, but moving a large category is very time-consuming, and one is supposed to get consensus at the CFD page, where everything seems to take a minimum of several months - as I said, some discussions begun in 2013 are still open. I haven't tried speedies - perhaps I should. But as I understand it, the articles & sub-cats would still have to moved manually. Johnbod (talk) 13:00, 20 July 2020 (UTC)
I've run into the stoves issue before — the disambiguation there is a mess. I posted about it at WikiProject Home Living, but (hello systemic gender bias) that project is pretty much dead, so I'm not overly hopeful of getting a reply before 2030. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 20:45, 20 July 2020 (UTC)
  • If the goal is to make things easier for Wikidata, don’t expect a whole lot of cooperation from WP.en on this. There is a history of antipathy and frustration between the two projects. Blueboar (talk) 14:06, 20 July 2020 (UTC)

@Johnbod:Maybe removing some articles into sub-cats first would help? I often move all files into other category and use speedy deletetion.

@Sdkb:I'm going to help you there, especially by Wikidata.

@Blueboar:Sorry to heard about that. Could you tell me what happened in short?--迴廊彼端 (talk) 14:31, 26 July 2020 (UTC)

If you mean on Wikipedia, you are not supposed to "move all files into other category and use speedy deletetion", but take it to Cfd for the community to discuss. As I say above, on Commons the chances are no one will notice or care in most cases. Johnbod (talk) 14:56, 26 July 2020 (UTC)

Image question

Can someone move File:Lynching of the Ruggle Brothers.jpg to Commons, or at least re-organize it? It shows up under Category:Death in the United States. Thanks! Drmies (talk) 23:19, 29 July 2020 (UTC)

ANTIFA

The wiki page to ANTIFA is locked. The group definition has been altered recently and it is incorrect. ANTIFA 2020 in America is not fighting white supremacy groups who are causing destruction or openly convening to promote white supremacy. ANTIFA terrorizes cities with no objective. Andy Ngo is not a white supremacist- he's a journalist. The wiki page sympathyzes with ANTIFA and does not appear factual; initially, the page says ANTIFA is not an organized group with leaders and funding but then concludes that there are several groups across the country in 2020. There are no specifics about the mass random destruction and occupation which resulted in ANTIFA killing other ANTIFA in the state of WASHINGTON. The mention of CNN as a defining source is reprehensible. CNN is a news outlet with talking heads just like FOX; biased and unreliable. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2600:6C51:6B7F:E892:79E0:5D7:2E90:4DDF (talk) 14:03, 30 July 2020 (UTC)

IP, it appears you can comment at Talk:Antifa (United States) if you believe that your requested change will be successful. You will need reliable sources and a specific requested change which is from a neutral-point-of-view. --Izno (talk) 14:54, 30 July 2020 (UTC)
Yeah... if you feel that a locked page is inaccurate, you need to discuss it on the article talk page... be specific - say what existing text you want changed, what you think the article should say, and supply the sources that support your preferred text. Blueboar (talk) 15:08, 30 July 2020 (UTC)
Just adding that pages are often put under full protection with the "wrong" information in place, and it doesn't necessarily indicate the sympathies of the protecting administrator, who is most likely just trying to stop an edit war, or how the page will look after consensus is reached. Dhtwiki (talk) 21:20, 30 July 2020 (UTC)

RFC notice

An rfc on table style has been made. talk:List_of_states_and_union_territories_of_India_by_fertility_rate#RFC_style Manabimasu (talk) 13:41, 3 August 2020 (UTC)

Rfc notice

An rfc on religion and philosophy content has been made here - Talk:Catholic_Church#RFC_note_on_"head".Manabimasu (talk) 13:44, 3 August 2020 (UTC)

Need help with Proquest

I'm trying to find

"Army Uniform Cost Soldier His Life". Chicago Defender. April 5, 1919. p. 1.

