Meta:Babel/Archives/2006-09

I'm going to be blunt.

Meta sucks. The way that it is right now is completely and totally unacceptable. As David Gerard put quite nicely, Meta is the junkpile of Wikimedia.. heck, I even deleted several pages that were TOTALLY unrelated to Wikimedia in general. I found an article that has been in a vandalized state for over three years.

Now... I would like to form some type of committee or something that will focus on making Meta, well, you know, not suck. I've already gone through about 10% of the entirety of Meta (by hand, mind you), and I would appreciate some help. I would prefer administrators, but at this point I can use whoever I can get.

Comment, please. Linuxbeak 00:58, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

I'll help organize the MediaWiki development information. I've already started actually. Maybe I should apply for adminship to help with cleanup (I'm an admin on English Wikipedia). Ambush Commander 03:34, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

Cool. We've already got a MetaProject started at Meta:MetaProject to Overhaul Meta. Sign up and help out! Linuxbeak 03:36, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

Whee. Ambush Commander 03:37, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

I'm in. - Taxman 00:51, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

I've already started helping.. Esteffect 00:33, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia commentary

This seems like a list of barely, if at all useful pages. I didn't want to tag them all with {{delete}}, but many of them probably deserve it. Any thoughts? Is some of it worth historical interest, and if so where should it go? - Taxman 00:51, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

Overly broad discussions on issues that don't tie themselves straight to Wikipedia, in my opinion, are clear deletes. Others probably shouldn't be, but many may be of only historical significance. Ambush Commander 05:53, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

That was my thought too. The speedy criteria mention anything with no relation to any projects are delete worthy. But Amgine removed my speedy tag on A day in the life of an ordinary Canadian, which to me has no redeemable value to any of our projects. There's nothing wrong with it as an essay, and if someone wants to userify it that's fine. But it seems we need to come to a community decision about what to do with these essays. At some point it seems meta became a dumping ground for essays from Wikipedia's early days. - Taxman 14:50, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

It would occur to me that if anyone objects, we should run it through the regular deletion process for a week or so, and then delete. I think Amgine's main objection (and I may be wrong) is that we're moving too fast, and that something useful might actually get deleted. Ambush Commander 18:39, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

The Canadian essay is cubemail - the sort of thing office workers forward each other. If it showed up on en: today it would be speedied. That said, there's no hurry to delete. Best to tag with Category:Looks useless or similar; anyone disagreeing can put it in a better category - David Gerard 17:44, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

That actually sounds like a very good category. I'll start using it instead of speedy. Ambush Commander 21:25, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

By chance I saw it in "recent changes" or similar, and also loved it immediately. For pages included elsewhere it might be better to use <noinclude>{{Looks useless}}</noinclude>. -- Omniplex (w:t) 19:14, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

Discrimination on the Czech part of Wikipedia continues

A friend of mine (his name is Ignác Pokorný) created a user account on the Czech part of Wikipedia which was called "IgnácP". Asthonishingly, he was promptly blocked by admin Beren, because his username should have to be confusing with the username Cinik! As he tried to get his way and argumented that there would not have been any reason to block this username, he was declared to be a slug (!) and nobody responded to him.

As there is no other way to carry one's point in the discussion because one is simply declared to be a slug when he has a different opinion than the admins, I have to ask for my rights here.Anonymní 20:43, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

Account IgnácP was created in the middle of the night in a sequence of accounts "Cinikilinky" (01:41 CEST), "IgnácP", "I.P", "Ignácek", "Ignácínek", "IG", "G-nácek" (=G-nazi), "Pospíšilek", "Cinikopedista" (01:48 CEST), etc. --cs:che

However, I have a right to create as many user accounts as I want. There is no violation of Wikipedia caused by this action. Anonymní 06:00, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

You? Or Your friend? :o) Cinik 07:50, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

No, you are not entitled to as many user accounts as you want. This is called sockpuppetry. Ambush Commander 23:13, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

He has indeed the right to create as many accounts as he wants. He does not have the right to try to confuse sysops and users by making them similar and using them in the same time. Solensean ᛁᛉᛁ 18:29, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

Just for your information... Number of accounts created by this user is about 80 today, many of them with provocative or offensive names, many of them vandalizing pages and expressing will to disrupt the project and community. He refuses suasions and scolding. When blocked, he uses public proxy servers to create new accounts and immediately continues. Each loophole in rules is good enough for him to exploit it. --Egg 20:31, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

The Meta "community"?

This thread is now at Meta talk:Community because it was long.

Limit small projects to using media from commons only

(moved from proposals for discussion)

AS we get bigger copyright is becoming more of an issue. The bigger wikis are mostly about to handle this because they have teams who try to deal with this problem. The smaller wikis don't. Limiting the smaller wikis to commons only would reduce the opportunity for copyvios and at the same time increase the profile of commons.Geni 13:13, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

A great idea. - Taxman 16:07, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

No. You two mean well, but it is not fair to discriminate against smaller wikis in this manner. If big wikis took images only from Commons, that would "increase the profile" more. --Kernigh 04:30, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

I am also against this. Commons can not be trusted. Projects should have the right to upload there pictures local where the are save. --Walter 08:09, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

Uploads Admin only

How do you set up uploads to be admin only using MediaWiki 1.5.8? 86.41.158.223 10:38, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

You can do this by setting $wgGroupPermissions in LocalSettings.php. Specifically, you'd need to disable uploading for all users and enable it for sysops:

$wgGroupPermissions['*']['upload'] = false;
$wgGroupPermissions['sysop']['upload'] = true;

See also Help:User rights for other keys you can set. Note that you can get help with this type of question in #mediawiki on Freenode. // Pathoschild (^talk) 11:33, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

Thanks very much. 86.41.146.229 22:22, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

You're welcome. // Pathoschild (^talk) 23:08, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

Update

Please, update statistics, and correct the problem of LETTERS and letters in dictionary!!

