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A year and a half ago Kurdish forces in Syria apprehended an American, said to be fleeing a rapidly deflating ISIS. I started an article American ISIS fighter. I predicted, at its AFD, that we would soon learn his name, when lawyers filed a habeas corpus request, on his behalf.
Habeas Corpus petitions were filed. But his name has been redacted.
It seems the NYTimes determined the name, months ago, through a review of captured Daesh documents. But they didn't publish it until a few days ago.
So, is a single source, even the NYTimes, publishing a name, based on speculation, enough to rename the article? Should the article remain at the current name, but include the name, saying it is based solely on NYTimes speculation? Geo Swan ( talk) 20:51, 30 October 2018 (UTC)
The man, a dual American and Saudi citizen, was captured in September 2017 by a Kurdish militia in Syria. The Kurds turned him over to the American military, which held him as a wartime detainee at a base in Iraq while a court battle over his fate played out. The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said he was released in Bahrain, where his wife and daughter are living.
{{
cite news}}
: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (
link) CS1 maint: url-status (
link) ... The individual's name is in the linked article along with their reasons for knowing it. —
Anomalocaris (
talk) 00:23, 31 October 2018 (UTC)
I began this discussion at Talk:Second Amendment to the United States Constitution#Reject "supports the Second Amendment" phraseology. Someone recommended that I move it to Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals) but Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous) seems to me to be a better fit.
A Google search for "supports the second amendment" (with the quotes) on English Wikipedia, "supports the second amendment" site:en.wikipedia.org, has 24 results. There are several problems with Wikipedia saying that an individual or organization "supports the Second Amendment". In many cases, Wikipedia would be echoing that individual or organization's own ipse dixit claim, which is not coming from a third-party reliable source. Even if it comes from a reliable source, the phrase "supports the Second Amendment" could mean many possible interpretations of the Second Amendment, so the reader learns nothing about the individual or group's actual views on gun ownership and carry. Most important, though, is that in most cases, "supports the Second Amendment" is used to mean support for an interpretation of the Second Amendment emphasizing an individual right to own and carry guns. Until District of Columbia v. Heller, U.S. courts had continually held that the Second Amendment did not include an individual right to own and carry guns, and in this point remains controversial. Notably, a Google search for "opposes the second amendment" on English Wikipedia, "opposes the second amendment" site:en.wikipedia.org, has zero results (although that will change when this page is indexed), which suggests that groups and individuals that support limitations on gun ownership and carry do not describe themselves, and are not described by others, as opposing the Second Amendment, which in turn means that groups and individuals that generally oppose limitations on gun ownership and carry should not be described as supporting the Second Amendment. (Without restricting to English Wikipedia, there are 213,000 results for "supports the second amendment" and only 50 for "opposes the second amendment", confirming my point.)
Wikipedia should not take sides in the disputed interpretation of the meaning of the Second Amendment and should not use phrases like "supports the Second Amendment"; instead Wikipedia should say more precisely that an individual or organization supports an interpretation of the Second Amendment that ..." or otherwise describes their views on what limitations should or should not exist with respect to gun ownership and carry. I look forward to a discussion on this topic, and if there is a consensus, we can edit articles that are out of alignment with that consensus. Here are some examples of language illustrating the problem:
After consensus forms here, I would like to be able to refer to this discussion in future edit summaries to minimize risk of reversion. — Anomalocaris ( talk) 07:19, 30 October 2018 (UTC)
Let me see if I understand the consensus on this:
All of this assumes that the claims about Hackenbush meet the requirements of WP:V, WP:RS and WP:WEIGHT.
Do I understand the consensus correctly, or did I get it wrong? -- Guy Macon ( talk) 09:10, 31 October 2018 (UTC)
Let someone rename article " Kastriot principality" to "Principality of Kastrioti", User:Doltjank is renamed the article in the last edit ... "Kastriot principality" (and " Kastriot Principality") it should be a redirect on article "Principality of Kastrioti" -- SrpskiAnonimac ( talk) 13:02, 26 October 2018 (UTC)
@
Galobtter: Rename and article "
Makovo, Republic of Macedondia" in "Makovo, Republic of Macedonia", wrongly written..."Makovo, Republic of Macedondia" should be deleted --
SrpskiAnonimac (
talk) 17:05, 1 November 2018 (UTC)
Why do they only appear when one is not signed in? People who can be bothered to sign in are going to be more likely to contribute than IPs. Lilac Amethyst ( talk) 16:32, 1 November 2018 (UTC)
This article opened my eyes: https://medium.com/s/powertrip/wikipedias-top-secret-hired-guns-will-make-you-matter-for-a-price-a4bdace476ae . Is there a place on these pages to discuss these things? 5.34.89.241 ( talk) 05:48, 3 November 2018 (UTC)
Note that Shin Seong-il died on 3 november according to Google. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 109.185.175.84 ( talk) 13:04, 3 November 2018 (UTC)
Check out this xkcd comic. [1] Landmarks on the map (in gray) are links to Wikipedia articles with coordinates pointing to places in the United States. That's hilarious, isn't it? -- Agusbou2015 ( talk) 23:05, 3 November 2018 (UTC)
Self-nominations for the 2018 English Wikipedia Arbitration Committee elections are now open. The nomination period runs from Sunday 00:00, 4 November (UTC) until Tuesday 23:59, 13 November 2018 (UTC). Editors interested in running should review the eligibility criteria listed at the top of Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee Elections December 2018/Candidates, then create a candidate page by following the instructions there. SQL Query me! 18:07, 4 November 2018 (UTC)
Maybe I am getting dotty, but I could not find the Village Pump where I expected to get access to it, via the Community portal. Shouldn't it be findable there? How is someone not aware of it supposed to find it from the list of things we have? Kdammers ( talk) 05:51, 3 November 2018 (UTC)
A recent - and in my view, very bad - decision at TfD was to delete {{ Goodreads author}} and {{ Goodreads book}}. I noticed today that the latter has been orphaned, and that we currently have virtually no article space links to the Goodreads website
The decision at TfD was to delete the template, and gave no mandate to remove the links, and so instances of the template should have been Subst:.
I can not find who deleted these links, but they should be restored. Links using the author template should likewise not be deleted. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 18:58, 3 November 2018 (UTC)
There is clearly consensus to link to Goodreads in the articles using the deleted template, because it was not removed from those articles by their editors, prior to its deletion.That is not how it works. The WP:SILENT consensus by the links being in the article is overridden by the consensus at WP:ELN and WP:TFD that the vast majority of links were not appropriate; and so the use should be justified on a case by case basis. I'd say the main reason (as the closer of the Tfd) that people sought the removal, is that they didn't think Goodreads provided
neutral and accurate material that is relevant to an encyclopedic understanding of the subject and cannot be integrated into the Wikipedia article due to copyright issuesper WP:ELYES. Galobtter ( pingó mió) 20:24, 4 November 2018 (UTC)
Ok... let me try to clarify the situation: The two goodreads templates have now been deleted. 1) while that deletion can be challenged, this is not the venue to challenge it. 2) Assuming the deletion is upheld, the question then becomes, what next? Do we allow non-templated links or not... and if so under what circumstances? Blueboar ( talk) 21:27, 4 November 2018 (UTC)
I now see that even while this discussion is underway' {{Goodreads author}}
has been deleted without subsitution, removing links from articles (
example) This is outrageous.
Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing);
Talk to Andy;
Andy's edits 10:19, 5 November 2018 (UTC)
why growth of en Wikipedia articles decrease than years ago example in 2006 add 665000 articles and in 2017 add 220000 articles Amirh123 ( talk) 14:02, 6 November 2018 (UTC)
While facts themselves are not copyrightable, at what point would a machine learning model that learned to ask and answer questions using wikipedia content be subject to the copyleft clause for wikipedia content? In terms of generative writing style, a model would be a statistical summary of the writing styles on wikipedia i.e. a derived work of the copyrightable presentation of the non-copyrightable facts. On the other hand, a reformulation of words based on reading other works is precisely what humans can and would do if they "ingested" wikipedia, and I don't believe there would be any issue with a human using wikipedia as a source of verifiable content and writing or synthesizing new text (for example question and answer texts) in their own words.
Related, is knowledge derived by analyzing meta data about wikipedia such as the link structure between articles considered derived content and therefore copyleft territory? Notabotyet ( talk) 03:59, 10 November 2018 (UTC)
I wanted to share this with the pump readers. Also posted on help desk and teahouse.
TimTempleton (talk) (cont) 22:46, 9 November 2018 (UTC)
If I attempt to post to Wikipedia:Reference desk/Entertainment, I currently get:
Now, first, I have no intention of ever having a Wikipedia account. I'm talking about posting from an IP address, as I am doing here. And second, I understand that this "throttling" is going on because there have been ongoing vandalism attacks on the reference desks, and I have no problem with such actions being taken.
But there are still problems. First, there is no notification at the top of the page (as there would be if it was semi-protected) to say that this is going on. I only found out after I had composed my posting. That's not nice.
Second, there is no option (as there would be if it was semi-protected) to post an "edit request" to a page where someone more privileged can verify that the posting is constructive and post it.
Third, there is no explanation of what "throttling" even means, or what "this filter" is blocking.
Would someone please arrange for better information to be provided? -- 76.69.46.228 ( talk) 15:14, 10 November 2018 (UTC)
Thanks for the answers. -- 76.69.46.228 ( talk) 15:28, 11 November 2018 (UTC)
Hi! Can you please sign the petition to TASS and RIAN requesting them to release certain historic photos for Wikimedia by adding your signature to the signature section? Also, please do spread the word to other Wikipedians. Thanks, -- PlanespotterA320 ( talk) 16:15, 11 November 2018 (UTC)
I recently got an email from Flickr.
"After February 5, 2019, free accounts that contain over 1,000 photos or videos will have content deleted -- starting from oldest to newest date uploaded -- to meet the new limit. Members may always choose to download content over the limit at any time prior to these dates."
I've noticed many of the images in Wikipedia articles came from Flickr.
Perhaps we should make an effort to transfer over as much as we can before it's too late?
Benjamin ( talk) 05:10, 13 November 2018 (UTC)
I recently received this promotional spam. Most likely Wiki Professionals Inc is already known to the Wikipedia community, but just in case. —Sothomensch (Tom Holzinger)
WikiPedia <david.wilson@wikipageinc.com> To: <redacted> Oct. 13 at 8:05 a.m. Thomas Holzinger, Do you think Gangnam Style, Justin Bieber and Adele went viral based on just the quality of their work? You’d be wrong if you thought so! Generating the right type and amount of exposure for yourself or your business is not just a matter of fate or chance but rather a focused and calculated work of digital sciences. In the digital age, businesses, actors, writers, singers and everyone else who wants to be popular have teams working for them to strategize and manage their content and reputation over the internet. We believe it’s time you took a step in the same direction to get the fire started. What do we propose? We will take you and your business truly global with a place on the world’s largest online encyclopedia, taking you instantly to the top of your league! It might look like a simple page on Wikipedia but here is what you really need to know to understand the real power of Wiki. 1. Wikipedia is the largest and most popular general reference work on the Internet. 2. It is ranked the fifth-most popular website. 3. It comprises more than 40 million articles in 299 different languages. 4. The encyclopedia has 18 billion page views and nearly 500 million unique visitors each month. 5. Wikipedia's level of accuracy has approached that of Encyclopedia Britannica. We are not saying that this is all you’ll ever need to go from common to ‘famously known’ but this will surely be the smartest first step towards it. Interested to know more about it? Don’t wait any longer! We are offering a Special 85% discount on our Digital Services this New Year Click Here to Activate your 85% Off Deal Now. Your Sincerely, David Wilson Senior Consultant Wiki Professionals Inc 4330 Clarence Court Fayetteville, NC 28306
— Preceding unsigned comment added by Sothomensch ( talk • contribs) 05:12, 9 November 2018 (UTC)
Change coming to how certain templates will appear on the mobile web
Please help translate to other languages.
Hello,
In a few weeks the Readers web team will be changing how some templates look on the mobile web site. We will make these templates more noticeable when viewing the article. We ask for your help in updating any templates that don't look correct.
What kind of templates? Specifically templates that notify readers and contributors about issues with the content of an article – the text and information in the article. Examples like Template:Unreferenced or Template:More citations needed. Right now these notifications are hidden behind a link under the title of an article. We will format templates like these (mostly those that use Template:Ambox or message box templates in general) to show a short summary under the page title. You can tap on the "Learn more" link to get more information.
For template editors we have some recommendations on how to make templates that are mobile-friendly and also further documentation on our work so far.
If you have questions about formatting templates for mobile, please leave a note on the project talk page or file a task in Phabricator and we will help you.
Thank you!
CKoerner (WMF) ( talk) 19:34, 13 November 2018 (UTC)
Headbomb is changing this OK with current English Wikipedia policy? -- Magioladitis ( talk) 22:20, 13 November 2018 (UTC)
I generally don't post information about my Wikipedia research here, but I feel this one is VERY relevant to our community, so here it goes :) I put my 10+ years of Wikipedia experience into writing this, as I think the issues I discuss there are something that is quite important for the project's (and our) well-being and future health. The official release is likely paywalled ( [3]) but I did upload a pre-print copy to academia.edu ( [4]), at worst, you need to create a free account to download it. -- Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 04:09, 8 November 2018 (UTC)
Hi, is there any maintenance template requesting that an article be checked by a native speaker of English for grammatical and/or spelling mistakes? Some hours ago, I overhauled some parts of maximal entropy random walk and wondered in some places whether the sentence order is correct (e.g. choose stochastic matrix such that) or if nouns are missing articles (e.g. all vertices but the marked ones have additional self-loop or analogy to electrons in defected lattice of semi-conductor). However, not being a native speaker of English, I cannot decide whether this is just a matter of style.
