Wikipedia talk:Geonotice

Geolocation and CentralNotice
I've just filed a bug report suggesting that CentralNotice uses Geolocation: the bug report is at. Mike Peel (talk) 08:02, 26 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Looks good. You should also check out Proposal:Geonotice improvements on the Wikimedia Strategic Planning site.--Pharos (talk) 17:50, 26 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Impressively, this has apparently been done! See and meta:Special:CentralNotice. Next step: figuring out how we can actually post messages to it... :-/ Mike Peel (talk) 22:54, 29 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Huzzah! Let me know if you do make any progress figuring it out :)--Pharos (talk) 00:54, 30 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Should be easy to replace with the wikimedia geo locator. It produces the variable Geo = {"city":"Enschede","country":"NL","lat":"52.216702","lon":"6.900000","IP":"hidden","netmask":"16"}. Will also make it easier to target a specific country. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 18:59, 30 September 2010 (UTC)
 * User:TheDJ/Geonotice.js using Geo= requires importScriptURI of http://geoiplookup.wikimedia.org —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 19:42, 30 September 2010 (UTC)
 * To post CentralNotices you need admin access on meta. Note that the Geo javascript variable is set on every pageload, however, so you can reuse it in local scripts. (The variable name may change at some point, however.) Also note that the current Geo lookup service is only reliable for country-level lookup. The city-level lookup is not reliable. Kaldari (talk) 19:13, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

The bug has been closed as fixed in September 2010. How do we use this new facility? The top of WP:Geonotice currently says it is not possible, so that may need to be updated. John Vandenberg (chat) 01:11, 8 June 2011 (UTC)

IndianaBackstagePass Geonotice is broken
This is throwing Javascript errors due to the conflicting quotation marks: text: "You are invited to the Children's Museum of Indianapolis Backstage Pass event on Friday, November 5. Go behind the scenes in the largest children's museum in the world!" Kaldari (talk) 19:15, 1 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Should be fixed now. Thanks for pointing it out. Mike Peel (talk) 20:32, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

Targeting particular domains or IPs
Is it possible to target particular domains or IPs using Geonotices or something similar? We discussed this as a possibility on Wednesday when doing outreach at Imperial College for their Wikipedia student society. It would be very useful to make something like a Geonotice but targetted just to people coming from a particular institution or type of institution, say universities in London (basically a filtered Geonotice for just those on .ac.uk domains).

While helping get the word out about the 2011 expert involvement survey, it seems equally useful to do domain targeting. For that, we are trying to get academics, scientists and other experts to tell us why they do or do not contribute to Wikipedia and how that can change. Specifically being able to target those on academic domains (.edu, .ac.uk etc.) would be useful for that. Is this possible? Is this something we should be able to do? —Tom Morris (talk) 16:27, 11 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Hmm. This might be possible. You might poke thedj directly about this. From what he says a few sections above, the code may be able to be tweaked to pull the IP from http://geoiplookup.wikimedia.org/. Killiondude (talk) 00:29, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

wrong geoip
My geoip (coming from http://toolserver.org/~para/geoip.fcgi map) is often being recorded as Amsterdam (52.5,5.75). Other times it correctly pinpoints my location.(about 5kms off, which is pretty good since I am in the middle of nowhere) Is anyone else experiencing this? John Vandenberg (chat) 00:25, 9 June 2011 (UTC)


 * Happening for me too. Typically it's only a couple of km off for me, now it's picked a point on the opposite side of the world.  Lankiveil (speak to me) 08:32, 9 June 2011 (UTC).


 * I've notified the tool owner User_talk:Para. -- John Vandenberg (chat) 10:18, 9 June 2011 (UTC)


 * The lookup is based on the free GeoLite City database from MaxMind. Their forums say that "GeoLite draws primarily from publicly available data" and "we will only be making resolution corrections to the [commercial] GeoIP databases. GeoLite data is provided as is." So there's nothing I can do I'm afraid. If the publicly available data they're referring to is WHOIS and DNS records, it might help to complain to your ISP(s). Changing or layering data sources might also improve the location information, compare your current info with that from http://geoiplookup.wikimedia.org/, http://geoiplookup.wikia.com/, and the geolocation API available at the top left of Google Maps. --Para (talk) 19:56, 9 June 2011 (UTC)


 * Disregard that, this is actually not a data source problem. The introduction of a reverse http proxy at the toolserver has broken this tool. It no longer sees users' IPs at all, and thinks Amsterdam is where all the action is. There seems to be some discussion on the toolserver mailing list about that at the moment, related to other tools, so it will probably be fixed eventually. --Para (talk) 20:08, 9 June 2011 (UTC)


 * Thanks. anyone wanting to track this can follow TS-1063. -- John Vandenberg (chat) 03:25, 10 June 2011 (UTC)
 * This is fixed now. I just changed the code so that it uses the CentralNotice GeoIP lookup instead of the one from the toolserver. Kaldari (talk) 23:48, 16 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Thank you!! John Vandenberg (chat) 00:01, 17 June 2011 (UTC)

Is there work happening on the Geonotice for the Phoenix Wiknic?
Is there work happening on the Geonotice for the Phoenix Wiknic? It was supposed to be dispositioned by June 11, and it is now June 15?--Jax 0677 (talk) 23:58, 15 June 2011 (UTC)

Geonotice code tool
It would be really awesome to get a Geonotice code tool that could whip up something from a couple of textboxes and a rectangle drawn on a googlemap, and/or a radius from a central city or a dropdown of pre-defined locations. Anyone up for this?--Pharos (talk) 17:49, 25 July 2011 (UTC)

Discussion about WMUK, scope and use of geonotices
I have taken the liberty of moving the existing discussion here.

Discussion from project page
I concur with Ironholds. The point of Geonotices is not to do this sort of thing. I don't think I've ever seen another chapter doing likewise, nor have I seen the Foundation using Geonotices to advertise jobs. I think the point of geonotices is to help connect Wikipedians in the UK with events, meet-ups, get-togethers and other things that are of direct relevance to them as a volunteer content contributor to Wikimedia projects. Job adverts in my view go above and beyond the intended purpose of geonotices (even though I obviously want a wide range of people to be exposed to and hopefully apply to WMUK positions so we can have the most effective chapter leadership we can possibly have).
 * The deadline is this coming Monday, which means that the notice needs to run today for people to see it in time. User:Seddon posted this notice initially; User:Ironholds reverted that saying "utterly ridiculous. Geonotice templates are not for bloody job offers". For the reasons set out above, I don't think that this is at all ridiculous; nor do I see the harm in this notice running for the next few days. As such, I will revert to the original notice in the next few minutes. If consensus develops here that making people aware of high-level chapter positions being advertised is not an appropriate use of the geonotices, then I won't object to it being taken down. Mike Peel (talk) 06:52, 30 July 2011 (UTC)
 * I have again removed it. Mike, is there something at WP:BRD that is unclear? Is it the discuss part that is causing you some difficulty? You have made a change. That change has been vociferously opposed. The correct action is to restore everything to its original state and talk about it, not alter things to your preferred version and hold it there until chats have concluded. Do not add the geonotice again until consensus has been reached that this is an appropriate use of the tool.
 * Your notice is advertising a Chief Executive position, which you claim will interest qualified UK wikimedians. Right. The advertisement itself reads "With exceptional communication and relationship building abilities, you are experienced at leading effectively at senior level and working collaboratively with a non-executive board, and will thrive in a small and high-growth, start-up environment" - how many people are there, in the UK, who edit en-wiki, who are qualified for a job with this description? How many are there likely to be? And how many of those people are actually likely to respond? We can't get more than 20 people to turn up to a pub, let alone a job interview. If WMUK is finding itself unable to communicate with highly qualified UK wikimedians and members of the chapter, my heart bleeds for you - and you obviously have deeper communications issues which won't be solved by shanghai'ing a geonotice and pissing some UK Wikimedians off in the process.
 * Your notice also, apparently, "falls under the 'local chapter activities' category so it abides by the guidelines as presented". That's be nice, except the "local chapter activities" principle is quite blatantly to advertise events or actual things going-on. A job advert is something which will attract a tiny sliver of the tiny number of potential people who might see it, and is thus hardly to the scale of..well, advertising a meetup, or an editathon. Your geonotice is a waste of 10 million dollars worth of screen real estate, is something pushed in despite being against both the spirit and the letter of what geonotices are for, and is likely to be of little interest to the vast, vast majority of people who see it. Ironholds (talk) 11:01, 30 July 2011 (UTC)
 * I do have to say it doesn't seem a really appropriate use of a geonotice. Far too big a 'catch market' reading the geonotice for the fraction of a percentage of those who'd be both interested and appropriately qualified to attend the "event" of a job interview ...  Pesky  ( talk  …stalk!) 11:32, 30 July 2011 (UTC)
 * The level of likely interest seems a poor measure in this case. The V&A Wikilounge had around 10 Wikimedians attend physically and around 4 or 5 virtually, this was a good use of the geonotice which spanned the whole of the UK, Pakistan, India and Afghanistan. In the case of the CEO position, several days ago it was reported that over 100 information packs had been requested. This would indicate that this geonotice is more relevant to the UK than the V&A Wikilounge if you accept this particular type of measure as a rationale for inclusion of a notice. Fæ (talk) 11:39, 30 July 2011 (UTC)
 * "several days ago it was reported that over 100 information packs had been requested" yeah, nice selective statistics. That'd totally be a valid argument, except none of those information packs could have come from this geonotice. I'm sure that a 52k a year job is of great interest - to professional executives. Ironholds (talk) 11:41, 30 July 2011 (UTC)
 * Sarcasm does not help your argument, particularly in this discussion. I am reporting a fact, not deliberately misleading by the use of selective statistics. Thanks Fæ (talk) 11:45, 30 July 2011 (UTC)

