Denny

Sure, no problem. Andre (talk) 23:41, 12 August 2005 (UTC)

Talk:WikiData WMDE#Status updates

^ :-) --MZMcBride 22:05, 15 January 2012 (UTC)

Wikimedia Travel Guide: Naming poll open

Hi there,

You are receiving this message because you voiced your opinion at the Request for Comment on the Wikimedia Travel Guide.

The proposed naming poll opened a few days ago and you can vote for as many of the proposed names as you wish, if you are eligible. Please see Travel Guide/Naming Process for full details on voting eligibility and how the final name will be selected. Voting will last for 14 days, and will terminate on 16 October at 06:59:59 UTC.

Thanks, Thehelpfulone 21:52, 6 October 2012 (UTC)

Restructuring Wiktionary Future content

Hi Denny, I added a comment on this on Psychoslave’s talk page. NoX (talk) 20:08, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

Fundraising translation feedback

Hey Denny, I have a bit of a request to ask from you. We pulled down our banners nearly a fortnight ago for what was a highly successful international fundraiser and brought the curtain down on last years fundraiser. This week however we will be changing payment processors and during the testing of the new system it would be useful to use the time productively on on testing banner text.

To help us out with this I wonder if you would be willing to help us improve our geman text using This Link

Simply follow the simple instructions on that page and if you have any questions feel free to contact me on my talk page.

We are going to run the test on tuesday so if you dont see this message till 24 hours after it was sent you can ignore me :) Many Thanks though.

Jseddon (WMF) (talk) 20:10, 28 April 2013 (UTC)

Please fill out our brief Participation Support Program survey

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The survey should take less than 10 minutes to complete. We really appreciate your feedback! And we hope to see you in the Participation Support Program again soon.

Happy editing,

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This message was sent via Global message delivery on 21:37, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

Upcoming IdeaLab Events: IEG Proposal Clinics

Idea Lab

Idea Lab

Hello, Denny! We've added Events to IdeaLab, and you're invited :)

Upcoming events focus on turning ideas into Individual Engagement Grant proposals before the March 31 deadline. Need help or have questions about IEG? Join us at a Hangout:

• Thursday, 13 March 2014, 1600 UTC
• Wednesday, 19 March 2014, 1700 UTC
• Saturday, 29 March 2014, 1700 UTC

Hope to see you there!

This message was delivered automatically to IEG and IdeaLab participants. To unsubscribe from any future IEG reminders, remove your name from this list

Long tail of languages

Yesterday I linked you [1] but I forgot to tell where I took the link from: mw:Content translation. Are you interested in me linking/cc'ing you to other bugzilla requests or proposals on how to better leverage the long tail of underdeveloped language editions? It's usually very hard to get any development interest in such things. Look for instance at how stupid www.wikipedia.org is, despite having billions of visits per year. How to measure/demonstrate the impact of issues and solutions in a way that attracts some work on them? --Nemo 19:39, 26 August 2014 (UTC)

Yes @Nemo bis:, I am interested in seeing them. Thanks for the link! I also think that www.wikipedia.org could be slightly improved. Where is the cabal that needs to be convinced of that? --denny (talk) 22:02, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

Thanks! There isn't any: you'd first need to convince the hyper-cabal to set up such cabal; however, for specific things it's possible to get some help by specialised devs.

• Project portals are community maintained but there's a limit to what we can do with HTML and JavaScript. Their most important problem is IMHO bugzilla:24767: as long as users search and browse only en.wiki (e.g. in India) they'll never contribute in their language. There's also bugzilla:47979. mw:Search gave us cross-wiki search, needs to be put in use. IMHO such "small" things have most impact, but it's harder to get interest for them than for M$-worth projects.
• bugzilla:56464 is the elephant in the room: big work on ULS; basically put on shelf.
• mw:Content translation is the next big thing in the works. --Nemo 05:48, 30 August 2014 (UTC)

Invitation

Thank you for using VisualEditor and sharing your ideas with the developers. My apologies if you're getting this message more than once, and/or not in your favorite language.

Hello, Denny,

I am contacting you because you have left feedback about VisualEditor at pages like mw:VisualEditor/Feedback in the past. The Editing team is now asking for your help with VisualEditor. Please tell them what they need to change to make VisualEditor work well for you. The team has a list of top-priority problems, but they also want to hear about small problems. These problems may make editing less fun, take too much of your time, or be as annoying as a paper cut. The Editing team wants to hear about and try to fix these small things, too. 

You can share your thoughts by clicking this link. You may respond to this quick, simple, anonymous survey in your own language. If you take the survey, then you agree your responses may be used in accordance with these terms. This survey is powered by Qualtrics and their use of your information is governed by their privacy policy.

More information (including a translatable list of the questions) is posted on wiki at mw:VisualEditor/Survey 2015. If you have questions, or prefer to respond on-wiki, then please leave a message on the survey's talk page.

Unsubscribe from this list • Sign up for VisualEditor's multilingual newsletter • Translate the user guide

Thank you, Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 17:40, 3 April 2015 (UTC)

Signpost inquiry

Hi, I've emailed you (via de.WP). Tony (talk) 16:40, 10 May 2015 (UTC)

@Tony1: Thanks for letting me know, I would have easily missed it. --denny (talk) 17:19, 10 May 2015 (UTC)

Re: we don’t have the situation that the Board members elected by the communities are struggling against the others

Are you sure? --Nemo 08:53, 11 May 2015 (UTC)

@Nemo bis: Two out of three community elected board members opposed that motion and one approved it, and it passed due to the other Trustees. Is that the 'worst' case there is? Then I still stand with my statement. --denny (talk) 16:35, 11 May 2015 (UTC)

(And thank you for bringing up the example)

Of course one can read the event differently, but I stand by my characterisation that 100 % non-officer community trustees opposed (i.e. all the 4 trustees the community could count on, the other being forced to represent the majority). The resolution passed, depending on how one wants to see it, due to Jimbo's treachery or due to one other trustee.

