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Voting in the Movement Charter Drafting Committee election is open
Latest comment: 3 years ago5 comments5 people in discussion
Further details and voting link here. This committee will create/facilitate creation of what is essentially a new constitution for the Wikimedia movement. Voting will run until 24 October. (Disclaimer, I am a candidate, other candidates are available). The Land (talk) 11:04, 12 October 2021 (UTC)
FYI, it's nearly impossible to understand the 70 candidates without some basic tools for browsing their credentials and responses. Here are two tools to help do that, as documented on meta:
Thank you for those useful summaries. I would still urge a glance at the candidates' statements, to learn their positions on other issues voters consider important, but it would be difficult and unfair to condense that information into another column of the table. Certes (talk) 12:32, 21 October 2021 (UTC)
Desktop Improvements Call - 16:00 UTC (30 minutes from posting)
Latest comment: 3 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion
Have you noticed that some wikis have a different desktop interface? Are you curious about the next steps? Maybe you have questions or ideas regarding the design or technical matters?
Join an online meeting with the team working on the Desktop Improvements! It will take place on October 12th, 16:00 UTC on Zoom. It will last an hour. Click here to join.
The meeting will not be recorded or streamed. Notes will be taken in a Google Docs file. The presentation part (first two points in the agenda) will be given in English.
We can answer questions asked in English, French, Polish, and Spanish. If you would like to ask questions in advance, add them on the talk page or send them to sgrabarczuk@wikimedia.org.
Olga Vasileva (the team manager) will be hosting this meeting.
Latest comment: 2 years ago76 comments40 people in discussion
Cross-posting from this month's Tech News:
Last year, the Portuguese Wikipedia community embarked on an experiment to make log-in compulsory for editing. The impact report of this trial is ready. Moving forward, the Anti-Harassment Tools team is looking for projects that are willing to experiment with restricting IP editing on their wiki for a short-term experiment. Learn more.
I'm torn here. The editor/admin in me says, "Yes, please, now, if not sooner". The software engineer in me says, "This is a big change; we should roll out big changes slowly and carefully". List of Wikipedias says enwiki has 10^5 active users while ptwiki has 10^3. Making the next scale-up a factor of 100x seems aggressive. I have no idea how these other projects feel, but if one of {ru, ja, es, de, fr} went next, that would seem more prudent, as a 10x scale-up. -- RoySmith(talk)16:46, 6 September 2021 (UTC)
I agree with Roy. Running an experiment in mid-sized projects first sounds more sensible. That being said, once we know the structure of the experiment, we should discuss doing it on enwiki at some point. MarioGom (talk) 16:52, 6 September 2021 (UTC)
I also reluctantly agree. We should try definitely try it on en.wiki in the future, but seems sensible to try it on some other smaller wikis first. Joseph2302 (talk) 17:16, 6 September 2021 (UTC)
I'd say No. Preventing anonymous edits, even temporarily, is far too important a change to be done experimentally. It would be one of the biggest decisions the community has ever taken, and would certainly require consensus at a major RfC advertised with banners, etc. Certes (talk) 17:29, 6 September 2021 (UTC)
Well, at least WMF is seriously talking about this - this is a very significant step. But I agree that we are probably not a good test case, if "temporary" is all that is being offered right now. --Rschen775418:04, 6 September 2021 (UTC)
My opinion is that this is long overdue. Obviously the advantage of IP editing is its role in getting new editors in, in that people see without any hassle how easy it is to edit the encyclopedia. That's how I got roped in, certainly. But the project is very mature now, and it's much more accepted on the web generally that you have to sign up for things in order to contribute. People are used to that. And there are major problems with the IP model, including: (1) it's slightly deceptive, because as a new editor (and again, this happened to me) you imagines that you're editing Wikipedia anonymously when logged out; or at the very least that only high-powered users can see your details. But in fact, your IP address gets logged publicly and irrevocably against that edit. And yes, there is a warning box, but it could easily be missed. (2) I'm no legal expert, and no doubt the WMF have done their due diligence, but the concept of attributing a piece of text to an IP address from a copyleft point of view seems distinctly odd. IP addresses are shared and transient, and in most cases it would be near impossible to use it to identify the individual making the edits; and (3) along the same lines, IP editors are basically legal sockmasters; they can edit from any and all IP addresses in the world, and nobody is any the wiser. I apologise to any long-term IP editors who may take this as an affront to their way of life, but I think all things being equal it will be better for them to just sign up and contribute that way. All IMHO anyway. Interested to see which way this goes. — Amakuru (talk) 19:37, 6 September 2021 (UTC)
Privacy isn't an issue because masked IPs are coming. Preventing IP edits might spare WMF the considerable work of implementing masked IPs, and spare us from whatever drawbacks their chosen design might have, but privacy is happening anyway. Certes (talk) 00:18, 7 September 2021 (UTC)
@Certes: I agree, and to add to this, I really haven't seen much evidence from the WMF that masked IPs will be implemented in a way that won't significantly impact anti-vandalism efforts. Given that, I think that as long as there's first a major RfC confirming there's consensus for it, disabling anonymous editing is the best way forward here, since the WMF has stated repeatedly that IP masking is a non-optional mandate from Legal and thus keeping the status quo is simply not an option. Nathan2055talk - contribs21:51, 11 September 2021 (UTC)
I'm a strong supporter of allowing IP editing, but sticking our head in the sand is not an option. The arguments from vandalism-prevention and privacy-promotion will eventually win the day if there is no data showing benefits to IP editing. I support a short, fixed-time experiment where IP editing is disabled world-wide. Certainly no more than a week; even 31 hours may be enough to get sufficient data. User:力 (power~enwiki, π, ν) 19:40, 6 September 2021 (UTC)
Presumably the WMF will write that up in detail before the (absolutely necessary) high-profile RFC. At a high level I would want to see data regarding: change in edits reverted as vandalism, change in account signups, change in good edits from non-ECP users, change in complaints on Twitter, and change in edit rate on certain pages that generally see high IP activity (I don't have specific pages in mind but my first guess is current sports events). User:力 (power~enwiki, π, ν) 19:52, 6 September 2021 (UTC)
There is a writeup of the pt trial on meta. It's not always easy to determine what constitutes "success", but these two graphs are rather convincing: reverts dropped by about 50% and protected pages dropped by about 80%. -- RoySmith(talk)23:31, 6 September 2021 (UTC)
I agree with Roy above that enwiki should not be a test; I do, however, support forcing account creation, especially to stop masked IP editing. ― Qwerfjkltalk19:44, 6 September 2021 (UTC)
If there is to be an experiment then the success criteria should be decided in advance. All too often I have seen experiments on Wikipedia being adjudged to be successful because of the sunken costs fallacy. Phil Bridger (talk) 20:13, 6 September 2021 (UTC)
Once again, the WMF appears to assume that the communities require their permission to a) ban IP editing, b) run a trial. This harks back to WP:ACTRIAL which they blocked for SIX years under a fake premise. ACTRIAL had been carefully prepared and approved by the en.Wiki community by overwhelming consensus at series of major RfC. The success of these debates was due to careful planning and wordsmithing of neutral RfC statements prepared by a small taskforce, backed up by available stats. When it was realised that the trial could be done ourselves anyway by applying a simple local filter, and threatened to go ahead, the WMF relented and even agreed to provide further stats for the experiment, proving yet again that the English Wikipedia has far more qualified people among its ranks than the WMF and is big enough and ugly enough to make its own decisions. The rest is history. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 22:45, 6 September 2021 (UTC)
Some of the high-handed language in the WMF report is unfortunate (they will allow Portuguese Wikipedia to continue disallowing IP editing apparently), but on the whole I think it's great they are now willing to support trials of radical changes like this. We won't be able to decide whether enwiki is better or worse with anonymous editing by chewing over the same old talking points; we need hard data. – Joe (talk) 06:42, 7 September 2021 (UTC)
Like I said, because you obviously missed it Joe Roe, the WMF is too big for its boots. They do not give the communities 'permission ' to do anything. The communities are the bosses, not the WMF, and the communities should assert themselves. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 09:45, 7 September 2021 (UTC)
I'm sorry but the graphs posted here are just dumb, and an example of confirmation bias at best. What we need in contrast to this are graphs that show the percentage of good edits by IPs and editors before and after the trial, absolute numbers corresponding to the same and then compare them with the revert/page protection figures. What we need to know is where it hurts, not the obvious implications that reverts and page protects dropped (since IP-related edits construe the most of both of these actions). To clarify, I'm not implying fault on the poster but presenting these graphs without context as to what the relevant information is would mislead the general community. --qedk (t愛c)15:25, 7 September 2021 (UTC)
We need to do [[A/B_testing]] to test randomly how many people don't bother to edit if they are given no choice but become and editor.
At each step do [[A/B_testing]]; user chooses to edit, sees different versions of the warning message ( "You are not logged in. Your IP address will be publicly visible if you make any edits. If you log in or create an account, your edits will be attributed to a username, among other benefits."), how many give up, how many get reverted or marked as a vandal,etc), same IP address that starts to edit and quits a few times before coming back etc. We also need to do the same for long term IP address users to explain the risk
Also as I suspect 15 year olds are many of our vandals, trying stopping anonymous edits at peak vandalism for different countries.
In all honesty I think we will find little change, and reduced vandalism. The reason why people are choosing anonymous is not because they are concerned about privacy, it is because it has the lowest friction. If we offered open id/google/microsoft/facebook etc links then our number of editors might increase.
Any further discussions about IP editing must also take into account that WMF planned to mask IP editing. I have done a mini-research last month about IP editing, and in my opinion, we still need IP editing. And even if we decided to disallow IP editing, what kind of registration do we like? Do we want confirmation of email address? Or we just allow sign up without email address? How about temporary email? Do we allow usage of them? How hard/simple the registration will be? The discussion about IP editing is a long-winded one, and we shouldn't concern only about the edits themselves, but also the registration, if we choose to mandate it.
My question would be the desired benefit from this. I'm going to guess it's related to vandals and sockpuppetry. I got sucked into watching for socks in India/Pakistan film and television related articles a few years ago where there are several highly active socks who frankly don't care one way or the other. They create accounts when needed, use IP's when they feel like it. This change would make them create more accounts, which means SPI will get even more reports and more of a backlog. Unless this change would also require an email address and the account confirmed from that email address, I don't see how this will do much to stop or significantly slow down the more dedicated socks and vandals. Drive-by vandalism would slow a lot, but anything else I question. Ravensfire (talk) 18:09, 8 September 2021 (UTC)
It is true that socks create accounts willy-nilly. But, at least that gives us some clues about which edits were done by the same person, and a useful target to block. I don't get the logic behind This change would make them create more accounts, which means SPI will get even more reports and more of a backlog. That's like saying stores shouldn't install security cameras because it would catch more shoplifters and make more work for the courts. -- RoySmith(talk)18:58, 8 September 2021 (UTC)
My thought there (and from dealing with another Bttowadch range) is that I generally don't bring IP's to SPI without a named account also existing. If I do, it's either a very static IP or a range that recent activity (3-4 months minimum) is substantially all from the sock. With IP masking, my ability as a normal editor to identify those ranges is gone. If you now eliminate the IP editing, that means a lot of sock accounts created. There are times that an SPI report sits for 7+ days because there isn't enough of you all already (please don't take that as anything bad about the folks working SPI, ya'll frankly rock on a task that can be disheartening at times). I worry that's going to get worse. Ravensfire (talk) 13:56, 9 September 2021 (UTC)
I agree that enwiki should eventually sign on, but as RoySmith says we should not be the next in line to "try it out". Work out the kinks on projects that aren't the largest in the portfolio first. As for protecting "anonymous editing" that's becoming more and more of a red herring: the only way to edit truly anonymously is by creating an account. If you have an account we will bend over backwards to safeguard your connection info from becoming public, but if you don't create an account and edit "anonymously" we will paste your IP address right next to each and every edit you make. Ivanvector's squirrel (trees/nuts) 18:48, 8 September 2021 (UTC)
Remember that we are the free encyclopaedia that anyone can edit - not the encyclopaedia that only registered editors can edit. Bear in mind that registering an account takes time (you have to stop editing the page, go to the registration form, complete and submit it, and then go back to the page) - that will for sure stop casual vandals, but it also stops good-faith editors who just want to fix something. There's definite confirmation bias going on here. Sure, making editor IP addresses public is problematic - but that's already being fixed separately within MediaWiki, so it's a separate problem from whether IPs should be allowed to edit. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 19:08, 8 September 2021 (UTC)
So the developers streamline the registration process so it can be completed without navigating away from the page. Plenty of web sites with much smaller budgets than the WMF have figured that one out. - MrOllie (talk) 19:11, 8 September 2021 (UTC)
What will a potential recruit do when their attempt to publish their first edit pops up a registration form? My reaction would probably have been to abandon any attempt to contribute, mumbling "fix your own bloody encyclopaedia then". Certes (talk) 19:21, 8 September 2021 (UTC)
Simplifying the registration form per the suggestion by @MrOllie: makes sense ('Do you want to continue editing and expose your IP address, or quickly register a pseudonym') - but the response by @Certes: about then abandoning the edit given the complication also makes sense. It's a trade-off, but in general I think we should err on the side of enabling more editors. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 19:35, 8 September 2021 (UTC)
'Do you want to continue editing and expose your IP address, or quickly register a pseudonym?' seems a very reasonable question (until IPs get masked). However, 'Do you want to register or go away?', even if more delicately phrased, sounds less encouraging. Certes (talk) 23:46, 8 September 2021 (UTC)
First and foremost (i.e. WP:5P1), we are an encyclopedia. Anything which detracts from achieving that must be subordinated to the primary goal. And there's nothing in "anyone can edit" which implies "anyone can edit without registering". We have lots of requirements. We require that everybody use https. We require that editors not share their passwords. We require that editors not use their user page to sell illegal drugs. And a bunch of other things. All of these in some way place restrictions on "everyone may edit". Requiring that you register wouldn't be any different. -- RoySmith(talk)00:13, 9 September 2021 (UTC)
Just saying, if we're all in a running trials kind of mood, we could... actually try IP masking and see if the parade of horribles actually turns up, before we try pulling up the drawbridge entirely. Opabinia regalis (talk) 19:32, 8 September 2021 (UTC)
@Opabinia regalis: The problem with that is that implementing IP masking, even on a trial basis, would still require a series amount of development work from the WMF, which could be instead put toward fixing more critical issues like WP:THEYCANTHEARYOU, while disabling IP editing completely is a single configuration switch on the backend. I also have pretty significant concerns about the WMF testing code and/or plugins on production wikis, since they don't exactly have a great track record with their previous testing programs. Notably, Flow, a talk page plugin that has been all but abandoned by the WMF in favor of the newer talk page initiative, is still installed on Commons despite an RfC to remove it following the conclusion of its trial, since the WMF was unwilling to have old Flow-based talk pages linked in logs go to 404 messages, and was also unwilling to spend any developer time making a clean uninstall script or some other workaround to fix that issue; IIRC there's even still an open Fabricator ticket to fix it that of course hasn't been touched in like five years.
