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I've just filed a bug report suggesting that CentralNotice uses Geolocation: the bug report is at [1]. Mike Peel ( talk) 08:02, 26 October 2009 (UTC)
The bug has been closed as fixed in September 2010. How do we use this new facility? The top of WP:Geonotice currently says it is not possible, so that may need to be updated. John Vandenberg ( chat) 01:11, 8 June 2011 (UTC)
This is throwing Javascript errors due to the conflicting quotation marks:
text: "You are invited to the <a href=" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:GLAM/TCMI/BackstagePass">Children's Museum of Indianapolis Backstage Pass event</a> on Friday, November 5. Go behind the scenes in the largest children's museum in the world!"
Kaldari ( talk) 19:15, 1 October 2010 (UTC)
Is it possible to target particular domains or IPs using Geonotices or something similar? We discussed this as a possibility on Wednesday when doing outreach at Imperial College for their Wikipedia student society. It would be very useful to make something like a Geonotice but targetted just to people coming from a particular institution or type of institution, say universities in London (basically a filtered Geonotice for just those on .ac.uk domains).
While helping get the word out about the 2011 expert involvement survey, it seems equally useful to do domain targeting. For that, we are trying to get academics, scientists and other experts to tell us why they do or do not contribute to Wikipedia and how that can change. Specifically being able to target those on academic domains (.edu, .ac.uk etc.) would be useful for that. Is this possible? Is this something we should be able to do? — Tom Morris ( talk) 16:27, 11 February 2011 (UTC)
My geoip (coming from http://toolserver.org/~para/geoip.fcgi map) is often being recorded as Amsterdam (52.5,5.75). Other times it correctly pinpoints my location.(about 5kms off, which is pretty good since I am in the middle of nowhere) Is anyone else experiencing this? John Vandenberg ( chat) 00:25, 9 June 2011 (UTC)
Is there work happening on the Geonotice for the Phoenix Wiknic? It was supposed to be dispositioned by June 11, and it is now June 15?-- Jax 0677 ( talk) 23:58, 15 June 2011 (UTC)
It would be really awesome to get a Geonotice code tool that could whip up something from a couple of textboxes and a rectangle drawn on a googlemap, and/or a radius from a central city or a dropdown of pre-defined locations. Anyone up for this?-- Pharos ( talk) 17:49, 25 July 2011 (UTC)
I have taken the liberty of moving the existing discussion here.
I concur with Ironholds. The point of Geonotices is not to do this sort of thing. I don't think I've ever seen another chapter doing likewise, nor have I seen the Foundation using Geonotices to advertise jobs. I think the point of geonotices is to help connect Wikipedians in the UK with events, meet-ups, get-togethers and other things that are of direct relevance to them as a volunteer content contributor to Wikimedia projects. Job adverts in my view go above and beyond the intended purpose of geonotices (even though I obviously want a wide range of people to be exposed to and hopefully apply to WMUK positions so we can have the most effective chapter leadership we can possibly have).
I'm not wild about there being a revert war on this, and given it is only to run till Monday, I'd suggest that whether it stays or goes is not really of much importance now–the game is no longer worth the candle to use that wonderful expression. The more important questions would seem to me to be: what is the general community consensus of uninvolved editors on the appropriate limits for geonotices as, looking through the archives of WP:GN, the vast majority of GN requests are currently for UK events and WMUK activities. If we don't work out what counts as a limit for WP:GN, we risk people becoming blind to the geonotices - in fact, some people block them on principle. It is in the interest of both the chapters and the enwiki community to work out the most effective way to use geonotices to help solidify the community of interested participants in both chapter events and the overall goal of the projects. There is a limit: just imagine if every time, say, WikiProject Berkshire or WikiProject Scotland or whatever created a new article or were trying to get an article up to GA or FA, they put up a geonotice to try and get collaboration. There must be a limit, and we should try and find consensus as to where that limit is.
I'd say that the other concern I have is that there may become an overreliance on geonotices by WMUK, which will only end up with dwindling returns and also doesn't adequately cover participants in sister projects. But of course, that's really a concern for WMUK members and the board rather than a WP:GN concern. — Tom Morris ( talk) 11:39, 30 July 2011 (UTC)
I'm a bit concerned by the tone of this discussion. I am sure the same points could have been made in a rather more constructive way. While I share Tom's concern that there are often quite a lot of geonotices running in the UK - and there is at present no particular consensus on how to ration them (are London meetups of interest to people living in Inverness? I'd argue no, other people have argued Yes). But I certainly don't think that, as Ironholds suggests, it's "utterly ridiculous" and I'm not quite sure why he feels so strongly on the issue. The Land ( talk) 12:45, 30 July 2011 (UTC)
Replying to a number of points raised above:
Thanks. Mike Peel ( talk) 17:25, 30 July 2011 (UTC)
Right, let's try and calm down a little. There is little point debating who is to blame: the only thing that matters is finding a productive way forward. Recrimination over civility doesn't help. I've taken the bold, perhaps reckless, step of moving this on to the talk page and I'll attempt to try and direct this towards what could hopefully be a mature and reasoned discussion and we might just be able to grasp consensus from the jaws of failure.
The underlying issue is: what limits should there be to geonotice use? Should geonotices be used to advertise job opportunities with chapters? Any chance we could work out the scope of acceptable geonotice use. Let's put civility issues to one side, as well as issues specifically related to the Chapter as those can hopefully be resolved by mature and reasoned discussions elsewhere.
A simple question then: Does the current guidance on WP:GN need changing to limit the uses of geonotices to specific types of announcement? — Tom Morris ( talk) 14:42, 30 July 2011 (UTC)
Why should a short-term geonotice of limited audience be such a big deal? I mean, is it really so intrusive? If you find yourself so highly touched off by a couple of days of a short notice, you might need to start spending more time out of doors. You might find it easier to discuss the problem in a way that doesn't distract from the substance of your complaint with the manner in which its delivered. Nathan T 20:56, 30 July 2011 (UTC)
I don't have any ponies in this race: I would not have received this geonotice, I'm not a member of WMUK (or its board), I have no interest in applying for positions with WMF or any Wikimedia chapters. What I do have an interest in is the project as a whole, and notices in general.
