Meta:Babel

Note: If you seek the language competence templates, see Meta:Babel templates.

Hello,
especially for smaller wikis it is very interesting how many visitors are attracted daily/monthly!

WikiCharts was/is a nice idea, but figures have been wrong for the last months, and the last weeks (like several times, now) it just does not work!

I have made a JavaScript script which will do similar for combined use with an external (Wikimedia or own) server.

My script eventually will only count the number of visitors/IPs, and it will not expose sensitive referrers, except a given meaningless address!

External (non-Wikimedia) server? Please read wikt:als:Benutzer:Melancholie/monobook.js carefully!

Here my question: Is this idea conform to our Privacy policy? If not, will you allow projects to expand their privacy policy a little bit towards this feature? --- Best regards, Melancholie 02:58, 15 February 2008 (UTC) Reply

You may be interested in user:midom's statistics at http://dammit.lt/wikistats/ .Hillgentleman 21:32, 16 February 2008 (UTC) Reply

Thank you very much for this link! It's better than nothing, but it is not really a Visitor Counter but a Hit Counter! My suggested counter will be a pure visitor counter! The "problem" with Midom's hit counter is that it is based on the squid access-log stream, and thus probably most bots, reloads, crawlers etc. are counted, too! --- Thanks, Melancholie 06:06, 17 February 2008 (UTC) Reply

P.s.: Furthermore (like so often) only Wikipedia, Commons and Meta have been considered for that stats, yet!

It would be great if every article would display history of visits.--Piotrus 14:56, 22 February 2008 (UTC) Reply

Wikipedia users and editors have been asking for this for ages. Everyone wants a timestamped visitor counter for each page. The problem appears to be twofold: First, coding time and second, computation resources. -Kslays 21:23, 25 February 2008 (UTC) Reply

I don't think the first one is a problem! Huji 07:50, 27 February 2008 (UTC) Reply

Previous discussion is archived.

I don't see any reason provided in the discussions why the colors were changed. The new colors really are counter-intuitive. Moreover, as it was already noticed, meta is the central coordination platform for all Wikimedia wikis. Having a different color code for babel templates will confuse everyone. I see the color code can be personalized in the new template, but I think default colors should be the old ones. Thanks. guillom 08:57, 9 February 2008 (UTC) Reply

Ik ben het helemaal eens met Guillom. De kleuren die er nu op gezet zijn, zijn triest en ongelukkig gekozen. Het voelt zowat als een beschuldiging met het donkergrijs als je "slechts" een -1 hebt, terwijl het eigenlijk een complimentje hoort te zijn. De standaardkleuren dienen sowieso de oude te zijn wat mij betreft, en ook alleen in de taal waar het over gaat als het aan mij ligt. Mensen zijn intelligent genoeg om te snappen wat er staat, zeker als er meermalen onder elkaar hetzelfde staat. Ik zie dan ook niet de noodzaak in om nu na tien dagen discussieren hier dit botmatig dwingend te gaan wijzigen. Ik zie overigens ook niet in waarom de oude sjablonen niet naar de nieuwe kunnen blijven bestaan, en waarom dit nu weer allemaal onder "old" geplaatst moet worden. Dit soort veranderingen kan wmb beter langzaamaan gaan, zodat mensen er aan kunnen wennen en het zelf kunnen doorvoeren. Effeiets anders 14:26, 9 February 2008 (UTC) Reply

Translation: "I totally agree with Guillom. The colors that we put on now are sad and unfortunate. It feels almost like an accusation with a dark gray if you "only" have a -1, whereas it should actually be a compliment. The old standard should anyway be what I am concerned, and only in the language it is about if it was up to me. People are intelligent enough to understand what it says, especially if there are several others on the page with the same standard. I therefore see no need, after ten days here discussing, for this mandatory bot work to go ahead. I also see no reason why the old templates cannot continue to exist alongside the new , and why now all of the "old" templates need to be placed. This kind of change can be made more slowly, so that people can get used to it and it can carry itself out." —translated by Pathoschild.

The new colour scheme was chosen as a progression of related colours. If you don't like the colours, suggestions are more than welcome. However, you are more than welcome to use the old babel format, and this is explicitly stated in the edit summaries when updating. Compare:

{{user nl}}

{{babelold|nl|N}}

{{user language|nl|N}}

{{babelold}} contains the babel format in one template but uses the new text and categories. We could conceivably place it on every babel template page, but this would be more work in the future and most users would not even realize the templates are superseded. :) —{admin} Pathoschild 20:03:23, 09 February 2008 (UTC)

You say "However, you are more than welcome to use the old babel format". Well, you are the one declaring the "old" template is deprecated and using scripts on thousands of userpages to switch to your new template with colors you only have chosen. If you really want to let users choose, then don't replace the babel box by your new template, replace it by the "babelold" template, so that you don't change the appearance of every single userpage on this wiki. Besides, the "progression of related colours" may look like a good idea to yourself, but how does one know that a light green means a lower level than a dark green? At least, in most cultures it is commonly accepted that red means "not ok" and green means "ok". guillom 21:30, 9 February 2008 (UTC) Reply

PS: I know you're trying to make things better, but I would really like to see more attention to the pursuit of consensus. guillom 21:30, 9 February 2008 (UTC) Reply

This was discussed quite a bit before implementation. I invited comment repeatedly in several multilingual IRC channels, particularly #wikimedia and #wikimedia-translation, before I even posted the product of our discussion here. This proposal was to change the default templates, not to introduce a redundant system (which is a bad idea).

Ideally, there should be nobody at all using {{babelold}}. If someone switches to {{babelold}}, that means they're not satisfied with the new template, and I'm personally contacting them to discuss whether the template can be changed to their liking. So far, a very tiny percentage (much less than one percentage point) have expressed dissatisfaction with the new template.

With regards to the colours, there is a clear relation between the colours for every level ( 1 ,  2 ,  3 ,  N ), much more so than the old colour scheme ( 1 ,  2 ,  3 ,  4 ,  5 ,  N ). If you have suggestions for a better colour scheme, these are very welcome. This template is the product of a lot of collaboration and suggestions. —{admin} Pathoschild 22:00:14, 09 February 2008 (UTC)

The 4th and 5th level are almost not used on meta, and their color in the "old" color code is surely not ideal. Though, I see you don't propose any better color for these two levels though, your template actually doesn't even allow them, probably because the most used templates are the blue and green ones, and the one you forgot, the level  0 . I think this color scale ( 0 ,  1 ,  2 ,  3 ,  N ) is more intuitive: green means "ok, you can talk to me in this language", blue means "so-so" and red means "not ok, I am not able to communicate in this language".

The new color code you propose ( 1 ,  2 ,  3 ,  N ) makes sense when all colors are next to each other: once can understand that green means "ok" and the less green there is, the less ok it is. Though, "grey" doesn't really mean "not ok". Besides, there is no difference between  level 0  and  level 1 , though there is a real difference between these two: one means "I cannot communicate in this language" and the other means "I have basic knowledge in this language".

What about something like: ( 0 ,  1 ,  2 ,  3 ,  N ,  Pro )? This is probably not ideal yet, but we could work on it. You may note this fixes the inconsistency with the professional "babel-5" template which is supposed to be a better level than only "native". guillom 10:31, 10 February 2008 (UTC) Reply

People interested in this discussion may wish to take a look at User:Pathoschild/Sandbox4 where a new color set was proposed : ( 0 ,  1 ,  2 ,  3 ,  N ,  P ) (knowing that the P level may not be implemented). guillom 13:13, 10 February 2008 (UTC) Reply

Sorry for being a bit late, but I'd like to ask that some distinction between the colors for 0 and 1 be made. If we use the greening scheme, I would suggest that 1 be a very light grayish green or something instead of exactly the same as 0. Alternatively make 0 reddish and keep 1 at gray?? (I use -0 a lot on wikis where I do not speak the native language) Thanks. ++Lar: t/c 00:27, 29 February 2008 (UTC) Reply

It makes a sense to give different colors to 0 and 1. While I don't know the proposal of Guillom is intuitive, it may be an option (at least it is more eye-pleasure). Red / Green scaling may be another option, I suppose. --Aphaia 00:56, 29 February 2008 (UTC) Reply

The reason levels 0 and 1 don't have separate colours is that level 0 isn't recognized as a standard level; the template only allows English to bypass the level validation for 0, and without a category. —{admin} Pathoschild 02:48:02, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

I think there's a lot of value in recognising 0 as a standard level, (I tried 0 with ja and it seemed to work for me in a test edit so maybe I don't quite follow what you meant?) and in any case the color should be different than 1, standard or not. The old boxes worked that way on many wikis. ++Lar: t/c 03:04, 29 February 2008 (UTC) Reply

No, using {{user language|ja|0}} should display something like "This user speaks Japanese at a level." (note the missing adjective), with the page categorized to Incorrect user language level. A more visible error message is possible, but that would require special coding to make an exception for English. I'm not strongly opposed to a zeroth level, but please wait until we finish discussing the fourth level before proposing it. :) —{admin} Pathoschild 04:08:18, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

