Wikimedia:Village pump

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Welcome to the Outreach Wiki's village pump. This page has two functions:

  • This is where general outreach-related discussions can be held. Click here to open up a new topic.
  • You can also use this page to request administrator assistance with vandalism or other incidents needing action. Please be as specific as possible, including the name of the user or IP causing problems, the page name, and your signature.
  • Requests for permissions should be made on the respective page.


Please sign and date your post (by typing ~~~~ or clicking the signature icon: Insert-signature.png in the edit toolbar). Please add new topics to the bottom of this page.

« Older discussions | Archives: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

Strategy 2017[edit]

See m:Strategy/Wikimedia movement/2017. Should this be promoted on the Main Page? Koavf (talk) 05:55, 10 April 2017 (UTC)

  • It appears that you did this with this diff. I have no objection, but I think that you should have waited a week after posting the question here. --Pine✉ 07:03, 16 July 2017 (UTC)

Where to request File mover rights on Outreach wiki[edit]

Where can I request for File mover rights on Outreach wiki? As publication leader for the Education Newsletter I move drafts articles to their permanent names after copy-edit. The redirects left behind serve no purpose and I might have to tag them for deletion at some point. —M@sssly✉ 15:03, 27 May 2017 (UTC)

@Masssly: There is no such the file mover permission here. —Alvaro Molina (✉ - ✔) 15:44, 27 May 2017 (UTC)
@Masssly, AlvaroMolina: Hi as mentioned AlvaroMolina at this time it is not possible to assign this right because it does not exist on outreach. However, if you are in favor, I can apply for Phabricator to create the user group. What do you think? --Samuele2002 (talk) 06:45, 28 May 2017 (UTC)
Yes, I am in favour. —M@sssly✉ 06:51, 28 May 2017 (UTC)

How can I help here?[edit]

I'm a former anon from 2004-2005, but now want to help again as a user. What can I do to help that's useful? --Walkden861 (talk) 17:26, 13 June 2017 (UTC)

@Walkden861: You may want to check out the strategy talk on Meta: m:Strategy/Wikimedia movement/2017/Cycle 2. Koavf (talk) 18:03, 13 June 2017 (UTC)

Add Wikidata support here or not?[edit]

Since all monolingual projects (i.e. above Other Wikimedia projects of Special:SiteMatrix) plus Commons, MediaWiki.org, Meta-Wiki, Wikispecies and Wikidata itself are now combined interwiki links to that project (supports for Incubator, Multilingual Wikisource and Beta Wikiversity are chakushu-ing on phab:T54971), I would like to find next project that makes sense to iw-link. And perhaps to provide combined, structured, and on-going updated (if that isn't vandalism) datas. Any comments are welcome under this section. --Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 00:57, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

@Liuxinyu970226: This is a good question--it's not covered by Wikidata's discussion of sister projects. Nor are Wikitech and the Wikimanias (if you're still looking for a next logical project to add). Of course, this project will have some pages like this or Main Page which will be interwiki links with others but a vast majority are Outreach-only. What would be the value of Wikidata integration to you? Koavf (talk) 01:39, 7 July 2017 (UTC)
i see wikidata has an item "This Month in GLAM" d:Q15868218. without a link to outreach. Slowking4 (talk) 01:10, 8 July 2017 (UTC)

Well I guess we want this because of Structured Commons? From Outreach we link all over the place, and it would be e.g. beneficial to be able to have GLAM pages on Outreach that are linked from the GLAM's item on Wikidata, since that is the hub for all things wiki to do with that GLAM. Jane023 (talk) 06:16, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

If there's no opposition comments before July 20, then I will file a task on Phabricator. --Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 14:50, 15 July 2017 (UTC)
I don't see any harm in taking this action, and perhaps it will be beneficial, so I support proceeding in the absence of objections prior to July 20, per Liuxinyu970226. --Pine✉ 07:09, 16 July 2017 (UTC)
@Koavf, Slowking4, Jane023, Pine: Requested at phab:T171140. --Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 03:32, 20 July 2017 (UTC)

The occasion is smart with few animations[edit]

<--Yes of cause the inventer of the wikifoundation has never thought his administrators would be sluggish and call noble editors names disgraced above the universe.Most think their jurisdiction is to block,revert and condemn editorials at their own discression forming giberish and nonsensial poor judgements.to support their iliteracy and boosy influencess that are either cultural/political,religiuos for goodness sake.the choice is so poor and tantamount to imperialism and bad manner -->[Djs](41.138.78.55 12:53, 12 July 2017 (UTC))

Sorry, what? Koavf (talk) 15:54, 12 July 2017 (UTC)
I would guess a poor google translation of a specific problem. The 64 cent question is which language wiki did he/she come from and what wiki did he/she think this village pump is for? Jane023 (talk) 16:42, 13 July 2017 (UTC)
by global [1] you might speculate an editor from Botswana . there is an unfortunate tendency to logout from the SUL. did he mean bossy or boosy ? Slowking4 (talk) 07:32, 14 July 2017 (UTC)

