Wikimedia Forum

The kenyan chapter of Wikipedia held a conference to celebrate the 10 anniversary of wikipedia foundation. It was held at Strathmore University in Nairobi Kenya. The chief Guest was Mr. Ting Chen the chairman of Board of Trustees. It was a very successful meeting bringing together students from various universities across Kenya. I must say I learnt a lot from the conference and was so inspired by the speech given by the chief Guest. Look forward to more of such interactive conferences. LONG LIVE WIKIPEDIA AND HAPPY BIRTHDAY

Lovely :) –SJ · talk | translate

Requests for new languages/Wikiversity Chinese translation for all mw & extension messages is done. What next? --Waihorace 10:31, 21 January 2011 (UTC) Reply

The project needs an active community (I would rather say it's more than 3 active USERS) now, and it is required to keep the community active for several months. BTW, It's ironic to answer you in English. --DS-fax 14:15, 21 January 2011 (UTC) Reply

We do understand some English, but coming back to the subject, the request for Wikiversity Chinese is done, just lacking someone to submit the proposal to the Language Committee. Are you able to? Hydriz 10:51, 20 February 2011 (UTC) Reply

Wikipedia user should be aware for the following website, and its link is similar to Wikipedia's link.

• wikiedia.org
• wikipeda.org
• wikiepdia.org
• wikipedoa.org

These site I think is not controlled by Wikimedia Foundation. --Waihorace 14:32, 21 January 2011 (UTC) Reply

It's a deliberate attempt to catch traffic from people who have mistyped the name Wikipedia, but as the landing pages are clearly different to Wikipedia, people should see that they have landed in the wrong place, and will type again. I don't think it's a serious enough issue for the Foundation to consider buying the names. SilkTork 23:24, 21 January 2011 (UTC) Reply

These sites claim that you have owned a big prize from Wikipedia, [1]. So they're misleadable.––虞海 (Yú Hǎi) ✍ 10:58, 22 January 2011 (UTC) Reply

Ugh. Shameless!! They even tried to rip off the puzzle globe! -- OlEnglish ^(Talk) 06:11, 5 February 2011 (UTC) Reply

Yeah. When I noticed the image changed to a coin, I knew that they were stopped from trying to mislead people. WhisperToMe 01:22, 14 February 2011 (UTC) Reply

Here's a possible new fundraising source that may be both practical and able to generate significant funds, submitted for consideration.

Aside from the annual fundraising drive which appeals to many Wikipedians, its possible to have a separate benefactor microdonation system linked to every article page. It would permit readers of Wikipedia articles to make payments to both the contributors of an article, and to Wikimedia itself.

I'd recommend involving an electronic payment company such as PayPal, Visa, Matercard, Amex... (companies which I have no employment relationship with) to administer the actual processing of payments. We can believe that such companies can provide the electronic payment processing for Wikimedia on a pro bono or at cost basis, since it wouldn't likely involve a great deal of effort on their part because of the use of their existing infrastructure.

The Wikipedia encyclopedias have several stakeholders -let's reward the two principals. This would benefit both Wikimedia and the quality of its encyclopedic articles at the same time. The two most important stakeholders are, naturally, Wikimedia, which runs and enables the entire organization, and the editor/contributors who both create and upgrade its encyclopedic articles. A new system can benefit both stakeholders, and at the same time provide greater motivation for expansion of its articles, depth and quality, all without conflict to Wikipedia's traditional fundraising.

New microdonation system:

1) DONATION SYSTEM PROCESSOR: a donation processing agreement is coordinated with a company such as PayPal. The processor would receive the payments from readers, aggregate them and then bill them monthly to the readers that volunteer to make such payments. As per the procedure schedule and formula, the payments would be made to both the registered-contributors/editors and to Wikimedia itself.

2) ENROLMENT OF MICRODONATORS: the Wikipedia encyclopedia would offer readers, via a hyperlink, the opportunity to register themselves for microdonations, and then make such donations while reading its articles. Registration of benefactors would be handled by the processing organization, which would obtain valid credit card or bank account information from those wishing to donate. Doubtlessly, many readers have been impressed by the broad scope of articles available, and by the depth and quality of its many individual articles. Let's allow such readers the opportunity to provide a modest award to the article's contributors and to Wikimedia at the same time. The range of donations can be set with minimum/maximum limits: expressed in U.S. currency, perhaps 5 cents at the minimum, and perhaps 1ドル at the maximum, per article, that the reader wishes to award. For simplicity, such donations would be tax exempt: no formal donation paperwork would be issued regarding donations for income tax purposes.

