Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous)/Archive 55

Why in the Russian-language Wikipedia is forbidden to raise the issue "Corruption in Wikipedia"?
The Russian-language Wikipedia, the theme of "Corruption in Wikipedia" administrators instantly blocked. Why can not understand the fact of corruption in Wikipedia?

Machine translation theme will copy here:

"Friends, how relevant is of corruption in Wikipedia (probability) and what the possible formats, it can be shown? I list some:

1) First User protects point of vision the second participant, instead of wanting to protect the point of view of the first (of);

2) Admins protect someone instead of something of interest. That is to say, administrators involved in the sale of the truth and it will earn a living, see Wikipedia as a source of income;

3) Admins punish someone commissioned by someone;

4) Admins repress (block forever), a number of people who will be able in the future to prevent them in the election to this position again. With this offer a lifetime membership.

'''The problem is that Wikipedia is not only a platform of ordinary scientists, and sometimes a number of states will try to push through it, some their ideologies, to use it as an instrument of its ideological politics. And for such purposes allocated huge sums from the budget at all times. I fear that these policies will affect and Wikipedia.''' This includes state-level pressure on the AK, the administrator, and someone else.

I'm not saying that is the case today. But in the future - not excluded.

Please discuss".

Daryanush (talk) 11:41, 14 February 2017 (UTC)


 * Wikipedias in different languages are independent of one another, so we have no control over anything they do. Britmax (talk) 12:35, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

Review of initial updates on Wikimedia movement strategy process
''Note: Apologies for cross-posting and sending in English. Message is available for translation on Meta-Wiki.''

The Wikimedia movement is beginning a movement-wide strategy discussion, a process which will run throughout 2017. For 15 years, Wikimedians have worked together to build the largest free knowledge resource in human history. During this time, we've grown from a small group of editors to a diverse network of editors, developers, affiliates, readers, donors, and partners. Today, we are more than a group of websites. We are a movement rooted in values and a powerful vision: all knowledge for all people. As a movement, we have an opportunity to decide where we go from here.

This movement strategy discussion will focus on the future of our movement: where we want to go together, and what we want to achieve. We hope to design an inclusive process that makes space for everyone: editors, community leaders, affiliates, developers, readers, donors, technology platforms, institutional partners, and people we have yet to reach. There will be multiple ways to participate including on-wiki, in private spaces, and in-person meetings. You are warmly invited to join and make your voice heard.

The immediate goal is to have a strategic direction by Wikimania 2017 to help frame a discussion on how we work together toward that strategic direction.

Regular updates are being sent to the Wikimedia-l mailing list, and posted on Meta-Wiki. Beginning with this message, monthly reviews of these updates will be sent to this page as well. Sign up to receive future announcements and monthly highlights of strategy updates on your user talk page.

Here is a review of the updates that have been sent so far:


 * Update 1 on Wikimedia movement strategy process (15 December 2016)
 * Introduction to process and information about budget spending resolution to support it
 * Update 2 on Wikimedia movement strategy process (23 December 2016)
 * Start of search for Lead Architect for movement strategy process
 * Update 3 on Wikimedia movement strategy process (8 January 2017)
 * Plans for strategy sessions at upcoming Wikimedia Conference 2017
 * Update 4 on Wikimedia movement strategy process (11 January 2017)
 * Introduction of williamsworks
 * Update 5 on Wikimedia movement strategy process (2 February 2017)
 * The core movement strategy team, team tracks being developed, introduction of the Community Process Steering Committee, discussions at WikiIndaba conference 2017 and the Wikimedia movement affiliates executive directors gathering in Switzerland
 * Update 6 on Wikimedia movement strategy process (10 February 2017)
 * Tracks A & B process prototypes and providing feedback, updates on development of all four Tracks

More information about the movement strategy is available on the Meta-Wiki 2017 Wikimedia movement strategy portal.

Posted by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of the Wikimedia Foundation, 20:30, 15 February 2017 (UTC) • m:Special:MyLanguage/Strategy/Wikimedia movement/2017/Updates/Initial announcements review • Get help

One page has only been edited by the same guy for two months in over 200 edits
Isn't this WP:Owning? I'm a bit concerned that the article will just be whatever he wants, since some of his sources are pretty biased. In over 200 edits, he's the only one who has been editing that page for two months. ÞunoresWrǣþþe (talk) 09:18, 12 February 2017 (UTC)
 * OWNing is when a user insists on his/her version, despite other users disagreeing. A user being the only editor of the page isn't OWNing. If you have issues with some of the text there, feel free to edit the page and see how (s)he reacts. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 16:54, 12 February 2017 (UTC)
 * I agree with Od. Being a custodian is different from declaring an article your soul baby. As a RCP I have seen plenty of pages that haven't been edited in months, (till I came along and rvv). If someone is the only editor in a time period, they are just working on it. L3X1 My Complaint Desk 21:44, 12 February 2017 (UTC)
 * Are you referring to Sutton Hoo helmet? There is nothing wrong with only a single editor making most of the edits to an article. OWNing is when an editor gets possessive and rejects any/all edits by other users. Master of Time   ( talk ) 21:49, 12 February 2017 (UTC)

Invitation to help improve and translate in other languages 16 biographies about African women
In the run up to International Women’s Day on the 8th March, Wiki Loves Women is launching the on-Wikipedia translated drive #16WikiWomen : 16 African Women Translate-a-thon

The idea is for Wikipedians to take 16 days to translate the Wikipedia biographies of 16 notable African women, into at least 16 languages (African and/or international languages).

The articles to be translated will be the biographies of African women. The list of language can be, but is not limited to:
 * International languages: Arabic, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, German
 * African languages: Akan, Afrikaans, Igbo, Hausa, Wolof, Tswana, Zulu, Xhosa, Shona, Swahili, Yoruba, Sudanese, Amharic, Tsonga, Ewe, Sesotho, Chichewa

The list of the 16 women biographies that will be translated are:
 * 1) Malouma, a Mauritanian singer, songwriter and politician
 * 2) Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge, a South African politician.
 * 3) Cri-Zelda Brits, a South African cricketer
 * 4) Anna Tibaijuka, a Tanzanian politician and former under-secretary-general of the United Nations
 * 5) Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti, a Nigerian women’s rights activist
 * 6) Flora Nwapa, a Nigerian author who writes predominantly in Igbo
 * 7) Samia Yusuf Omar, a sprinter from Somalia
 * 8) Maggie Laubser, a South African painter
 * 9) Fatima Massaquoi, a pioneering educator from Liberia
 * 10) Frances Ames, a South African neurologist, psychiatrist, and human rights activist
 * 11) Asmaa Mahfouz, a Egyptian activist. The best version is currently in Arabic : Asmaa Mahfouz
 * 12) Yaa Asantewaa, the legendary former Queen Mother of Ghana
 * 13) Fatou Bensouda, a Gambian lawyer
 * 14) Martha Karua, a Kenyan politician
 * 15) Chinwendu Ihezuo, a Nigerian professional footballer
 * 16) Nassima Saifi, a Paralympian athlete from Algeria

Please jump in! Whilst all those articles already exist in English, you may improve them... or you may translate them into another language you know, or you relay the project in other linguistic communities. If you wish to participate, please feel free to add your name and any comments here : 16 African Women Translate-a-thon/participants Results will be tracked on this page : 16 African Women Translate-a-thon/tracking

Thanks

Anthere (talk) 10:44, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

Language of Articles
I noticed that many of the Simplified Chinese translations use traditional Chinese characters. Why is this?York12321 (talk) 15:54, 20 February 2017 (UTC)
 * Impossible to say without providing an example link. --Malyacko (talk) 13:31, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

Requesting an article re-assessment
Is there an official channel trough which an editor could request a re-assessment of an article? Plaza del Lago, for instance, is an article that was assessed several years ago as a "start-class" article. However, it has long since outgrown such a categorization. Since I originally created this page (it was the first article I created. My learning-curve on Wikipedia largely took place through creating and revising this article), I am obliged to relieve myself from providing a new assessment myself, as I possess a I strong bias towards it. But how/ where could I make a request for other users to do so? Is there a category tag one could add in such circumstances, or a page that a user would need to add the article to a list? Or do no such constructs currently exist on Wikipedia? And shouldn't we have one?

If I am not mistaken no such construct exists, and perhaps one should. SecretName101 (talk) 23:56, 19 February 2017 (UTC)
 * Assessments are generally done through the Wikiproject(s) the article is associated with. If there is an active Wikiproject that maintains the article, you can check with them.  -- Jayron 32 13:47, 20 February 2017 (UTC)


 * So a user should make such a request on the main discussion-page of the Wikiproject(s) it belongs to? Thanks! As a side-note, steps one could take to request a re-assessment should perhaps be included on the central-page describing the assessment process itself.SecretName101 (talk) 20:05, 20 February 2017 (UTC)


 * I've bumped it up to C; it's not a Stub and it's way outgrown Start. I'd encourage editors to be bold, at least for classifications up to C. --Tagishsimon (talk) 21:36, 21 February 2017 (UTC)
 * Yes, please, be bold. And if anyone's interested in doing this systematically, then please see m:Research:Screening WikiProject Medicine articles for quality/Stub prediction table for an example of what could be done to address outdated article assessments.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:08, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

Elections for New Page Patrol/New Page Review coordinators
Voting for coordinators has now begun HERE and will continue through/to 23:59 UTC Monday 06 March. New Page Review and its Page Curation is a core MediaWiki extension. The process of expertly vetting all new articles is a critical issue needing a couple of 'go to' people. The coordinators will do their best for for the advancement of the improvement of NPP and generally keep tracks on the development of those things. Coordinators have no additional or special user benefits, but they will try to keep discussions in the right places and advance negotiations with the WMF. Please be sure to vote. Any registered, confirmed editor can vote. Nominations are now closed. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 02:04, 22 February 2017 (UTC)

Request for review of suggested changes to the UNESCO article, also graphics being made available from the UNESCO Science Report
Hi all

Please could someone have a look at the suggested edits made by a UNESCO staff member to the UNESCO article? The request was made over 2 months ago.