In this particular case, a request for an "event" that was known about weeks in advance (i.e., the closing date for applications for a job) was suddenly added without community discussion only 48 hours before the application period closes. This was a significant error in judgment: first that a very different type of geonotice was being added without any attempt at community input, and secondly that it was being posted with such poor timing. Proposing this geonotice at or before the time the position application period opened would have allowed the community to consider whether or not this was appropriate use of the geonotice tool. It's not a simple question, as such use of centralnotice has met with very significant community opposition in the past, to the point that it is not used for announcing position openings anymore. As well, I think it was an error in judgment on Seddon's part to have activated this posting; he is well known to be an active member of WMUK, and it is clear from the discussion above that he did so at the request of the executive of that chapter rather than as an independent administrator assessing community response. In summary:
As noted, this is my independent and uninvolved opinion. Risker ( talk) 00:07, 31 July 2011 (UTC)
I was aware of this discussion at its very early stages but did not have time to respnd. It has grown more quickly than I anticipated and I apologize for not commenting here sooner. I also apologize if this is a little ;tldr but please take the time to read this.
Firstly I want to talk about my involvement in this. I conceed that there was a COI here with me starting the geonotice, similarly the creation of the banners on central notice was also a bad decision on my part particularly involving the my use of the staff account to create the banners. I genuinely thought that what I was doing was for the benefit to the community. The community has played a huge roll amoungst staff at the foundation and chapters and I felt that this was in the spirit of that.
There are many lessons to be learned, and I'm learning mine. But another important lesson might be that current processes are somewhat broken in the use of geonotice. WP:GEONOTICE used to only have one significant reviewer, the situation is mildly better but its still very small in terms of those that participate and in fact Risker is pretty much the only person not tied to a chapter or regular meet up to be involved in it. There many requests that dont get seen to there and this is a big problem. Geonotices are an important part of getting the word out for chapter and local community related things. This is why those folks are the most active there. If that page isn't well patrolled then that is a let down for the movement and those who regularly or would like to regularly participate in things that are publicised via the geonotice. Based on that I saw no problem with chapters independently applying geonotices. To be honest I would attribute the success of many events to this usage and have no regrets with previous decisions I have taken to apply geonotices without posting them first.
However being bold here is going to lead to more problems. We need to fix the process and agree on the situations these geonotices can be used. Prehaps cross posting requests at WP:AN is the way forward in the short term to encourage participation in discussion but in terms of the general usage and process I think that this is a community wide issue that affects all geographies and the wider community so we should probably list such a topic at centralised discussion.
As I said I am very sorry for this misjudgement, I just hope that something can be learnt and we can move forward.
Many Thanks Seddon talk| WikimediaUK 22:37, 31 July 2011 (UTC)
Could someone clarify the official position of the WMF interfering in community decisions for geonotices? This diff where Philippe has chosen to veto a new geonotice appears to run counter to the previous official position explained to me when I raised the question on the Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List. I daresay that I might have agreed with the removal if the WMF had bothered to explain the issue here first. Fæ ( talk) 07:21, 7 October 2011 (UTC)
The archives page is getting very long. Should we break it up into several pages? One page per each past year seems to be about the right length. Der yck C. 21:32, 9 October 2011 (UTC)
How does a person perminently opt out of recieving Geonotices Gnan garra
/* Geonotices toggle */ div.geonotice { display: none; }
On March 19 I posted a request for a geonotice to begin on March 26. I have yet received no acknowledgement. Is my request properly formatted? Could I do anything else which would make my request more easy to receive or process? I was hoping to have this and would appreciate quick help. How does this work? What class of users manages this process? Blue Rasberry (talk) 16:56, 27 March 2012 (UTC)
I think the page is organized oddly. Do we have to split it into "Currently running"? We have the Toolserver tool that shows the map with current notices. Killiondude ( talk) 21:14, 12 April 2012 (UTC)
Please see WP:Village pump (proposals)#Watchlist notice guideline. There is a proposal to create a guideline outlining acceptable watchlist notice practices. Equazcion (talk) 16:26, 15 Apr 2012 (UTC)
Please feel free to edit this directly, unless/until it's in a state where changes could be contentious. I propose that the agreed version be incorporated at Wikipedia:Geonotice#Guidelines (which forms the basis).
Geonotice watchlist guideline, proposed to be incorporated at
Wikipedia:Geonotice#Guidelines
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Consider suitability and wording
Example: Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.
=== [[Related page name (e.g. meetup page)]] === '''Locations required:''' <!-- List the cities/regions to be notified. Optionally include geo-coordinates using {{coord}} --> * * '''Possible messages:''' <!-- Only one is necessary, but two is recommended in case one is rejected --> * * '''Date range required:''' <!-- Please give us at least 5 days warning, unless you have an important reason --> * '''Misc info:''' * ''Reason for requesting:'' * ''User requesting:'' <!-- sign here with THREE tildes --> '''Discussion''' Locations
Messages
Date range
Reason requesting
Notify geonotice maintainers
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-- Trevj ( talk) 08:40, 24 April 2012 (UTC)
Concerning "missed target" calculations, I quote River Tarnell's insight on a previous posting to the WMUK mailing list (public subscription):
For ADSL users, it makes no sense to assign IP addresses or do routing based on the user's physical location, because all traffic has to go through BT (or another wholesale provider) in London anyway, and the route it takes after it gets to BT is not visible in traceroute. So, when the user connects the ISP just assigns the first available IP with no regard to location.
It's possible that there is an ADSL ISP that still assigns IPs based on physical location, but I've never seen one.
I'm fairly certain (and I've said this before) that for this reason it's impossible to do city-level geolocation of UK users in any useful way.
Even worse, MaxMind (the service Wikimedia uses) tries to "guess" the location of ADSL users, and usually fails. [specific example involving personal details omitted].
