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Wikidata weekly summary #486

Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week.
  • Press, articles, blog posts, videos
    • Videos
      • Mapping the Scottish Reformation - using Wikidata, Wikipedia's sister project - YouTube
      • OpenSym 2021: WDProp: Web Application to Analyse Multilingual Aspects of Wikidata Properties - YouTube
      • Wikipedia Weekly Network - LIVE Wikidata editing #53 (user scripts and gadgets that can help you edit) - YouTube


You can see all open tickets related to Wikidata here. If you want to help, you can also have a look at the tasks needing a volunteer.

The Signpost: 26 September 2021

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 20:57, 26 September 2021 (UTC)

Wikidata weekly summary #487

Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week.
  • Discussions
    • Open request for adminship: BrokenSegue (RfP scheduled to end after 27 September 2021 14:36 UTC)
  • Development
    • Changed the formatting of low year numbers so that they now show as e.g. “5 CE” instead of “5” to reduce ambiugity in dates like “March 5 (CE)” (phab:T104750)
    • Working on fixing an issue where two Properties could have the same label in a given language (phab:T289473)
    • Working on preventing a few more cases where two Items could have the same sitelink (phab:T291377)
    • Mismatch Finder: Continuing to work on showing mismatches on the results page so that they can be reviewed
    • Continuing to work on technical improvements to how changes on Wikidata are propagated to Wikipedia and the other Wikimedia projects

You can see all open tickets related to Wikidata here. If you want to help, you can also have a look at the tasks needing a volunteer.

Administrators' newsletter – October 2021

News and updates for administrators from the past month (September 2021).

Guideline and policy news

Technical news

Arbitration

  • A motion has standardised the 500/30 (extended confirmed) restrictions placed by the Arbitration Committee. The standardised restriction is now listed in the Arbitration Committee's procedures.
  • Following the closure of the Iranian politics case, standard discretionary sanctions are authorized for all edits about, and all pages related to, post-1978 Iranian politics, broadly construed.
  • The Arbitration Committee encourages uninvolved administrators to use the discretionary sanctions procedure in topic areas where it is authorised to facilitate consensus in RfCs. This includes, but is not limited to, enforcing sectioned comments, word/diff limits and moratoriums on a particular topic from being brought in an RfC for up to a year.

Miscellaneous

  • Editors have approved expanding the trial of Growth Features from 2% of new accounts to 25%, and the share of newcomers getting mentorship from 2% to 5%. Experienced editors are invited to add themselves to the mentor list.
  • The community consultation phase of the 2021 CheckUser and Oversight appointments process is open for editors to provide comments and ask questions to candidates.
Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:04, 1 October 2021 (UTC)

Wikidata weekly summary #488

Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week.
  • Discussions
    • Closed request for adminship: BrokenSegue. Welcome onboard \o/
  • Development
    • Finished preventing a case where the same sitelink could be added to two different Items (phab:T291377)
    • Continuing work on the Mismatch Finder. Currently focusing on showing the details of the mismatches to the person reviewing mismatches.
    • Continued work on not allowing two Properties to have the same label after undo/revert (phab:T289473)
    • Continuing work on improving how changes on Wikidata are propagated to Wikipedia and the other other Wikimedia projects. The new system is being rolled out to all wikis now. It should not change anything for editors and just be a technical improvement in the backend.

You can see all open tickets related to Wikidata here. If you want to help, you can also have a look at the tasks needing a volunteer.

DYK nomination of 2021 La Palma volcanic eruption

Hello! Your submission of 2021 La Palma volcanic eruption at the Did You Know nominations page has been reviewed, and some issues with it may need to be clarified. Please review the comment(s) at your nomination's entry and respond there as soon as possible. Thank you for contributing to Did You Know! Flibirigit (talk) 16:54, 5 October 2021 (UTC)

DYK for Fundadores de São Paulo

On 6 October 2021, Did you know was updated with a fact from the article Fundadores de São Paulo, which you recently created, substantially expanded, or brought to good article status. The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Fundadores de São Paulo. You are welcome to check how many pageviews the nominated article or articles got while on the front page (here's how, Fundadores de São Paulo), and if they received a combined total of at least 416.7 views per hour (i.e., 5,000 views in 12 hours or 10,000 in 24), the hook may be added to the statistics page. Finally, if you know of an interesting fact from another recently created article, then please feel free to suggest it on the Did you know talk page.

