Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous)/Archive 76

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This page contains discussions that have been archived from Village pump (miscellaneous).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

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Link to userpage, not homepage

When I click on my username at the top right, is there a way to link it to my user page and not my homepage? Thanks! Cocobb8 (💬 talk • ✏️ contribs) 18:07, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

Take a little look at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-personal-homepage — is Default to newcomer homepage from username link in personal tools checked? — TheresNoTime (talk • they/them) 18:15, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

YThat worked, thanks a lot. Cocobb8 (💬 talk • ✏️ contribs) 18:21, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

There's a homepage? Is it different from Main Page? --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 18:59, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

Yes, it's in addition to your user page. It's located at the top menu when you are on your user page or talk page. https://wiki.riteme.site/w/index.php?title=Special:Homepage Cocobb8 (💬 talk • ✏️ contribs) 20:02, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

(edit conflict) @Redrose64: They are likely referring to a Growth Team feature that gives newcomers their own private homepage with info about their edits and with personalized suggestions about articles needing cleanup. It looks like this. ObserveOwl (chit-chat • my doings) 20:02, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

OK, thanks. Never seen that before. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 21:57, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

Come help at wikifunctions!

Translation certainly could use more support. Edward-Woodrow • talk 19:54, 5 October 2023 (UTC)

Feel free to provide links. Here's one to the WikiFunctions main page. Here's another to TranslateWiki.net. Is this what you had in mind? –Novem Linguae (talk) 01:04, 6 October 2023 (UTC)

Stub improvement drive

Starting this week, WikiProject Stub improvement is holding week-long drives to expand stubs in different topics. This week's topic is women's history, and all are invited to join! The drive can be found here. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 00:13, 8 October 2023 (UTC)

ArbCom Electoral Commission nominations open

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.

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Nominations for the Electoral Commission for the 2023 Arbitration Committee elections are now open. — Frostly (talk) 22:14, 2 October 2023 (UTC)

WP:ACE Election Commission - Call for candidates

Hello all, qualified editors are invited to self-nominate for the 2022 Arbitration Committee Elections Electoral Commission. Those interested should list themselves on this page. Commissioners are empowered to make binding decisions on unexpected or exception issues related to the election, and some other duties specified in Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Arbitration Committee Elections/ACERFC decisions to date. This is a single-term position lasting until the end of the December election. Thank you, -- Asartea ^{Talk | Contribs} 07:16, 5 October 2023 (UTC)

Reminder, the deadline for candidate entries is in about 9 hours. — xaosflux ^Talk 14:44, 8 October 2023 (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.

Seeking tool to fill in citation parameters

Is there a tool (bot, gadget, script, whatever) that will go through an article and fill in citation parameters such as date, title, website, author? Or one which will change the square-bracket format of a citation to a cite web style? I've spent an hour getting lost in the catacombs of Wikipedia and can't find one. I frequently come across articles with sad collections of sources (e.g. Horse markings), and it is tedious to click on everything and hand-code citations. If I could automate some of the citation cleanup, I could spend more time on fixing content. I know these must exist; please list your favorites. ▶ I am Grorp ◀ 21:31, 5 October 2023 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:reFill.-gadfium 22:10, 5 October 2023 (UTC)

@Gadfium: Well, I gave reFill/reFill2 a hard workout—I had it check every article I'd edited in my last 200 edits. It is squirrely as f**k, offers some pretty poor results (that have to be fixed by hand and sometimes undone), and completely misses a lot of citations that do need help. I suppose it is "a" tool, but it's a pretty poor one. Also tried Zotero, which will be useful for constructing new citations for journal articles (which are pretty cumbersome). ▶ I am Grorp ◀ 03:45, 6 October 2023 (UTC)

It is squirrely as f**k heh. Wikipedia:Village_pump_(proposals)/Archive_187#RfC:_Block_reFill_tool_until_fixed (1 year 1 months ago). What progress has been made since then, I wonder? -- GreenC 04:14, 6 October 2023 (UTC)

@GreenC: Apparently none. 1.7 years ago, BTW. Does WP:REFLINKS work to do a similar job, and does it work any better? (I saw it mentioned in the RfC.) ▶ I am Grorp ◀ 06:07, 6 October 2023 (UTC)

I use the visual editor, and sometimes if I find a badly formatted citation I'll extract the key bit of information (e.g. the URL for a web citation) and reinsert it using VE's automatic citation formatting tool. It always still needs tweaking after that but if the original citation is a mess it can give a better starting point. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 12:39, 6 October 2023 (UTC)

All the automated citation creation tools will sometimes mess things up, the only solution is to make sure to check the output. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 18:51, 6 October 2023 (UTC)

Exactly this. The Zotero translators for any tool scripted to work with Wikipedia have to go through the API, which is not as fully functional as the Zotero browser extension, and so many domains only work partially. (See the comment by MVolz (WMF), Citoid's maintainer, at mw:Talk:Citoid#Improving citation quality). What this means in practice is that fully automating citations to the point where they don't need to be double checked and repaired is still quite a long ways off. Sometimes they're all ready to go, sometimes they leave a huge cleanup project in their wake. Wikipedia:WikiProject Citation cleanup/Repairing algorithmically generated citations has more info.

With that caveat of always double checking your script's output, there was a nice Signpost article about this a little while ago at Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2023-08-01/Tips and tricks, if you're interested, User:Grorp. Folly Mox (talk) 07:28, 8 October 2023 (UTC)

• Yup… Sometimes trying to automate with bots takes longer than doing things by hand. Blueboar (talk) 13:02, 6 October 2023 (UTC)

Big tables on small monitors

What should be done for large tables with more than 5 columns that have a problem of displaying on mobile phones if we don't want to reduce the number of columns? For example, how do you make this table? {{Hapoel Be'er Sheva matches in European football}}? Masoud.h1368 (talk) 15:26, 6 October 2023 (UTC)

As a person who reads and edits solely on mobile, I understand that sometimes I'll have to do a sidey-scroll to see all the bits of a table. It's nowhere near as much of an accessibility problem as a thread gone too far indented, or a noticeboard archive box taking up too much screen width, either of which leave a column of completely illegible single characters running vertically down the edge of the screen. In the linked template, you could try relabelling the rightmost column to "Overall", which is narrower than "Aggregate". Folly Mox (talk) 09:05, 8 October 2023 (UTC)

2023 Arbitration Committee Elections - Electoral Commission feedback requested

The community evaluation period for the Electoral Commission is open until 23:59, 15 October 2022 (UTC); feedback on volunteers for this commission is appreciated. -- Asartea ^{Talk | Contribs} 08:53, 9 October 2023 (UTC)

Opportunities open for the Affiliations Committee, Ombuds commission, and the Case Review Committee

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Hi everyone! The Affiliations Committee (AffCom), Ombuds commission (OC), and the Case Review Committee (CRC) are looking for new members. These volunteer groups provide important structural and oversight support for the community and movement. People are encouraged to nominate themselves or encourage others they feel would contribute to these groups to apply. There is more information about the roles of the groups, the skills needed, and the opportunity to apply on the Meta-wiki page.

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~ Keegan (WMF) (talk) 16:41, 9 October 2023 (UTC)

UTM parameters in URL-s

Do we have any rule about using the UTM parameters in external links (e.g. to sources) in Wikipedia? Is there any consensus to consider them appropriate? ...useful? ...irrelevant? ...harmless? ...harmful?
Should they be stripped from links? Are there any bots periodically scanning Wikipedia and removing them?
Should such task be proposed at WP:BOTREQ? --CiaPan (talk) 06:51, 5 October 2023 (UTC)

It already has been: Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/PrimeBOT 17. Nardog (talk) 07:50, 5 October 2023 (UTC)

...and? A search for insource:/[\?&]utm_/ finds 500 main-space articles—or more (I did not click 'next 500'). One of them is Europe, which has a tracked URL in the very first words of the lede (footnote [a], ref. [11] within it). The link was added in February (Special:Diff/1137319284), so it is there over half a year, and has not been noticed by a bot. --CiaPan (talk) 10:01, 5 October 2023 (UTC)

cc Primefac in case the bot needs adjusting. –Novem Linguae (talk) 10:35, 5 October 2023 (UTC)

Adjusting, no, just running; last time I ran that task was May 2022. Primefac (talk) 10:52, 5 October 2023 (UTC)

I think there's a consensus that UTM and similar tracking parameters are mildly harmful and should be removed but not urgently. Certes (talk) 11:13, 5 October 2023 (UTC)

I suspect most of them come from the automated citation formatter built into VisualEditor. Citoid, I think it's called? That should strip out the UTM crap when it creates the citation. RoySmith (talk) 15:00, 5 October 2023 (UTC)

Any reason the wikitext editor wouldn't also have this problem? Not everyone knows enough about tracking links to strip out those parameters. –Novem Linguae (talk) 15:09, 5 October 2023 (UTC)

@Mvolz (WMF) would know whether mw:citoid strips these. I know that it cleans up some URLs. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:16, 11 October 2023 (UTC)

A topical article from The Register today: [1] Certes (talk) 14:38, 6 October 2023 (UTC)

British or English?

There's an edit war currently going on at Connie Talbot regarding whether she should be considered British or English. What's correct? 195.178.166.244 (talk) 06:22, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Nationality of people from the United Kingdom may or may not be of help to you. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 07:28, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

Yes, it may or may not, but the place to discuss this issue is Talk:Connie Talbot. And please, everyone, don't edit war. Phil Bridger (talk) 07:39, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

Arbitration committee 2023 election: nominations to start in a month

The nomination period for the 2023 arbitration committee election will start in just under a month. If there is someone you'd like to see run, or if you want to know someone else's plans before making your own decision, I encourage you to talk to them now, well in advance of the election. For more information about the work involved with serving on the committee, see the arbitrator experiences page. isaacl (talk) 22:51, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

What the difference Dissolution, and Breakup?

What the difference between Dissolution, Collapse and Breakup of states/countries? Why we call Breakup of Yugoslavia but Dissolution of the Soviet Union‎? Kaiyr (talk) 04:54, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

User:Kaiyr, this isn't really the right forum for this question (it's probably better suited for WP:RD), but you may also want to test your thesis. Folly Mox (talk) 14:27, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

I just realised this probably is a question about Wikipedia, specifically article titles. See Talk:Breakup of Yugoslavia#Requested move 8 April 2022 and Talk:Dissolution of the Soviet Union/Archive 1#'dissolution' vs 'collapse' for relevant discussions. Folly Mox (talk) 14:39, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

Wikimedia Foundation PageTriage project: Final update

This is a quick notice that I've just posted the final update for the Wikimedia Foundation Moderator Tools' team's work on PageTriage for New Pages Patrol. Samwalton9 (WMF) (talk) 11:00, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

Review and comment on the 2024 Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees selection rules package

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Dear all,

Please review and comment on the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees selection rules package from now until 29 October 2023. The selection rules package was based on older versions by the Elections Committee and will be used in the 2024 Board of Trustees selection. Providing your comments now will help them provide a smoother, better Board selection process. More on the Meta-wiki page.

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01:12, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

Obsolete policy proposals appearing in Google answers

If you do a Google search for "Do Wikipedia edits have to be approved?" the first search result is a link to Wikipedia:Edit Approval. Google displays a passage from it, highlighting "If an administrator or a person who is considered trustful by any two administrators believes the edit is a valuable contribution to Wikipedia, they will approve the edit." Does anyone know how to ask Google to stop coughing up historical policy proposals as answers to questions? Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 21:32, 9 October 2023 (UTC)

I see a "Feedback" link at the bottom right of the snippet, I was able to click that and select that it was "Inaccurate content" and then explain why. How Google actually take that feedback into account is another question, but maybe if enough VPM watchers do the same thing it could help. the wub "?!" 22:05, 9 October 2023 (UTC)

I'd be very surprised if Google took the slightest interest in a few complaints about their search engine. They've been misrepresenting AI-generated nonsense of their own as Wikipedia content for years, and clearly don't care about inaccuracies as long as they can generate search results that look superficially convincing - what AI does best. AndyTheGrump (talk) 22:20, 9 October 2023 (UTC)

@Clayoquot, I wonder if we could WP:NOINDEX that page. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:06, 10 October 2023 (UTC)

Boldly  Done Edward-Woodrow • talk 00:22, 10 October 2023 (UTC)

Thanks everyone! Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 00:32, 10 October 2023 (UTC)

Should we NOINDEX all {{historical}} or {{failed proposal}}s? are there any disadvantages to doing this? Alpha3031 (t • c) 15:06, 14 October 2023 (UTC)

Can't think of any, tbh. Edward-Woodrow • talk 16:36, 14 October 2023 (UTC)

The disadvantage would be making it difficult for those who are specifically searching for particular pages to find them. CMD (talk) 03:07, 15 October 2023 (UTC)

They could just go on our site and search there. QuicoleJR (talk) 14:09, 25 October 2023 (UTC)

That's a difficult question. I would like to say that people who believe AI-generated nonsense only have themselves to blame, and that we should leave people who want to find out whether a proposal has been rejected before in peace, but lots of people seem to prefer to believe the AI-generated nonsense. Is it our job to protect people, and Google, from themselves? Phil Bridger (talk) 17:50, 14 October 2023 (UTC)

If you have a deep hole on your property, you put up a fence. It'll stop most people from falling in, and if someone really wants to climb under the fence--whether to study the hole or out of stupidity--you did your part and you're innocent. But if you don't put up a fence and someone falls in, that's completely your fault, because how were they supposed to know the hole was there?

Case in point: It'll stop most misinformation, and if someone really wants to find out about a rejected Wikipedia proposal, they could still look it up in, well, Wikipedia. 2603:8001:4542:28FB:C4A:7FE3:361D:7B96 (talk) 02:51, 15 October 2023 (UTC) (Please send talk page messages here instead)

I've reverted the NOINDEX. We shouldn't be in the SEO game. Pages that are failed proposals are just as interesting as other pages from a search perspective. Let's not second-guess what pages people want to find when they do a search, and let's not second-guess what google shows to their users. RoySmith (talk) 03:15, 15 October 2023 (UTC)

If we want pages to appear in normal search results, we can still exclude them from Google snippets using a "data-nosnippet" attribute. [2] Do we (or can we make) a template that would put this attribute on a page? Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 04:40, 15 October 2023 (UTC)

In theory, we should be neutral between search engines and can't hope to pander to the idiosyncrasies of all of them. In practice, Google has such a monopoly that we should probably do this. Certes (talk) 13:53, 15 October 2023 (UTC)

There's two distinct issues here. One is whether we should be hiding specific pages from search engines based on our evaluation of whether they're obsolete or not. The other is the mechanism used to do this. I'll stick to the first question, and my opinion is emphatically that we should not.

Our job is to write an encyclopedia. Let the search engines worry about what they index and how they present it. Once we get into customizing things to optimize how the search engines present our stuff, it'll never end. If we hide obsolete policies, why not failed FA, GA, DYK, ITN, etc, nominations? Failed RFAs? How about AfDs which ended up getting overturned at DRV? Maybe search for every place somebody struck out text and figure out how to get the search engines to ignore that?

We already have ways to mark content as obsolete, for example the {{historical}} and {{Failed proposal}} templates used here. If the search engines want to use those to adjust their internal rankings, good on them. If not, then not our problem. RoySmith (talk) 14:54, 15 October 2023 (UTC)

The slippery slope argument? Really?

I'd support noindexing that page. Wikipedia should be giving accurate information. If we know a failed proposal is leading to inaccurate search results, and adding one line of text to the page will fix it, we should fix it. And if that happens again with another page in the future, we should fix that page, too.

It's better to fix it that to look down our noses at Google while not fixing it. Levivich (talk) 15:02, 15 October 2023 (UTC)

Fully agree with RoySmith. If Google produces inaccurate search results because it is misreading correctly tagged information on Wikipedia, that seems to be something Google could be interested in fixing. The search results for "questions" at Google often answer incorrectly or not the question I asked; it is not our business spending any effort on improving that. —Kusma (talk) 16:58, 15 October 2023 (UTC)

Should a failed proposal ever appear in a data snippet? If not then we might add "data-nosnippet" to the {{Failed proposal}} tag. Is that any worse than using the blunt instrument of __NOINDEX__, which we already use in appropriate templates? Certes (talk) 15:26, 15 October 2023 (UTC)

That would just prevent the banner from appearing in a snippet. We'd have to wrap the entire page in a div with data-nosnippet. Nardog (talk) 15:35, 15 October 2023 (UTC)

What about making {{nosnippet}} render <meta name="robots" content="max-snippet:0">? I'm not sure but I think that can be thrown in the body anywhere (so at the top of a page) without having to be part of a div/span/section. We could then add {{nosnippet}} to {{failed proposal}} and other similar templates. Levivich (talk) 16:10, 15 October 2023 (UTC)

<meta> can't be in wikitext. We have to request __NOSNIPPET__ on Phab. Nardog (talk) 16:47, 15 October 2023 (UTC)

So that means we'd need a closing template to close the div tag, right? Ugh. Idk, imo, all of WP: space should be no-snippeted. WP-space pages, including policy pages, are not good pages to snippet, as the snippet will undoubtedly be taken out of context (as demonstrated here). Maybe that should be the Phab request. Levivich (talk) 16:55, 15 October 2023 (UTC)

I'm opposed; perhaps a search engine comes along that does a good job at making snippets, and we shouldn't block that. —Kusma (talk) 16:59, 15 October 2023 (UTC)

That's highly speculative. If and when someone develops technology that will correctly snippet Wikipedia policies and failed proposals (mark my words: that will never happen), then we can remove the no snippet. Levivich (talk) 17:12, 15 October 2023 (UTC)

If people are running LLMs or similar on Wikipedia and ignore page headers that clearly state the page is obsolete, they clearly do not care about the quality of their results. Improving untrustworthy machines slightly can be bad if it increases trust. —Kusma (talk) 17:29, 15 October 2023 (UTC)

The Google snippet does not include the header templates. Edward-Woodrow • talk 17:48, 15 October 2023 (UTC)

@Certes Should a failed proposal ever appear in a data snippet? Of course it should. If I was researching failed proposals on wikipedia, I might run this search. I would be pretty annoyed if I discovered that all the failed proposals were missing from the search results. RoySmith (talk) 17:08, 15 October 2023 (UTC)

No snippet does not remove them from search results. No snippet isn't the same as no index. Levivich (talk) 17:11, 15 October 2023 (UTC)

Yes, you would want it in your search results. But "data snippets" seems to be something other than search results: an AI-based or AI-like attempt to answer your question by writing an answer based on information from Wikipedia and elsewhere. Unless the question is "which failed Wikipedia proposal would have required two supporters for each edit", this isn't the right answer. Certes (talk) 17:14, 15 October 2023 (UTC)

+1 for RoySmith's reasoning. — Frostly (talk) 18:27, 15 October 2023 (UTC)

Just throwing out that there would still always be Category:Wikipedia failed proposals (for failed proposals), Category:Inactive project pages (for historical or superseded pages), and for full completeness, Category:Defunct WikiProjects for historical WikiProjects, Category:Deprecated templates/Category:Deprecated templates kept for historical reasons for historical templates, and Category:Obsolete images for historical images. Yes, it takes a small bit more searching than a simple Google search, but if someone really wants to find a historical page it's still more than doable (not to mention that Wikipedia will obviously have more complete coverage of those than Google ever will), and it wouldn't inconvenience those who are looking for current information and would get served the wrong info instead. 2603:8001:4542:28FB:8997:D75D:C1E9:927B (talk) 20:46, 15 October 2023 (UTC) (Please send talk messages here instead)

Some people prefer to use their favorite web search engine to find old conversations, etc., which can include "historical" pages. I have done it myself, though I'm generally happier with the internal search, as it correctly handles "shirt" -stripes searches, and others don't. (As a general rule, Duck Duck Go gives me pages that still include stripes, and Google gives me pages that don't include shirt.) I wouldn't want to break searching in general, but when we have a known problem, I don't mind doing what we can to fix it. It's more important to me that people understand how Wikipedia works than that we maintain a consistent system internally.