Well since I don't read japanese, all I saw was that the template didn't throw an error. And it shouldn't. The old system has -0 templates. I would prefer not to discuss one digit at a time, but instead discuss the notion that the new system should be as powerful as the old system was, and not mandate a different, more restrictive way of thinking about things. That's what I allude to below but I'll reiterate it here, because that's what I do :). Many many wikis use -0, have categories set up for it, have old system boxes that use it, etc. and therefore the new system should support that, or it won't be portable. And portability, a single template, a single set of translated strings, etc., is a big selling point for me. It's basically the whole reason I haven't been opposing the change entirely, I was sold on the idea that a simpler, more regular system would be more portable. That doesn't mean it shouldn't be as powerful as the old one, as expressive... we need 0-5 and N because that's what existing wikis use. ++Lar: t/c 04:17, 29 February 2008 (UTC) Reply

The {{user language}} localizations need to be updated to reflect the recent changes. I've contacted all the translators, and most have already been updated. Please update any localizations in your languages listed at User:Pathoschild/User language update. —{admin} Pathoschild 22:29:48, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

When enabled, lets you enter CIDR ranges (/16 and /24 - /32) in Special:Contributions as well as wildcard prefix searches, for example: "Splark*"

Thanks to User:Splarka for the gadget! ~Kylu (u|t) 16:54, 7 March 2008 (UTC) Reply

Very good, thank you very much Splarka. --Anonymous Dissident ^Talk 08:21, 18 March 2008 (UTC) Reply

• Requesting input here: Requests for comments/Meta-wiki suffrage in regards to local elections ~Kylu (u|t) 04:58, 19 March 2008 (UTC) Reply

Please comment on the discussion at Top Ten Wikipedias. Waldir 19:05, 23 March 2008 (UTC) Reply

I just want all metapedians to join the discussion there. Thanks — Vasil ievVV 14:32, 25 March 2008 (UTC) Reply

Is there a way to translate gadget descriptions? Like MediaWiki:Gadget-BiDiEditing/fr being a French version of MediaWiki:Gadget-BiDiEditing (or I suppose it might be MediaWiki:Gadgets-definition/fr translating MediaWiki:Gadgets-definition).

Also, is there a way to change the page so it uses labels on the text? On all other preference panes, clicking the text activates the check box as well. I'd love to see this extended to gadgets as well. EVula // talk // ☯ // 18:45, 25 March 2008 (UTC) Reply

The extension currently does not allow localisation of dynamic messages... Maybe a feature request at mw:Extension talk:Gadgets could help. Siebrand 14:28, 26 March 2008 (UTC) Reply

Just noting, I have flagged the above account as a bot, as it was flooding recent changes. If anyone feels this was a mistake, please reverse it, or let me know. Thanks, Majorly (talk ) 21:55, 28 March 2008 (UTC) Reply

Bah, majorly thanks for the flag. The bot does counterspam statistics, which will be useful for the folks working the blacklist. As I said to majorly I did not think it would be a big deal, as it should be doing only a few edits an hour, that is after it gets the initial statistics reports down. —— Eagle101 ^{Need help?} 22:04, 28 March 2008 (UTC) Reply

Regarding Image:Imagepageexample2.PNG & Image:Imagepageexample3.PNG

Some assistance from users both cool-headed and legally-minded would be welcome. College IP law course attendance a plus. :) ~Kylu (u|t) 20:13, 7 April 2008 (UTC) Reply

Now global title blacklist is live Wikimedia-wide — Vasil ievVV 03:54, 10 April 2008 (UTC) Reply

Great news.. I love that title blacklist extension :-) --Meno25 19:18, 10 April 2008 (UTC) Reply

Looking at the recent Recentchanges ... do we need to multiligualize {{test}} and so on? It seems pointless to put a warning in English in case a user wrote in Japanese or French and they give no sign they are capable to read English. --Aphaia 13:14, 13 April 2008 (UTC) Reply

Definitely - "steal" from Commons maybe? --Herby ^{talk thyme} 13:15, 13 April 2008 (UTC) Reply

Go for it! --Aphaia 19:49, 13 April 2008 (UTC) Reply

How can I filter http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ALog&type=rights&user=&page= for getting the rigths of the users in huwiki? I want to get user:<anybody>@huwiki. Bináris 20:28, 14 April 2008 (UTC) Reply

Have a look in preferences, and then gadgets. Under the interface section is an option to filter logs. Majorly (talk ) 20:49, 14 April 2008 (UTC) Reply

Thank you, I found it and switched on, but I still cannot write the query, beacuse I am very much beginner with regex (altough I have tried). Could you please help me to query the rights for anyusers@huwiki? Bináris 07:06, 15 April 2008 (UTC) Reply

This filter seems to work wrong: it checks changed rights instead of target user — 12:53, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

Oh, that's why I couldn't do it! Bináris 15:06, 15 April 2008 (UTC) Reply

You can use this tool to do it. For the rights changes of the users of huwiki, see [1] (note that this also includes users of huwikisource and huwikibooks). Korg 17:18, 15 April 2008 (UTC) Reply

That's great, thank you very much! Bináris 20:31, 18 April 2008 (UTC) Reply

I observed situation on SR/SUL. Since SUL was enabled, there were a lot of usurpation requests (~100) with I high request rate. When SUL is publically available, there most probably will be a big backlog. So, I propose so a new group (SUL admins) who will have access to Special:CentralAuth (or grant it to meta sysops), since it doesn't allow to make something really harmful, unrevertable or not logged and doesn't reveal private info — Vasil ievVV 13:09, 19 April 2008 (UTC) Reply

I think it makes more sense (if additional hands are needed; and I agree the volume is large - whether it's beyond a reasonable workload for the stewards is for them to determine) to make this a 'crat right, rather than an admin one (or creating a new usergroup). Bureaucrats deal with user-account stuff - user rights, user renames... seems like administering SUL fits right in! – Mike.lifeguard  | ^@en.wb 13:59, 19 April 2008 (UTC) Reply

Agree with Mike. Majorly (talk ) 16:13, 19 April 2008 (UTC) Reply

Agree with both! Huji 16:27, 19 April 2008 (UTC) Reply

On pl-wiki we responded to the higher volume of SUL usurpations by electing a couple of new bureaucrats (this is actually when I joined the club there, too). Pundit 19:51, 19 April 2008 (UTC) Reply

See bugzilla:13810 — Vasil ievVV 16:28, 21 April 2008 (UTC) Reply

Sounds good to me. Easier than holding an extra set of steward elections before SUL gets rolled out. :) EVula // talk // ☯ // 23:34, 21 April 2008 (UTC) Reply

Will stewards still be able to deal with CentralAuth then? (Otherwise we'd need 30 additional bureaucrats when they enable SUL for all... *ggg*) --Thogo (talk) 11:09, 22 April 2008 (UTC) Reply

Of course — Vasil ievVV 17:15, 22 April 2008 (UTC) Reply

For those who may have missed it, there is discussion happening about global blocking over there. Input is always welcome. – Mike.lifeguard  | ^@en.wb 14:02, 19 April 2008 (UTC) Reply

Please see

• MediaWiki talk:Common.css#Wikitable borders in email and outside web pages

I sometimes want to copy wikipedia tables and lists into my web pages, or into my email. The standard table created by the table button in the Wikipedia editing form does not add the necessary bit of code to allow tables to show up easily outside wikipedia. So the tables lose their borders when pasted into my web pages, or into my email. A jumbled mess. A simple solution awaits! border="1" - See the above talk page link. --Timeshifter 20:55, 19 April 2008 (UTC) Reply

Per a previous motion to close on 1 May 2008, MF-Warburg closed this interminable, two-year discussion today. He closed it as "keep". 64 editors supported closing the project, 56 opposed closure. While MF-Warburg did not elaborate on his decision, presumably he made it on the lack of sufficient consensus to eliminate a project.

In November 2007, a non-admin, Prince Kassad "closed" the discussion as "close", stating this was not a useful project. This was quickly overturned as an invalid action by a non-admin.

Today, Prince Kassad struck MF-Warburg's decision, calling it invalid since MF-Warburg gave no reason for his decision.

I believe MF-Warburg's decision was entirely proper and within his rights as an admin. I believe Prince Kassad's actions, while surely made in good faith, were invalid and inappropriate. I have temporarily protected the page for one week so that only admins can edit it and I have referred any further discussion to the talk page. Note that there was already a previous, robust discussion of this project on the talkpage.

Disclaimer: for the record, I am a supporter of keeping this project open. --A. B. ^(talk) 14:52, 2 May 2008 (UTC) Reply

MF-Warburg is not an admin, at least on Meta. I'm not sure who has authority to close them, but I assumed it was Meta admins. Majorly (talk ) 14:55, 2 May 2008 (UTC) Reply

Oh, heck. Thanks for catching that, Majorly. I thought he was. Well then, this is just like Prince Kassad's invalid November closure all over again.

I feel OK stopping the discussion and protecting the page, however as a partisan of keeping that project alive, I think another, more neutral admin should make the final decision and close the discussion.

This matter needs to be settled now -- the closure discussion has dragged on for two years. --A. B. ^(talk) 15:37, 2 May 2008 (UTC) Reply

I closed this discussion because of the "motion to close" that was there. Nobody objected and 64/56 is not enough support so the result should be of course keep. I made this decision although I am not an admin here (why should only admins be allowed to close discussions?). I have yet closed other project closing proposals and nobody ever protested (except Yaroslav Zolotaryov...). --MF-W 16:57, 2 May 2008 (UTC) Reply

Probably nobody complained because the others were uncontroversial (except for Yaroslav Zolotaryov's and that's an entirely different, very long story!). Besides, you know more about our small projects than >95% of Meta admins. I always thought you were an admin; I hope you will consider becoming one here.