Archival note[edit]

I have boldly moved several older Village Pump discussions to Wikimedia:Village pump/Archive 5. If someone wants to resume a discussion that I archived, please feel free to cut and paste it from Archive 5 back to this page. --Pine✉ 07:00, 16 July 2017 (UTC)

+1 --Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 07:41, 16 July 2017 (UTC)

Requirements for new administrators for the Outreach wiki[edit]

This discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. You may start a new discussion on the same topic if you wish. There was a time when this wiki didn't have many administrators, especially active administrators. Spam and vandalism currently seem to be well under control, so I think that we aren't desperate for new administrators and can set some formal expectations for people who wish to offer their services as administrators on Outreach. (Addition to original proposal: I suggest that the length of time for this discussion should be 10 days so that there is a reasonable length of time for people to comment.)

I propose the following requirements for new administrators (these requirements wouldn't be retroactive):

  • 10,000 global edits under all registered accounts
  • At least 1 year as a registered user under the account which the requester proposes to use for admin activity on Outreach
  • No more than 1 active block across all Wikimedia projects on all of the user's accounts
  • The account which the user proposes for administrator activity on Outreach already has administrator permissions on at least one other Wikimedia wiki, with
  • at least 3,000 edits on that wiki
  • at least 1 year as an administrator on that wiki
  • at least 300 logged admin actions on that wiki
  • no blocks (other than self-requested blocks) within the past 5 years on that wiki. (The account doesn't need to be 5 years old.)

What do others think? Pinging User:Koavf in particular, as the bureaucrat who has been recently active on Outreach's request for permissions page.

--Pine✉ 18:25, 20 July 2017 (UTC)

  • Symbol support vote.svg Support I do not see any problem with these requirements. —Alvaro Molina (✉ - ✔) 19:21, 20 July 2017 (UTC)
  • Conditional Symbol support vote.svg Support. I think this is very sensible but I would leave a caveat for someone who may be associated with some outside organization who is editing here and may need to (e.g.) delete a page. As long as there is a reasonable process for bureaucrats to use their discretion and as long as it's made clear that those admin rights would be exceptional but are acceptable, then that would be good for me. Koavf (talk) 20:24, 20 July 2017 (UTC)
  • Hi Koavf, in the case of someone from an outside organization who would like to delete a page, that person can make a deletion request here at the Village pump. That is a much less risky method than assigning admin rights to that person. --Pine✉ 20:32, 20 July 2017 (UTC)
  • @Pine: I'm sensitive to reducing overhead. Whatever would be easiest is what I'll support. Either way, I don't oppose your initial language, so if that's what others think is best, then I am on board. Koavf (talk) 20:38, 20 July 2017 (UTC)
  • By the way, I suggest that we give this proposal 10 days for people to comment. Having a broad consensus would be nice. I will add this comment to my proposal above --Pine✉ 20:46, 20 July 2017 (UTC)

As there has been no further discussion, I am closing this. I will add the information to the Requests for Permissions page. --Pine✉ 22:15, 3 August 2017 (UTC)

Hm, this turned Outreach wiki policy orthogonally. This used to be a wiki where it is the easiest to obtain admin rights. Even after the times when every non-vandal account here was given admin rights it still was easy. Now with such criteria especially of being an admin elsewhere for a year it is very difficult. --Base (talk) 19:37, 16 August 2017 (UTC)

  • @Base: I agree that it represents a pretty big shift in the way things are done around here. This is also one of the very few WMF wikis where a bureaucrat can make someone else a bureaucrat or take away that user right. I don't know that it's an improvement or a detriment but it's clear that this is what the community wants or at least tacitly accepts. If you feel like it's a problem, then I'm open to hearing your concerns. Do you think this is a bad thing? Does it help the wiki to mature? Koavf (talk) 19:45, 16 August 2017 (UTC)
    Well, the way this wiki was it was one of the few examples of actually following the "adminship is not a bit deal" principle. Now it is, you have to meet very strict criteria. I do not believe creating strict policies equals wiki maturing. Oh I do like policies, I love them, but they make things more complicated. And unfriendly. --Base (talk) 19:59, 16 August 2017 (UTC)
(editconflict) No blocks for 5 years is also a crazy requirement. I would not meet this criterium for even now, but I cannot remember this creating any problems on this wiki in 4 years I am an admin here. Blocks often stem of particular community problems and are absolutely irrelevant in different community. Furthermore I believe there is no such requirement even for running for Steward rights, it seems most unreasonable to request it for adminship in this quiet wiki.
  • 10k edits globally is not a good criterion as well. GLAM and Education focused people often do a lot of stuff offline and are not that active onwiki to have such numbers of edits. It is not a reference I like, but Jimbo Wales, the co-founder of Wikipedia has only 14,194 edits globally.
  • 3k edits on a wiki is a lot too. I cannot say that doing admin actions on this wiki is too much different from my experience on Ukrainian Wikinews and Ukrainian Wikiquote where I am an admin as well (and just as with this wiki my adminship there had seen better days activity wise). I do not have 3k edits in those wikis though. There is just no way to get them not being a very active content contributor, and contributing content actively is not what administrators are required to do (though they are encouraged to do that for sure).
  • 1 active block is fair, but I would like it to be applied not blindly.
I suggest to reconsider the new policy. It is unreasonably too strict. --Base (talk) 19:54, 16 August 2017 (UTC)
Thank you to bring the idea out, @Base:. In my humble opinion, I don't like the rule to be this strict, either. I once was introduced to this wiki two years ago by the Wikipedia Education Program staff. I tried to become an translation admin but I can't understand the documentation of translation administration and its example, so I just stopped there and not applying the translation administration right. Just last few days I got a chance to see what @Trizek (WMF): has created for the explanation of translation extension and then understand what most of the documentation implies. I think my case just shows how other people might have. If the rule to become an admin is so difficult then I am afraid this wiki will not be an environment welcome enough for people who do outreach, it will be less friendly for the user and make the time longer to make this wiki be matured. --Liang_(WMTW) (talk) 21:57, 17 August 2017 (UTC)