On another note, we are currently uploading a few 100 graphics from the UNESCO Science Report to Wikimedia Commons here. Please do keep checking back to the category as I continue to upload images over the coming weeks. Here are a small selection, almost all are .svg files to allow best quality, adaptation and translation.

Thanks very much

--John Cummings (talk) 13:29, 23 February 2017 (UTC)

Do, or should, Category:Fictional characters and Category:People apply only to humans?
Apokrif (talk) 18:13, 15 February 2017 (UTC)
 * I don't have any particular opinion on whether they should, but Category:Fictional characters certainly does contain non-humans in its category tree (and therefore Category:People, a supercat of Category:Fictional characters does too). Indeed, Category:Fictional characters by species is a direct subcategory of Category:Fictional characters. So in practice at least they don't apply only to humans. Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 18:05, 16 February 2017 (UTC)
 * The real question for me is why Category:People is a supercat of Category:Fictional characters at all. Not all fictional characters are humans and calling any characters, even if human, "people" is a mis-classification in my mind. A "character" is not a person. Jason Quinn (talk) 17:57, 20 February 2017 (UTC)
 * What about Category:Mythological characters, many of whom are almost-certainly fictional. The line is not so obvious as even to exist. :D --Izno (talk) 17:28, 23 February 2017 (UTC)

Replacing a patrolled redirect with an unpatrolled article
The above page was created as a redirect to Dr. Phil (TV series) by Gourami Watcher who has the autopatrolled right. The page has been turned into a very weak article. Am I right in thinking that cases like this escape new pages patrol? Has there been any discussion about suitable responses? Johnuniq (talk) 03:36, 19 February 2017 (UTC)
 * I don't know, but it kind of looks like it bypassed new pages patrol, doesn't it? I have turned it back into a redirect, for lack of notability. Gourami Watcher, you have already been pinged here. If you wish to defend your article, please respond. Bishonen &#124; talk 17:10, 21 February 2017 (UTC).
 * The whole point of the autopatrolled right is to bypass such events. If a review of an editor's contributions indicates that there's a pattern of inappropriate article creation, then the right can be removed.  According to Requests for permissions, that process is usually handled at WP:ANI.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:06, 21 February 2017 (UTC)
 * The autopatrolled right has not been misused. The problem is that the page was created as a redirect, and the redirect was marked as patrolled. Other editors then came along and changed the page to an article which inherited the patrolled status despite the fact that it was inappropriate. That is a loophole. Johnuniq (talk) 22:46, 21 February 2017 (UTC)
 * I've seen recent discussion related to this particular problem recently though I can not recant where. You/We can summon some of the normal NPP names to see if they know of those discussions. --Izno (talk) 17:27, 23 February 2017 (UTC)
 * Ah, the discussion I was probably thinking about was Village_pump_(proposals), speedily closed in the affirmative. I would guess first a question at WP:VPT or at WT:NPP would tell us whether the system unpatrols things which are created from a redirect page, and if it does not currently, WP:VPPRO would probably settle in the affirmative for making it do so. Alternatively, maybe knows the former question. --Izno (talk) 23:11, 23 February 2017 (UTC)

Ping Kudpung—you have enough work to do in the NPP area, but in case you are not aware of the above loophole you may as well add it to your list of things to be considered. Johnuniq (talk) 06:22, 24 February 2017 (UTC)
 * You're quite right, I don't really want o get involvd in the technicalities - I've got enough onmy plate trying to clear my desk before I hand over the thankless and lonsome task of watching what goes on at NPP all these years. I will however take the opportunity to point out that the section linked to by doesn't appear to say anything of the sort; not only does it not address the issue, but that page hasn't even been fully updated to reflect this new user right. Any admin can remove the 'Patroller' flag at any time, and we want to keep it as easy to do as possible without opening it up to the peanut gallery and his dog. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 11:32, 24 February 2017 (UTC)
 * The linked section says, "This is not the place to request review of another user's rights. If you believe someone's actions merit removal of a permission flag, you should raise your concern at the incidents noticeboard." I think that sentence is accurately paraphrased as "that process is usually handled at WP:ANI", don't you?  WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:28, 24 February 2017 (UTC)
 * No,, I don't. Linguistically it doesn't even come close. There is a difference between paraphraing, making loose interpretations, making sweeping statements, or takimg things out of context. Good thing we're not evaluating. medical symptoms... Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 00:55, 25 February 2017 (UTC)
 * So the page says that if you want to propose having a permission removed from someone's account, then you should go to ANI, but you believe that's not the right page? In that case, I invite you to (try to) update that page with the information that you believe is accurate, then.  It would be a service to everyone to know where and how to propose that someone not have a given user right.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:05, 26 February 2017 (UTC)
 * Misuse of user rights are not relevant for this discussion—no one has misused a right in the scenario I outlined. Can we leave the issue of how a right should be removed to another section please? Johnuniq (talk) 06:59, 26 February 2017 (UTC)
 * You asked what the suitable responses were. I am telling you that one suitable response – at least if it's a pattern, rather than a one-off article – is to have the user right removed.  According to PERM (but apparently Kudpung disagrees with PERM), the rights removal is usually handled at ANI.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:44, 27 February 2017 (UTC)

Request for comments
Could we get more comments here? --168.235.1.4 (talk) 18:50, 1 March 2017 (UTC)

Abstract images
m:Grants:Evaluation/100 Words Campaign is trying to find images that illustrate intangible concepts, such as "ability" or "constructiveness". Please boldly add your favorites. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:50, 1 March 2017 (UTC)

Contacting sources in the real world
Howdy, I've been working on updating the article Tansy beetle and aim to get it to GA standard. Following my request for peer-review from a fellow editor, they then asked one of the previous contributors to the article, Geoff Oxford, for views on the topic via his talkpage User talk:Geoff Oxford. Geoff is an academic and wrote several of the sources I referenced in the article. Looking at his recent activity I had thought it unlikely he would actually answer via the talk page so took it upon myself to look him up at the University of York and sent him an email directly. He has cordially replied sending through a few open access papers to reference in the article. My question is this - what is Wikipedia's policy about contacting possible useful sources outside of the Wikipedia space in the real world? Have I unwittingly committed some terrible faux pas? Or even bludgeoned myself with a COI issue in my excitement??

Advice/comments appreciated.Zakhx150 (talk) 09:54, 1 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Good work, carry on! So long as articles are written from reliable sources without undue reliance on a single source, getting information from experts is good. It sometimes is of limited value in that the expert might say that some text in the article is wrong and some other text would be right, but we need to check that with a reliable source. There is no COI because you are working to improve the encyclopedia, not to push a particular line. Johnuniq (talk) 00:22, 2 March 2017 (UTC)


 * , it's a good idea to contact specialist sources. I've done it several times, and it has always led to improvement. People who care about the topic are often incredibly generous with their time. SarahSV (talk) 00:34, 2 March 2017 (UTC)


 * Ah good, appreciate those answers. Thanks.Zakhx150 (talk) 07:55, 2 March 2017 (UTC)

Feedback requested on XTools rewrite
Hello! Community Tech is teaming up with to address the 2016 top 10 wish of rewriting the popular XTools suite. The first tool Community Tech will be working on is Articleinfo (accessible via the "Revision history statistics" link on history pages). At it's simplest, our goal is to rewrite it to be stable and fully functional. Before we get started, we want your feedback on what you'd like to see in the new version, and what you don't like about the current version. Please review our plans and provide any feedback at Community Tech/Rewrite Xtools/Articleinfo. Thank you! &mdash; MusikAnimal  talk  00:09, 2 March 2017 (UTC)

Intellipedia, the government's intelligence Wikipedia
Just something curious I'd like to share: That site, called Intellipedia, has been around for more than a decade. It’s made up of three different wikis, at different classification levels [...] Built on the same software platform as Wikipedia, Intellipedia's articles are often cribbed directly from the free encyclopedia, but with sensitive classified information added by analysts. The Government’s Secret Wiki for Intelligence. --bender235 (talk) 23:19, 3 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Maybe something for Signpost? Certainly the sort of thing they write about.  -- Jayron 32 00:57, 4 March 2017 (UTC)

RFC needs additional opinions to break a deadlock.
See Talk:Chemistry. Please contribute if you have an opinion. Thanks. -- Jayron 32 02:55, 4 March 2017 (UTC)

Calling all editors--revise Columns templates
re: Templates_for_discussion/Log/2017_March_3 & Category:Multi-column templates - Older Column templates & view: Template:Column-generating template families which inserts section-subsections... I was 'bitten' a while ago by a dog of an Older Column templates unexpected behavior, and upon reviewing the templates usage, Rip-Van-Winkle-like found there are whole families of more modern Column templates we ought be using with often less complexity in application and more importantly, are compatible with newer CSS standards and modern browsers. Most importantly, they wrap properly in the realm of smartphones, and PAD computer operating systems, whereas the Older Column Templates I list for discussion DO NOT! Since PAD and other portable devices now make up a huge percentage of cases when we are accessed, as a computer engineer it seems silly to let incompatible column templates stay around when most can readily be replaced systematically, at least semi-automatically with, I suspect, a bit of cleaver BOT ops in the proper order. More importantly the tougher cases can be weeded into nothingness with a small dose of daily editing. Most all need only a new name substituted and formats checked. The trouble will come from style formats and margins, but the new CSS3 families have all the advantages there. The options are listed in Template:Column-generating template families.