The point is; if there's a simple solution that doesn't have that many drawbacks, is shown to be supported by the majority of editors, and only requires a single setting change and no custom code from the WMF, and on top of all of that is likely to seriously reduce the load on the anti-vandalism teams, it seems like that's the option we should be working towards as opposed to the "half-measure" of implementing masked IPs that is, at least as of now, believed to come with a serious set of drawbacks and new problems that we'll need to work around. Nathan2055talk - contribs22:09, 11 September 2021 (UTC)
@Nathan2055: As far as I understand, the WMF is going to put in that work to implement IP masking either way, so we might as well try it for a bit once it's finished. If it's fine, great. If it isn't, we can still flip that single configuration switch. – Rummskartoffel11:44, 13 September 2021 (UTC)
I agree with one of the comments above that a decrease in reverts and page protects is merely an expected result, although they’re still useful as a measure of the change in moderation workload. We also already have a measurement for "good" edits (the number or fraction of non-reverted edits), which is probably one of the better approximations we are likely to get. The relevant question is the comparison between the two.
One way to frame this to ask about how much we care about the total number of good edits, compared to the average quality of edits, and (since it is virtually guaranteed that these will point in different directions) to what degree we are willing to sacrifice one in favor of the other. This is probably where setting a threshold of action ahead of time would be the most valuable. If I were doing the analysis, I think I would create a summary measurement "reverts per good edit" - i.e. a value of 10 would mean we have 10 reverted edits for every good edit, and a value of 0.1 would mean we have 1 reverted edit for every 10 good edits – which would be a direct measurement of the cost-benefit ratio (at least for these specific costs and benefits). The information for this should already be in the data, so it could to be calculated for the existing dataset as well.
Another relevant point is that any comparison between IPs and registered users based on number of edits assumes that those edits have the same average quality, which may or may not be the case. One option would be to weight by the absolute number of characters added or removed (in other words, the measurement of "quality" would be the amount of content changed by the edit), which would be an imperfect measurement although I don’t have any better alternative coming to mind right now. Sunrise(talk)22:51, 8 September 2021 (UTC)
I agree that the drop in reverts and page protects, by themselves, are not enough to prove this is what we want. As an extreme example, we could reduce reverts and protects to zero by disabling all editing. I put those results into the category of "That's encouraging; this definitely deserves a closer look".
Some of the costs of IP editing are harder to quantify. There's a huge amount of effort by editors and admins that goes into fighting spam, vandalism, and other non-productive editing. I'd certainly rather be writing DYKs and GAs, but SPI keeps dragging me back in.
Not to mention WMF developer time that goes into developing code to manage IPs. Sadly, it appears that IP masking is already a sunk cost (or at least committed to be), but consider what other improvements could be made if the effort that's going into to could be put to improving the system in other ways. What's your favorite feature request that's not getting done because there's nobody to work on it? -- RoySmith(talk)13:31, 9 September 2021 (UTC)
We are now to a point on the internet that if you want to participate anywhere, you create an account to do so. I don't see why this is such a hurdle. RickinBaltimore (talk) 11:27, 9 September 2021 (UTC)
Just because it is how it is =/= how it should be. The ideal internet is where there is no identity or trust involved, the primary reason why registration has been required is because of a) data collection, primarily, b) lock-in, secondarily and in a very side effect kind of way, c) control malicious actors. Think of how many fake accounts a social media platform typically has, there is nothing stopping bad actors from running rampant after creating accounts, in fact, the things that prevent those are hardblocks, autoblocks and account creation blocks, all of which rely on the fact that we know their IP addresses. --qedk (t愛c)14:10, 12 September 2021 (UTC)
Sure, but one of the fundamental features of Wikipedia is that it has full attribution on its edits. As such, identity is a key facet of editing and it simply isn't good enough to rely on a transient IP for that, any more than it is good enough to allow open proxies to edit. Trust is also a factor, because bad actors do exist, and nobody's proposing the hiding of IP addresses from the software and advanced users, only that you won't be able to perform an edit under that handle. — Amakuru (talk) 14:36, 12 September 2021 (UTC)
QEDK, concepts of "trust" and "identity" are essential parts of what makes Wikipedia work. (I don't know how or why Wikipedia works, but I know that much. I also know that I'm not disagreeing with you ... you're making a technical point I think, and I'm making a point about our cultural values.) - Dank (push to talk) 14:56, 12 September 2021 (UTC)
I doubt the purpose of registration is for data collection or lock-in, one would think it's clearly for the sake of better attribution. Also, hardblocks and account creation blocks can both work with IP editing disabled. – SD0001 (talk) 06:59, 13 September 2021 (UTC)
I have long defended IP editing, partly because it is probably how I started, and partly becaues Pre Covid I would make IP edits while on unsafe WiFi such as in airports. However I have read meta:IP Editing: Privacy Enhancement and Abuse Mitigation/Impact report for Login Required Experiment on Portuguese Wikipedia and been converted. We should trial this on EN wikipedia and see if we get the same benefits including fewer admin actions needed. If we can't persuade more people to run for RFA we need to reduce the admin workload, and stopping IP editing seems to do that. I agree that with spam and similar problems now would also be a time to require email for account creation, but not for people who's IP's geolocate to countries whose governments have tried to restrict Wikipedia. ϢereSpielChequers12:42, 13 September 2021 (UTC)
@WereSpielChequers: I seriously respect your opinion, given your long-term involvement with the Wikimedia projects, and also your endorsement of IP editing and simplified RFA procedures that I've seen for a long time now (and I was thoroughly convinced that you were thinking in the right way when I heard you talk about both these issues at past wikimeets). So your statement here seriously makes me stop and rethink this issue. In part, it seems like an 'if we can't do A, then let's stop B' kind of position - wouldn't it be better if we could get people through RfA more easily, rather than blocking IP editing? But you've worked on simplifying RfA for so long, perhaps if even you are giving way here, perhaps we should consider the alternative? But then, what do we gain here - half the reverts, and half the blocking workload - but no clear statistics for the number of positive edits? Maybe 'non-reverted' is a good metric, but the fluctuations are an order of magnitude more than the 'reverted' stastics? What impact does this have on the ethics of the community, rather than its workload? Thanks for thinking about this. Mike Peel (talk) 21:53, 13 September 2021 (UTC)
Thanks Mike, yes there is an element of pragmatism, fixing RFA is very hard, and reducing the admin workload may be a better approach. But there is also the issue of being willing to change your mind if the facts change. I did not expect the Portuguese language IP ban to have as good a set of results as it has done, and while I would like to see longer term results, short term has been good. As for ethics, we have an obligation to protect those members of the community who get targeted for harassment, and an IP ban is one way to do that. The other ethical issue is that we have huge skews as to where in the world we have editors. An IP ban that switched off IP editing in the parts of the world where we already have significant numbers of editors, but allowed IP editing in countries where we most need new editors would be an interesting exercise to preferentially recruit where we most lack editors. ϢereSpielChequers10:33, 16 September 2021 (UTC)
This is an interesting idea but I can imagine it backfiring and making IP editors even more maligned than they already are. This isn't always the case, but I tend to associate IP editors from these countries with spam and seemingly good-faith but very misguided efforts to improve Wikipedia. I don't think IP editing is a good recruitment tool because of the communication problems involved. There's also the problem that IP's outside of North America/Europe tend to be very dynamic in my experience (more so than those in countries with high editing rates), making it harder to track miscreants down and effectively deal with them. Graham8713:15, 17 September 2021 (UTC)
It also raises a couple of other questions. Firstly, is it fair to introduce positive discrimination by this back door rather than on its own merits after proper discussion? Secondly, how will mobile IP editors react, especially those using the app, given the difficulty of notifying them what's happening? Certes (talk) 13:30, 17 September 2021 (UTC)
To answer Graham87's point, by leaving IP editing as a possibility in parts of the world which we underrepresent, we aren't likely to increase our problems in those areas, rather reduce the amount of dodgy editing by IPs in UK, and US anda few other countries. To answer Certes point, perhaps it is positive discrimination, is that a problem? Happy to discuss that if others think the idea might fly. However I have a suspicion that the trolling and really nasty stuff is predominately from privileged kids in parental basements, if it turns out that the worst we get from Nigeria and India is spam then maybe we should not think of this as positive discrimination, and instead think of it as an extension of range blocking. Country wide range blocking in countries where IPs harass editors. ϢereSpielChequers18:47, 24 September 2021 (UTC)
@WereSpielChequers and others; I am only an occasional contributor but I agree that banning IP editing makes a lot of sense also because many IP vandals are people who:
- are too young to understand and to accept the responsability for what they are doing (just think about a bored young teenager that is editing an article from his/her smartphone);
- are maybe a bit out of mind (because they are high, drunken, etc.);
- are focused on annoying targets, such as the arbitrary deletion of portions of text from serious/long articles because they think that long articles should fit into the screens of their micro smartphones (because less is more), etc.;
- have not enough knowledge about what they are writing about.
Maybe talk page could be left open to IP (masked) editing; even better would be to reserve a new visitor talk page reserved for IP users so that they can write comments or report about imprecisions / errors found in article page.
In any case, if wikipedia is aiming to improve the average quality of its articles then it should add a minimal filter to the contributors and this filter is the account because an account can be blocked / banned, etc. for reasons based on facts (repeated harms to articles, etc.). Reviewers should spent less time in fighting vandalism and more in making constructive comments about the quality of articles.Ade56facc13:10, 10 November 2021 (UTC)
I commented five years ago now about planning for a post-admin era on Wikipedia. Bit by bit, that reality is coming true. Whatever reforms have been attempted on RfA, WSC's very helpful (if depressing) table at WP:RBM shows they've not been able to increase the numbers of successful RfAs over the last ten years. In fact, it's the opposite. If the current trend continues for another ten years, the number of successful RfAs in a given year may drop to zero. This is part of the product lifecycle. Either we plan for it, or we're doomed. One way to help soften the blow is to reduce current admin workload. There are a variety of ways to do this. To name a few; reduce the amount of continued vandalism by IPs and bad faith accounts is one. Imagine a world where ClueBot can block, and not just based on edits but also on filter logs. That needs to happen in some form. Another method is to analyze processes admins have to follow to conduct admin functions and streamline those processes that are the biggest time sinks. Another is automatic page protections for articles where there is a high rate of vandalism or reversions as determined by ClueBot. I could go on for a while here. What has to happen, whether we like it or not, is for the project to become increasingly protectionist of its existing content. Honestly, this more abstract discussion likely needs to be done elsewhere. --Hammersoft (talk) 14:21, 17 September 2021 (UTC)
The bar for RfA has risen steadily, predictably increasing quality but decreasing quantity. I can't deny that having too few good admins is better than having too many bad ones. I wonder if there are more ways to delegate carefully selected admin-type work to experienced editors who wouldn't pass RfA because they are competent in some but not all areas. Certes (talk) 23:23, 18 September 2021 (UTC)
I think I may be a little unique in that I first registered an account because for some reason (very likely my computer illiteracy) I was unable to edit unregistered. I don't think asking people to spend 15 seconds registering completely anonymously is going to see droves of potential editors be turned away. I await further analysis of other wiki's trials, but I think this is something we here should trial soon. Cavalryman (talk) 01:08, 23 September 2021 (UTC).
Can we throttle, but not block? If WereSpielChequers' comment above is correct that it's mostly an admin resources issue, then some sort of throttling of IP contributions would reduce admin resources required, while still allowing IP editing in some form. Time-based throttling might restrict when (think alternate side parking rules) and ID-based throttling might restrict who (even IPs on M,W,F, odds on Tu-Th-Sa). Measurements taken after some elapsed interval would allow fine-tuning of the throttling needed to achieve a desired end. Mathglot (talk) 18:28, 24 September 2021 (UTC)
IP Editing and IP Masking
User:RoySmith wrote that turning off IP editing is a major change that should be rolled out gradually, and in particular tried on one or more of the second-tier encyclopedias before being implemented on the English Wikipedia. I agree. However, I have a question as to what is the status of IP masking? IP masking is, in my opinion, a more disruptive experiment than turning off IP editing. I think that there is consensus that IP masking should be delayed and fought. So my recommendation is that if we have the choice of IP masking or no IP editing, no IP editing is a less disruptive experiment. Turning off IP editing should be tried on other wikis first, unless the WMF decides to implement IP masking, which will complicate control of vandalism. It will also have no benefit except to IP editors who want to maintain privacy without using a pseudonym, and they can get the same benefit by using a pseudonym. IP addresses have always been masked for registered editors.
