Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Intertranswiki/OKA

OKA

 * One question... I was unaware about the funding, . Curious regarding -but only if you are comfortable sharing- how you notice translations by OKA editors as I have been oblivious to this. --Rosiestep (talk) 14:49, 20 April 2024 (UTC)


 * In regard to OKA articles, I frequently come across them when reviewing or assessing Italian articles. The most recent ones have been Alessandro Manzoni's thought and poetics, Pellegrini Chapel (San Bernardino) and Prospero Provana. But I also see them in translations from Spanish, French and German. I was interested to see that most of the editors come from South America where they apparently provide better value for money. I'm not too sure whether I agree with this approach to paid editing. There are not so many problems with articles addressing culture and cultural heritage but as you probably know, some of the donors call for translations of articles addressing their business interests. I don't know to what extent these and other paid groups of editors have received any kind of official attention and, if so, whether the approach is considered acceptable.--Ipigott (talk) 15:28, 20 April 2024 (UTC)
 * Aha! When I do WP:NPP,, I don't commonly look at the article's talkpage, but now I see that this gets added to talkpages of that ilk: OKA. As for whether the approach is considered acceptable, I admit to feeling ... uncomfortable, but if it's disclosed paid editing (and the google doc you linked to indicates that it must be disclosed on the editor's page), then it's "okay". That said, interestingly, there is no category for the hundreds of OKA translations. Perhaps it would be useful to have such a cat for (a) historical documentation as well as for (b) spot-checking the translation quality. Are you aware if there's a wiki talkpage somewhere for this? Perhaps discussion of this sort has occurred there already? --Rosiestep (talk) 16:04, 20 April 2024 (UTC)
 * In view of the latest communications (see below), it now looks as if things are not OK as the level of disclosure is deemed not to have been sufficient. As of today there is a firm requirement that all OKA translations are to be prepared as drafts and submitted to AfC for approval. It seems to me that as OKA have been so open about their funding, payments and disclosure on the talk pages of all new creations, it is rather strange that no one has required further action until now. I hope it's not a result of the discussions here. If so, once again mea culpa. Perhaps you could advise on a more reasonable way to deal with the problem. Maybe there could be special provision in connection with translated articles, or at least a more efficient procedure for arranging the approval of AfC drafts. It seems pretty draconian to block any OKA editor who fails to implement full COI rules from tomorrow. There are usually at least four or five new translations a day from various editors. That could result in a considerable series of blockages as their creations are not difficult to identify.--Ipigott (talk) 16:12, 6 May 2024 (UTC)
 * See also: List of paid editing companies, which contains an on-wiki list of editors, and a google doc list of articles. --Rosiestep (talk) 16:08, 20 April 2024 (UTC)
 * Sorry, I should perhaps have sent you the talk pages of these articles instead. Whenever I come across an NPP article for review, I always look at both the article and the talk page, carrying out any necessary assessment. That's how I have become aware of so many OKA translations as they are frequently unassessed and many of them deserve B class. As for an OKA category for articles created, if it's introduced it should probably be invisible but for me clear mention of OKA on the talk page is sufficient. OKA themselves might of course welcome an additional means of identifying the articles created as they seem to be proud of their achievements. I must say that in most cases OKA involvement indeed indicates a much higher standard than can usually be expected of translated articles. And unlike many (if not most) translated articles, OKA editors always clearly mention the source article in their first edit. OKA articles are almost always creations rather than improvements to existing articles (which other "agencies" usually seem to prefer). I have not come across any talk pages discussing the involvement of OKA but as their activity is obviously progressing, it might be useful to draw wider attention to their work. I agree with you that full disclosure of their operations and editor involvement probably makes everything more or less OK.--Ipigott (talk) 06:11, 21 April 2024 (UTC)
 * You might be interested in these articles translated by the highly active OKA editor over the past couple of months. Although they stem from well developed articles in Polish, the standard of translation is impressive. My interest was triggered by the biography of Leonia Nastał.--Ipigott (talk) 13:52, 21 April 2024 (UTC)
 * Don't know if WikiProject Intertranswiki is on anyone's watchlist anymore, but OKA translation efforts would pertain to it. (cc: ) --Rosiestep (talk) 16:26, 20 April 2024 (UTC)
 * Hello! For some reason your pings aren't working!♦ Dr. Blofeld  17:50, 20 April 2024 (UTC)
 * , that's odd; don't know why they aren't working. I'm trying "ping" now instead of "u" in pinging you; did you get this one? --Rosiestep (talk) 18:43, 20 April 2024 (UTC)
 * Got that one. :-) I only saw a post from you from about a month ago asking for help editing something a few days ago too, didn't get the notification! ♦ Dr. Blofeld  19:45, 20 April 2024 (UTC)

End moved discussion. --Rosiestep (talk) 15:20, 21 April 2024 (UTC)