It is a reasonable assumption of SpinningSpark's that, because sub-UK geolocation "works" for the 3 of the 4 major ISPs for him, it should work for everyone else on the same ISPs; however the general sentiment on previous geonotice-related discussions on the WMUK mailing list suggests otherwise. Der yck C. 13:39, 25 April 2012 (UTC)
It's probably worth noting that both the start and end date/time of notices can be scheduled, to encourage people to submit notices well in advance of the event without worrying that they might be forgotten. It might also be worth asking for notices to include a general link - e.g. to
Meetup - so that a) those viewing it can understand the context, and b) for those that the event doesn't apply to for reasons of geography are encouraged to run a local event of their own.
Mike Peel (
talk)
19:36, 25 April 2012 (UTC)
Nothing that's been said so far leads me to believe that the "50 miles rule" is unreasonable. River Tarnell comments that all ADSL traffic goes through BT. Besides not being strictly true (many ADSL users are connected by cable TV) it is not very likely that BT would route a user in Southampton all the way to Dundee on their twisted pair network before connecting them to the internet. They get connected somewhere much more local. If there are major exceptions to this then let's hear them. Those arguing that some people travel more than fifty miles to some events have misunderstood the rule. It is not fifty miles from the event, it is fifty miles from the edge of the intended target area. If the intended target is the whole of the UK then that means 50 miles around Britain. Spinning Spark 23:19, 25 April 2012 (UTC)
The MaxMind data also backs me up. According to their table only 7% in the UK could not be located to the city level. Note that the >25 miles category is considered to be within city level and thus certainly <50 miles. Almost certainly a large portion of the 7% will also be within the 50 mile rule. Very few countries exceed 10% in this category. I suggest a reasonable rule for exceptions, that is a local event can be advertised country-wide, would be countries where the MaxMind data shows >=15% cannot be located to a city. Spinning Spark 23:32, 25 April 2012 (UTC)
Target event | Area notified (square degrees) |
---|---|
Lansing | 0.16 |
Jackson | 0.16 |
Portland | 36.0 |
New York | 8.0 |
New England | 26.48 |
Target event | Area notified (square degrees) |
---|---|
Wakefield | 75.46 |
Coventry, London | 75.46 |
Of interest here may be a discussion at MediaWiki_talk:Geonotice.js#Excessive_UK_notices. Just pointing out for more full input. Philippe Beaudette, Wikimedia Foundation ( talk) 20:22, 26 October 2012 (UTC)
Hi all,
This is a fairly low-traffic page, and not many people keep an eye on it. I've been trying to keep it maintained recently, but it's often the case that three or four days go by without my remembering to check it - which can be a problem if people put things up with quite short notice (we've had under a week in the past). To try and get around this, I've added a note to requests saying to chase me if it's urgent; hopefully this will mean requests don't languish there for days on end!
If anyone else who's comfortable with handling geonotice code would like to add their name there as well, please do :-) Andrew Gray ( talk) 11:10, 4 December 2012 (UTC)
I've been talking with the Berkeley Student Cooperative, and they'd like to host a Wikipedian in Residence. The BSC is a ~1300 member housing cooperative, the largest housing cooperative in the United States. All members of the BSC contribute five hours a week in 'workshift' to their houses as both a way to contribute to their communities and a way to keep costs down. The BSC would like to have their Wikipedian in Residence be someone who currently lives in the BSC system, and the position would receive workshift credit. I know there are at least a few experienced Wikipedians who live in the BSC currently, but am not sure who they are. It occurred to me that one way for us to successfully locate Wikipedians who live in BSC houses would be a Geonotice, if one could be tailored narrowly enough. Would it be technically possible to set up a geonotice-type notice that would only display to logged in users from particular IPs? It would probably be ~80 different IP's, almost all in the same range. (The BSC is using other channels to turn up candidates as well, but this seemed like an additional good one.) Kevin Gorman ( talk) 19:20, 29 January 2013 (UTC)
The auto-generated map at https://maps.google.com/maps?q=http://toolserver.org/~para/geonotices.php is empty. A couple of days ago it showed three: two in the eastern USA, one in Great Britain. The GB one was definitely not the UKMeetups one - it was either the Nottingham one from a couple of weeks back, or the recently-added Burnley one. By my reckoning, there are three currently-active geonotices - one in Canada, and two in Great Britain. Is there something wrong with the format of these notices which causes Google Maps to reject them? -- Redrose64 ( talk) 07:15, 16 April 2013 (UTC)
Commons has recently deployed a very promising notice system which replaces their watchlist notices (see note here). Rather than display a long list it rotates between them in a banner-style box. Notices can be individually marked as read, and they are categorised under general headings - new features, elections, technical changes, etc - which allows users to select the topics they don't want to hear about in future.
I think this has real potential for finally unifying watchlist notices & targeted geonotices, and it might be worth thinking about what's needed to deploy it here. Andrew Gray ( talk) 22:27, 29 May 2013 (UTC)
Hi all,
I'm trying to figure out if the UK lookup has actually improved at all since our discussions a year or two ago, or if it's still abysmal. (And - more usefully - how it's abysmal - does it work in some areas and not others? Do people at least geolocate to roughly the right end of the country?). It'd be a great help if UK users could fill out the short test form here - it doesn't record IPs, personal information or usernames, just where Wikimedia thinks you are & where you (roughly) are.