Could you explain what would it take for you to say that the community trustees struggled against the others? --Nemo 16:45, 11 May 2015 (UTC)

@Nemo bis: Three community-elected Trustees opposing a motion which still gets approved would be a necessary condition. --denny (talk) 16:52, 11 May 2015 (UTC)

Why are you ignoring chapter seats? Do you really think that a resolution passed with 70 % of the votes is worse than one passed with 60 %? Your division seems artificial to me, because with a 7:3 majority no single vote would change the result and the blame is always shared. Anyway, you said necessary, what about a sufficient condition? :) --Nemo 16:57, 11 May 2015 (UTC)

@Nemo bis: Chapter seats are not elected from the community at large. What is the difference between the seats appointed by the board and the seats appointed by the chapters? Why would the chapter-appointed seats carry any more immediacy than the board-appointed seats?

Regarding sufficient, the above is almost sufficient. In order to make it really sufficient, there should be any indication, direct or indirect, that it was indeed a contentious matter of import. I guess most of the resolutions of the board would qualify, I just want to be able to discard mere matters of householding which have no real import.

Also, I did not understand the 7:3-6:4 / 70%-60% numbers you gave. A resolution can as well pass 6:4 and have all three community eelected board members be against it. I do not require it to be all against the community elected Trustees, but merely all community elected Trustees being unilateral for or against a resolution, but the resolution still failing respectively passing.

As I said, I understand the Board to work usually through consensus, and therefore these cases to be basically hypothetical. But if you find a counterexample, I would be thankful and ready to change my opinion on a few questions. When I was scanning it myself, I did not find such a counterexample. --denny (talk) 21:14, 11 May 2015 (UTC)

Chapters do not appoint anyone, only the board itself appoints (all) board members. Chapters select candidates and they are democratic, being member-based organisations with internal elections etc. The WMF bylaws consider the affiliate-selected board seats to be in the same bucket as community-"elected" seats and that's the definition I'm operating under; if you use a custom definition, that's fine (there were many discussions about it), but you should probably specify it.

Your distinction is IMHO artificial because it assumes a difference in voting patterns between affiliate-selected and community-elected board members. As in most cases all 5 community trustees vote together, but 5 members don't make a majority, a resolution opposed (or supported) by those 5 trustees alone would not pass; a resolution proposed by them and opposed by the others would probably not even be voted, because the non-community members control the chair and therefore the agenda. Your requirement speculates an internal democracy and an external transparency/visibility that the WMF board does not have at all.

I don't see a usefulness in the rhetoric about "consensus" in governance bodies, which is not defined in law nor (AFAIK) in political science. (Pointers to the contrary would be appreciated.) What is clear is that the 5 community-selected members of the WMF board do not have a democratic control of the board and were put in minority in at least one case.

To surface the opposition, we can only rely on decisions taken on a tight margin, i.e. by a single vote, and look how people sided. From the case at hand, we know that community-selected members stood together and that Jimmy Wales didn't stand with the community-selected members. It would be nice to have more transparency than this, but a tradition of democratic centralism in the WMF board seems to prevent it. --Nemo 07:56, 12 May 2015 (UTC)

@Nemo bis: I specified my understanding. In my view, the community-elected seats are more democratically elected than the affiliate-selected seats. In my view, the affiliate-selected seats, from the view of the wider community, are more comparable to the board-appointed seats. For most active contributors, they have equally little direct influence on both of these groups. And once they are on the Board, it does not even matter - there was a question to this effect in the questions to the Board candidates.

You are building hypothetical situations. Did it ever happen that all five of these seats voted in favor of a resolution, but it still did not pass? Did it ever happen that all all five - not four of five - voted in opposition of a resolution, and it still passed? I have never attended a Board session, but I have talked with a few Board members, and my understanding from these talks is that the goal is to find consensus. Whether this a proper legal or political science construct, I do not care much - it is, in my opinion, the ideal way to make decisions at Wikimedia. An instantiation of that for the English Wikipedia can be found here. --denny (talk) 15:42, 12 May 2015 (UTC)

IMHO, there's nothing hypothetical in my examples and your requirements are unrealistic. Anyway, I consumed enough of your time and we don't need to convince each other nor to lecture each other on things we both know well like consensus, so we can conclude here. Thanks for the interesting conversation, Nemo 06:24, 13 May 2015 (UTC)

@Nemo bis: If it is unrealistic that a resolution passes or gets rejected against the vote of all community elected Board members, then I am rather content with that :) I hope that this remains the case. Thanks to you too, your questions made me think harder through the situations you described. --denny (talk) 21:10, 13 May 2015 (UTC)

Namespaces

LOL, I end up opening a new discussion already :), but an entirely different topic! I happened to read a characterisation of MediaWiki namespaces as "url formatting practices"... So I immediately thought: did Denny write a paper on the invention and importance of namespaces, too? :) Or anyone else? Stories like the migration from */Talk to Talk:* etc. etc. the template initialisation script, perhaps the invention of the MediaWiki namespace; and their importance now (personally I consider namespaces to be point 1.1 of mw:Principles). A sort of prequel to the paper on categories.