on line for an article I'm researching. Supposedly, Proquest has the Chicago Defender archives. I have Proquest access via The Wikipedia Library. But, no matter how I search, I can't find it. Unfortunately, Proquest is one of those old-school search engines where you need to know know exactly what field to search and assemble your query with boolean logic. It's possible I'm just doing it wrong, or it's possible it's really not in the database. Hard to tell for sure. Do we have any Proquest wizards here? -- RoySmith (talk) 23:10, 28 July 2020 (UTC)

Seems like a Wikipedia:WikiProject Resource Exchange/Resource Request question. --Izno (talk) 23:25, 28 July 2020 (UTC)
RoySmith, I can't find anything on Proquest, but Early County News reprinted the article here. Schazjmd (talk) 23:29, 28 July 2020 (UTC)
Schazjmd, Yeah, I know about that reprint. I'm trying to find the original. But thanks :-) -- RoySmith (talk) 23:33, 28 July 2020 (UTC)
  • OK, I've got this sorted. Thank you to everybody who responded. It turns out, there were two issues. One is that Proquest has distinct "newspaper" and "historical newspaper" databases. This was in the later. The other problem is that different subscriber libraries apparently have different levels of access. When I search Proquest via the Wikipedia Library link, I get, "We're sorry, your institution doesn't have access to this article through ProQuest.". But, the New York Public Library is also a Proquest subscriber, and when I search using my NYPL credentials, I get access to the document. -- RoySmith (talk) 23:18, 3 August 2020 (UTC)

Notification about a proposed global ban of User:Eric abiog

Please help translate to other languages.

Dear community,

pursuant to the global ban policy, I would like to notify your community I have proposed that User:Eric abiog to be globally banned by the global Wikimedia Community.

You are invited to discuss the case in a request for comment that is running at the Meta-Wiki.

Best regards,
Martin Urbanec (talk)

Delivered by --MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:11, 5 August 2020 (UTC)

Decline of the Spanish, Russian and German Wikipedias

Hi,

According to Wikimedia: "Page views on Wikimedia projects is our most important content consumption metric.". So I wanted to update the articles of the different editions of Wikipedia with the number of page viewed and their trends, based on data from Wikimedia Statistics. I looked at some of the largest Wikipedias (en, ja, es, de, fr, ru, it, zh, pt, pl, ar, nl, fa, id, tr, sv, vi, ko, cs, uk, he, th, and hi) and when I did a linear regression from Jan 2016 to June 2020 I realized that they were all growing in terms of page views (some slowly like the Portuguese Wikipedia, other extremely fast like the Arabic Wikipedia), with the exception of the German Wikipedia, the Spanish Wikipedia, the Russian Wikipedia, and the Turkish Wikipedia.

There was a Block of Wikipedia in Turkey for almost 3 years, which explains why there was such a decline and then a recent rebound after the decision of the Turkish Constitutional Court.

However, I don't understand the reason of the decline of the German, Spanish and Russian Wikipedias. There is a similar trend on Toolforge, so it's probably not a bug due to Wikimedia Statistics. There was a huge increase in page views during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns of April and May 2020 and there's also a lot of variation from one month to another but if you plot a linear regression or if you look at the peak each year the decline appears. For instance for the Spanish Wikipedia:

  • Oct 2015: 1.285M
  • May 2016: 1.261M
  • March 2017 : 1.259M
  • May 2018 : 1.205M
  • Oct 2019 : 1.205M
  • March 2020 (excl. April & May 2020): 1.185M

Does anyone has any idea of what may cause this decline?

For Russian, I guess there's a decline in the number of speakers for Russian due to the Demographic crisis of Russia and also an increasing competition of other Wikipedias in Russian-speaking countries such as the Ukrainian Wikipedia and the Kazakh Wikipedia.

For Spanish and German maybe that Spanish and German speakers tend to use more the English Wikipedia instead?

