This page contains discussions that have been archived from Village pump (miscellaneous). Please do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to revive any of these discussions, either start a new thread or use the talk page associated with that topic.
< Older discussions · Archives: A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V, W, X · 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79
This seems like the default to ask this question, though I hope some of the people I'm trying to reach actually check this page:
Long-term IP editors, you are my favorite class of editor. How are you taking the news of the upcoming temporary accounts for unregistered editors|temporary accounts for unregistered editors roll-out? I hope you all will still feel whole after this comes to pass, and you are IP editors no longer. Remsense 诉 16:50, 5 April 2024 (UTC)
For the interested, WP:IPMASKING. Gråbergs Gråa Sång ( talk) 16:49, 7 April 2024 (UTC)
Does anyone know how long the temporary accounts last and if they last more than 4 days can a temp account become autoconfirmed? I didn't see anything about this in the linked pages but it is a lot to go through. The closest I could find is a comment that there is awareness of the impact on anti-vandal efforts but that is quite vague. RudolfRed ( talk) 22:30, 7 April 2024 (UTC)
The footer of our pages says:
Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 4.0; additional terms may apply. By using this site...
I think it would be sensible to change it to something like (additions emboldened for clarity):
Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 4.0; additional terms may apply. Images may be subject to copyright or require attribution if reused; see individual image pages for details. By using this site...
My reasoning is that images may be open-licensed or fair-use, and in neither case do we display any notice of this to readers on the page.
Is this in our gift, or is it a WMF issue? Where should a request be raised? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 14:14, 6 April 2024 (UTC)
Why no mention on home page of 50th anniversary of Henry Aaron hitting 715th home run to break Babe Ruth’s MLB record? Fairly significant; maybe more than formation of Progress Party in Norway? Pliny37 ( talk) 07:32, 8 April 2024 (UTC)
Hi everyone,
The Wikimedia Foundation’s draft annual plan for the 2024-2025 fiscal year is now available. This plan is shaped by many factors. These include external technological, regulatory, and social trends in the world about how people look for information and rely on the Wikimedia projects. Our planning was also built around small group discussions on wiki, via mailing lists and over 130 conversations with individuals in person and in scheduled calls. These discussions consistently highlighted the need to remain focused on upgrading our technical infrastructure and supporting volunteer needs for tool maintenance and metrics.
Our answer to these trends and needs is in this draft annual plan. You will see that it prioritises maintenance and upgrades for our technical infrastructure, such as MediaWiki core, data centre operations, and site reliability engineering services. There are also key results around a number of issues discussed here over the past year, such as ways to help volunteers connect to others who share their interests, building newcomer edit workflows that reduce the burden on experienced editors, building a new community wishlist that better connects movement ideas to Foundation activities, and improving tools for editors with extended rights.
You can read a summary of the plan in yesterday’s letter from Wikimedia Foundation CEO Maryana Iskander, with a slightly-longer version on the annual plan landing page. The summary also offers details about what we’ve achieved so far in this current year. You can also read about our financial model, revenue strategy, and budget breakdown.
The annual plan talk page is open for questions and feedback now through the end of May, after which we’ll summarise all of the responses across talk pages and community calls and publish a final version of the plan that considers this feedback. Thanks in advance for sharing your thoughts! KStineRowe (WMF) ( talk) 21:59, 12 April 2024 (UTC)
I see everyone doing it and I want to try. Amoxicillin on a Boat ( talk) 15:28, 15 April 2024 (UTC)
Is there (or can there be) a bot to remove archived or stale talk page subscription from Special:TopicSubscriptions, or maybe there's a way to condense the page manually? I have not been able to find any documentation on this issue. - FlightTime ( open channel) 20:53, 18 April 2024 (UTC)
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Dalton Tan ( talk · contribs) has described misinformation several times in railway-related articles, and it has escalated even if it is warned. Even if I have been warned many times, I don't seem to understand it, so should I report it to the Administrators' noticeboard? -- H.K.pauw ( talk) 09:55, 17 April 2024 (UTC)
Is there a function that I can add to the Tools menu that will generate a list of redirects to the current page? I.e. similar to "What links here" but for redirects. I'd like to be able to check for valid anchor points. Thanks. Praemonitus ( talk) 15:53, 17 April 2024 (UTC)
How do I request that a Level 2 caution template be added to the Twinkle notices? This is a long-standing complaint of mine about this particular message, which is copy-pasting a draft by someone else into article space. When I request the history merge to provide attribution, it tells me that I can copy a template onto the talk page of the editor who did the copy. However, the message that it puts on the user talk page of the user who did the copying is mealy-mouthed. I think that something a little stronger is in order. This is an action which, whether intentional or not, creates work for an administrator in order to provide attribution to the editor who really wrote and submitted the draft. It doesn't really say that copy-pasting is discouraged. So how do I request that a message having to do with inappropriate copying within Wikipedia be added to the Warn templates? Robert McClenon ( talk) 22:29, 18 April 2024 (UTC)
Exactly, although I think that "pathetic" is not a strong enough rebuke for plagiarizing someone else's draft. That is why I wanted a stronger warning, because I think that usually the editor who copies someone else's draft to an article knows what they are doing, or at least ought to know. Robert McClenon ( talk) 01:18, 24 April 2024 (UTC)Copy/pasting someone else's draft to an article is pathetic. Volunteers who create content should be acknowledged in the article history and posting a template on talk as an alternative is just bullshit.
A new case request was made in the past 24 hours at the Dispute Resolution Noticeboard with regard to a contentious perennial issue within a contentious topic. I checked on the history of the filing account. What I saw is that the filing account has made 16 edits, between 21 April 2024 and 23 April 2024. That would be a new account, jumping into a contentious topic, which is a little concerning as it is. But the account was created in December 2015. It has been a sleeper for more than eight years. I know that there is a guideline to Assume Good Faith, but should I assume good faith, or is there something that I should do or someone that I should notify? Robert McClenon ( talk) 01:29, 24 April 2024 (UTC)
Dear all,
I am writing to you to let you know the voting period for the Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee (U4C) is open now through May 9, 2024. Read the information on the voting page on Meta-wiki to learn more about voting and voter eligibility.
The Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee (U4C) is a global group dedicated to providing an equitable and consistent implementation of the UCoC. Community members were invited to submit their applications for the U4C. For more information and the responsibilities of the U4C, please review the U4C Charter.
Please share this message with members of your community so they can participate as well.
On behalf of the UCoC project team,
RamzyM (WMF) 20:20, 25 April 2024 (UTC)
I having trouble with my caplock, if I turn it on I have to restart my laptop to get it to turn off, also I now have a screen indicator showing caplock on/off, this has to be in a recent windows update, I did a search for the issue and they want me to uninstall my keyboard driver then re-install it, no way am I doing that, this really sucks. Is there a way to search recent updates, then uninstall the one with the issue? IDK.. - FlightTime ( open channel) 21:23, 25 April 2024 (UTC)
The Met Office logo is currently protected by Crown copyright in the United Kingdom, but may not be copyrightable in the United States because it does not meet original standards. The version currently uploaded locally on English Wikipedia is the 2009 version. There may be differences in color matching between this version and the 1987 version. Therefore, the copyright protection period of logos uploaded in different periods will also be recalculated. - Fumikas Sagisavas ( talk) 04:09, 14 April 2024 (UTC)
If a user who is blocked takes advantage of autoblocking being enabled for their block to stop other, innocent users from editing by attempting to edit from random IP addresses, what will the administration do about it? By modifying the block to disable autoblocking, this allows the blocked user to evade the block, so will they send a request to a steward on Meta to lock the account to prevent further collateral damage because the account can no longer be logged into if all else fails? Faster than Thunder ( talk | contributions) 21:51, 27 April 2024 (UTC)
We want editors to find and use templates easily. As such, we have selected two wishes which we are implementing together:
These wishes ranked 5th and 11th in the Community Wishlist Survey 2023 respectively.
Please read more about the template picker improvements project, and leave any early feedback on the talkpage.
On behalf of Community Tech, –– STei (WMF) ( talk) 21:20, 29 April 2024 (UTC)
About 2 months ago, I made an RFC at Talk:Somalia#Somalia showed as controlling Somaliland. After a slow RFC after which the opinion remained split, nothing happened. Owing to a recent edit war regarding the image, I am posting this here for further input so this issue can be put to bed.
This has been posted on different projects as of yet but it's still equally split. Fantastic Mr. Fox ( talk) 20:51, 26 April 2024 (UTC)
Starting yesterday, queries to the WP 1.0 server go into a loop that never responds. At least for me. Praemonitus ( talk) 13:49, 6 May 2024 (UTC)
Hello everyone,
We have two updates about the Community Wishlist Survey:
Update one concerns upcoming changes to the survey. In the new survey, we are experimenting with grouping similar wishes into a problem space known as Focus Area and modifying the way the community votes to complement this approach. We also have mockups of the new wish intake form. Get the full details.
The other update announces the selection of 4 related wishes around template use for fulfillment (e.g. adding infoboxes and bookmarking templates).
Please make time to read the announcements in detail, and join the discussions.
On behalf of Community Tech –– STei (WMF) ( talk) 11:58, 9 May 2024 (UTC)
The "Kids Online Safety Act" (KOSA) is a bill introduced in the US Senate by Senators Richard Blumenthal (D‑CT) and Marsha Blackburn (R‑TN) in February 2022 and reintroduced in May 2023; the bill establishes guidelines meant to protect minors on covered platforms. Per Section 3.b of the proposed act, a "covered platform" (defined as "a commercial software application or electronic service that connects to the internet and that is used, or is reasonably likely to be used, by a minor.") has the duty to block a minor's access to content that is deemed harmful to them.
This puts **every** Wikimedia project in danger of being censored by the U.S. government, because not only does it count as a “covered platform” (it is used by students under 16 for study and references), but it may either force the Wikimedia Foundation to ask users to provide personal information about themselves (particularly their age) when creating a new account, or remove encyclopaedic articles under the guise of “ensuring minor safety”. If passed, the KOSA act will put information on Wikimedia projects under scrutiny by the US government, and virtually eliminate the neutrality that has been part of them for years.
Not only does the act create an excuse for information censorship (about things that the US government doesn’t favour), but also the risk of a data leak. If someone has access to the age of every single Wikimedia user, then there’d be a very real possibility that they would be leaked to the public, including those of younger editors.
Therefore, an anti-KOSA blackout should be done to stop the act from being passed (like the last time we did with SOPA and PIPA; all three bills are somewhat related to censorship).
The responsibility of protecting a minor’s information online should be done by, and taught to, the minor’s parent, and not by the government.
tynjee 13:18, 28 April 2024 (UTC)
ageoption, that would privacy invasion and just silly. To be clear, I think this bill has potential for abuse/censorship, although it means well, I'm just assessing whether we really need to be worried here or not. Cremastra ( talk) 15:06, 28 April 2024 (UTC)
Masem ( t) 15:22, 28 April 2024 (UTC)Does the Kids Online Safety Act cover platforms run by non-profit organizations?