That said, I do sometimes wonder where all y'all are when the question is about "letting" Google index new articles. I see several people here saying it's not our job to protect Google from a known-bad page, but I feel pretty lonely in conversations about whether unknown-and-probably-okay articles should remain NOINDEXd to protect Google's search results from something that definitely doesn't qualify for speedy deletion but isn't in very good shape. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:45, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

I've complained to Google as The wub suggested. Pinigng NPerry (WMF) in case he knows someone at Google to notify as well. In the meantime I'd support a NOINDEX of all failed proposal pages because misinformation is bad, and misinformation about Wikipedia is ultimately bad for Wikipedia, regardless of whose fault it is. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 04:21, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

As an aside, I see google have disabled snippets related to the search query "who is caliph of Islam?" Folly Mox (talk) 15:50, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

(This box only shows for autoconfirmed users.) WTF? It's bad enough we're talking about manipulating how the search engines index particular pages, we've got warning boxes on our own site that we hide from unconfirmed readers? What's next, shadow banning? Enterprisey (my apologies for the tone) can you explain why you thought this was a good idea? RoySmith (talk) 16:07, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

Since the box says "Feel free to move to a better title", and only autoconfirmed editors can move pages, it's not unreasonable to restrict the box to people who can actually do the proposed task. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:15, 23 October 2023 (UTC)

In fact, that page is extended confirm protected for both edits and moving for the next three years (log), so even most autoconfirmed editors can't move it! Caeciliusinhorto-public (talk) 08:46, 25 October 2023 (UTC)

The more I think about it, the more I think that Wikipedia should nosnippet the entire website. I don't trust snippet algorithms to accurately summarize Wikipedia articles (nevermind our policy pages), or to grab the best excerpt from articles--even when it's grabbing a portion of the lead, it might mislead readers by grabbing the wrong portion and presenting something out of context. Since nosnippet is not the same as noindex, it would still allow people to search for and find information from Wikipedia, it would just stop the unreliable snippets from being presented to readers who are searching for stuff. Let them click on the link and read the Wikipedia page in context. Levivich (talk) 16:10, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

If you did that, I'll bet you 100 quatloos that Google will just start ignoring the no-snippet hint. SEO is a losing game. RoySmith (talk) 16:17, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

Same. jp×g 08:46, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

• There's a surprising (to me) amount of controversy here. Given the broader policy implications, I strongly suggest that before anybody takes any action on this, start a formal RFC and advertise it in the usual places so we don't fall into the WP:LOCALCONSENSUS trap. RoySmith (talk) 14:51, 17 October 2023 (UTC)
  • I concur. — Frostly (talk) 21:56, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

About vermiculite

Where does this mineral come from? Geko72290 (talk) 22:15, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

@Geko72290, if Vermiculite or its sources doesn't have your answer, the next place you could ask is WP:RDS. The village pumps are for discussing Wikipedia itself and related matters, not for general knowledge questions. 57.140.16.12 (talk) 14:00, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

@Geko72290: from the lead of Vermiculite: Vermiculite forms by the weathering or hydrothermal alteration of biotite or phlogopite. Edward-Woodrow • talk 12:04, 25 October 2023 (UTC)

Norwegian names

Not sure where I should bring this up. I guess this is the best place? This is about Norwegian geographical names, specifically Svarthuken in Svalbard. Once named Negro Point by English sailors, changed in two steps to the current Norwegian name... but does the English name for a location follow name changes in Norwegian automatically? The impact and interest for the place should be minimal for English speakers so maybe it does not matter. If you have an opinion, please comment in Talk:Svarthuken. BRG Hubba (talk) 13:15, 24 October 2023 (UTC)

The commonly used English name should be used, see WP:COMMONNAME. I'm sure there isn't going to be any regular usage of the old name, given it's so obscure. So changing the name would seem appropriate. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 21:11, 24 October 2023 (UTC)

Too many edits allowed

I believe this site is losing its credibility. There are too many people making edits on subjects they know nothing about. One deceased musician's page has been edited countless times by know nothing's. They changed his entire history, removed notable achievements. The Wikipedia information doesn't match media articles. It makes for too many questions. I'm sure this man's page is not the only one altered by people who have no business editing finished the pages. 2600:8805:C03:800:9095:FA06:91E6:506 (talk) 02:22, 26 October 2023 (UTC)

Feel free to link to the page in question here, and experienced editors will likely take a look and improve it. –Novem Linguae (talk) 06:12, 26 October 2023 (UTC)

Editors Interested in Wikipedia Research Ethics

Hi all, I'm repeating this post from Wikipedia_talk:Teahouse in hopes it will reach a few interested editors.

We're looking 3-5 editors are interested in joining us and other editors in a remote online workshop to talk about Wikipedia community values and how they interplay with research that is conducted on/with Wikipedia. We're in a bit of a bind with scheduling a synchronous workshop and would really appreciate any help! Specifically, if anyone is available on November 12, 2023 · 2:00pm - 4:00pm CST that is the time that works for the majority of our interested Wikipedians thus far. If you're interested, you can learn more at our Meta Research Page. Leave a comment here, on our talk page, or share your email privately with this questionnaireand I can reach out with more information. Cheers,Zentavious (talk) 15:10, 30 October 2023 (UTC)

Message from other language

When on the Wikipedia page where you choose what language you want to go to, I misclicked while over the Arabic wiki. Now I have a welcome message from that wiki. I don't speak Arabic, so I can't edit it. The only reason I know the topic is because I was using a translator. What should I do about this? Wolf ^{(talk | contribs)} 17:10, 1 November 2023 (UTC)

If you mean the message at ar:User talk:ItsTHEwolfTime, just ignore it, or archive it away if it bothers you. It shouldn't happen again. A few other-language wikis send a greeting the first time you read a page when logged in, even if you don't edit. I have a similar message there from my first visit several years ago. Certes (talk) 17:42, 1 November 2023 (UTC)

Timeline of ... history

Is it just me, or do others feel as well that the many articles titled "Timeline of X history" have a rather redundant title? Would the contents of Timeline of Perry County, Tennessee history be any different to those of Timeline of Perry County, Tennessee? Timeline of Scotland is a redlink (as of now), but we do have Timeline of Scottish history? Timeline of Quebec history (beginnings–1533) or Timeline of Quebec (beginnings–1533)? Fram (talk) 15:37, 2 November 2023 (UTC)

Yep. Timeline of X history implies a timeline of the differing approaches to the history of X – more or less Historiography of X. I assume this is not intended, so including both Timeline and history is redundant. Either Timeline of X or History of X would be OK, with Timeline of implying a simple list of dates and events whereas History of implies something more descriptive — GhostInTheMachine ^{talk to me} 20:21, 2 November 2023 (UTC)

login.wikimedia.org

Moved to Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)

Feedback requested: use of 'archiveN' as subpage name for active, non-archival page

The Wikipedia:Featured articles process appears to regularly use pagenames of the form Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/<Article name>/archiveN for active, ongoing discussion. I raised a discussion about this there, and your feedback would be welcome at WT:Featured article candidates#Use of 'archiveN' as subpage name for active, non-archival page. Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 18:57, 7 November 2023 (UTC)

Question as I'm a new user

I'm a new user to Wikipedia - I've just created this account yesterday. Is this the page for us to be able to post about anything? CoinCelery42020 (talk) 14:49, 8 November 2023 (UTC)

Hello, welcome to Wikipedia. Questions related to editing Wikipedia should probably be posted at WP:TEAHOUSE. If you just want to chat/socialize, might want to go offwiki for that. Got any questions in mind? –Novem Linguae (talk) 15:22, 8 November 2023 (UTC)

Not as of right now - thank you CoinCelery42020 (talk) 17:35, 8 November 2023 (UTC)

RFC on baseball player style advice for infoboxes

This discussion is regarding whether the baseball player style advice for infoboxes should be modified to include the 40-40 club under career highlights and awards. All feedback is welcome. Thanks Nemov (talk) 15:18, 9 November 2023 (UTC)

Scoring for Wikipedia type Articles Generated by LLM

See the post at Wikipedia:Village_pump_(proposals)#Scoring_for_Wikipedia_type_Articles_Generated_by_LLM Terribilis11 (talk) 01:19, 10 November 2023 (UTC)

Talk page villages in the city of Wikipedia

I have notice a phenomenon. Talk pages are sort of organic. One conversation can spark the idea for a new conversation. Or a conversation started 20 years ago can still have occasional additions, with a gap of 10 years between posts. Even simply having a longish talk page can encourage more posts, the page has a party momentum.

I have noticed cases, a hypothetical example, where the talk page had a lot of activity, say between 2003-2013. Then it was archived. From 2013-present, there is very little activity. It's like a village that grew organically, and is fragile, then "destroyed" in the name of progress/cleanup/clutter. I'm not making any suggestions. only observing this phenomenon. Check old archive pages and see how busy they used to be prior to archiving, and what happened after. Of course some pages continue at good pace, but some never recovered the same momentum.

This is cool sociology stuff that is easily studied because it can be quantified, and there is a long history, and large amount of data. It reminds me of The Death and Life of Great American Cities where urban planners destroyed organic communities in the name of progress and the city never recovered. Talk pages are villages in the city of Wikipedia.

(there are ways to reignite old conversations, etc.. but in the main, most users don't go into the archives to contribute because those conversations are locked and copying it back to the primary is not done very often). -- GreenC 15:43, 26 October 2023 (UTC)

Archiving can be setup to leave a certain amount of threads on the talk page. I've have my talk page to leave at least five threads unarchived for exactly the reasons you mention. I don't think it would be helpful to not archive anything on talk pages, as the page would become so long as to discourage new activity. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 19:53, 26 October 2023 (UTC)

I have seen many cases where someone replies to years-old comments but I don't recall seeing anything constructive. Just NOTFORUM problems or complaints about living people and similar. Johnuniq (talk) 22:12, 26 October 2023 (UTC)

That’s very much my experience also. Responses to old threads are rarely helpful. Doug Weller talk 20:22, 29 October 2023 (UTC)

I wonder how much the general reduction in talk page activity is related to the fact that anonymous users on mobile devices have historically been unable to interact with talk pages (permalink) ... though that link may well be out-of-date (see this discussion and m:Talk pages project/Mobile. Graham87 (talk) 10:13, 27 October 2023 (UTC)

Everyone seems to have different archiving preferences. I agree that setting minthreadsleft:0 is bad, and that there should always be some recent conversations left on a talk page, so that visitors can see what has been discussed recently. –Novem Linguae (talk) 10:17, 27 October 2023 (UTC)

Or maybe it simply means that there was much to be said and done in 2013, but that the topic itself (not the Wikipedia article) has stagnated since.--User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 16:09, 27 October 2023 (UTC)

I've been off on several rants recently about how the fundamental structure of wikipedia is broken, and this is another example. One of the important problems (perhaps the most important one from a technology standpoint) with wikipedia is that the information is stored as plain text. Any attempt to layer structure on top of that is based on parsing the text, which is fraught with peril because most of it is generated by hand with essentially random markup. There is no real concept of a "conversation" in the sense of a tree (or even a forest) of posts with clear metadata about who wrote what, and which posts are in response to which other posts. RoySmith (talk) 16:51, 27 October 2023 (UTC)

@RoySmith We have a pretty reliable structure of conversations these days thanks to DiscussionTools, for example: Special:DiscussionToolsDebug/Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous). It's still based on parsing the plain text, so it can fail, but we also increasingly use tools for editing that plain text that guarantee not to mess it up (DiscussionTools and Twinkle account for >50% of comments posted [3], and probably some 20% of the rest is posted using other similar tools). Matma Rex talk 21:27, 28 October 2023 (UTC)

As others have, I keep threads on the page, usually as many as makes the ToC equal the length of the archive box (~6). I have encountered, without reverting, instances of people archiving, either by hand or automatically, and leaving nothing on the page. If the threads are very old, I let them go. However, leaving even very old threads on the talk page does contribute to a feeling of liveliness as well as showing what issues have been addressed in the past, which in itself can be helpful. Dhtwiki (talk) 23:52, 27 October 2023 (UTC)

There is a current proposal at BOTREQ to archive all talk pages automatically, to keep them clear of "clutter" ie. talk pages are mostly composed of "clutter". In need of "cleaning". By a bot algorithm. It will never get approval, but I suspect a lot of people would vote for it. There's nothing in the WP docs that talks about the downsides of archiving, or upsides of keeping pages intact. -- GreenC 04:15, 28 October 2023 (UTC)

I have a large user talk page and I prefer to manage its archives manually. As I revisit old conversations and topics, I check on them to see how they have fared after an interval of several years. Because I have some familiarity and investment in the topics, it's easier to pick them up again than to start on something completely new.

What I'd really like is a tool which would move a section to another page in a simple and efficient way. It may be that the one-click archiver tool does something like this but I've not yet found a good resource which explains it and the alternatives. So, some talk page tools which facilitate manual curation might help editors engage with their history. Andrew🐉(talk) 23:13, 5 November 2023 (UTC)

Archiving really can be a problem when people simply treat the age of a post as the criteria for archiving. It really should be whether the issue is resolved or now irrelevant that matters. I sometimes respond to very old messages. I am also bothered when a message is closed for discussion and I want to add something important that was missed. Instead of "archiving" discussions, they should instead be marked "dormant". This allows the conversation to be picked up again if necessary. Talk pages are the least well designed aspect of Wikipedia. In whatever replaces Mediawiki there's huge room for improvement. Talk pages should have a threaded conversation model, sectioning and signatures should be automatic. The last text model where anybody can edit anywhere, doesn't work so well. Jason Quinn (talk) 08:05, 11 November 2023 (UTC)

Like WP:Flow? It turned out that in particular the history features people wanted were hard to keep working when each comment to a thread had its own history. Anomie⚔ 13:09, 11 November 2023 (UTC)

Like Flow but Flow is a bad implementation of threading style-wise. Social media sites like Reddit have a much better grasp of the use of space and font size, etc, that people like for threads. Jason Quinn (talk) 14:07, 11 November 2023 (UTC)

Ah, Flow, or whatever it's called now. I hate it passionately. Edward-Woodrow (talk) 14:24, 11 November 2023 (UTC)

Donation

I already sent a check for 10.00 to Wikipedia last year. 185.30.75.253 (talk) 21:10, 11 November 2023 (UTC)

Thank you for your valued contribution. Money raised via the Donate link on this website goes to the Wikimedia Foundation, which supports many projects including this English-language Wikipedia. Any further donations are, of course, completely optional. Certes (talk) 22:29, 11 November 2023 (UTC)

If you create an account, you can disable the fundraising banners. RudolfRed (talk) 22:10, 12 November 2023 (UTC)

عبدالله_بن_حسين_بن_مبارك_آل_خليفه_-_رحِمهُ_الله

Foreign language article which has been in mainspace for an inexcusably long time. Original author explicitly stated they meant to publish this in arwiki. Someone who knows arwiki syntax, please cut/paste there. Mach61 (talk) 01:22, 12 November 2023 (UTC)

It's only been in mainspace for a bit over a day. I've moved it to draft. —Cryptic 01:42, 12 November 2023 (UTC)

I see. I just looked at the history and not the logs Mach61 (talk) 03:43, 12 November 2023 (UTC)

Logs won't tell you much; if a page is moved, the log entry for the move is placed on the log for the old name, but not the new one. However, there is also an entry added to the page's edit history - look for "moved page" in the edit summary. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 12:32, 12 November 2023 (UTC)

Potential misinformation in Current Events Nov 12 regarding Israel-Palestine

Hello, I am inexperienced so I don't know where to report this. There is an issue with the current events page but the talk page is blocked so I am reporting here.

In the current events of Nov 2012 page (link below), the following paragraph exists:

'"The World Health Organization says that there are reports that people who fled Gaza’s Al-Shifa hospital “have been shot at, wounded and even killed”'

While the linked WHO report does complain about the hospital conditions, I could not find that it mentions shooting those who are being evacuated. Here is the report which is one of the references: https://www.emro.who.int/media/news/who-loses-communication-with-contacts-in-al-shifa-hospital-in-gaza-amid-reports-of-attacks.html

Although Wikipedia relies primarily on secondary sources, I think this paragraph must either be removed or a primary source must be added because it is seemingly a direct quote. Furthermore, in case this quote never came out of WHO, then the user needs to clarify their intentions.

Here is the diff which added it:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:MobileDiff/1184774867

Here is a message I added to the user talk page:

"https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:SkylarEstrada#source_of_your_claim_about_WHO's_report_in_Current_Events_Nov_12 109.253.209.80 (talk) 07:45, 13 November 2023 (UTC)

@109.253.209.80: The source you linked has the quote "There are reports that some people who fled the hospital have been shot at, wounded and even killed." This is the source of the quote from your snippet. PiGuy3 (talk) 07:51, 13 November 2023 (UTC)

The wording is critical. The wording in current news is 'The World Health Organization (WHO) reports that people who fled the hospital "have been shot at, wounded and even killed"' which is false. The WHO is not claiming this as a primary source, it is only saying there are reports of this. 109.253.209.80 (talk) 08:14, 13 November 2023 (UTC)

@109.253.209.80: Please use Template:Reply_to when replying, thanks. PiGuy3 (talk) 08:46, 13 November 2023 (UTC)

I do apologize for not clarifying that the quote in a slightly different form does indeed exist in the source I linked. But as I said, the difference is critical. 109.253.209.80 (talk) 08:21, 13 November 2023 (UTC)

The original WHO article says that there are merely reports of people being shot as they leave. The WHO never claimed that the WHO itself has evidence that these reports are at true

The current news article has had this very midleading wording at some point:

The World Health Organization (WHO) reports that people who fled the hospital "have been shot at, wounded and even killed

... And as I wrote this complaint it has changed to the more accurate

The World Health Organization says that there are reports that people who fled Gaza’s Al-Shifa hospital “have been shot at, wounded and even killed”

And I think it is changing back and fourth but am too inexperienced to understand what's going on 109.253.209.80 (talk) 08:28, 13 November 2023 (UTC)

Update: I have misread the current news. The article does not claim that the WHO directly reports on this, rather, the who itself says "there are reports that", I think this is delicate and needs to be reworded to avoid misreading. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 109.253.209.80 (talk) 07:50, 13 November 2023 (UTC)

I have changed the statement back to the accurate version. Phil Bridger (talk) 08:41, 13 November 2023 (UTC)

Invitation to Test the Incident Reporting System Minimum Testable Product in Beta

Community, you are invited to test an initial Minimum Testable Product (MTP) for the Incident Reporting System.

Earlier, the Trust and Safety Product team started work on an incident reporting system which aims to make it easy for users to report harmful incidents. We have created a basic product version enabling a user to file a report of an incident, from the talk page where the event occurs.

Your feedback is needed to determine if this starting approach is effective. Please see our MTP Beta update for a quick guide on how to test and also give feedback. –– STei (WMF) (talk) 20:51, 13 November 2023 (UTC)

ultimate clarification regarding Nov 12

Hello. I am starting from scratch because I have confused the structure previous thread making it hard to follow, and the article changed as I copy pasted atuff, causing confusion for me and others. Here is my ultimate clarification

Summary:

• WHO said there are merely reports of people being shot as they leave hospital. WHO did not say it verified those reports and the original reports did not originate from WHO. Source: https://www.emro.who.int/media/news/who-loses-communication-with-contacts-in-al-shifa-hospital-in-gaza-amid-reports-of-attacks.html
• At some point, the Wiki wording was misleading, making a far stronger claim, it said 'The World Health Organization (WHO) reports that people who fled the hospital "have been shot at, wounded and even killed', implying this is WHO-verified
• The wording is changing back and fourth to the softer 'The World Health Organization says that there are reports that people who fled Gaza’s Al-Shifa hospital “have been shot at, wounded and even killed”'
• It has changed as I wrote the previous article, making me confuse my copy-pastes. Making me believe I have misread.
• Background: The distinction is very important in this conflict, as the Israeli side is denying shooting civilians that leave the hospital, and the first wording implies that the WHO, a reliable source, is saying that civilians are getting shot, but it is not saying so. Wikipedia ought not take sides before there are concrete evidence.
• I think that even the second variation "The WHO says there are reports..." gives the current reports more weight than the deserve, every knows there are reports, and prefixing it with the WHO is redundant and gives an air of credibility that isn't yet there. To take an extreme example, consider the following quote: "the WHO says there are reports that covid vaccines cause autism", this is absolutely true, the WHO would never deny there are *reports* like that, but the phrasing gives the impression that the WHO supports the claim, when in fact it does not.
• original bad wording in this diff: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:MobileDiff/1184774867

109.253.209.80 (talk) 08:43, 13 November 2023 (UTC)

@109.253.209.80: It looks like it was already fixed by Phil Bridger. PiGuy3 (talk) 08:49, 13 November 2023 (UTC)

The same user has misquoted again. Discussion here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal_talk:Current_events/2023_November_13

-- 89.138.187.35 (talk) 09:03, 14 November 2023 (UTC)

Please discuss at Portal talk:Current events –Novem Linguae (talk) 17:15, 14 November 2023 (UTC)

Cricket World Cup request

ICC MENS CRICKET WORLD CUP matches are going on in India, but no news is appearing in Wikipedia. Please do the necessary — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.2.136.28 (talk) 20:17, 9 November 2023 (UTC)

WP:NOTNEWS. Edward-Woodrow (talk) 23:41, 9 November 2023 (UTC)

From the opening words of that policy section: "Editors are encouraged to include current and up-to-date information within its coverage..." WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:18, 16 November 2023 (UTC)

Advice wanted: when should pageant articles be created

I noticed today that Miss International 2024 has been created, but it doesn't exist yet on the sponsor's website [4], and there's nothing in the article indicating even a possible date or venue. Seems premature to me, is there any consensus on this? ☆ Bri (talk) 04:24, 13 November 2023 (UTC)

Just the usual, @Bri: all events that interest "me" should be created immediately, and all events that "I" think are unimportant should be created at the last minute.