I'm not wild about there being a revert war on this, and given it is only to run till Monday, I'd suggest that whether it stays or goes is not really of much importance now–the game is no longer worth the candle to use that wonderful expression. The more important questions would seem to me to be: what is the general community consensus of uninvolved editors on the appropriate limits for geonotices as, looking through the archives of WP:GN, the vast majority of GN requests are currently for UK events and WMUK activities. If we don't work out what counts as a limit for WP:GN, we risk people becoming blind to the geonotices - in fact, some people block them on principle. It is in the interest of both the chapters and the enwiki community to work out the most effective way to use geonotices to help solidify the community of interested participants in both chapter events and the overall goal of the projects. There is a limit: just imagine if every time, say, WikiProject Berkshire or WikiProject Scotland or whatever created a new article or were trying to get an article up to GA or FA, they put up a geonotice to try and get collaboration. There must be a limit, and we should try and find consensus as to where that limit is.

I'd say that the other concern I have is that there may become an overreliance on geonotices by WMUK, which will only end up with dwindling returns and also doesn't adequately cover participants in sister projects. But of course, that's really a concern for WMUK members and the board rather than a WP:GN concern. —Tom Morris (talk) 11:39, 30 July 2011 (UTC)
 * Ummm, Fae ...... over 100 info packs requested a few days ago; how long ago was the geonotice posted? How many of those requests came as a result of the geonotice?  Do you have any data on that? (If so, is there any link to it - this kind of data would be very interesting)  Pesky  ( talk  …stalk!) 11:46, 30 July 2011 (UTC)
 * The information about how many packs were requested was reported at the beginning of the week on the UK members mail list (if I recall correctly). The requests were not caused by the geonotice but if the reasoning for rejecting this geonotice is due to a lack of interest by our Wikipedia community, then this figure is relevant to quote. If geonotices can only be allowed once we have figures for impact, then we would have no geonotices. If evidence of likely numbers were to become a requirement, then the majority of non-London UK wikimeets would fail to meet the inclusion criteria. As for possible impact of this particular geonotice (the only notice that would have been on display in the UK this weekend), disappointingly it seems moot as it will be too late by the time this discussion reaches a conclusion to have impact. It should have been visible yesterday and today to encourage last minute requests for information from our Wikipedian community (I would have thought most people in our community would like to see a UK Chapter Manager being selected who has experience as a Wikipedia contributor). I see this discussion now as clarifying our consensus on geonotices and whether they ought to be used for anything other than wikimeets and how often they ought to be used. Fæ (talk) 12:08, 30 July 2011 (UTC)
 * The figure is not relevant to quote unless you can show that those requests came from the Wikimedia community. My point is that since the advertisement via geonotice and on-wiki only started 12 hours ago, and was quickly halted, this is unlikely. So..how many of these requests came from Wikimedians? Ironholds (talk) 12:11, 30 July 2011 (UTC)
 * I have no idea, Andrew Turvey could probably produce a percentage figure. My educated guess would be that those claiming to have Wikimedian experience would be an extremely high percentage, particularly as the job advert states "A commitment to the ethos of Wikimedia UK and the centrality of volunteers is essential" and any candidate who had never, or rarely, edited on Wikipedia would be at a disadvantage when it came to explaining their understanding of the ethos of Wikimedia UK. Perhaps you should have asked this question before deleting this geonotice? It seems academic at this point. Fæ (talk) 12:23, 30 July 2011 (UTC)
 * Perhaps the people making a controversial and reverted action should have the onus on them to explain it, rather than reinstating it? In fact, last time I checked, that was precisely how Wikipedia worked. The person who needs to justify a controversial action is the person making it. I agree that it is academic, given the spectrum of opposition to this notice. Ironholds (talk) 12:34, 30 July 2011 (UTC)

I'm a bit concerned by the tone of this discussion. I am sure the same points could have been made in a rather more constructive way. While I share Tom's concern that there are often quite a lot of geonotices running in the UK - and there is at present no particular consensus on how to ration them (are London meetups of interest to people living in Inverness? I'd argue no, other people have argued Yes). But I certainly don't think that, as Ironholds suggests, it's "utterly ridiculous" and I'm not quite sure why he feels so strongly on the issue. The Land (talk) 12:45, 30 July 2011 (UTC)
 * You're using the geonotices system to advertise something of incredibly limited interest. You also used the CentralNotice system to do the same thing. On both occasions you got an employee of the Wikimedia Foundation to make the change. On both occasions you completely failed to consult with people on-wiki beforehand. When I reverted the change, the board chose to ignore WP:BRD and instead simply blindly revert. That, combined, is utterly ridiculous. Ironholds (talk) 12:50, 30 July 2011 (UTC)
 * To be clear, my comments and opinion in this discussion is as an established Wikipedian and admin. The WM-UK board has not chosen to revert anything or take any action here. There was no board decision to raise this geonotice. Please do not make claims and assumptions about the WM-UK board that have no basis in fact. Fæ (talk) 13:01, 30 July 2011 (UTC)
 * I don't see how Seddon being employed by the Foundation makes any difference. He is, I assume, not editing this page as a staff member. I am also not sure what "consultation" you would have expected - any admin can post any geonotice anywhere in the world. In general, I really don't understand why you are responding to this by shouting at people. Why the drama? The Land (talk) 13:18, 30 July 2011 (UTC)


 * Fae, in that case, you may want to raise the issue with Seddon, who informed me that the board had decided to put this geonotice into place. Land, you may want to look at the meta contributions, where the staff account was used to stick in the CentralNotice. I did try resolving it in a drama-free fashion - by quietly removing it and then emailing you all - only to wake up this morning and found it had been reinstituted. Ironholds (talk) 13:30, 30 July 2011 (UTC)
 * And on the consultation front - it is standard operating procedure to list requests here, where an uninvolved editor can take a looksee and make sure everything is fine. This also gives people a chance to object. This was not done, and it was instead blindly stuck in. When people did object, it was reinstated. If you're claiming that this was simply an administrator action, and the presence of half the board here saying it was the correct thing does not indicate it was a board decision, then you should note that administrators should not use their tools where they have a conflict of interest. Ironholds (talk) 13:34, 30 July 2011 (UTC)
 * Your email this morning telling us we were idiots was not exactly drama-free itself, to be frank. Nor was the "this is bloody stupid" edit summary you used to revert it in the first place. But I don't intend to spill any more ink over it. The Land (talk) 13:48, 30 July 2011 (UTC)
 * Seddon can comment here, if he feels like it, as to why you might misunderstand the background. As The Land has pointed out, it seems irrelevant as Seddon acts independently of the WM-UK board and would have made his own choice as an admin as to whether to raise the notice or not. My statement stands. As for drama I see you creating plenty of it, on-wiki and off. It is no surprise that WM-UK board members might take a look at this discussion today considering you have emailed us all about it. Perhaps you should take a break and consider what has been clearly stated here and how claims of COI against busy and unpaid volunteer WM-UK board members or an employee of the WMF acting in good faith and the best interests of the WM-UK community might appear unhelpful. Fæ (talk) 13:55, 30 July 2011 (UTC)


 * Fae, you're on the board. Mike is on the board. The Land is on the board. That's a fairly clear conflict of interest when it comes to making, undoing and commenting on admin actions. If you can't see that, hand in the tools or resign as a trustee. Nobody gains anything through you posting spurious counter-arguments. Ironholds (talk) 13:57, 30 July 2011 (UTC)

Replying to a number of points raised above:


 * 1) Board action: my edits on this wiki (and, indeed, any wiki aside from the WMUK ones - and perhaps some routine ones on meta) are completely my own as a community member. None of them ever have, or ever will, be on behalf of the WMUK board. I thought that was clearly obvious; my apologies if it appeared any other way.
 * 2) Conflict of interest: I don't believe that a COI exists between being involved in the chapter and being an editor/janitor here, any more than a conflict of interest exists from being an editor on Wikimedia Commons and inserting photographs uploaded there into Wikipedia articles. We're all on the same side here; please don't try to raise artificial barriers.
 * 3) Blind revision: I had no involvement putting the notice up in the first place (that was Seddon, at the request of Andrew), so there was no "again" involved here. I guess the comments here are related to the confusion about (1)...
 * 4) Discussion: please note my comment at the start of this section - I did immediately raise it for discussion, and explain my personal viewpoint, as there was some disagreement. Given the short timeline for the notice, though, I felt it important that the notice stayed up until more than a single individual objected to it, i.e. until there was consensus against it. This consensus still doesn't exist (I count roughly equal numbers on each side), but I won't add it back again. I look forward to seeing the outcomes of the discussion below for future situations like this.
 * 5) Please remember to assume good faith - this seems to be somewhat absent above, which is a shame.

Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 17:25, 30 July 2011 (UTC)

Attempt to refocus
Right, let's try and calm down a little. There is little point debating who is to blame: the only thing that matters is finding a productive way forward. Recrimination over civility doesn't help. I've taken the bold, perhaps reckless, step of moving this on to the talk page and I'll attempt to try and direct this towards what could hopefully be a mature and reasoned discussion and we might just be able to grasp consensus from the jaws of failure.

The underlying issue is: what limits should there be to geonotice use? Should geonotices be used to advertise job opportunities with chapters? Any chance we could work out the scope of acceptable geonotice use. Let's put civility issues to one side, as well as issues specifically related to the Chapter as those can hopefully be resolved by mature and reasoned discussions elsewhere.

A simple question then: Does the current guidance on WP:GN need changing to limit the uses of geonotices to specific types of announcement? —Tom Morris (talk) 14:42, 30 July 2011 (UTC)
 * There is an assumption that this is a content guideline that users are free to interpret and refine. However the WMF are free to turn off or adapt the service as it may be seen as an operational rather than content matter, ultimately this gives the WMF the authority to deny or adapt the service if they are unhappy with how it is applied. Perhaps a good starting point would be to clarify the basis on which this service is granted and our assumption that admins have the final say on which geonotices are appropriate? I could see a situation where the WMF would want to use geonotices and would not feel obliged to follow the latest on-wiki guidelines that they had no control over to do so. Fæ (talk) 15:01, 30 July 2011 (UTC)
 * Sure, and one would hope that if we have a sensible consensus-based system for determining what gets put out as a geonotice, the WMF would see fit to leave it up to the community to manage geonotices without handholding being required from upstairs. If the WMF intend us to continue placing geonotices, they presumably intend us to use consensus to determine the content of those geonotices. I'm just suggesting we should consider the policy under which we do so (just as we use consensus for other 'operational' decisions like, say, blocking/banning policy or WP:RfA). —Tom Morris (talk) 15:12, 30 July 2011 (UTC)
 * I am confident that is the case here too, though to avoid being underpinned by assumptions I have raised the question on Foundation-l to see if we can get a firm commitment. Thanks Fæ (talk) 19:02, 30 July 2011 (UTC)
 * It's a community matter; by the same reasoning, even though the Foundation can technically switch the servers on and off, that doesn't mean they regulate the nuances of how they should be used. Ironholds (talk) 23:18, 30 July 2011 (UTC)
 * A note that the Foundation did at one point try using geonotices to advertise a job. They got shouted at, and haven't done it since. Ironholds (talk) 15:27, 30 July 2011 (UTC)


 * Prior warning: my comment below specifically relates to the use of geonotices to advertise staff positions, rather than addressing the general question raised above. Sorry, but I think those are two separate questions - and given the discussion above, I think the specific question needs to be settled first before addressing the more general one.
 * There is interest in Wikimedia jobs from Wikimedians, as demonstrated by around 40% of the WMF's employees being wikimedians (see meta:Wikimedia Foundation Report, April 2011
 * There are some positions in chapters that I would expect to be of particular interest to wikimedians - those that will involve their knowledge of wikimedia. High-level positions in chapters and WMF clearly fall under this category, as do program activities. Admin positions clearly don't.
 * There aren't any clear ways to notify most Wikimedians about job positions on-wiki; in fact, I think the options are just the signpost and (depending on this debate) geonotices. There are a number of off-wiki possibilities - mailing lists, twitter, and the other standard recruitment routes - but those all require wikimedians to be in other places than wikimedia, which seems a bit odd to me.
 * For some positions, there are geographical dependencies - e.g. WMUK can only hire those that have permission to work in the UK; ditto the WMF's india project positions are fairly clearly aimed at those based in India (but most of the WMF's positions are more globally-orientated). Therefore, it makes sense to geolocate/geo-focus the notices about them.
 * Given the above, I would support the use of geonotices to raise awareness of staff positions, provided that the notices don't run too often in the same geography, and the staff positions are clearly Wikimedia-related rather than generic posts. Mike Peel (talk) 17:53, 30 July 2011 (UTC)
 * If we're drawing Foundation comparisons, you'll be aware that the Foundation did once try advertising via central and geonotices for a job offer, and were shouted down? Other questions - of those 40 percent, how many lead the organisation, or sections of the organisation? How many set organisational goals and strategy? How many were editors before they became staffers? How many of them have a role roughly equivalent to the WMUK one?
 * It's not just about "some Wikimedians may find this interesting" - it's about the fact that the vast majority hit by this notice will not, and that the vast majority of those who do will not actually be able to take advantage of the opportunity. You're hitting a vast number of people to get a small number of qualified people for a single post; that seems to be neither productive nor efficient, and certainly not something we should be spending screen space on. Ironholds (talk) 23:23, 30 July 2011 (UTC)
 * The hypocrisy displayed by some people here is ridiculous. Nobody has any significant objections to geonotice announcements about local wikimeetups or other events that are not even required to be from a foundation-approved chapter. But if a foundation approved chapter, for WM UK no less, is attempting to hire someone to directly advance the mission of the WMF in the UK, suddenly people get all up in arms. Sounds to me like there are ulterious motives at play here. Just sayin'.  &rArr;   SWAT Jester    Son of the Defender  20:45, 30 July 2011 (UTC)


 * The word, Daniel, is ulterior. Such a statement constitutes an assumption of bad faith, something you were previously complaining about - although quite frankly if 3 people who sit on a board which decided to hire somebody think that they can't possibly have a conflict of interest when deciding if advertising said job opportunity is appropriate, they need their head examined. SWATJester, if you believe there are ulterior motives, please, feel free to explain them either here, on my talkpage, or via email. Hypocricy, Daniel, would be if you had two situations which were identical or nearly identical in all pertinent ways. If you believe that meetups and job advertisements are identical, that is your prerogative; personally, I do not. A meetup or editathon is likely to be of interest to a wide spectrum of wikipedians in the UK, which is why advertisements for them are targeted at a wide spectrum of wikipedians in the UK. This job advertisement, which is in no way comparable to a meetup, was targeted at a wide spectrum of users despite being interesting to a small minority and despite an even smaller minority being qualified to do anything about the opportunity. That is why I am complaining. Ironholds (talk) 22:57, 30 July 2011 (UTC)
 * No, after the nasty off-wiki email you sent to me, I have no interest in feeding your continued bad attitude. Not sure how my keyboard managed to auto-correct to ulterious though. Glad to know though that you are the final arbiter of who might be interested in the job, and who would be qualified about it. &rArr;   SWAT Jester    Son of the Defender  23:34, 30 July 2011 (UTC) -e- BTW, I go by Dan, and you can use my username instead if you're going to be snarky.  &rArr;   SWAT Jester    Son of the Defender  23:44, 30 July 2011 (UTC)
 * When I suggest someone has a COI, that's bad faith. When somebody suggests I have ulterior motives, that's fine. When I call an idea ludicrous, that's incivility; when somebody states that my arguments are ridiculous and hypocritical, that's fine. Did I wander off into the Twilight Zone at some point? Ironholds (talk) 23:38, 30 July 2011 (UTC)
 * In your sarcastic response and spelling corrections for Swatjester, did you really mean to say "Hypocricy", that one is definitely not in the OED? If you are joking, I'm afraid it's completely over my head (the same one you state should be examined and that I apparently take turns swapping with Mike and The Land). Fæ (talk) 23:15, 30 July 2011 (UTC)
 * Fae, I am not suggesting that you share a head. I am suggesting that three trustees of an organisation with job offers should not be the administrators deciding whether advertising such job offers is appropriate. Could you explain to me how that is in some way a controversial statement? Ironholds (talk) 23:18, 30 July 2011 (UTC)
 * It is controversial because it is untrue. As has been pointed out more than once, there was no board decision to create this geonotice. Mike has explained his position above and The Land and myself have not touched the geonotice. Personally I was completely unaware that Seddon would be creating it as there was no advance board discussion. Your continued accusations against unpaid volunteers who are openly elected by our membership to board positions are unwelcome, unhelpful and disruptive. Your ranting and sarcastic arguments here are exceedingly worrying coming from someone who is a Wikipedia administrator and a major contributor to the encyclopaedia. You are not representing a consensus view, as there is no current consensus, and replies here to your various accusations have been well considered and made in good faith, though as board members I suspect this is a rather poor use of our time.
 * I feel that UK Wikipedians would be interested in the recruitment of a WM-UK CEO who will represent the interests of WM-UK and many of the applicants will be long term Wikipedia contributors. It is a great pity that due to your actions this geonotice has not been made available to attract a few more last minute applications from within our community. However I would have been happy to see a sensible and civil discussion about improving the GN guidelines and I would have had no objection to the notice being removed while this discussion was taking place even if this meant the geonotice would never be used in time. Unfortunately any reader can see that your inflammatory accusations here are neither sensible or civil and appear worryingly self-destructive. --Fæ (talk) 23:50, 30 July 2011 (UTC)