So, please Bookmark to do a daily 'Onesie'... fix something on WhatLinksHere check on Col-begin and clear an old bit of code in favor of a newer better choice. My, it's just technically engaging enough to wake me up while I'm working on opening the other eye and working my way down from the top O'that 'first half-cup' of Morning joe! (Just don't drive and edit at the same time!) // Fra nkB 22:01, 3 March 2017 (UTC)
 * This post seems like an attempt to execute the result at Templates for discussion/Log/2017 March 3 before it is closed. P p p er y 02:40, 4 March 2017 (UTC)
 * YEP! - As I just clarified,we had 'ankle deep blood in the digital streets' about eight years back about whether "D"'s in any 'xFD' were for DISCUSSION or DELETION... the argument seemed to go on for weeks! Alas, TFD seems to have retained the un-PC reputation as of Deletion vice Discussion. (I will admit to trawling here for additional participants, but the discussion does seem apropos THERE!), and further, ... Apologies, aging seems to have caused me to forget there was (is???) some other templates discussion page too. (Alas, one forgets. The only templates I've worked with since 2009 are on the Commons or Wikibooks projects. If you don't use it, you loose it!) As far as the 'implementation of the suggested action', many editors of are perhaps unaware one family is of benefit over the other choices, so Div col... Div col end OUGHT be used (IMHO, based in my best professional judgment as someone first coding software in 1976) when and where they work and that, as soon as possible. Since anyone seeing such a use can convert the older to the preferable, and superior formatting template (we're mostly talking 1:1 swaps Beginning, middle, and end templates for two column tables, or even three-plus, if the div col & Columns-list usage is understood.) [Given the shear amount of time many of us under 40 years-old dive onto smartphones for the least tidbit of information, we'll be doing a favor to a lot of users. I swear to God, some of you in your twenties, like both my boys, have magnets pulling your nose down to your phones anytime you are asked a question!]  So yeah, in general, IMHO (again), we in the community ought be aware there is a better, and less-good alternatives, and ought to update things possibly problematic (where time permits) to the best solution for any given circumstances. I do believe, that is an 'editor's' function, as is understanding 'such circumstances obtain'  and so, , yes indeed, I believe that information that there is a good-better-best choice, ought be promulgated on such news pages like this one. // Best regards Fra nkB 20:11, 4 March 2017 (UTC)

How to prevent an edit war
See Sargon of Akkad (YouTube), and it's history page. Without pointing fingers to certain parties, it appears that an edit war cannot be avoided if the users continue to edit as they do now. Is there someone out there with a real neutral point of view, who can look at the edits? Or where can I find such a person? I found WP:AN/3, but there I need to accuse certain persons, and I do not believe that is the road that must be taken. Best regards,Jeff5102 (talk) 08:34, 5 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Jeff5102, you can try WP:3O, WP:DRN, or posting at the WikiProject talk pages listed on the talk page of the article. Other than that, you need to request action against specific users at AN3 as you found or page protection at WP:RFPP. --Izno (talk) 15:12, 5 March 2017 (UTC)

RfC on Napoleon Hill - an obscure guy who wrote a famous book
This RfC on Napoleon Hill just started. This is not a high traffic article so the more eyes the better, if you can spare a few minutes. Thanks. SW3 5DL (talk) 15:29, 7 March 2017 (UTC)

Football/Soccer Goal Keepers
I feel that a football/soccer goal keepers Wikipedia page should include the amount of goals they have conceded for their club/country etc. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Andywooo (talk • contribs) 17:00, 7 March 2017 (UTC)
 * The question is... is this a statistic that is written about in sources? If so, feel free to add a his information to the relevant articles.  If not, then it would constitute a  WP:No original research violation to add it. Blueboar (talk) 19:38, 7 March 2017 (UTC)

Overview #2 of updates on Wikimedia movement strategy process
''Note: Apologies for cross-posting and sending in English. This message is available for translation on Meta-Wiki.''

As we mentioned last month, the Wikimedia movement is beginning a movement-wide strategy discussion, a process which will run throughout 2017. This movement strategy discussion will focus on the future of our movement: where we want to go together, and what we want to achieve.

Regular updates are being sent to the Wikimedia-l mailing list, and posted on Meta-Wiki. Each month, we are sending overviews of these updates to this page as well. Sign up to receive future announcements and monthly highlights of strategy updates on your user talk page.

Here is a overview of the updates that have been sent since our message last month:
 * Update 7 on Wikimedia movement strategy process (16 February 2017)
 * Development of documentation for Tracks A & B
 * Update 8 on Wikimedia movement strategy process (24 February 2017)
 * Introduction of Track Leads for all four audience tracks
 * Update 9 on Wikimedia movement strategy process (2 March 2017)
 * Seeking feedback on documents being used to help facilitate upcoming community discussions

More information about the movement strategy is available on the Meta-Wiki 2017 Wikimedia movement strategy portal.

Posted by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of the Wikimedia Foundation, 19:43, 9 March 2017 (UTC) • Strategy/Wikimedia movement/2017/Updates/Overview 2 of updates on Wikimedia movement strategy process • Get help

Looking for non-medical people
I am looking for more comments regarding a page move here:. Any input from more editors would be greatly appreciated! --My Core Competency is Competency (talk) 16:02, 10 March 2017 (UTC)

Hazal Kaya
Hi. Can someone please review all sources of this "prizes" (zB:, ...). Most of them (if not all) are really crap. Regards. --Ganímedes (talk) 16:06, 7 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Hmmmm. Sadly nobody cares. Pitty. --Ganímedes (talk) 10:47, 12 March 2017 (UTC)

What percentage of Wikipedia articles are about sports players?
They seem to come up a lot on Special:Random. Same question for municipalities/towns/villages as well. Thanks, Ab e g92 contribs 02:09, 18 February 2017 (UTC)


 * We have 1,444,805 biographies and 338,912 are recorded as being sport-related . So. Somewhere north of 23.4% - there will be many sports biogs which are not usefully marked as such. --Tagishsimon (talk) 02:22, 18 February 2017 (UTC)


 * I use Special:Random a lot too and also notice how disproportionate the fraction of sports players on Wikipedia is. My suggestion to editors is to try not to create articles on very minor players and instead have redirects from their names to things like lists of players for the team. Only those players with clearly established notability should have articles. And when interpreting notability, we ought to be more conservative than liberal. If sports players are kind of borderline in terms of notability, err on the side of non-notable. It makes no sense to create "articles" that basically consist of a sentence giving their name, their team, and what years they played. Jason Quinn (talk) 18:04, 20 February 2017 (UTC)


 * The problem with that is that the notability guidelines for sportspeople - WP:NSPORT - boils down to "if you've played in one international or professional match, you're notable." Giving rise to a mass of stub articles for not-particularly-significant players of various sports. I guess "Sports Almanac" is not one of those things Wikipedia is not. That's not the call I would have made, but that horse bolted a long time ago. Chuntuk (talk) 17:01, 21 February 2017 (UTC)
 * What really? Then I'm notable, but I wouldn't dream of anyone creating an article for me on those grounds. Bizarre... Carl Fredrik   💌 📧 16:28, 7 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Yes, they need to raise the bar to a level equivalent to WP:NACADEMIC. Require them to win "player of the game" in a professional match, for example, or win a major sporting event such as a gold medal at the Olympics. Praemonitus (talk) 21:07, 13 March 2017 (UTC)
 * I agree about the futility of locking the barn door after the horse has bolted, but it's possible that the community might choose to tighten up its criteria. WP:WHYN might be a good starting point, since it is the official explanation of why it's not usually appropriate for an encyclopedia to include doomed WP:PERMASTUBs (e.g., articles that consist of one sentence giving the athlete's name, team, and years plus we have no rational basis for believing that they could be expanded beyond that point).
 * Also, it might be desirable for the notability guidelines to be written by both fans and non-fans of X, regardless of whether X is athletes ("any one international or professional match = notable"), actors ("any two named credits = notable"), professors ("almost anyone who did research that some editors think is important") or anything else. But that's harder to do, since editors who are uninterested in "X" are unlikely to stick with interminable discussions about what makes a notable X.   WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:35, 21 February 2017 (UTC)


 * I don't think the notability guidelines are watered down, and I honestly believe the sports biographies are useful information. Maybe it's not useful to everyone, but then again is having article on every Linux distribution, or most known objects in the solar systems useful to everyone? Probably not. But it has it's niche. --bender235 (talk) 23:09, 3 March 2017 (UTC)


 * There are 463,263 transclusions of Infobox settlement, so there's a rough minimum for municipalities/towns/villages. And Category:Articles with 'species' microformats contains 345,183 articles about species of life. ~21% of Wikipedia articles are either sports biographies, settlements or species. Plantdrew (talk) 18:08, 27 February 2017 (UTC)


 * These stats are off. As of this edit there are 5,345,717 articles on enwiki (check). If there are 338,912 sport-related biographies, that's 6.3% of all articles. Likewise, 8.7% municipalities/towns/villages, 6.5% about species, 21.5% all of those categories combined. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 18:15, 27 February 2017 (UTC)
 * I think that the editor meant 23% of biographies, not 23% of articles. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:37, 27 February 2017 (UTC)

Redirect discussion on NP
The soft redirect NP is currently discussed at WP:RFD. I invite you to chime in. --George Ho (talk) 19:48, 7 March 2017 (UTC)

What is a soft redirect? SW3 5DL (talk) 13:39, 8 March 2017 (UTC)
 * From WP:soft redirect: "a replacement of usual or "hard" redirects and is used where the destination is another site—including Wikimedia's sister projects." A soft redirect is intended "for external use" as a hard one doesn't work for such. Also, it can redirect to a special page using "Special:" namespace. You can read more. --George Ho (talk) 13:46, 8 March 2017 (UTC)
 * , Thanks George, appreciate you taking the time. SW3 5DL (talk) 20:02, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

DMOZ closing
Apparently, DMOZ is closing down on March 14. DMOZ, a high-risk template, will have to be deprecated as a result. Also, there's a proposal to create a MediaWiki-based, WMF-hosted web directory that you may be interested in. KATMAKROFAN (talk) 04:40, 9 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Sorry to see that go. Praemonitus (talk) 21:01, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

Wiki 4 Coop
Hello everyone,

I come to you to invite to re-read the submission of a new partnership project between the Wikimedia movement and the Belgian NGOs. The project is titled Wiki 4 Coop and I invite you to discover its submission page on Meta-Wiki. Do not hesitate to endorse the project if you like it and even correct my English if you have a little time. A beautiful end of day for all of you, Lionel Scheepmans ✉ Contact (French native speaker) 11:44, 17 March 2017 (UTC)

Template: Specific
Please see Template talk:Specific for a suggestion on rewording this template message to make the purpose and meaning clearer, especially regarding the use of secondary sources. —Sangdeboeuf (talk) 02:08, 20 March 2017 (UTC)

Odd links
On page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Statistics which is accessible from the main page by clicking on the number of articles in English, if you click on "Content Pages", it'll take you to https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:AllPages&hideredirects=1 which the very first article (!) is a redirect and (!! Chess) is just a section of an article. Shouldn't redirects be hidden? Why is this? Thanks,    Alex the Nerd (talk) 21:18, 20 March 2017 (UTC)Alex the Nerd
 * The filter for redirects was disabled today due to performance problems. See Village pump (technical). PrimeHunter (talk) 21:28, 20 March 2017 (UTC)

We invite you to join the movement strategy conversation (now through April 15)

 * This message, "We invite you to join the movement strategy conversation (now through April 15)", was sent through multiple channels by Gregory Varnum on 15 and 16 of March 2017 to village pumps, affiliate talk pages, movement mailing lists, and MassMessage groups. A similar message was sent by Nicole Ebber to organized groups and their mailing lists on 15 of March 2017. This version of the message is available for translation and documentation purposes

Dear Wikimedians/Wikipedians:

Today we are starting a broad discussion to define Wikimedia's future role in the world and develop a collaborative strategy to fulfill that role. You are warmly invited to join the conversation.

