Talk:Wikis World

Terms of service

Happy to see we're with Masto.host. When I launched a read-only instance with them, I used very simple but explicit terms of service to start with, maybe they're useful:

You accept to release under Creative Commons Zero any original work you publish through this instance. For content mirrored or federated from other fediverse instances and websites, refer to the responsibilities and rights of the respective sources. Please refer to the MastoHost privacy policy. No personal data is processed by us other than what is performed by MastoHost to run this service.

(With CC-0 to be replaced by CC-BY-SA-3.0 as discussed.) When you start accepting new users it will be necessary to also discuss conduct and maybe reuse some part of the default privacy policy, but it needs some adapting. Nemo 04:40, 12 October 2022 (UTC)

Oh, I see you already have everything (?) in /about/more even if /terms is just the default. Nemo 04:47, 12 October 2022 (UTC)

Yeah, I just copied what mastodon.technology has. I think leaving the default privacy policy in place is fine for now. Legoktm (talk) 00:23, 13 October 2022 (UTC)

What I don't like about the default privacy policy is that it's impermissibly vague, so it doesn't actually serve as a valid privacy policy. In particular, the part where it says "if this server is hosted in EU" etc. needs to be changed. It's definitely hosted in EU and serves EU users. Nemo 05:16, 14 October 2022 (UTC)

Good point. I switched /terms to just link to /about/more and updated the Privacy policy text with some of your wording. How does it read now? Legoktm (talk) 06:06, 15 October 2022 (UTC)

Good. Most instances other than mamot and friends aren't very strict about this, but I think it's a good idea to state who is the data controller, or rather how to reach them: probably it's enough to say that it's wikisworld@legoktm. Other than that, the masto.host page, despite being written from the perspective of the data processor, contains pretty much everything you might need to know about privacy in Mastodon. Nemo 05:53, 16 October 2022 (UTC)

Rapid growth of new users

We are currently at 23 users with 3 invites outstanding. There are at least 4 more people who've requested invites that I haven't replied to yet. Our current "Planet" masto.host plan is rated for 20 active users. The next tier ("Star") is for 100 active users. Wikis World has been a bit slow and sluggish today, but I think that's probably because masto.host has seen 10x growth in the past week and is struggling to keep up.

My current thinking is that we're probably fine to keep handing out invites until we get to 30-35 users, at which point we should upgrade to the next plan (and hopefully by then masto.host has stabilized too). Some amount of currently active users will probably go inactive, so we're probably going to stay close to the "20 active users" anyways. Certainly we weren't expecting this level of rapid growth, but since it's happening we should try to capitalize on it and get more people into the fediverse. Legoktm (talk) 07:07, 8 November 2022 (UTC)

FYI: If there is further growth, I don't mind pitching in for the cost. Even though I'm not on the server right now, I do support it as a mission and I'll likely either move there at some point, or will fork my account into two different accounts. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 12:05, 8 November 2022 (UTC)

@TheDJ that is generous and I think many other people and some affiliates would follow that.

WMF should have flexible discretion funds *(not just funding protocol option) for this kind of situations. -- Zblace (talk) 08:58, 22 December 2022 (UTC)

They have grants for this, but I think that ppl of that server would prefer to manage it completely standalone from the WMF. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 09:32, 22 December 2022 (UTC)

Yeah...I think it's important the server continues to be operated in a bottom-up manner by individuals who are passionate about it, rather than an organization that appears to not care about this stuff :(. At the same time, it certainly feels weird to ask individuals to donate/contribute financially for this when the cost would be pretty negligible for the WMF.

Anyways, I was/am hoping more people will comment in #Finding a legal home below, which is somewhat related to this and would influence what direction we go in. Legoktm (talk) 09:48, 23 December 2022 (UTC)

Finding a legal home

If you haven't read https://denise.dreamwidth.org/91757.html yet, please do, it is a good overview of the legal stuff we want/need to take care of in the long term.

I see 3 primary options: 1) join up with an existing Wikimedia affiliate/WMF 2) join up with a more generic open/free non-profit like Open Collective 3) register our own LLC/non-profit.

Obviously #3 is the most work and therefore my least preferred solution. For #2 I know @Nemo bis has been exploring Open Collective.

Do people have thoughts, comments, suggestions? One other thing to consider is whether we want said legal home to be in the US or EU. Our data is currently in the EU but there are backups in the US (because of me).