If a reader found an article compelling and educationally satisfying to him/herself, the reader clicks on a micropayment button to make one-time donation payment, either for a default amount or for another amount within the min/max range. After confirmation, that payment data would be registered by the donation system processor. At the end of the month, the payment processor would aggregate the donation data and bill the benefactors' registered credit cards or other accounts. Ex: if a casual reader read 20 quality articles in a month, and then donated 10 cents for each one, that person would be billed exactly 2ドル.00 on his or her credit card or other account, paid to both the article's registered editors who wish to receive such payments, and to Wikimedia, as applicable.

3) ENROLMENT OF ARTICLE WRITERS AND EDITORS: contributor/editors would be permitted to register themselves if they wish to receive such payments.

• Payments could be make to valid PayPal, direct deposit bank accounts and possibly to credit card accounts.
• To reduce the operational costs, payments would only be made electronically, and would not be made unless the registered contributor/editors had such accounts, i.e.: no time-consuming or expensive payment methods would be utilized, such as mailed cheques.
• Registration of the editors/contributors would be entirely voluntary; they would receive such payments only if they personally take the time to register themselves.
• Any such payments would be classified as a contract service: no withholding taxes or other fees would be applied, and it would be up to the contributor/editors to register their own earnings if income taxes were applicable.
• If a minimal payment transaction fee were required by the payment organization or the bank or credit card company to handle the cost of the payment service, it would be deducted from the payment. If a registered contributor/editor were to receive a payment of 25ドル and a 15 cent service fee was required to cover the transaction, then he/she would receive a net payment of 24ドル.85. Wikimedia would obviously have the ability to veto the use of any payment service that proposed exorbitant rates for such payment transactions.

4) PAYMENT CALCULATIONS AND ASSIGNMENTS: Do not award contributors by the number of edits they make to an article that receives donations! Some contributor/editors (of the 'starving artist' category) might change their edit style to inflate the number of edits performed to create or upgrade articles.

a) Award the payments on the basis of the percentage of article's length that the editor has written which has not been reverted. If the hypothetical article 'The History of Pie' was written and upgraded by a total of three award-registered editors, and a combined total of seven unregistered/IP editors, and if editors A, B and C hypothetically wrote 20%, 15% and 10% respectively of that article, then at the end of the payment period Editor A would be awarded 20% of the aggregated payments collected, Editor B would receive 15%, Editor C would receive 10%, and the remaining 55% of the amounts collected would be awarded to Wikimedia itself.

b) The percentage each individual registered contributor/editor would receive would be calculated by the amount of editorial material he or she contributed, minus any materials reverted by others. If the case of 'The History of Pie', if Editor A had contributed 40% of the article, but 20% of his/her contributions had been reverted due to inaccuracies, then that person's net contribution to that article would be calculated at 40% - 20% = 20%, resulting in an award of 20% of the aggregated collections for that article.

5) NET BENEFITS:

• Readers who wish to reward article writers for the efforts would now have a vehicle to do so with;
• Article writers who have a need for some extra funding would be able to receive such payments;
• Article writers would also be encouraged to create more articles and expand existing ones: exchanging 'knowledge for change';
• Article writers would be encouraged to improve the quality of their articles, since the greater the quality, the greater the reward. Its exactly like busking: the more you impress and move your target audience, the more change they'll drop in your hat;
• Many writers will not wish to register themselves to receive such payments; those portions, as well as the portions performed by IP editors will default to Wikimedia. If the hypothetical The History of Pie article receives an aggregate total of 100ドル in donations in a one month period, and only 45ドル is awarded to the registered editors, Wikimedia would benefit by receiving the remaining 55ドル for that article;
• Finally, a certain percentage of unregistered IP editors may be encouraged to sign up for Wikipedia accounts! Hooray! More registered Wikipedians creates more Wikipedia involvement (hopefully of the positive type)—another plus!

For your consideration; feel free to contact me if I can be of help in refining the suggestion. Best regards: HarryZilber

Last year ITI khamariya Seepat Bilaspur Chhatisgarh upgraded by world bank project and Chhatisgarh Govt. for training in COPA trade.

Special:Preferences contains private information such as an user identity number, an e-mail adress, a watchlist-token and the option to change the account's password. Nevertheless, it is still send via a non-secure connection.

At the beginning of 2010, after repeated public demands, Google has changed its connections for mail, document and calendar services to secure https by default.

Does Wikimedia intend to change its software too, so that Special:Prefences can be accessed through https, and make https the default setting just as Google did? If yes, when?