There are many ways to participate, by joining an existing conversation or starting your own:

Track A (organized groups): Discussions with your affiliate, committee or other organized group (these are groups that support the Wikimedia movement).

Track B (individual contributors): On Meta or your local language or project wiki.

This is the first of three conversations, and it will run between now and April 15. The purpose of cycle 1 is to discuss the future of the movement and generate major themes around potential directions. What do we want to build or achieve together over the next 15 years?

We welcome you, as we create this conversation together, and look forward to broad and diverse participation from all parts of our movement.


 * Find out more about the movement strategy process
 * Learn more about volunteering to be a Discussion Coordinator

Sincerely,

Nicole Ebber (Track A Lead), Jaime Anstee (Track B Lead), & the engagement support teams 05:09, 18 March 2017 (UTC)


 * There's a local page dedicated to this, at Wikimedia Strategy 2017, if you'd prefer to participate here instead of at Metawiki. Other locations are slowly being added to the tracking page at Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2017/Participate. Looking forward to your input. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 20:40, 21 March 2017 (UTC)

Fair use template
Is there a template I can tag articles with that use too many non-free images in them? Thanks. SharkD  Talk  04:31, 24 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Non-free seems to do this job. -- John of Reading (talk) 07:28, 24 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Thanks! SharkD   Talk  04:18, 25 March 2017 (UTC)
 * You could also just send the images to WP:FFD if they are borderline or remove them and let the automated deletion tagging robot take care of them. Depends on the situation. If you don't mind me asking, what article? --Majora (talk) 04:23, 25 March 2017 (UTC)
 * The article is Action role-playing video game. I'm not sure there are more images than there should be. SharkD   Talk  06:23, 25 March 2017 (UTC)
 * So I've always been more strict with my interpretation of our fair use policy and to me, that article has way too many non-free images on it. Essentially one per section amounts to nothing more than a gallery of fair use images (just one that is spread out instead of in a nice neat row). A few of those images are so overused on other articles as well that it is severely straining our fair use policy (specifically WP:NFCCP #3) in my opinion. This is a gray area. Wikipedia purposefully follows a far more strict fair use policy than actual US copyright law. We do that to encourage as much "free" content as possible. We are the "free encyclopedia" after all. In terms of actual US copyright law, those images on that article are probably fine (standard disclaimer: this is not legal advice but my interpretation of the complexities of copyright). I can see how someone would argue that each of those photos fits into our fair use policy. I can see how they could win that argument. I can also see how the opposite can be true. The grayness of our policy allows for both to occur. The only way to be sure would be to put the lot towards FFD as one nomination and see how others interpret it. --Majora (talk) 19:11, 25 March 2017 (UTC)

Blocks in de finite
Nowadays blocks can be indefinite, which means that their expiry has not been set. Was the code word originally "in-finite" as opposed to "in-definite"? In the Finnish Wikipedia there is still in use the translation "forever", which leads me to think that the original wording in English might have been something else than it's now. --Pxos (talk) 11:38, 25 March 2017 (UTC)
 * As far as I can remember, it's been "indefinite." The idea is that it is not necessarily forever: a person could be unblocked later. Ian.thomson (talk) 12:32, 25 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Indeed. The idea being that there is no set expiry; the user is blocked until the relevant people decide they should be unblocked. 'Forever' would be incorrect because it implies the result can never be changed. Sam Walton (talk) 20:12, 26 March 2017 (UTC)
 * As long as I can remember (just over 12 years now) the wording here WP:INDEF that blocks are "indefinite not infinite" has applied. This is quoted quite often at AN and ANI threads about blocks. Translations from one language to another can be tricky things and this may be one of those situations. MarnetteD&#124;Talk 20:18, 26 March 2017 (UTC)


 * If the intent had been "forever", any native English speaker would have used "permanent", not "infinite". &#8213; Mandruss  &#9742;  20:20, 26 March 2017 (UTC)


 * According to WikiBlame, the text in the dropdown list of block reasons was changed from "nfinite" to "indefinite" in [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=MediaWiki:Ipboptions&diff=prev&oldid=18233386 July 2005] by Zzyzx11. From their [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Contributions&offset=20050706052724&contribs=user&target=Zzyzx11&namespace=&tagfilter= contributions around that time], I can't figure out what prompted them to make that change however. Graham 87 10:18, 27 March 2017 (UTC)
 * It's unrelated to that diff, but there was some interesting early discussion about that here. Sam Walton (talk) 10:51, 27 March 2017 (UTC)
 * That brings back memories from 12 years ago when we were more relaxed in edit summaries. That was for consistency. Despite what MediaWiki:Ipboptions had at the time, the block log was listing "with an expiration time of indefinite", not "infinite". I knew what and where MediaWiki:Ipboptions was. I didn't know (and still don't really know) what system message is generating the "with an expiration time of indefinite" for the block log. Zzyzx11 (talk) 06:53, 28 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Zzyzx11, the logs take all their contents from current system messages. If you were to change the wording "infinite" to "a very long time indeed", all the logs would change as well, and it really would read in the logs that in the year 2005 someone was blocked for "a very long time indeed", althoug at the time it would have read "infinite/indef/whatever". So the logs of a wiki are not a reliable archaeological evidence of how things once were. Only diffs are. --Pxos (talk) 13:49, 30 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Then my memory fails me, sorry. I might have done it because Blocking policy had more frequent use of "indefinitely".. Or maybe because there was an issue with the MediaWiki software at the time, per the summary of the edit made four minutes after mine (and to whoever I was trying to block, another admin was able to get it through). And I do not think it was an accident that one day later I changed it to match the default formatting at the time. But again, 2005 was a time when admins had more of a luxury of being more bold on the system messages without discussion. Zzyzx11 (talk) 03:30, 1 April 2017 (UTC)
 * So the word has really been verbatim translated from English to Finnish before July 2005, because the Finnish WP has used "forever", like, forever. Whenever there is a mightily confusing wording, I have learned to go back 10–15 years searching for the relevant term in English. Sometimes the original wording is miserable, sometimes the translator has botched things up. As long as Blame can be placed correctly on a Wiki, things are all right. --Pxos (talk) 12:13, 30 March 2017 (UTC)
 * All wikis are different. It's possible that Finnish Wikipedia's rules are open to a "forever", permanent ban. Spanish Wikipedia has a permanent block with no avenue to appeal, which has occasionally led Spanish users here to plead with Spanish admins on their enwiki pages. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 19:13, 3 April 2017 (UTC)

Wikipedia logo animation
Hello friends,

Please enjoy this animation my computer took one week to generate. :) --Psiĥedelisto (talk) 10:17, 26 March 2017 (UTC)




 * Nice work! &#8213; Mandruss  &#9742;  20:22, 26 March 2017 (UTC)
 * I agree! I always forget that the globe is actually 3D and has other sides. --Majora (talk) 20:39, 26 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Excellent! Is that one month of coding and one week of computer processing time? You should add this to User talk:Jimbo Wales where this would be welcome relief from some of the stuff currently going on. Johnuniq (talk) 01:35, 27 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Support! Jimbo needs the break. 68.233.214.74 (talk) 18:14, 27 March 2017 (UTC)

~  ONUnicorn (Talk&#124;Contribs) problem solving 18:53, 27 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Wow. Really cool. Shearonink (talk) 19:06, 27 March 2017 (UTC)

Arbitration Committee seeking new clerks
The Arbitration Committee clerks are currently looking for a few dependable and mature editors willing to serve as clerks. The responsibilities of clerks include opening and closing arbitration cases and motions; notifying parties of cases, decisions, and other committee actions; maintaining the requests for Arbitration pages; preserving order and proper formatting on case pages; and other administrative and related tasks they may be requested to handle by the arbitrators. Clerks are the unsung heroes of the arbitration process, keeping track of details to ensure that requests are handled in a timely and efficient manner. Clerks get front-line seats to the political and ethnic warfare that scorches Wikipedia periodically, and, since they aren't arbitrators themselves, are rarely threatened with violence by the participants.

The salary and retirement packages for Clerks rival that of Arbitrators, to boot. Best of all, you get a cool fez!