Yes, I'll do my homework and search on http://wikipapers.referata.com/ and beyond later, but this evening I'm a bit tired. --Nemo 20:13, 14 May 2015 (UTC)

@Nemo bis: You might been remembering this paper: Introducing new features to Wikipedia - Case studies for Web Science by Mathias Schindler and me. I also am an avid fan of "Cool URIs", on which I wrote time and again (but not much in connection with Wikipedia, more for my PhD thesis). I would obviously value nice URLs and URL-naming practices a bit higher than in that answer you linked to. --denny (talk) 03:08, 15 May 2015 (UTC)

Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees Elections 2015

Dear candidate. My general opinion about administration of Wikimedia is negative. Many texts and images had been removed with pretext of protection of rights of the owners of the copyright owners. The special permissions by the copyright owners were just ignored, and removed together with the files. In particular, this refers to images of the Soviet dissidents and their texts.

Below I suggest only few examples in order to let you know what is happening: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Sofiya_Kalistratova&oldid=649939072 https://ru.wikisource.org/w/index.php?title=Софья_Васильевна_Каллистратова&oldid=93595 https://ru.wikisource.org/w/index.php?title=Леонард_Борисович_Терновский&type=revision&diff=1312548&oldid=585736

I investigated the case and I revealed that many removals were performed by bureaucrat Lozman, who has absolutely no experience with obtaining permission from the copyright owners and does not even remember, who made him bureaucrat. However, this is only example.

Sorry for being late, but I just received the invitation to vote. You still have two days to change my opinion about at least one of the candidates suggested. One example of complain by the author is available at site TORI, http://mizugadro.mydns.jp/t/index.php/Kouznetsov,_permission I mention it because it has English version, although many Russian authors were offended in the similar way.

Now I formulate the question:

Do you think it is still possible to handle the cases mentioned?

Do you think that you can find time to deal with the cases mentioned?

Sincerely, Domitori (talk) 08:07, 28 May 2015 (UTC)

Zdravo @Domitori:. Would you consider moving your question to the official Question and Answer page? If you don't know how, I can help you.

Based on your Commons talk page, I see that you have often struggled with licensing issues. Thank you very much for talking with so many different creators and helping them to publish their images on Commons! It is hard for me to trace what exactly happened to the files you mentioned.

In general it seems that the answer to that Question will be similar to Question #5 on page 3, on the Murder of Meredith Kercher article. In short, I trust the local communities and the autonomy of the local wikis to do good decisions. I agree that there is no good escalation method for the rare cases where the local wikis break down, and I think that is something that the next Board should address. I can see that you send Smerus more Russian sources explaining in more detail what is going on. If you want, you can explain it also to me, but I unfortunately don't read Russian too well (my wife does, but she is currently traveling).

I would be particularly interested in why images, which seem to have a keep discussion, were still deleted. --denny (talk) 05:15, 29 May 2015 (UTC)

The missing question

From your recent thoughts on the Board Election:

I should have been asked about my role in the events surrounding the Croatian Wikipedia in 2013 (and if I didn't have one, why not)

Indeed, that was the question I wanted to ask, but it seemed a bit too narrow to be useful to other voters who I presume are largely unfamiliar with this issue. Instead, I asked a general question that happens to be not entirely unrelated to the CW affair.

I know you might not exactly be in the mood for answering the 40th question, but I'd really appreciate it - I'd be satisfied with the "short version" of the answer (if a short version is possible here in the first place :-) ).

BTW, Wikidata is a great thing, I'm a fan of the concept, and I have great respect for your work in this department. GregorB (talk) 07:23, 3 June 2015 (UTC)

@GregorB: I would have stuttered as I will now. Because I do not write and read Croatian as well as I should - also because the language has developed in the last twenty years, and I learned it in an oral way, so that written and formal Croatian is an impediment for me - I noticed that I always struggled to communicate with the Croatian Wikipedia community. I did start the project, but I have not been active there for a long time. I was always aware that there are nationalistic interests evident in parts of the community, but I never really investigated how strong they are. I still haven't, because it is a tough thing to do, especially if you do not have sufficient background - I am a computer scientist, not a historian. When the 2013 events happened, I was asked to step in. I tried, by trying to calm down both sides (at least in my opinion), but I guess I just lost sympathies on both sides by trying to mediate. A vote happened locally. I do not know how much has changed since then.

As you can see, this answer is rather unsatisfying, which is why I was not unhappy that no one asked that question. In short, I do not know how bad the situation is, if it is bad at all. By looking at the community metrics, the Croatian Wikipedia does seem to do reasonably well, which makes me happy, but it is much harder to assess whether the Croatian Wikipedia is politically biased or not without actually doing deeper analysis. --denny (talk) 16:27, 3 June 2015 (UTC)

A study like Research:Awareness of Wikipedia and its usage patterns would be useful. --Nemo 17:19, 3 June 2015 (UTC)

(Edit conflict) Thanks, I see your point, and I tend to agree that the whole thing did devolve into fairly nasty mudslinging, in which the media did not help, although I believe their central point (that there was something seriously wrong with CW and that certain people were responsible) was largely correct.

The thing is, it's not just the political bias. My Board Election question was inspired by an actual incident in which I was blocked for two weeks for making this edit. (Even explaining profusely in the article's talk page did not help at all.) I suppose getting banned for using "citation needed" might be unique in the history of Wikipedia. Well, heck, "automatic translation on Wikipedia is strictly forbidden" then, and I'm not allowed to challenge it. This tells me admins are either severely clueless about the basics of verifiability, or are malicious - not sure which is worse. Even if all CW admins explicitly say I'm not allowed to make that edit, and if I get banned again for making it - it's no skin off their backs, and it can't be helped. And no, I don't think this is "local autonomy" one would wish to foster.