Help:Contents

Please swap the protected Help:Contents with the fixed Help:Content, or maybe simply unprotect it. -- Omniplex (w:t) 12:42, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

Done. -- Omniplex (w:t) 18:52, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

Dispute resolution for kn.wikipedia.org?

Hi. I'm an administrator on the en wikipedia, and a user requested help on the Kannada wikipedia on our Requests for page (un)protection...and when I told them it was unlikely that any of the en admins could help, he asked if there was a dispute resolution page for the kn wikipedia. Any help would be appreciated. I don't have any stake in this personally, just trying to be helpful. Thanks! --Syrthiss 15:01, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

I will take care of this --Walter 19:07, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

Unterschiede der Wikipedias angleichen?

Gibt es eigentlich eine Initiative, um die nationalen Wikipedias ähnlicher zu halten (bspw. gibt es auf es.wikipedia.org abgerundete "discussion" und "edit" Buttons, die man ja eigentlich für alle Wikipedias übernehmen könnte). Andererseits sehen die "Stub"-Hinweise z.B. in englisch und deutsch unterschiedlich aus, das wäre ja auch nicth schlecht, wenn man das einheitlich gestalten würde.

Are you refering to the skin? This could be modified, of course. (Incidentally, they are not "national" Wikipedias, but language-oriented. For example, Spanish is spoken in many different nations as a native language.) Currently there are no plans I am aware of to give a similar look and feel to standard templates. Could you direct me to the initiative for standardizing the skin? - Amgine / ^{talk meta} 05:06, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

bspw. gibt es auf es.wikipedia.org abgerundete "discussion" und "edit" Buttons --> Auf fr.wikipedia.org auch ! Teofilo 12:41, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

New CSS class for MediaWiki:Common.css

Hi, I've proposed the addition of a new CSS class for MediaWiki:Common.css (see MediaWiki talk:Common.css for the request). —Locke Cole • t • c 06:27, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

MediaWiki:Rfcurl

FYI, see w:MediaWiki talk:Rfcurl for details. -- Omniplex (w:t) 18:59, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

ForbiddenYou don't have permission to access /mediawiki/config/index.php on this server. (help please)

to tell the truth i have no idea if this is the place where i should be looking for help if not please send me an email at rzwicker@winnco.com

here is my problem i am running fedora coer 5 every time i point to the index.php i get this message

Forbidden

You don't have permission to access /mediawiki/config/index.php on this server.

please help me i get this every time. i dont know what to do and cant find any help on the net

Please some one help me or at least point me someplace where i can get some help Please

Hello. The problem is most likely related to the permissions for your files. Try setting the permissions on /mediawiki/config to 755, or owner(read/write/execute)/group(read/execute)/world(read/execute). How you do this depends on the client and protocol you're using to connect to your server. // Pathoschild (^talk/_map) 23:56, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

On RH/Fedora, the web server runs as user: apache - changing the ownership or permissions of ./config and ./images so that the 'apache' user owns them (or at least can write to them) should resolve this. --66.102.74.177 16:30, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

Hi, actually the problem is related to the access allow file /etc/httpd/conf.d/mediawiki.conf It occurs, because we are trying to access the wikiserver from some other client (not the localhost) and in /etc/httpd/conf.d/mediawiki.conf only the localhost 127.0.0.1 is allowed to access config directory (by default). change / add your clients IP address in /etc/httpd/conf.d/mediawiki.conf allowed list and restart apache. it should work.

Cheers Parminder

Wikimedia Conferentie Nederland

Hallo allemaal,

Vereniging Wikimedia Nederland organiseert op 2 september 2006 de (grotendeels Nederlandstalige) Wikimedia Conferentie Nederland (vooralsnog alleen een werknaam). Deze bijeenkomst zal gedeeltelijk bestaan uit lezingen en workshops, maar ook uit discussiegroepen rondom de thema's:

• Feedback uit Boston
• Wiki-projecten
• Techniek
• Gemeenschap
• Leer elkaar wat

Iedereen wordt van harte uitgenodigd om een voorstel voor een lezing, discussiegroep, workshop of een andere presentatievorm in te dienen. Meer informatie hierover vindt u op de Wiki van Wikimedia Nederland. Er zijn sprekers nodig, meld u dus aan! Naast het feit dat u er hopelijk veel zult opsteken en mensen zult ontmoeten, zal het er ook heel gezellig worden! Ik hoop van harte u terug te zien op de lijst met voorstellen.

Met vriendelijke groeten, Effeietsanders 21:52, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

Message when creating a new page

Hi all,

When creating a new page, I get the following message:

Attention visitors!

This site is for Wikimedia projects documentation and discussion.

If you are trying to add a page to your company's internal wiki site, you're in the wrong place. Just hit "back" in your browser until you find youself back home.

I understand the necessity of a message warning visitors that meta is not Wikipedia, but it is very agressive indeed. And moreover, it badly deters and discourages people that collaborate on Test-Wikipedias: when reading this message they may think that the Test-wikis have been abandoned and that you're no longer allowed to write articles for future Wikipedias (to be sure Test-wikipedias are pages in which people who speak a language without a Wikipedia can create articles; some of these are quite successful and have contributed to the quick and sudden growth of later Wikipedias). Recently I received an e-mail from a disturbed user who has worked faithfully on the Seeltersk test wiki for quite some time. Therefore I think the message should be adapted: it should be made less agressive and it should mention the test-wikis as an exception. Caesarion 22:21, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure how a user could mistake a message targetted at "your company's internal wiki site" to include future Wikimedia Foundation public wikis. The message is no doubt intended to discourage articles that are somehow regularly created here by accident. I see no reason not to redesign it if you have a better way to display that prominent message in a way that gets users' attention. // Pathoschild (^talk/_map) 00:01, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

Eingabe Formular

Hallo, ich wollte wissen, ob es eine möglichkiet gibt, bei der Eingabe eien Arte Eingabeformular vor zu geben, damit im endeffekt alle Artikel das gleiche Format haben. ALso z.B Das Bild immer an der gleichen Stelle ist udn die Schrift immer die Selbe ist?