OKA category
, returning to the question of categorizing OKA articles, one way to track them would be to add the WP Intertranswiki talkpage template to all the articles and templates (and drafts?) created by OKA editors. The on-wiki list is here; this is a list of OKA-templated articles so it may be incomplete if some articles created by OKA-editors aren't OKA-templated. OKA also maintains an off-wiki list, which may be different. If you think it's a good idea to add the WikiProject Intertranswiki talkpage template (I couldn't find one but I assume there is one), I'd want to get opinion on the matter, (a) because of the quantity (almost 2,000 articles/templates), as well as (b) his availability to do the needful. --Rosiestep (talk) 15:36, 21 April 2024 (UTC)
 * Adding (founder of OKA) to the conversation. Also, noticing that they have already commented on this WikiProject talkpage, so a belated warm welcome and thank you for what you do around here! --Rosiestep (talk) 15:39, 21 April 2024 (UTC)
 * Hi everyone,
 * From the OKA perspective, we are ok with tagging the articles we translated with any categorization that the community feels adequate, especially if it can help raise visibility of the work. We currently have the OKA template added to the talk page of all articles (+ the tracker) so it's easy to find the full list.
 * 7804j (talk) 15:54, 21 April 2024 (UTC)
 * Thank you,, for your understanding. Perhaps someone (?) could devise an automated way of handling this. I would prefer a dedicated OKA category rather than Intertranswiki.--Ipigott (talk) 18:02, 21 April 2024 (UTC)

Adding to the conversation as they helped us modernize the Women in Red talkpage template. Old style example: Talk:Aurélie Neyret; new style example: Talk:Marietta Sherman Raymond. Martin, maybe you have some thoughts on how to categorize OKA articles on-wiki. The tracker that refers to is fine for their business model but as it's a ggl doc and off-wiki, it doesn't solve on-wiki tracking. If I misunderstand the tracker, hoping someone can clarify. --Rosiestep (talk) 20:11, 21 April 2024 (UTC)


 * For on-wiki tracking, there is also this page that can serve as an alternative (though it is obviously not as convenient as a proper category)
 * 7804j (talk) 20:46, 21 April 2024 (UTC)
 * This is a useful list but it includes articles which have been improved by OKA editors rather than created from scratch. I think many of us would be particularly interested in articles created by OKA editors on the basis of translations from other language versions. Are you able to provide such a list? If not, it should be possible to differentiate between full translations and improvements to existing articles on the basis of Wikipedia article creation stats, etc. I am a bit confused by the chronology (if any) of your list. Can you offer any explanations? I have been spending quite a bit of my editing time on reviewing creations by OKA editors as until they are accepted after review they are not fully searchable on Wikipedia. As so many of them remain unreviewed for months on end, you and your editors might not be aware of the importance of reviewing. From now on, when I come across a creation by an OKA editor, I'll look into the full list of articles he/she has created any will try to review those needing attention (as I already have for Oliwiasocz -- see above).--Ipigott (talk) 06:47, 22 April 2024 (UTC)
 * At the moment, the vast majority of OKA articles are new, with only a few being expansions of existing articles (but even in case of extensions, they are almost alway through translation). In terms of chronology, we have a date published field on our internal tracker in oka.wiki/tracker (and I also ask translators to flag the non-new articles by marking them as "expand", but they haven't been doing it as systematically as I'd like) but I'm not sure if there is a way within Wikipedia to sort the ones woth the OKA template by date published
 * I didn't realize that there was such a long review waitlist -- thanks a lot for your help in clearing through that backlog!
 * If there is no automated way to add the OKA category to articles, I can also ask my team to do it manually but that would obviously not be ideal as there are almost 2000 of them
 * 7804j (talk) 07:09, 22 April 2024 (UTC)
 * and I will need to look at this further over the next few days - I've been in and out all day, and don't have the wherewithal before bed, I'm afraid.  But I'm sure that a hidden category might be a possibility. -- Ser Amantio di Nicolao Che dicono a Signa?Lo dicono a Signa. 04:39, 22 April 2024 (UTC)


 * Assuming the articles will all use the OKA template on the Talk page, then categorizing the articles is trivially easy. Just add the category to the template, and create the category. The hardest part of this is probably just choosing the right name for the category, so that it parallels the structure of other categories of this sort, so I would recommend that someone look around at other categories that are similar in some way and suggest name for the category. Once we have that, the rest is easy. Mathglot (talk) 11:32, 24 May 2024 (UTC)


 * ✔️. See below. Mathglot (talk) 20:53, 2 July 2024 (UTC)

OKA WikiProject?
The scope of WikiProject Intertranswiki is translation of articles from some language Wikipedia into EN-WP. The scope of OKA appears to be translation of articles from some language Wikipedia into EN-WP and getting paid for it. , would you please confirm or clarify? Ergo, I've been thinking of OKA as a "task force" of WikiProject Intertranswiki but it would probably be more appropriate for OKA to be its own WikiProject. This would be useful for tracking (e.g., "hidden category") and talkpage discussions, e.g., a particular OKA-article, a particular OKA-editor, OKA-editor editing trends, paid-editing specifically related to OKA, etc. Examples of conversations on two now-blocked OKA-editor talkpages that could more fully be discussed on the WikiProject OKA talkpage: As OKA-article talkpages already have the OKA-template, the next steps would include creation of WikiProject OKA, and enhancement of the OKA-template with the appropriate WikiProject-talkpage parameters. Is this the right direction, or something else? --Rosiestep (talk) 15:15, 22 April 2024 (UTC)
 * Caress9570, "I want to delete this page because I was scammed by OKA. They never paid me!!!"
 * Alemedicen, "The group that arranges your paid editing emphasizes increasing traffic to targeted pages."