I believe the official rule is that you need to know, with reasonable certainty, that the event will happen. Since the article is the next event, it's not unreasonable for it to exist. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:24, 16 November 2023 (UTC)

It might be OBE; the article is currently pending WP:G5 speedy deletion. ☆ Bri (talk) 18:21, 17 November 2023 (UTC)

Spammer that may have removed valid sources

Washington Independent is currently complete and utter garbage. There was a completely different site on that domain in the past (at least in 2009), but today it's trash. So I'm removing references to the current site, while being careful not to remove links to archived articles from the site that used to be there. Slight hiccup.

• Special:Contributions/Josephstanlourlo52aRk
• Special:Contributions/JeremyRFLO
• Special:Contributions/186.14.45.73
• Special:Contributions/StanLouisTx54

And there are likely more. They replace existing references with their own garbage. I can remove some of their garbage (given enough time, all of it), add some {{cn}} tags here and there, but I can't realistically dig through the history of everything to figure out who screwed up the article. Even with wikiblame it's just too much.

If anyone feels like sock hunting to recover the original references, please, be my guest. Edit: it's worse than I thought. These links really need to be reviewed on a case-by-case basis as the current garbage site copied content from the original site while changes the name of the author and altering the date. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 20:57, 14 November 2023 (UTC)

I probably got all the spam. Probably, hopefully Wikipedia:Bot requests#Archiving washingtonindependent.com is possible. Anything that wasn't archived before 2016 or so should be removed regardless of whether or not the link was ever legit. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 01:03, 15 November 2023 (UTC)

We have 300+ articles remaining that have these links.

The best way to stop more getting added is to blacklist the domain. It then becomes impossible to add the link anywhere. --A. B. ^{(talk • contribs • global count)} 06:23, 17 November 2023 (UTC)

Links also appear on other Wikipedias. --A. B. ^{(talk • contribs • global count)} 06:33, 17 November 2023 (UTC)

A. B., most if not all links here on enwiki that are left in mainspace seem legitimate links to the site as it was before 2015. It's already in the queue: Wikipedia:Link rot/URL change requests/Archives/2023/November#washingtonindependent.com. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 08:37, 17 November 2023 (UTC)

Blacklisting would prevent adding legitimate links to the pre-2015 site. XLinkBot may be able to do better. Certes (talk) 11:18, 17 November 2023 (UTC)

ACE2023 nominations are open

Eligible users are invited to submit a nomination statement for the Arbitration Committee elections at the elections page. Thank you, — Frostly (talk) 00:45, 12 November 2023 (UTC)

There are ~2 days left to enter nominations! — xaosflux ^Talk 21:16, 19 November 2023 (UTC)

Paolo Petrocelli Article

Hello,  

This request is regarding Paolo Petrocelli’s Wikipedia article. I tried creating an entry on him last week, but it was deleted shortly after. Wikipedia says that there’s a pre-existing article titled ‘Paolo Petrocelli,’ but whenever I click on it, it redirects us to his company’s Wikipedia article, EMMA For Peace. Please note that he is notable; he has articles about him published in Financial Times, The Times, Forbes, Huffington Post, United Nations official website, and UNESCO, so there is no issue on that front.  Additionally, I would like to update the article with new relevant information. Moreover, he has Wikipedia entries in other languages, including Arabic, Spanish, and French. I also intend on removing the biography section in his EMMA For Peace, his company, Wikipedia entry. In short, I would like clarification on why I am unable to successfully publish his biography, and I would highly appreciate any advice regarding how I could do so.   Shahdmurshed (talk) 12:25, 21 November 2023 (UTC)

@Shahdmurshed Your starting point should probably be Draft:Paolo Petrocelli. You can develop an article there talking about him independently of his company; make sure the reliable sources you cite are focused on him. There was an article about Petrocelli, but i was deleted in 2017. See Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Paolo Petrocelli for the community's discussion where they reached consensus on deleting the article, based on his lack of independent notability at that time. —C.Fred (talk) 13:15, 21 November 2023 (UTC)

ACE2023 questions phase open

Interested editors are invited to ask the candidates questions. — Frostly (talk) 07:17, 22 November 2023 (UTC)

Proposed change to watchlist details

Interested editors are invited to participate in a discussion at MediaWiki talk:Watchlist-messages § Revised watchlist details options. After a suitable time, it would be helpful for a disinterested admin to summarize the discussion and implement any change reached by consensus. YBG (talk) 06:12, 23 November 2023 (UTC)

There has been some slight changes to the options, so I’ve repointed the link above; the previous discussion is just above the new link target. YBG (talk) 15:18, 24 November 2023 (UTC)

Welcome message for new editors editing ARBPIA topics

I threw together Template:Welcome-arbpia so we can hopefully have an easy way to inform all of the new editors trying to take part in discussions about the conflict of the sanctions as a welcome rather than a warning. I'd like to get it to the point where it can be included in the twinkle welcome templates. Any feedback would be appreciated. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 17:59, 20 November 2023 (UTC)

I think that's an excellent idea rather than going straight to warnings. Knitsey (talk) 18:04, 20 November 2023 (UTC)

Something to think about is how the template would co-exist with {{Contentious topics/alert/first}}. The template you created is good for letting new editors know about existing imposed editing restrictions. However the contentious topic alert template also has to be placed on editor talk pages to let them know about the potential restrictions that might get imposed. It's somewhat confusing that there are the already-imposed special rules (as described in your template) and the "special set of rules" as described in the alert template, which are different. Perhaps your template can use another term. isaacl (talk) 22:45, 20 November 2023 (UTC)

I actually went with "strict rules." I'm thinking about how best to also include alert/first without causing banner blindness and introducing a bunch of stuff a new editor wouldn't have any idea about, e.g. the Arbitration Committee... the purposes of Wikipedia... Wikipedia’s norms and policies... applicable policies and guidelines... editorial and behavioural best practice.

It's really to welcome a new editor and explain why their talk page message or article edit was reverted in plain language and to lay out the most important thing for them to know about editing ARBPIA topics, that they can't do it. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 22:56, 20 November 2023 (UTC)

Sorry, must have read that too quickly. Perhaps something like "rigorous restrictions" would be better, as it would emphasize that editors are currently restricted from certain actions, versus there just being a different set of rules that admins use to decide upon restrictions to impose.

With the rigid procedure on having an initial alert, I'm not sure how you're planning to put in on a user's talk page without introducing the text in the template. Are you suggesting to revise the text of the alert template? I've previously made proposals that would shorten it, but ultimately the arbitrators have to be convinced. So far they have seemed intent on signaling that the contentious topic procedures originate from the arbitration committee. isaacl (talk) 23:29, 20 November 2023 (UTC)

Currently my thought is that it wouldn't cover the alert, and an alert would still need to be given if their editing continues. Could also just throw a The specifics of the contentious topic procedures are below. at the end, and then throw the alert there. My concern with that is we'll dump too much text, it'll be less likely that they'll read any, and it will push away potential editors. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 23:36, 20 November 2023 (UTC)

I think this is awesome. My thought would be to make it crystal clear that certain areas (RfCs, AfDs, RMs, etc.) are off-limits. The "you may request a specific change..." sentence does cover this off, but I get the sense that there's some lingering confusion about this point. That said, I'm also aware of tl;dr... I wonder if maybe a bulleted/tabled "Dos and Don't's" list could be helpful? (e.g., "DO: be civil, use specific language in edit requests; DON'T: make vague/open-ended suggestions, participate in !votes). Just some ideas. WillowCity^(talk) 23:11, 20 November 2023 (UTC)

• I think this is a good idea. I was making a similar warning a while ago and you are welcome to borrow any aspect of this if it's useful, User:Andrevan/Rus-Ukr_warning. I think it would need to be ratified as part of the contentious topics procedure though. Andre🚐 23:43, 20 November 2023 (UTC)

  The contentious topic procedure doesn't dictate a specific way to let an individual editor know about enacted page restrictions. (The page itself must have an edit notice, and the talk page should have a notice.) isaacl (talk) 00:30, 21 November 2023 (UTC)

  That may have changed with the move from the previous discretionary sanctions regime to the current contentious topics system, but I was under the impression that the notification templates were part of the procedure. I shopped around the above template (here) and it was mentioned that such template may not constitute "notification" or "awareness" of the sanctions, so I don't use it because what's the point of having a shorter template that is more explanatory and to the point, if it doesn't actually "count" for a notification of contentious topics awareness. Andre🚐 23:28, 22 November 2023 (UTC)

  As I mentioned, there is a specific template mandated by the contentious topic procedure that has to be placed on a user's talk page to let them know about a topic that has been designated as a contentious topic, when they haven't been notified about any contentious topic previously. (Under the old system, there was a template to let a user know that the topic is one for which administrators have been authorized to enact special sanctions at their discretion.) However either under the current or previous system, there isn't a mandated method to tell an individual editor that an enacted page restriction is in place. The edit notice and talk page notice serve as notification to all editors who edit the page. isaacl (talk) 06:24, 23 November 2023 (UTC)

  I understand, but it would be nice if I just had one warning template, preferably loaded into twinkle/popups and the like, that would give the user a welcome, a CT notice, and an ECP notice altogether. Andre🚐 00:29, 25 November 2023 (UTC)

  That's my end goal, but unfortunately you'll end up with an enormous wall of text. This is how it works out in practice, which I guess isn't horrible, but it does take away from the conciseness I was aiming for. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 00:33, 25 November 2023 (UTC)

  Yeah, exactly, but that could be fixed by actually amending the CT templates. Andre🚐 00:35, 25 November 2023 (UTC)

  Yes, I was only responding that the proposed template regarding enacted page restrictions doesn't require a change to the contentious topic procedure, as you suggested. I have already commented on shortening the first-time alert template, and the desirability of considering the overall effect of using both a topic area-specific template and the alert template together. Since the alert template is now only given once, personally I think it's desirable to keep its contents more general, and have a separate message to convey topic area-specific details, such as restrictions that have been enacted, particularly if they were arbitration remedies that were imposed on top of the contentious topic designation. isaacl (talk) 18:49, 25 November 2023 (UTC)

• I also said this at the ArbCom talk page, but I don't like the lime green background color. It's garish (to my taste), and more importantly, it's dark enough to make the print difficult to read, which raises accessibility issues, and it can come across as an alert that something is wrong, rather than just an alert to some new information. I really do think it should be changed to match the background color of Template:Contentious topics/alert/first. The choice of that color came after a lot of discussion and a lot of trial and error (a long time ago), and it seems ill-advised to try to reinvent the color wheel. --Tryptofish (talk) 00:22, 25 November 2023 (UTC)

  My only concern with that is that if there is an alert/first given at the same time as the welcome message, then it ends up as one giant wall of text with all the same color background. I just lightened it up a bit, though. I'm not stridently opposed to matching the CTOP alert, but concerned. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 00:31, 25 November 2023 (UTC)

  Oh, that's much better! That works well for me. Thanks. --Tryptofish (talk) 00:39, 25 November 2023 (UTC)

Lecture on Prestigious journals struggle to reach even average reliability

Relevant for all those who care about WP:RS. There's now a lecture by Björn Brembs explaining the results of the study Prestigious Science Journals Struggle to Reach Even Average Reliability. See https://juser.fz-juelich.de/record/1018170/files/Lecture.mp4 . Nemo 14:24, 20 November 2023 (UTC)

• Reliability is contextual. In the end, the community decides what is reliable. The cited paper, along with other factors, such as the replication crisis, should be considered in the overall process of determining criteria for reliability, but should not be a major factor in community discusions about the reliability of a particular source. Donald Albury 15:56, 20 November 2023 (UTC)
• The lecture focuses on the sciences rather than the humanities, which is reasonable because journal articles are used very differently in those different fields. We are already told to use secondary sources rather than primary studies, most obviously in WP:MEDRS, so I don't think that this is such a major issue for Wikipedia as it is for the prestigious journals. No source is absolutely reliable for everything. Even after taking those criticisms on board academic journals are certainly more reliable for science than newspapers. Phil Bridger (talk) 16:32, 20 November 2023 (UTC)
  • Yes but we just didn't come up with a good way to measure such things in humanities; there's no evidence suggesting the basic mechanisms would be different for humanities journals. Journals with high JIF are like tabloids, they sell more because they have the most sensational content. This is not necessarily a problem but it's good for people to keep in mind. Nemo 17:24, 20 November 2023 (UTC)

    Well... in the sciences, there are often specific answers, which means your paper could be factually wrong. In fact, with p=0.05, even if you do everything perfectly, you've got a 5% chance of getting the wrong result. In the humanities, that's not always, or even usually, the case. "This artwork [music, painting, book – it doesn't matter] displays some elements of this culture" or "Free speech is more important than kindness" is not really a statement you can disprove; it can't really be factually wrong, even if others don't share your viewpoint. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:09, 21 November 2023 (UTC)

    True, but sad how few understand this! jp×g🗯️ 23:49, 26 November 2023 (UTC)

RfC of interest

(non-automated message) Greetings to all followers of WP:VPM! I have opened an RfC on WT:ROYALTY that may be of interest to followers of this page! You are encouraged to contribute to this discussion here!

(Note that this is my first time posting a message to WP:VPM, so I apologize if I have done anything improperly.) Hurricane Andrew (444) 17:22, 24 November 2023 (UTC)

Isn't everything of interest to this page? Whatever, I'll take a look at the rfc. Edward-Woodrow (talk) 20:57, 25 November 2023 (UTC)

ACE2023 voting open

Go do it! — Frostly (talk) 00:04, 28 November 2023 (UTC)

Bad experience editing on a contentious topic

I usually stay away from contentious topics. But noticed recently that an editor had inserted a conclusion sourced to a publication listed on WP:RSPS as consider[ed] a biased source by almost all editors in Wiki voice in an Israel-Hamas related article, Al-Shifa Hospital. So I made a single edit removing that conclusion, and requesting that the statement be reformulated in the source's voice. I also engaged with the other editor on the talkpage. My change was rather quickly reverted (by a "retired" editor which is also kind of weird) with an edit summary saying I am a newbie reverter without a serious policy rationale implying I am unqualified to edit, and that I had not engaged on the talkpage, which is false. The response left me even more convinced that a) contentious-topic editors have taken control and b) I'm going to continue staying away from it. To point a, it is concerning that many of the most active editors at the article are only active in that single contentious topic. It doesn't seem healthy for Wikipedia to have a "guarded" article (group) like this is likely to be or to become. ☆ Bri (talk) 16:21, 28 November 2023 (UTC)

That is the nature of contentious topics editing. You may have to be persistent, know the rules, and thick skinned. There are POV pushers around. You have one revert per day. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 20:08, 28 November 2023 (UTC)

Almost to prove my point, Graeme Bartlett's edit (summary removed biased propaganda from lede) was reverted by the same editor. ☆ Bri (talk) 17:49, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

@Graeme Bartlett, what's the mood at AE around editors who seem to be watching the clock for that "one revert per day"? I'm seeing a couple of reverts followed by self-reverts during the last week, with edit summaries like "have to wait". WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:38, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

This has been brought to ANI: WP:ANI#Editwarring at page under Israel-Paelstine arb sanctions ☆ Bri (talk) 19:14, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

Wikiproject AI cleanup

There's a new maintenance Wikiproject at WP:WPAIC dedicated to cleaning up articles and content added by editors using AI tools. Please feel free to help out or add problematic content that you find to the to-do list. Fermiboson (talk) 07:05, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

Request for conversation / Talking: 2024

Hi folks,

Recently, Maryana Iskander, Foundation CEO, announced a virtual learning and sharing tour, Talking: 2024. This is two years after the initial listening tour that Maryana launched before assuming her role. The aim is to talk directly with Wikimedia contributors around the world about some of the big questions facing the future of our movement. I'm writing here to warmly invite those of you interested to participate – on-wiki or by signing up for a conversation. The priorities that contributors identify in these conversations will become the driving force in the Foundation’s annual planning process, especially as our senior leadership and Trustees develop multi-year goals in 2024. Thanks for your time and attention. Looking forward to talking together.
-MPourzaki (WMF) (talk) 21:59, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

Database dumping

• Tin Zaouatene volcanic field (AfD discussion)
• Licto volcanic field
• & c.

This is a rather interesting situation. These articles have come from the Global Volcanism Program, but the maintainers of that database apparently just delete records with zero documentation. Presumably database record #225002 will disappear from NERC's COMEVT database soon, too; as it is derived from the Smithsonian database.

The same happens with other database dump articles, too; and this shows a hole in the whole dumping databases into Wikipedia idea. What if the people who maintain a database decide that they were wrong about a record, and their way of fixing it is to delete the record unceremoniously? Their expected users don't apply the database cumulatively, as people who turn the database records into Wikipedia articles do. When a record isn't there any more, it isn't there for those users either, because either they replace their copies or they pull the GVP data directly. But to Wikipedia editors, this is a WWW page that has vanished, and we all know how the "just use the Wayback Machine" argument goes; even though the experts who decide what counts as evidence of a volcano have decided that they were wrong before.

Yes, it would be good if the GVP maintained a deletion log or an errata list. But it doesn't need to for the way that they expect it to be used. It's a luxury, not a necessity.

Uncle G (talk) 01:34, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

Another possibility for database maintainers is to deprecate the record with a reason. ChemSpider for example does that. The record does not show in a search, but can be revealed with a direct link. But if we have an article based only on a dud entry, a good idea is to delete it. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 11:48, 11 December 2023 (UTC)

Should This be Taken off Stubs Category

I have been editing a stub called Geissorhiza radians and I am trying to see if I should take off the stub category. It's not a long article but there is not a lot about it. It would be nice a plant expert answered my question, but any input is welcome.

Cyprus76 Cyprus76 (talk) 18:09, 12 December 2023 (UTC)

Clearly no longer a WP:stub so I WP:boldly removed the template.

Llew Mawr (talk) 19:58, 12 December 2023 (UTC)

Thank you Llew Mawr! Cyprus76 (talk) 20:10, 12 December 2023 (UTC)

Why is Wikipedia so sceptical about paranormal phenomena?

Why is it that Wikipedia, which is meant to be written from a Neutral Point of View, is always so sceptical about anything to do with parapsychology? Take the article on the Ganzfeld experiment, for example. This seems bent on writing this technique off as pseudoscience. A much more informed discussion of Ganzfeld research can be found in the online en- cyclopaedia of the Society for Psychical Research, available at https://psi-encyclpedia.spr.ac.uk. YTKJ (talk) 20:38, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

YTKJ, Wikipedia requires reliable sources to support content in articles. If you think that Ganzfeld experiment has some gaps and room for improvement, feel free to add information supported by high-quality sources! Best, — Frostly (talk) 20:50, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

Wikipedia neutrally repeats what reliable sources state, see WP:NPOV. If reliable sources are sceptical of paranormal phenomena Wikipedia will reflect that. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 21:41, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

See also WP:YESBIAS Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 22:51, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

Often it is because of the WP:NPOV policy, which contains parts like WP:FALSEBALANCE. If that is the case for this particular article I don't know. You may or may not find Why Wikipedia Is So Tough on Bigfoot interesting. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 11:39, 10 December 2023 (UTC)

Perhaps the name of the NPOV policy is misleading in these cases. We're not trying to be scrupulously even-handed. We're trying to fairly and proportionately represent high-quality sources. Nearly all high-quality sources say that the various things put forward to "prove" ESP-type mental communication haven't proven anything. Very few say that it's uncertain either way, or that it is proven to be true. Because of this lopsided situation in the sources, an article that's balanced to match the high-quality sources will say that ESP basically doesn't work. We call that "neutral". WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:18, 10 December 2023 (UTC)

Another common meaning of "neutral" is "stuff I agree with." Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 10:05, 11 December 2023 (UTC)

We all believe our own beliefs are reasonable, after all. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:31, 14 December 2023 (UTC)

Because there is no good evidence for anything to do with parapsychology. --User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 15:41, 11 December 2023 (UTC)

Many anatomy and disease articles are too human-centric.

Hey guys, I just want to address a problem I found on so many anatomy articles and that is how human-centric a lot of anatomy articles are even if said article is not exclusively referring to human anatomy.

First for some minor examples of this human-centric problem is that many, many articles on general anatomy or diseases that can be found in other animals link to human anatomy articles. Articles such as knee and cheek link almost exclusively to human anatomy despite many animals have them. I fixed those.

But my biggest problems arise in how many anatomy and disease articles are written exclusively about humans despite animals having them. A lot of these do not have an animals section which they should if animals are capable of getting those diseases or have those anatomy parts too.

For example supposedly your dog gets sick and they tell you it has (insert disease name here) so you look up that disease's article only to find out there is no information for non humans.

As an encyclopedia, the sheer amount of anthropocentrism (human-centric worldview) is ridiculous and I want to try and lessen it down.

And I want any volunteers with capable knowledge to expand these articles to be more general.