I oppose banning VPN IPs: Criminal prosecution concerns and worse
I see in this effort to ban IPs a purely utilitarian move, completely disregarding principles of privacy and open access for all. In the last decade or so, a worrying trend has manifested itself in the so called Free World in the increase of monitoring and restriction of online activities. This has resulted in police showing up at people's homes to chat with them regarding their online publications, warn them, or even arrest them. I have to bring the case of Pierre-sur-Haute military radio station, where the French government "forced Rémi Mathis, a volunteer administrator of the French-language Wikipedia, and president of Wikimedia France, under threat of detention and arrest, into deleting the article". In the worst cases, people can get murdered because of things they write online. Because of these concerns and given the track record of 20 years of Wikipedia being a completely open platform to edit without tracking people via registering accounts, I oppose banning anonymous IPs from editing. Edit: I have been pointed out the obvious, that an IP directs law enforcement to the location of the user. Got it, I got myself a little confused. I was probably trying to think of an anonymous IP that uses VPN. But certainly, editors below have a point about non-anonymized IP being a danger to their owners. Thinker78 (talk) 17:58, 10 October 2021 (UTC)
As editing as an IP exposes an editor's location so that anyone has a good idea of where you are - isn't the converse true? At least logged in editing gives some degree of obscuration of your loacation>Nigel Ish (talk) 18:19, 10 October 2021 (UTC)
It may be more than "a good idea of where you are". Depending on your ISP's logging practices, and how willing they are to divulge the content of their logs to law enforcement (possibly under duress), your IP may well locate you to a specific residence, or a specific mobile device. Of course, WMF logs can (within limits, and via controlled access) map logged-in edits to IP addresses, but it's another layer that needs to be pierced. -- RoySmith(talk)18:51, 10 October 2021 (UTC)
I also oppose banning IPs. I'm not convinced that editing as an IP is more private, though it may become so if masking is forced upon us. My main argument is that the thrill of seeing one's first IP edit go live is a big incentive to continue contributing, usually though not necessarily as a registered editor. Of course, making that first edit from an account would be equally effective, but less likely to happen if an additional registration hurdle has to be jumped. I realise that hurdle is a low one in Wikipedia's case, but many of us have a more general distrust of registration based on other sites which demand our phone number, credit card details and grandfather's inside leg measurement before granting access. Certes (talk) 22:22, 10 October 2021 (UTC)
(Added after the heading changed from "IPs" to "VPN IPs":) I can see the logic in banning VPN IPs, as they allow a vandal to evade blocks by changing address frequently. In a perfect world where all edits were constructive, we would allow them, but in practice I must sadly exclude VPNs from my comments above. Certes (talk) 09:54, 11 October 2021 (UTC)
@Certes My first few edits were anonymous :-) And it was a thrill.
Did WMF a reason give for not wanting IP? Is it legal, reputational, or because of the amount of editing resources it takes to fix? And are there stats on how many editors are anonymous in the long term? Wakelamp d[@-@]b (talk) 12:23, 4 November 2021 (UTC)
I'm pretty sure that the WMF doesn't want to ban unregistered edits, but the reaction by many volunteer editors to their insistence on introducing IP masking to hide the editor's IP address has been that it will be very difficult to hold back the tide of vandalism without this information. Phil Bridger (talk) 14:26, 4 November 2021 (UTC)
I [mis]interpreted "not wanting IP" as "not wanting IP addresses to be displayed unmasked". I wasn't commenting on the WMF's stance on whether to allow unregistered editors at all. I hope they recognise the decision as one for the project communities rather than the WMF. Certes (talk) 14:33, 4 November 2021 (UTC)
Here's a couple of thoughts prompted by the most recent comments in this thread.
The desire by some people to forbid IP editing on enwiki predates the whole IP masking thing. But, the impending implementation of masking has certainly brought this to the forefront of discussion and probably won over some people who resisted the idea before.
As for the WMF, my reading of their stance is that they are not happy with the idea of a community banning IP editing, and believe it is ultimately their decision whether to ban IP or not. That being said, if there were to be a properly run and well-attended RFC on enwiki which resulted in a clear statement that the enwiki community wants to ban all IP editing, I believe the WMF would acquiesce. -- RoySmith(talk)14:47, 4 November 2021 (UTC)
I think it would avoid any ambiguity if people would recognise that all edits (with the possible, but unlikely, exception of some changes by developers from terminals directly connected to the servers) are IP edits. What matters is whether the editor is registered or not, and whether their IP address is available to most people. IP addresses, although potentially obfuscated by proxies/VPNs, are available to the servers for all edits including ones from registered users, and can thus potentially be passed to law enforcement agencies. Phil Bridger (talk) 16:33, 4 November 2021 (UTC)
What does "directly connected to the servers" mean? In the primordial days of computing, computers had serial ports by which terminals were "directly connected". Such things haven't existed since dinosaurs roamed the earth. I can't remember the last time I connected to a server by anything other than ssh or the like.
But, yes, you are correct. Every edit to wikipedia, whether "anonymous" or "logged in to an account" is logged somewhere along along with your IP address, and we depend on the integrity of WMF to determine who has access to that log data. For that matter, the same is true when connecting over an "anonymizing proxy". You are exposing your IP address to whoever is running the proxy service, and counting on them to safeguard that information. If I walk into a Starbucks and jump on their open WiFi, how do I know that Starbucks isn't logging my laptop's MAC address and cross-checking Apple's manufacturing and sales records to see who bought that machine? I don't for sure, but at some point you have to draw a line somewhere and say, "Beyond this I'm just being paranoid". -- RoySmith(talk)17:16, 4 November 2021 (UTC)
Movement Charter Drafting Committee election
Latest comment: 2 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Irregularities I think could occur in a few areas
1/ Non-Editors (such as Foundation staff, external developers etc) can vote and could sway and there no is visibility of how many or for which candidate they voted.
2/ Audit. Statistics on irregular votes are not advised (votes are checked in the one week between the vote being complete and the announcement) and voters do not get confirmation of their vote.
3/ Group voting: Votes by Language edition or editor type were not advised for each candidate
4/ STV manipulation. STV voting only changed the vote for 4th place, But there are issues if
Electors don't know enough candidates. The record in Australia is 110 candidates for 6 positions. And in our case this is made worse as there is no visibility of candidates for re-election performance.
No criteria for a significant number of supporters to nominate a candidate.
Low voter turnout. STV has not changed turnout, but voter confusion from some countries was reported as STV was unknown
Latest comment: 2 years ago5 comments3 people in discussion
I remember reading recently that the WMF is about to add temporary advertisements to Wikipedia pages, soliciting donations to the WMF, but I can't find the announcement anywhere. Please does anyone have a link? Thanks, Certes (talk) 12:13, 8 November 2021 (UTC)
I think that there are people at the WMF who may get a bit touchy about the word "advertisements", although it seems accurate to me. Don't expect any response to that here any time soon, because everyone there seems reluctant to say anything unless it has gone through all the relevant subcommittees and been signed in triplicate - any commercial organisation working at the WMF's pace would go bust before anyone could say anything. Phil Bridger (talk) 19:17, 8 November 2021 (UTC)
I don't intend to reply here or at WP:VPM, but I've followed the useful link in that announcement to m:Talk:Fundraising and had my say there. As you say, we're not listened to, but I'm not going to let that keep me quiet! Certes (talk) 19:22, 8 November 2021 (UTC)
New IP Masking implementation updates available
Latest comment: 2 years ago27 comments14 people in discussion
We have new information on IP Masking for you. Thank you for being patient as the project unfolds.
IP masking hides the IP addresses of unregistered editors on Wikimedia projects, fully or partially, from everyone except those who need access to fight spam, vandalism, harassment and disinformation.
So far, we have had conversations on why we are masking IPs and the tools you will need to continue fighting abuse. What is up next is, we want to share with you details about the implementation itself.
This update answers some likely questions you may have about who gets to view IP addresses and the various IP Masking implementation approaches and how each of them will impact the communities.
Alternatively, we could save ourselves the trouble and just ban IP editing. Or do nothing until a few other wikis have tested this. —Kusma (talk) 15:33, 15 November 2021 (UTC)
Quote from the linked page All users with accounts over a certain age and with a minimum number of edits (to be determined) will be able to access partially unmasked IPs without permission. This means an IP address will appear with its tail octet(s) – the last parts – hidden. This will be accessible via a preference where they agree not to share it with others who don't have access to this information. How is the last bit to be governed? Locally or by T&S. And what are the sanctions for disclosing an IP address to another? Blocking, removal of the right? Sounds like a bureaucratic nightmare whichever way. Nthep (talk) 16:00, 15 November 2021 (UTC)
I guess removal of the right. I can imagine an office ban if the individual was disclosing a lot of personal information before getting caught, but this is not our business.--Ymblanter (talk) 22:25, 15 November 2021 (UTC)
This is a very strange criteria. Surely most editors at some point "fight spam, vandalism, harassment and disinformation"? These are quite basic editing tasks. If IP masking is going to make this basic stuff more difficult, the user right should require a very low bar. CMD (talk) 15:25, 15 November 2021 (UTC)
Autoconfirmed? (A significantly higher bar than the one we currently have, and I still don't know what problem we're trying to solve, so I will assume that raising the bar to that level will be enough). —Kusma (talk) 15:34, 15 November 2021 (UTC)
It says "Editors who partake in anti-vandalism activities, as vetted by the community, can be granted a right to see IP addresses to continue their work. This could be handled in a similar manner as adminship on our projects. The community approval is important to ensure that only editors who truly need this access can get it. The editors will need to have an account that is at least a year old and have at least 500 edits." @STei (WMF), I don't know if you are aware, but "in a similar manner to adminship" on this wiki means "editors will have to submit to a deeply unpleasant process in order to be allowed to volunteer for more work". It sounds like it might be hard to recruit people for this, and it is also amazingly complicated, all for a total of zero known advantages for us over the current situation. Currently I'm not interested in helping with this. —Kusma (talk) 17:50, 2 December 2021 (UTC)
So if this gets implemented, it will be punishable to ask for a rangeblock of a named range anywhere on Wikipedia? WP:AIV will be halved? WP:SPI will need to go behind a curtain? Fram (talk) 16:03, 15 November 2021 (UTC)
@STei (WMF):, as a note, you really shouldn't say clearly incorrect statements like So far, we have had conversations on why we are masking IPs. That suggests both clarity and a two-way process. The WMF had a conversation, then ignored it, and now is in a willfully vague position on its reasoning. Now that poor behaviour has been apologised for by @Johan (WMF):, but not by anyone from Legal who were the actually responsible group for all those issues. It may even be necessary, but definitely don't state that it is something positive (a conversation) that it clearly was not. Nosebagbear (talk) 15:55, 18 November 2021 (UTC)
Indeed. I have no idea why IPs should be masked (all I know is that if there is a legal requirement to do so, we won't be told what it is), so I don't know how well they need to be masked, and so it is pointless to talk to me about the processes involved in the masking and unmasking. —Kusma (talk) 17:53, 2 December 2021 (UTC)
I can imagine a {{#IP:Anon1234}} magic word that wraps a specific user's IP in whatever magic the WMF is going to use to make our other IPs (un)hideable such that we can talk about it directly. STei (WMF) might be wise to look at that in continuing discussions. Izno (talk) 00:32, 25 November 2021 (UTC)
Forgive me, I don't understand your suggestion. When you say "our other IPs" do you mean if the editor returns to edit with a new IP? STei (WMF) (talk) 13:39, 1 December 2021 (UTC)
@STei (WMF): Much of what has been discussed has probably been discussing history pages and similar, which is what "our other IPs" refers to. However, we will likely need a way to talk directly about specific IPs in wikitext, and the only way to do that without stating the IP directly is some kind of magic word to wrap the unregistered's public display name, which the parser subsequently outputs with the same supporting machinery as in those other lists like the history page. IznoPublic (talk) 15:41, 5 December 2021 (UTC)
Maintaining recognizability of IP ranges
@STei (WMF):, thank you for this update. I looked at implementation options concerning the hash implementation, and I have the following question: how will I be able to continue to recognize edits coming from a range of IPs that may represent the same user?
One of the basic features of a hash algorithm, is that it turns adjacent plaintext values into completely different (non-adjacent) hashed values. At first blush, this would seem to destroy my ability to recognize an editor who is popping up in a defined range of IP addresses. To give you something concrete to look at, please see the information about a block-evading sock and IP user at this UTP section. Going forward, how will I be able to recognize edits from all these IP users if they are hashed? Perhaps "181.26.8.76" might get hashed to "User:ca1f46" (stealing your example), but "181.26.9.225" might get hashed to "User:xuw99". This may hurt my ability to recognize block-evading indeffed IP user, and leave those articles more apt to be vandalized.