Hog Farm Talk 04:25, 6 October 2021 (UTC)

Wikidata weekly summary #489

Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week.
  • Tool of the week
  • Development
    • Mismatch Finder: We are continuing the work on the review part of the system. We are now working on letting reviewers indicate if the mismatch is on Wikidata, the other database, both or neither.
    • Fixed a bug where it was possible for two Properties to have the same label in a given language by undoing/reverting an edit (phab:T289473)
    • Fixed a confusing error message that was being shown when trying to save geoshape / tabular data that doesn’t exist (phab:T285758)
    • Removing some unnecessary entity link formatting in edit summaries and special pages to improve performance (phab:T292203)
    • Fixing an issue with invalid dates that the API accepts but should not (phab:T289417)
    • Migrated all Wikimedia wikis to use the new change dispatching system. This system is responsible for notifying the other wikis about edits made on Wikidata that affect their articles so the article is refreshed and edits are added to recent changes and watchlists.

You can see all open tickets related to Wikidata here. If you want to help, you can also have a look at the tasks needing a volunteer.

This Month in GLAM: September 2021



Headlines
Read this edition in full • Single-page

To assist with preparing the newsletter, please visit the newsroom. Past editions may be viewed here.

Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Llywelyn2000/Archive

Mike, the report had been disposed of and closed by GeneralNotability. Once a report is closed, any clerk may archive it. The fact that you do not understand what happened does not entitle you to edit the archive and ask. As I said in my edit summary, if you want to get more info, talk to GeneralNotability or TheSandDoctor. I am going to revert you again. Please leave it alone.--Bbb23 (talk) 20:15, 8 October 2021 (UTC)

@Bbb23: Where was the closing statement please? Mike Peel (talk) 20:17, 8 October 2021 (UTC)
Special:Diff/1048889956 GeneralNotability (talk) 20:20, 8 October 2021 (UTC)
@GeneralNotability: Thanks. There's a mismatch between @GeneralNotability: saying "Regrettably, I believe the best path forward is to block the editors" and them actually doing the block - and I completely missed the closure because of that. I'm upset by the conclusion, but as you say, it is separate from the archive editing. I won't repeat the edit. But I really hope that there will be an appeal here, and I'm also planning a general WTF post about this and other recent situations. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 20:25, 8 October 2021 (UTC)
Hi Mike, just commenting per the pings & was going to leave you a note here, but was tied up IRL for a bit (hence the editing drop off) and see a section was made. As Bbb23 says, I came along as the archiver after seeing GeneralNotability's close and that nothing seemed really amiss. I don't really have an opinion in this; in general, the closer is generally the best one to direct questions to that may arise. --TheSandDoctor Talk 20:40, 8 October 2021 (UTC)
This kind of archiving is really best done by bot, rather than a user, to avoid exactly this kind of issue. Nothing against you personally! Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 20:43, 8 October 2021 (UTC)
Hi Mike. The process we use at SPI includes manual archiving as an essential part of our quality control. As TheSandDoctor said, the archiving clerk is looking to see that "nothing seemed really amiss". That's mostly a check for mechanical things, like the text being formatted properly, tags applied if appropriate, the case is filed under the correct title, etc. When I archive a case, I'll occasionally ask the closer a question or two, to verify that what was intended was indeed what was done. That kind of review is beyond the ability of a bot. That's the reason we don't want people editing the archives; once a case is archived, we know it has gone through this checking process.
That's not to say that users can't ask questions, or even voice objections. It's just that doing that in the archives is the wrong place. Asking on the closer's talk page is certainly the right place to start. I think you'll find that most SPI clerks (and certainly GeneralNotability) take WP:ADMINACCT seriously and are happy to answer reasonable questions on their talk page. -- RoySmith (talk) 21:12, 8 October 2021 (UTC)

