Wikimedia Forum/Archives/2014-03
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Wikimedia Highlights from January 2014
- Wikimedia Foundation highlights
- Data and Trends
- Financials
- Other highlights from the Wikimedia movement
disabled people policy
Hi! I wounder if the WMF has a general "disabled people policy" or not? Has this question being rised so far? I contribute to many projects since autumn 2004 Sometimes I feeld worse the surviving Abu Ghraib. ·לערי ריינהארט·Th·T·email me· 02:13, 3 March 2014 (UTC)
- wmf:Non discrimination policy is a WMF policy (relating to Foundation business). wmf:Values: Commitment to openness and diversity. Do you have specific concerns? PiRSquared17 (talk) 02:26, 3 March 2014 (UTC)
Thnaksǃ http://208.80.153.172/api?q=string̼%5B227:%224834635-4%22%5D
·לערי ריינהארט·Th·T·email me· 03:13, 3 March 2014 (UTC)
- Why the link to Magnus's Wikidata Query API? PiRSquared17 (talk) 03:46, 3 March 2014 (UTC)
The only validation about authority control identifiers is a piece of code disallowing to post a GND indentifier twice. I added that numbers long time ago, one year or so to some of the WP's. It appeared to be assigned to the wrong place i. e. to the district and not to the prison. The advanced features of this people knowing eveything is Magnus query which he posted to me four month ago and I never tried it out.
- Sorry, but I don't understand how that is related to this topic. PiRSquared17 (talk) 04:31, 3 March 2014 (UTC)
Is there a person of trust encharged at the WNF about handling complains for disabled people policy and how hhe or she can be reached? ·לערי ריינהארט·Th·T·email me· 03:24, 3 March 2014 (UTC)
- If it is just a local incident, you could report it to the wiki's admins. If this is cross-wiki harassment you could report it somewhere else on Meta. I'm not sure which WMF email address is most appropriate, but info@wikimedia.org will probably get you a reply. PiRSquared17 (talk) 03:46, 3 March 2014 (UTC)
WMF is stating that it provides equal conditions. This is not the case. The SUL-query did never worked / start because of an UTF-8 encoding bug. So obviously no equal conditions. The other issue is that people should be handled with respect and having in mind their physical and mental abilities. Since my 7 years at WMF I experience a more and more like KaPo (KZ-polizei) - system inside WMF and believe me I experienced a lot in the outside world.
Regards ·לערי ריינהארט·Th·T·email me· 04:25, 3 March 2014 (UTC)
- CentralAuth works fine for Unicode, so I'm not sure what you are talking about... was it previously broken? Is there anything else I can help you with? PiRSquared17 (talk) 04:31, 3 March 2014 (UTC)
- SUL used on that page did not work these days with Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.3; WOW64; rv:27.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/27.0 on Windows 8.1 beleive me ·לערי ריינהארט·Th·T·email me· 04:58, 3 March 2014 (UTC)
- Can't reproduce that. That sounds more like something for a Bugzilla ticket than intentional "discrimination". You are of course welcome to submit a patch (but I don't see anything wrong there...). PiRSquared17 (talk) 05:09, 3 March 2014 (UTC)
It was stated at https://www.wikidata.org/?curid=17446888#footer-copyrightico with timestamp 19:35, 28 February 2014 (UTC)
·לערי ריינהארט·Th·T·email me· 05:21, 3 March 2014 (UTC)
- That is not in core or CentralAuth. That is a Tool Labs tool. I happen to know the person who wrote it (Quentin) and also can contact the maintainer (Cyberpower678) so they will fix it if there is a problem. (Or you can create a ticket.) I think the tool is broken for everyone currently, not just people with non-ASCII usernames, but I may be wrong. The Toolserver version is working. PiRSquared17 (talk) 05:30, 3 March 2014 (UTC)
- What does this have to do with discrimination against disabled people? I'm confused. PiRSquared17 (talk) 05:37, 3 March 2014 (UTC)
I posted the badge at ma enwiki page years before. During my absence feom MediaWiki fault finding I lived for years with colegues people with mental anomalities in places therefor. I got used to be handled as pariah (as an outcast). To evolve Gandhis talksː "I am a pariah, I will live like a pariah and I am proud to be a pariah." But are these causes to handicap my work here (especialy at Wikidata), to restrict the tehnicaly provided functions? ·לערי ריינהארט·Th·T·email me· 06:50, 3 March 2014 (UTC)
