Meta:Babel/Archives/2016-01

Happy Public Domain Day 2016!

Logo Public Domain Day

On January 1 we celebrate Public Domain Day as many works of authors who died 70+ years ago now enter the public domain and can be used freely.

Let us be aware: copyright is temporary. It only lasts during the authors lifetime and 70 years afterwards (in most countries). During those years it is limiting Wikipedia and her sister projects in showing works of art, literature, public art and buildings in countries without freedom of panorama, and more in the articles. But now a new batch is freed from copyrights!

An overview of images and texts that are restored or added to the Wikimedia Commons, are collected on: this page.

Many of these files still need a place in articles. You can help!

You can also help by uploading new files of subjects that are freed of copyrights.
You can also help by tagging all requests for deletion pages with the category when the file can be restored, which will be/was deleted.

As I follow the log of restored files this week, more images and texts will follow. If still files or texts are missing in the list, let me know or add them yourselves.

A very happy Public Domain Day! Romaine (talk) 13:38, 2 January 2016 (UTC)

• Some of the freed files:

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  Leif Ericsson
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  El Lissitzky
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  Alfred Ost
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  Leonid Pasternak
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• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

Welcoming

Tracked in Phabricator:
Task T122441

Hi dear fellows, in my opinion is not a good idea to welcome all users, vandals and spammers especially, I think welcoming should not be an automatic process, it would be done manually only to users who demonstrate good intentions, as occurs on other wikis.--Syum90 (talk) 09:44, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

• Support I fully agree with Syum90's request. Alan ^(talk) 10:07, 14 December 2015 (UTC)
•  Oppose Welcoming always contains many useful links. --Ochilov (talk) 13:20, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

  @Ochilov: This automated system generates amounts of unuseful pages, I've deleted several of them this morning.--Syum90 (talk) 14:30, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

•  Support Comment Too fast to Add welcome message[1]. I think to set a time interval is the best way for us to solve this problem. For example, welcoming bot waits for up to one day to add welcome message, and if the user was set locked or blocked until it added welcome message, welcoming bot disables an automatic process like this. --Infinite0694 (Talk) 14:05, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

  Infinite0694, this one sounds reasonable :) --Ochilov (talk) 14:55, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

  I prefer this process to be done manually, but at least this proposal is quite better than the current one.--Syum90 (talk) 15:00, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

• Strong support deactivating automatic welcomes - It just generates large ammounts of rubbish and it is not useful IMHO. And also generates privacy/suppression policy violations when the user created is suppressed. You have later to search for user/usertalk pages and go suppressing them manually. You can ask oversighters (such as @Barras) that I regularly encounter and forward for suppression such kind of abusive account name user talk pages; and franckly I'm tired. Most account creation nowadays are not real users, but spambots. I think it's better to manually welcome users. Best regards. —MarcoAurelio 15:35, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

  2011 discussion about enabling it here. The discussion started because new users didn't know what Meta-Wiki was about and there was a need to welcome them and inform them about the site. But now that we've Echo which also adds a welcome notification on sign-up (I think it doesn't for autocreated accounts but we could probably get that enabled here). We can link it to Meta page (or create a new shorter, user-friendly welcome page) and consider that enough for a welcome message. --Glaisher (talk) 15:51, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

  I just created MediaWiki:Notification-welcome-link to link to Special:MyLanguage/Meta:About. Maybe there's a better welcome page here or is this page fine? --Glaisher (talk) 15:14, 23 December 2015 (UTC)

• Strong support per MA above. I can confirm that I regularly have to suppress stuff created by that useless welcome bot. It creates simply more work and I don't even want to know how many pages are out there that are not suppressed but should be suppressed. -Barras talk 17:43, 14 December 2015 (UTC)
• Support as well. We don't need a bot to welcome users who have just created their account as a mean to vandalize, as said above by others; it makes everything just harder. --Stryn (talk) 18:57, 14 December 2015 (UTC)
• Support per everything that is already explained by the supporters. I think it is best to avoid that amount of work and time. Allan Aguilar (talk) 19:03, 14 December 2015 (UTC)
• opinion - can't there be some threshold for welcoming. Like to autowelcome only those users who have made N edits and are still not banned/locked after M days and haven't got welcomed by a human being yet. I would believe it would do much more sense that way. If that is not possible, then I  Support disabling autowelcome. --Base (talk) 19:05, 14 December 2015 (UTC)
•  Support as I see the situation --Ochilov (talk) 02:28, 15 December 2015 (UTC)

  I have issued a block on the extension, given than in less than 24 hours we've got far more consensus to stop the system than we got in 2011 to enable it. It can be unblocked if the consensus changes. —MarcoAurelio 07:03, 15 December 2015 (UTC)

• Support in accordance with the previously mentioned reasons above. AustinHammond (talk)
• Support I fully Support it.--Infinite0694 (Talk) 14:21, 16 December 2015 (UTC)
• Support --Steinsplitter (talk) 15:08, 16 December 2015 (UTC)
• This bot should only welcome users who made at least X edits after Y days and aren't blocked/locked. In its current state I have to  Support disabling it. There're a lot of abusive usernames that should be supressed and remain visible because autowelcome creates talk pages for them. Defender (talk) 21:25, 17 December 2015 (UTC)
• I am not quite a friend of the current state, yet I don't believe welcoming new users is a proper task for volunteers to do. The fashion of doing this on a user talk pages makes it a mess, and the Echo solution Glaisher mentioned above should be the preferred way. --Vogone (talk) 02:55, 1 January 2016 (UTC)

I'm agree, I think Glaisher's proposal is the best option.--Syum90 (talk) 15:21, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

Use a page created on Meta-Wiki like a global template

Hello everyone, I don't know if it is the correct forum to ask it. If not, excuse me.

Well, I have a question abot the use of "Global Templates". Can I create a page on Meta-Wiki (like User/UserName/global) to use it like a template ({{User/UserName/global}}) on other wiki projects?

I have tryed to make it but I didn't get anything sucessfully. I have tryed that: first, I create a User Page, then I tryed to include in other page of a different wiki project using the template structure {{m:User:Ivanhercaz/globalUser}}, but it didn't works. Am I doing something wrong or we can't make this kind of "global" templates?

Thanks in advance.

Regards, Ivanhercaz (talk) 11:03, 12 January 2016 (UTC)

@Ivanhercaz: It's not currently possible to use global templates, you may be interested on phab:T1238 & phab:T6547. If you wish to use one for your user page, I think it'd be more appropriate to use a global user page. Matiia (talk) 17:00, 12 January 2016 (UTC)

@Matiia: Thank you for your reply. Very interesting the global user page function, I didn't know anything about it. I am going to read more and when I have enought time I maybe change my user local pages to an only global user page.

Regards, Ivanhercaz (talk) 00:19, 13 January 2016 (UTC)

ProcseeBot

Related to Meta also, but not only, see this proposal. --92.115.106.250 00:36, 27 January 2016 (UTC)

Script validation

I noticed nice work done by CommonsMaintenanceBot at commons (see c:Commons:User scripts/reports and c:Commons:User scripts/users namespace/reports) and because Meta is now central place for a lot of user scripts, I would suggest to create conditions and to approve a similar task to be run here too. --92.115.106.250 00:36, 27 January 2016 (UTC)