Wikimedia Forum/Archives/2015-03

SUL issue: cannot log in on some projects

Hi. My account is a SUL account, and has been for a long time. It happens that on some projects, like wikidata, I cannot log in with my SUL account (and my "logged in" status is not recognized when I have logged in on some other project). I have checked that there is no local account with that name (the user page says the username is not registered, when trying to register it says my username is already taken as a SUL account). Is it some known issue about wikidata, or is it only me? Thanks in advance, --Eusebius (talk) 07:25, 1 March 2015 (UTC)

Usually this happens when the autocreation of the local account upon login is prevented by something. You have created only 2 local accounts in a year but the most recent is today. Do you manage to login, say, on wikt:it: or outreach:? --Nemo 08:38, 1 March 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for taking the time to reply. Problem solved, of course it was a stupid one: I changed my password a while ago, then forgot that I did, and only one of my browers recorded the change, the other ones apparently kept running on prior authentication cookies... Sorry to have wasted your time and thanks again. --Eusebius (talk) 10:06, 1 March 2015 (UTC)

Since the inception of the Outreach wiki in 2009, SUL has never worked properly for me there. Recently, it is less bad -- when I go there, I am not logged in, but when I click "log in" it recognizes that I am already logged in and does not request my username and password -- it simply refreshes the page, now showing my logged-in interface. I don't know if this is something specific to Outreach wiki, specific to my account, or what. -Pete F (talk) 17:40, 2 March 2015 (UTC)

Outreach was special. It is no longer. See gerrit:58924 and phab:T16407#194365. cc Anomie --Jeremyb (talk) 18:20, 2 March 2015 (UTC)

New Wikipedia Library Accounts Available Now (March 2015)

Hello Wikimedians!

The TWL OWL says sign up today!

The Wikipedia Library is announcing signups today for, free, full-access accounts to published research as part of our Publisher Donation Program. You can sign up for new accounts and research materials from:

• Project MUSE — humanities and social science books and journals
• DynaMed — clinical reference tool for medical topics
• Royal Pharmaceutical Society — pharmaceutical information and practice resources
• Women Writers Online — a digital humanities database focused on women's literature
• Newspapers.com — American newspapers database w/ Open Access opportunities (expansion of accounts)

Many other partnerships with accounts available are listed on our partners page. Do better research and help expand the use of high quality references across Wikipedia projects: sign up today!
--The Wikipedia Library Team 21:14, 2 March 2015 (UTC)

Help us coordinate Wikipedia Library's distribution of accounts, communication of access opportunities and more! Please join our team at our new coordinator page.

This message was delivered via the Global Mass Message tool to The Wikipedia Library Global Delivery List.

Adding a topic to Wikipedia site

How does one go about adding a new topic to Wikipedia?

See Your first article. Ruslik (talk) 16:42, 7 March 2015 (UTC)

Revert notifications encourage revert warring

Tracked in Phabricator:
Task T91909

Notifications-Flyout-Screenshot-08-10-2013-Cropped

Why are reverted edits included in alert notifications and enabled by default? A sudden notification of a revert by another editor feels like a slap on the face, and only serves to encourage or even increase the speed of edit warring between editors. I have changed my own settings, but I think in the interests of the wider community across WMF projects the default settings should be reconsidered. - Mailer Diablo (talk) 22:53, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

• Notifying a user about edit reversion is actually helpful to me. This is because it helps to notify the user that someone has reverted the user's edit. This gives the impression to the user that he has done something wrong , otherwise why would his edit be reverted? But for this to work fully , a reason should be provided , which is not so when an edit is reverted.--Leaderboard (talk) 13:12, 5 March 2015 (UTC)
• I was under the impression that this notification does not appear unless you are logged in to an autoconfirmed account. In theory, anyone who is autoconfirmed ought to know better than to edit war. Of course, the best way to prevent a revert war is for the person who is tempted to revert to edit collaboratively, by trying to salvage something (no matter how small) rather than reverting wholesale and thus triggering the revert warning. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:30, 6 March 2015 (UTC)
  • Perhaps we could direct the user's behavior. "Your edit was reverted. Leave a message?" harej (talk) 02:34, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

    I like the default summary in English Wiktionary: "If you think this rollback is in error, please leave a message on my talk page" Something alike is more friendly. --Vriullop (talk) 17:55, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

    • I can confirm that the notifications will also go to IP's who are not logged in and are not necessarily confirmed. Reguyla (talk) 02:45, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

