Foundation wiki feedback/Archive/2012

FUNraising

I actually enjoy making contribution$ to organizations that benefit the world - and I appreciate your Thank You emails, and take to heart your fundraising requests.......... and as I sit here, thumbing through my "Wireless" catalogue, from PBS, I wish you would provide a more straightforward link to your Cafe Press merchandise (marketing, ugh) page......... Some people would love to "show" their support......

We're planning on making this more prominent in the future.  ℳono  20:00, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

wikimediafoundation.org

I think you guys are pretty good people. I used to use Encarta but now I have a MAC and I think they stopped making that program anyway. One thing I do miss is that the had a dictionary that gave the correct prononcuation of words. Do you guys have any plans to include this feature?

Yes, Wiktionary (here). Here is a full list of Wikimedia projects. --Z 00:52, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

Terms of use

in-re;Parkway West Sr. High Ballwin, Mo. You have it stated that the school was refered to as PWHS and that may be so but it was also called PaWeSeHi pronounced paw-wa-say`he.

Pagina Principale

Nella sezione "Trasparenza", andrebbe corretto il seguente testo "Se ti piacerebbe di partecipare ad una conversazione..." in "Se desideri partecipare ad una conversazione..."

In "Trasparenza" section, "Se ti piacerebbe di partecipare ad una conversazione..." text should be amended as "Se desideri partecipare ad una conversazione..."--Nubifer 09:47, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

Fixed, many thanks. PeterSymonds (talk) 15:11, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

Errors in Article

I tried really hard to figure out where to submit this comment, but your website seems to be designed to not allow feedback - it is an endless series of logic loops and dead ends.

Anyway, please relay this to whoever handles mistakes.

I read an article about "Bonny Hicks." There are two obvious factual errors:

1. It says that Silk Air is an Indonesian national airline. In fact, it is a subsidiary of Singapore Airlines.

2. It refers to the pilot of a crashed Silk Air flight as both a friend of Bonny Hick's ex husband, and as Bonny Hick's ex husband. I think it is the former, but I'm not sure. It obviously is not both.

Hi -- sorry to hear you find the site difficult to navigate! In a way, it may be easier to give feedback than you think: you can simply click the "edit" button in the upper right corner of the article, and improve the article yourself! YOu should be sure to include a link to an independent citation (like a news article) if possible. Alternately, you can click the "Discussion" tab and bring up these points there, and discuss with other editors what changes need to be made. Happy editing! -Pete F 18:47, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

Board of Trustees

Hi,

The dates for the Board of Trustees needs an update,

• Jan-Bart de Vreede, Vice Chair (term until December 2011)
• Stu West, Treasurer (term until December 2011)
• Jimmy Wales, (term until December 2011)

I'd imagine the new dates are December 2012, as per this .

Thanks,

The Helpful One 17:12, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

Done, many thanks. PeterSymonds (talk) 17:20, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

Talk:Accueil

"un des 5 sites les plus visités au monde. "

Le lien indique que Wikipédia est le 6ème, une petite maj s'impose :)

Merci! English: This Accueil should say 6th most popular website, not the fifth (the page hasn't been updated in over a year). I'll request this is fixed now. :) The Helpful One 15:45, 18 January 2012 (UTC)

Fixed. The Helpful One 15:47, 18 January 2012 (UTC)

Página Principal

Mistake in translation, the objective is: "Imagine um mundo onde todos seres humanos compartilhem livremente a soma de todo o conhecimento" pleas change asap, kiss. Rodrigo Tetsuo Argenton ^m 04:44, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

Fixed, many thanks. PeterSymonds (talk) 13:34, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

Download PDF Is Broken

When I do the following on the left side "Print/export", then "Download as PDF", it appears the service is currently broken. I have no idea where to report this issue, thus reporting it here.

I tried getting a PDF of the main page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page and some other pages, including logged into my account and logged out, and they all give this error.

Render server error
An error occured on the render server: RuntimeError: command failed with returncode 256: ['mw-render', '-w', 'rl', '-c', 'cache/04/04e9e5f2586231af/collection.zip', '-o', 'cache/04/04e9e5f2586231af/output.rl', '--status', 'qserve://localhost:14311/04e9e5f2586231af:render-rl', '--template-blacklist', 'MediaWiki:PDF Template Blacklist', '--template-exclusion-category', 'Exclude in print', '--print-template-prefix', 'Print', '--print-template-pattern', '$1/Print', '--language', 'en'] Last Output: 2012-01-09T09:41:04 mwlib.options.warn >> Both --print-template-pattern and --print-template-prefix (deprecated) specified. Using --print-template-pattern only. 1% reading /tmp/tmpfXrv7_/revisions-1.txt 0% error removing '/tmp/tmpfXrv7_' Traceback (most recent call last): File "/home/pp/local/bin/mw-render", line 9, in <module> load_entry_point('mwlib==0.13.0', 'console_scripts', 'mw-render')() File "/home/pp/local/lib/python2.6/site-packages/mwlib-0.13.0-py2.6-linux-x86_64.egg/mwlib/apps/render.py", line 211, in main return Main()() File "/home/pp/local/lib/python2.6/site-packages/mwlib-0.13.0-py2.6-linux-x86_64.egg/mwlib/apps/render.py", line 176, in __call__ writer(env, output=tmpout, status_callback=self.status, **writer_options) File "/home/pp/local/lib/python2.6/site-packages/mwlib.rl-0.12.9-py2.6.egg/mwlib/rl/rlwriter.py", line 2176, in writer r = RlWriter(env, strict=strict, debug=debug, mathcache=mathcache, lang=lang) File "/home/pp/local/lib/python2.6/site-packages/mwlib.rl-0.12.9-py2.6.egg/mwlib/rl/rlwriter.py", line 245, in __init__ self.tmpdir = tempfile.mkdtemp() File "/home/pp/local/lib/python2.6/tempfile.py", line 318, in mkdtemp _os.mkdir(file, 0700) OSError: [Errno 31] Too many links: '/tmp/tmpE0yC1_' in function system, file /home/pp/local/lib/python2.6/site-packages/mwlib-0.12.17-py2.6-linux-x86_64.egg/EGG-INFO/scripts/nslave.py, line 37''

I'm not sure if this is broken on multiple wiki's or just English Wikipedia.

Sbmeirow 12:07, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

Looks like someone fixed it. If it break again today, then I'll report it here. Sbmeirow 13:42, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for reporting this, I checked again today and it seems to be working so hopefully this was only a temporary problem. Thank you again! :) The Helpful One 15:49, 18 January 2012 (UTC)

Términos de Uso

En la descripción que hacen titulada "La mil y una noches:760" hay un error en el artículo sobre "Las babucjasinservibles" La ciudad en la que habitaba el personaje que figura en esa narración (Abu Cassem) y la ciudad en la que se desarrollan los episodios, no era El Cairo, sino Bagdad. Estudié árabe con el famoso profesor García Gómez y tradujimos justamente esta narración, por eso sé bien lo que afirmo. Tampoco estoy seguro de que ese cuento pertenezca a "Las mil ý una noches". Es más ... lo dudo. Pero eso lo pueden averihuar ustedes. Quiten lo de El Cairo, por favor.

I believe the page in question is on the Spanish Wikisource. Therefore, I copied this comment on to the talk page. The Helpful One 15:57, 18 January 2012 (UTC)

resolved Type
Under the "key" header -- "creactive commons" is a cool portmanteau, but methinks that it might be a typo... http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Feedback_data Memtgs 16:46, 11 January 2012 (UTC) Fixed, many thanks. PeterSymonds (talk) 16:54, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

SOPA Blackout

I donate to Wikipedia and I support the SOPA blackout! It is important to make online users aware of this critical legislation that could lead to internet content control. Censorship of any kind is the enemy of freedom. We must endeavor to keep all forms of information and expression free from censorship controls.

Thank you for the support..of both kinds! -Pete F 03:22, 18 January 2012 (UTC)

Terms of use

Your page regarding Warrant Officer Hugh Thompson Jr. and the My Lai massacre is inaccurate in regards to the helicopter WO Thompson was flying. There were no Raven OH-23's in Vietnam used in combat at this time and OH-23's could not perform the missions discribed. All Assault Helicopter Co's. were flying UH-1H (Hueys) at this time. It's a big mistake. Submtted: CW2 Dan Heckerman 61 AHC, 1967-1968, 1st Platoon Section Cmdr, LZ English, Bong Son, Vietnam

Hi, this page is for comments about [1], the official Wikimedia Foundation website. Please add your comments to the talk page of the article in question on the English Wikipedia. Best, The Helpful One 15:59, 18 January 2012 (UTC)

resolved English Wikipedia anti-SOPA blackout
its 2012 not 2011 Ha, thanks. Fixed. --MZMcBride 03:09, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

resolved English Wikipedia anti-SOPA blackout Spelling error
The blackout is a protest against proposed legislation in the United States —the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the U.S. House of Representatives, and the PROTECTIP Act (PIPA) ain the U.S. Senate— that, if passed, would seriously damage the free and open Internet, including Wikipedia. 70.67.212.206 03:43, 17 January 2012 (UTC) Fixed. Thanks. --MZMcBride 03:47, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

resolved Talk:English Wikipedia anti-SOPA blackout
Typo. The word "ain" after PIPA should be "in."--108.196.25.194 03:46, 17 January 2012 (UTC) Yup. Fixed, thanks. :-) --MZMcBride 03:47, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

resolved English Wikipedia anti-SOPA blackout
In this press release by the Foundation, the word "commercialy" should be spelled "commercially". 27.32.118.134 03:55, 17 January 2012 (UTC) Fixed. Thanks. --MZMcBride 03:59, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

resolved Copyediting SOPA letter
The SOPA letter uses "internet" with a lowercase "i" toward the bottom. The word should be capitalized. Emw 03:56, 17 January 2012 (UTC) There's continuing debate whether "Internet" should be capitalized nowadays, but the document must be consistent, yes. Fixed. Thanks. --MZMcBride 04:00, 17 January 2012 (UTC) The en dashes and odd spacing around them should be replaced with em dashes (—) with no surrounding spaces in the following sentence: "We believe that new proposed laws like SOPA –and PIPA, and other similar laws under discussion inside and outside the United States– don’t advance the interests of the general public." This would make the article both internally consistent and more in line with convention on English Wikipedia. Emw 04:08, 17 January 2012 (UTC) It's an established peculiarity among North Americans that they tend to use spaced emdashes, but you're correct that it's wrong. I've converted the punctuation to spaced endashes. Thanks! AGK [•] 23:57, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

wikimediafoundation.org

LET'S TAKE OUR BALL AND GO HOME!

The WP blackout is the stupidest idea I've heard, and my contributions to WP (intellectual and financial) will end the second the blackout goes live ... I mean dead. And lasting until WP acknowledges the stupidity of the action and apologizes to the entire world.

The whole thing came up with no email to warn current financial and intellectual contributors. And I have no idea where I can even post my protest. It's all been done by the insiders.

Publicizing the issue is totally appropriate. Burning the book is dumb. An encyclopedia exists to provide information, including information about political issues. But engaging in active protest destroys WP's claims to neutrality.

Paleolith 04:35, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

Discussion has been happening on the public mailing lists and on wiki in prominent places for weeks. And the final poll was advertised by banners to all users. the wub "?!" 14:23, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

English Wikipedia anti-SOPA blackout

Hey guys, you didn't have to blackout everything from the English section, at least leave accessible all the links related to the SOPA legislation and the statement of your protest for people to be sure about the protest measures you're taking. Hope yours success in your just cause. Cheers! ;)

I think the pages about SOPA will be left open for everyone to read. Cheers. Aude 04:47, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

English Wikipedia anti-SOPA blackout

Thank you...really appreciate for being penalized for what the idiots in Washington try to do...guess I will just forget Wiki is out here in cyberworld even after you come back online for "English" pages...have a good life...

English Wikipedia anti-SOPA blackout

You are only shooting yourself in the foot by taking such an action. Why don't you take a poll first before taking a unilateral action that will harm readers much more than congresspeople that support the legislation.

There was a poll which was well advertised and attracted input from hundreds of readers and editors. This action is anything but unilateral. the wub "?!" 14:27, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

English Wikipedia anti-SOPA blackout

You will have studied the implications on your blackout of the Obama edict enabling any person whom the President wishes to silence to be imprisoned indefinitely without trial.However your actions are clearly made for the benefit of the US more than of anyone else. It is "We the people" who will suffer, that is, ordinary US Citizens.The actions against which Wikipedia is protesting are, in my view, taken on behalf of the free world. The actions of the US legislature and their President are in abuse of the USA's Constitution. They are, themselves, against the interests of the US. Arguably, this raft of legislation mirrors similar measures unsuccessfully imposed since the beginning of recorded history down to other current renegade states in their dying imperial excesses.They defy the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The world is aware of the total impotence of the United Nations Organisation.Thus the Foundation stands for humanity as a whole in taking this action, which will be supported globally. If these comments are more apt in general discussion, please place them there.

English Wikipedia anti-SOPA blackout

I fully understand and support your position on these important issues. With due respect, please consider recommending concrete actions that Wikipedia users like myself can take to show solidarity to sustain a free and open Internet.

Thank you. [[|--72.189.166.61 05:32, 17 January 2012 (UTC)]]

I do too, as a user and a contributor to wikipedia Trassiorf 15:55, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

wikimediafoundation.org

I approve of your thoughts for the blackout. On the other hand? I donot think that is good protest means. Maybe rally people who use it for a common good (IE freedom of speech and my world thought). A formal wriiten protest signed by all of us treasure knowledge. Hope this makes sense as i do enjoy your sight woutlaw44@yahoo.com

English Wikipedia anti-SOPA blackout

Please do not block out Wikipedia English because of some law. I think it is almost bigoted against English speaking people who should not be forced out of a website from it's creators or foundation because they're protesting law changes that could into affect....

English Wikipedia anti-SOPA blackout

Hi, this image doesn't exist, did you mean to upload it? The Helpful One 16:16, 18 January 2012 (UTC)

English Wikipedia anti-SOPA blackout

http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=23783

http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=23791

English Wikipedia anti-SOPA blackout

So much for NPOV and not taking sides in political arguments.

The principles that make wiki what it was are being thrown out the window.

110.32.27.203 12:11, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

The freedom to make it what it is is being thrown out of the window; hence the protest!

The Facebook button at the end of http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/English_Wikipedia_anti-SOPA_blackout links to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:SOPA_initiative/Take_action rather than itself. Is that intentional? Fayenatic london (talk) 13:03, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

I don't imagine it was intentional, but the button now goes to Facebook, so this was fixed. Thanks! AGK [•] 23:31, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

wikimediafoundation.org

Hi, Wikipedia has helped me a lot in my project works and various other researching purposes. Most of the science articles are so good it has given me a vast ocean of knowledge and allowed me to dwell into theoretical Questions. I have tried to keep up with the vast expanse of knowledge hidden beneath this "ocean" but I will never be able to know how much there is hidden in this "deep well of knowledge".

Certain things to share to improve the quality of material: 1.> Have a better explanation and derivation of formulas present in theories. 2.> Better updating of trends (Higgs' boson, breaking of Speed of light barrier)

English wikipedia being closed

So you are closing the english site because of an american legislation that will only take effect on american writers of wikipedia. And also you are closing the site which is what the american government want. Also you are holding a protest which is very pessimistic and they wont even notice it. To add there are another million websites on the internet and there are actual books that you can read that you can be ashored wont have any lies such as some pages on wikipedia which is youre biggest weakness. But you are such a big company that I dont think it will be a problem for you and did you even read all of the ideas in the legislation or are you just going on a rampage which could just change the ideas in the legislation. You are also turning away all the users of wikipedia who might already feel like they cant trust you because of some of the non-fiction which is fiction. To add you are holding ot at 7 o'clock in the morning shich is normally the time in england that children get ready for school and most adults get ready for work so not alot of time to finish homework and work. And I wonder what the newspaper will say.

From an avid english reader

Regardless of your stance, please note that U.S. legislation affects every version and language of wikipedia, regardless of where the contributor or reader is located. Seb az86556 17:33, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

To elaborate, this legislation affects the entire foundation. Some of the servers and the foundation itself is based in the US, which means all the Foundation projects are required to play by US rules, regardless of the citizenship of the user in question. Not to mention the community reached consensus to do this. 67.246.226.214 17:47, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

SOPA Protest

I'm sure you're getting a lot of messages, just want to say thank you and that we appreciate that you're making this statement loud enough that congressmen are going to have to listen (I'm a college engineering student so we've all been abuzz about this)

Thanks for the support! -Pete F 03:18, 18 January 2012 (UTC)

English Wikipedia anti-SOPA blackout

hOW CAN I SURVIVE FOR 24 HOURS WITHOUT WIKIPEEDIA!?

My intellectual rights

I, like probably several million other people, am going about my business trying to eke out a living from my limited talents as a photographer. I have been doing it for years and long before the internet the occasional thief stole a picture or two. Now everyone thinks it's their god given right to lift anything they find on the internet as though it has no consequence. When criminals, companies, organisations and anyone else that can use a keyboard starts removing your property and using it for themselves it is about time, long overdue, that governments stepped in and try to protect their citizens. My work is not virtual, its piracy reduces my ability to make a living in two ways - the loss of the sale of the photograph and the reduction of the value of the photograph because it can be pirated however much I try to protect it.

To see Wikipedia support pirates of copyright material of any type on the pretext that the legislation proposed reduces peoples freedom is a hollow joke. Am I supposed to give up my living to pirates for the greater good? I am afraid the internet is still in the Wild West era where honest town folk are deprived of their property at gun point and no sheriff or marshal seems to want to interfere. If Wikipedia and other big players did more to keep their organisations clean then legislation would not be required. Websites that host material that is copyrighted without the owners permission are making their fortunes from theft. But they winge on about "its not their job to control the content of their sites" while filling their pockets with gold created from the possessions of others. It would not be condoned or accepted anywhere else, except perhaps Somalia.

Some people seem to think that all creative media; music, film, television, games, books, photographs etc should be free for the entire world and that this constitutes freedom of speech. We are not all billionaires who can afford to give away our work for nothing unless and until, lawyers, manufacturers, farmers, supermarkets, bankers etc join in. Ah! what a wonderful world - Imagine.

But, I support your right to say what you will, to give away your virtual possessions - just don't steal mine.

No-one supports the theft of your property. At the same time, no-one supports accusing others of theft and arresting them without trial, warrant, or legal recourse. That's what this protest is about. Seb az86556 00:31, 18 January 2012 (UTC)

"Websites that host material that is copyrighted without the owners permission are making their fortunes from theft". Personally, I think this is one of the major factors which distinguish Wikimedia projects from a lot of the 'user-contributed' internet. We have aggressive policies demanding that content be freely licensed and our community actively patrols for infringement and removes it without request (sometimes this even makes the copyright holders complain, because they like the free PR!). Our communities even maintain blacklists of bad accounts on sites like Flickr where our contributors are forbidden to copy content from because they are known sources of 'whitewashed' infringement which the operators of those other sites willfully ignore even when we report them. Our community goes above and beyond the strict requirements of the law because we care about doing the right thing and because having proper and legal free content licensing is a core part of our mission.

