Meta:Babel/Archives/2015-01

Needed?

Hi. Doing some stats job I found that autoreviewed users exist. Meta does not use FlaggedRevs, and that permissions looks created without community consensus (sorry if wrong), so I feel this permission is useless to have here. I suggest that we request its removal, as the testing (?) looks finished on May. Thanks. — M 17:00, 05 December 2014 (UTC)

IIRC flaggedrevs is used for Foundation's Zero-related things. Meta:Zero administrators may be related, but I'm not sure. — Revi 18:13, 5 December 2014 (UTC)

Thanks. In that case I suggest that the autoreview right be merged into the zeroadmin group so we can avoid granularization of usergroups. Notwithstanding I see that the zeroadmin group has become also useless. There seems to be no work in development here at Meta, no Zero namespace as far as I can see. Maybe I'm missing something... Best regards. -- M\A 15:34, 6 December 2014 (UTC)

@Jalexander-WMF and Philippe (WMF): could you please say to us if those usergroups are needed by now? Happy New Year! Best regards. -- M\A 12:44, 5 January 2015 (UTC) edit: fixed name User:Jalexander-WMF -- M\A 11:36, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

@MarcoAurelio: I'm not 100% sure what it does (though I have a guess, I think it was essentially an 'auto approved' flag for people who edit the zero configs) it is no longer needed both because the Zero config is no longer active on Meta (it's just a history thing now) and because that account is his personal account and the only reason I didn't remove it when I switched him/others to new staff accounts is because I mistook it for an autoreview/community type right. Thank you for the ping. (cc @Philippe (WMF): Jalexander--WMF 17:14, 9 January 2015 (UTC)

Thanks James. You where right, that permission allowed to edit the zero configs which no longer exist. Shall we then request on Phabricator the removal of the zeroadmin and autoreview flags or do you (staff) take care of this? :-) Best, -- M\A 17:59, 9 January 2015 (UTC)

@MarcoAurelio: You can feel free to ask it on Phabricator. if you can CC me on there it would be great, if they need to be removed from the config then I'm happy to submit the patch and get it deployed myself. The only reason I haven't before was that I know they're keeping the pages around for a bit history wise (at some point I think they'll be moved somewhere but not sure) and I assumed the rights might disappear when they eventually disabled the extension). Jalexander--WMF 19:35, 9 January 2015 (UTC)

Done and I have CC you as requested. Best regards. -- M\A 15:08, 10 January 2015 (UTC)

WMF Global Ban Policy

The WMF Global Ban Policy page was apparently added without any kind of process three days ago. It should be speedily renamed or deleted as redundant, cf. OFFICE, Office actions, Terms of Use, User:WMFOffice, etc. –Be..anyone (talk) 22:50, 17 January 2015 (UTC)

Why is slight redundancy a reason for deletion in your opinion? Anyway, the page has been linked to too often already and thus would need to be redirected somewhere instead of deleted, provided your opinion is shared by many others as well. Vogone (talk) 23:21, 17 January 2015 (UTC)

WM:CSD G4. –Be..anyone (talk) 03:14, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

I don't agree that the page is redundant. It is one of the obvious outcomes of a process that WMF undertakes for breaches of the terms of use. It also provides a summary of the actions taken for stewards, and other advanced rights holders across the wikis.

You have no idea of whether there was a process or not, just because it isn't known to you or to me, doesn't mean that it did not happen. From my understanding from discussions with WMF staff there has been a process, and they see the WMF global ban as being different from an office action which they declare is about the editing process. Is your disagreement with the action taken affecting your approach to this matter?  — billinghurst sDrewth

"Process" in the sense of policies+guidelines, with a successful RFC for some kind of consensus determined by a trusted neutral user. The publication three days before the application against four users suggests a rather radical idea of BOLD+IAR, or simply ignorance. Redundant: 3 of the 7 (ever) office action bans worked without this pamphlet. Maybe rename it, a title without the misleading "policy" would be a good step, "official clarification" or similar. –Be..anyone (talk) 12:40, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

