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The following is an automatically-generated compilation of all talk pages for the Signpost issue dated 2013-06-05. For general Signpost discussion, see Wikipedia talk:Signpost.

Discussion report: Return of the Discussion report (3,469 bytes · 💬)

A grateful thanks to Pine for bringing back this most helpful Signpost feature. 64.40.54.202 (talk) 04:29, 7 June 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for your comment! I'm glad it's helpful. --Pine✉ 05:46, 8 June 2013 (UTC)

The link labelled "Non-free content: audio file use in articles" doesn't lead to that RFC. Maybe it was moved or deleted? GermanJoe (talk) 13:48, 7 June 2013 (UTC)

Yes, that's been archived to Wikipedia talk:Non-free content/Archive 59#How to interpret WP:NFCC.237 for audio files. --Pine✉ 05:46, 8 June 2013 (UTC)

Nice work on bringing this back. J36miles (talk) 15:11, 7 June 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for your comment! --Pine✉ 05:46, 8 June 2013 (UTC)
  • I don't understand what you are suggesting, but would be glad to see it listed with Template RFCs. How do I do that? Do I change the {{rfc|bio|media|lang|rfcid=161008D}} template at the RFC or do I do something else?--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 23:18, 9 June 2013 (UTC)
  • Yes, add |tech. I've done it for you. The instructions are at the bottom of the RfC category page. --Pine✉ 03:03, 10 June 2013 (UTC)
  • +1 to the thanks above. Nice work indeed. – SJ + 23:19, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

Featured content: A week of portraits (780 bytes · 💬)

  • I have not seen any mention of demotions of featured content lately. Is this because no such demotions are occurring anymore or have you chosen not to cover them? JRSpriggs (talk) 05:40, 7 June 2013 (UTC)
  • This report doesn't usually cover demotions although we could have a special report about them if someone was interested enough to write it. --Pine✉ 06:26, 7 June 2013 (UTC)

From the editor: Signpost developments (4,625 bytes · 💬)

  • The description under the title uses the word "quinzenário", meaning "fortnightly".

—Wavelength (talk) 22:10, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

The original choice of Mondays was primarily a product of the fact that when I started this, and was still writing the bulk of the material personally, the best window for the most intense effort was on the weekends outside of my regular workweek. Since those reasons do not apply now, and it's occasionally been a struggle for Signpost editors since, the change in timing is perfectly justifiable. In fact, it's a testament to the conservatism of inertia that the initial pattern has remained nominally in place this long. --Michael Snow (talk) 23:15, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

I've been surprised that the deadline hasn't been moved previously; I think I suggested, a year or so ago, that it be changed to Tuesday. In any case, I want to express my appreciation for all the time and effort of the contributors to the Signpost - it's a luxury to be able to stay informed about significant events concerning Wikipedia without having to check scores of pages, personally. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 02:38, 7 June 2013 (UTC)
  • Thanks Ed, I really appreciate your words. On behalf of all the team, thank you for your support. Anyone interested in working with us, read here all the information. VítoR™  • (D) 14:49, 7 June 2013 (UTC)
  • I object to the stated proposal to move the newspaper to Wikipedia:Signpost before the name of the newspaper is settled. This publication is variously called Signpost, Wikipedia Signpost, The Signpost, and The Wikipedia Signpost. If the naming structure is going to be reformed and codified, as well it should be, then everything should have a consistent name. The nice font over the newspaper says that its name is The Signpost and if that is the case, then the homepage should be Wikipedia:The Signpost to minimize confusion. In practice, most people call the paper the Signpost and it is my opinion that this should be the name of the paper, but in that case, the title graphic ought to be changed to omit the "the".
This is an issue which has been addressed before. The New York Times, for example, includes the word "the" as part of the publications name and their formatting of the title elsewhere reflects that.
This publication has already published some stories of interest beyond the Wikipedia community and which have been cited elsewhere. I think it is time to standardize the name as a demonstration of increased professionalism and acknowledgement of the traditions of journalism. Blue Rasberry (talk) 14:59, 7 June 2013 (UTC)
This appears to be the very definition of bikeshedding (or The Bikeshedding?). Ironholds (talk) 23:22, 7 June 2013 (UTC)
I can't find the exact quote, but I recall reading somewhere that when the New York Times dropped the period after their title (see File:Titanic-sinks-new-york-times-thumb.jpg, e.g.), among the voluminous hatemail to Ed Benguiat was a letter from a man who compared it to waking up in the morning, sitting down at his breakfast table, and discovering that his wife had a new face. Anyways, I see it as a good thing that this is all we have to bicker over in regards to the Signpost's management. Publishing delays aside, if everything on Wikipedia were as smoothly run as the Signpost, there'd be a whole lot less drama. — PinkAmpers&(Je vous invite à me parler) 04:38, 14 June 2013 (UTC)