- P.S. Some Javascript manipulates the keyboard setting here, I did reboot the combuter am still not able to subskrybe here. I need to cut and past the tildes from another FF tab. ·לערי ריינהארט·Th·T·email me· 06:50, 3 March 2014 (UTC)
New project proposals
Hello all. I have put forward proposals for two new wikis at Userwiki and NonFreeWiki. I think they are somewhat similar to earlier ideas but I would welcome any comments and questions. Green Giant (talk) 16:05, 15 February 2014 (UTC)
- I don't think I would particularly like NonFreeWiki, and I would expect much opposition from other users as well. It goes against Wikimedia's mission and its vision of free knowledge for all. Wikimedia Commons is specifically and deliberately set up the way it is, as a free repository of media files; in this context, it has a specific scope as a wiki to develop free media content for its particular audience, like how Wikipedia has a specific scope as a wiki to develop free peer-reviewed informational article content for its particular audience. Wikimedia Commons also has the ability to be reused outside the Wikimedia Foundation, including for commercial purposes, through InstantCommons; NonFreeWiki can afford no such provisions. TeleComNasSprVen (talk) 01:42, 16 February 2014 (UTC)
- I understand what you mean and ideally we would use only Commons files but the proposal is not about free knowledge. Despite the vision of free knowledge, we still have a very large amount of non-free content on some projects. My proposal is to put it all in one location and stop local uploads at any other wiki. It is better to deal with such content in one place than in 36 locations, where some of the content is effectively duplicated. I am not proposing that we make this content available outside WMF but to rationalise its use within our projects. Green Giant (talk) 15:00, 17 February 2014 (UTC)
- In principle I like the NonFreeWiki idea (although not the name, maybe "Fair Use Wiki", although FU Wiki isn't great!) if it leads to better control over fair use material. I can see a few potential issues but I'm not expert enough on non-free media to know if I am right or not. @Stefan2: and other experts in this area might have a strong view. QuiteUnusual (talk) 15:51, 17 February 2014 (UTC)
- To be honest, I don't like the name either but it was the best I could come up with. For the issue of non-free media, I believe all that is needed is for the new wiki to have an Exemption Doctrine Policy (EDP) to host the non-free media and for the other wikis to slightly modify their existing EDP's to enable the use of non-free media from the new wiki. By stopping local uploads it would force people to think more clearly about what they are uploading. Specifically there would be a feature which would prevent such files from being available for use by other wikis until the file had a fair use rationale for each page it would appear on. Read the Resolution on Licensing policy and you'll notice it says that EDP's must be minimal. The idea was to reduce non-free content to an absolute minimum but this is more difficult to enforce on 36 wikis than it would be on a single wiki. In the List of Wikipedias there is a column which shows how many images are held by each wiki. Count the ones with images and you will find there are far more than 36, with at least 80 that host over 1,000 images each. I would be very surprised if the majority of those images weren't fair use. It is almost 7 years since the licensing resolution was passed and yet there are still wikis out there with significant numbers of images but no EDP. I think we have had plenty of time for this issue to be resolved at a local level. This is why we should have a NonFreeWiki. Green Giant (talk) 01:56, 18 February 2014 (UTC)
- Thanks for the clarification, I see the points for the wiki more clearly now. I do have at least one concern though: each wiki either has their own EDP, with their own legal language, or simply translate English Wikipedia's EDP and adapt it to their local language project. What do you propose be done with, say, wikis which have EDPs that are more restrictive than that of the English Wikipedia? Differing levels of restrictiveness within EDP language can determine whether wikis would choose to access NonFreeWiki or not, and still must resort to the old practice of local uploads. For example, if the EDP of NonFreeWiki is too lenient, and some wiki EDPs do not permit some media files from NonFreeWiki, they cannot link to it like Wikimedia Commons and would have to resort to local uploading. If the EDP of NonFreeWiki is too restrictive... well I'm not sure what would happen in this scenario, but they probably won't benefit from it as much. TeleComNasSprVen (talk) 06:53, 18 February 2014 (UTC)