I'm not really complaining here (okay, maybe just a bit :-) ), I just wanted to fully illustrate the issue and why I thought it may be universally important. GregorB (talk) 17:30, 3 June 2015 (UTC)

Congratulations

Hi Denny -- as you're aware, I endorsed your candidacy, so I am especially pleased to see you join the Board of Trustees. Well done -- and best of luck in moving the organization and the movement toward a brighter future! -Pete F (talk) 02:55, 6 June 2015 (UTC)

Thank you! --denny (talk) 21:53, 6 June 2015 (UTC)

• Dear Dr. James - Congratulations on your success.. I was expecting Your success. Hope the foundation and the movement will be strengthened with your endeavors. Ahmed Nisar (talk) 06:49, 6 June 2015 (UTC)

@Doc James:, this one's for you! ;) --denny (talk) 21:53, 6 June 2015 (UTC)

Thank you User:అహ్మద్ నిసార్ I believe we will all work to try to improve the functioning of the movement as a whole. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 04:17, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

• Dear Denny, I congratulate you for your success in this election and I am extremely sure that you can better efficiently the main performances of Wikimedia Foundation these years. --Csisc (talk) 09:35, 6 June 2015 (UTC)

Thank you! --denny (talk) 21:53, 6 June 2015 (UTC)

• Dear Denny.. congratulations on your success... Hope we work together for the movement.... In fact I have greeted all successful candidates, including you on 6th June.... I forgot to mention your name ... sorry for that. I am happy that I got a chance again to greet you. Wish you all the best. Ahmed Nisar (talk) 08:54, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

Thank you, Ahmed! --denny (talk) 14:49, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

Did you ever attend Wikimania with your money? Talk to us!

TL;DR: Fill a short Wikimania survey, it takes 5 min.

Hi, I'm writing you because you are listed in Wikimania/Frequent attendees. As you probably know by now, Wikimania 2016 Esino Lario wants to achieve a Wikimania format which allows people to "get things done" and leave the conference fully satisfied with the result of their investment of time and other resources (see pillars 2 and 4: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_2016_bids/Esino_Lario/Pillars ). For this purpose, we consider all audiences (see https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_2016_bids/Esino_Lario/Program#Target ).

Participants other than scholarship recipients and reimbursed representatives are one group we heard very little from, but we think they are important because: 1) they have financial resources and help make the Wikimania budget sustainable; 2) they have motivation to share and ideas on what makes Wikimania valuable.

We set up a form mainly to collect names of some such people and talk with them later: if you provide your contact, we may write you on this topic. We may release aggregate data from the resposes; data will be handled by us and the Wikimania 2016 fiscal sponsor "Ecomuseo delle Grigne" (under EU law). Please fill the whole form, it's short!

Feel free to forward this invite to anyone.

Thanks,
Federico Leva and Martin Rulsch
Wikimania 2016 team, scholarships subteam
08:30, 11 September 2015 (UTC)

Voting System

Hey Denny, I read User:Denny/Thoughts Board Election 2015 and found it really insightful. Your discontent with the voting system attracted my attention! I am a member of a Persian Wikipedia committee responsible for finding the most appropriate voting system for our ArbCom elections. We are absolutely frustrated by the Support/Neutral/Oppose system. Since Schulze method is indeed a single-winner voting system, we lean towards proportional Meek STV which is probably the best method to elect multiple winners.

If you are electing multiple people and simplicity is not important, then we recommend Meek STV. Most people agree that Meek STV is the best variant of STV, but it can only be implemented with a computer program.

But there is a stumbling block! The SecurePoll extension does not support various systems. Please take a look at Opavote to see how marvelous they run elections.

In practice we know that Persian Wikipedia does not have the needed leverage to convince the Foundation to upgrade SecurePoll extension, but we hope to make our voice heard by bringing up this issue to the next Board elections. As a member of the Board, I expect you to appoint the 2017 Election Committee members as soon as possible so that they will have enough time to revisit the proposal of changing the voting system. Hopefully the committee may consider getting help from third parties to find the suitable voting systems for all Wikimedia communities, including smaller projects such as Persian Wikipedia which suffer from low turnout. Low turnout means lower input data and, in turn, the stronger need for a robust voting system (=processor) to generate a reasonable outcome. Sincerely 4nn1l2 (talk) 08:40, 29 October 2015 (UTC)

Hi 4nn1l2! Indeed I agree that the Election Committee should be a standing committee. This should allow for sufficient time to make this important decision. I cannot comment on the technicalities of the question due to two reasons - first, because I do not have the knowledge to do so, and second, because there is a possible perceived conflict of interest. Me discussing the voting system would be as insane as letting political parties decide on the borders of their election districts. No rational country would allow for that, and so we should neither. --denny (talk) 17:40, 11 November 2015 (UTC)

Wikinews and Wikivoyage Thai

Please Open that by final decision please Now Wiki Thai want to open them [2] [3] --Parintar (talk) 11:29, 15 December 2015 (UTC)

Wikimania 2016

Hey Denny,

There seems to be uncertainty whether you attended Wikimania 2016 or not :) Perhaps you can add that info? Thanks! Effeietsanders (talk) 15:01, 4 August 2017 (UTC)

@Effeietsanders: thanks for making me aware of it, I have not been in Esino Lario. Just added that to the list. --denny (talk) 21:03, 4 August 2017 (UTC)

Wikipediocracy

Saw the Wikipedia Weekly discussion and thought I would point out my ban from Wikipediocracy was lifted just an hour or two after my first Breitbart piece appeared. However, I have only since made one post, which was in the members-only section after the fall of the ProBoards Wikipedia Review in order to mention Wikirev, the back-up forum.--The Devil's Advocate (talk) 18:12, 16 September 2017 (UTC)

@The Devil's Advocate: Why have you been banned from Wikipedia and Wikipediocrazy in the first place? --denny (talk) 14:46, 18 September 2017 (UTC)

My ban from Wikipedia is a matter of considerable public debate. I left a note about my Wikipediocracy ban on my English Wikipedia talk page before I was banned from there as well. Unlike my ban from Wikipedia, I never appealed the WO ban and it was lifted on their own initiative.--The Devil's Advocate (talk) 19:51, 18 September 2017 (UTC)

Please take care of Wikidata, this is going out of hand

I was rude to that person. For a good (bad) reason.