--Rosenkohl 14:42, 10 February 2011 (UTC) Reply

You can access every Wikimedia website and every aspect of the site via the secure server at https://secure.wikimedia.org/. – Adrignola talk 13:43, 11 February 2011 (UTC) Reply

Ok this would answer my first question. However, please remember that the Google services also could be accessed through https before 2010, but it was not set as default. So the point of the public demand was not that that Google should give the possibilitie to use https, but that Google should set it as the default. Also Special:Preferences pages are different from other pages since they contain private data. Nevertheless Wikimedia projects still don't have set https as default for Special:Preferences. So I don't think my second (and third) questions still have been adressed, Greeting --Rosenkohl 15:37, 11 February 2011 (UTC) Reply

I'd just like to point out that the user id number isn't private. While it's not easily viewed (as there's little reason to do so), it is viewable via both pages on-wiki and various toolserver tools. There's also little use to knowing the user id except for possibly wiki-age bragging rights of some sort, I suppose. As far as Wikimedia changing its configuration similarly, I would tend to think that the direction to do so would come from the community rather than the Board, so the best way to implement such a change would be to suggest it to the greater Wikimedia community and develop consensus for the change. Best regards. Kylu 18:13, 14 February 2011 (UTC) Reply

I have seen that there is not much travel on this page "Wikimedia Forum". Nevertheless had posted my questions here, with the idea that a place called a forum could fit to discuss an issue concerning the greater Wikimedia community. I remember that the whole Wikimedia community was called to participate at the Wikimedia board elections. All the other community decision of which I know were made on the level of single projects, e.g. the single language versions of Wikipedia.

So if not here at the Wikimieda Forum, where else do you think I could "suggest it to the greater Wikimedia community and develop consensus for the change"? Greetings, --Rosenkohl 14:36, 23 February 2011 (UTC) Reply

Thread brought from Wikimedia Foundation wiki feedback.

Hello. Please, I have a question.

As I have seen, there is no Wikimedia USA, but Wikimedia New York, and several other places in the USA as potential new chapters. Your reason about the possibility of having multiple national chapters is that they "may be founded on a metropolitan and regional-scale level, because of the unique issues of uneven population density throughout the country, and the relative unimportance of state boundary lines". On the other hand, the creation of multiple chapters in other countries is *forbidden*, regardless of their "unique issues of uneven population density throughout the country" (in Spain, if you pay close attention to the population, you'll find that it's everything but even, and let's not even think about Russia or China). So, my question is (sorry for being so blunt), does that mean that, in the future, you'll have several chapters to receive money from the Foundation and the rest of the countries just one each? --Dalton2 04:47, 16 February 2011 (UTC) Reply

I'm relatively new. This chapters go by "legal" countries, right? In Spain we have CCAA, that means different legislations (with our different parliaments) and also different languages and different "Wikipedia's" projects. Long term should be created (i.e.) Viquimèdia Catalunya? --Emporio2012 08:23, 19 February 2011 (UTC) Reply

I just see "Possibly the Basque region of Spain", OK, there's at least one "possibility" already in this sense. So I understand it depends on the people who ask for it, legal borders, density (related with the "use" of the project and the geografic situation where people could and is going to contact easier), etc. Here I see a discussion about the article I think you talk about... --Emporio2012 09:13, 19 February 2011 (UTC) Reply

I just saw that "cat" has already its own proposal and, very nice by the way. OK, I'm learning step by step. Good day! :-) --Emporio2012 09:58, 19 February 2011 (UTC) Reply

I'm not sure exactly what you're asking here. I assume you're referring the grants process, but these grants are only given a on a project-by-project basis. Whoever has a project worth supporting (whatever the scope of it) can apply and get support — there is no "fixed amount" for a given chapter or geographic area/country. Cbrown1023 talk 01:11, 20 February 2011 (UTC) Reply

Hi! I found this at the Indonesian Wikipedia: id:Wikipedia:Surat pernyataan permintaan penghapusan gambar-gambar penghinaan terhadap Nabi Muhammad saw.. I'm not exactly sure what it is (I don't know Indonesian, so I am not sure if this is a userbox or an essay or something) - But it seems like Si Gam Aceh is editing again. Is his block expired? WhisperToMe 01:41, 17 February 2011 (UTC) Reply

Looks like a petition:

"Wikipedia: The statement requests the elimination of the drawings insulting the Prophet Muhammad.

Bismillaahirrahmaanirraahiim ...