Perhaps making a policy exception for WMF employees working on Outreach-related topics may be a solution. Thoughts? —Alvaro Molina (✉ - ✔) 15:13, 22 September 2017 (UTC)

WMF Employee&Contractor always can get advanced permission without community scrutiny - via their advanced permission rules. -revi (talk) 07:39, 24 February 2018 (UTC)

Improved search in deleted pages archive[edit]

During Wikimedia Hackathon 2016, the Discovery team worked on one of the items on the 2015 community wishlist, namely enabling searching the archive of deleted pages. This feature is now ready for production deployment, and will be enabled on all wikis, except Wikidata.

Right now, the feature is behind a feature flag - to use it on your wiki, please go to the Special:Undelete page, and add &fuzzy=1 to the URL, like this: https://test.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3AUndelete&fuzzy=1. Then search for the pages you're interested in. There should be more results than before, due to using ElasticSearch indexing (via the CirrusSearch extension).

We plan to enable this improved search by default on all wikis soon (around August 1, 2017). If you have any objections to this - please raise them with the Discovery team via email or on this announcement's discussion page. Like most Mediawiki configuration parameters, the functionality can be configured per wiki. Once the improved search becomes the default, you can still access the old mode using &fuzzy=0 in the URL, like this: https://test.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3AUndelete&fuzzy=0

Please note that since Special:Undelete is an admin-only feature, this search capability is also only accessible to wiki admins.

Thank you! CKoerner (WMF) (talk) 18:36, 25 July 2017 (UTC)

Requirements for existing admins and bureaucrats[edit]

For those having advanced rights (admin, bureaucrat, check user, oversight), do we want to have a policy on usage of the rights? At the moment, we have (e.g.) a bureaucrat who only edited less than a dozen times a several years ago. Following from the above discussion, do users here have any strong feelings on minimum usage requirements for advanced rights? (Please note that we have no local check users or oversighters but they are advanced local user rights which could in theory be applied to a policy like this.) Koavf (talk) 22:26, 8 August 2017 (UTC)

This wiki, except for the deletion of pages of spam or out of project scope, does not demand much activity in regards to administrative actions. Outreach Wiki is mostly edited by members of Wikimedia chapters (several of them are not administrators here). I believe that applying some policy of local inactivity to existing administrators or bureaucrats is unnecessary since this wiki (in terms of active community) is not very high and most of those who edit have no closeness to the goal itself of Outreach Wiki. I believe that the global inactivity policy is sufficient.
As far as a policy for granting advanced permissions is concerned, I think the current requirements for administrators (it could have been somewhat more flexible), but here anyway, almost no one in the last time has requested to be an administrator here. I believe that a policy could also be implemented to grant the bureaucrat permission (requirements could be the same requirements for being an administrator and at least 6 months as an administrator).
It would be appreciated to read the opinions of other users about it. —Alvaro Molina (✉ - ✔) 04:22, 9 August 2017 (UTC)
  • Wikimedia:Inactivity policy was created based on Wikimedia:Village_pump/Archive_3#Inactivity_policy. Not sure if we should still use it. --Steinsplitter (talk) 17:12, 10 August 2017 (UTC)
  • If there was already an approved policy, then I don't think it is necessary to change it. I read it and it seems fine. —Alvaro Molina (✉ - ✔) 18:06, 13 August 2017 (UTC)
  • I agree but I simply wanted to bring this to the community to discuss since it seemed germane. Koavf (talk) 21:08, 13 August 2017 (UTC)
  • I suggest staying pretty flexible as this is a specialist wiki. There's no standard time between notifying the sysop that they have reached the limit and removing rights. Any thoughts, I believe the norm elsewhere is to give people a month to reply before the housekeeping happens. --Fæ (talk) 23:12, 13 August 2017 (UTC)
    • @Fæ: That's what Wikimedia:Inactivity policy says. Did you read it? Koavf (talk) 01:11, 14 August 2017 (UTC)
      • Yes. It is not especially long, yet I cannot see where the policy specifies the housekeeping time of a month.Thanks --Fæ (talk) 07:34, 14 August 2017 (UTC)
        • Seems reasonable, I think that the "may" is important. I was reminded that I have rights here that I havnt been flexing. However I spend a lot of my time doing outreach so I should be interested in this project. Victuallers (talk) 10:41, 14 August 2017 (UTC)
          • I don't edit much anymore but I do check emails so I've kept the rights if needed. From my memory Outreach has generally been more open to granting admin/crat rights to trusted community members, as per AlvaroMolina and Fae's points above. Thehelpfulone 22:49, 18 August 2017 (UTC)

