Meta:Babel/Archives/2012-08

Is it possible to do an interwiki search ?

Hello,

Is it possible to do an interwiki search ? I mean I put a keyword and the engine searches in all Wiki websites ? Euroflux (talk) 17:26, 23 July 2012 (UTC)

No, it's not suported by Special:Search. Although in some cases it can support looking for titles on related projects (eg. there's no page on en.wikipedia but there is on en.wiktionary). Platonides (talk) 17:29, 23 July 2012 (UTC)

It was introduced at some point and removed shortly afterwards for some reason, you may want to dig in previous years' history. --Nemo 18:14, 23 July 2012 (UTC)

For exact title searches you can use http://vs.aka-online.de/globalwpsearch/ that searches all wikipedias globally. Merlissimo (talk) 14:33, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

Proposed article merge

I did proposed in January to merge Changing bot status into Promoting users. Eight months ago and nobody did objected but said nothing in support, so I'm asking here again if there's any objection if I merge those two pages and merge its histories too. Discussion in Talk:Changing bot status. Regards, — MA (audiencia) 09:18, 3 August 2012 (UTC)

No opposition to a text merge, but why merge the histories? The result would look really confusing. Jafeluv (talk) 09:39, 3 August 2012 (UTC)

I used to merge histories elsewhere back in the old times and though it'd be appropiate. However I'm fine with redirecting and linking to the history and oldid of the old page. — MA (audiencia) 09:49, 3 August 2012 (UTC)

Those two histories mustn't be merged but yes, the first page can be redirected to the second (which shouldn't be where it is btw). --Nemo 13:00, 3 August 2012 (UTC)

I agree with me move into the Help: namespace. However something wrong happened when moving it. It seems all translations were lost. I can no longer see the <languages /> languages at the top of the page. And checking at Help:Promoting users/es only French appears and it's a red link, and red links are not supposed to appear in that tag. Also "This page is a translated version of a page Help:Promoting users and the translation is 0% complete.".

Talk:Promoting users should have been also moved to avoid having an orphan talk page.

— MA (audiencia) 14:23, 3 August 2012 (UTC)

┌─────────────┘
I did queried the DB and the jobqueue isn't very backlogged either IMHO:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<api servedby="srv253">
  <query>
    <statistics pages="1198819" articles="25859" edits="5026434" images="3879" users="1442429" activeusers="2539" admins="87" jobs="39" />
  </query>
</api>

— MA (audiencia) 14:38, 3 August 2012 (UTC)

Done A dummy edit fixed it. --Nemo 22:12, 3 August 2012 (UTC)

Policy RFC

I've opened at RFC to seek community views regarding the approval or the rejection of the proposed Meta:Meta–Steward relationship/Rewrite at Requests for comment/Approval of the rewritten Meta-Steward relationship document as policy. The RFC will be opened for three weeks starting from today, the last week being a local community vote at a different subpage which will be also announced. Regards, -- MarcoAurelio (talk) 11:08, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

Funds Dissimulation Commitee

How can I make a clear distinction between Funds Dissimulation Commitee and Funds Dissimination Commitee ? The least we can say is that information about the "FDC Portal"[[1]]) is not too aggressive:

• No link in the diambiguation page for "FDC" on the English part of Wikipedia before today
• No link in the diambiguantion page for "FDC" on the French part of Wikipedia before today either
• Moreover, the special "Babel" device on the FDC Portal does not sound very clear to me. Thank you for your help, and beware of your funds. Crocy (talk) 15:53, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

SNOW closures

The number of such closures have increased in the last year in spite of our local Meta:Snowball, a local essay uncontested for years which told us to make quite the contrary (recently this one and here quite a lot more). The result of those votings if closed in due time would probably be the same but using pages from other projects to close local discussions here looks not appropiate for me. Since the essay was written in 2008 it's true that some things might have changed but what we have now here suggests (essay ≠ policy) not to make such closures. Those were the views of the Meta users in the past, and I'm sure some still think that way.

The question is if we still consider valid that essay and stop doing anticipated closures or the community has now changed its thoughts and deem appropriate doing premature closes (thus we might even consider changing the essay and convert it in a guideline). I would have to search because I probably have made one or two swow-like closures in the past.

I personally preferr to avoid SNOW closures. If a voting has a determined voting period it should be respected and if it's going down, the user asked if he wants to continue or not. That's the risk of being in a nomination & the polite way of dealing with RFXs nominations IMHO.

