Wikimedia Forum/Archives/2011-05

2011 Survey

I have been trying for over a week to access the survey. I have sent e-mail to the address indicated, I have posted questions in the talk page. Nobody answers. There is no way to record a complaint. Can Wikimedia do more than just pretend to be interested in the views of the editors? I am editing in various languages and have not seen the banner in any of the languages. Is the survey invitation sent only the the happy few editors who will answer that wikipedia is perfect? Well, my conclusion is that it is far from perfect and it has no intention of improving. I don't expect that this posting will improve the situation. But until it does I can only stick to my conclusion and reduce my edits and cut any contributions to the wikipedia foundation.Afil 18:32, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

Is the survey invitation sent only the the happy few editors who will answer that wikipedia is perfect?... How would they know, in advance of the survey, who is going to give a positive response? There is no conspiracy. QU ^TalkQu 21:44, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

cerco di capire...

buonasera, mi scuso per la domanda probabilmente banale, mi sembra di aver capito che su wikimedia posso riproporre qualcosa che è stato cancellato da wikipedia eventualmente arricchita di altre immagini? Sono sicuramente un pò imbranato nel muovermi in un qualcosa di nuovo per me, saluti e grazie per una eventuale sisposta.--Silvio59 17:23, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

Troubles

Since today, I noticed that many minor wikipedia projects do not appear correcty in my computer and with Internet Explorer 8. The appearence is similar to the one of Wikipedia ten years ago. Projects includes many minor languages, but also for example esperanto. The problem does'nt concern major wikipedia whise appearence is normal. What happened ? Is this a trouble that is common to many users ? many countries ? many OS ? Is this problem repeared soon ? Gmelfi 14:55, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Can you provide a specific example? Ruslik 18:18, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

And the problem with this is? Kingofthosewhoknow 20:28, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

I have also noticed broken page rendering lately, since about a day ago. It looks very similar to what happened during the initial, aborted rollout of the MediaWiki v1.17 a few months ago, when pages rendered without their associated CSS, or portions thereof.

Visible symptoms:

1. Page difs are rendered without highlighting the changed lines and emphasizing the changed text.
2. User links at the top of the page, links in the page tabs, and navigation links in the left sidebar are not rendered in their normal places with their normal formats. Instead, they are all displayed at the bottom of the page as plain lists of links.
3. Sometimes pages appear to render with no CSS at all.

Where & when:

• At en.wikiquote, where I spend most of my time, I am seeing symptom 1 consistently, all the time, but I am only seeing symptom 2 intermittently and symptom 3 very infrequently.
• Here at meta I have only seen symptom 1 intermittently.
• At en.wikipedia I have not seen any symptoms.

I didn't raise this at Bugzilla yesterday because I assumed the problem was so conspicuous that someone was already on it. That assumption may be wrong if for some reason it is not happening on the flagship wiki. ~ Ningauble 13:02, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

P.S. – Before anybody asks, yes, clearing my browser cache was the first thing I tried. : ) Ningauble 13:15, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

I have had these problems for three days now. It is worst on Wikimedia Commons, but it occurs frequently at Swedish Wikipedia too. The problems only appear when using Internet Explorer, but it doesn't matter which computer I use, so it's the same problem at work and at home. / Achird 20:58, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

bits.wikimedia.org ? Ruslik 06:56, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

Cf. bugzilla:28714, bugzilla:28840. I experienced symptoms 2 and 3 here at meta today. ~ Ningauble 12:12, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

Still the same problems at Wikimedia Commons. I'll add that I use Windows XP Professional and Internet Explorer 7 here at work (and since it is at work I cannot choose another OS or another browser). / Achird 12:50, 8 May 2011 (UTC)

Same problem on the german wikipedia when using IE8... without any exception. --Rectilinium 09:15, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

We are also having problems viewing the Kurdish Wikipedia [1], sometimes it's like normal, other times the menu on the left side disappears, etc. We have tried with several browsers, but it makes no difference. --MikaelF 12:14, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

There is now a temporary patch in place (bugzilla:28840) that appears to alleviate the problem. ~ Ningauble 14:48, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

"What links here"

I have a question. Is it possible to filter out links which are embedded in a template? I give an example: on the Dutch wikipedia you can see how many pages link to the article 'oppervlakte'. However, if we look closer one can see that 90% of those links are actually embedded in a template. Is it possible to filter out those 'links'? Greetings, --Zuyderkamp from de Dutch wikipedia. 15:19, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