AnimalRights Thanks. 2001:44C8:4551:3D07:A4CB:AA6E:A3D4:6739 (talk) 17:29, 13 December 2023 (UTC)

Wikipedia is based on reliable sources. If, as I suspect, most sources on most diseases are about humans then we reflect that. If not then you can edit articles or start talk page discussions about specific deseases. Phil Bridger (talk) 19:07, 13 December 2023 (UTC)

Further, Wikipedia is written by volunteers. In many cases our volunteers, being humans themselves, are understandably more interested in writing about these things from a human perspective. It'd be nice if people would address some of the topics more generally, but so far in many cases no one with the requisite writing skill and sources has stepped up. Anomie⚔ 22:03, 13 December 2023 (UTC)

WP:Featured Articles are required to be "comprehensive" and "a thorough and representative survey of the relevant literature". For example, Meningitis and Pancreatic cancer both have such coverage[5][6]. It might be interesting to watch the queue of featured article candidates for this type of article and see if there are WP:RS which cover those diseases in animals and if there are (and the article doesn't already cover it), put in a review pointing this out and see what happens. And please ping me to the review because I'd be interested to see how it plays out. RoySmith (talk) 00:13, 14 December 2023 (UTC)

+me for the ping request. One example of a FA w/o reference to animals is Dementia with Lewy bodies; SandyGeorgia maintains it a bit so they might know. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 09:00, 14 December 2023 (UTC)

I have never read or seen a reference to DLB in animals; I did find information with respect to REM sleep behavior disorder (one symptom of DLB), and long ago added it to that article. It is something FA writers routinely check for, so I don't think RoySmith's reminder is necessary re FAC (it's in WP:MEDORDER, which serves as its own comprehensiveness check for medical content). I dealt with it at Tourette syndrome in 2008, and nothing has changed. The next medical FA coming up is prostate cancer, so we can ask Ajpolino if they have ever come across in animals information (I haven't). I am fairly certain medical editors routinely watch for and add this info where sources warrant it. (He certainly added it at Buruli ulcer). With respect to general anatomy articles like knee, User:Tom (LT) might have an opinion. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:01, 14 December 2023 (UTC)

I don't think anyone is maintaining the very old FA meningitis and Johnbod is the person for pancreatic cancer. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:05, 14 December 2023 (UTC)

I'm afraid I do very little there now, but others keep it in decent shape I think. Johnbod (talk) 15:38, 14 December 2023 (UTC)

@Colin and Graham Beards: SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:13, 14 December 2023 (UTC)

I know On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog, but I suspect most Wikipedians and readers of Wikipedia are human. Unlike the OP, I wouldn't assume they all have a dog or spend any portion of their lives thinking about dogs other than when out for a walk, someone else's uncontrolled dog rushes up and jumps all over you, or when you have to deal with their mess. On the other hand, many of us and our readers spend hours of each day concerned about the health of humans. Nearly all published articles we might uses as sources are about anatomy or diseases on humans, so in a way, Wikipedia is somewhat odd in having "Oh by the way, other animals have this..." consideration. For most publications, you'd actually have to pick up a vet or animal biology book to learn about that. -- Colin°^Talk 11:26, 15 December 2023 (UTC)

And I just checked every common condition in the breed of my dog, and all mentioned animals, except cataracts. I'm not sure a general reminder here is necessary; editors interested can join the WikiProjects on anatomy or veterinary medicine-- I'm not seeing any alarming level of a problem other than a reflection of how many editors we have to do anything-- much more alarming is the overall state of our medical content. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:24, 14 December 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for the ping @SandyGeorgia. This old (and valid) chestnut! I agree WP certainly does have an anthropocentric perspective on most issues, including anatomy, medicine, history, natural disasters, and politics to name a few. I would love to see more animal content on Wikipedia including for anatomy + medicine, however as Anomie astutely identifies, the issue is usually that there aren't editors who are writing that content. In addition, in my experience there are less reliable sources that cover anatomy in animals to the depth that would be needed for writing on this encyclopedia. In these discussions usually a lot of steam gets vented about this particular issue but rarely if ever does additional content get written. I think the tags mentioned by Mach61 are a good way to start to identify articles where the lack of animal coverage is particularly noticable. Cheers Tom (LT) (talk) 05:22, 19 December 2023 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:WikiProject Veterinary medicine for a group of editors interested in animal health. PamD 09:29, 14 December 2023 (UTC)

From the talk page this doesn't seem very active. Johnbod (talk) 15:38, 14 December 2023 (UTC)

And WP:ANATOMY. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:15, 14 December 2023 (UTC)

Tagging with {{anthropocentric}} or {{missing}} could help draw attention Mach61 (talk) 04:53, 16 December 2023 (UTC)

Review Article

Hi, can anyone who may be interested in railways articles, and has some background knowledge of technical terms, help me clean up this draft article if possible? Thank you. Riad Salih (talk) 18:24, 20 December 2023 (UTC)

I have posted your request at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Trains, where you may find someone who can help. Phil Bridger (talk) 18:42, 20 December 2023 (UTC)

A major issue that I am trying to fix. (Also break notice)

Hey. I just wanna say this.

If you have looked at my edit history, I have been trying to remove a major issue I found on a lot of articles while also losing my OCD sanity.

That is, linking human anatomy on general anatomy articles. (and also trying my best to generalize general anatomy articles that almost exclusively talks about human anatomy) I find it scandalous that SO MANY articles that talk about general anatomy, not just human anatomy, almost always link to human anatomy if that anatomy part has a seperate human anatomy article. For example, almost EVERY single eye and leg related article, many of which are in fact general articles that are human exclusive, link to "human eye" and "human leg" respectively, including 90% of individual eye and leg anatomy part articles, despite many of them being present in almost every animal ever. It is ridiculous that these articles of anatomy parts NOT found only in humans link to human anatomy. To me, doing that makes you feel like these parts are ONLY found in humans and in no other animals (looking at you "wakefulness". Prior to my edit this article claims it is a HUMAN BRAIN only state but if that were the case all animals would be sleeping for eternity lol), which is not ok, as it feels like people are treating animals like they are nothing, and I hate that as an animal rights advocate. This is why I've been trying to change these whenever I could find any and it has turned into an OCD ritual that's draining my sanity with every edit.

I've also attempted to tweak a bit from pages like "face" and "body fluid" as these general anatomy pages lack anything on other animals and have had discussions related to this at one point but have yet to be generalized as of writing this.

I also just requested someone write an "in other animals" section on "puberty" and gave sources I could find about animal puberty (there is a LOT of them these are just ones that I think are the most reliable) as I want more people to know that puberty is not a human only thing and it happens in a lot of animals as well.

Well, I think its time to take a break. I need to stop my OCD ritual of madly fixing links like a madman and losing my soul and sanity in progress because its impacting my mental health (if I could think of an anatomy word I rush to that word's article to edit it and I will get irritated if I don't and its killing me right now). I'll probably leave Wikipedia for some time to restrain my sanity and find a new hobby before I start editing again.

Meanwhile if anyone wants to help me generalize articles just do it. It helps make me happy that more articles have content on animals, and it helps everyone reading those articles too.

Thanks. 2001:FB1:97:D678:3524:F23B:4AF8:4072 (talk) 13:08, 21 December 2023 (UTC)

Dear IP editor: You say "If you have looked at my edit history", but because you are on an IP address which appears to change, there are only two edits in your edit history, one being this. If, when you return, you want to be able to show your work, discuss things with other editors on your talk page, etc, please register as a named editor. You, presuambly, made 11 edits using the IP address used in the section further up this page. We can't see what other edits you have made. PamD 16:56, 21 December 2023 (UTC)

See also Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous)#Many anatomy and disease articles are too human-centric.

2001:FB1, it would be a good idea for you to read Wikipedia:Redirect#Do not "fix" links to redirects that are not broken. If the content of the paragraph is meant to be human-specific, the links to human-specific words should be kept. This is because there's a chance that in the future that Lung would become more general, and a separate, human-specific article would be re-created at Human lung. Right now, that redirected link sends people to the general article, but if, in the future, a separate article for human lungs gets split off, then we would want the links to still point to the desired target. Similarly, if the content is not human-specific, it would ideally point to the general subject (or the most relevant one, e.g., Hip dysplasia (canine) rather than Hip dysplasia) even if a link to the human-specific redirect ends up taking the reader to the right place at the moment. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:23, 21 December 2023 (UTC)

Steamboat Willie POTD discussion

The POTD talk page doesn't have nearly as many watchers as the VP, so posting here about a discussion about whether to make Steamboat Willie the POTD on January 1st (when it enters the public domain) and the logistics involved.

Wikipedia_talk:Picture_of_the_day#Steamboat_Willie

— Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 23:15, 21 December 2023 (UTC)

Redirects to nowhere

I have penned a new essay/public complaint. See Wikipedia:Redirects to nowhere. —ReadOnlyAccount (talk) 03:55, 18 December 2023 (UTC)

I think you left out the last step, in which the redirect is deleted because the merged-in and later removed subject matter isn't mentioned by name in the current version of the article. Thus instead of indicating that Alice Actor (probably) had something to do with this television show, we give readers nothing at all. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:41, 18 December 2023 (UTC)

You may well be right, but of course, once your "last step" occurs —and I don't know how frequently it does— even information in the history becomes invisible to ordinary users. So that means absent special privileges, you and I can't prove there ever was a there there. So I can't focus on that. What I can focus on is that even the supposed "merge" that comes earlier often isn't one, because in actuality, those who decide to "resolve" a request for sabotage (that's what it is) by "merging" frequently simply turn the victim article into a redirect and merge absolutely none of its content into the target article. It ought to be possible to report those who do that as acting in bad faith, but I would not know where. —ReadOnlyAccount (talk) 09:06, 22 December 2023 (UTC)

Well, unless they're trying to hurt Wikipedia (as their actual goal, not just the result), then it's not "bad faith". It could be a Competence problem, but sometimes I wonder whether the disconnect is with values. The Wikipedia:Editing policy says Wikipedia summarizes accepted knowledge. As a rule, the more accepted knowledge it contains, the better. I wonder sometimes whether there are editors who disagree in principle with this statement. For example, perhaps they believe that Wikipedia is best off when it contains only knowledge about "serious" subjects, or only knowledge that is on track for being developed into an impressive-looking article. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:44, 23 December 2023 (UTC)

I understand your position, but I find the invocation of "genocide" - in the very first sentence! - a tad distracting and off-putting in an essay about incautious merging of Wikipedia articles. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 19:29, 22 December 2023 (UTC)

Spam: Frequent mention of Guiness Book of World Records?

Over the past couple of years I've noticed an increasing appearance of links to Guinness World Record. These often appear prominently in articles. I just saw another one this morning when reading a "Did you know" article and came upon Japanese idol which has a link to "Guinness World Record" very prominently at the top right.

It looks like about 6,000 to 12,000 articles link to it, I think.

I suppose Guinness is a valid source, but it is a private company, and is advertising a commercial product. Does this bother anyone else? Has anyone in WP proposed a guideline where articles should simply say "... holds the world record ..." and the word "Guinness" is put into a citation/footnote? Noleander (talk) 17:49, 16 December 2023 (UTC)

This may be a variation on Wikipedia:We don't care what happens to your website. Who cares if it's a private company? We're saying it because it's true, and we're being specific because there are other groups that track world records (especially in sports). WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:43, 18 December 2023 (UTC)

If someone is spamming references and links to Guinness World Records, then that world be a problem. Otherwise I agree with WhatamIdoing, we shouldn't care if it helps or hinders them neither are the reason for editing the encyclopedia. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 16:59, 19 December 2023 (UTC)

As WAID and ActivelyDisinterested note, we're agnostic to whether or not a source is commercial or not—but perhaps that's the wrong question to be asking about all these links.

It may be worth examining whether all of those links and references are sufficiently relevant and noteworthy of mention. Are all these Guinness references running into issues with WP:INDISCRIMINATE? In places where they are relevant, are they duplicative of other, better sources? (Or should they be flagged for replacement with better sources?) In a related vein, it's worth noting that Guinness does a fair bit of promotional partnership these days. A growing segment of their revenue comes from the recordholders (and would-be recordholders) themselves, who want to have the gloss of a world record, and pay handsomely for Guinness to provide adjudicators and consultants...and promotion.

Looking at the first few (non-list) entries at Special:WhatLinksHere/Guinness_World_Records,

• Agatha Christie, cited for best-selling fiction author of all time. Probably all right, though we might find better sources for sales.
• Arabs, cited to describe the University of Al Quaraouiyine as the oldest continuously-operating degree-granting institution in the world. Also footnoted with UNESCO, a better source.
• Andhra Pradesh (the state in India), cited to support the claim that D. Ramanaidu has produced more films than any other person. Seems a bit of minutiae, at best, given this article is about the entire history of a region with 50 million people.
• André the Giant, cited as being the world's highest-paid wrestler (ever) in 1974. Probably relevant and appropriate.
• Adam Carolla, cited for most downloaded podcast in 2011. Probably okay.
• Atari 2600, used as a footnote for (presumably-record-shattering) sales figures. Not actually used for a named record. Sales figures might better be sourced to trade publications of the era, or even mainstream news coverage.
• Amr Diab, cited for winning the Best Selling Middle Eastern Artist category of the World Music Awards more often than any other artist. Does this need to cite Guinness at all? Presumably this factoid could be pulled from a music publication, or even from the World Music Awards themselves.

...and so on. That said, it would be a mammoth undertaking to review and revise so many links. As Noleander notes, there's around ten thousand of these things. (minor edits for typos) TenOfAllTrades(talk) 19:51, 21 December 2023 (UTC)

RSP might be relevant: There is consensus that world records verified by Guinness World Records should not be used to establish notability. Editors have expressed concern that post-2008 records include paid coverage.— Frostly (talk) 01:57, 25 December 2023 (UTC)

Invitation

Colleagues, I invite you to take part in the discussion on Meta about the admissibility of nominating the article Putin khuylo! to good status and placing it on the main page of the Wikipedia. Asorev (talk) 10:48, 25 December 2023 (UTC)

Looks like a dispute on ruwiki. Enwiki and meta are unable to assist. –Novem Linguae (talk) 12:28, 25 December 2023 (UTC)

Putting a Russian version of Putin khuylo! ("Putin is a dickhead!") on the main page of the Russian Wikipedia would lead to more than a dispute. The internet is available for anonymous people to poke bears but those running ruwiki should not be exposed to that kind of idiocy. Johnuniq (talk) 01:14, 26 December 2023 (UTC)

Spousal privilege in events of Wikipedia

Hi, I am contributor in local language and I want to go to attend a Wikipedia event with my girlfriend, who is contributing too from a long time. Wikipedia is one of the reasons that We are together. But can we stay in one room? Is there any policy regarding this? Sorry for anonymous message. 2402:A00:404:2152:476:5C25:1F04:57EE (talk) 02:45, 28 December 2023 (UTC)

Hi, a lot depends on the situation. For WikiConference North America, for example, scholarship recipients could mutually request each other as a roommate. Many people arranged their own accommodations, so they were on their own for that.

Perhaps others can weigh in with a more global point of view. Peaceray (talk) 03:32, 28 December 2023 (UTC)

I assume your girlfriend is the more experienced editor since you don't have an account yet? I think your girlfriend should probably ask the event coordinators or the scholarship coordinator for the specific event you plan to attend. Your post is a bit too vague to answer here, in my opinion. Anything we say would just be guessing. –Novem Linguae (talk) 04:37, 28 December 2023 (UTC)

WikiCup signups are now open!

Signups for the 2024 WikiCup are now open!
The WikiCup is a championship that has taken place annually since 2007. The Cup is played and won by skill of editing. The purpose of the Cup is to encourage content creation and improvement and to make editing on Wikipedia more fun!
If you'd rather not participate but would like to keep up with the Cup's progress, you can also sign up for the Cup's newsletter.
Don't hesitate to let me or the other judges (Cwmhiraeth & Epicgenius) know if you have any questions!
For the WikiCup, — Frostly (talk) 08:36, 31 December 2023 (UTC)

Happy New Year

Hello to all of you. Happy New Year and my best wishes to all of you. --Γιάννης Ευαγγελίου (talk) 21:50, 31 December 2023 (UTC)

Backatya! Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 02:17, 1 January 2024 (UTC)

Shaping the Future of the Community Wishlist Survey

Hello community,

Thank you for participating in the Community Wishlist Survey over the years.

We are also grateful for your feedback about the survey and your patience in waiting for a response.

We have reviewed your feedback and made preliminary decisions to share with you.

In summary, Community Tech would like to develop a new, continuous intake system for community technical requests that improves prioritization, resourcing, and communication around wishes. Until the new system is established, the Community Tech team will prioritize work from the recently audited backlog of wishes rather than run the survey in February 2024. We are also looking to involve more volunteer developers in the wishlist process, beginning with the first-ever community Wishathon in March 2024.

Please read the announcement in detail either on the Diff blog or MetaWiki, and give your feedback.

The new intake system will need your ideas and involvement, and we’ll reach out on this topic in the next few months.

We look forward to hearing from you.

–– STei (WMF) (talk) 16:54, 4 January 2024 (UTC)

Wikipedia has ORed its modern history periodization

English Wikipedia has more or less invented a non-existent term called the "late modern period" and seems to be basing it's top-level categorization of historical topics on it. I started a thread about the matter here:

Wikipedia talk:WikiProject History#Modernity articles are a hot mess

I urge editors familiar with modern historiography to join in. I think this is a sign of a pretty serious deficiency in our treatment of historical topics. Peter ^Isotalo 20:46, 4 January 2024 (UTC)

I have replied at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject History#Modernity articles are a hot mess. I would urge everyone to keep the discussion in one place. Phil Bridger (talk) 21:01, 4 January 2024 (UTC)

New piechart template (graph replacement)

Hi. I created a new {{Piechart}} template. You can use it to replace graphs of type=pie.

Example chart:

1. sweets: 5 (45.5%)
2. sandwiches: 3 (27.3%)
3. cookies: 2 (18.2%)
4. drinks: 1 (9.1%)

Birmingham languages:

1. English: 866833 (84.7%)
2. Urdu: 29403 (2.9%)
3. Punjabi: 21166 (2.1%)
4. Bengali: 14718 (1.4%)
5. Pakistani Pahari languages: 10827 (1.1%)
6. Polish: 8952 (0.9%)
7. Somali: 8139 (0.8%)
8. Chinese languages: 7807 (0.8%)
9. Other: 55541 (5.4%)

Documentation is here: Module:Piechart/doc#Labels_and_Legend. The charts are inspired by Lea Verou CSS charts. They should be fully accessible as long as you add the legend meta-option. The pichart module is also independent of any extensions (like the currently broken Graph extension). All graphs from the Module:Piechart are simply HTML with just a bit of CSS tricks. Nux (talk) 16:56, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

VPuffetMichel (WMF): Is the Editing team still looking at graphs? WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:05, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

@WhatamIdoing Not the Editing team per se. I will share with the group who is working on this. Thanks! VPuffetMichel (WMF) (talk) 10:20, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

How does this improve on {{pie chart}}?-gadfium 00:54, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

@Gadfium Various ways make it better, which probably come from the fact that it's a module:

• You can just provide values for the module (don't have to add labels), and it will just work. See examples on module:Piechart and some more on pl:Module:Piechart/test.
• You can provide actual numbers, and percentages will be calculated for you. Graph extension module had this, but Pie chart brakes in weird ways when you provide it with numbers larger then 100.
• You can reorder slices easily e.g. to sort them by value. So should be easier to update when data changes. Templates have to enumerate each parameter, in JSON which my module uses this is not needed.

Also, I didn't know about the Pie chart template (: So I just found out... Visually, it seems to be on par with my take. Most of the things I talked about come from calculations I do under the hood. I must say that it is weird the Pie chart template wasn't mentioned when the Graph extension failed (or I missed it). Still, it seems I got some interesting results starting with a completely different approach. I have already replaced some usages of the Graph extensions with the new module. From what I can see, my version is more stand-alone (it doesn't use image classes), more flexible (easier to place in different parts of the page), and more accessible too (the legend is just a list, making it usable for screen readers). Nux (talk) 01:49, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

You may want to add yours to {{Graph, chart and plot templates}} and Category:Graph, chart and plot templates so it can be easily found.-gadfium 01:52, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

Wikiproject Inca Empire

How about a new start for WikiProject Inca Empire. It never really went up, huh? Well I think there are enough Inca/Andes interested Users to get that thing rolling. Are there though? Anyway I just wanted to ask if anyone was interested in instating some minimal organization, like on the other WikiProkects. Cheers. Encyclopédisme (talk) 03:04, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

@Encyclopédisme, you might find WP:REVIVE useful. The first and most important thing to do, if you want to revive Wikipedia:WikiProject Inca Empire, is to find editors who are already editing relevant articles and make friends with them. Find ways to help them out, and then ask them to watchlist the page (as a favor to you). WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:35, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

badge privilege

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T354117

I see the following on my page heading:

Congratulations! You are now eligible for The Wikipedia Library.

Click here to browse a wide collection of free reliable sources.

But when I 'click here' I see a button to login, but then get a error message:

Sorry, your Wikipedia account doesn’t currently qualify to access The Wikipedia Library.

Help!