Why should a short-term geonotice of limited audience be such a big deal? I mean, is it really so intrusive? If you find yourself so highly touched off by a couple of days of a short notice, you might need to start spending more time out of doors. You might find it easier to discuss the problem in a way that doesn't distract from the substance of your complaint with the manner in which its delivered. Nathan  T 20:56, 30 July 2011 (UTC)


 * Ironholds, I'd appreciate it if you'd avoid adding typos to my comments, particularly when you are making your own, and ribbing someone else for theirs, just a few lines above. Nathan  T 23:32, 30 July 2011 (UTC)
 * Oop, my apologies; whoever designed this laptop keyboard managed to stick the mousepad just where my palm hits it, ensuring I sometimes start typing in the middle of the wrong bally sentence. Sorry. Ironholds (talk) 23:38, 30 July 2011 (UTC)

Completely independent opinion
I don't have any ponies in this race: I would not have received this geonotice, I'm not a member of WMUK (or its board), I have no interest in applying for positions with WMF or any Wikimedia chapters. What I do have an interest in is the project as a whole, and notices in general. In this particular case, a request for an "event" that was known about weeks in advance (i.e., the closing date for applications for a job) was suddenly added without community discussion only 48 hours before the application period closes. This was a significant error in judgment: first that a very different type of geonotice was being added without any attempt at community input, and secondly that it was being posted with such poor timing. Proposing this geonotice at or before the time the position application period opened would have allowed the community to consider whether or not this was appropriate use of the geonotice tool. It's not a simple question, as such use of centralnotice has met with very significant community opposition in the past, to the point that it is not used for announcing position openings anymore. As well, I think it was an error in judgment on Seddon's part to have activated this posting; he is well known to be an active member of WMUK, and it is clear from the discussion above that he did so at the request of the executive of that chapter rather than as an independent administrator assessing community response.

In summary:
 * Notices should be proposed far enough in advance to permit community discussion of their appropriateness, particularly when it is a significantly different use of the geonotice feature, or where the (broader) community has rejected similar notices using other broadbased internal communication methods.
 * Geonotices should only be activated by administrators who are independent of any relationships to the requesting editors, normally after assessment of any community discussion about the proposed geonotice.

As noted, this is my independent and uninvolved opinion. Risker (talk) 00:07, 31 July 2011 (UTC)
 * Agreed; this (broadly) covers my concerns - that the geonotice was outside what we're familiar with and turned on arbitrarily by people with a clear involvement. Ironholds (talk) 00:12, 31 July 2011 (UTC)
 * Wikimedia Australia was guilty of activating its own geonotice for the meetup Meetup/Dogwood Crossing. It was poor planning on our part as we didn't request it in advance.  I think we should agree that uninvolved admins should be activating the geonotice, otherwise we're going have chapter vs community problems like the above, which dont benefit anyone.  Requests for comment/Global banners shows that there must be consensus for external organisations to use the community spaces for notices. John Vandenberg (chat) 00:38, 31 July 2011 (UTC)
 * Risker has put my own thoughts on this matter better than I could have done. I'd only add, from my own gut reaction, that regardless of anyone stating that their action was an admin action, not a board action, the weight of arguments here (those in favour vs. those uncomfortable, to whatever extent, with it) leaves a nasty taste in the mouth.  Pesky  ( talk  …stalk!) 08:32, 31 July 2011 (UTC)

Comment by Seddon
I was aware of this discussion at its very early stages but did not have time to respnd. It has grown more quickly than I anticipated and I apologize for not commenting here sooner. I also apologize if this is a little ;tldr but please take the time to read this.

Firstly I want to talk about my involvement in this. I conceed that there was a COI here with me starting the geonotice, similarly the creation of the banners on central notice was also a bad decision on my part particularly involving the my use of the staff account to create the banners. I genuinely thought that what I was doing was for the benefit to the community. The community has played a huge roll amoungst staff at the foundation and chapters and I felt that this was in the spirit of that.

There are many lessons to be learned, and I'm learning mine. But another important lesson might be that current processes are somewhat broken in the use of geonotice. WP:GEONOTICE used to only have one significant reviewer, the situation is mildly better but its still very small in terms of those that participate and in fact Risker is pretty much the only person not tied to a chapter or regular meet up to be involved in it. There many requests that dont get seen to there and this is a big problem. Geonotices are an important part of getting the word out for chapter and local community related things. This is why those folks are the most active there. If that page isn't well patrolled then that is a let down for the movement and those who regularly or would like to regularly participate in things that are publicised via the geonotice. Based on that I saw no problem with chapters independently applying geonotices. To be honest I would attribute the success of many events to this usage and have no regrets with previous decisions I have taken to apply geonotices without posting them first.

However being bold here is going to lead to more problems. We need to fix the process and agree on the situations these geonotices can be used. Prehaps cross posting requests at WP:AN is the way forward in the short term to encourage participation in discussion but in terms of the general usage and process I think that this is a community wide issue that affects all geographies and the wider community so we should probably list such a topic at centralised discussion.

As I said I am very sorry for this misjudgement, I just hope that something can be learnt and we can move forward.

Many Thanks Seddon talk|WikimediaUK 22:37, 31 July 2011 (UTC)

WMF veto of geonotices
Could someone clarify the official position of the WMF interfering in community decisions for geonotices? This diff where Philippe has chosen to veto a new geonotice appears to run counter to the previous official position explained to me when I raised the question on the Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List. I daresay that I might have agreed with the removal if the WMF had bothered to explain the issue here first. Fæ (talk) 07:21, 7 October 2011 (UTC)


 * I certainly don't have a problem with WMF staff removing geonotices on the grounds that they duplicate CentralNotice. Seems uncontroversial enough to me... The Land (talk) 18:54, 7 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Well a lot of people kill off CNs because 99% they don't display any relevant content for most users, where as a a Geonotice is specificity targeted towards a group of people based on location (so they might actually care about it), and the fact that someone did raise comment here does prove its not uncontroversial. Peachey88 (T &middot; &#32; C) 01:17, 8 October 2011 (UTC)
 * I don't think anyone actually has a big problem about removing a GN that's a duplicate of a CN. The only controversial thing is that Philippe used his official account to make the edit, when GN and CN have always been community-governed. Deryck C. 21:34, 9 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I certainly agree it's reasonable in this case not to double-up on these.--Pharos (talk) 21:23, 14 October 2011 (UTC)

Archives page
The archives page is getting very long. Should we break it up into several pages? One page per each past year seems to be about the right length. Deryck C. 21:32, 9 October 2011 (UTC)

opt out
How does a person perminently opt out of recieving Geonotices Gnangarra
 * This is not a standard preference, but if you edit your vector.css (see your preferences, appearance tab for a link to your current .css file) you can add this line to switch off all geonotices:

/* Geonotices toggle */ div.geonotice { display: none; }
 * --Fæ (talk) 09:15, 14 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Thats not really a good solution, but at a bare minimum this be on the project page so people can opt out. The thing is there really should be something alot simplier say a link on the banners to disable future notices or at the very least an option in my preference.. Gnangarra 09:59, 14 November 2011 (UTC)
 * I'm all for user choice, a section at the top of this Geonotice page saying how to opt out, would be useful for those that are annoyed by these notices and may not want to benefit from local events. This could be suggested as an extra standard preference, the Village pump (technical) would probably be a good place to start though it may take a long time or never get in if considered a bit fringe. Cheers --Fæ (talk) 11:03, 14 November 2011 (UTC)
 * My personal opinion would be that it should be an option on Preferences under Appearance as a checkbox, but I don't know who one would contact to get it on the (probably quite long) feature wishlist. Orderinchaos 05:01, 15 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Yes, ideally it should be a Preference-style option, however Geonotice isn't an inherent part of MediaWiki, so it's probably quite low down the wishlist. On the other hand, there is a quick-fix: currently each geonotice has a "hide" button, which uses Cookies. After you press it, you won't ever be shown the same geonotice again unless you clear your Cookies. It is possible to implement a hide button for all geonotices, and I think User:Kaldari is the person to ask. Deryck C. 20:57, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