No, websites run by non-profits organizations – which often host important and valuable educational and support services – are not covered by the scope of the legislation.
The American Civil Liberties Union, Center for Democracy & Technology, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Fight for the Future, GLAAD and Wikimedia Foundation were among the more than 90 groups that wrote to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., Senate Commerce Committee Chair Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., and Ranking Member Roger Wicker, R-Miss., opposing the Kids Online Safety Act.
“ | (B) EXCEPTIONS.—The term “covered platform” does not include— [...] (ii) an organization not organized to carry on business for its own profit or that of its members; |
” |
Hello all,
The next language community meeting is scheduled in a few weeks - May 31st at 16:00 UTC. If you're interested, you can sign up on this wiki page.
This is a participant-driven meeting, where we share language-specific updates related to various projects, collectively discuss technical issues related to language wikis, and work together to find possible solutions. For example, in the last meeting, the topics included the machine translation service (MinT) and the languages and models it currently supports, localization efforts from the Kiwix team, and technical challenges with numerical sorting in files used on Bengali Wikisource.
Do you have any ideas for topics to share technical updates related to your project? Any problems that you would like to bring for discussion during the meeting? Do you need interpretation support from English to another language? Please reach out to me at ssethi(__AT__)wikimedia.org and add agenda items to the document here.
We look forward to your participation!
MediaWiki message delivery
21:22, 14 May 2024 (UTC)
There is currently a discussion at Wikipedia talk:Growth Team features#Should English Wikipedia enable the Suggested Links newcomer task? regarding the technical implementation of the "add a link" newcomer task. Thank you. Folly Mox ( talk) 13:06, 16 May 2024 (UTC)
As I have talked about both in Wikimedia Forum and in the Internet Archive's one, Archive's Wayback Machine, being a very important resource for Wikipedia (it's where many article references come from, and where all references will always be forwarded if the original source some day disappears), can't be taken for granted, because almost all its content is hosted only in an area with great natural risks. It strikes me (negatively) that no one has replied to my post on Archive's forums. Perhaps people are more concerned with day-to-day issues, and dismiss this as long-term paranoia, but I think this is currently the most important issue regarding human knowledge's future. If Archive is eventually lost, Wikipedia and its sister projects, will be even more important than they are now, as the memory of the start of 21st century (and of other previous times), but it would be really sad to lose so much content as Archive has. If there's anyone here that shares my concern, he/she could, if has an Archive account (or wants to create one), and wanted to do it, talk about it in the thread that I opened at Archive's forum. I think that this is a very important issue, for everyone, as persons, but especially as wikipedians/wikimedians. MGeog2022 ( talk) 11:36, 22 April 2024 (UTC)
Libraries are going to have to fight to be able to buy, preserve, and lend digital books outside of the confines of temporary licensed access. We deeply appreciate your support as we continue this fight!
Inappropriate, rude nastiness appearing in blurb of search result for "The Spike" essay by George Orwell. Can anyone help get it deleted? It is only returned +/- 1 in 5 times of search. Seemingly linked to orwell.ru website although I am not suggesting they are responsible. DieselEstate ( talk) 06:59, 18 May 2024 (UTC)
Dear all,
As mentioned previously, the WMF is running its annual banner fundraising campaign for non logged in users in Malaysia (on English Wikipedia only) from 28th of May to the 25th of June..
Generally, before and during the campaign, you can contact us:
Thanks you and regards, JBrungs (WMF) ( talk) 09:46, 20 May 2024 (UTC)
Dear all,
As mentioned previously, the WMF is running its annual banner fundraising campaign for non logged in users in South Africa (on English Wikipedia) from 28th of May to the 25th of June.
You can find more information around the campaign, see example banners, and leave any questions or suggestions you might have, on the community collaboration page.
Generally, before and during the campaign, you can contact us:
Thanks you and regards, JBrungs (WMF) ( talk) 09:49, 20 May 2024 (UTC)
Hello, I'm an art student conducting research on Userboxes.
I made a tool to browse through your Userbox social graph, which you can check out at: https://lucaszuidema.com/network.html. And I'm hoping to gain more insight into why Wikipedians put Userboxes on their User Pages, and what the social function of them can be.
Do you have Userboxes on your page? Or do you actively choose not to use them? I'd love to interview you about your Userboxes (or lack thereof), and for your insights to be published on a website, together with the graph.
If you're interested in participating, please send me a message on my talk page, or send me an email via the sidebar. As a reward for participating (for all you Userbox collectors out there), you'll get a special Userbox to put on your User Page.
Thanks a lot!
Lucasorigami ( talk) 18:14, 20 May 2024 (UTC)
Dear community members,
The Community Affairs Committee (CAC) of the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees invites you to give feedback on a draft Procedure for Sibling Project Lifecycle. This draft Procedure outlines proposed steps and requirements for opening and closing Wikimedia Sibling Projects, and aims to ensure any newly approved projects are set up for success. This is separate from the procedures for opening or closing language versions of projects, which is handled by the Language Committee or closing projects policy.
You can find the details on this page, as well as the ways to give your feedback from today until the end of the day on June 23, 2024, anywhere on Earth.
You can also share information about this with the interested project communities you work with or support, and you can also help us translate the procedure into more languages, so people can join the discussions in their own language.
On behalf of the CAC,
RamzyM (WMF) 02:25, 22 May 2024 (UTC)
Hello, I'm researching historical positions within the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) because Andrei Kirilenko (politician) page have the position called "Senior Secretary of Cadres." However, I haven't been able to find much information about it. Did this position officially exist within the CPSU, and if so, what were its responsibilities? Any guidance or references would be greatly appreciated. Thank you! SleepyJoe42 ( talk) 09:27, 22 May 2024 (UTC)
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
(Transcribed from here) "pedophiles, will be blocked and banned indefinitely." I was curious about the sentence, but isn't this equivalent to discrimination against the mentally ill? -- H.K.pauw ( talk · contribs) 05:14, 3 May 2024 (UTC)
(Transcribed here) -- H.K.pauw ( talk · contribs) 09:51, 24 May 2024 (UTC)
A contest will take place from June 1, 2024, to June 30, 2024, on Bangla Wikibooks to enrich its content. A central notice request has been placed to target both English and Bangla Wikipedia users, including non-registered users from Bangladesh and the Indian state of West Bengal. Thank you. — MdsShakil ( talk) 10:00, 24 May 2024 (UTC)
Has the ability to turn off Media Viewer been removed for users without accounts? I recently reset my cookies, and now I don't see the option to turn off Media Viewer anymore.
-- 65.92.244.237 ( talk) 14:09, 24 May 2024 (UTC)
I’m looking to create a
Jet Lag: The Game themed
userbox. I know this qualifies as fair use under U.S. law, however the Wikipedia upload tool for non free content says that it has to be for an article, explicitly stating “no userspace”, so what is the best way to proceed?
Iovecodeabc (
talk)
00:48, 26 May 2024 (UTC)
There is an error in the title and the article should be renamed. 2A02:9130:803B:C427:7879:15DD:A35C:63C1 ( talk) 14:17, 26 May 2024 (UTC)
Hey folks - WMF is making updates to our Community Wishlist, from making it open year round to prioritizing "focus areas" of user submitted ideas, requests, and bugs that share an underlying problem.
In this process, we've realized we're outgrowing the the name "Community Wishlist Survey" and I wanted to get your feedback on a few other options. We've offered 3 ideas, and if you have another preference, we welcome you to suggest alternatives! JWheeler-WMF ( talk) 21:31, 29 May 2024 (UTC)
Has there been anybody who tried to complete the rule of three when it comes to "Editing Wikipedia while driving" and "Editing Wikipedia while drunk" on Wikipedia:Deleted articles with freaky titles? Perhaps, "Editing Wikipedia while drunk driving"?
i am very interested in the deleted articles with freaky titles but i'm too chicken to make it myself OrlandoApollosFan69 ( talk) 02:29, 2 June 2024 (UTC)
Hello,
The scrutineers have finished reviewing the vote results. We are following up with the results of the first Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee (U4C) election.
We are pleased to announce the following individuals as regional members of the U4C, who will fulfill a two-year term:
The following individuals are elected to be community-at-large members of the U4C, fulfilling a one-year term:
Thank you again to everyone who participated in this process and much appreciation to the candidates for your leadership and dedication to the Wikimedia movement and community.
Over the next few weeks, the U4C will begin meeting and planning the 2024-25 year in supporting the implementation and review of the UCoC and Enforcement Guidelines. Follow their work on Meta-wiki.
On behalf of the UCoC project team,
RamzyM (WMF) 08:14, 3 June 2024 (UTC)
When visiting this cascade-protected image file page, the action bar at the top shows "Edit source" instead of "View source". Was this a typo, or was it intentional? I would highly appreciate any responses, especially from WikiMedia staff.
MasterOpel 20:39, 3 June 2024 (UTC)
Hi, sorry to bother everyone but I stumbled address the Arabic Wikipedia and they had a large banner that said something about the Hamas Israel war, and it was like (don’t quote me on this) stop the genocide in Gaza! And I could be wrong I’m not a Wikipedia editor but I was just curious like is this agents policy, like I don’t mind it at all but I was just wondering 2600:6C48:617F:2533:9D74:4184:C6F7:F5D6 ( talk) 03:43, 28 May 2024 (UTC)
Hello
The moderation tools team is working on Automoderator, a tool that would make it possible to revert vandalism automatically. This tool could replace vandalism bots (or be used in parallel), or help users prevent vandalism on wikis where no bot is available.
From 6 June to 7 July 2024, on your wiki, we will randomly display an invitation to complete a survey to selected users, as part of our efforts to understand how patrollers behaviors will change when Automoderator is deployed.
The survey will be shown to registered users, who signed up before 2024, and who have made more than 500 edits.
You can find out more about this survey at phab:T362462.
Please share this information anywhere useful. Thank you in advance for your participation!
Trizek_(WMF) ( talk) 13:22, 5 June 2024 (UTC)
There's really not a noticeboard that covers this, so this is the most general place I could find. Template talk:Header navbar community. Thanks. ScottishFinnishRadish ( talk) 17:16, 10 June 2024 (UTC)
Hi everyone,
The final text of the Wikimedia Movement Charter is now up on Meta in more than 20 languages for your reading.
What is the Wikimedia Movement Charter?
The Wikimedia Movement Charter is a proposed document to define roles and responsibilities for all the members and entities of the Wikimedia movement, including the creation of a new body – the Global Council – for movement governance.
Join the Wikimedia Movement Charter “Launch Party”
Join the “Launch Party” on June 20, 2024 at 14.00-15.00 UTC ( your local time). During this call, we will celebrate the release of the final Charter and present the content of the Charter. Join and learn about the Charter before casting your vote.