Perhaps an admin's not needed. We don't have a formal procedure and have not needed one before. In any event, VasilievVV has closed it as "keep" the same as you did. --A. B. ^(talk) 18:46, 2 May 2008 (UTC) Reply

Since, as per the inclusion policy, unfree content is not allowed on Meta, I propose that we disable local uploads and instead use Commons for all images. Commons is much better set up to handle images and is in a better position to manage any issues. I'd welcome any comments on this issue and any suggestions as to why this might not be worth doing. Regards. Adambro 13:23, 3 May 2008 (UTC) Reply

I suggest not to disable it at all, but limit to sysops for some rare cases, like it's done on Incubator — Vasil ievVV 14:05, 3 May 2008 (UTC) Reply

I agree. The majority of uploads here are deleted immediately, but some images are uploaded. The policy is also wrong in practise, as Meta has several unfree images hosted. However, such images can be uploaded by admins only. It'll make less work in having to delete them. Majorly (talk ) 14:12, 3 May 2008 (UTC) Reply

Limiting to sysops seems sensible. Leaves the option open in those limited circumstances where it might be appropriate. Adambro 14:24, 3 May 2008 (UTC) Reply

Meta is much used for marketing materials (see Presentations, etc.). Where are we supposed to upload these files, given that some people on Commons claim Commons shouldn't host text documents? Note that this is an open question: I am not really against disabling local upload on meta, I'd just like to be sure that all materials uploaded and to upload to meta will be accepted on Commons. I think this should be discussed with people from Commons as well, because Commons' scope is unclear about this. guillom 06:53, 4 May 2008 (UTC) Reply

When we talk about "uploads" everyone starts with thinking about images. However, an important part of uploads are non-image files such as PDF documents, Powerpoint presentations, etc. Some of such things are only related to Meta and as long as there is no licensing problem, it is fine if they are uploaded on Meta, not Commons. So in short, I'm not sure if we should disable uploads. Huji 17:48, 4 May 2008 (UTC) Reply

On another note, I open another discussion: Meta:EDP. Please provide feedback on this in the talk page. Thanks Anthere 23:35, 3 May 2008 (UTC) Reply

I oppose this idea. Uploads to Meta need to remain available. Currently there are several proposals for new logos under discussion for both Wikibooks and Wikijunior, and there have been other similar proposals in the past for other projects. It's (a) inconvenient, (b) misleading, and (c) inappropriate to upload the images to Commons instead of Meta. It's inconvenient because of the delays in waiting for two different bureaucracies (please don't be offended, but if you're not an admin on both projects, it feels like you're dealing with a bureaucracy) to rename, delete, update, etc. Since Meta admins are often involved in the discussions, it's easy for them to handle those maintenance tasks "in-house". It's misleading because Commons is for free media. These proposals are not "free" - they are licensed exclusively to the Wikimedia Foundation for its eventual use (or non-use). It is inappropriate because Commons is the wrong place for them. Once approved, there would be no problem moving the selected logo to Commons, but until then, a slew of unapproved potential WMF logos would just confuse the heck out of people on the Commons. Perhaps instead of disabling uploads, it could be stated that uploads are only for material licensed for exclusive use by the Wikimedia Foundation and its related projects, such as proposed logos, marketing materials, etc. --Willscrlt (Talk) 06:41, 19 June 2008 (UTC) Reply

I mostly agree with Willscrlt. That said, there are significant backlogs in Category:Images with unknown source, Category:Images with unknown license, and Category:Presumed GFDL images which require admin attention (and they've been there for months despite my trying to poke people towards them :-( ). giggy _(:O) 07:47, 19 June 2008 (UTC) Reply

What about a special upload right flag that can be granted and/or revoked. It could even be something that someone can turn on initially for themselves after reading an acceptable use page and agreeing to what is/is not accepted here. If someone uploads the wrong stuff, it can be turned off. Another alternative is that users who participate in a project or discussion in which uploading is necessary can request the privilege be turned on by an admin. It's not something that should be difficult to initially obtain, but it doesn't need to be automatic either. I think the problem is largely a matter of education. I remember that I mistakenly uploaded my first image to Meta. Somehow I got all confused between Wikipedia's uploads, Commons, and Meta. After a couple hours of frustration and some hand-holding by a helpful admin, I finally figured it out. I'm sure that much of the troubles here are similar. The change I just proposed won't solve 100% of the problems, but it should help -- especially if, instead of just blocking uploads, the user is redirected to the appropriate place to upload things. --Willscrlt (Talk) 08:46, 19 June 2008 (UTC) Reply

If logos are not free use, and Meta allows onlt free use uploads, isn't there a contradiction?--Cato 18:31, 19 June 2008 (UTC) Reply

Not really. Perhaps in the wording of the statement "Meta allows only free use uploads", because it does only allow those AND items that are copyrighted by the Foundation. For example, the Wikipedia and Wiktionary logos are not free use, but they can be used on any Wikimedia Foundation site. It's just copyrighted material that others own that can't be uploaded here. The proposed logos all have their copyrights transferred to the Foundation, so there's no problem. I would assume that the same holds true for presentations, etc. --Willscrlt (Talk) 04:09, 20 June 2008 (UTC) Reply

I have flagged Erwin85Bot as a bot as it was flooding recent changes. I'm hoping this was a good move. Majorly ^talk 15:09, 22 May 2008 (UTC) Reply

Yes it was :)  – Mike.lifeguard  | ^@en.wb 22:39, 27 May 2008 (UTC) Reply

Hello,

Could a kind bot owner set up a bot to reset the sandbox? The bot that did this before, Uncle G's 'bot, is no longer running. Thanks in advance, Korg 11:02, 29 May 2008 (UTC) Reply

There's a stack of these bots on sister projects (especially EnWP) if someone wanted to import the code. giggy _(:O) 11:34, 29 May 2008 (UTC) Reply

When should it reset the sandbox? At some given time or at a given time after the last edit? I've got a bot running on nlwiki that resets it twice a day. I could run it here as well or use a bot to reset it after a given time. I'll be gone until monday though. If anyone else wants to run this bot, be my guest. --Erwin(85) 13:43, 29 May 2008 (UTC) Reply

The old one ran once a day at 0:00 UTC iirc. Twice a day would probably be good. Majorly ^talk 13:50, 29 May 2008 (UTC) Reply

Looking into this. Would probably run once every six hours. Daniel (talk) 14:00, 29 May 2008 (UTC) Reply

Once or twice a day would be good, but every six hours would be good as well :) (As a comparison, the Commons sandbox is cleared every six hours, although it is less actively edited than Meta's). Thanks, Korg 01:01, 30 May 2008 (UTC) Reply

User:SoxBot has been brought over from EnWP to run. Soxred93 06:09, 2 June 2008 (UTC) Reply

Thank you very much! Korg 11:04, 2 June 2008 (UTC) Reply

I have noticed the Assessments template on Commons doesn't work properly. I'm referring to the "considered" button, which should direct you to the nomination page of he image. I have see that the Turkish Wikipedia is the only one for which this feature worked. What they have different is that the instead of having {{FULLPAGENAME}}, like all other Wikipedias, they have {{PAGENAME}}. This is in order to exclude the "Image:" prefix from the name, because all Wikis have another prefix for Images, and the way this template on Commons works doesn't allow for all of them to be defined.

Besides this, in order to work (cause this isn't enough), the names of all the nominations, at least from now on, should be changed to that they would include the actual name of the picture, for without the "Image:" prefix. For a better understanding see Image:Lightning over Oradea Romania 2.jpg, where the above mentioned feature works for the Turkish, but not for the English Wikipedia. Also see the source of trwiki, and of enwiki, where you can see the {{PAGENAME}} and {{FULLPAGENAME}} codes.

So, do you think this new change should be applied to all Wikipedias, in order for the template to work properly? diego_pmc 07:07, 6 June 2008 (UTC) Reply

Hello?!? diego_pmc 09

22, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

It could just be me, I'm not sure what change you're asking for. If you want things to work the way {{FULLPAGENAME}} does, you just need to change {{PAGENAME}} to {{FULLPAGENAME}} at the appropriate page. Use {{editprotected}} (on Commons, obviously) to do this if you're not an admin.

If you're requesting something and it's painfully obvious or I've missed, feel free to ignore me. :-) giggy _(:O) 10:08, 11 June 2008 (UTC) Reply

I'm suggesting a solution to the issue with that template on Commons. 16:40, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

Since many stewards feels that bureaucrats should not have access to it, I suggest to vote on it. Please, vote if you think Meta bureaucrats should have an access to it.