In the spirit of welcoming the birthday of Prophet Muhammad., we are the Wikipedians from Wikipedia Bahasa Indonesian, demanding abolition of all the drawings insulting the Prophet Muhammad. contained in the various Wikimedia projects particularly in Simple English."

Seb az86556 02:41, 17 February 2011 (UTC) Reply

So, the question is, is the petition in the correct space? (Maybe user space, like the German userbox solution?) What are the Bahasa Indonesia Wikipedia's rules on this? WhisperToMe 02:59, 17 February 2011 (UTC) Reply

No idea; it's labeled a project. What they don't seem to get is that it's pointless — so let them. No one on any other wiki is gonna give a rat's ass what they do or rant about. Once they start vandalizing, it's block time again. FWIW, I'm gonna notify en.wiki, since their articles are linked to from there. Seb az86556 04:29, 17 February 2011 (UTC) Reply

Oh, btw, the account is a sock, started today Seb az86556 04:44, 17 February 2011 (UTC) Reply

Alrighty. About the petition, I personally don't mind as long as the petition is in the correct userspace/project space on ID. I fully understand that its goals are not attainable. About the user, I will let the stewards decide what to do, depending on the user's actions. WhisperToMe 04:52, 17 February 2011 (UTC) Reply

As a side note, I made a userbox image for people who disagree with hosting Muhammad images en:User:WhisperToMe/Userboxes/NoMo - Maybe a good way to deal with this is to promote the usage of this userbox and any translations of them WhisperToMe 05:37, 17 February 2011 (UTC) Reply

I really don't think that it is appropriate for this sort of thing to be hosted on Wikimedia Foundation projects. If someone wants to start a petition against a Wikimedia project, they should do so on an external site. The creator of the petition, Si Gam Aceh  (talk • contribs • block • xwiki-contribs  • xwiki-date  ^{(alt )} • gblock  • ST  • lwcheckuser ), is a blatantly obvious sock, main account: Si Gam Acèh  (talk • contribs • block • xwiki-contribs  • xwiki-date  ^{(alt )} • gblock  • ST  • lwcheckuser ) (see [2]). See also [3]. That is me removing the almost exact same template from the main page of w:ace about 6 months ago, after he put it there. See [4]. Finally, note the J.delanoy ^gabs _adds 17:21, 17 February 2011 (UTC) Reply

• Comment: Indonesian Wikipedia discussion started at id:Wikipedia:Permintaan_perhatian_pengurus#Si_Gam_Aceh - English Wikipedia discussion at en:Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard#just_a_heads-up - J. Delanoy notified him about the meta thread, while I notified him about this one and the English Wikipedia thread. WhisperToMe 18:16, 17 February 2011 (UTC) Reply
  • An Indonesian Wikipedian is developing a Bahasa Indonesia version of the userbox that I posted: id:Pengguna:Wagino 20100516/Bak pasir - Hopefully this will help give a healthy way for people who disagree with the Muhammad images to express their beliefs WhisperToMe 16:36, 18 February 2011 (UTC) Reply

Hey, at Wikipedia:Surat_pernyataan_permintaan_penghapusan_gambar-gambar_penghinaan_terhadap_Nabi_Muhammad_saw.#Comments it looks like Si Giam Aceh is starting to make several loud statements with allcaps. I think we need to look at them. One statement was "I attack you all because you attack us first. Wikimedia NEVER respect us as muslim! " WhisperToMe 20:50, 18 February 2011 (UTC) Reply

Let him rant. And don't feed the trolls. It's tedious. Seb az86556 21:38, 18 February 2011 (UTC) Reply

I have no plans to talk to him (and therefore he can't be fed if you don't engage him). I do not feel that he has contributed to things, so therefore I'm letting other people deal with him. At this rate I feel that it's not possible to reason with him. WhisperToMe 04:37, 19 February 2011 (UTC) Reply

Agree. Seb az86556 04:46, 19 February 2011 (UTC) Reply

And the petition that SGA started was nominated for deletion, for "Against Foundation policy of NPOV" : -id:Pembicaraan Wikipedia:Surat pernyataan permintaan penghapusan gambar-gambar penghinaan terhadap Nabi Muhammad saw. - I am not surprised. Also I honestly think the angry "DELETE IMAGES INSULTING PROPHET MUHAMMAD PBUH FROM WIKIPEDIA" template should now be given a swift retirement. WhisperToMe 01:28, 24 February 2011 (UTC) Reply