If there is an appropriate maintenance template, please tell me so I can place it in the article; or, if someone just happens to have time, feel free to check the article now. -- 78.50.153.140 ( talk) 19:31, 11 November 2018 (UTC)
Was there any discussion about YouTube using Wikipedia content? Benjamin ( talk) 06:48, 14 November 2018 (UTC)
At Talk:Queen_Street_West#Requested_move_13_November_2018 I requested a move and got 2 supports. The idea was to move Queen Street West to Queen Street (Toronto), but I've found some issues. First of all, Queen Street, Toronto exist, which would become a redirect. I created a page at User:BrandonXLF/Queen Street (Toronto), that would become the new Queen Street (Toronto). The issue is Queen Street (Toronto) exist, so do we need to do a history merge (meaning Queen Street (Toronto) would have to be deleted)? If so, do we move User:BrandonXLF/Queen Street (Toronto) to it (which takes content from Queen Street West), or do we merge Queen Street West to it then add the content at User:BrandonXLF/Queen Street (Toronto) to it (I added a lot of extra content and rewrote/created many sections of the article). Of course, Queen Street West isn't being deleted so we can just provide attribution using {{ copied}} and an edit summery? Is that sufficient? – BrandonXLF (t@lk) 02:55, 15 November 2018 (UTC)
Currently, Category:Unassessed Pennsylvania articles has Category:Unassessed Lehigh Valley articles and Category:Unassessed Philadelphia articles, but not Category:Unassessed Erie articles. Please add Erie as a category within Pennsylvania.-- Dthomsen8 ( talk) 13:48, 15 November 2018 (UTC)
NPR NEEDS YOU! New Page Reviewers operate the only firewall against junk, attack, spam, and undeclared paid editing which has aways made up the majority of a day's intake of new pages masquerading as articles. Community Wishlist Voting is taking place now until 30 November for the Page Curation and New Pages Feed improvements, and other software requests. The NPP community is hoping for a good turnout in support of the requests to Santa for the tools that are urgently needed. This is very important as the Foundation has been constantly asked for these upgrades for 4 years. The Page Curation suite of tools now stands a good chance of getting long awaited attention to the upgraded tools it needs, but it needs your help: whether you are an active patroller or just want a junk-free encyclopedia, the Community Wishlist Survey – needs you: Vote NOW, and do also consider applying to become a New Page Reviewer. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง ( talk) 12:01, 18 November 2018 (UTC)
The Community Wishlist Survey. Please help translate to other languages..
Hey everyone,
The Community Wishlist Survey is the process when the Wikimedia communities decide what the Wikimedia Foundation Community Tech should work on over the next year.
The Community Tech team is focused on tools for experienced Wikimedia editors. The communities have now posted a long list of technical proposals. You can vote on the proposals from now until 30 November. You can read more on the wishlist survey page.
/ User:Johan (WMF)18:13, 22 November 2018 (UTC)
There is a serious issue with a backlog at this page that needs urgent attention by the wider community and some measure to fix this issue permanently.
Lurking shadow ( talk) 21:43, 15 November 2018 (UTC)
I have looked for the article on the reagality theory but I have not been able to find it. Has it been deleted? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 181.22.87.129 ( talk) 22:15, 23 November 2018 (UTC)
Article " Makovo, Macedonia" needs to be renamed to " Makovo, Republic of Macedondia" (there are two more similarly written articles, see here: Category:Villages in Novaci Municipality...see also here: Makovo). Article " Makovo, Republic of Macedondia" should be deleted because it is wrongly written. -- SrpskiAnonimac ( talk) 15:42, 24 November 2018 (UTC)
May we have some input at two Rfcs occurring on the talkpage of Wikipedia:WikiProject Biography/Politics and government? It concerns infobox content of politician bios. GoodDay ( talk) 16:52, 24 November 2018 (UTC)
Please verify the articles of the user: الصبي الهندي, its showing something like paid news, the user is also updated the same articles in malayalam wikipedia, but there is no other articles are there with his id. Check the statistics In English Wiki, in Malayalam Wiki- Rajesh K Odayanchal ( talk) 11:54, 27 November 2018 (UTC)
Hey Everyone,
Today, Tuesday 27th November @ 16:00 UTC, we will launch our desktop banner campaigns with mobile launching on Thursday. We expect to run the fundraising campaign on English Wikipedia in 6 countries: USA, Canada, UK, Ireland, Australia, and New Zealand. You may notice some final systems tests running between now and then.
You can see all of our current most effective fundraising banners on our Fundraising Ideas page where you can also contribute any specific ideas or stories we should tell via social media, banners, emails etc. ( https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising/2018-19_Fundraising_ideas )
Like last year, we will come to you for ideas and suggestions to test. In addition to bringing in donations, we aim to use the campaign to educate all readers about Wikipedia and the community who creates it. The fundraising team’s A/B testing strategy works in iterative steps, so look at our banners and have a think about what one element you would change or add and how would you make it different. Think of sentences we can use to tell our story that would make you proud. Look at other non-profit websites and see if there are ideas that you think we should try.
To get people thinking, here is a list of things of what works and what does not:
WHAT WORKS
WHAT DOESN'T
If you see any technical issues with the banners or payments systems please do report it on phabricator: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/maniphest/task/create/?template=118862
If you see a donor on a talk page, OTRS, or social media with questions about donating or having difficulties in the donation process, please refer them to: donate wikimedia.org.
Here is also the ever present fundraising IRC channel to raise urgent technical issues: #wikimedia-fundraising ( http://webchat.freenode.net?channels=%23wikimedia-fundraising&uio=d4)
A huge thank you to everyone here who works to create and support Wikipedia and who make it a resource that people love and want to donate to. Fingers crossed!
Regards Seddon (WMF) ( talk) 14:53, 27 November 2018 (UTC)
Please comment:
Thank you. Levivich ( talk) 01:51, 30 November 2018 (UTC)
hi I want a web site to have all : Provinces, Prefectures, Counties, Cities, Districts and... more in all countries around world Amirh123 ( talk) 15:32, 20 November 2018 (UTC)
what site have all Provinces, Prefectures, Counties, Cities, Districts and... — Preceding unsigned comment added by Amirh123 ( talk • contribs) 14:18, 23 November 2018 (UTC)
Is there a time limit on how long red-linked requested articles should stay at Wikipedia: Requested articles? Vorbee ( talk) 17:57, 28 November 2018 (UTC)
I'm looking for the right venue in order to attract more eyeballs to a discussion about a proposed large rollback at Roman diocese. The discussion is already listed at two WikiProjects (and has garnered one response) and I've pinged the top ten editors. WP:3O doesn't seem to be the right place to go, because that's for disputes that have been "thoroughly discussed on the article talk page", and this hasn't been because the other party will not engage there or on his user page. WP:DR doesn't seem right either, since DR is "an informal place to resolve small content disputes" and this is not small, and not a dispute since they won't talk. WP:HD and WP:RD are not appropriate. So, where do I post to ask for feedback? I'm a bit nervous about pulling the trigger to reduce an article by 130 kb without a few more opinions, although I think it's the right thing to do. How do I get more eyeballs on this, or do I just go ahead and do it, and see if anyone objects? (Ping please.) Thanks, Mathglot ( talk) 21:52, 1 December 2018 (UTC)
Can someone rename the article " Milevska Planina" in " Milevska planina"...that the article be written the same as other articles about the mountains in Serbia and Bulgaria (see: Category:Mountains of Serbia and Category:Mountains of Bulgaria), with a small letter "P" -- SrpskiAnonimac ( talk) 23:03, 29 November 2018 (UTC)
Do you think these people would write and get accepted a nice article about me? I'm a great guy. https://www.legalmorning.com/writing-services/wikipedia-articles/ Rhadow ( talk) 19:13, 1 December 2018 (UTC)
User: Rhadow in order to have an article written about you, you would have to pass the notability threshold. Vorbee ( talk) 16:35, 2 December 2018 (UTC)
If I have enough money to pay this outfit to write a vanity article about me, do you think that would make me notable enough? Rhadow ( talk) 16:44, 2 December 2018 (UTC)
Hi Team,
I am interested in opening a page to publish my works in the field of cinematography. Kindly assist me in creating one.
Thanks & Regards, Ashokkumar — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ananee05 ( talk • contribs) 16:03, 2 December 2018 (UTC)
These articles both feature a "Not to be confused with" notice to each other, but this seems more comical than functional to me. I can't see how anyone would assume that "Little Englander" is a generic term for English people, nor why anyone searching for the term "English people" would in actual fact be looking for this rather ephemeral article. It's as though we prefixed the article on Dawn French with a notice saying "Not to be confused with the ethnic group from France". Am I missing something, or should these notices be removed? -- Newbiepedian ( talk · C · X! · L) 18:42, 2 December 2018 (UTC)
I have put in my name for consideration of the Bot Approvals Group. Those interested in discussing the matter are invited to do so here. Thank you for your input. Primefac ( talk) 00:42, 4 December 2018 (UTC)
I am writing to tell you that the project Wikipedia Cultural Diversity Observatory (WCDO) has presented a plan for a second phase to extend the project and provide tools based on the data collected.
As a reminder, the WCDO aims at providing valuable strategic data in order to fight for more cultural diversity in each Wikipedia language edition. In the previous phase, we collected the Cultural Context Content (CCC) datasets for all 300 language editions and provided some top priority articles for different topics such as women-men, geolocated, among others (named Top CCC articles). The infrastructure for the project has been set (datasets and website).
In this new phase, we plan to create many more tools and visualizations: Top CCC article lists based on community member suggestions, but most importantly, to create a tool to monitor the gaps on a monthly basis and serve it as a newsletter. This way editors are able to constantly see the efforts dedicated to create geolocated articles or cultural context content more in general related to other language editions.
Also, we plan to research on marginalized languages in order to see which have more potential to become a new Wikipedia language edition, start creating content about their cultural context ("decolonizing the Internet"), and increase the overall cultural diversity of the project. Most of the project efforts are dedicated to data-compiling and analysis. However, there is a lot of work to do in disseminating the results and tools so they can create more impact in helping local events such as contests. If you think you can join the project, please write us at tools.wcdo@tools.wmflabs.org. If you consider this may be helpful, please help us, provide some feedback and endorse the project.
You take a look at the project plan here: meta:Grants:Project/WCDO/Culture Gap Monthly Monitoring
Thanks in advance for your time. All the feedback is welcome. Best, -- Marcmiquel ( talk) 14:18, 4 December 2018 (UTC)
First 5 articles on Wikipedia, as reported by API:Allpages sorted alphabetically
-- Green C 16:43, 4 December 2018 (UTC)
The Wikimedia Foundation security team is implementing a new password policy and requirements. You can learn more about the project on MediaWiki.org.
These new requirements will apply to new accounts and privileged accounts. New accounts will be required to create a password with a minimum length of 8 characters. Privileged accounts will be prompted to update their password to one that is at least 10 characters in length.
These changes are planned to be in effect on December 13th. If you think your work or tools will be affected by this change, please let us know on the talk page.
Thank you!
CKoerner (WMF) ( talk) 20:02, 6 December 2018 (UTC)
Don't know the correct board for this, but user keeps editing articles to add information that the article persons are christian, in places it doesn't need to be stated, but on the flipside has edited another article to remove information denoting that this person is Jewish, claiming that it is irrelevant information. Is this bad faith editing? @ Tornado chaser: -glove- ( talk) 00:08, 7 December 2018 (UTC) -glove- ( talk) 23:57, 6 December 2018 (UTC)
I would like to know which is the correct link in English wikipedia for [ this] page. Adithyak1997 ( talk) 07:19, 5 December 2018 (UTC)
all wikipedias has 49 2000 000 articles I want know how many articles creating with bots — Preceding unsigned comment added by Amirh123 ( talk • contribs) 17:49, 7 December 2018 (UTC)
There is a form of words on Referring to 1924 Prime Minister's Resignation Honours "The King has been pleased to direct the following be sworn of His Majesty's Most Honourable Privy Council:"
That seems to me to be archaic and unencyclopedic. It is a direct copy of the London Gazette announcement; wikipedia in 2018 is not bound to follow anachronistic rhetorical flourishes used in court announcements.
Although this much should be obvious to us all, User:Wikimandia objects that we should use this wording - see Talk:1924 Prime Minister's Resignation Honours.
I'd be grateful for discussion & opinion here, a posting on Wikipedia:WikiProject Orders, decorations, and medals having gone unanswered. -- Tagishsimon ( talk) 01:11, 5 December 2018 (UTC)
Do we have a policy on when and how published articles may be moved to draft?
While it's better than deletion in some cases. I'm concerned that it occurs with no wider community attention, and may be a de facto as a "deletion by stealth".
Even speedy deletion requires two editors to be in agreement.
Perhaps we should have a template, like {{ Db}}, but for this use case? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 12:16, 7 December 2018 (UTC)
Please visit Talk:Zodiac Seats U.S.#Requested move 4 December 2018 to discuss moving Zodiac Seats U.S. to Safran Seats. -- Jax 0677 ( talk) 15:47, 8 December 2018 (UTC)
You are invited to join these discussions:
Wikipedia:Deletion review#1960–61 United States network television schedule (Saturday morning)
Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/1980–81 United States network television schedule (Saturday morning)
Thank you.
Levivich ( talk) 16:58, 8 December 2018 (UTC)
Shouldn't there be a main article that encompasses the subjects of non-theatrical films like Direct-to-video and Television film? The two articles don't need to merge immediately, but I was thinking: Direct-to-video films are often shown on TV, and Television films will eventually released on home media and digital anyway. Plus, there's a trend among streaming services (like Netflix and Amazon Video) that they offer original films. That's actually a blend of both mediums, because such services act like a mix of premium TV channels (without linear TV presence) and home media platform (without physical releases). JSH-alive/ talk/ cont/ mail 12:21, 26 November 2018 (UTC)
Hi all. An update about the experiment for eliciting new editor interests mentioned here earlier. documented, the first design of the experiment did not result in enough responses in the second stage. We have iterated on it based on the learnings and designed a new one which has significantly reduced the steps and cognitive load which was required in the first trial. In the coming 48 hours, we will start reaching out to those who registered on enwiki in September 2018 or later to encourage them to participate in the new design of the experiment. We do not expect this test to have impact on experienced editors. If you do observe an issue, please ping me here or on the project's talk page. Thank you! -- LZia (WMF) ( talk) 23:27, 10 December 2018 (UTC)
I'm working to measure the value of Wikipedia in economic terms. I want to ask you some questions about how you value being able to edit Wikipedia using a 10-15 minute survey.
I hope that you will enjoy it and find the questions interesting. All answers will be kept strictly confidential and will be anonymized before the aggregate results are published. Regretfully, my team and I can only accept responses from people who live in the US due to restrictions in our grant-based funding.
As a reward for your participation, we will randomly pick 1 out of every 5 participants and give them $25 worth of goods of their choice from the Wikipedia store (e.g. Wikipedia themed t-shirts).