- @TeleComNasSprVen: thanks for raising this issue. My thoughts are that the proposed wiki would be only as lenient as the most lenient existing EDP allows, which appears to be English Wikipedia, judging by the number of images. Using the example I gave in the proposal, let's say I upload an image of the common face of a 1 Euro coin. The design of such coins is that one face is unique to each country and the other side is a common design used by all countries of the Eurozone. In the proposal I highlighted four Wikipedias that use images of Euro coins, namely French, German, Italian and Russian, although there are some others, but for the sake of the example let's imagine it is just these four. The software would allow me to upload the image and I would have to provide details such as copyright status and where I found the image. However, I would not be able to use that image in any articles until I filled out a fair use rationale for each article (for example the relevant Euro articles) and for each wiki in line with their particular requirements. Somewhere on the file page there would be a button I would click to add one rationale at a time. There would be a dropdown menu to let me select which wiki I wanted to use the file on, so if a wiki did not have an EDP it would be impossible for me to select that wiki. Equally, the software would be programmed to flag any wiki that has a more restrictive policy. On Commons, there is a list on each file page which indicates global usage of that file, and the same would happen on the proposed wiki, except that usage on more restricted wikis would be prominently highlighted to alert anybody who looked at the file. In addition it would build on an existing model, which is that when files are uncategorized or they need categories checking, there is a message that appears on the file page. So on the proposed wiki, file usage on a restricted wiki would place that file in a special category until someone checks that the usage is acceptable.
- In my crazy mind, I see it in terms of a new car that someone has bought to use on a daily basis. I know it sounds like the ramblings of a lunatic but it is the best analogy I can give. I'm sure it is pretty much the same in most countries but in the UK every car needs insurance, road tax and a fitness test (called an MOT). For my uploaded file the equivalent would be the copyright status and where I found the image etc. Even then, there are rules about how you use a car, for example the most common restriction is the traffic light system mainly found at junctions of two or more roads. In case it is different elsewhere, we usually have three lights, red for stop, amber/yellow for ready, and green for go. My uploaded file would initially have red lights for all wikis, and even if I tried linking to the image from de:Euro, all I would see is the text that appears when you link a non-existent file. As soon as I fill out a rationale for German Wikipedia, it would give the file a green light and I could then link it from the article. I would then have to fill out another rationale for each of the other wikis before the file could be used there. Now, let's say that I decided to try and link the file from ca:Euro on the Catalan Wikipedia (which appears to have a more restrictive policy), I would be able to complete the form but it would be tailored to the specific needs of ca-wiki. It would allow me to then link from the article but the file would have an amber light to let other users know that this usage needs checking and confirming. Obviously for wikis that only allow Commons files, there would be no option in the rationale form to select such a wiki and if I tried being a hothead and linking anyway, all it would show is a non-existent file. To illustrate the example, the very bottom part of the file page would look something like this, bearing in mind that the section heading would use the normal === on either side:
- File usage on other wikis