And, of course, unlike flickr, youtube, facebook, etc. nothing on Wikipedia is done for a profit. Wikipedia is run by a charity. There are no ads on the site. The funding from the operation comes primarily from voluntary contributions by members of the public and a few grants here and there.

At the same time, the laws we're concerned about allow the suppression of material on pretext. They can allow misguided or outright dishonest claims to be used to suppress lawful material and they would reasonably be expected to chill free speech as sites become more conservative about what they publish to avoid claims. As a community our own success in avoiding infringement makes it obvious to use that infringement can be minimized without the use of such dangerous tools.

We make use of copyright ourselves— to ensure that our content and derivatives of it remain available to everyone under equivalently permissive terms. While there are some in our community who are outright opposed to copyright, there are a great many who are not, and our community includes many people who make their living off of copyrighted works (including many professional photographers who release a portion of their work as under free licensing as charity). --Gmaxwell 01:34, 18 January 2012 (UTC)

your comments are busted,wiki!

so,i log on,to find that you are blacking out for SOPA....this of course makes no sense,as the only people hurt are the ones who use you,and the people who are pushing the SOPA laws prolly will never even know about this...whatever it is...protest i guess...

however,the problem here is the i tried to post a comment to the announcement,and the system gave me a page with one sentence and no links telling me 'Slow down. You are posting too quickly.'...i posted once,and it was my first post,and i was reprimanded for posting too much??sounds to me like they are censoring people who dont like their little...idea....

so,SOPA is evil,and bad,we all agree,but shutting down wiki,as i said,doesnt help keep sopa away,it only hurts your users....bad decision

thanks

"If someone makes a law forcing you to wear shoes, you dont protest by breaking your ankle." - bull,jan 2012

wikimediafoundation.org

You are making a big mistake with the blackout. You solicit contributions from your users and are giving us a reason to say no by ignoring how the blackout affects us.

Speaking for myself only -- I don't think it's true that the effects have been ignored. The possible effects have been discussed in endless detail, and the actions have been carefully considered to balance the short-term and long-term interests of all Wikipedia's stakeholders. You may have a different conclusion, but I don't think it's fair to say anybody's interests have been ignored. (And you should also keep in mind, the action is that of the English Wikipedia community, not of the Wikimedia Foundation -- the Foundation is merely facilitating a decision that was taken by the overwhelming majority of the site's volunteer contributors.) -Pete F 03:15, 18 January 2012 (UTC)

English Wikipedia anti-SOPA blackout

thanks guys you will be missed,hurry back,long live freedom and liberty.

Thanks for the words of support! -Pete F 03:12, 18 January 2012 (UTC)

Protest against SOPA/PIPA is a good cause for the blackout

Whenever legislators attack the freedom of communication, and particularly the freedom to receive information, the web community should try to stage efficient protests. Including Wikipedia!

The legislators are ever more using indirect and unfair, "statistically justifiable" procedures to suppress unwanted/illegal practices and contents on the web. This must not be allowed. Whatever they want to prevent should be done by appropriately designed measures. Their incomepetence cannot justify collateral dammage to freedom in general.--Ilevanat 01:41, 18 January 2012 (UTC)

English Wikipedia anti-SOPA blackout

please don't pull the plug on me!!!

AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHGGGG!!!!!!

Error on SOPA page?

"Wikipedia depends on its existence for a free and open, uncensored Internet."

Maybe I'm missing something, but shouldn't that be something like "Wikipedia's existence depends upon a free and open, uncensored Internet."? --Stismail 1/17/2012 11:27 PM CT Done -- we got that one fixed after a couple hours, thanks! -Pete F 22:13, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

Why java script?

Why entire blackout may be stopped by disabling java script? Bulwersator 07:22, 18 January 2012 (UTC)

  thank you!!! bull

Failed implementation: blackout

As noted, "To cancel the redirect of any wiki page, press esc when loading is begun. Tested and guaranteed;) https://twitter.com/#!/PontGate/status/159555223445176320". Please implement an effective solution representing en.'s consensus decision. the "no java" workaround was marginally acceptable on a technical basis. This isn't. Fifelfoo 08:51, 18 January 2012 (UTC)

English Wikipedia anti-SOPA blackout/ca

Please, fix a typo: {{DISPLAYTITLE:Tancament de la Viquipèdia en anglès en protesta contra la SOPA}}. Thanks. --Vriullop 09:01, 18 January 2012 (UTC)

Fixed, many thanks. PeterSymonds (talk) 09:04, 18 January 2012 (UTC)

This Blackout is stupid

I understand your interest in making your point, but this Blackout is stupid. Most people don't need to be hit over the head with a hammer to get the point. Having a Blackout is hitting me with a hammer. Thanks for the poor judgement.

Thank you for your courage

I respect the rights of those who are against the blackout, and hope they will respect my topic. I would just like to say thank you for having the courage to go through with this. Companies have gone bankrupt and shut down for less nobler causes than this, and I am proud to consider wikimedia's sties my main resources for information. I believe that no matter what we make the internet to be, it is still a resource for information. To try and restrict what information people give to others, is little more than dictatorship.

I hope your efforts are not in vain, for it is no secret that the American Government has tried to mislead their students, in teaching them historical facts that glorify their country rather than speak the truth. Who knows what they will try to enforce on foreigners next, even beyond restricting their rights to share historical knowledge with the rest of the planet. The fight is not over until it's won, so let us hope there are still enough Americans in congress who value freedom of speech on a global scale.

the blackout - a possible next step

Hello.

I understand that typically wikpedia is not a political org. That said - it is an important time for us to defend our freedom and the wonderful space we call the internet.

I suggest an international petition against the actions of the US govt attempting to censor us. That is less than wonderful to say it nicely.

I would assume we can collect several million signatures in less than a week's time. We have to stop this. And we have to do it now.

Janis said "freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose". Well said - but 50 years later we face a different reality.

I will support this in any way I can - but the wiki folks are more up to speed on such things. Perhaps a new splinter site - like "wikifreedom.org" ?

Let's make it happen. When millions speak up - things happen.

Peace. Freedome. Weirdness.

That's what we all need.

- senor marcos - aka - mark young - mazatlan, sinaloa, mexico.

wmf:English Wikipedia anti-SOPA blackout/nl

Please fix the grammatical error on wmf:English Wikipedia anti-SOPA blackout/nl by replacing {{DISPLAYTITLE:Anti-SOPA black-out van de Engelstalige Wikipedia}} with {{DISPLAYTITLE:Anti-SOPA-black-out van de Engelstalige Wikipedia}}. Also, Sue Gardner is the "directeur" of the Wikimedia Foundation, not the "bestuursvoorzitter". Could someone replace those words? Thanks, Mathonius 14:32, 18 January 2012 (UTC)

Done by PeterSymonds. The Helpful One 14:53, 18 January 2012 (UTC)

Blackout

Wikipedia has chosen to throw its hat into the political ring through this action, and by so doing has removed its mask of neutrality. User's concerns about Wikipedia's content due to its editorial stance (or lack thereof) combined with this overt political action makes Wikipedia a very dubious source for information. "Better to let people think you are stupid than open your mouth and remove all doubt," goes the old adage. To Wikipedia we could say, "Better to let people think your content is suspicious than to become a political activist and remove all doubt."

The fact that this political action has occurred without an attempt at an explanation of how SOPA or PIPA could effect Wikipedia's day to day activities casts even further doubts on to their motives. The lack of explanation can only lead to the conclusion that giving an explanation would expose how much of their content is in fact stolen intelligence property ; it would amount to a mea culpa. A simple explanation of how trying to stop overseas pirating sites would devastate the free web would go a long way to alleviating the trepidation caused by this veiled political action. — The preceding unsigned comment was added by 141.218.53.61 (talk)

There's no veil here: this is transparently and unquestionably a political action! But it is one we've made our best effort to explain. You can see our general counsel Geoff Brigham's blog post explaing why SOPA and PIPA are bad for Wikipedia and the free web here. Sue's blog post on the blackout explains specifically why this kind of action and why now, quoting my mailing list post: our articles are politically neutral, but our existence isn't. We stand for some radical ideas, ideas that depend on a favorable legal infrastructure, and we need to defend the structures that allow us to exist. Kat Walsh (spill your mind?) 22:49, 18 January 2012 (UTC)

In addition, it is a (commonly repeated) mistake to think of Wikipedians' actions as being "neutral" in general. Every day, Wikipedians take strong positions on article talk pages, for instance arguing strenuously against corporate marketing departments that want to control or remove information in an article. These actions are not neutral! They are aimed at producing neutral content, but that is not the same thing. There is nothing new going on here; Wikipedia has always been a convening project for people with a very strong, passionate, and non-neutral belief in the importance of free knowledge. -Pete F 22:12, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

Those who object to the anti-SOPA initiative as being non-neutral are confusing the content of the encyclopedia, which should be neutral, with the activity of creating the encyclopedia, which is not. Undertaking to freely share the sum of human knowledge is a profoundly disruptive political act, not a neutral one, because knowledge is power. ~ Ningauble 15:21, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

SOPA/Blackoutpage

i am with Wikipedia. The Black out is condemned. This is totally bad for us ,so please do not enforce this rule over freedom of speech and opportunity to gain knowledge. this is against our freedom of sharing knowledge

wikimediafoundation.org

BLACKOUT POLICY

I concur with your approach to the pending legislation. I also support the use of Wikipedia to take political positions when the polices and basis of Wikipedia may be abridged by restrictions that, in fact, censor content.

The message with the blackout is very well said. I believe Wikipedia is not only there to be helpful but to give voices to all who make the effort to participate. This is root to freedom of expression, to free speech, to the fundamental to goverence in Wikipedia and to our pursuit of happiness.

James Meer Microflight@att.net

Thank you for your support! :) The Helpful One 16:42, 18 January 2012 (UTC)

English Wikipedia anti-SOPA blackout

Wikipedia should be free. i get game information from it.glitches awaeness i get from it.

sopa page has no edit button

so i used the well known and absurdly easy bypass to get the main sopa blackout page on wiki,to post that the blackout was somewhat of a failure due to the fact that there are at least two well known and easy to use workarounds...that being hitting esc as the page loads(to prevent the redirect to the blockade page) and disabling java active scripting...and the EDIT button was missing....both on the main page and the talk page...i would have liked to have been the one to post that on the page,because while i disagree with sopa,i also disagree with the blackout....how are we supposed to add new info if there is no edit button? ADD: ok,ive gone on to find out that NO wiki pages but this one have edit buttons anymore....so,another round of censorship from our pals at wikipedia,all for the sake of lawmakers who probably dont even realize,and certainly dont care,that wiki is 'blocked' (at least for those who havent yet heard how to bypass it)

Hi there! Thank you for your feedback. As part of the Wikipedia Blackout, although we have allowed certain pages to be viewed that are related to SOPA and PIPA, all editing has been disabled - even for administrators. Have a look at this page for a bit more information, only Wikimedia Staff and Stewards are allowed to edit, and this is for emergency purposes only. Best, The Helpful One 20:15, 18 January 2012 (UTC)

actually,the SOPA info pages are all blacked out....but easy to get to,as have the xfiles pages ive been perusing today...ok,i guess ill just have to make do going to every public site i can and spreading the wealth of my information about the bypass...good day

wikimediafoundation.org - How to join

Hi,

I was just trying to login, not sure if I need to.

I am not about to edit any article, just wondering if there is any benefits to joining, otherwise.

I support your blackout today.

I contacted both VT Senators, and my Congressman.

I also made a very small paypal donation.

Thanks,

jim bator 01/18/2012

Hi Jim. The Wikimedia Foundation wiki located at wikimediafoundation.org is closed to editing and can be edited only by certain people. The Wikimedia Foundation wiki contains information about the Wikimedia Foundation, the non-profit organization behind Wikipedia, and cannot be joined or edited. If you have a suggestion regarding the content of that site, post it on this page. If you're interested in editing Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, you can create an account or edit without one after the blackout. Thanks,  ℳono  00:24, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for everything

Hello, I just wanted to say thanks to all involved in keeping this website alive. I have used this webservice (it is more than a website) many times over the years. For help with academic assignments yes, but honestly, I just enjoy browsing the site, seeing what experts have to say about topics of interest. I have made a monetary donation and I hope others do as well, since I firmly believe I know not one person who doesn't use this webservice. The accurate posts are the most valuable obviously and I, and millions of others, appreciate the efforts taken by you and your staff to keep the records accurate. Thank you so very much Mr. Wales, and your HARDWORKING staff.

Sincerely, Lorien

Welcome back

WIKI has my full support tim letchfield, LONDON, eNGLAND

SOPA/Blackoutpage

Just want to say that the main reason why these two acts are taking place is due the increasing lack of paid advertising for various tv networks. Therefore congress is trying to control Internet programming by channeling it onto specific sites which they would own.

ps. good luck and god bless

Thank you!!!!!

To all at Wikipedia,

although I am just one individual, yet one of many, I would like to express my most profound gratitude for standing up and speaking out against PIPA and SOPA. You, and all who participated in speaking out deserve the deepest thanks so, here it is, THANK YOU! As a social worker, I value the importance and great need for knowledge and have come to rely upon websites that provide the same - particularly yours. My deepest regret this year was being unable to support Wikipedia with a small financial donation as I utilize this resource often. Unfortunately I was unable as I am battling end stage four liver disease and undergoing rigorous treatment and battling too keeping the roof over our heads (single mom two kids...). In that vein, it's important to me to send this message as part of the populous that does struggle thus is ever so appreciative for your tremendous efforts of providing a venue that is accessible, affordable and informative. In fact, it is a service that allowed me to stay informed throughout my treatment and continued illness and I am ever so grateful.

In summation, forgive my intimate candour regarding my circumstance, but I believe with my entire being that such circumstances are very relevant as it goes to the heart of what you provide - a service available to all. In my case, unable to get out of bed and/or unable to acquire materials due to physical and financial challenges, this, and other web services have afforded priceless to me and for that I thank you.

The fact that I live in Canada (Calgary, Alberta) does not afford me the ability to protest these bills to the US government however this issue was a catalyst that brought out a strength I haven't felt during this illness as I haven't much of that lately. I share these words to demonstrate how the thought of any such action by greedy individuals who subscribe to censorship for no other apparent reason but a money grab has evoked a rage in me. So, I hope, in turn that I speak for those who really benefit from what the current web offers.

I too, have published some works during my graduate years and have no second thoughts about others accessing my work although, being humble, would not assume any person may. That is not the point. I guess I am trying to say that even when I cannot afford food or some of the medications I require, I would not attempt to squeeze others inadvertently or not when they could benefit from knowledge. What angers me the most is that those (music and movie industries for example) who certainly do NOT need more of our hard earned money are desperately attempting to squeeze every last drop from those of us who have little and worse - those who have little to no access to knowledge!

Thank you again for your stance on this and thank you so much for providing me and billions with your wonderful service.

With deepest respect and utmost gratitude, Sheila Larsen Calgary, Alberta

wikimediafoundation.org

I just want Wiki to know, I'm very disappointed in the manner in which the organization decided to protest the current bills heading to congress. I am a frequent user of Wiki, and use it as a beginning resource when working on my literary materials. It royally pi**ed me off when I could not access the site's functionality. I understand Wiki asking for assistance in the protest, but the manner in which it was done only caused inconvenience to the people who actually wanted to use the resource. You should not be taking a political view, and you should certainly not risk the relationship you have with your client base. It isn't savvy, and it isn't professional. I expected more from you guys.

Ron, from Columbia Falls, Montana.

Correction needed at Advisory Board

At http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Advisory_Board#Mitch_Kapor

"He founding or co-founded the Lotus Development Corporation, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the..."

should be

"He founded or co-founded the Lotus Development Corporation, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the..."

Sven Manguard 18:54, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

Done. Killiondude 18:56, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

Feedback privacy statement/nl

"Terugkoppeling" lijkt me een heel onbekend woord. Hoewel het wel officieel Nederlands is, lijkt mij "feedback" duidelijker. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 217.123.25.172 (talk) 08:05, 22 January 2012

Misschien... maar "terugkoppeling" wordt wel degelijk gebruikt en "feedback" is een Engels woord, terwijl wij de Nederlandstalige Wikipedia zijn. Trijnstel 13:41, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

Het lijkt er op dat "feedback" ook wel degelijk een geaccepteerd woord is in de Nederlandse taal (vandaleTaalunie woordenlijst). En ben het met bezoeker 217.123.25.172 eens dat het een beter en duidelijker woord is in de Nederlandstalige gemeenschap. –Krinkle^talk 06:18, 7 March 2012 (UTC)

Ah, goed gevonden. Ik zal vragen om een wijziging voor die pagina (kan het zelf niet).

@someone with access to the foundationwiki. Please change the word "terugkoppeling" in "feedback" on the page Feedback privacy statement/nl. Trijnstel_talk 11:34, 7 March 2012 (UTC)

Done. Killiondude (talk) 17:38, 7 March 2012 (UTC)

wikimediafoundation.org

the concern about what happened these days between the FBI to intervene websites, media-wiki in his great contribution to the Wor deberoa wide web out for not piracy, but a gradual order, not the way generated a global chaos. sincerely marcewar - juegos de mario

I'm sorry, but I didn't understand what you meant -- could you rephrase it, please? Banaticus (talk) 19:18, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

wikimediafoundation.org

great plans!!

wikimediafoundation.org - Visual format of the blog

Hello! I frequently read the Wikimedia blog on a 1600 x 900 screen. The content is aligned to the left, so I see 850 pixels of content on the left and 750 blank pixels on the right. Could you change the format to center, so I see 375 pixels in blank on each side? Thanks! --NaBUru38 13:23, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

I agree with you. Centering the blog's layout is planned, unfortunately it isn't trivial, because the layout is based on the Vector skin from MediaWiki. I should be able to get to it in the coming weeks. guillom 13:09, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

wikimediafoundation.org

I strikr j ile would like to be granted un publi material thnk u :-)

Resolution:Licensing policy

The links to examples of EDPs are wrong - the English one should be "...Non-free content criteria", and the Polish one should probably not be given at all, as it is only a proposal.

wikimediafoundation.org

Hi, guess to tell something about Airbus A350 vs. Dreamliner of Boeing, but no chance due logging in and so on ... how can I use Wikipedia - to tell my owns???

Hi, you were trying to login to the website of the Wikimedia Foundation, the organization behind Wikipedia. The website you are looking for is Wikipedia, which can be found here. Wikipedia already has articles on both the Boeing 787 Dreamliner and the Airbus A350, which you can edit without logging in. Good luck! nl:Mark W (Mwpnl) ¦ talk 23:50, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

wikimediafoundation.org

While reviewing countries of the Middle East, it was discovered that Eygpt and Libya are listed as Middle Eastern countries. The Middle East is located on the Countinent of Asia. Egypt and Libya are on the Continent of Africa. They are North African countries.

