Meta:Babel/Archives/2012-09

Question to community

Does anybody find useful the patrolled edits system? The system is enabled here before I joined Meta but I've never felt it was useful at all. What the system allows you is simply to mark a diff as patrolled which just makes an entry at the patrol log and that's all. In my opinion it is just an annoying feature which adds a red exclamation mark on each diff in the RecentChanges, which consumes administrators' time flagging people as autopatrolled to avoid seeing those exclamation marks, a system that floods a useless patrol log and a system that really does not prevent vandalism nor makes any difference between a diff patrolled and a diff unpatrolled (if at least made any difference... but both sort of diffs are shown identically).

As such I propose to remove the RCpatrolling system by setting $wgUseRCPatrol = false; in our site config to disable it.

Please note that this is not the same as the patrol marks at Special:NewPages because that one is really useful as it allows you to check for new unreviewed pages. At least that allows a weak content management.

Regards. -- MarcoAurelio (talk) 19:22, 24 August 2012 (UTC)

I completely agree. The only visible function it has is rendering Special:Log unusable for any autopatrolled user. --MF-W 19:29, 24 August 2012 (UTC)

I find it useful and I always use it, of course it's easier with AJAX admin and such. It's a necessary feature to avoid duplicating RC patrolling work. --Nemo 19:43, 24 August 2012 (UTC)

It is an outdated and underused system. I suppose if some people still want to use it we could keep it, but it really should be removed and perhaps replaced by something more modern. Ajraddatz (Talk) 19:45, 24 August 2012 (UTC)

I don't find it useful on a wiki without that many recent changes like this one. On enwiki it's useful for catching bad pages because our recent changes and logs are stuffed anyways.--Jasper Deng (talk) 23:55, 24 August 2012 (UTC)

There isn't and can't be anything "more modern", perhaps you're looking for more modern tools for your own patrolling. There are already several useful scripts, and the new "Page curation" extension uses RC patrol too of course (new pages patrol, naturally).

Even if for some reason the generalist RC patrollers are not using RC patrol (although rollback autopatrols as well, and you're surely using rollback), here on Meta-Wiki as everywhere I find it very useful to have the patrol marks on my watchlist, to quickly spot the changes which have problems or need to be reverted; I often find weeks-old vandalism in this way. --Nemo 07:15, 25 August 2012 (UTC)

Something more modern could be FlaggedRevs but enabling FlaggedRevs here is something that scares me and I feel they won't work either. -- MarcoAurelio (talk) 09:29, 26 August 2012 (UTC)

On the wiki's that I run, I find the patrolled edits feature completely useless. Guido den Broeder (talk) 19:57, 15 September 2012 (UTC)

Meta-Wiki Welcome

Hi,
For the French Wikipedia, does anyone know how operate Meta-Wiki Welcome ? Is it a bot ?
Thank you,--AM 23 (talk) 19:05, 15 September 2012 (UTC)

No, it's mw:Extension:NewUserMessage. You can enable it on your wiki if you want (with consensus). --Nemo 19:10, 15 September 2012 (UTC)

Ok, thank you for your answer, I will ask them, because currently, it's a bot and it has some technical problems--AM 23 (talk) 19:32, 15 September 2012 (UTC)

Comment period on the Wikimedia United States Federation

There is a proposal for an an umbrella organization for chapters and other groups in the US called the Wikimedia United States Federation. A draft of the bylaws is now up at meta. There will be an open comment period on the bylaws 17 September, 2012 to 1 October, 2012. The comments received given will be incorporated into the bylaws and they will be put up to a ratification vote from 8 October, 2012 to 15 October, 2012. --Guerillero 21:53, 17 September 2012 (UTC)

Seems it is still in the main namespace --Mys_721tx(talk) 03:47, 18 September 2012 (UTC)

Template talk:Essay

Resolved.

This template is horrible for the reasons listed on this page. It seems to have been horrible since 2008 (maybe earlier?). It would be nice if some kind-hearted soul would make this less horrible so the template doesn't take up nearly three page-lengths before actual page content is shown. 76.14.177.248 07:24, 30 June 2012 (UTC)

It's a problem with WM:LS which arose with some recent releases of some browsers (like Firefox), not a generalized one. Selecting your language manually under the page title usually fixes it. --Nemo 16:18, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

Platonides fixed it (at least, it works for me now). --Nemo 16:42, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

This may not be fixed. I find that it works perfectly in Firefox and a drop-down list allows selection of a language. However, in Internet Explorer 9, the drop-down list does not appear. Perhaps other IE9 users would comment, so that we can establish whether this is a general problem or if I am the only one to have experienced it. 86.112.45.225 11:42, 19 September 2012 (UTC)

Langswitch template

I'd like to import the langswitch template from Commons.

I notice Iberocoop has Template:Iberocoop/Participants as a participant list. I want it to display differently depending on your site preferences, with the list being in English if Meta is set to English, Spanish if set to Spanish, etc WhisperToMe (talk) 03:17, 7 September 2012 (UTC)

See WM:LS. --Nemo 19:11, 15 September 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing it out! Now, how do I get a langswitch without the name of the language being displayed? Thanks WhisperToMe (talk) 22:39, 19 September 2012 (UTC)

Automatic approval @ Arabic Wikipedia

Hello. I should ask stewards not to perform automatic approval for bot status requests related to Arabic Wikipedia (like this one). Local bureaucrats on ar.wiki can deal with this kind of requests. I will modify Cipher's edit on our local requests page. Regards.--Avocato (talk) 14:23, 17 September 2012 (UTC)

No problem, just open a discussion, find consensus and edit the list for Bot policy. --Nemo 14:37, 17 September 2012 (UTC)

Do you mean a discussion here on Meta or on Arabic Wikipedia? For Arabic Wikipedia, the text: ".. and automatic approval of certain types of bots" was added by Ciphers without a local discussion. Hence, I think there's no need to open a new local discussion.--Avocato (talk) 15:13, 17 September 2012 (UTC)

I suggest you to re-read the policy again. Automatic approval means that if the wiki do allow it, stewards are allowed to directly flag such bots at meta no matter if there are bureaucrats or not. I recently asked about the global bot policy implementation at arwiki and another bureaucrat, Antime, confirmed me that the validity of the policy text over arwiki was not disputable. -- MarcoAurelio (talk) 17:03, 17 September 2012 (UTC)

Notwithstanding, if arwiki (not you, nor the bureaucrats: the community) wants to disable automatic approval on arwiki, you should follow the local procedure for gauging consensus and then if your proposal succeeds, we will update the template Nemo said above more than hapily and we will deferr further botflag requests to the local requestpage. -- MarcoAurelio (talk) 17:06, 17 September 2012 (UTC)

I already understand the policy. :) I just said "Local bureaucrats on ar.wiki can deal with this kind of requests" in order to clear that the matters in Arabic Wikipedia has changed since it became more «active» to supervise it's bot requests, not because I or the other bureaucrats want this. Actually, I didn't expect needing for a local discussion as automatic approval has been based on Arabic Wikipedia through «individual actions» from users I really admire and respect: whether Cipher's mentioned edit or Antime's respond, not based through a local discussion. But in that case, I will demand our local community's opinion about disabling automatic approval, soon, and inform you on this page if the community agreed to my proposal. Thanks for your cooperation.--Avocato (talk) 17:13, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

Yes, please do so. --Nemo 17:34, 20 September 2012 (UTC)