Gibt es da einen einfachen weg?

Danke

Images not scaling

On my own wiki GIF and PNG images don't seam to scale properly like they do on WikiMedia projects (for examle http://www.gmcfoley.com/wiki/index.php?title=Sonic_the_Hedgehog_2). What is causing this? Thanks, 83.70.111.28 17:29, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

Cancel Meta:Submission Standards

I propose ending the Meta:Submission Standards; please comment at Meta talk:Submission Standards. --Kernigh 04:01, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

Is there a Portuguese article on lapdancing?

I am surprised that, on the English Wikipedia, that the "lapdance" article has no link to a Portuguese translation.

Does no such translation exist, or does one exist but is not linked to?

There reason why I ask is: In my area (it is in the USA), there are a lot of Brazilian lapdancers, and I would expect that by now, at least one of these lapdancers would have written an article on her profession.

Would some dancer please be kind enough to write such an article?

(If you're not a dancer but you speak Portuguese, please translate this notice into Portuguese.)—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 172.161.169.212 (talk • contribs).

Apart from a (maybe) request for translation, this seems to be an attempt at a joke? Redux 22:16, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

It is not a request for an article to be translated into Portuguese. It is a request for a dancer (or other knowledgeable person) to write an article in Portuguese.

Welcome

Meta don't have a welcome template? It's necessary, no? -- Slade ^pt.wp 18:28, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

I would add that there seems to be no template for warning against vandalism either (or have I missed it?). That would also be useful. Regards, Redux 22:05, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

Err, never mind about my comment, there's {{Test}}. What I wanted to say (but didn't, actually) was that we don't have here a progressive list of warning templates, I believe...
But about the welcome template, it's not usually necessary to have one general template for all to use. On en, we usually have a few formats that are more popular, but they are not official, or generalized. More commonly, users develop their own template welcoming message, which may be assembled as a user subpage, for instance. It's not something that needs to be at the template namespace. Regards, Redux 02:25, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

Answer in th Redux talk page. -- Slade ^pt.wp 16:35, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

How do I use a template that is in my userspace? Do I have to write it out in nowiki and then copy it or is there a way to use it like a regular template? --Cromwellt|talk 20:47, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

You just use it like a regular template, but don't forget the namespace, e.g. {{User:Cromwellt/Welcome}}. Vildricianus 17:33, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

Also, whenever using those to place a welcome message, it is always best to user "subst" in the code, so that the template code will be copied into the page, rather then linking to the original page. Like this: {{subst:User:Cromwellt/Welcome}}.
And, if you are interested, Slade and I have started to put together a pilot welcome message; it's at User:Redux/Welcome — more details in the thread below that I started to make public this initiative. Redux 04:36, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

Two other questions

I actually came here looking for a list of project abbreviations I saw somewhere (stuff like "w:" for Wikipedia and "m:" for Meta), but now I can't find it. I thought it would be on the Wikimedia projects page, but it isn't there. Can anyone tell me where I can find it? Thanks.

Oh, and another question: Does it require developer intervention to modify (or add) the buttons above the edit box, or can it be found on one of the system messages or something? Simple English Wikipedia would like to add the redirect button that English Wikipedia has, and Simple English Wikibooks and Simple English Wikiquote have no buttons there at all. --Cromwellt|talk 20:47, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

About the second question: I'm no expert, but I believe that this kind of modification can be made by editing the MediaWiki. This, however, can only be done by Admins (or higher access level). It would probably be more effective to check with some of our "software extraordinaires", such as CesarB, over at en. Redux 04:29, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

Hi Redux. Thanks for the response. I will ask CesarB about those buttons. I am an admin on most simple English projects, so there won't be a problem with that. Oh, and Slade also answered my first question on my talk page. Happy editing! --Cromwellt|talk 14:37, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

Glad to have helped. Let me know if there's anything more that I can do. And thanks for your participation in our current effort to develop a standard, multilingual welcome message! :) Redux 02:45, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

Answer to first question: Interwiki map. --Pmsyyz 16:46, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, everyone. The page I was looking for was at Help:Interwiki linking, which I found via the page that Pmsyyz directed me to. I am still having trouble with one link on q:simple:User:Cromwellt. If someone took a look, I would appreciate it. It is a self-referencing link (which is not black because it goes by way of English Wikiquote), but it shows up red, even though Interwiki linking says that abbreviations work everywhere.