Listed Errors; Egypt and Libya listed as Middle Eastern Countries

While reviewing information on the Middle East, it was discovered that Egypt and Libya are listed as Middle Eastern countries. Egypt and Libya are countries on the continent of Africa. Middle Eastern countries are located on the continent of Asia.

wikimediafoundation.org

I am a constant contributor to wikipedia, still I find my id in red letters whereas those who have been contributing after me have their names in blue letters. Why this discrepancy?

A red link simply means that the target page has not been created yet. If you click on the red link, User:Somesh virgo, it will bring you to your userpage and tell you that the page does not exist. If you put something on the page and save it, your name will appear blue. The red link does not mean that you are an "unestablished" user or anything, any link, like this one, that is aimed at any non-existent page will appear red. J.delanoy^gabs_adds 17:01, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

Improved translation Dutch version

I hope I have improved the low-quality Dutch version (robot translation?) of this page, see http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Translation_requests/WMF/Home/nl . Could somebody implement these changes? Thanks, cheers, JMMuller (talk) 11:15, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

Congratulations !

Hi Everyone !

I just wanted congratulate you for this FAN-TAS-TIC site !

I don't know WHO created it, but he must be thanked. It's a really precious tool and "source" (or "spring" ?) of informations when our dictionnary don't have the word that we look for. In my case, I was looking for a medical word who didn't exist in my french dictionnary. So, thank your !

Voilà, that's it...

All the best to all of you from France ! Mlle Marilyne Chenuet

Feedback privacy statement

I find that WIKIMEDIA is a excellent source of information and use you often when researching various projects. I find NO fault with what YOU have on the "USS WINDHAM COUNTY LST-1170" because it is the "Official" story of the squadron during the early 1960s. The events it mentions ARE fact, the "unofficial" activities are what's left out. And, for some reason or another, it's still "classified". The only thing I can suggest is that you might start the histories with the words "Official Records". Even this might confuse some people but those of us who where there, WE'LL know what it means!

Thank you for your fine work.

wikimediafoundation.org

Why does Wiki have sections labeled 'criticisms' for conservative organizations like Promise Keepers and Fellowship of Christian Athletes, but nothing like this for liberal organizations like ACLU? Is there a liberal bias in Wiki reporting?

Home

On reading about Napolean III,I noticed that the reference about to opium wars omitted the primary reasons for the war and it's the gain from its victory. The selling of opium to the the Chinese which the Chinese leaders did not want. Hence the name opium wars. There is plenty to be said on the subject but it seems to be of primary importance to the subject as well as a subject of no small conciquence to all parties involved including ,political economic social.

  The subject Little more than mention in this particular situation but it does seem an omission. 
      Wicapedia is a credit to the human race. 
          Sincerely ,
              Mr. Timothy R. Lewis

Account request by ItsMeBrandonSky (talk) 16:58, 11 March 2012 (UTC)

It is requested that an account at Wikimedia Foundation be made with the following info:
Name: ImBrandonHTFFan

Reason for account creation: User doesn't exist, create it for me. I will not vandalize.

Accounts are requested at Request for an account on the Foundation wiki. Please read the guidance on that page regarding why accounts are created first as the reason you give him isn't sufficient. Thanks QU ^TalkQu 18:34, 11 March 2012 (UTC)

wikimediafoundation.org

Op jullie hoofdpagina staat bij degene die vandaag zijn geboren ene Kemal Ataturk. Als je dan doorklikt naar zijn gegevens staat er dat hij in 19 mei geboren is.Wat is waar?

19 mei 1881 QU ^TalkQu 09:12, 12 March 2012 (UTC)

Template:Recentchangestext

Maybe there's a way to allow people to open edit for sources and allow links as well through ONE thread to find more sources for information. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 71.94.0.126 (talk) 19:54, 31 March 2012

Dead link at Resolution:Affiliations Committee

The link to "Resolution:Recognizing Models of Affiliation" should be "Resolution:Recognizing Models of Affiliations" (final "s"). Or a redirect might be helpful. ~ Ningauble (talk) 15:48, 3 April 2012 (UTC)

Done --lyzzy (talk) 16:28, 3 April 2012 (UTC)

Notes

A few points:

• There seem to be many instances (hundreds?) of hardcoded URLs (e.g. http://) on wmfwiki. Should we bother to fix these as we come across them?
• wmf:Stories2/en is so lengthy that it almost becomes bothersome. Perhaps we can work some magic (either on that page or a new one) where visitors are given one story contained in a module that can be reloaded by click and provide another? Just a thought. It'd be nice if that page weren't reloaded but the thingy used some sort of scripting or flash magic. MZ would have a better idea about how (if?) that can be accomplished. Just to note, this doesn't appear to be a random page. It's linked from wmf:Ways to Give and a plethora of other pages.
• Navigating through the site by use of Special:AllPages, search, and by other means is all bogged down due to translations and the cornucopia of fundraising test pages, pages by country, pages by language, and so on. Is there a way we can make it easier for people to use the search function when they visit the site? Or perhaps for people who are attempting to clean it up?
• It might be nice to have a one-time run of a few database reports similar to those that are collected on the English Wikipedia. Specifically, I saw wmf:Wikimedia Foundation Board Governance Committee Charter in the recent changes and, while it is categorized, it doesn't appear to be linked from anything. This can be a feature or a bug. If we had a list of unlinked pages that might be nice. Though, there might be some noise in that some of the fundraising pages don't link using wikilinks. Some other reports might assist in cleaning things. Killiondude (talk) 05:49, 6 April 2012 (UTC)

God, you want a lot, don't you? Bastique ^{☎ call me!} 06:07, 6 April 2012 (UTC)

So I was thinking about the first point of yours, I made a list of those pages that have http://wikimediafoundation.org links - I took out the fundraising ones where the code is HTML so you need the links,

If we want to, we would convert the URLs to wikilinks and in the cases of the Donor policy for example, convert the http:// to protocol relative as I did here. The Helpful One 12:29, 6 April 2012 (UTC)

I brought up the protocol-relative URL issue ages ago: wmf:Wikimedia:Babel#Protocol-relative URLs. Not sure what the best answer is there. The rest of your post just sounds like "more work for MZ." --MZMcBride (talk) 13:09, 6 April 2012 (UTC)

@MZ, sorry if it seems that way. I actually only thought the stories module and the report might be things you could/might help with. I thought perhaps some other tech wizard could help with the search thing. Isn't there a person studying search stuff that's being paid by the Foundation?

@THO, There are also links to the different projects' portals (e.g. http://www.wikipedia.org) that would need to be identified and fixed as some point as well. There are also cases where the page author seems to have wanted to provide an external link to meta to show that the reader would be leaving wmfwiki (I don't know if this is good or bad) and they used http:// for the link. Killiondude (talk) 16:41, 6 April 2012 (UTC)

Vision and mission in Portuguese

Hi,

I have translated the mission and vision pages into Portuguese here on meta.

Kindly request to incorporate the translations into the website.

Thanks,

--Solstag (talk) 05:18, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

Thank you for translating! I've copied over the vision page onto the wiki, Visão, but can you please translate the phrase "Mission statement" into Portuguese for me? This is so that I can put the mission statement under that name on the Foundation wiki, for example Spanish is Declaración de misión. Thanks again. The Helpful One 08:59, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

Hi! Well, I'd just translate Vision as "Visão" and Mission Statement as "Missão" or "Nossa missão" (Our mission). Adding a word like "statement" would only make it sound unusual in Portuguese. Thanks for being helpful! ;) --Solstag (talk) 09:23, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

Done, see Missão :) The Helpful One 09:34, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

Template:MissionLang

The last edit to this template should be reverted and Template:VisionLang should be updated with the Portuguese link. Clay^Clay_Clay 20:01, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

Oops! Sorry that was my fault, fixed, thanks for letting us know. The Helpful One 20:04, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

wikimediafoundation.org

I just wanted to say that this is the greatest to come along since the wheel. I wish that I could have donated more, but I am retired on a limited income with health probles, so you are a life saver. I am using your information on my family tree that I am working on. Thank you so much for this great source of information. Sincerely, Arthur H. Nicander, Email: arthurnicanderatt.net

Thank you for your donation and kind words! AGK [•] 17:18, 3 June 2012 (UTC)

wikimediafoundation.org

I want to really know what this website is alabout am intrested to be a fellow.

Hi there, you can read more about our Fellowship program at Wikimedia Fellowships, and for more information about our projects, please have a read of our Frequently asked questions. Best, The Helpful One 00:15, 21 May 2012 (UTC)

Terms of Use (2012)/pl

Translation of the Terms of Use (2012) is far from optimal. In fact it resembles product of translating machine.

Please consider prompt correction of some most obvious mistakes:

• "Klauzula:" in Polish means "Clause" and does not mean "disclaimer". There is no single Polish word which could be used here but in typical Polish documents most popular is to use "Uwaga:" (exact meaning "remark"), "Uwaga prawna" (legal remark) or "Zastrzeżenie prawne:" (exact meaning "legal stipulation" or "caveat").

• " (...), ma tylko za zadanie pomóc w ich zrozumieniu." should be rather "(...), a jedynie ma pomóc w zrozumieniu ich".

• instead "Częśćmi naszej misji są" one could say "Częściami naszej misji są" but this is not an accurate translation of "Part of our mission is to:". In Polish more natural way to say this would be: "Nasza misja obejmuje:" (which literally means "Our mission includes").

• "Czytać i Drukować' - in Polish one must not use excessive capitalization as in English Legalese. This sentence should be translated to "bezpłatnie czytać i drukować nasze artykuły oraz inne treści".

• same about two next sentences: "bezpłatnie i zgodnie z licencją rozpowszechniać i przetwarzać nasze artykuły i inne treści." and "Pracować w wielu różnych projektach i redagować ich zasoby."

Above it just for starter. Only 1 from 8 sentences is more or less properly built. I wonder why Foundation did not ask editor's of Polish Wikipedia for their help or proof reading?

rdgs

Wladek (talk) 03:32, 20 April 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the feedback: the Terms of use launch is being delayed 5 days to April 25th, to allow for more time to make these types of fixes. The Polish (and other) communities will have the chance to work on the translations. Philippe (WMF) (talk) 15:10, 20 April 2012 (UTC)

Hi, Wladek. We did. :) In fact, much if not all of the content you're discussing here was contributed by editors of the Polish projects. Certainly, these translations are collaborative just like the rest of the projects, and I'm very happy to see you contributing! Hopefully more editors will become involved to give us the best versions we can get. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 00:47, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

I can still see faults in http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Terms_of_Use_%282012%29/pl, for example:

• Częśćmi naszej misji są is not corrected yet, another possible translation could be Nasza misja między innymi polega na (that would require a different word agreement in the next two sentences).
• Capitalization acceptable in English does not work in Polish, i.e. in Czytać i Drukować, Rozpowszechniać i Przetwarzać and Pracować i Edytować the second upper case letter has to be made lower case. However, since for clarity and to observe Polish word order the first of these should be made into: bezpłatnie czytać i drukować nasze artykuły oraz inną treść I highly recommend to not carry over capitalization from English into Polish since the next items also suffer from unnecessary capitalization.
• Parallel structures are not present in the English original, but they are highly recommended in Polish and it is only required to change Prawo into Praworządność, and possibly the fifth item into działalność przestrzegająca warunki użytkowania i regulaminy, które ustali społeczność <<-- in my view that wording is better, but please get an opinion from a translator accepted by WMF.
• There should be a consistent translation of policy into zasada, so e.g. word zasady is used in place of regulaminy.

What about http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/New_Terms_of_use/pl ? Can we start with changing 25 May 2012 r. into 25 maja 2012 r.?

Absolwent (talk) 06:21, 26 April 2012 (UTC) P.S. It is always easier to improve upon a translation, than write everything oneself ;-)

New Terms of use/ja

I have to say the translation of wmf:New Terms of use/ja was not in the best quality. In particular,

Item #5 (Clearer free licensing:...): This items is quite confusing because the word 'free' is interpreted as 'free-of-charge', which is wrong in this context. It should be:

• より明確なフリーライセンス：一部の人から、以前のToUではフリーライセンスに関する要件が分かりづらいというご指摘をいただきました。規約改訂版では、編集者と寄稿者に分かりやすりように、かかる要件をより明確に説明しています（これまでの運用に変更はありません）。

Item #6 (More tools against harassment, ...): This item is difficult to follow even though I know the new terms to some extent. It should be:

• 嫌がらせ、脅迫、ストーカー行為、破壊行為、その他の長期的問題に対するさらなる手立て：かかる行為が禁止されていることを規約で明確にしています。これまでのWikimediaにはなかった事項として、規約改訂版では、ウィキを横断する極端な規約違反に対してグローバルな追放を行う可能性に言及しています。その必要性は、数多くのコミュニティ構成員から指摘されてきました。グローバルな追放は利用規約で承認されており、コミュニティの方針によって細則がさだめられます。

The two above were the most critical mistakes I could see in the current translation. If I have a chance to do, I'd also change some other Wikimedia-specific terminologies according to our practices. --whym (talk) 12:42, 20 April 2012 (UTC)

Please see comment above. :) We'll be moving it to meta for translation fixes. Philippe (WMF) (talk) 15:10, 20 April 2012 (UTC)

Thanks! I'll see and fix it at Terms_of_use/Introduction/ja. --whym (talk) 09:22, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

Thank you, this was published a while ago. The Helpful One 00:16, 21 May 2012 (UTC)

New Terms of use/pt

Hello

Surprisingly the "New terms of use" is separated in the two versions of portuguese. If one is discriminated as brazilian portuguese it is obvious that the other should be the european portuguese, but that's not the the case. It's only a duplication of the other version. If you I want to continue to mantain the version in european portuguese here it is the corrected version:

Na sequência de um processo histórico de edições e comentários da comunidade, os Termos de Uso da Wikimedia (ToU) foram atualizados. A versão revista recentemente pode ser visualizada aqui e entrará em vigor em 25 de maio de 2012.

A versão atualizada dos ToU é o resultado de um processo colaborativo único que incorporou mais de 200 edições e 4500 linhas de discussão. Há mais de 140 dias, a comunidade Wikimedia reviu, redigiu e reformulou atualizações propostas para os ToU, resolvendo mais de 120 problemas. Nunca antes, os ToU de um grande site foram elaborados por meio de um esforço tão interativo e colaborativo.

O Conselho de Curadores formalmente aprovou o projeto finalizado os termos atualizados em 6 de março de 2012. Entre outras coisas, esses termos preveem:

• Compreensão melhor: o acordo atualizado inclui um resumo do modelo de fácil leitura para ajudar a facilitar a compreensão dos termos.
• Segurança mais forte: os termos atualizados proíbem vários ações – como instalar malware – que poderiam comprometer os sistemas de Wikimedia. Embora essas restrições não representem uma mudança na política, proporcionam clareza sobre o que é comportamento inaceitável.
• Papéis mais claros: em resposta a pedidos de orientação, o acordo atualizado esclarece as funções e as responsabilidades da comunidade, incluindo editores e colaboradores. Esses termos também buscam oferecer orientações para ajudar os utilizadores a evitar problemas.
• Mais comentários da comunidade: o contrato atualizado garante que futuras atualizações dos ToU serão acompanhadas por um processo de debate colaborativo. A atualização oferece aos utilizadores, pelo menos, um período de 30 dias de comentários antes de uma revisão importante entrar em efeito (com aprovação do Conselho). Há uma exceção de três dias para mudanças legais e administrativas urgentes.
• Licenciamento livre mais claro: de acordo com alguns, os ToU anteriores eram por vezes confusos no que diz respeito aos requisitos de licenciamento livre. O acordo atualizado tenta explicar mais claramente esses requisitos para editores e colaboradores (sem alterar as práticas existentes).
• Mais ferramentas contra assédio, ameaças, perseguição, vandalismo e outros problemas a longo prazo: os termos deixam claro que esses atos são proibidos. Novidade para a Wikimedia, o contrato atualizado levanta a possibilidade de uma proibição global de violações extremas em toda a Wiki, uma necessidade que foi expressa a partir de vários membros da comunidade. Enquanto o banimento global está autorizado pelos termos de uso, ele será implementado pela política comunitária.
• Melhor proteção jurídica: os termos atualizados incorporam secções legais que são comummente usadas para ajudar a salvaguardar um site como o nosso, como a melhor explicação de nosso status de hospedagem, bem como isenções de responsabilidade e limitações de responsabilidade para a Fundação.

Basta dizer, somos coerentes com outras organizações afins, que incorporaram acordos semelhantes, incluindo Internet Archive, Creative Commons, Mozilla Firefox, Open Source Initiative, Project Gutenberg, Linux Foundation, Stack Exchange, WikiSpaces e WordPress.com.