John Wheater (talk) 14:14, 28 December 2023 (UTC)

@JohnWheater would you try to access the link from this page, then try to log on? Be sure you are not blocking scripts or cookies. — xaosflux ^Talk 14:38, 28 December 2023 (UTC)

No, thats the very page that gives the error message when I click login John Wheater (talk) 15:19, 28 December 2023 (UTC)

@JohnWheater: You need to have made >=10 edits within the past 30 days. Espresso Addict (talk) 03:49, 29 December 2023 (UTC)

So why the "congratulations" ?? John Wheater (talk) 09:14, 29 December 2023 (UTC)

@JohnWheater: No clue, sorry! You might get more information asking at the Wikipedia Library talk page; @Samwalton9 (WMF): in the hope that they can shed some light. Espresso Addict (talk) 02:21, 30 December 2023 (UTC)

• I've opened a bug on this behavior at phab:T354117. — xaosflux ^Talk 16:59, 30 December 2023 (UTC)

  I believe that the Echo/Notifications message triggers when you make your 500th edit. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:58, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

  Thanks for filing the ticket. We're only checking overall edit number and tenure, not the block status or recent edits, as these were harder to engineer and only impact a small number of users receiving the notification. We're unlikely to stop sending to users who are blocked somewhere due to the ambiguities around blocks and our willingness to allow some blocked users to use the library, but recent edits seems feasible to address. Samwalton9 (WMF) (talk) 11:36, 8 January 2024 (UTC)

Central banner for a Commons contest to photograph the culinary diversity of Bengal

A photographic contest is going to happen from 15th January, 2024 to 14th February 2024 on Wikimedia Commons to enrich the photographic content Bengali culinary diversity and a central notice request has been placed to target English Wikipedia users including non-registered ones from Bangladesh and the Indian states of West Bengal, Tripura, Assam, Sikkim and Jharkhand. Thanks. -- Bodhisattwa (talk) 06:33, 9 January 2024 (UTC)

change the description of an article

I entered the word "Triptych" and one of the possibilities that popped up was "Triptychs by Francis Bacon" with a note that they were painted between 1994 and 1986. I looked; that should be "between 1944 and 1986." How can this be fixed? J S Ayer (talk) 04:43, 10 January 2024 (UTC)

Simply edit the {{short description}} template, which is probably near the top of the page. Mach61 (talk) 05:13, 10 January 2024 (UTC)

@J S Ayer, it looks like that's the result of a simple accidental typo. You can see the edit that caused it here. You can fix it yourself, or you can ask Ffffrr to fix it. We all make mistakes occasionally, and it really helps if other people are willing to look out for the accidents and help fix them. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:36, 10 January 2024 (UTC)

Thank you! Never ran into that one before! J S Ayer (talk) 06:01, 10 January 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for correcting the error. Ffffrr (talk) 11:52, 10 January 2024 (UTC)

Edit summary spam

I'm sure this must be a perennial chestnut but what's the best way to handle edit summary spam? I see an increasing number of edits like this which commit trivial vandalism, a dummy edit or even a minor improvement but their main effect and likely purpose is to pollute the page history permanently with a commercial break. They generally do not qualify for revdel. Do we simply ignore them per WP:DENY? Certes (talk) 12:55, 9 January 2024 (UTC)

@Certes revert, block as needed. If there is some excessive amount, no one is going to care if an admin revdel's them via RD5 embracing DELREASON 4. I wouldn't bother chasing after single ones for such revdel, same as we wouldn't bother chasing after revdeling spam in the page text. — xaosflux ^Talk 15:01, 9 January 2024 (UTC)

Also, if there become some recurring pattern - we can try to prevent them with abusefilters. — xaosflux ^Talk 15:01, 9 January 2024 (UTC)

I think it's worth remembering how few people actually look at the edit summaries, especially if it's not the edit at the top of the list.

That IP range has made a lot of contributions, and most of them don't have an edit summary at all. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:34, 10 January 2024 (UTC)

Mass revdel does make that a lot easier for those up for the task. I'd definitely take the time if the edit summaries include links, I do that for user creation logs when I block promotional usernames. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 05:07, 11 January 2024 (UTC)

Third RfC on Vector 2022

• Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Evaluation of Vector 2022 is open.

Æo (talk) 21:43, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

Proposal to globally ban Guido den Broeder

Hi, this is to let you all know that there is a proposal to ban User:Guido den Broeder at m:Requests for comment/Global ban for Guido den Broeder. You are receiving this notification as Guido den Broeder has made at least one edit to this wiki as per the m:Global bans policy. Best, --SHB2000 (talk) 05:48, 13 January 2024 (UTC)

Wow, mobile browser editing really is bad

My usual device is not working, so I tried editing off of Safari (I did sign up for the NPP backlog drive, after all). Genuinely unusable. Probably going to take a break until it's fixed. DrowssapSMM 22:41, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

Calling @Folly Mox, who knows about editing on the mobile site. Unfortunately, there's no central noticeboard or other page where mobile-based editors congregate. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:00, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

If Talk:List of stores that sell laptops wasn't a redlink that would be the obvious choice. jp×g🗯️ 10:42, 8 January 2024 (UTC)

Perhaps there could be - is this suitable for a project, or do they have to be about articles? Newystats (talk) 22:04, 15 January 2024 (UTC)

My experience (as a frequent iPhone user) is that m.wiki is very good for reading pages (better than Vector is on desktop, actually), serviceable for copyediting and projectspace discussions, and very bad for expanding articles (no tools like ProveIt for citations, and switching between the article and the sources is harder with mobile browser tabs). Vector 2010 holds up surprisingly well for editing, seeing as it wasn't mobile-optimized at all, but is a much worse reading experience. Mach61 (talk) 03:06, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

(responding to ping) I do like the mobile web experience for the most part, and don't really find any part of it particularly burdensome or uncomfortable. I've been a fully mobile editor since the death of my last computer in summer 2022, but I must confess almost complete unfamiliarity with most advanced editing tools. I've never applied for the NPP perm, but having a look at Special:NewPagesFeed just now, it seems essentially identical between Minerva and Vector 2022.

There are, of course, some tasks that are more difficult: I can't run two browser windows sidey-side with a source in one and an open editing interface in another, but it is a bit more convenient that I can hold my phone flat against the opposing page of a physical book if I'm using one of those. Most scripts don't support Minerva, so I'll have to hop into desktop view if I want to use Rater or Prosesize or many functions of Twinkle, and the limited RAM of a mobile device has led me to uninstall scripts that have some utility because the additional javascript load times weren't worth it. And of course the input is typically a bit slower on a cell phone keyboard than the usual kind, but the predictive text helps to an extent (I never have managed to figure out swipe typing).

Essentially though, genuinely unusable is so nonspecific and unactionable that I don't know what to say or how I could help. This reminds me of another recent complaint at VPI, which suggested the mobile frontend was "uncomfortable" without specifics or further elaboration. That's not a way to get functional help or to suggest software improvements. User:DrowssapSMM, I hope your computer gets fixed soon, but do you have any examples of specific tasks you were unable to complete using your mobile device, and what it was in particular that made them impossible for you? Folly Mox (talk) 12:33, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

@Folly Mox I edit a lot on an Android phone and find that I keep changing between different interfaces, voluntarily or involuntarily, to get different functionality: If I want to look at an editor's contributions I have to get their user page, opt for "Desktop view" and then look at the contributions list. If they haven't created a user page ... I have to find something they've edited, find a version which gives a "contribs" link alongside their username as part of the diff, etc. There is one ghastly state I sometimes fall into where the font size increases with every keystroke so it's very soon impossible to do anything at all and I have to abandon the edit.

It seems impossible to contribute to some talk page discussions, I think Wikipedia Project talk pages mostly, though I can contribute to article and user talk pages. If I want to add to the end of the automatic edit summary after doing an "undo", I often struggle to scroll along to its end, if it's longer than the input box: sometimes it will move, sometimes not, possibly dependent on what scale Ive zoomed it to.

It's altogether a somewhat unpredictable and stressful experience, but I keep on doing it because I can use the phone in places where I don't have my computer, such as sitting on the sofa, semi-sociably half-watching something on the television. PamD 17:08, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

PamD huh, I have encountered zero of those problems using Firefox on Android with "advanced" mode in my mobile preferences. Contribs are available at the page header of User: and User talk: pages, I can tap "read as a wiki page" to view and edit Wikipedia talk: conversations, and my typeface size has never increased outside a pinch zoom. I could see an Undo diff preview being uncomfortably long, but have never had a problem getting the screen to scroll. Folly Mox (talk) 17:18, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

Hmm, I use Firefox on desktop but Chrome on phone. Perhaps I should try Firefox on the phone. PamD 18:08, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

You might find this page useful: User:Cullen328/Smartphone editing. I do a lot of editing while mobile (such as now!) and I find the desktop version of Vector 2010 to be the best interface for it. Barnards.tar.gz (talk) 17:26, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

I mean, maybe, and I'm not sure of any other high profile mobile editing user essays, but the takeaway from the linked essay (briefly: desktop view, landscape orientation) is the exact opposite to how I edit, and I get on fine. It's really up to personal preference (and Special:Preferences) except in some edge cases, like viewing navboxes or the source of a fully protected template. Folly Mox (talk) 03:22, 4 January 2024 (UTC)

Mobile editing is terrible, but for me even mobile reading (Samsung Galaxy A50, Chrome) is nearly impossible since a few weeks. And then there are the strange things on Mobile view even when seen on a desktop. E.g. the right side of the translate box at the top of this is a clear "show", while the same in mobile view has a "show" which for some reason fades out to the right. The watchlist in mobile uses way, way too many lines (4 or 5 per entry for no good reason), where "thank" is a too big button and "rollback" is a lot smaller and without a border (on desktop view they are nicely aligned and formatted).

This is simply brilliant. Above the diff, it shows the legend: "Content added" in a blue box, "Content deleted" in a yellow box. Below, the actual diff, shows content added against a green background, and content removed against a red background. Phew, good thing I had the legend... Oh, but perhaps because I look at it in Wikitext and not in Visual? Er, no, when I make that switch, the added text is shown against some green-bluish hue, not the same as the "content added" box at all, and the removed line is no longer visible.

Editing? I can't edit a complete page in mobile, if I use the "edit" pencil at the top I only get the lead. E.g. swapping two sections is not possible (or at the very least not intuitive) this way. Doing this in desktop mode is straightforward. Doing all this also reminded me of one of the reasons why Visual Editing is such a pain in the ass. Changing a short description in wikitext is "click edit, change shortdesc, save". Doing this in VE is "click edit, scroll up (!), click short desc icon, click edit again but now at the bottom, change shortdesc, save, save again because you only "saved" the template change". Fram (talk) 19:19, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

I use to edit using the mobile version on my phone a lot. ... no longer do so...instead I switch to desktop mode on my phone. There is a link at the very bottom of every page to change to desktop view and back. Moxy- 20:06, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

There's a script that will force the desktop version as well, useful if you're googling something and end up following a link back to Wikipedia. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 01:11, 4 January 2024 (UTC)

An "edit full page" option for mobile was added a few months ago, in the vertical ellipsis menu in the upper right, with the rest of the page tools. Swapping sections seems pretty identical (cut-paste). I don't see the same blue / yellow legend boxes in inline diff mode, which might be the result of a user preference. Folly Mox (talk) 03:18, 4 January 2024 (UTC)

I get the exact same look when I log out, so not the result of a user preference. Fram (talk) 09:39, 4 January 2024 (UTC)

After checking the linked diff logged out in three separate browsers, I haven't been able to view the "content added" / "content removed" legend in either source or visual mode, so it doesn't seem like it's one of my user preferences either. Folly Mox (talk) 12:11, 4 January 2024 (UTC)

Looks like the legend hides if your device is 1000px wide or smaller. Which may explain why it hasn't been noticed that MobileFrontend overrides MediaWiki core's diff colors but not the colors in the legend. Compare this desktop diff (again, in a browser with a width >1000px) where the legend and colors do match. Anomie⚔ 12:38, 4 January 2024 (UTC)

Seconding the concern that editing pages on mobile in Firefox gives a bizarre situation where editing the entire article only gives you the lead section. I figure this might be some weird user preference but it always annoys me a lot. In general, the mobile editing experience leaves a lot to be desired, although I'll confess I do not have a lot of concrete suggestions. It does seem like the mobile website downplays the editor-created nature of the site a lot (i.e. history and the like are often hidden). jp×g🗯️ 08:46, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

JPxG, the edit pencil at the top of an article opens only the lead. "Edit full page" is collapsed inside the vertical ellipsis menu in the upper right, along with Special:WhatLinksHere, Special:PageInfo, et al. This is a recent change (feels like second two thirds of 2023; I'll see if I can find the date). Folly Mox (talk) 12:40, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

1 August, as part of MediaWiki 1.41/wmf.20, pursuant to phab:T203151, but apparently this option is only available if you enable "Advanced" mode in Special:MobileOptions. I think not having this mode enabled probably severely cripples the editing experience (link anchored to "1 August" above has the deets). Folly Mox (talk) 12:54, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

Computer is fixed, so it doesn't really matter all that much anymore. I just couldn't deal with mobile diffs. DrowssapSMM 12:10, 4 January 2024 (UTC)

Inline diffs can be um challenging to parse sometimes (scroll down in the linked mobile diff for the fun part). Folly Mox (talk) 13:57, 4 January 2024 (UTC)

Displaying some Wikipedia mobile view anomaly

Screenshot added. Also note the ridiculously large footer (which extends further to the right than the actual page, poor layouting once again) Fram (talk) 12:23, 4 January 2024 (UTC)

Illustrate a mobile view anomaly on Wikipedia

Another screenshot, showing the weird "show" (bottom right) fade out. Very artistic. Fram (talk) 12:28, 4 January 2024 (UTC)

Separately from any issues with it, the mobile view has the appearance of something that is a decade or more out of date. I would hope the WMF are working to consolidate around one appearance that scales across devices and different screen sizes. Working on each separately at this point would be a waste of resources. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 19:45, 4 January 2024 (UTC)

I don't think I share that hope. Having one or more giant screen, with a keyboard + mouse input setup, and the ability to have multiple apps open in a single view, is a fundamentally different experience to a vertically oriented, cramped, "one app at a time", "long-press contextual menu instead of shortcut keys", "keyboard input necessarily occludes a non trivial portion of the screen" kinda situation.

Also there are pretty big differences in system resources. I really should replace my phone soon, but my device memory is such that even if most gadgets and userscripts were supported in Minerva I'd still disable them due to the overhead of loading all the javascript. I only enable Twinkle if I have to restore an old revision or AfD an article.

I'm sure that Minerva probably looks old and busted viewed full screen on a desktop monitor, but on a mobile device it does a good job giving the page contents most of the screen real estate and keeping the other elements out of the way until needed. Folly Mox (talk) 18:00, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

Minerva probably looks old and busted viewed full screen on a desktop monitor – before Vector 2022, before even Wikiwand, I understand that how to switch to Wikipedia's "secret" mobile view periodically made the rounds on social media. Reportedly, people thought it was easier to read. It's not my own personal favorite, but that doesn't mean those people are wrong. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:02, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

It's altogether possible that what looks "fine and normal" to me actually looks a decade or more out of date to younger eyes. That probably applies to most of the things I own and uh me. Folly Mox (talk) 23:21, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

What to do when editors don't agree

Please see Wikipedia:Requests for comment/When there is no consensus either way and share your advice. Specifically, if editors genuinely can't agree one whether to include or exclude a fact in a given article, what principles or processes should they follow? WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:11, 15 January 2024 (UTC)

How would I get Turkish Wikipedia to have a news feed and request template

Hi, I am working on the wikifeeds service and fixing the feeds and hoping to add more features such as a news feed which isn't currently implemented on the wiki. I can probably copy a news request template from other wikis but I assume that the Turkish Wiki would need a bot to grab news from Turkish news media sources and place them in specifically named pages. I am just starting to look at the news feed capability and how it is implemented in other language wikis, but anyone with insights about this would be very helpful. SBailey (WMF) (talk) 21:45, 17 January 2024 (UTC)

@SBailey (WMF): probably better to ask this at WP:VPT, imho, the people there will understand the technical issues better. 🌺 Cremastra (talk) 21:51, 17 January 2024 (UTC)

Thanks, I will check with WP:VPT

Regards,

Shannon SBailey (WMF) (talk) 22:05, 17 January 2024 (UTC)

Feminism and Folklore 2024

Please help translate to other languages.

Dear Wiki Community,

You are humbly invited to organize the Feminism and Folklore 2024 writing competition from February 1, 2024, to March 31, 2024 on your local Wikipedia. This year, Feminism and Folklore will focus on feminism, women's issues, and gender-focused topics for the project, with a Wiki Loves Folklore gender gap focus and a folk culture theme on Wikipedia.

You can help Wikipedia's coverage of folklore from your area by writing or improving articles about things like folk festivals, folk dances, folk music, women and queer folklore figures, folk game athletes, women in mythology, women warriors in folklore, witches and witch hunting, fairy tales, and more. Users can help create new articles, expand or translate from a generated list of suggested articles.

Organisers are requested to work on the following action items to sign up their communities for the project:

1. Create a page for the contest on the local wiki.
2. Set up a campaign on CampWiz tool.
3. Create the local list and mention the timeline and local and international prizes.
4. Request local admins for site notice.
5. Link the local page and the CampWiz link on the meta project page.

This year, the Wiki Loves Folklore Tech Team has introduced two new tools to enhance support for the campaign. These tools include the Article List Generator by Topic and CampWiz. The Article List Generator by Topic enables users to identify articles on the English Wikipedia that are not present in their native language Wikipedia. Users can customize their selection criteria, and the tool will present a table showcasing the missing articles along with suggested titles. Additionally, users have the option to download the list in both CSV and wikitable formats. Notably, the CampWiz tool will be employed for the project for the first time, empowering users to effectively host the project with a jury. Both tools are now available for use in the campaign. Click here to access these tools

Learn more about the contest and prizes on our project page. Feel free to contact us on our meta talk page or by email us if you need any assistance.

We look forward to your immense coordination.

Thank you and Best wishes,

Feminism and Folklore 2024 International Team

Stay connected  

--MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 07:26, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

Wiki Loves Folklore is back!

Please help translate to other languages.

Dear Wiki Community, You are humbly invited to participate in the Wiki Loves Folklore 2024 an international photography contest organized on Wikimedia Commons to document folklore and intangible cultural heritage from different regions, including, folk creative activities and many more. It is held every year from the 1st of February till the 31st of March.

You can help in enriching the folklore documentation on Commons from your region by taking photos, audios, videos, and submitting them in this commons contest.

You can also organize a local contest in your country and support us in translating the project pages to help us spread the word in your native language.

Feel free to contact us on our project Talk page if you need any assistance.

Kind regards,

Wiki loves Folklore International Team

-- MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 07:26, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

Vote on the Charter for the Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee

You can find this message translated into additional languages on Meta-wiki. Please help translate to other languages.

Hello all,

I am reaching out to you today to announce that the voting period for the Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee (U4C) Charter is now open. Community members may cast their vote and provide comments about the charter via SecurePoll now through 2 February 2024. Those of you who voiced your opinions during the development of the UCoC Enforcement Guidelines will find this process familiar.

The current version of the U4C Charter is on Meta-wiki with translations available.

Read the charter, go vote and share this note with others in your community. I can confidently say the U4C Building Committee looks forward to your participation.

On behalf of the UCoC Project team,

RamzyM (WMF) 18:08, 19 January 2024 (UTC)

Foreign policy of Germany

Requesting a new section: please see the discussion. --Pegasovagante (talk) 16:53, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

I have replied at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Germany#Foreign policy of the Scholz cabinet. Let's keep the discussion in one place. Remember that people have lives outside Wikipedia, and are in different time zones, so you may not get an immediate response. Phil Bridger (talk) 18:45, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

Copy Wikipedia website

I found Google Search these website are copy a webpage. I don't know for Wikimedia policy can copy or not.

• https://svizznuovo.net/?_=%2Fwiki%2FSpecial%3AMyContributions%23KJWqMdlUlBnuJaMCWRbpl47xcYAuFE2m
• https://decolasocial.com/?_=%2Fwiki%2FTalk%3AMicrosoft_Windows%230uin5ucbyOleodSFrE3Ig20Bb%2B96bPf4

• https://wheretobecr.com/?_=%2Fwiki%2FSpecial%3AMyContributions%23IL5%2BxIOg8jh67dqCN0nyux53BALp%2BkAK

47.234.198.142 (talk) 22:25, 21 January 2024 (UTC)

So long as the websites abide by the terms of the CC-BY-SA license, they're freely allowed to copy content. You may wish to add them to WP:Mirrors and forks Mach61 (talk) 22:43, 21 January 2024 (UTC)

Copyright, reliability, citogenesis and the relation between Wikipedia and professional encyclopedias where contributors are the same

Note I am an experienced Wikipedia contributor, reasonably familiar with copyright. I am also a scholar, my user page disclosses my real name and academic affiliation. But I am a bit stumped about the best practices in the following case.