I think you are confusing "getting a message" with "getting a notification", Reguyla. IPs are "getting a message" about reverts by a bot (or a user) to the IP talk page (at least on enWP, not on many Wikipedias!), which triggers the good old "orange bar of doom", OBOD. IPs are definitely not getting "notifications", the red number thing, this feature is only activated for registered users (all registered users, autoconfirmed or not). --Atlasowa (talk) 07:47, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

After testing it I think your right. I could have sworn that it was the alert but when I just tested it the OBOD showed up and no the alert. Although I haven't checked the actual ping function to an IP, perhaps that's what did it before. Reguyla (talk) 19:06, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

• • • I like the idea harej and Vriollop bring. I know that I'd be off-put if I were to receive a message like this. Lessening the blow, so to speak, would be nice. Killiondude (talk) 18:49, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

I'm sure I discussed with a researcher at Wikimania the idea of doing some analysis to determine if and when the revert notification is a net positive. I guess nothing came of that. Rich Farmbrough 22:22 10 March 2015 (GMT).

WMF vs NSA - big data vs gigantic data

Where is this being (and as importantly where was this being) discussed? Rich Farmbrough 22:20 10 March 2015 (GMT).

Dunno if you saw the announcement and ensuing discussion: [1]. I think you're looking for discussion prior to today, however. Killiondude (talk) 22:41, 10 March 2015 (UTC)

Thanks, I saw that after I came across the matter on Jimbo's talk page. I have made my concerns clear there, and on a comment on the blog post. It increasingly seems that the pledge by Lila to involve the community more is more of an aspiration than a hard commitment. Rich Farmbrough 13:39 11 March 2015 (GMT).

Looking for a tool

Hi, I'm from Es-Wikipedia and I'm looking for a tool that can show the recent changes of the same wiki, but only from a specific country. Does exist any like this? Thanks for the info. --Jsmura (talk) 04:13, 13 March 2015 (UTC)

SUL finalization update

Hi all, please read this page for important information and an update involving SUL finalization, scheduled to take place in one month. Thanks. Keegan (WMF) (talk) 19:27, 13 March 2015 (UTC)

Username changes

See also: Talk:Single User Login finalisation announcement#I don't understand and Talk:Single User Login finalisation announcement#Bug?

Can anyone explain this message about a username change?. I have an unified account and don't want to change my name. --Keysanger (talk) 08:35, 18 March 2015 (UTC)

Hello Keysanger. The message was probably intended for user talk:Createaccount, which redirects to your talk page. The bot that placed the message follows redirects. —Pathoschild 13:06, 18 March 2015 (UTC)

Is the Language Committee still active?

So there is this thing called the Language committee or LangCom, which according to their page should "act in the Requests for new languages process by reviewing the requests, giving advice and eventually recommending the creation of new language versions to the Board". They also have a talk page where people can "add any questions or feedback to the language committee". On that page many users are asking if the project they're working on is ready to be approved, and for advice about how to reach that target. But they almost never get any answer. Check the archive of the talk page: lots and lots of unanswered messages in many past months. I first pinged, and then wrote individually to each member of the LangCom, asking if they can check the talk page. I didn't get any reply so far from any of them. Also, the last activity report is from 2013.

So my question is: is the Language Committe still active? If yes, why don't they answer any message, and how can one contact them? If no, then how are people supposed to develop new projects, if the Committe is not there to give advice and decide upon the requests?

Let's ping all members again for their information: (@Amire80, Antony D. Green, Bèrto 'd Sèra, Maor X, GerardM, Jon Harald Søby, and Karen:, @Arria Belli, MF-Warburg, Evertype, Millosh, Baba Tabita, SPQRobin, and Santhosh.thottingal:, @Shanel and ZaDiak:)

Candalua (talk) 10:38, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

Hello Candalua. Many of the members are inactive, but the committee itself is still (barely) active. You can check their internal discussion archives for a peek into their activity. —Pathoschild 13:12, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

Thank you Pathoschild, but still the issue remains. If some members are inactive due to lack of time or other, why don't they simply resign and ask to be replaced? And why nobody bothers to answer any message? Why do they only talk between themselves on a mailing list, instead of actually talking with the users? What are users supposed to do in this situation? Candalua (talk) 13:53, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

LangCom has always seemed inactive for as long as I can remember. PiRSquared17 (talk) 17:54, 18 March 2015 (UTC)

Active. Antony, Maor, Gerard, Jon, MF-Warburg, Evertype, Millosh, Santhosh, SPQRobin, and myself are definitely around and participating in the mailing list discussions. I'm not sure about the other people above. It is not very proactive, however. We are all busy with other stuff in real life, so we need to be poked. MF-Warburg is probably the most proactive member (thanks a lot for that).