I'll post back in a bit with the summarised results. Andrew Gray ( talk) 19:27, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
It keeps hogging my browser and stops me from using my other scripts as the only way i can stop it from hogging is to press the stop (X) key and thus this also disables my other scripts, please how do you shut this off??, its getting irritating and also affecting me on other wikimedia wikis...... its not linking anywhere and going to "geoiplookup.wikimedia.org is a DEAD-END..-- Stemoc ( talk) 13:20, 18 October 2013 (UTC)
li.geonotice, hr#geonotice-hr { display: none; }
I would like feedback on WP:Village pump (technical)#Migrating Geonotice to a gadget. Helder.wiki 00:21, 27 July 2014 (UTC)
-- [[
User:Edokter]] {{
talk}}
08:53, 8 August 2014 (UTC)Please add a space between the full stop of each notice and the [Hide] link. I'm sure there used to be one. — Martin ( MSGJ · talk) 12:20, 1 September 2014 (UTC)
-- [[
User:Edokter]] {{
talk}}
15:22, 3 September 2014 (UTC)It appears that links to http://maps.google.com/ - such as the one just above the TOC at Wikipedia:Geonotice - will stop working soon. I've started a thread at Template talk:GeoGroup#Viewing KML data in Google Maps. -- Redrose64 ( talk) 20:01, 25 February 2015 (UTC)
Is it possible to do a geonotice that also targets by number of edits? Ϣere SpielChequers 09:42, 3 November 2015 (UTC)
I had requested one for Winnipeg. OhanaUnitedsaid it was set up. I don't see a msg for Winnipeg, I only see the global Wikipedia15 message. But then, maybe a geonotice is not what I think it is? Main page says "notice similar to a sitenotice, anonnotice or watchlist notice" but the links just go to empty pages. What should I actually be looking for? Tenbergen ( talk) 16:30, 10 January 2016 (UTC)
I've replaced "corners:" line of the long-standing UK meetups geonotice with the newer "country:" line. The current format of UK-wode meetup geonotice was invented because ISPs don't (didn't?) resolve geolocation accurately within the UK, so we just have one notice for the whole UK. With this switch we will also (theoretically) stop telling people geolocated in Dublin (just about inside the rectangle because it needed to cover western Scotland) about meetups in Great Britain. Der yck C. 16:31, 29 February 2016 (UTC)
Clicking "view" or "edit" on a geonotice seems to redirect to MediaWiki:Watchlist-details, which doesn't reflect the current geonotice. That's not the expected behaviour... Thanks. Mike Peel ( talk) 22:28, 21 September 2016 (UTC)
{{navbar|MediaWiki:Watchlist-details|plain=1}}
This placement is intentional, since the links are there to facilitate editing of the watchlist notices. Geonotices are merely a subtopic of the watchlist notices, and are coded at
MediaWiki:Gadget-geonotice-list.js. --
Redrose64 (
talk)
23:12, 21 September 2016 (UTC)I have processed a number of requests here, and I'd like to suggest that we try to make the process a little easier. At least from my perspective, the process for an administrator is fairly cumbersome, and the perpetual backlog suggests to me I might not be the only one.
I'm thinking we could do either of the following, or perhaps a combination:
Does this seem like a good idea? If so, does anybody (like maybe Andrew Gray or Deryck Chan) want to help me refine the specifications a bit so we can redesign the instructions and/or make a more specific request of developers? - Pete Forsyth ( talk) 02:28, 17 February 2017 (UTC)
Pinging all recent contributors to MediaWiki:Gadget-geonotice-list.js: @ Deryck Chan, Amorymeltzer, Pharos, Cyberpower678, TheDJ, Xaosflux, Redrose64, and Ganeshk.
Starting in the near future (perhaps this week), we will be using a new bot-assisted system for managing geonotices. You can see the BRFA at Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/MusikBot II 2 and Special:PermaLink/862124571#Geonotices for the original discussion. The reason we're doing this is to allow any admin to manage geonotices, and not just interface admins.
Under the new system, you'll use Wikipedia:Geonotice/list.json (currently outdated) to configure the notices. A bot will sync this to MediaWiki:Gadget-geonotice-list.js every five minutes. This is JSON format, not JavaScript. As such, the rules have changed:
'
) are no longer escaped, but double quotations are (as with \"
). This should be a welcomed change, since you're much more likely to want to use single quotes than double quotes. If you attempt to escape single quotes, or forget to escape double quotes, the JSON editor will show an error and will not let you save.HongKongNov18
) would be entered like HongKongNov18: { ... }
. Now you should write it like "HongKongNov18": { ... }
. The same is true for the individual options, like "begin"
, "end"
, etc. If you attempt to save without adding such quotations, the JSON editor will show an error.[https://example.org example.org]
instead of <a href="https://example.org">example.org</a>
. The MediaWiki parser API is used, so any valid wikitext should work. The other nice advantage here is you can easily test what your notice will look like, using your sandbox, for example."comments": "..."
to your notice configuration, such as in
this example. This will only be shown on the JSON page, and will not be copied to
MediaWiki:Gadget-geonotice-list.js.A bot report reflecting the current status will be written to User:MusikBot II/GeonoticeSync/Report, which will be transcluded at the top of this page and somewhere on Wikipedia:Geonotice. The report will include timestamp of the last successful sync, along with either "No errors!" or a list the detected errors. Here are the things the bot will check:
If there are any concerns, please let me know. When this goes live, I'll be sure to update all documentation, including the comment block at MediaWiki:Gadget-geonotice-list.js. Regards, — MusikAnimal talk 17:06, 7 November 2018 (UTC)
Geonotice appears to be broken, is it working for anyone?-- Pharos ( talk) 04:09, 18 January 2020 (UTC)
Hi! I am running a survey of Wikipedians/Wikimedians in Ireland and would like to place a geonotice with a link to the Qualtrics survey from mid-April to mid-May. I could have sworn I requested one for a survey I conducted in 2016, but I can't find any trace of it. Is this the best place to go about this? Thanks! Smirkybec ( talk) 15:44, 30 March 2020 (UTC)
There is new Basshunter tour soon and I though it may be good occasion to take a photo of live performance by someone who live in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Finland or Norway. List of locations: Facebook, Instagram or Twitter. Basshunter performed for few million people already but there are no new images in Wikimedia Commons available since 2009. Eurohunter ( talk) 17:50, 21 June 2022 (UTC)
Based on a request/discussion from @ Pharos and @ OhanaUnited, I created Wikipedia:Geonotice/Map, which uses a Lua module ( Module:Geonotice map) to parse the JSON and render a map showing the details of each geonotice and the area it covers. Legoktm ( talk) 01:58, 14 August 2022 (UTC)
A discussion about changing the size of Wikipedia:Geonotices is open at MediaWiki talk:Gadget-geonotice-core.css. Any feedback about this is welcome there. — xaosflux Talk 13:30, 3 October 2022 (UTC)
![]() | Geographical coordinates | |||
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I've just filed a bug report suggesting that CentralNotice uses Geolocation: the bug report is at [1]. Mike Peel ( talk) 08:02, 26 October 2009 (UTC)
The bug has been closed as fixed in September 2010. How do we use this new facility? The top of WP:Geonotice currently says it is not possible, so that may need to be updated. John Vandenberg ( chat) 01:11, 8 June 2011 (UTC)
This is throwing Javascript errors due to the conflicting quotation marks:
text: "You are invited to the <a href=" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:GLAM/TCMI/BackstagePass">Children's Museum of Indianapolis Backstage Pass event</a> on Friday, November 5. Go behind the scenes in the largest children's museum in the world!"
