Meta:Babel/Archives/2013-01

Multilingualism

See Talk:Multilingualism#Page names --Rogerhc (talk) 01:12, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

Organizing discussion spaces on meta

Hi. I've been working on organizing / cleaning up a few areas here on meta, and I'd like to address the topic of discussion spaces.

There are currently several main discussion spaces split by topic:

• Meta:Babel (this page): a place to discuss general stuff related to meta-wiki
• Wikimedia Forum: a place to discuss general Wikimedia stuff
• Meta talk:Babylon: a place to discuss translation stuff
• Help Forum: a place to get general help
• Tech: a place to get technical help

Despite editing meta-wiki for years, I still find this quite confusing, in no small part due to the various names: I usually mix "Babel" and "Babylon", and I never remember if meta-specific issues should go to "Babel" or to the "Forum".

I'd like to start a discussion to see if we can find consensus to organize those pages better.

One solution would be to use a system similar to what exists on a few Wikimedia wikis, with subpages for specific areas. For example, this could look like:

• Forum (Wikimedia Forum)
  • Forum/Meta (Meta:Babel)
  • Forum/Translation (Meta talk:Babylon)
  • Forum/Help (Help Forum)
  • Forum/Tech (Tech)

I've chosen "Forum" as the parent page because it's a Latin word and therefore more language-neutral than idioms like "Village Pump", but obviously this is up for discussion. We can also discuss whether it should be in the Meta: namespace. We can also discuss completely different solutions, but I do want us to try and come up with a system that is more sane than the current situation.

guillom 13:59, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

It would probably be easier to kill the Help Forum and, if necessary, rename the Babylon (or Babel). --Nemo 14:23, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

Help should not be subsumed under Forum - they're very different things. So maybe:

• Forum
  • Forum/Wikimedia
  • Forum/Meta
  • Forum/Translation
• Help
  • Help/General
  • Help/Technical

-- YPNYPN ✡ 14:34, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

Template:Languages vs Template:Languages light

See proposing by User:Rogerhc on Template talk:Languages. --Kaganer (talk) 15:15, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

Multilingualism

Hi, your advice please: is putting pages not written in English on language code subpages of English page names, as outlined in Meta:Interlanguage links, the current best practice for handling multilingual pages these days on Meta? I'm new here, just off the Wikivoyage boat. Putting language pages other than English on language code subpages of English page names, eg English_page_name/de, is the same way we handled multilingualism on Wikitravel Shared. I'm trying to sort out how we at Meta Wikivoyage can best handle this here. Meta:Interlanguage links seems like the going advice. If it is, it will be easy for us Wikivoyagers (former Wikitravelers) to follow because we are used to doing it that way. I notice other things have been tried but I am not looking for anything fancy and confusing, just something simple that works for creating and maintaining Meta Wikivoyage community multilingual pages, something that has a successful track record. Is Meta:Interlanguage links the way to go? Any tips or advice? Thx! --Rogerhc (talk) 00:01, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

Search Help namespace by default

Now that we've consolidated all help pages in the Help: namespace eliminating the translated namespace, it's time to make it more usable. The wiki is already configure to search "Research" namespace by default, so it also (and even more) makes sense to search Help: which is a content namespace for this wiki as on mw:. What do you think? If there are no objections, in about two weeks I'll request Help: to be added to default search and also (if it's not yet) to content namespaces. Thanks, Nemo 11:12, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

Note another consequence: the Help: namespaces will be a Special:Random's target. --Dereckson (talk) 13:20, 30 November 2012 (UTC)

It's all explained in the link I gave. ;-) --Nemo 15:39, 30 November 2012 (UTC)

bugzilla:43687. --Nemo 20:23, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

Admins: CentralNotice fix

Could an admin change MediaWiki:Centralnotice-WikivoyageMockUp5g-text2/de to the following:

den freien Reiseführer, an dem jeder mitschreiben kann. Mach mit!

Currently, there is a typographic error and the honorific form is used, which is uncommon in German wmf projects. --188.23.204.34 12:44, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

This is the typical "small change" that causes an edit war and insults from German users to the unfortunate admin, so personally I'm not going to do this urgently, sorry. Maybe some other courageous (or German) admin will do it, anyway please edit Wikivoyage_2013/CentralNotice and leave a note on talk. --Nemo 12:50, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

I'm German and have Done this! --MF-W 15:13, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

Is it possible that a section of an old rfc demanding no longer applicable remedies be closed?