A455bcd9 (talk) 15:36, 22 July 2020 (UTC)

  • Maybe a plateau of demand is reached and this shows up sooner in "smaller" languages (relative to English). Spanish is half a billion and English is about 2 billion or a 4x difference. - GreenC 15:59, 22 July 2020 (UTC)
Yes I could understand a plateau, but not a decrease. Also, the Japanese Wikipedia which is the second most viewed after English continues to grow (in terms of page views), and there's only 125 million Japanese speakers. A455bcd9 (talk) 18:17, 22 July 2020 (UTC)
  • I think the decline in the Russian Wikipedia may be down to politics. Publications like Wikipedia that are regarded as Western are often seen as unpatriotic by a significant section of the Russian public, and my impression is that this trend is increasing. As regards the German and Spanish Wikipedias this may be (I haven't looked at the results in detail) something that is affecting all larger Wikipedias but doesn't show up on the English Wikipedia because of the number of non-native readers of the language who use it, both because they can read the language and it has the most comprehensive coverage. Phil Bridger (talk) 16:41, 22 July 2020 (UTC)
That's a good point, I didn't think about potential cultural differences. But is there a Russian competitor of Wikipedia (whether it's an encyclopedia or another type of website where Russian-speaking people can find answer to their questions)? "this may be something that is affecting all larger Wikipedias": unless I made a mistake other large Wikipedias (by number of articles) aren't affected: the French Wikipedia is still growing (in terms of page views) and actually quite fast, so that it may overtake the declining German Wikipedia in about one year. Other "big" Wikipedias (Dutch, Portuguese, Polish) maybe stable but none of them are declining (in terms of page views). A455bcd9 (talk) 18:21, 22 July 2020 (UTC)
No, there is no competition to speak of in Russian--Ymblanter (talk) 09:10, 25 July 2020 (UTC)
Ymblanter, there may not be any extant competition, but that hasn't stopped Putin from polemicizing against it and promoting the Great Russian Encyclopedia as an alternative. signed, Rosguill talk 17:11, 28 July 2020 (UTC)
I am aware of the existence of this project. This is not a competitor of the Russian Wikipedia in any way, at least not in the sense it is presented.--Ymblanter (talk) 17:14, 28 July 2020 (UTC)
And if you want my opinion, I am much more worried about this, though it does not have a direct relation to the topic--Ymblanter (talk) 17:33, 28 July 2020 (UTC)
Yaroslav, glad to hear from you here. When I came to Wiki 10 years ago, you were among the best examples to follow with your metapedic approach. It was not monkeying, but anyway. as well, as you did, I also opened more than a dozen of interwikis for my personal page, I wrote the articles for the non-Russian segment… but soon the time came when I understood that the climate in ru-wiki was not for me. I expressed my protest against ru-wiki in an original manner: against >120-150 new articles the counter showed for my contribution to Russian wiki I wrote 300 (or 500?) stubs in the Portuguese section (mainly, about the metro stations through the USSR) to show, that Lusophonic segment is closer to me than Russian. After 4-5 years of silence I returned to ru-wiki… and again came across the agressive, tone in which the active participants discussed my contribution, so next 2 years of my boycott followed. This summer I again returned for a while, but do not see any perspectives for myself to stay in the ru-wiki after I improve one article, the contents of which is beyond my critics… So, from my POV the main reason for ru-wiki to decline lies in the specific features of the contingent which decides to spend its time for the project. Of course, many experienced administrators still continue to work for ru-wiki, but AFAIK even the positions in the Arbitrage are filled with the certain difficulties. Cherurbino (talk) 15:30, 6 August 2020 (UTC)
FYI we now have data for July 2020 and ru-wiki continues its decline vs fr-wiki. However if we consider Agent=User only then ru-wiki is still a little ahead of fr-wiki but I guess fr-wiki will soon overtake ru-wiki given the trend since July 2015. By the way, similar trends (one stable or slowly growing European language vs one fast-growing language of developing countries) for nl-wiki vs fa-wiki, it-wiki vs zh-wiki and pl-wiki vs ar-wiki. A455bcd9 (talk) 20:23, 6 August 2020 (UTC)
  • English Wikipedia hasn't exactly been growing much either in terms of page views, though April and May's numbers both spiked this year (for obvious reasons, I assume). See [9]. Calidum 18:31, 22 July 2020 (UTC)
Yes it's hard to tell with all the monthly variations and it's definitely not growing fast, but even when I exclude April and May 2020, using data from Wikimedia Stats, the linear regression is growing (I mean it has a positive slope). A455bcd9 (talk) 18:52, 22 July 2020 (UTC)