Update on users with advanced rights[edit]

I recently removed the user rights of 57 admins and bureaucrats per the inactivity policy and conversations on the talk page of everyone who had advanced user rights as of one month ago. Our current list of 54 admins:

And our seven bureaucrats:

If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to post them here. And if I made a mistake, it's easy to fix, so let me know. Koavf (talk) 18:05, 16 September 2017 (UTC)

Advanced advanced user rights[edit]

I'd like to survey the community here about having local Check Users or Oversighters. I suggest that these two advanced user rights may be useful on this wiki:

  • Oversight is necessary on wikis with Flow enabled in order to complete delete topics. Threads which should be completely deleted such as Topic:Tycmw0e6a2dxs9yd are only actually removed from a user's talk page if you use the "delete" function. Cf. phab:T163061#3210902. Since this wiki is intended to be very outward-facing, it may also be necessary to remove revisions that have personal information.
  • Check User could be helpful for investigating sock puppetry or harassment on this wiki. Again, since the goal of this is to be a very gentle landing pad for persons outside the Wikimedia movement, it's important to be able to investigate these abuses.

One argument against the latter user right is that these investigations may be handled faster if we appeal to the relevant pages on Meta and ask a Steward to come here to address them.

Thoughts? Koavf (talk) 05:03, 18 September 2017 (UTC)

  • @Eloquence, Jami (Wiki Ed), OhanaUnited, Steinsplitter, TFlanagan-WMF, Wittylama: as the local users with the most advanced user rights at the moment. Koavf (talk) 05:05, 18 September 2017 (UTC)
    • I don't see the merits of having local checkuser. I don't ever recall seeing sockpuppet in here without triggering alerts from other wikis. OhanaUnitedTalk page 05:12, 18 September 2017 (UTC)
    • I would like to remind people that if Checkuser or Oversight help is needed, stewards may always be able to help. Just post a CU request on m:SRCU or email for CU/OS requests to stewards﹫wikimedia.org. While I'm not an active member of this community, I think it's not necessary to have advanced rights on this wiki. Trijnstel (talk) 10:29, 22 September 2017 (UTC)
    • I agree with Trijnstel, here there has not been a greater need to have checkusers given that the cases of spam that usually occur here are mostly controlled by the same stewards and I at least have not seen any request or situation that require oversight here. —Alvaro Molina (✉ - ✔) 15:10, 22 September 2017 (UTC)
The thing about Flow mentioned which though being just one more reason to hate flow and support motion towards its removal from wikis, is not so bad - without admin flag the pages are indeed deleted, only unlike normal revision delete you don't need to make extra clicks to see them when you are a sysop. Outward world would not be able to see the personal information. As to the flags, well, I think we need some CU help if it can help stop those vandals coming here creating spam pages on regular basis, but it is indeed better to leave it to stewards who can also lock the accounts and global block open proxies. I see no need in local OS. If the issue with Flow still looks bad I support deinstalling Flow from here more than having a local OS. --Base (talk) 22:32, 23 September 2017 (UTC)
Definitely better not to have a local checkuser or oversighter. If there was a consensus that Flow makes such a overhead needed, then I agree we should just have Flow uninstalled from the wiki. Nemo 06:35, 19 October 2017 (UTC)
No need for oversighters or checkusers on this wiki. Flow is outdated and not working well, beter uninstalled on this wiki.
There are plans to move the contents of this wiki to Meta and to close (and redirect) this wiki. Romaine (talk) 15:06, 24 October 2017 (UTC)
@Romaine: I've seen that discussed but not a plan. Can you please point me to a citation for this claim? Koavf (talk) 15:30, 24 October 2017 (UTC)
Likely you and I have a different perspective on what plan means. If you ask if the plan has been set to action, then I can say that I have not seen the incentive to it. Romaine (talk) 15:39, 24 October 2017 (UTC)
@Romaine: I sincerely don't understand what you're talking about. Can you please point me to a citation? Where are you getting your information please? Koavf (talk) 15:43, 24 October 2017 (UTC)
@Romaine: ? Koavf (talk) 02:02, 27 October 2017 (UTC)
@Koavf: My apologies, but in my previous message I explained it in the most simple way, and if that is not understood or read, I can't explain it simpler. Second I think this section is about advanced user rights, and the subject now is not about that. In general I consider it impolite to hijack a discussion to discuss a different topic, and while my previous message was intended to politely close the "closure" topic, it now goes to my opinion too long about something else if I would continue. This section is about advanced user rights. Romaine (talk) 02:15, 27 October 2017 (UTC)