Movement Charter ratification vote
Voting will commence on SecurePoll on June 25, 2024 at 00:01 UTC and will conclude on July 9, 2024 at 23:59 UTC. You can read more about the voting process, eligibility criteria, and other details on Meta.
If you have any questions, please leave a comment on the Meta talk page or email the MCDC at mcdc@wikimedia.org.
On behalf of the MCDC,
RamzyM (WMF) 08:44, 11 June 2024 (UTC)
Greetings, I have noticed that the article Squirtle which was recently promoted to good article has been placed not in the Video games category but Media and drama which doesn't make sense to me considering all previous Pokémon have been placed in the Video games category such as Bulbasaur, Charizard, Raichu, Jigglypuff, Psyduck, Voltorb, Jynx, Magikarp and Gyarados, Ditto, Eevee and many others. Moreover the article nomination WAS in the video games category. Is there a possibility to switch the category the good article is present ? DanganMachin ( talk) 11:19, 11 June 2024 (UTC)
Thank you to everyone who has provided feedback on renaming the Community Wishlist Survey. We now have 3 names for you to choose from:
1. Community Ideas Exchange
2. Community Feature Requests
3. Community Suggestions Portal
You are invited to vote for one that works for you. –– STei (WMF) ( talk) 15:03, 11 June 2024 (UTC)
Hello all,
Questions for input from Wikipedians regarding how articles that include text translated from foreign language wikipedias should have attributions handled. All translations of content from any language wikipedia are derivative works that require attribution. (See here for rationale.)
This arises from pages like Abeozen which have in-article mentions of the translation source ( The above article was created as a translation of its counterpart on the French Wikipedia, . (Specifically this version) but no mention of this attribution in the edit history or talk page. Current policies WP:TFOLWP and Help:Translate recommend inserting this information only in the edit history, and there are many pages (approx. 94,000 with Template:Translated page included in their talk page, but this appears to be additional and alone does not satisfy attribution requirements.
Looking for input on the following points:
Other answers or positions regarding the above questions are welcome, as are other questions arising in discussion on this point.
Pinging potentially interested Wikipedians: @ Mike Peel @ RudolfRed (thanks for suggestion to move question here from WP:Teahouse) @ GreenLipstickLesbian (thank you for your clarification for new editors at WP:Teahouse and your position in this diff)
Thank you all for your input! Shazback ( talk) 07:55, 6 June 2024 (UTC)
This article contains content translated from Persian Wikipedia.
|insertversion=
is available to make the timing context clear; see for example
Talk:ForGG or any of
these transclusions of the template. If the wording is not clear enough for that case, you could raise a discussion at Template talk to request an improvement.
Mathglot (
talk)
19:50, 7 June 2024 (UTC)I've just noticed that A heads (i.e. headings made by pairs of double equals signs ==) are in a much smaller unbold roman point size than sans-serifed bold B heads (i.e. headings made by pairs of three equals signs ===), which looks ridiculous. I'm sure this never used to be the case in the near 20 years I've been editing here. Is there any way of viewing pages so that A heads appear bigger and bolder than B heads? Thanks, Ericoides ( talk) 10:15, 12 June 2024 (UTC)
much smaller. h2's look bigger than h3's on my skin vector (2010). Example. What skin are you using? – Novem Linguae ( talk) 10:39, 12 June 2024 (UTC)
Did the hatnote stylesheet change? It seems to have become harder to read and a different font color in the last few days. -- 64.229.90.32 ( talk) 06:40, 14 June 2024 (UTC)
— Preceding unsigned comment added by Novem Linguae ( talk • contribs) 15:00, 14 June 2024 (UTC)
...I've made a graph comparing stats across English projects. Active users per admin is in blue. Cremastra ( talk) 20:21, 18 June 2024 (UTC)
I want to create article about Genetic studies on Bengali. I created many historical, political or other simple articles so I know how to find sources for these topics. But I am clueless about source indexing of genetic studies in search engines and I am having difficulties finding sources about genetic studies of Bengali people. Do you people have any idea how to find genetics-related sources effectively? Or can anyone redirect me to anyone who can really help me about the sources? Mehedi Abedin ( talk) 04:33, 19 June 2024 (UTC)
Until this edit [4], Austronesian peoples stated that Madagascar was reached by Austronesians c. 50–500 CE ("In the Indian Ocean, they sailed west from Maritime Southeast Asia; the Austronesian peoples reached Madagascar by ca. 50–500 CE"). Looking at that version [5], there are three references with failed verification tags. The last two references have been associated with this part of the article for some time. Precisely what is wrong with the references is discussed on the talk page [6] (It's the third of three issues under this heading.) Note these last two references, The Culture History of Madagascar and A chronology for late prehistoric Madagascar.
In a recent version
[7] of the article, we have two reintroductions of early dates for Austronesian settlement of Madagascar. The one that says Estimates for when this occurred vary from the 1st century CE,[153]...
has a new ref, Herrera et al. If you read that paper, you find, in the introduction:
Checkout those references – they are The Culture History of Madagascar and A chronology for late prehistoric Madagascar. Since neither of them support this date range, where did the authors of the paper get this from? There are plenty of other potential references in the literature (giving later dates). So why use these? The most likely explanation is that they were lifted straight from the Wikipedia article that existed at the time.
So, do we have a Wikipedia error (since corrected) now being recycled back into the article to perpetuate the error? What do you think? ThoughtIdRetired TIR 22:42, 19 June 2024 (UTC)
I neither have nor can afford an Apple Vision Pro at this time, and I don't think most of us do or can as well. I'd like to know, from those using the device, how Wikipedia on Safari functions as well as the Wikipedia mobile app there. George Ho ( talk) 21:33, 20 June 2024 (UTC)
(not real example). Template Infobox Guinea Pig has a parameter called "Tail color". I'd like to be able to see what values this parameter has over all articles that use the infobox. (I asked on the help desk and got no response) Naraht ( talk) 21:46, 20 June 2024 (UTC)
{{
Infobox guinea pig}}
template. Not sure it is quite what you want, but Bambots tracks parameters for all sorts of templates. It can list the different values used for a param. See
the documentation and
an example (click on "Click to show"). The template needs to have TemplateData set up —
GhostInTheMachine
talk to me
11:06, 23 June 2024 (UTC)I just came across the Moto G54 5G article which has a rather peculiar template at the top of the page, saying it was written with GPT-4. At first I thought it was a new official template I didn't know about, then I looked at the source and noticed it's a template sitting in userspace, which looks like it was made to mimic the design of standard header templates. What is the right way to deal with a situation like this? Do we just remove the template from the page, or do we need to deal with the AI-written content in the article somehow? – numbermaniac 18:23, 23 June 2024 (UTC)
has been visited by many readers and is unlikely to include false information or fake referenceswhich seems fallacious. Barnards.tar.gz ( talk) 19:51, 23 June 2024 (UTC)
What a weird coincidence; I came here with my "cyberthriller story". A user asked WPRussia to help with one reference in Assault they found suspicious, but it was to a text in Russian, so they asked for assistance. Indeed, the ref was nonsense and I removed it. At first I thought is was cut'n'paste error, but nasty me decided to find the author for mild trout-slapping. Well, it was a "drive-by editor" Ugwuowo samuel ( talk · contribs) and at first (well, at second :-) I just shrugged, but I noticed that the user used the same edit summary "added few words and references" for all its edits. Then I noticed another editor in same page Ifyeke ( talk · contribs) with exactly same edit summary, and all of them were the same as well. So I felt something fishy. Then in the page edited by Ifyeke I saw edits by blocked Onyebuchi Echezona ( talk · contribs).... Oh people, You have to waste a minute of your time and read its unblock request! It is a poem written on a wall..... by a chatbot.
So, in two minutes I run into three apparently chatbots. In one page the edits of one of them
were reverted, but it gives me goosebumps to think how much more of them are roaming unnoticed. I am wondering whether Wikimedia is aware of this threat? The prev section say failed to verify them in the cited sources
-and tghat's one of severe issues: the bot generates fake refs (as I explained at the beginning, one was really fake, so the "page owner" (in a good sense) spotted it. But otherwise the texts look legit;
Turing test, you know.
Another thing worries me is that I suspect Wikipedia is being (ab)used as a testbench for chatbots at all our's expense. If one may remember, in these gooden olden days of Wikipedia various smartasses loved to insert typos and nonsense into wikipedia to see how quickly they will be spotted. And quite a few had an arrogance to write news articles reporting their findings. Fortunately our antivandalbots became strong. Repeating: are there any "antiChatBots" in development? Or waiting until it hits the fan? - Altenmann >talk 05:35, 25 June 2024 (UTC)
P.S. The sectkion above suggests to use template that says " may still include false information " - IMO it is an insult to the common sense. AFAIK such texts must be deleted on the spot, not tagged. If a user knowingly adds fake references by whatever means, they must be blocked for disruption of wikipedia. - Altenmann >talk 06:41, 25 June 2024 (UTC)
such texts must be deleted on the spot, that's part of the challenge with LLMs. They're unreliable because of their inherent flaws, and have a significant risk of producing incorrect information, fictitious references, and copyvios, but it's not a given that LLM output is complete nonsense and there's nothing in it that could be salvaged. (As opposed to something like plagiarism, which absolutely should just be removed on sight.) Kinsio ( talk ★ contribs) 17:45, 28 June 2024 (UTC)
A contest will take place from July 1, 2024, to July 31, 2024, on Bangla Wiktionary to enrich its content. A central notice request has been placed to target both English and Bangla Wikipedia users, including non-registered users from Bangladesh and the Indian state of West Bengal. Thank you — MdsShakil ( talk) 16:19, 27 June 2024 (UTC)
Thank you everyone who has participated in the restructuring and rebranding conversations of the Wishlist so far.
Regarding the renaming, based on your feedback, we will keep the 'Community Wishlist' and remove 'Survey'.
Please read more about the renaming, check out the vote results and learn more about the re-opening of the Community Wishlist on July 15, 2024, in our latest update. –– STei (WMF) ( talk) 20:06, 28 June 2024 (UTC)
Hi folks - I wanted to announce and invite anyone interested to view and apply to the Product and Technology Advisory Council.
As part of the movement strategy recommendation for "Coordinating Across Stakeholders," the Product & Technology Advisory Council (PTAC) will bring technical contributors and Wikimedia Foundation together to co-define a more resilient, future-proof technological platform. The PTAC will meet over a one year pilot; upon its completion, members of the Council will make a joint decision to continue the program, its member base, and purpose.
This council is sponsored by CPTO Selena Deckelmann. Applications are open today, July 1, 2024, through August 10, 2024, and we encourage anyone interested to apply.