 * I think the objectives of both Intertranswiki and OKA are the same, i.e., translating articles into EN-WP (though in the case of OKA, we also translate into other Wikis, and some of our editors also occasionally do a bit non-translation related improvements to articles). The key difference is on the "how": Intertranswiki consists only of pure volunteers, while OKA editors receive a stipend.
 * Therefore we could either see OKA as a separate project, or one part of OKA as a task force of Intertranswiki. If other people from Intertranswiki want to be more involved in OKA itself (e.g., streamlining processes, taking part in articles prioritization), I'm also open to it
 * The main reasons why I haven't created a Wikiproject for OKA so far are:
 * (1) I was worried that this would be perceived negatively by the community, as our translators are technically paid editors. I know many people in the Wiki community are not supportive of paid editing and I'm not sure if there are precedents for a paid-editing initiative having its own project, so I didn't want to create a controversy
 * (2) I don't have prior experience in setting up or managing a Wiki community, so I'm lacking a bit of the technical expertise to do so. Internally, we have a Google Workspace chat where our translators communicate, so we didn't have a strong need for a dedicated space within WP
 * If you believe that (1) is ok and would be able to assist with (2), I think that would be a great addition. I agree that having the discussions such as the ones you raised in the talk page of the community would make things easier (so far I recommended to people to use the talk page of our template, but people haven't done it so far).
 * 7804j (talk) 17:39, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

OKA lists
* On-wiki list of OKA articles: here * Off-wiki (ggl doc) list of OKA articles: here * On-wiki list of OKA editors: here


 * Reply to Ipigott at 15:28, 20 April: not only from Italian, Spanish, French and German, but also from Portuguese . Pinging, in case you wish to comment (and thanks for your translations on Brazilian topics). User:7804j, do you maintain a list (or better, sortable table) of OKA-assisted creations by language? That would assist editors here who wish to review (or improve) articles in which they have language proficiency, and not others where they don't. I'd like to see: column 1 = lang code, c2 = creation date, c3 = editor link, c4 = article link. Can assist with wikifying data into a sortable table, if you know how to provide CSV, TSV (preferred), or even Excel format. Mathglot (talk) 19:55, 22 April 2024 (UTC)


 * and all: At the top of this section, I've blueboxed the OKA lists that we're currently aware of, but if you know of others, please add. --Rosiestep (talk) 21:58, 22 April 2024 (UTC)


 * Thanks for your interest. Yes, I am certainly aware of Portuguese. In fact I have looked carefully through the list of almost 294 articles translated by since December 2022 and reviewed and assessed those needing attention. As you can see, the results are impressive. As time permits, I'll assess/review articles by other OKA translators. I've already been able to cover 77 by Oliwiasocz (Polish) and 140 by Manoru007 (Italian). If you (or anyone else) can suggest any other prolific OKA translators (especially those who are still active), I'll try to look through their work too. (I'm thinking of handling those created by  (German) which I may be able to cover later today.--Ipigott (talk) 05:55, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

OKA translators blocked from creating new articles
Hi everyone (and in particular @Ipigott @Mathglot @Rosiestep @Ser Amantio di Nicolao @Dr. Blofeld since you were involved in previous discussions related to OKA),

It was recently raised on my talk page that it is not allowed for OKA translators to create new articles, as they are technically paid editors (WP:COI says that paid editors "should put new articles through the Articles for Creation (AfC) process instead of creating them directly").

This is quite unfortunate since, unlike almost all other paid editors, we only distribute grants as a non-profit without directing our translators to specific content. Also, our translators only receive a small "cost of living" stipend of less than 450 USD per month when they work full-time (usually a lot less than that since most of our translators do this as a side activity). In that sense, our translators are more like grant recipients than really paid editors, but as far as I know there is no such exception in the current wording of the policy.

I haven't used the AFC process in the past, but my impression is that it is not the most efficient part of Wikipedia, with currently >2000 articles in the backlog, many from several months ago. OKA creates several thousand new articles per year (99% of which are translations), so I have concerns that if all of these were to go through AFC, it would completely clog the process and makes us unable to operate. We will test it but, given the circumstances, there is a real risk we may need to shut down OKA entirely on EN WP and re-assign our ~15 full-time translators to other Wikipedia languages with less stringent paid editing policies.

Before doing this, I wanted to get your view on two points:

1) Do you see any path for requesting a simplification of the current policy? Requiring that every OKA article be submitted through AFC does not seem to benefit anyone, as it will (at best) reduce the productivity of both our translators and consume time from the volunteers reviewing the AFC list or (at worst) lead us to drop out of EN Wiki entirely

2) In case (1) is not possible and we need to go for the AFC route, would you be able to assist us in clearing the backlog from the OKA translations?

Thanks a lot for your advice!

7804j (talk) 14:13, 6 May 2024 (UTC)


 * Thank you for notifying us of the warning you have received, . It is in fact technically correct that paid editors must declare a Conflict of Interest in connection with any article for which they receive payment. It nevertheless seems to me that OKA's overall aim to improve Wikipedia by encouraging translations between language versions is very different from cases in which editors receive payment for writing articles to promote a person or a business. I think this is a special case which should be discussed on the basis of a formal proposal. Perhaps interested administrators could suggest how this could be initiated. As for AfC, the backlog frequently runs to two months or more and I am pretty sure most editors who are members of the project would not give any priority to articles created by paid editors. They might well find fault with many of the articles and suggest they should be kept in draft form or even deleted. It might nevertheless be possible for you to work with a group of editors who are willing to look at OKA drafts and promote them to article space if there are no major problems. It would be interesting to hear what others think about this.
 * In this connection, over the past couple of weeks I have been looking carefully through hundreds of OKA articles submitted to the English Wikipedia, reviewing and rating them as necessary. I believe all those submitted over the past year have now been assessed, the vast majority reaching B class. In this connection, I have not come across any obvious promotion of individuals or business interests. The articles all seem to have been selected with a view to improving coverage of the English Wikipedia.--Ipigott (talk) 15:15, 6 May 2024 (UTC)