-- avi_gan Researcher, MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy ~~~~~
Files Go has been renamed to Files by Google, please move Files Go to Files by Google (please keep the original page as a redirect page). Thanks. -- XL-028 ( talk) 03:13, 11 December 2018 (UTC)
There is currently an research survey being conducted by researchers at Dalian University of Technology. You can read about the research on Meta. The research involves asking Wikipedia editors for personal information, and then associating that personal information with their editing behaviors in order to construct personality profiles. EpochFail and I have asked the researchers a series of questions and urged them to follow best practices for responsible Wikipedia research, and to offer some basic documentation (e.g. data collection and retention, institutional review) demonstrating that this research will be conducted in an ethical fashion. The researchers have not responded adequately to our stated concerns. I am concerned that participating in this study will expose editors to risk, and recommend that editors not fill out this survey. Regards, J-Mo 20:14, 12 December 2018 (UTC)
Some time ago, following this short discussion someone added {{ NOINDEX}} to {{ Undisclosed paid}}. As a result, pages on important topics such as Simon & Schuster, Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company, and Swansea University are currently excluded from Google search results (and, in the latter case, has been for a quarter of a year); despite no significant issues with the article content being identified on their talk pages. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 13:56, 3 December 2018 (UTC)
"has no effect in the main (article) namespace unless the article is less than 90 days old", but its not clear whether that is 90 days since creation, or last edit. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 14:39, 3 December 2018 (UTC)
<meta name="robots" content="noindex,nofollow"/>
. —
xaosflux
Talk 15:46, 3 December 2018 (UTC)
"If people didn't want the articles about their companies taken out of the searches, they shouldn't have edited them."And what about the cases where there is no evidence that they have edited them? Or where the editor does have a COI, but there is nothing actually wrong the the content? Not to mention the fact that anyone can apparently have their competitors article removed from Google's index of Wikipedia by creating a throw-away account in their name. Or indeed the one about themselves, if they deem it too negative. Do we really want to give them that capability? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 16:17, 3 December 2018 (UTC)
As a thought experiment as it has been announced that Voyager 2 has entered interstellar space.
If there was an equivalent probe launched, with a modern version of the Voyager Golden Record, and Wikipedia was invited to contribute, what pages in particular should be included or created as showing what can be done? Jackiespeel ( talk) 17:52, 12 December 2018 (UTC)
Pitch competition (currently a redlink) seems widely used on WP and elsewhere, apparently referring to a competition in which participants pitch an idea to a group, which then decides which idea (if any) is best. A redirect to sales presentation seems off-target for competitions that are more like debates or persuasion than sales proposals, like research projects and Wikipedia policies. New article or a better target? —[ AlanM1( talk)]— 02:20, 14 December 2018 (UTC)
Our longest pages are, presently:
and we have more than 500 articles that are over 300,000 bytes. That is far too big.
I have started discussion on the talk pages of some of those listed above, as have others, so far mostly to little avail. What is to be done? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 21:10, 5 December 2018 (UTC)
Some current discussions, where there is resistance to splitting long pages, include: Talk:List of compositions by Johann Sebastian Bach#Problems with using this page and Talk:List of compositions by Franz Schubert#This article is far too long. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 12:45, 10 December 2018 (UTC)
I think the above examples are ample evidence that we have an issue when it comes to gaining consensus to split over-long artciles. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 15:28, 14 December 2018 (UTC)
Why does enwiki not have a WP:TROLL page? Just when I needed it! It only links to mw and so. - DePiep ( talk) 03:16, 15 December 2018 (UTC)
On The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt I had replaced File:Witcher 3 cover art.jpg with File:The Witcher 3 - Standard Edition Unboxing (Official Trailer) cover.jpg. I thought this was right because Wikipedia:Non-free content#Meeting the no free equivalent criterion says: "Non-free content cannot be used in cases where a free content equivalent, with an acceptable quality sufficient to serve the encyclopedic purpose, is available or could be created."
But it was rolled back by The1337gamer without comment.
When asked, The1337gamer said "Blurry, miscoloured, PEGI rating and says "PROVISIONAL" in the bottom left. Objectively inferior quality to the non-free version."
Uh yeah no argument there (though I don't think it's miscoloured), but the replacement is "an acceptable quality sufficient to serve the encyclopedic purpose" imho? But it isn't? I'm not sure I understand. - Alexis Jazz 11:36, 13 December 2018 (UTC)
There is an article named Student Day (Iran) as the anniversary of the murder of three students of University of Tehran on December 7, 1953 (16 Azar 1332 in the Iranian calendar), here the student refers to people who study courses in university, in other hand it is seen another anniversary about demonstrations of students to show their objection of Pahlavi on November 4, 1978 (13 Aban 1357), here the student refers to people who study courses in (elementary, secondary or high) school. By the way, I am going to collect some material relevant to 13 Aban anniversary as a paragraph into Student Day (Iran) or creating the new article, but I face with a problem for naming. How is it made difference between students who study in university and school? I exactly discuss the title. Saff V. ( talk) 07:20, 15 December 2018 (UTC)
I'll note that "college" or "post-secondary" (in the U.S. at least) is sometimes further divided by "under-graduate" (or "under-grad") and "graduate", distinguishing between students that are studying for a Bachelor's degree (or equivalent) and those that have completed a Bachelor's and are studying for higher degrees, respectively; all with or without hyphens. Not that any of those would be right for the article title, which, I think, should be named per a "standard" translation of the Farsi name (which appears to be the current name, "Student Day", right?), if it is to remain named for the memorial day. I.e. we can't rename the memorial day even though we think it might be ambiguously named . —[ AlanM1( talk)]— 15:02, 15 December 2018 (UTC)
Does the 10 edits and 4 days autoconfirmation have any value at all? The spammers just create accounts by the truckload, do 10 random edits to get them autoconfirmed, then warehouse the account until the next time they need to create an article. Has this really done us any good? -- RoySmith (talk) 22:51, 17 December 2018 (UTC)
Off-topic
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Wikimedia Foundation To whom it may concern, I noticed signficant amount of non-heterosexual discrimination on the website
https://pricaonica.krstarica.com. According to their Terms of Service (
https://pricaonica.krstarica.com/pravilnik/) all sorts of discrimination on any basis is prohibited. What steps may I take? Thank you in advance. Vs6 507 12:26, 21 December 2018 (UTC)
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This question has been bugging me. There were a few discussions in 2017 that led to the consensus that "community-imposed blocks" must be appealed to the community and cannot be unilaterally undone by an admin. But what about when talk page access was abused and then removed, and a block appeal is made by UTRS? How does the process work then? (Note that I a particular case brought this to mind, but it is already "too late" to affect that case; this is meant as a general question.) Hijiri 88 ( 聖 やや) 16:08, 21 December 2018 (UTC)
Can we get some comments at the fact we list hundreds of automated portals on our community page. Pls see Wikipedia talk:Community portal#Time to get rid of the portal spam.-- Moxy ( talk) 14:45, 22 December 2018 (UTC)
Hello! If you are autoconfirmed and willing to help, there is currently a ~50 edit backlog of semi-protected page edit requests, see list at User:AnomieBOT/SPERTable. Thank you! — xaosflux Talk 16:36, 24 December 2018 (UTC)
Has there ever been a content dispute that was impossible to resolve?
I know that there are dispute resolution mechanisms, but is it possible for those to fail at establishing consensus?
ArbCom doesn't deal with content disputes, per se, so is there some other last resort for content disputes that has the final say?
Are there any issues where the community is pretty much evenly split?
Benjamin ( talk) 19:09, 17 December 2018 (UTC)
Is topic-banning someone from the "Wikipedia talk" namespace and all village pumps allowed, or does t violate some obscure policy/guideline? Someone at AN wants to do this to me, and therefore prevent me from participating in most proposals. Kamafa Delgato ( Lojbanist) Styrofoam is not made from kittens. 19:30, 23 December 2018 (UTC)
See FA lead. It now has an extra link (image-link of an open book, see topright next to the FA-gold star). That wikiversitary link is a horror, and outdated. Bad attributions also. Que pasa? - DePiep ( talk) 01:20, 25 December 2018 (UTC)
Please help translate to other languages.
Love is an important subject for humanity and it is expressed in different cultures and regions in different ways across the world through different gestures, ceremonies, festivals and to document expression of this rich and beautiful emotion, we need your help so we can share and spread the depth of cultures that each region has, the best of how people of that region, celebrate love.
Wiki Loves Love (WLL) is an international photography competition of Wikimedia Commons with the subject love testimonials happening in the month of February.
The primary goal of the competition is to document love testimonials through human cultural diversity such as monuments, ceremonies, snapshot of tender gesture, and miscellaneous objects used as symbol of love; to illustrate articles in the worldwide free encyclopedia Wikipedia, and other Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) projects.
The theme of 2019 iteration is Celebrations, Festivals, Ceremonies and rituals of love.
Sign up your affiliate or individually at Participants page.
To know more about the contest, check out our Commons Page and FAQs
There are several prizes to grab. Hope to see you spreading love this February with Wiki Loves Love!
Kind regards,
Imagine... the sum of all love!
-- MediaWiki message delivery ( talk) 10:12, 27 December 2018 (UTC)
What do I do if I find an image being used as fair use which I can demonstrate is, in fact, 100% free to use?
Now, the fair-use image is a highly-scaled down, oddly coloured copy, but File:Elinorglyn.jpg - which doesn't have any information about where the image came from, who made it, etc - is very clearly the same as http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2014680673/ - which a little further research ( [ http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/90714689/ is clearly from the same session) allows to be dated to c. 1908. In any case, it's {{ PD-Bain}}.
The easy solution might be to just upload the LoC copy, and switch over to it, letting the mislabelled one be deleted, but I don't want to confuse things. Adam Cuerden ( talk)Has about 8.9% of all FPs 23:00, 25 December 2018 (UTC)
It might help to check any contributions sourced to articles by Claas Relotius, who falsified details in articles. WhisperToMe ( talk) 10:03, 23 December 2018 (UTC)
Hello everybody,
There is an urgent need to discuss this with you.
We all felt sorry for what happened to the German magazine “Der Spiegel”. Years of lies and misinformation by a famous and trusted reporter.
What do we need to do to trust all the sources that Wikipedia is based on??? Alex-h ( talk) 23:38, 28 December 2018 (UTC)
I seek advice on the page User talk:Georges T..
That page contains an extensive piece of original research, apparently in violation of the policy WP:What_Wikipedia_is_not#BLOG. I have previously warned this user that they are misusing their user page. I don't think that User pages are ever eligible for deletion; and I'm not aware of any process for deleting the majority of the content from another user's talk page.
For what it's worth, I believe the material on that page is kooky, crazy nonsense. It's never been cited, because the author evidently can't get it published by any reputable academic journal. This editor occasionally makes changes to articles concerning timescales, such as Coordinated Universal Time - these changes are always reverted rather quickly. Remarks on the corresponding user page suggest that the user is bonkers.
It's worth noting that this user has opinions about copyright in material posted to Wikipedia that may diverge from Wikipedia policy (he expresses these opinions on his talk page). As far as I am aware, he is entitled to claim copyright in the material he posts, but he has automatically licensed that material to the whole world under CC-BY-SA as well as GFDL, by virtue of having posted it to Wikipedia. CC-BY-SA entitles the original author to demand attribution, but the GFDL does not confer any such entitlement. He has effectively given up all his rights under copyright, other than to sue someone who falsely claims to be the author. At least, that's the way I read it - IANAL.
Any advice welcome! MrDemeanour ( talk) 12:57, 4 January 2019 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous)/Archive 60#Makovo, Macedonia -- SrpskiAnonimac ( talk) 14:48, 28 December 2018 (UTC)
Hello. Many places in Cyprus (and Greece) named after saints. For example, Agia Varvara, Paphos named after Saint Barbara.
The word saint in Greek Language is Άγιος (masculine) or Αγία (feminine). So most of the places in English are written as Agios but some of them are as Ayios (Agia or Ayia). The problem is that there is not a common "rule" for that. Or is there and I just don't know it?
Most places name are written with g and some with y.
Should I move them and write them with g?
Xaris333 ( talk) 03:33, 6 January 2019 (UTC)
Hello,
There is a debate over the meaning of legacy for this individual--and by extension, to similar cases. All editors are invited to contribute to the discussion at
Georgejdorner ( talk) 18:43, 6 January 2019 (UTC)
Dear friends and colleagues,
We invite you to take part in the international contest “Learn the world. Start with twin cities” which is held from 1 November 2018 to 1 March 2019 and is organized by “Wikimedia RU” together with partners. Web page of the contest: " Discover the world. Start with the sister cities The purpose of this thematic marathon contest is to create articles in all languages of the world about the sights of cities and regions of Russia and their foreign sister and partner territories. Twin cities and partner territories are territories which have permanent friendly relations for mutual acquaintance with life, history and culture of each other.
Winners of the contest will receive prizes regardless of their citizenship and location anywhere in the world! JukoFF ( talk) 18:49, 10 January 2019 (UTC)
Hello! Is it a common practice to organize the professions of a person in the introduction of a biography article according to relevancy? For example, in Jacqueline Kennedy's article, the intro says "Jacqueline Lee Kennedy Onassis was an American book editor and socialite who was First Lady of the United States during the presidency of her husband". Are there guideline for this order of professions (book editor then politician)? Or is it left to editors?-- Reem Al-Kashif ( talk) 15:59, 12 January 2019 (UTC)
Looking at the sentence I think it is fine: "Jacqueline Lee Kennedy Onassis (née Bouvier /ˈbuːvieɪ/; July 28, 1929 – May 19, 1994) was an American book editor and socialite who was First Lady of the United States during the presidency of her husband, John F. Kennedy, from January 1961 until his assassination in November 1963." I would say the internal link highlights the role of First Lady of the United States, not to mention the name John F. Kennedy. I also think the construction of the sentence benefits from getting the minor role of "book editor" out of the way before addressing the more complicated part of the sentence. Bus stop ( talk) 20:39, 12 January 2019 (UTC)
I am just writing this to inform Village pump (miscellaneous) that I have requested to join the Bot Approvals Group (BAG). I invite your thoughts on the nomination subpage, which is located here. Thank you for your time. -- TheSandDoctor Talk 05:41, 14 January 2019 (UTC)
Hello everyone. In 2 weeks time, the latest (5th) edition of Wiki Loves Africa will launch on the theme Play for one month. Please check out the contest main page for details about the theme if you are directly interested and want to contribute pictures and join the fun online or locally.
But this message is also a pre-warning that hords of new and unexperienced users from Africa will join and upload pictures, that are often wonderful (but not really categorized or described) and sometimes terrible (blurred, irrelevant, promotional, copyrighted etc.). I would like to extend an invitation to you guys to help with image tracking and clean-up during the contest. If you plan to help heavily, please add your name to the team page so that we know where to go and who to ask if we have issues. But also, more generally, please help in keeping an eye on the general category where images will be uploaded (right now there is only a test picture from a painting from my daughter... but soon... we can expect probably around 10k images to look at). Your help will be tremendously and gratefully welcome.
Anthere ( talk) 14:33, 17 January 2019 (UTC)
This question has been moved to WP:HELPDESK. User670839245 ( talk) 07:52, 17 January 2019 (UTC)
I'm a researcher studying the effects of rewards on motivation. My team and I would like to run an experiment with barnstars on Wikipedia. We'll use data analysis to identify editors who are making substantial contributions to Wikipedia and we'll post barnstars on their talk pages. Our goal is to see if specific types of barnstars elicit different types of motivation reinforcement for an editor. For example, if we reward an editor for doing copy-editing work specifically, are they more likely to continue doing copy-editing work?
Our goal in all of this is to find effective strategies for increasing the long term retention of editors. To us, it appears that identifying way to motivate volunteers to stay and contribute is very important. For the continued viability of Wikipedia. And anyway, it's good to recognize people for their hard work.