Bugged template[edit]

Hi all, anyone could help, please? The Template:Welcome is a bit broken, it was half in English half in French, I turned back to an older version, but now the user name doesn't appear. I'm sorry, actually I'm unable to fix it :( --Wikinade (talk) 10:02, 24 October 2017 (UTC)

@Wikinade: I tried a couple of things that didn't work and just reverted it back. It's all in one language for me. Koavf (talk) 08:35, 25 October 2017 (UTC)
I tested it on my own talk page, look at it, the result is quite weird… ^^' The issue probably comes from an incomplete translation of the template in French, but inclusions of templates in the main template are discouraging. Anyway, thanks for having tried :) --Wikinade (talk) 09:30, 25 October 2017 (UTC)

Closing this wiki[edit]

@Romaine: Please provide some citation or source for this--I'm keen to find out if this wiki is closing. Koavf (talk) 04:04, 27 October 2017 (UTC)

@Koavf: As far i know this has been discussed a while ago, but there was no consensus. Which means, it is unlikely that this wiki will be closed as for now. --Steinsplitter (talk) 19:06, 1 December 2017 (UTC)
@Steinsplitter: Agreed. I was specifically creating this thread for User:Romaine who dropped some cryptic reference above and then refused to discuss it as it was off-topic. So I simply asked for some kind of citation, which he failed to provide and leads me to think that he was just making up stuff. Koavf (talk) 19:09, 1 December 2017 (UTC)
@Steinsplitter: I do not think consensus has been sought, at least not so far I know. Multiple people just have proposed a plan and further they did not do anything with it so far I have seen. Romaine (talk) 19:22, 1 December 2017 (UTC)
@Koavf: Because of your behavior, including pushing + "making up stuff", I see no reason to reply to you. Stop pinging me or change your behavior. I have tried to be as clear as possible. Apparently that is still too difficult for you and I have no plan to continue on this. Thank you. Romaine (talk) 19:22, 1 December 2017 (UTC)

Usage of ANEFO images (Dutch National Archives) in Wiki tops #90,000[edit]

Dutch National Archives (Nationaal Archief) have made well over 320,000 images from the photograph press agency Anefo available under a CC-0 license –from 2012 onwards. These images form a set of photographs from the Netherlands (and abroad!) covering the period 1945-1989. Dutch National Archives announced this gesture (and performed the action) in 2012, made images available in high resolution in 2015 and changed the license to CC-zero in 2017. All these photographs are available from the website of the Nationaal Archief.
More than 17,000 images have been uploaded to Wikimedia Commons so far (Nov. 2017), and usage is stunning. Not all images have been categorized properly, but a first search with a wmflabs tool shows 17,036 distinct images present in Commons (d.d. 17 Nov.2017), of which 11,282 (66.22% of all images in this category) are now being used in dozens of language versions of Wikipedia –with high usage in Wikidata too. Total image usages in Wiki have just surpassed 90,000.

ANEFO logo (1954)
Photograph of Joseph Brodsky (1988), one of the heavily used photos from the ANeFo collection
Site Images used
en.wikipedia 27261
nl.wikipedia 10470
wikidata.wikipedia 6430
de.wikipedia 5221
es.wikipedia. 5074
fr.wikipedia 4329
it.wikipedia 2952
ru.wikipedia 2195
pl.wikipedia 2049
no.wikipedia 1383
pt.wikipedia 1340
ca.wikipedia 1150
hu.wikpedia 1027
& others xxxxx
Total image usages 90009
Distinct images used 11282 (66.22%)
Thanks for the note. The Dutch are always ahead. :) --Nemo 08:57, 16 November 2017 (UTC)
Emoji u1f603.svg Jan Arkesteijn (talk) 12:26, 16 November 2017 (UTC)

Wikimuseum[edit]

@Mu301: advised me to warn you guys: please check meta:Wikimuseum.--Felipe da Fonseca (talk) 12:07, 2 January 2018 (UTC)

This could be of interest to those from the GLAM community. I don't have an opinion on this specific proposal, but it is an interesting idea to consider and discuss. --mikeu talk 17:33, 2 January 2018 (UTC)

IP blocks[edit]

I was looking in the block log and I notice that some IP blocks are indefinite with account creation disabled. I generally think that this should be avoided because IPs are not so closely linked to individual people as accounts are, and we wouldn't want to indefinitely block an entire school from editing Outreach wiki because one student vandalized a page. I would like to propose that local IP blocks should generally be 6 months long and should block anonymous edits only. If we want to get more sophisticated with checkuser tools we can do so, but for the time being I think that this would be sufficient. Pinging User:Joalpe and User:Jeff G. who have made IP blocks in 2017-2018. --Pine✉ 20:13, 22 July 2018 (UTC)