Sem o trabalho árduo e a especialização de nossa comunidade, este projeto teria sido impossível. Aplaudimos a participação da comunidade nesta iniciativa inovadora, que resultou nos termos mais elaborados em colaboração de uso para qualquer site principal. Japf (talk) 18:04, 25 April 2012 (UTC)

Thanks, we'll get this up. : ) Philippe (WMF) (talk) 20:01, 25 April 2012 (UTC)

Talk:Terms of Use (2012): Section heading capitalizing

This may not apply, but the document Terms of Use (2012)/en does not follow the Wikipedia Manual of Style standards on capitalizing (MOS:CAPS) for section headings (WP:HEADINGS, WP:SECTIONCAPS). Good luck. 99.146.148.157 18:31, 25 April 2012 (UTC) User:Jerryobject

It's not on Wikipedia. :-) Philippe (WMF) (talk) 20:01, 25 April 2012 (UTC)

Terms of Use (2012)/en

Minor fix: in the human-readable summary of the new Terms of Use, the word "harm" in "No harm" should be capitalized for consistency with the other bullet points. Tktktk (talk) 18:55, 25 April 2012 (UTC)

Thank you, fixed. The Helpful One 19:11, 25 April 2012 (UTC)

New_Terms_of_use/fr

Hello,

This page http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/New_Terms_of_use/fr have a bad link "(version récemment révisée)". Thanks. 19:44, 25 April 2012 (UTC)

Fixed, thank you. The Helpful One 19:51, 25 April 2012 (UTC)

Hello,

I think that "pourrait ne pas s’appliquer pas à vous" in http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Terms_of_Use_(2012)/fr should be "pourrait ne pas s’appliquer à vous"

Fixed. Thanks. The Helpful One 18:07, 16 May 2012 (UTC)

New Terms of use/ru

Please correct the spelling: in all places in the text, where the letter Ё (Yo) must be used, the letter Е (Ye) is used instead. (Not replace all Ye with Yo — in the most cases Ye is used correctly.) Gamliel Fishkin (talk) 22:31, 25 April 2012 (UTC)

We apparently have a newfangled system where you can fix these on Meta and it can be synced to the official document on Foundationwiki. Russian is here if you'd like to make the local changes. Killiondude (talk) 00:08, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

wikimediafoundation.org

Hello and Greetings to All, I have been using Wikimedia/Wikipedia for many years.. I have seen the changes and I hope that all goes well. I read read some of the info for the new terms and how you had to have many discussions and it is nice that you have linked for all to see the conglomerate. I have noticed changes that I am curious about, but I have not been capable to keep up with my researches because of illness. Thanks to your conglomerate of sharing important information; I am able to try and heal myself. You have done great work and I always send good intentions that you survive and provide what you can for the public to have more knowledge... Knowledge is power... I thank you and respect your works.. with divine loving consciousness and quantum consciousness Devorah Radhasakhi Lalana Sakinah

Talk:New Terms of use/vi

Is it need to translate to other languages? I dont know where it is in [[2]] to translate or update?--Cheers! (talk) 01:45, 26 April 2012 (UTC)

Hi there! Yes we'd love for you to translate it into any language that you can, if you click here and select your language from the drop-down list, you will be able to start translating. The Helpful One 16:10, 26 April 2012 (UTC)

Terms of Use (2012)/nl

The Dutch translation of the Terms of Use still has a lot of errors, but I do not have permission to edit the page. The translator(s) may contact me via my Dutch Wikipedia Userpage. Muijz (talk) 05:05, 26 April 2012 (UTC)

Hi. Thanks for offering to help fix the mistakes, please update it as you see fit at <https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ATranslate&taction=translate&group=page-Terms+of+use&language=nl&limit=1000&task=view>. The Helpful One 16:13, 26 April 2012 (UTC)

New Terms of use/de

„Das weltweite Verbot wird zwar durch die Nutzungsbedingungen genehmigt“ - So klingt das widersinnig, Verbot bitte durch Entzug des Schreibzugriffs o.ä. ersetzen. --Itu (talk) 05:17, 26 April 2012 (UTC)

Fixed, thanks. The Helpful One 16:42, 26 April 2012 (UTC)

hi itu, while you're right that is sounds strange, "Entzug des Schreibzugriffs" is wrong, see Global ban. i've changed it to "Globales Verbot" on meta (which is the translation of the proposed policy in question). cheers, —Pill (talk) 09:15, 13 May 2012 (UTC)

Siehe auch zu "Lektoren" User_talk:Philippe_(WMF)#Nutzungsbedingungen_TOU_translation. --Atlasowa (talk) 11:02, 26 April 2012 (UTC)

I have done the "Lektoren" one as per this edit, I will ask someone to translate what you have said Itu. The Helpful One 16:23, 26 April 2012 (UTC)

---

Hallo an alle dort draußen,

• Terms of Use (2012)/de

Im dortigen blaugerahmten Kasten oben steht:

Hinweis: Diese Zusammenfassung ist nicht Bestandteil der Nutzungsbedingungen und
stellt kein Rechtsdokument dar. ...

In der Rolle als Dummy oder Super-DAU gefragt:
Könnte man diese Aussage jetzt nicht auf den gesamten Text der Seite beziehen?

---

Interpretiere ich die Seite falsch, wenn ich den Text ab der Überschrift
Unsere Nutzungsbedingungen
als Rechtsdokument ansehe?

---

Hat es eine besondere Bedeutung, das die (hideable) TOC-Liste (Contents) am Ende des Absatzes "Überblick" erscheint, aber den Punkt Überblick dann selbst beinhaltet?

---

217.92.174.176 09:48, 27 April 2012 (UTC) (... thats Jaybear | _talk...)

---

Where I can translate New Terms of use/en?

Hi. Where I can translate this page into my language? --06:42, 26 April 2012 (UTC)

Hi there! Thanks for offering to translation, please click here and select your language from the drop-down list, you will be able to start translating. The Helpful One 16:10, 26 April 2012 (UTC)

Thanks but New Terms of use/en and Our updated Terms of Use will become effective on May 25, 2012. Find out more weren't there. --07:59, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

Ah, apologies, the link you want is this one. :-) The Helpful One 08:17, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

Terms of Use (2012)/ru

Russian translation mistakes: 'trademark' should be translated as "товарный знак", and not "торговая марка"; "a state court" should be translated as "суд штата", and not "государственный суд". --Л.П. Джепко (talk) 09:43, 26 April 2012 (UTC)

Two places of the same document

It can be a bit frustrating to find out that there are always two versions of the terms of use, the summary, and the introduction. The prominent one on Foundation Wiki, which are revised and corrected there, and the draft versions at Meta, which are left behind so that even if the translation might be perfect on Meta, they still have to be tweaked on WMF wiki to suit the latest version there. May the two versions some day meet in a happy unison, but in the meantime, it would be great if the English versions on Meta were updated to reflect the changes on WMF wiki. --Pxos (talk) 12:14, 26 April 2012 (UTC)

There are templates on meta that put that page in a category to be synced (perhaps someone can chime in that knows what they are). Or one can prod people here to sync the documents. Killiondude (talk) 00:04, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

Looks like Template:Update needed exists, but Killiondude is correct, prodding people here is probably the best way to do it - I've been responding to users and syncing to the Foundation wiki fairly frequently as have others. I prefer to do the syncing in batches but of course if someone requests here that a page is synced, it may be done more quickly. The Helpful One 00:11, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

Terms of Use (2012)/es

There is an error in the Spanish translation (section Resumen): it reapeats twice the phrase; "con la rara excepción" (with the odd exeption with the odd exeption of these policies). 80.1.32.60 13:13, 26 April 2012 (UTC)

Thanks, this should be fixed now as I synced the changes from the edits on Meta-Wiki. The Helpful One 16:16, 26 April 2012 (UTC)

Talk:New Terms of use/en

Where does one ask questions about the new Terms of Service? The links on the banners lead people to Foundation pages which are not open to all users for editing. This lack of a place for everyone to discuss closing matters handicaps its acceptance & implementation. -- Llywrch (talk) 18:19, 26 April 2012 (UTC)

A lot of discussion is taking place at Talk:Terms of use. However, there are smaller discussions taking place in other places. The Foundation wiki really wouldn't be used for such discussions as only a few people can edit it. Rjd0060 (talk) 18:58, 26 April 2012 (UTC)

Then why does the banner ad announcing the new TOU point to a page people cannot edit, instead of one of those locations you linked to? Either that wasn't very well thought out, or comments & requests for further information from people who just learned about the matter is not considered important. -- Llywrch (talk) 23:37, 1 May 2012 (UTC)

Talk:New Terms of use/en

where are the actual terms of use for review? The subject page seems to be a big explanation of why the new terms are awesome but doesn't contain a link to the actual text.— The preceding unsigned comment was added by 50.74.140.235 (talk) ~ 22:06, 26 April 2012 (UTC)

The new terms are available for viewing at wmf:Terms of Use (2012)/en. Rjd0060 (talk) 22:06, 26 April 2012 (UTC)

New Terms of use/it

La traduzione italiana è comprensibile, ma non delle migliori (anche confrontando il testo con l'originale inglese). In generale, la trovo poco scorrevole e ridondante, talora (molto) imprecisa. Mi spiace di essere così critico, ma alcuni passaggi, poi, sono scritti davvero in un pessimo italiano. Alcuni suggerimenti (in grassetto le parti modificate):

• Migliore comprensione: l'accordo aggiornato include un riepilogo di facile lettura, che agevola la comprensione dei termini.
• Maggiore protezione: i termini aggiornati proibiscono un certo numero di azioni - tra cui l'installazione di malware - che potrebbero compromettere i sistemi informatici di Wikimedia. Sebbene tali restrizioni non costituiscano una modifica della nostra politica, forniscono maggiore chiarezza sui comportamenti non tollerati.
• Ruolo più chiaro: in risposta alle richieste di indicazioni, l'accordo aggiornato chiarisce il ruolo e le responsabilità della comunità, inclusi gli editori e i contributori. Lo stesso accordo si propone, inoltre, lo scopo di fornire delle linee di condotta che consentano agli utenti di non incorrere in problemi.
• Maggiori feedback dalla comunità: l'accordo aggiornato assicura che le future modifiche ai termini d'uso saranno accompagnate da un processo di discussione comune. L'aggiornamento garantisce agli utenti un periodo di discussione di almeno 30 giorni prima dell'entrata in vigore (per approvazione del consiglio) di ogni revisione importante. È prevista un'eccezione di 3 giorni per modifiche urgenti di carattere legale e amministrativo.
• Maggiore chiarezza sulle condizioni di utilizzo delle licenze libere: secondo alcuni, i precedenti termini d'uso erano per certi aspetti fuorvianti sui requisiti necessari per l'adozione delle licenze libere. L'accordo aggiornato cerca di spiegare più chiaramente questi requisiti per editori e contributori (senza modificare le pratiche esistenti).
• Più strumenti per contrastare i casi di molestie, minacce, stalking, vandalismo e altri problemi di lungo periodo: i termini spiegano con maggior chiarezza che tali atti sono vietati. Una novità per Wikimedia: l'accordo aggiornato offre la possibilità di bandire globalmente un'utenza in caso di violazioni estreme su più wiki; un'esigenza espressa da numerosi membri della comunità. Anche se il bando globale è autorizzato dai termini d'uso, sarà implementato attraverso le politiche comunitarie.
• Migliore tutela legale: i termini aggiornati integrano le sezioni legali utilizzate solitamente per salvaguardare siti come il nostro, fornendo ad esempio una migliore spiegazione delle nostre condizioni di hosting , delle liberatorie e delle limitazioni di responsabilità per la Fondazione.

Nanae (talk) 09:24, 27 April 2012 (UTC) (Nanae su it.wikipedia)

Terms of use/Introduction/fa is ready

Terms of use/Introduction/fa is ready to go to the Foundation wiki.--Taranet (talk) 20:35, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

Thanks, I saw whilst you were doing in on the RC feed so have already synced it at wmf:New Terms of use/fa. :) The Helpful One 20:42, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

New Terms of use/de

Leichter zu lesende ist zutreffender als leicht zu lesende. 84.164.51.193 21:05, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

3 x kostenlos 1 x kostenfrei. Von der Idee her (frei) - und hier wird ja auch nichts nichts verkauft ("Und eine Packung Staubsaugerbeutel kriegen Sie kostenlos dazu, Gnä' Frau!") - wäre in allen Fällen kostenfrei vorzuziehen, oder? 213.169.163.156 11:50, 1 May 2012 (UTC)

Typo in der Zusammenfassung: "Wobei Ihnen Folgendes bewusst ist" - das "ihnen" muss man hier klein schreiben. - LWChris (talk) 20:07, 7 May 2012 (UTC)

• Das erste habe ich gerade erledigt, das mit dem frei und den Typo habe ich nicht gefunden. -Barras talk 21:12, 7 May 2012 (UTC)

New Terms of use/en

The grammar is wrong in the last line- the phrase reads "suffice it to say" while the correct edit should read "suffice to say". As the nature of the sufficing is referenced earlier in the piece, it is neither necessary nor proper to include the "it".

Quite right; fixed. Philippe (WMF) (talk) 23:06, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

changes

Am I to understand that the highlighted portions of the new agreement are the changes that have been made? If so, please state this somewhere. If not, I would highly suggest that you provide a quick method to see what is different about the new terms, even if you must do so in a non-binding "human readable" way.

This suggestion is not just for the benefit of the users but for yourself as well. It is my experience that unscrupulous companies often attempt to hide the exact nature of these changes, and that people very quickly notice these attempts, making the company look bad. I assume good faith on your part, and you've dealt with us fairly in the past, but that doesn't mean it wouldn't help your image to explain the differences clearly.

I thank you in advance for considering my request. Trlkly (talk) 11:39, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

Talk:Terms of Use (2012)

From the Terms of use page:

"This is a human-readable summary of the Terms of Use."

'Human Readable'? This description is either meaningless garbage or implies that we expect non-humans to attempt to read the Terms of Use - and don't want them to. Wikimedia should be available to ALL, regardless of species. My dog has taken SERIOUS offence at this and threatens to stop contributing to Wikipedia unless the Terms of Use are expressed in more inclusive language. He has engaged a lawyer to issue a Woof Bark Growl injunction on Wikimedia unless it incorporates canine-readable Terms of Use within the next 36 hours. Specism is, quite simply, unacceptable.Butcherscross (talk) 00:26, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

The user "My Dog" is a very appreciated member of the community and their contributions to the project are crucial. He/she/it/what has been especially valuable in the translation process. Hats off! --Pxos (talk) 02:39, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

Shhh.... Don't blow the cover! Seb az86556 (talk) 12:39, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

wikimediafoundation.org

It would be nice to see the foundation's US tax ID (20-0049703) directly on the Tax Deductibility page linked from the donate page. I just had do dig a while before I found it on Deductibility of donations. It is on the 501(c)3 status letter under EIN, but it's not obvious this is the same number.

--71.90.29.117 22:32, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

Thank you, great suggestion. I've done that. Philippe (WMF) (talk) 23:09, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

New Terms of use/en

In the article about Waxhaw, North Carolina, it indicates the railroad came to town in 1901. This is incorrect. The railraod arrived in 1888.

Hi there, thanks for your comments. If you could bring this up on the talk page of the article, w:en:Talk:Waxhaw, North Carolina, with some references to prove that it arrived in 1888, then someone will be able to update the article. The Helpful One 11:44, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

New Terms of use/de

Style: bei was es sich => wobei es sich

Done - thanks. The Helpful One 15:05, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

New Terms of use/en

"The updated Terms of Use is" - sorry but no; it should read "The updated Terms of Use ARE". —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 58.96.90.42 (talk • contribs) .

Fixed. Killiondude (talk) 05:58, 30 April 2012 (UTC)

Actually, in this case "is" is correct. "Terms of Use" is the title of the document. If discussing the terms collectively, "are" would be appropriate ("The updated terms of use are intended to be easier to understand...."), but in discussing the document as a whole, it takes "is." Similarly, "The Grapes of Wrath is a fine book" would be correct, while the song from which the title was taken correctly uses the plural: "He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored". --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 13:51, 30 April 2012 (UTC)

The plural was used elsewhere in the document leading normal people to believe Wikimedia made a small error, not a larger one by referring to "terms" as a singular noun. :) Killiondude (talk) 16:49, 30 April 2012 (UTC)

I agree it was confusing; I made it consistent it. :) --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 19:16, 30 April 2012 (UTC)

New Terms of use/pt

the correct form is: comumente not: comummente

Done - fixed, thanks. The Helpful One 17:36, 16 May 2012 (UTC)

New Terms of use/fr

it should be "LA DURE" labeur.. and not "LE DUR". (at the very end of the terms.

No, labeur is actually a masculine noun, so there's nothing to change. Please see fr:wikt:labeur. -- Quentinv57 ^(talk) 18:56, 1 May 2012 (UTC)

Terms of Use (2012)/en

Why is it necessary to state at the top of the document (http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Terms_of_Use_(2012)/en) that this is a "human-readable" summary of the Terms of Use? Can anyone not deduce that it is human-readable by the fact that they are reading it?— The preceding unsigned comment was added by 131.191.94.60 (talk) 19:43, 1 May 2012 (UTC)

It is geek jargon for a "simplified summary that is understandable for non-lawyers" (i.e., mere mortals), as used in the Creative Commons license. The joke (a play on the distinction computer programmers use between machine readable code vs. human readable text) may not translate well in other languages, or make sense to non-geeks. ~ Ningauble (talk) 21:06, 1 May 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the explanation. I could have guessed as much, but there are other possibilities than it being dry, dark humor, and it seems out of place in a document that is supposed to be taken seriously. I would suggest identifying the main text as technical writing, and leaving the word "summary" to speak for itself.— The preceding unsigned comment was added by 131.191.94.60 (talk) 22:36, 1 May 2012 (UTC)

Indeed. The implication that the actual terms of use are not human readable would mean there is no enforceable contract, for humans at least, because there can be no meeting of the minds. By leading with this silly joke, the drafter has expressly invalidated the contract. ~ Ningauble (talk) 14:31, 3 May 2012 (UTC)

Terms of Use (2012)/en

In the Steeler Heinz Field article that is a picture. It refers to the confluence of the Ohio and Allegheny rivers. Actually, it is the confluence of the Allegheny and Monongohela rivers that form the Ohio.— The preceding unsigned comment was added by 63.131.117.194 (talk) 01:34, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

Hi there, thanks for your comments. Terms of Use (2012)/en does not picture any confluence of rivers. If you could bring this up on the talk page of the article in question then someone may be able to assist you. ~ Ningauble (talk) 14:37, 3 May 2012 (UTC)

Template:Contribute French translation of "New Terms of use"

(English) In sect. 4 of the french Translation of the "New terms of use": Refraining from Certain Activities there is under the subtitle Engaging in Disruptive and Illegal Misuse of Facilities, the expression "Trojan horses" translated as "chevaux de Troyes". Now Troyes is in french Champagne, and has nothing to do with Troy of the mythical epos Iliad, which was destroyed by the celebrated Trojan horse. There should be written "chevaux de Troie".

(French) Dans la section 4 des nouvelles Conditions d’utilisation : Restrictions de certaines activités, au sous-titre "Faire un usage perturbant et illégal des équipements et services", il est indiqué qu'il est interdit d'introduire dans le système des "chevaux de Troyes". Or Troyes est en Champagne, et n'a rien à voir avec la Troie d'Asie mineure où a lieu la célèbre épopée de l'Iliade, qui est vaincue par le "cheval de Troie". Il convient donc de corriger l'orthographe.