Kaldari ( talk) 19:15, 1 October 2010 (UTC)
Is it possible to target particular domains or IPs using Geonotices or something similar? We discussed this as a possibility on Wednesday when doing outreach at Imperial College for their Wikipedia student society. It would be very useful to make something like a Geonotice but targetted just to people coming from a particular institution or type of institution, say universities in London (basically a filtered Geonotice for just those on .ac.uk domains).
While helping get the word out about the 2011 expert involvement survey, it seems equally useful to do domain targeting. For that, we are trying to get academics, scientists and other experts to tell us why they do or do not contribute to Wikipedia and how that can change. Specifically being able to target those on academic domains (.edu, .ac.uk etc.) would be useful for that. Is this possible? Is this something we should be able to do? — Tom Morris ( talk) 16:27, 11 February 2011 (UTC)
My geoip (coming from http://toolserver.org/~para/geoip.fcgi map) is often being recorded as Amsterdam (52.5,5.75). Other times it correctly pinpoints my location.(about 5kms off, which is pretty good since I am in the middle of nowhere) Is anyone else experiencing this? John Vandenberg ( chat) 00:25, 9 June 2011 (UTC)
Is there work happening on the Geonotice for the Phoenix Wiknic? It was supposed to be dispositioned by June 11, and it is now June 15?-- Jax 0677 ( talk) 23:58, 15 June 2011 (UTC)
It would be really awesome to get a Geonotice code tool that could whip up something from a couple of textboxes and a rectangle drawn on a googlemap, and/or a radius from a central city or a dropdown of pre-defined locations. Anyone up for this?-- Pharos ( talk) 17:49, 25 July 2011 (UTC)
I have taken the liberty of moving the existing discussion here.
I concur with Ironholds. The point of Geonotices is not to do this sort of thing. I don't think I've ever seen another chapter doing likewise, nor have I seen the Foundation using Geonotices to advertise jobs. I think the point of geonotices is to help connect Wikipedians in the UK with events, meet-ups, get-togethers and other things that are of direct relevance to them as a volunteer content contributor to Wikimedia projects. Job adverts in my view go above and beyond the intended purpose of geonotices (even though I obviously want a wide range of people to be exposed to and hopefully apply to WMUK positions so we can have the most effective chapter leadership we can possibly have).
I'm not wild about there being a revert war on this, and given it is only to run till Monday, I'd suggest that whether it stays or goes is not really of much importance now–the game is no longer worth the candle to use that wonderful expression. The more important questions would seem to me to be: what is the general community consensus of uninvolved editors on the appropriate limits for geonotices as, looking through the archives of WP:GN, the vast majority of GN requests are currently for UK events and WMUK activities. If we don't work out what counts as a limit for WP:GN, we risk people becoming blind to the geonotices - in fact, some people block them on principle. It is in the interest of both the chapters and the enwiki community to work out the most effective way to use geonotices to help solidify the community of interested participants in both chapter events and the overall goal of the projects. There is a limit: just imagine if every time, say, WikiProject Berkshire or WikiProject Scotland or whatever created a new article or were trying to get an article up to GA or FA, they put up a geonotice to try and get collaboration. There must be a limit, and we should try and find consensus as to where that limit is.
I'd say that the other concern I have is that there may become an overreliance on geonotices by WMUK, which will only end up with dwindling returns and also doesn't adequately cover participants in sister projects. But of course, that's really a concern for WMUK members and the board rather than a WP:GN concern. — Tom Morris ( talk) 11:39, 30 July 2011 (UTC)
I'm a bit concerned by the tone of this discussion. I am sure the same points could have been made in a rather more constructive way. While I share Tom's concern that there are often quite a lot of geonotices running in the UK - and there is at present no particular consensus on how to ration them (are London meetups of interest to people living in Inverness? I'd argue no, other people have argued Yes). But I certainly don't think that, as Ironholds suggests, it's "utterly ridiculous" and I'm not quite sure why he feels so strongly on the issue. The Land ( talk) 12:45, 30 July 2011 (UTC)
Replying to a number of points raised above:
Thanks. Mike Peel ( talk) 17:25, 30 July 2011 (UTC)
Right, let's try and calm down a little. There is little point debating who is to blame: the only thing that matters is finding a productive way forward. Recrimination over civility doesn't help. I've taken the bold, perhaps reckless, step of moving this on to the talk page and I'll attempt to try and direct this towards what could hopefully be a mature and reasoned discussion and we might just be able to grasp consensus from the jaws of failure.
The underlying issue is: what limits should there be to geonotice use? Should geonotices be used to advertise job opportunities with chapters? Any chance we could work out the scope of acceptable geonotice use. Let's put civility issues to one side, as well as issues specifically related to the Chapter as those can hopefully be resolved by mature and reasoned discussions elsewhere.
A simple question then: Does the current guidance on WP:GN need changing to limit the uses of geonotices to specific types of announcement? — Tom Morris ( talk) 14:42, 30 July 2011 (UTC)
Why should a short-term geonotice of limited audience be such a big deal? I mean, is it really so intrusive? If you find yourself so highly touched off by a couple of days of a short notice, you might need to start spending more time out of doors. You might find it easier to discuss the problem in a way that doesn't distract from the substance of your complaint with the manner in which its delivered. Nathan T 20:56, 30 July 2011 (UTC)
I don't have any ponies in this race: I would not have received this geonotice, I'm not a member of WMUK (or its board), I have no interest in applying for positions with WMF or any Wikimedia chapters. What I do have an interest in is the project as a whole, and notices in general.