- Thanks for the clarification, I see the points for the wiki more clearly now. I do have at least one concern though: each wiki either has their own EDP, with their own legal language, or simply translate English Wikipedia's EDP and adapt it to their local language project. What do you propose be done with, say, wikis which have EDPs that are more restrictive than that of the English Wikipedia? Differing levels of restrictiveness within EDP language can determine whether wikis would choose to access NonFreeWiki or not, and still must resort to the old practice of local uploads. For example, if the EDP of NonFreeWiki is too lenient, and some wiki EDPs do not permit some media files from NonFreeWiki, they cannot link to it like Wikimedia Commons and would have to resort to local uploading. If the EDP of NonFreeWiki is too restrictive... well I'm not sure what would happen in this scenario, but they probably won't benefit from it as much. TeleComNasSprVen (talk) 06:53, 18 February 2014 (UTC)
- To be honest, I don't like the name either but it was the best I could come up with. For the issue of non-free media, I believe all that is needed is for the new wiki to have an Exemption Doctrine Policy (EDP) to host the non-free media and for the other wikis to slightly modify their existing EDP's to enable the use of non-free media from the new wiki. By stopping local uploads it would force people to think more clearly about what they are uploading. Specifically there would be a feature which would prevent such files from being available for use by other wikis until the file had a fair use rationale for each page it would appear on. Read the Resolution on Licensing policy and you'll notice it says that EDP's must be minimal. The idea was to reduce non-free content to an absolute minimum but this is more difficult to enforce on 36 wikis than it would be on a single wiki. In the List of Wikipedias there is a column which shows how many images are held by each wiki. Count the ones with images and you will find there are far more than 36, with at least 80 that host over 1,000 images each. I would be very surprised if the majority of those images weren't fair use. It is almost 7 years since the licensing resolution was passed and yet there are still wikis out there with significant numbers of images but no EDP. I think we have had plenty of time for this issue to be resolved at a local level. This is why we should have a NonFreeWiki. Green Giant (talk) 01:56, 18 February 2014 (UTC)
- In principle I like the NonFreeWiki idea (although not the name, maybe "Fair Use Wiki", although FU Wiki isn't great!) if it leads to better control over fair use material. I can see a few potential issues but I'm not expert enough on non-free media to know if I am right or not. @Stefan2: and other experts in this area might have a strong view. QuiteUnusual (talk) 15:51, 17 February 2014 (UTC)
- I understand what you mean and ideally we would use only Commons files but the proposal is not about free knowledge. Despite the vision of free knowledge, we still have a very large amount of non-free content on some projects. My proposal is to put it all in one location and stop local uploads at any other wiki. It is better to deal with such content in one place than in 36 locations, where some of the content is effectively duplicated. I am not proposing that we make this content available outside WMF but to rationalise its use within our projects. Green Giant (talk) 15:00, 17 February 2014 (UTC)
- If the file has no fair use rationales filled in, then there would be a red light like this (
) at the top somewhere with a message saying something like: "This file does not have any fair use rationales. It cannot be used on any other wiki until a rationale is provided." - On a higher level, I think it would need some software changes but I might be wrong because I'm not a technical sort of person. I hope that clarifies things but as with any idea, it never comes out perfectly formed in one go.
- If the file has no fair use rationales filled in, then there would be a red light like this (
- Just as an addendum, I avoided giving too many numbers in the proposal but I think it is worth noting that there appear to be about 2.2 million files on the various Wikipedias, of which English Wikipedia alone hosts more than 800,000. I don't think it is wrong to suggest that a large proportion of those will be duplicates or effective duplicates. Obviously it is difficult to gauge exactly how many unnecessary files there are but am I wrong to think that we probably have at least a million files that don't really need to be hosted? As a comparison, Commons appears to have more than 20 million files at the moment, which would indicate that about 10% of all the files are non-free content. It is fantastic that 90% are free but it would be more fantastic to be able to say that 95% are free files, if we could just weed out all the duplicates and near duplicates. Green Giant (talk) 12:50, 18 February 2014 (UTC)