Trassiorf (talk) 11:36, 3 May 2012 (UTC)

Done The Helpful One 18:02, 16 May 2012 (UTC)

Template:Contribute

Hello! I think that the new terms of use section should be also written in Greek. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 85.72.231.224 (talk) 07:29, 4 May 2012

Hi there! Thank you for your comments, are you able to translate into Greek? If so, we would really appreciate it if you could do some translating at <https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Translate&group=page-Terms+of+use&task=view&language=el>, then the translations can be copied over to Foundation wiki. The Helpful One 17:38, 16 May 2012 (UTC)

Apostrophes

For the French text in particular, the so-called dactylographic apostrophe (') should be systematically replaced with proper typographic apostrophes (’). Thank you. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Urhixidur (talk) 11:24, 4 May 2012

wikimediafoundation.org

So much for being impartial! The elimination of content for the subject "forward" that has been eliminated becasue of President Obama's use of the word forward for his political campaign is shameful. Wikipedia assures everyone that the content is not affected by the whims of others. Seems Wikipedia has a favorite becasue they have hidden all the content referring to forward in the political catagory. Seems this is a huge socialist code word and the Obama campaign does not like this. So wikipedia rolls over and pulls the references, nice going guys it is nice to see that you are so biased. Guess that makes our project nothing more than a left wing support vehicle and not the supposed unbiased publication you represent. — The preceding unsigned comment was added by 98.69.145.86 (talk) 03:28, 6 May 2012 (UTC)

I'm afraid that I have no idea to what you are referring. --Philippe (talk) 17:35, 6 May 2012 (UTC)

This apparently relates to w:en:Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Forward (Obama-Biden Campaign Slogan) and w:en:Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Forward (generic name of socialist publications), neither of which pertains to the wikimediafoundation.org site. ~ Ningauble (talk) 16:21, 8 May 2012 (UTC)

New Terms of use/ru

Problems of translation:

• таких, как установление вредоносного программного обеспечения → таких, как установка вредоносного программного обеспечения;
• для оставления комментариев → для комментирования;
• возможность глобальной блокады → возможность глобального блокирования;
• глобальная блокада авторизована Условиями пользования → глобальное блокирование санкционировано Условиям пользования. — ƒorajump, 14:18, 6 May 2012 (UTC)

Hi there! Please could you finish and correct the translations at <http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Translate&group=page-Terms+of+use%2FIntroduction&task=view&language=ru>, then leave a message here when you are done, I will then be able to sync this with the Foundation wiki. The Helpful One 14:26, 6 May 2012 (UTC)

Template:Contribute

Terms of Use: "For the protection of the Wikimedia Foundation and other users like yourself, if you do not agree with our Terms of Use, you cannot use our services."

can so. lysdexia (talk) 16:34, 8 May 2012 (UTC)

Not legally.--Jasper Deng (talk) 05:16, 24 May 2012 (UTC)

Template:Contribute

"Selbstverständlich stehen wir mit anderen gleichgesinnten Organisationen in Einklang, die ähnliche Vereinbarungen eingearbeitet haben" soll das Deutsch sein?

Ich habe das überarbeitet. —Pill (talk) 09:08, 13 May 2012 (UTC)

Could someone update Nutzungsbedingungen/Einleitung on wmfwiki? —Pill (talk) 09:08, 13 May 2012 (UTC)

Synced to wmf:New Terms of use/de. The Helpful One 17:43, 16 May 2012 (UTC)

Talk:New Terms of use/en announcement

Two minor corrections: "3-day" should be "three-day", and "long- term" should be "long-term".—DocWatson42 (talk) 01:12, 10 May 2012 (UTC)

Fixed, many thanks. PeterSymonds (talk) 20:35, 11 May 2012 (UTC)

Template:Contribute

right we need to make the sandbox page better by choosing who you want to text

Typo

In the new Terms of Use at section 4 concerning the Trojan horses, they are translated into French by "Chevaux de Troyes". But Troyes is in french Champagne, and has nothing to do with the old city of Troie, which was captured by Ulysses and his fellows aboard a gigantic horse, the Trojan horse. So the right way to write is "Chevaux de Troie".

Trassiorf (talk) 14:50, 11 May 2012 (UTC)

Trassiorf

Hi there, thanks for spotting this, this should be fixed now. The Helpful One 18:02, 16 May 2012 (UTC)

wikimediafoundation.org

In terms of a board review of editing:

Who will the Board be made up of? How can people ensure that information that is being posted is reliable? Can we as members, request for a change after a change has already been approved by the board and the general consensus of the members of the Wikimedia?

How often will the board see changes within the posts?

Thank you,

David

Chief Research Coordinator

I just wanted to correct a rather common mistake: "a first" in this and many other articles is clearly incorrect because there can only be one first of anything: So it should be "the first" ... :-)

Hi there! Although the page hasn't been touched since September 2008 and as such I am not sure if the role still exists, I have corrected this mistake for you. Thanks for letting us know, and if you do see any other errors, feel free to report them here. :-) The Helpful One 21:47, 12 May 2012 (UTC)

Terms of Use (2012)/ro

There is no page with the new Terms of Use in romanian. Someone should do it. I would do it, but I don't have any accounts on Wikimedia Foundation. -- Desenele (talk) 07:30, 13 May 2012 (UTC)

Hi there! Thank you for offering to translate, all the translations are done here on Meta-Wiki, then we copy over complete translations to the Foundation Wiki. Would you be able to do the translation into Romanian at <https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ATranslate&taction=translate&group=page-Terms+of+use&language=ro&limit=1000&task=untranslated>? The Helpful One 17:46, 16 May 2012 (UTC)

New Terms of use/en

'Following an historic...' good grammar costs nothing!

....but comes at the expense of my pride. Thanks for the correction, fixed.  :) Philippe (WMF) (talk) 16:52, 16 May 2012 (UTC)

I'm disappointed Philippe, what would your mum say? :P Thanks for proving that Philippe is slightly human. :) The Helpful One 17:48, 16 May 2012 (UTC)

That's a dirty lie, and I resemble it :) Philippe (WMF) (talk) 16:27, 23 May 2012 (UTC)

New Terms of use/es

Greetings, In the new Términos de Uso in Spanish (http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/New%20Terms%20of%20use/es?utm_source=TOU_top_TestClone2), you should add (ToU) after the first appearance of the term in the first line, i.e. the first sentence should read as follows: Tras un proceso extraordinario de edición y comentarios de la comunidad, los Términos de Uso (ToU) de Wikimedia han sido actualizados.

Cheers! --Technopat (talk) 00:24, 16 May 2012 (UTC)

Done, thank you. The Helpful One 17:49, 16 May 2012 (UTC)

Terms of use-Summary/pt

There is an error: "côrtes" should be "cortês". Please, correct. Thank you.

Thank you, done. Philippe (WMF) (talk) 16:49, 16 May 2012 (UTC)

wikimediafoundation.org

[Edit: german pre-text of new terms-of-use] Auf der Seite mit den neuen "terms of use" heißt es: "einer bedeutenden Website mitteils einer derart interaktiven" ... müsste es dort nicht eher "mittels" heißen? --79.212.86.100 10:58, 17 May 2012 (UTC)

ja, so ist es, den tippfehler habe ich produziert, sorry. habe es in der vorlage korrigiert, jetzt müssen wir auf jemanden warten, der die korrektur überträgt. danke für den hinweis & grüße, —Pill (talk) 11:26, 17 May 2012 (UTC)

@all: Please resync http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/New_Terms_of_use/de with http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Terms_of_use/Introduction/de. thanks in advance & cheers, —Pill (talk) 11:26, 17 May 2012 (UTC)

Synced. The Helpful One 11:40, 17 May 2012 (UTC)

Contribute to the New Terms of use in bulgarian

Как мога да помогна с някои корекции в текста на български? Видях няколко грешки, които се нуждаят от корекция. -- by Hansen 85.130.10.80 15:29, 22 May 2012 (UTC)

Please can you fix the errors by making adjustments at <http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Translate&group=page-Terms+of+use%2FIntroduction&task=view&language=bg>? I will then sync this to the Foundation wiki once you have fixed the errors. Thanks, The Helpful One 15:33, 22 May 2012 (UTC)

Моля, можете да поправите грешките, като се правят корекции на <http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Translate&group=page-Terms+of+use%2FIntroduction&task=view&language=bg>? След това ще се синхронизира това уики на Фондацията, след като сте фиксирани грешки. Отговорности: Google Преведено . Благодаря, The Helpful One 15:33, 22 May 2012 (UTC)

И това старите (досегашни) условия ли са? 85.130.10.80 15:35, 22 May 2012 (UTC)

That's actually the old terms of use, the new one is at <http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ATranslate&taction=translate&group=page-Terms+of+use&language=bg&limit=1000&task=view>. Thanks for offering to translate! :) The Helpful One 15:40, 22 May 2012 (UTC)

Това е всъщност старите условия за ползване, нова е <http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ATranslate&taction=translate&group=page-Terms+of+use&language=bg&limit=1000&task=view>. Благодаря за предлагане да превежда! :) The Helpful One 15:40, 22 May 2012 (UTC)

Por nada :) BTW, there's no problem in answering me just in english. Yet this is a translation matter. But anyone's welcome to ask for help with bulgarian language :) 85.130.10.80 19:37, 22 May 2012 (UTC) Here * we are editing this text. When will be updated this one? --- Hansen, the Keeper of the keys :) 85.130.10.80 21:56, 22 May 2012 (UTC)

Hi! If you've completed the translation of that text, just let me know here and I will update it for you. The Helpful One 22:15, 22 May 2012 (UTC)

I think that Introduction is ready, for now. It had some minor errors/laxities. If there are other suggestions and/or it must be reviewed by someone else, do what is necessary. Else, you can publish it. :) 85.130.10.80 00:54, 23 May 2012 (UTC)

Synced in this edit - thank you! The Helpful One 01:03, 23 May 2012 (UTC)

* Actually this link I mentioned up there, as I see now, is the full text. I meant the Intro (which you've updated, yes :) 85.130.10.80 01:11, 23 May 2012 (UTC)

wikimediafoundation.org

hey you

Hello! The Helpful One 18:10, 22 May 2012 (UTC)

New Terms of use/en

It is my belief that "terms" should be a plural word. "Never before has a major website’s terms been drafted" I would therefore change to "Never before have...."

I also think that "an historic" is wrong, though I know it's widely used, even by the editor of Harper's Magazine. That's partly why I dropped my subscription.

"terms" is plural when it is discussing the collective terms discussed, but singular when it refers to the title of the document. :) For comparison, "Grapes of Wrath is my favorite book. Grapes was written by John Steinbeck" but "Grapes are my favorite fruit."

In terms of thinking "an historic" wrong, you are in good company, although there are passionate defenders of it. :) Some background reading that may be of interest is here, while Oxford Dictionaries suggests it's a hold over from a historic practice. :) --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 11:38, 25 May 2012 (UTC)

Unless you pronounce it 'istoric "an" is an affectation, as it is with "hotel". But hey! Affectations are much beloved of the English speaking peoples. Rich Farmbrough 23:43 26 May 2012 (GMT).

Terms of Use (2012)/es

Inaccuracy in Spanish translation:

Gracias

Apreciamos que usted se haya tomado tiempo para leer estos Términos y condiciones de uso, y estamos muy felices de que usted contribuya a los Proyectos y use nuestros servicios. Mediante sus contribuciones, usted está ayudando a construir algo realmente grande – no solamente una importante colección de Proyectos de referencia editados en colaboración que provee educación e información a millones que de otro modo podrían carecer de acceso a la misma, pero también una vibrante comunidad de pares igualmente involucrados, enfocados en una muy noble meta.

Suggested text, instead:

Gracias

Apreciamos que usted se haya tomado tiempo para leer estos Términos y condiciones de uso, y estamos muy felices de que contribuya a los Proyectos y use nuestros servicios. Mediante sus contribuciones, usted está ayudando a construir algo realmente grande –no solamente una importante colección de Proyectos de referencia editados en colaboración, que provee de educación e información a millones que de otro modo podrían carecer de acceso a la misma–, sino también una vibrante comunidad de pares igualmente involucrados, enfocados en una muy noble meta.

Updated terms of use summary uses spaced em dashes. It should not.

The updated terms of use (or at least its summary) uses spaced em dashes. This is a little confusing as the Wikipedia MOS says that spaced em dashes should not be used, and most readers of these TOS will be Wikipedia users. So it sends a bad message. Can we make the terms of service actually respect Wikipedia style guidelines? —TedPavlic (talk/contrib/@) 15:11, 24 May 2012 (UTC)

Citation needed. :-) Remember, English Wikipedia may be the single largest project, but I'm not certain that "most readers of the TOS will be Wikipedia users" - through implication, I think you mean English Wikipedia users, since Wikipedia doesn't have a unified MOS throughout all language versions.  :) Philippe (WMF) (talk) 19:15, 25 May 2012 (UTC)

Although, to be fair, the list of projects that are likely to have an MOS applicable to English is limited (only around 10-15 counting all sister projects, Meta, Strategy, Outreach and Simple English wiki). Of course, for any style guide advocating against a spaced em dash (e.g. Chicago Manual of Style, English Wikipedia MOS) you are likely to find one that does the opposite (e.g. AP style guide); however, it would be useful to a degree if the WMF had a consistent house style for its own publications (and they probably do have one at the Com department), which could be the English Wikipedia MOS for English language texts or a different one (for other languages, there are different choices and variables, but where there is a nontrivial choice [in case of some languages there is a standardization body that settles questions of orthography and style], the translators would probably benefit from guidance for consistency's sake).--Bence (talk) 23:07, 5 June 2012 (UTC)

The WMF is, if anything, consistently inconsistent. Please allow them that! ;-) Killiondude (talk) 07:24, 6 June 2012 (UTC)

Switched to en dashes in this edit. Let me know if you notice any other issues (or if you wanted something different). --MZMcBride (talk) 20:51, 7 June 2012 (UTC)

foundation:Terms of Use

Please make correction to foundation:Terms of Use page. There is a broken link to the old terms of use at the bottom of the page. Replace it with this - http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Terms_of_Use_(2009) --Shureg (talk) 21:01, 27 May 2012 (UTC)

Done by Thehelpfulone. Rjd0060 (talk) 09:32, 29 May 2012 (UTC)

Ah yes, sorry for not replying here, I also fixed it on all the language subpages, which had the same problem as the banner is on all of those pages. Thank you for reporting the problem. :-) The Helpful One 10:40, 29 May 2012 (UTC)

Template:Contribute

Zitat:"Hinweis: Diese Zusammenfassung ist nicht Bestandteil der Nutzungsbedingungen und stellt kein Rechtsdokument dar." KLasse, das man bei Wikipedia nun nicht mehr seine Meinung sagen / schreiben darf.

Änderungen können auf dieser Seite vorgeschlagen werden. AGK [•] 17:15, 3 June 2012 (UTC)

wikimediafoundation.org

What school, if any, did your techs go to? I typed an inquiry for Heather Lynch on wikipedia. What I got was Heather Stevens a fictional character on TV. Like the two are the same. Are your volunteers and workers of such low intelligence, or if they have any intelligence, don't use it, that they can not properly program a computer, or know the difference between that which is requested and that which they deem to put up, or are thy totally stoned and drunk all the time? There was a time when a person could get quality products and service because the workers took pride in their work. Today, it seems the worker rather do drugs and watch sports then work. The workers have the intelligence, its just that they don't want to use it, except in the case of sports,getting stoned and drunk, and scratching their gentiles or backside.

Thank you for getting in touch, but this complaint relates to a Wikimedia project (like Wikipedia), not the actual Wikimedia Foundation site. If you wish to suggest an improvement to the search suggestions function, you might subscribe to the wikitech-l mailing list and circulate your thoughts among the subscribers. Should you choose to do so, you may wish to remember that many of our developers are volunteers who give their time to this project free of charge. Yours, AGK [•] 17:12, 3 June 2012 (UTC)

Work with us

Keewaydin Island? There is no Keewaydin Island off of Naples Fl. It is actually Key Island. There was an old club on Key Island called Keewaydin club.

Template:Contribute

Your donation form is too smart for its own good. I tried to use LastPass (firefox 14.0) to fill in credit card information. First appears name and address. No problem. Then the credit card info drops down. As soon as LastPass tries to fill it in, that section disappears. I'll try again next year.

I'm not familiar with LastPass, but I'll pass that along to the fundraising team. Thank you for telling us about the issue! --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 20:02, 20 June 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the report. We investigated this last year and it was determined that the first step to a resolution required a fix by LastPass. The issue is being tracked by bug 3422 in Bugzilla. We will look again to see if that has been resolved and, if so, determine any issues on our end. --Peter Gehres (WMF) (talk) 20:19, 20 June 2012 (UTC)

wikimediafoundation.org

Please pass along my thanks to Jimmy Wales for making Wikipedia a reality and for preserving and freely sharing knowledge for knowledge's sake. You and all the staff of Wikipedia have given me far more than my tiny $5 donation could ever buy. I wish it could be $5 million. Thanks so much for being here.— The preceding unsigned comment was added by 99.37.49.127 (talk)

Thank you for your kind words and your donation. I will pass that along, but want to note that the real heroes here are the volunteers who create and curate the content. Staff is happy to support them as they can, but it is their tireless efforts that have made the projects so great. :) --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 19:57, 20 June 2012 (UTC)

Template:Contribute

Asking for money is advertising.

When KERA runs a pledge drive, they are advertising that they are looking for donations. It doesn't matter if the company in question is the one that is running the interruption, it is still - an interruption of service. Placing a window of any kind that advertises, either way you look at it, is still an advertising window.

You would do better to advertise products like the original people who tirelessly contribute their time and effort to write the articles that MADE Wikipedia what it is today AND pay them.

My question is, do any of these contributions go towards the people who write and post WIKIPEDIA's articles ?

If the answer to that question is NO, then there is a problem of balance in the distribution of the monetary wealth and salary towards it's founders, like Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 66.169.108.202 (talk) 20:13, 22 June 2012

wikimediafoundation.org

Hi this DEVA M I want to create own my account how to do can u tell me

Request for an account on the foundation wiki, though it is limited to people who are administrators on one or more Wikimedia content projects and demonstrate a need for it.--Jasper Deng (talk) 01:12, 27 June 2012 (UTC)

Resolution:Board visitors

Shouldn't "8-1" here actually be "8-0-1"? As I understand it, the notation "x-y" usually means "x in support, y in opposition," while "x-y-z" means "x in support, y in opposition, z abstaining or not present." --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 02:29, 5 July 2012 (UTC)

I believe you're right, but wouldn't that make it 8-1-1? Which is what it says, but in words. Rjd0060 (talk) 05:30, 18 July 2012 (UTC)

Yes, it would. I was reading the words as explaining the "1", not as supplementing it. Which doesn't add up to ten Board members, my bad! At any rate, changing it to either "8-1-1" or to "eight in support, one opposed, and one absent" would avoid that confusion for others. --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 09:05, 19 July 2012 (UTC)

...any other thoughts on this? --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 12:08, 14 September 2012 (UTC)

Terms of Use/ru

In Russian version of the text, correct <tt>info {{@}} <tt>wikimedia.org</tt> to <tt>info</tt> {{@}} <tt>wikimedia.org</tt> Hinote (talk) 14:01, 7 July 2012 (UTC)

Fixed. Thank you. Rjd0060 (talk) 08:48, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

Date

So this passed on "July 11, 2011", huh? ;-) Ed ^{[talk] [en]} 07:05, 14 July 2012 (UTC)

Fixed, thanks. PeterSymonds (talk) 07:17, 14 July 2012 (UTC)

Resolution:Board visitor - Doron Weber (2012)

The link to Doron Weber is broken. This works. --Palnatoke (talk) 06:50, 21 July 2012 (UTC)

This was corrected earlier today. Thank you. Rjd0060 (talk) 03:13, 22 July 2012 (UTC)

Terms of Use/de

Hello. Please see Meta_talk:Babylon#wmf:Terms_of_Use.2Fde_has_mistake. Please update wmf:Terms of Use/de from Terms of use/de. Probably something is wrong with <OL STYLE="list-style:lower-roman">, but parts of the text aren't showing there. Thank you. — MA (audiencia) 08:15, 21 July 2012 (UTC)

This was fixed by Lizzy. Thank you. — MA (audiencia) 11:25, 23 July 2012 (UTC)

Terms of Use

On the subject matter 'taller towers' you may include Tamilnadu Villupuram dt. Tirukovilur Thrivikramaswami temple East gopuram,said to be 192 ft. tall. Likewise the Rajagopuram of Vriddhagireeswarar temple,Vriddhachalam,Cuddalore dt.Tamilnadu state.152 ft.Many more are also there in Tamilnadu temples.For more details Tamilnadu Hindu Religious and Charitable Endownments Department may be contacted thro' their website #tngov.in.