 * Hi, regarding:
 * Do you see any path for requesting a simplification of the current policy?: I would suggest not requesting a change until a high success rate with these articles is documented over some reasonable period of time. At the moment, I'm unclear how to quantify "high success rate" and/or "reasonable period of time", but maybe it'll become evident after a bit.
 * would you be able to assist us in clearing the backlog from the OKA translations?: yes, as long as the process is on-wiki. For example, is the list of articles that need reviewing on-wiki? --Rosiestep (talk) 16:37, 6 May 2024 (UTC)


 * Thanks @Ipigott and @Rosiestep!
 * @Rosiestep: Since we already published over 1000 articles over 1.5 years, many of them B-class (see Ipigott's reply), wouldn't that qualify as "high success rate" already, or at least sufficient evidence to support a change request? They didn't go through AfC process but most of these were reviewed already. If so, what would be the best way to initiate such a request, should it come from me or from someone who's not a member of OKA?
 * Let me know what you think 7804j (talk) 01:31, 7 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Another idea that came to mind as a solution until the paid contributions policy is changed is to ask OKA translators to just publish articles as drafts (and not submit to AfC) and tag them with OKA template once they are ready for review. Then a volunteer from Intertranswiki or elsewhere can review them and publish to mainspace if they feel they are ready. The benefit of this approach is that it won't clog the AfC process with OKA articles, and ensure ppl reviewing OKA articles are familiar with OKA.
 * 7804j (talk) 05:34, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

I'm still on the learning curve here, but it seems like OKA-paid editors are not in the same class as what Wikipedia has heretofore considered pretty much an axiomatic equivalence between being paid on the one hand, and having a conflict of interest on the other, because it doesn't take into account philanthropy as a motive. If the OKA members can translate whatever articles they want, and are not vetted on the content of their translation by OKA, then I don't see where the conflict is. Maybe one thing that might help, is if OKA would forswear any articles on topics labeled as controversial on the Talk page, or might reasonably be considered controversial, that might help a bit. But getting back to conflict of interest: the meaning of the term is that there might be some undue advantage incurred by someone or some entity by dint of an editor being paid or in an official position of responsibility. But exactly who benefits ilicitly from translations of: (those are just the first few entries at Special:WhatLinksHere for Template:OKA). If there is no prospect of anyone benefiting, then in my view, there can be no conflict of interest, regardless of pay. It may be that the unstated axiomatic equivalence principle needs to be reviewed, as it seems aimed (understandably, for historic reasons) solely at actors with self-interested motivation, without taking into account the possibility of actors with purely philanthropic motivation. We may need to consider that possibility now. Do we prohibit donors to Wikimedia or wmf employees from creating new articles here of their choice? I don't think so. Is that not an equivalent conflict of interest? (Yes, it seems equivalent to me, and no, it's not a conflict of interest when donors write articles, because there is no monitoring of what they do.) Maybe we need a new shortcut: WP:DONTBITETHEDONORS. The only ones I see benefiting from these additional (paid) translations for the most part, are readers of Wikipedia. Mathglot (talk) 09:43, 7 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Thank you,, for these constructive comments. Perhaps you should bring them to the attention of those who have insisted that from today all OKA editors need to declare a conflict of interest. It seems very unfortunate to me that editors who have created dozens of excellent articles in good faith are to be indefinitely blocked if they create one more article without making such a declaration. But perhaps we should urge them to follow the COI rules until we can come forward with a more reasonable procedure.--Ipigott (talk) 13:17, 7 May 2024 (UTC)
 * I'm not opposed to OKA editors being required to make a paid declaration, I just think we need a new kind of paid declaration which includes pay but doesn't say anything about COI one way or the other (because an editor working with pay but without COI via OKA, could still have a COI for some completely unrelated reason somewhere else). I.e., they should follow the rules that are in place now, until a better set of rules can be devised that can better cover this situation. But that would have to be a community decision, and would take some time. I'll see if I can comment elsewhere about it, but the time I have available to devote to this is a bit thin right now and about to become thinner, but if you think it would help, feel free to quote, excerpt, or link my comment wherever you feel would be appropriate if I don't get around to it. Mathglot (talk) 20:28, 7 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Hi @Ipigott, @Mathglot, @Rosiestep,
 * I think it would make sense to introduce a distinction between regular paid editors and "Philanthropic" paid editors. This second label could be either through self-disclosure, or through a community review process. Criteria could include factors such as whether or not editors are directed to specific articles or topics, whether they are connected in some way to the topics they edit, whether the paying organization is recognized as an official non-profit, etc.
 * Regarding what being labeled as such would entail: the current "paid editor" disclosure is not an issue for us. The main problem is the requirement for paid editors to use AfC for all new articles. So I think the only actual change in policy that is really needed for these "Philanthropic paid editors" would be the drop of the AfC requirement.
 * Regarding how to initiate this community proposal: should I create a new topic in the COI talk page, then raise awareness of that discussion within places such as the Village pump? Or is there a different process we should follow? I just want to make sure to follow the appropriate channels.7804j (talk) 02:57, 8 May 2024 (UTC)