• Support Support — VasilievV ² 13:39, 7 June 2008 (UTC) Reply
• Support Support Also see my latest addition to the RFA talk page. Majorly ^talk 13:46, 7 June 2008 (UTC) Reply
• Oppose Oppose just because those that made this mistakes, were warned too many times, but they did, its more of an immaturity issue than abuse...--Comet styles 13:55, 7 June 2008 (UTC) Reply

  Both bureaucrats and stewards made such mistakes — VasilievV ² 14:09, 7 June 2008 (UTC) Reply

• Oppose Oppose —DerHexer (Talk) 13:56, 7 June 2008 (UTC) Reply
• Oppose Oppose --Complex 13:57, 7 June 2008 (UTC) Reply
• (削除) Support Support (削除ここまで) Is this just based on principle or have their been legitimate cases of abuse/mistakes? Cbrown1023 talk 13:58, 7 June 2008 (UTC) Reply

See Cometstyles' vote there have been many mistakes, and by the same people too. Majorly ^talk 14:02, 7 June 2008 (UTC) Reply

• Oppose Oppose, --birdy geimfyglið _(:> )=| ∇ 14:03, 7 June 2008 (UTC) Reply
• Oppose Oppose as much per Comets as anything else. Frankly I am very glad I am not a 'crat here at present (& doubtless others will agree) --Herby ^{talk thyme} 14:04, 7 June 2008 (UTC) Reply
• Comment Comment. If CentralAuth were bug free and nothing irreversible could be done, I would see no problem with it being in the hands of meta crats. However, the fact that people can lose accounts if this is not done properly is troubling. Perhaps we should run a while with only stewards doing this and monitor the workload. If the stewards feel they are being overwhelmed with work, access can always be given to others (either to another usergroup or presumably individually). Ideally, if Bug #13507 could be fixed, there would be far fewer requests to process anyway. WjBscribe 14:11, 7 June 2008 (UTC) Reply

  I removed this functions from Special:CentralAuth today — VasilievV ² 14:20, 7 June 2008 (UTC) Reply

  I'd like to second WjB's comment. The ability to give the functionality to others of administrating global accounts and such may not be a bad idea. ----Anonymous Dissident ^Talk 15:20, 7 June 2008 (UTC) Reply

  Did we have a clear consensus already? ++Lar: t/c 15:17, 7 June 2008 (UTC) Reply

  VasilievVV means removing the ability to delete accounts from CentralAuth [2]. One of the problems here is that what exactly CentralAuth can do tends to fluctuate - either due to bugs or features being added/removed by developers. It is difficult to discuss sensibly whether a group should have access to a right without being utterly sure what that right will be able to do in the future. This seems another reason to limit access in the short term until we are sure exactly what CentralAuth is going to be able to do. WjBscribe 15:49, 7 June 2008 (UTC) Reply

• I'm not sure which way support/oppose means so I'll try to state my views unambiguously. I now (on reflection) Oppose Oppose meta 'crats being able to carry this function out and Support Support removal of the ability to carry out this function from meta 'crats. Note that if the backlogs build up, please feel free to beat up stewards (including myself) to get the work done... ++Lar: t/c 15:17, 7 June 2008 (UTC) Reply
• Oppose Oppose mainly per Cometstyles, but also because there was no real consensus on granting this ability to Meta crats. --Brownout ^(msg) 15:24, 7 June 2008 (UTC) Reply

  We didn't, but now we're discussing this — VasilievV ² 16:26, 7 June 2008 (UTC) Reply

• I think the only problem now is that we (and by "we" I mean "you, collectively") are not able to play by the rules. Since that's not a problem with administering CentralAuth, let's keep this ability, but go with Majorly's proposal (gasp!) Crats who haven't done a "real RFB" may do renames and SUL, but not admin/bot promotions. The best of both worlds.  – Mike.lifeguard  | ^@en.wb 16:19, 7 June 2008 (UTC) Reply

  Erm, they shouldn't be allowed to the matematical stuff like sysop/bot promotions but the global serious account deletions, locks etc.? Sounds a bit strange. :-/ —DerHexer (Talk) 16:26, 7 June 2008 (UTC) Reply

  Were there problems with crats handling that previously? Will there be in the future now that bugzilla:13507 is fixed? Depending on the answers, my view would change. But my current understanding leads my to the position above. I think this whole radical idea may have fallen apart. At this point, I'm of the view that it should be scrapped entirely, and all crats promoted since it was begun should be removed pending a proper RFB. This has actually been a tad embarrassing to watch. Seriously, how hard is it to not close RFAs early (etc)?  – Mike.lifeguard  | ^@en.wb 18:34, 7 June 2008 (UTC) Reply

• Oppose Oppose - 'crats have been doing a sloppy job lately with closing Rfas early, etc. While that stuff can be removed/reverted much more easily, this can't be. Monobi (talk ) 17:05, 7 June 2008 (UTC) Reply
• Oppose Oppose - we have a position for dealing with global matters: stewards. Meta bureaucrats were not chosen for this purpose (and in fact many of them were not chosen at all). — Dan | talk 17:24, 7 June 2008 (UTC) Reply
• Oppose. Any Meta administrator is eligible to become a bureaucrat, and these administrators were not elected with important global responsibilities in mind. They are elected locally, and do not represent the choice of the wider community. Furthermore, they do not have access to technical discussion and bug warnings on stewards-l. Stewards are capable of administering global account conflict resolutions themselves, and can create a global group with the rights if need be without giving access to every administrator on a project. —{admin} Pathoschild 17:27:01, 07 June 2008 (UTC)
• Oppose - Pathoschild put it nicely above. Meta admins turned 'crats shouldn't really be dealing with global affairs external to the wiki in which they were given the trust. We have Stewards, who went through an election in which the wider community participated, for global purposes. --Anonymous Dissident ^Talk 17:35, 7 June 2008 (UTC) Reply

  I think the spam blacklist, interwiki map and the portals are precisely why admins here do have abilities affecting more than meta, no? Of course, not at the same level as the stewards, but adminship at meta is different in this respect.  – Mike.lifeguard  | ^@en.wb 18:34, 7 June 2008 (UTC) Reply

  This is true, but this particular function should be particular to Stewards, I think, because it revolves around user housekeeping and user-based requests. It just seems like a duty that is related to Stewardship, not bureaucratship, even if it is on Meta. --Anonymous Dissident ^Talk 18:48, 7 June 2008 (UTC) Reply

• Oppose per Pathoschild. --Erwin(85) 18:13, 7 June 2008 (UTC) Reply

Though meta has it is own community but i think most people here are representing other wikis ideas so i really think crat's here could deal with such subject and up to now i didn't see any abuse may some wrong action both have done by crats and steward due to the bug but now it seems bug has been fixed and would have this problem.so i Support Support meta's crat can deal with such subject.--Mardetanha ^talk 19:07, 7 June 2008 (UTC) Reply

• I see no real advantage to have meta crats here too as SUL administrators, I think it makes communication, especially in the startup phase with bugs etc, harder then when there is only one group with their own mailing list anyways and I agree with the election argument. I think that means an oppose. Effeiets anders 19:23, 7 June 2008 (UTC) Reply
  • People are using this as an excuse to obtain crats on Meta which maybe another reason I have opposed this, and I'm not sure what the stewards have discussed regarding this and why it was brought up in the first place and I do know it has been abused by meta crats as well, so I'm sure it should stay with the Stewards for know, since they are forced to clean up the mess made by the crats, so for the betterment of the community (not meta, wikimedia)..that feature should only remain with the stewards...--Comet styles 22:41, 7 June 2008 (UTC) Reply
• I concur with Dan and thus oppose. giggy _(:O) 01:03, 8 June 2008 (UTC) Reply

Regardless of the technical issues, if we shrink the pool of those capable of deleting global accounts without fixing the bugs that are making the requests necessary, we will see a rapid bottlenecking of the SUL process. The way the process currently works, anyone who encounters an SUL conflict that requires a usurpation using a pre-existing, differently named account is unable to complete this usurpation without a global account deletion (or lose all the edits made on the differently named account - I myself even have the problem with la:Usor:Andrus, though I don't care to preserve that contribution history). So, we have a lot of users who don't complete SUL unification, and due to language barriers or just general confusion, never make the proper request in the proper place. The problem with Pathoschild's reasoning is that, in essence, an SUL rename or usurpation is a local issue, which cannot be solved by local bureaucrats. Andre (talk) 01:44, 8 June 2008 (UTC) Reply

I think we have enough stewards to handle this for now. If at some point it's not getting handled, beat up the stewards. Another alternative approach is to create a new group to handle this, some group with a bit more vetting than "meta admin from whenever, and then asked nicely to be a 'crat and some other 'crat that just recently got to be a crat by asking nicely turned it on for them". ++Lar: t/c 04:06, 8 June 2008 (UTC) Reply

• Ok, consensus is quite clear here that this function should be turned off by the developers fro meat bureaucrats. I think it would be fine if someone could give them the go ahead with the request on bugzilla, which was effectively suspended pending the outcome of this discourse. --Anonymous Dissident ^Talk 04:16, 8 June 2008 (UTC) Reply
• Oppose Oppose per (Happy Birthday) Pathoschild. --FiliP ×ばつ 06:22, 8 June 2008 (UTC) Reply
• Oppose per Pathoschild. --.anaconda 09:58, 8 June 2008 (UTC) Reply
• Oppose Oppose There were enough good reasons named already. --Thogo (talk) 12:16, 8 June 2008 (UTC) Reply
• Oppose Oppose, per good reasoning above, though I note that this makes my reasoning for getting Bureaucrat here a little, well, moot. :-( James F. (talk) 19:54, 8 June 2008 (UTC) Reply
• Oppose Oppose Meta bureaucrats were elected with only adjusting local user rights in mind. It's a jump if local bureaucrats get to control a Wikimedia-wide process. --O  (谈 • висчвын) 22:31, 08 June 2008 (GMT)

  Er, they already have it. This is a poll about whether it should be removed. :-) Cbrown1023 talk 01:44, 9 June 2008 (UTC) Reply

  I think he means that they shouldn't have it, and thus supports removal. giggy _(:O) 02:41, 9 June 2008 (UTC) Reply

  Ack giggy. --O  (谈 • висчвын) 20:31, 09 June 2008 (GMT)

  • nod* either way, his oppose was still obvious with what he meant... Cbrown1023 talk 21:23, 9 June 2008 (UTC) Reply