Hello, I am unsure as to where it would be appropriate to file this request so please move it where it would be more appropriate if this is not the correct forum. Back in 2008 a RFC regarding certain actions on the Lombard Wikipedia was filed and it has so far remained open. There's a specific subsection regarding me on the list, demanding my resignation as temporary sysop from the Lombard Wikipedia. I was inactive at the time and was never notified of this request as I would have otherwise gladly given up my rights. Now the RfC section is still open, demanding my resignation despite me having been removed as temporary sysop for inactivity many years ago. Would it be possible that this section be marked as closed? The remedies it requires are no longer applicable. I believe that this request I am filing here has little to do with the allegations against me, but simply with the impossibility of fulfilling the remedies demanded. I am honestly still not very familiar with the customs and rules of the RfC process here on Meta and do not know how to properly address the situation. Requests for comments/The meatpuppeting attack to the LMO wikipedia - Corrective actions requested#About the "temporary sysop" Snowolf. Corrective action required is the RFC in question. Snowolf ^{How can I help?} 21:31, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

Two weeks and no answer? Meta appears to be a ghost town. Snowolf, I will see if I can fix the matter for you. --Rogerhc (talk) 23:13, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

Of course Meta is a ghost town. :P πr² (t • c) 04:34, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

Okay, I have put a {{help}} template on that page. Hopefully that will help move it along the assembly line to the bit bucket, but I doubt it. Probably an admin could help better than I. For one thing, I'm not sure what {{help}} does if anything on Meta. Someone who can help more please do. --Rogerhc (talk) 23:20, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

You could try {{helpme}}. {{help}} is an example template. πr² (t • c) 04:34, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

Updating PlanetWiki

Hello all,

First, I would like to say that I'm not sure if this is the right place to ask my question and that my English is not my first language. In ether case, please be gentle with me and direct me to the correct place if I am wrong.

More than a month ago, I asked for my blog to be added to Wikimedia Planet in the French version (see edit here. A month after, the inclusion still has not been made and for requests are piling up. I have asked the last person who has updated the feeds to make a run but I have not received any answer (see edit here). I was wandering who I should ask to do this update or if I could do it my self. Could someone help me? Thank you very much for your answers. Have a nice day, Letartean (talk) 19:30, 18 January 2013 (UTC)

Hi. Thank you for posting about this. I poked James in this edit. We'll get this sorted out very soon. :-) --MZMcBride (talk) 22:56, 18 January 2013 (UTC)

James replied. --MZMcBride (talk) 06:16, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

Main Page needs updating

There is a link to the Strategy Wiki on the Main Page... problem is, the Strategy Wiki is closed. Could this be updated? --Rschen7754 09:06, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

So in a situation like this, you want to click the "Edit" tab at the top of the page. You'll notice that the page is using a series of templates. Click the "Page information" link in the sidebar (in the "Toolbox" section). That'll lead you to <https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Main_Page&action=info>. From there, just scroll down to the "Page properties" section of the page to view a list of templates transcluded on the specified page. Click Template:Main Page/Sisterprojects/Code and you've found the page you need to edit. :-) Don't worry, it's only semi-protected. --MZMcBride (talk) 09:29, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

Okay, I didn't realize it was only semi. Done. --Rschen7754 09:48, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

Universal Language Selector coming

Tracked in Phabricator:
Bug 39992

Of particular interest for Meta: see [Wikitech-l] i18n deployment 2013-01-15. WM:LS may need some updating, I don't know. Also, it would probably be nice to rethink some of our translations, e.g. maybe move the main page to int trick like translatewiki:'s. --Nemo 00:04, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

Tracked in Phabricator:
Bug 44013 resolved as invalid

So I think it's enabled now and yes, all multilingual templates are broken and are showing all languages. Regards, -- MarcoAurelio (talk) 13:12, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

Ugh, I wish we had been given earlier and bigger notice about this to properly warn the affected wikis. guillom 13:16, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

I can't seem to find any issues; Language select-enabled templates show properly for me. Do you have an example? guillom 14:13, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

MarcoAurelio, what language do you have in your preferences and did it use to be different? Do you have set a cookie for LS with a wrong language (should be named commonswiki_language_js). LS works for me too, so unless it's a browser-dependent bug (we had some in the past) that's what happens when the LS item doesn't have a translation in your language. --Nemo 14:36, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

To me the font of the letters I used to see here has changed (they're a bit more squared) and, for example, the intro template of this very Meta:Babel page displays all the languages instead of the language I've set in my preferences, which for Meta has always been English. Thanks. -- MarcoAurelio (talk) 19:46, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

I've cleaned all cookies and temp files, did a hard refresh, and can see again the "Language select" dropdown above the page. -- MarcoAurelio (talk) 19:49, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

Dissapeared again. Maybe a browser bug... -- MarcoAurelio (talk) 19:51, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

(edit conflict) You've not said what your preferences currently are and what's your browser.

The font is another issue; is the "more squared" font a sans-serif one? If yes it's probably bugzilla:39992 (a workaround is described in comment 8). --Nemo 19:54, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

As I've said before I have English set in my preferences, as I've always had here. If it's of any importance I use the monobook skin. I use Firefox as browser. Regards. -- MarcoAurelio (talk) 20:01, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

┌───────────────────────┘
From error console: [redacted] -- MarcoAurelio (talk) 20:17, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, filed as bugzilla:44013. Is the other problem bug 39992? Is the font sans-serif? --Nemo 20:39, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

I've looked at the source code of this page to look at it but I don't know where to exactly find which is the font type I'm seing. A tip, please? -- MarcoAurelio (talk) 02:32, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

I've solved the font issue by going to the ULS link at the top of the page and unchecking the "download fonts" and disabling the all input settings. -- MarcoAurelio (talk) 03:03, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

@Nemo: yes, it's sans-serif. But I think bugzilla:39992 already covers this. -- MarcoAurelio (talk) 23:08, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

Hi Marco,

Siebrand and I cannot reproduce this bug. Does it still happen to you? Can you please tell exactly what are you doing when this happens? Which page are you viewing? In which language?