If you're interested, please read and follow the directions on this page

For the Arbitration Committee Clerks, Kharkiv07  ( T ) 20:52, 26 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Discuss this at: Wikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee/Noticeboard

Help - can't find the Wikilink to a WP policy/guideline/rule about multiple cites to one reference
The first time a reference appears in an article, it's the full cite. Thereafter, it is supposed to be the version (and not the other way around with maybe the full cite at the 10th occurrence and then the partial ones preceding it). I am pretty sure that this is a policy/guideline but I cannot find the WP page or shortcut! Help please & thanks. Shearonink (talk) 19:05, 27 March 2017 (UTC)
 * See Help:Footnotes. Nothing says the full footnote needs to be first. It can be at any place the reference is used. If it is an Infobox or other template it would be better to have the full reference in the text instead. StarryGrandma (talk) 22:35, 27 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Also, using named references at all is not required. It would be acceptable for a particular page to use a citation style in which there are no named references, and citations that are used more than once are just repeated in full. &mdash; Carl (CBM · talk) 00:39, 28 March 2017 (UTC)
 * That was just the form I used in this post (re refname, also since that is what the MOS pages use as their example as in WP:REFNAME lol). I know it's not required for a GA etc. At some point today I did find a statement that said the full cite 'should probably be first but that it wasn't a requirement" but now can't even find that WP-page.  If anyone knows what I am talking about (I read it somewhere here on WP and I just want to know *where*) please put me out of my misery and post the link etc here.  Thanks, Shearonink (talk) 04:47, 28 March 2017 (UTC)
 * I've never seen that anywhere in any of the reference guidelines so I can't help. After several years of correcting reference problems, however, I can tell you that in practice the full reference tends to be wherever the editor first used the source in an article and is as likely to be several citations deep in the article as at the first usage. It would not be a good idea to require moving the full reference once it is added just because a new use comes in ahead of it. The parser doesn't care where it is. StarryGrandma (talk) 05:48, 28 March 2017 (UTC)

Wikidata editor for Wikipedia
I would like to announce my grant proposal for the development of a gadget for editing Wikidata information (primarily used in the infoboxes) without leaving the Wikipedia page. My goal is to make one simple gadget helpful for all users which cover 80-90% of the needs, even if not everything is available for editing. In simpler terms, it's about creating an editor for "Wikidata infoboxes". Please write your opinion and wishes on the grant page. — putnik 09:52, 29 March 2017 (UTC)

Email throttle
Hi, I accidentally refreshed an Special:EmailUser page a stack of times yesterday. I still seem to be throttled 20 hours later. Is there a time limit before the action is unlocked, or have I triggered some permanent lock? T.Shafee(Evo &#38; Evo)talk 03:47, 30 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Our mw:Manual:$wgRateLimits in https://noc.wikimedia.org/conf/highlight.php?file=InitialiseSettings.php says:

'emailuser' => [ 'ip' => [ 5, 86400 ], // 5 per day per ip (logged-out and new users) 'newbie' => [ 5, 86400 ], // 5 per day for non-autoconfirmed 'user' => [ 20, 86400 ], // 20 per day for users ],
 * ip's cannot actually mail users. PrimeHunter (talk) 14:29, 30 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Thank you. T.Shafee(Evo &#38; Evo)talk 22:12, 30 March 2017 (UTC)

Talk:Super Mario World/GA2
The reassessment on Super Mario World, Talk:Super Mario World/GA2, is still open. A volunteer may be needed, or the page can be converted to the community reassessment. Comments are welcome either here or there. --George Ho (talk) 09:47, 1 April 2017 (UTC)

Requests for comment on Microscope article
Please comment on a few requests for comments on the Microscope article.

Talk:Microscope

Talk:Microscope

Thank you, --2601:648:8503:4467:F4B3:6D6C:9DCC:DC06 (talk) 21:02, 1 April 2017 (UTC)

What is the status of forced administrator recall?
Where was the last serious proposal for recalling bad or abusive admins, and what kept it from being adopted? — swpb T 18:48, 3 April 2017 (UTC)
 * In a nutshell, Perennial proposals. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 19:10, 3 April 2017 (UTC)

Importance of article history
Is there a neat, user-friendly explanation of why we need to keep article histories? I think there used to be, but I can't find it.

I'm dealing with a persistent user who doesn't understand our copyleft obligations at all. Any links to suggested help or project places, or even the meta, would be greatly appreciated.

Places that might mention or link to it you'd think include:
 * Administrators' reading list
 * wp:page history
 * meta:Help:Page history
 * WP:guide to deletion
 * wp:Copyleft

And perhaps I'm already looking straight at it somewhere there. Happens from time to time. Anyway, any help appreciated. Andrewa (talk) 03:19, 4 April 2017 (UTC)
 * Try Copying within Wikipedia. I don't know why the page history pages don't explain this. They should. StarryGrandma (talk) 03:28, 4 April 2017 (UTC)
 * Thanks, that's exactly the sot of thing I am after. But that doesn't go nearly far enough... a link from an edit summary does not show up in "What links here", so there's a danger if this protocol is followed that a page whose edit history is required for attribution purposes will be innocently deleted.
 * Has this perhaps slipped through the cracks over the years since I became a sysop? A sort of wp:instruction slip (the opposite disease to wp:instruction creep)? Andrewa (talk) 11:11, 4 April 2017 (UTC)
 * I don't know why putting the information on the talk pages is called "optional". I would think for any substantial copying that Template:Copied should be put on the destination talk page at least. At the moment that template is merge/split specific. StarryGrandma (talk) 16:21, 4 April 2017 (UTC)
 * Yes, exactly. And under substantial copying I think we need to include anything that might put the free reuse of Wikipedia under threat if not properly attributed. Which could be a single sentence, or in theory even a phrase.
 * In any case, and at the risk of argument from silence, there seems to be a serious gap in our documentation, IMO. Andrewa (talk) 23:04, 4 April 2017 (UTC)

Now raised at Village pump (policy). Andrewa (talk) 21:07, 5 April 2017 (UTC)

New essay - NPP and hoaxes
Hi, I've been writing up an essay on spotting hoaxes during NPP and things to watch out for, based on personal experience. I hope it covers some new ground.

I'd be keen to see if anyone has any thoughts or feedback - I'm thinking of moving it from userspace to being an essay if people like it. Blythwood (talk) 11:43, 4 April 2017 (UTC)


 * Mixed feelings. I enjoyed reading it but I expect most of it is pretty obvious to New Page Patrol regulars, and we risk encouraging hoaxers by publicising their achievements and providing a reference page of techniques for them to use. See wp:don't stuff beans up your nose. Andrewa (talk) 07:55, 5 April 2017 (UTC)

Community notification of grant application
Hi all

I'm applying for a grant from WMF to continue my work at UNESCO from September this year, please take a look, let me know what you think and endorse if you want.

The main goals are:


 * 1) UNESCO’s publication workflows incorporate sharing open license content on Wikimedia projects.
 * 2) Support other Intergovernmental Organisations and the wider public to share content on Wikimedia projects.
 * 3) Support Wikimedia contributors to easily discover and use UNESCO content and the documentation produced.

Thanks

--John Cummings (talk) 20:06, 4 April 2017 (UTC)

Redirect Filter
I am aware that the redirect filter for the page list is disabled due to performance issues. Does anybody know when it is expected to be working again? Thanks, Alex the Nerd (talk) 20:10, 4 April 2017 (UTC)Alex the Nerd
 * There's no timeframe. You might want to follow along on T160983. Anomie⚔ 20:54, 4 April 2017 (UTC)

Coordinates -- decimal vs. degrees/minutes/seconds
I'm starting to construct a list article, and am finding the coordinates for the locations involved expressed in both decimal form (41.289°S 174.777°E) and degree/minute/second form (57°18′22″N 4°27′32″W). Given that I'm going to have to convert some of them, is there any reason to prefer one form over another? Is there any advantage to a reader, or to other software that might want to make use of the data? Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 01:04, 5 April 2017 (UTC)
 * I suggest mentioning this at Template talk:Coord where people who deal with this sort of thing are more likely to notice. Johnuniq (talk) 03:51, 5 April 2017 (UTC)
 * Done. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 09:58, 5 April 2017 (UTC)

Wiki Loves Africa best picture Community vote
Is open. 3 images have already been selected by a jury. Please select a 4th winner in the images listed here. Vote now :) c:Commons:Wiki Loves Africa 2016/Community Prize Selection Anthere (talk) 14:34, 6 April 2017 (UTC)

WikiProject assessments vs. external reviewers vs. ORES
Hey folks, I have been collaborating with some researchers who are publishing a dataset of externally reviewed Wikipedia articles (the sample was taken back in 2006). I'd like to take the opportunity to compare the prediction quality of m:ORES' article quality model with these external reviewers, but in order get a good picture of the situation, it would also be very helpful to get a set of Wikipedian assessments for the same dataset. So, I have gathered all of the versions of externally reviewed articles in User:EpochFail/ORES_audit and I'm asking for your help to gather assessments. There's 90 old revisions of articles that I need your help assessing. I don't think this will take long, but I need to borrow your judgement here to make sure I'm not biasing things.

To help out, see User:EpochFail/ORES_audit.

ORES is a generalized machine prediction service that helps catch vandalism, measure the development of articles, and support student editors. The more we know about how ORES performs against important baselines, the better use of it we can make it to measure Wikipedia and direct wiki work. --EpochFail (talk &bull; contribs) 22:04, 6 April 2017 (UTC)

== Start of the 2017 Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees elections ==

''Please accept our apologies for cross-posting this message. This message is available for translation on Meta-Wiki.''

On behalf of the Wikimedia Foundation Elections Committee, I am pleased to announce that self-nominations are being accepted for the 2017 Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees Elections.

The Board of Trustees (Board) is the decision-making body that is ultimately responsible for the long-term sustainability of the Wikimedia Foundation, so we value wide input into its selection. More information about this role can be found on Meta-Wiki. Please read the letter from the Board of Trustees calling for candidates.

The candidacy submission phase will last from April 7 (00:00 UTC) to April 20 (23:59 UTC).

'''We will also be accepting questions to ask the candidates from April 7 to April 20. You can submit your questions on Meta-Wiki.'''

Once the questions submission period has ended on April 20, the Elections Committee will then collate the questions for the candidates to respond to beginning on April 21.

The goal of this process is to fill the three community-selected seats on the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees. The election results will be used by the Board itself to select its new members.