To read more and apply, please view the post on Meta. --- JWheeler-WMF ( talk) 12:11, 1 July 2024 (UTC)
I see [subscribe] links on talk pages and noticeboards, but only for top-level sections (H2). On pages such as Wikipedia:Redirects_for_discussion, I would like to be able to subscribe to specific discussions that correspond to sub-sections or sub-sub-section. Is this possible? Jruderman ( talk) 22:13, 1 July 2024 (UTC)
How do I get TimedText:Stalin_Speech_Life_Has_Become_Better.webm.en.srt moved to Commons? The associated file was recently moved to Commons. – LaundryPizza03 ( d c̄) 06:12, 24 June 2024 (UTC)
Hello everyone,
The voting to ratify the Wikimedia Movement Charter is now open. The Wikimedia Movement Charter is a document to define roles and responsibilities for all the members and entities of the Wikimedia movement, including the creation of a new body – the Global Council – for movement governance.
The final version of the Wikimedia Movement Charter is available on Meta in different languages and attached here in PDF format for your reading.
Voting commenced on SecurePoll on June 25, 2024 at 00:01 UTC and will conclude on July 9, 2024 at 23:59 UTC. Please read more on the voter information and eligibility details.
After reading the Charter, please vote here and share this note further.
If you have any questions about the ratification vote, please contact the Charter Electoral Commission at cec@wikimedia.org.
On behalf of the CEC,
RamzyM (WMF) 10:51, 25 June 2024 (UTC)
the link below provides highly valuable data on some of the multiple concerns raised by the board's review process:
link: meta:Wikimedia Foundation Board noticeboard/Board liaisons reflections on final Movement charter draft/Brief
important points from above:
The Global Council is the most anticipated aspect of the Movement Charter recommendation. Overall,the proposed Global Council's purpose is not clearly connected to advancing Wikimedia's public interest mission. It lacks a compelling explanation of how it will ensure more equitable decision-making and support the mission of sharing free knowledge. It also does not guide us as the Movement on how to address many of the most pressing issues facing community governance on Wikimedia projects.
The Wikimedia Foundation is willing to delegate some powers to the Global Council. At the moment, we have not read similar statements from other parts of the movement - and without that, the Global Council cannot really act as a body that goes beyond the Wikimedia Foundation.
Would volunteers accept a decision made by the Global Council, even if they don’t like it, just because they had a chance to vote in their elections?
why do we need a Global Council? Who is asking for this to be established? that's my own concern and my own questions on this.
ok here is another comment, from someone connected to two members of the board, from the page below
link: Wikimedia Foundation Board liaisons reflections on final Movement charter draft:
We believe that approving this version of the Charter, despite the tremendous amount of work and resources already put into it, would not be the right call. Instead, we think it is better to continue pursuing the same goals the draft Charter also sought to pursue in a different way, by identifying key areas where the final draft Charter provides us with guidance on concrete steps that can be taken towards increasing volunteer and movement oversight of certain core areas of responsibility.
For an all-encompassing document the support required to ratify the threshold -- 55% plus a minimum of 2% of eligible voters participating in vote -- is quite low.
-- Sm8900 ( talk) Sm8900 ( talk) 16:52, 27 June 2024 (UTC)
Please see MediaWiki_talk:Searchmenu-new#Remove_link_to_the_article_wizard. – Joe ( talk) 07:51, 3 July 2024 (UTC)
Here’s what to expect, and how to prepare.
Hello everyone, the new Community Wishlist (formerly Community Wishlist Survey) opens on 15 July for piloting. I will jump straight into an FAQ to help with some questions you may have:
Q: How long do I have to submit wishes?
A: As part of the changes, Wishlist will remain open. There is no deadline for wish submission.
Q: What is this ‘Focus Area’ thing?
A: The Foundation will identify patterns with wishes that share a collective problem and group them into areas known as ‘ Focus Areas’. The grouping of wishes will begin in August 2024.
Q: At what point do we vote? Are we even still voting?
A: Contributors are encouraged to discuss and vote on Focus Areas to highlight the areas.
Q: How will this new system move wishes forward for addressing?
A: The Foundation, affiliates, and volunteer developers can adopt Focus Areas. The Wikimedia Foundation is committed to integrating Focus Areas into our Annual Planning for 2025-26.
Focus Areas align to hypotheses (specific projects, typically taking up to one quarter) and/or Key Results (broader projects taking up to one year).
Q: How do I submit a wish? Has anything changed about submissions?
A: Yes there are some changes. Please have a look at the guide.
Q: Where do I find the Community Wishlist home page? ( Kevin Bouwens)
A: ...................
I hope the FAQ helped. You can read more about the launch.
You are encouraged to start drafting your wishes at your pace. Please consult the guide as you do so. Also if you have an earlier unfulfilled wish that you want to re-submit, we are happy to assist you draft.
You can start your draft (see an example) and don't hesitate to ask for support when drafting by sending me a link to your draft/sandbox via Meta email to help/review it. Alternatively you can leave the link in the Drafts List.
–– STei (WMF) ( talk) 11:43, 4 July 2024 (UTC)
Neatsville, Kentucky in April was the 2nd most viewed Kentucky-related article and has been similarly highly viewed for several months. I cannot make sense of this. This is a small unincorporated community in the middle of rural Kentucky. I cannot find any TV show or movie referencing it. It also doesn't make sense that anyone would be gaming this outcome for months (although I suppose this isn't impossible). Am I missing something? Stefen Towers among the rest! Gab • Gruntwerk 21:00, 28 May 2024 (UTC)
Publishers Clearing House for some reason included a link to [the page] in email (promoting daily contests) for awhile.Page view patterns are the same as with Neatsville. Not sure if this IP is relevant either 107.128.181.22 ( talk) 08:31, 4 June 2024 (UTC)
Publishers Clearing House for some reason included a link to [the page] in email (promoting daily contests) for awhile. This seems like the most plausible explanation so far. – Novem Linguae ( talk) 12:10, 4 June 2024 (UTC)
<iframe>
) and yes. Probably uncommon though. –
Novem Linguae (
talk)
23:53, 10 June 2024 (UTC)New data: This is remarkable. Two days after moving the article, Neatsville, Kentucky continues to average close to 20,000 pageviews per day, but Neatsville, Adair County, Kentucky is averaging 50 pageviews per day. Anyone actually navigating to the Neatsville, Kentucky link would be redirected to Neatsville, Adair County, Kentucky, which should therefore also have those tens of thousands of views. This definitively means that visits to Neatsville, Kentucky are not organic views from regular readers, but are queries of the URL itself that therefore do not get redirected. BD2412 T 17:15, 19 June 2024 (UTC)
If a user browses to a redirect, a pageview is registered for the redirect but not for the target page.That suggests to me that it's technically feasible that ~20,000 human readers went to Neatsville, Kentucky, were redirected, and did read Neatsville, Adair County, Kentucky - but I've little experience of this tool, could be very wrong. NebY ( talk) 19:42, 19 June 2024 (UTC)
The article has now been moved back. Moving the page does not appear to have had any effect on incoming views, but appears to have confirmed that these views were just calling the URL, and not actually looking at it (i.e., not following to the redirect target while it was a redirect). My going theory is that this is itself a test by some outside entity that intends to manipulate page views for some other page in the future, probably for commercial or political ends, and is confirming its ability to do so. BD2412 T 20:16, 25 June 2024 (UTC)
TL;DR: A data integrity problem (but not currently a performance problem) is being caused by some entity running up hundreds of thousands of fake views per month of select articles, particularly Neatsville, Kentucky, leading to corrupted presentations in reports based on this views data. Apparent solutions include more smartly identifying such views and recategorizing them (as they highly likely aren't views from real people) and figuring out what exactly is the origin or origins of this access and taking steps such as blocking to handle them. Stefen Towers among the rest! Gab • Gruntwerk 06:37, 27 June 2024 (UTC)
Nature magazine has been running a series of Science Fiction short stories called "Futures". The latest one -- "Plastic-eating fungus caused doomsday:[2][3] A collaborative effort" -- is told as a series of entries to a Wikipedia talk page. Never thought of Wikipedia as a genre. AFAIK, this is the first Wikipedia fiction -- not counting hoax articles, of course.
I don't know how long this link will be good, so I downloaded a pdf copy of this story in case it goes away. -- llywrch ( talk) 02:44, 17 June 2024 (UTC)
References
Gråbergs Gråa Sång ( talk) 08:11, 17 June 2024 (UTC)
AFAIK, this is the first Wikipedia fictionNope! Pre-dated by works like Neurocracy (2021), Missing Links and Secret Histories (2013), and I'm sure there's many more examples. – Tera tix ₵ 10:02, 17 June 2024 (UTC)
Hello everyone,
This is a kind reminder that the voting period to ratify the Wikimedia Movement Charter will be closed on July 9, 2024, at 23:59 UTC.
If you have not voted yet, please vote on SecurePoll.
On behalf of the Charter Electoral Commission,
RamzyM (WMF) 03:45, 8 July 2024 (UTC)
This page has a broken infobox that I have no idea how to fix. Can someone help out with this? I hope this is the right place to ask. 🎸✒️ ZoidChan23 🥁🍕 20:29, 8 July 2024 (UTC)
Hello all,
A special election has been called to fill additional vacancies on the U4C. The call for candidates phase is open from now through July 19, 2024.
The Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee (U4C) is a global group dedicated to providing an equitable and consistent implementation of the UCoC. Community members are invited to submit their applications in the special election for the U4C. For more information and the responsibilities of the U4C, please review the U4C Charter.
In this special election, according to chapter 2 of the U4C charter, there are 9 seats available on the U4C: four community-at-large seats and five regional seats to ensure the U4C represents the diversity of the movement. No more than two members of the U4C can be elected from the same home wiki. Therefore, candidates must not have English Wikipedia, German Wikipedia, or Italian Wikipedia as their home wiki.
Read more and submit your application on Meta-wiki.
In cooperation with the U4C,
-- Keegan (WMF) ( talk) 00:02, 10 July 2024 (UTC)
Can someone else please take a glance at Bill Cook and Ron Herzman? It seems really odd to have one article about these two different people. Thanks! ElKevbo ( talk) 22:51, 26 June 2024 (UTC)
they have separate lives, and teaching careers, and in one case political aspirations.Those elements aren't indicators of notability, honestly. Per WP:N, WP:NBIO, WP:NACADEMICS, and WP:BLP if still living, everything about each of them comes down to what they are notable only for and how notable their own careers are outside the collaboration. Furthermore, the sources you provided are primary, so what about secondary and tertiary ones? George Ho ( talk) 08:30, 27 June 2024 (UTC)
Some examples I have encountered are: Charles and Ray Eames, Mary Dann and Carrie Dann, Peter and Rosemary Grant. Johnuniq ( talk) 09:09, 27 June 2024 (UTC)
Please see Wikipedia:Neutral point of view/Noticeboard#RFC - Gaza Health Ministry qualifier. ScottishFinnishRadish ( talk) 12:58, 15 July 2024 (UTC)
This page contains discussions that have been archived from Village pump (miscellaneous). Please do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to revive any of these discussions, either start a new thread or use the talk page associated with that topic.