−

@RoySmith: I responded to the problem on the relevant talk page - but it was prematurely archived. Mike Peel (talk) 21:19, 8 October 2021 (UTC)
Where was it? I don't see it in the history of Wikipedia talk:Sockpuppet investigations/Llywelyn2000 or User talk:GeneralNotability. The only place a comment was left that I saw was on the archive, which isn't a talk page? I'm confused. --TheSandDoctor Talk 22:04, 8 October 2021 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Llywelyn2000/Archive. Mike Peel (talk) 09:11, 9 October 2021 (UTC)
@GeneralNotability, Bbb23, RoySmith, TheSandDoctor, and Llywelyn2000: I'm too close to this, so I deliberately took a few days away from this to come back to it when I was less frustrated about it. Coming back to it this eve, I want to raise three procedural issues that I have concerns with. I don't expect them to change anything in this case, I just want to share them with you in case they are helpful with improving the approach for future cases.
  1. The closure should be clearly marked. We normally do this here by using an archive template and having the closing admin response at the top of the page. For a completely random example (1st of this month), see Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Log/2021_October_1#Shaheed_Bir_Uttam_Lt._Anwar_Girls_School_&_College - you can clearly see that it's been archived, and see the conclusion. That was not the case here. I understand why the page isn't archived in place (for privacy reasons), but it should still be indicated as closed on the arxiv page.
  2. GeneralNotability specifically mentions in his closing statement that "this is not a CU block". However, if you look at the block template posted at User talk:Llywelyn2000, there's no indication that this was the case - it was a block linked to a CU case. I haven't checked the other user accounts affected, but I assume that it's the same. This statement is buried at the bottom of the archived page, which is at least two clicks away from the user page. I'd strongly suggest making the conditions of the block clearer on the user page, or at least only one click removed.
  3. There is no clear procedure for editors to comment on a recently closed CU case. This is what I tried to do, and I also saw a reverted comment at Wikipedia talk:Sockpuppet investigations/Llywelyn2000. The archiving felt very quick, and there was no clear alternative venue to post at. I don't know what the best solution is here.
I hope these thoughts are useful. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 18:06, 11 October 2021 (UTC)
Mike Peel, in order:
  1. Why? Generally, the only people who care about archives (and which comment closed the case) are what I usually refer to as "SPI personnel" - clerks, CUs, and the occasional patrolling admin. It is not a discussion forum, nor a place where consensus is required. The purpose of the various steps in the process are to help the aforementioned SPI personnel track the progress of the case.
  2. You have things backwards. Blocks are checkuser blocks if and only if they are marked with {{checkuserblock}} (or one of its variants). I think (though don't have data to confirm) that most blocks coming out of SPI are normal administrative blocks rather than checkuser blocks. Also, I'm not a checkuser, so I cannot apply checkuser blocks myself. The only reason I made that comment was because a checkuser marked the accounts in the case as {{confirmed}}, which usually does result in a checkuser block. Further, your next bullet refers to these as "CU cases" - these are sockpuppet investigation cases, which may or may not involve CU, and the block may or may not be a CU block even after CU is run. We did have Wikipedia:Requests for checkuser once upon a time (I believe it and Wikipedia:Suspected sock puppets were merged to form SPI), but SPI is not exclusively checkuser-based.
  3. If you have concerns about the handling of a case, you should either discuss it with the admins/clerks who handled the case (me, though if you have concerns about the CU findings you should discuss them with AmandaNP since she performed the check) or raise your concern at the clerk noticeboard. The archive step just means that a clerk has made sure all of the paperwork is done, everyone who should be blocked is blocked, etc.
SPI has plenty of bureaucracy already. I don't see the value in adding a formal closing statement or whatever - it is not a venue where we're trying to find a consensus decision, and the "closure" is usually some variation on either "I agree these appear to be sockpuppets, blocked" or "I don't think these are the same person." I am certain I have closed cases with the statement "Yup. Blocked." If you object to my actions, you can follow your choice of dispute resolution - raise it with me (done here, I guess), take it to WP:AN, unblock if you feel sufficiently un-WP:INVOLVED, even go to ArbCom if you feel that is appropriate. But again: SPI is not a consensus venue, and to be blunt, I do not think there is anything you could have said that would have changed my actions in this case. GeneralNotability (talk) 18:30, 11 October 2021 (UTC)
Mike, SPI isn't AfD. The way GN closed this is completely standard SPI process. The people who hang out at SPI do tend to use a lot of jargon and verbal shortcuts. That's unfortunate, and could be improved, but it is what it is.
Regarding the "checkuser block" question, please see WP:CUBL. Seriously; please go read it and ask questions if anything is unclear. In short, if the comment in the block log said {{checkuserblock}} or {{checkuserblock-account}}, that triggers specific requirements, most notably that if another admin were to unblock the user without getting explicit permission from a CU, they would be subject to being desysopped. I see you're an admin; you really should know that. You really don't want this to happen to you, and "I didn't know what checkuserblock meant" is unlikely to be a useful argument. What GN was saying was, "Even though a CU did a check, this block is explicitly not a {{checkuserblock}} and thus doesn't trigger the CUBL requirements."
I agree with you about your last point. People comment on the archives of closed SPIs on a regular basis. I did so myself once a long time ago and got slapped for it. That fact that it happens so frequently is a good indication that we need both more clarity about the rule (maybe an edit notice on archives?), and a more obvious venue for people to discuss archived cases.
I offer no opinion on the block itself. I just wanted to address the procedural issues you brought up. -- RoySmith (talk) 18:39, 11 October 2021 (UTC)
Mike, I think you might be confused on how checkuser blocks are marked. Here's an example of one I made not terribly long ago: User_talk:FutureWorldCup. The corresponding log entry looks like this: [2]. We use variants of {{checkuserblock}} in the block log, and sometimes the user talk when we mark things as CU blocks. I don't see anywhere that GN alluded to it being one, and neither the userpage, nor the block log of the editor in question uses these templates, or similar verbiage. SQLQuery Me! 20:07, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