The full schedule for the Board elections is as follows. All dates are inclusive, that is, from the beginning of the first day (UTC) to the end of the last.


 * April 7 (00:00 UTC) – April 20 (23:59 UTC) – Board nominations
 * April 7 – April 20 – Board candidates questions submission period
 * April 21 – April 30 – Board candidates answer questions
 * May 1 – May 14 – Board voting period
 * May 15–19 – Board vote checking
 * May 20 – Board result announcement goal

In addition to the Board elections, we will also soon be holding elections for the following roles:


 * Funds Dissemination Committee (FDC)
 * There are five positions being filled. More information about this election will be available on Meta-Wiki.


 * Funds Dissemination Committee Ombudsperson (Ombuds)
 * One position is being filled. More information about this election will be available on Meta-Wiki.

Please note that this year the Board of Trustees elections will be held before the FDC and Ombuds elections. Candidates who are not elected to the Board are explicitly permitted and encouraged to submit themselves as candidates to the FDC or Ombuds positions after the results of the Board elections are announced.

More information on this year's elections can be found on Meta-Wiki. Any questions related to the election can be posted on the election talk page on Meta-Wiki, or sent to the election committee's mailing list, board-electionswikimedia.org.

On behalf of the Election Committee,

Katie Chan, Chair, Wikimedia Foundation Elections Committee

Joe Sutherland, Community Advocate, Wikimedia Foundation

Posted by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of the Wikimedia Foundation Elections Committee, 03:36, 7 April 2017 (UTC) • m:Special:MyLanguage/Wikimedia Foundation elections/2017/Updates/Start of the 2017 Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees elections • Get help

Wikipedia Credibility Reputation - Major Media Stories
My concerns about "High-Conflict Subjects vs. Saboteurs," expressed in Wikipedia talk:Protection policy, recently drew this reponse from a senior editor:
 * "Your assertion that the "credibility of Wikipedia, itself, is at stake" seems a bit alarmist, but I actually wouldn't be surprised if we wind up with egg on our faces a few years down the road..."

I replied:
 * "It's a bit late for that. The credibility of Wikipedia is not that high in most circles, and its crediblity has been the butt of countless sarcastic remarks, wisecracks and late-night comics' jokes.While I think Wikipedia has merit (or I wouldn't bother with it), Wikipedia's credibility has been in danger for years, now. ... Wikipedia has "egg on its face" every time some visitor reads an obviously corrupted article."

Then I did a little research, to underscore the long history of Wikipedia's tarnished reputation, and found these critiques of Wikipedia, published by the same sources that Wikipedia generally encourages editors to cite as references. If they're credible, then consider these articles they've published about Wikipedia's credibility:


 * 2005-11-29: USA Today:
 * "A false Wikipedia 'biography,'"


 * 2007-03-29: NBC News
 * "The word on Wikipedia: Trust but verify", "Popular online encylopedia, plagued by errors, troubles educators."


 * 2009-02-04: ABC News:
 * "Wikipedia's Woes" "...Wikipedia does have some serious shortcomings, the most glaring of which is its accuracy."


 * 2009-12-15: Wall Street Journal:
 * "Ron Livingston vs. Wikipedia Editor: The Challenge of Policing the Web" "...an attempt to censor or alter information leads to wider publicity. That’s what happened to Livingston... an anonymous user repeatedly changed the actor’s Wikipedia profile to claim he’s in a gay relationship (he’s straight and married), [so the actor] filed suit... to uncover the cyber-vandal’s identity, [but that] led to a slew of news articles and even accusations that Livingston is homophobic."


 * 2012-04-19: ABC News:
 * "Wikipedia: Public Relations People, Editors Differ Over Entries"
 * "1,300 public relations people... surveyed... told her 60% of Wikipedia entries contained factual errors about their clients' companies, ranging from trivial to highly controversial -- and the PR people, being 'interested parties,' felt they could not make corrections."


 * 2014-06-26: CBS News:
 * "Wikipedia drug entries often inaccurate or outdated, study finds" "Overall, 41% of the relevant Wikipedia entries had been updated within two weeks following an FDA safety warning. Nearly a quarter (23%) took more than two weeks to update, while more than a third (36%) still didn't reference the FDA warning a year after it was issued, the study authors said."


 * 2016-02-01: New York Times:
 * "On Wikipedia, Donald Trump Reigns and Facts Are Open to Debate" "Wikipedia’s rules generally forbid anyone with a 'conflict of interest' to edit pages, but this rule is difficult to enforce because editors are almost never identified by their real names"


 * (currently) Harvard University:
 * "What's Wrong with Wikipedia?" in Harvard Guide to Using Sources "...Wikipedia is not a reliable source for academic research..."

We Wikipedians need to be careful about our reputation, and how we earn it, and how we protect it, or Wikipedia will gradually fade into irrelevance, for lack of credibility, and even our most honorable work will be lost in the smoke of our faults. ~ Penlite (talk) 08:57, 6 April 2017 (UTC)
 * Firstly, I'm not sure that all of these sources actually demonstrate that wikipedia lacks credibility. The "Harvard Guide to Using Sources", for instance, says that wikipedia is "not a reliable source for academic research", but we're not intending to be a reliable source for academic research, we are intending to be an encyclopedia!  Indeed, the HGUS specifically says that "In fact, some instructors may advise their students to read entries for scientific concepts on Wikipedia as a way to begin understanding those concepts."  That's hardly the statement of an organisation who think that wikipedia lacks credibility.
 * More generally, reliable sources have been questioning the wikipedia model for more than a decade, as your own list demonstrates. That's pretty much as long as wikipedia has been widely known as the go-to encyclopedia.  We haven't faded into irrelevance yet, and I don't see any particular reason to be more worried about that now than we were last year, or in 2010, or indeed any time in the past decade or so... Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 16:28, 7 April 2017 (UTC)


 * As the young man said: "Well, I got away with it. Must be OK." As the middle-aged man said: "See, I told you I could get away with it." As the dying man said, on his deathbed, "Well, my sins haven't caught up with me yet... so what's to worry?"
 * ~ Penlite (talk) 08:09, 8 April 2017 (UTC)


 * Almost every one of these stories is "Here's this one article here that this one controversial thing happened with" or "Here's these  that have problems" Yes, we know and accept that we are a work in progress.  Also, "Academics say that you shouldn't use Wikipedia to do hard research" is a non-starter.  That's never been a goal of Wikipedia.  -- Jayron 32 18:13, 11 April 2017 (UTC)

Read-only mode for 20 to 30 minutes on 19 April and 3 May
Read this message in another language •

The Wikimedia Foundation will be testing its secondary data center in Dallas. This will make sure that Wikipedia and the other Wikimedia wikis can stay online even after a disaster. To make sure everything is working, the Wikimedia Technology department needs to conduct a planned test. This test will show whether they can reliably switch from one data center to the other. It requires many teams to prepare for the test and to be available to fix any unexpected problems.

They will switch all traffic to the secondary data center on Wednesday, 19 April 2017. On Wednesday, 3 May 2017, they will switch back to the primary data center.

Unfortunately, because of some limitations in MediaWiki, all editing must stop during those two switches. We apologize for this disruption, and we are working to minimize it in the future.

You will be able to read, but not edit, all wikis for a short period of time.


 * You will not be able to edit for approximately 20 to 30 minutes on Wednesday, 19 April and Wednesday, 3 May. The test will start at 14:00 UTC (15:00 BST, 16:00 CEST, 10:00 EDT, 07:00 PDT, 23:00 JST, and in New Zealand at 02:00 NZST on Thursday 20 April and Thursday 4 May).
 * If you try to edit or save during these times, you will see an error message. We hope that no edits will be lost during these minutes, but we can't guarantee it.  If you see the error message, then please wait until everything is back to normal.  Then you should be able to save your edit.  But, we recommend that you make a copy of your changes first, just in case.

Other effects:


 * Background jobs will be slower and some may be dropped. Red links might not be updated as quickly as normal. If you create an article that is already linked somewhere else, the link will stay red longer than usual. Some long-running scripts will have to be stopped.
 * There will be code freezes for the weeks of 17 April 2017 and 1 May 2017. Non-essential code deployments will not happen.

This project may be postponed if necessary. You can read the schedule at wikitech.wikimedia.org. Any changes will be announced in the schedule. There will be more notifications about this. Please share this information with your community. / User:Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:34, 11 April 2017 (UTC)

The Core Contest
Right folks, I am setting this up to run May 15 to June 30 again...with the usual Amazon vouchers up for grabs. Cheers, Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 13:35, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

Update 13 on Wikimedia movement strategy process
TL;DR: We hope you will contribute your thoughts to this question: "What do we want to build or achieve together over the next 15 years?" - at either Wikimedia Strategy 2017 or on metawiki at Strategy/Wikimedia movement/2017/Cycle 1, plus continue discussing each others' ideas. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 19:37, 14 April 2017 (UTC)


 * This message, "April 12: Update on Wikimedia movement strategy process (#13)", was sent by Katherine Maher on 12 April 2017.

Hi all!

Summary: The first cycle of strategy conversations is ending soon. We hope you will contribute your answer to this question: "What do we want to build or achieve together over the next 15 years?"

This phase has been an opportunity to come up with new ideas. The next phase is about refining these ideas to reach some consensus on the most important ones. This means that there will still be opportunities to contribute in the future! It also means that the focus of the conversation will change. If you are interested in generating creative new ideas about the future of our projects, now is the time to share your thoughts!

Participating is easy. Check out the participation page on Meta-Wiki's movement strategy portal for more information. Find online discussions, local meetups, and a survey on Meta-Wiki.

One note: In consideration of the Passover and Easter holidays people around the world are recognizing this week and weekend, we have moved the closing day for this discussion cycle to the end of April 18 (23:59 UTC). That means you have a few additional days to share your ideas - big and small - for Wikimedia's future.

Once this discussion cycle ends next week, we will be gathering common topics from across all the global discussions and posting them on Meta-Wiki. That includes conversations from the wikis, meetups with experts, discussions from affiliates, and anywhere else we have documented.