In the media: China blocks secure version of Wikipedia (5,387 bytes · 💬)

Hmm. How shall the WMF go about actively breaking down the Great Firewall of China? *evil smirk* Whoop whoop pull up Bitching Betty | Averted crashes 10:22, 7 June 2013 (UTC)

The paper for this BusinessWeek article ("Skype's Been Hijacked in China, and Microsoft Is O.K. With It") refers to this Usenix paper (slides) which links to these Chinese Skype censorship stoplists and surveillance triggers, which in 2011 contained:
中文维基百科 ("Chinese-language Wikipedia")
维基百科 ("Wikipedia")
中文维基百科加密版 ("Encrypted version of the Chinese-language Wikipedia")
While "中文维基百科加密版" occurs in the most recent 3/8/2013 version of the surveillance trigger list, the other two do not.
See also https://en.greatfire.org/search/all/wikipedia for a list of blocked Wikipedia articles, chinese and english. --Atlasowa (talk) 12:39, 7 June 2013 (UTC)

I'm confused; the http version of Wikipedia is perfectly accessible in China - I'm posting this right now in Beijing without a VPN. There is the normal keyword blocking, in which pages with certain sensitive terms will not load and render Wikipedia inaccessible for about 1 minute, but that is true for any website accessed in China. I just surfed over to the Chinese version and that seems to work fine too. Why does the article say that blocking the https is "almost completely cutting off access to those in China"?--Danaman5 (talk) 16:30, 8 June 2013 (UTC)

Hmm. I wrote based on the articles ... can you access Tiananmen Square protests of 1989? Go Phightins! 17:20, 8 June 2013 (UTC)
The lede of the referenced TheNextWeb article says they "blocked the encrypted version" of Wikipedia, not Wikipedia as a whole, i.e. they blocked the loophole allowing uncensored access. The Signpost head and lede are thus misleading. --R. S. Shaw (talk) 02:39, 9 June 2013 (UTC)
Well, it's not entirely misleading. A version was blocked, yes, and people viewing the pages are now subjected to government oversight and censored content. Still, I've changed the title to be more specific. :-) Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 02:48, 9 June 2013 (UTC)
My fault on the title. I just jotted something down at the top of the Google Doc to reference which was going to be the lead story, and forgot to go back to change it. Thanks for doing so, Ed. Go Phightins! 19:12, 9 June 2013 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure that the https version was never completely free of censorship in China. Keyword blocking works based on what is on the page, I don't think which version you use matters. There was a period during which the http version was blocked, but the https version was not, that's why people started using the latter, but that doesn't mean that it was free of censorship. I could be wrong on that, though, I didn't use the https version much after the http version was unblocked. I seem to remember hitting censorship when I did use it though. (and no, I can't access Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 here. Strangely, it loaded once completely, but then when I tried reloading it, it gave me the usual error. Sometimes the keyword censorship is slow to catch up)--Danaman5 (talk) 13:47, 11 June 2013 (UTC)

  • Interesting that unlike the Wikipedia in the 80s video, the Twitter in the 80s video assumed that users dialed a number using a modem to go online online to tweet. Their 80s vision of Wikipedia seems to be a memory-resident (possibly CD ROM-based) product. Certainly a better vision would involve dialing a 1200-baud modem to go online so you could actually edit the encyclopedia! Wbm1058 (talk) 16:47, 12 June 2013 (UTC)
https://upload.wikimeida.org also blocked in China --Shizhao (talk) 14:17, 13 June 2013 (UTC)

News and notes: "Cease and desist", World Trade Organization says to Wikivoyage; could WikiLang be the next WMF project? (16,887 bytes · 💬)