@Pine: I commuted one block to 6 months anon only and paroled another.   — Jeff G. ツ 20:34, 22 July 2018 (UTC)
@Pine: Thanks for bringing this up. You're right. I have changed the expiration date of one IP I had blocked --this particular case is currently under global block anyway. --Joalpe (talk) 00:42, 25 July 2018 (UTC)

Proposal: change the design of the main page[edit]

Hi all. I would like to bring to your attention a discussion that is taking place at Talk:Main_Page#Featured_publications_on_the_main_page. The issue is a proposal to feature publications on the main page of the project. As of today, the main page remains mostly static. I hope you can come and comment. Good edits! --Joalpe (talk) 20:55, 24 August 2018 (UTC)

Broken link at MediaWiki:Histlegend[edit]

The "Edits by user" link at MediaWiki:Histlegend is broken. //tools.wmflabs.org/usersearch/index.html?page={{FULLPAGENAMEE}}&server=outreachwiki should be changed to //tools.wmflabs.org/sigma/usersearch.py?page={{FULLPAGENAMEE}}&server=outreachwiki. For example, on the page history of GLAM the current link produces the broken https://tools.wmflabs.org/usersearch/index.html?page=GLAM&server=outreachwiki. The change will produce the working https://tools.wmflabs.org/sigma/usersearch.py?page=GLAM&server=outreachwiki. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:26, 8 September 2018 (UTC)

@PrimeHunter: Thanks, fixed. --Steinsplitter (talk) 17:36, 27 September 2018 (UTC)

Reminder: No editing at 14:00 UTC on September 12 and October 10[edit]

Hey everyone,

This is a reminder that, because of a server test to make sure we can still function in case of a catastrophe, there will be a short period of time (up to an hour, probably shorter) when you can read but not edit the wikis on September 12 and October 10. This will start at 14:00 UTC. You can read more at m:Tech/Server switch 2018. /Johan (WMF) (talk) 12:17, 10 September 2018 (UTC)

IP Block[edit]

Hi there!

I couldn't find a better place to do this, so sorry if this is at the wrong place. The IP 130.193.237.228 (talk · contribs) is vandalizing a lot of articles, so I think a block should be made.

Thanks in advance! —Thanks for the fish! talk•contribs 17:55, 4 October 2018 (UTC)

@Tks4Fish: YesY Done Thanks Koavf (talk) 18:18, 4 October 2018 (UTC)

Security incident involving account with Outreach admin permissions[edit]

It looks like we had a security incident with an account that somehow got admin permissions on Outreach wiki. I don't see a notice about this on Meta on the Stewards' noticeboard, and I don't know whether this problem was specific to Outreach or extended also to other wikis. Pinging Steward @Shanmugamp7: to request more information. --Pine✉ 06:14, 21 October 2018 (UTC)

  • I have been doing more poking around. It looks like Koavf (talk · contribs)'s account was compromised, and is now globally locked. I am not impressed with a bureaucrat losing control of their account, and I will want an explanation of how this could have happened, if and when Koavf returns. @Steinsplitter:, @Wittylama:, @Jami (Wiki Ed):, @OhanaUnited: you are the remaining bureaucrats on this wiki, and I would like to request that you revoke Koavf's bureaucrat and admin flags. Even if he returns, I will want an explanation of how this could have happened and what he will do to prevent a recurrence before I will trust him again with having the bureaucrat and admin flags. I regret the inconvenience to him and others, but I think that we should be cautious here about re-assigning the bureaucrat and admin flags to someone who lost control of their account. --Pine✉ 06:27, 21 October 2018 (UTC)
  • @Steinsplitter: please do not return those flags if and when he returns until and unless there becomes consensus to do so. In my opinion there needs to be a persuasive case for why he should be trusted again with those flags. I am likely to oppose re-granting those flags. --Pine✉ 13:40, 21 October 2018 (UTC)
  • My account was compromised 3 years ago and en.wiki's ArbCom restored my rights rather quickly after I re-gained control. I don't see a lot of issues with restoring his admin rights because of the limited impact on Outreach Wiki. On the other hand, Koavf is also a Checkuser on Wikispecies and that has far greater impact in terms of reach, impact and public-facing because of the rights he held there. OhanaUnitedTalk page 22:38, 21 October 2018 (UTC)
The stewards and WMF (understandably) have not gone into specifics, but from what I can tell, it looks like malicious JavaScript. --Rschen7754 06:41, 22 October 2018 (UTC)
Correction: at least part of it looks like malicious JavaScript, it's possible there were other factors involved. --Rschen7754 18:12, 22 October 2018 (UTC)