No acknowledgment of my request
On March 19 I posted a request for a geonotice to begin on March 26. I have yet received no acknowledgement. Is my request properly formatted? Could I do anything else which would make my request more easy to receive or process? I was hoping to have this and would appreciate quick help. How does this work? What class of users manages this process?  Blue Rasberry   (talk)   16:56, 27 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Done. We are a bit slow sometimes. Deryck C. 06:43, 28 March 2012 (UTC)
 * I made another request 24 April. As of today it has not been acknowledged on the project page. Is the notice active? Thanks. Would it make things easier if I formatted the text for someone? I plan to post a notice at least monthly so it may be useful for me to learn if there is a tutorial somewhere.  Blue Rasberry    (talk)   21:28, 30 April 2012 (UTC)
 * I am nothing to do with this project (I only came here to give them a hard time about not having proper guidelines) but you can find the list of current notices at MediaWiki:Geonotice.js. The page is in javascript and instructions for formatting entries are embedded in the page (right after the end of the current notices).  Spinning  Spark  10:51, 1 May 2012 (UTC)
 * Thanks for this.  Blue Rasberry    (talk)   19:35, 3 May 2012 (UTC)

Page organization
I think the page is organized oddly. Do we have to split it into "Currently running"? We have the Toolserver tool that shows the map with current notices. Killiondude (talk) 21:14, 12 April 2012 (UTC)


 * Yes I think it should be better named "Answered requests"... or alternatively just remove the entire section because that just increases manpower. Deryck C. 10:52, 13 April 2012 (UTC)


 * Isn't there a way to set up a bot to automatically archive requests after they've been marked done for a given length of time? Dominic·t 08:55, 15 April 2012 (UTC)

Watchlist notice guideline proposal at Village Pump
Please see WP:Village pump (proposals). There is a proposal to create a guideline outlining acceptable watchlist notice practices.  Equazcion  ( talk )  16:26, 15 Apr 2012 (UTC)
 * So should the proposal be drafted here or there? Logically, I think that here's the most appropriate place. I'm making a start at #Draft guideline. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Trevj (talk • contribs) 08:40, 24 April 2012 (UTC)

Draft guideline
Please feel free to edit this directly, unless/until it's in a state where changes could be contentious. I propose that the agreed version be incorporated at Geonotice (which forms the basis).

Consider suitability and wording Example:
 * 1) Is the proposed notice potentially appropriate to an audience of Wikipedians?
 * 2) State location (and date, if applicable) early in notice.
 * 3) Include why the notice is appropriate.

Create request
 * To propose a geonotice, simply create a new third level section (using ===) under the "Requests" section, using the boilerplate text below, and follow the instructions in this section.

Related page name (e.g. meetup page)
Locations required:

Possible messages:

Date range required:

Misc info: Discussion
 * Reason for requesting:
 * User requesting:

Locations
 * Try to be as specific as possible with the location. For  example, a Washington, D.C. meetup would not be appropriate to advertise to everyone in the United States.
 * Be aware that the detection is not flawless; due to varying region boundaries and the inaccuracies of IP locating, the result cannot be perfect. If, for whatever reason, you need to reach everyone in the target area, request the surrounding areas as well.

Messages
 * Messages should be under three sentences in length, and they should not contain any flashy text or images. It is a good idea to provide at least two options, in case one is deemed inappropriate.
 * Messages exceeding four sentences are deemed too large, except in cases where the sentences are short.
 * Geonotices should always be used with the understanding that some of the intended audience will be excluded and that some unintended people will be included. As such, the message should be written in a way that would be suitable for display to all users.  For example, write "The New York City Wikipedia Meetup will be on August 12" rather than "Hello resident of Long Island...".

Date range
 * Try to post your request at least five days (preferably seven to ten days) in advance. It may take a while for requests to be handled.
 * Requests should not be shown for meetups more than 2 months in advance.

Reason requesting
 * In the case of a meetup, where that page is linked and it is obvious by the message, this is not necessary. If there is possible confusion regarding the reason for the geonotice, please state a clear reason.

Notify geonotice maintainers
 * In case there is no feedback in a few days after posting the request, ask an administrator to take a look.

-- Trevj (talk) 08:40, 24 April 2012 (UTC)


 * The wording "potentially appropriate" is next to useless as guidance. That could be interpreted as almost anything.  I propose that geonotices are limited to Wikipedia related events that are organised by Wikimedia or one of its local chapters.


 * I think specific guidance should be given on the coordinates to be used. I propose the coordinates should be set to intended target area plus no more than fifty miles.  This can be relaxed where it can be shown that large numbers would be excluded.  This may be the case in countries such as India where I understand there is a shortage of IP addresses.  It has been claimed in an earlier discussion that the UK cannot be sub-divided because of this problem, but I believe the majority of IPs in Europe geolocate reasonably well.  According to The Guardian, the top four ISPs in the UK account for 87.5% of the market.  I have personal experience of the first three and they have always geolocated me to well within 10 miles.  If Sky (no.4 ISP) is also this good and all the other ISPs are useless, the "missed target" is going to be around 6% at the very worst for an intended target of half the UK.  Spinning  Spark  11:03, 25 April 2012 (UTC)


 * Note: I've pointed WMUK to this discussion. -- Trevj (talk) 12:07, 25 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Note The WMUK mailing list has also been notified. Deryck C. 13:32, 25 April 2012 (UTC)

Concerning "missed target" calculations, I quote River Tarnell's insight on a previous posting to the WMUK mailing list (public subscription): For ADSL users, it makes no sense to assign IP addresses or do routing based on the user's physical location, because all traffic has to go through BT (or another wholesale provider) in London anyway, and the route it takes after it gets to BT is not visible in traceroute. So, when the user connects the ISP just assigns the first available IP with no regard to location.

It's possible that there is an ADSL ISP that still assigns IPs based on physical location, but I've never seen one.

I'm fairly certain (and I've said this before) that for this reason it's impossible to do city-level geolocation of UK users in any useful way.

Even worse, MaxMind (the service Wikimedia uses) tries to "guess" the location of ADSL users, and usually fails. [specific example involving personal details omitted]. It is a reasonable assumption of SpinningSpark's that, because sub-UK geolocation "works" for the 3 of the 4 major ISPs for him, it should work for everyone else on the same ISPs; however the general sentiment on previous geonotice-related discussions on the WMUK mailing list suggests otherwise. Deryck C. 13:39, 25 April 2012 (UTC)
 * For what it's worth, I have never been able to use geolocation to a useful radius within the UK. You can probably geolocate the Northern UK, the Southern UK, and Londoners - but no more specific than that. The Cavalry (Message me) 13:45, 25 April 2012 (UTC)
 * I'd have to agree here - my BT IP currently geolocates to London, about 50 miles away; when I lived in Oxford and used TalkTalk, my IP tended to resolve variously to Buckinghamshire or Berkshire. These are reasonably close, in the grand scheme of things, but they're certainly not in the ten mile range.
 * On a broader note, though, 50 miles isn't that far. I regularly travel fifty miles to the London meetups - it's about an hour on the train - and it's not uncommon to find people there who've come from longer distances. Given that larger events often attract people from correspondingly longer distances, it seems reasonable to advertise major events in Birmingham to people in London and vice versa. Shimgray &#124; talk &#124; 18:05, 25 April 2012 (UTC)


 * It turns out that MaxMind publish a table of how accurate they think the geolocation database is. For the UK 72% of addresses turn out to be within 25 miles of the true location and 21% are more than 25 miles away. They don't say how wrong the wrong locations are beyond that. This comes "from sites that ask the web visitor to provide their geographic location. The geographic location along with the web visitor's IP Address is forwarded to us." This approach should mean that the estimate has the bias caused by the different popularity of different ISPs and connection methods already included (at some level, but seeing more data would be good). Anyway, it may be worth including something in the guidance to say that note should be taken of how far people are likely to travel and the accuracy of the database when deciding how broadly or narrowly to define a geonotice location. Actual guidance probably needs to be different for different countries. Andreww (talk)
 * Out of interest - are you sure those figures are for the geolocation database we are using? The Land (talk) 21:04, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

It's probably worth noting that both the start and end date/time of notices can be scheduled, to encourage people to submit notices well in advance of the event without worrying that they might be forgotten. It might also be worth asking for notices to include a general link - e.g. to Meetup - so that a) those viewing it can understand the context, and b) for those that the event doesn't apply to for reasons of geography are encouraged to run a local event of their own. Mike Peel (talk) 19:36, 25 April 2012 (UTC)

Nothing that's been said so far leads me to believe that the "50 miles rule" is unreasonable. River Tarnell comments that all ADSL traffic goes through BT. Besides not being strictly true (many ADSL users are connected by cable TV) it is not very likely that BT would route a user in Southampton all the way to Dundee on their twisted pair network before connecting them to the internet. They get connected somewhere much more local. If there are major exceptions to this then let's hear them. Those arguing that some people travel more than fifty miles to some events have misunderstood the rule. It is not fifty miles from the event, it is fifty miles from the edge of the intended target area. If the intended target is the whole of the UK then that means 50 miles around Britain.  Spinning Spark  23:19, 25 April 2012 (UTC)


 * Aha - I'd assumed that "intended target area" for, say, a Liverpool meet would be "geolocates to Liverpool" rather than "geolocates to north-west England". If we're interpreting it to mean the more general area by default, then a +50 miles margin seems okay. Shimgray &#124; talk &#124; 18:24, 26 April 2012 (UTC)