I feel this has nothing to do with the wmfwiki itself. — MA (audiencia) 10:24, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

"In the Heat of the Night" article

The article on "In the Heat of the Night" TV series appears to be yet one more 100% completely plegerized copies of material on the subject.

Google "Anne-Marie Johnson My Highschool was bigger than this town"

John Bonaccorso

Hi, John. :) It can be really hard to figure out who plagiarized from whom. With the article, for instance, that phrase was first placed into the article in May 2008. I can't find any source that's clearly older than our article that used that text. This one, for instance, was created in 2009, and it was clearly copied from us.

As a volunteer, I work a lot on copyright issues to try to help make sure that our content is legitimately our own. One of my favorite tricks is to figure out if the content evolved "naturally." We look at where the content entered and then where it changed, trying to figure out if the sites that share the material use it in the old way or the new way. If they are more similar to our article after it changed, that makes it more likely that we had it first.

This is the first change to that content. It happened four minutes after the article was created. There no text matches for one string as it was in the original. Taking one of the matches you found at random, it's obvious that we did not copy from them. It can be tedious, but these kinds of investigations often reveal that Wikipedia has a wide influence on other writers. :)

If you're worried about it, though, or about any article on Wikipedia, I'd encourage you to view w:Wikipedia:Copyright violations or w:Wikipedia:Copyvio101. Either of these will tell you what to do to bring the content to the attention of other editors who may be able to either verify that it is our own or remove it, if they can't. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 16:29, 27 July 2012 (UTC)

access to non-public data policy

hoi, please update: Meta-Wiki / Foundation wiki. cheers, —Pill (talk) 19:25, 23 July 2012 (UTC)

Done. Thanks. — MA (audiencia) 10:22, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

Terms of Use/es

Please synch and update that page from the source Terms of use/es. It has several modifications and corrections, most of them to correct innacuracies and parts of text that made absolutely no sense (I think somebody go ahead and used an automatic translator). Aditionaly, please do fix the excesive breaks in lines, as can be seen in section 7. Thank you. — MA (audiencia) 17:16, 24 July 2012 (UTC)

It's now Done by me. — MA (audiencia) 10:47, 2 August 2012 (UTC)

Contact us comment fo Bengali Wikipedia

I want to request all writers in Wikipedia Bengali version to use freely the English words which are commonly used by all Bengalees . Particularly in scientific or technical matters English words should be used . This will make Bengali language richer . All higher studies in science and technology are understood better in English language for historical reason . Regards , B.B.Das.

Wouldn't this be an issue for the Bengali Wikipedia to address? --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 22:50, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

Home - let's open the WMF wiki for public editing

Moved this conversation to Talk:Liberating wikimediafoundation.org. --MZMcBride (talk) 02:42, 31 July 2012 (UTC)

Tolikara,Papua

[[3]]

I don't know what your point was, but that image is no longer available. --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 06:50, 6 August 2012 (UTC)

wmf:Terms of Use/ja

Hi. On wmf:Terms of Use/ja, there is a blank line "b" in a list of "7. コンテンツの利用許諾". Regards, Akaniji (talk) 12:08, 12 August 2012 (UTC)

I fixed it I think. Regards. -- MarcoAurelio (talk) 12:17, 12 August 2012 (UTC)

wikimediafoundation.org - equity

To stay true to its foundation principles Wikipedia must not allow editors however senior to restrict freedom of information and publication by abusing own personal position (i.e. Lacturer in Information Systems) to override or delete contributions that contradict or do not fit their political convictions and motives, and thereby to influence the content on Wikipedia. It is wrong to assume that most contributors are lay people with little academic background who do not know a definition of a reliable source. For Mr Jenkins from South Australia, this is not something that should do him proud. Intelligence can be used in a good and in a bad way and academics should stay on the academic side and not abuse their academic position to influence political debate. Mr Jenkins many of us know what a reliable source is because many of us hold equally high degrees as you do and possibly more relevant to publishing too.

Stories2/en

This Wikimedia Foundation page (linked in subject headline) is supposedly about Wikipedia "changing lives", with "amazing stories" about Wikipedia that users share.

This entry has nothing to do with Wikipedia, it seems. It's just blather and should be removed:

I have been in Radio for 34 years, I have won over 66 awards, in credit for serving the communities that my radio signals cover and filling their needs on all levels. Until 1999 I ran a total of 11 stations, since I run 4 land based and 6 internet. I am a cutting edge person, I hold many copy writes for the type of advertising we have designed using the best of all worlds. Internet, Radio, and dry. It is called Mirror Marketing, and @ as well as trademarked to my own company "Global Radio and Asset Management " I have been written up in the greatest read ever B R E Mag. with a 6 pg. spread on my devotion to small market radio and helping inner city kids reach their dreams. I have worked on many B O D's and panels including AWART, FAB, APAHC, ACDAA, Who's who, Who's who in America and lastly Who's who in Radio and Television, GAB, Angle number one of the syndicated radio show, the Iron Angles" as well as host of the also syndicated radio talk show " Through the eyes of your dog " International adoption league, Woman in Arts, and so on. Today I am fighting my 7th battle brought by a brother and a sister since 1983 when at just 21 years old my dad named me the head of Dee Rivers Radio Something that has never set well with two out of 5 siblings. The best thing I can tell you is that every day when I talk to a listener and they tell me how much they love one of our stations, or I am working with one of our long term employees almost all have been working with me for over 14 years, then any of the grief brought on by their lies and the hassles of years of this kind of thing, makes it all worth while!!!

Best wishes. - 2001:558:1400:10:B026:9996:EE58:3FBC 14:21, 24 August 2012 (UTC)

Also, this one is mostly a big advertisement for the lady's new business, "Bloomers", with no mention at all of Wikipedia:

I grew up on a farm in an age with no computers and in a place with only two television channels. I learned to create imaginative worlds for myself. Worlds in the thick forest that rose behind my house, the meadows alive with fireflies, the steamy-hot vegetable gardens, the abandoned greenhouse with the secret basement and the whispering pines. Those places were my playground. That was my world.

I earned my undergraduate degree in agriculture because that is what I knew and loved. No one in my family went to college. My 4-H coach walked into the dean’s office and said let this girl in. She is something special. He saved me.

As a junior at Penn State I took a money and banking course as an elective. In a class of 400 I received the highest grade. I promptly changed my major from animal science to agricultural economics. Now I wouldn’t be just taking care of the animals, I would be running the whole farm! I was going places. I subsequently was awarded a fellowship to Georgetown University where I earned my masters degree in economics and international finance.

Upon graduation, I went into investment banking where I saw a lot of people getting rich by starting, buying and selling companies. I wanted to be a part of that. With a relentless ambition I started a toy company with my husband, which I helped run for seven years. Our company specialized in classic toys with a twist. In 1990 we were named one of the Entrepreneurs of the Year by Entrepreneur magazine.

During this time we had started a family and sadly our marriage ended - a casualty of working together in part. I moved to California and gave my half of the toy company to my husband. I felt that I could rebuild my life and my wealth and I did. It proved to be a lot harder than I thought especially with little kids, but I did it.

When my daughter attended preschool she had two best friends, Rosie and Lily. Her babysitter was Iris. She thought Iris was mean because Iris made her carry her dishes to the sink and brush her teeth before she went to bed. I loved Iris! I started imagining a world where little flower girls like Rosie and Lily lived, a place where evolution took a left turn in the road and plants could talk – plants and trees with kid’s names like Bud, Daisy and Violet. And they lived in the places of my youth. One day I found myself writing about it and painting characters and the idea of Bloomers began to present itself to me. It began to grow on me.

Every year since I had moved to California I took my kids back to my mom’s farm in Pennsylvania. That was our vacation. My mom had kept a thriving vegetable garden as big as our house. The kids loved to pull the carrots and onions from the ground. They dug up potatoes, squealing with delight as excited as if they were discovering nuggets of gold. We picked lettuce and cucumbers and squash. We made salads and potato soup. We cooked our garden booty and they learned to consider eating vegetables. We went on hayrides, built bonfires and rode horses, ate the wild blackberries that grew in the forest and were scared by their cousins who hid in the cornfields.

Back in California, I bought a big house in Venice and planted a huge garden in the front yard with bananas and many exotic flowering trees and plants. I worked my way up in a variety of good jobs, even as a partner in my own company. But they were jobs that took me away from my true love of gardening and growing which was always there in the back of my mind, in the front of my yard.

Not too long ago, my daughter found my flower girl paintings and said, “Mom you have to bring this to life. You have to work on this. This is cuter than anything out there.” So I decided to make my world come alive. I wanted to pass on the thrill of connecting with nature to other children. I wanted them to fall in love with gardening like I did. Like my children did. I had several false starts all the while working on other things. Finally, I was able to sell my apparel company and raise an additional $500,000. I hired a game developer, artists, animators and illustrators. I did it. I envisioned it and then I created it.

When we started programming the game, I watched a TED video featuring celebrity chef Jamie Oliver. He went into a town in West Virginia to try and teach the residents how to cook and eat healthier food. They filmed him in an elementary school where he held up vegetables and asked the first graders if they could name the vegetable. Amazingly, none could. Not one vegetable was identified. Not even a potato. Shocking.

I’ve come to the realization that Bloomers has to be more than a game - even more than an educational game. I want the children playing it to be incentivized to go out and plant something – anything – a flower, a vegetable, a tree. I want them to know the joy of planting a potato, taking care of it, digging it up, cooking it and eating it. I want them to go out and get their hands dirty. I want to instill a passion in children to plant trees. Trees have the singular ability to save our world by processing carbon dioxide and generating oxygen. But they have to be planted and nurtured. Someone has to make sure they bloom.

I intend for Bloomers to lead the revolution of companies that seek to bridge the virtual world and the real world for children in their homes and in school as they begin their journey to ‘Know and Grow’.

All the best. - 2001:558:1400:10:B026:9996:EE58:3FBC 14:27, 24 August 2012 (UTC)

Hi there! Thank you very much for reporting this here, I have removed these stories from the aforementioned page on Foundation wiki. Please feel free to report any other stories that you notice of this nature in the future. Best, The Helpful One 14:43, 24 August 2012 (UTC)

Tax Deductibility/es

The translation of the page from English is too poor, I'd write it like this:The translation that is one the page in English is very poor.

Estados Unidos

La Fundación Wikimedia (NIF en EEUU: 20-0049703) es una organización sin ánimo de lucro establecida en el IRS de los Estados Unidos en la sección 501(c)(3), y, por esa razón, donaciones de personas o entidades que se encuentran en los Estados Unidos pueden beneficiarse de deducciones de impuestos.

Resto de países

La Fundación Wikimedia es una organización sin ánimo de lucro establecida en el IRS de los Estados Unidos en la sección 501(c)(3), y, por esa razón, donaciones de personas o entidades que se encuentran en los Estados Unidos pueden beneficiarse de deducciones de impuestos. Las donaciones de personas o entidades situadas fuera de los Estados Unidos pueden no ser deducibles de impuestos en los Estados Unidos y en cualquier otro sitio; en tales casos, los donantes deben buscar asesoramiento fiscal local. Cabe destacar que Wikimedia no busca donaciones de personas o entidades que se encuentra bajo cualquier jurisdicción que prohíbe o restringe las actividades de recaudación de fondos por parte de organizaciones benéficas internacionales como Wikimedia o que aplica tasas sobre las donaciones hechas a tales organizaciones.

Template:Contribute

Hay una falta de ortografía sistemática en algunas formas de «reusar»: no es «reuso» sino «reúso», «reusa» sino «reúsa»... Convendría que lo revisara algún hispanohablante para corregirlo. --80.33.231.125 13:36, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

wikimediafoundation.org ..wikimedia copied

Hello, I just saw this German website and as it seems to copy wikipedia but appears to be "bashing" certain groups of people and individuals I thought I would bring it to your attention. http://wikimannia.org/Hauptseite Kind regards, Sharron Sawyer, Berlin Germany

Home

hi im new here want to start page the religious history page about chishtiya sufi cult from india thank your regards

You may see en:Template:Welcome and en:Wikipedia:Introduction. Regards, -- MarcoAurelio (talk) 14:48, 19 September 2012 (UTC)

"Removed accounts" log notice

The notice above the log confuses the issue because "removing accounts" is blocking, (likly) only with mw:Manual:$wgBlockDisablesLogin enabled. IMO it should read "disabled accounts" because accounts are never completely removed, only disabled/blocked.--Jasper Deng (talk) 01:19, 14 September 2012 (UTC)

Update Advisory Board page

Add Barry newstead. --Arjunaraoc (talk) 03:21, 19 September 2012 (UTC)

Hi. Yes, we should update that page. Do you have any proposed text for his bio? --MZMcBride (talk) 03:23, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

Protected for a year?

Should this feedback page really be protected for a whole year? As WMF pages cannot be edited, this is the way to reach the Foundation staff members easily. Now it's even more difficult. --Pxos (talk) 14:44, 19 September 2012 (UTC)

Hi. I've gone ahead and unprotected the page. No, this page really can't be protected from IP editing. If there's a spam issue, we'll need to discuss it and possible means of addressing it. There are a lot of anti-spam options available, including the AbuseFilter, the spam blacklist, and various other tools. --MZMcBride (talk) 03:25, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

FAQ

In this part of the FAQ, change In Summer 2012 [[wm2012:|Wikimania will be in Washington DC, USA.]] to In summer 2013, [[wm2013:|Wikimania will be in Hong Kong.]].Yutsi (talk) 03:54, 27 September 2012 (UTC)

Updated. :) --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 16:26, 27 September 2012 (UTC)

A problem on Thai Terms of Use page

Please fix a problem as described here. Thank you so much. --Aristitleism (talk) 13:23, 4 October 2012 (UTC)

Done. --Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 12:39, 11 November 2012 (UTC)

Terms of Use

Near the top of http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Terms_of_Use it says "This is a human-readable summary of the Terms of Use". Is this a joke at the expense of lawyers? The Terms of Use are themselves human-readable. I am not sure this page is the place for frivolity. Nurg (talk) 19:55, 5 October 2012 (UTC)

Hi.

I understand your point, but I don't believe this was intended as a joke at the expense of lawyers. I'm almost certain that Wikimedia got the idea of a "human-readable" summary from Creative Commons (where you can see nearly identical language). The wording was probably intended to be a bit tongue-in-cheek.

I don't believe "human-readable summary" must be there, though. If you have alternate wording suggestions, I'm open to implementing them. --MZMcBride (talk) 02:00, 6 October 2012 (UTC)

Note that ToU, licenses, etc., can also be digitally encoded. See w:WP:Microformats. - Amgine/^{meta wikt wnews blog wmf-blog goog news} 02:07, 6 October 2012 (UTC)

Yes, it came from Creative Commons and yes, as previously discussed, it is a joke. Any of the following would be better and wiser than "human-readable":   "non-technical", "plain-English" (substitute translation target name), or "simple". ~ Ningauble (talk) 15:59, 13 October 2012 (UTC)

So, yes, it's a joke. And what of it?  :) That page is important, and it's equally important to pass along our culture as well, and our culture is one that is able to poke fun at itself a little. I don't think it artificially infuses levity or anything, and I have heard no reports of someone thinking it's a page from "The Onion" and thereby disregarding the Terms. :)

I don't mind if we change it, but really? REALLY? That's kind of a disappointment, culturally speaking. If you decide to change it, let me know what your final term choice is, because I'll need to run it by Geoff. Believe it or not, the name of sections matters, and - while this one is fine - there are narrowly defined terms in law that we'll want to avoid. Personally, I'd say "leave it alone." Philippe (WMF) (talk) 16:12, 13 October 2012 (UTC)

No doubt most people can understand the sense of this, even if they do a double-take at the geeky little joke (a play on the distinction computer programmers make between machine readable code vs. human readable text). Being a native English speaker and a bona fide geek by training and profession, I totally get the joke. I like the joke, and I do not object to injecting a modicum of levity here and there. My reservation is not because it is a joke per se, but because it is a geeky joke. I do not know what proportion of people who do a double-take at this wry turn of phrase are left smiling in the end.

The reason I think it unwise to use this joke here is because I believe a general tendency to "geek culture", which has pervaded wiki culture from its earliest days, is one of the impediments to contributor recruitment and retention. That is just my opinion, and others do not think anyone is put off or left out by it.

This little joke is a small thing. Culture is made up of small things, but has a big impact. I have attempted to tone down the geekiness at Wikipedia in small ways on a few occasions. Those attempts have always met stiff resistance. Always. The strength of that resistance leaves me with the impression of a turf battle over the dominance of geek culture within wiki culture and confirms, in my mind, that the general tendency to geekiness is a barrier to entry.

That said, I don't expect it to change. The joke is a small thing, and wiki culture is geeky. Culture evolves, or not, of its own accord. ~ Ningauble (talk) 12:05, 14 October 2012 (UTC)

Many Terms of Use pages are not "human-readable," though this one probably is. As far as Ningauble's comment, I think the "double-take" rather than the "smiling at the end" is the point: It hopefully gets people to actually read the summary and reminds them that there's more to it than just the summary. --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 05:55, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

wmf:Staff

The tiger image is linked to the file description page, instead of user page (or wmf:Rory in this case) like what other images of staff are... Liangent 15:25, 8 October 2012 (UTC)

It looks like all of the images are linking to the file description pages since August 10, 2012. --MZMcBride (talk) 19:53, 8 October 2012 (UTC)

FAQ/es

Typo: Protectos = Proyectos

FAQ in spanish —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 187.134.155.144 (talk) 06:47, 13 October 2012

Template:Contribute

How many countless hours of professional time cleaning up core entries do you squander with this kind of narrow focus on revenue? -- Robert Thomas Hayes Link

• Hi Robert. I'm not sure what you mean by core entries - could you provide a little more context? Just a reminder - this page is for discussing the wikimediafoundation.org website. Thanks,  ℳono  23:49, 22 October 2012 (UTC)

Problem trying to donate via BPay

Hi,

Trying to donate via BPay, returns internal error as below;

Internal error
Jump to: navigation, search

Requested an unavailable or non-existent form.