CesarB does know the answer to the second question: it has to do with the javascript. We'll see if I can figure it out, with his help.  :) Happy editing! --Cromwellt|talk 19:41, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

The link is red because it is linking to the same website as the one your userpage is in (simple wikiquote). You can't use the abbreviation for the same website, because that will send you to "q:simple:User:Cromwellt", which, naturally, doesn't exists. You only use the abbreviation to link to a different project of the Wikimedia system. For an internal link, just use the regular format, which, if posted on the same page it's linking to, will turn out black.
I'm glad to hear that CesarB was able to assist you. Hopefully, you should be able to add the buttons to the other projects. Redux 20:17, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

Regarding your second question, whenever you're looking for a system message, check Special:Allmessages. But no, the edit box buttons cannot be directly edited. You may want to file a bug report. Maybe some Common.js trickery would do the job? Ambush Commander 21:27, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

CesarB is already taking Cromwellt through the steps to get the buttons added to the other projects. Indeed, a common.js "manouver" is involved in the process (Cesar's explanation). Redux 21:52, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

Welcome message

Hi all. After a discussion with Slade, we have started working on a template welcome message for Meta. We are working on the pilot version at User:Redux/Welcome. The idea is for a short message, with some of the most important links. Another key aspect is that it would be multilingual (another reason why it has to be short, so that it won't be too long once several languages are available). So far, we have a draft of the version in English and a translation of it into Portuguese. We are hoping that others might take an interest and translate it into other languages as well (e.g. Norwegian, Check, etc.). You will notice that the user-related links are pointing to my own pages there, but the idea would be that, once it's ready, anyone could copy it and make any needed/wanted changes in order to use it. Just thought I'd make this public here, so that anyone interested can join the effort. Thanks, Redux 01:00, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

Rename

I would to rename my login to Slade, but the account is already registered. Do you can usurp the actual Slade to move my login to here? -- Slade ^pt.wp 17:34, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

That might be possible. Harass a developer. Ambush Commander 21:22, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

Oddly enough, the "Slade from Meta" registered the account but never made a single edit with it (Special:Contributions/Slade). Indeed, I don't know it that'd be possible, although I've always heard that accounts can't be deleted from our software (which I suppose would be necessary in order to "reassign" the account name). I wonder what would happen if the present "Slade" account were to be renamed (I don't know if there'd be a point in asking the owner, since s/he's never been around, apparently). Then maybe it would be possible to rename your account to "Slade", but I don't know if the name stays "occupied" after a renaming takes place. If it does, maybe a developer can fix it, but if he can't, I fear it might not be possible for you to get that account name. Redux 19:48, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

It doesn't. I got renamed on en.wikipedia, and I had to create User:Ambush Commander again.

Thank you, Ambush Commander. So there you go, Slade. This seems to be a viable solution. Bring up the fact that the account was never used, ever. If the account gets renamed (to whaterver name, maybe "InactiveUser01"), then your account can be renamed to Slade (which is important to preserve your history of contributions). I Suppose the appropriate venue to request this would be Meta:Requests for help from a sysop or bureaucrat (a Bureaucrat, in this case). Redux 20:05, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

To get the name of an already registered user, the other user must be renamed first. I don't think that'd be a problem in this case, but it's not up to me to decide. Jon Harald Søby 22:16, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

Moved from Spellchecking Wikipedia

There is an online spell-checker http://ee.www.ee/filosoft/html_speller_en/ but I can not make it accept Wikipedia pages. Why ? —unsigned by 217.99.96.xxx (talk) 14:17, 25 November 2001

You can try this one http://www.spellonline.com/ It works with me. Joao —unsigned by Joao (talk) 12:49, 26 November 2001

Thanks. kpjas —unsigned by 213.76.2.xxx (talk) 12:49, 26 November 2001

Proposed overhaul of the deletion policy

Please see Meta talk:Deletion policy#Proposed_overhaul for a proposed overhaul of the deletion policy. // [admin] Pathoschild (^talk/_map) 22:10, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

Inequality between large and small languages / what's up with all the front pages?

I've noticed this from time to time here - a full year ago when the Ido Wiktionary reached 10,000 articles (somewhere around 5th place) I posted on a number of areas including some of the sysops who design the front pages about changing the search bar to add Ido, but after a few months of that I received a total of zero responses, even to questions on users' talk pages. Even now the Ido Wiktionary is in 4th place, 7th place in number of edits and nor have we used a single bot unlike other languages. Why then is Latin with under 4,000 words in the search bar when we with over 51,000 entries are not? And Hindi, with not even 1,500 words?

The other thing I noticed just today was that French has a place on the front of the Wikiquote mainpage, with a total of 0 articles. Why does a language get a place on the front page with nothing to show for it? It certainly can't be just due to real population, because then we would need Hindi there too.

French just got taken off the front per my suggestion. Mithridates 22:16, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

The third example isn't so much bias towards smaller languages as what seems like a complete lack of thought: the main page of Wikipedia itself. It has the following: Other languages • Weitere Sprachen • 他の言語 • Kompletna lista języków • 其他语言 • Aliaj lingvoj • 다른 언어 • Ngôn ngữ khác

That would be English (1st place), Germain (2nd place), Japanese (5th place), Polish (4th place), Chinese (12th place), Esperanto (15th place), Korean (28th place), and Vietnamese (er...oh there it is, 46th place). What's the reason for this? I would recommend choosing instead languages according to their number of edits if we are to have a meaningful front page. That would keep others from using bots to try to get ahead and focus instead on making a quality encyclopedia.

Back to smaller languages: I'm not sure what the treatment is like towards other smaller natural languages (as opposed to Ido for example which is constructed) but I'm curious whether anyone else has felt this. Think of this as more an open question than an accusation of bias. Any thoughts? I think the whole thing needs a complete workover myself. Mithridates 11:24, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

MediaWiki.org

What's the purpose of mw: in relation to m:, why aren't they one project? Some folks intend to move parts of the help pages, see this talk page. What's the best way to stop this, a proposal to join m: and mw: (= closing one of them)? -- Omniplex (w:t) 04:05, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

There should be two projects; neither should be closed, and there shouldn't be any overlapping. mw: is for documentation of the MediaWiki software, while Meta is for coordination of the Wikimedia Foundation's projects. Jon Harald Søby 19:20, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Sysop for a while

I’m like to suggest hereby to create an option Sysop for a while as a solution for some special cases. I can imagine following ones:

• I am a bureaucrat in a small domain without great knowledges in programming; now I need to change something which can be done with sysop rights only
• I am a bureaucrat there and leave for two weeks for holiday, and there is no other one who could keep the domain free of vandals etc.