The MaxMind data also backs me up. According to their table only 7% in the UK could not be located to the city level. Note that the >25 miles category is considered to be within city level and thus certainly <50 miles. Almost certainly a large portion of the 7% will also be within the 50 mile rule. Very few countries exceed 10% in this category. I suggest a reasonable rule for exceptions, that is a local event can be advertised country-wide, would be countries where the MaxMind data shows >=15% cannot be located to a city.  Spinning Spark  23:32, 25 April 2012 (UTC)


 * Another interesting comparison is that in the US, geonotices for meetups are typically done at a state level, which covers about the same area as a country in the UK. The reason many geonotices in the US crop out a much smaller reason is that they target educational institutions within a specific area, and educational institutions are obviously very accurate geolocated. Deryck C. 18:44, 26 April 2012 (UTC)


 * Let's see if that's true. Here are the events in the US that are currently up on geonotice:


 * Compare this to the events currently up for the UK:


 * Even the New England one, which covers six states, is less than half the area of the UK events. None of the US events are notifying an area anywhere near as large as used in the UK.  The Coventry/London meetups notification is justified covering the whole UK because it is trailing more than one meetup, but I think this shows that many UK events are being notified over much too wide an area.  And just to add to the picture, the current notice for Melbourne, Australia, where they have similarly large areas to cover as in the US, has only notiified an area of 36, about half that of the UK notices.  Spinning  Spark  17:06, 28 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Actually the New England notice area isn't that much smaller than the UK notice area. When one uses square-degrees on a map to compare areas in different parts of the world, latitude correction needs to be applied. Very roughly speaking, on average New England is at 40°N and the UK is 55°N, which means the UK is only 70% the distance from the north pole as New England and therefore a (very rough) area correction factor of 0.7×0.7≈0.5 needs to be applied. The UK notices only cover an area about 40% larger than the New England notice, as opposed to 200% as the comparison without area correction would suggest. Thanks Spinningspark for the correct maths below Deryck C. 22:14, 3 May 2012 (UTC)
 * Completely incorrect. Only the length of lines of latitude need correcting, the distance subtended on a line of longitude by a given angle is invariant with location.  Also, the ratio of small circle distances is given by the ratio of cosines of the latitude, not of the angles themselves.  The true correction is nearer to 0.75.  I realised I was making a fairly chunky approximation when I compiled the table, but I really didn't give a toss because it makes no difference to the principle of what we are discussing and we might as well keep it simple and easy for everyone to follow.  I might have known someone would start pointlessly picking over the details.  Spinning  Spark  01:30, 4 May 2012 (UTC)
 * Well yea. I threw in my (equally) incorrect approximation just to point out that the numbers presented above are in a form that is unhelpful to the discussion. But I digress. Deryck C. 10:19, 4 May 2012 (UTC)
 * Re: The Coventry/London meetups notification is justified covering the whole UK because it is trailing more than one meetup [...] If there's that much of an issue about the notification area for UK events, are we saying that grouping events in single announcements should be done more often? If so, more coordination and advance submissions will be required in order to arrive at suitable succinct wording. We'll also need to reword as events drop in and out (rather than simply replacing the wording of one event with that of another). -- Trevj (talk) 09:18, 4 May 2012 (UTC)
 * If some admin would like to step in and do more geonotice maintenance than those currently involved have time for, that'll be great. However, the last thing I wish to see is for geonotices to become so bureaucratic that individual admins don't dare to post notices without prior discussions. Deryck C. 10:19, 4 May 2012 (UTC)
 * Combined notices was not my proposal, they exist already, apparently as a consequence of the rule for only two UK notices at any one time (although I note this rule is not currently in the guidelines). My proposal was target plus 50 miles.  Spinning  Spark  12:48, 4 May 2012 (UTC)


 * Just an observation the instruction Messages exceeding four sentences are deemed too large, except in cases where the sentences are short is meaningless this restriction should be something thats readily identifiable and easliy made consistant the instruction should be more along the line of Messages shouldnt exceed 100 characters, though descretion can be used where necessary Gnangarra 22:10, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

Pointer to discussion of interest
Of interest here may be a discussion at MediaWiki_talk:Geonotice.js. Just pointing out for more full input. Philippe Beaudette, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 20:22, 26 October 2012 (UTC)

Admins to chase
Hi all,

This is a fairly low-traffic page, and not many people keep an eye on it. I've been trying to keep it maintained recently, but it's often the case that three or four days go by without my remembering to check it - which can be a problem if people put things up with quite short notice (we've had under a week in the past). To try and get around this, I've added a note to requests saying to chase me if it's urgent; hopefully this will mean requests don't languish there for days on end!

If anyone else who's comfortable with handling geonotice code would like to add their name there as well, please do :-) Andrew Gray (talk) 11:10, 4 December 2012 (UTC)
 * I have not yet been able to spend time learning the code nor do I have admin userrights, but I watch the page otherwise. Thanks for helping with this.  Blue Rasberry    (talk)   14:59, 4 December 2012 (UTC)

IP-based notices?
I've been talking with the Berkeley Student Cooperative, and they'd like to host a Wikipedian in Residence. The BSC is a ~1300 member housing cooperative, the largest housing cooperative in the United States. All members of the BSC contribute five hours a week in 'workshift' to their houses as both a way to contribute to their communities and a way to keep costs down. The BSC would like to have their Wikipedian in Residence be someone who currently lives in the BSC system, and the position would receive workshift credit. I know there are at least a few experienced Wikipedians who live in the BSC currently, but am not sure who they are. It occurred to me that one way for us to successfully locate Wikipedians who live in BSC houses would be a Geonotice, if one could be tailored narrowly enough. Would it be technically possible to set up a geonotice-type notice that would only display to logged in users from particular IPs? It would probably be ~80 different IP's, almost all in the same range. (The BSC is using other channels to turn up candidates as well, but this seemed like an additional good one.) Kevin Gorman (talk) 19:20, 29 January 2013 (UTC)


 * Somewhat counterintuitively, there isn't an easy way to target specific IP ranges through the geonotice setup - it's designed to go through an IP-to-coordinate resolver. We could try one narrowly targeted at the Berkeley area, though, which would also catch them when outside the domestic network. Andrew Gray (talk) 20:49, 29 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Would a relatively short-running geonotice targeted at Berkeley be considered narrowly tailored enough to be acceptable? If so, once we get some more stuff worked out about it, I'll put up a request for one. (With the turnover of BSC residents, the notice could be of potential interest to probably one in twenty Wikipedia editors in Berkeley.) Kevin Gorman (talk) 00:15, 1 February 2013 (UTC)
 * The geolocation database is quite good with educational institutions, so a geonotice covering the entire campus plus a bit of surrounding area should suffice. (Note also: geonotices are written in a way such that your location isn't divulged to anyone.) Deryck C. 21:33, 2 February 2013 (UTC)
 * If you are on their network itself, you can find out its exact geocoordinates (according to the database that Geonotice uses) at https://bits.wikimedia.org/geoiplookup . Regards, HaeB (talk) 21:40, 2 February 2013 (UTC)

The auto-generated map of currently pending and running geonotices is broken
The auto-generated map at https://maps.google.com/maps?q=http://toolserver.org/~para/geonotices.php is empty. A couple of days ago it showed three: two in the eastern USA, one in Great Britain. The GB one was definitely not the UKMeetups one - it was either the Nottingham one from a couple of weeks back, or the recently-added Burnley one. By my reckoning, there are three currently-active geonotices - one in Canada, and two in Great Britain. Is there something wrong with the format of these notices which causes Google Maps to reject them? -- Red rose64 (talk) 07:15, 16 April 2013 (UTC)


 * a) Toolserver is currently a bit flaky. Rerunning it with https seems to work a bit better. (Not sure what this is...)
 * b) It still only displays two, however; but the generic UK one is still on watchlists. It sounds like this means a bug in the code somewhere, but I can't immediately spot it. I've tried fiddling the start dates in case it helps. Andrew Gray (talk) 09:10, 16 April 2013 (UTC)
 * OK; both the http and the https are showing the notices for LondonONApril13 and BurnleyMay13 but not UKMeetups20130414. I see you adjusted the start date of that - something I'd already considered, hence why I altered it in, whereas previously I'd left it alone. -- Red rose64 (talk) 13:31, 16 April 2013 (UTC)
 * I'm seeing four now, as follows:
 * LondonONApril13 Join one of two Contribution Month in Canada events at London Central Library on
 * WalsallApril13 A series of backstage pass tours and editathons will be
 * DCGWApril13 On Saturday, April 20, Wikimedia DC is partnering with the George Washington Uni
 * BurnleyMay13 A backstage pass tour and editathon will be held a
 * But still not the UKMeetups one. It's the only one of the five currently-active notices that doesn't display.
 * Theory: only the first few characters of the cookie ID are significant. How might we determine how many that is? The current cookie ID is hidegeonoticeUKMeetups20130419, 30 characters long, but the first 13 are the same for all geonotices. -- Red rose64 (talk) 17:50, 19 April 2013 (UTC)

New notice system on Commons
Commons has recently deployed a very promising notice system which replaces their watchlist notices (see note here). Rather than display a long list it rotates between them in a banner-style box. Notices can be individually marked as read, and they are categorised under general headings - new features, elections, technical changes, etc - which allows users to select the topics they don't want to hear about in future.