And at id:Pembicaraan Pengguna:Si Gam Acèh/Hapus Gambar Penghinaan Nabi Muhammad saw someone nominated the "DELETE IMAGES INSULTING PROPHET MUHAMMAD PBUH FROM WIKIPEDIA" template for deletion too - I'm not sure how much of this is on ID, but En's en:Wikipedia:Userboxes#Content_restrictions policy says "Userboxes must not be inflammatory or divisive" and "Wikipedia is not an appropriate place for propaganda, advocacy, or recruitment of any kind, commercial, political, religious, or otherwise, opinion pieces on current affairs or politics, self-promotion, or advertising." WhisperToMe 01:56, 24 February 2011 (UTC) Reply

To be fair, if you wanted to take that one literally, you can go ahead and delete all useboxes, short of "I am male" and "I live in Timbuktu". There's a host of userboxes that cheer for conservative parties, against conservative parties, for Israel, against Israel, probably even for planting bananas in the Arctic. Seb az86556 02:45, 24 February 2011 (UTC) Reply

I think the idea is that a userbox can state a political opinion and/or viewpoint as long as it does so in a non-threatening, non-insulting, or non-demanding manner. The German userbox solution was made to accommodate userboxes that stated political and viewpoint opinions. WhisperToMe 03:24, 24 February 2011 (UTC) Reply

On ID, id:Pengguna:Si Gam Acèh/Hapus Gambar Penghinaan Nabi Muhammad saw has been retired. WhisperToMe 23:01, 24 February 2011 (UTC) Reply

On ACE I found: ace:Wikipedia:Bèk peuhina Islam - It seems to be an old page. It claims "Note that only acehnese Wikipedia contributors who can vote" WhisperToMe 23:47, 1 March 2011 (UTC) Reply

(削除) Finally, I found a more correct place to can talk with more users about Wikipedia, my first time here (I was thinking in send a fax to California but, it's nice that also it's possible to speak about it here). Well, it's only because I had very strong problems with the Spanish Wikipedia that affect me really (this is not a soap start, don't worry), and well, I really didn't think in more ways to can solve it or comment it, so I felt very insecure in Wikipedia en español. (削除ここまで)

(削除) I was reading last days opinions and cases of Wikipedia en español and I understand now that this is a very particular case, really and without doubt. I also use Viquipèdia and the difference is very strong but, what I mean is, that it's not only a "results" matter. I don't know if you have the information about what is happening in this Wiki... (削除ここまで)

(削除) Well, I think we or you must talk about it. What can I say at first is that now I have fear because the information that it gives is going in a very bad way... relatively "very bad" is small. Do you have references about this case? --Emporio2012 13:34, 17 February 2011 (UTC) (削除ここまで)Reply

Context: She was blocked after creating some usernames attacking another female editor (while she was already having a short block). She admitted accounts linked to IP, but claims it wasn't her, but an acquaintance that was visiting her mansion and that it was done as a joke (cachondeo) [5] . es: Magister Mathematicae 19:48, 17 February 2011 (UTC) Reply

Emporio2012 known sockpuppets:

• Libertatcom
• Bucephala la Gallinita] (attack account against es:User:Bucephala)
• Bucephala FemiNazi (idem)
• Hermana Clausa [6]
• Began

es: Magister Mathematicae 22:26, 17 February 2011 (UTC) Reply

(削除) ::Hey, of course, I started to investigate seriously when I saw the politicies of the librarians in Wikipedia en español. Without a context I'd never do it. The point is that I started to investigate the bad references and, I was surprised. You're free to put this here about the case that involves me. I didn't say exactly what you trasmit here. Anyway, it's not the topic that I'd like to treat here. If anybody has to talk about last movements of the users when they open a topic in the forum, would be very large! I could talk about your "context" also, is anyone interested? (削除ここまで)

(削除) By the way I've never asked to be unblocked of that page, Magister. I suppose my opinion and effords are unvalid, by your response, at least for you. Is what I tell you. I love this projects and I really like to contribute in the way I can. I found people differenciating the case. Simply I would like to know and find more information about it because I'm interested in this kind of perspectives also. Actually there's no reply here more than Magister response. I found this forum a good place to expose it by the head. Now, searching more, I see that there're some stadistics, that's nice. But I don't have any intention beyond expand my own information and free knowledge. So that's all. Its very nice to have known this part of the project and the chapters, and all. Thank you really for let me talk and don't delete my message, --Emporio2012 00:47, 21 February 2011 (UTC) (削除ここまで)Reply

User:ЛеонидовЕВ, mass removing content from pages. It's personal data removed. vvv ^t 15:11, 11 March 2011 (UTC), vandal from ru.wiki, from Duke University.--Bunker by ruwiki 23:08, 19 February 2011 (UTC) Reply

