Wikimedia Forum/Archives/2012-10

WP:LIBEL — is it a global rule?

It was suggested to bring this issue here (see en:Wikipedia_talk:Libel#Clarification of the scope). The English page of WP:LIBEL denotes the rule as being established by the founder and endorsed by the Wikimedia Foundation. Does it mean that the rule is mandatory for all Wikipedias in all languages and its global acceptance is axiomatic? | Xerocracy (talk) 16:52, 4 October 2012 (UTC)

Libel is prohibited in the Terms of use, which applies to all pages on projects (not just Wikipedia) in all languages. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:09, 4 October 2012 (UTC)

Request: add Chinese Wikibooks to 1000+ project on wikibooks.org homepage

With the hard working of many people, now Chinese Wikibooks project has more than 1300 books. This is a milestone for Chinese Wikibooks. So please add Chinese Wikibooks to the 1000+ project list on homepage of wikibooks.org. It will be a good gift for all its contributors. Thanks.--Guoyunhebrave (talk) 14:07, 6 October 2012 (UTC)

Please post this at Talk:www.wikibooks.org template Allen4names (talk) 14:28, 6 October 2012 (UTC)

Large move request of high visibility pages

There is a large move request at Meta:Proposed_page_moves#Current_requests to move ~200+ pages from Board elections to Wikimedia Foundation Board elections. More feedback needed. John Vandenberg (talk) 06:43, 11 October 2012 (UTC)

Import request for one strategy page

I would like strategy:MENA Region Catalyst Projects to be imported. The meta page MENA Region Catalyst Projects is a redirect, and this is an active WMF program - see Special:search/MENA.

The history of the meta page MENA Region Catalyst Projects redirect does not contain any important information (all activity is on 2011-12-14 by user:Peteforsyth - it was created as a redirect, and recategorised a few times); it can be deleted and the strategy page imported in its place.

It would also be a good idea to import strategy:User:Sarakyap as they dont have a meta user page. John Vandenberg (talk) 02:39, 12 October 2012 (UTC)

Deleted, please proceed. I'd suggest adding this category after import: Category:MENA region catalyst projects. And, Sara no longer works for WMF, as far as I know. -Pete F (talk) 03:15, 12 October 2012 (UTC)

John, I don't know what the process is for importing a page from strategy. Let me know if you would like me to do anything more. -Pete F (talk) 12:50, 12 October 2012 (UTC)

Thanks Pete. I dont know what the process is either. The method is Special:import. Another admin will surely do it if you dont. John Vandenberg (talk) 13:51, 12 October 2012 (UTC)

Please go to Special:Import (transwiwiki import) and import the requested pages (without templates). Ruslik (talk) 19:36, 12 October 2012 (UTC)

OK, all done. Thanks Ruslik, glad to learn of this import tool! -Pete F (talk) 21:14, 12 October 2012 (UTC)

Upcoming software changes - please report any problems

(Apologies if this message isn't in your language. Please consider translating it)

All Wikimedia wikis - including this one - will soon be upgraded with new and possibly disruptive code. This process starts today and finishes on October 24 (see the upgrade schedule & code details).

Please watch for problems with:

• revision diffs
• templates
• CSS and JavaScript pages (like user scripts)
• bots
• PDF export
• images, video, and sound, especially scaling sizes
• the CologneBlue skin

If you notice any problems, please report problems at our defect tracker site. You can test for possible problems at test2.wikipedia.org and mediawiki.org, which have already been updated.

Thanks! With your help we can find problems fast and get them fixed faster.

Sumana Harihareswara, Wikimedia Foundation Engineering Community Manager (talk) 03:04, 16 October 2012 (UTC)

P.S.: For the regular, smaller MediaWiki updates every two weeks, please watch this schedule.

Distributed via Global message delivery. (Wrong page? Fix here.)

Fundraising localization: volunteers from outside the USA needed

Please translate for your local community

Hello All,

The Wikimedia Foundation's Fundraising team have begun our 'User Experience' project, with the goal of understanding the donation experience in different countries outside the USA and enhancing the localization of our donation pages. I am searching for volunteers to spend 30 minutes on a Skype chat with me, reviewing their own country's donation pages. It will be done on a 'usability' format (I will ask you to read the text and go through the donation flow) and will be asking your feedback in the meanwhile.

The only pre-requisite is for the volunteer to actually live in the country and to have access to at least one donation method that we offer for that country (mainly credit/debit card, but also real-time banking like IDEAL, E-wallets, etc...) so we can do a live test and see if the donation goes through. All volunteers will be reimbursed of the donations that eventually succeed (and they will be low amounts, like 1-2 dollars)

By helping us you are actually helping thousands of people to support our mission of free knowledge across the world. Please sing up and help us with our 'User Experience' project! :) If you are interested (or know of anyone who could be) please email ppena@wikimedia.org. All countries needed (excepting USA)!

Thanks!
Pats Pena
Global Fundraising Operations Manager, Wikimedia Foundation

Sent using Global message delivery, 17:10, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

Global message delivery

The Global message delivery is today used for several purpose. It is messages related to "Fundraising", "Software changes", "Terms of Use", "Legal issues" etc. On svwp these messages are, to some extent, treated as spam.

Sometimes these messages are "translated" to the local language. This far, these translations has been of a poor quality, and I would have prefered to read the orginal English version.

In the end of some messages there is a message telling: (Wrong page? Fix here.) It would be nice to deliver these messages to different pages, depending on the subject. "Fundraising" to one page, and "Software changes" to another, for example. It would be logical since the local Village pump on svwp is split by subject. (Like WP:Wikipediafrågor for technical subjects.)