I think this has real potential for finally unifying watchlist notices & targeted geonotices, and it might be worth thinking about what's needed to deploy it here. Andrew Gray (talk) 22:27, 29 May 2013 (UTC)


 * As a quick update, I have singularly failed to do anything about this for some months, but hope to pull together a proposal & RFC soon :-) Andrew Gray (talk) 19:28, 18 August 2013 (UTC)

UK targeting
Hi all,

I'm trying to figure out if the UK lookup has actually improved at all since our discussions a year or two ago, or if it's still abysmal. (And - more usefully - how it's abysmal - does it work in some areas and not others? Do people at least geolocate to roughly the right end of the country?). It'd be a great help if UK users could fill out the short test form here - it doesn't record IPs, personal information or usernames, just where Wikimedia thinks you are & where you (roughly) are.

I'll post back in a bit with the summarised results. Andrew Gray (talk) 19:27, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
 * I've got a nice sample for you. There's a vandal who I've been watching since June 2013 (see WT:UKRAIL. The IPs used by this person are dynamic, changing every few days, so I've been able to build up a sample consisting of 28 items of data. Occasionally the IP geolocation is simply United Kingdom (which has come up 5 times), but is normally geolocatable to a specific town. So far, I have noted (in alphabetic order): Andover (Hampshire), Cambridge (Cambridgeshire), Egham (Surrey), Maidenhead (Buckinghamshire), Market Harborough (Leicestershire), Newmarket (Suffolk), Northampton (Northamptonshire), Silverstone (Northamptonshire), Slough (Buckinghamshire), Towcester (Northamptonshire), Wellingborough (Northamptonshire), Wokingham (Berkshire). Of these, Towcester has come up three times, and Wellingborough five; other towns in Northamptonshire or close by (Market Harborough is two miles outside Northants) have come up six times in total. Thus, even though there is a good proportion (14 out of 28) where it gets it within 20 miles or so of Northampton, there are still 50% misses. -- Red rose64 (talk) 09:59, 17 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Interesting - thanks! So either "UK" or within the same general quadrant of "the south-east" if in error. Andrew Gray (talk) 12:56, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

Shut it off??

 * See also Village pump (technical)/Archive_119 -- Red rose64 (talk) 13:40, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

It keeps hogging my browser and stops me from using my other scripts as the only way i can stop it from hogging is to press the stop (X) key and thus this also disables my other scripts, please how do you shut this off??, its getting irritating and also affecting me on other wikimedia wikis...... its not linking anywhere and going to "geoiplookup.wikimedia.org is a DEAD-END..--Stemoc (talk) 13:20, 18 October 2013 (UTC)
 * You can permanently hide all geonotices by adding this CSS to Special:MyPage/common.css:  - it won't affect the regular watchlist notices. -- Red rose64 (talk) 13:47, 18 October 2013 (UTC)
 * still problematic, now i get "Read upload.wikimedia.org" in my browser status as well..a permanent solution?..--Stemoc (talk) 14:34, 18 October 2013 (UTC)
 * In which case, it's not a problem with geonotice per se, but with the servers at http://upload.wikimedia.org/ - Wikipedia content is built from files hosted at several domains. You could try asking at WP:VPT. -- Red rose64 (talk) 15:51, 18 October 2013 (UTC)
 * I think the upload server is one of the server it prevents from loading but overall its the geoiplookup which is the problem, could be a server error cause i run a sniffer in the background everytime i'm online and a new remote host has started appearing for wikimedia "bits-lb.ulsfo.wikimedia.org"..it wasn't there a few days ago...did they move servers?--Stemoc (talk) 00:19, 19 October 2013 (UTC)


 * For what it's worth, geoiplookup is loaded on every page -  is the last script element before the body for all users, at least in content namespaces. The watchlist geonotices rely on geoiplookup, but are a particular kind of message that will only display on the watchlist. Andrew Gray (talk) 12:49, 19 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Ok, but which is the problem:
 * https://geoiplookup.wikimedia.org/ is offline/inaccessible when it should be accessible
 * https://geoiplookup.wikimedia.org/ is not supposed to be used any more and a script or other code is erroneously calling it. Nurg (talk) 21:47, 19 October 2013 (UTC)


 * Seems there was a misconfiguration for geoiplookup.wikimedia.org at the new caching datacenter (ulsfo) where geoiplookup was pointing to an IP address that wasn't bound to any service. I've fixed that and have temporarily moved traffic to eqiad while the DNS change propagates. In an hour I'll move the traffic back to ulsfo.--Ryan lane (talk) 00:57, 20 October 2013 (UTC)
 * thanks, looks like i was right, something wrong with the new server [ulsfo] (datacentre), hopefully the fix is permanent...this was definitely affecting many people but most didn't know where to go with the problem.hehe..--Stemoc (talk) 02:40, 20 October 2013 (UTC)

Migrating Geonotice to a gadget
I would like feedback on WP:Village pump (technical)#Migrating Geonotice to a gadget. Helder.wiki 00:21, 27 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Migration is complete. The script now only loads on your Watchhlist.  08:53, 8 August 2014 (UTC)

Space
Please add a space between the full stop of each notice and the [Hide] link. I'm sure there used to be one. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 12:20, 1 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Pinging ... &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 10:56, 3 September 2014 (UTC)
 * @MSGJ: This was removed by Aude on 28 May 2013. This change should restore the previous appearance. Helder 12:51, 3 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Thank you. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 12:52, 3 September 2014 (UTC)
 * It doesn't restore the previous appearance though, because the font used to be somewhat larger, as seen at m:User:Redrose64 - the bit beginning "Interested in having a chat with fellow Wikipedians?". -- Red rose64 (talk) 13:44, 3 September 2014 (UTC)
 * it seems the CSS was in the wrong page. I moved it to MediaWiki:Gadget-geonotice-core.css. Helder 14:15, 3 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Looks much better, thanks. I wonder if the smaller font is the reason that at the last Oxford, we only had three people; and that only four signed up for the last Portsmouth. -- Red rose64 (talk) 14:31, 3 September 2014 (UTC)
 * That would be my fault... Sorry for the screw-up.  15:22, 3 September 2014 (UTC)

Viewing KML data in Google Maps
It appears that links to http://maps.google.com/ - such as the one just above the TOC at Geonotice - will stop working soon. I've started a thread at Template talk:GeoGroup. -- Red rose64 (talk) 20:01, 25 February 2015 (UTC)
 * Redrose64, looks like it was replaced by a working Bing maps link https://www.bing.com/maps/?mapurl=https:%2F%2Ftools.wmflabs.org%2Fpara%2Fgeo%2Fgeonotices . I'd love to see this replaced by Openstreetmap/wmflabs : https://tools.wmflabs.org/lp-tools/misc/bbox.html?sw=55.2,10.8&ne=69.1,24.4 "BBox visualiser" by user:Lokal_Profil (Visualises a bounding box on a Leaflet.js map. Useful for getting the valued to enter into MediaWiki:Geonotice.js.) --Atlasowa (talk) 15:25, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

GeoNotices for experienced editors
Is it possible to do a geonotice that also targets by number of edits?  Ϣere Spiel  Chequers  09:42, 3 November 2015 (UTC)
 * Not AFAIK. -- Red rose64 (talk) 17:21, 3 November 2015 (UTC)
 * In general, geonotices are much more likely to be read by high-edit people anyway (it only appears on the watchlist, after all). And anytime a new editor magically notices it, I consider that a gift.--Pharos (talk) 19:23, 3 November 2015 (UTC)
 * In general I agree. But I was thinking of promoting Arbcom voting where you wouldn't want to show the invite to someone who hadn't yet met the voting criteria.  Ϣere Spiel  Chequers  08:13, 4 November 2015 (UTC)
 * Why would you want to target users by geographic location for that? Are you thinking of a generic watchlist announcement? Killiondude (talk) 21:11, 4 November 2015 (UTC)

so what does a geonotice actually look like?
I had requested one for Winnipeg. OhanaUnitedsaid it was set up. I don't see a msg for Winnipeg, I only see the global Wikipedia15 message. But then, maybe a geonotice is not what I think it is? Main page says "notice similar to a sitenotice, anonnotice or watchlist notice" but the links just go to empty pages. What should I actually be looking for? Tenbergen (talk) 16:30, 10 January 2016 (UTC)
 * Make sure that you have not disabled "" at . If that is enabled, they are only shown at the top of watchlists, above the other watchlist messages like "The 2016 WikiCup is now underway. All editors can sign up until February 1." Geonotices are in large text: if you go to m:User:Redrose64, and look for the phrase "which displays as", the large text after that looks very much like a geonotice. -- Red rose64 (talk) 16:59, 10 January 2016 (UTC)
 * Thanks RedRose64, so it only hits the watchlists, not the top of the screen like the Wikipedia15 banner. That's too bad, I bet only a small fraction of people use those, but I can see where you don't want all sorts of petty things on that banner. An entry at the top of the watch list would still be OK, but I don't even get that. Tenbergen (talk) 20:02, 12 January 2016 (UTC)
 * should fix it. The Winnipeg message should now displayed to people whose IP address geolocates to any point within a rectangle whose opposite corners are 49°N, -102°W and 60°N, -89°W, which should catch the whole of Manitoba, a fair chunk of Ontario plus bits of Saskatchewan and Nunavut - also the Northwest Angle. You can check where your IP address geolocates to by visiting http://geoiplookup.wikimedia.org/ and checking the figures after "lat" and "lon". They're not always accurate, but that's the fault of the web service provider, not us. If your coords do not fall within that box, you won't get the geonotice. -- Red rose64 (talk) 20:34, 12 January 2016 (UTC)
 * Thanks Redrose64, that did the trick, the notice is now on my watchlist! Now I am curious, I suppose if I used a service like Blockless to get US Netflix (Lots of Canadians do...) that would probably fool this as well, right? Tenbergen (talk) 23:09, 12 January 2016 (UTC)
 * Don't know, never heard of it. Try WP:RD/C. -- Red rose64 (talk) 00:12, 13 January 2016 (UTC)