• Oppose Oppose Bureaucrat is a local position and should not perform global tasks. If we need more stewards, lets get some more stewards instead of giving meta 'crats semi-steward status. --MiCkE ^d _b 20:43, 9 June 2008 (UTC) Reply
• Oppose Oppose Bureaucrats are a local function, not a global function, they have not proven themselves to have the global trust that Stewards have, and should not be able to act in a global capacity. MBisanz 20:52, 12 June 2008 (UTC) Reply
• Oppose per everyone else, pretty much. Meta Bureaucrats shouldn't be doing such global things; that's what stewards are for. EVula // talk // ☯ // 21:37, 12 June 2008 (UTC) Reply
• Oppose Oppose - pretty much per consensus here. Local 'crats have local functions only, and this shouldn't extend cross-wiki at this time - Alison ^❤ 23:56, 12 June 2008 (UTC) Reply
• Oppose Oppose I belive only stewards should be able to have this.--Kanonkas 14:32, 14 June 2008 (UTC) Reply
• Oppose Oppose Why not Commons bureaucrats while we're at it?--Cato 18:33, 19 June 2008 (UTC) Reply
• Oppose Oppose Per Micke and others. — H92 (t · c · no) 02:22, 25 June 2008 (UTC) Reply
• Oppose Oppose this is really something that the stewards should be doing, not meta 'crats IMO. SQL ^{Query me!} 16:35, 1 July 2008 (UTC) Reply

Done by brion. Nakon 19:17, 6 July 2008 (UTC) Reply

Some mention has been made of reviewing Meta namespaces on the Foundation & Meta lists with a view to making Meta easier to organise & so allow people to find their way around better.

Specifically a Historical: namespace was mentioned to allow the "filing" of items that are of historic interest rather than current (there are a number lurking here!). However it seems sensible to consider whether others might also be appropriate. To me Translation: is a fundamental part of Meta and maybe warrants a namespace. Equally something in the form of Maintenance: (or appropriate other work) to cover areas such as SWMT & the black list etc may be useful.

Others may have other ideas & it would be good to open up a discussion that allowed Meta to be easier for people to find their way around. --Herby ^{talk thyme} 11:09, 11 June 2008 (UTC) Reply

See also this email as a starting point. Historical: and Translation: make perfect sense to me. I don't know about Maintenance: but I don't oppose it. I think we should start by an inventory of meta's content ; it will be easier then to know how to organize it and what namespace we need. I think we should revive the Meta:MetaProject to Overhaul Meta. This should also be done in coordination with Meta:MetaProject to transfer content to MediaWiki.org ; we could probably get rid of all the translated help namespaces once everything has been transferred to mediawiki.org. guillom 11:50, 11 June 2008 (UTC) Reply

While we're touching on the subject, it has always seemed a little hit-and-miss to me whether pages end up in the mainspace or the meta namespace. For example, requests to be renamed locally are made at Meta:Changing username whereas local requests for checkuser are made at Requests for CheckUser information. It seems to me that the latter page (being one about the running of meta itself) should also be in the meta namespace? WjBscribe 12:20, 11 June 2008 (UTC) Reply

Yep, that's right. guillom 12:29, 11 June 2008 (UTC) Reply

Certainly the content of the Meta: namespace (& what doesn't get in there is also in need of review. It will be messy for a while but not as bad as it will be if we leave it! --Herby ^{talk thyme} 12:32, 11 June 2008 (UTC) Reply

Yes, the mainspace/meta namespace distinction has long been blurred & is in need of some defining & enforcement. The mainspace should be for pages about the WMF projects; the Meta namespace should be for pages about this project. As to a Maintenance namespace, that would be useful for coordination of maintenance activities which are not actually about the other projects, nor this one - think SWMT or External links policy. Neither one is really about other projects, but is rather about coordination of cross-wiki maintenance. As well, renewed efforts to move help content to mediawiki wiki would be most welcome.  – Mike.lifeguard  | ^@en.wb 13:33, 11 June 2008 (UTC) Reply

I to think that an historical namespace is a good idea, but what about the help namespace? What should be the distinction between the help mainspace and the main namespace? I'm think for example about Help:Unified login and Using the python wikipedia bot. It's not clear to me why these pages are in the namespace they are and not the other. --MiCkE ^d _b 14:00, 11 June 2008 (UTC) Reply

Err, please, rather than giving many examples of pages that are not in the namespace they belong to, please help doing the inventory, so that we know what we have and how to sort this stuff :) guillom 14:30, 11 June 2008 (UTC) Reply

Support this notion, it seems like it would in the long term help a lot. For pages in mainspace that really belong in metaspace, I'd say please leave redirects behind for a while. But where I am a bit hazy is that there seems to be some conceptual blurring between what is purely (local) Meta: and what isn't ... For example, Interwiki map is administered locally, but has global effect. It's in mainspace because I think a lot of things have dependencies on it being there. Should all global things be in mainspace? Or should there be another prefix introduced for them? Another example is what of steward related things? Some of that seems blurry... stewards act globally but are selected locally... (as in the process is local but has global participation) Let me know if I'm all wet. As with all classification schemes it may not be possible to get a perfect classification. Document exceptions and be happy :) Note: I give examples to show there's stuff to talk about and clarify... Thanks to all who thought of this idea... ++Lar: t/c 16:19, 11 June 2008 (UTC) Reply

I've always thought of it as global stuff (ie. stuff which can affect other projects) goes in the mainspace, and local stuff (stuff that ONLY affects Meta) goes in the Meta namespace. Where it's selected (eg. Stewards selected locally) shouldn't really have an impact on the namespace, IMO. giggy _(:O) 10:03, 12 June 2008 (UTC) Reply

I like the idea of Meta-specific pages being in the Meta: namespace, and global pages (such as as the interwiki map, essays like Don't be a dick, or informational pages like Table of Wikimedia Projects by Size) being in the main namespace. I also support a "Historical:" namespace. A "Translation:" namespace makes sense to help partition off work like that, but I can very easily see an argument being made that it remain in the main namespace (since translation work is, to a certain extent, a global activity). EVula // talk // ☯ // 19:24, 13 June 2008 (UTC) Reply

Having just come on to Meta, and having been confused myself by what was in the different namespaces, I definitly think this is a good idea! Mike.lifeguard's description above really make sense, at least to me: "The mainspace should be for pages about the WMF projects; the Meta namespace should be for pages about this project." Beyond that, I don't think I'm familiar enough with the namespaces to make suggesitons, but that one part definitly feels like it would add some clarity. -- Natalya 02:59, 17 June 2008 (UTC) Reply

I just noticed that, after you move a page, Template:MediaWiki revert link, Template:MediaWiki delete link 2 and Template:MediaWiki delete link 1 are not working fine any more. The link to 3ドル and 4ドル's instead of the page names. I didn't have time to check what caused it (just played with the params, which didn't help) so thought maybe another admin will get a handle of it. Huji 22:16, 13 June 2008 (UTC) Reply

Message parameters such as 1ドル don't seem to work anymore in templates inside mediawiki messages. Template parameters should probably be used instead (e.g. {{MediaWiki revert link|3ドル|4ドル}}). This will also make it possible to merge the deletion templates into one template, using different parameters each time. Note that in this message, 1ドル and 2ドル are links, while 3ドル and 4ドル are plaintext. – rotemliss – Talk 06:42, 14 June 2008 (UTC) Reply

Please see: Wikipedia:Advertisements#Income from search tools on wikipedia pages

We could add more search tools to the existing Wikipedia searchbar. We can continue to use the existing open-source search tool, and also charge Google, Yahoo, etc. to place their search tools in the Wikipedia searchbar as a dropdown menu choice.

The nonprofit Firefox browser has a such a searchbar. Firefox received 61.5 million dollars in search royalties in 2006, and Wikimedia received no search royalties. See Mozilla Foundation#Financing

The searchbar would make even more money if it were moved to the top left of Wikipedia pages (above the wikipedia logo). Then the searchbar would be visible even to newbies to Wikipedia pages. Many people would use the searchbar frequently.

Better yet, I suggest we start negotiations with the Firefox people about merging with them. We are both nonprofits.

Or we could work with them on learning how to get a similar deal from Google search, Yahoo search, etc.. We could ask them to loan us some of their programmers, equipment, office space, and so on, too. --Timeshifter 03:39, 15 June 2008 (UTC) Reply

Try proposing this on the the Foundation-l mailing list or contacting our Head of Business Development at kul@ wikimedia.org. Cbrown1023 talk 23:47, 15 June 2008 (UTC) Reply

Thanks for the ideas. I don't do email lists, though, except for announcement lists mostly. I don't like my email address getting out. Plus I am interesting in discussing the issues and getting broader feedback from the wider wikimedia/wikipedia readership. Public message-board-type forums are good for that. Others might bring the resulting ideas to the places you suggested. --Timeshifter 08:00, 16 June 2008 (UTC) Reply

Can an admin please go in and edit MediaWiki:Loginend so that it links to the secure login site, like it does on enwiki? Sorry if this request is in an odd place, I didn't know where else to put it (feel free to move it if you know somewhere better). Anthony 22:10, 21 June 2008 (UTC) Reply

'tis Done. --Az1568 02:17, 22 June 2008 (UTC) Reply

Hi. I am an administrator in the Esperanto Wikipedia. I have noticed that across several Wikipedias, the article "Yot" (or the equivalent) was created by an anonimous user across several Wikis. It claims it as a separate letter than Iota, with seemingly flimsy evidence. Because the evidence seemed flimsy, we are in the process of deleting it at Esperanto. However, I noticed a mass of anonymous creations of this article across many wikis, and they were trying to use evidence of its presence in other wikis to prop itself up as a legitimate article. (It was not created in the English wikipedia, but a mention of it on the discussion page of Iota seems to laugh it off as flimsy as well.) Also anonymous changes were made to our template of Greek Letters, eo:Ŝablono:Grekaj literoj. I have similar concerns about the greek letter heta which was created in several wikis by anonymous users and added to the template at about the same time.