One big variable is the mirroring on Google knowledge graph etc, small changes on that can "lose" us a whole swathe of those readers who only want the first paragraph or so, or who now just want to check on something from Wikidata. I suspect another variable is the language that search engines default to in searches in particular countries. Then there is the whole political thing, I suspect Spanish wikipedia has lost some audience to Catalan Wikipedia in Catalonia in recent years. Georgian Wikipedia is also on a pretty sharp growth curve in readership, and with the shift in education from Russian to English in the 1990s, the Russian speaking generations in Georgia are thinning out each year, as others have pointed out, that may be quite widespread across the non Russian bits of the former Warsaw Pact. ϢereSpielChequers 11:16, 23 July 2020 (UTC)
Yes the Google knowledge graph may explain a decrease in page views, but the decrease should be general and not only on the Russian, German, and Spanish WP, shouldn't it? Regarding the Spanish Wikipedia, Spain represents only 15% of the visits. The competition of the Catalan Wikipedia does exist [but it seems small: views on the Catalan Wikipedia represent less than 3% of the views on the Spanish Wikipedia. Georgia is a great example and there are many other in the former USSR such as Ukraine, Armenia and the Baltic States where English and the local Wikipedia are gaining traction. So a declining population + competition of other languages may explain the decline of the Russian Wikipedia. But the biggest mystery for me is Spanish as the Spanish-speaking population is growing, with many Spanish-speaking developing countries with a growing middle-class so I would have expected a strong growth for the Spanish Wikipedia. A455bcd9 (talk) 12:45, 23 July 2020 (UTC)
I don't know if the Google knowledge graph was rolled out at the same rate and in the same way across all languages, but I'd assume that Google is sufficiently tech savvy not to change things simultaneously in all languages. So over the course of several years the loss of page views to the knowledge graph probably is similar in the major languages. But I would expect to see the actual change come at a different date in the different languages, so to my mind it is possible that Google knowledge graph or something similar went live in Spanish during this era, years after going live in English. ϢereSpielChequers 14:37, 23 July 2020 (UTC)
Yes that would work but usually Google rolls out feature to over main languages (and especially Spanish given the size of the Spanish-speaking community in the US) quite fast, it's more a matter of months than years. Anyway I asked the question on Twitter: Mikhail Popov and Frans Dans from the Wikimedia Foundation suggested to look at mobile vs desktop. It's interesting because desktop visits have been decreasing for all big Wikipedias since 2016 (at least). For most of them mobile traffic is compensating the decline of visits on desktop, except for Russian, German, and Spanish... A455bcd9 (talk) 18:29, 23 July 2020 (UTC)
For the German Wikipedia, I don't know what could have caused the decline you're describing, but I'm also not really seeing it: Yes, 2016 was exceptionally strong (probably due to UEFA Euro 2016 and 2016 United States presidential election, which both caused increased media attention), but if you compare the last three years, there was not much of a change. --Tkarcher (talk) 06:27, 24 July 2020 (UTC)
@Tkarcher: Indeed it's not easy to see it for the German Wikipedia. It can be seen more easily on those graphs or on those ones that start a little earlier. Another way is to look at yearly figures instead of monthly: 2016=14.1B views, 2017=13.3B views, 2018=12.8B views, 2019=13.1B views (and 2020 so far = 7.0B). Yes, if you only consider July 2017 to June 2020 the German Wikipedia is indeed growing, so maybe it just some yearly variations. However 2016 wasn't exceptionally strong at all according to Wikimedia Stats (Legacy page views). We don't have data for the full year unfortunately but Jan 2015-Aug 2015 = 9,218,548,524 visits vs Jan 2016-Aug 2016 = 8,124,119,284 so a huge -12% decrease in page views from 2015 to 2016! We'll have a better picture at the end of 2020 but at least one can say that the German Wikipedia isn't growing fast, that it's rather stable in page views, or even declining since 2015. Don't you think so? A455bcd9 (talk) 17:49, 24 July 2020 (UTC)
@A455bcd9: Seeing that the majority of the decline is caused by falling numbers of desktop users, I wonder whether this trend could simply be a consequence of more and more people moving to mobile devices, which never were (and probably never will be) very comfortable for reading long, encyclopedic articles. So people who used to spend time on their desktop PCs reading Wikipedia might now just spend this time on their phones browsing Twitter and Instagram instead. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Tkarcher (talk) 19:22, 24 July 2020 (UTC)