I'm posting here today to announce the project and to invite you to highlight any potential issues with us posting barnstars. See metawiki:Research:How role-specific rewards influence Wikipedia editors’ contribution for our proposed study design. There, you can find our criteria for selecting editors to receive barnstars. We're interested in your insights. We're also very interested in working with anyone who would like to collaborate with us in this experiment. -- Diyiy ( talk) 23:20, 18 December 2018 (UTC)
Editors in the top 10% of those making edits adding substantive content or performing copy-editing actionsare. Is the top 10% just an evaluation of edit volume? I would be interested in helping hand out the barnstars, but I'm skeptical that edit volume is really indicative of quality contributions and would feel uncomfortable handing out barnstars on that basis alone. Additionally, I'd suggest an exclusion criterion that should be added: editors who are watching this page or who have participated in discussions on this page while this discussion is on the page. signed, Rosguill talk 07:15, 19 December 2018 (UTC)
References
While I think the results of the study could be very enlightening, I agree that this sounds a little too disruptive and disingenuous: I guess I fundamentally don't agree with awarding barnstars semi-arbitrarily; if someone told me that my first barnstar was awarded to me as part of an experiment to see if my behavior changed as a result, I'd probably be a little disappointed and upset to be used as a lab rat. There has to be enough legitimate barnstars already awarded for real reasons to study passively, aren't there? Can't a study be designed as a strict observation of existing barnstar awards to accomplish the same thing? Is there some reason that the study must award its own barnstars? CThomas3 ( talk) 03:14, 22 December 2018 (UTC)
As an aside...To show pasteurized process cheese and its cheese spread that there are no hard feelings: Mmmmmmmmm...pasteurized-process cheeeeeeeese. Shearonink ( talk) 21:46, 28 December 2018 (UTC)
If you want really see if barnstars work, try this find a sample size of users who meet at least the following criteria;
This criteria proves the people are long term editor who contributions are likely accepted, and importantly something the community would encouraged. Additionally they will be contactable by email this user. Divide the sample into 3 groups;
Measure their activity 1 day, 1 week, 1 month for however long you can. Then you're able to at least make a plausible causal inference about the impact of each style of contact including a correlation of the outcomes between each group both in the number and size of edits also the length of time they edit. Gnan garra 17:40, 28 December 2018 (UTC)
Our experimental treatment was to assign an informal, peer-to-peer reward, or ‘barnstar,’ to contributors who had never previously received one ... We focused on the top 10% of Wikipedia’s contributor community ... we removed those users who had administrative or elevated privileges, and excluded ... the bottom 90% of contributors by edit volume in the prior 30 days. We also screened out users who had previously received a barnstar ... After stratifying the population, we conducted a simple random sample of 200 subjects from each tier. The treatment consisted of anonymously placing a barnstar on the subjects’ user-talk page ... The barnstar we chose ... expressed community appreciation for their contributions, but it was not tailored to any recipient-specific activities or achievements. ... Contrary to theory, rewarding less productive editors did not stimulate higher subsequent productivity. ... The experimental results show that rewards can be used to sustain productivity among highly-active contributors at the top of the distribution, yet are ineffective in this regard for less-active contributors.
We test the effects of informal rewards in online peer production. Using a randomized, experimental design, we assigned editing awards or “barnstars” to a subset of the 1% most productive Wikipedia contributors. Comparison with the control group shows that receiving a barnstar increases productivity by 60% and makes contributors six times more likely to receive additional barnstars from other community members, revealing that informal rewards significantly impact individual effort.
To try to summarize the discussion and reach consensus, here are what I think are the main points raised so far. Sorry if I’ve gotten anything wrong or missed important points, but the discussion has been long, meandering and continually changing. In the summary, I’ll generally use the general term “recognition,” where Barnstars, Thanks, and WikiLove are all forms of positive recognition, because many of the concerns raised in the discussion apply independent of the type of recognition.
Diyiy, Your user page User:Diyiy links to your homepage http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~diyiy/ where you state "I am supported by Facebook Fellowship" Can you clarify if and how Facebook benefits from the research that you propose here? Thanks, Vexations ( talk) 20:49, 28 December 2018 (UTC)
@
Robertekraut wrote above at 22:13, 28 December
[12]: Facebook won't benefit at all from the research we've been describing
.
@
Diyiy wrote above at 02:15, 29 December
[13]: the proposed work has nothing to do with Facebook
.
However, https://research.fb.com/programs/fellowship/#Eligibility_Criteria says very clearly: "Applications Must Include: 250-word research summary which clearly identifies the area of focus, importance to the field and applicability to Facebook of the anticipated research during the award (reference the research areas below)". (underling added by BHG)
(The acceptable topics are set out further down that page at https://research.fb.com/programs/fellowship/#Research_Areas)
Those statements by Diyiy and Robertekraut relating to Facebook appear to me be incompatible with the terms of the Fellowship.
So it seems to me that that:
There may of course be some other explanation for this apparent incompatibility. But whatever the explanation is, I think it is important that Diyiy and Robertekraut promptly clarify exactly what is going on here. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 16:20, 31 December 2018 (UTC)
References
Diyiy and Robertekraut, what is the opt-out protocol for this research project? For example, is there a template users can place on their user page to exclude themselves from your research? Vexations ( talk) 17:34, 29 December 2018 (UTC)
This was mentioned on my talk page, so I came here with an open mind to it check out. All our contributions to Wikipedia are publicly visible, and much research has been done on them. Some of it is very valuable. In principle, more research is fine.
But having read the discussion, I am strongly opposed.
The good side is that the researchers came here to set out their proposal, and have engaged in a collegial manner with those who commented. Good marks on that score.
Points lost for the obvious folly of claiming that an editor with <500 contributions in near 12 years is a senior contributor
. Others have explained why that is not so, but it raised alarm bells with me as an indication of a very poor understanding of the editorial community. On the day this proposal was posted, the editor ranked at slot number 10,000 in the list of editors by edit count had made
8201 edits. The numbers are no criticism of the editor with <500 contibs, whose efforts are evidently made in ways which don't accumulate a high edit count ... but this sort of data should have been well-known to the designers of the research project. It is a flashing red light that the researchers have done seriously inadequate homework about the nature of the community they are researching.
Homework aside, it's clear that the substance of this project is to monitor the effects of a program of systematic deception.
The project is misleadingly labelled as research, a broad spectrum term which includes observational and analytical processes, as I mistakenly assumed this to be. In reality, what is proposed is a social experiment: to measure how people behave when manipulated as part of an RCT. More points lost for not explicitly labelling the project as a social experiment.
This deception experiment is destructive, because Wikipedia is a trust community. It is composed overwhelming of volunteers who contribute without possibility of tangible reward, and mostly anonymously. We don't hear voices or see faces, let alone any of the social aspects of community of most collaborations. All we have is letters on a screen, and trust which is built up slowly on an assumption of good faith. We react very strongly against editors who deceive the community, whether by socking or by faking references or claiming false credentials.
So when someone gives a thanks or barnstar or a welcome or a friendly note, we assume that is out of some sort of good intent. As others noted above, there are complex permutations around good intent, but the core of it is that some human is trying to make a nice gesture. The community has repeatedly rejected proposals for a "welcome bot" — so much so that it is listed both as a perennial proposal and as a frequently denied bot. The reason is simple: human gestures are valueless unless genuine, and fake ones can be deeply corrosive.
This is a proposal to target hundreds editors with fake acknowledgements. Sure, they will be delivered by a human, but the decision will be made by some sort of bot. Every editor delivering such a message will be deceiving the recipient into believing that the decision is their own.
@
Robertekraut defended this by repeating that the barnstars will be given to editors who deserve them but haven't yet received any
. I think that misses the whole point of barnstars, Most editors know that >99% of the good stuff they do en.wp goes unpraised; the significance of the barnstar is not in the work done, but in the fact that a human being has been watching and decided of their own free will to extend praise.
Such deceit is highly corrosive. It doesn't just sour the relationship betweeen the two individuals involved; it sours the recipient's undestanding of the whole community. One fake reward makes all rewards suspect, and even the news that this is being planned will make editors more wary.
I am saddened to hear that CMU's IRB waived informed consent. It seems to be adhering more closely to the minimal requirements of the US's National Research Act than to the much higher principles of the Nuremberg Code. The deceit and manipulation involved here is miniscule compared to the deceit and manipulation involved in all the commercial, political and military uses of manipulative psychology to which universities turn a blind eye; but it is on that dark side of the spectrum.
I hope that Facebook's sponsorship of @ User:Diyiy's work is at sufficient distance that there is no possibility of direction from the company. https://research.fb.com/programs/fellowship/ is vague about selection personnel and criteria, so I will AGF. But given the extent of Facebook's manipulation of its users, its spectre hovers overs this project, even if its malign influence is only as an indirect signal to the educational culture that its bread is buttered on a particular side.
Wikipedia has a lot in common with how the internet was in its pre-commercialisation days in the early 1990s: anonymous, quite anarchic, and driven by altruism rather than by money. This proposed social experiment reeks of the manipulation of users and and monetisation-of-retention which underpins the giants of the commercialised web.
Many thanks to Diyiy and Robert for their courtesy and civility in this discussion. But FWIW, my view is that this proposal doesn't belong on en.wp ... and that if it proceeds, sanctions should be applied to any editor who assists it without full transparency. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 15:39, 30 December 2018 (UTC)
During the experiment, it was noted on the Administrator's noticeboard/Incidents page that a seemingly random IP editor was "handing out barnstars", which led to some suspicion from Wikipedians. The thread was closed after User:Mike Restivo confirmed he accidentally logged out when delivering the barnstars. He did not, however, declare his status as a researcher, and the group's paper does not disclose that the behavior was considered unusual enough to warrant such a discussion thread.
We don't want to discourage ethical research that could help us improve the project. I get a whiff from this discussion that some WMF staff saw the potential gains for en.wp from this research project, but did little scrutiny of the downsides. I suspect that most research proposals will have some positive potential, and that the main issue will be weighing the potential gains against against the possibilities for harm. In other words, this is a an area replete with trade-offs, and we need to be clear about which issues are bright lines, and for other issues how the trade-offs are weighed. For example, I can imagine that some breaching experiments might be considered if carefully constructed.
The Barnstar system whereby editors spontaneously award the stars will be corrupted and distorted by turning the system into an experiment. It will deliberately manipulate formerly innocent and well-meaning Wikipedian behaviour, and turn it into a reward-seeking, unspontaneous activity. The purpose of the encyclopaedia is not to manipulate contributors, especially without their knowledge and consent, which is unethical "science".
A researcher should properly study the system as it is, as it operates now. Once the researcher becomes, instead, an experimenter — and she openly admits how her research actively seeks to change Wikipedian behaviour — she interferes with the system she proposes to study. This is not merely bad science — it is not science at all.
There should be no burden placed on Wikipedians, generous with their time, to opt out of manipulative experimentation. The default should be that they may be invited to opt in to being manipulated. And bear in mind, that an experimental subject, conscious of being observed, is liable to behave unnaturally, is liable to have his activity distorted by self awareness, which is therefore a distorted behaviour, and therefore presents activity for study which is no longer authentic. Thus, the behaviour to be studied is no longer valid, "clean" experimental data, and "scientific" conclusions drawn from it would be unreliable, to put it mildy. — O'Dea ( talk) 18:12, 1 January 2019 (UTC)
Barnstars are of no real-world value, and in practice are awarded almost randomly. They are also open to counterfeiting, since anyone can make a "barnstars" page (or section on their user page), and put any barnstars they want on it. No one goes around checking to see if the barnstars added to such pages are legitimate. Probably no one looks at such pages at all. The idea that they influence editing behavior is therefore absurd on its face. bd2412 T 23:15, 1 January 2019 (UTC)
I would just like to echo GMG a bit -- what we should be concerned with is not whether an experiment will produce scientifically viable results or whether it asks a silly question. Rather, we need to ask whether it comports with Wikipedia policies and the community's ethical consensus. To put it succinctly, science is their area; Wikipedia is ours. That said, a very happy New Year to all. Dumuzid ( talk) 23:22, 1 January 2019 (UTC)
How can the experiment protect the victims of testing on them, firstly in the active stage when encourages addictive outcomes, dirves peope away, or devalues the efforts of others. What happens if it draws attention on an editor in a not so friendly environment who wants to remain under the radar, we have had editors in prisoned and those who have died as result being an editor. What about in the future when a editor puts their hand for RfA and some points out that the small recognition they got had been part of an experiment and wasnt any indication that the community appreciated their contributions. What about the damage to Wikipedia as an independent reliable source of information when its editors are being manipulated for scientific research. Gnan garra 06:19, 2 January 2019 (UTC)
Even though we think that our research would answer questions about the impact of recognition that are both scientifically interesting and useful to Wikipedia and that the research could be conducted in an ethically responsible way, we’ve decided to withdraw this research project.
The initial discussion we had with the community was valuable and constructive. It evaluated the value of the research (mostly positive), raised ethical concerns (e.g., concerns about devaluing Barnstars) and suggested ways to improve the research, by mitigating the ethical concerns (e.g., using Thanks instead of Barnstars as recognition) and by increasing the likelihood that the research would lead to meaningful results (e.g., by having multiple experienced editors issue the recognition).
However, the most recent discussions suggesting that the receipt of barnstars causes Wikipedia addiction and our research is corrupt because Diyiy has a Facebook fellowship were not very productive. Despite our best intentions for scientific research on the effects of barnstars and recognition, we are sorry to see that some of the comments above contained accusation of us lying either to the Wikipedia community or to Facebook, which we consider ad hominem attacks. The most recent discussions were taking too much time, exacting too high an emotional toll and not going anywhere. Taking into account everyone’s opinions and the time we have available for this research, Diyiy and I have decided that we’ll withdraw our research proposal and discontinue this proposed project. We thank all of you for your active participation and discussion about this research proposal. Robertekraut ( talk) 18:45, 2 January 2019 (UTC)
followed best practices for performing ethical research on Wikipedia. As I acknowledged elsewhere, they got some things very right, but some things badly wrong:
"diluting the value of the barnstar"as expressed by Noyster. This was also my primary concern. Bus stop ( talk) 21:59, 2 January 2019 (UTC)
ad hominem attacks. The questioning was solely a consequence of the researchers' choice to leave this info to be dragged out of them in multiple rounds. I stand by comment above that I have
concerns about the candour and transparencyof these researchers. I hope that in future, WMF will advise researchers to be much more candid in their initial approach, and to respond to any questions or suspicions with enthusisastic transparency rather than the defensiveness displayed here. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 07:54, 4 January 2019 (UTC)
Is there a way to encode a wikilink so that it calls Special:RandomInCategory with a specific category? The Help:Special page entry for that call doesn't say, and the form at the link looks like it is using the Post method. Praemonitus ( talk) 22:58, 15 January 2019 (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.