There is discussion about this on CU mailing list, for those who have access. Yes, I would like my user rights restored. Koavf (talk) 08:25, 23 October 2018 (UTC)

Welcome back Koavf. Sorry to hear about the issue. Best. --Joalpe (talk) 18:50, 23 October 2018 (UTC)
Yeah, a weird thing. I have a unique password for WMF. I'm looking forward to details on CU-list. I am also hoping that no one expects me to have a (insecure surveillance device) smartphone in order to be a bureaucrat here. I think that's the wrong solution. Koavf (talk) 19:29, 23 October 2018 (UTC)
I am pretty sure this will be solved in the best possible way. You are an active, good-faith editor. Let me know if I can be of any assistance. --Joalpe (talk) 22:04, 23 October 2018 (UTC)
I am going to take a firm stance. As far as I know, there is nothing that I would accept as an excuse for not using 2FA these days. Not using 2FA puts other people at elevated risk, such as by misuse of the editinterface permission. If someone does not want to use a smartphone then I believe that they can use an iPod or a non-phone mobile device. I oppose returning Koavf's admin and bureaucrat permissions on this wiki. The benefits do not offset the risks. Regrets, --Pine✉ 05:46, 24 October 2018 (UTC)
@Pine: If you know of a device I can use with free software that isn't a cellular mobile, I will happily investigate one. Koavf (talk) 05:53, 24 October 2018 (UTC)
There are tons of twofactor auth tools out there, for example this for firefox. I saw you got rights restored via meta, please enable two factor auth asap. And btw, if you know how-to a smartphone is not a insecure surveillance device. --Steinsplitter (talk) 14:34, 25 October 2018 (UTC)
@Steinsplitter: If this browser extension works, then that is great. If you know of cellular mobiles that can overcome these shortcomings, then I am all ears. Koavf (talk) 20:09, 25 October 2018 (UTC)
@Koavf: if you want a device for 2FA that isn't a cellular mobile and uses free software then my guess is that an old non-cellular Android device would be your cheapest and best option. If you don't require free software then iPods are an option too. I have heard that Google employees who have access to Google's data center hardware use a physical device as part of their authentication, and although I don't know how it works, that makes me think that there are probably also single-purpose devices that are designed for corporate users like Google employees that would also support 2FA, but my guess is that an old non-cellular Android device would be your cheapest physical option. I haven't tried a browser plugin and I don't know how secure it would be to use one of those for 2FA, but they sound like they're worth researching. --Pine✉ 04:39, 28 October 2018 (UTC)
Thanks. Koavf (talk) 05:04, 28 October 2018 (UTC)

Bureaucrat removal[edit]

Hi all. Currently, this is one of the few wikis where bureaucrats can remove bureaucrats (see m:Bureaucrats). This was apparently done in 2010 with no community discussion presented phab:T25118.

I am not sure that this is a good idea going forward. For one, there was the security incident described above. This increases the damage that a hacked bureaucrat account can accomplish. Secondly, in the past there has not been high scrutiny of advanced permissions on this wiki - case in point, one bureaucrat was globally banned by WMF.

Thus, I am proposing that the ability to remove the bureaucrat flag is relegated to stewards. Thoughts? --Rschen7754 04:13, 17 December 2018 (UTC)

For those who aren't terribly familiar with the history, the bureaucrat rights used to be given out very freely as well, simply based on having been a trusted user elsewhere with WMF projects. This community has moved toward a much more stringent model in the past two or three years. Koavf (talk) 07:07, 17 December 2018 (UTC)
Symbol support vote.svg Support realigning permissions to align with the rest WMF policies in regards to granting/revoking rights. A compromised bureaucrat scenario doesn't look good as evidenced above. --Arseny1992 (talk) 07:47, 17 December 2018 (UTC)
Symbol support vote.svg Support It is necessary to define clearer guidelines on this subject, since currently this wiki does not have much "content" activity, but rather cleaning and administrative tasks. —AlvaroMolina (✉ - ✔) 02:56, 21 December 2018 (UTC)
Symbol support vote.svg Support Seems reasonable. Quiddity (talk) 00:44, 22 December 2018 (UTC)
Symbol support vote.svg Support Sounds reasonable. --Steinsplitter (talk) 19:25, 26 December 2018 (UTC)
Symbol oppose vote.svg Oppose Maybe I'm the odd one out, but I notice that this wiki is self-contained and does not need this 'trimming' of 'crat rights. Both reasons provided aren't enough - anyone could be affected by one (even stewards). (ping me if you need further input, thanks) Leaderboard (talk) 20:33, 29 December 2018 (UTC)

Added to Phabricator: phab:T214133 --Rschen7754 01:29, 18 January 2019 (UTC)

And done. --Rschen7754 01:24, 23 January 2019 (UTC)

Desysop request[edit]

Could a bureaucrat please desysop User:Barbara Fischer (WMDE) since they have apparently left WMDE? [2] [3] --Rschen7754 01:30, 22 January 2019 (UTC)