The next phase of the discussion will begin by May 1. We’ll be working together to prioritize the thematic statements. More information on that cycle is available on Meta-Wiki, and we’ll share more when that cycle gets started.

I have already seen and heard some fantastic ideas from our first discussion cycle these past few weeks. I look forward to seeing what ideas emerge in the final days of this cycle!

Un cordial saludo (Spanish translation: “Best regards”), Katherine

-- Posting. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 19:37, 14 April 2017 (UTC)

Userbox templates that fail to include "noinclude" tags around their categories
Looking at Category:Political parties user templates recently, I found a number of pages listed that were not userboxes, but rather were user pages that included political party userboxes. It seems that some of the userboxes included the designation without including "noinclude" tags around the category, thus placing the pages that transcluded the userbox into the category of Category:Political parties user templates as well.

I managed to identify several of the problematic templates and added "noinclude" tags around the category, so that they would say

However, if this is happening with political party user templates, it could be happening with other kinds of userboxes too. Is there any way to find other userboxes that fail to use the "noinclude" tag around their category designations? --Metropolitan90 (talk) 19:48, 14 April 2017 (UTC)
 * Search userspace for . Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 20:49, 14 April 2017 (UTC)

UNESCO Challenge
Dear Wikipedians, Happy easter for those of you celebrating.

Tomorrow, the International Day for Monuments and Sites is celebrated. On that same day, the first edition of the UNESCO Challenge will also commence. The UNESCO Challenge is a challenge co-arranged by UNESCO, the Swedish National Heritage Board and Wikimedia Sverige, with the purpose to improve articles on world heritage sites. UNESCO are going to release a large series of images (in this category), and a lot of open access texts on the sites, which may be used in the challenge.

Write in whatever language you like! You find the page for participation and points registration here.

Best, Eric Luth (WMSE) (talk) 09:59, 17 April 2017 (UTC)

Open letter to Burger King
Please see Conflict of interest/Noticeboard open letter. This is time sensitive, I intend to send the letter tomorrow. Smallbones( smalltalk ) 19:33, 17 April 2017 (UTC)

Ongoing "420 collaboration" to improve cannabis/marijuana articles
Just spreading the word about our ongoing project. If this interests you, feel free to also disseminate the word over social media! It's a wide-ranging topic with all kinds of interesting facets, so even if this isn't your usual area, I invite you to drop in and check out our list of redlinks to see if any of them catch your attention. Thanks! Goonsquad LCpl Mulvaney (talk) 07:41, 18 April 2017 (UTC)


 * I'd particularly encourage more editors to watchlist the article 420 (cannabis culture) since we routinely get a huge spike in views on 20 April, and it'd be great to quickly catch any vandalism. Thanks! Goonsquad LCpl Mulvaney (talk) 05:56, 20 April 2017 (UTC)

Template text inadvertently discourages use of NPOV language
The phrase "Jesus Christ" is a theologically loaded title that Jews and others reject, and that (per WP:NPOV) should not generally be used on English Wikipedia except in very specific circumstances. The neutral, equally recognizable term is "Jesus of Nazareth". I went to yesterday to see if there were pages that linked to it inappropriately, but before I got to that I saw that the redirect page currently includes the text Please do not replace these redirected links with a link directly to the target page unless expressly advised to do so below or elsewhere on this page. This was clearly meant to discourage editors from piping directly to the article title from pages that use the same "alternate name" as the redirect, but that wording assumes that all alternate names are equally acceptable for Wikipedia to be using in its text, which is not the case.

The template in question, Template:Redr, is apparently deprecated, but I really don't know what that means when the template is permanently "template-protected to prevent vandalism" (even though the odds of extended-confirmed editors engaging in bona fide "vandalism" on relatively obscure template pages that can generally only be seen by clicking noredirect links are next to nil).

Shouldn't the text be changed to Please do not replace these redirected links with a link directly to the target page without a good reason? I don't even know how or where to go about doing this, which is why I'm at the miscellaneous village pump.

Hijiri 88 ( 聖やや ) 00:54, 22 April 2017 (UTC)


 * It looks like there are many thousands of redirects to Jesus Christ, many of which may be appropriate usages. This would be a long-term project requiring manual reading each case for context. Due to the subject, I'd expect you'd get pushback for many of the edits so this is a task that seems ripe for revert wars. I would first create an short, concise, formal argument justifying bypassing the redirect based on our policies and guidelines (like you've started above using NPOV) that properly weighs WP:DONOTFIXIT. Once you are ready, you can make your proposal in the Village Pump's Proposals section (if a better place springs to somebody's mind, please suggest it). If that succeeds with consensus, you can use a link to that discussion when making your edits, which will help explain the purpose and justification for your edits and prevent disagreements. Jason Quinn (talk) 05:56, 22 April 2017 (UTC)

A new project needs you
Please read Wikipedia talk:Requests for adminship.

Please join and participate.

Anna Frodesiak (talk) 00:01, 23 April 2017 (UTC)

Criticism of Walmart discussion
There has been a really great conversation at Talk:Criticism of Walmart and I'm looking for more editors to join the discussion. To summarize: Wikipedians have noticed and have begun attempts to fix the Criticism of Walmart article, which is full of WP:UNDUE and WP:POV content, and is far from encyclopedic in areas. Some editors have suggested throwing out the article and starting from scratch, while others have said the article would take a "massive" effort to clean up properly. The issue is no one knows where to start, which brings me here. Input and advice from additional editors could be a huge benefit to finding a way forward with this. As one of Walmart's representatives on Wikipedia, I have a conflict of interest and I do not feel comfortable making suggestions as to whether the editors should try to correct the existing article or start over by reducing it to a stub, as has been suggested by others. I am, however, willing to help with whatever "grunt" work is necessary to assist other editors in fixing the page (providing references, assisting with identifying inaccuracies, etc.). Any insight is valuable and appreciated. Thanks, JLD at Walmart (talk) 14:32, 25 April 2017 (UTC)
 * Hi, JLD. What about WP:NPOVN, where you can address the article's bias? --George Ho (talk) 10:05, 26 April 2017 (UTC)

Ongoing proposals at Meta-wiki
There are ongoing proposals, including older ones, to close or delete some language projects, like Beta Wikiversity and Moldovan Wikipedia. Also, there are proposals for new projects, like NonFreeWiki, WikiJournal, Wikigames, and Wikidirectory. --George Ho (talk) 05:08, 27 April 2017 (UTC)

RFC on microscope article
Talk:Microscope

--2600:387:6:807:0:0:0:C2 (talk) 14:30, 27 April 2017 (UTC)

The strategy discussion. The Cycle 2 will start on May 5
The first cycle of the Wikimedia movement strategy process recently concluded. During that period, we were discussing the main directions for the Wikimedia movement over the next 15 years. There are more than 1500 summary statements collected from the various communities (including 40 from your local discussion). The strategy facilitators and many volunteers have summarized the discussions of the previous month. A quantitative analysis of the statements will be posted on Meta for translation this week, alongside the report from the Berlin conference.

The second cycle will begin soon. It's set to begin on May 5 and run until May 31. During that period, you will be invited to dive into the main topics that emerged in the first cycle, discuss what they mean, which ones are the most important and why, and what their practical implications are. This work will be informed and complemented by research involving new voices that haven’t traditionally been included in strategy discussions, like readers, partners, and experts. Together, we will begin to make sense of all this information and organize it into a meaningful guiding document, which we will all collectively refine during the third and last cycle in June−July.

We want to help your community to be more engaged with the discussions in the next cycle. Now, we are looking for volunteers who could We are looking forward to your feedback!
 * tell us where to announce the start of the Cycle 2, and how to do that, so we could be sure the majority of your community is informed and has a chance to feel committed, and
 * facilitate the Cycle 2 discussions here, on Wikipedia.

Base (WMF) and SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 16:30, 27 April 2017 (UTC)

Title
Article Autonomous Province of Kosovo and Metohija should be renamed in only Kosovo and Metohija, as has already been done with  Autonomous Province of Vojvodina (Vojvodina). --SrpskiAnonimac (talk) 22:53, 26 April 2017 (UTC)


 * Are you familiar with the WP:Requested moves process? Any editor can start it.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:15, 29 April 2017 (UTC)
 * I think that you accidentally closed the move discussion at Talk:Autonomous Province of Kosovo and Metohija, instead of starting it. I also see that someone else proposed this idea last year, and that there have been no objections so far.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:57, 29 April 2017 (UTC)

Hyphen in this name
This redirect page, Lavonia-Carnegie Library, is about the Carnegie Library in the town of Lavonia, Georgia. Of course, hyphens are used when combining two of the same type of thing, e.g. the Smith-Jones house, the Dallas-Ft. Worth area, but is it correct to use it when one is a town and the other is a person's last name? Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 02:12, 28 April 2017 (UTC)
 * From their web page, it seems that the name of the library is Lavonia-Carnegie Library, so this would seem appropriate usage. Robminchin (talk) 04:44, 28 April 2017 (UTC)


 * But the name on the building and the sign in front of the building don't say that. A manual of style says to use hyphens for things that are of equal importance.  And neither does the NRHP form. And I checked with a language expert and he stated that there should not be a hyphen there.  Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 14:44, 28 April 2017 (UTC)


 * As there is also a Lavonia Carnegie Library redirect to the same article, I think we have it covered either way. Anything wrong with status quo? The rules are different for redirects, which is why we deliberately keep redirects with spelling errors, etc. &#8213; Mandruss  &#9742;  23:29, 28 April 2017 (UTC)


 * The version with the (incorrect) hyphen is also used in line 25 of National Register of Historic Places listings in Franklin County, Georgia and in Athens Regional Library System. Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 01:35, 29 April 2017 (UTC)