What assurance can you offer that there will be tools available to be able to continue as before? I should note that my vandalism-fighting activity is probably less than 10% of my activity. Should I just give it up, and concentrate on my other activities? Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 08:47, 25 November 2021 (UTC)
On the matter of tools, how do you feel about about the IP Info Feature? Does it look like something that'll help your work? It's one of the tools Product would want to support the communities with. STei (WMF) (talk) 14:17, 6 December 2021 (UTC)
I continue to bang on about solutions such as Crypto-PAn but no one responds. If the WMF deploy this, we'll be able to continue fighting vandalism. If not, they'll have to spend some of their huge surplus on paying someone to do the job instead. Their choice. Certes (talk) 12:26, 25 November 2021 (UTC)
"they'll have to spend some of their huge surplus on paying someone to do the job instead." They won't. That leaves us with the only option of banning IP editing outright. Headbomb {t · c · p · b}16:47, 5 December 2021 (UTC)
A few libel cases, which would have been avoided under the current system, might focus some minds on vandal prevention being a wise investment. Certes (talk) 19:58, 5 December 2021 (UTC)
STei (WMF), it's either happening or it isn't. If it's planned to be introduced at some point after the implementation of IP masking, it's safest to consider it as "not happening" as developers tend to follow Valve Time. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 14:18, 6 December 2021 (UTC)
Mathglot, STei (WMF), if edits from similar ranges can't be identified as such without special permissions I'm inclined to prefer banning IP-editing outright. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 17:05, 5 December 2021 (UTC)
Is there an outline of how a user with suitable rights would see an IP? If I see dubious edits from User:ca1f46 and also from User:dbe591, would I have to think that the edits looked similar and would need to click an extra button on ca1f46 to see the IP and a similar button on dbe591? Would I be able to copy the IPs from the same window (one copy of the two IPs for a range-checking tool)? Anything complicated is going to end up with anon users being blocked for a month or more for trivial problems because mucking around for trolls leads to burn out—a small amount of effort from a bored kid would require ten times the effort from an admin to handle in a provably "correct" way. Johnuniq (talk) 00:41, 7 December 2021 (UTC)
User confused by sandbox
Latest comment: 2 years ago6 comments4 people in discussion
What else could we do? In order to put those changes in, this editor would have had to press a button marked "Publish changes". I don't think we could be more clear than the word "Publish" that when you do that, you are making something available to public view. SeraphimbladeTalk to me21:53, 5 December 2021 (UTC)
This problem, insofar as it exists, isn't specific to sandboxes. It says above the Publish button that By publishing changes... you irrevocably agree to release your contribution... Could that be clearer? (Not a rhetorical question.) Certes (talk) 22:38, 5 December 2021 (UTC)
Certes, apparently, yes. Some people seem to have the impression that the sandbox is a special page. It is linked in the menu after all, like other special pages like your user and user talk page, watchlist and contributions. And the watchlist is private, so why wouldn't the sandbox be? (I'm not saying it should be, but I could follow the logic and an edit notice seems like a reasonable option) — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 22:44, 5 December 2021 (UTC)
@Alexis Jazz: A namespace wide editnotice sounds like a reasonable idea to me. How about a message to the effect of "Your user space is public and pages you create here can be viewed and modified by others. Pages containing copyright violations, promotional material or hoaxes may be deleted."? I agree this is a recurring problem, I remember seeing someone at the teahouse a few months ago who had put their personal information in their sandbox on the assumption that it was private. 192.76.8.80 (talk) 17:37, 10 December 2021 (UTC)
Everipedia violates Wikipedia's free license
Latest comment: 2 years ago12 comments7 people in discussion
Everipedia's attribution of Wikipedia in 2017 (missing required license info)Attribution in 2018 (seems acceptable)Attribution in 2021
Ah shit, here we go again. Everipedia. They've been slapped on the wrist about poor attribution in the past. In 2017 their attribution was just "The original version of this page is from Wikipedia, you can edit the page right here on Everipedia". After a slap on the wrist they added "Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license"
It seems they've moved the attribution to a reference – number 41 on their version of Clarabelle Cow. – Joe (talk) 12:37, 29 November 2021 (UTC)
Joe Roe, um, oh, but that doesn't even show unless you press "Show all citations" to uncollapse the list. (so I missed it) And it's hidden in a long list of references, the place you copied the article from would not commonly be called a "reference". This attribution isn't even remotely "reasonable to the medium". And 4.a ("You must include a copy of, or the Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) for, this License with every copy of the Work You Distribute or Publicly Perform.") isn't met at all. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 13:30, 29 November 2021 (UTC)
Because we own our added content - not the WMF (a rare case for websites, but in almost all cases a good thing!), I suspect their response will be something like "sorry, we know this is annoying, we can't take any action, we suggest you reach out to them etc etc etc". Do Everipedia have a legal contact address? Nosebagbear (talk) 14:06, 2 December 2021 (UTC)
Their Terms of Service provide their designated copyright agent but also make clear that they're operating under a CC4 license which (IANAL) seems like would be sufficient to meet their obligations even if they don't broadcast it as far and wide as we do. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 16:28, 2 December 2021 (UTC)
I distinctly remember that there were certain incompatibilities between CC-BY-SA 4.0 and our licence, but I wouldn't know if that means that they cannot copy out content. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 16:45, 2 December 2021 (UTC)
Barkeep49, it's worse than I thought! So they changed the license. CC BY-SA (our license) requires derivative works to be licensed under the same or a compatible license. CC BY is simply not possible. (also, while IANAL, me and Legal tend to agree a lot and I don't believe a footnote in the ToS would ever constitute "any reasonable manner based on the medium") Also, when a user registers on Everipedia and edits an article they are not informed in any sufficiently clear way that their contribution will be published with either CC BY or BY-SA. Something hidden in the ToS is not sufficient, as a matter of fact, I don't recall agreeing to their ToS either when I created a test account. As users aren't informed, there is no license for original contributions from Everipedia. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 09:32, 5 December 2021 (UTC)
AAAAAAAARGH! I made the huge mistake of actually reading their ToS. I really shouldn't be surprised, but it's written by a complete moron who couldn't possibly have a legal background. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 10:02, 5 December 2021 (UTC)
Regarding the fundraising banners
Latest comment: 2 years ago7 comments6 people in discussion
Why are fundraising queries ending up at the Teahouse and the Help Desk? The volunteers there don't run the fundraiser, the Wikimedia Foundation does. Shouldn't the foundation be answering these questions? Shouldn't there be some contact information included in the banner messages?
Many such comments are from people who think they can influence the content of the encyclopedia by donating or withholding donations. Of course they can't, but there's nothing in the fundraising banners (that I've seen) that would tell them that. But there is a lot confusing and inaccurate stuff like "this is the 6th time we've interrupted your reading", which might be correct for everyone using this IP put together, but not for me, the person reading the message. A lot of comments also point that out. I understand it's a technical limitation - but since there isn't actually any need to include something like that in these messages, the solution is obvious.
It turns out there are a few informational links included in the banner, but they're hidden until you click a button to donate. It's clear from the queries at the Teahouse and Help Desk that a lot of readers don't make it that far. The only contact information given for the Wikimedia Foundation is an email address at the very end of the FAQ.
This information should be included in the banner message, where people will actually see it, not buried in the fine print. 2601:194:300:130:78B1:37FF:1DC6:F52B (talk) 23:00, 4 December 2021 (UTC)
We should probably have a standard response clarifying that the Wikipedia community neither solicits nor receives donations, and stating how to contact the WMF with any queries or feedback about their banners. Certes (talk) 01:02, 5 December 2021 (UTC)
There is the {{HD}} family of templates, where a message to that effect could be added. I don't know of any equivalent for the Teahouse. Rummskartoffel15:01, 5 December 2021 (UTC)
Latest comment: 2 years ago15 comments9 people in discussion
I’ve paid my subscription as requested - happy to do so, but still get confronted by reminders (demands?) to pay every time I use Wikipedia. If they are clever enough to count how many times they’ve reminded me, surely they already smart enough to know I’ve already paid? 2001:8003:7CBF:1401:3451:A0B8:F4F:D66D (talk) 23:13, 21 December 2021 (UTC)
Welcome and thank you for your question about donations! To hide the fundraising banners, you can create an account and uncheck Preferences → Banners → Fundraising. The Wikimedia Foundation does not track the identity of IP addresses, so it doesn't know your age, income level or whether you donated in the past. None of the Wikipedia volunteer editors here who add and improve content in articles receive any financial benefit. We all simply contribute our time because we care about building a great encyclopedia for you and innumerable others around the world to use. If you cannot afford it, no one wants you to donate. Wikipedia is not at risk of shutting down, and the Wikimedia Foundation, which hosts the Wikipedia platform and is asking for these donations, is richer than ever. We are led to believe that users who allow cookies are less likely to see these banners on repeat visits (further information is available here), and you are welcome to communicate directly with the donor-relations team by emailing donate@wikimedia.org. Thank you! ― Qwerfjkltalk10:42, 22 December 2021 (UTC)
Out of curiosity, what led you to believe that the Wikimedia donation campaign was a subscription or paywall that restricted access to using Wikipedia? --WaltCip-(talk)13:52, 22 December 2021 (UTC)
Thank you for your kind donations, and I'm sorry that you have still been seeing banners. We do try to prevent donors from seeing more fundraising banners for the year, by setting a cookie when you reach the Thank You page. However sometimes it can be cleared in your browser, and it won't work if you visit Wikipedia using a different browser/device. You can re-visit that link at any time to set another cookie to hide banners. Creating an account and browsing Wikipedia while logged in is another way to hide fundraising banners, and has other benefits too.
Nor did I, but now I think about it, it makes sense. Why not get rid of the other namespaces, because gathering money for the WMF is the sole purpose of Wikipedia, isn't it? Phil Bridger (talk) 17:12, 27 December 2021 (UTC)
Thanks for the correction, stwalkerster, and: Holy cow. It's not (just) a namespace, it's an entire wiki of its own, parallel to English WP, German WP, English Wiktionary, etc. — JohnFromPinckney (talk / edits)23:14, 27 December 2021 (UTC)
Latest comment: 2 years ago10 comments9 people in discussion
I just learned that WMF actually accepts cryptocurrency donations‽ May I suggest that the WMF join Mozilla and Greenpeace in stopping that because, as Mozilla cofounder jwz said "Everyone involved in the project should be witheringly ashamed of this decision to partner with planet-incinerating Ponzi grifters"[jwz1] and "Cryptocurrencies are not only an apocalyptic ecological disaster, and a greater-fool pyramid scheme, but are also incredibly toxic to the open web"[jwz2]. What use is creating an encyclopedia if you're culpable in causing a mass extinction event? You need a livable biosphere in order for the encyclopedia to be used. -- Jeandré, 2022-01-09t14:11z — Preceding undated comment added 14:11, 9 January 2022 (UTC)
We've accepted them for a long time. 2014 it seems. It used to be that the bitcoin donations would immediately be paid out in USD to the foundation (because of its speculative nature), I have no idea if that is still the case. I was told once that at some point the income from it was pretty dead, but no clue what the current popularity of it is. I'd personally rather see it go, but as long as we don't encourage ppl to use it and it is just another payment option hidden at the bottom of the page, I can sort of live with it. Mozilla was trying to promote it on Twitter (trying to cash in on the web3 craze) and THAT rubs me the wrong way. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 14:50, 9 January 2022 (UTC)
This is definitely worth considering. 2014 was a different time for cryptocurrency, and I don't think the environmental impact was as well known as it is now. I know personally I was excited when Wikipedia's bitcoin address was rolled out (and I'm sure others were), but now I think it's kind of overplayed given the current climate (no pun intended). Though, I do wonder what the energy saving cost for a functioning night mode would be... –MJL‐Talk‐☖17:34, 9 January 2022 (UTC)
Latest comment: 2 years ago9 comments8 people in discussion
Hi!
You get this message because you are an admin on a Wikimedia wiki.
When someone edits a Wikimedia wiki without being logged in today, we show their IP address. As you may already know, we will not be able to do this in the future. This is a decision by the Wikimedia Foundation Legal department, because norms and regulations for privacy online have changed.
Instead of the IP we will show a masked identity. You as an admin will still be able to access the IP. There will also be a new user right for those who need to see the full IPs of unregistered users to fight vandalism, harassment and spam without being admins. Patrollers will also see part of the IP even without this user right. We are also working on better tools to help.
We have two suggested ways this identity could work. We would appreciate your feedback on which way you think would work best for you and your wiki, now and in the future. You can let us know on the talk page. You can write in your language. The suggestions were posted in October and we will decide after 17 January.
+1, and how do we report vandals if we can't post their identities at AIV, which seems to be prohibited by the "agree not to share it with others who don't have access to this information" rule? DuncanHill (talk) 15:06, 11 February 2022 (UTC)
This "editor matching feature" worries me. It's either going to make checkusers obsolete (which is a good thing) or it's going to give everyone the same access to an editor's location as a checkuser! magic pixie dust. ☢️Plutonical☢️ᶜᵒᵐᵐᵘⁿᶦᶜᵃᵗᶦᵒⁿˢ14:47, 11 February 2022 (UTC)
The only way it makes CU obsolete is if it is some actual magic pixie dust. And regarding your second scenario, I think I can put your mind at ease there as well, for reasons that the broader context of this whole situation should make pretty obvious. AngryHarpytalk14:58, 11 February 2022 (UTC)
Hmmm. Your RFC says that's $1.3M. I don't know what WMF salaries are, but I'm assuming as a non-profit they're well below industry, so a first-order estimate would be $100k/year/FTE including fringes and benefits. Roughly 13 people. meta:Community Tech lists 12 people in the group. To a first-order approximation, what you're asking for is what they're doing now. -- RoySmith(talk)22:09, 11 January 2022 (UTC)
Luis Bitencourt-Emilio joining WMF and the danger of NFTs and/or crypto becoming part of Wikipedia
Latest comment: 2 years ago32 comments15 people in discussion
The Wikimedia Foundation has recently announced that a fella named Luis Bitencourt-Emilio joined the Board of Trustees. Glancing at his Twitter profile one can see a lot of red flags, like for instance him describing himself as an "investor" and expressing huge interest in blockchain and NFTs. One cannot help but be quite worried about the potential crypto lobbying that may be done by him or on his behalf – I am definitely not looking forward to seeing some ridiculous ideas like tokenizing articles which would be "owned" by individuals as a funding method for the foundation.