Nbody should do these edits in the first place (or ever)

• 1
• 2 I'm not sure I had time to enter other programs with Q38201025/Q38201321
• 3 Q504073 not used in Q187791?..
• 4 but not trio

User misunderstands "structural need" point in the worst way possible. Trivial statements are necessary.

I expect ban untill they realize their actions are causing problems stalk D1gggg/Fractaler solely to do this pointless revenge nobody cares about without any discussion with community: Norms of administrative behavior. Many edits should be reworked, not deleted.

Wikidata needs to add statements in 1000s every week and not this.

Sources are highly welcome, but trivial and correct statements should be kept to a reasonable extend (we are not saving bytes). D1gggg (talk) 08:22, 12 November 2017 (UTC)

Paired and not-paired organs possibly could be used in "part of <paired organ>"

Then Andreasmperu claims wrong statement like

"he ignores other users' opinions about searching for references other than his own mind, and keeps on creating non-notable items."

when they provided 2 references: Ok. In Russian, for example...

http://dep_zoo.pnzgu.ru/files/dep_zoo.pnzgu.ru/anatomiya_pozv_titov.pdf

• 3.1. Непарные плавники
• 3.3. Парные конечные

So I expect ban not only for wrong deletions, but also for false accusations and drama about "what he actually thinks". D1gggg (talk) 09:18, 12 November 2017 (UTC)

Honestly, @Denny: why are you closing eyes on this? 1 2 Q336989 is used for Q549563, but you need non-zero understanding of this 11:00, 12 November 2017 (UTC)

I can keep going like this: 1

I can argue that P279=property is more accurate because of needle (Q1192354) and paper towel (Q1151042) but it can be also a property of wood (material?)

Relation to conflagration (Q168983) is just removed: my first visit on fire station (Q1195942) was in the first grade.

How different Spanish "inflamabilidad" can be to remove such relation? D1gggg (talk) 11:20, 12 November 2017 (UTC)

Hello, @D1gggg:. I can see that you are upset, and that you are trying to escalate a discussion you are having in Wikidata. But the thing is, I don't have much extra power on Wikidata. I am not even an admin there. Also, I did not look into any of the issue you have raised in detail, but they seem to concern statements that very well can raise questions of proper modeling and correctness, and are inherently difficult in Wikidata.

To make an example: statement that is not difficult: George W Bush followed Bill Clinton in the role of US president. Statement that is difficult: trio follows duo. I can argue for or against the latter one, but in the first case I can't see much room for debate.

Dealing with statements of the second type requires dedication and its pay-off is not immediately obvious. I would in general suggest to leave this kind of statements out for now, and focus on the plenty of statements that are less difficult. But then again, I can't tell anyone what to do and not to do, so I do not expect you or anyone else to listen to me. My second suggestion, in anticipation that the first one will be ignored, is to take a small break, to make a walk, to stay away for a few days from this particular topic, and then to search a discussion, about use cases and queries that you want to see answered in a specific way, and then take it from there.

Really, I am not the ultimate ontological decision body for Wikidata (although that would be a cool job description), and therefore I am afraid your escalation to me can not be effective. I hope you understand. --denny (talk) 16:06, 13 November 2017 (UTC)

Problem with specific user and quite repetitive and has no resolution since September 2017.

Problem is that Andreasmperu ignores any discussion: Talk:Q7075 and rolls edit war at this item (among many others items)

And it is messy as said at talk page: not every library (room/space) is a organization. Edit comments from Andreasmperu add no value

Worst of this is that user pretends to save the world not less.

Abuse is severe.

Removed "Stagecoach Driver": https://www.wikidata.org/w/index.php?title=Q15631664&action=history with historic information

Removed correct mathematical claims https://www.wikidata.org/w/index.php?title=Q310890&diff=prev&oldid=589442613

This is abstraction from Slavic languages and has nothing to do with agriculture: https://www.wikidata.org/w/index.php?title=Q2991771&action=history

https://www.wikidata.org/w/index.php?title=Q213753&type=revision&diff=589928065&oldid=589927854

refrigerator https://www.wikidata.org/w/index.php?title=Q37828&type=revision&diff=589552124&oldid=586666257

https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q30302262

animal slaughter https://www.wikidata.org/w/index.php?title=Q4282505&type=revision&diff=567450391&oldid=559417541

>trio follows duo

"criterion used" can help to some extend, but I don't see need to remove all info.

> I am not the ultimate ontological decision body

Me too.

> cool job description

All I need is a good enough ontology (with a sense of the real world and not only with accord to books or papers)

D1gggg (talk) 10:30, 18 November 2017 (UTC)

You write "All I need is a good enough ontology (with a sense of the real world and not only with accord to books or papers)" - but that's exactly what Wikidata is not. Wikidata is not about the truth, or about corresponding to reality. It is about what the sources, the books and papers, say. --denny (talk) 16:01, 20 November 2017 (UTC)

Good you said "Wikidata is not about the truth" and "or about corresponding to reality" so that we don't need to discuss for too long.