Backtrace:

#0 /srv/www/org/wikimedia/payments/extensions/DonationInterface/gateway_forms/RapidHtml.php(134): Gateway_Form_RapidHtml->set_html_file_path('default')
#1 /srv/www/org/wikimedia/payments/extensions/DonationInterface/gateway_common/GatewayForm.php(124): Gateway_Form_RapidHtml->__construct(Object(GlobalCollectAdapter))
#2 /srv/www/org/wikimedia/payments/extensions/DonationInterface/gateway_common/GatewayForm.php(315): GatewayForm->displayForm()
#3 /srv/www/org/wikimedia/payments/extensions/DonationInterface/gateway_common/GatewayForm.php(287): GatewayForm->resultHandlerError()
#4 /srv/www/org/wikimedia/payments/extensions/DonationInterface/globalcollect_gateway/globalcollect_gateway.body.php(158): GatewayForm->resultHandler()
#5 /srv/www/org/wikimedia/payments/includes/SpecialPageFactory.php(493): GlobalCollectGateway->execute(NULL)
#6 /srv/www/org/wikimedia/payments/includes/Wiki.php(263): SpecialPageFactory::executePath(Object(Title), Object(RequestContext))
#7 /srv/www/org/wikimedia/payments/includes/Wiki.php(603): MediaWiki->performRequest()
#8 /srv/www/org/wikimedia/payments/includes/Wiki.php(513): MediaWiki->main()
#9 /srv/www/org/wikimedia/payments/index.php(58): MediaWiki->run()
#10 {main}

ian, perth Western Australia —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 203.161.68.80 (talk) 23:38, 23 October 2012

Thank you. I've passed that along to the fundraising team. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 17:46, 24 October 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the head's up, Ian! A few people emailed us about this as well, and our tech team is working on a fix. We should have BPay back up soon. Thanks again! Jvandavier (talk) 17:53, 24 October 2012 (UTC)

wikimediafoundation.org - ownership of images

Hi I am surprised to see sometimes a message in the header, asking to help Wikimedia. I won't do that, cause as a photographer since my pictures are online it's impossible for me so chance the licence, delete my picture or change resolution. It's means the owner of the picture is no more the owner and this is against the internationnal laws of copyright ! So to help wiki :

- I won't post anymore picture - I won't advertise the content

And this unless my problem is solved ! Regards,

Samuel Photographer —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 84.6.44.61 (talk) 14:14, 24 October 2012

• Hi. Wikimedia projects only accept freely licensed content, where the author grants everyone permanent permission to use the content under the license. These licenses often require that people credit the work to you, but there are violations and also licenses that do not require this. If you have donated images to Wikimedia, you cannot revoke that content from the license. If you do not wish to license your content under a free license, you can refrain from uploading images in the future. Our terms are not a violation of any kind of copyright law, because if you own the content, you are authorized to grant us non-revocable permission. I hope this clears things up.  ℳono  15:27, 30 October 2012 (UTC)

Login issue to wikimediafoundation.org

https://wikimediafoundation.org does not accept my Wikipedia login, yet I can login to Wikipedia and meta.wikimedia.org with it. Is wikimediafoundation.org has different login ?— The preceding unsigned comment was added by DimitriAu (talk)

Yes, it's a special login. That wiki is not connected to the SUL-system. -- Tegel _(Talk) 23:13, 24 October 2012 (UTC)

That is confusing (at least for me), the donate link from wikipedia.org pointed to wikimediafoundation.org but did not return to wikipedia.org after the donation. Naturally, I hit login there, without reading the small print.

Wikimedia ZA and Wikimedia KE

Can some one update this page? I believe that Wikimedia ZA and Wikimedia KE are now officially and recognised chapters. --Thuvack (talk) 10:03, 27 October 2012 (UTC)

wikimediafoundation.org

Я несколько дней назад послал для Википедии свою статью "Таблица Менделеева должна выглядеть так" Это статья из блога ЖЖ borgece.livejournal.com . В статье помещена таблица Менделеева такой, какой она должна быть на самом деле. Там обосновывается и доказывается, почему это так, но Википедия, поместив любые версии (конечно же не соответствующие правдивости), мою, то есть такую которая через 20 лет будет считаться основной, по каким-то причинам у себя не разместила. Мне кажется, я ещё что-то посылал вам. Возможно, о действительном устройстве атома, происхождении полезных ископаемых на Земле или солнечных выбросах, но так как это не соответствует позиции науке в этих вопросах, отличаясь от её толкований, как да от нет, никто об этом не узнал. А зря! С уважением, Борток Георгий Сергеевич. Хотелось бы увмдеть вашу реакцию на моё сообщение. borgece@yandex.ru

Я не знаю в какой статье речь идет о. Если речь идет о статье в русской, Может быть, здесь лучше писать в http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Обсуждение:Периодическая_система_химических_элементов ? / Not sure which exact article you refer to. Might make more sense to comment on the talk page of the corresponding article in the Russian Wikipedia instead? --Malyacko (talk) 13:12, 31 October 2012 (UTC)

Broken donate link on error page

Tracked in Phabricator:
Bug 41566

Just letting you know about a broken 'donate' link.

While submitting a change to an article on the English-language Wikipedia, I got the standard error page ("Wikimedia Foundation Error Our servers are currently experiencing a technical problem. This is probably temporary and should be fixed soon. Please try again in a few minutes ... ")

The 'donate' link on the error page leads to https://donate.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:LandingCheck, which reports "No pages were found while performing the request."

I'm guessing this is meant to bounce incoming requests to a donations page, but hasn't been fully set up.

Cheers. - TB (talk) 22:23, 30 October 2012 (UTC)

Eep! Thank you very much for the report. Filed as bugzilla:41566. --MZMcBride (talk) 22:30, 30 October 2012 (UTC)

This looks fixed to me now; the link on the error page is now to http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Fundraising which behaves just fine. Many thanks to all involved. - TB (talk) 09:50, 9 November 2012 (UTC)

blog links to newer and older articles

Could links to "newer article" and "older article" be added to blog.wikimedia.org? I'd like to bookmark an article, then come back a week or two later and be able to click through newer articles, confident that I'm not missing anything (and not having to go backwards through articles until I get back to one I've read before). I think this is the place to discuss that -- I didn't see a discussion place on the blog itself and the contact us link on the left took me here. Banaticus (talk) 03:56, 1 November 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the suggestion, Banaticus. :) I don't have anything to do with the blog, but I have passed it along to someone on the communications team, who intends to discuss it with the technical people who work on the blog. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 20:47, 1 November 2012 (UTC)

wikimediafoundation.org sidebar

Could we simplify the sidebar? Many things are redundant like FAQ and Questions for Wikimedia? should be combined and some things aren't there.  ℳono  21:53, 2 November 2012 (UTC)

Sure. The sidebar is actually editable by any user with an account at wmf:MediaWiki:Sidebar. (The MediaWiki namespace protection is disabled on this account-restricted fishbowl wiki.)

I'd recommend drafting a new version somewhere and then proposing it here. That way, we can do one switch for users, rather than you editing the page, getting reverted, then drafting a redesign somewhere. ;-)

I'd like to keep the link to "Recent changes" in the sidebar. The rest of it, I don't personally care about. Others will be vested in, for example, the donate link. We should also think about playing with the general look and the collapsibility. And as you hint at, redoing the sidebar may first require building better index/landing pages for some of this content. A finance portal or something, for example.

Lastly, you should check in with Jay at some point when there's a draft of something decent and you're ready to go live, at least. --MZMcBride (talk) 22:52, 2 November 2012 (UTC)

wikimediafoundation.org

I'm hoping that this is in the correct location, so sorry in advance if it's not. I love Wiki, I feel the work you do is extremely important, and that it is one of the last true safeguards against Governmental Information Censorship. With efforts such as WikiLeaks, you are providing an invaluable service to the American people, and through your outreach programs, indeed the world as well.

As such, I believe that a Donation is in order. But when I tried to donate, the page... malfunctioned. When I selected the -Mastercard payment option, the light blue box dropped, but no additional information was displayed. There was no "confirmation" of my payment, and reloading the page did not help. I'm very particular about not entering the same information twice, but I believe that Wikipedia provides an incredibly important, and powerful resource to the Global Information Community. I would love to help this organization! Can someone contact me, or point me in the right direction to get this resolved? I would hate to neglect this opportunity to contribute to such an important project.

Many thanks, much respect.

Hi there,

It looks like you also sent us an email about this issue, and I've followed-up with you there :) for everyone else, we're aware of the issue and working with our payment processor to resolve the delay donors are experiencing. We hope to have it solved ASAP!

Thanks,

Jvandavier (talk) 00:36, 9 November 2012 (UTC)

wikimediafoundation.org

How can I donate my 50CNY to Wikipedia? I have a ICBC card only!!

Hi there :)

Currently we only offer online donations via credit or debit card in CNY, and these donations must generally be made from credit or debit cards enabled for international transactions. We are always interested in learning about other payment options, and I'd invite you to contact me with more information either on my talk page or via email (it's in the upper right-hand corner). I can pass this information onto the rest of the fundraising team.

Thanks, Jvandavier (talk) 21:49, 13 November 2012 (UTC)

wikimediafoundation.org

Hi! Just a question about your fund rising. Why not asking the United Nation or UNESCO since wiki is used all over the word ? And finally gather the people.

Template:Contribute

"Gift Aid in the United Kingdom will not be applicable to donations to the Wikimedia Foundation."

Why not? It was last year unless I'm very much mistaken.

Hi there,

As you mentioned, Gift Aid in the United Kingdom is not applicable this year. Donations are being processed by the Wikimedia Foundation, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit with tax exempt status in the United States . As such, Gift Aid is not applicable to these donations. We do hope to be able to accept Gift Aid in future fundraisers, but we are unable to do so this year.

Thanks for your support! Jvandavier (talk) 22:51, 15 November 2012 (UTC)

That begs the question, and does so sufficienly blatantly that it seems deliberate.

Why is Gift Aid not possible this year when it was last year?

As I mentioned, the Wikimedia Foundation is processing payments from donors in the United Kingdom this year. Wikimedia UK previously processed these payments, but they have agreed that the Wikimedia Foundation shall process payments for the UK during this year's fundraiser. As such, Gift Aid will not apply. Jvandavier (talk) 01:04, 22 November 2012 (UTC)

OK, so the British charity isn't accepting donations but the American company is. For the third time: WHY? Why is Wikipedia throwing away money?

More information as to why Wikimedia UK is not payment processing this year can be found in a joint statement on our blog. Thanks! Jvandavier (talk) 22:47, 24 November 2012 (UTC)

Ah, so it's the UK charity throwing money away in response to ill-informed press coverage? Most interesting. Presumably the Foundation would prefer that the Gift Aid money was not lost to the movement but the UK charity chose to throw it away anyway?

Template:Contribute

i will not donate anything to wikipedia because lot of websites cannot rank in google now. google choosing wikipedia only because no ads competition, it only one reason.

Template:Contribute

g.day kindly note thati am working to immplement the (ISLAMIC DATE LINE) from holly maccah to bring the world in islam kindly help me to introduce the ISLAMIC DATE LINE o evry one in the world thanks. brgd capt:syed abid hussain email: hamra_cap@yahoo.com

wikimediafoundation.org

Your feedback questionnaire for donations does not seem to work on my iMac running Mountain Lion.

We tested this with a few different computers, but we haven't been able to replicate the problem. If you would like to help us troubleshoot or can send more information, please feel free to email the fundraising team at problemsdonatingwikimedia.org Jvandavier (talk) 18:30, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

Match Your Gift/en

Amazon.com does not match any donations made by its employee; I think it should be removed from the list.

Thanks for the info -- we've removed it from the matching gifts page. Jvandavier (talk) 18:25, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

WikiMedia Innovation

I am happy with what the WikiMedia Foundation has done, to moderate knowledge. However, their efforts stand in a fragile infrastructure which the foundation refuses to expand, in ways that make its services more fault-tolerant and distributed. The wiki services provided do not utilize redundant data storage, so that they may survive the efforts of political interests which seek to suppress knowledge, or those that pervert the truth for personal gain. A simple example is political pages on wikipedia which are often manipulated by competing parties. The manipulation may be limited due to human moderation intervention, but with more serious risks there is no current solution. An example of other risks are simple power outages that last for extended periods of time, server hard drives that are destroyed due to angry politicians, simple attacks on DNS servers that provide wikimedia foundation domain name lookup, simple Internet backbone router blocking, and many, many, other possible ways to stop the dissemination of knowledge that your current service provides. As the largest and most complete storage of current human knowledge on the Internet, and as stewards of future knowledge, you have a responsibility to make your service more fault-tolerant with multi-country redundancy that is able to avoid blacklisting, but still provide the moderation. This task may seem too large for a simple businessman, but could easily get the support of distributed systems researchers with grant writing, and the support of the foundation. I am tired of reading the constant pleading for donations on a site that refuses to innovate, despite their responsibility to do so. Focusing on just the presentation, will leave a broken shell of what was once very modern, but will be discarded and ignored. Please consider the need to preserve knowledge and prevent its destruction!

DNSETUP AmolMap.com

Hi I want using wiki media pedia foundation organisation on my pages blogs sites gateway net website weblog, but now in my main website: http://www.amolmap.com/ Exist a DNS Error Server Responding that don't access to loading my web site mail by parallels.com and horde.org Are your system software storage able or want help to resolving my now extention important PROBLEMS?

Answers

The link to Special:SiteMatrix down the bottom doesn't work as intended. The anchor needs to be changed to #mw-sitematrix-others Thanks, This, that and the other (talk) 10:58, 19 November 2012 (UTC)

wikimediafoundation.org

Hello.

I would like to recommend that you eliminate the embarrassing begging at the top of every page for what seems like 10 months out of the year, every year. If that level of bothersome annoying crap at the top of the page is what is necessary to keep this site functional, then clearly it is not properly functional.

This website does not generate any revenue at all. While begging for donations must have worked in the past, as the site grows you cannot possibly be counting on increased traffic to correspond to increased donations.

While it may be an unpopular decision, putting some well-placed and subtle advertisements on your website (in the form of Google Adsense or a system similar to Facebook's) would probably be prudent.

As a regular reader of Wikipedia and someone who HAS donated in the past, I would much rather see some subtle text-only ads then the horrific yellow bar begging me for more money at the top of every page that I load. I feel as though I am not in the minority here.

So, in conclusion, I would like to donate my ADVICE to you: Get some subtle non-flashy text ads, start generating your own revenue, and stop begging for money like a bum in the streets. This website could generate millions of dollars a year to fund the continued expansion of its database. Ads would likely lead to a surplus of COH, which could then be re-directed to the website, its founder, its employees, or even the contributors. Instead, you pander to the minority who dislike subtle advertisements (the extremely small minority, that is, that isn't able to install Google Adblock)by begging for money. It's senseless and useless and you're CLEARLY not getting the amount of donations you require to keep the site alive.

The sooner you recognize the fact that the site has no long-term stability without generating some sort of revenue, the sooner you will be happy with the decision to explore some non-intrusive advertisements.

Thank you for your time. I will not donate again.

Problem donating and other assorted comments

I could not donate on wikipedia. I clicked the amount, and pay with a card, but it would not go forward. I saw it was wikimedia which was taking the money so I went to wikimedia.com. Luckily, you covered the .com error. Unluckily, others will click on the wikipedia donation presentation and won't be allowed to go forward. Most won't be as persistent as I am.

Giving the devil his due, the 'open' and 'close' feature on the wikipedia donation presentation was good. It just wouldn't go forward.

---

Walesedia is GOOD. I'm an atheist. I respect and admire Walesedia (yes, wikipedia). I respect and admire Wales hisself (No, I'm a good speller).

My definition for love: respect and admiration.

---

Stay out of trouble for the rest of the day, youz guys.

wikimediafoundation.org

I wish you would allow open editing 65.175.243.48 15:54, 21 November 2012 (UTC)

Me too. Can we please try "open editing for all talk pages" to start with? –SJ talk 

Wikimedia statistics

This page could use an update, and I have no access. [stats.wikimedia.org Wikistats] has been disabled only few months in 2006. Thanks, Erik Zachte (talk) 16:41, 26 November 2012 (UTC)

Erik, I have removed the sentence "These stats are temporarily disabled." Does this address your concern or is there further editing needed? -Pete F (talk) 17:26, 26 November 2012 (UTC)

Solving the underlying problem: I propose Erik should be able to edit the wmf wiki :) –SJ talk  05:32, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

+1, I'd add a request at Request for an account on the Foundation wiki, but I suppose Erik should be consulted first :) -Pete F (talk) 19:38, 29 November 2012 (UTC)

Terms of Use resolution

Resolution:Terms of use has a tense issue and a history/transparency issue.

First, the "reference" links say:

== Reference ==

• updated terms of use
• current terms of use

But, now that the new ones have been instated, both links lead to the same text. To address the history issue, I propose changing to this:

== Reference ==

• Terms of Use (prior to April 2012)
• Terms of Use (as approved by this resolution)

Second, it seems to me the page's history prior to the resolution has been deleted. Avoiding confusion is certainly a concern, so that's probably appropriate; but the old version should be preserved somewhere on our projects, and it should be linked from this resolution. We could simply link to the Internet Archive's version, which might be fine as a first step, but it doesn't seem optimal. Have they been archived somewhere on Meta? If not, can we do so? Perhaps a Foundation Wiki admin or legal department staff could grab an authoritative version, instead of relying on the Archive for this important document.

Third, since the deliberation was so thorough and had so much input, I think it would be appropriate to link it from here as well. I would suggest a third bullet point:

• Community, staff, and board deliberations behind the update (see archives linked on that page)

I have Foundation wiki access, so I can make these changes assuming there is consensus; but I'm hesitant to mess with a Resolution page without seeking input first. -Pete F (talk) 02:18, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

I think that makes sense, Pete. --Philippe (talk) 04:56, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

+1 –SJ talk 

Done, and thanks for the consideration. I think it would still be a good idea to revive the history instead of relying on the poorly formatted, and less authoritative Internet Archive version. -Pete F (talk) 06:16, 29 November 2012 (UTC)

wikimediafoundation.org

This is my biggest pet peeve about donating. I believe in Wikipedia. I've used it a lot. I am a middle school teacher, and for the most part it has always been a wonderful jumping off point for my students to further their search for additional details and paths within a subject. I want a t-shirt! dont donate to but a few organizations, How to I get a t-shirt! All the best with the new change. Frances Heeber "Learning is constant;time is the variable."

See here, although you don't get one free with a donation, sorry.--Jasper Deng (talk) 03:35, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

Do we get something more in return?

Do people who donate get to be rewarded with some job from Wikipedia, e.g. 'Admin' or 'moderator'?

Thanks.

No.--Jasper Deng (talk) 04:23, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

Why not allow advertising?

Why don't you just allow one advertising banner rather than asking people to donate - I'd rather donate to charity!

Hi. You may be unaware, but the Wikimedia Foundation, the organization that operates Wikipedia and its sister sites, is a charity. It's a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization based in San Francisco, California, United States.