Is this an unnecessary worry? Is there nothing to worry about? Would any drastic change like this need to be community approved? What do other editors think? BeŻet (talk) 15:47, 15 January 2022 (UTC)
I don't think that there is any great danger to Wikipedia articles, but I do worry about people joining the board who are obviously more willing to follow fashion than to put the few seconds' thought in necessary to determine that NFTs are the 21st century equivalents of Tulip mania. And I also worry about the people who gave such a person a job - they are obviously just as thick. Phil Bridger (talk) 16:59, 15 January 2022 (UTC)
I agree, his background isn't entirely encouraging either - real estate, gig worker apps etc., however maybe he will focus on what he was doing for Reddit which apparently involved overseeing "all data, machine learning, spam/abuse protection and search efforts for the platform". Not saying he won't do any good, but still I think it's good to express concerns. BeŻet (talk) 17:14, 15 January 2022 (UTC)
He's a software engineer with experience in important positions in big tech companies. The question is what skill/experience he has that the board wants/was lacking. It's not that he's into crypto, certainly. I get that we all know at least one person for whom crypto seems to have taken over how they see the world, but a whole lot of people are interested in it without being transformed into a full-koolaid cryptopyramidologist. Being interested in the stuff doesn't negate what other experience you have. If there's a concern here, it's the WMF taking one more step towards the technology industry and away from community-focused nonprofits IMO. — Rhododendritestalk \\ 14:57, 16 January 2022 (UTC)
The Board has always had a mixture of tech industry-types and NGO-types as far as I know. I don't think this appointment represents any change there. As for NFTs, personally I wouldn't touch them with a hundred foot barge pole, but to be fair it's probably no worse a hobby than online poker. --RaiderAspect (talk) 23:15, 16 January 2022 (UTC)
@BeŻet Yes, I meant, on wiki. And for the record, I am not looking at this as a "thing for WMF", but a "thing for editors". This technology has the potential to give editors a tangible stake in Wikipedia, something they could even - gasp - monetize. This project, since day one, has suffered from the problem of not sufficiently rewarding its contributors (all we get is some self-fulfillment, an occasional barnstar and a ton of stress), and this technology offers a solution for balancing this inequality. Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here09:13, 10 February 2022 (UTC)
I don't understand what you are talking about. There are many good reasons not to pay contributors to Wikipedia, while there already exist ways to do so with existing non-crypto technology. —Kusma (talk) 11:01, 10 February 2022 (UTC)
I disagree with you there, I'm afraid. I think adding financial incentives to edit would be extremely toxic to the community, if people are getting paid to edit then you add a perverse incentive and encourage editors to perform actions that are not in the best interests of the project but result in pay-outs. If you pay people to create articles then you just encourage people to spam low-quality single sentence stubs that technically pass some SNG. If you pay people per edit then you encourage bot like minor editing that doesn't really improve the project. If you pay based on reader engagement then you incentivise spamming links into places they don't belong. We had enough trouble with #WPWP last year where people were spam-adding low quality/irrelevant/incorrect images to try to win gift cards, applying the same thing to all editing would be a disaster IMO. 192.76.8.77 (talk) 11:16, 10 February 2022 (UTC)
Exactly all of this. It's just a dreadful idea on so many levels. Wikipedia has been very successful without editors being reimbursed. Moreover, I don't understand how introducing such horrible mechanics like asset speculation would help the community, and not be exploited by big owners of capital, just as everything crypto-related has been thus far. It would frankly discourage many editors from contributing - why would I want to contribute to an article if someone else would financially benefit from it, either immediately or in the future? We would suddenly have labour exploitation. Wikipedia is a collective effort for a collective benefit, not for some individuals to profit from it. This idea is just so horrible that I cannot fathom why anyone would want to support it. BeŻet (talk) 12:06, 10 February 2022 (UTC)
The moment money plays a part in anything but just running the servers and keeping the lights on, Wikipedia will fall faster than anything I've seen. The whole beauty is that we do this not for a reward but out of a conviction that the benefit for others is better than the time we could be using elsewhere. If someone tries to pay me for this I will instantly lose all joy. There's a reason many artists warn me not to monetize my hobbies, associating pleasure with financial reward sucks the soul out of a lot of nice things. A. C. Santacruz ⁂ Please ping me!20:25, 25 February 2022 (UTC)
We may be conflating two issues here. There seems to be a strong consensus against paying editors. If that ever changes, those of you who choose to stay won't need a digital currency to receive your payments, let alone any new "on wiki" crypto technology. Certes (talk) 11:55, 10 February 2022 (UTC)
I just read your comment saying that "the Luddite opposition to this emerging tech is baffling". I wish you spent more time familiarizing yourself with the critique of cryptocurrencies before calling people Luddites. BeŻet (talk) 18:12, 9 February 2022 (UTC)
Hmm... yeah, I'm hardly a Luddite. Perhaps my opposition to cryptocurrencies is not based on opposition to automation, computerisation, or new technologies in general but rather on a solid (technical) understanding of blockchain technology and its societal impacts. Just an option to ponder; not everyone who disagrees with one is therefore an idiot. Vexations (talk) 18:27, 9 February 2022 (UTC)
I'm disappointed in this too. This project is supposed to be about freeing digital information, not "monetising" it the polar opposite of the crypto/fintech world Bitencourt-Emilio is from. It seems like a continuation of the long-running tendency of some upper echelons of the WMF to play at being a tech company rather than an educational foundation. – Joe (talk) 12:26, 10 February 2022 (UTC)
Dariusz Jemielniak, the chair of the Board Governance Committee, stated quite clearly that the new trustee's interest cryptocurrency and blockchain was not a factor in the selection. Crypto is irrelevant here, and on-wiki discussion of it is unproductive. --Yair rand (talk) 23:28, 10 February 2022 (UTC)
It not being a factor in the selection says nothing about him potentially trying to lobby for crypto features. It's good to hear that Dariusz isn't a fan of cryptocurrencies though. I disagree however that there is no need for a unified stance about this - there should be a statement that unequivocally rejects any possible official crypto integrations and features. BeŻet (talk) 11:15, 11 February 2022 (UTC)
Telling us it's unproductive to discuss on-wiki the position of a WMF board member is unproductive. It rather inclines people to ask "what are they trying to hide?", even if they aren't trying to hide anything. DuncanHill (talk) 15:10, 11 February 2022 (UTC)
(n.b. see Yair's followup below) I've no reason to think Dariusz is not telling the truth when he says it wasn't factored in, and unlike others, I also don't think it had to be factored in. However, a Board member saying on-wiki discussion of it is non-productive...that I disagree with, very firmly. Discussing who the WMF's Board members are, and their positions (and potential positions) is inherently a reasonable area of discussion. This is especially true while the BOT believes that they have a Movement governance role, rather than being made by the communities. Nosebagbear (talk) 13:54, 19 February 2022 (UTC)
@Nosebagbear: ? I don't think any Board member suggested that. I hope it didn't look like the second sentence of my comment was attributed to Dariusz? That was just my own opinion, that on-wiki discussion of it ("it" being crypto itself, not the trustee selection) would be unproductive. --Yair rand (talk) 17:32, 20 February 2022 (UTC)
Latest comment: 2 years ago6 comments5 people in discussion
Hi, a few days ago I read that Wikimedia servers are located in Europe and the U.S.A. I don't recall where I saw that but it seems plausible. Considering the current war and the possibility of expansion beyond the Ukraine, I wonder whether a third location might be prudent. Australia and New Zealand are obvious possibilities. Regards, ... PeterEasthope (talk) 03:17, 27 February 2022 (UTC)
Don't worry, Wikipedia never delegated authority over the domains to outside the US. In the worst case scenario, all Wikipedias hold a .org domain, which is controlled by US (verisign), in the event of any dispute, Wikipedia can just ask verisign to redirect connections to their US servers. The only way to intercept communications would be to compromise Root DNS servers on a region-per-region basis, but even then, HTTPS certificate infrastructure would need to be compromised, and that is probably hosted in the US, and such an attack would exceed Wikipedia Scope. As a country with almost 30% of it's state budget invested into the military, the US is well prepared to avoid this attacks on their network (remember the Internet was born in the Department of Defense), especially after the 9/11 attacks and the congress-mandated reinforcements on network sovereignty
(link elided) A current copy of the current revisions of all pages of the English Wikipedia, in all namespaces, for satisfying any paranoia. That's just 40GB, worth actually downloading and saving somewhere just because you can. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 15:51, 10 March 2022 (UTC)
@ToBeFree, my apologies, but I've deleted the link to the dump file. I would imagine many people have clicked on that not realizing they were starting to download a 40 GB file which will almost certainly be of no use to them. I agree that we should let people know about the dumps (and encourage other organizations with the required resources to mirror them), but a better way to do it is to point them to m:Data dumps where they can learn about the file formats and download all the data from every project, not just enwiki. -- RoySmith(talk)14:17, 14 March 2022 (UTC)
enwiki-latest-pages ...bz2 is a good idea; although connectivity and storage don't permit a copy here. Never put all your eggs in one basket even if absolutely convinced that you can never be influenced by a tyrant. =8~) Thanks ... PeterEasthope (talk) 13:34, 14 March 2022 (UTC)
Quarterly Community Safety survey
Latest comment: 2 years ago3 comments3 people in discussion
Starting the week of 28 March 2022, the Wikimedia Foundation will conduct a quarterly anonymous survey about safety perceptions among the English Wikipedia community members.
This survey responds to a Universal Code of Conduct community recommendation, and we encourage you to participate.
A recommendation from a draft, which wasn't retained in the "final" page which is right now being voted on. Clearly a high priority investment of WMF time, unlike, oh, other stuff discussed on this page, or some of the many Phabricator bugs from years and years ago, or the community wishlist, or... Still, they won't collect any personally identifying information when you enter the surbey, apart from, uh, your IP address apparently (and for some reason the page you were reading when you answered the survey). Still, the results of this yes-no question will be incredibly useful to support whatever claim the WMF wants to make about the results of UCOC or IP masking I guess (more people feel harassed? We need more WMF actions! Less people feel harassed? WMF actions clearly work!). Fram (talk) 11:46, 21 March 2022 (UTC)
Latest comment: 2 years ago8 comments5 people in discussion
A message above my watchlist says that "Voting on the ratification of the Universal Code of Conduct (UCoC) enforcement guidelines is open until 22 March 2022." Has the deadline been extended from 21 March, or do we need to fix the message so no one waits until tomorrow and misses out? Certes (talk) 12:39, 21 March 2022 (UTC)
Confirm that my watchlist also says "Voting on the ratification of the Universal Code of Conduct (UCoC) enforcement guidelines is open until 22 March 2022." with a link that leads to a page that says "The ratification voting process for the revised enforcement guidelines of the Universal Code of Conduct (UCoC) is now open! Voting commenced on SecurePoll on 7 March 2022 and will conclude on 21 March 2022. Please read more on the voter information and eligibility details." --Guy Macon Alternate Account (talk) 13:35, 21 March 2022 (UTC)
Ah, so I suppose "open until [00:00 UTC] 22 March" is technically correct, though someone in the US could be forgiven for expecting "until 22 March" to allow a vote this evening. Certes (talk) 14:18, 21 March 2022 (UTC)
Is the goal to be technically correct but misleading or is the goal to be clear and unlikely to be misunderstood? In general, deadlines should not be set at exactly midnight. Something like "voting closes at 23:59 on 21 March (UTC)" is far less likely to be confused. --Guy Macon Alternate Account (talk) 18:16, 21 March 2022 (UTC)
The problem is not that the deadline is midnight. The problem is that "22 March 2022" is a vague and incomplete description of a point in time. Either of "until 23:59:59 21 March 2022 UTC" or "before 00:00:00 22 March 2022 UTC" would have been precise and unambiguous ways to say this. The idea that a website which is used by people around the world should be publishing times without explicitly indicating a time zone (and that time zone being UTC) is mind boggling.
A bunch of years ago, at a large company which you've heard of, one of their top-tier products suffered a 1 hour lapse in support coverage because the crew in California and the crew in Sydney botched a handoff when daylight savings time started or ended at one location or the other and the extremely smart people who work there ran out of fingers to count time zones on. -- RoySmith(talk)19:55, 21 March 2022 (UTC)
Apparently a range of consultants were used to develop the policy.[1] It doesn't seem like the community was really consulted during the process or pre-approval by the board. Also, at first thought, I'm not sure about the value of a 'human rights policy' in an organisation that, at its core, develops an online website, but I will acknowledge I've only skimmed the policy and not read it thoroughly along with the various simultaneously-published FAQs, blog posts, etc. (which I imagine would take several hours). In my skim, I found it a bit vague/opaque and I find it hard to picture any practical changes. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 15:32, 10 December 2021 (UTC)
I am not sure how it will have impact on our daily operations. I do think it's going to codify the way legal performs its balancing tests in some situations. This is reflective of the work done this year around challenges to articles, for instance, which did result in changes though I can only find the blog post introducing it as a topic for discussion. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 17:29, 10 December 2021 (UTC)
When did this go live for consultation @Barkeep49:, do you know? Also pinging the two adders @RGaines (WMF) and GVarnum-WMF: I remember a re-write of the text on when Legal would take cases, but have absolutely no recollection of seeing this for consultation, and I am perhaps being optimistic and assuming that even the BOT wouldn't have made a significant global policy (itself calling on to a not yet finished or ratified UCOC) without major public consultations. Nosebagbear (talk) 09:19, 13 December 2021 (UTC)
No, of course they wouldn't do such a thing, they always remember that they are here to serve Wikipedia, not to rule it (or to help themselves and their dearest). How dare you even suggest such things? Luckily the policy is a purely empty promo gesture, a non-entity that will change nothing (but again reinforces the image that the BoT sn't really concerned with what actually makes things work around here, or what people actually donate money for). Lofty but completely untenable ideals if taken literally like "we believe that everyone acting in good faith should be able to participate and feel respected." Good faith but in the end unhelpful editors are shown the door (respectfully): we don't have to accommodate every good faith editor, no matter how incompetent they are. If that's a human rights violation, then we have a problem; but I guess that's only a human rights issues in the eyes of our BoT. On the other hand, there are many good faith long-term editors who feel thoroughly disrespected by the WMF and the BoT, so it seems as if the BoT is violating their own policy already. Quelle surprise... Fram (talk) 09:50, 13 December 2021 (UTC)
@Barkeep49: One argument I have seen elsewhere, made by a Chinese Wikipedia editor, is that it makes clear that commitment to human rights trumps commitment to neutrality. (This is in the context of the political situation affecting the Chinese language community.) That's the best argument I have seen, though I am not sure that it would have required a policy as broad as this, based on human rights documents that also cover aspects such as minimum pay, right to healthcare (see [2] for a poignant post from Tito Dutta) and right to form unions – human rights that are clearly not well modelled in the Wikimedia movement, and in part, the WMF would surely argue, not applicable to it. --AndreasJN46610:34, 13 December 2021 (UTC)
I wouldn't be at all surprised. We've seen several infiltration campaigns by certain countries under the guise of 'participation' and 'freedom of speech', while pressuring editors and running propaganda editing campaigns. China, russia, belarus, israel, but also the situations in the arabic and croatian communities we have seen all come to mind. These worries also came up in the movement talks a couple of times; how wikipedia is fundamentally founded in western liberties and how some editors were concerned if we would be able to uphold those liberties in our various projects with how the internet was globally evolving. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 15:57, 18 December 2021 (UTC)
As a note, I sent a number of questions to the stated email contacts. While I had hoped they'd get at least their initial response back prior to their Christmas break, apparently it'll be mid-Jan before an answer. And at that, it looks like they're planning on aggregating and only then answering. I'm still not sure why, given most of these were obvious questions, they don't already have the answers to hand. Nosebagbear (talk) 14:20, 14 December 2021 (UTC)
The WMF are obviously short of money (especially after paying those poor consultants who wouldn't have been able to put food on the table for their children if they hadn't been given doners' cash), and need lots more people in order to be able to answer questions any more quickly. Phil Bridger (talk) 14:40, 14 December 2021 (UTC)
Hey, now maybe we can use their Human Rights Policy against them and force them to do something about discrimination against the visually impaired? Maybe @Guy Macon: can email talktohumanrightswikimedia.org and see if those guys will force the WMF to put its million dollar warchest on fixing a major issue from 15+ years ago. Headbomb {t · c · p · b}15:25, 18 December 2021 (UTC)
"National Federation of the Blind v. Target Corporation" ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Federation_of_the_Blind_v._Target_Corp. ) was a case where a major retailer, Target Corp., was sued because their web designers failed to design its website to enable persons with low or no vision to use it.