In this particular case, a request for an "event" that was known about weeks in advance (i.e., the closing date for applications for a job) was suddenly added without community discussion only 48 hours before the application period closes. This was a significant error in judgment: first that a very different type of geonotice was being added without any attempt at community input, and secondly that it was being posted with such poor timing. Proposing this geonotice at or before the time the position application period opened would have allowed the community to consider whether or not this was appropriate use of the geonotice tool. It's not a simple question, as such use of centralnotice has met with very significant community opposition in the past, to the point that it is not used for announcing position openings anymore. As well, I think it was an error in judgment on Seddon's part to have activated this posting; he is well known to be an active member of WMUK, and it is clear from the discussion above that he did so at the request of the executive of that chapter rather than as an independent administrator assessing community response. In summary:
As noted, this is my independent and uninvolved opinion. Risker ( talk) 00:07, 31 July 2011 (UTC)
I was aware of this discussion at its very early stages but did not have time to respnd. It has grown more quickly than I anticipated and I apologize for not commenting here sooner. I also apologize if this is a little ;tldr but please take the time to read this.
Firstly I want to talk about my involvement in this. I conceed that there was a COI here with me starting the geonotice, similarly the creation of the banners on central notice was also a bad decision on my part particularly involving the my use of the staff account to create the banners. I genuinely thought that what I was doing was for the benefit to the community. The community has played a huge roll amoungst staff at the foundation and chapters and I felt that this was in the spirit of that.
There are many lessons to be learned, and I'm learning mine. But another important lesson might be that current processes are somewhat broken in the use of geonotice. WP:GEONOTICE used to only have one significant reviewer, the situation is mildly better but its still very small in terms of those that participate and in fact Risker is pretty much the only person not tied to a chapter or regular meet up to be involved in it. There many requests that dont get seen to there and this is a big problem. Geonotices are an important part of getting the word out for chapter and local community related things. This is why those folks are the most active there. If that page isn't well patrolled then that is a let down for the movement and those who regularly or would like to regularly participate in things that are publicised via the geonotice. Based on that I saw no problem with chapters independently applying geonotices. To be honest I would attribute the success of many events to this usage and have no regrets with previous decisions I have taken to apply geonotices without posting them first.
However being bold here is going to lead to more problems. We need to fix the process and agree on the situations these geonotices can be used. Prehaps cross posting requests at WP:AN is the way forward in the short term to encourage participation in discussion but in terms of the general usage and process I think that this is a community wide issue that affects all geographies and the wider community so we should probably list such a topic at centralised discussion.
As I said I am very sorry for this misjudgement, I just hope that something can be learnt and we can move forward.
Many Thanks Seddon talk| WikimediaUK 22:37, 31 July 2011 (UTC)
Could someone clarify the official position of the WMF interfering in community decisions for geonotices? This diff where Philippe has chosen to veto a new geonotice appears to run counter to the previous official position explained to me when I raised the question on the Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List. I daresay that I might have agreed with the removal if the WMF had bothered to explain the issue here first. Fæ ( talk) 07:21, 7 October 2011 (UTC)
The archives page is getting very long. Should we break it up into several pages? One page per each past year seems to be about the right length. Der yck C. 21:32, 9 October 2011 (UTC)
How does a person perminently opt out of recieving Geonotices Gnan garra
/* Geonotices toggle */ div.geonotice { display: none; }
On March 19 I posted a request for a geonotice to begin on March 26. I have yet received no acknowledgement. Is my request properly formatted? Could I do anything else which would make my request more easy to receive or process? I was hoping to have this and would appreciate quick help. How does this work? What class of users manages this process? Blue Rasberry (talk) 16:56, 27 March 2012 (UTC)
I think the page is organized oddly. Do we have to split it into "Currently running"? We have the Toolserver tool that shows the map with current notices. Killiondude ( talk) 21:14, 12 April 2012 (UTC)
Please see WP:Village pump (proposals)#Watchlist notice guideline. There is a proposal to create a guideline outlining acceptable watchlist notice practices. Equazcion (talk) 16:26, 15 Apr 2012 (UTC)
Please feel free to edit this directly, unless/until it's in a state where changes could be contentious. I propose that the agreed version be incorporated at Wikipedia:Geonotice#Guidelines (which forms the basis).
Geonotice watchlist guideline, proposed to be incorporated at
Wikipedia:Geonotice#Guidelines
|
---|
Consider suitability and wording
Example: Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.
=== [[Related page name (e.g. meetup page)]] === '''Locations required:''' <!-- List the cities/regions to be notified. Optionally include geo-coordinates using {{coord}} --> * * '''Possible messages:''' <!-- Only one is necessary, but two is recommended in case one is rejected --> * * '''Date range required:''' <!-- Please give us at least 5 days warning, unless you have an important reason --> * '''Misc info:''' * ''Reason for requesting:'' * ''User requesting:'' <!-- sign here with THREE tildes --> '''Discussion''' Locations
Messages
Date range
Reason requesting
Notify geonotice maintainers
|
-- Trevj ( talk) 08:40, 24 April 2012 (UTC)
Concerning "missed target" calculations, I quote River Tarnell's insight on a previous posting to the WMUK mailing list (public subscription):
For ADSL users, it makes no sense to assign IP addresses or do routing based on the user's physical location, because all traffic has to go through BT (or another wholesale provider) in London anyway, and the route it takes after it gets to BT is not visible in traceroute. So, when the user connects the ISP just assigns the first available IP with no regard to location.
It's possible that there is an ADSL ISP that still assigns IPs based on physical location, but I've never seen one.
I'm fairly certain (and I've said this before) that for this reason it's impossible to do city-level geolocation of UK users in any useful way.
Even worse, MaxMind (the service Wikimedia uses) tries to "guess" the location of ADSL users, and usually fails. [specific example involving personal details omitted].