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A year and a half ago Kurdish forces in Syria apprehended an American, said to be fleeing a rapidly deflating ISIS. I started an article American ISIS fighter. I predicted, at its AFD, that we would soon learn his name, when lawyers filed a habeas corpus request, on his behalf.
Habeas Corpus petitions were filed. But his name has been redacted.
It seems the NYTimes determined the name, months ago, through a review of captured Daesh documents. But they didn't publish it until a few days ago.
So, is a single source, even the NYTimes, publishing a name, based on speculation, enough to rename the article? Should the article remain at the current name, but include the name, saying it is based solely on NYTimes speculation? Geo Swan ( talk) 20:51, 30 October 2018 (UTC)
The man, a dual American and Saudi citizen, was captured in September 2017 by a Kurdish militia in Syria. The Kurds turned him over to the American military, which held him as a wartime detainee at a base in Iraq while a court battle over his fate played out. The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said he was released in Bahrain, where his wife and daughter are living.
{{
cite news}}
: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (
link) CS1 maint: url-status (
link) ... The individual's name is in the linked article along with their reasons for knowing it. —
Anomalocaris (
talk) 00:23, 31 October 2018 (UTC)
I began this discussion at Talk:Second Amendment to the United States Constitution#Reject "supports the Second Amendment" phraseology. Someone recommended that I move it to Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals) but Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous) seems to me to be a better fit.
A Google search for "supports the second amendment" (with the quotes) on English Wikipedia, "supports the second amendment" site:en.wikipedia.org, has 24 results. There are several problems with Wikipedia saying that an individual or organization "supports the Second Amendment". In many cases, Wikipedia would be echoing that individual or organization's own ipse dixit claim, which is not coming from a third-party reliable source. Even if it comes from a reliable source, the phrase "supports the Second Amendment" could mean many possible interpretations of the Second Amendment, so the reader learns nothing about the individual or group's actual views on gun ownership and carry. Most important, though, is that in most cases, "supports the Second Amendment" is used to mean support for an interpretation of the Second Amendment emphasizing an individual right to own and carry guns. Until District of Columbia v. Heller, U.S. courts had continually held that the Second Amendment did not include an individual right to own and carry guns, and in this point remains controversial. Notably, a Google search for "opposes the second amendment" on English Wikipedia, "opposes the second amendment" site:en.wikipedia.org, has zero results (although that will change when this page is indexed), which suggests that groups and individuals that support limitations on gun ownership and carry do not describe themselves, and are not described by others, as opposing the Second Amendment, which in turn means that groups and individuals that generally oppose limitations on gun ownership and carry should not be described as supporting the Second Amendment. (Without restricting to English Wikipedia, there are 213,000 results for "supports the second amendment" and only 50 for "opposes the second amendment", confirming my point.)
Wikipedia should not take sides in the disputed interpretation of the meaning of the Second Amendment and should not use phrases like "supports the Second Amendment"; instead Wikipedia should say more precisely that an individual or organization supports an interpretation of the Second Amendment that ..." or otherwise describes their views on what limitations should or should not exist with respect to gun ownership and carry. I look forward to a discussion on this topic, and if there is a consensus, we can edit articles that are out of alignment with that consensus. Here are some examples of language illustrating the problem:
After consensus forms here, I would like to be able to refer to this discussion in future edit summaries to minimize risk of reversion. — Anomalocaris ( talk) 07:19, 30 October 2018 (UTC)
Let me see if I understand the consensus on this:
All of this assumes that the claims about Hackenbush meet the requirements of WP:V, WP:RS and WP:WEIGHT.
Do I understand the consensus correctly, or did I get it wrong? -- Guy Macon ( talk) 09:10, 31 October 2018 (UTC)
Let someone rename article " Kastriot principality" to "Principality of Kastrioti", User:Doltjank is renamed the article in the last edit ... "Kastriot principality" (and " Kastriot Principality") it should be a redirect on article "Principality of Kastrioti" -- SrpskiAnonimac ( talk) 13:02, 26 October 2018 (UTC)
@
Galobtter: Rename and article "
Makovo, Republic of Macedondia" in "Makovo, Republic of Macedonia", wrongly written..."Makovo, Republic of Macedondia" should be deleted --
SrpskiAnonimac (
talk) 17:05, 1 November 2018 (UTC)
Why do they only appear when one is not signed in? People who can be bothered to sign in are going to be more likely to contribute than IPs. Lilac Amethyst ( talk) 16:32, 1 November 2018 (UTC)
This article opened my eyes: https://medium.com/s/powertrip/wikipedias-top-secret-hired-guns-will-make-you-matter-for-a-price-a4bdace476ae . Is there a place on these pages to discuss these things? 5.34.89.241 ( talk) 05:48, 3 November 2018 (UTC)
Note that Shin Seong-il died on 3 november according to Google. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 109.185.175.84 ( talk) 13:04, 3 November 2018 (UTC)
Check out this xkcd comic. [1] Landmarks on the map (in gray) are links to Wikipedia articles with coordinates pointing to places in the United States. That's hilarious, isn't it? -- Agusbou2015 ( talk) 23:05, 3 November 2018 (UTC)
Self-nominations for the 2018 English Wikipedia Arbitration Committee elections are now open. The nomination period runs from Sunday 00:00, 4 November (UTC) until Tuesday 23:59, 13 November 2018 (UTC). Editors interested in running should review the eligibility criteria listed at the top of Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee Elections December 2018/Candidates, then create a candidate page by following the instructions there. SQL Query me! 18:07, 4 November 2018 (UTC)
Maybe I am getting dotty, but I could not find the Village Pump where I expected to get access to it, via the Community portal. Shouldn't it be findable there? How is someone not aware of it supposed to find it from the list of things we have? Kdammers ( talk) 05:51, 3 November 2018 (UTC)
A recent - and in my view, very bad - decision at TfD was to delete {{ Goodreads author}} and {{ Goodreads book}}. I noticed today that the latter has been orphaned, and that we currently have virtually no article space links to the Goodreads website
The decision at TfD was to delete the template, and gave no mandate to remove the links, and so instances of the template should have been Subst:.
I can not find who deleted these links, but they should be restored. Links using the author template should likewise not be deleted. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 18:58, 3 November 2018 (UTC)
There is clearly consensus to link to Goodreads in the articles using the deleted template, because it was not removed from those articles by their editors, prior to its deletion.That is not how it works. The WP:SILENT consensus by the links being in the article is overridden by the consensus at WP:ELN and WP:TFD that the vast majority of links were not appropriate; and so the use should be justified on a case by case basis. I'd say the main reason (as the closer of the Tfd) that people sought the removal, is that they didn't think Goodreads provided
neutral and accurate material that is relevant to an encyclopedic understanding of the subject and cannot be integrated into the Wikipedia article due to copyright issuesper WP:ELYES. Galobtter ( pingó mió) 20:24, 4 November 2018 (UTC)
Ok... let me try to clarify the situation: The two goodreads templates have now been deleted. 1) while that deletion can be challenged, this is not the venue to challenge it. 2) Assuming the deletion is upheld, the question then becomes, what next? Do we allow non-templated links or not... and if so under what circumstances? Blueboar ( talk) 21:27, 4 November 2018 (UTC)
I now see that even while this discussion is underway' {{Goodreads author}}
has been deleted without subsitution, removing links from articles (
example) This is outrageous.
Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing);
Talk to Andy;
Andy's edits 10:19, 5 November 2018 (UTC)
why growth of en Wikipedia articles decrease than years ago example in 2006 add 665000 articles and in 2017 add 220000 articles Amirh123 ( talk) 14:02, 6 November 2018 (UTC)
While facts themselves are not copyrightable, at what point would a machine learning model that learned to ask and answer questions using wikipedia content be subject to the copyleft clause for wikipedia content? In terms of generative writing style, a model would be a statistical summary of the writing styles on wikipedia i.e. a derived work of the copyrightable presentation of the non-copyrightable facts. On the other hand, a reformulation of words based on reading other works is precisely what humans can and would do if they "ingested" wikipedia, and I don't believe there would be any issue with a human using wikipedia as a source of verifiable content and writing or synthesizing new text (for example question and answer texts) in their own words.
Related, is knowledge derived by analyzing meta data about wikipedia such as the link structure between articles considered derived content and therefore copyleft territory? Notabotyet ( talk) 03:59, 10 November 2018 (UTC)
I wanted to share this with the pump readers. Also posted on help desk and teahouse.
TimTempleton (talk) (cont) 22:46, 9 November 2018 (UTC)
If I attempt to post to Wikipedia:Reference desk/Entertainment, I currently get:
Now, first, I have no intention of ever having a Wikipedia account. I'm talking about posting from an IP address, as I am doing here. And second, I understand that this "throttling" is going on because there have been ongoing vandalism attacks on the reference desks, and I have no problem with such actions being taken.
But there are still problems. First, there is no notification at the top of the page (as there would be if it was semi-protected) to say that this is going on. I only found out after I had composed my posting. That's not nice.
Second, there is no option (as there would be if it was semi-protected) to post an "edit request" to a page where someone more privileged can verify that the posting is constructive and post it.
Third, there is no explanation of what "throttling" even means, or what "this filter" is blocking.
Would someone please arrange for better information to be provided? -- 76.69.46.228 ( talk) 15:14, 10 November 2018 (UTC)
Thanks for the answers. -- 76.69.46.228 ( talk) 15:28, 11 November 2018 (UTC)
Hi! Can you please sign the petition to TASS and RIAN requesting them to release certain historic photos for Wikimedia by adding your signature to the signature section? Also, please do spread the word to other Wikipedians. Thanks, -- PlanespotterA320 ( talk) 16:15, 11 November 2018 (UTC)
I recently got an email from Flickr.
"After February 5, 2019, free accounts that contain over 1,000 photos or videos will have content deleted -- starting from oldest to newest date uploaded -- to meet the new limit. Members may always choose to download content over the limit at any time prior to these dates."
I've noticed many of the images in Wikipedia articles came from Flickr.
Perhaps we should make an effort to transfer over as much as we can before it's too late?
Benjamin ( talk) 05:10, 13 November 2018 (UTC)
I recently received this promotional spam. Most likely Wiki Professionals Inc is already known to the Wikipedia community, but just in case. —Sothomensch (Tom Holzinger)
WikiPedia <david.wilson@wikipageinc.com> To: <redacted> Oct. 13 at 8:05 a.m. Thomas Holzinger, Do you think Gangnam Style, Justin Bieber and Adele went viral based on just the quality of their work? You’d be wrong if you thought so! Generating the right type and amount of exposure for yourself or your business is not just a matter of fate or chance but rather a focused and calculated work of digital sciences. In the digital age, businesses, actors, writers, singers and everyone else who wants to be popular have teams working for them to strategize and manage their content and reputation over the internet. We believe it’s time you took a step in the same direction to get the fire started. What do we propose? We will take you and your business truly global with a place on the world’s largest online encyclopedia, taking you instantly to the top of your league! It might look like a simple page on Wikipedia but here is what you really need to know to understand the real power of Wiki. 1. Wikipedia is the largest and most popular general reference work on the Internet. 2. It is ranked the fifth-most popular website. 3. It comprises more than 40 million articles in 299 different languages. 4. The encyclopedia has 18 billion page views and nearly 500 million unique visitors each month. 5. Wikipedia's level of accuracy has approached that of Encyclopedia Britannica. We are not saying that this is all you’ll ever need to go from common to ‘famously known’ but this will surely be the smartest first step towards it. Interested to know more about it? Don’t wait any longer! We are offering a Special 85% discount on our Digital Services this New Year Click Here to Activate your 85% Off Deal Now. Your Sincerely, David Wilson Senior Consultant Wiki Professionals Inc 4330 Clarence Court Fayetteville, NC 28306
— Preceding unsigned comment added by Sothomensch ( talk • contribs) 05:12, 9 November 2018 (UTC)
Change coming to how certain templates will appear on the mobile web
Please help translate to other languages.
Hello,
In a few weeks the Readers web team will be changing how some templates look on the mobile web site. We will make these templates more noticeable when viewing the article. We ask for your help in updating any templates that don't look correct.
What kind of templates? Specifically templates that notify readers and contributors about issues with the content of an article – the text and information in the article. Examples like Template:Unreferenced or Template:More citations needed. Right now these notifications are hidden behind a link under the title of an article. We will format templates like these (mostly those that use Template:Ambox or message box templates in general) to show a short summary under the page title. You can tap on the "Learn more" link to get more information.
For template editors we have some recommendations on how to make templates that are mobile-friendly and also further documentation on our work so far.
If you have questions about formatting templates for mobile, please leave a note on the project talk page or file a task in Phabricator and we will help you.
Thank you!
CKoerner (WMF) ( talk) 19:34, 13 November 2018 (UTC)
Headbomb is changing this OK with current English Wikipedia policy? -- Magioladitis ( talk) 22:20, 13 November 2018 (UTC)
I generally don't post information about my Wikipedia research here, but I feel this one is VERY relevant to our community, so here it goes :) I put my 10+ years of Wikipedia experience into writing this, as I think the issues I discuss there are something that is quite important for the project's (and our) well-being and future health. The official release is likely paywalled ( [3]) but I did upload a pre-print copy to academia.edu ( [4]), at worst, you need to create a free account to download it. -- Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 04:09, 8 November 2018 (UTC)
Hi, is there any maintenance template requesting that an article be checked by a native speaker of English for grammatical and/or spelling mistakes? Some hours ago, I overhauled some parts of maximal entropy random walk and wondered in some places whether the sentence order is correct (e.g. choose stochastic matrix such that) or if nouns are missing articles (e.g. all vertices but the marked ones have additional self-loop or analogy to electrons in defected lattice of semi-conductor). However, not being a native speaker of English, I cannot decide whether this is just a matter of style.