 * I see someone above thought that this discussion called my attention to the issue. It didn't; I don't follow or watch this page or project. Rather, my attention was called to the issue by an editor changing links in high-traffic articles to irrelevant or inappropriate targets (ex.:, ), after being told very clearly not to do that , presumably due to some desire to "drive traffic". From this discussion I see that this is not the first time that particular practice has become a problem, nor was that the only type of disruption that's been caused. And there's also a fair few articles from these editors which have needed a move to draft, have been duplicates of existing articles, or the like. Paid editors making messes that volunteers later have to clean up is the exact reason we have paid editors go through review by non-paid editors; there is a fundamental difference between having financial incentives to edit and doing so as a volunteer. And I also do not see why going through review processes should cause anyone to have to "shut down"&mdash;if an editor is making articles that would readily pass AfC, they can just move on to their next draft while they wait for others to be reviewed, and if they're writing stuff that wouldn't pass, well, then it's not the review process that's the problem, it's the poor quality writing or failing to take due care in checking that, for example, they aren't duplicating something which already exists. Seraphimblade Talk to me 22:15, 7 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Hi Seraphimblade,
 * OKA editors are grant recipients and therefore benefit from a lot of freedom. This explains why not all OKA editors have the same level of proficiency and experience in editing Wikipedia. We do not caution the type of behavior that this person did. I don't think she did it with any intention to drive traffic, since we do not reward ppl based on the traffic of the articles they translate. Instead, I assume she did so to avoid having her articles being tagged as "orphan". It was just a very clumsy way of doing so, but such actions afe something that some regular volunteer might also do, not specific to paid edits.
 * The problem with AfC, aside from being very slow, is that the bar to accept articles is usually very high compared to the bar from directly publishing an article, because it is a process designed for providing feedback to first time creators. So I expect that OKA articles submitted there would receive excessive feedback from well meaning reviewers who will not always realize that these are translations.7804j (talk) 23:47, 7 May 2024 (UTC)
 * "We're not using AfC because they would not pass" is an argument in favor of having you use it, not an argument against. One of the responsibilities of a translating editor is to make sure that the translation is suitable for the English Wikipedia, and not all translations are, since each project has their own rules and practices. Seraphimblade Talk to me 00:19, 8 May 2024 (UTC)
 * All of our articles would pass the AfC criteria. What I am saying is that some may require a large number of back and forths to answer optional feedback from AfC reviewers on how to further improve the page 7804j (talk) 01:37, 8 May 2024 (UTC)
 * (post-ec) Actually, 7804j, no. See here for an article translated from French which couldn't (or at least, shouldn't) pass AFC. This may trace back to the differences between the understanding of Original research at English Wikipedia (WP:OR) and at French Wikipedia (WP:TI), but the bottom line is that this is English Wikipedia, and this pretty much highlight's Seraphim's point @00:19 above about the translator's responsibility, which goes beyond just translation if the article is to be acceptable here. Mathglot (talk) 02:10, 8 May 2024 (UTC)
 * The very last part about differences among projects is very relevant; see this explanation to an OKA editor of why I Draftified their article. This is slightly o/t for this discussion, but since you mentioned it, I've thought about how to address this before, and came up with this configurable, table temmplate as an initial proof of concept for how one might deal with policy differences among Wikipedias:


 * It would need to be expanded along both axes to make it really useful for active translators on Wikipedia, but it seems to work as far as it goes. You can pick what languages you want in it via template params. Mathglot (talk) 01:56, 8 May 2024 (UTC)
 * And, that's why making rather blanket statements like All of our articles would pass the AfC criteria. is often not the best idea. That one certainly wouldn't, and shouldn't, have passed. The one I deleted as G11/advertising from the editor I earlier discussed certainly wouldn't and shouldn't have passed either. So, that again reinforces my view that I don't trust your judgment in that, and they need to go through review by non-conflicted, non-paid editors. Seraphimblade Talk to me 02:02, 8 May 2024 (UTC)
 * I agree I responded a bit too fast here. What I meant by "all articles" was ">95% of articles". Today we already have a few articles that get draftified, like the one mentioned by @Mathglot, when the criteria differ from one wiki to another. No matter whether we go through the AfC process or the regular review process, these articles would be turned down. In the vast majority of cases, when this happens, our editors do their best to address these issues, which explains why over 95% of articles end up remaining published7804j (talk) 03:02, 8 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Note that it is easy to find a couple of articles that have issues considering that we have over 20 different translators that have published over a 1000 articles. It is similar to journalists trying to prove Wikipedia is not reliable overall by picking examples where it is not. What I am asking is that we assess the overall quality of our output rather than whether every work done by OKA translator is perfect. We don't claim to achieve that standard. 7804j (talk) 03:05, 8 May 2024 (UTC)
 * By all means, let's do that. That assessment can be done when the articles are submitted through AfC. Seraphimblade Talk to me 03:14, 8 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Are you saying that, if OKA translators can successfully submit a large number of articles through AfC, you would be open to consider a motion to lift the AfC requirement for OKA translators (or at least some of them)? I think it would be already extremely helpful if our most proficient and experienced translators could create their own articles without going through AfC 7804j (talk) 03:26, 8 May 2024 (UTC)
 * No, I did not say that at all. Seraphimblade Talk to me 05:17, 8 May 2024 (UTC)
 * While I am here, I should perhaps point out that the editor of several recent OKA translations in connection with Poland has not yet complied with the recommended COI procedure although I noticed others have adapted their user pages as necessary.--Ipigott (talk) 08:44, 13 May 2024 (UTC)