It would be best if frontage would say this as the first sentence, so that users don't expect too much from it.

We don't need Wikidata. We don't need another semi-succeed encyclopedia with broken processes. We don't need second (dbpedia.org) export from Wikipedia in RDF form.

We have several private projects 100M$ beyond current state: "Wikidata at this point is effectively Wikipedia metadata. There projects for doing more, but outside of biographies there's little progress. I got pushback with UPC claiming "its too many items" (max 1 trillion). —Dispenser (talk) 20:11, 14 November 2017 (UTC)"

"I don't need disambiguations, ever" was the first thing I said when started editing. But I guess they eat 1 million of item from budget straight away, similar to categories. D1gggg (talk) 15:20, 28 November 2017 (UTC)

Sorry, I don't understand everything you say. I am not sure what you refer to with "private projects 100M$".

In fact, it is the first sentence on the Wikidata Introduction: it says that Wikidata is a "secondary database" to "provide support for Wikipedia [...] and to anyone". This both makes it clear that Wikidata is primarily supporting Wikipedia, and that Wikidata is aiming to collect only sourced statements from other primary sources. That is simply a natural development from Wikipedia's WP:NOTTRUTH policy. I don't know of a limit on the number of items for Wikidata, although I would be wary of a trillion - where would that number come from? The architecture is designed to be stable with regards to growth to the number of items, although I expect major hiccups for every growth in order of magnitude. I hope this all makes some sense. --denny (talk) 18:07, 28 November 2017 (UTC)

even from WP:TRUTH: "nor delete content they believe to be untrue" - as I said, "stagecoach+driver" stagecoach driver is a real occupation https://www.wellsfargohistory.com/stagecoach/

Similarly this user removed date of assassination of Julius Ceasar...

I made this edit on purpose to see if this user is adequate.

But "wow". D1gggg (talk) 19:59, 28 November 2017 (UTC)

This claim wasn't re-recreated on "murder performed by a group"

Does user speak Latin in order to claim why it wasn't 15-03-44? Or why it wasn't a group murder?D1gggg (talk) 19:59, 28 November 2017 (UTC)

I think it is unreasonable to demand every formulation of mathematical, chemical, physical and biological claim.

For example, sky is blue - nobody ever should remove it: https://spaceplace.nasa.gov/blue-sky/en/

One may improve statements about where such reflections may happen but not to remove trivial claims "sky is blue".

Similarly Q2 is a landing place for spacecraft and similar.

Wikidata won't cost even 10M$ after years of development without expertise: books and articles are not panacea.

And with users like these you would need an army of educated users doing nothing, but searching for most relevant books of that time.

drivers don't use license

vehicle category is not a regulation

Strange user, lives in their own world - it seems. D1gggg (talk) 23:29, 28 November 2017 (UTC)

prosaist and scientist are not occupations, utopia is not genre

How long it takes to change Q131156 to Q15062360 and not to spam Svetlov Artem in-box with otherwise vandalism?.. D1gggg (talk) 00:21, 29 November 2017 (UTC)

spread(s) don't have viscosity 26 11 2017‎

I'm not sure between P31 and P279 in "use": https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q41446476 https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q41446502

But one don't want to improve Wikidata when simply removes such relations. D1gggg (talk) 23:59, 28 November 2017 (UTC)

edit with СП 54.13330.2011 reference

@Denny: deal with troll? D1gggg (talk) 01:54, 29 November 2017 (UTC)

@Denny: I don't think think that "casino" can be field/responsibility

We literally open any first page: 1 2

And see "greetings", "rules", "conduct" and such.

Can user explain why croupier can't be in casino? D1gggg (talk) 02:17, 30 November 2017 (UTC)

I think that Dispenser said something wrong about trillion.D1gggg (talk) 19:59, 28 November 2017 (UTC)

@Denny: enough of "Why on Earth have you created a new element (Q13107360) without consensus? Andreasm háblame / just talk to me 21:50, 11 May 2013 (UTC)"

Somebody in Wikidata has God complex and unable to discuss matter efficiently!

You cannot misspell or mash T9 that hard.

https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/User_talk:Fractaler#Stop_creating_non-notable_items D1gggg (talk) 23:09, 29 November 2017 (UTC)

@Denny: I think that @Infovarius: or anyone else shouldn't fix mess after that "admin".

https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q34215449 - item was created as adjective 1. "Of a suitable size for carrying in a pocket" - https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/pocket

but @Andreasmperu: vandaled items 1 2 3

and pretended like item had no content: Does not meet the notability policy: content was: ""

Wikidata has laughable users with admin flags. D1gggg (talk) 08:00, 8 December 2017 (UTC)

Wikidata is dead? So soon?

Denny is right for not making single-handed decisions, but I also don't see support of these insane edits in September 2017-December 2017.

Dad and I were standing in the foyer, when Dad took from his shirt pocket a pack containing just six cigarettes

I wounder how many "admins" support

• removal of https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q35033654 - not quite same as https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q199342, labels are removed without merge (vandalism)
• edits like this https://www.wikidata.org/w/index.php?title=Q1578&type=revision&diff=601000100&oldid=599066945
  • Q1578/Q35033654/Q199342 vandaled in 26 November 2017‎ even after user seen https://www.wikidata.org/w/index.php?title=Property:P4330&action=history in 17 October 2017‎
• edits in sections above

So many useful solutions to choose from but user picks none of them.

Such deletions are structural damage to Wikidata, when performed by admin for so long without reasonable explanation - it is a sabotage.