Thanks! --Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 21:59, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

I've commented on the bug. Thanks. -- MarcoAurelio (talk) 02:32, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

Interesting. Should the "Language select:" bar at the top be removed now? If there's now a more convenient way to select one's language, I don't see why the local stuff is necessary. It would probably also be helpful to start internationalizing the contents of Category:Image with comment templates, replacing them with the kinds used on Commons and Wikidata. --Yair rand (talk) 10:18, 22 January 2013 (UTC)

MediaWiki namespace cleanup

Hi. I do wish to perform some cleanup of MediaWiki messages on this project. Is there any objection to delete the identical and/or unused system messages? Best regards. -- MarcoAurelio (talk) 23:05, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

No objection from me. Though it's possible some of the old messages contain interesting or useful page history. It may be good to do a quick check of the page history first. --MZMcBride (talk) 00:02, 22 January 2013 (UTC)

I disagree for unused (they don't harm), I agree for identical but remember that Robin's tool doesn't work at all for Meta, it's thought for a few hundreds messages and we have dozens thousands so limits are hit immediately. --Nemo 00:08, 22 January 2013 (UTC)

Yeah, I didn't take Meta etc. into account when developing it. I should fix that sometime. :) SPQRobin (talk) 00:44, 22 January 2013 (UTC)

I guess the issue is that Meta-Wiki's MediaWiki namespace is breathtakingly large? --MZMcBride (talk) 00:50, 22 January 2013 (UTC)

I tend to think so, since CentralNotice depends on it. A cleanup of unused CentralNotice messages/banners should happen too IMHO. BR, -- MarcoAurelio (talk) 11:37, 22 January 2013 (UTC)

I disagree on this even more than on deleting normal unused system messages: in this case, not only it's hard to know what's unused, but messages are also part of our history, think of permanent links to fundraising banners from all over the web. --Nemo 15:44, 22 January 2013 (UTC)

I think that what I intended to do will be covered by bugzilla:43917 and bugzilla:43915. -- MarcoAurelio (talk) 11:38, 23 January 2013 (UTC)

Want to help improve VisualEditor's handling of non-Latin scripts?

Hi. Next week's VisualEditor tests will include non-Latin scripts. I'd like to invite anyone with an interest to help out in this.

message from Quim Gil
Next week we are going to focus on testing VisualEditor in conjunction with non-Latin scripts: العربية, Ελληνικά, 한국어, हिन्दी, עברית , 日本 語, Русский, 中文 and more. mw:VisualEditor/Testing_Non-Latin_Characters_Input_and_Behavior The testing will be done at the English Wikipedia (primarily in User pages), where VisualEditor can be enabled. Any editor can contribute, regardless of testing / technical experience and even knowledge of languages in those scripts. For instance, copying texts from http://ru.wikipedia.org/ or http://ja.wikipedia.org/ and playing with them in your User page is also a good starting point. Of course we welcome the participation of editors from projects based on non-Latin scripts. Your help as ambassadors connecting with your communities is especially needed! A main incentive is that good testing coverage of VisualEditor in a specific script plus good community involvement might lead to its inclusion in the related Wikipedia(s) for broader testing. If you have any questions or feedback please comment at mw:Talk:VisualEditor/Testing Non-Latin Characters Input and Behavior or send me an email [qgilwikimedia.org]. Thank you!

Please spread the word to any editors you think might be interested in helping with these tests! --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 19:48, 25 January 2013 (UTC)

CentralNotice / Translate Extension

The fundraising team is preparing to deploy to meta the work we did with the Translate team late last year. This means changes to the CentralNotice workflow with regard to banner localization. Currently the changes are live on testwiki and we would love your feedback. I created an overview here. Please give us feedback either on wiki here, or via bugzilla, or IRC at #wikimedia-fundraising. Mwalker (WMF) (talk) 22:57, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

Addition of New Namespaces (866/867) -- CentralNotice/Translate

All -- I know this is already live and I apologize for the late announcement. I didn't realize it was going to cause problems. As part of the CentralNotice + Translation deploy I introduced two new namespaces, CNBanner (866) and it's associated talk (867). Right now this change is present on all wikis -- I have a patch in place that will limit it to only 'infrastructure' wikis; these are meta, test, test2, betameta. I hope to have the patch deployed this afternoon PST. Mwalker (WMF) (talk) 19:44, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

RFC

Hello. I'd like to advertise again this RFC due to the lack of participation IMHO. If you have any comments, feel free to participate. Best regards. -- MarcoAurelio (talk) 15:24, 30 January 2013 (UTC)