@Tkarcher: yes I totally agree with this idea, but what makes Russian, Spanish, and German special regarding mobile usage? How come the growth of mobile compensated the decline of desktop for other languages but not those three? Maybe that there's a different reason for each of them actually? A455bcd9 (talk) 19:26, 24 July 2020 (UTC)
Maybe due to the different language versions being in different phases of the Hype cycle? While the German Wikipedia is well known and accepted by a broad audience for many years now (= on a plateau), other language versions might still be climbing the slope, getting more attention, press coverage and new readers. This could (temporarily) compensate negative influences like the decline of desktops. --Tkarcher (talk) 19:47, 24 July 2020 (UTC)
What data do you use and how do you analyze it? I've made yearly analysys for Russian Wikipedia using this data and got this result:
  • 2017 comparable to 2016 -4,861095671 %;
  • 2018 comparable to 2017 -2,54126648 %;
  • 2019 comparable to 2018 +0,309755246 %
  • Jan—Jun 2020 comparable to Jan—Jun 2019 +1,450674953 %
There was decline in 2017 and 2018 (with very strange -12 % in July and even -21 % in august 2017 comparable to 2016), but last one and half year I see growth, not decline. --Igel B TyMaHe (talk) 08:43, 24 July 2020 (UTC)
Hi @Igel B TyMaHe:. I'm using the same data as you and I got the same results:
  • 2016: 12.9B views
  • 2017: 12.3B views
  • 2018: 12.0B views
  • 2029: 12.0B views
  • 2020, so far: 6.3B views
So if you draw a line from 2016 to today in any software (Excel, Google Sheets, etc.) you'll find a decline.
Another way to look at the decline is this graph.
For older data you can also consider legacy page views, and it seems that the decline started in 2014 for the Russian Wikipedia.
That's why I think that the Russian Wikipedia has been declining in page views since at least 2016 (and even 2014), despite a recent growth mainly due to Covid. Don't you think so? A455bcd9 (talk) 18:37, 24 July 2020 (UTC)
2014 likely means the outflow of Ukrainian users who were mostly bilingual in Russian and Ukrainian.--Ymblanter (talk) 11:22, 25 July 2020 (UTC)
You mean that because of political reasons (2014 Ukrainian revolution) Ukrainian users who used to read the Russian Wikipedia or contribute to it may have moved the the Ukrainian Wikipedia? That's an interest explanation. Do you know some users who did that? A455bcd9 (talk) 12:45, 25 July 2020 (UTC)
By that time I have not been active in the Russian Wikipedia. I guess NickK probably knows way more details than I know.--Ymblanter (talk) 15:30, 25 July 2020 (UTC)
@A455bcd9 and Ymblanter: There is indeed such a trend in Ukraine regarding the Ukrainian and Russian Wikipedias. Here is the graph between 2015 and 2020 File:Views of Russian and Ukrainian Wikipedias pages from Ukraine 2015-2020.png, showing that views of Russian Wikipedia from Ukraine are essentially stagnating (and probably slightly decreasing without COVID), while those of Ukrainian Wikipedia are constantly increasing (and got a huge boost with COVID). If you look at 2009-2013 statistics, the ratio between Russian and Ukrainian pageviews from Ukraine was usually around 4.5 outside Q3 and around 7 in summer. It is now around 2 outside summer and around 3.5 in summer. This means a slight decrease (likely at most 0.1B/year or so) for Russian Wikipedia but a significant increase for the Ukrainian one.
I would say that two first-order reasons are:
  • More devices, OS and software are now provided in Ukrainian by default, meaning that people are more likely to get a Ukrainian link by default (while they were more likely to use a device, OS or software in Russian or English before).
  • More content in Ukrainian, meaning that on key topics an average reader is quite likely to get a good content in Ukrainian and would not need to switch to Russian or English to get the information they are looking for. This is particularly true regarding educational topics, which is the reason why summer is an outlier, as schools and universities are closed and students are not looking for content - they are naturally looking for it in Ukrainian as they study in Ukrainian.
If you wonder, this 'school holidays' trend is particularly visible in Ukrainian, Kazakh and Kyrgyz Wikipedia and to a lesser extent in the Romanian one
NickK (talk) 12:08, 27 July 2020 (UTC)
Thanks, it makes sense.--Ymblanter (talk) 12:55, 27 July 2020 (UTC)
@NickK: Thanks, it's really clear! The school holidays trend is also visible for the Georgian Wikipedia and the Armenian Wikipedia. A455bcd9 (talk) 20:00, 27 July 2020 (UTC)