You seem to be operating under the sorely mistaken impression that WMF policy is in any way beholden to consensus here at Meta, or anywhere for that matter. I don't know why most of these bans have been issued but it is not something they do lightly and I believe even the WMF lawyers are involved in these decisions. This is why there is none of the usual transparent processes that wiki users are so used to. They can't discuss them publicly, or they risk exposing the foundation to legal problems, and local wikis can't override them in these matters. Although we are all part of a global movement/community, at the end of the day we don't actually own these websites. The foundation does, and they sometimes must act to protect them. Beeblebrox (talk) 00:47, 20 January 2015 (UTC)

The WMF has its own Wiki over there, where they can invent policies as they see fit. Here a policy is something based on community consensus, unlike Terms of Use or Office actions. –Be..anyone (talk) 01:01, 20 January 2015 (UTC)

┌───────────────────┘
While the WMF Global Ban Policy is certainly not a Community Policy I think it very much falls within the norms of global policies housed on Meta and the way the term is used here. As that policy page points out one of the sources of authority for a policy on meta is the Wikimedia Foundation. This is one of those, just like the Privacy policy, Terms of use and Office_actions page (Policies that were promulgated by the Foundation in the end) are listed on Meta:Policies_and_guidelines as global policies. Since most of the actions (like global locks) take place here on Meta I think it's important to have the policy on meta too. Jalexander--WMF 03:31, 21 January 2015 (UTC)

While the WMF is de jure the owner of this enterprise and thus de jure may be authorized to do such extreme actions without any consultation, as has been done here, such things are everything but legitimate. The WMF is really just the service organization of the Wikuverse, necessary because we are too big for complete self-government. Such extreme measures have thus to be community vetted, or are not valid.

The WMF has usurped far too much dictatorial powers in the last year with the MediaViewer desaster and the putsch against the german and english communities in that regard to have much trust left over from the real souvereign of the Wikiverse, the communities. In order to regain some trust this new dictatorial measure is doing quite the opposite. Developing and implementing such new policy withing a few hours, like it was done with superputsch by Erik last year and here again, is a clear message of distrust by the WMF against the whole community. They don't want to be bothered by the providers of content and donations, they want to simply rule, full stop. This is not acceptable in an open project like the Wikiverse. --♫ Sänger - Talk - superputsch must go 08:46, 21 January 2015 (UTC)

Enable crosswiki search on meta

On the Italian Wikipedia, thanks to Cirrus we've been using interwiki search for a while, see example showing results from Wiktionary, Wikibooks etc. on the right side (the boxes are not shown if there is no match).

Meta has a number of related public wikis, the main of which is probably outreach:; but strategy: also holds a lot of still-relevant content, and there are many others like chapters wikis etc. Commons' project namespace also contains meta-ish info quite often. It's not always obvious where something might be, so a unified search across all possible non-content wikimedia.org subdomains seems a rather obvious improvement.

Chad told me this is probably possible, but needs some investigation for the details. I propose to ask the devs to enable crosswiki search here in whatever way is most feasible, be it search across 1, 5, 10 or 50 related domains. CirrusSearch devs have always been very responsive, so if it turns out not to be useful it will be easy to disable. --Nemo 09:18, 23 January 2015 (UTC)

Yes, I would love to see cross wiki search enabled at Meta. --Glaisher (talk) 09:32, 23 January 2015 (UTC)

Support. It seems like a good function who can be of help for people looking for something that might be on Meta or elsewhere. -- M\A 14:08, 23 January 2015 (UTC)

A good proposal. --MF-W 14:08, 23 January 2015 (UTC)

Good idea. Alan ^(talk) 14:43, 23 January 2015 (UTC)

Outreach: appears to be dead on arrival or too far sub-par, but a crosswiki search covering d:, mw:, and translatewiki would be brilliant. –Be..anyone (talk) 18:05, 23 January 2015 (UTC)

Though translatewiki is not a project of WMF so I don't think that it's possible to include it. --Stryn (talk) 18:39, 23 January 2015 (UTC)

ACK, that would also exclude mw:, but mw:InstantCommons exists, maybe Brionthe devs can twist it as they wish. –Be..anyone (talk) 18:48, 23 January 2015 (UTC)

While outreach may appear to be dead, it contains lots of useful pages so I support adding that too. --Glaisher (talk) 05:01, 24 January 2015 (UTC)