We approved several new wikis recently, and are going to approve more soon. --Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 14:02, 19 March 2015 (UTC)

It might be worthwhile for the committee to take a look at its components and remove those who are no longer active/interested. At least one of them has not edited any Wikimedia wiki since 2008... Snowolf ^{How can I help?} 14:53, 19 March 2015 (UTC)

Actually I found another one who's got one edit since 2006... I might make a chart so the committee can tackle this matter more easily. Snowolf ^{How can I help?} 14:56, 19 March 2015 (UTC)

Amire80: wikimedia: active, mailing list: active.

Antony D. Green: wikimedia: inactive (17 global edits, all on meta, last edit in 2013 - how did somebody with 17 Wikimedia edits get appointed to the committee? I'm confused...), mailing list: one post since January 2014 (october 2014).

Bèrto 'd Sèra: wikimedia: inactive (no edits since 2008), mailing list: inactive (no posts since January 2014).

Maor X: wikimedia: active, mailing list: inactive (no posts since January 2014).

GerardM: wikimedia: active, mailing list: active.

Jon Harald Søby: wikimedia: active, mailing list: inactive (no posts since January 2014).

Karen: wikimedia: inactive (no edits since 2012, not sure if they even own the SUL, as the meta account - which has only one edit. If they are the enwikinews user, two edits since 2006. If they are the etwiki user, inactive since 2011 save for one edit in 2012), mailing list: one post since January 2014 (february 2014).

Arria Belli: wikimedia: inactive (no edits since 2013, no edits on meta since 2008), mailing list: inactive (no posts since January 2014).

MF-Warburg: wikimedia: active, mailing list: active.

Evertype: wikimedia: active, mailing list: active.

Millosh: wikimedia: active, mailing list: inactive (no posts since January 2014).

Baba Tabita: wikimedia: active, mailing list: active.

SPQRobin: wikimedia: active, mailing list: inactive (no posts since January 2014).

Santhosh.thottingal: wikimedia: active, mailing list: active.

Shanel: wikimedia: inactive (no edits since 2014, one edit since 2013), mailing list: inactive (no posts since January 2014).

ZaDiak: wikimedia: inactive (no edits since 2014, half a dozen edit or so on a single day since 2013, no edits on meta since 2012), mailing list: inactive (no posts since January 2014).

This is hand compiled so there can be mistakes although I have tried to make it as accurate as possible. I have used the list of users on Langcom, SUL and the mailing list archives as sources. Snowolf ^{How can I help?} 15:40, 19 March 2015 (UTC)

Too often we accidentally still use the old mailing list unfortunately, so there is quite a bit of activity of several members that is not counted in the above overview. SPQRobin (talk) 18:13, 19 March 2015 (UTC)

Just to say that I am active, but I have some technical issues related to the access to the list. --Millosh (talk) 15:49, 19 March 2015 (UTC)

At last, some answers from the members! Better late than never. Of course I understand that you guys, like everybody, are often busy in real life and don't get much time. But I hope all of you also understand that to get some feedback from you, I had to first drop a message on the LangCom talk page, then drop a message to each and every one of the 16 members, then write here in the Forum and now at last, after some weeks have passed, I'm finally able to communicate with you! I think it's clear to everybody that this situation is not acceptable. I'm not personally much involved in the development of new projects, I'm just helping a little on Wikisource; but I see many users who have been working hard on their project for a long time, and I see how much they would like to receive a bit of attention from the Committee. Not much, just a "hey, we see that you're doing well, we'll try to get your project approved soon" or "sorry, we think you should work more on this and that". That's it. Too many projects are being abandoned after a good start, because the users feel their work will never get any consideration at all. So please, please, guys, come out of those obscure mailing lists and start talking with the people! And if some members aren't participating, replace them. Otherwise you can as well remove the "giving advice" part from your stated goals, and close the talk page, which is currently useless. Thank you very much Snowolf for the chart, I hope some decision will be taken. Thanks everybody for your attention. Candalua (talk) 09:43, 20 March 2015 (UTC)

Proposal: Bring inactive users in a sleep-modus (for end-user information)

Tracked in Phabricator:
Task T93345

Hello, I proposed a feature to show real information about user statistic (count) information, like users count information, watchers of pages (or user count of specific gadgets).