In both cases I can make a sysop from somebody, but if I will to make it temporarily only, I must request for desysoping some days or weeks later. Therefore in some cases in small domains it could be an advantage, If I could give the sysop rights temporarily for 1 week, 2 weeks or something like that, after the time the rights expire authomatically (or I do it) and a desysoping via Meta is not necessary. I am not sure if this is practicable. Just an idea. -jkb- 09:04, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Once more again I would like to discus this proposal. First, as a sysop-bureaucrat of a small new damain (cs.wikisource) I would have needed somebody like that in the last weeks, indeed. Secondly, there will be great problems with some new created dmains of other wikisources some three weeks ago where there is nobody to manage them. One time again: this proposed sysop for a while must not have the same status as a normal sysop who has been elected; and either his rights will go to the end in a special time, or a sysop with this special status can be desysoped by a local bureaucrat (without the request here on meta). I suppose that especially in small and new doamins this could help a lot. -jkb- 15:29, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

It sounds like a great idea to make temporary sysops whose adminship will expire automatically. I support.--Jusjih 01:24, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

Sounds worthy to consider and even do a test on the community which supports this idea. You may happy to talk on it further with developers: how about bugzilla as a request for new feature? --Aphaia 01:10, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

Tab order problem on Create account page

Tabbing from the Captcha text entry field should jump to the Username text entry field; it currently jumps to some linked text above. Freshstart 03:04, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

Bugzilla. — Ambush Commander^(Talk) 19:39, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

Update hit list

Are there any plans to refresh Pages from English Wikipedia with more than 1000 hits in Feb 2004? It's quite an interesting link but it is over 2 years out of date now so it would be interesting to see how it has changed. Any response would be appreciated at en:User talk:Djr_xi. Regards - DJR.

Language Select JavaScript

The language select JavaScript will be going live in a few days. Please report bugs and catastrophic failures to either my talk page or language select's talk page. — Ambush Commander^(Talk) 19:40, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

The code is live. Please discard your cache to see the changes. I think some restyling of the language select widget is in order, if anyone would like to make it less prominent. — Ambush Commander^(Talk) 04:12, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

Wiki logins

Is it feasible to make it so that if you say, went to Wikipedia and logged in and then clicked a link to another project, you would still be signed in and able to contribute? 203.122.221.184 11:30, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

Please see Single login specifications page. --M/ 11:32, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

OK thanks. 203.122.221.184 11:34, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

Wikimedia Incubator

Someone should write an entry about it, no? —Nightstallion (?) 20:00, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, M7! —Nightstallion (?) 13:02, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

Other language babels

I was patrolling recent-changes when I stumbled upon this page: Bar, a Polish Babel. This makes me think there may be more of these. Should we link to them from here? — Ambush Commander^(Talk) 00:12, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

Good idea. -- Omniplex (w:t) 17:40, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

Change of scope at WikiSource to exclude reference material

I would like to call the community's attention to and personally protest a decision at Wikisource to exclude and delete a significant portion of the material that was part of its original charter. Prior to April 29 of this year, Wikisource:What is Wikisource? listed the following as included material:

"Some things we include are:

• 1. Source texts previously published by any author
• 2. Translations of original texts
• 3. Historical documents of national or international interest
• 4. Mathematical data, formulas, and tables
• 5. Statistical source data (such as election results)
• 6. Bibliographies of authors whose works are in Wikisource
• 7. Source code (for computers) that is in the public domain or compatible with the GFDL"

On that date the project page was changed to explicitly exclude:

• Mathematical data, formulas, and tables
• Source code (for computers) that is in the public domain or compatible with the GFDL
• Statistical source data (such as election results)

Obviously, this represents a major change in the scope of the project. It is based on a single poll conducted between April 4 and 27, 2006 Wikisource:Scriptorium/Archives/2006/04. Previous discussions had been held with opposite results Wikisource:Wikisource talk:What Wikisource includes. A primary reason given for the new change is that the editors participating do not feel competent to maintain this material and have little interest in it. However apparently no effort was made to notify participants in the previous discussions, nor to recruit new editors that might have an interest. Note that there are many active projects pages in mathematics and the sciences where such people might be found.

There was also no discussion of methods for reducing the load on editors, such as locking material after review. In general, reference material does not need or benefit from frequent edits.

I certainly respect the efforts of the regular editors on Wikisource and agree that their views should be shown some deference. However the process they chose is not sufficient. At the very least, I think there needs to be broader community input into such a massive change in the scope of a Wikimedia project. Even if this material is best excluded from Wikisource, I believe it deserves to be part of an encyclopedia and that any material already contributed should be moved elsewhere rather than be deleted. The simplest solution would be to move mathematical and scientific reference material to Wikipedia, where there are large communities to evaluate and protect this information. An argument could be made that mathematical data belongs in Wikicommons because it is, or potentially can be, language neutral. Or perhaps there should be a new Wikireference project. Computer source code deserves a separate discussion, since there are so many other open source code repositories available.

At this point hundreds of articles have been marked for deletion. See Wikisource:Category:Deletion requests/Reference data Some material has apparently aready been deleted. There is nothing left in Category:Mathematics. I would propose that all article deletions on Wikisource based on this change be frozen until a fuller, community-wide discussion can be held.