Legoktm (talk) 08:30, 16 December 2022 (UTC)

@Legoktm Open Collective sounds good if none of the WM Affiliates wants to proactively pick it up. --Zblace (talk) 08:53, 22 December 2022 (UTC)

I had a call today with the Open Collective Foundation, we'll be setting something up with them. More details to come! Legoktm (talk) 19:35, 7 February 2023 (UTC)

We are now fiscally hosted by the Open Collective Foundation. Donations can be made on the linked page. Legoktm (talk) 04:24, 14 February 2023 (UTC)

Correction needed?

The FAQ currently includes, Anyone can view all posts from users on our instance (the "local timeline"). Shouldn't that read "view all 'public' or 'unlisted' posts"? Surely the 'private' and 'direct' posts (I'm using the terminology in spec/models/account_statuses_filter_spec.rb here) cannot be viewed by non-followers or by non-mentioned (@) people, respectively? I don't know if you hacked the code to prevent private and direct posts... Boud (talk) 00:27, 21 December 2022 (UTC)

@Boud: correct, it's just public posts, which I've clarified (please edit if it's still not clear). And for what it's worth, we're running normal Mastodon, with all the standard features including DMs. Legoktm (talk) 01:18, 22 December 2022 (UTC)

Yes, it's clearer now. Boud (talk) 01:55, 22 December 2022 (UTC)

Consider dropping the advertisement for Microsoft

Given the tyranny of convenience attitude that seems to be the spirit of active Mastodon developers, Wikis World sysadmins (not me :)) might want to consider shifting away from Microsoft (scroll down to View source code at the bottom left (desktop browser) of the /about page) to a community git forge, e.g. see [1], which points to https://framagit.org/framasoft/framapiaf . Even if most issues will have to be posted at Microsoft until there's a community shift (in order to have a chance of being handled) - just as some communities are still on the birdsite because the mass of people are still there - it would be good to at least point to community-hosted forks. I understand the time/effort costs of migration, but the attitude seems to be "we don't even want to open up or stimulate any discussion about how to migrate off Microsoft servers; if you're not an influential developer of Mastodon, then you'll just have to wait to see if and when we decide to migrate the system." Or wait a few more days to see if there any more constructive reactions...?

A patch or fork that edits line 21 of mastodon/spec/views/about/show.html.haml_spec.rb and lines 94 and 95 of mastodon/spec/presenters/instance_presenter_spec.rb , either with a new hardwired value or a value read from the host itself might make sense.

Independently, switching from joinmastodon.org to fediverse.party would be less trivial to change: grep -r "joinmastodon" mastodon/|wc gives 50 lines in a bunch of different files, all having this string (and w:John Mastodon might get upset ;)). Boud (talk) 02:34, 22 December 2022 (UTC)

I'm sympathetic to your request, but unless these links are customizable in the UI somewhere, we don't currently have the technical means to implement this. Our hosting provider doesn't support any modifications to the Mastodon software. Legoktm (talk) 02:43, 22 December 2022 (UTC)

The three lines with in show.html.haml_spec.rb and instance_presenter_spec.rb look hardwired to me. Boud (talk) 03:25, 22 December 2022 (UTC)

For what it's worth, it is possible to change the repository links without editing the code. It can be configured with the environment variables SOURCE_BASE_URL and/or GITHUB_REPOSITORY [2]. That's how we changed it (not to shun the host chosen by upstream, but in order to fulfill the AGPL license, since the code we run has some modified files). Platonides (talk) 23:50, 28 February 2023 (UTC)

Visual branding start

Instance looks super bare (default) and I wonder if WMF can recognize the effort and dedicate someone professionally for a few hours to part time in this so that it can go in direction to be green lighted for use of communal Wikimedia branding (not WMF logo) maybe with 'legacy' colors and develop own custom visuals? I know this is painful topic with WMF so I think going just colors and own visuals for start would be good...am I correct @QuimGil? -- Zblace (talk) 09:02, 22 December 2022 (UTC)

More design resources and customization would be nice! One note is that we can only tweak things with CSS right now.

I would also like to clarify that this server is explicitly not a "Wikimedia Mastodon instance", it's open to anyone interested in wikis, broadly defined, hence "wiki enthusiasts". We already have a few accounts for non-Wikimedia wiki projects. Legoktm (talk) 07:54, 23 December 2022 (UTC)

Is this initiative looking for more exposure?