UK batch geonotice
I've replaced "corners:" line of the long-standing UK meetups geonotice with the newer "country:" line. The current format of UK-wode meetup geonotice was invented because ISPs don't (didn't?) resolve geolocation accurately within the UK, so we just have one notice for the whole UK. With this switch we will also (theoretically) stop telling people geolocated in Dublin (just about inside the rectangle because it needed to cover western Scotland) about meetups in Great Britain. Deryck C. 16:31, 29 February 2016 (UTC)
 * Where do you live? Is it in the UK? If so, are you seeing that geonotice? Because I live in the UK, and I'm not seeing it any more. We tried the country code thing before, and it simply didn't work - UK was apparently being interpreted as Ukraine, and I suspect that is what is happening here. -- Red rose64 (talk) 22:55, 29 February 2016 (UTC)
 * Just did some testing. 'UK' doesn't work but 'GB' seems to work. Ukraine is 'UA'. Deryck C. 23:28, 29 February 2016 (UTC)

Edit link doesn't work
Clicking "view" or "edit" on a geonotice seems to redirect to MediaWiki:Watchlist-details, which doesn't reflect the current geonotice. That's not the expected behaviour... Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 22:28, 21 September 2016 (UTC)
 * It doesn't redirect, since the navbar concerned is in MediaWiki:Watchlist-details - it's in the very first line, as  This placement is intentional, since the links are there to facilitate editing of the watchlist notices. Geonotices are merely a subtopic of the watchlist notices, and are coded at MediaWiki:Gadget-geonotice-list.js. -- Red rose64 (talk) 23:12, 21 September 2016 (UTC)

Improving this process
I have processed a number of requests here, and I'd like to suggest that we try to make the process a little easier. At least from my perspective, the process for an administrator is fairly cumbersome, and the perpetual backlog suggests to me I might not be the only one.

I'm thinking we could do either of the following, or perhaps a combination:
 * Create a template or form, such that the person making the request can take care of more of the formatting; the administrator would still want to review for things like apostrophes to escape, but would have less to do in finalizing the text to include on the Geonotice page.
 * Create a bot and/or userscript that can translate more human-readable input from the requester into the more machine-readable output.
 * Create a "preview" functionality that can show (a) what the output text will look like, (b) show on a map where it will be displayed, and overall (c) provide some reassurance to the requester and the administrator implementing it that it's actually all set

Does this seem like a good idea? If so, does anybody (like maybe or ) want to help me refine the specifications a bit so we can redesign the instructions and/or make a more specific request of developers? -Pete Forsyth (talk) 02:28, 17 February 2017 (UTC)


 * I wonder if one section of the form should simply become "fill in your own code". That will reduce the amount of admin work. Deryck C. 16:28, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

New bot-assisted system
Pinging all recent contributors to MediaWiki:Gadget-geonotice-list.js:.

Starting in the near future (perhaps this week), we will be using a new bot-assisted system for managing geonotices. You can see the BRFA at Bots/Requests for approval/MusikBot II 2 and Special:PermaLink/862124571 for the original discussion. The reason we're doing this is to allow any admin to manage geonotices, and not just interface admins.

Under the new system, you'll use Geonotice/list.json (currently outdated) to configure the notices. A bot will sync this to MediaWiki:Gadget-geonotice-list.js every five minutes. This is JSON format, not JavaScript. As such, the rules have changed:
 * Single quotations are no longer escaped, but double quotations are (as with  ). This should be a welcomed change, since you're much more likely to want to use single quotes than double quotes. If you attempt to escape single quotes, or forget to escape double quotes, the JSON editor will show an error and will not let you save.
 * All keys have double quotes around them. Before your notice key (e.g. ) would be entered like  . Now you should write it like  . The same is true for the individual options, like ,  , etc. If you attempt to save without adding such quotations, the JSON editor will show an error.
 * Only use wikitext, no HTML. Not that HTML is anything hard to grasp, but under the new system, you should use the same ole wikitext that you're all familiar with. E.g. use  instead of  . The MediaWiki parser API is used, so any valid wikitext should work. The other nice advantage here is you can easily test what your notice will look like, using your sandbox, for example.
 * Comments are added as a key/value. I see some maintainers add comments in their code. Since comments are not valid JSON, you instead will need to enter in comments as a key/value pair. To do this add  to your notice configuration, such as in this example. This will only be shown on the JSON page, and will not be copied to MediaWiki:Gadget-geonotice-list.js.

A bot report reflecting the current status will be written to User:MusikBot II/GeonoticeSync/Report, which will be transcluded at the top of this page and somewhere on Geonotice. The report will include timestamp of the last successful sync, along with either "No errors!" or a list the detected errors. Here are the things the bot will check:
 * Validates the format of dates
 * Validating the country code (going off of this list)
 * Ensures only valid keys are used ("begin", "end", "country", and either "corners", "text" or "comments")
 * The wikitext itself

If there are any concerns, please let me know. When this goes live, I'll be sure to update all documentation, including the comment block at MediaWiki:Gadget-geonotice-list.js. Regards, &mdash; MusikAnimal  talk  17:06, 7 November 2018 (UTC)


 * Thank you so much! Ping us again when the bot goes live. Deryck C. 17:40, 7 November 2018 (UTC)
 * The bot is now live! Make sure to edit Geonotice/list.json until further notice, and monitor User:MusikBot II/GeonoticeSync/Report for errors (will be transcluded in various places). If the bot messes up, please first disable the task by setting the value to anything other than "true", then rollback the problematic edits. Hopefully that won't happen, though :) &mdash; MusikAnimal  talk  17:32, 9 November 2018 (UTC)
 * All working well, thank you! Deryck C. 20:46, 10 November 2018 (UTC)
 * I already have a port of the gadget to the new system, which allows us to use .json files directly in MediaWiki namespace. If I forget to post this copy of the gadget within the next 2-3 days, please remind me ;) —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 12:34, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Appears to be broken
Geonotice appears to be broken, is it working for anyone?--Pharos (talk) 04:09, 18 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Broken in what way? -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 22:56, 18 January 2020 (UTC)
 * It's not displaying my local notice on the watchlist and it didn't last time either, is it working for you or others?--Pharos (talk) 20:29, 19 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Which one? The Oxford one was certainly working for me until 17:00 yesterday, when it came down automatically. -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 12:46, 20 January 2020 (UTC)
 * My mistake, was using bad coordinates for the NYC one.--Pharos (talk) 13:42, 20 January 2020 (UTC)

Geonotice for a survey
Hi! I am running a survey of Wikipedians/Wikimedians in Ireland and would like to place a geonotice with a link to the Qualtrics survey from mid-April to mid-May. I could have sworn I requested one for a survey I conducted in 2016, but I can't find any trace of it. Is this the best place to go about this? Thanks! Smirkybec (talk) 15:44, 30 March 2020 (UTC)
 * Never mind, just realised it was a Central Banner requested through Meta! Smirkybec (talk) 15:48, 30 March 2020 (UTC)

Image request
There is new Basshunter tour soon and I though it may be good occasion to take a photo of live performance by someone who live in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Finland or Norway. List of locations: Facebook, Instagram or Twitter. Basshunter performed for few million people already but there are no new images in Wikimedia Commons available since 2009. Eurohunter (talk) 17:50, 21 June 2022 (UTC)

Map to visualize geonotices
Based on a request/discussion from @Pharos and @OhanaUnited, I created Geonotice/Map, which uses a Lua module (Module:Geonotice map) to parse the JSON and render a map showing the details of each geonotice and the area it covers. Legoktm (talk) 01:58, 14 August 2022 (UTC)

font size of notice
A discussion about changing the size of Geonotices is open at MediaWiki talk:Gadget-geonotice-core.css. Any feedback about this is welcome there. — xaosflux  Talk 13:30, 3 October 2022 (UTC)