- I have found a clearer example to demonstrate the scale of the problem. I'm sure we all have fond memories of the 1997 movie "Titanic", so I present these copies of the promotional poster, with some variations but ultimately based on the same image:
- am:ስዕል:Titanic_poster.jpg - the wiki has no EDP
- az:Şəkil:Titanic_poster.jpg - no EDP
- be:Файл:Titanic_3D_Poster.jpg - EDP is similar to enwiki
- bn:চিত্র:Titanic_poster.jpg - developing EDP is similar to enwiki, but non-free images of living people strongly discouraged
- bs:Datoteka:Titanic.jpg - no EDP
- ca:Fitxer:Titanic_poster.jpg - strongly discouraged for images of living people
- ckb:پەڕگە:Titanic_poster.jpg - only admins can upload
- cy:Delwedd:Titanic_poster.jpg - no EDP
- el:Αρχείο:Titanic_1997_poster.jpg - not allowed to have non-free images of living people
- en:File:Titanic_poster.jpg - strongly discouraged for non-free images of living people
- eo:Dosiero:Titanic1997.jpg
- fa:پرونده:Titanic_poster.jpg
- fi:Tiedosto:Titanic_poster.jpg - non-free images of living people are forbidden
- ga:Íomhá:Titanic_poster.jpg - no EDP
- hi:चित्र:टाइटैनिक_(१९९७_चलचित्र).jpg - no EDP
- hr:Datoteka:Titanic_poster.jpg
- hy:Պատկեր:Titanic_poster.jpg - EDP is similar to enwiki
- id:Berkas:Titanic_film.jpg
- is:Mynd:Titanicplakattvo.jpg - strict limits allow such files only when no free file is available
- ka:ფაილი:Titanic_ver2.jpg - no EDP
- lt:Vaizdas:Titanic_poster.jpg
- lv:Attēls:Titanic_poster.jpg
- mk:Податотека:Titanic_poster.jpg
- ml:പ്രമാണം:Titanic_poster.jpg - EDP is similar to enwiki
- ms:Fail:Titanic_poster.jpg - EDP is similar to enwiki but with some differences
- pt:Ficheiro:Titanic_poster.jpg
- ro:Fișier:Titanic_poster.jpg - EDP is similar to enwiki
- si:ගොනුව:Titanic_poster.jpg - EDP is similar to enwiki
- sl:Slika:TitanicDVD.jpg - EDP is similar to enwiki
- sr:Датотека:Titanic_poster.jpg
- sw:Picha:Titanic_poster.jpg - no EDP
- ta:படிமம்:டைட்டானிக்_திரைப்பட_உறை.jpg - EDP still being worked on
- tr:Dosya:Titanik_film.jpg - non-free images strongly discouraged for living people
- uk:Файл:Titanic_poster.jpg - EDP is similar to enwiki
- vi:Tập_tin:Titanic_poster.jpg
- zh:File:TITANIC.jpg - EDP is similar to enwiki but strongly discourages non-free images of living people
- I had to go through 74 articles about the movie to find these images. Clearly a large number of them are problematic, either with no EDP on their wiki or poorly presented attribution or they are hosted on wikis that strongly discourage non-free images of living people. If we have a single wiki for non-free images, we could detect and deal with this kind of problem more easily than at the moment. Instead of 36 images with varying levels of attribution and policy compliance, we could host just one image with full attribution and compliance and then allow it to be linked from a limited number of articles. Green Giant (talk) 17:34, 18 February 2014 (UTC)
- @TeleComNasSprVen: and @QuiteUnusual:, I have tried to create some example pages for a non-free wiki at User:Green Giant/NonFreeWiki. I invite you both and anyone else who is interested to look at them and tell me what you think, even if it is to tell me that I should just pack it all in. Please do excuse the amateurish attempt to replicate pages but there is not much to go on. I look forward to your comments. :) Green Giant supports NonFreeWiki (talk) 14:59, 23 February 2014 (UTC)
- According to wmf:Resolution:Licensing policy, an EDP must be "in accordance with [...] the law of countries where the project content is predominantly accessed (if any)". As different Wikipedia projects are accessed from different countries, this means that different Wikipedia projects need to adopt vastly different EDPs, and some files would only be useable on some projects but not on other projects. See for example Wikilegal/Turkish Wikipedia and Non-Free Content for a discussion of what this means for Turkish Wikipedia. One of the problems you mentioned is that some projects still lack an EDP. A "NonFreeWiki" would not solve this; those projects would still have to come up with an EDP which is in accordance with the law of the countries in which those projects predominantly are accessed. Adopting w:WP:NFCC (or a translation of it) would not necessarily be possible as the United States might not be the only country from which the project predominantly is accessed.