Dferg caught them. Killiondude 01:04, 20 February 2011 (UTC) Reply

All (as far as I can tell) pages on bat-smg Wikipedia redirect to a blank screen. I guess this is related to the many uses of document.write on w:bat-smg:MediaWiki:Common.js (turn JavaScript off to read the page). Should a steward perhaps fix this? Ucucha 22:10, 20 February 2011 (UTC) Reply

Yes, it would be great if someone could fix that, most of these mediawiki codes were copied from Lithuanian and Polish wikipedias but now maybe became obsolete. Hugo.arg 16:32, 21 February 2011 (UTC) Reply

Commenting out the document.write calls seemed to at least get rid of the blank screens, although there might still be some other issues. Interestingly, none of the javascript pages the commented code tried to include seem to have ever existed. Jafeluv 17:23, 21 February 2011 (UTC) Reply

Now fixed by Krinkle. Jafeluv 11:52, 23 February 2011 (UTC) Reply

no idea if this is the right place - but anyway...

At the moment I have problems to access the vi.WP with the secure connection, the main page is displayed for a short while but afterwards the screen is blank and the browser tries to connect to vi.wikipedia.org.

Any idea what is happening? Some incorrect scripts? Thanks, Rbrausse 09:59, 22 February 2011 (UTC) Reply

No clue, but I confirm the problem: Screen blanks after load, only when using the secure server. May be in vi:MediaWiki:Common.js/secure.js, but not enough time to check. Kylu 17:03, 23 February 2011 (UTC) Reply

First thing i ́ve got to say is, I cant write english that good so please forgive me my mistakes :)

So my problem is, when i want to upload a picture, my wikimedia site tells me that it cant find that file. I have my wikipage working on a local server so it isnt found in the internet.

What can i do, that i can upload my files i need.

Greetings

Phinex 12:41, 23 February 2011 (UTC) Reply

About 2 weeks ago a problem appeared with the Watchlist display for Users of WikiSpecies. It affects many, if not all, browsers, and may have coincided with a Wiki software update. Can someone with the knowledge please look into the discussion on WikiSpecies Village Pumpand see if the problem can be sorted? It sounds very similar to the "script" issue mentioned two sections above on this page. Thanks. Accassidy 22:49, 26 February 2011 (UTC) Reply

How can we do it? Alma mater 17:27, 26 February 2011 (UTC) moved from here Reply

Do you simply want be-x-old to go away, or are there pages that are missing? –SJ · talk | translate 12:57, 3 March 2011 (UTC) Reply

Both projects are actively developing and growing. Many article subjects appear in both of them; sometimes it's mostly the same text with different orthography and sometimes the text is significantly different. Some articles appear in only one project. Some people participate in both projects, others stick to only one, for various reasons.

Merging the two projects is very desirable, but it will require a lot of work, both social and technical. It's important to understand that it will be best done by the community members of both projects working together, and not by the WMF forcing it. --Amir E. Aharoni 15:45, 3 March 2011 (UTC) Reply

I was thinking some more about a dispute resolution committee and was reminded of the old idea of having a low-traffic list for people involved in cross-wiki facilitation, like current & past ombudsmen & stewards. It could be a publicly-readable list; perhaps 1-2 email threads a week.

The list could be used to share requests for help in rare circumstances, say in an under-represented language. I was thinking of it as a place to discuss moving forward with a DRC -- it's not something that needs private discussion, but it could use more back-and-forth discussion than on a Meta talkpage. Does this sound like something that might be useful? –SJ · talk | translate 12:57, 3 March 2011 (UTC) Reply

So, let's start with it. To make things faster, let Board nominate a couple of persons for this group initially and if it becomes alive, elections would be held yearly. --Millosh 08:28, 6 March 2011 (UTC) Reply

In portuguese wikipedia, we are planning a colabotation campaign. How do I create the campaign with CentralNotice? Danilo.mac talk 13:43, 3 March 2011 (UTC) Reply

In this case, using the Sitenotice in pt.wiki, since this campaign is only for one wiki. Béria Lima ^msg 14:18, 3 March 2011 (UTC) Reply

I would use the SiteNotice and AnonNotice, but the cache prevent the random content generation and the developers didn't allow a extension to prevent caching, if I use JavaScript as the developer has suggested the banner will not be seen by those who don't refresh the browser cache, so the unique solution is the CentralNotice. I've readed the help:CentralNotice, but my english is not pretty good and I did not understand how do I create a new campaign. Danilo.mac talk 15:32, 3 March 2011 (UTC) Reply