This resulted in Target paying out roughly ten million dollars.
I have been repeatedly told that the proper way to request that Wikipedia stop discriminating against the blind is through phabricator, but clearly this was not effective in this case. I do NOT consider 15 years of refusing to answer to be reasonable behavior on the part of the WMF.
I have been asking this question since 3 August 2017.
What I expect from the WMF:
I expect a yes or no answer. Either the WMF makes an official statement saying "No, we have decided not to fix this" or an official statement saying "Yes, we have decided to fix this."
If the answer is "Yes", I expect a page to be created (preferably on the English Wikipedia, but I will accept a page on Meta) that gives us the requirements (a testable definition of "done"), a schedule with milestones and updates, and budget and staffing information.
The WMF has made multiple statements saying that they intend to be more open about these sort of thing, and this is an excellent place to show that the commitment to openness is more than just talk.
Feel free to send copies of the above email to anyone at the WMF that you think might listen. Also feel free to add it to any appropriate mailing list.
Those of you with social media accounts, please publicize the above email with the hashtag #WikiforHumanRights [3]
In January I plan on organizing a huge online "Celebrating 16 years of Wikipedia discriminating against the handicapped" party and inviting a bunch of journalists. Watch my talk page for details.
This is the Postfix program at host smtp4.irbs.net.
Your message was successfully delivered to the destination(s) listed below. If the message was delivered to mailbox you will receive no further notifications. Otherwise you may still receive notifications of mail delivery errors from other systems.
<talktohumanrights@wikimedia.org>: delivery via localhost[127.0.0.1]:5020:
250 Ok <talktohumanrights@wikimedia.org> Queued for delivery,
MTA response: 250 2.0.0 Ok: queued as 4JGsmS2CTsz3cBd
Reporting-MTA: dns; smtp4.irbs.net
Arrival-Date: Sun, 19 Dec 2021 01:11:19 -0500 (EST)
Did anyone else notice this bit (I think one of the bullet points under Scope):
Use our influence with partners, the private sector, and governments to advance and uphold respect for human rights.
When I read that, to me it sounds like they're planning to take up international/global lobbying of various governments and other powerful entities around the world in an effort to promote and advocate for the ideals contained therein...is that an accurate interpretation, or do y'all interpret that passage to also be largely lip service and hand waving? If THAT were what their plans are, I suppose that would partially explain the WMF's continually ratcheting up of their feverish rush for ever-increasing (on an exponential curve) amounts of cash. 2600:1702:4960:1DE0:E915:C0E7:63E2:3E2C (talk) 07:18, 20 December 2021 (UTC)
I am shocked -- shocked to find[4] that the WMF has once again not responded in any way to being informed that they are breaking the law. Who would have guessed that I would see the exact same stonewalling that all previous efforts to open a discussion saw? --Guy Macon Alternate Account (talk) 19:56, 9 January 2022 (UTC)
I got an actual communication from the WMF! And they say that the age of miracles is past. Keep in mind that this is in direct response to me reporting that the WMF is violating the law and could be sued for millions of dollars.
(Redacted) (Someone objected to me publishing the email and redacted it. The content was basicly "Stay off of phabricator for two weeks, and when you come back stop telling the W?F that the only acceptable solution to the W?F breaking the law is having the W?F stop breaking the law. If you keep saying that you will be blocked.")
Ah, Aklapper and the other similar ones at Phabricator and surroundings. Rather typical, that. No answer (or no useful answer), no answer, "when will you finally answer!", oh, poor conduct, block. Aklapper doesn't seem to have added anything useful to this phab task (or most others I have seen), but still feels the need to add "Could the signal vs noise ratio be decreased on this task, please? Thanks." when people are suggesting all kinds of ideas and trying to get an idea of the status of the task. Same AKlapper, when someone is finally enthusiastic about this task and wants to try to solve it (after 13, 14 years?), the very same day they assing the task to themselves: "Could you elaborate on your plans to go forward, code-wise?" Yes, no one at the WMF or Phabricator can solve this, but when someone offers to try, they have to present their plans, "code-wise", the very same day. How encouraging! I avoid Phabricator like the plague. It's useful (sometimes) for urgent requests, when the Thursday updates have once again broken something important or obvious. But otherwise, the whole atmosphere there (and the ridiculous "priority" assignment which is an after-the-fact experience, not an actual priority setting) is quite offputting. Fram (talk) 13:59, 31 January 2022 (UTC)
I know you have a terrible disdain for both me and for the enwiki community, but you are not obliged to post otherwise empty potshots. If you have anything constructive to add, feel free. Otherwise, don't bother please. Fram (talk) 14:30, 31 January 2022 (UTC)
No Guy, you have been repeatedly told to stop being confrontational, argumentative and to contribute in a constructive matter in what many ppl consider their workplace (Phabricator) and/or place of joy (hobbyists). On this issue, but also on several other Phabricator issues in the past. You are repeatedly ignoring ppl trying to talk you out of scaling the reichstag in a spiderman suit and instead you choose to make Phabricator your place of war with WMF. Take it to twitter or something. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 14:05, 31 January 2022 (UTC)
Perhaps the people who see Phabricator as their place of joy where no actual complaints about the WMF and its handling of bugs may be uttered, and the way some of their cronies try to stifle even the slightest frustration (or, as seen above, try to actievly discourage others from even working on such long-standing bugs or from posting helpful suggestions), should find another place, instead of the people using Phabricator to raise issues with the software and trying to get them resolved? Phabricator shouldn't be the private playground of some WMF'ers and hanger-ons, where external intrusion is seen as a threat and the never-ending issues with e.g. the "priority" system aren't adressed but rudely dismissed. Fram (talk) 14:30, 31 January 2022 (UTC)
I find it interesting that TheDJ objects to my attempts to get the W?F to follow the law, but apparently has no objection to the W?F doing illegal things. Purposely discriminating against the handicapped isn't just illegal. It is also evil. Looking the other way while others do evil is also evil.
The sad part is that multiple W?F employees and consultants (none of them in management or in a position of authority to assign someone the job of fixing the problem) have expressed to me privately that they are frustrated and ashamed with how the W?F is discriminating against blind people, but cannot say so publicly without being fired. --Guy Macon Alternate Account (talk) 20:23, 31 January 2022 (UTC)
repeatedly told to stop being confrontational, argumentative and to contribute in a constructive matter, I fail to see what is non-constructive about asking the WMF to DO ITS DAMNED JOB and fix a longstanding accessibility issue that's been going on for OVER FIFTEEN YEARS. It's not like the dozens of times where a more collegial tone was employed got us anywhere. Headbomb {t · c · p · b}20:43, 31 January 2022 (UTC)
Obviously the W?F breaking the law by discriminating against the handicapped isn't the problem. Miscreants like you talking about the W?F breaking the law by discriminating against the handicapped is the real problem. All you have to do is shut your pie hole and the problem is solved. --Guy Macon Alternate Account (talk) 17:04, 8 February 2022 (UTC)
Has WMF Security, Legal or Tgr actually actually been assigned the job of making a decision on this? Or is this something with no budget, staffing or deadline that everyone can ignore for another 16 years without it in any way affecting their performance reviews? --Guy Macon Alternate Account (talk) 21:42, 19 February 2022 (UTC)
Whilst your point is important to many readers and editors of Wikipedia and other projects, it's clearly of less interest to the WMF than the unwanted projects they actually spend money on. I suspect that the only way forward is for someone, possibly a U.S. or Californian disability charity, to bring enforcement action. I should state per WP:no legal threats that I am not doing nor intending to do this myself. That policy and sub judice rules may also prevent anyone who does act from keeping us informed. Indeed, for all I know, prosecution may already be in progress. Certes (talk) 19:17, 26 March 2022 (UTC)
I doubt that either would prevent us from being informed. I doubt that a simple, neutral, statement that legal action has been taken would fall foul of our policy, and sub judice rules in California are not nearly as strict as in the UK. Phil Bridger (talk) 19:44, 26 March 2022 (UTC)
I really don't want to see the W?F sued over this, especially because I might be called as a witness. I would have to tell the truth; that I have contacted every board member, every recent CEO, everyone I could find at W?F legal, talktohumanrights@wikimedia.org, Trust and Safety, etc., and the only official response I got was to tell me to stop asking questions about this on phabricator. --Guy Macon Alternate Account (talk) 00:42, 28 March 2022 (UTC)
It is now 07 April 2022 and this has been "pending further internal review" for nearly two months. As usual, followup questions about this on phabricator are being ignored.
Has anyone at WMF Security, Legal or Tgr actually actually been assigned the job of making a decision on this?
Or is this something with no budget, staffing or deadline that everyone working for the W?F can ignore for another 16 years without it in any way affecting their performance reviews?
We have been waiting over 16 years. Could someone -- anyone -- who is an actual paid W?F employee or consultant please respond and start a dialog on why we have been waiting over 16 years for this to be fixed?
Silence will not be an option when someone in the W?F is compelled to give a disposition in court of law explaining why they are discriminating against the visually handicapped. Wouldn't it be better to talk about it now and see if we can solve this before a judge orders the W?F to do so? --Guy Macon Alternate Account (talk) 03:12, 8 April 2022 (UTC)
(...Sound of Crickets...)
Does anyone have any suggestions as to how to get the W?F to respond? Even a "no" would be a starting place for a dialog, but what can you do when every effort to contact the W?F is met with silence? --Guy Macon Alternate Account (talk) 15:19, 12 April 2022 (UTC)
So 16 years of intentionally discriminating against blind people in a clear violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act is perfectly fine, but using a silly little question mark to oppose the idiotic plan to rename the Wikimedia Foundation "Wikipedia Foundation" is not. Gotcha. Your opinion is duly noted and will be given the attention and respect it deserves. --Guy Macon Alternate Account (talk) 17:30, 13 April 2022 (UTC)
Where do we go to warn the WMF about new security threats?
Latest comment: 2 years ago5 comments5 people in discussion
They probably already know about this one, but in case they don't I want to warn them.
Where can you post a message that someone in the WMF will actually read?
I'm sure the folks at WMF are already on top of things like this. But since we're here, it's worth mentioning WP:EMERGENCY for other ways to notify WMF about urgent threats (the particular issue cited here doesn't count as "urgent"). -- RoySmith(talk)00:50, 31 March 2022 (UTC)
Something like ca(AT)wikimedia(dot)org is probably the way to go. The last few transparency reports have the WMF getting almost none (in our last, actually none) emergency requests, so in that sense it's not an active issue but obviously could be. Nosebagbear (talk) 11:07, 31 March 2022 (UTC)
It's pretty much par for the course among such corporate web pages, in that it doesn't provide any details about how to tell the WMF that they're doing something wrong. It's almost as is if (perish the thought) that they want to discourage people from doing so. Phil Bridger (talk) 18:28, 5 April 2022 (UTC)
@Phil Bridger: Not 'as if'. A couple of years ago they deliberately moved all their stuff off MediaWiki/Wikimedia, supressed the original pages and redesigned and hosted it elsewhere using WordPress, used by 40.4% of all websites on the Internet (although per definition it is a blog system/website generator, not a fully fledged CMS : easier to write (no complex Wiki markup), very selective publication of staff details (hiding what they don't want the communities to know), updates as rare as they care to make them, easier to control who writes (granular permissions), commenting option disallowed, etc., etc. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 11:53, 14 April 2022 (UTC)
Wikipedia is swimming in money—why is it begging people to donate?