There's a deeply held belief that advertising would irreparably harm Wikipedia and its mission. Consequently there's a steadfast commitment to not allow advertising on Wikimedia wikis. --MZMcBride (talk) 17:19, 15 December 2012 (UTC)

wikimediafoundation.org

Thank you for providing an amazing service. It is often my first step in researching topics of interest.

Just made a donation by Paypal but it didn't take me back to the Wiki page I was trying to read as I expected. Not a huge problem, just a little annoying. Perhaps that could be changed.

Hi, we send donors to a thank you page instead - we do that to make sure you know that your donation went through, to thank you for your generosity and finally in hopes that you will share your donation on social media so others may donate. I'm fairly sure that we don't track which page you came from, but your browser's back button should work. Thanks for donating!  ℳono  21:11, 25 December 2012 (UTC)

wikimediafoundation.org

Please add more radio buttons to question #12 in your survey: some of us are (much) older than 55... Thanks.

wikimediafoundation.org

Wikipedia is an amazing source to gather information. However, the fact that Wikipedia allows outsider influence is an major issue in protecting valuable and correct information. I am a student in college and my college professor will not allow any references from Wikipedia because of the lack of authenticity. Wikipedia would find that even though there are few employees working for it, there would be a lot more people willing to sponsor a site that is factual. If Wikipedia filtered and determined what the general public published about any person, place or thing to be correct, it would be able to call itself "factual." Without being factual, Wikipedia is just another website on the internet that no one can trust. If no one can trust it, very few will finance it.

But, that is just my opinion...

A statement of appreciation

I hope people appreciate the beauty of this amazing approach. You, we and all have proven what a success information and education can be, if not adulterated by gossip, opinion or advertising (which is a mixture of both). You always provide me with hope, when I sometimes feel all is lost and I must give back or I will not feel it appropriate for me to come back. Thank you, you made a difficult day, one I shall never forget and I cannot wait to donate in various ways.

Hi. Thank you very much for your kind and thoughtful words. :-)

If you have any interest in contributing, you can donate financially or donate your time by clicking "edit" on any page in your Web browser and adding what you know or making the page better! --MZMcBride (talk) 17:23, 15 December 2012 (UTC)

Ways to Give/en

Dear Wikimedia

On Jimmy Wales's annual appeal for funds, could we have something specific about using CAF to donate. You (we!) have been successful in the past year at achieving charitable status in the UK (very, very well done, the team that achieved this!); now we should trumpet details of this on the giving page that has just appeared with Wikipaedia.

Kind regards

Quartic (talk) 23:01, 28 November 2012 (UTC)

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On the 'Gift Policy' page appears the phrase "Board approval per subsections 1-3 of this section (C)".

The Gift Policy page is not labelled/numbered and therefore the reference is obscure/incorrect. Either section numbering should be added or the reference re-worded.

Fund-raising banner.

Your "flogging" banner is much more attractive (IMHO; I should say "less offputting") than the previous years' that featured mug shots of someone who needed to get a pace or two closer to his razor. Good work (Wikipedia, in general, especially)! My check will be in the mail.

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Pls add Amazon payment entry point to this page: https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Ways_to_Give/en

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Please make a note of my ip. I am a young disbled person living alone with a six hundred and twenty dollar per month 'spend down' meaning that after working all of the decades that I did, I am still in forties and do not qualify for any help whatsoever. This is half of my amount the other half going to rent/bills even medical dr visits and emergencies as I am not covered where I was two years ago. I would be happy to give to you but I am struggling as so many and you are. It would make me happy to; you and whatever is on the web is all I have (seeing through a broken screen) as I cannot leave the house due to broken bones, and chemo. I am going downhill every day. I can only thank you for being up for me as you give back so much. I thank you so much and appreciate every minute you give to me. Please know that.

Talk:Match Your Gift/en

The link "Click here to see if your employer will match your gift" is broken.

The functionality seems to work for me. Could you provide us with more details about what is not working?  ℳono  01:27, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

wikimediafoundation.org

Why don't you stop invading the wiki space of those of us whom have already donated? Do you believe we May be inclined to give..more$ ... If you keep accosting us with your banner pleas?

I adore wiki everything. I am an avid user. I am more than willing to donate an amount appropriate my situation.

Why don't you all consider rewarding your donors by ceasing inntrusive support requests,. Hit us again next year. Enough is enough. You might find it even improved donation levels.

I invite you to create a new class of Wiki users- an exclusive Club of the Generous. Create a class of folk who are no longer hounded by you, but rather, thanked (!) - with a one or two line header- ' Thank you for your support'-- demonstrate your appreciating by both repeated thanking during your fund season...land....reinforcing your appreciating by not blocking their view of the page!

Be the Change

People love to made to feel special. They feel good about themselves when they are reminded of 1. Their generosity and 2. Your appreciation of their generosity 3. They are in a special class-they are goodniks.

Surely you, or some generous Palo Alto tech-anthropist, have the savvy to filter donors' searches from non- donor searches- seperate whom to keep bugging from whom to keep thanking.

I would much more inclined to give even more, if very time I opened your page I received a small, discreet Thank You, reminding me of just how grateful I am for the remarkable, and indispensible service you provide.

I'm a New Yorker. When I moved to north Carolina and learned the local lingo- I witnessed how much greater the efficacy of praise. Praise trumps pressure.

Reliability and verifiability

If you guys would research and get your facts straight perhaps, people would donate to your cause. I'm sure your employees try hard to get the facts, but most of the time they get the facts wrong. Confidence in the website is critical. I want to know that I have the right facts. Get your shit together and maybe people will help out. Until then.....

Hi there. You seem to be a bit confused about how Wikipedia and its sister projects operate. Almost all of the content on these sites does not come from employees, but instead from volunteers. Feel free to contribute what you know by clicking "edit" in your Web browser! More information about Wikipedia generally is available here: w:en:Wikipedia:FAQ/Overview. --MZMcBride (talk) 17:15, 15 December 2012 (UTC)

wikimediafoundation.org

Dear Dedicated Wikipedia Founder, Jimmy Wales;

I use a evaluation scheme to help remind me of Wikipedia's many contributions to my education and understanding of life alound me. You may find this scheme beneficial if offered to help other donators remember to assist Wikipedia each month.

Each time I use Wikipedia I copy my search word into my note pad for addition to my "Wikipedia Help" file when my search work is done.

When adding my note pad search word to my list of search words in the "Wikipedia Help" file, I grade each one by the personal "Help" I received; either as some new knowledge gained or as some old knowledge refreshed/confirmed.

When I do my monthly household bills I pull up my "Wikipedia file" and add up the month's "new knowledge" count and the "old refreshed-knowledge" count and record them in the search-word file.

I then multiply the "new" count by $1. and the "refresh" count by $.50 and also record the total $ in the search-word file.

I make a donation to WIKIMEDIA for the total computed and include my "Thank You" note for being the most reliable, current, personal reference library and encyclopedia source available to civilived man.

When I donate I would like to see a "Donations Received" page accounting of the Wikipedia contributions of previous months.

Hi, I thank you for your contribution to the Wikimedia Foundation and your support of the Wikimedia movement. You can view a statement of your donation in your credit card, PayPal, or Amazon account at any time - I hope that helps. We really appreciate your assistance.  ℳono  01:23, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia is practically my personal assistant

My name is Addison, I'm 18 and Attend High School in the United States.

I study computer science on my spare time and spend days at a time on my computer. Wikipedia is practically my personal assistant. I come across terms and ideas every day that challenge my mind and I would spend about 70% longer understanding concepts if it wasn't for Wikipedia's availability, convenience, and vast amount of knowledge. It is my go to when I run into trouble... Then my last resort is Yahoo Answers. The pair is unstoppable, and hopefully will continue to exist for the rest of my life. I need both of you! Thank you so much Wikipedia! =)

Edit: I am very proud to have donated and support such a wonderful cause.

Thank you for the very kind words. :-)

If you ever have any interest in making a non-monetary contribution to Wikipedia or its sister sites, just click "edit' in your Web browser! --MZMcBride (talk) 17:13, 15 December 2012 (UTC)

Where knowledge goes to die

This page is where knowledge goes to die. No donation for you.

Hi. I'm not sure what you mean. Can you elaborate? --MZMcBride (talk) 17:11, 15 December 2012 (UTC)

Check vs. cheque

hi, i was reading other ways to donate

I think that check should be replace with cheque

Hi. wikt:cheque is the British (or non-American) spelling. Given that the Wikimedia Foundation is incorporated and headquartered in the United States, most spelling is consequently in American English (wikt:check). If there are specifically UK-related or Australia-related donation pages, those should be using the non-American spelling. Feel free to report any errors or possible errors here. --MZMcBride (talk) 17:10, 15 December 2012 (UTC)

Reports of online fundraising?

Do you post reports on the amounts you've been able to raise online?

There's wmf:Special:FundraiserStatistics. There may be other reports as well. What specifically are you looking for? --MZMcBride (talk) 17:06, 15 December 2012 (UTC)

Interested in donating; don't support leaking military secrets

i would like to donate funds to your site, because of all the good information always readily available. If your service did not include "leaking" military secrets of the US, obtained by criminal(s), then you would be valid.

Hi. You may be interested in reading w:en:Wikipedia:WikiLeaks is not part of Wikipedia. --MZMcBride (talk) 17:07, 15 December 2012 (UTC)

wikimediafoundation.org

The quote by the founder sums up the quality of this site perfectly. Wikiemedia is and likely will remain the the most relavent &nd comprehensive source of information in the lifetime of anyone who can read this. M.A Vancouver B.C.

Thank you for the kind words. If you'd like to further the Wikimedia mission, please feel free to donate or volunteer by clicking "edit" on any page. :-) --MZMcBride (talk) 17:05, 15 December 2012 (UTC)

FAQ/en

On the English-language FAQ page, to the right of the orange cover page image, there is a link "Wikimedia Foundation 2012-13 Annual Plan", but it goes to the 2011-12 Plan. JohnCD (talk) 16:09, 15 December 2012 (UTC)

Well spotted. Fixed. --MZMcBride (talk) 17:04, 15 December 2012 (UTC)

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Hello,

I noticed that several times on this page: https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Ways_to_Give/en you have referred to a cheque as a "check". Just for reputation purposes you may want to change this.

Good in reaching your goal(s).

Hi, the Wikimedia Foundation operates out of California, USA. Check is a common word there and is usually used instead of cheque if that helps explain that.  ℳono  23:09, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

simplicity

Great website and very helpful.

Perhaps contributors should be encouraged to further distill entries with a simple synopsis in tag lines. For example on the page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meaning_of_life under Platonism say something like “the concept of right and wrong.” Under Aristotelianism say something like “who is to say which is which.” I know this would be difficult to create but could be enormously helpful to the casual reader.

I hope this is helpful. Thanks.

Purpose of wmf:Home

Hi. Recent edits to wmf:Home indicate that the purpose of this page is unclear. Is it to raise awareness of the Wikimedia Foundation as a non-profit? Is it to solicit financial donations? Is it to find out how to contact (or "reach out") to the Wikimedia Foundation via traditional means or via social media? Is it simply a document repository for Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees papers and policies?

Perhaps it's all of these things or none, but the confusion here consequently makes redesigning or updating the page incredibly difficult. That is, without a clear purpose, it's difficult to figure out whether the current works or what might work better. --MZMcBride (talk) 00:17, 19 December 2012 (UTC)

All have gone into it; as with many main pages! Picking one or two an focusing on those is a good idea. It just needs someone to take ownership of making it better over time. I'm not sure why there aren't specific alternate main page designs developed there, as usually happens on other wikis when a redesign is mooted. –SJ talk 

From what I can tell, it's a mess of purposes - it seems that like everything else, everyone at the WMF has a personal stake in preserving the status quo. This also reflects the pattern that the WMF is resistant to outside (volunteer) interference and change in general, which is likely why they shuffle departments around numerous times in a year.

The purpose of the page should be a professional-looking showcase of what the organization does and ways to contribute, not a homegrown mix of bad wiki design and legal text stuck together. It is really odd that the page still resembles its 2008 glory and any attempt to deviate is stifled.

Wikimedia:Mañana says "Home — far too wide and needs a complete redesign" but the attitude of the WMF is that making their front page look more presentable should happen mañana. The never-ending 'issues' referenced when making fairly minor changes are not only absurd, but should be discouraging to all Wikimedia editors. The Wikimedia community is in a perpetual state of conflict with the WMF and something needs to give.

 ℳono  18:27, 23 December 2012 (UTC)

You've lost me, Mono. Leaving the projections of intent aside: can you point to specific redesign ideas that you like? –SJ talk  12:12, 24 December 2012 (UTC)

They have been proposed here & here. No, they are not perfect, but the reversion here and places could become constructive.  ℳono  15:26, 24 December 2012 (UTC)

I was doing a google book search to find out which was the most common spelling of Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, a hyphen or a dash (3 out of 20 use a dash, 17 a hyphen), and was surprised to see that one of those 17 was published by the Wikimedia Foundation, "History of Europe", published in June 2011. We moved the article from a hyphen to a dash in 2008. Good for WMF for ignoring that and using what per common use we should be using. Apteva (talk) 04:29, 24 December 2012 (UTC)

Hi folks - apologies for the delay in getting to this thread. I was on vacation most of the last two weeks. This is a relevant question from MZ, and I know some recent work on the WMF wiki has raised the question both from volunteers and from some staff. I don't have a complete answer to share right now, though I will say that over the next week or so I'm going to be having some initial internal conversations with my WMF colleagues to gather their thoughts - and I'll encourage them to come here too.

My quick answer is that I think the WMF wiki is primarily a public-facing communications space for the Foundation - largely focused on core communications needs. This is where important legal policy is posted, Board details (minutes, who's who, agenda etc), the WMF staff, financials, standard reports etc. Much of that material, as with any responsible, transparent NGO or non-profit, needs to be easy to find and easy to update. The WMF wiki is also central to providing a space where the Foundation can explain what it does in support of the movement and community - particularly for prospective donors, volunteers, employees, partners etc. I still don't think WMF (and the WMF wiki) is doing a very good job of telling that story to that audience. Specifically we struggle to make clear how our programs work, what people are doing, and what our goals and milestones look like. And I don't think any amount of surface design work will change that - this means organizing and creating new information. On the other hand I think there's good work underway (and has been for some years) in translating the stuff that is there.

Much of what is there, and in many cases laid out in a pedantic and perhaps boring way, is there and that way for a reason. I don't disagree that some cosmetic changes are needed, but above that we need a broader strategy for the organization of the info and the outcomes we want the wiki to have, and after we have that we do need some clean, simple design. The wiki is really, really important to a handful of our core needs at the Foundation - particularly recruiting new staff and reaching new donors.

WMF hasn't designated a single staffer or section of the org to handle the wiki and to think about changes to the wiki alongside the volunteers who have accounts here. As the person responsible for our communications work, it seems pretty obvious that the role lives mostly in my world. As always, we're seriously resource constrained, but I'm committed to getting some direction in place and developing a simple strategy that I can share on here to get some feedback. As with any good design work, it's always important to start with that strategy and the bigger questions before tucking into the designs.

Thanks for bringing this up though. I will share some of my thinking and seek your thoughts on an overall strategy for a better-functioning site layout and purpose shortly. JayWalsh (talk) 19:07, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

Wikimedia Foundation costs, expenses and employee salaries

Feel free to join the discussion here. Nirvana2013 (talk) 10:28, 24 December 2012 (UTC)

The Wikimedia Foundation Wikirate Group

I would like to propose that wikipedians and wikimedians, including the Wikimedia Foundation founder and employees, be the first to form a Wikirate Group (a new project proposal posted here: Wikirate. The group would be tasked with the creation of a sociological impact / moral rating for the Wikimedia Foundation itself as an example of how Wikirate Groups would function. I believe Wikirate Groups is a natural extension of all the Wikimedia Foundation wants to achieve. Would people please consider the project deeply and help me flush out the idea? I truly believe it has the potential to change the world for the better. Please help me?

Home

173.72.80.158 12:52, 26 December 2012 (UTC)

Hi, can we help you?  ℳono  18:32, 26 December 2012 (UTC)

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It's a shame that all resolutions are worded in professional English and NO translation of any of them is neither available nor it is possible to create one at the protected foundation wiki. Just one example of an important resolution that applies to nearly all projects is wmf:Resolution:Images of identifiable people. -- Rillke (talk) 20:41, 28 December 2012 (UTC)

Hi, the Wikimedia Foundation wiki is protected from public editing for security reasons. It would be nice to have more open access, but features like raw HTML make this impossible right now. People can create translation requests and most editors at wmfwiki would be more than happy to transfer them, but usually translations are limited to the most crucial pages like donations and legal requirements. I hope this helps explain the system, but I understand that it does not address your concern.  ℳono  22:13, 28 December 2012 (UTC)

Well, why not at least make the talk-spaces unprotected? I'm not sure why "raw HTML" is a problem, almost certainly it could be worked around with edit filters. Rich Farmbrough 23:40 29 December 2012 (GMT).

This has been (and continues to be) discussed (cf. Liberating wikimediafoundation.org and mw:Requests for comment/Disable raw HTML on wikimediafoundation.org). Raw HTML is a real security concern. If you don't understand why, I'd suggest doing some further readin about Web development. :-) If you do understand why, perhaps you can help move this issue (bug) forward? I don't believe the AbuseFilter is a workable solution here. --MZMcBride (talk) 23:56, 29 December 2012 (UTC)

We can afford to let every trusted translator directly edit pages on that site. If there is an occasional html problem it can be identified and reverted. The current situation is not a hypothetical risk, but a known source of distress. In the short term, if this is still unresolved, we should probably make Meta the primary source for resolutions. –SJ talk  23:53, 30 December 2012 (UTC)

Okay. Potential translators just need to be pointed to WMFACCOUNT, then. Though there's an additional requirement currently that the user also be an administrator somewhere. I'll follow-up with you on your talk page. --MZMcBride (talk) 19:16, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

Hi Rillke, thanks for the comment. I agree, there is a need especially for our resolutions to provide them in more than only one language. I don't know if this has been already discussed in the board, but I'll raise the question there. Do you have any ideas how we could manage that? --Alice Wiegand (talk) 18:00, 29 December 2012 (UTC)

There's a translations team somewhere... Nemo may know how to make the wheels turn. I used to rely on Casey or Alex, but they're both no longer around very much. :-( --MZMcBride (talk) 23:56, 29 December 2012 (UTC)

Financial Reports/Financial Statements Ending June 30 2012 and 2011

The cash and cash equivalents line on the balance sheet in the 2011 column is incorrectly showing $21,026,303 rather than $12,026,303. Thanks, Alasdair

Thanks, Alasdair! I'll bring that to the attention of the financial department. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 13:11, 30 December 2012 (UTC)

I've gone ahead and boldly fixed this to match the audited statement. This edit suggests to me that it was a mistake made when trying to fix other figures on the page. Thanks again for catching this Alasdair! Thehelpfulone 15:29, 30 December 2012 (UTC)