Does anyone know how I create a campaign with CentralNotice? Danilo.mac talk 21:58, 5 March 2011 (UTC) Reply

What is the way to follow for having "$wgPFEnableStringFunctions = true;" in LocalSettings.php as explained in mw:Extension:StringFunctions. Who could do that ? To who should we ask ? Thanks. Please answer on my Esperanto talk page --Arno Lagrange ✉ 09:18, 4 March 2011 (UTC) Reply

It would be a Bugzilla: request on the agreement of the community. From my limited understanding of the issues, I don't fancy your chances of success, however, you never know. About the only allowed functions are those through mw:Help:Magic words and mw:Help:Extension:ParserFunctions billinghurst sDrewth 12:29, 8 March 2011 (UTC) Reply

Now it's the Waray-Waray Wikipedia's turn to try and artificially climb to the top of the List of Wikipedias by churning out virtually useless one-sentence "articles". Have we learnt nothing from previous similar stunts, like the Volapük and Lombard Wikipedias?--Leptictidium 18:44, 5 March 2011 (UTC) Reply

Please, provide a link to the project. Ruslik 19:24, 5 March 2011 (UTC) Reply

[7] Jafeluv 20:25, 5 March 2011 (UTC) Reply

The projects seems to be active. Ruslik 20:44, 5 March 2011 (UTC) Reply

No, it is not. It is a two-men show focusing solely on boosting article count by copy-pasting tons of one-sentence microstubs. --Leptictidium 20:06, 6 March 2011 (UTC) Reply

Y'know, if they wanna make themselves look ridiculous, let them. Most people people know by now that article-count doesn't mean shit. Seb az86556 02:50, 7 March 2011 (UTC) Reply

See List of Wikipedias by sample of articles. All the bot-o-pedias are usually found somewhere near the bottom of that list. Spamming articles won't do them any good. -- Prince Kassad 22:12, 11 March 2011 (UTC) Reply

One minute I was discussing a topic on Wikipedia and the next minute I become connected to this page. What is this place, why was I sent here?

Please, provide a link to the Wikipedia discussion (English one I suppose?). Ruslik 20:53, 6 March 2011 (UTC) Reply

There were 2 links where discussions were being held:

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:External_links#137_Links_to_BeatlesBible.com 2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Fiatlux5762

So what is this and why was I sent here??

Why is "Log Me In Globally" enabled by default on the user login screen? Jc iindyysgvxc 08:08, 10 March 2011 (UTC) Reply

Why not? Ruslik 09:41, 10 March 2011 (UTC) Reply

Well, 1) users might not want to log in globally, and 2) most newbies do not understand what it means. Jc iindyysgvxc 10:18, 10 March 2011 (UTC) Reply

First, I guess 99 % of the users want to log in globally, you can deactive it if you don't want to; secondly, if somebody doesn't know what it is - so nothing happens, if he does it anyway. It is OK so. -jkb- 10:39, 10 March 2011 (UTC) Reply

What does "Log Me In Globally" actually do?

See this page: SUL. Logging in globally or "Unified login" is a mechanism which allows users to use a single login across the majority of the Wikimedia Foundation's projects. So, if you log in on the English Wikipedia then you will be logged in on the german wikipedia, wikimedia commons etc. It saves having to log in individually. Woody 17:52, 13 March 2011 (UTC) Reply

from the log:

16:14, 11 March 2011 VasilievVV (talk | contribs) changed revision visibility of "Wikimedia Forum": hid content for 72 revisions ‎ (Inappropriate personal information)

??? -jkb- 16:22, 11 March 2011 (UTC) Reply

If the question is regarding the number of revisions, it's due to the personal information being removed having been in each of those revisions, otherwise, please rephrase with a more specific query. Kylu 16:42, 11 March 2011 (UTC) Reply

Yep, that is, 72 revisions since Feb 20th, a little surprise... OK, thanks. -jkb- 16:44, 11 March 2011 (UTC) Reply

I actually do not do understand why the removed information was considered so private. Ruslik 20:40, 11 March 2011 (UTC) Reply

Someone's real name, if they chose to not disclose it on-wiki, is typically considered private information here. If I say, "Ruslik0, also known as April Sanchez, has been pestering me about..." where you hadn't disclosed your information previously, you'd be rightfully upset that I posted your name purposely to out information on you. (Note to readers: "April" is picked out of the air, and if that's actually Ruslik0's name, I'll be mighty impressed...)