< Older discussions · Archives: A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V, W, X · 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79
This seems like the default to ask this question, though I hope some of the people I'm trying to reach actually check this page:
Long-term IP editors, you are my favorite class of editor. How are you taking the news of the upcoming temporary accounts for unregistered editors|temporary accounts for unregistered editors roll-out? I hope you all will still feel whole after this comes to pass, and you are IP editors no longer. Remsense 诉 16:50, 5 April 2024 (UTC)
For the interested, WP:IPMASKING. Gråbergs Gråa Sång ( talk) 16:49, 7 April 2024 (UTC)
Does anyone know how long the temporary accounts last and if they last more than 4 days can a temp account become autoconfirmed? I didn't see anything about this in the linked pages but it is a lot to go through. The closest I could find is a comment that there is awareness of the impact on anti-vandal efforts but that is quite vague. RudolfRed ( talk) 22:30, 7 April 2024 (UTC)
The footer of our pages says:
Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 4.0; additional terms may apply. By using this site...
I think it would be sensible to change it to something like (additions emboldened for clarity):
Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 4.0; additional terms may apply. Images may be subject to copyright or require attribution if reused; see individual image pages for details. By using this site...
My reasoning is that images may be open-licensed or fair-use, and in neither case do we display any notice of this to readers on the page.
Is this in our gift, or is it a WMF issue? Where should a request be raised? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 14:14, 6 April 2024 (UTC)
Why no mention on home page of 50th anniversary of Henry Aaron hitting 715th home run to break Babe Ruth’s MLB record? Fairly significant; maybe more than formation of Progress Party in Norway? Pliny37 ( talk) 07:32, 8 April 2024 (UTC)
Hi everyone,
The Wikimedia Foundation’s draft annual plan for the 2024-2025 fiscal year is now available. This plan is shaped by many factors. These include external technological, regulatory, and social trends in the world about how people look for information and rely on the Wikimedia projects. Our planning was also built around small group discussions on wiki, via mailing lists and over 130 conversations with individuals in person and in scheduled calls. These discussions consistently highlighted the need to remain focused on upgrading our technical infrastructure and supporting volunteer needs for tool maintenance and metrics.
Our answer to these trends and needs is in this draft annual plan. You will see that it prioritises maintenance and upgrades for our technical infrastructure, such as MediaWiki core, data centre operations, and site reliability engineering services. There are also key results around a number of issues discussed here over the past year, such as ways to help volunteers connect to others who share their interests, building newcomer edit workflows that reduce the burden on experienced editors, building a new community wishlist that better connects movement ideas to Foundation activities, and improving tools for editors with extended rights.
You can read a summary of the plan in yesterday’s letter from Wikimedia Foundation CEO Maryana Iskander, with a slightly-longer version on the annual plan landing page. The summary also offers details about what we’ve achieved so far in this current year. You can also read about our financial model, revenue strategy, and budget breakdown.
The annual plan talk page is open for questions and feedback now through the end of May, after which we’ll summarise all of the responses across talk pages and community calls and publish a final version of the plan that considers this feedback. Thanks in advance for sharing your thoughts! KStineRowe (WMF) ( talk) 21:59, 12 April 2024 (UTC)
I see everyone doing it and I want to try. Amoxicillin on a Boat ( talk) 15:28, 15 April 2024 (UTC)
Is there (or can there be) a bot to remove archived or stale talk page subscription from Special:TopicSubscriptions, or maybe there's a way to condense the page manually? I have not been able to find any documentation on this issue. - FlightTime ( open channel) 20:53, 18 April 2024 (UTC)
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Dalton Tan ( talk · contribs) has described misinformation several times in railway-related articles, and it has escalated even if it is warned. Even if I have been warned many times, I don't seem to understand it, so should I report it to the Administrators' noticeboard? -- H.K.pauw ( talk) 09:55, 17 April 2024 (UTC)
Is there a function that I can add to the Tools menu that will generate a list of redirects to the current page? I.e. similar to "What links here" but for redirects. I'd like to be able to check for valid anchor points. Thanks. Praemonitus ( talk) 15:53, 17 April 2024 (UTC)
How do I request that a Level 2 caution template be added to the Twinkle notices? This is a long-standing complaint of mine about this particular message, which is copy-pasting a draft by someone else into article space. When I request the history merge to provide attribution, it tells me that I can copy a template onto the talk page of the editor who did the copy. However, the message that it puts on the user talk page of the user who did the copying is mealy-mouthed. I think that something a little stronger is in order. This is an action which, whether intentional or not, creates work for an administrator in order to provide attribution to the editor who really wrote and submitted the draft. It doesn't really say that copy-pasting is discouraged. So how do I request that a message having to do with inappropriate copying within Wikipedia be added to the Warn templates? Robert McClenon ( talk) 22:29, 18 April 2024 (UTC)
Exactly, although I think that "pathetic" is not a strong enough rebuke for plagiarizing someone else's draft. That is why I wanted a stronger warning, because I think that usually the editor who copies someone else's draft to an article knows what they are doing, or at least ought to know. Robert McClenon ( talk) 01:18, 24 April 2024 (UTC)Copy/pasting someone else's draft to an article is pathetic. Volunteers who create content should be acknowledged in the article history and posting a template on talk as an alternative is just bullshit.
A new case request was made in the past 24 hours at the Dispute Resolution Noticeboard with regard to a contentious perennial issue within a contentious topic. I checked on the history of the filing account. What I saw is that the filing account has made 16 edits, between 21 April 2024 and 23 April 2024. That would be a new account, jumping into a contentious topic, which is a little concerning as it is. But the account was created in December 2015. It has been a sleeper for more than eight years. I know that there is a guideline to Assume Good Faith, but should I assume good faith, or is there something that I should do or someone that I should notify? Robert McClenon ( talk) 01:29, 24 April 2024 (UTC)
Dear all,
I am writing to you to let you know the voting period for the Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee (U4C) is open now through May 9, 2024. Read the information on the voting page on Meta-wiki to learn more about voting and voter eligibility.
The Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee (U4C) is a global group dedicated to providing an equitable and consistent implementation of the UCoC. Community members were invited to submit their applications for the U4C. For more information and the responsibilities of the U4C, please review the U4C Charter.
Please share this message with members of your community so they can participate as well.
On behalf of the UCoC project team,
RamzyM (WMF) 20:20, 25 April 2024 (UTC)
I having trouble with my caplock, if I turn it on I have to restart my laptop to get it to turn off, also I now have a screen indicator showing caplock on/off, this has to be in a recent windows update, I did a search for the issue and they want me to uninstall my keyboard driver then re-install it, no way am I doing that, this really sucks. Is there a way to search recent updates, then uninstall the one with the issue? IDK.. - FlightTime ( open channel) 21:23, 25 April 2024 (UTC)
The Met Office logo is currently protected by Crown copyright in the United Kingdom, but may not be copyrightable in the United States because it does not meet original standards. The version currently uploaded locally on English Wikipedia is the 2009 version. There may be differences in color matching between this version and the 1987 version. Therefore, the copyright protection period of logos uploaded in different periods will also be recalculated. - Fumikas Sagisavas ( talk) 04:09, 14 April 2024 (UTC)
If a user who is blocked takes advantage of autoblocking being enabled for their block to stop other, innocent users from editing by attempting to edit from random IP addresses, what will the administration do about it? By modifying the block to disable autoblocking, this allows the blocked user to evade the block, so will they send a request to a steward on Meta to lock the account to prevent further collateral damage because the account can no longer be logged into if all else fails? Faster than Thunder ( talk | contributions) 21:51, 27 April 2024 (UTC)
We want editors to find and use templates easily. As such, we have selected two wishes which we are implementing together:
These wishes ranked 5th and 11th in the Community Wishlist Survey 2023 respectively.
Please read more about the template picker improvements project, and leave any early feedback on the talkpage.
On behalf of Community Tech, –– STei (WMF) ( talk) 21:20, 29 April 2024 (UTC)
About 2 months ago, I made an RFC at Talk:Somalia#Somalia showed as controlling Somaliland. After a slow RFC after which the opinion remained split, nothing happened. Owing to a recent edit war regarding the image, I am posting this here for further input so this issue can be put to bed.
This has been posted on different projects as of yet but it's still equally split. Fantastic Mr. Fox ( talk) 20:51, 26 April 2024 (UTC)
Starting yesterday, queries to the WP 1.0 server go into a loop that never responds. At least for me. Praemonitus ( talk) 13:49, 6 May 2024 (UTC)
Hello everyone,
We have two updates about the Community Wishlist Survey:
Update one concerns upcoming changes to the survey. In the new survey, we are experimenting with grouping similar wishes into a problem space known as Focus Area and modifying the way the community votes to complement this approach. We also have mockups of the new wish intake form. Get the full details.
The other update announces the selection of 4 related wishes around template use for fulfillment (e.g. adding infoboxes and bookmarking templates).
Please make time to read the announcements in detail, and join the discussions.
On behalf of Community Tech –– STei (WMF) ( talk) 11:58, 9 May 2024 (UTC)
The "Kids Online Safety Act" (KOSA) is a bill introduced in the US Senate by Senators Richard Blumenthal (D‑CT) and Marsha Blackburn (R‑TN) in February 2022 and reintroduced in May 2023; the bill establishes guidelines meant to protect minors on covered platforms. Per Section 3.b of the proposed act, a "covered platform" (defined as "a commercial software application or electronic service that connects to the internet and that is used, or is reasonably likely to be used, by a minor.") has the duty to block a minor's access to content that is deemed harmful to them.
This puts **every** Wikimedia project in danger of being censored by the U.S. government, because not only does it count as a “covered platform” (it is used by students under 16 for study and references), but it may either force the Wikimedia Foundation to ask users to provide personal information about themselves (particularly their age) when creating a new account, or remove encyclopaedic articles under the guise of “ensuring minor safety”. If passed, the KOSA act will put information on Wikimedia projects under scrutiny by the US government, and virtually eliminate the neutrality that has been part of them for years.
Not only does the act create an excuse for information censorship (about things that the US government doesn’t favour), but also the risk of a data leak. If someone has access to the age of every single Wikimedia user, then there’d be a very real possibility that they would be leaked to the public, including those of younger editors.
Therefore, an anti-KOSA blackout should be done to stop the act from being passed (like the last time we did with SOPA and PIPA; all three bills are somewhat related to censorship).
The responsibility of protecting a minor’s information online should be done by, and taught to, the minor’s parent, and not by the government.
tynjee 13:18, 28 April 2024 (UTC)
ageoption, that would privacy invasion and just silly. To be clear, I think this bill has potential for abuse/censorship, although it means well, I'm just assessing whether we really need to be worried here or not. Cremastra ( talk) 15:06, 28 April 2024 (UTC)
Masem ( t) 15:22, 28 April 2024 (UTC)Does the Kids Online Safety Act cover platforms run by non-profit organizations?