I wanted to alert people in other languages about this. -- Yekrats 19:30, 24 June 2008 (UTC) Reply

I also thought this was suspicious. I’ve left a note on it:Discussioni_utente:F_l_a_n_k_e_r#Greek_yot, the talk page of the user who uploaded Image:Yot uc lc.svg. — H92 (t · c · no) 22:17, 24 June 2008 (UTC) Reply

Hi! Yes, I'm the author of the SVG, but it was requested by an IP (87.96.53.60), you can find the request in my archived talk page: it:Discussioni_utente:F_l_a_n_k_e_r/Archivio_4#Yot uc lc.svg. I'm not an expert in ancient greek letters so I've followed the instructions. It was also a little discussion about this letter here: en:User_talk:Future_Perfect_at_Sunrise/Archive_10#Greek letter Yot. Hope this helps. Bye, F l a n k e r 23:02, 24 June 2008 (UTC) Reply

From the discussion I've seen, It's not a letter that is actually in either modern or ancient Greek, but a proposed letter not currently (and never before) being used. This sounds suspiciously like a violation of "No original research". -- Yekrats 23:58, 24 June 2008 (UTC) Reply

The user seems to be [3]. By the way, "het" is not so bad (it did exist), but I'm not sure what form of article it requires (and whether it was a letter or just a sign). Maybe everything about it should be in eta, maybe not. — Svetko 14:18, 25 June 2008 (UTC) Reply

What annoys me about it is, there seems to be a fair amount of bullying and screaming going on if someone dares to challenge the assertion that it's a letter despite the lack of evidence showing it used. We experienced it in the Esperanto, and they point to its existance (and "acceptance") in other Wikis as evidence that it really exists. -- Yekrats 14:28, 25 June 2008 (UTC) Reply

There's a background story to this. The "Greek letter Yot" is not really a hoax, but an object of irrational fixation by a problematic user on en-wiki, most recently known as w:en:User:CBMIBM, who is very likely the originator of all these spin-offs. "Greek Yot" is an actual, existing character in Unicode; it's a glyph clone of the normal Latin letter J, to be used for certain technical linguistic notations in modern linguistic treatments of (pre-literary) ancient Greek. So, it exists in modern computer encoding, but it was never part of actual Greek orthography. For some reason I don't really understand, Unicode opted to encode it separately as part of the Greek code block.

Now, this user on en-wiki is pursuing an irrational campaign of promoting an OR interpretation that projects some kind of maximum systematicity onto the Greek alphabet, apparently linked to some semi-religious ideas about Greek and/or Proto-Indoeuropean as the primeval languages of mankind or some such. It's pretty confused, but somehow he gets fixated on having these Yot and Heta thingies and some other marginal characters upgraded to full-fledged members of the Greek alphabet. He's done all sorts of weird things on en-wiki, including sockpuppetry. Other than that, it's not that he doesn't act in good faith, he's just confused. I suspect he might suffer from some mental condition like some mild form of autism that makes it difficult for him to communicate in a meaningful way, and at the same time gives him these idées fixes. Fut.Perf. ☼ 14:30, 25 June 2008 (UTC) Reply

I noticed that our anonymous user has added these eight archaic letters to absolutely all wikis having the article "Greek alphabet", even to those not using alphabets from Europe. It seems to me that its aim is to promote the first ever solution in the history of linguistic - both in the sphere of language and script, which as first have emerged for humanity, while these solutions are fully compatible with Catholic faith. He is completely healthy, but he is very extreme Ultracatholic. 89.149.244.184 15:47, 25 June 2008 (UTC) moved up from header below by me Finn Rindahl 22:57, 25 June 2008 (UTC) Reply

Hm, is he healthy? I've answered him in Polish and he says now he doesn't know Polish. It's already a sign of mental insanity. — Svetko 20:05, 27 June 2008 (UTC) Reply

This is not obsession. This is my Ultracatholic inquisitorial fanatism to fight for preserving of heritage of my Catholic Faith. God obliges me here: http://www.giftstor.org/tomkiel05fst.html in general to fight for His Catholicism, especially against stubborn sinners who perform removals of Catholic Heritage in part or in whole. 87.96.32.168 09:21, 28 June 2008 (UTC) Reply

Wow, just wow. Well, CBMIBM/Wikinger/whoever, given this profession of disruptive POV-pushing intention, you are now indef-blocked on en-wiki, and I strongly recommend every other project should do the same. Fut.Perf. ☼ 15:49, 29 June 2008 (UTC) Reply

@CMBIBM (IP-adress): I sincerely believe that you have not done this with malice, and that you believe giving witness of the Truth is for the benefit of all. It is not our place to judge your convictions as "obsession" or "confusion", and descriptions such as "hoax", "forgery" and "vandalism" may not be adequate for this situation. But the purpose of Wikipedia is not to bring witness of anyones convictions, we don't exist as a project to tell the truth. Our purpose is to cite facts, to summarize, organize, present and make avvailable human knowledge in the form of referenced facts that represent a neutral point of view. Wikipedia should not present your convictions, neither should it present mine. It should account for the variuous convictions held by humans, and the history of those convictions.

As CBMIBM has spread their convictions throughout the wikiworld, by editing/creating articles and templates about the ancient Greek alphabeth in many different language projects, we have some cleaning up to do. It is of course the responsibility of every individual project to verify that their articles are factual and neutral, not every projects have contributors with solid knowledge of ancient Greek though, and many of us has been fooled by verifying new articles by checking interwiki's. It is not as easy as simply reverting all IP-edits to articles about Greek letters from the last six months, CBMIBM has contributed information which can be verified as neutral and factual. But it would be a very great challenge if every single projects would have to do these verifications based only on their own human resources. If we could use this page at Meta to somehow account for the basic facts of what has happened, where the relevant discussions are, and what resources and sources are avvailable for verification and rewritng of these articles I believe that would be of great help to many wikipediaprojects. Finn Rindahl 12:10, 28 June 2008 (UTC) Reply

Please consider these sources:

• Greek letters and their history
• Greek letters implemented into Unicode

They provide both history and implementation of each Greek letter, including those introduced by me, especially on their subpages, and can serve as reference to Greek letters disapproved by you. You disapprove them, but they exists both in real history and Unicode. For example Yot dates back at least to nineteenth century, and when you don't name younger IPA from twentieth century as fiction, similarly should be with Yot. 87.96.32.168 12:28, 28 June 2008 (UTC) Reply

While if anything this history has reminded us that we should be very careful with using Wikipedia articles as a reference for Wikipedia articles, I still would recommend en:Greek alphabet with subarticles as a starting point. These articles give a solid account - with references - of the Greek alphabeth, and also accounts for the letters that got obsolete and their development. en:Template:Table Greekletters gives an example of a table with the 24 letters of the Greek alphabet with the 4 obsolete letters mentioned under, another solution may be the la:Formula:Abecedarium Graecum which lists the 24 letters and then the numerical system. An entry in the unicodesystem does not give evidence that such a letter have been in use in the ancient Greek alphabet. For the interrested reader I would also recommend la:Disputatio_Formulae:Abecedarium_Graecum (it is in English). Finn Rindahl 13:59, 28 June 2008 (UTC) Reply

Many IPA symbols are existing totally outside of any orthography, but they exist and are mentioned in Wikipedia. Similarly should be for example with Yot. I am specifically promoting PIE as first ever human language, and Greek as first ever human IPA-equivalent alphabet. All is explained here: http://www.wikinfo.org/index.php/Adamic_language PIE-language and Greek-alphabet are different things.

Please remake in Commons Yot image fully compatible with Unicode definition, and it will be replaced anywhere to proper version automatically. Image must still have name Image:Yot uc lc.svg, because otherwise wikicode used in this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Table_Greekletters and similar templates will not react on Yot file, because treats "uc lc.svg" string as constant. This solution will purge original research from this file. More here: http://no.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brukerdiskusjon:Finnrind

Reliable sources - especially on subpages:

• Greek letters and their history
• Greek letters implemented into Unicode
• Official Yot

87.96.32.168 16:39, 28 June 2008 (UTC) Reply

Not sure if this helps, but I found a mention of a letter "yot" in this patent: US 2,170,668 "Printing Method and Apparatus Therefor" (Aug 29, 1939) [4]. Hippopotamus 21:06, 28 June 2008 (UTC) Reply

I hope that this patent will convince you. 79.162.50.18 07:15, 29 June 2008 (UTC) Reply

@IP: It's a bit confusing with all this different ip-adresses, please register an account or at least sign with a nickname. @Hippotamus: Thanks for your help. Unfortunately, that patent concerns Hewrew letters, and yot there is a variant spelling of Yodh. Regards, Finn Rindahl 10:35, 29 June 2008 (UTC) Reply

It is worrying if the existence of an article on one wiki could justify its existence on another. Surely you should never quote any WMF site as a reliable source in itself, although you can point to reliable sources cited in another article.--Cato 12:01, 29 June 2008 (UTC) Reply