It is a reasonable assumption of SpinningSpark's that, because sub-UK geolocation "works" for the 3 of the 4 major ISPs for him, it should work for everyone else on the same ISPs; however the general sentiment on previous geonotice-related discussions on the WMUK mailing list suggests otherwise. Der yck C. 13:39, 25 April 2012 (UTC)
It's probably worth noting that both the start and end date/time of notices can be scheduled, to encourage people to submit notices well in advance of the event without worrying that they might be forgotten. It might also be worth asking for notices to include a general link - e.g. to
Meetup - so that a) those viewing it can understand the context, and b) for those that the event doesn't apply to for reasons of geography are encouraged to run a local event of their own.
Mike Peel (
talk)
19:36, 25 April 2012 (UTC)
Nothing that's been said so far leads me to believe that the "50 miles rule" is unreasonable. River Tarnell comments that all ADSL traffic goes through BT. Besides not being strictly true (many ADSL users are connected by cable TV) it is not very likely that BT would route a user in Southampton all the way to Dundee on their twisted pair network before connecting them to the internet. They get connected somewhere much more local. If there are major exceptions to this then let's hear them. Those arguing that some people travel more than fifty miles to some events have misunderstood the rule. It is not fifty miles from the event, it is fifty miles from the edge of the intended target area. If the intended target is the whole of the UK then that means 50 miles around Britain. Spinning Spark 23:19, 25 April 2012 (UTC)
The MaxMind data also backs me up. According to their table only 7% in the UK could not be located to the city level. Note that the >25 miles category is considered to be within city level and thus certainly <50 miles. Almost certainly a large portion of the 7% will also be within the 50 mile rule. Very few countries exceed 10% in this category. I suggest a reasonable rule for exceptions, that is a local event can be advertised country-wide, would be countries where the MaxMind data shows >=15% cannot be located to a city. Spinning Spark 23:32, 25 April 2012 (UTC)
Target event | Area notified (square degrees) |
---|---|
Lansing | 0.16 |
Jackson | 0.16 |
Portland | 36.0 |
New York | 8.0 |
New England | 26.48 |
Target event | Area notified (square degrees) |
---|---|
Wakefield | 75.46 |
Coventry, London | 75.46 |
Of interest here may be a discussion at MediaWiki_talk:Geonotice.js#Excessive_UK_notices. Just pointing out for more full input. Philippe Beaudette, Wikimedia Foundation ( talk) 20:22, 26 October 2012 (UTC)
Hi all,
This is a fairly low-traffic page, and not many people keep an eye on it. I've been trying to keep it maintained recently, but it's often the case that three or four days go by without my remembering to check it - which can be a problem if people put things up with quite short notice (we've had under a week in the past). To try and get around this, I've added a note to requests saying to chase me if it's urgent; hopefully this will mean requests don't languish there for days on end!
If anyone else who's comfortable with handling geonotice code would like to add their name there as well, please do :-) Andrew Gray ( talk) 11:10, 4 December 2012 (UTC)
I've been talking with the Berkeley Student Cooperative, and they'd like to host a Wikipedian in Residence. The BSC is a ~1300 member housing cooperative, the largest housing cooperative in the United States. All members of the BSC contribute five hours a week in 'workshift' to their houses as both a way to contribute to their communities and a way to keep costs down. The BSC would like to have their Wikipedian in Residence be someone who currently lives in the BSC system, and the position would receive workshift credit. I know there are at least a few experienced Wikipedians who live in the BSC currently, but am not sure who they are. It occurred to me that one way for us to successfully locate Wikipedians who live in BSC houses would be a Geonotice, if one could be tailored narrowly enough. Would it be technically possible to set up a geonotice-type notice that would only display to logged in users from particular IPs? It would probably be ~80 different IP's, almost all in the same range. (The BSC is using other channels to turn up candidates as well, but this seemed like an additional good one.) Kevin Gorman ( talk) 19:20, 29 January 2013 (UTC)
The auto-generated map at https://maps.google.com/maps?q=http://toolserver.org/~para/geonotices.php is empty. A couple of days ago it showed three: two in the eastern USA, one in Great Britain. The GB one was definitely not the UKMeetups one - it was either the Nottingham one from a couple of weeks back, or the recently-added Burnley one. By my reckoning, there are three currently-active geonotices - one in Canada, and two in Great Britain. Is there something wrong with the format of these notices which causes Google Maps to reject them? -- Redrose64 ( talk) 07:15, 16 April 2013 (UTC)
Commons has recently deployed a very promising notice system which replaces their watchlist notices (see note here). Rather than display a long list it rotates between them in a banner-style box. Notices can be individually marked as read, and they are categorised under general headings - new features, elections, technical changes, etc - which allows users to select the topics they don't want to hear about in future.
I think this has real potential for finally unifying watchlist notices & targeted geonotices, and it might be worth thinking about what's needed to deploy it here. Andrew Gray ( talk) 22:27, 29 May 2013 (UTC)
Hi all,
I'm trying to figure out if the UK lookup has actually improved at all since our discussions a year or two ago, or if it's still abysmal. (And - more usefully - how it's abysmal - does it work in some areas and not others? Do people at least geolocate to roughly the right end of the country?). It'd be a great help if UK users could fill out the short test form here - it doesn't record IPs, personal information or usernames, just where Wikimedia thinks you are & where you (roughly) are.