@GeneralNotability and RoySmith: Thanks for the replies. With respect, I think you are both too close to the process to understand how others perceive it. Please take a step back and consider it from a more remote perspective. Consider that not everyone even knows what SPI or CU means in this context. Again, please remember that I'm not complaining about what happened - but I think the process can be improved.

With the specific points I raised:

  1. Remember that the archives will be read by the affected people - both the editor that is directly affected, their active on-wiki colleagues, and anyone that comes across their talk page in the future and wants to understand what happened. You can't just think about them from the perspective of your SPI personnel.
  2. How would anyone looking at the user page know that you didn't issue checkuser blocks? It's certainly not obvious when looking at the specific user page that is affected by the block - but you still linked to a checkuser page as the reason from the block. With WP:CUBL, that makes sense - providing you know the relevant templates. Otherwise, you're looking at a user page that says "for canvassing and/or meatpuppetry discussed at Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/..." - so that's a CU block?
  3. The obvious place to comment on a case is the page about that case. In this case, that was the archived page - or at least, that's the first I saw of it when I saw the block. You shouldn't expect people to find user talk pages to comment on it (e.g., the only reason I started discussing it here was because I was asked to come back to this talk page).

I understand that in most cases you don't expect a consensus decision, and for good reason - normally you're processing private information and making a decision based on that, which only people that can see that private information can comment on. The exception to that rule really should be where people think that there is a false positive, and you should expect extra scrutiny when that happens.

And thanks Roy for noting that comments on the archives happen regularly - that's a clear indication that something needs to be improved with the processs. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 19:07, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

For 2: if it were a checkuser block, it would be marked as such. It was not marked as such. It is not a checkuser block. Also, the blocks and block notices were customized in this case - there is a standard SPI block template and there is a specific talk page template for CU blocks (starts with something like "Wikipedia's technical logs indicate..."). I chose to make a customized block notice instead. Do I also need to indicate that this wasn't a username block, a harassment block, an oversight block, or a vandalism block?
For 3: You keep insisting on commenting on the case, but: why do you need to comment on the case at all? What is it going to change? If you object to the blocks, raise it with the blocking admin (as you've done), but the SPI archives aren't the place for you to record your disagreement. I've seen the comment you wanted to make, and it was just "I don't see the closing statement" - we've been over that already, there isn't a closing statement, but the correct approach would have been to ask a clerk for help. This has been answered.
And for your final comment: no, Roy and I (and our fellow SPI clerks) are almost never acting on private information (and when we are, it's usually someone emailing us to say "hey, I found someone tweeting 'go vote on this deletion discussion' but it would be OUTING to link their twitter here" or "both of these users' names match employees at XYZCorp"). Neither Roy nor I are checkusers, we are normal administrators who happen to be SPI clerks. We don't see the technical data. We aren't charged with receiving private information. Aside from a short conversation on IRC with Amanda about the details of her findings (which still did not involve private evidence, and consisted of me asking a couple clarifying questions about the patterns she saw so that I could get a better handle on sockpuppetry vs meatpuppetry), everything I used to make my decision was present on that SPI. Of course people push back when they disagree with the findings, and of course there will be more scrutiny on high-profile cases. But this isn't a "false positive," as you say: I believe the technical data is accurate, and the users in question confirmed as much, but my decision to block was based on both the technical data and the behavioral evidence that I summarized in my comments. If you have further concerns about my use of the admin tools, ArbCom is that way GeneralNotability (talk) 19:52, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