No, websites run by non-profits organizations – which often host important and valuable educational and support services – are not covered by the scope of the legislation.
The American Civil Liberties Union, Center for Democracy & Technology, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Fight for the Future, GLAAD and Wikimedia Foundation were among the more than 90 groups that wrote to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., Senate Commerce Committee Chair Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., and Ranking Member Roger Wicker, R-Miss., opposing the Kids Online Safety Act.
“ | (B) EXCEPTIONS.—The term “covered platform” does not include— [...] (ii) an organization not organized to carry on business for its own profit or that of its members; |
” |
Hello all,
The next language community meeting is scheduled in a few weeks - May 31st at 16:00 UTC. If you're interested, you can sign up on this wiki page.
This is a participant-driven meeting, where we share language-specific updates related to various projects, collectively discuss technical issues related to language wikis, and work together to find possible solutions. For example, in the last meeting, the topics included the machine translation service (MinT) and the languages and models it currently supports, localization efforts from the Kiwix team, and technical challenges with numerical sorting in files used on Bengali Wikisource.
Do you have any ideas for topics to share technical updates related to your project? Any problems that you would like to bring for discussion during the meeting? Do you need interpretation support from English to another language? Please reach out to me at ssethi(__AT__)wikimedia.org and add agenda items to the document here.
We look forward to your participation!
MediaWiki message delivery
21:22, 14 May 2024 (UTC)
There is currently a discussion at Wikipedia talk:Growth Team features#Should English Wikipedia enable the Suggested Links newcomer task? regarding the technical implementation of the "add a link" newcomer task. Thank you. Folly Mox ( talk) 13:06, 16 May 2024 (UTC)
As I have talked about both in Wikimedia Forum and in the Internet Archive's one, Archive's Wayback Machine, being a very important resource for Wikipedia (it's where many article references come from, and where all references will always be forwarded if the original source some day disappears), can't be taken for granted, because almost all its content is hosted only in an area with great natural risks. It strikes me (negatively) that no one has replied to my post on Archive's forums. Perhaps people are more concerned with day-to-day issues, and dismiss this as long-term paranoia, but I think this is currently the most important issue regarding human knowledge's future. If Archive is eventually lost, Wikipedia and its sister projects, will be even more important than they are now, as the memory of the start of 21st century (and of other previous times), but it would be really sad to lose so much content as Archive has. If there's anyone here that shares my concern, he/she could, if has an Archive account (or wants to create one), and wanted to do it, talk about it in the thread that I opened at Archive's forum. I think that this is a very important issue, for everyone, as persons, but especially as wikipedians/wikimedians. MGeog2022 ( talk) 11:36, 22 April 2024 (UTC)
Libraries are going to have to fight to be able to buy, preserve, and lend digital books outside of the confines of temporary licensed access. We deeply appreciate your support as we continue this fight!
Inappropriate, rude nastiness appearing in blurb of search result for "The Spike" essay by George Orwell. Can anyone help get it deleted? It is only returned +/- 1 in 5 times of search. Seemingly linked to orwell.ru website although I am not suggesting they are responsible. DieselEstate ( talk) 06:59, 18 May 2024 (UTC)
Dear all,
As mentioned previously, the WMF is running its annual banner fundraising campaign for non logged in users in Malaysia (on English Wikipedia only) from 28th of May to the 25th of June..
Generally, before and during the campaign, you can contact us:
Thanks you and regards, JBrungs (WMF) ( talk) 09:46, 20 May 2024 (UTC)
Dear all,
As mentioned previously, the WMF is running its annual banner fundraising campaign for non logged in users in South Africa (on English Wikipedia) from 28th of May to the 25th of June.
You can find more information around the campaign, see example banners, and leave any questions or suggestions you might have, on the community collaboration page.
Generally, before and during the campaign, you can contact us:
Thanks you and regards, JBrungs (WMF) ( talk) 09:49, 20 May 2024 (UTC)
Hello, I'm an art student conducting research on Userboxes.
I made a tool to browse through your Userbox social graph, which you can check out at: https://lucaszuidema.com/network.html. And I'm hoping to gain more insight into why Wikipedians put Userboxes on their User Pages, and what the social function of them can be.
Do you have Userboxes on your page? Or do you actively choose not to use them? I'd love to interview you about your Userboxes (or lack thereof), and for your insights to be published on a website, together with the graph.
If you're interested in participating, please send me a message on my talk page, or send me an email via the sidebar. As a reward for participating (for all you Userbox collectors out there), you'll get a special Userbox to put on your User Page.
Thanks a lot!
Lucasorigami ( talk) 18:14, 20 May 2024 (UTC)
Dear community members,
The Community Affairs Committee (CAC) of the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees invites you to give feedback on a draft Procedure for Sibling Project Lifecycle. This draft Procedure outlines proposed steps and requirements for opening and closing Wikimedia Sibling Projects, and aims to ensure any newly approved projects are set up for success. This is separate from the procedures for opening or closing language versions of projects, which is handled by the Language Committee or closing projects policy.
You can find the details on this page, as well as the ways to give your feedback from today until the end of the day on June 23, 2024, anywhere on Earth.
You can also share information about this with the interested project communities you work with or support, and you can also help us translate the procedure into more languages, so people can join the discussions in their own language.
On behalf of the CAC,
RamzyM (WMF) 02:25, 22 May 2024 (UTC)
Hello, I'm researching historical positions within the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) because Andrei Kirilenko (politician) page have the position called "Senior Secretary of Cadres." However, I haven't been able to find much information about it. Did this position officially exist within the CPSU, and if so, what were its responsibilities? Any guidance or references would be greatly appreciated. Thank you! SleepyJoe42 ( talk) 09:27, 22 May 2024 (UTC)
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
(Transcribed from here) "pedophiles, will be blocked and banned indefinitely." I was curious about the sentence, but isn't this equivalent to discrimination against the mentally ill? -- H.K.pauw ( talk · contribs) 05:14, 3 May 2024 (UTC)
(Transcribed here) -- H.K.pauw ( talk · contribs) 09:51, 24 May 2024 (UTC)
A contest will take place from June 1, 2024, to June 30, 2024, on Bangla Wikibooks to enrich its content. A central notice request has been placed to target both English and Bangla Wikipedia users, including non-registered users from Bangladesh and the Indian state of West Bengal. Thank you. — MdsShakil ( talk) 10:00, 24 May 2024 (UTC)
Has the ability to turn off Media Viewer been removed for users without accounts? I recently reset my cookies, and now I don't see the option to turn off Media Viewer anymore.
-- 65.92.244.237 ( talk) 14:09, 24 May 2024 (UTC)
I’m looking to create a
Jet Lag: The Game themed
userbox. I know this qualifies as fair use under U.S. law, however the Wikipedia upload tool for non free content says that it has to be for an article, explicitly stating “no userspace”, so what is the best way to proceed?
Iovecodeabc (
talk)
00:48, 26 May 2024 (UTC)
There is an error in the title and the article should be renamed. 2A02:9130:803B:C427:7879:15DD:A35C:63C1 ( talk) 14:17, 26 May 2024 (UTC)
Hey folks - WMF is making updates to our Community Wishlist, from making it open year round to prioritizing "focus areas" of user submitted ideas, requests, and bugs that share an underlying problem.
In this process, we've realized we're outgrowing the the name "Community Wishlist Survey" and I wanted to get your feedback on a few other options. We've offered 3 ideas, and if you have another preference, we welcome you to suggest alternatives! JWheeler-WMF ( talk) 21:31, 29 May 2024 (UTC)
Has there been anybody who tried to complete the rule of three when it comes to "Editing Wikipedia while driving" and "Editing Wikipedia while drunk" on Wikipedia:Deleted articles with freaky titles? Perhaps, "Editing Wikipedia while drunk driving"?
i am very interested in the deleted articles with freaky titles but i'm too chicken to make it myself OrlandoApollosFan69 ( talk) 02:29, 2 June 2024 (UTC)
Hello,
The scrutineers have finished reviewing the vote results. We are following up with the results of the first Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee (U4C) election.
We are pleased to announce the following individuals as regional members of the U4C, who will fulfill a two-year term:
The following individuals are elected to be community-at-large members of the U4C, fulfilling a one-year term:
Thank you again to everyone who participated in this process and much appreciation to the candidates for your leadership and dedication to the Wikimedia movement and community.
Over the next few weeks, the U4C will begin meeting and planning the 2024-25 year in supporting the implementation and review of the UCoC and Enforcement Guidelines. Follow their work on Meta-wiki.
On behalf of the UCoC project team,
RamzyM (WMF) 08:14, 3 June 2024 (UTC)
When visiting this cascade-protected image file page, the action bar at the top shows "Edit source" instead of "View source". Was this a typo, or was it intentional? I would highly appreciate any responses, especially from WikiMedia staff.
MasterOpel 20:39, 3 June 2024 (UTC)
Hi, sorry to bother everyone but I stumbled address the Arabic Wikipedia and they had a large banner that said something about the Hamas Israel war, and it was like (don’t quote me on this) stop the genocide in Gaza! And I could be wrong I’m not a Wikipedia editor but I was just curious like is this agents policy, like I don’t mind it at all but I was just wondering 2600:6C48:617F:2533:9D74:4184:C6F7:F5D6 ( talk) 03:43, 28 May 2024 (UTC)
Hello
The moderation tools team is working on Automoderator, a tool that would make it possible to revert vandalism automatically. This tool could replace vandalism bots (or be used in parallel), or help users prevent vandalism on wikis where no bot is available.
From 6 June to 7 July 2024, on your wiki, we will randomly display an invitation to complete a survey to selected users, as part of our efforts to understand how patrollers behaviors will change when Automoderator is deployed.
The survey will be shown to registered users, who signed up before 2024, and who have made more than 500 edits.
You can find out more about this survey at phab:T362462.
Please share this information anywhere useful. Thank you in advance for your participation!
Trizek_(WMF) ( talk) 13:22, 5 June 2024 (UTC)
There's really not a noticeboard that covers this, so this is the most general place I could find. Template talk:Header navbar community. Thanks. ScottishFinnishRadish ( talk) 17:16, 10 June 2024 (UTC)
Hi everyone,
The final text of the Wikimedia Movement Charter is now up on Meta in more than 20 languages for your reading.
What is the Wikimedia Movement Charter?
The Wikimedia Movement Charter is a proposed document to define roles and responsibilities for all the members and entities of the Wikimedia movement, including the creation of a new body – the Global Council – for movement governance.
Join the Wikimedia Movement Charter “Launch Party”
Join the “Launch Party” on June 20, 2024 at 14.00-15.00 UTC ( your local time). During this call, we will celebrate the release of the final Charter and present the content of the Charter. Join and learn about the Charter before casting your vote.