- If a project only can use a subset of the files in an image repository but not all of them, this risks making file patrolling more difficult. On English Wikipedia, files can easily be deleted if the file is found not to satisfy the EDP (w:WP:NFCC). On the other hand, if a file is hosted on a "NonFreeWiki", the file may have to be kept on the "NonFreeWiki" project because it satisfies the EDP of the Syldavian Wikivoyage or the Brutopian Wikiversity. On English Wikipedia, the vast majority of EDP violations that I find and report concern files where all uses violate the EDP, and much fewer of them concern files used in two or more articles where the file has to be removed from some but not all of the articles using the file. Also, if a decision is taken to remove a file from some but not articles, I sometimes see that file being re-added immediately afterwards. I would therefore guess, although I'm not sure, that it is easier to manage file usage if a file simply can be deleted for violation of the EDP, and that a NonFreeWiki, which would make the same file useable on many more pages, would make such image patrolling more difficult.
- I also note a problem with local images which this project would solve. I sometimes find that a different language edition of Wikipedia has translated an article from English Wikipedia and that the translation refers to files under the same names as on English Wikipedia. This gives ugly red links for those files which have been uploaded locally to English Wikipedia. If they instead had been uploaded to a central repository, the translation would still have contained the correct images.
- User:TeleComNasSprVen mentioned mw:InstantCommons and claimed that you wouldn't be able to use that feature for a non-free wiki. I'm not sure that this is correct. I believe (although I might be wrong) that you can use any WMF projects as an "image repository" in the same way as mw:InstantCommons by simply adding a couple of lines to your own wikiproject's mw:LocalSettings.php. However, since non-free files on at least English Wikipedia frequently tend to be deleted (for example because of violation of w:WP:NFCC#7), using a "NonFreeWiki" as an image repository sounds unstable.
- Also note that different projects define "free" differently:
- On English Wikipedia, anything published before 1923 is determined to be "free" (because of United States law). Such content is not necessarily free elsewhere, and such content is not necessarily acceptable on Commons (see w:Template:PD-US-1923-abroad). Using English Wikipedia content in the United Kingdom, Canada or Australia is often illegal because of this.
- On German Wikipedia, photographs of buildings and statues are usually determined to be "free" if permission has been granted from the photographer (because of German, Austrian and Swiss law). On the other hand, such content is not necessarily free elsewhere (see for example w:Korean War Veterans Memorial#United States postage stamp court case). It is therefore often llegal to use German Wikipedia content in Belgium, Luxembourg and South Tyrol, because of conflicting laws.
- On Italian Wikipedia, photographs taken more than 20 years ago usually seem to be determined to be free (because of a short term for photographs in Italian law), but such photographs are not always considered to be "free" in other countries (see e.g. the warning about 1976 in it:Template:PD-Italia), and using Italian Wikipedia content is therefore sometimes illegal in Switzerland.
- What would this proposal do about files which are considered to be "free" on one project but not on another project? --Stefan2 (talk) 15:30, 26 February 2014 (UTC)
- This section is becoming very long, so I have copied it to NonFreeWiki#Comments and replied there. Green Giant supports NonFreeWiki (talk) 19:30, 15 March 2014 (UTC)
Language speakers needed to notify wikis of an RfC
Hello,
The current Requests for comment/Wikimedia Commons interwiki prefix has the potential to affect a number of different WMF wikis, so all of them need to be made aware of its existence. If you speak any of
- Chinese, Spanish, Estonian, French, Japanese, Oriya, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Swedish, or Urdu,
it would be great if you could help out by translating a notification message and posting it to a community noticeboard. Please see Requests for comment/Wikimedia Commons interwiki prefix#Next steps for details. Thank you. — Scott • talk 11:40, 27 February 2014 (UTC)
- These are now
Done. Thanks to all who helped out. — Scott • talk 13:41, 12 March 2014 (UTC)
.jpg){kind=link}
Mandatory, agreed-upon reasons for Undo
I’d like to discuss whether it would be helpful to add specific reasons for undoing changes in articles.