@GeneralNotability and RoySmith: (This is a partial reply) Thanks for the replies. With respect, I think you are both too close to the process to understand how others perceive it. Please take a step back and consider it from a more remote perspective. Consider that not everyone even knows what SPI or CU means in this context. Again, please remember that I'm not complaining about what happened - but I think the process can be improved.

With the specific points I raised:

  1. Remember that the archives will be read by the affected people - both the editor that is directly affected, their active on-wiki colleagues, and anyone that comes across their talk page in the future and wants to understand what happened. You can't just think about them from the perspective of your SPI personnel.
  2. How would anyone looking at the user page know that you didn't issue checkuser blocks? It's certainly not obvious when looking at the specific user page that is affected by the block - but you still linked to a checkuser page as the reason from the block. With WP:CUBL, that makes sense - providing you know the relevant templates. Otherwise, you're looking at a user page that says "for canvassing and/or meatpuppetry discussed at Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/..." - so that's a CU block?
  3. The obvious place to comment on a case is the page about that case. In this case, that was the archived page - or at least, that's the first I saw of it when I saw the block. You shouldn't expect people to find user talk pages to comment on it (e.g., the only reason I started discussing it here was because I was asked to come back to this talk page).

I understand that in most cases you don't expect a consensus decision, and for good reason - normally you're processing private information and making a decision based on that, which only people that can see that private information can comment on. The exception to that rule really should be where people think that there is a false positive, and you should expect extra scrutiny when that happens.

And thanks Roy for noting that comments on the archives happen regularly - that's a clear indication that something needs to be improved with the process. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 20:17, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

It's that iron law again. Andrew🐉(talk) 08:43, 13 October 2021 (UTC)

Pi Bot & CC-By-SA

Hey Mike, I'm not sure the best place to have the discussion - can you explicate what Pi Bot copies from Wikipedia into WikiData and how you're ensuring it's not violating copyright? Thanks, The Cunctator (talk) 15:52, 6 October 2021 (UTC)

@The Cunctator: You can find all the info about Pi bot on its user page, User:Pi bot. It doesn't copy anything long enough to violate copyright. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 15:55, 6 October 2021 (UTC)
Cumulatively, it copies entire books' worth of content. Furthermore, there's no set legal definition of a short enough passage to avoid violating copyright. At least under U.S. law. Fair use is an affirmative defense, for which the *defendant has the burden of proof*. --The Cunctator (talk) 01:15, 13 October 2021 (UTC)
@The Cunctator: The cumulative amount doesn't matter. If people are writing whole passages as short descriptions, that's a different problem here (and pi bot avoids that by checking the length of the descriptions before copying them). There's actually a tracking category for that at Category:Articles with long short description. Fair use is different: this is simply uncopyrightable material. And this was a lot clearer when we were just using the short descriptions directly from Wikidata. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 06:58, 13 October 2021 (UTC)
What's the basis for you saying that this is uncopyrightable material? I honestly don't understand that. --The Cunctator (talk) 14:08, 13 October 2021 (UTC)
For example, see [3] or [4]. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 14:27, 13 October 2021 (UTC)

Nomination for deletion of Template:AutoMapZoom

Template:AutoMapZoom has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the entry on the Templates for discussion page. WikiCleanerMan (talk) 21:37, 16 October 2021 (UTC)

Wikidata weekly summary #490

Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week.
  • Tool of the week
  • Development
    • Mismatch Finder: We are continuing the work on the review part of the system. We are working on letting reviewers submit their decision if the mismatch is on Wikidata, the other database, both or neither.
    • In the previous week we migrated all Wikimedia wikis to use the new change dispatching system. This system is responsible for notifying the other wikis about edits made on Wikidata that affect their articles so the article is refreshed and edits are added to recent changes and watchlists. This week we monitored the new system and investigated and fixed a few issues that came up.

You can see all open tickets related to Wikidata here. If you want to help, you can also have a look at the tasks needing a volunteer.

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