"For Russian, I guess there's a decline in the number of speakers for Russian due to the Demographic crisis of Russia"

Well, there is no demographic crisis in Russia now, and it could not have caused such a rapid decline in June only. I suspect changes in the counting method. Lesless (talk) 10:00, 24 July 2020 (UTC)

Hello @Lesless:, sorry you're right I wasn't clear, I was referring to this and the fact that the Russian population decreased from 1992 to today, whereas during the same period the population of many other countries increased (for instance, US: +26%, France: +14%, Germany: +4%, Brazil: +36%, Spain: +21%). A455bcd9 (talk) 18:42, 24 July 2020 (UTC)
The population in Russia has been growing since 2010, ↑ 4,000,000, please, see the graphics: [10]. Это не может объяснять спад читаемости Википедии, ну никак. Я и спада-то особого не вижу. Lesless (talk) 19:28, 24 July 2020 (UTC)
Also, I don’t know how in the Western world, but in Russia, just somewhere since 2015, Wikipedia articles are not in the highest positions in Yandex search results. Lesless (talk) 22:11, 24 July 2020 (UTC)
@Lesless:, thanks I didn't know for Yandex. Do you have links about that change in 2015? A455bcd9 (talk) 07:56, 27 July 2020 (UTC)
It was a gradual process for no particular reason. Lesless (talk) 08:51, 27 July 2020 (UTC)
  • When I was doing research on how the public uses the internet for medical information in 2014, I think all the non-native English speakers I interviewed said they used en:wp for preference, or first, basicly because it was better and more trusted. This was in London and all had decent normal (but not medical) English. A couple looked at their native language wikis after looking at en:wp. They spoke Spanish & Polish. In general the undoubted quality gap between en:wp and other language versions (sometimes even on local matters to the other language) seems to be expanding steadily. We know Indian & Bangladeshi readers massively (around 90%) prefer to use en:wp, presumably for this reason. A large number are probably more comfortable reading an Indian language. Johnbod (talk) 14:39, 27 July 2020 (UTC)
    I an afraid it is way more complicated that that, if we take into account all topics, not just medical ones. I know that the Russian Wikipedia for obvious reasons is much better than the English one in many topics like for example Russian-language culture, so if I have to look up a Russian actor or a scientist I have better chances typing a Cyrillic name in Google and not a Latin name. The next layer is that the Russian Wikipedia has some topics which are formally covered better but are hopelessly biased, to the point that the articles become useless. And, next to it, there are of course people who do not speak enough English to read Wikipedia articles in English.--Ymblanter (talk) 15:02, 27 July 2020 (UTC)
    Or sometimes less complicated. I wasn't just talking about medical topics, but as I made clear I was talking about subjects with articles in several languages. I look mostly at the French, Italian and German wps, and it is perfectly usual for topics in art and history local to one of those to be better covered in en:wp, although of course sometimes things go the other way. Get on to Persian or Arabic, and it is clear from just the length that the coverage in English of major local topics in history and art is better, at least in quantity terms (I can't read either). Johnbod (talk) 21:59, 27 July 2020 (UTC)
    Most people arrive on Wikipedia from Google. So for instance if you're in France only the French Wikipedia will be among the first results. You really need to make an effort to have the English Wikipedia (especially since many words are spelled the same in French and English). And then you need to be fluent to understand. But it's possible that German speakers, Spanish speakers (especially in the US and Mexico) and Russian speakers have a higher English proficiency and are more comfortable reading Wikipedia in English than French, Arabic, Italian or Portuguese speakers for instance. A455bcd9 (talk) 07:43, 28 July 2020 (UTC)