Not everyone wants their real name posted in conjunction with their editing. For some (think some of the Chinese Wikipedians), such information could actually reduce their chances of continuing to live. Kylu 20:56, 11 March 2011 (UTC) Reply

I, of course, noticed the name. However, there is something fishy about it—the account in question is blocked as a sock of a banned user, and I am not even sure that the name is a real one. Anyway, is not it an open secret now? Ruslik 09:44, 12 March 2011 (UTC) Reply

So, it's okay to out users publicly as long as we don't like them? Maybe instead the revisions on that page should be corrected. I'll mention it to vvv. Kylu 19:33, 12 March 2011 (UTC) Reply

I did not mean that we should purposefully out anybody, but users who abuse their editing privileges have lower expectation of privacy. Ruslik 19:46, 12 March 2011 (UTC) Reply

As far as I am aware, this user never contested releasing their user name into the public. I believed this is enough to remove his real name which was inserted into the pages by another trolls. vvv ^t 09:46, 13 March 2011 (UTC) Reply

"contested"? Do you mean "consented" instead maybe? Kylu 12:58, 14 March 2011 (UTC) Reply

A couple ago, an image was removed from the en:Frank Buckles article per this discussion. Short version, they said the image removed wasn't military. A VERY quick search of Google Images came up with this image, the very same image deleted at Commons. The source for that image...army.mil. About as military as one photo can get. This isn't the first time this has happened. It happened a couple weeks ago, then it was called a "copyright violation" and "there's no evidence that this is a federal work". Well, back to the ol' Google and via WLS Radio's website, there is the image, credit going to the Library of Congress, which as you know is at loc.gov (I looked for the file, but gave up after 10 pages).

So, this is two seperate images that "aren't military" or "federal work" that turn out to be found on government and military websites. Did anyone at Commons even bother to look at Google? Check the sources of the images?

So, it brings me back to the question in the header, "Who's Manning the Ship at Commons?" I think we need to take a good look at Commons, if all they are doing is blindly deleting images because someone thinks they are a violation or aren't military, when a 30 second Google Images search finds they are.

(BTW: I raised this on AN on en.Wiki and was told to come here. I know this should go to Commons for discussion, but I am actually have an arguement with a Commons admin over whether an image of an Army soldier in an Army uniform is an Army image, so I don't think they will be open to ideas for change.) - Neutralhomer 13:33, 13 March 2011 (UTC) Reply

Hello, I am not sure if this is the correct place to discuss this, so if I am in the wrong place by all means point me elsewhere. I am the holder of the un-unified SUL of User:Woody with the main account being en:User:Woody where I am a sysop. There are 4 wikipedias where I could not unify my account due to existing editors having edits there. Now for the problem: some of the edits that I have made on the English Wikipedia have been transwikied across to different wikipedias under the username Woody, mainly to the German language Wikipedia, and these are now attributed to the German Woody and not back to myself. This breaks the link of attribution of edits. Take this edit for example, which was transwikied from this edit on the English Wikipedia. There are various examples of this in de:Spezial:Beiträge/Woody. Does the foundation have a way of rectifying these issues and the issue of non-usurpable accounts across wikimedia projects? Why are edits being transwikied if this fundamental issue with SUL has still not been resolved? Woody 14:20, 13 March 2011 (UTC) Reply

nice example for transwikiing user accounts, indeed. -jkb- 18:14, 13 March 2011 (UTC) Reply

There's a related Bugzilla request here. Jafeluv 18:37, 13 March 2011 (UTC) Reply

choosing FA(s) from different languages as a representative article

I needs your help, especially the help from those who can use multi-language. I am trying to assess the featured articles across diverse languages on Wikipedia in order to find what factors affect the difference of the quality of the featured articels by language.

As you know, I cannot manually evaluate all featured articles from diverse Wikipedia languages because the total number of featured article approved over all the languages reaches thousands. I need to select a representative that explains the quality of the featured article group of each language on Wikipedia as a sample for the quality evaluation.

I established the criteria for selecting the sample as follows:

• Not translated, that is the representative article does not use other language source as reference as less as possible
• concerns history, particularly historical person whom most sources about was written in its own language
• When a language does not have a featured article satisfying the criterion above, the article from other topic, for example geography can be a representative article for the test.
• When a language has more than one article meeting with the criteria above, the best quality article is preferable

I have found the representative article candidates for each language as seen in the table below. Please give me your opinion on the candidate list, and the advice for updating the list if you know the better one for candidate for what I try to do, with short explanation of why you recommend the new article. Cooldenny 06:02, 16 March 2011 (UTC) Reply

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