In reply to comments about assessing quality when articles are submitted through AfC, we have now accumulated some data about that. A table summarizing the quality breakdown of articles submitted to Afc by OKA editors (more precisely, Afc-submitted and assessed articles tagged with an OKA template on the Talk page) can be seen here. Mathglot (talk) 10:08, 7 July 2024 (UTC)

OKA Task Force to this WikiProject

 * Do you think it's time for a WikiProject Intertranswiki OKA "task force" as a way to keep all this information together? --Rosiestep (talk) 16:37, 6 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Regarding a transwiki taskforce, I am definitely supportive! That would help a lot with the coordination. Do you think we could create a page WikiProject Intertranswiki/OKA? To easily identify the OKA AfC pages to review, I could ask my translators to add the OKA template to all drafts. 7804j (talk) 01:31, 7 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Hi @Rosiestep,
 * Friendly bump on this topic. Would it be ok to create a sub-page for OKA within Intertranswiki (e.g.,WikiProject Intertranswiki/OKA), or shall I create instead a dedicated Wikiproject? I would prefer the former to minimize maintenance efforts, as the main purpose of that page would be communication between OKA and other non-OKA Wikipedia volunteers, but I would be fine with either.
 * Thanks a lot!
 * 7804j (talk) 02:24, 13 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Hi, seems fine to me. I think , favored that option, too. --Rosiestep (talk) 08:23, 13 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Yes, I think it would but good to start with a task force under Intertranswiki. I'm sure would be happy to provide any assistance. --Ipigott (talk) 08:44, 13 May 2024 (UTC)
 * I have a lot going on right now, but I'll help as time permits. --Rosiestep (talk) 09:09, 13 May 2024 (UTC)
 * , have you committed to creating the Task Force, and if so, do you have a timeline? Alternatively, have you decided to not create it? --Rosiestep (talk) 16:52, 15 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Yes -- I will create it in the next couple of days (I'm currently focused on updating our internal processes for AfC, so wanted to finish cleaning these up before setting up the taskforce) 7804j (talk) 19:57, 15 May 2024 (UTC)

Deletion of OKA articles from mainspace
I have just discovered that several of the high quality translations by OKA editors which I moved to mainspace have been deleted on the basis of R2 which I simply do not understand. I have asked for explanations on User talk:Shellypls so that we can resolve any problems. Perhaps can help with this. Otherwise it looks as if many OKA creations will simply remain as drafts.--Ipigott (talk) 13:00, 20 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Let's see what says regarding the R2. Particularly, I'm interested if the deletion is related to articles created by paid editors or if the deletion is related to the translations themselves (e.g., if they would have been R2'ed if created by a non-OKA editor). --Rosiestep (talk) 14:03, 20 May 2024 (UTC)
 * I'm sorry to see that as yet there has been no response from . Perhaps as always she has simply been too busy and will respond later. I was however interested to see that Spa Conference (29 September 1918) is now once again in mainspace although from User talk:Carolsantosl it can be seen that under the title Conférence de Spa (29 septembre 1918) it had previously been deleted along with Spa Conference (2-3 July 1918) and Spa Conference (13-15 August 1918). It will be interesting to see if it now survives and on what grounds or whether it is still a candidate for R2.--Ipigott (talk) 06:44, 21 May 2024 (UTC)


 * I can answer this: R2 applies only to the redirect not to the article. The entire translation remains as it was before, and is now located in draft space at Draft:Louis-Pantaléon de Noé. Redirects from main space must not point to a draft, which is why the redirect was speedy deleted.
 * The spa article should *not* have been recreated, that was a mistake, and needs draftifying somewhere; the original article was not deleted, and remains at Draft:Spa Conference (2-3 July 1918). I’ve moved the recreated one to Draft:Spa Conference (29 September 1918). Mathglot (talk) 16:23, 24 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Crap, I didn’t see that the 29 September one had been processed through Afc; I’ve moved it back. Hopefully, everything is in the right namespace now. Mathglot (talk) 16:29, 24 May 2024 (UTC)

AfC discussion on Village pump
Hey everyone (and @Rosiestep @Ipigott, @Mathglot),

In case you are interested, I just wanted to flag that a discussion was initiated in the Village pump regarding whether an exception to the AfC requirement for OKA.

7804j (talk) 08:51, 22 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Thanks. (Converted link above to default (desktop); mobile users will continue to see mobile view.) Mathglot (talk) 09:02, 22 June 2024 (UTC)


 * Thanks,, for the alert. As you may know, is an experienced contributor who helps extensively with translation problems in various languages. His suggestions seem reasonable.  produces excellent articles on the arts and culture and it is not surprising he notices problems connected with the subjects he covers. In relation to AfC, however, it seems to me we encounter far more problems with non-OKA translations than with those by OKA translators who of course rely first and foremost on the articles to be translated. While DeepL Translator generally provides high-quality translations, there are of course mistranslations and unnatural turns of phrase which in most cases are successfully resolved. As I have been fairly closely associated with OKA and have reviewed and assessed many of the articles, at this stage I would prefer not to comment on the Village Pump but sincerely hope the discussion leads to a more reasonable outcome for all concerned.--Ipigott (talk) 09:20, 22 June 2024 (UTC)