Latest comment: 2 years ago8 comments4 people in discussion
The Wikimedia Foundation may be swimming in money, but only a fraction of it is spent on Wikipedia. The distinction is subtle (and will become even more subtle if the WMF renames itself after Wikipedia) but important. Wikipedia itself urgently needs more funding for technical fixes and enhancements, but this could come from cutting spending in areas on the periphery of the WMF's remit rather than from further "begging". Certes (talk) 11:31, 9 April 2022 (UTC)
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
Would the OP rather they were broke and could not maintain the infrastructure necessary to support their projects? --Jayron3213:16, 11 April 2022 (UTC)
They aren't, but the fact that Wikimedia Foundation is financially sound seems to be an odd thing to complain about... --Jayron3213:36, 11 April 2022 (UTC)
Rather an odd reading of the article, which is complaining about the tone and audience of the too often misleading banners, not about the fact that the WMF has plenty of money. Replying to the OP (who only posted a link to the article to start with) with a false dilemma based on a misreading of the actual contents of the article is not really a good appraoch to discussion. Fram (talk) 13:48, 11 April 2022 (UTC)
Does Wikipedia have a published policy for deleting old user data? I seem to remember a checkuser saying that they couldn't look into an account because it hadn't posted in years, but is that data actually gone or is that just a rule checkusers follow? --2600:1700:D0A0:21B0:13D:DA3C:F3BD:6B51 (talk) 00:18, 18 April 2022 (UTC)
Some search, social media and retail companies may base their business models on data retention, use and resale, but Wikipedia has very different objectives. The data collected is narrow in scope, and the tiny amount of personal information used for checkuser is limited to a few trusted administrators. I would be naive and arrogant to say it's not an issue, but Wikipedia behaves far better in this respect than most organisations and is actively taking steps to improve further. Certes (talk) 14:06, 18 April 2022 (UTC)
And yet, [5] says "We actively collect some types of information with a variety of commonly-used technologies. These generally include tracking pixels, JavaScript, and a variety of "locally stored data" technologies, such as cookies and local storage. These types of technologies may also be used in online tools on a third-party site that loads information from the Wikimedia Sites" and [6] says "A “tracking pixel” (sometimes called “web beacons”, “transparent GIFs”, “clear GIFs”, “pixel gifs”, or “pixel tags”) is a tiny, invisible image that allows us to track activities on Wikimedia Sites or activities based on email notifications we send. Although tracking pixels are commonly associated with advertising, we never use tracking pixels for advertising nor do we sell or rent the information collected through tracking pixels. Information collected through tracking pixels can only be shared with third parties in aggregated form and in accordance with the Privacy Policy. Tracking pixels help us figure out if certain features, notifications, and products are effective and if they can be improved."
In the context of the Wikimedia Foundation and its projects, including Wikipedia, "Advertising" always refers to advertising for third party websites/products/services. In some contexts it can also refer to advertising for one WMF project on another (e.g. promoting Wikivoyage on Wikipedia) but never to WMF fundraising banners. Thryduulf (talk) 13:14, 19 April 2022 (UTC)
Wikimedia, as parented by the WMF, is (by far) the most PII data limited site in the top 20 most visited. Almost no data is gathered from readers or even editors, and as noted, info like IPs are purged after 90 days. One of the reasons why those irritating banners can't be made to go away after someone has donated or told them to go away (beyond the length of a session) is because they don't track users persistently. Nosebagbear (talk) 10:56, 20 April 2022 (UTC)
(although it's a little anomalous - there's various system-based loopholes for long-term retention of IP info on cu-wiki and things like that. However, most PII that a major website would hoover up about you, aren't relevant here) Nosebagbear (talk) 11:02, 20 April 2022 (UTC)
Join the Wikimedia Foundation Annual Plan conversations with Maryana Iskander
Latest comment: 2 years ago3 comments2 people in discussion
The 2030 Wikimedia Movement Strategy sets a direction toward "knowledge as a service" and "knowledge equity". The Wikimedia Foundation wants to plan according to these two goals. How do you think the Wikimedia Foundation should apply them to our work?
The Wikimedia Foundation continues to explore better ways of working at a regional level. We have increased our regional focus in areas like grants, new features, and community conversations. What is working well? How can we improve?
Anyone can contribute to the Movement Strategy process. Let's collect your activities, ideas, requests, and lessons learned. How can the Wikimedia Foundation better support the volunteers and affiliates working in Movement Strategy activities?
The information will be available in multiple languages. Each call will be open to anyone to attend. Live interpretation will be available in some calls.
It appears the Board has changed the election process such that the community will now only be allowed to vote on trustee candidates that have been pre-selected by the affiliates. Anyone else concerned about this? To me, it seems like a conversion of all community-selected seats to affiliate-selected seats, and as such, a disenfranchisement of the community. Levivich16:44, 20 April 2022 (UTC)
I sort of half think that the intent was to have both affiliate-related and community-at-large board members? But it seems like this notice (and, to be honest, almost everything that comes from WMF) is so opaquely worded that I honestly can't tell if my interpretation is correct or not (I'm avoiding stating my gut feeling on whether this opacity is intentional or not). If the affiliate-only interpretation is correct, then - to the extent that it's not too late or that no one with the authority to change it cares - I deeply object. --Floquenbeam (talk) 16:55, 20 April 2022 (UTC)
Well if we want clarity we should ask somewhere that foundation people actually want to post to, so perhaps the talk page of that announcement on meta. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 17:03, 20 April 2022 (UTC)
This is the 2020 amendment to the bylaws, specifically removing (C) ("Three Trustees will be selected from candidates approved through community voting..." and (D) ("Two Trustees will be selected from candidates approved through a process determined by Affiliates collectively...") and combining them into a new section, "Community- and Affiliate-selected Trustees", that doesn't specify how many community or how many affiliate, or how they are selected. This amendment was made by the Board that postponed the elections, during the postponement, i.e., after terms expired under the then-current Bylaws.
Another change in this Amendment is changing "Each Trustee shall hold office until the expiration of his or her term as specified in Article IV, Section 3 below, or until his or her earlier resignation, removal from office, or death." to "Each Trustee will serve until the expiration of their term and until their successor has been appointed and qualified, or until their earlier resignation, removal from office, or death."
Now this 2022 Resolution, under the revised Bylaw language, the Board is changing the way these two affiliate seats will be chosen (by making them subject to final selection by the community, if I understand correctly). I don't see "issues with the trustee selection process that have to be addressed", I see a Board choosing to change the way Trustees are elected. Personally, I don't oppose these changes, but I think they should be put to the community for ratification. Not "consultation", but ratification. Levivich19:08, 20 April 2022 (UTC)
Additionally, it needs to be clearly specified that this mechanism will be used for the 2 seats that were affiliate chosen and the others will still be purely "at-large" selected.
Meanwhile, the WMF's "Call for Feedback" mailing list post on January 19 2022 quite clearly said:
This leaves the important question: How should affiliates be involved in the selection of new seats? The question is broad in the sense that the answers may refer not just to the two seats mentioned, but also to other, Community- and Affiliate-selected seats.
So don't believe anyone who tells you they haven't thought of keeping that arrangement for all future C/A-selected seats.
It is of course a bit awkward for me to comment here, but I think that I should.
As is well known, I have no interest in being the boss of anything or the dictator of anything. My most keen interest is for the future of the encyclopedia, with all the core values intact: that we are a community-first project, that we are a charity, that we are neutral, that we strive for quality, and that we work towards governance that means safety for all these values in the long run.
In the past few years, there have been several crises that have made it increasingly clear to me: the biggest problem on the board is not a lack of professional expertise, but rather a lack of community representation and control. I am a steadfast proponent of that - you can speak to James Heilman for more details (I've not consulted with him in advance but I'm sure he'll tell you about my concerns about the "professional" board members who don't seem to have our values at heart.)
I am deeply concerned about the tone of some of the latest proposals from some quarters: a reluctance to be firmly clear that community control - in the form of voting and not just some vague "community-sourced board members" language that might mean anything or nothing - is not negotiable.
I believe that we need to be moving in a mildly different direction with the board expansion. I don't want to make a specific proposal but I will say this: rather than an expansion that keeps community in a slight +1 position, I think we need an expansion that gives the community an absolutely dominant role.
I've not spoken yet about my personal role, because I want us to focus on the long run. But my preference is not to step aside until I am sure that the "professional" appointed seats are absolutely always in service to the community, by making sure that their numbers are - relative to the community numbers - reduced.
Removing my voting seat - yes, it's a good idea in the long run, as I am just one person and not that important in the grand scheme of things. But for now, I feel that my role is to represent the moral conscience of the movement and to prevent takeover by outside interests who do not understand our values. So for those who ask when, I would say: when we are safe. And I don't think that's true just yet.
I've often vociferously disagreed with Jimmy Wales, and it feels strange to quote him approvingly, but I absolutely share every word of the sentiment he expressed above. He lost that battle, as the Signpost reported, and the bylaw change went through ... and paved the way for the situation we're now in. So I think it is time to make a stink, unless you're happy to vote only for people you're told you can vote for in future. AndreasJN46617:18, 25 April 2022 (UTC)
@Nosebagbear:Additionally, it needs to be clearly specified that this mechanism will be used for the 2 seats that were affiliate chosen and the others will still be purely "at-large" selected.
@EpicPupper, actually I followed your link above, and commented there; however, your link now points to this discussion on its page in the archives. I comented there and didn't realize it was in the archives until recently. I have opened a NEW section on the Miscellaneous tab. I suggest that folks please comment there, if they wish. thanks!! --Sm8900 (talk) 17:18, 10 June 2022 (UTC)
Enterprise Office Hours - June 9th 1500
Latest comment: 2 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion
Reposting WMF Enterprise's scheduled Office Hour call from their talk page original announcement
The direct zoom link sits on that page, rather than needing to be requested.
Latest comment: 2 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
I have just published an update about this project - announcing our first set of customers, as well as a new self-signup system - on the project’s talkpage. You can read the details there and ask questions. The new system in includes free access for a trial account, on top of the existing free access methods. There will be a public community open meeting on Thursday 23 June @ 1700 UTC on Zoom which is already announced on Meta on the project’s page & the mainpage calendar. Sincerely, LWyatt (WMF) (talk) 16:18, 21 June 2022 (UTC)
Chair Emeritus of the Wikimedia Foundation
Latest comment: 2 years ago4 comments3 people in discussion
Hello, according to the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees page, Jimmy Wales is the Chair Emeritus of the Wikimedia Foundation, an honorary title created in 2006. In the infoboxes of the articles Patricio Lorente and Florence Devouard, it is mentioned that Lorente and Devouard are Chair Emeritus of the Wikimedia Foundation. Are these informations reliable ? I could not find any confirmation of that on the WMF website (archives included). --ContributorQ (talk) 11:00, 23 June 2022 (UTC)
Does it require confirmation beyond the simple fact that they were chair of the fundationbut are no longer? In many cases one automatically becomes "_____ emeritus" as soon as one leaves the office of _____. --User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 20:20, 26 June 2022 (UTC)
We use reliable sources, not assumptions based on "in many cases". In my experience, "emeritus" is a title explicitly granted to somebody as an honor for meritorious service, and in fact the press release cited above does that explicitly for Wales: "He ... assumes the title of Chairman Emeritus of the Foundation". In my opinion, we need similar citations for Lorente and Devouard. -- RoySmith(talk)14:57, 27 June 2022 (UTC)
Latest comment: 2 years ago13 comments8 people in discussion
I wanted to propose this here after reading a recent Wikipedia Signpost article regarding WMF allocating surplus cash on hand.
WMF may benefit from a bug bounty program, where WMF offers bounties for individuals who find and report security vulnerability bugs.
These programs have seen a lot of success elsewhere in the software industry, and would be a great way not only to patch security vulnerabilities and improve MediaWiki and related software, but also engage more developers in Wikimedia's tech stack and get people familiar with contributing to Wikimedia's software.
Additionally, some bounty programs also allocate money for volunteers who close existing bugs or feature requests being tracked, as a way to entice more volunteers to help.
This seems like a very direct way to allocate WMF's surplus in a way that would both benefit the tech that WMF relies on, as well as drawing more people into the development community.
A potential downside: Even more reports from self-described "security researchers" who discover bugs like the fact that anyone can edit almost any page. Anyway, this isn't something we could do here. You'd have to convince the WMF. Anomie⚔11:55, 29 June 2022 (UTC)
while the WMF has money, it lacks IT resources to act on existing bugs reported by volunteers. Incentivising people to report more bugs would only exacerbate existing problems for volunteers trying to get improvements through phabricator. ϢereSpielChequers18:55, 12 July 2022 (UTC)
We already have enough free bug reports outstanding and don't want to buy any more. The part about incentives for closing existing bugs is tempting but would need careful implementation. Someone would have to check all the alleged fixes, and that might take an experienced developer longer than doing the work themselves. Certes (talk) 22:17, 12 July 2022 (UTC)
I haven't checked lately but what's the phabricator backlog? Like 8,000 bugs volunteers have found but can't fix? Levivich[block]22:52, 12 July 2022 (UTC)
How many of which are engaged in something more meaningful to the actual encyclopedia and editing than fundraising technology, campaign, community programs, and the like? Product Design Strategy has six employees listed, a VP, a program manager, two leads and two senior researchers. A VP overseeing a manager overseeing two leads overseeing two researchers doesn't seem like an efficient use of capital. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 00:48, 13 July 2022 (UTC)
I've learned titles are just a way to create more salary scales in the USA. And while I appreciate people complaining about 'overhead', I'll also point out that a lot of overhead is the direct result of complaints of the community, requiring higher quality, more diverse quality, more communication and overall more aspects of the software process to be covered and 'informed by data' etc etc. Little of this overhead was there in the days of Multimedia Viewer, but ppl didn't really seem to appreciate that time either. So to some degree, it's a self inflicted wound. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 08:37, 13 July 2022 (UTC)
No, it’s not that simple… it’s only ironic. Some overhead is good, some of it is not. For instance, overhead makes creating solutions (the process) more complex, without necessarily dealing with the inherent complexity the software and its target audience already pose. The point is that ppl keep thinking they can contribute simple solutions like ‘add a researcher’, ‘remove research department’ but the actual problems are so complex and simplifying it like that is as useful as screaming at a wall. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 06:37, 16 July 2022 (UTC)
Just a few notes. 1. A lot of tickets are features requests, which will likely never be fulfilled (too complicated, too expensive, too far removed from the projects core goals) 2. Lots of tickets are more open discussions and exchanging of ideas, which doesn't necessarily make them 'a thing to do'. 3. A lot of issues are also starting points, and when actually tackled will sprout a dozen or sometimes even a hundred new tickets. 4. A significant amount of the issues only relate to VERY few users. 5. There are also several hundred volunteer projects and tech related committees which are not directly related to mediawiki projects and/or might not even be bugs at all, just todo's, which are tracked in Phabricator.
All in all, this is to say that any listing of numbers would require careful interpretation to get a clear view of the state of things. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 08:25, 13 July 2022 (UTC)
Forbid ukranian WP crowdfunds on ukranian military forces
Latest comment: 2 years ago3 comments2 people in discussion
There is the page (translation) that calls to donate money to ukranian military forces.