If there is an appropriate maintenance template, please tell me so I can place it in the article; or, if someone just happens to have time, feel free to check the article now. -- 78.50.153.140 ( talk) 19:31, 11 November 2018 (UTC)
Was there any discussion about YouTube using Wikipedia content? Benjamin ( talk) 06:48, 14 November 2018 (UTC)
At Talk:Queen_Street_West#Requested_move_13_November_2018 I requested a move and got 2 supports. The idea was to move Queen Street West to Queen Street (Toronto), but I've found some issues. First of all, Queen Street, Toronto exist, which would become a redirect. I created a page at User:BrandonXLF/Queen Street (Toronto), that would become the new Queen Street (Toronto). The issue is Queen Street (Toronto) exist, so do we need to do a history merge (meaning Queen Street (Toronto) would have to be deleted)? If so, do we move User:BrandonXLF/Queen Street (Toronto) to it (which takes content from Queen Street West), or do we merge Queen Street West to it then add the content at User:BrandonXLF/Queen Street (Toronto) to it (I added a lot of extra content and rewrote/created many sections of the article). Of course, Queen Street West isn't being deleted so we can just provide attribution using {{ copied}} and an edit summery? Is that sufficient? – BrandonXLF (t@lk) 02:55, 15 November 2018 (UTC)
Currently, Category:Unassessed Pennsylvania articles has Category:Unassessed Lehigh Valley articles and Category:Unassessed Philadelphia articles, but not Category:Unassessed Erie articles. Please add Erie as a category within Pennsylvania.-- Dthomsen8 ( talk) 13:48, 15 November 2018 (UTC)
NPR NEEDS YOU! New Page Reviewers operate the only firewall against junk, attack, spam, and undeclared paid editing which has aways made up the majority of a day's intake of new pages masquerading as articles. Community Wishlist Voting is taking place now until 30 November for the Page Curation and New Pages Feed improvements, and other software requests. The NPP community is hoping for a good turnout in support of the requests to Santa for the tools that are urgently needed. This is very important as the Foundation has been constantly asked for these upgrades for 4 years. The Page Curation suite of tools now stands a good chance of getting long awaited attention to the upgraded tools it needs, but it needs your help: whether you are an active patroller or just want a junk-free encyclopedia, the Community Wishlist Survey – needs you: Vote NOW, and do also consider applying to become a New Page Reviewer. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง ( talk) 12:01, 18 November 2018 (UTC)
The Community Wishlist Survey. Please help translate to other languages..
Hey everyone,
The Community Wishlist Survey is the process when the Wikimedia communities decide what the Wikimedia Foundation Community Tech should work on over the next year.
The Community Tech team is focused on tools for experienced Wikimedia editors. The communities have now posted a long list of technical proposals. You can vote on the proposals from now until 30 November. You can read more on the wishlist survey page.
/ User:Johan (WMF)18:13, 22 November 2018 (UTC)
There is a serious issue with a backlog at this page that needs urgent attention by the wider community and some measure to fix this issue permanently.
Lurking shadow ( talk) 21:43, 15 November 2018 (UTC)
I have looked for the article on the reagality theory but I have not been able to find it. Has it been deleted? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 181.22.87.129 ( talk) 22:15, 23 November 2018 (UTC)
Article " Makovo, Macedonia" needs to be renamed to " Makovo, Republic of Macedondia" (there are two more similarly written articles, see here: Category:Villages in Novaci Municipality...see also here: Makovo). Article " Makovo, Republic of Macedondia" should be deleted because it is wrongly written. -- SrpskiAnonimac ( talk) 15:42, 24 November 2018 (UTC)
May we have some input at two Rfcs occurring on the talkpage of Wikipedia:WikiProject Biography/Politics and government? It concerns infobox content of politician bios. GoodDay ( talk) 16:52, 24 November 2018 (UTC)
Please verify the articles of the user: الصبي الهندي, its showing something like paid news, the user is also updated the same articles in malayalam wikipedia, but there is no other articles are there with his id. Check the statistics In English Wiki, in Malayalam Wiki- Rajesh K Odayanchal ( talk) 11:54, 27 November 2018 (UTC)
Hey Everyone,
Today, Tuesday 27th November @ 16:00 UTC, we will launch our desktop banner campaigns with mobile launching on Thursday. We expect to run the fundraising campaign on English Wikipedia in 6 countries: USA, Canada, UK, Ireland, Australia, and New Zealand. You may notice some final systems tests running between now and then.
You can see all of our current most effective fundraising banners on our Fundraising Ideas page where you can also contribute any specific ideas or stories we should tell via social media, banners, emails etc. ( https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising/2018-19_Fundraising_ideas )
Like last year, we will come to you for ideas and suggestions to test. In addition to bringing in donations, we aim to use the campaign to educate all readers about Wikipedia and the community who creates it. The fundraising team’s A/B testing strategy works in iterative steps, so look at our banners and have a think about what one element you would change or add and how would you make it different. Think of sentences we can use to tell our story that would make you proud. Look at other non-profit websites and see if there are ideas that you think we should try.
To get people thinking, here is a list of things of what works and what does not:
WHAT WORKS
WHAT DOESN'T
If you see any technical issues with the banners or payments systems please do report it on phabricator: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/maniphest/task/create/?template=118862
If you see a donor on a talk page, OTRS, or social media with questions about donating or having difficulties in the donation process, please refer them to: donate wikimedia.org.
Here is also the ever present fundraising IRC channel to raise urgent technical issues: #wikimedia-fundraising ( http://webchat.freenode.net?channels=%23wikimedia-fundraising&uio=d4)
A huge thank you to everyone here who works to create and support Wikipedia and who make it a resource that people love and want to donate to. Fingers crossed!
Regards Seddon (WMF) ( talk) 14:53, 27 November 2018 (UTC)
Please comment:
Thank you. Levivich ( talk) 01:51, 30 November 2018 (UTC)
hi I want a web site to have all : Provinces, Prefectures, Counties, Cities, Districts and... more in all countries around world Amirh123 ( talk) 15:32, 20 November 2018 (UTC)
what site have all Provinces, Prefectures, Counties, Cities, Districts and... — Preceding unsigned comment added by Amirh123 ( talk • contribs) 14:18, 23 November 2018 (UTC)
Is there a time limit on how long red-linked requested articles should stay at Wikipedia: Requested articles? Vorbee ( talk) 17:57, 28 November 2018 (UTC)
I'm looking for the right venue in order to attract more eyeballs to a discussion about a proposed large rollback at Roman diocese. The discussion is already listed at two WikiProjects (and has garnered one response) and I've pinged the top ten editors. WP:3O doesn't seem to be the right place to go, because that's for disputes that have been "thoroughly discussed on the article talk page", and this hasn't been because the other party will not engage there or on his user page. WP:DR doesn't seem right either, since DR is "an informal place to resolve small content disputes" and this is not small, and not a dispute since they won't talk. WP:HD and WP:RD are not appropriate. So, where do I post to ask for feedback? I'm a bit nervous about pulling the trigger to reduce an article by 130 kb without a few more opinions, although I think it's the right thing to do. How do I get more eyeballs on this, or do I just go ahead and do it, and see if anyone objects? (Ping please.) Thanks, Mathglot ( talk) 21:52, 1 December 2018 (UTC)
Can someone rename the article " Milevska Planina" in " Milevska planina"...that the article be written the same as other articles about the mountains in Serbia and Bulgaria (see: Category:Mountains of Serbia and Category:Mountains of Bulgaria), with a small letter "P" -- SrpskiAnonimac ( talk) 23:03, 29 November 2018 (UTC)
Do you think these people would write and get accepted a nice article about me? I'm a great guy. https://www.legalmorning.com/writing-services/wikipedia-articles/ Rhadow ( talk) 19:13, 1 December 2018 (UTC)
User: Rhadow in order to have an article written about you, you would have to pass the notability threshold. Vorbee ( talk) 16:35, 2 December 2018 (UTC)
If I have enough money to pay this outfit to write a vanity article about me, do you think that would make me notable enough? Rhadow ( talk) 16:44, 2 December 2018 (UTC)
Hi Team,
I am interested in opening a page to publish my works in the field of cinematography. Kindly assist me in creating one.
Thanks & Regards, Ashokkumar — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ananee05 ( talk • contribs) 16:03, 2 December 2018 (UTC)
These articles both feature a "Not to be confused with" notice to each other, but this seems more comical than functional to me. I can't see how anyone would assume that "Little Englander" is a generic term for English people, nor why anyone searching for the term "English people" would in actual fact be looking for this rather ephemeral article. It's as though we prefixed the article on Dawn French with a notice saying "Not to be confused with the ethnic group from France". Am I missing something, or should these notices be removed? -- Newbiepedian ( talk · C · X! · L) 18:42, 2 December 2018 (UTC)
I have put in my name for consideration of the Bot Approvals Group. Those interested in discussing the matter are invited to do so here. Thank you for your input. Primefac ( talk) 00:42, 4 December 2018 (UTC)
I am writing to tell you that the project Wikipedia Cultural Diversity Observatory (WCDO) has presented a plan for a second phase to extend the project and provide tools based on the data collected.
As a reminder, the WCDO aims at providing valuable strategic data in order to fight for more cultural diversity in each Wikipedia language edition. In the previous phase, we collected the Cultural Context Content (CCC) datasets for all 300 language editions and provided some top priority articles for different topics such as women-men, geolocated, among others (named Top CCC articles). The infrastructure for the project has been set (datasets and website).
In this new phase, we plan to create many more tools and visualizations: Top CCC article lists based on community member suggestions, but most importantly, to create a tool to monitor the gaps on a monthly basis and serve it as a newsletter. This way editors are able to constantly see the efforts dedicated to create geolocated articles or cultural context content more in general related to other language editions.
Also, we plan to research on marginalized languages in order to see which have more potential to become a new Wikipedia language edition, start creating content about their cultural context ("decolonizing the Internet"), and increase the overall cultural diversity of the project. Most of the project efforts are dedicated to data-compiling and analysis. However, there is a lot of work to do in disseminating the results and tools so they can create more impact in helping local events such as contests. If you think you can join the project, please write us at tools.wcdo@tools.wmflabs.org. If you consider this may be helpful, please help us, provide some feedback and endorse the project.
You take a look at the project plan here: meta:Grants:Project/WCDO/Culture Gap Monthly Monitoring
Thanks in advance for your time. All the feedback is welcome. Best, -- Marcmiquel ( talk) 14:18, 4 December 2018 (UTC)
First 5 articles on Wikipedia, as reported by API:Allpages sorted alphabetically
-- Green C 16:43, 4 December 2018 (UTC)
The Wikimedia Foundation security team is implementing a new password policy and requirements. You can learn more about the project on MediaWiki.org.
These new requirements will apply to new accounts and privileged accounts. New accounts will be required to create a password with a minimum length of 8 characters. Privileged accounts will be prompted to update their password to one that is at least 10 characters in length.
These changes are planned to be in effect on December 13th. If you think your work or tools will be affected by this change, please let us know on the talk page.
Thank you!
CKoerner (WMF) ( talk) 20:02, 6 December 2018 (UTC)
Don't know the correct board for this, but user keeps editing articles to add information that the article persons are christian, in places it doesn't need to be stated, but on the flipside has edited another article to remove information denoting that this person is Jewish, claiming that it is irrelevant information. Is this bad faith editing? @ Tornado chaser: -glove- ( talk) 00:08, 7 December 2018 (UTC) -glove- ( talk) 23:57, 6 December 2018 (UTC)
I would like to know which is the correct link in English wikipedia for [ this] page. Adithyak1997 ( talk) 07:19, 5 December 2018 (UTC)
all wikipedias has 49 2000 000 articles I want know how many articles creating with bots — Preceding unsigned comment added by Amirh123 ( talk • contribs) 17:49, 7 December 2018 (UTC)
There is a form of words on Referring to 1924 Prime Minister's Resignation Honours "The King has been pleased to direct the following be sworn of His Majesty's Most Honourable Privy Council:"
That seems to me to be archaic and unencyclopedic. It is a direct copy of the London Gazette announcement; wikipedia in 2018 is not bound to follow anachronistic rhetorical flourishes used in court announcements.
Although this much should be obvious to us all, User:Wikimandia objects that we should use this wording - see Talk:1924 Prime Minister's Resignation Honours.
I'd be grateful for discussion & opinion here, a posting on Wikipedia:WikiProject Orders, decorations, and medals having gone unanswered. -- Tagishsimon ( talk) 01:11, 5 December 2018 (UTC)
Do we have a policy on when and how published articles may be moved to draft?
While it's better than deletion in some cases. I'm concerned that it occurs with no wider community attention, and may be a de facto as a "deletion by stealth".
Even speedy deletion requires two editors to be in agreement.
Perhaps we should have a template, like {{ Db}}, but for this use case? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 12:16, 7 December 2018 (UTC)
Please visit Talk:Zodiac Seats U.S.#Requested move 4 December 2018 to discuss moving Zodiac Seats U.S. to Safran Seats. -- Jax 0677 ( talk) 15:47, 8 December 2018 (UTC)
You are invited to join these discussions:
Wikipedia:Deletion review#1960–61 United States network television schedule (Saturday morning)
Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/1980–81 United States network television schedule (Saturday morning)
Thank you.
Levivich ( talk) 16:58, 8 December 2018 (UTC)
Shouldn't there be a main article that encompasses the subjects of non-theatrical films like Direct-to-video and Television film? The two articles don't need to merge immediately, but I was thinking: Direct-to-video films are often shown on TV, and Television films will eventually released on home media and digital anyway. Plus, there's a trend among streaming services (like Netflix and Amazon Video) that they offer original films. That's actually a blend of both mediums, because such services act like a mix of premium TV channels (without linear TV presence) and home media platform (without physical releases). JSH-alive/ talk/ cont/ mail 12:21, 26 November 2018 (UTC)
Hi all. An update about the experiment for eliciting new editor interests mentioned here earlier. documented, the first design of the experiment did not result in enough responses in the second stage. We have iterated on it based on the learnings and designed a new one which has significantly reduced the steps and cognitive load which was required in the first trial. In the coming 48 hours, we will start reaching out to those who registered on enwiki in September 2018 or later to encourage them to participate in the new design of the experiment. We do not expect this test to have impact on experienced editors. If you do observe an issue, please ping me here or on the project's talk page. Thank you! -- LZia (WMF) ( talk) 23:27, 10 December 2018 (UTC)
I'm working to measure the value of Wikipedia in economic terms. I want to ask you some questions about how you value being able to edit Wikipedia using a 10-15 minute survey.
I hope that you will enjoy it and find the questions interesting. All answers will be kept strictly confidential and will be anonymized before the aggregate results are published. Regretfully, my team and I can only accept responses from people who live in the US due to restrictions in our grant-based funding.
As a reward for your participation, we will randomly pick 1 out of every 5 participants and give them $25 worth of goods of their choice from the Wikipedia store (e.g. Wikipedia themed t-shirts).