Admins

• @*Youngjin:
• @-revi:
• @Ajraddatz:
• @AmaryllisGardener:
• @Andre Engels:
• @Arkanosis:
• @Ash Crow:
• @ChristianKl:
• @Conny:
• @Csigabi:
• @Dexbot:
• @Ebrahim:
• @Epìdosis:
• @Eurodyne:
• @HakanIST:
• @Harmonia Amanda:
• @Hazard-SJ:
• @Hoo man:
• @Jared Preston:
• @Jasper Deng:
• @Jianhui67:
• @Ladsgroup:
• @Lakokat:
• @Matěj Suchánek:
• @Mbch331:
• @MisterSynergy:
• @Multichill:
• @Nikki:
• @Nikosguard:
• @Pamputt:
• @Pasleim:
• @Penn Station:
• @Queryzo:
• @Rippitippi:
• @Romaine:
• @Rschen7754:
• @Rzuwig:
• @Sannita:
• @Sjoerddebruin:
• @Sotiale:
• @Stryn:
• @Taketa:
• @ValterVB:
• @Wagino 20100516:
• @YMS:
• @Zolo:
• @יונה בנדלאק:
• @علاء:

Bureaucrats

• @Lymantria:
• @Vogone:
• @Ymblanter:

Your role at Google

Does your Wikimedia-related role at Google have a particular name? I'd like to add a section on it to Google, but I don't know what to call it. --Yair rand (talk) 19:42, 6 October 2019 (UTC)

We don't have a good name yet. I'm fine with something like "Wikidata liaison at Google". I also wouldn't fight "Wikidatan in Residence" or "Wikimedian in Residence", but that sounds so much like am an external, not a Google employee. So, no agreement yet. --denny (talk) 20:51, 6 October 2019 (UTC)

Multilingual cite permutations / more questions from User:Lamb-da

I've asked over at WikiCite if they think clever people could come up with a template that allows citations entered via Wikidata to be automatically translated into the various and sundry language templates, modèles, etc. that you find in other language wikis. Maybe this is already possible? Improved referencing quality on *.wp would be great, and being able to move citations between languages could certainly help. Looking forward to hearing more about these (encyclopedic) automatic writing bot-séances (in perhaps more concrete terms). Is mundane lexically driven template generation part of your project?

• en:Cite:Book
• fr:Modèle:Ouvrage
• (Data:Written Work)
• (Data:Book)

SashiRolls (talk) 19:43, 7 May 2020 (UTC)

It seems that they are discussing that within WikiProject Source MetaData. --denny (talk) 02:11, 8 May 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for your patience. Looking into this has led me to go back and try to understand lambda calculus & Y-combinators, kites & kestrels. I've also tried to add a property to Wikidata for the first time... ^^ SashiRolls (talk) 07:45, 10 May 2020 (UTC)

The Original Barnstar

		The Original Barnstar
		For your work in Metawiki. BoldLuis (talk) 17:59, 17 May 2020 (UTC)

Wikidata descriptions and WikiLambda

Ive been active in WD for quite a while and I have a quick question about WikiLambda. Would WD descriptions be a good initial testing ground for Wikilambda ? WD could also benefit a lot in the process.

Cheers, (keep my fingers crossed for WikiLambda)

Kpjas (talk) 13:36, 22 May 2020 (UTC)

@Kpjas: Yes, I fully agree! The project plan already covers that idea. Let me know if that is what you were thinking of. --denny (talk) 22:41, 24 May 2020 (UTC)

FYI re Scots Wikipedia

I don't know how much of the recent media coverage about sco.wiki you may have seen, but this morning I have mentioned Abstract Wikipedia in the ongoing discussions about what could and should be done. Also maybe of background interest is some earlier discussion about possible cross-pollution, at Ycombinator and here. AllyD (talk) 09:43, 30 August 2020 (UTC)

AW question

Hi Denny, Asaf deleted my question to you, so I moved it to [4]. Looking forward to the video. Best regards, -Jim James Salsman (talk) 20:54, 14 September 2020 (UTC)

We sent you an e-mail

Hello Denny,

Really sorry for the inconvenience. This is a gentle note to request that you check your email. We sent you a message titled "The Community Insights survey is coming!". If you have questions, email surveys@wikimedia.org.

You can see my explanation here.

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:45, 25 September 2020 (UTC)

Small Fix

It is also easily the most impactful technical change in many years, and yet it was introduced with an unusual small amount of backlash and on-wiki discussions.

unusual -> unusually

ツ --Indolering (talk) 20:29, 9 October 2020 (UTC)

Community Wishlist Survey 2021: Invitation

The 2021 Community Wishlist Survey is now open! This survey is the process where communities decide what the Community Tech team should work on over the next year. We encourage everyone to submit proposals until the deadline on 30 November, or comment on other proposals to help make them better. The communities will vote on the proposals between 8 December and 21 December.

The Community Tech team is focused on tools for experienced Wikimedia editors. You can write proposals in any language, and we will translate them for you. Thank you, and we look forward to seeing your proposals!

SGrabarczuk (WMF)

18:25, 20 November 2020 (UTC)

Community Wishlist Survey 2021

We invite all registered users to vote on the 2021 Community Wishlist Survey. You can vote from now until 21 December for as many different wishes as you want.

In the Survey, wishes for new and improved tools for experienced editors are collected. After the voting, we will do our best to grant your wishes. We will start with the most popular ones.

We, the Community Tech, are one of the Wikimedia Foundation teams. We create and improve editing and wiki moderation tools. What we work on is decided based on results of the Community Wishlist Survey. Once a year, you can submit wishes. After two weeks, you can vote on the ones that you're most interested in. Next, we choose wishes from the survey to work on. Some of the wishes may be granted by volunteer developers or other teams.