Steward permissions

Just a random thought, since stewards already have default checkuser (CU) access to those wikis without a CU staff, why must they give themselves local CU permissions, preform the check, and then remove the permission each time they want to do a CU check? To me that is a waste of time, clutters the permissions logs, and is pointless. We already have global bot, global rollback and global sysop. Why do we not create a wikisets one for CU the other for Oversight (OS) and place all the wikis that stewards have management over in the appropriate set and give them global CU/OS for all wikis that lack the appropriate functionaries. This would enable them to do their jobs with a lot less hassle. Δ 23:45, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

Yet, when the local (or global, if this is passed) checkuser right is off, they're unable to perform checkuser actions. Generally stewards don't keep rights for long periods of time, so it seems the current system actually would promote transparency, as it shows the specific windows in which they have checkuser rights. Maybe a better idea would be to simply have a separate group with global checkuser and (non-wikset) global sysop+centralauth rights, to perform antivandalism work. This could be differentiated from the permissions/renames/projects work that they otherwise do. Plus, Delta, do you really think the larger projects won't work to smother the proposal? Starfallen 00:08, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

that is why we create a new 2 wikisets which only has those projects where stewards do the CUing/OSing, and have the global CU/OS only apply to those wikis, and only stewards would have that ability. We have CU/OS logs for any transparency issues that are needed. This way it doesn't clog up the rights logs with pointless clutter each time a CU is needed on a small project. Δ 00:13, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

The current system exists to promote transparency - every time a CheckUser or oversight is done by a steward it is publicly logged in a sense. I personally think that this is a good thing, since some of Wikimedia's top goals is to be transparent, and to allow easy review by other users. The only exception of course is the Ombudsman, but they don't use their CU access globally anyways, just look at the logs for possible abuse, and from what I know are watched themselves. Ajraddatz (Talk) 03:22, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

how do I create an article

How do I make an article?

it depends: on English and some other wikipedias, you need to create an account. if no account is required, type the article's title into the searchbox, and click on the red link this says something like "do you want to write about "XYZ""? Seb az86556 13:04, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

Policy proposal for wiki closures

I made a policy proposal for Proposals for closing projects, see User:SPQRobin/Closing projects. If you have feedback, or if you prefer either community decision or LangCom decision, please say so on the talk page. If most people prefer LangCom, I will discuss that with other LangCom members. Afterwards, I will propose to adopt the policy (although I wonder how to do that: {{proposal}} says "no voting", but how else measure consensus?) Thanks, SPQRobin (talk) 16:53, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

Anyone? SPQRobin (talk) 21:07, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

I think you've already heard from everyone who cares. Seb az86556 22:13, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

This proposal, as amended, has been moved to mainspace as a formal policy proposal at Closing projects policy, and notice has been posted at Proposals for closing projects. It proposes to reorganize the current ad hoc process and have Langcom members decide on requests to close wikis, subject to board ratification. ~ Ningauble 17:00, 22 May 2011 (UTC)

Request for Checkuser at Wikiquote

There is an ongoing Request for Checkuser permissions, at Wikiquote. Those interested in the processes at the Wikiquote project, please see q:Wikiquote:Request for Checkuser and Bureaucrat/BD2412. Thank you for your time, -- Cirt (talk) 17:07, 27 May 2011 (UTC)

Moved to 2 pages, now at q:Wikiquote:Requests for checkuser/BD2412 and q:Wikiquote:Request for bureaucrat/BD2412. -- Cirt (talk) 18:21, 27 May 2011 (UTC)

Various Images Uploaded Here - Copyright

Hi, not sure where to place this information... a number of images, e.g., File:Contrib.png, have been uploaded by User:Meganhernandez. These are all licensed as "public domain self" but I don't think they can be. The uploader almost certainly isn't the creator of the image and a number of them contain copyright material of WMF. I don't want to tag them all for deletion or license problems as they all related to the WMF fundraiser. QU ^TalkQu 11:41, 27 May 2011 (UTC)

Yes, this is a problem. A screenshot is not an original work, and the contributor does not have standing to take images owned by WMF, licensed under cc-by-sa or trademarked by it, and release them into the public domain. ~ Ningauble 16:38, 27 May 2011 (UTC)

PS – Well, perhaps she does have standing to do so as an employee of the Foundation, but I seriously doubt this action is authorized. ~ Ningauble 16:52, 27 May 2011 (UTC)

Someone else came through and retagged them, so problem solved. QU ^TalkQu 13:39, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

Yes, it is better now. Still, though, some of them are images that can be found at Commons with better attribution than "screenshot." ~ Ningauble