Reason: All such information, still lose more and more (in years) of their usefulness (so this feature proposal is a question of time). All in all it makes a project more of impression of alive.

Furthermore: It's suggested to add an automated message on the concerned user page. (Some gadgets for this will be replaced)

I would suggest an automate process to fill this group with users inactive for more than 2 years. What do you think about this?

Thanks ↔ User: Perhelion  14:10, 20 March 2015 (UTC)

Discussion

Thanks to Dereckson's comment on T93345 I have a vague idea what this is about. Two years of inactivity sounds okay, maybe one year would also work, it's anyway far too long for anti-abuse applications, leaving lots of other legit uses. –Be..anyone (talk) 14:32, 20 March 2015 (UTC)

What was the purpose of the fundraiser survey

It can't have any connections with the critics expressed in the mailing lists by the community, which were not only about the huge size, but as well about the misleading content, and reactions of donors, who will get aware that they were treated with not-so-right messages. In this Op-Ed at the current signpost the survey is harshly criticised for failing to ask this questions. These questions where asked here as well, and consequently not answered by the fund-raising team as well. The whole survey looks like something especially commissioned to support the justification lyrics for this scare-mongering begging spree with huge banners. It's just a meaningless powerpoint presentation, obviously made by some tie-wearing consultant clones, that misses the main questions. A lot about meaningless formal questions, nothing about the blatant lies in the message. Will there be any more answers to this questions? Why were they avoided in the survey? ♫ Sänger - Talk - superputsch must go 14:46, 22 March 2015 (UTC)

Wikinet

Hello, I proposed a project to create here. Wikinet is a free search engine where everyone can add quality site. We're sure to have interesent and acceptable sites for everyone.
If you are interested, you can enter your pseudo here.
You can see to the test build here (link in French)

Thank

--Bastenbas (talk) 11:23, 19 March 2015 (UTC)

A wiki could never be an effective search engine. You would need to crawl/spider a large portion of the web for one to even be useful. What you're proposing seems to be more like DMOZ. PiRSquared17 (talk) 19:29, 23 March 2015 (UTC)

Bureaucrat For All Wikis

I propose re-allowing granting bureaucrat access for small wikis. Mjbmr (discussion • contribs) 23:36, 22 March 2015 (UTC)

Define "small". And when was this disallowed exactly? Link to discussion(s) or edit(s) please. PiRSquared17 (talk) 19:33, 23 March 2015 (UTC)

It isn't banned. I suspect this refers to the Steward practice of not usually granting Bureaucrat access to projects with no or a very small number of permanent admins and / or a very small active community. QuiteUnusual (talk) 19:58, 23 March 2015 (UTC)

Distribution of funding

Where can I read about how funding has been distributed over the past few years? Thanks, --C.Koltzenburg (talk) 13:00, 15 March 2015 (UTC)

You can look at wmf:Financial_reports. Ruslik (talk) 17:13, 15 March 2015 (UTC)

Thanks! However, I might need more details to be able to answer this question. E.g., the document entitled "Financial statements, years ending June 30, 2014 and 2013" only talks about sums, not about any distribution statistics or otherwise. My guess is that the other financial statements are likely to be similar. Does anyone else have an idea as to any sources? --C.Koltzenburg (talk) 19:10, 15 March 2015 (UTC)

What do you mean by "distribution statistics"? Ruslik (talk) 19:52, 15 March 2015 (UTC)

2014–15 Wikimedia Foundation Annual Plan (PDF) gives a pie chart summary of how money was allocated by spending type. Is this what you're looking for? It's on page 6. Killiondude (talk) 21:41, 15 March 2015 (UTC)

Ah, thanks, we are getting a little nearer, I would like to be able to answer questions like the following: How much funding went into IEG grants compared to PEG grants? What type of grants other than IEG or PEG was funded, if at all? What percentage of grants funded were classified as research grants? How much money was spent on projects led my people with male first names? What are the differences between the statistical data from the last 5 years? etc. etc. --C.Koltzenburg (talk) 09:05, 22 March 2015 (UTC)

It sounds like you want to ask on the IEG or PEG discussions whether there's a spreadsheet summarizing grants made each year. The raw data is available on Meta, attached to each grant; but this isn't very accessible for the questions you want to answer. –SJ talk  17:50, 22 March 2015 (UTC)

See commons:Category:Wikimedia_Foundation_quarterly_reviews for Grantmaking Quarterly Reviews. Ruslik (talk) 18:16, 22 March 2015 (UTC)

thanks, all. --C.Koltzenburg (talk) 10:59, 24 March 2015 (UTC)

MediaWiki 5

See here: Meta:Requests for help from a sysop or bureaucrat#Make an updated version of MediaWiki.