I have also posted these comments at Wikisource:Scriptorium, where I think the primary discussion should be held.--24.62.135.33 16:03, 19 June 2006 (UTC) --24.62.135.33 16:03, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

Replicating parts of the OEIS (Online Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences) and similar sources was a stupid idea, it's fine if they stopped this. Nobody would trust the 1001st wannabe Pi-calculation to 1,000,000,000 digits in an s: file, it's a waste of space. I can't judge your other points, but I'd certainly not touch any source code on an obscure wiki server. -- Omniplex (w:t) 17:47, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

This matter has been discussed at length on the main community page ("Inclusion of reference data on Wikisource", "Plan on phasing out reference data", and "Deletion of reference material at Wikisource"), on the Wikisource mailing list, mentioned on pages as diverse as Talk:Main Page and Category:Mathematics, and noted in the local news project ("Vote excludes reference material"). The poll which excluded reference data was held for nearly a full month. The reference data is being gradually phased out over a period of thirteen weeks, during which time they dominate Wikisource:Proposed deletions. Various communities and WikiProjects on Wikibooks, Wikipedia, and even other language-Wikisources were notified both during discussion and when we began implementing the phase-out plan. I fail to see how we could have done so more openly.

For reasons that seems relatively obvious to me, other members of the local community disagree with points you raised there. I don't particularly see how the Meta-Wiki is relevant to the discussion; a better place to cross-post would be the multilingual Wikisource, which is used to coordinate and organise Wikisource communities (among other things). However, note that recent discussions there tended towards the same result. // [admin] Pathoschild (^talk/_map) 21:01, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

Wiki Blog

Gibt es die Möglichkeit ein Blog in Mediawiki zu integrieren? Gibt es ein Plugin welches evtl. die Zusammenarbeit mit einer anderen Blogsoftware (z.B. Wordpress) ermöglicht? Danke schön!

I'd say this is highly, highly unlikely (unmöglich). Providing Blog space is not part of the Wikimedia Foundation goal. Our projects include encyclopedias in various languages, dictionaries, free image depositories, etc. But not blogs. Regards, Redux 21:06, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

Opportunity to research second life

The following text was moved from Opportunity to research second life, created by 69.196.135.99 02:35, 23 June 2006 (UTC). // [admin] Pathoschild (^talk/_map) 02:42, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

I'm a GBS partner working in the Canadian govenrment for a client called Service Canada, a cross government service delivery organization. They joined Don Tapscotts think tank and are about to particpate in the net gen research project he is setting up. I am their strtegic advisor and have got them very interested in using second life as an experiment to reach young people. We are looking for people interested in a research project on how to use second life to reach young people in a different way. If I can find a good proposal, I can probably get some funding for it along the lines of youth engagement and virtual goverment. Does this align with any of your projects, possibly a FOAK, or pure research with a client.

Please email me at martin duggan/ontario/ibm.

wiki admins forum?

Am I missing it somewhere? Is there a forum for those who run their own wiki's? I've recently started one and wouldn't mind discussing some topics, getting a little guidence on some issues, etc. Or is this page it?

Admin and steward resignation

Short note to let you know I resign from my meta admin and steward position. Too busy IRL really, I prefer somebody more active to take the seats. Good luck all. villy ♦✎ 17:51, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

Request for new languages

I's like some admin to take a look at the discussion being held here and here (this edit should also be seen:[1]). The user Tugazo insists that he can start a poll in which only native speakers can vote, based on guidelines contrary to all procedures used so far. Because of the fact that the previous vote was 36 against vs 3 pro, he wants to do that. Thanks.--Gaf.arq 00:44, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

Welcome message

Hi all. I while back, I started a coordinated effort to come up with a multilingual, standard welcome message for Meta. At this point, the page is hosted in a subpage of mine (but the plan is to move it to the template namespace eventually). After working on a pilot version in English, we have started the process of translating it into as many other languages as possible. Right now, we already have it in English, Portuguese, Spanish, French and Italian. We would like to have more languages added (such as German, Russian, Dutch, Czech, Polish, Japanese, Arabic, etc.). If anyone is interested, please drop in to add any language desired. Thanks to all, Redux 20:50, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

• I added Russian message, however this template in its current implementation seems to me too scary. Imagine: wiki-n00b makes a coulple of edits and is welcomed by this huge message. If his native language isn't supported, he'll see a lot of text he cannot understand, and if he's unfamiliar with language codes it could be difficult for him to find message in language he understand. Even more problems will arise when user's browser have JS disabled or not enough supports CSS. For the content pages such situation could be tolerable but on talk page it's more problematic. MaxSem 21:30, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

• • Concur with MaxSem. If you aren't sure which language she or he speaks, a simple welcoming message in one line with a link to a content page for newcomers would be nice. For Japanese and German speakers, I created my own separated one and have used them. See User:Aphaia/Welcome-ja for instance. --Aphaia 03:48, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

Well, one of the goals of this initiative is to come up with a simple, concise message, while at the same time one that would help get the newcomer started on Meta — even users with some experience in other Wikimedia sites can get a little lost on Meta at first. That it would be a "central" message, and multilingual, is another key aspect: once we moved it to the template namespace, it would be something everyone and anyone could use. I believe Ambush Commander mentioned that by using that coding, it would be possible for any user to visualize only the language s/he is interested in, or all of them. In any event, we could make English the default language (meaning: never "save" any other version in the selection window on the welcome message page), and, since it would be copied to a user's talk page using the "subst" code, s/he would be able to change it on his/her talk page only, not affecting the main template. I would assume (although I am no expert) that if someone can't access the language selection window, they'd at least get the welcome message in English, which could still be a good help in getting started — and remembering that, obviously, this new message would not be "binding" in any way, people can still welcome others, or not, in whatever manner they wish. It's similar to warning vandals, anyone can post a personal warning, but it helps a lot having the standard "test" template.
If the message is too complicated still, we can make it better. The first draft I had come up with was even more complicated, but we trimmed down through discussions on the talk page of my subpage. Of course, nothing is written in stone. Suggestions on how to make it any more simple and concise would be more than welcome (on the subpage's talk page), the proposed course of action, again, being to work on a pilot version in English, freezing all the other languages until a satisfactory version can be achieved on the pilot, and only then start making changes to/adding other languages. Redux 05:10, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

3 year Wikibooks Anniversary

This is a feeler to go out to any Wikibooks user in languages other than English, or for that matter any Wikimedia user who wants to help participate with the development of a general press release/status report over Wikibook on Wikibooks day, July 10th, 2006. On that day Wikibooks will be three years old from when http://textbooks.wikipedia.org/ was first established and the first pages were created.