Migration of OKA to meta.wikimedia.org
Following the suggestion of another editor, I have created a page for OKA at meta.wikimedia.org. I also in the process of wikifying our instructions to translators, so that all the documentation is available in-wiki. I believe that meta.wikimedia is a more suitable space for topics related to OKA, as OKA is active across multiple Wikipedia (EN, PT, ES). To avoid duplication, I was thinking of redirecting the existing pages on WikiProject Intertranswiki to the new home, but also happy to keep a presence here if you feel it is useful. 7804j (talk) 19:29, 1 July 2024 (UTC)
 * 7804j, Disagree. Meta should only contain material general to all Wikipedias, whereas now it contains a mix of general info and lots of content relevant only to English Wikipedia. This either needs to be undone, or, more likely, split. Mathglot (talk) 23:24, 1 July 2024 (UTC)
 * I undid the content removal from the Task force page. This page is still the home page for the Intertranswiki project Task force, and that belongs to English Wikipedia alone; other Wikipedias can have their own WikiProjects or Task forces (or not), and the Meta page should continue on as a starting point for issues common to all uses of OKA in every language pair; this is not that.
 * Meta can remain mostly as is, but anything local to English Wikipedia (such as "Members") must live here only, at least for members interested in to-English translation only. Mathglot (talk) 23:36, 1 July 2024 (UTC)
 * I have no strong opinion so what you suggests works for me too. I'll then reorganize both pages to make the split clearer between what's general across Wikis and the part that affect only EN WP. 7804j (talk) 05:58, 2 July 2024 (UTC)
 * I've added another section to the Meta page that links en-wiki, es-wiki, and pt-wiki. Only en-wiki has a WikiProject and categories subcategorized by quality assessment; the other two link only the template (which still need documentation). But both wikis have the possibility of subcategories, so they should probably be implemented as well. Mathglot (talk) 10:13, 3 July 2024 (UTC)

New talk page template auto-categorizes pages
The original OKA template has been replaced, and is now a redirect. The new one uses standard Module:WikiProject banner which is used by most WikiProjects to facilitate various operations, including auto-categorization. To see an example of the new template in use, see Talk:Ancient Regime of Spain.

Auto-categorization has already been initiated by the bot associated with this process, and the results can be seen in main category Articles translated by an OKA editor. Other categories exists for tracking and other purposes. As articles are assessed for quality, they will start to populate the quality-scale categories, which are listed at Category:OKA articles by quality. This change should be completely transparent; there is no reason afaik to give OKA editors any special notification of this change—they can keep doing what they were doing before, and keep using template redirect OKA which is shorter and easier to type than the full, wikiproject template name.

I am not an expert on quality assessment, and there are some aspects of the quality assessment feature of the module that I believe involve a bot that can do auto-assessment for quality. I don't know how that all happens, but the new template is highly configurable, and if we want to change how categorization is done (or if it is done at all) that should all be doable using the extensive module parameter set. Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 23:29, 1 July 2024 (UTC)


 * So long as the OKA articles are going through AfC, they should get rated "automatically", since one of the steps in the AFCH workflow is to rate the article. WP:MILHIST has a bot that will come do its own pass on the article after it's in mainspace. -- asilvering (talk) 00:14, 2 July 2024 (UTC)

Translators instructed to delete draft talk after release
There was a sentence in the section that said:

I have deleted the part after the ellipsis. Talk page discussions should not be deleted (except for vandalism, personal attacks, and a few other reasons). Talk discussions may be (do not have to be) archived, but OKA editors need not be concerned with that; they already have enough on their plate. If this derives from external instructions given to OKA editors, please remove it from those instructions as well, at least as far as English Wikipedia is concerned. Mathglot (talk) 00:03, 2 July 2024 (UTC)


 * I will remove that from the instructions, and replace it by "instructed to remove the OKA template from the draft talk page". The reason is that filtering for drafts that contain this template is the only option I found so far to easily find all OKA articles submitted for AfC7804j (talk) 06:02, 2 July 2024 (UTC)
 * , that is one option, but I would oppose that. It is very useful to have the template on the Talk page after release, as it enables continuing trackability. For another thing, there is precedent for this approach: for example, articles edited by members of Wikiproject "Guild of copy editors" retain their project template on the page along with the other Wikiproject bbanners after an article is released, both as a record, and to facilitate tracking; see for example, the wikiproject banners at Talk:Kraków or Talk:Vulgate. This makes it easy to view all of their contributions collectively via their category, Articles copy edited by the Guild of Copy Editors (over 10,000).
 * In my opinion, this is the model that OKA should follow. It is useful to have this information available, and it will be nice to watch the quality categories evolve, until one day we start having OKA articles end up as GA (good article) or FA (featured article) quality, which you'll be able to see at categories GA-Class OKA articles and FA-Class OKA articles, currently both empty. The distribution of quality categories over time will also show you what kind of topics, and perhaps even which translators, are most effective at kicking off articles which are later picked up and improved by others, and start moving up the quality scalse towards featured articles. Imho, this is useful data to have, can drive all sorts of inquiry and monitoring, and shouldn't be just thrown away by deleting the template after release, so I hope you will reconsider, and keep the template post-release, and group it with the other Wikiproject banners, just as GOCE does. Mathglot (talk) 05:31, 4 July 2024 (UTC)

Translators instructed to add the OKA template after AfC submission
There is a sentence in the section that says:

In my opinion, editors should be instructed to add the OKA template to the Talk page immediately after their first edit creating the page. This will aid transparency, categorization, collaboration, and improve the chances that other editors will find the Draft and drop by to help. If there is a good reason not to use the template right away, I'm willing to be persuaded, but I only see downsides to that and no advantages. Am I missing something? Mathglot (talk) 00:13, 2 July 2024 (UTC)