Are you looking for more exposure, e.g. a mention in The Signpost? I'm not sure if it's experimental right now or expecting to grow rapidly? - Bri (talk) 19:54, 13 April 2023 (UTC)

@Bri: more exposure would be nice! I would say we are pretty stable now (so not experimental), but we are not trying to grow rapidly. If it happens, we're ready for it, but not something we are trying for, if that makes sense. Legoktm (talk) 20:19, 14 April 2023 (UTC)

@Legoktm @Bri think this instance is really good practice example and should get more exposure not just among Wikimedians, but also Fediverse people who are not sure how to socially and culturally manage their own instances. --Zblace (talk) 15:24, 19 April 2023 (UTC)

Translator

Hi, I'm following people in different languages, also languages that I don't master, I would like to read translated messages without leaving the platform Mastodon, should it be possible/scheduled to add an instant text translation tool for single messages, please? Cheers, Patafisik (talk) 10:18, 18 May 2023 (UTC)

@Patafisik: As far as I know, Mastodon only supports DeepL, which is a proprietary service. Personally I've been using Firefox Translations for quickly translating posts, but it's language coverage is still pretty small (but growing!). Legoktm (talk) 18:45, 24 May 2023 (UTC)

Signing up request for an unofficial Kowikinews bot

Hi, If here is not the suitable place, please let me know that. I want to move/copy my unofficial kowikinews relaying Twitter account(@wikinews_ko2022) to this mastodon instance. Could I ask for help? Lens0021 (talk) 05:00, 1 June 2023 (UTC)

Hi @Lens0021, so far we haven't allowed bots and instead pointed people to the botsin.space instance. Largely that was because of scalability concerns, but I think we're at the point that we can probably start adding some low-traffic bots. Let me check with the other mods and get back to you! Legoktm (talk) 01:32, 3 June 2023 (UTC)

I would be interested, too. I started https://botsin.space/@DidYouKnowWp before considering wikis.world. 8 posts per day might still be too many, though. whym (talk) 09:08, 4 June 2023 (UTC)

There's now a draft bots policy that we'll circulate for more feedback in the June monthly update (and thanks to @HaeB for some early feedback). Currently the limit is 5 posts per day which should be more than enough for kowikinews but not enough for en.wp's DYK. We're probably going to end up moving to a bigger hosting plan in a few months, we can probably raise the limit around that time. Legoktm (talk) 17:55, 9 June 2023 (UTC)

Planning to change default license to CC BY-SA 4.0

We are planning to change the default license to CC BY-SA 4.0 (from the current CC BY-SA 3.0), for all content posted after July 1, 2023 (tentatively, may adjust timeline if needed). All content from before then will remain under 3.0 by default but you are welcome to retroactively relicense your own content if you want.

This will be formally announced in the June monthly update in a little less than a week. If you have concerns or questions, please let us know. Legoktm (talk) 17:42, 9 June 2023 (UTC)

The monthly update has been posted, and I've enabled an in-Mastodon announcement as well for this. Legoktm (talk) 01:37, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

All documentation should have been updated (let us know if you see something that got missed), and posted one final reminder about this. Legoktm (talk) 07:28, 28 June 2023 (UTC)

Emoji Wikilove

Hey, I would like to use the emoji for Wikilove, I know it does exist on some channels of the WMF on Slack, can we have it on the Wikis World? Something similar to this. Patafisik (talk) 14:18, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

@Patafisik: Done as :wikilove: Lucas Werkmeister (talk) 18:48, 9 October 2023 (UTC)

Moving host & flavour

I'd like to propose migrating https://wikis.world from https://masto.host to https://fedi.monster (migration of data possible per https://fedi.monster/about/migration).

I propose this for 3 key reasons:

• They align closer to the Wikimedia values (non-profit, privacy conscious, financially independent, etc.)
• They are cheaper per-tier
• They would allow us to use the glitch-soc fork of Mastodon, which includes features such as Markdown support for posts.

I'd welcome the admins/mods thoughts on this proposal, as well as any other users' comments 🙂 — TheresNoTime (talk • they/them) 12:12, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

nb. on the costing side of things, it may be worth contacting fedi.monster as they state "If you're a non-profit, or aim to represent a marginalized community, or personally can't afford it, we might offer a discount, free service, or adapt to the donations you get." — TheresNoTime (talk • they/them) 12:14, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

@TheresNoTime Do we know any other instances on fedi.monster? (I suppose contacts to any mods/admins on those admins would be especially useful, but I’d already be happy if someone I know is on an instance that turns out to be hosted by them and I can ask them if they’re happy with their instance’s performance.) Lucas Werkmeister (talk) 17:17, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

I know Olivvybee's instance is hosted using them, but I've also asked my followers — TheresNoTime (talk • they/them) 17:33, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

Love the idea 😀 — Frostly (talk) 23:14, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

@TheresNoTime @Lucas Werkmeister: A notable and verified instance that come to mind is https://w3c.social/@w3c. A big instance that comes to mind is octodon.social (stats). Both are hosted at Fedi Monster (confirmed by DNS/IP). Krinkle (talk) 01:04, 18 October 2023 (UTC)

The fedi.monster terms of service page (linked from their FAQ) is a 404...