If you want to help out with at least putting in a few positive comments over what has happened on Wikibooks please join us at:

b:en:Wikibooks:State of the Project/2006

We have comments from the Polish, English, and German Wikibooks groups, but more would be appreciated.

SPAM URL filter

One day I was edited an article and I couldn't save it because it contained an URL that was considered an SPAM URL. My great problem it is that I can't find this article to illustrate my experience.

Now my request is to ask to every members of this community if it is really possible that I have discribed, or it was a dream.

And if I am right, how will it be possible to block another SPAM URL from an unsuitable web site. My last purpose is to impede the www.lastoa.cat, that belongs to a undesirable subject.

If it is possible, I'll contact to someone of administrators of Wikipedia in Catalan to formalize the request.
Pasqual (ca) · CUT 15:10, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

Yes, this feature indeed exists; see SpamBlacklist extension for more information. A request for blacklistin www.lastoa.cat could be posted at Talk:Spam_blacklist. — Timichal • 18:48, 17. Jul 2006

Whois

Please, somebody can tell me what can I do to know the origin of a dynamic IP. How can I make a Whois?
Pasqual (ca) · CUT 19:59, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

Try this link. Hopefully it will help, but if you are talking about an AOL IP, for instance, the best you can find is that it is an AOL IP, but you will not be able to get an exact location, since AOL users get different IPs for nearly every different page they load, so any given AOL IP may be used by any given AOL user. Regards, Redux 23:17, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

Wiki Closure

Where can one propose that a wiki be closed? I think that the b:la:Latin Wikibooks should be closed; it has no useful content, and no active users. Thanks.

See Proposals for closing projects. – Minh Nguyễn (talk, contribs) 01:06, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Russian Wikipedia is close to becoming a 100,000+ Wikipedia

The Russian Wikipedia is quite close to the 100,000 mark. It has about 97,000 articles as of August 7th 2006, and on June 5th, 2006, the Russian Wikipedia apparently had about 85,000 articles (source: Russian Wikipedia article on Wikipedia). That means that if the current growth rate of the Russian Wikipedia persists, than the Russian Wikipedia will hit the 100,000 article mark sometime this month, so I think we should be on our toes ready to place the Russian Wikipedia in the 100,000+ category. --FreshFruitsRule 21:03, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

I did some math, and I figured out a projection, based on the statistics at http://stats.wikimedia.org, that the Russian Wikipedia will become a 100,000+ wikipedia around August 21st. --FreshFruitsRule 22:29, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

I did some more math, and I figured out a projection, based on the statistics at http://stats.wikimedia.org, that the Russian Wikipedia will surpass the Spanish Wikipedia around the end of April 2007. --FreshFruitsRule 22:36, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

Kudos to our Russian (or Russian speaking) contributors! Redux 23:08, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

Translation combination boxes

Hi, Sabine worked on new boxes for translators. They aim at giving information about translation combination: say, I can translate from English to French, from Italian to Spanish, and so on. It would help us to know who can translate what, in what, to streamline the translation process. The boxes do not provide information about your level (wether you are a professional translator or not, for example); you may use Babel templates (very useful as well). A few combination boxes are available: be bold and create those you need :) Be aware we are using ISO 639-3 codes for languages combinations (fra and not fr, eng and not en, ...). If you do not want or know how to create boxes and their relative categories, just ask me to do it for you. Please add any new template in the list of combinations:

See "Translator in the following language combinations" and pick up templates for your user page!
This message was pasted on several User talk pages of active translators.

Thank you :) jd ৸ 01:36, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

:( Is it a good idea to have a template for each combination? You know, I think it could be done with {{translator|eng|fra}}, for example... it'd be much more tidy with this solution. — Timichal • 05:16, 10. Aug 2006

It sounds nice, but I'm afraid it become template monolingual. It wouldn't make a sense for me that fr-es template has English description, for example. As Babel can't be turned into your proposal, I'm afraid ComboBox wouldn't either. Or you have any cool solution? --Aphaia 05:22, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

Yes it must be like {{translator|deu|fra}} and the message should be in both mentionned languages through a variable as :

{{{translatorMessage/fra}}} = "Ce traducteur traduit de [ {{{deu/fra}}} = "l'allemand" ] vers  [ {{{fra/fra}}} = "le français" ] "
{{{translatorMessage/deu}}} = "Dieser Übersetzer übersetzt ab [ {{{deu/deu}}} = "Deutsch" ] zu [ {{{fra/deu}}} = "Französich" ] " 

Arno Lagrange ✉ 06:34, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

Arno, can you give me an example? I agree with you generally on that bilingual messages make sense.