 * Manual of Style, section on Dashes, under "In compounds when the connection might otherwise be expressed with to, versus, and, or between", it says "Here the relationship is thought of as parallel, symmetric, equal, oppositional, or at least involving separate or independent elements. ... " and gives examples: "the Uganda–Tanzania War;  the Roman–Syrian War;   the east–west runway;   the Lincoln–Douglas debates;   a carbon–carbon bond".  Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 02:11, 29 April 2017 (UTC)
 * That is overridden for particular institutions etc, where they get to choose their own way of naming themselves. The website page is clear, and enough for us. Why not contact them & tell them they are doing it all wrong? Johnbod (talk) 09:21, 30 April 2017 (UTC)

Linking to non-English Wikipedia?
In this diff user:Ag2gaeh is linking to German Wikipedia instead of clarifying a statement he has made. Is this appropriate? I don't think we should be sending English speaking users to German Wikipedia to seek clarification, when the author can simply explain the thing his or herself. (Note that he has provided a German reference in addition to the interwiki link, which is not a problem. But why can't he simply explain it himself?) He has also been removing all the clarify tags I've added to the article. His writing style is not very advanced, and I am having trouble understanding the article. SharkD  Talk  12:15, 24 April 2017 (UTC)


 * It would be helpful, if SharkD would look for an English source instead to remove my link. I have no access to English literature. An explanation in more detail would be an extra article. SharkD has "fortgeschrittene Deutschkenntnisse" and is able to read the German links. So perhaps he may be able to insert a "short" explanation. A long explanation would be not convenient. I intend to translate the German Wiki article "orthogonale Axonometrie". But it takes time. Discussions like this here and there are preventing me from working for Wikipedia. --Ag2gaeh (talk) 13:39, 24 April 2017 (UTC)


 * It should be mentioned here that is a disruptive editor, who has never learnt that, in mathematics, many words have an accurate meaning that may differ from their common meaning. It results that he call "grammar errors of a non-native English speaker" many phrases that could be clarified by simply adding an appropriate wikilink, and does not really take into account the posts from other editors who disagree with him (see Talk:Parallel projection and its history for details). This results in the retirement from Wikipedia of a good mathematical editor (they are too few). This could be the object of a notice to WP:ANI, if I had the time for detailing this disruptive behaviour, which is of a minor importance, because the implied article have a very small audience.. D.Lazard (talk) 15:49, 24 April 2017 (UTC)


 * I don't want to go into too much detail here, but I reverted one edit, and you yourself said the change I reverted was ill-advised to begin with. Since then, I have tried to discuss each of the issues I have found in the articles on the Talk page, and use the clarify template as I was instructed. (Which have been deleted.) If you would like to participate constructively, why not join the discussion on the Talk page? That is why it is there. That said, I would still like to know what the policy is on directing English-speaking users to German Wikipedia for further info. I imagine the reverse happens a lot, but it still bothers me and seems sloppy. SharkD   Talk  16:26, 24 April 2017 (UTC)


 * To help clarify, the issue is about partially explaining a topic, and then asking readers to, "Please go to German Wikipedia for more info." SharkD   Talk  01:35, 27 April 2017 (UTC)
 * It's not ideal, but it might be better than nothing. Have you considered providing the clarification that you want yourself?  WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:13, 29 April 2017 (UTC)
 * I don't understand all of what the author is trying to say. Every grammar error or ambiguity can potentially have a large effect. SharkD   Talk  21:18, 2 May 2017 (UTC)

New Wikipedia Library Accounts Available Now (May 2017)
Hello Wikimedians! The Wikipedia Library is announcing signups today for free, full-access, accounts to published research as part of our Publisher Donation Program. You can sign up for new accounts and research materials from:


 * American Psychiatric Association – Psychiatry books and journals
 * Bloomsbury – Who's Who, Drama Online, Berg Fashion Library, and Whitaker's
 * Gaudeamus – Finnish humanities and social sciences
 * Ympäristö-lehti – The Finnish Environment Institute's Ympäristö-lehti magazine

Expansions
 * Gale – Biography In Context database added
 * Adam Matthew – all 53 databases now available

Many other partnerships with accounts available are listed on our partners page, including Project MUSE, EBSCO, Taylor & Francis and Newspaperarchive.com.

Do better research and help expand the use of high quality references across Wikipedia projects: sign up today! --The Wikipedia Library Team 18:52, 2 May 2017 (UTC)


 * You can host and coordinate signups for a Wikipedia Library branch in your own language. Please contact Aaron.
 * This message was delivered via the Global Mass Message tool to The Wikipedia Library Global Delivery List.

Introducing the Community health initiative on English Wikipedia
Community health initiative

Helping the Wikimedia volunteer community to reduce the level of harassment and disruptive behavior on our projects. Hello! Today we'd like to introduce the new Community health initiative, the people who will be working on it, and most importantly how you can get involved.

The Community health initiative
Over the past several years the Wikimedia Foundation has researched and learned how harassment affects participation on Wikipedia and have received numerous requests from the English Wikipedia community for better tools and preparation to deal with negative behavior. In January we received funding via a Newmark Foundation grant to address this problem over the next two years.

We're calling these efforts the 'Community health initiative' and our work contains four equally important parts:
 * 1) Researching the causes of harassment and workflows of those who report and resolve harassment
 * 2) Building anti-harassment tools for the MediaWiki platform
 * 3) Fostering an environment for the Wikipedia community to evaluate and grow their policies on harassment
 * 4) Identifying and training Wikipedia contributors to properly mitigate reports of harassment

Research
The Research team's Anti-Harassment Research project will aim to understand and model the characteristics of harassment in Wikimedia projects in order to inform the development of anti-harassment tools and recommendations for community-specific behavioral policies and enforcement processes.

Anti-harassment tools
We want to build software that empowers contributors and administrators to make timely, informed decisions when harassment occurs. Four focus areas have been identified where new tools could be beneficial in addressing and responding to harassment:
 * 1) Detection: We want to make it easier and more efficient for editors to identify and flag harassing behavior. We are currently questioning how harassment can be prevented before it begins, and how minor incidents be resolved before they snowball into larger uncivil problems.
 * 2) Reporting: According to Detox research, harassment is under reported on English Wikipedia. No victim of harassment should abandon editing because they feel powerless to report abuse. We want to provide victims improved ways to report instances that are more respectful of their privacy, less chaotic and less stressful than the current workflow. Currently the burden of proof is on the victim to prove their own innocence and the harasser's fault, while we believe the MediaWiki software should perform the heavy lifting.
 * 3) Evaluating: We want to build tools to help volunteers better understand and evaluate harassment cases, and inform the best way to respond. Current processes are time consuming and a high level of proficiency is necessary for an user to be able to analyze and evaluate the true sequence of events of a conduct dispute. We want to reduce the workload on people evaluating cases.
 * 4) Blocking: We want to improve existing tools and create new tools, if appropriate, to remove troublesome actors from a wiki, or certain areas within a wiki, and to make it more difficult for someone who's blocked from the site to return.

Policy growth
We will work with the community to research and analyze how behavioral issues on English Wikipedia are a) covered in policy, and b) enforced in the community, particularly noticeboards where problems are discussed and actioned. We will provide research on alternate forms of addressing specific issues, researching effectiveness, and identifying different approaches that have found success on other Wikimedia projects. We believe this will help the Wikipedia community make informed changes to existing policies and guidelines.

Training
To help functionary and community governance groups better coordinate their work, we will facilitate in the development of a training platform and will guide the establishment of a modules based around the critical area of addressing harassment.

After consultation with functionaries (stewards, global admins, Arbitration Committees, admins), community members, and outside experts an initial group of modules about Online harassment and Keeping events safe was created and is now available for training.
 * We will further collaborate with the community to development of future training modules.

The team
The Anti-Harassment Tools team includes five Wikimedia Foundation employees, partnering with members of the Wikipedia community who want to participate. The software we build will be useless if it doesn't address real-world workflow problems for the existing Wikipedia community, so we will heavily rely on your input to make our efforts a success.

You can read about more about the team. We're still searching for two PHP developers for this team, if you're interested apply here!

How to get involved
We're just getting started, and we look forward to your participation every step along the way. As we've prepared for the grant and and on-boarded the new team members we've collated some notes on meta, most of which we've moved here to Community health initiative. These plans and notes will almost certainly change base on the Wikipedia community's input.

Want updates or learn more about how to participate? Sign up for the Community health initiative mailing list or the Community health initiative Newsletter or follow our progress on the Community health initiative on English Wikipedia page.

We'd love to hear your initial thoughts on Wikipedia talk:Community health initiative on English Wikipedia. There's a lot to discuss and we hope to hear from you. Thank you! — Caroline, Sydney, & Trevor of the Anti-Harassment Tools team. 23:41, 2 May 2017 (UTC)

References to link what it means, since for years I saw it, and never knew. However, there is already a Template there, or rather, a redirect, which redirects to Template:Not a ballot. Where should I ask if anyone minds if I take over this redirect? Fwiw, the #Redirects section of the doc page for the template lists three redirects, but not that one, so I'm not even clear if anyone is using that one. What's the right way to advertise or ask about this, so I don't step on any toes about the old redirect? Mathglot (talk) 07:45, 1 July 2017 (UTC)
 * There are currently 103 transclusions of that redirect. You might look through that list to see who has added it to discussions recently to fine people who might mind. Anomie⚔ 11:38, 1 July 2017 (UTC)


 * Oppose. Would make an useful template harder to find. KMF (talk) 01:16, 3 July 2017 (UTC)

Category weirdness
Hi - I notice what I'm hoping is a glitch - that items in categories are in two columns rather than three. If this is a glitch, has anyone any idea what's causing it... or if it's some new attempt to fix something that wasn't broken by making it worse, is there some way of adding a doohickey in my monobook or elsewhere so that I can see them properly again? Grutness...wha?  14:36, 2 July 2017 (UTC)
 * At least in Firefox 54.0.1, the categories display on one, two or three columns depending on the current width of the browser window. What browser are you using? What happens if you resize the window? -- John of Reading (talk) 15:08, 2 July 2017 (UTC)
 * Aaaah. that explains it. The same must be true in Safari 10.1.1, but I'd not realised it before. Sorry folks (and thanks ) - that solved the problem! Grutness...<small style="color:#008822;">wha?  01:37, 3 July 2017 (UTC)