Description of current problem
Many users have indicated that deletions, or reversions of their contributions, are one of the most annoying and misused aspects of Wikipedia, leading to edit wars. Some state that deletions of contributions particularly affects women contributors, and has been given as one of the reasons why female participation in Wikipedia is low (of course the issue affects all contributors, not just women). As a result there have been proposals to limit the Undo function
The ability to undo changes in Wikipedia is essential to prevent vandalism and delete material that is irrelevant, just plain wrong, offensive, constitutes spam, etc. However, the fact that many people seem to be dissatisfied with the way the current undo process works, suggests that it could be improved.
Currently editors have a lot of leeway to remove contributions. Editors, at their own option, can write a reason for the undo, but the default text is very general (i.e. “Undid revision…”). Even when editors choose to specify a reason, it can sometimes be vague, or in fact deletions may be made for inappropriate reasons. This, in turn, can leave the person whose edit has been deleted, confused, upset, etc.
Description of proposed solution
The proposed change is quite simple - i.e. it is suggested that a defined list of reasons for undoing be added (e.g. Vandalism, Spam, Offensive, Not relevant, etc) Thus, when an editor is performing an undo, she/he must select the appropriate reason (e.g. via drop down list or radio buttons), before the undo can be carried out. If a reason has not been selected an error message would appear
This list would include a short description of each reason, so that everyone understands what are the appropriate, agreed upon reasons for deleting edits. The list can also include an “Other” reason, plus, as now, a textarea where the editor can add additional helpful explanations. Once the delete is confirmed, the selected reason, along with the additional written explanation, will appear on the View history page in the edit summary text.
Of course, a definitive list of valid reasons for performing undos, would first need to be defined and agreed upon
Benefits
The benefits of this simple change would be twofold:
- To editors who are performing undos, it would provide a reminder on what are valid, agreed upon reasons for deleting contributions, and thus make the process less arbitrary. By requiring specific reasons for deletions, the incidence of inappropriate deletions, as well as possibly the intensity of some edit wars, could be reduced
- To editors whose contributions are being deleted, the reasons would provide a better, agreed upon explanation of why their contribution was deleted. Thus, the process would appear less arbitrary to them, and potentially less unsettling. This in turn could reduce the likelihood of editors being discouraged from participating, as observers state is the case now
Level of effort
Implementing the proposed change would be fairly simple, requiring relatively little effort
- Ivansfca (talk) 04:50, 9 March 2014 (UTC)
- This is a great proposal; however, this is the wrong place to put it. I recommend posting this at W:EN:WP:VPR or the equivalent at other projects. Meta-Wiki doesn't decide these kinds of issues. -- Ypnypn (talk) 02:23, 9 March 2014 (UTC)
- Totally agree, this is a great proposal. Am I correct in the belief the proposal will be placed on the w:en:Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals) ? Lotje (talk) 07:09, 9 March 2014 (UTC)
- I posted the proposal on Village pump - Ivansfca (talk) 22:33, 9 March 2014 (UTC)
- Nice idea, thank you. English Wikipedia is one place to discuss this. It could also be developed as a general option for any Wikimedia wiki. It might be easier to test it out on a smaller project (such as Meta!) first, once you find a group of people who want to design it and realize it. Regards, –SJ talk 01:45, 10 March 2014 (UTC)
- I posted the proposal on Village pump - Ivansfca (talk) 22:33, 9 March 2014 (UTC)
Enabling an opt-in VisualEditor preference on Meta
Meta:Babel#Enabling an opt-in VisualEditor preference on Meta 17:33, 11 March 2014 (UTC)
como activar wikimedia commons para subir archivos?