However at the same time, I strongly hope the size of message is kept as large as the current babel templates. If templates are too huge and ugly, translators might want not to have those templates on their userpage, and even if, those templates are not friendly for users who visits such userpages. --Aphaia 07:06, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

Why not use <small> + </small> then and for te text just "Translator English-German" - "Übersetzer Englisch-Deutsch". so it would not become bigger. And that this is a translator for the "following languages" is already stated at the beginning of the box - so it is somewhat obvious and we can avoid to repeat this. Since here on meta the main lanugage is English people will mainly use English - by clicking on the title, on the page where you find the present templates, you can give the translations of this titile in the various languages. There are now also conditional templates (don't know how to program them for now - they would allow to show English if UI is English, German if UI is German etc). Do we have someone who already knows how to do this? If we have an example for three or four UI lanugages I believe it will be quite easy to produce the rest of it. --Sabine 07:20, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

I definately prefer the {{translator|en|fr}} to having specific templates for each use. I'm sure that this could be done easily using the switch function; I might have a go myself. Daniel (‽) Check out Wikiscope! 17:21, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

On a second look, that can't be done with any real ease of use. The above-mentioned scheme of using lots of templates would work though. Daniel (‽) Check out Wikiscope! 17:31, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps we should shorten the text in the boxes. Currently the template says "This translator translates English to German". Perhaps a better text may be "I translate English to German". Thus it will be easier to create bilingual boxes without enlarging them massivly. Another suggestion is that we keep the text monolingual but change the language to the respective language of origin: If you translate English into German the text may be "I translate English into German" and if you translate German into Englisch the text thus may be "Ich übersetze Deutsch ins Englische". What do you think? Best regards --Marbot 20:41, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

Well, yes, shortening the text is always better to my opinion. These templates were just created from scratch to have something to show. The other day I also thougt if it made sense just to say: Translator: English-German and on a second line just English-Deutsch or maybe only insert the language combination because the logo used and the box containing the various templates with the combinatios itself already indicates that it is about translations.--Sabine 16:47, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

Your proposal to shorten the text in the templates is excellent. I utterly agree to it. Personally I would prefer to implement the second variation mentioned. However I leave the choice to the community or to you since it was your very good idea to introduce these translation combination boxes to META. Just tell me if you need help to do the necessary changes. Best regards --Marbot 16:40, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

I added code to better deal with unwanted entries in categories. Templates themselves are not listed in "Category:Translator ..." any more, and reference pages and samples can use e.g. {{Translator ksh-deu|skipcat=yes}} so as to do the same. Users are listed alphabetically by their names (as opposed to previously, all under "Use..", and those with names collating improperly, such as Èÿleen can use {{Translator ksh-deu|Eyleen}} as they would with Category tags.

It's currently only in deu-eng, eng-deu, deu-ksh, ksh-deu, ksh-eng, eng-ksh, please spread it. -- Purodha Blissenbach 10:16, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

I don't think the monolingual approach of using either the source or the target language would suffice. I should be able to read translator labels of both translators into my language as well as from my language.

Short would be wording: "tsalagi → latina" or "Deitsch ← italiano" or "Ladino ←→ Suomi"

I do plegde for a bidirectional variant. Where professionalism in not such a big issue more often, I expect reduced space consumption and shorter lists on user pages to be beneficial to all. Probably we should make them optically distinct from unidirectional ones.

As others, I don't think skill levels would be needed. Babel Templates will do. However, an indication of availability or workload could be helpful, maybe a simple version of the wikistress meter graphic. -- Purodha Blissenbach 10:16, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

As a semi-professional translator, I think I'm obligated to point out that translational ability is quite distinct from general language competence. Someone with very low productive ability in language X may nonetheless be able to translate from that language quite well -- by the same token, a fluent speaker of both X and Y may be quite hopeless at translating between the two. If we're going to be serious about valuing translators' work, we need to acknowledge that it is something quite different from multilingualism. -- Visviva 15:37, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

You are quite right with your statement. However I believe, that people generally have a pretty good idea of how skilled they are in translating texts. A person not good at translating from language x to language y will soon stop doing so. Unskilled translators soon loose interest because it gets to timeconsuming under such circumstances. In all other cases translations will have to undergo a careful revision process. --Marbot 18:27, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

In April 2006 I started Multilingual_users, which shows automatically which users have native, intermediate (2), advanced (3) or very advance knowledge (4) of a set of 2 languages. See also User:HenkvD/multilingual users. HenkvD 14:58, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

Why don't you move your projekt to the main namespace? I think it is worth doing so. --Marbot 18:31, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

OK, do you have a suggestion for a name. Would Multilingual_users be OK? HenkvD 18:26, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

transportation---LA to playa..

hallo all,,

many people from our camp have contacted me, looking for a ride to the playa from LA (where their flight will be landing)....the most efficient thing for us to do as a camp is to have everybody needing a ride from there communicate with one another, and then be able to all pitch in together in renting a van, or something....i'm willing to help facilitate this process how i may,,,but what i need from you all is to have the name/contact info of all those interseted in this,,,so that i may then send you the contacts of those wanting to work together. please send info to [email redacted to prevent spammeisters from feasting on your flesh]

thanks...all blessings.

-brittany jade

Brittany, this is the Meta-Wiki, which is for discussion about Wikimedia Foundation projects. I think you may have placed your message on this publicly-viewable page by mistake. – Minh Nguyễn (talk, contribs) 00:38, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

Why is my watchlist in bold now?

Seems pretty weird. I understand bold on Special:Recentchanges and the like. But obviously when I'm viewing my watchlist, everything is on my watchlist. :P Also I don't get this on my other wiki logins. pfctdayelise 07:39, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

The pages which you have not yet viewed are in bold. That's as far as I know. Daniel (‽) Check out Wikiscope! 16:39, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

I find it highly irritating, though. I wish it were reverted. Steinbach (formerly Caesarion) 20:34, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

This is probably related to the "updated since my last visit" thing in page histories, by the way. – Minh Nguyễn (talk, contribs) 00:38, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

Precisely. Once you've finished reviewing your watchlist, press the "Mark all pages visited" button to un-bold them. — Edward Z. Yang^(Talk) 19:09, 25 August 2006 (UTC)