But in general if the end goal is to switch to glitch-soc, I'd want to consider that as its own discussion - my initial thought is that I personally prefer simpler microblogging without markdown and longer posts. And then stability over the new hotness. But that also might just be me, so I'm curious what others want. Legoktm (talk) 05:36, 18 October 2023 (UTC)

@Legoktm: 🙃 I've emailed them about the ToS link, appreciate that's probably not the best advertisement for them..! — TheresNoTime (talk • they/them) 10:21, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

While glitch-soc is interesting, fedimonster is in the USA so it's practically impossible for it to respect the GDPR. I often recommend it for communities or single-user instances whose users are outside Europe, but for Wikis World I'd recommend avoiding unnecessary headaches. Nemo 18:17, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

Invite

Hi, how can I get an invite to join the server, please? Many thanks! Fgnievinski (talk) 01:54, 3 December 2023 (UTC)

 Email sent

AntiCompositeNumber (talk) 02:41, 3 December 2023 (UTC)

I asked for one since long time ago, but now ready to bring it up again. Can I have an invite for my wiki project please? Thank you! -- Song Ngư • 🗨️ • 🌐 12:56, 5 June 2024 (UTC)

 Email sent

--Lucas Werkmeister (talk) 17:32, 5 June 2024 (UTC)

Bots, redux

With the news that botsin.space is closing, we've had multiple requests for hosting bots on Wikis World. We are looking to formalize our draft bot policy; if you have a wiki-related bot and would like to host it here, please let us know if this policy would work for you or if you'd want to see changes. While the policy does have a posts/day limit, for now I'd be in favor of mostly ignoring that to ensure bots can get migrated off botsin.space properly. Legoktm (talk) 02:17, 31 October 2024 (UTC)

Thank you! This is a very useful service to provide and it's very generous for the moderators to be willing to shoulder the additional work (botsin.space had a local patch to enforce posting unlisted).

At some point it would be nice to estimate the additional hosting costs brought by the bots and ask help to cover them. Judging from 2022 figures and the fact botsin.space size (by number of posts) has more than doubled since, it would take at least 4 masto.host galaxy instances to replace it, so at 2000 active bots/month the average bot costs 2-3 €/y to host. What about suggesting that bot accounts include a link to the opencollective inviting the bots' followers to contribute every now and then?

Would it help to look at some specific known cases to see whether the rules fit them? For example wikipediahaiku is an excellent bot. DIY and featured content are rather typical feeds. Nemo 08:28, 31 October 2024 (UTC)

Stashbot's @wikimedia_sal@botsin.space is one of the wiki related bots in need of a new home. I believe the bot already meets all of the draft criteria with the exception of post volume. I think it violates that by a couple orders of magnitude typically. It looks to have produced about 350 posts on 2024-10-30 which seems like a fairly typical volume these days. If wikis.world was willing to take on the bot's post volume I would be willing to set the automated post deletion preferences to drop things after 6-12 months in an attempt to moderate the db storage needs.

Hosting with Wikimedia.Social may be an option for this particular bot as well, so please do not feel pressure to provide a home for it. -- BDavis (WMF) (talk) 16:02, 31 October 2024 (UTC)

https://wikimedia.social/@sal will be my bot's next home. That also conveniently makes me feel less guilty about figuring out how to financially support the hosting instance. -- BDavis (WMF) (talk) 17:06, 4 December 2024 (UTC)

May I have a wikis.world account?

Hello, I would love to join wikis.world, especially as we are about to start publishing WikiPotrika (similar to enwiki's Signpost) on the Bengali Wikipedia. We also plan to promote it on social media. If possible, could you please send me an invitation link at Special:Email/খাত্তাব হাসান? Thank you! খাত্তাব হাসান (talk) 18:13, 11 December 2024 (UTC)

Done sent via email. Lucas Werkmeister (talk) 21:35, 17 December 2024 (UTC)