  • Wikipedia has Wikipedia:WikiProject Endangered languages. —Wavelength (talk) 22:16, 6 June 2013 (UTC)
    • Somewhat inactive: the project page and main talk page have a total of one edit so far in 2013. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 02:46, 7 June 2013 (UTC)
    • The Incubator could work for endangered languages, if we relaxed our policies about being "notable" and "encyclopedic" to accommodate the type of content that is useful for endangered language learning. The materials needed to learn or document a language are a little different than the pages you would compose to write an encyclopedia. The Wiki for Indigenous Languages is an example of the content a language revitalization wiki needs to provide. They are working with the Yaqui Language community with UCLA programming support. After perusing what's out there for language documentation, I'm finding our Wiki-dictionary options aren't as attractive as Lexique Pro and First Voices, and our wiki audio / video uploads and licensing can be a little cumbersome. However, the photos we have in Commons are rather handy for ethnobotanical picture dictionaries and plant identification. As others have pointed out, it takes a committed community of fluent speakers to make a Wikipedia happen in any language; and people want articles with useful content. Djembayz (talk) 00:55, 10 June 2013 (UTC)
  • Languages are not people; they have no right to exist. The sooner we can all shift to one language, the better for all of us. JRSpriggs (talk) 05:58, 7 June 2013 (UTC)
    • Languages are vastly disparate ways of being human. I suspect you must be a native speaker of English, as this sort of bigoted anglocentric assertion is rarely made nowadays by speakers of any other language. --Orange Mike | Talk 18:39, 7 June 2013 (UTC)
      • To Orangemike: As to which of us is bigoted, I will allow the reader to judge from the above comments. Language exists for the purpose of allowing people to communicate. Learning another language is a major barrier to overcome before people can achieve that communication. Thus teaching everyone a single common language from childhood would facilitate the purpose of language. On the other hand, maintaining a plethora of mutually incomprehensible languages just impedes human progress. JRSpriggs (talk) 04:44, 8 June 2013 (UTC)
        • To be fair, you are both very correct. JRSpriggs is right that facilitating communication is a high and worthy aspiration, and one that is best served by universalizing language. But Orangemike is also correct that different languages represent different cultures, and diversity in thinking is also a high and worthy aspiration. I'd say that it's not so much the loss of the languages themselves, but rather the loss of the unique ways of thinking and feeling that the languages represent, that is the true loss. Powers T 20:55, 9 June 2013 (UTC)
          • However JRSpriggs also claimed that 'maintaining a plethora of mutually incomprehensible languages just impedes human progress'. This is quite questionable since beyond the points you have raised, there is fairly strong research based evidence of the advantages of bilingualism or further multilingualism. We even have an article Cognitive advantages to bilingualism and this is also covered somewhat in Multilingualism. Nil Einne (talk) 21:17, 10 June 2013 (UTC)
        • "Language exists for the purpose of allowing people to communicate" is like saying transport systems only exist to get us from A to B, yet no one would argue for one type of transport. The view appears to be that language is purely a protocol for communication, with the protocols being interchangeable without loss of a part of the culture, but truly it is a massive over-simplification since language and culture are strongly interconnected. IRWolfie- (talk) 13:06, 11 June 2013 (UTC)
          • The signal weakness in the statement "Language exists for the purpose of allowing people to communicate" as a justification for encouraging the extinction of languages or dialects is that standardization inevitably engenders the loss of memes - easily recognizable constructs which are lost in translation from one language to another. My own native dialect, Cajun English, has loan words from French, autochthonous North American languages like Choctaw, Chitimachan, Cherokee, Houma and others, Spanish, German, and other European languages spoken by early Louisiana settlers. If JRSpriggs has his way, we lose boucherie, which isn't strictly a party, picnic, blow-out, feast, revel or other celebration or assembly - it's a boucherie. We lose fais-do-do, which isn't, strictly, a boucherie, either. We lose cuyon, we lose pirogue (if we all are made to speak McEnglish as JRSpriggs wants), and a lot of other terms which give life in south Louisiana much of its charm. And we lose so many other memes from other cultures - I can only speak to the culture I came from, and which I will mourn when it's lost. It's probably too late for Cajun French, which probably had 100 dialects, most with their own vocabularies, lost when roads were laid between towns in south Louisiana (state in the United States of America) and electronic communications homogenized spoken language there. My mother had already begun to lose her heritage by acculturation, and in my generation we had stopped learning French except to break the "code" our elders used for private communications. (In a reversal of the process, my wife and I, both polyglots, inadvertently caused our sons, who inherited our ability to pick up new languages, to learn German, Cajun and Metropolitan French and Russian just to understand our private parental conversations.) Sorry, but you'll get MY native language away from me out of my cold, dead frontal lobe.loupgarous (talk) 03:48, 15 June 2013 (UTC)
    • No worries, JRSpriggs, from now on we'll all speak all Japanese Mandarin all the time. :) Djembayz (talk) 02:08, 11 June 2013 (UTC)
      • I read what he wrote as meaning The sooner we can all shift to one the language I speak, the better for all of us me, IRWolfie- (talk) 13:06, 11 June 2013 (UTC)
    • Addressing JRSpriggs initial comment. in the American tradition, people have an inalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and the most important legally protected right is that of free speech. thus, while a language is not a human being, the right of a person to speak as they please, in the language(s) of their choice, is fundamental and must not be abridged by law, in accordance with the American belief in the principles of the Enlightenment. This is aside from what is a clear advantage to being multilingual, and the value of loan words from other languages which enrich each other and expand how we actually think. We have 1 universal language: that of mathematics and the basic physical/chemical processes. We have 1 dominant language that binds many cultures together: English. Since all language use is translation from what you say or write to how i understand it, even one language may be considered "many" (remember the tv documentary on english needed subtitles for some speakers!) y'all can relax now.Mercurywoodrose (talk) 03:02, 12 June 2013 (UTC)