Regards, — MA (audiencia) 14:19, 4 August 2012 (UTC)

For Meta-Wiki processes, snowball closures are an absolute no-go as far as I can see; stewards may decide to handle stewards requests differently but I personally don't see a reason to, the example you gave was probably only a misunderstanding by the closing user. --Nemo 15:07, 4 August 2012 (UTC)

For the record, I agree with MA here. Although when the SRGP minimum voting periods were agreed back in September, the closure did include an exception clause for obvious non-succeeding candidacies. Jafeluv (talk) 16:04, 4 August 2012 (UTC)

That's quite the opposite of what the proposal there requested, the exception has not been included in the actual policy on the SRGP page and has been surely abused I'd say. I'd suggest to make Meta:Snowball policy (or guideline?) and (if stewards agree) to note at least in SGRP's GR and GS sections that the minimum time is not subject to exception in any direction (I don't know about the "short period of consideration"-like requests). --Nemo 16:17, 4 August 2012 (UTC)

FWIW I was the one closing the proposal. The exception were candidacies who were not eligible so no vote was needed to prove that (I was probably distracted by something else at RfA, because nor GR nor GS needs an objective requirement prior to run like "you've to be an admin elsewhere"). Indeed the proposal said "no matter how obvious the result may seem" and I think that while that rule was proposed in a time were requests were speedy closed due to overwhelming support, it also applies to the opposite. I'm more than willing to correct that. — MA (audiencia) 11:45, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

Done as said above.[2] [3] [4] --Nemo 15:32, 21 August 2012 (UTC)

Closing the Travel Guide RfC

Wondering if there is an admin here who would be willing to close the Travel Guide RfC. A summary of the arguments is provided here. It has been allowed to run for an extra 4 weeks following Wikimania 2012 per the request from the WMF board. Many thanks Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 19:54, 10 August 2012 (UTC)

The Board has requested "an additional 4-6 weeks" of discussion on that RFC, which request was made midway through July. This RFC should not be closed until that amount of time has passed, which puts it at end of August. I request the discussion remain active, as votes and arguments on either side of this debate continue to come in on a daily basis.--IBobi talk email 20:06, 10 August 2012 (UTC)

SJ has requested closure here [5]. Second IBobi is an employee of Internet Brands, the commercial company that currently owns Wikitravel. It is clear that he wishes to do everything in his power to prevent us from creating a new Travel Guide. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 20:16, 10 August 2012 (UTC)

If the Board is officially changing its time frame on when the RFC should close, so be it. This does not seem to be the case, however.--IBobi talk email 20:19, 10 August 2012 (UTC)

The board stated that they wished 4-6 more weeks following Wikimania in Washington. It is now 4 weeks. Thus this closure does not require a changing of the boards time frame.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 20:21, 10 August 2012 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Please AGF (besides, I don't see the correlation; the voting pattern has reversed again and we're now seeing more pro than contra, while the current total is surely not a clear consensus). Anyway, this was only an initial and unclear discussion on principles and arguments are currently running in circles, so I doubt that length matters much at this point. --Nemo 20:22, 10 August 2012 (UTC)

Regarding AGF: Paul, as an employee of Internet Brands, and whose job may in jeopardy because of this proposal, should have recused himself from the discussion, as he has a clear and strong conflict of interest. --Peter ^Talk 21:17, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

You're mistaken, Doc. See Information from the Board: "Based upon those discussions and the current state of the RFC, we would like the community to continue its discussions for at least 6 more weeks to ensure all interested parties have an opportunity to express their views." Posted July 13, by Alice Wiegand.--IBobi talk email 20:26, 10 August 2012 (UTC)--

I have commented at Talk:Requests for comment/Travel Guide#anticipated closing time? Could we keep the discussion there? It is confusing to have the same discussion at multiple places. --Stefan2 (talk) 20:27, 10 August 2012 (UTC)

Agreed. The discussion there, and decision on timing (making it 6 weeks from that earlier post), seem fine to me. –SJ talk  22:45, 22 August 2012 (UTC)

While 6 weeks are now up. Time to summarize. Anyone? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 17:37, 24 August 2012 (UTC)

A "Don't search on commons" feature

Hi all. At ro.wikipedia we've got a lot of images taken from de.wiki, en.wiki, hu.wiki and so on in 2004-2007. I was about to do a cleanup in those files but I failed at the first step: when I'm searching for http://de.wikipedia.org/Bild: it gives me a bunch of images from commons. What's the way of searching for text in the File namespace and getting only the local results? --Gikü (talk) 10:40, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

The way is to avoid using search. Ask a list on tswiki:Query service or add a template to those pages with a bot. --Nemo 07:36, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

You could also try searching with an external search engine: [6]. Jafeluv (talk) 08:45, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

Using an external search engine is a nice solution, I have to be honest. Thank you for assistance. Gikü (talk) 17:37, 24 August 2012 (UTC)

Deletion of fair use files and templates

Please see Meta:Requests_for_deletion#All_fair_use_files_and_templates. --MGA73 (talk) 18:13, 29 August 2012 (UTC)