I was recently invited to write some encyclopedic articles for a professional encyclopedia (non-profit, actually, and open access, but using traditional copyright: The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction). For some cases, those topics have only a poor article on Wikipedia, or none at all, so I would like to improve it here as well. There are some MoS differences, so the entry I write for us would not be identical to the one I will write for them - for example, they do not require footnotes, nor to they have lead or section headings), but obviously, there would be some overlap. Crucially, I don't want to waste time paraphrasing my own words, but I am also expecting they might be resistnat to the idea of using CC-BY-SA for my entry in their project. So question one is: is it possible for me, as the sole author of a text, to both put it on Wikipedia (as I usually do) but also to donate it to that other encyclopedia, where it would not be CC-BY-SA'ed? To avoid issues with CC, would I have to not publish my entry on Wikipedia until it is ready to be "forked" - because usually I work on an article over here over a period of days or weeks, and occasionally helpful editors make minor tweaks, but as soon as someone tweaks an entry, even fixing a single typo, I am not a sole author and I am bound by CC, right?

Second dimension to discuss. That encyclopedia is seen as RS and cited on Wikipedia. Regardless of whether they agree to use CC-BY-SA and attribute Wikipedia as one of the sources, how does that play with WP:CITOGENESIS? Will the entry I write for them be prohibited from use on Wikipedia, even through it goes through their peer review system (or editorial review)?

To add yet another wrinkle, that encyclopedia accepts original research claims (like all the others except, well, us). Again, they have internal review (they are a reliable, academic work). So if I publish vesion 1 on Wikipedia, and version 2 (with some OR), on their site, can this OR now be used on Wikipedia? Do I need to self-report it to COI first if I want to cite my own entry there for some claim? Do we need a RSN discussion to accept the use of such entries?

To give us some practical examples:

• case 1: I recently wrote and got to Good Article status the entry on Władysław Umiński. While I am the principal author of this (95%), any rewrite of this for SFE would have to be CC-BY-SA there, with attribution to Wikipedia. Fine. But I can obviously add some claims to SFE that would be ORish for Wikipedia. How to go about adding them to Wikipedia? Report my intention to COI and RSN...? Nobody bats an eyelid when SFE is used on Wikipedia as a source, but because this entry would be written by non-anonymous contributor, i.e., me, would all those extra steps be required? (If so, it seems like yet another case where by disclosing my identity on Wikipedia I open myself to more pain, here, COI review, which would not be needed if I were anonymous?)
• case 2: I am not sure if I'll be adding any OR to Umiński's SFE entry (would need to think more about that oone), but I would like to use SFE to finally add a claim to another of my Good Articles on Wikipedia, namely the one on hyperspace: that the color of hyperspace in the TV show Babylon 5 was red (or red-black). It still irks me that this fact has no reliable source out there, and I intend to ask SFE to allow me to revise that entry. And actually, I recall numerous discussion with a fellow sf editor, User:TompaDompa, about sysbias issues in our sf entries - we often think that certian examples or arguments should be made, but they are never made in RS (for example, disucssion of non-English classics). Working with SFE (which, again, has editorial peer review) would allow us to improve such entries, by adding content to SFE, then citing it at Wikipedia. But then, again, should one go through COI and RSN here each time? It seems somewhat ridcolous...
• case 3: Let's say they balk at the use of CC-BY-SA. Fine. I itend to improve some stubby bios of Polish sci-fi writers, for us and them. Ex. Jarosław Grzędowicz. I can write something from scratch, but I don't want to do this twice. If the text is published at SFE with full copyright, can I, as the sole author, simoultanesly use it on Wikipedia under CC-BY-SA? And, sigh, once again, would I need to deal with COI and RSN each and every time?

_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 03:08, 23 January 2024 (UTC)

To answer copyright issues: As the author you can put the content on both encyclopedias. However you should prove that you are the same user / author on both encyclopedias, so on SFE you should have a statement that you are the same person as Piotrus on Wikipedia. Then anything you contribute on both is proved to have permission. Self citing is not a great idea and we tend to treat it as a form of promotion or advertising. So best not to put your own original ideas on Wikipedia in articles. If SFE is counted as a reliable source here, then you could use OR from there and reference it to SFE. however please consider whether it is TRUE, or just an opinion that needs attribution to an author. And just do that for other's writings rather than your own to avoid COI and own-idea promotion. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 06:10, 23 January 2024 (UTC)

Wikimedia Foundation banner fundraising campaign in Malaysia

Dear all,

I would like to take the opportunity to inform you all  about the upcoming annual Wikimedia Foundation banner fundraising campaign in Malaysia (on English Wikipedia).

The fundraising campaign will have two components.

1. We will send emails to people who have previously donated from Malaysia. The emails are scheduled to be sent between the 13th of February to the 2nd of March.  
2. We will run banners for non-logged in users in Malaysia on English Wikipedia itself. The banners will run from the 28th of May to the 25th of June.

Prior to this, we are planning to run some tests, so you might see banners for 3-5 hours a couple of times before the campaign starts. This activity will ensure that our technical infrastructure works.

Here are some example banners. If you have any comments or suggestions on them, please get in touch with me or reply below:

• Desktop large
• Desktop small
• Mobile large
• Mobile small

Generally, before and during the campaign, you can contact us:

• On the talk page of the fundraising team
• If you need to report a bug or technical issue, please create a phabricator ticket
• If you see a donor on a talk page, VRT or social media having difficulties in donating, please refer them to donatewikimedia.org

Thanks you and regards, Julia JBrungs (WMF) (talk) 06:53, 23 January 2024 (UTC)

Wikimedia Foundation banner fundraising campaign in South Africa

Dear all,

I would like to take the opportunity to inform you all  about the upcoming annual Wikimedia Foundation banner fundraising campaign in South Africa.

The fundraising campaign will have two components.

1. We will send emails to people who have previously donated from South Africa. The emails are scheduled to be sent between the 1st to 24th of May.  
2. We will run banners for non-logged in users in South Africa on English Wikipedia itself. The banners will run from the 28th of May to the 25th of June.

Prior to this, we are planning to run some tests, so you might see banners for 3-5 hours a couple of times before the campaign starts. This activity will ensure that our technical infrastructure works.

I am also sharing with you a community collaboration page, where we outline more details around the campaign, share some banner examples, and give you space to engage with the fundraising campaign.

We will also be hosting a community call, details are on the collaboration page, to which you can bring your questions and suggestions.

Generally, before and during the campaign, you can contact us:

• On the talk page of the fundraising team
• If you need to report a bug or technical issue, please create a phabricator ticket
• If you see a donor on a talk page, VRT or social media having difficulties in donating, please refer them to donatewikimedia.org

Thanks you and regards, Julia JBrungs (WMF) (talk) 07:16, 23 January 2024 (UTC)

Informing you about the Mental Health Resource Center and inviting any comments you may have

Hello all! I work in the Community Resilience and Sustainability team of the Wikimedia Foundation. The Mental Health Resource Center is a group of pages on Meta-wiki aimed at supporting the mental wellbeing of users in our community.

The Mental Health Resource Center launched in August 2023. The goal is to review the comments and suggestions to improve the Mental Health Resource Center each quarter. As there have not been many comments yet, I’d like to invite you to provide comments and resource suggestions as you are able to do so on the Mental Health Resource Center talk page. The hope is this resource expands over time to cover more languages and cultures. Thank you! Best, JKoerner (WMF) (talk) 21:45, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

Hi, on my user page I came out as a schizophrenia patient. I'm very stable and not delusional. While I was viciously attacked sometimes, those were just words, and I never experienced any real abuse. I say this because I know at least a couple of other editors who came out as psychiatric patients, and I think they are just the tip of the iceberg. Perhaps Wikipedia attracts such editors, especially in the areas of religions and esotericism. And also the usual fringe POV pushers who get summarily dismissed. My view of Wikipedia is that is requires a keen mind, and it is in some respects a very dog eats dog environment. This is because we deal in knowledge, which requires epistemological responsibility—a minority of people are scientifically literate, and a minority of those who are scientifically literate behave epistemically responsible, hence the edit conflicts which are all too common at Wikipedia. Sometimes reasonable people disagree, but in many respects I find that being an Wikipedian means fending off edits from people who are unreasonable. The gravest Wikipedic sin is not believing in e.g. quantum mysticism, but in being unable to realize that quantum mysticism is WP:FRINGE.

And sometimes being viciously attacked is empowering a sense of personal worth, rather than denying it. Days when I'm not attacked seem lazy and pleasant, but I wouldn't like too many lazy days. A truly shocking day for me was when Facebook was displaying only positive news. tgeorgescu (talk) 20:15, 24 January 2024 (UTC)

Libel trial against Wikipedia

I am asking about Irismeister vs. Wikipedia admins. How did that trial end? On ro.wiki there are rumors that he won the trial (perhaps in Israel), but on Google I could not find any information about that.

I think I know more: he advocated a class action trial, led by a group called Wikipedia Watch. AFAIK, that trial went nowhere, and the website of that group no longer exists. tgeorgescu (talk) 12:50, 24 January 2024 (UTC)

List of Wikipedia controversies#September 2005 might be informative re: Wikipedia Watch. I don't know how Irismeister might have been involved in that and have never heard of the suit, but judging from the 125kB of conspiracy theory-style lists of grievances formerly posted on their now-deleted user page, I'm guessing no competent lawyer would take the case. Just speculating, though. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 13:03, 24 January 2024 (UTC)

@Ivanvector: Here an IP said that Irismeister has won the trial. Nobody has contradicted that claim on ro.wiki. The IP claims that Irismeister is from Israel and writes modern Hebrew—somehow as a defense against Irismeister's patent antisemitism. tgeorgescu (talk) 13:10, 24 January 2024 (UTC)

I'm running that through a translator which could be adding its own quirks, but the style of that rant is very similar to the former userpage. Around 2005 Irismeister, under what is apparently their real name, emailed several admins warning that they had already filed claims against Wikipedia with the FTC, there's an old mailing list thread archived on the 'net about it. It's not likely they actually did, they were known for throwing around legalese threats to get their way evidently before WP:NLT was policy; instead there was an Arbcom case in which Irismeister was specifically banned from making legal threats. Their response was threatening to sue for libel, which got them blocked, then they socked with a variety of IPs to restore the threats. The IP that posted on rowiki is a known proxy and now globally blocked. I'm just guessing again but I'd say that the claim of having won a suit in Israel, embedded as it is in a bunch of other ranting about pseudoscience, is just completely made up. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 13:38, 24 January 2024 (UTC)

@Ivanvector: Agree. Winning a lawsuit against en.wiki admins would be big news, and it could still be found through Google, even if it happened before 2008.

And, yup, the admins ridiculed his threats as following: FTC is a federal government body which regulates commerce. Since Wikipedia does not do commerce, it does not fall under the purview of the FTC. So there was nothing which FTC could do with his complaints, except dismiss them out of hand. And, indeed, the FTC is not competent to do anything else with his complaints, since what is commerce and what is not commerce is strictly defined by federal law. tgeorgescu (talk) 19:27, 24 January 2024 (UTC)

Jan Jakob Lodewijk ten Kate

There's two people by this name, and I fear they're getting combined rather badly in links and such. Adam Cuerden ^(talk)_{Has about 8.8% of all FPs.} 08:44, 25 January 2024 (UTC)

@Adam Cuerden Could you add a note to the article talk page explaining this, and telling us how they differ? Dutch wikipedia also seems to have just the one article. Thanks. PamD 09:13, 25 January 2024 (UTC)

Ah, cracked it: there's painter Jan Jacob Lodewijk ten Kate (1850-1929) and writer Jan Jakob Lodewijk ten Kate (1819-1889), according to Wikidata. And nl.wiki has articles on them both, without so much as a helpful hatnote directing to the other one. PamD 09:16, 25 January 2024 (UTC)

See https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Jacob_Lodewijk_ten_Kate_(1850-1929) and https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Jakob_Lodewijk_ten_Kate (can't remember how to elegantly link to nl.wiki). PamD 09:19, 25 January 2024 (UTC)

@PamD: You do it by adding a colon between the opening brackets and the interwiki prefix, like "[[:nl:Jan Jakob Lodewijk ten Kate]]". Graham87 (talk) 08:24, 27 January 2024 (UTC)

@Graham87Ah, thanks: I forgot that first colon. Will add it to my list of "useful stuff" in my sandbox. PamD 09:56, 27 January 2024 (UTC)

We have in en.wiki a redirect from Jacob to Jakob. PamD 09:20, 25 January 2024 (UTC)

And nl.wiki confirms that they were father and son. PamD 09:29, 25 January 2024 (UTC)

And I've now added a note on the son, with 2 sources, to the "Family" section, retargeted the redirect from "... Jacob..." to point there, and added a hatnote. An article on the son would be better, but this should help for now. PamD 09:42, 25 January 2024 (UTC)

Making my first article

Just wanted to see what you think about this article.

Draft:Lobotomy (Geometry Dash) Pemcil (talk) 05:39, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

• A fan wiki is user-generated, so it's not reliable.
• The last sentence has no citation. Where is the information coming from?

🌺 Cremastra (talk) 14:30, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

@Pemcil The lead sentence should give some context, so that if someone finds the article by clicking "random article" they know what it is about. Put yourself into the position of someone who has never heard of "Geometry Dash", and whose world doesn't revolve around videogames, and see what you can make of it. The word "game" needs to be in there. PamD 14:39, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

I'll add that writing about video games is very popular and we have an entire wikiproject devoted to it: WP:WikiProject Video games. Asking your question on that project's talk page will probably get you some excellent feedback about what makes a good video game article. RoySmith (talk) 16:09, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

Legalism (Chinese philosophy)

Not sure it is really something to be concerned about, but I just wanted to note that on Weeklypedia - an automatically generated list of the most-edited articles - Legalism (Chinese philosophy) usually shows up on a weekly basis, with hundreds of edits made usually by one or two authors. Not an edit war, but it is just interesting that one person making cumulatively thousands of edits a month ... MollyRealized (talk) 18:43, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

The fact that these are all mobile edits, and that the cumulative effect of the edits is meaningful makes me pretty confident this is just one persons weird way of doing a full rewrite and nothing fishy is going on. Mach61 (talk) 18:53, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

It almost certainly breaks the record for the highest number of edits by a single user to one article, though, with 18,964, at the time of writing. The previous record I knew about was at [[List of United States political families, with 9,714. I think I'll notify the user involved, FourLights, on their talk page. Graham87 (talk) 08:13, 27 January 2024 (UTC)

Most of my work is not done on my phone, and there is no second person there would be an edit war with, he attempted to reformat the references which I need to review now with reorganization near complete. My subject is technically dead, it just took my a long time to put it together into understanding. It begs the question of how to deal with a dead subject, I am not an expert wikipedia writer, but if anyone has ideas I have and can acquire sources and can take action. Also - the page currently present represents a new constructions. Previously the page was simply occupied by it's figures - which I had also wrote. However, it was suggested to move information to figures pages. Han Feizi is also under construction, I can rewrite the section Morality of Han Fei I wrote into something better. Neither page is the quality I would like. Regardless of what information needs to be offloaded, I would have to engage in new reading.FourLights (talk) 12:24, 27 January 2024 (UTC)

A clue to why there are so many edits to Legalism (Chinese philosophy) can be seen in the history of this page. FourLights took nine edits to make the statement above. One might think that it's a weird way of working, but it's that editor's way, and it doesn't cause disruption, only minor annoyance to the people with the page on their watchlists. Phil Bridger (talk) 09:57, 28 January 2024 (UTC)

I think some of us are more irked that people seem to like to wall off sections of wikipedia based on edit counts, so when we see editors whose (completely legitimate) work process may be to enter in their edits incrementally, it makes us blame the system, maaaan.

I find it ironic that Legalism of all articles is the context in which this is brought up, since an oft repeating discussion in legalism is gaming the system (e.g., facilitated with increasing objectivity/precision in law/names), which is the background suspicion motivating this thread. SamuelRiv (talk) 01:25, 29 January 2024 (UTC)

Seeking more participation at an RfC

Hi, I'm trying to get more participation at an RfC that I started.

That RfC being: Genocides in history (1946 to 1999): Request for Comment: 1948 Palestinian expulsion https://wiki.riteme.site/wiki/Talk:Genocides_in_history_(1946_to_1999)#Request_for_Comment:_1948_Palestinian_expulsion

I have read https://wiki.riteme.site/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment#Publicizing_an_RfC which led me here, but I'm still wondering if there is somewhere else I could go in order to better publicize this RfC. Any advice on this would be appreciated. Note that there are special considerations regarding potential canvassing violations in the publicizing of this RfC due to the sensitive, contentious and polarizing nature of the content.

One of the reasons I am looking to get more input on this RfC is that I am concerned there may be editors participating there who are voting on ideological grounds. (There has been an issue with canvassing involving one of the editors who participated in the pre-RfC discussion and one of the editors who participated in the RfC itself [7]) Whether or not canvassing has occured in this particular RfC - which there is no evidence that it has - more participation can only be a good thing, especially considering the significance of the content.

Additionally, though there have been multiple editors who have voted in the RfC there has been very little discussion.

Greater participation in these closely related discussions would also help significantly:

Genocides in history (1946 to 1999) - "Scope of this article": https://wiki.riteme.site/wiki/Talk:Genocides_in_history_(1946_to_1999)#Scope_of_this_article

List of genocides - "How do we cover debate and uncertainty": https://wiki.riteme.site/w/index.php?title=Talk:List_of_genocides&diff=next&oldid=1199226548#How_do_we_cover_debate_and_uncertainty

- IOHANNVSVERVS (talk) 11:24, 27 January 2024 (UTC)

The Wikipedia:Feedback request service is broken, so I expect that participation is down in a lot of RFCs (for the last month). WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:38, 29 January 2024 (UTC)

Requesting input in categorization discussion

Hello. There is a discussion at Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2024 January 27#Category:Assassinated politicians by method regarding categorization of ways by which politicians were assassinated. Your input is welcome. Regards, Thinker78 (talk) 23:36, 27 January 2024 (UTC)

Image request template should go on articles

We have no problem putting cleanup templates, most notably {{citation needed}}, on articles.

Yet we relegate {{Image requested}} to talk pages.

Our readers are often likely to be able to supply images - of objects in their household, places where they live or visit, or whatever.

We should have a template, linking to a page which explains copyright and Wikimedia Commons, which can be used on articles, or indeed on sections of articles. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 19:42, 23 January 2024 (UTC)

Was tried before and ultimately rejected in 2008. Mach61 (talk) 19:43, 23 January 2024 (UTC)

Mistakes can and should be rectified. Sixteen-year-old mistakes, doubly so. Further, that conversation appears to be about image placeholders, not cleanup templates. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 20:34, 23 January 2024 (UTC)

Agree. On the page itself one would get much more attention. Hyperbolick (talk) 07:03, 24 January 2024 (UTC)

Just to add, 2008 was a long time ago - 16 years! So much has altered since then, both on and off wiki, that it seems a good opportunity to re-address the discussion. In 2008, hardly anyone had a camera in their pcoket, now (in the UK at least) the majority of us do! Lajmmoore (talk) 07:56, 30 January 2024 (UTC)

Last days to vote on the Charter for the Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee

You can find this message translated into additional languages on Meta-wiki. Please help translate to other languages.

Hello all,

I am reaching out to you today to remind you that the voting period for the Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee (U4C) charter will close on 2 February 2024. Community members may cast their vote and provide comments about the charter via SecurePoll. Those of you who voiced your opinions during the development of the UCoC Enforcement Guidelines will find this process familiar.

The current version of the U4C charter is on Meta-wiki with translations available.

Read the charter, go vote and share this note with others in your community. I can confidently say the U4C Building Committee looks forward to your participation.

On behalf of the UCoC Project team,

RamzyM (WMF) 17:00, 31 January 2024 (UTC)

O Iran Problem

Can someone please go to the O Iran page and add a translation to English? Thank you. Faith15 21:45, 27 January 2024 (UTC)

There is a link to an English translation of the lyrics at the bottom of the article. Dhtwiki (talk) 07:29, 28 January 2024 (UTC)

And the source doesn't seem to give any information that could help ascertain the copyright status of the translation. It is quite possible that the original lyrics are public domain but that the translation (which was presumably done later) is copyrighted under a non-free licence. We can't include content that may not be under a free licence. Phil Bridger (talk) 10:35, 28 January 2024 (UTC)

I was thinking that the link would be enough and the translation wouldn't be copied over, regardless of copyright status. Dhtwiki (talk) 21:33, 28 January 2024 (UTC)

So here's the problem. I don't actually have access to the translation page. And I don't have access to Google Translate. Faith15 21:59, 28 January 2024 (UTC)

Why does the translation page not work for you? (If you don't mind me asking) 🌺 Cremastra (talk) 22:00, 28 January 2024 (UTC)

I only have access to a limited number of websites. This site being one of them. Faith15 22:02, 28 January 2024 (UTC)

Ladsgroup, do you happen to know anyone at the Persian Wikipedia who would be willing and able to translate the lyrics (or at least some of them) for us? WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:41, 29 January 2024 (UTC)

@Faithful15 and @WhatamIdoing I will ask in fawiki's VP. I'm sure some people are willing to help on that. Ladsgroup^overleg 16:13, 29 January 2024 (UTC)

mentioned it there. Will keep you posted. Ladsgroup^overleg 16:29, 29 January 2024 (UTC)

Thanks. It would be nice to have a version without copyright worries. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:37, 29 January 2024 (UTC)

I think this will work:

O Iran, O precious border (country)

O country whose soil is the source of the beginning of art

Those who have bad thoughts about you, stay away from you

We hope you will always remain eternal and exist

O enemy, if you are a worthless stone, I am iron

My life is sacrificed for the homeland

Love for you is all life

you never leave my thought

In your way, my life is worthless

I hope the soil of our Iran will always remain eternal

A stone from your mountains is like a jewel

The soil of your plains is more valuable than gold

Love for you always remains in my heart

Tell me, how can I spend my life without your affection and love?