I would also like to have the possibility to "block" some kind of messages. Sending messages about "Fundraising" to all Swedish projects is nothing but spam. I think it would be enough to send that kind of messages to the Wikipedia-project in the Swedish project-family, and skip the other sv-projects. The number of users who are active only on the non-WP-projects, are extremly few. And the Swedish users who are active on Commons only, are more familiar with the English Village pump, than with the Swedish "Bybrunnen".

Opinions?! -- Lavallen 15:12, 18 October 2012 (UTC)

• In addition to global notices at community forums or notice boards, this system has also been used for bulk mail delivery to user talk pages. After being used for this purpose at en.Wikiquote the delivery bot was blocked, and Wikiquote is no longer receiving global messages from this system.

  I would encourage the nascent Sister Projects Committee or other responsible body to explore establishing a mechanism for the exclusive use of WMF staff and duly constituted committees to send global notices to the projects without relying on a bot that is or can be used for general bulk mail. ~ Ningauble (talk) 18:26, 18 October 2012 (UTC)

  • Yeah, the English Wikiquote kind of shot itself in the foot there. I would think people on the English Wikiquote would want to know about some of these announcements, but whatever.

    There are a lot of reasons to have a better bulk message delivery system, but you seem to be focused on issues that are present in any delivery system. That is, it's always possible to spam (with an e-mail client, with global message delivery, with a wiki bot, etc.). The issue you're trying to address is not really technical, it's social. I'm not sure adding bureaucracy (such as a committee) will help much. --MZMcBride (talk) 17:36, 19 October 2012 (UTC)

    • Off with your head. Killiondude (talk) 22:40, 19 October 2012 (UTC)
    • The person who placed the block at Wikiquote may have overreacted. Since the reason given for the block was operating a bot without registering at q:en:WQ:BOT and the bot flag has subsequently been granted, I will post a reminder there about the preexisting block in case the flagging bureaucrat may want to unblock it. Failing that, a request for unblock at q:en:WQ:AN might be appropriate.

      Still, I think a dedicated process for official WMF communications might be a good idea. Junk mail incidents are probably inevitable with an open bulk mail system, and the knee-jerk reaction to any high-volume automated nuisance is to just block the bot. ~ Ningauble (talk) 20:58, 20 October 2012 (UTC)

• Hi. I don't think there's a bot issue or anything that needs to change about the bot. It sounds like you're objecting to the use of a single distribution list. The bot delivers to where it's told to deliver to (via the aptly named Global message delivery/Spam page). A lot of people operating the bot are lazy and simply re-use Distribution list/Global message delivery rather than creating their own specialized list. A few specialized lists already exist at Global message delivery/Targets. It sounds like you want a few more lists (i.e., /Targets/Fundraising; /Targets/Software changes; etc.).

  I agree with you that better target lists would be nice, but this isn't something that really involves me (as the person who maintains the bot). The people at Global message delivery/Access list are the ones sending out these messages. If people misusing or abusing the bot, please remove them from the access list. :-) --MZMcBride (talk) 17:36, 19 October 2012 (UTC)

  • I summoned you to be aware of the opinions about how the bot is used. It is your (bot)name that is seen in the logs, not the wmf-staff. -- Lavallen 08:26, 21 October 2012 (UTC)

They killed Monobook

Oh my God (Opera 12.02, Windows 7)! Developers killed Monobook! You bastards! :) Saint Johann (ru) 21:24, 25 October 2012 (UTC)

Can't see that blue block on http://ru.wikipedia.org/. Do I need to be not logged in? --Malyacko (talk) 17:07, 26 October 2012 (UTC)

Ah, this was reverted according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_%28technical%29#Fund-raising --Malyacko (talk) 17:25, 26 October 2012 (UTC)

German personal and formal address

Please see here: Talk:Fundraising_2012/Translation#Question.2Fcomments_regarding_German_address_versions --Hans Haase (talk) 17:47, 26 October 2012 (UTC)

MIssing link http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Ways_to_Give/de

Origin http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Ways_to_Give/en can not be translated to http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Ways_to_Give/de ?! Maybe, it could be created, but it should be secured like the origin page --Hans Haase (talk) 07:08, 27 October 2012 (UTC)

Might be worth to bring up at https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Foundation_wiki_feedback --Malyacko (talk) 11:49, 29 October 2012 (UTC)

Advertisement banners on wikimedia italy

During this month a banner is appearing in both italian and english version. It promotes the monuments photographic competition.

Clicking on the italian version you are redirected to a page promoting the competition itself. This page is populated bu advertising banners as shown in this screenshot.

Advertisement banners on wikimedia italy related project - September 2012

I have always supported wikipedia financially basing on the fact that no advertising appears on this site. Of course if advertising banners will start to appear I will loose any reason to continue financial support, as I will consider financial support already provided by advertisers.

Note that you are redirected to an external site in this case (http://www.wikilovesmonuments.it/), but the banner from wich you start is from wikipedia. I think this kind of bahaviour should not be accepted as it is not coherent with wikipedia rules.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Jimbo_Wales#Advertising_on_Italian_Wiki_Loves_Monuments_page 92.13.214.144 23:06, 29 October 2012 (UTC)

Wikiproofs

Very interested project Wikiproofs, it allow trace proofs influence by hypertext. It is relatively old idea (May 2005). Is chance to realize it? Borneq (talk) 19:56, 31 October 2012 (UTC)