      • The short-lived satellite television series Cajun Justice had to resort to subtitles from difficulties with the local English accent in Terrebonne Parish, Louisiana, USA (the show's setting). Accent and pronunciation is the issue there, something we haven't considered so far in this discussion. In understanding Cockney English (which the landlord of the Kings Head pub in Battle, E. Sussex, England showed me is just about as difficult as Cajun English for a foreigner like me to follow) you have both accent and vocabulary to contend with.
      • While electronic communication have "flattened" regional accents, I actually can and do speak in at least three North American accents routinely, depending on whether I'm with my neighbor Coloradans, family, or speaking with people elsewhere in North America. I can manage a reasonable facsimile of Received Pronunciation British if I must, and the barmaid at the Kings Head paid me the compliment just before I had to return to the US of saying I'd mastered Cockney (she was being kind, though). You reminded me of accent and pronounciation difficulties, Mercurywoodrose, when you closed your post with Y'all, which is just a variant pronounciation of "you all" that has acquired its own spelling.
      • The United States military also has a unique accent and vocabulary which arose out of necessity - in a hurry, the person on the other end of a low-quality radio or telephone connection had better be able to understand what you're saying the first time around. NATO phonetic alphabet rendering (alfa for "A," bravo for "B," down to X-ray for "X," yankee for "Y," and zulu for "Z") is used when an unusual or hard-to-pronounce word or an acronym HAS to be understood the first time around - it's spelled out in NATO phonetics. There's also a special pacing of words in military voice communications over radio or telephone, three words at a time, to enhance first-time comprehension and reduce the chance of misunderstanding. This has tended to become more important now that military actions over the world commonly involve coalitions of several nations, each of which pronounces various English words differently - the initial reason for the NATO phonetic alphabet, which itself grew out of earlier phonetic schemes developed during the two World Wars of the 20th century - fought between coalitions of nations with different languages. Finally, the US military has a distinctive culture with its own memes, some of which are encoded in acronyms such as FUBAR or SNAFU, or phonetic acronym ejaculations such as November Foxtrot Whisky! (the meaning of which is left as an exercise for the reader).loupgarous (talk) 04:07, 15 June 2013 (UTC)
Since I had to look it up, I'll pass along this link to the meaning.  Senator2029 ➔ “Talk”  03:41, 28 July 2013 (UTC)
  • About the WikiLang story:
    • while I am flattered to be cited, the quote is not from me, it is from User:Ypnypn [1].
    • If you read that page, you will also see that my proposition for merging it with OmegaWiki is only a fallback position, and that as a first choice, I'd prefer for them to be a separate project under the WMF umbrella. Should that not happen, I proposed hosting it at OmegaWiki, rather than having the project not exist at all.
    • What is called in this story the "OmegaWiki vote" is not a vote. It is a request for comments (the page title says it as well). I don't know if there will be a vote. In the end I think it is the WMF which decides if they want to support it or not, and how it should be integrated with the existing projects. We can only make comments.
    • The part about me being the current maintainer of OmegaWiki is true :) --Kipmaster (talk) 08:21, 7 June 2013 (UTC)
      • In order: that was an editing error—sorry! We originally had the right attribution, but I mixed them up when paring the story down.
      • I've added a clarification regarding this point.
      • You're completely right.
      • Well... one out of four at least. ;-) Thank you for commenting! Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 08:37, 7 June 2013 (UTC)
  • First time I've seen both logos adjacent: yep, I think the WTO has a case. Why on earth were the same colours chosen? That was asking for trouble. Tony (talk) 09:27, 7 June 2013 (UTC)
    • Because those also happen to be the Wikimedia Foundation colours - David Gerard (talk) 10:21, 7 June 2013 (UTC)
      • Well, that was an avoidable whoops!... Carrite (talk) 03:13, 8 June 2013 (UTC)
        • The "WMF" color scheme was favored by a large number of contributors to the logo selection process, although I do note that I haven't seen very many of those voters around Wikivoyage in the months since. Maybe they all contribute to other language versions, though. Powers T 21:02, 9 June 2013 (UTC)
          • I don't think there's enough similarity between the logos to support the WTO's contentions. Has WMF consulted an intellectual property law firm about this? Just asking.loupgarous (talk) 03:25, 15 June 2013 (UTC)
  • Is there even one actual linguist commenting on this page? I love Wikipedia's democratic approach, but the idea that "anyone can edit" should never be extended to assume "everyone has some clue what they are talking about". If you don't know linguistics, sorry, but... with all due respect to Wikipedia's philosophy etc., your opinions are still... the nicest word would be "hogwash". I'll stick to that. The idea, forex, that languages are not people and should not be saved........................... there are no polite terms; it is not a noble idea. Various other posts have no proximity to WP:CLUE either. Please go back to editing... whatever it is you edit... I won't venture to guess, but it isn't linguistics. • Serviceable†Villain 02:41, 11 June 2013 (UTC)
    • Very true that the skill set for self-taught language learners, and for traditional language transmission in the home, is not the same as the skill set for linguistics. Given that the majority of those born in the US have never studied linguistics or reached fluency in a second language, the overall level of discussion here is about what I'd expect. I've been editing by adding current press coverage of language revitalization efforts by Native Americans. If you have academic training in language documentation or second language acquisition, I'd like to hear your opinion on how we can support endangered language communities. Djembayz (talk) 11:35, 12 June 2013 (UTC)