-- avi_gan Researcher, MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy ~~~~~
Files Go has been renamed to Files by Google, please move Files Go to Files by Google (please keep the original page as a redirect page). Thanks. -- XL-028 ( talk) 03:13, 11 December 2018 (UTC)
There is currently an research survey being conducted by researchers at Dalian University of Technology. You can read about the research on Meta. The research involves asking Wikipedia editors for personal information, and then associating that personal information with their editing behaviors in order to construct personality profiles. EpochFail and I have asked the researchers a series of questions and urged them to follow best practices for responsible Wikipedia research, and to offer some basic documentation (e.g. data collection and retention, institutional review) demonstrating that this research will be conducted in an ethical fashion. The researchers have not responded adequately to our stated concerns. I am concerned that participating in this study will expose editors to risk, and recommend that editors not fill out this survey. Regards, J-Mo 20:14, 12 December 2018 (UTC)
Some time ago, following this short discussion someone added {{ NOINDEX}} to {{ Undisclosed paid}}. As a result, pages on important topics such as Simon & Schuster, Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company, and Swansea University are currently excluded from Google search results (and, in the latter case, has been for a quarter of a year); despite no significant issues with the article content being identified on their talk pages. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 13:56, 3 December 2018 (UTC)
"has no effect in the main (article) namespace unless the article is less than 90 days old", but its not clear whether that is 90 days since creation, or last edit. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 14:39, 3 December 2018 (UTC)
<meta name="robots" content="noindex,nofollow"/>
. —
xaosflux
Talk 15:46, 3 December 2018 (UTC)
"If people didn't want the articles about their companies taken out of the searches, they shouldn't have edited them."And what about the cases where there is no evidence that they have edited them? Or where the editor does have a COI, but there is nothing actually wrong the the content? Not to mention the fact that anyone can apparently have their competitors article removed from Google's index of Wikipedia by creating a throw-away account in their name. Or indeed the one about themselves, if they deem it too negative. Do we really want to give them that capability? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 16:17, 3 December 2018 (UTC)
As a thought experiment as it has been announced that Voyager 2 has entered interstellar space.
If there was an equivalent probe launched, with a modern version of the Voyager Golden Record, and Wikipedia was invited to contribute, what pages in particular should be included or created as showing what can be done? Jackiespeel ( talk) 17:52, 12 December 2018 (UTC)
Pitch competition (currently a redlink) seems widely used on WP and elsewhere, apparently referring to a competition in which participants pitch an idea to a group, which then decides which idea (if any) is best. A redirect to sales presentation seems off-target for competitions that are more like debates or persuasion than sales proposals, like research projects and Wikipedia policies. New article or a better target? —[ AlanM1( talk)]— 02:20, 14 December 2018 (UTC)
Our longest pages are, presently:
and we have more than 500 articles that are over 300,000 bytes. That is far too big.
I have started discussion on the talk pages of some of those listed above, as have others, so far mostly to little avail. What is to be done? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 21:10, 5 December 2018 (UTC)
Some current discussions, where there is resistance to splitting long pages, include: Talk:List of compositions by Johann Sebastian Bach#Problems with using this page and Talk:List of compositions by Franz Schubert#This article is far too long. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 12:45, 10 December 2018 (UTC)
I think the above examples are ample evidence that we have an issue when it comes to gaining consensus to split over-long artciles. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 15:28, 14 December 2018 (UTC)
Why does enwiki not have a WP:TROLL page? Just when I needed it! It only links to mw and so. - DePiep ( talk) 03:16, 15 December 2018 (UTC)
On The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt I had replaced File:Witcher 3 cover art.jpg with File:The Witcher 3 - Standard Edition Unboxing (Official Trailer) cover.jpg. I thought this was right because Wikipedia:Non-free content#Meeting the no free equivalent criterion says: "Non-free content cannot be used in cases where a free content equivalent, with an acceptable quality sufficient to serve the encyclopedic purpose, is available or could be created."
But it was rolled back by The1337gamer without comment.
When asked, The1337gamer said "Blurry, miscoloured, PEGI rating and says "PROVISIONAL" in the bottom left. Objectively inferior quality to the non-free version."
Uh yeah no argument there (though I don't think it's miscoloured), but the replacement is "an acceptable quality sufficient to serve the encyclopedic purpose" imho? But it isn't? I'm not sure I understand. - Alexis Jazz 11:36, 13 December 2018 (UTC)
There is an article named Student Day (Iran) as the anniversary of the murder of three students of University of Tehran on December 7, 1953 (16 Azar 1332 in the Iranian calendar), here the student refers to people who study courses in university, in other hand it is seen another anniversary about demonstrations of students to show their objection of Pahlavi on November 4, 1978 (13 Aban 1357), here the student refers to people who study courses in (elementary, secondary or high) school. By the way, I am going to collect some material relevant to 13 Aban anniversary as a paragraph into Student Day (Iran) or creating the new article, but I face with a problem for naming. How is it made difference between students who study in university and school? I exactly discuss the title. Saff V. ( talk) 07:20, 15 December 2018 (UTC)
I'll note that "college" or "post-secondary" (in the U.S. at least) is sometimes further divided by "under-graduate" (or "under-grad") and "graduate", distinguishing between students that are studying for a Bachelor's degree (or equivalent) and those that have completed a Bachelor's and are studying for higher degrees, respectively; all with or without hyphens. Not that any of those would be right for the article title, which, I think, should be named per a "standard" translation of the Farsi name (which appears to be the current name, "Student Day", right?), if it is to remain named for the memorial day. I.e. we can't rename the memorial day even though we think it might be ambiguously named . —[ AlanM1( talk)]— 15:02, 15 December 2018 (UTC)
Does the 10 edits and 4 days autoconfirmation have any value at all? The spammers just create accounts by the truckload, do 10 random edits to get them autoconfirmed, then warehouse the account until the next time they need to create an article. Has this really done us any good? -- RoySmith (talk) 22:51, 17 December 2018 (UTC)
Off-topic
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Wikimedia Foundation To whom it may concern, I noticed signficant amount of non-heterosexual discrimination on the website
https://pricaonica.krstarica.com. According to their Terms of Service (
https://pricaonica.krstarica.com/pravilnik/) all sorts of discrimination on any basis is prohibited. What steps may I take? Thank you in advance. Vs6 507 12:26, 21 December 2018 (UTC)
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This question has been bugging me. There were a few discussions in 2017 that led to the consensus that "community-imposed blocks" must be appealed to the community and cannot be unilaterally undone by an admin. But what about when talk page access was abused and then removed, and a block appeal is made by UTRS? How does the process work then? (Note that I a particular case brought this to mind, but it is already "too late" to affect that case; this is meant as a general question.) Hijiri 88 ( 聖 やや) 16:08, 21 December 2018 (UTC)
Can we get some comments at the fact we list hundreds of automated portals on our community page. Pls see Wikipedia talk:Community portal#Time to get rid of the portal spam.-- Moxy ( talk) 14:45, 22 December 2018 (UTC)
Hello! If you are autoconfirmed and willing to help, there is currently a ~50 edit backlog of semi-protected page edit requests, see list at User:AnomieBOT/SPERTable. Thank you! — xaosflux Talk 16:36, 24 December 2018 (UTC)
Has there ever been a content dispute that was impossible to resolve?
I know that there are dispute resolution mechanisms, but is it possible for those to fail at establishing consensus?
ArbCom doesn't deal with content disputes, per se, so is there some other last resort for content disputes that has the final say?
Are there any issues where the community is pretty much evenly split?
Benjamin ( talk) 19:09, 17 December 2018 (UTC)
Is topic-banning someone from the "Wikipedia talk" namespace and all village pumps allowed, or does t violate some obscure policy/guideline? Someone at AN wants to do this to me, and therefore prevent me from participating in most proposals. Kamafa Delgato ( Lojbanist) Styrofoam is not made from kittens. 19:30, 23 December 2018 (UTC)
See FA lead. It now has an extra link (image-link of an open book, see topright next to the FA-gold star). That wikiversitary link is a horror, and outdated. Bad attributions also. Que pasa? - DePiep ( talk) 01:20, 25 December 2018 (UTC)
Please help translate to other languages.
Love is an important subject for humanity and it is expressed in different cultures and regions in different ways across the world through different gestures, ceremonies, festivals and to document expression of this rich and beautiful emotion, we need your help so we can share and spread the depth of cultures that each region has, the best of how people of that region, celebrate love.
Wiki Loves Love (WLL) is an international photography competition of Wikimedia Commons with the subject love testimonials happening in the month of February.
The primary goal of the competition is to document love testimonials through human cultural diversity such as monuments, ceremonies, snapshot of tender gesture, and miscellaneous objects used as symbol of love; to illustrate articles in the worldwide free encyclopedia Wikipedia, and other Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) projects.
The theme of 2019 iteration is Celebrations, Festivals, Ceremonies and rituals of love.
Sign up your affiliate or individually at Participants page.
To know more about the contest, check out our Commons Page and FAQs
There are several prizes to grab. Hope to see you spreading love this February with Wiki Loves Love!
Kind regards,
Imagine... the sum of all love!
-- MediaWiki message delivery ( talk) 10:12, 27 December 2018 (UTC)
What do I do if I find an image being used as fair use which I can demonstrate is, in fact, 100% free to use?
Now, the fair-use image is a highly-scaled down, oddly coloured copy, but File:Elinorglyn.jpg - which doesn't have any information about where the image came from, who made it, etc - is very clearly the same as http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2014680673/ - which a little further research ( [ http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/90714689/ is clearly from the same session) allows to be dated to c. 1908. In any case, it's {{ PD-Bain}}.
The easy solution might be to just upload the LoC copy, and switch over to it, letting the mislabelled one be deleted, but I don't want to confuse things. Adam Cuerden ( talk)Has about 8.9% of all FPs 23:00, 25 December 2018 (UTC)
It might help to check any contributions sourced to articles by Claas Relotius, who falsified details in articles. WhisperToMe ( talk) 10:03, 23 December 2018 (UTC)
Hello everybody,
There is an urgent need to discuss this with you.
We all felt sorry for what happened to the German magazine “Der Spiegel”. Years of lies and misinformation by a famous and trusted reporter.
What do we need to do to trust all the sources that Wikipedia is based on??? Alex-h ( talk) 23:38, 28 December 2018 (UTC)
I seek advice on the page User talk:Georges T..
That page contains an extensive piece of original research, apparently in violation of the policy WP:What_Wikipedia_is_not#BLOG. I have previously warned this user that they are misusing their user page. I don't think that User pages are ever eligible for deletion; and I'm not aware of any process for deleting the majority of the content from another user's talk page.
For what it's worth, I believe the material on that page is kooky, crazy nonsense. It's never been cited, because the author evidently can't get it published by any reputable academic journal. This editor occasionally makes changes to articles concerning timescales, such as Coordinated Universal Time - these changes are always reverted rather quickly. Remarks on the corresponding user page suggest that the user is bonkers.
It's worth noting that this user has opinions about copyright in material posted to Wikipedia that may diverge from Wikipedia policy (he expresses these opinions on his talk page). As far as I am aware, he is entitled to claim copyright in the material he posts, but he has automatically licensed that material to the whole world under CC-BY-SA as well as GFDL, by virtue of having posted it to Wikipedia. CC-BY-SA entitles the original author to demand attribution, but the GFDL does not confer any such entitlement. He has effectively given up all his rights under copyright, other than to sue someone who falsely claims to be the author. At least, that's the way I read it - IANAL.
Any advice welcome! MrDemeanour ( talk) 12:57, 4 January 2019 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous)/Archive 60#Makovo, Macedonia -- SrpskiAnonimac ( talk) 14:48, 28 December 2018 (UTC)
Hello. Many places in Cyprus (and Greece) named after saints. For example, Agia Varvara, Paphos named after Saint Barbara.
The word saint in Greek Language is Άγιος (masculine) or Αγία (feminine). So most of the places in English are written as Agios but some of them are as Ayios (Agia or Ayia). The problem is that there is not a common "rule" for that. Or is there and I just don't know it?
Most places name are written with g and some with y.
Should I move them and write them with g?
Xaris333 ( talk) 03:33, 6 January 2019 (UTC)
Hello,
There is a debate over the meaning of legacy for this individual--and by extension, to similar cases. All editors are invited to contribute to the discussion at
Georgejdorner ( talk) 18:43, 6 January 2019 (UTC)
Dear friends and colleagues,
We invite you to take part in the international contest “Learn the world. Start with twin cities” which is held from 1 November 2018 to 1 March 2019 and is organized by “Wikimedia RU” together with partners. Web page of the contest: " Discover the world. Start with the sister cities The purpose of this thematic marathon contest is to create articles in all languages of the world about the sights of cities and regions of Russia and their foreign sister and partner territories. Twin cities and partner territories are territories which have permanent friendly relations for mutual acquaintance with life, history and culture of each other.
Winners of the contest will receive prizes regardless of their citizenship and location anywhere in the world! JukoFF ( talk) 18:49, 10 January 2019 (UTC)
Hello! Is it a common practice to organize the professions of a person in the introduction of a biography article according to relevancy? For example, in Jacqueline Kennedy's article, the intro says "Jacqueline Lee Kennedy Onassis was an American book editor and socialite who was First Lady of the United States during the presidency of her husband". Are there guideline for this order of professions (book editor then politician)? Or is it left to editors?-- Reem Al-Kashif ( talk) 15:59, 12 January 2019 (UTC)
Looking at the sentence I think it is fine: "Jacqueline Lee Kennedy Onassis (née Bouvier /ˈbuːvieɪ/; July 28, 1929 – May 19, 1994) was an American book editor and socialite who was First Lady of the United States during the presidency of her husband, John F. Kennedy, from January 1961 until his assassination in November 1963." I would say the internal link highlights the role of First Lady of the United States, not to mention the name John F. Kennedy. I also think the construction of the sentence benefits from getting the minor role of "book editor" out of the way before addressing the more complicated part of the sentence. Bus stop ( talk) 20:39, 12 January 2019 (UTC)
I am just writing this to inform Village pump (miscellaneous) that I have requested to join the Bot Approvals Group (BAG). I invite your thoughts on the nomination subpage, which is located here. Thank you for your time. -- TheSandDoctor Talk 05:41, 14 January 2019 (UTC)
Hello everyone. In 2 weeks time, the latest (5th) edition of Wiki Loves Africa will launch on the theme Play for one month. Please check out the contest main page for details about the theme if you are directly interested and want to contribute pictures and join the fun online or locally.
But this message is also a pre-warning that hords of new and unexperienced users from Africa will join and upload pictures, that are often wonderful (but not really categorized or described) and sometimes terrible (blurred, irrelevant, promotional, copyrighted etc.). I would like to extend an invitation to you guys to help with image tracking and clean-up during the contest. If you plan to help heavily, please add your name to the team page so that we know where to go and who to ask if we have issues. But also, more generally, please help in keeping an eye on the general category where images will be uploaded (right now there is only a test picture from a painting from my daughter... but soon... we can expect probably around 10k images to look at). Your help will be tremendously and gratefully welcome.
Anthere ( talk) 14:33, 17 January 2019 (UTC)
This question has been moved to WP:HELPDESK. User670839245 ( talk) 07:52, 17 January 2019 (UTC)
I'm a researcher studying the effects of rewards on motivation. My team and I would like to run an experiment with barnstars on Wikipedia. We'll use data analysis to identify editors who are making substantial contributions to Wikipedia and we'll post barnstars on their talk pages. Our goal is to see if specific types of barnstars elicit different types of motivation reinforcement for an editor. For example, if we reward an editor for doing copy-editing work specifically, are they more likely to continue doing copy-editing work?
Our goal in all of this is to find effective strategies for increasing the long term retention of editors. To us, it appears that identifying way to motivate volunteers to stay and contribute is very important. For the continued viability of Wikipedia. And anyway, it's good to recognize people for their hard work.