Why would that warrant desysopping? Koavf (talk) 04:42, 22 January 2019 (UTC)
Because they were only granted the admin privileges due to their job. Also, the account is not supposed to be used again and the sysop rights should be removed for security (unless they are re-hired, in which case the rights would be regranted). --Rschen7754 01:24, 23 January 2019 (UTC)
Makes sense. YesY Done Koavf (talk) 01:36, 23 January 2019 (UTC)

Admin request[edit]

Hello, I'm a new dashboard admin. Requesting admin access here for any useful maintenance I may come across. Xaosflux (talk) 18:26, 4 February 2019 (UTC)

@Xaosflux: Best requested over at Wikimedia:Requests for permissions. Cheers. Quiddity (talk) 07:48, 7 February 2019 (UTC)
Thanks, added there. Xaosflux (talk) 22:38, 7 February 2019 (UTC)

Bureaucrat request[edit]

Could a bureaucrat remove TA rights from User:EGalvez (WMF)? Account is globally locked. --Rschen7754 17:49, 9 February 2019 (UTC)

YesY Done Thanks! Koavf (talk) 21:19, 9 February 2019 (UTC)

User talk:Drmies[edit]

See the history: this is my main argument for declaring this whole global account stuff to be just BS, nothing but an invitation to cross-wiki vandalism. Where am I going to get this next? My talk page on the Uzbek wiki? Drmies (talk) 15:01, 11 February 2019 (UTC)

  • The piece of shit did indeed show up on the Uzbek wiki. I forgot who this jackass was--Willie on Wheels? Thanks WMF. Steward, crats, whatever, suppress please. Drmies (talk) 15:12, 11 February 2019 (UTC)
  • @Drmies: it looks like Trijnstel (talk · contribs) deleted the page. I didn't look at its contents, but I hope that this fixes the problem. If there are further issues please let us know. The Outreach admins do look at this page periodically. As an alternative to posting on this page, you can leave a message for one of us who is active on one of our talk pages. If you post here and don't get a response within a few days, or if you have an urgent request, you can ping one of the active admins to your request on this page, though please don't ping a lot of us at the same time. Best wishes, --Pine✉ 22:33, 22 February 2019 (UTC)

Video tutorial regarding Wikipedia referencing with VisualEditor[edit]

Hi, I have received a grant from WMF to support production of a video tutorial regarding creating references with VisualEditor. I anticipate that the video will be published in March 2019. Depending on funding considerations, this tutorial might be published in both English and Spanish. If this tutorial is well received then I may produce additional tutorials in the future. If you would like to receive notifications on your talk page when drafts and finished products from this project are ready for review, then please sign up for the project newsletter.
Regards, --Pine✉ 05:48, 26 February 2019 (UTC)

Wikimedia:Inactivity policy[edit]

Wikimedia:Inactivity policy

It seems that the last inactivity cleanup was done in September 2017. Maybe it is time to do another one? --Rschen7754 23:03, 10 March 2019 (UTC)

@Rschen7754: What do you propose needs changing? Koavf (talk) 06:46, 11 March 2019 (UTC)
Nothing. It's just that as it has been over a year, more users have gone inactive, so maybe it is time to do another run of the policy. --Rschen7754 07:00, 11 March 2019 (UTC)
Gotcha. Koavf (talk) 07:02, 11 March 2019 (UTC)

Note: the use of wikilinks in section headers can cause problems with navigation on mobile devices. Clicking on a table of contents item will open the page link rather than the subsection note about the page. This behaviour is sometimes inconsistent across devices. I've moved the link above out of the section markup to avoid this. Please see v:Wikiversity_talk:Manual_of_Style#Links_in_Headings --mikeu talk 14:36, 11 March 2019 (UTC)

How considerate. Thanks. Koavf (talk) 16:50, 11 March 2019 (UTC)
I wrote a script to pull the relevant usernames, https://quarry.wmflabs.org/query/34987
Username
Pharos
Kaganer
Jane023
Perohanych
Awinda
Abuse filter
Looks like @Koavf: notified them yet (E.g. here.) --Steinsplitter (talk) 14:23, 8 April 2019 (UTC)
My activity was very low in last two year (due to the heavy off-wiki workloads), but I intend to resume activity soon. --Kaganer (talk) 16:47, 8 April 2019 (UTC)
Me too. --Perohanych (talk) 19:00, 8 April 2019 (UTC)

Wikimedia brands[edit]

FYI: "Branding (summarized as name and logo associations with projects and values) is a powerful tool for simplifying our invitation and increasing the familiarity of both Wikimedia projects and our values. If we are to make Wikimedia projects the essential infrastructure of free knowledge, we need to make sure people can quickly recognize who “we” are and what the connections are between parts of our ecosystem." See meta:Communications/Wikimedia brands/2030 research and planning and participate at meta:Talk:Communications/Wikimedia brands/2030 research and planning/community review --mikeu talk 18:38, 12 March 2019 (UTC)

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