I too noticed that this patent is about Hebrew letter Yodh. 91.94.146.118 13:31, 29 June 2008 (UTC) Reply

Oh dear, so it is... Hippopotamus 21:33, 29 June 2008 (UTC) Reply

As we had the same story in de-WP (de:Portal Diskussion:Griechenland#Jot): the "greek yot" ist nothing than the latin "j", used within Greek to indicate a phoneme /j/ in pre-classical Greek, as the Greek alphabet never had an own letter for this phoneme. Example: *Δjεύς as a proto-form of Ζεύς (Zeus). The name for this letter is the German one: Jot, transcribed in Greek as "γιοτ". The use of latin "j" in Greek words started in 19. cent. around German and Greek graecists. But it has never been a Greek letter. It's Unicode policy to give different codes to the same letter in different writing systems – that's the reason for a "letter" named "GREEK LETTER YOT", as an "additional letter" of Greek alphabet. Obviously there's just a minuscule form - it's never been used outside scientists’ word recontrucitons. See here. --Pitichinaccio 08:31, 30 June 2008 (UTC) Reply

P. S.: You can still find the "Jot" in the Greek-alphabet-templates of some WP’s, mostly with the wrong Image:Yot uc lc.svg: ar, bs, cs, fi, fr, it, ja, ms, ko, pt, simple, sk, sl, th, tr, zh. Japanese article ja:ヨット (ギリシア文字) has no deletion request yet. --Pitichinaccio 09:13, 30 June 2008 (UTC) Reply

Thanks to Finnrind, I've now requested deletion of the article on Japanese wikipedia (ja.wp). --Peccafly 01:30, 1 July 2008 (UTC) Reply

IPuser from Polish address comes to ja.wp and behaves very anoyingly to stop the deletion. The user shows Latin Wikipedia as a source of the information of Yot. --Peccafly 14:43, 1 July 2008 (UTC) Reply

This is one of his proxies. 91.94.42.40 16:13, 1 July 2008 (UTC) Reply

This is of course all the same guy. I just love it how on Japanese wiki he attacks me as an evil arrogant westerner ([5]), on Swahili wiki as an evil European slave hunter ([6]), on tr wiki as an evil "anglican" (and "not a Turk"), and on en-wiki he tells me to "repent or perish" for breaking "God's property" ([7]). Priceless. Can everybody please just try and get him banned on their home wikis? There's obviously no point of trying to rationally debate this guy. Fut.Perf. ☼ 08:24, 2 July 2008 (UTC) Reply

Hm, you're getting much more interresting feedback than I do [8]... As for cross-wiki ban that may not be so easily achieved, given than the user mainly contributes from different ip-adresses. AFAIK the only projects with registred accounts are en: and simple: Finn Rindahl 13:03, 2 July 2008 (UTC) Reply

And he finally did this, pointing at his blog: http://pingwinojad.blog.pl machine translated to English. His real nick is "Pingwinojad", what means "Penguin Eater". I noticed that his blog is very radically targeted against Wikipedia and Free Software. See this: http://pingwinojad.blog.pl/archiwum/index.php?nid=12717425 He as fanatic Windows believer attacks Free Software and Wikipedia with full force of his propaganda. 91.94.220.71 20:28, 2 July 2008 (UTC) Reply

"This is Meta's general and policy discussion page" the header states, I suppose the discussion above concerning the cross wiki campaign for the letter "jot" and revising the understanding og the greek alphabet doesn't really belong on this page. Is there a different page suitable for such things? That such a discussion belongs on Meta should be evident, as this is really something that concerns a number of wikimedia projects and having to examine and debate the issue at every single project is rather complicated and inefficient. Finn Rindahl 14:53, 25 June 2008 (UTC) Reply

We get a large number of image uploaded which are proposed to be a logo for one of the WMF projects. Some time ago I created Category:Proposed logos in an attempt to better organise this files and have now created Template:Proposed logo which I would welcome comments on. Clearly when these images are uploaded they can't be available under a free license, this would prevent it from being considered as a WMF project logo since the free license couldn't be revoked if it was chosen as an official logo. We can therefore presume that the creator of any proposed logos agree to grant the WMF an exclusive license to use the image. If we are able to agree about this template then I'll use my bot flagged account to add it to each of the images currently in the category and I'd also suggest that it be added to MediaWiki:Licenses so that it can be selected via a drop down box on the upload page. It might be appropriate to add some of the other license templates there also. Adambro 18:51, 26 June 2008 (UTC) Reply

Support. I am not clear whether we need so many different logos (I would prefer all Wikipedias, all Wikiquotes, etc. to use the same logos) but if we do, the proposal is eminently sensible.--Cato 11:57, 29 June 2008 (UTC) Reply

I'm starting this to seek community approval for the developers to "switch on" an extra right to be used here.

A number of you will be aware that we have had ongoing vandal attacks over long periods where the vandal has switched IPs each time making CU less effective. I am not, & probably never will be, a fan of range blocks however they have proved effective in dealing with people some persistent vandals. The problem with such blocks is that they may affect innocent users.

Currently we have a wiki wide vandal in the form of Grawp. After exchanges on the CU list a number of wikis have placed range blocks to deal with this persistent vandal (I have done so here as others have for example). Thanks to the CU list I was pointed to a "right" I was not really aware of which is implemented on en wp - IP block exemption.

It seems perfectly reasonable to me to "exempt" valid users from being accidentally blocked by any IP blocks that are placed. I would see this as "If you have a problem ask & we will look into it. If you are a valid user you will be exempted" and I can't see it as controversial or needing massive "paperwork". I see on en wp that admins have the right automatically - that is not something I think is that relevant in our case so I'm not suggesting it (now would I be against it if others felt it important).

If there is no obvious problem to others I'd like to see this switch on very soon. I have no problem with 'crats or admins being able to give IP exemption though I guess such issues will usually be tackled by the project CUs in the case of range blocking. Personally I find the en wp page fairly comprehensive & would see little need to change much of it for here on Commons so maybe we can steal it & make any minor amendments that are necessary. It would be good to get some feedback with any "support" or "oppose" as soon as we can. Thanks --Herby ^{talk thyme} 13:17, 27 June 2008 (UTC) Reply

• Good idea, I support that idea, thanks Herby, --birdy geimfyglið _(:> )=| ∇ 13:37, 27 June 2008 (UTC) Reply
• This has worked well on en.wiki and I don't see an issue with bringing it here. Nakon 13:59, 27 June 2008 (UTC) Reply
• Good idea. Majorly ^talk 14:06, 27 June 2008 (UTC) Reply
• It has worked well on enwiki, and I would support it here too, but it must be remembered that it has to be carefully watched because if it is given to a troll's sleeper account, it makes it significantly more difficult to stop and I believe it also minimizes the applicability of checkuser. -- Avi 14:14, 27 June 2008 (UTC) Reply

• How does it "minimise" CU applicability? --Herby ^{talk thyme} 14:16, 27 June 2008 (UTC) Reply

• I remember that point being raised on enwiki; let me see if I can dig it up. -- Avi 14:51, 27 June 2008 (UTC) Reply
• Check your email, Herby. -- Avi 14:56, 27 June 2008 (UTC) Reply

• Seems like a good idea ("support"). —giggy 16:34, 27 June 2008 (UTC) Reply
• Good idea, don't see any reason why not. Finn Rindahl 18:29, 27 June 2008 (UTC) Reply
• Yep, do it. I should add my opinion for everyone to see... I'd prefer CUs only (not admins, not crats) to deal with this, as they're the most likely to have the requisite info to deal with this.  — Mike.lifeguard  | ^@en.wb 19:40, 27 June 2008 (UTC) Reply
• Support Support Will no doubt be useful.--Cato 11:55, 29 June 2008 (UTC) Reply
• It's definitly been useful over at en-wiki, no reason it can't do the same here. -- Natalya 16:49, 29 June 2008 (UTC) Reply
• I believe this extension was meant to be more useful wikimedia wide than only enwiki.. Support Support ...--Comet styles 21:32, 29 June 2008 (UTC) Reply

  It's not an extension... just a small-ish coding change. Cbrown1023 talk 03:12, 3 July 2008 (UTC) Reply

• My support on enwiki was partly based on situations such as users having to proxy-in to bypass the Great Firewall, among ohters. I not only support the right here, but would encourage it on other "special" projects as well, such as mediawiki.org and commons. Kylu 01:59, 3 July 2008 (UTC)
• I definitely support this - I was a strong advocate of this right being implemented on enwiki and believe it is working well there. WjBscribe 02:15, 3 July 2008 (UTC) Reply
• I have no problems with this. Cbrown1023 talk 03:12, 3 July 2008 (UTC) Reply

Thanks all - bug request submitted (bugzilla:14733). It would be good if folk could vote for it or even better try and get something done about it (the same Commons request has been outstanding for some time now :(). Cheers --Herby ^{talk thyme} 12:30, 5 July 2008 (UTC) Reply

Re. the bugzilla, what is the consensus here regarding who can grant it? CUs or bcrats? Majorly ^talk 14:04, 5 July 2008 (UTC) Reply

As I said above, I think it should be CUs handling this. As to whether consensus exists on that, I think people are either ambivalent or don't see the need to restrict it to CUs (though I disagree). So unless we work something else out (which I think we should) perhaps a note on the bug to include crats is needed.  — Mike.lifeguard  | ^@en.wb 16:30, 5 July 2008 (UTC) Reply

I'd say bureaucrats is best. I don't see the need to restrict it to checkusers when regular sysops are allowed to give it out on a wiki as large as enwiki. Cbrown1023 talk 16:54, 5 July 2008 (UTC) Reply

As nothing has happened to the Commons one yet I'd say there was time to decide :)

Commons the req is for CU & 'crats as a backup. Wouldn't worry me here but almost anyone can be a 'crat here so I could go either way. CUs are likely to be the ones who know who should be blockexempt. --Herby ^{talk thyme} 17:30, 5 July 2008 (UTC) Reply

Why checkusers, not admins? Assigning ipblock-exempt is a part of unblocking, and unblocking is a part of administrators' rights — VasilievV ² 18:23, 7 July 2008 (UTC) Reply

Probably the wrong place to ask...

http://www.EveryonesHome.org.uk a wiki to help end London Homelessness...

how do I make each page in a defined wikipedia category a database record containing pre defined elements to provide location based search?