I'm posting here today to announce the project and to invite you to highlight any potential issues with us posting barnstars. See metawiki:Research:How role-specific rewards influence Wikipedia editors’ contribution for our proposed study design. There, you can find our criteria for selecting editors to receive barnstars. We're interested in your insights. We're also very interested in working with anyone who would like to collaborate with us in this experiment. -- Diyiy ( talk) 23:20, 18 December 2018 (UTC)
Editors in the top 10% of those making edits adding substantive content or performing copy-editing actionsare. Is the top 10% just an evaluation of edit volume? I would be interested in helping hand out the barnstars, but I'm skeptical that edit volume is really indicative of quality contributions and would feel uncomfortable handing out barnstars on that basis alone. Additionally, I'd suggest an exclusion criterion that should be added: editors who are watching this page or who have participated in discussions on this page while this discussion is on the page. signed, Rosguill talk 07:15, 19 December 2018 (UTC)
References
While I think the results of the study could be very enlightening, I agree that this sounds a little too disruptive and disingenuous: I guess I fundamentally don't agree with awarding barnstars semi-arbitrarily; if someone told me that my first barnstar was awarded to me as part of an experiment to see if my behavior changed as a result, I'd probably be a little disappointed and upset to be used as a lab rat. There has to be enough legitimate barnstars already awarded for real reasons to study passively, aren't there? Can't a study be designed as a strict observation of existing barnstar awards to accomplish the same thing? Is there some reason that the study must award its own barnstars? CThomas3 ( talk) 03:14, 22 December 2018 (UTC)
As an aside...To show pasteurized process cheese and its cheese spread that there are no hard feelings: Mmmmmmmmm...pasteurized-process cheeeeeeeese. Shearonink ( talk) 21:46, 28 December 2018 (UTC)
If you want really see if barnstars work, try this find a sample size of users who meet at least the following criteria;
This criteria proves the people are long term editor who contributions are likely accepted, and importantly something the community would encouraged. Additionally they will be contactable by email this user. Divide the sample into 3 groups;
Measure their activity 1 day, 1 week, 1 month for however long you can. Then you're able to at least make a plausible causal inference about the impact of each style of contact including a correlation of the outcomes between each group both in the number and size of edits also the length of time they edit. Gnan garra 17:40, 28 December 2018 (UTC)
Our experimental treatment was to assign an informal, peer-to-peer reward, or ‘barnstar,’ to contributors who had never previously received one ... We focused on the top 10% of Wikipedia’s contributor community ... we removed those users who had administrative or elevated privileges, and excluded ... the bottom 90% of contributors by edit volume in the prior 30 days. We also screened out users who had previously received a barnstar ... After stratifying the population, we conducted a simple random sample of 200 subjects from each tier. The treatment consisted of anonymously placing a barnstar on the subjects’ user-talk page ... The barnstar we chose ... expressed community appreciation for their contributions, but it was not tailored to any recipient-specific activities or achievements. ... Contrary to theory, rewarding less productive editors did not stimulate higher subsequent productivity. ... The experimental results show that rewards can be used to sustain productivity among highly-active contributors at the top of the distribution, yet are ineffective in this regard for less-active contributors.
We test the effects of informal rewards in online peer production. Using a randomized, experimental design, we assigned editing awards or “barnstars” to a subset of the 1% most productive Wikipedia contributors. Comparison with the control group shows that receiving a barnstar increases productivity by 60% and makes contributors six times more likely to receive additional barnstars from other community members, revealing that informal rewards significantly impact individual effort.
To try to summarize the discussion and reach consensus, here are what I think are the main points raised so far. Sorry if I’ve gotten anything wrong or missed important points, but the discussion has been long, meandering and continually changing. In the summary, I’ll generally use the general term “recognition,” where Barnstars, Thanks, and WikiLove are all forms of positive recognition, because many of the concerns raised in the discussion apply independent of the type of recognition.
Diyiy, Your user page User:Diyiy links to your homepage http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~diyiy/ where you state "I am supported by Facebook Fellowship" Can you clarify if and how Facebook benefits from the research that you propose here? Thanks, Vexations ( talk) 20:49, 28 December 2018 (UTC)
@
Robertekraut wrote above at 22:13, 28 December
[12]: Facebook won't benefit at all from the research we've been describing
.
@
Diyiy wrote above at 02:15, 29 December
[13]: the proposed work has nothing to do with Facebook
.
However, https://research.fb.com/programs/fellowship/#Eligibility_Criteria says very clearly: "Applications Must Include: 250-word research summary which clearly identifies the area of focus, importance to the field and applicability to Facebook of the anticipated research during the award (reference the research areas below)". (underling added by BHG)
(The acceptable topics are set out further down that page at https://research.fb.com/programs/fellowship/#Research_Areas)
Those statements by Diyiy and Robertekraut relating to Facebook appear to me be incompatible with the terms of the Fellowship.
So it seems to me that that:
There may of course be some other explanation for this apparent incompatibility. But whatever the explanation is, I think it is important that Diyiy and Robertekraut promptly clarify exactly what is going on here. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 16:20, 31 December 2018 (UTC)
References
Diyiy and Robertekraut, what is the opt-out protocol for this research project? For example, is there a template users can place on their user page to exclude themselves from your research? Vexations ( talk) 17:34, 29 December 2018 (UTC)
This was mentioned on my talk page, so I came here with an open mind to it check out. All our contributions to Wikipedia are publicly visible, and much research has been done on them. Some of it is very valuable. In principle, more research is fine.
But having read the discussion, I am strongly opposed.
The good side is that the researchers came here to set out their proposal, and have engaged in a collegial manner with those who commented. Good marks on that score.
Points lost for the obvious folly of claiming that an editor with <500 contributions in near 12 years is a senior contributor
. Others have explained why that is not so, but it raised alarm bells with me as an indication of a very poor understanding of the editorial community. On the day this proposal was posted, the editor ranked at slot number 10,000 in the list of editors by edit count had made
8201 edits. The numbers are no criticism of the editor with <500 contibs, whose efforts are evidently made in ways which don't accumulate a high edit count ... but this sort of data should have been well-known to the designers of the research project. It is a flashing red light that the researchers have done seriously inadequate homework about the nature of the community they are researching.
Homework aside, it's clear that the substance of this project is to monitor the effects of a program of systematic deception.
The project is misleadingly labelled as research, a broad spectrum term which includes observational and analytical processes, as I mistakenly assumed this to be. In reality, what is proposed is a social experiment: to measure how people behave when manipulated as part of an RCT. More points lost for not explicitly labelling the project as a social experiment.
This deception experiment is destructive, because Wikipedia is a trust community. It is composed overwhelming of volunteers who contribute without possibility of tangible reward, and mostly anonymously. We don't hear voices or see faces, let alone any of the social aspects of community of most collaborations. All we have is letters on a screen, and trust which is built up slowly on an assumption of good faith. We react very strongly against editors who deceive the community, whether by socking or by faking references or claiming false credentials.
So when someone gives a thanks or barnstar or a welcome or a friendly note, we assume that is out of some sort of good intent. As others noted above, there are complex permutations around good intent, but the core of it is that some human is trying to make a nice gesture. The community has repeatedly rejected proposals for a "welcome bot" — so much so that it is listed both as a perennial proposal and as a frequently denied bot. The reason is simple: human gestures are valueless unless genuine, and fake ones can be deeply corrosive.
This is a proposal to target hundreds editors with fake acknowledgements. Sure, they will be delivered by a human, but the decision will be made by some sort of bot. Every editor delivering such a message will be deceiving the recipient into believing that the decision is their own.
@
Robertekraut defended this by repeating that the barnstars will be given to editors who deserve them but haven't yet received any
. I think that misses the whole point of barnstars, Most editors know that >99% of the good stuff they do en.wp goes unpraised; the significance of the barnstar is not in the work done, but in the fact that a human being has been watching and decided of their own free will to extend praise.
Such deceit is highly corrosive. It doesn't just sour the relationship betweeen the two individuals involved; it sours the recipient's undestanding of the whole community. One fake reward makes all rewards suspect, and even the news that this is being planned will make editors more wary.
I am saddened to hear that CMU's IRB waived informed consent. It seems to be adhering more closely to the minimal requirements of the US's National Research Act than to the much higher principles of the Nuremberg Code. The deceit and manipulation involved here is miniscule compared to the deceit and manipulation involved in all the commercial, political and military uses of manipulative psychology to which universities turn a blind eye; but it is on that dark side of the spectrum.
I hope that Facebook's sponsorship of @ User:Diyiy's work is at sufficient distance that there is no possibility of direction from the company. https://research.fb.com/programs/fellowship/ is vague about selection personnel and criteria, so I will AGF. But given the extent of Facebook's manipulation of its users, its spectre hovers overs this project, even if its malign influence is only as an indirect signal to the educational culture that its bread is buttered on a particular side.
Wikipedia has a lot in common with how the internet was in its pre-commercialisation days in the early 1990s: anonymous, quite anarchic, and driven by altruism rather than by money. This proposed social experiment reeks of the manipulation of users and and monetisation-of-retention which underpins the giants of the commercialised web.
Many thanks to Diyiy and Robert for their courtesy and civility in this discussion. But FWIW, my view is that this proposal doesn't belong on en.wp ... and that if it proceeds, sanctions should be applied to any editor who assists it without full transparency. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 15:39, 30 December 2018 (UTC)
During the experiment, it was noted on the Administrator's noticeboard/Incidents page that a seemingly random IP editor was "handing out barnstars", which led to some suspicion from Wikipedians. The thread was closed after User:Mike Restivo confirmed he accidentally logged out when delivering the barnstars. He did not, however, declare his status as a researcher, and the group's paper does not disclose that the behavior was considered unusual enough to warrant such a discussion thread.
We don't want to discourage ethical research that could help us improve the project. I get a whiff from this discussion that some WMF staff saw the potential gains for en.wp from this research project, but did little scrutiny of the downsides. I suspect that most research proposals will have some positive potential, and that the main issue will be weighing the potential gains against against the possibilities for harm. In other words, this is a an area replete with trade-offs, and we need to be clear about which issues are bright lines, and for other issues how the trade-offs are weighed. For example, I can imagine that some breaching experiments might be considered if carefully constructed.
The Barnstar system whereby editors spontaneously award the stars will be corrupted and distorted by turning the system into an experiment. It will deliberately manipulate formerly innocent and well-meaning Wikipedian behaviour, and turn it into a reward-seeking, unspontaneous activity. The purpose of the encyclopaedia is not to manipulate contributors, especially without their knowledge and consent, which is unethical "science".
A researcher should properly study the system as it is, as it operates now. Once the researcher becomes, instead, an experimenter — and she openly admits how her research actively seeks to change Wikipedian behaviour — she interferes with the system she proposes to study. This is not merely bad science — it is not science at all.
There should be no burden placed on Wikipedians, generous with their time, to opt out of manipulative experimentation. The default should be that they may be invited to opt in to being manipulated. And bear in mind, that an experimental subject, conscious of being observed, is liable to behave unnaturally, is liable to have his activity distorted by self awareness, which is therefore a distorted behaviour, and therefore presents activity for study which is no longer authentic. Thus, the behaviour to be studied is no longer valid, "clean" experimental data, and "scientific" conclusions drawn from it would be unreliable, to put it mildy. — O'Dea ( talk) 18:12, 1 January 2019 (UTC)
Barnstars are of no real-world value, and in practice are awarded almost randomly. They are also open to counterfeiting, since anyone can make a "barnstars" page (or section on their user page), and put any barnstars they want on it. No one goes around checking to see if the barnstars added to such pages are legitimate. Probably no one looks at such pages at all. The idea that they influence editing behavior is therefore absurd on its face. bd2412 T 23:15, 1 January 2019 (UTC)
I would just like to echo GMG a bit -- what we should be concerned with is not whether an experiment will produce scientifically viable results or whether it asks a silly question. Rather, we need to ask whether it comports with Wikipedia policies and the community's ethical consensus. To put it succinctly, science is their area; Wikipedia is ours. That said, a very happy New Year to all. Dumuzid ( talk) 23:22, 1 January 2019 (UTC)
How can the experiment protect the victims of testing on them, firstly in the active stage when encourages addictive outcomes, dirves peope away, or devalues the efforts of others. What happens if it draws attention on an editor in a not so friendly environment who wants to remain under the radar, we have had editors in prisoned and those who have died as result being an editor. What about in the future when a editor puts their hand for RfA and some points out that the small recognition they got had been part of an experiment and wasnt any indication that the community appreciated their contributions. What about the damage to Wikipedia as an independent reliable source of information when its editors are being manipulated for scientific research. Gnan garra 06:19, 2 January 2019 (UTC)
Even though we think that our research would answer questions about the impact of recognition that are both scientifically interesting and useful to Wikipedia and that the research could be conducted in an ethically responsible way, we’ve decided to withdraw this research project.
The initial discussion we had with the community was valuable and constructive. It evaluated the value of the research (mostly positive), raised ethical concerns (e.g., concerns about devaluing Barnstars) and suggested ways to improve the research, by mitigating the ethical concerns (e.g., using Thanks instead of Barnstars as recognition) and by increasing the likelihood that the research would lead to meaningful results (e.g., by having multiple experienced editors issue the recognition).
However, the most recent discussions suggesting that the receipt of barnstars causes Wikipedia addiction and our research is corrupt because Diyiy has a Facebook fellowship were not very productive. Despite our best intentions for scientific research on the effects of barnstars and recognition, we are sorry to see that some of the comments above contained accusation of us lying either to the Wikipedia community or to Facebook, which we consider ad hominem attacks. The most recent discussions were taking too much time, exacting too high an emotional toll and not going anywhere. Taking into account everyone’s opinions and the time we have available for this research, Diyiy and I have decided that we’ll withdraw our research proposal and discontinue this proposed project. We thank all of you for your active participation and discussion about this research proposal. Robertekraut ( talk) 18:45, 2 January 2019 (UTC)
followed best practices for performing ethical research on Wikipedia. As I acknowledged elsewhere, they got some things very right, but some things badly wrong:
"diluting the value of the barnstar"as expressed by Noyster. This was also my primary concern. Bus stop ( talk) 21:59, 2 January 2019 (UTC)
ad hominem attacks. The questioning was solely a consequence of the researchers' choice to leave this info to be dragged out of them in multiple rounds. I stand by comment above that I have
concerns about the candour and transparencyof these researchers. I hope that in future, WMF will advise researchers to be much more candid in their initial approach, and to respond to any questions or suspicions with enthusisastic transparency rather than the defensiveness displayed here. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 07:54, 4 January 2019 (UTC)
Is there a way to encode a wikilink so that it calls Special:RandomInCategory with a specific category? The Help:Special page entry for that call doesn't say, and the form at the link looks like it is using the Post method. Praemonitus ( talk) 22:58, 15 January 2019 (UTC)