    (ec) I am pretty sure for Russian it is generally better in the Russian Wikipedia (which is probably related to the fact that here only a handful of users work on these topics at all, and if just one user drops out it can delay the whole development of the topic by years). Another thing is that we typically have better sourcing due to more stringent sourcing requirements, and it is often a lot of junk in Russian articles.--Ymblanter (talk) 07:44, 28 July 2020 (UTC)
  • German Wikipedia, for one, has internal credibility problems that have unfortunately spilled over in the real world. One female contributor, who is regarded by many as an authority and acts as the de facto queen of German Wikipedia, has had a stint as a PR relations manager at a theatre in an large Saxony-Anhalt town, in 2019. There, she behaved in exactly the same authoritarian manner she is used to online - and got sacked after three days! Apparently, I am not allowed to link to articles about her antics (it has got me banned several times on de-wiki), but there was plenty of coverage back then because of her high profile on WP. --Edelseider (talk) 18:25, 27 July 2020 (UTC)
  • I think we're all speculating about causes. It would shed some more light on the matter if we could combine these data with data about where edits have been made from. For example, especially in the cases of the Russian and English Wikipedias, what proportion of edits are made from places where the main language spoken is not that of the Wikipedia in question. My speculation is that that proportion may have decreased for Russian but increased for English, but if someone could support that with data it would be great. Phil Bridger (talk) 17:07, 28 July 2020 (UTC)
  • This is a very interesting discussion, but assuming the OP quote page views are the most important content consumption metric, the foundation must have multiple people working on this full-time. What did they have to say? We might well have some interesting theories to add but if it's really this important this should be full-time professionals analyzing it.--S Philbrick(Talk) 17:12, 28 July 2020 (UTC)
    Do you really believe that the foundation has people doing real, relevant research, rather than getting involved in make-work projects such as rebranding that prejudge their own necessity? Phil Bridger (talk) 17:54, 28 July 2020 (UTC)
    I know for sure that the Foundation has people doing real, relevant research. I intersected with some of them.--Ymblanter (talk) 18:07, 28 July 2020 (UTC)
    Mikhail and Frans who work at the Foundation gave some interesting ideas on Twitter. If page views are the most important content consumption metric then this issue should be a priority for the foundation. A455bcd9 (talk) 16:48, 29 July 2020 (UTC)
Hi all. My name is Leila and I'm the Head of Research at WMF. A few items to share on my end:
  • Phil Bridger, I take your comment as an opportunity for the two of us to connect and share more with each other. If you welcome that, here is some info that can be helpful for you (for this or future topics). WMF does have a Research team. These days, we primarily focus on three areas of research and research community building: addressing Wikimedia's knowledge gaps, improving knowledge integrity on the projects, and building the foundations for a more global and empowered network of Wikimedia researchers. Each of these areas have their own whitepapers you can read more about if you're interested. If you want to get a sense of what we do in a half a year time frame, I encourage you to check out our research reports (the second one is on its way out in no later than a week.). I hope you find it helpful and I'm happy to engage here or in other venues if you want to talk more. :)
  • A455bcd9, I did a pass over this thread. Thanks for initiating it. I have a couple of higher level thoughts/pointers/questions. If you want input from someone in WMF that works with the pageview data extensively, I encourage you to reach out to Connie Chen (IRC on freenode, channel: #wikimedia-research, id: cchen). Regarding your motivation for starting the thread (to put pageview counts on the articles): Who do you consider as the audience of this information? What do you expect them to be able to do with this information?