Movement Charter ratification vote
Voting will commence on SecurePoll on June 25, 2024 at 00:01 UTC and will conclude on July 9, 2024 at 23:59 UTC. You can read more about the voting process, eligibility criteria, and other details on Meta.
If you have any questions, please leave a comment on the Meta talk page or email the MCDC at mcdc@wikimedia.org.
On behalf of the MCDC,
RamzyM (WMF) 08:44, 11 June 2024 (UTC)
Greetings, I have noticed that the article Squirtle which was recently promoted to good article has been placed not in the Video games category but Media and drama which doesn't make sense to me considering all previous Pokémon have been placed in the Video games category such as Bulbasaur, Charizard, Raichu, Jigglypuff, Psyduck, Voltorb, Jynx, Magikarp and Gyarados, Ditto, Eevee and many others. Moreover the article nomination WAS in the video games category. Is there a possibility to switch the category the good article is present ? DanganMachin ( talk) 11:19, 11 June 2024 (UTC)
Thank you to everyone who has provided feedback on renaming the Community Wishlist Survey. We now have 3 names for you to choose from:
1. Community Ideas Exchange
2. Community Feature Requests
3. Community Suggestions Portal
You are invited to vote for one that works for you. –– STei (WMF) ( talk) 15:03, 11 June 2024 (UTC)
Hello all,
Questions for input from Wikipedians regarding how articles that include text translated from foreign language wikipedias should have attributions handled. All translations of content from any language wikipedia are derivative works that require attribution. (See here for rationale.)
This arises from pages like Abeozen which have in-article mentions of the translation source ( The above article was created as a translation of its counterpart on the French Wikipedia, . (Specifically this version) but no mention of this attribution in the edit history or talk page. Current policies WP:TFOLWP and Help:Translate recommend inserting this information only in the edit history, and there are many pages (approx. 94,000 with Template:Translated page included in their talk page, but this appears to be additional and alone does not satisfy attribution requirements.
Looking for input on the following points:
Other answers or positions regarding the above questions are welcome, as are other questions arising in discussion on this point.
Pinging potentially interested Wikipedians: @ Mike Peel @ RudolfRed (thanks for suggestion to move question here from WP:Teahouse) @ GreenLipstickLesbian (thank you for your clarification for new editors at WP:Teahouse and your position in this diff)
Thank you all for your input! Shazback ( talk) 07:55, 6 June 2024 (UTC)
This article contains content translated from Persian Wikipedia.
|insertversion=
is available to make the timing context clear; see for example
Talk:ForGG or any of
these transclusions of the template. If the wording is not clear enough for that case, you could raise a discussion at Template talk to request an improvement.
Mathglot (
talk)
19:50, 7 June 2024 (UTC)I've just noticed that A heads (i.e. headings made by pairs of double equals signs ==) are in a much smaller unbold roman point size than sans-serifed bold B heads (i.e. headings made by pairs of three equals signs ===), which looks ridiculous. I'm sure this never used to be the case in the near 20 years I've been editing here. Is there any way of viewing pages so that A heads appear bigger and bolder than B heads? Thanks, Ericoides ( talk) 10:15, 12 June 2024 (UTC)
much smaller. h2's look bigger than h3's on my skin vector (2010). Example. What skin are you using? – Novem Linguae ( talk) 10:39, 12 June 2024 (UTC)
Did the hatnote stylesheet change? It seems to have become harder to read and a different font color in the last few days. -- 64.229.90.32 ( talk) 06:40, 14 June 2024 (UTC)
— Preceding unsigned comment added by Novem Linguae ( talk • contribs) 15:00, 14 June 2024 (UTC)
...I've made a graph comparing stats across English projects. Active users per admin is in blue. Cremastra ( talk) 20:21, 18 June 2024 (UTC)
I want to create article about Genetic studies on Bengali. I created many historical, political or other simple articles so I know how to find sources for these topics. But I am clueless about source indexing of genetic studies in search engines and I am having difficulties finding sources about genetic studies of Bengali people. Do you people have any idea how to find genetics-related sources effectively? Or can anyone redirect me to anyone who can really help me about the sources? Mehedi Abedin ( talk) 04:33, 19 June 2024 (UTC)
Until this edit [4], Austronesian peoples stated that Madagascar was reached by Austronesians c. 50–500 CE ("In the Indian Ocean, they sailed west from Maritime Southeast Asia; the Austronesian peoples reached Madagascar by ca. 50–500 CE"). Looking at that version [5], there are three references with failed verification tags. The last two references have been associated with this part of the article for some time. Precisely what is wrong with the references is discussed on the talk page [6] (It's the third of three issues under this heading.) Note these last two references, The Culture History of Madagascar and A chronology for late prehistoric Madagascar.
In a recent version
[7] of the article, we have two reintroductions of early dates for Austronesian settlement of Madagascar. The one that says Estimates for when this occurred vary from the 1st century CE,[153]...
has a new ref, Herrera et al. If you read that paper, you find, in the introduction:
Checkout those references – they are The Culture History of Madagascar and A chronology for late prehistoric Madagascar. Since neither of them support this date range, where did the authors of the paper get this from? There are plenty of other potential references in the literature (giving later dates). So why use these? The most likely explanation is that they were lifted straight from the Wikipedia article that existed at the time.
So, do we have a Wikipedia error (since corrected) now being recycled back into the article to perpetuate the error? What do you think? ThoughtIdRetired TIR 22:42, 19 June 2024 (UTC)
I neither have nor can afford an Apple Vision Pro at this time, and I don't think most of us do or can as well. I'd like to know, from those using the device, how Wikipedia on Safari functions as well as the Wikipedia mobile app there. George Ho ( talk) 21:33, 20 June 2024 (UTC)
(not real example). Template Infobox Guinea Pig has a parameter called "Tail color". I'd like to be able to see what values this parameter has over all articles that use the infobox. (I asked on the help desk and got no response) Naraht ( talk) 21:46, 20 June 2024 (UTC)
{{
Infobox guinea pig}}
template. Not sure it is quite what you want, but Bambots tracks parameters for all sorts of templates. It can list the different values used for a param. See
the documentation and
an example (click on "Click to show"). The template needs to have TemplateData set up —
GhostInTheMachine
talk to me
11:06, 23 June 2024 (UTC)I just came across the Moto G54 5G article which has a rather peculiar template at the top of the page, saying it was written with GPT-4. At first I thought it was a new official template I didn't know about, then I looked at the source and noticed it's a template sitting in userspace, which looks like it was made to mimic the design of standard header templates. What is the right way to deal with a situation like this? Do we just remove the template from the page, or do we need to deal with the AI-written content in the article somehow? – numbermaniac 18:23, 23 June 2024 (UTC)
has been visited by many readers and is unlikely to include false information or fake referenceswhich seems fallacious. Barnards.tar.gz ( talk) 19:51, 23 June 2024 (UTC)
What a weird coincidence; I came here with my "cyberthriller story". A user asked WPRussia to help with one reference in Assault they found suspicious, but it was to a text in Russian, so they asked for assistance. Indeed, the ref was nonsense and I removed it. At first I thought is was cut'n'paste error, but nasty me decided to find the author for mild trout-slapping. Well, it was a "drive-by editor" Ugwuowo samuel ( talk · contribs) and at first (well, at second :-) I just shrugged, but I noticed that the user used the same edit summary "added few words and references" for all its edits. Then I noticed another editor in same page Ifyeke ( talk · contribs) with exactly same edit summary, and all of them were the same as well. So I felt something fishy. Then in the page edited by Ifyeke I saw edits by blocked Onyebuchi Echezona ( talk · contribs).... Oh people, You have to waste a minute of your time and read its unblock request! It is a poem written on a wall..... by a chatbot.
So, in two minutes I run into three apparently chatbots. In one page the edits of one of them
were reverted, but it gives me goosebumps to think how much more of them are roaming unnoticed. I am wondering whether Wikimedia is aware of this threat? The prev section say failed to verify them in the cited sources
-and tghat's one of severe issues: the bot generates fake refs (as I explained at the beginning, one was really fake, so the "page owner" (in a good sense) spotted it. But otherwise the texts look legit;
Turing test, you know.
Another thing worries me is that I suspect Wikipedia is being (ab)used as a testbench for chatbots at all our's expense. If one may remember, in these gooden olden days of Wikipedia various smartasses loved to insert typos and nonsense into wikipedia to see how quickly they will be spotted. And quite a few had an arrogance to write news articles reporting their findings. Fortunately our antivandalbots became strong. Repeating: are there any "antiChatBots" in development? Or waiting until it hits the fan? - Altenmann >talk 05:35, 25 June 2024 (UTC)
P.S. The sectkion above suggests to use template that says " may still include false information " - IMO it is an insult to the common sense. AFAIK such texts must be deleted on the spot, not tagged. If a user knowingly adds fake references by whatever means, they must be blocked for disruption of wikipedia. - Altenmann >talk 06:41, 25 June 2024 (UTC)
such texts must be deleted on the spot, that's part of the challenge with LLMs. They're unreliable because of their inherent flaws, and have a significant risk of producing incorrect information, fictitious references, and copyvios, but it's not a given that LLM output is complete nonsense and there's nothing in it that could be salvaged. (As opposed to something like plagiarism, which absolutely should just be removed on sight.) Kinsio ( talk ★ contribs) 17:45, 28 June 2024 (UTC)
A contest will take place from July 1, 2024, to July 31, 2024, on Bangla Wiktionary to enrich its content. A central notice request has been placed to target both English and Bangla Wikipedia users, including non-registered users from Bangladesh and the Indian state of West Bengal. Thank you — MdsShakil ( talk) 16:19, 27 June 2024 (UTC)
Thank you everyone who has participated in the restructuring and rebranding conversations of the Wishlist so far.
Regarding the renaming, based on your feedback, we will keep the 'Community Wishlist' and remove 'Survey'.
Please read more about the renaming, check out the vote results and learn more about the re-opening of the Community Wishlist on July 15, 2024, in our latest update. –– STei (WMF) ( talk) 20:06, 28 June 2024 (UTC)
Hi folks - I wanted to announce and invite anyone interested to view and apply to the Product and Technology Advisory Council.
As part of the movement strategy recommendation for "Coordinating Across Stakeholders," the Product & Technology Advisory Council (PTAC) will bring technical contributors and Wikimedia Foundation together to co-define a more resilient, future-proof technological platform. The PTAC will meet over a one year pilot; upon its completion, members of the Council will make a joint decision to continue the program, its member base, and purpose.
This council is sponsored by CPTO Selena Deckelmann. Applications are open today, July 1, 2024, through August 10, 2024, and we encourage anyone interested to apply.