As long as the sky exists and everything is spinning (forever), God guides us

...

Iran, O my green paradise, my destiny and fate are clearer and more obvious to you.

If I am in the hardest conditions and fire falls from the sky on me, nothing will remain in my heart except your affection and love

My existence (heart) has been mixed with your water, soil, affection, and love.

If your affection and love leave from within me, I will perish.

WASP-Outis (talk) 16:54, 29 January 2024 (UTC)

Thanks @WASP-Outis. CC @WhatamIdoing and @Faithful15 Ladsgroup^overleg 08:26, 30 January 2024 (UTC)

@WhatamIdoing and @Ladsgroup. I have revised and corrected the English translation, ensuring it accurately reflects the Persian lyrics. This version maintains brevity while capturing the essence of the original verses more accurately. Tisfoon (talk) 21:00, 31 January 2024 (UTC)

Thank you for your edits to Ey Iran#English translation! WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:42, 31 January 2024 (UTC)

Polish village names automatically butchered by bot

A few days ago I added a move request on the page Stare Bogusze because its name is incorrect and should be Bogusze Stare. When I checked other Polish villages, two others in the same gmina have their word orders reversed as well: Stara Kosianka and Nowe Sypnie (should be Kosianka Stara and Sypnie Nowe respectively).

Then I went to Gmina Siemiatycze and found one not only in the wrong order, but misspelled as well: Stare Krasewicze should be Krasewice Stare. This error was also repeated with Krasewicze-Czerepy and Krasewicze-Jagiełki (both should have Krasewice). There is also Stare Moczydły, Gmina Siemiatycze which should be renamed Moczydły, Siemiatycze County but that is not the bot's fault as it was renamed since it was created. I start checking every village with multiple words in the same voivodeship, then after a while I find another one (Stare Brzóski which should be Brzóski Stare) and gradually another one (Stara Kamienna which should be Kamienna Stara).

Could someone do a bot run to check which English Wikipedia village names are different from the Polish version so we can review all potential mistakes? We should probably check all of Poland (I assume they were created by the same bot?). Ilawa-Kataka (talk) 16:55, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

This could be a job for Wikidata:SPARQL. Certes (talk) 17:01, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

I have no experience at this level. I have only used the query builder on Wikidata. It would probably be better if someone else did it. Ilawa-Kataka (talk) 17:08, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

@Ilawa-Kataka Looking at WD, there are 31000 "instance of : village in Poland" items that have both enwiki and plwiki articles, of which ~26000 have different page titles. However, most of those are different because of disambiguation suffixes etc.

There are 1602 pages where the first five characters are different, though that will catch a few which are "Xxxx (disambig)" vs "Xxxx, Wherever". A more restricted search (neither can have a space in the first five characters) gets 524 pages. Looks like it's throwing up a lot of your switched name orders. Andrew Gray (talk) 15:41, 4 February 2024 (UTC)

@Stok @Malarz pl - maybe you know who else to ping. _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 04:03, 3 February 2024 (UTC)

@FOARP - more Kotbot mess... _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 04:04, 3 February 2024 (UTC)

I maintain my position that really we need to just deal with Kotbot's articles in bulk. Some of them are about villages that aren't villages but former communist-era facilities such as state farms or railway stations. Others are about places that effectively don't exist. In many, many cases there is no real argument for notability (simply being listed as a locality in a register - not a town despite this being the same word in Polish - is not "legal recognition" as a "populated place" as required by WP:GEOLAND). In this case the names are just wrong. In every case the articles that Kotbot created were effectively not encyclopaedia articles but one-sentence directory listings, and Wikipedia is not a directory.

Some of these articles have since been improved. Many have not been. Many cannot be because they are about non-notable places about which there is nothing really to write.

A solution exists, it's the same one that was used for Lugnut's Olympian stubs (see WP:LUGSTUBS). We run an algorithm to find all the unimproved Kotbot articles and put them into draftspace until they can be fixed, and delete the ones that can't be fixed at the end of a suitably long period.

Some argue that there is no harm in keeping these articles around. I would argue that there is actually a real-world harm involved in Wikipedia articles creating places that don't exist that then propagate all over the internet, including on to sources like Google Maps. We can see this in articles about "villages" that don't exist but are present in Google maps. "Cieleśnica PGR" is an example of this - the state farm (PGR) shut down decades ago, the place on the register is now Cieleśnica-Pałac and this is what can be seen on local road-signs, but because the Wikipedia article called it Cieleśnica PGR that's what Google maps says and I imagine local delivery men are likely to be confused by this.

The alternative - trying to fix these tens of thousands of bot-produced articles that we know are faulty one-by-one - is just unworkable. FOARP (talk) 13:12, 3 February 2024 (UTC)

I agree 100%. To illustrate the importance of this, here are all the issues with villages I found in just the urban-rural gmina of Dąbrowa Białostocka:

1. Brzozowy Borek, Prohalino, and Zujkowszczyzna are sub-units of villages and probably aren't notable.
2. Harasimowicze-Kolonia, Łozowo-Kolonia, Małyszówka-Kolonia, Ostrowie-Kolonia, and Stara Kamienna-Kolonia are sołectwa, not settlements, probably aren't notable, and aren't even spelled correctly (see here).
3. Nowa Kamienna should be Kamienna Nowa (not to be confused with nearby Nowa Kamienna which is a sub-unit of Kamienna Stara).
4. Ostrowo should be Ostrowie (Wikidata has it as two different items).
5. Stara Kamienna should be Kamienna Stara.

That's 11 out of 54 or approximately 20% of all settlements in the gmina with issues. That is quite likely over a thousand across Poland. Ilawa-Kataka (talk) 21:16, 3 February 2024 (UTC)

@Ilawa-Kataka - And if you look at the locations in the articles, they are often wrong. For example, the location given for Ostrowie-Kolonia is an empty field directly next to Ostrowie. Kolonia Ostrowie is a single farm on the opposite side of Ostrowie to the location in our article, the postal address of which appears to be Ostrowie. Kotbot's articles were hot garbage and have only flown under the radar for so long because they are in a subject-area that few people look in to.

@BilledMammal - You've run scripts to get info like this, any thoughts on this issue? FOARP (talk) 09:46, 4 February 2024 (UTC)

I have already begun work on some of them: I added population and other data to some official units in Dąbrowa Białostocka (such as Bagny), AfDed Brzozowo-Kolonia, and moved Ostrowo to the correct title and cleaned it up on the Wikidata end. I am also going to improve, AfD, or PROD more articles today. Funny enough, the reason I started this was accidentally propagating some of the false information before having to immediately correct myself... Ilawa-Kataka (talk) 14:09, 4 February 2024 (UTC)

Customized licensing?

I have a query about this[8] Commons image being added by PK-WIKI to Face masks during the COVID-19 pandemic. The photographer has uploaded the imge to Commons with additional text in the "author" field including

It may only be used according to the rules mentioned here. This specifically excludes use in social media.

In my understanding this modifies the base license terms to add additional restrictions, effectively creating a custom image license. Is this correct, and if so are such "custom license" images suitable for use on en.wikipedia? Bon courage (talk) 11:06, 3 February 2024 (UTC)

This would be more a question for Commons than here, the image is there and in matters like this they're often more strict than we are.

Note you didn't quote the full sentence: This specifically excludes use in social media, if applicable terms of the licenses listed here not appropriate. IMO the bolding is confusing and the English translation seems somewhat mangled. Running the German version, Dies schließt insbesondere eine Verwendung in sozialen Netzwerken aus, deren Nutzungsbedingungen der hier aufgeführten Lizenz nicht entsprechen, through Google Translate gives This excludes in particular any use in social networks whose terms of use do not correspond to the license listed here which sounds much more like a reminder that following the license terms when posting on social media may be impossible than an added restriction against social media. c:Commons:Village pump/Copyright/Archive/2016/02#File:Cesare Battisti by Adolfo Wildt.jpg seems to agree with that. Anomie⚔ 13:18, 3 February 2024 (UTC)

• commons:Commons talk:Licensing may be a good place to have longer conversations about licenses on that project. — xaosflux ^Talk 14:20, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

Wiki-plagiarism

Hello,

How can I find more community discussions about wiki-plagiarism? I'm especially curious community reactions to news sites copying Wikipedia content without proper licensing and attribution. Bjelica (talk) 12:45, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

@Bjelica before you go too deep first be aware that plagiarism and copyright violations, while similar, are quite different. Also, keep in mind that we encourage reuse of our content, provided that the copyright license is honored (which requires attribution in most cases). For plagiarism, here on Wikipedia, see Wikipedia:Plagiarism and its attached talk page. For other sites that are reusing our content, see Wikipedia:Mirrors and forks, its linked pages and their talk pages. Also concept wise - for articles the copyright owner is not the Wikimedia Foundation, but each of the editors that contributed to the article.

A quick summary of general norms is: We love people to reuse our content, so long as they give us credit and preserve our license. When someone doesn't, our preferred remedy is simply that they bring their works in to compliance with the license. — xaosflux ^Talk 14:17, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

@Bjelica, you may find this video interesting: A Wikipedian explains Wikipedia to Bill Ackman. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 11:47, 6 February 2024 (UTC)

Moving to Commons filter

Hi, The moving to Commons prevents files with a valid license (Template:PD-old-70-expired) to be moved to Commons, i.e. File:Waxworks, German release poster, 1924.jpg. I had to add a license which is wrong so that I can transfer the file to Commons. The license doesn't exist here, but is available on Commons, and is valid for this file. I am not sure what's the solution: creating this license? editing the filter? Thanks, Yann (talk) 13:03, 7 February 2024 (UTC)

What is the error message? Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 14:12, 7 February 2024 (UTC)

I expect this is being blocked in the extension, likely due to something missing in mw:Extension:FileImporter/Data/en.wikipedia? — xaosflux ^Talk 14:38, 7 February 2024 (UTC)

Here is another example: File:A Spaniel. Painting by James Hardy junior.jpg. Message is This file cannot be imported to Wikimedia Commons because it is not marked with a compatible licence. Wikimedia Commons does not allow such files. This might be resolvable, but most probably means the file is not compatible. Please consult the Wikimedia Commons community policy and talk pages about licensing. I don't see any issue with the text of this license, even if it is the wrong one for this file. Yann (talk) 21:11, 7 February 2024 (UTC)

PD-URAA isn't on Xaosflux' list and commons:Template:PD-URAA says it's deprecated. I guess that might be the issue. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 07:31, 8 February 2024 (UTC)

@Jo-Jo Eumerus: Thanks for your answer. Where is this list? Would it be possible to add some licenses to it? Yann (talk) 11:08, 8 February 2024 (UTC)

Somewhere there is a way to search through the source code of that extension but I don't remember what it is. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 11:15, 8 February 2024 (UTC)

OK, I found it and added a few licenses: mw:Extension:FileImporter/Data/en.wikipedia. Yann (talk) 14:09, 8 February 2024 (UTC)

The list is what I linked to above. It is still inexplicably housed on mediawiki despite really being a commonswiki thing - and the discussions are buried in Flow. — xaosflux ^Talk 14:53, 8 February 2024 (UTC)

Róbert Cey-Bert

Róbert Cey-Bert's work and activities are not verified by any independent source or scientific forum, the events of his life are mostly based on his narrative, for which there is no direct evidence. Hungarian Wikipedia has therefore already deleted his article. More here in hungarian:

• Szélhámos az 1956-os érdemeiért tisztikereszttel kitüntetett Cey-Bert Róbert
• Az ember, aki mindenütt ott volt: a Magyarságkutató Intézet főtanácsadójának esete a tényellenőrzéssel

I recommend changing or deleting the article due to the above information. Vander (talk) 21:36, 8 February 2024 (UTC)

Taken to WP:BLPN#Róbert Cey-Bert Doug Weller talk 12:24, 9 February 2024 (UTC)

"Stint" Is an Anachronism and Should Not Be Used

"Stint" is often used to refer to an athlete's time with a team and subsequent return to that team. It's an anachronistic term. "Return" is more moder, more common, more well known. "Return" is more appropriate and should be used rather than "stint".

See also: Talk:Joe_Flacco#Etymology_for_"Stint"

ProofCreature (talk) 19:03, 8 February 2024 (UTC)

If you want to deprecate use of "stint", Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Words to watch might be a better place to discuss your proposal. Off hand, I am familar with that use of "stint", and likely would be opposed to deprecating it, but I am older than the average Wikipedian, and think that any decision to deprecate its use in Wikipedia should depend, at least in part, on how commonly it is used in fairly recent (say, since 1975) reliable sources. It is also something that can be discussed on the talk pages of individual articles. Donald Albury 19:26, 8 February 2024 (UTC)

@Donald Albury: I appreciate your comment. I might try to discuss the topic in the Manual of Style as you suggested. The comments here, below, though, suggest " stint " is used much more than I thought. (I still think it's an ugly word).

ProofCreature (talk) 22:08, 8 February 2024 (UTC)

The etymology page ([9]) linked from the Flacco talk page mostly talks about old/archaic but the most prevalent modern meaning isn't. See [10] and wikt:stint in particular, where the meaning being used about Flacco isn't marked as archaic or obsolete.

And "return" doesn't mean similar enough for a one-to-one replacement since if someone does something in two non-contiguous periods they both could be called "stints" but only one of them could be called a "return". If it's the "best" word to use on a particular page should be discussed on the article's talk page (just like any disputed prose edits) but I oppose a general deprecation of it when used in the meaning described in the Oxford's Learners Dictionary [11]. Skynxnex (talk) 20:02, 8 February 2024 (UTC)

(edit conflict) I think maybe you meant to say, "Stint is obsolete" or "archaic", because saying it's "anachronistic" makes no sense in this context. So, going on the assumption that you meant "Stint is obsolete": no, it isn't at all obsolete; whatever gave you that idea? Use of the word has been on a slow, steady upward trend since World War II; some recent examples (post-2000) in books are here.

Having said that, the expression return [to a team] is not a synonym or valid alternative for stint, because stint doesn't imply they ever came back (and doesn't rule it out, either). Also, you appear to contradict yourself: you started out by saying, "'Stint' is often used to refer to an athlete's time with a team", but if it is often used, then how can it be obsolete? Mathglot (talk) 20:21, 8 February 2024 (UTC) Post-ec note: looks like Skynxnex had some of the same ideas, and beat me to it. Mathglot (talk) 20:21, 8 February 2024 (UTC)

That chart is remarkable. It does not reflect my (isolated and limited) experience, @Mathglot:. It surprises me that it is being used as often as that, but I guess everything old is new, eh? ProofCreature (talk) 22:04, 8 February 2024 (UTC)

ProofCreature, It's suggestive, but not proof. Fortunately, ngrams does allow part-of-speech tags, so at least we could skip verbs, but it doesn't have semantic tags, so we don't know for sure how much of the increase is due to increased research on the bird variety; that would take a deep dive and wouldn't be simple. The other thing, is you can extend the starting point back to 1800, when the proportion of scientific publications would have been much less (even that is my conjecture, and would have to be proved, but seems likely). Bottom line, the chart helps, but if someone was really determined to get to the bottom of it, they'd have to do a whole lot more work, and for one word, who really cares? If someone has a synonym that works and doesn't actually make things worse, I think that's fine. I just thought the proposal of deprecating a word is a bit over the top. Or just examine what word the majority of sources use, and just use that; I can't see anyone objecting to that, and we could finesse the whole discussion about whether to deprecate a word or not. Also, I forgot to say last time, that 90% of the articles I read on the site are full of words I don't know, and how is that a bad thing? It's all about learning new things, and Wiktionary is that-a-way ⟶   ⟶ . Mathglot (talk) 22:35, 8 February 2024 (UTC)

The question is if the word is precise or vague, within a context of use. Does it clarify, or muddle. Many words can be used to smooth over a lack of knowledge, and merely imply something that may or may not be true. If it's imparting vague information, consider a more precise way of saying what is actually known. -- GreenC 22:14, 8 February 2024 (UTC)

It has never occurred to me that it might be possible to get confused. A stint can have different meanings according context, but my experience is that context is always clear.

verb

supply a very ungenerous or inadequate amount of (something).

"stowage room hasn't been stinted"

noun

1. a person's fixed or allotted period of work.

"his varied career included a stint as a magician"

2.limitation of supply or effort.

"a collector with an eye for quality and the means to indulge it without stint"

It's a useful word. Doug Weller talk 12:23, 9 February 2024 (UTC)

Could always use "spell" for a change. Bon courage (talk) 12:27, 9 February 2024 (UTC)

The etymology doesn't suggest any particular use, either. It is a vague word. I think there is a better more accurate word to use.

ProofCreature (talk) 13:10, 9 February 2024 (UTC)

To my ears, spell has a much too informal tone, and I wonder if it isn't chiefly an Americanism. Mathglot (talk) 18:57, 9 February 2024 (UTC)

I don't think it's particularly vague in modern usage; etymology doesn't (solely) define current meaning. My impression is that most people don't even really know there's a meaning other than noun#1 in Doug Weller's comment. Browsing through Special:Search/insource:stint seems to support both that it's fairly commonly used, across many fields, and seemingly overwhelming this single meaning. Skynxnex (talk) 19:03, 9 February 2024 (UTC)

That's very persuasive; who'd a thunk that there are over 36,000 uses of it on WP alone by hundreds of different authors? I think that just gave the coup de grace to this proposal. Mathglot (talk) 19:13, 9 February 2024 (UTC)

I looked at the link you posted (Special:Search/insource: stint), @Skynxnex:. One could replace the word "stint" with the word "time" in most sentence there, still have the same significance to the sentence, and have a slightly more accurate word.

ProofCreature (talk) 21:29, 9 February 2024 (UTC)

I think I figured out what my problem with the word is. "Stint" is very similar to the word "stent" (tiny tube that a doctor places in an artery or duct to help keep it open and restore the flow of bodily fluids in the area.) Obviously they are different words, but "time" or "Return to" (as opposed to "second stint") do not at all suggest injury. ProofCreature (talk) 21:36, 9 February 2024 (UTC)

Neither does stint; not even a whiff of it. Stint is narrowly focused and applies to an interval with an implied beginning and an end, as opposed to time which is both broader and less precise. Glad you figured out what the problem was, and it's understandable. The arbitrariness of sound–meaning correspondence is a core feature of all human language, so we can't get any clues about the meaning of stint by knowing the meaning of sting or tint or splint or stent—it's all arbitrary, and not infrequently sound similarity can lead to confusion of lexical items. Mathglot (talk) 01:19, 10 February 2024 (UTC)

I agree - "sound similarity can lead to confusion of lexical items". It does seem (un)fairly arbitrary at times. One way to reduce that confusion is to use words that are distinct, simple, and common. "Time" and "return" seem more common than "stint". "Time" seems distinct and simple, too.

I wonder if there's some resource to measure distinction, simplicity, commonness. Any ideas, @Mathglot: (or on anyone)? Any other charts or graphs?

ProofCreature (talk) 11:16, 10 February 2024 (UTC)

Regarding "reduc[ing] that confusion" by using "words that are distinct, simple, and common", may I suggest you have a look at Simple Wikipedia? You can find it here, and you may find it matches your philosophy better. At some point, this discussion at WP:VPM will have run its course, and I'd suggest that we are at that point now, or close to it. If there is a side-issue about "measur[ing] distinction, simplicity, commonness" in language, that might be an interesting discussion at another venue; perhaps WT:LING, or maybe even better, Wikipedia:Reference desk/Language. You could try raising it there. Good luck, Mathglot (talk) 12:05, 10 February 2024 (UTC)

Not getting their way here, the editor has taken this to Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Words to watch#I Suggest "Stint" Should Be Replaced In Most Context. Doug Weller talk 11:14, 10 February 2024 (UTC)

It was recommended (see above) that would be a better forum. I'm curious about other opinions and enjoy the discussion.

ProofCreature (talk) 11:19, 10 February 2024 (UTC)

Well, I did initially suggest that, but I would have thought the discussion here was pretty clear that your proposed change was not regarded as a productive idea. Donald Albury 14:05, 10 February 2024 (UTC)

Nb: User_talk:Mathglot#Consensus

Opinions from more than five users would be appropriate.