  • I'd also like to put an offer out here that our team does deeper readership research (some examples of past research: paper, paper, and paper). If you all would like to talk about specific topics that are readership related (or even just research related), our team hosts monthly office hours as an experiment (we're currently discussing other formats) and I'm happy to bring together folks in our team and in other teams within WMF for having a deeper conversation with you all about the topic of interest to you.
Thank you! --LZia (WMF) (talk) 00:20, 30 July 2020 (UTC)
Hi @LZia (WMF):! I wasn't clear enough in my initial message. My motivation started when I saw that the Russian Wikipedia was still described as the second most read with unofficial and unavailable data from 2016. And the maps of readership featured on each article (for instance for the French Wikipedia were also not up-to-date and didn't reflect the current situation. For instance English or the local language has overtaken Russian in many former Communist countries over the past few years. So I opened a feature request on Phabricator to get this data.
I think it would be interesting to know the most read Wikipedia edition by country. We could for instance compare the Member states of the Organisation internationale de la Francophonie with the actual countries were the French Wikipedia is used (and we would see that English in French is more used than French in Canada :) ). It's also a good way to measure the Languages used on the Internet.
And for the foundation, if we understand why some languages are growing and some are declining, we could try to reverse the trend and accelerate growth of those Wikipedias. A455bcd9 (talk) 16:44, 30 July 2020 (UTC)
@A455bcd9: thanks for getting back to me. Re readership per project per country: I've sent you a follow-up response on the phabricator task. Let's continue there. Re understanding the underlying reasons for why pageviews may be going up or down in specific countries or languages: the causal relationships are hard to verify. We can have hypotheses and sometimes we can test if those are correct or not. Two things I can concretely say: I'll reach out to Product Analytics (the team Connie Chen is in) to see if our teams can work together to provide a snapshot of what we know about readership trends and possible causes for the community. I can't promise we can pull this off; I promise that I make an attempt. In the meantime, one thing I'd like to share: our team has been working on better understanding readers and their needs for the past few years. In 2019 we conducted a survey in 14 Wikipedia languages to understand the possible relationships between readers' motivations and needs and their demographics. (some detailed stats/results) One thing I want to point out is that in Russian Wikipedia (given the focus in this discussion), we see a gap (though much smaller than some other languages) between pageviews by men vs. women/self-identify (see Figure 1). We don't know why this gender gap is happening in the daily pageviews, but it's there. (See possible causes) Something we also see in the deeper analysis is that there are some early signals that women and men have some topical preferences when they read Wikipedia. (Read Page 3 for more.) Putting these two together: One way we can focus on testing to see if we can increase pageviews (and also increas the diversity of folks who read Wikipedia daily) is to attempt it from the gender angle. On our end, we've also started a project to understand how readers engage with images. (Read more.) And of course there is the potential impact from re-use that Isaac Johnson in our team is interested to pursue. I'll follow up on the to-do I signed up for in some weeks. If I don't, please feel free to ping. --LZia (WMF) (talk) 19:45, 31 July 2020 (UTC)
@LZia (WMF): Do you have the opportunity to take a look for a ruwiki on the impact of enabled enforced https (2013) and the proportion of views on os, especially win xp, win7 ( https://analytics.wikimedia.org/dashboards/browsers/#all-sites-by-os/os-family-timeseries ), the appearance of other os and the difference in their views with other wikis? --Sunpriat 07:39, 2 August 2020 (UTC)
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Village_pump_(miscellaneous)/Archive_64&oldid=1085548388"