I have found that, when searching for an article on Wikipedia, I noticed that I can switch to mobile mode. It works great on my desktop computer.

I have decided to request an updated version of MediaWiki, usually called "MediaWiki 5", with a new interface similar to the mobile version. I have posted a sample so you can see what I mean.

The new logo for the new software looks like this:

I will suggest to update the MediaWiki software with the above interface. Thanks. Regards, WhiteWindow^(History) Date: 14:03, 16 March 2015 (UTC)

Looks a lot like the "Classic" skin! :) That's called MediaWiki 1.2. While MediaWiki's features of 2002 are being reimplemented, you can use minerva. --Nemo 15:03, 16 March 2015 (UTC)

Then, why not try "MediaWiki 1.3"? How about that? Regards, WhiteWindow^(History) Date: 22:59, 16 March 2015 (UTC)

Already done, see mw:Release notes/1.3#Version 1.3.0, 2004-08-11 first bullet. Maybe it went in a direction you don't like, though. --Nemo 23:26, 16 March 2015 (UTC)

Well, they do say that fashion trends repeat itself in 40 years, but for softwares, that might be only 10 years. Good thing about MediaWiki skins is that you can always switch it. --朝彦 (Asahiko) (talk) 01:31, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

You can try changing the links into tabs. That way it won't cause confusion between the old version and the new version. Regards, WhiteWindow^(History) Date: 02:02, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

Lots of thought went into designing the current skin Vector, led by the Wikipedia Usability Initiative. But you can develop your own skin if you're interested and it doesn't necessarily have to replace the current skin. --朝彦 (Asahiko) (talk) 03:37, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

Why MediaWiki 5? Did we skip MW 2, 3, and 4? Also it seems you are proposing a new skin change, not a version of MediaWiki per se. (Recently skins have become more separated from MW core) PiRSquared17 (talk) 17:53, 18 March 2015 (UTC)

Wild guess, inspired by HTML5 after the demise of XHTML2, which was inspired by DOS5 after DOS4 turned out to be a miserable failure in comparison with DOS3.<shrug /> –Be..anyone (talk) 14:02, 20 March 2015 (UTC)

Guessing that the new skin shows above, we're going to release the update now. Cheers. :-) 99.121.210.109 03:55, 26 March 2015 (UTC)

Wikimedia Highlights from February 2015

Here are the highlights from the Wikimedia blog in February 2015, covering selected activities of the Wikimedia Foundation and other important events from the Wikimedia movement.

• Love on the Wikis
• A WikiLove story
• Who links to Wikipedia?
• What is Wikipedia Zero? (VIDEO)
• Join the Wikimedia strategy consultation
• Black History Month edit-a-thons tackle Wikipedia’s multicultural gaps
• Wiki Loves Africa photo contest announces winning pictures

About · Subscribe/unsubscribe, 19:27, 28 March 2015 (UTC)

Query with regard to the article stats on Hindi Wikipedia

One of my colleagues @ Hindi Wikipedia has queried about the sudden anomaly in the list of articles on Hindi Wikipedia. According to https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/List_of_Wikipedias HiWP has 117,557 articles. But according to just updated data on https://hi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Statistics?action=raw , HiWP has 1,03,000 articles. How is it possible? Have thousands of article been deleted overnight? If so, no massive deletion entries are seen in the deletion log. Please help me & my friend understand this. --Muzammil (talk) 18:28, 29 March 2015 (UTC)

Statistics were previously not always updated in case of deletions, imports etc. Special:Statistics on hi.wiki (and some other wikis) accumulated errors across many years, which will now be corrected monthly. For official numbers, always refer to Wikistats. --Nemo 18:44, 29 March 2015 (UTC)

Thank you very much! --Muzammil (talk) 19:13, 29 March 2015 (UTC)