¿Cómo activo wikimedia commons para subir archivos? o que otra forma tengo de subir archivos ya que en el menú de la izq. no me da esa opción. gracias
- Es necesario registrar una cuenta en Commons para poder subir archivos. Una vez lo haya hecho, le saldrá la opción de "Subir un archivo" en el menú de la izquierda. Aquí tienes un tutorial para ayudarte. Un saludo Raystorm (talk) 13:12, 12 March 2014 (UTC)
- I assume that since User:Escuela TAI is blocked at Commons, this user is asking how to be unblocked. Someone could translate this to Spanish, perhaps. --Glaisher [talk] 13:14, 12 March 2014 (UTC)
- Interesting. The user was asking how to upload pics to Commons, so I explained you needed to have a registered account and linked to the tutorial in Spanish. No mention about a request to be unblocked at all. Cheers, Raystorm (talk) 13:27, 12 March 2014 (UTC)
- I assume that since User:Escuela TAI is blocked at Commons, this user is asking how to be unblocked. Someone could translate this to Spanish, perhaps. --Glaisher [talk] 13:14, 12 March 2014 (UTC)
Wikimedia_genealogy_project
Hello, you may wish to see Wikimedia_genealogy_project, where plans for a genealogy project on Wikimedia are being drawn up. --Jakob (talk) 16:34, 13 March 2014 (UTC)
Proposed optional changes to Terms of Use amendment
Fundraising totals by country
In Fundraising 2011/Report we could see Donation totals by country
In the Fundraising 2012/Report one can see the total sums only for the top 10 countries. I suppose the data on every other country are also of great interest. --Perohanych (talk) 08:58, 14 March 2014 (UTC)
Wikimania 2014 London: Promoting livestream using banners
Hello!
I'm leading the team organising Wikimania this year. As an outreach initiative, I am organising a track of presentations by notable speakers; so far I've confirmed Lawrence Lessig, Clay Shirky, Danny O'Brien (Director of EFF), Elizabeth Marincola (CEO of PLOS) to name a few, as well as Jimmy and Sue of course. All of their talks will be on aspects of Wiki*edia, how it functions, its role in education, the role of open licensing, wiki*edia and open access, wikidata, etc.
I'd like to promote the livestream of these talks via banners on en-wp during the conference itself. Does the community have any objection to this? Ignore for now the technical demands on the streaming servers - this is just about whether there are any problems in principle with promoting Wikimania livestreams using banners.
EdSaperia (talk) 15:31, 14 March 2014 (UTC)
- Do you mean via SiteNotice, CentralNotice, or something else? If not SiteNotice, would you limit it to logged-in users? PiRSquared17 (talk) 20:43, 14 March 2014 (UTC)
- Via centralnotice, to all English speaking users, including anonymous users. 188.222.243.118 01:55, 15 March 2014 (UTC)
- The idea is for people who haven't really thought about the Wikimedia community before to be exposed to some of the complexity. EdSaperia (talk) 22:16, 15 March 2014 (UTC)
- Via centralnotice, to all English speaking users, including anonymous users. 188.222.243.118 01:55, 15 March 2014 (UTC)
Save the dates. ;-) --Nemo 21:24, 23 March 2014 (UTC)
Two years to plan and implement Wikimania
I have added a discussion topic on Wikimania discussion page about "allowing two years to plan and implement Wikimania". This topic relates to Wikimania Esino Lario bid, but it is something that can have larger implications and it would be relevant to hear your thoughts about. --iopensa (talk) 18:46, 24 March 2014 (UTC)
Wikimedia Highlights from February 2014
- Wikimedia Foundation highlights
- Data and Trends
- Financials
- Other highlights from the Wikimedia movement
Changes to the default site typography coming soon
This week, the typography on Wikimedia sites will be updated for all readers and editors who use the default "Vector" skin. This change will involve new serif fonts for some headings, small tweaks to body content fonts, text size, text color, and spacing between elements. The schedule is:
- April 1st: non-Wikipedia projects will see this change live
- April 3rd: Wikipedias will see this change live
This change is very similar to the "Typography Update" Beta Feature that has been available on Wikimedia projects since November 2013. After several rounds of testing and with feedback from the community, this Beta Feature will be disabled and successful aspects enabled in the default site appearance. Users who are logged in may still choose to use another skin, or alter their personal CSS, if they prefer a different appearance. Local common CSS styles will also apply as normal, for issues with local styles and scripts that impact all users.
For more information:
- Summary of changes and FAQ
- Discussion page for feedback or questions
- Post on blog.wikimedia.org
-- Steven Walling (Product Manager) on behalf of the Wikimedia Foundation's User Experience Design team 23:04, 31 March 2014