 * If it's only added after submission, then the articles tagged with it are all drafts that are "done" and pending AfC. I presume this is helpful for OKA folks to keep an eye on for their own reasons, but it also means that AfC editors can go through the tagged drafts and review several of them at once. I was using it for that purpose just yesterday. -- asilvering (talk) 00:16, 2 July 2024 (UTC)
 * I don't quite follow; can you elaborate? What does "done" mean in this context? And if they want to keep an eye on it and have it on their watchlist, won't they get notified anyway when a reviewer does anything to the page? Also, let's say they tag it first, and submit it after—does that scenario behave differently from submit-and-tag, and if so, how? Mathglot (talk) 01:32, 2 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Done here means "complete", ie, the draft is submitted to AfC. This means that when you look at the "what links here" of the template, you can clearly see which articles are stuck in the bottleneck between completion and mainspace. -- asilvering (talk) 01:59, 2 July 2024 (UTC)
 * As asilvering said, we currently use the template as a way to find all OKA articles that are currently submitted to AfC, which is why OKA translators are instructed to only use it once the page is ready for review 7804j (talk) 06:04, 2 July 2024 (UTC)
 * , I believe that that is not the best way to find submitted OKA articles, and has the unintentional side effect of hiding what OKA articles are currently being worked on by all OKA translators, or at least, makes it very difficult to find them. The only way to find all OKA articles in development now, afaict, is by searching the contributions of each translator individually, and that is very laborious even with only a couple dozen editors, and does not scale well should you have many more translators in the future.
 * I will be running a test as proof of concept of another, hopefully better way to do this, that I believe will make it far easier for everyone. It will also have the side benefit of providing additional, more fine-grained search than you can do now. This test will involve finding (through the laborious method) a handful of articles now in Draft and being worked on by OKA translators but not yet submitted for review, and tagging them with the OKA template. (This can be undone after a short while when the test is complete, should you find that the current system works better for you.) If the test works as planned, I believe you will find that the new system provides you a lot more power in search: you will be able to find all articles being worked on by OKA translators regardless of submission status in a single search, while still being able to find all submitted articles in a single search (as you do now), all declined submissions, and likewise for other statuses. This should enable any user interested in the OKA project to find more detail more easily than you can do now. During this test, please expect to see a handful of articles tagged with the OKA template that are *not* yet submitted for review. Please bear with me; I will report back when there is something to see. Adding . Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 21:29, 3 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Note: this is ongoing, and unrelated to the status summary mentioned in the next section. Mathglot (talk) 11:34, 6 July 2024 (UTC)

Status summary
Following the addition of quality categories as described above, a new section,, has been added to the project page, in the form of a table summarizing the number of articles assigned to each quality category. Feedback, bug reports, and enhancement requests welcome. Note: this is unrelated to the ongoing test described in the section above. Mathglot (talk) 11:34, 6 July 2024 (UTC)


 * I've seen that you've marked some articles such as this one as "Needing attention" via the talk page tag. Do you know if there is a way that I can easily find all OKA articles needing attention?
 * Related to this, I'd be curious to find a way to get all OKA-tagged articles that have a maintenance banner on them (in particular, banners around need for copy-editing/rough translation, as these can be improved). Do you know if there is an automated way to do this? 7804j (talk) 18:54, 15 July 2024 (UTC)

Previously active editor criteria
What does it mean that an editor is listed as listed as previously active (or "inactive")? What criteria do you use to determine if an editor is inactive? I noticed that whereas this editor hasn't edited for over a year, this one and this one have edits in late June 2024, but all are marked inactive. Does it have anything to do with their paid status? Does "inactive" mean they are no longer receiving a stipend from OKA?

If so, we should probably find other language to describe this, to avoid confusion with the typical use of the term at Wikipedia. There are a few terms commonly used to describe editors who have left Wikipedia: retired is one of those terms, and about 9,000 editors employ the Retired template to indicate their status on their User or User talk page. Note the wording of the template banner: "This user is no longer active on Wikipedia." Inactive is another one of the terms that mean someone who is no longer editing. Both terms are informal, and there are no specific criteria involved to determine who is or isn't inactive (or retired); nothing happens to inactive editors—their user accounts stay around forever, and the user can return to editing at any time with no process involved.

It's clear that some of the editors marked "previously active" are still editing, so that term is likely to cause confusion. We should find another term for it. If there is formal process involved, such as expiration, termination, or dissolution of a paid relationship between the previously active editor and OKA, maybe something along the lines of "Editors no longer receiving a stipend from OKA"? Just to be clear: there is no problem with editors who are no longer paid by OKA to continue editing Wikipedia on a non-fee basis like any volunteer editor of Wikipedia, nor do they need to change their username. This is strictly about the terminology we use to describe them, if that is what the term "previously active" means. Mathglot (talk) 23:49, 6 July 2024 (UTC)


 * I have updated the terminology to "Previously paid editors (no longer affiliated with OKA)". Is that clearer? It basically means we're no longer sending them any money 7804j (talk) 10:22, 7 July 2024 (UTC)
 * In Wikipedia context, that is better, as it will avoid confusion with the Wikipedia sense of "inactive". Mathglot (talk) 10:44, 7 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Have updated it further, to "current" and "former". Mathglot (talk) 00:53, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

On-wiki OKA instructions
As previously suggested, we've migrated our instructions to OKA editors to an on-wiki format here. Feel free to make direct edits if you see opportunities to improve them 7804j (talk) 18:57, 15 July 2024 (UTC)