ProofCreature (talk) 14:14, 10 February 2024 (UTC)

This is a bad idea. Our diction recommendations are not based on individual users' associations of words with other similar-sounding words. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 14:18, 10 February 2024 (UTC)

Your comment is recognized and appreciated.

ProofCreature (talk) 14:27, 10 February 2024 (UTC)

• No action needed - ”Stint” is a perfectly fine word, indicating a relatively brief term of activity (“When his stint in the Army was over, Fred went back to school and got a medical degree”). Blueboar (talk) 14:29, 10 February 2024 (UTC)

  Your comment is recognized and appreciated. Additionally, it is well phrased, and appropriately located.

  ProofCreature (talk) 14:45, 10 February 2024 (UTC)

A better alternatively (than "return") is that one could replace the word "stint" with the word "time" in most sentences, keep the same significance to the sentence, and have a slightly more accurate word. ProofCreature (talk) 14:47, 10 February 2024 (UTC)

Meh… I think “stint” is somewhat more precise than “time”… a “stint” doing an activity is usually a (relatively) brief subset of “time” - it conveys the idea that there is an expected start and ending to the activity… while “time” is more open ended. Blueboar (talk) 15:19, 10 February 2024 (UTC)

Stewards Election and Confirmation

The Stewards Election and Confirmation is currently taking place until 27 February. Interested editors can participate in the election here and the confirmation here.

Currently, 11 editors are running to become stewards, and 27 stewards are running to be reconfirmed; I have attempted to provide a neutral summary of the process and the editors running to be elected or confirmed at the Village Pump. BilledMammal (talk) 15:51, 10 February 2024 (UTC)

Alyne Pimentel vs. Brasil case

Alyne Pimentel vs. Brasil case is marked "orphan". I hate this tag, but I don't think I'll find articles to link it. It is a case decided by CEDAW. I don't know how many cases in the world were submitted to CEDAW. Does anyone have any tips for calling? And for categories? Does anyone know of more cases submitted to human rights courts? ✍A.WagnerC (talk) 18:27, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

there are some (unsure of list completeness) cases submitted to CEDAW here, also unsure which are represented on Wikipedia. This Wikipedia list page could also be helpful. 73.168.172.136 (talk) 18:09, 7 February 2024 (UTC)

Thank you very much. I will look into the possibility of creating a list. ✍A.WagnerC (talk) 12:36, 11 February 2024 (UTC)

Wikidata for Beginners

Let me invite you to a workshop called Wikidata for Beginners, which I'll be hosting online this Wednesday, February 14, 2023, where you can get in touch with the basics of Wikidata. You will have the opportunity to try contributing and improving items. More information via Wikiversity. Juandev (talk) 09:27, 11 February 2024 (UTC)

This will be an hour-long meeting using Jitsi Meet video conference tool. It's mid-morning if you're in New York's timezone, which means early morning for California, mid-afternoon in the UK, and the middle of the night for Australia.

Even if you're not excited about Wikidata, it's good for experienced editors to know a bit about the basics. If you are available and have any interest, please consider joining this class. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:20, 12 February 2024 (UTC)

Announcing the results of the UCoC Coordinating Committee Charter ratification vote

You can find this message translated into additional languages on Meta-wiki. Please help translate to other languages.

Dear all,

Thank you everyone for following the progress of the Universal Code of Conduct. I am writing to you today to announce the outcome of the ratification vote on the Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee Charter. 1746 contributors voted in this ratification vote with 1249 voters supporting the Charter and 420 voters not. The ratification vote process allowed for voters to provide comments about the Charter.

A report of voting statistics and a summary of voter comments will be published on Meta-wiki in the coming weeks.

Please look forward to hearing about the next steps soon.

On behalf of the UCoC Project team,

RamzyM (WMF) 18:23, 12 February 2024 (UTC)

A bit too much Alexander McQueen?

Today's featured article on the main page is, again, about an Alexander McQueen collection. Right below it, the first Did you know... article is about an Alexander McQueen collection.

"Wikipedia is not for sale", but is it up for manipulation by able marketers? Or what is going on here? BuonoPasto (talk) 01:52, 12 February 2024 (UTC)

Did the possibility of "one editor working within their particular interests" cross your mind at any point? Cursory examinations of the evidence would seem to support this theory, boring as it is. Remsense诉 02:06, 12 February 2024 (UTC)

(edit conflict) I agree this isn't an ideal situation, ideally the main page shouldn't give excess weight to individual subjects. The accusation of deliberate promotion seems undue though, I think this is just a coincidence. The TFA and DYK sections are worked on by different teams with separate scheduling systems. It would have been a good idea to have spotted this and shifted the date of the DYK hook IMHO and something to think about going forward. Cheers  — Amakuru (talk) 02:11, 12 February 2024 (UTC)

BuonoPasto if you want different content featured, then you're welcome to find an article that needs to be improved and fix it up so it can get nominated for the main page. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 22:06, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

About China

I left a question in Talk: China, but there is no answer yet. Please answer a lot. Mamiamauwy (talk) 12:48, 15 February 2024 (UTC)

Someone has now replied to you there, and that is where the discussion should continue. Donald Albury 17:39, 15 February 2024 (UTC)

tosdr.org lies about we

Hello, you are about to read a lie announcement. https://tosdr.org says Wikipedia can delete our accounts without a notice nor reason, but we know deleting accounts is a technically impossible action in all WMF wikis including Wikipedia and bans/blocks are only applied as a last resort to save wikis. That's an obvious lie. I wrote a comment and sent an e-mail to them but i could not get answer and text is not changed. I also cannot find an "edit" link to delete that lie. Also Wikipedia has "Grade-B" privacy to them but we know Wikipedia has a very strict privacy policy and it's more private than DuckDuckGo (it's "Grade-A"). They are exaggerating the "bad" things on our Privacy Policy with a huge amount and they are not showing the "good" things on our privacy policy. What we can do to remove this lie and write a correct privacy grade? RuzDD (talk) 22:04, 4 February 2024 (UTC)

@RuzDD: People lie or misinform on the internet with astounding regularity. The answer is probably "nothing". 🌺 Cremastra (talk) 22:09, 4 February 2024 (UTC)

I just joined two weeks ago and already I feel insulted by this. Wikipedia is a source of knowledge, not a place for hate! Something more should be done about this. 3.14 (talk) 00:39, 9 February 2024 (UTC)

tosdr.org appears to be correct. The page Wikimedia Foundation Terms of Use contains the text we reserve the right to suspend or end the services at any time, with or without cause, and with or without notice. -- GreenC 22:31, 4 February 2024 (UTC)

@GreenC Is "suspending or ending services" the same thing with "deleting accounts"? RuzDD (talk) 22:56, 4 February 2024 (UTC)

I mean, for example you can stop your apache without cleaning your database. RuzDD (talk) 22:59, 4 February 2024 (UTC)

The TOU doesn't say accounts are "deleted", you are correct. I think it is technically possible to delete an account. Edits are renamed to a generic placeholder name. I've seen that before although it's been a while, and I don't know if it's still done. It's an obscure thing and I doubt that is what tosdr had in mind. Probably tosdr is equating a permanent ban with deletion, in effect the account is made inoperable, either way. -- GreenC 01:02, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

Yes. Deleting accounts is a technically impossible process if you don't have access to the database, and of course you can do everything you want if you have access to the database (is it in control of Jimbo Wales?). Of course, database owners will not delete accounts, so i think "technically impossible" is not a wrong definition. RuzDD (talk) 09:56, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

Note: Permanent bans or blocks does not make accounts inoperable at all because for example you can continue to using your custom CSS and JS files when reading articles. RuzDD (talk) 10:00, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

It is possible to globally lock an account, which outright prevents logging in to it. But I don't TOSDR was referring to any specific technical action on Wikipedia, merely regurgitating what the TOS says as it is designed to do. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 00:55, 9 February 2024 (UTC)

But, it will not delete the account from the database, right? Also, i can't see something like "we can delete your account without a reason nor notice". RuzDD (talk) 01:33, 9 February 2024 (UTC)

No, accounts can't be deleted. But that's standardized terminology on the TOSDR site and is close enough to be accurate anyway. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 01:43, 9 February 2024 (UTC)

I could not see something like "we can delete your account without a reason nor notice" in our terms of service. Forgot to say: i received a reply a few days ago but that's not satisfying because it came too late for the laws (just for reference, nothing is implied) and also another citation is not showed (existing citation is invalid). RuzDD (talk) 02:22, 9 February 2024 (UTC)

I think RuzDD's question is the relevant one. Specifically, they seem to have interpreted "we reserve the right to shut down the entire website" (which is what I think that sentence is about) as being the same thing as "we reserve the right to delete your account".

We could use an article on the right to delete. In the GDPR definition ("right to obtain...erasure of personal data concerning him or her”), you can "delete your account" by resetting Special:Preferences (e.g., by removing your e-mail address and personal pronouns). This is never done by anyone else. In the CCPA definition (see https://www.oag.ca.gov/privacy/ccpa#sectiona, third question), the information potentially relevant for a right-to-delete request is: username, password, e-mail address, personal pronouns, and maybe the IP addresses that you post from (which are kept only temporarily). Of those, they would have clear exceptions for refusing to delete all except the e-mail address and pronouns ...and you can delete those yourself, any time you want, but this is never done by anyone else.

Probably they don't have a category for "Website could disappear with no warning" or "You can't delete your account, but there isn't really much of an account to delete". WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:32, 9 February 2024 (UTC)

Yes, and i think they must not write anything about this if they don't have a correct category. RuzDD (talk) 02:57, 9 February 2024 (UTC)

Also, this arcitle does not exists... RuzDD (talk) 02:58, 9 February 2024 (UTC)

Disclaimer - I am not a lawyer. Regarding the phrase I believe people are referring to: we reserve the right to suspend or end the services at any time, with or without cause, and with or without notice - it's important to read the context in which that originates. This is Section 13 (Termination) of the WFTOU. There's a boatload of legalese in this, so I'll post the entire statement and try to provide proper context:

If your account or access is blocked or otherwise terminated for any reason, your public contributions and a record of your activities on or in relation to the Projects (including any correspondence you have sent us) will be unaffected (subject to applicable policies), and you may still access our public pages for the sole purpose of reading publicly available content on the Projects. In such circumstances, however, you may not be able to access your account or settings. However, regardless of any other provision in these Terms of Use, we reserve the right to suspend or end the services at any time...

Terms of use, sometimes interchangeable with terms of service, serve (or at least, attempt to serve to the fullest extent provided by law) as an individually binding agreement between user and provider, notwithstanding exceptions in which a user might receive a severed agreement - "If you have not signed a separate agreement with us, these Terms of Use are the entire agreement between you and us". Thus "the services" in this case do not specifically reference the user's ability to access the website, nor does it reference WMF's management of the entire website as a whole. It is in reference to the entirety of any form of participation granted to the user/contributor from WMF.

Although they do promise to continue providing access to public pages or providing a record of public contributions and activities, they are not beholden to maintain that in perpetuity, nor does the termination clause provide any limits on the extent to which they can and cannot withhold services; it is deliberately written to be open-ended. When you have a statement that is this broad, unless the company has provided an explicit waiver in the text of either the TOU or the PP that excludes them from deleting an account without notice, they can indeed delete an account without notice. The privacy policy provides limits to how long Wikipedia can retain data for, but it doesn't exclude them from ever removing data. _{Duly signed,} ⛵ WaltClipper -(talk) 15:10, 16 February 2024 (UTC)

@WaltCip I think there's another point: service also includes data transmission from WMF to the user. So, not giving data to a user can be considered as "ending sesrvices", but giving data to user but not the ones about the account can not be considered as "ending services" as i understand. TOS says "If your account or access is blocked or otherwise terminated..." but that's only says what will happen if that's happened, not this can be happened as i understand. So, i think (but i don't give any law advice) they can't delete accounts.

Anyway, even if TOS says "we can delete your account without notice nor reason", the info on the TOSDR is still unacceptable because their citation only includes "we reserve the right to suspend or end the services at any time, with or without cause, and with or without notice.". RuzDD (talk) 15:43, 16 February 2024 (UTC)

List of codes of languages

Is there a full list of codes of languages and their WD codes? Eurohunter (talk) 14:59, 17 February 2024 (UTC)

I don't know of a list of language tags and their wikidata qids. You might try assembling such a list.

https://www.wikidata.org/w/index.php?title=Special:WhatLinksHere/Property:P220&limit=5000 will return the first 5000 wikidata items that have ISO 639-3 code (P220) (the remaining 3000+ are available on a second page). You could take that list and match the qid title against the list of ISO 639-3 tags and names listed in Module:Language/data/ISO 639-3.

There are similar properties for ISO 639-1 code (P218) and ISO 639-2 code (P219) and there are Module:Language/data/ISO 639-1, Module:Language/data/ISO 639-2, and Module:Language/data/ISO 639-2B.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 15:50, 17 February 2024 (UTC)

Meetups in Southern California

Thanks to the efforts of meta:Wikimedians of Los Angeles members the meetup Wikipedia:Meetup/Los Angeles/February 2024 was a success. I can only hope that the other meetup in Southern California this month in San Diego (Wikipedia:Meetup/San Diego/February 2024) will be a success as well. All are invited. RightCowLeftCoast (Moo) 11:15, 18 February 2024 (UTC)

Is wikipedia reliable?

Do you think think Wikipedia is reliable? And when and how. Outside you often hear about admins reverting falsehoods, tho thats obviously an oversimplification. On niche subjects? On known ones? I as someone who edits niche non_western cultures can tell you that modernizing ancient situations with exact dates and works of synthesis as sources is a problem. But overall, is wikipedia reliable? Encyclopédisme (talk) 14:59, 14 February 2024 (UTC)

According to Wikipedia, Wikipedia is classified as "generally unreliable". Personally, I'm not sure that's a reliable source. Barnards.tar.gz (talk) 16:02, 14 February 2024 (UTC)

More to the point, wikipedia is a WP:TERTIARY source. In theory, there's nothing in wikipedia which isn't sourced to some other reliable source, so there should never be any reason to cite a wikipedia article. Just cite the underlying WP:RS directly. Well written wikipedia articles are often a great way to get a broad understanding of a topic. But you always need to dig deeper to get down to definitive statements of fact. RoySmith (talk) 16:26, 14 February 2024 (UTC)

You never know, the moment you look at an article, even a WP:FA, somebody might have slipped some unreliable/hoaxed content in. So like most Wikis it's unreliable. Theoretically, some timestamped versions of article may be reliable; ISTR there was a push a few years ago to have some medical articles peer-reviewed as good. Bon courage (talk) 16:52, 14 February 2024 (UTC)

Wikipedia cannot guarantee the validity of the information found here. We have an article on this topic (Reliability of Wikipedia) - which may or may not be reliable itself :D For a more general response - most of our articles that list facts have references, which you could then follow up with if you want to establish the reliability of a statement. — xaosflux ^Talk 19:32, 14 February 2024 (UTC)

It's pretty good in parts. Which parts those are, opinion may differ. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 19:45, 14 February 2024 (UTC)

Yes but only the pages I edit. LegalSmeagolian (talk) 16:24, 20 February 2024 (UTC)

Reliability is often a function of how good the citations are: formatting, metadata, archive URLs. Without quality citations, it's hard to verify, or it simply looks so sloppy it gives the appearance of unreliability - and appearance counts for a lot. Many editors don't cite at all, or leave bare links, or sloppy free-form cites without templates. It seriously degrades the reliability of the of the project. Furthermore I have found from personal experience, you have to revisit every citation every couple years to make sure it's still in good shape. URLs still working, can the templates be improved based on your evolving knowledge of best practices. It's a never-ending process. Unfortunately most editors write it down one time, consider it "done" and walk away - always chasing the new. If editors spent more time maintaining, rewriting, improving, the content they already wrote, and did so on a regular basis. I try to go through every article I wrote on a regular basis, checking every citation, and even though I've checked them multiple times over the years, invariably I keep finding new ways to make improvements with each pass. They get better and better that way, over many years. -- GreenC 15:26, 16 February 2024 (UTC)

I think the answer depends on what the word reliability means to you. For example, in Wikipedia:Reliable sources, in practice, the definition of reliable basically means "source that other editors agree (either passively or actively) to let you cite in support of a given claim". We have some criteria that are useful for predicting the general cases (e.g., scholarly papers are more likely to be accepted than social media posts), but no criteria except WP:Published is an absolute requirement. A self-published, self-serving social media post is 100% acceptable if the statement to be sourced is "In a Spacebook post, Chris Celebrity immediately denied any involvement". WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:39, 20 February 2024 (UTC)

By reliable, I mean you can trust it, to whatever extent possible. On the wikilaw, other language wikis (i.e Fr.wiki, es.wiki, de.wiki) have different Guidlines. I remember having a big debate on the French wiki because of the use of an editorial, considered a primary source. The conclusion was that the author, a well respected expert, Alain Duhamel, was a political ennemy, and therefore a primary source. On the german wiki, if academic sources are a available, journalistic ones are ignored altogether. Encyclopédisme (talk) 17:49, 20 February 2024 (UTC)

In the french case the Argument was that since it wasn't an article, but an editorial, Duhamel, right-wing, (it was about Mélenchon) couldn't be used (the editorial of duhamel couldn't be used). I would agree with that, I just gave it as an exemple. Cheers. Encyclopédisme (talk) 17:52, 20 February 2024 (UTC)

Here, we sometimes have to remind editors that Secondary is not another way to spell good. You can USEPRIMARY sources, as long as you use them sparingly and carefully. An editorial by Duhamel could be used to say, e.g., that Duhamel criticized Mélenchon in an editorial piece. The editorial is WP:Reliable for that; after all, one could not read an editorial by Duhamel, in which he criticizes Mélenchon, and still wonder whether Duhamel has criticized Mélenchon.

But: it is not enough to have a reliable source; the information must also be appropriate for the article, give WP:Due weight to different viewpoints, of encyclopedic relevance, and so forth. We might say that it's a reliable source, and therefore a WP:Verifiable statement, but that it still does not belong in the article. One cannot include every single time that a politician is criticized for something. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:15, 20 February 2024 (UTC)

Valid use of Wikipedia's name?

Check this video on YouTube and see how it's identifying itself with Wikipedia. Does Wikipedia take action over stuff like this? Largoplazo (talk) 04:03, 18 February 2024 (UTC)

I haven't looked at it, but you can always ask trademarkswikimedia.org about potential misuse. Once you alert them, if they're concerned about it, they'll handle everything for you. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:42, 20 February 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for the lead. Largoplazo (talk) 22:09, 20 February 2024 (UTC)

Seeking feedback on Wikimedia Foundation draft "Infrastructure" objectives

Hello everyone! The Wikimedia Foundation has just posted the draft objectives for our product and technology work in next year’s annual plan. These represent the high level direction for our infrastructure work next year, and we’re asking for your ideas and feedback to shape our thinking. Later on in the planning process, we’ll share some draft key results (the measurable change we’ll aim to achieve) and a full draft annual plan with many of the details about our operations, budget, and work across departments. Long story short, we’d love to hear from you, and there will be further opportunities in the coming weeks. Thanks for your interest. KStineRowe (WMF) (talk) 17:21, 20 February 2024 (UTC)

Hey all,

This "infrastructure" plan is about:

• what newcomers and experienced editors need
• content creation and translation
• how much emphasis to put on Wikipedia vs other projects
• content curation and admin tools (e.g., CAPTCHAs, our increasingly impractical over-reliance on IPs to block IP-hopping abusers)
• Community Tech and the need to support volunteer developers (e.g., the people who write and operate Wikipedia:Bots)
• changing reader behaviors and expectations (e.g., reading Wikipedia via other sites, videos, AI/LLMs, chatbots?)

It's also about the things that aren't mentioned, such as:

• Commons
• Wikidata
• any of the other sister projects
• mobile readers (66% of our page views) and editors on mobile devices (much smaller percentage)
• our request to change the default size of images, which would require several months of re-sizing images
• whatever else is on your mind

What you need to do is:

1. Go to m:Wikimedia Foundation Annual Plan/2024-2025/Goals/Infrastructure
2. Find the section that seems most relevant to your concerns, and read it.
3. Go to the talk page and post your comments (good or bad, but do try to be practical/constructive).
4. Check back later to see if there are any follow-up questions or comments.

WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:39, 20 February 2024 (UTC)

This looks like a heap of corporatese and buzzwords that talks big and communicates nothing. I have left feedback accordingly. 🌺 Cremastra (talk) 01:00, 21 February 2024 (UTC)

IMO "high-level" would be a fairer description, but they're generally grateful for any feedback at all. It's discouraging to spend a month in meetings, write thousands of words, and then get no response at all (followed, all too often, by someone popping up months later to say "You never told anyone about any of this!").

@Cremastra, I see that you objected to them using the word content. That presumably refers to whatever is covered by our Wikipedia:Content policies and guidelines, but if you can suggest a better word, it might well be adopted. If nothing else, it might help the translators, who have to figure out which of several meanings is the relevant one. (Are you feeling content about our content?) WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:37, 21 February 2024 (UTC)