I'll post back in a bit with the summarised results. Andrew Gray ( talk) 19:27, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
It keeps hogging my browser and stops me from using my other scripts as the only way i can stop it from hogging is to press the stop (X) key and thus this also disables my other scripts, please how do you shut this off??, its getting irritating and also affecting me on other wikimedia wikis...... its not linking anywhere and going to "geoiplookup.wikimedia.org is a DEAD-END..-- Stemoc ( talk) 13:20, 18 October 2013 (UTC)
li.geonotice, hr#geonotice-hr { display: none; }
I would like feedback on WP:Village pump (technical)#Migrating Geonotice to a gadget. Helder.wiki 00:21, 27 July 2014 (UTC)
-- [[
User:Edokter]] {{
talk}}
08:53, 8 August 2014 (UTC)Please add a space between the full stop of each notice and the [Hide] link. I'm sure there used to be one. — Martin ( MSGJ · talk) 12:20, 1 September 2014 (UTC)
-- [[
User:Edokter]] {{
talk}}
15:22, 3 September 2014 (UTC)It appears that links to http://maps.google.com/ - such as the one just above the TOC at Wikipedia:Geonotice - will stop working soon. I've started a thread at Template talk:GeoGroup#Viewing KML data in Google Maps. -- Redrose64 ( talk) 20:01, 25 February 2015 (UTC)
Is it possible to do a geonotice that also targets by number of edits? Ϣere SpielChequers 09:42, 3 November 2015 (UTC)
I had requested one for Winnipeg. OhanaUnitedsaid it was set up. I don't see a msg for Winnipeg, I only see the global Wikipedia15 message. But then, maybe a geonotice is not what I think it is? Main page says "notice similar to a sitenotice, anonnotice or watchlist notice" but the links just go to empty pages. What should I actually be looking for? Tenbergen ( talk) 16:30, 10 January 2016 (UTC)
I've replaced "corners:" line of the long-standing UK meetups geonotice with the newer "country:" line. The current format of UK-wode meetup geonotice was invented because ISPs don't (didn't?) resolve geolocation accurately within the UK, so we just have one notice for the whole UK. With this switch we will also (theoretically) stop telling people geolocated in Dublin (just about inside the rectangle because it needed to cover western Scotland) about meetups in Great Britain. Der yck C. 16:31, 29 February 2016 (UTC)
Clicking "view" or "edit" on a geonotice seems to redirect to MediaWiki:Watchlist-details, which doesn't reflect the current geonotice. That's not the expected behaviour... Thanks. Mike Peel ( talk) 22:28, 21 September 2016 (UTC)
{{navbar|MediaWiki:Watchlist-details|plain=1}}
This placement is intentional, since the links are there to facilitate editing of the watchlist notices. Geonotices are merely a subtopic of the watchlist notices, and are coded at
MediaWiki:Gadget-geonotice-list.js. --
Redrose64 (
talk)
23:12, 21 September 2016 (UTC)I have processed a number of requests here, and I'd like to suggest that we try to make the process a little easier. At least from my perspective, the process for an administrator is fairly cumbersome, and the perpetual backlog suggests to me I might not be the only one.
I'm thinking we could do either of the following, or perhaps a combination:
Does this seem like a good idea? If so, does anybody (like maybe Andrew Gray or Deryck Chan) want to help me refine the specifications a bit so we can redesign the instructions and/or make a more specific request of developers? - Pete Forsyth ( talk) 02:28, 17 February 2017 (UTC)
Pinging all recent contributors to MediaWiki:Gadget-geonotice-list.js: @ Deryck Chan, Amorymeltzer, Pharos, Cyberpower678, TheDJ, Xaosflux, Redrose64, and Ganeshk.
Starting in the near future (perhaps this week), we will be using a new bot-assisted system for managing geonotices. You can see the BRFA at Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/MusikBot II 2 and Special:PermaLink/862124571#Geonotices for the original discussion. The reason we're doing this is to allow any admin to manage geonotices, and not just interface admins.
Under the new system, you'll use Wikipedia:Geonotice/list.json (currently outdated) to configure the notices. A bot will sync this to MediaWiki:Gadget-geonotice-list.js every five minutes. This is JSON format, not JavaScript. As such, the rules have changed:
'
) are no longer escaped, but double quotations are (as with \"
). This should be a welcomed change, since you're much more likely to want to use single quotes than double quotes. If you attempt to escape single quotes, or forget to escape double quotes, the JSON editor will show an error and will not let you save.HongKongNov18
) would be entered like HongKongNov18: { ... }
. Now you should write it like "HongKongNov18": { ... }
. The same is true for the individual options, like "begin"
, "end"
, etc. If you attempt to save without adding such quotations, the JSON editor will show an error.[https://example.org example.org]
instead of <a href="https://example.org">example.org</a>
. The MediaWiki parser API is used, so any valid wikitext should work. The other nice advantage here is you can easily test what your notice will look like, using your sandbox, for example."comments": "..."
to your notice configuration, such as in
this example. This will only be shown on the JSON page, and will not be copied to
MediaWiki:Gadget-geonotice-list.js.A bot report reflecting the current status will be written to User:MusikBot II/GeonoticeSync/Report, which will be transcluded at the top of this page and somewhere on Wikipedia:Geonotice. The report will include timestamp of the last successful sync, along with either "No errors!" or a list the detected errors. Here are the things the bot will check:
If there are any concerns, please let me know. When this goes live, I'll be sure to update all documentation, including the comment block at MediaWiki:Gadget-geonotice-list.js. Regards, — MusikAnimal talk 17:06, 7 November 2018 (UTC)
Geonotice appears to be broken, is it working for anyone?-- Pharos ( talk) 04:09, 18 January 2020 (UTC)
Hi! I am running a survey of Wikipedians/Wikimedians in Ireland and would like to place a geonotice with a link to the Qualtrics survey from mid-April to mid-May. I could have sworn I requested one for a survey I conducted in 2016, but I can't find any trace of it. Is this the best place to go about this? Thanks! Smirkybec ( talk) 15:44, 30 March 2020 (UTC)
There is new Basshunter tour soon and I though it may be good occasion to take a photo of live performance by someone who live in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Finland or Norway. List of locations: Facebook, Instagram or Twitter. Basshunter performed for few million people already but there are no new images in Wikimedia Commons available since 2009. Eurohunter ( talk) 17:50, 21 June 2022 (UTC)
Based on a request/discussion from @ Pharos and @ OhanaUnited, I created Wikipedia:Geonotice/Map, which uses a Lua module ( Module:Geonotice map) to parse the JSON and render a map showing the details of each geonotice and the area it covers. Legoktm ( talk) 01:58, 14 August 2022 (UTC)
A discussion about changing the size of Wikipedia:Geonotices is open at MediaWiki talk:Gadget-geonotice-core.css. Any feedback about this is welcome there. — xaosflux Talk 13:30, 3 October 2022 (UTC)