Technology report: Developers accused of making Toolserver fight "pointless" (4,210 bytes · 💬)

I haven't used it yet, but I really like both the idea and the execution of the "Thanks" feature. Is there any chance of it coming over to Wikidata soon? Sven Manguard Wha? 22:59, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

It is tied into the Echo extension, and you can see the status of that discussion at d:WD:PC. --Rschen7754 23:20, 6 June 2013 (UTC)
  • "all you were interested in was that ToolLabs provides the same environment so your tools can continue to run there". So, DaB is angry that Toolserver users are trying to make the best of a bad situation and migrate over to Tool Labs precisely because Tool Labs is going to continue running. WMDE saw the writing on the wall. The users - that is, the Wikimedians who use the tools that are hosted on Toolserver/Tool Labs don't really give a fuck so long as the tools work. Who gets to duct it all together is just insider politics and not worth getting in a strop about. —Tom Morris (talk) 11:57, 7 June 2013 (UTC)
  • Is there any way we could try to make the title more biased in future? I'm worried that it may actually neutrally portray the discussion rather than, for example, making an email thread that blew over in a week sound like a massive controversy to pique readers' interest. Ironholds (talk) 00:10, 8 June 2013 (UTC)
    • I don't see your point here Ironholds. By necessity a headline picks out a single point from a story and then seeks to put that in context in the content of the article (if OTOH your accusation is that the story itself is biased, then I'm all ears). Is your concern that people don't click through (and go away with an incomplete picture)? Or that they click through and... actually I'm not sure what the problem is then. Indeed, hopefully, the interesting headline drew in readers who e.g. hadn't heard of Wikimedia Labs, and now have hopefully an idea of the project and its trajectory. In any case, "blew over in a week" is itself a rather incomplete picture of events -- this is the latest (and IMHO important, but YMMV) part of a discussion that's been going on for seven months already, and will go on for at least another year, if not 18 months. It should be situated in that context. - Jarry1250 [Vacation needed] 10:37, 8 June 2013 (UTC)
      • I'd disagree that it's by necessity; you couldn't pick out a headline that communicated "Toolserver root admin argues with developers"? My concern is that you seem to be overestimating the instinctive rationality of readers. While I can't speak for every reader, I am instinctively emotional and, upon reflection, rational. If you present me with a biased headline (and what is interesting to the public is not what's in the public interest), my first reaction is going to be emotional and I'll click through on those grounds, leading to a very different read of the story and a very different reaction to it than if the headline had avoided deliberately poking the brain's default schaudenfreude button. Ironholds (talk) 16:12, 8 June 2013 (UTC)
        • I'm annoyed at the loss of the Toolserver. And yes, I do consider it lost since my network doesn't even seem to be able to access it anymore. If Labs is to succeed, they are going to need to at least removing the licensing crap. --Nathan2055talk - contribs 15:55, 11 June 2013 (UTC)
          • Licensing crap? And: if it can't be accessed that's a problem at the sysadmins end, I'd think, and not directly the fault of Labs. Ironholds (talk) 16:26, 11 June 2013 (UTC)

WikiProject report: Operation Normandy (0 bytes · 💬)

Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/2013-06-05/WikiProject report


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