We are waiting for your votes. Thank you!

SGrabarczuk (WMF)

16:09, 11 December 2020 (UTC)

Wednesday July 28: Wikispore Day Unconference

Wikispore Day 0, the picnic that partially inspired Wikispore.

Wikispore Day 1, last year

The second anniversary of Wikispore Day, observed on July 28, 2020, marks twenty-four months from the conceptual sprouting of the Wikispore idea from the Strategy Wiknic in NYC, which was held on July 14, 2019.

You are invited to participate in a virtual unconference for this year!

Wednesday July 28:

• Main Unconference (more details at wikispore:Wikispore Day)

• 12:00–2:00 pm (New York City time)
• (16:00–18:00 UTC/GMT, 18:00–20:00 Berlin)

• Social Hour

• 6:00-7:00 (New York City time)

Since Wikispore is probably the only Wikimedia project to be born at a picnic, you are encouraged to participate from a socially-distanced green space outdooors if possible.

• Register on Eventbrite
• Google Meet link: https://meet.google.com/vsg-mxiw-hij --Pharos (talk) 18:39, 26 July 2021 (UTC)

Wikisporadic Newsletter: August 2021

Wikisporadic, an Occasional Newsletter for our Germinating Community.

• The Wikipore Day Unconference was held in July, with about 20 participants - see etherpad. A suggested path forward is the "movement tactic" of regular collaborations, like a Spore of the Month or a Feature of the Fortnight.
• Some newer proposed projects at Wikispore: STARDIT (using mw:Extension:Cargo), Works Spore, WikiCite. (Comment on their talk pages!)
• On Saturday August 14, there will be a Wikimania lightning talk on Wikispore and Innovating Free Knowledge at 18:10 - 18:20 UTC, followed a few minutes later by an unconference group session for Wikimedians Innovating New Genres.

(You can subscribe/unsubscribe from future notifications for the Wikisporadic Newsletter by adding or removing your name from this list.)

Feedback on any of these items is welcomed at your friendly Wikispore Greenhouse!

--Pharos 19:48, 11 August 2021 (UTC)

Re duplicates in WD

Hiya. Just skimmed your simia article, and it raised a question about people duplicates that I have raised before. I am a merger at WD and get ultimately frustrated that I cannot do quick and easy people searches based on year of birth or year of death, either prior to creating an item or simply identifying targets for merging. Do you know whether some tool like that will be available. At the moment what should be a simple process either requires one to go and run coding language queries, or simple searches and trawl through results. Thanks.  — billinghurst sDrewth 00:59, 26 August 2021 (UTC)

@Billinghurst: Sounds like an interesting idea. I know of no such tool (it seems one could do it with SPARQL, but I am not sure that counts as simple). But it may be rather easy to implement. Would you mind describing in a bit more detail how, from a user perspective, you would like this to work? --denny (talk) 04:02, 26 August 2021 (UTC)

I did put it to the community chat at WD a couple of years ago to crickets. For the people merging, and the sake of keeping it simple (well as I see it now), I am looking for something that focuses on instance of (P31)<=>human (Q5) (avoids articles at WSes, news stories, images, etc.) and has a form with four optional fields: Given name; Family name; Birth year; Death year and a submit button. The trickiest part is to patch together search terms for given and family name to search the places that these names can appear and Label, Description, Interwiki, family name (P734), given name (P735) and deal with search: John / Smith to find John Aloysius Smith. If it gives me Smith John as well, I don't care, as that is manageable.

Searches are case insensitive regexes and return tabular data

Output would be Q (wikilinked) | Label | Description | date of birth (P569) | date of death (P570) (each field is sortable; limit output to a reasonable number as exhaustive lists shouldn't be required

If we wanted to get fancy sure there is more to do around languages of interfaces, year range searches, soundex of names, stem searches, merge buttons, yaddada yaddada, but I would be happy with something simple so finding the merge candidates and pop out the Qs to tabs and compare, then use existing merge tools. Thanks for taking an interest.  — billinghurst sDrewth 08:52, 26 August 2021 (UTC)

Via Hypothesis

Someone wonders what "The possibility to refer to semantics of functions through well-defined identifiers" is all about. -- C. A. Russell (talk) 13:10, 25 July 2022 (UTC)

That a specific function like "sort a list of strings" or "change a date from gregorian to julian calendar" would have an identifier denny (talk) 09:41, 1 August 2022 (UTC)

Wikisporadic Newsletter: September 2022

Wikispore lunch in Berlin

Wikisporadic, an Occasional Newsletter for our Germinating Community.

• Oral knowledge We held a session on oral knowledge and Wikispore as part of Options Space at Wikimedia Summit 2022 in Berlin, looking at options with several African affiliates to link out to cultural topics from Wikipedia(s). Some African communities are already doing oral knowledge documentation like the Nigerian community working on oral history as well as the growing Mozambican community working on oral history documentation in Makhuwa language. This is a way to provide more sources as well as digitize some oral parts of their history.
• Wikidata integration There is a plan to install the new UnlinkedWikibase extension, advancing the vision of Wikisprout and full Wikidata integration such as use in infoboxes.
• Movement strategy Using the Cargo and related extensions on Wikispore, work is underway to create a demo of Movement Strategy activities, adapting Baserow data from Wikimedia Summit.
• Halloween event As a Wikidata 10th Birthday event, there is hope to collaborate at the end of October with Wiki Cemeteries User Group on Grave Spore (see discussion), for maps and in-depth coverage of individual graves.

Participate: Comment on stories and ideas in this Newsletter, Join Wikispore on Telegram, Join Wikispore mailing list