To read more and apply, please view the post on Meta. --- JWheeler-WMF ( talk) 12:11, 1 July 2024 (UTC)
I see [subscribe] links on talk pages and noticeboards, but only for top-level sections (H2). On pages such as Wikipedia:Redirects_for_discussion, I would like to be able to subscribe to specific discussions that correspond to sub-sections or sub-sub-section. Is this possible? Jruderman ( talk) 22:13, 1 July 2024 (UTC)
How do I get TimedText:Stalin_Speech_Life_Has_Become_Better.webm.en.srt moved to Commons? The associated file was recently moved to Commons. – LaundryPizza03 ( d c̄) 06:12, 24 June 2024 (UTC)
Hello everyone,
The voting to ratify the Wikimedia Movement Charter is now open. The Wikimedia Movement Charter is a document to define roles and responsibilities for all the members and entities of the Wikimedia movement, including the creation of a new body – the Global Council – for movement governance.
The final version of the Wikimedia Movement Charter is available on Meta in different languages and attached here in PDF format for your reading.
Voting commenced on SecurePoll on June 25, 2024 at 00:01 UTC and will conclude on July 9, 2024 at 23:59 UTC. Please read more on the voter information and eligibility details.
After reading the Charter, please vote here and share this note further.
If you have any questions about the ratification vote, please contact the Charter Electoral Commission at cec@wikimedia.org.
On behalf of the CEC,
RamzyM (WMF) 10:51, 25 June 2024 (UTC)
the link below provides highly valuable data on some of the multiple concerns raised by the board's review process:
link: meta:Wikimedia Foundation Board noticeboard/Board liaisons reflections on final Movement charter draft/Brief
important points from above:
The Global Council is the most anticipated aspect of the Movement Charter recommendation. Overall,the proposed Global Council's purpose is not clearly connected to advancing Wikimedia's public interest mission. It lacks a compelling explanation of how it will ensure more equitable decision-making and support the mission of sharing free knowledge. It also does not guide us as the Movement on how to address many of the most pressing issues facing community governance on Wikimedia projects.
The Wikimedia Foundation is willing to delegate some powers to the Global Council. At the moment, we have not read similar statements from other parts of the movement - and without that, the Global Council cannot really act as a body that goes beyond the Wikimedia Foundation.
Would volunteers accept a decision made by the Global Council, even if they don’t like it, just because they had a chance to vote in their elections?
why do we need a Global Council? Who is asking for this to be established? that's my own concern and my own questions on this.
ok here is another comment, from someone connected to two members of the board, from the page below
link: Wikimedia Foundation Board liaisons reflections on final Movement charter draft:
We believe that approving this version of the Charter, despite the tremendous amount of work and resources already put into it, would not be the right call. Instead, we think it is better to continue pursuing the same goals the draft Charter also sought to pursue in a different way, by identifying key areas where the final draft Charter provides us with guidance on concrete steps that can be taken towards increasing volunteer and movement oversight of certain core areas of responsibility.
For an all-encompassing document the support required to ratify the threshold -- 55% plus a minimum of 2% of eligible voters participating in vote -- is quite low.
-- Sm8900 ( talk) Sm8900 ( talk) 16:52, 27 June 2024 (UTC)
Please see MediaWiki_talk:Searchmenu-new#Remove_link_to_the_article_wizard. – Joe ( talk) 07:51, 3 July 2024 (UTC)
Here’s what to expect, and how to prepare.
Hello everyone, the new Community Wishlist (formerly Community Wishlist Survey) opens on 15 July for piloting. I will jump straight into an FAQ to help with some questions you may have:
Q: How long do I have to submit wishes?
A: As part of the changes, Wishlist will remain open. There is no deadline for wish submission.
Q: What is this ‘Focus Area’ thing?
A: The Foundation will identify patterns with wishes that share a collective problem and group them into areas known as ‘ Focus Areas’. The grouping of wishes will begin in August 2024.
Q: At what point do we vote? Are we even still voting?
A: Contributors are encouraged to discuss and vote on Focus Areas to highlight the areas.
Q: How will this new system move wishes forward for addressing?
A: The Foundation, affiliates, and volunteer developers can adopt Focus Areas. The Wikimedia Foundation is committed to integrating Focus Areas into our Annual Planning for 2025-26.
Focus Areas align to hypotheses (specific projects, typically taking up to one quarter) and/or Key Results (broader projects taking up to one year).
Q: How do I submit a wish? Has anything changed about submissions?
A: Yes there are some changes. Please have a look at the guide.
Q: Where do I find the Community Wishlist home page? ( Kevin Bouwens)
A: ...................
I hope the FAQ helped. You can read more about the launch.
You are encouraged to start drafting your wishes at your pace. Please consult the guide as you do so. Also if you have an earlier unfulfilled wish that you want to re-submit, we are happy to assist you draft.
You can start your draft (see an example) and don't hesitate to ask for support when drafting by sending me a link to your draft/sandbox via Meta email to help/review it. Alternatively you can leave the link in the Drafts List.
–– STei (WMF) ( talk) 11:43, 4 July 2024 (UTC)
Neatsville, Kentucky in April was the 2nd most viewed Kentucky-related article and has been similarly highly viewed for several months. I cannot make sense of this. This is a small unincorporated community in the middle of rural Kentucky. I cannot find any TV show or movie referencing it. It also doesn't make sense that anyone would be gaming this outcome for months (although I suppose this isn't impossible). Am I missing something? Stefen Towers among the rest! Gab • Gruntwerk 21:00, 28 May 2024 (UTC)
Publishers Clearing House for some reason included a link to [the page] in email (promoting daily contests) for awhile.Page view patterns are the same as with Neatsville. Not sure if this IP is relevant either 107.128.181.22 ( talk) 08:31, 4 June 2024 (UTC)
Publishers Clearing House for some reason included a link to [the page] in email (promoting daily contests) for awhile. This seems like the most plausible explanation so far. – Novem Linguae ( talk) 12:10, 4 June 2024 (UTC)
<iframe>
) and yes. Probably uncommon though. –
Novem Linguae (
talk)
23:53, 10 June 2024 (UTC)New data: This is remarkable. Two days after moving the article, Neatsville, Kentucky continues to average close to 20,000 pageviews per day, but Neatsville, Adair County, Kentucky is averaging 50 pageviews per day. Anyone actually navigating to the Neatsville, Kentucky link would be redirected to Neatsville, Adair County, Kentucky, which should therefore also have those tens of thousands of views. This definitively means that visits to Neatsville, Kentucky are not organic views from regular readers, but are queries of the URL itself that therefore do not get redirected. BD2412 T 17:15, 19 June 2024 (UTC)
If a user browses to a redirect, a pageview is registered for the redirect but not for the target page.That suggests to me that it's technically feasible that ~20,000 human readers went to Neatsville, Kentucky, were redirected, and did read Neatsville, Adair County, Kentucky - but I've little experience of this tool, could be very wrong. NebY ( talk) 19:42, 19 June 2024 (UTC)
The article has now been moved back. Moving the page does not appear to have had any effect on incoming views, but appears to have confirmed that these views were just calling the URL, and not actually looking at it (i.e., not following to the redirect target while it was a redirect). My going theory is that this is itself a test by some outside entity that intends to manipulate page views for some other page in the future, probably for commercial or political ends, and is confirming its ability to do so. BD2412 T 20:16, 25 June 2024 (UTC)
TL;DR: A data integrity problem (but not currently a performance problem) is being caused by some entity running up hundreds of thousands of fake views per month of select articles, particularly Neatsville, Kentucky, leading to corrupted presentations in reports based on this views data. Apparent solutions include more smartly identifying such views and recategorizing them (as they highly likely aren't views from real people) and figuring out what exactly is the origin or origins of this access and taking steps such as blocking to handle them. Stefen Towers among the rest! Gab • Gruntwerk 06:37, 27 June 2024 (UTC)
Nature magazine has been running a series of Science Fiction short stories called "Futures". The latest one -- "Plastic-eating fungus caused doomsday:[2][3] A collaborative effort" -- is told as a series of entries to a Wikipedia talk page. Never thought of Wikipedia as a genre. AFAIK, this is the first Wikipedia fiction -- not counting hoax articles, of course.
I don't know how long this link will be good, so I downloaded a pdf copy of this story in case it goes away. -- llywrch ( talk) 02:44, 17 June 2024 (UTC)
References
Gråbergs Gråa Sång ( talk) 08:11, 17 June 2024 (UTC)
AFAIK, this is the first Wikipedia fictionNope! Pre-dated by works like Neurocracy (2021), Missing Links and Secret Histories (2013), and I'm sure there's many more examples. – Tera tix ₵ 10:02, 17 June 2024 (UTC)
Hello everyone,
This is a kind reminder that the voting period to ratify the Wikimedia Movement Charter will be closed on July 9, 2024, at 23:59 UTC.
If you have not voted yet, please vote on SecurePoll.
On behalf of the Charter Electoral Commission,
RamzyM (WMF) 03:45, 8 July 2024 (UTC)
This page has a broken infobox that I have no idea how to fix. Can someone help out with this? I hope this is the right place to ask. 🎸✒️ ZoidChan23 🥁🍕 20:29, 8 July 2024 (UTC)
Hello all,
A special election has been called to fill additional vacancies on the U4C. The call for candidates phase is open from now through July 19, 2024.
The Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee (U4C) is a global group dedicated to providing an equitable and consistent implementation of the UCoC. Community members are invited to submit their applications in the special election for the U4C. For more information and the responsibilities of the U4C, please review the U4C Charter.
In this special election, according to chapter 2 of the U4C charter, there are 9 seats available on the U4C: four community-at-large seats and five regional seats to ensure the U4C represents the diversity of the movement. No more than two members of the U4C can be elected from the same home wiki. Therefore, candidates must not have English Wikipedia, German Wikipedia, or Italian Wikipedia as their home wiki.
Read more and submit your application on Meta-wiki.
In cooperation with the U4C,
-- Keegan (WMF) ( talk) 00:02, 10 July 2024 (UTC)
Can someone else please take a glance at Bill Cook and Ron Herzman? It seems really odd to have one article about these two different people. Thanks! ElKevbo ( talk) 22:51, 26 June 2024 (UTC)
they have separate lives, and teaching careers, and in one case political aspirations.Those elements aren't indicators of notability, honestly. Per WP:N, WP:NBIO, WP:NACADEMICS, and WP:BLP if still living, everything about each of them comes down to what they are notable only for and how notable their own careers are outside the collaboration. Furthermore, the sources you provided are primary, so what about secondary and tertiary ones? George Ho ( talk) 08:30, 27 June 2024 (UTC)
Some examples I have encountered are: Charles and Ray Eames, Mary Dann and Carrie Dann, Peter and Rosemary Grant. Johnuniq ( talk) 09:09, 27 June 2024 (UTC)
Please see Wikipedia:Neutral point of view/Noticeboard#RFC - Gaza Health Ministry qualifier. ScottishFinnishRadish ( talk) 12:58, 15 July 2024 (UTC)