I want to format the data here [9] as an example into something searchable by postcode, whilst still having wikipedia pages that are editable by everyone.

Thanks, it would help a very fresh London homelessness charity provide an even more useful open source service in time... would appreciate anyones experience on the wiki also... Many thanks! info@everyoneshome.org.uk — The preceding unsigned comment was added by JohnMonday (talk) 03:34, 6 July 2008

As many of you may well be aware, some of the same vandals that have assaulted the English Wikipedia and other projects have discovered Meta, and the Meta administrators have been quite busy working to minimize the influence of these malicious users. With many pages approaching "bigdelete" size, preventing us from deleting specific revisions, and the rise in multiple sockpuppets on Meta, a few of the local bureaucrats have expressed (in private) the need for more trusted users with the Oversight and Checkuser permissions. Two of each should be sufficient at this time, though the number may vary depending on consensus. Please note that if approved, we will need a minimum of two oversights to satisfy oversight policy.

This posting is an attempt to gague community consensus regarding this need and to determine who would be both interested and qualified for these positions.

Please note that all candidates would be required to submit identification to the Foundation, be 18 years of age or older, and familiar with the privacy policy and the specific policy applicable to the permission applied for: Checkuser, Oversight. Thanks. Kylu 23:47, 6 July 2008 (UTC) Reply

I don't think anymore CheckUsers are needed. Spacebirdy, Herbythyme, Pathoschild and Drini are very active admins with this right, and I think it's well covered. However, oversights would be a good idea. I've seen recently stuff that could do with oversighting, and it is probably better local people are elected to handle it. Majorly ^talk 23:52, 6 July 2008 (UTC) Reply

That's fine, though I'd rather personally like to make sure that the Stewards aren't prohibited from assisting in either matter, regardless of local-specific oversights (or checkusers, if we elect more). Kylu 23:56, 6 July 2008 (UTC) Reply

Well I'm always eager to find other ways to help out on meta. I expect that checkuser work on meta is fairly similar to the work on commons where I've been a checkuser for some time. Meta seems to be cruising along quite nicely these days, as is commons. A lot of the checkuser activity that is going on lately is cross project collaboration. In any case, if there is an need to adding privileged users for whatever purpose, keep in mind that we have a wealth of people with the rights elsewhere and many of them, like myself, would be glad to help out on meta. --Gmaxwell 01:12, 7 July 2008 (UTC) Reply

I was just going to say about the same thing. There are users who can be recruited and are already trusted if we need more for either CheckUser or Oversight. I wonder if we could get the opinion of some active CUs here (Majorly mentions the ones who spring to my mind) on whether they would like the workload distributed? If they say so, I'd agree with them. Some names also spring to mind for already-trusted users we could ask, though I'm of course not opposed to new blood. At this point (when we're discussing whether more are needed in principle rather than discussing who those people might be) I think it is premature to be naming names, or otherwise discussing such possibilities.  — Mike.lifeguard  | ^@en.wb 01:26, 7 July 2008 (UTC) Reply

Drini, Lar and Spacebirdy are the 3 elected steward and checkusers on Meta and apart from them, Herbythyme is the only other elected non-steward CU whereas Tim, Midom, brion, have it since they are developers and I'm sure they never use it anyways and the rest of the stewards assigned it to themselves except Hei-ber who was given the right as a member of the Ombudsman commission..so we don't need anymore Checkusers, though it will be nice to remove it from those stewards not using it anymore..and Meta has no oversights and we probably need atleast 2 and probably one should be a non-steward :) ...and like everything else on Meta, we would prefer "active" editors to be oversights or Checkusers (if needed)....--Comet styles 01:38, 7 July 2008 (UTC) Reply

My thoughts regarding checkusers was mostly to not count "functionary" checkusers (that is, ombudsman, stewards, and developers) and focus solely on the checkusers who have the permission in the service of the local community. I'd suggest to the Ombudsman that with the global ombudsman permission containing checkuser rights, they should remove the local rights as they're redundant and only serve to confuse the permissions list more. Likewise, I'd prefer to see a global "Developer" group (a duplicate of the Steward global group, perhaps) and assign it to those currently with developer or steward who perform development tasks. As one of the prior uses of +developer was to assign it test permissions, they can do this easily now through the global rights interface and have little use for local permissions. This all, however, is extraneous to this discussion. I'll throw it on RFC sometime. :) Kylu 01:50, 7 July 2008 (UTC) Reply

Requests for comments/Special global permissions There, now to continue with this discussion. :) Kylu 02:19, 7 July 2008 (UTC) Reply

Extra Checkusers are not (IMO) required on Meta. With "front line" staff in the shape of birdy & myself little is likely to get by :) People can see I use the rights in my Meta confirmation data. There are then three backup CUs. We are all (I'd like to think) fairly experienced in cross wiki issues.

Oversight - maybe. However I would strongly resist the idea of elected anyone other than genuinely active Meta people &, in my mind, there are few of them. (& no I am not interested). --Herby ^{talk thyme} 07:08, 7 July 2008 (UTC) Reply

I also agree with what most of the people have said here. I think we already have enough CUs on meta; about Oversighters, I also share the same concern Herby has: we need to care a lot about choosing the right people (and in agreement with Cometstyles, I think non-Steward users should also be in the team). Huji 17:05, 7 July 2008 (UTC) Reply

Meta:Requests_for_oversight#Requests_for_Oversight_access Two current nominations, we'll need two passing nominations to qualify for oversight. Anyone else want to toss their hat into the ring? Kylu 00:23, 8 July 2008 (UTC) Reply

Hmm. Just to step back for a moment, OverSight exists to remove from the wiki information that we do not trust our sysops to see. I am, bluntly, sceptical that there is very much of this at all. If the only driver for this is pages with > 5000 revisions, surely it would be more sensible (and more to the benefit of the community not only here but more widely) to ask the devs to speed up analysis of the now two-(three?)-year-old "new deletion mechanism" so that individual revisions could be deleted by sysops?

James F. (talk) 06:27, 8 July 2008 (UTC) Reply

To be fair, it is far, far easier for us to adjust how we distribute user rights than to wait for the developers to make modifications to the MediaWiki system for our benefit. EVula // talk // ☯ // 15:06, 8 July 2008 (UTC) Reply

Correct me if I'm wrong, but if you're talking about revision deleting (which lets deleting a revision from an article which is too big to be deleted completely and then restored partially) it is already there (but perhaps not activated on Wikimedia wikis). If the only reason for having Oversighters on meta is this, we can ask this to be turned on only for Meta! And tell me if that really is the only reason for trying to have Oversighters or not, because if it is, I'm gonna say a "big" no to the whole thing. Poor idea... :( Huji 14:50, 9 July 2008 (UTC) Reply

I've seen material here that, in my considered opinion, required oversighting, not just bigdeletion, and after some consultation, I oversighted it. I support the notion of improving the ability to delete a single revision and agree that oversight should not be a substitute for it. But the two things are seperable. ++Lar: t/c 14:58, 9 July 2008 (UTC) Reply

Yesterday, Majorly fully protected Moulton (talk • contribs • count • logs • page moves • block log • CA • email)'s talk page, saying "Meta-Wiki is not for socialising like this. Please take your discussions elsewhere". See User_talk:Majorly#Locking_Moulton.27s_talk_page for some additional discussion. I'm not a fan of Moulton (a user who is currently indefintely blocked on en:wp) and am not sure that carrying on the sort of discussion he and User:WAS 4.250 were carrying on is completely within scope. But it's a judgement call, because a case could be made that this wasn't just chit chat... (as well as a case being made that even if it wasn't, it doesn't belong here) I would ask that we reach a consensus either endorsing this lock, or overturning it, as Moulton has now moved on to Wikiversity. (see en:v:User talk:Moulton)... it seems to me that deciding this here might be useful, so the overall community doesn't chase him from place to place. Either allow it here, or set the precedent that it's not allowed, which other communities can draw on, is my thinking. ++Lar: t/c 15:45, 9 July 2008 (UTC) Reply

I would like to thank this community for helping Moulton and myself to find an appropriate place for our discussion on the Ethical Management of the English Language Wikipedia. Any consensus you guys come to on this is moot because 1) We found a better place; we won't be coming back even if you want us back 2) A consensus here has no effect on other projects 3) A consensus now on this has no effective force on another issue at another time because cases differ and consensus can change. Spin your wheels all you like, but I for one see no point. Anyway, it is all for the best. We found a better venue. Thanks again. WAS 4.250 17:21, 9 July 2008 (UTC) Reply

• Communication
• Multilingualism
• Meta-Wiki organisation