1. I do think it's against any WP rules. I never saw calls to donate to Afganistan, Australia, China, Iraq, Italy or Korea military forces. If I'm wrong - please, correct.
2. I do think this page could be a cause to block the entire WP in Russia. That's why it requires WMF official response. This page looks like local ukranian administrators action, not like WP ones. homk17:42, 12 July 2022 (UTC)
Questions about the Ukrainian Wikipedia should be asked on the Ukrainian Wikipedia or at meta. The English Wikipedia can do nothing about this. Phil Bridger (talk) 17:48, 12 July 2022 (UTC)
Latest comment: 2 years ago3 comments2 people in discussion
Hola, si alguien es Bibliotecario/Administrador en Es~Wiki, necesito que me hagan el favor de enviar el código de mi página de usuario a mi correo electrónico joabinfante2016 @gmail.com porque allí me bloquearon injustamente y deseo el código para usarlo en otra Wiki. Yo me comuniqué con ellos pero me contestaron de mala manera y no me quisieron ayudar. Joab Israel Infante Lee (talk) 21:15, 5 August 2022 (UTC)
Note: The WMF has doubly outdone itself in abusive propaganda here. The WMF has explicitly forbidden any decision making by this group, and the WMF has explicitly forbidden any community representation in the group.
The documentation explicitly states this group does not make decisions.[1] (I am not the one who decided to make that text screaming-red, the WMF made it screaming red in the original source.) The group's sole purpose is to offer opinions and feedback to WMF product teams - who make decisions. Anyone can already show up and offer teams opinions and feedback.
Aside from egregious constraints on eligibility, the document explicitly states all members will be selected and appointed by the WMF itself.[2] As such, they by definition represent the WMF. Furthermore any member who displeases the WMF can be unilaterally dropped from the group by the WMF Chief Officer on a twice-yearly reappointment schedule, or banished immediately by a vote of staff in the group.
the WMF has explicitly forbidden any community representation in the group — you're going to have to run that one by me again.. the WMF has done no such thing as far as I can see? — TheresNoTime (talk • she/her) 17:16, 29 July 2022 (UTC)
@TheresNoTime, what would you say if Russia announced some organization to deal with the Russia-Ukraine conflict, and Russia announced the committee would include "Ukrainian representatives" unilaterally selected by Russia? What if China appointed "Taiwanese representatives"? Comparing the WMF with Russia may be overly harsh, but it clearly establishes a valid point: Trying to appoint "representatives" for someone else is obviously invalid, if not outright abusive.
I created Village_pump_(WMF) as part of my long work informally representing community concerns and community consensus to the WMF. The WMF has a bad habit of shooting the messenger, treating it as "disruptive" for anyone to accurately represent community concerns and consensus whenever that conflicts with their pre-established plans. In my experience WMF staff are good people with good intentions, they love the mission, they want to support the community, they want to listen to us and consult us. The problem is that they do not respect the community as a partner. When they don't understand why consensus says what it says, or when they they disagree with our expert experience or values, they believe they have righteous-authority as benevolent overlords. The WMF likes to select "community representatives" because it lets them tell themselves how much they love the community, it lets them tell themselves they support community input and participation, while desperately seeking any effective means of duly subjugating the community back down to their proper role as powerless peasants. Alsee (talk) 00:37, 7 August 2022 (UTC)
I think Alsee is a little harsh in their evaluation, but I do get where they're coming from. A selection process which consists of "We will decide who your representatives are" doesn't inspire confidence. But, more than that, I can't tell what this group is supposed to do. I've experienced some friction with the WMF regarding how the cloud services (Toolforge and VPS) work. When I first heard about this, I thought, "Hmmm, maybe it would be good for me to be part of this, because then I would have some influence about the things that bother me". But when I read https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Technical_decision_making/Forum, I honestly had no idea what this group would be doing. That page says, "The purpose of the Forum is to provide feedback to teams making decisions". Well, I do that now. It doesn't often have any effect, but it's also not clear how that would change if I were to join this group. -- RoySmith(talk)00:56, 7 August 2022 (UTC)
I should also add that having +2 rights is a requirement to membership. So, I do realize that I'm not eligible and my note above is moot. -- RoySmith(talk)01:00, 7 August 2022 (UTC)
> Well, I do that now. It doesn't often have any effect
Most of your comments likely are more "product" related. And that is not something that this group would involve itself with, that is mostly up to the individual teams and/or WMF management.
The forum (as stated in its FAQ and background page) mostly deals with large engineering questions that will effect multiple WMF technology teams and Mediawiki developers and is a continuation of it's previous TechCom RFC process and before that the Mediawiki architecture committee. It's mostly to make sure that teams/developers have a way to choose a direction where topics have interteam overlap in terms of responsibilities and impact, especially when those topics have long term impact. As such, a deep understanding of MediaWiki but also of the WMF specific configuration and engineering problems is required to participate. A specific example would be the decision that led to the selection of Vue as the next major frontend framework to be used by MediaWiki and the WMF teams. A decision that will impact MediaWiki and all its developers for 10+ years. This forum historically has not been very active and/or effective for various reasons (hence why there have been so many different versions of this process). —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 15:25, 8 August 2022 (UTC)
WMF prohibits community from voting for candidates of our choice in Board seats election
Latest comment: 2 years ago37 comments14 people in discussion
I'm withdrawing this, but leaving the discussion open if there is anything further to discuss.
It's clear there isn't sufficient interest in objecting to the current election, but there is potentially greater concern if the current process were to be used used in future elections. Alsee (talk) 09:18, 14 August 2022 (UTC)
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Note: Currently seeking clarification. I will withdraw this discussion if the new voting only procedures only apply to "affiliate" seats, and community seat elections continue without constraint.
Short statement: There is no time for a conventional RFC. Voting for the Board of Trustees election is scheduled to begin August 16. There are 12 candidates confirmed as eligible, however the WMF is only allowing us to vote among 6 committee selected candidates. Hopefully this discussion will rapidly manifest clear consensus on whether this is acceptable, and if not, discussion for swift action. Alsee (talk) 09:36, 12 August 2022 (UTC)
Extended explanation: Last year the WMF ran a Call for feedback: Community Board seats. The section #Problems to solve essentially objects to the outcome of past community votes as a "problem" to be solved. The Call for feedback proposes several possible plans for eliminating or restricting community voting. As far as I saw, feedback on these proposals generally ranged from negative to hostile.
12 candidates were certified by WMF Trust&Safety as eligible for the upcoming election:
123456789101112
On August 16 the WMF is going to open the voting website. Only the six approved candidates will appear on the ballot. The community is de facto banned from voting for any of the other 6 certified-eligible candidates. I believe they have also excluded any ability to cast any sort of "oppose" vote. Either you vote for one of the candidates that they want you to vote for, or you are denied any vote or participation at all.
Discussion
Illigitimate election process. This is an Iranian style sham election, were the people are only permitted to vote for candidates approved by the Theocratic committee. If others agree, I would support almost any action to reject this sham election. In addition to informing the WMF and the Board of our objections, we can ban any any attempt to advertize this sham election on this wiki. That would specificaly include a ban on any sitewide notice. We can also spread the word to other communities. Alsee (talk) 09:36, 12 August 2022 (UTC)
The candidates haven't been "approved" by the WMF. They've been elected by Wikimedia affiliates (WMUK, WM Indonesia, WM Canada etc) by proportional representation. If I understand this correctly, the two people who will be chosen by the community will join Shani Sigalov on the Board as representatives of the interests of affiliates. Apart from Jimbo, the Board currently has 10 people, of whom the community has elected four, two are those elected by the affiliates (without a community vote, unlike this time) and the other four are appointees selected "for specific expertise"; the meta page seems to imply they've been chosen by the rest of the Board, not the WMF's corporate apparatus. One of the members appointed by affiliates, Natalia Tymkiv, now holds an appointed seat as Board Chair. W. Tell DCCXLVI (talk to me!/c) 10:50, 12 August 2022 (UTC)
False alarm. The board members which are being replaced were the board members proposed by the affiliates, not by the community. (There is an extension of the Board, this is why now we have more seats, irrelevant for the discussion). We did not even ever vote for them, the affiliates decided themselves. Now the affiliates selected six candidates and we have given a chance to vote. I do not see in any way how this is out of order.--Ymblanter (talk) 09:54, 12 August 2022 (UTC)
Indeed, this is an vast improvement over the past processes. Maybe not perfect, but this ensures that affiliates seats have community support. Headbomb {t · c · p · b}10:15, 12 August 2022 (UTC)
@Ymblanter I did not see / was unaware of any indication that this vote was for Affiliate seats. I will happily withdraw this discussion if you (or anyone) can point me to some page showing that the next election is not going to filter candidates. Alsee (talk) 10:45, 12 August 2022 (UTC)
@Wilhelm Tell DCCXLVI @Fram. The answer was found by @Andreas JN466, thanks. The Foundation is eliminating the distinction between Affiliate and Community seats. Therefore the community is to be restricted to voting for approved candidates in all future elections. Alsee (talk) 11:27, 12 August 2022 (UTC)
@Alsee: The board refuses to be drawn on the method to be used for future elections, saying either nothing when asked about this or restricting themselves to saying that this is a decision to be made later, they're not thinking that far ahead, etc. See [12]. But it seemed to me the insistence on mentioning that the seats contested this year are former affiliate-selected seats betrayed a desire to "shoehorn" the new method in, by telling people, "Look, last time the affiliates alone voted for these seats, and nobody asked you at all. So this change is in your favour." Given that these seats are now, following the bylaws change, "community-and-affiliate-selected", what happened last time around is immaterial. AndreasJN46614:12, 12 August 2022 (UTC)
@Andreas JN466 I share your concern that this election may be used as silent justification to do the same in the future. However unless there is a shift in responses, consensus may be leaning in the direction of not making a fuss over this election. Alsee (talk) 14:47, 12 August 2022 (UTC)
Other than the linked mailing list discussion there was a fairly significant fuss about it in German Wikipedia a few weeks ago where volunteers have drawn the same comparison to the Iranian election method. Whether this will have been enough to impress upon the WMF that this approach to democracy and community representation is perceived as suboptimal remains to be seen. Given all the current hubbub about the Elections Committee on Meta-Wiki (here and here, for example) and the way the UCoC was pushed through, I fear that "our way or the highway" is pretty much the new modus operandi of the WMF and the various committees operating under its aegis. Cheers, AndreasJN46615:14, 12 August 2022 (UTC)
Unsure of resolution - if you create an RfC (or equivalent) @Alsee: you should note the desired resolution you have. Here, the BOT, unfortunately, has the right to tell us to go away and select the trustees by whatever method they wanted. They even, somewhat bizarrely, can do so counter to their own articles (blame the state law - UK law requires getting the charity commission's permission to change the rights of 3rd parties to select trustees). As such, your method would need to be of the "break the railtracks" type (e.g. down tools). I do think this election methodology is poor, hence why I created an election compass question exactly on it, to see if there were candidates who were in the final six who would encourage a move away in the future. Nosebagbear (talk) 09:58, 12 August 2022 (UTC)
@Nosebagbear I absolutely agree that this is issue is not remotely limited to EnWiki. However this an easier place to quickly get significant discussion. I planned to open the issue on Meta (and further) if-and-only-if the issue gets traction here. Alsee (talk) 10:55, 12 August 2022 (UTC)
Not sure if this is an emergency or not of interest, as the election pages at meta are extremely confusing and contradictory. Fram (talk) 10:46, 12 August 2022 (UTC)
I don't think it's an emergency. It appears the Board is in a state of transition from a 10+Jimbo Board to a 15+Jimbo Board, and is adopting new electoral procedures - instead of affiliates simply appointing their two members like before, they shortlist six, from which the community chooses two. The meta pages are indeed arranged unintuitively though, and I may be wrong. W. Tell DCCXLVI (talk to me!/c) 10:54, 12 August 2022 (UTC)
Possible explanation: The members being elected now are being elected to fill the traditional two seats on the Board reserved for the representatives of the interests of affiliates. Since 2008 these two members have been elected by Wikimedia affiliates and user groups (single transferable vote, with each affiliate organisation and user group getting one vote), initially for two-year terms and since 2016, for three-year terms. The last election was in 2019 and elected Shani Sigalov and Nataliia Tymkiv to the Board, it's now 2022 and it's time for the affiliates to elect two new people. What's new is that instead of just the affiliates voting, as in the past, now the community also gets to vote once the list has been whittled down to six. The source of confusion could be that the meta page for the affiliate-selected seats and its FAQ haven't been updated to reflect this new procedure. It is also unclear what Shani and Nataliia are going to do now - will they retire, or will they stay on in appointed positions as the Board steadily expands to a strength of 16 from a strength of 11? Nataliia already holds an appointed position as Board Chair, maybe she'll continue. W. Tell DCCXLVI (talk to me!/c) 11:10, 12 August 2022 (UTC)
Sorry, I don't see the issue here. If the references in question said what the OP says they say, then we might have something. The entire set of objections seems to be invented out of whole cloth by the OP, for reasons that I cannot fathom. Their characterization of the "Problems to solve" thread is particularly problematic. The discussion there is primarily about expanding the voices heard at the board level, especially from minority languages outside of the large Western European and North American ones. The OP, for some reason, characterizes this as a desire to restrict the community? I have a hard time getting behind any proposal by someone who writes such blatant mischaracterizations. If there is a problem here, the OP is doing themselves no service by inventing nonexistent problems to get everyone riled up. Additionally, it appears that the new voting procedure this year seeks to expand community participation by allowing wider community voting that was previously only done through the affiliates. This is really not what the OP says it is. --Jayron3211:16, 12 August 2022 (UTC)
To be clear: that bolding was introduced here by a volunteer (User:Sänger), merely to mark who elected these board members. It does not represent any formal difference in status between the various board members, that difference having been abolished in the bylaws last year, as your diff shows (thanks for adding it). AndreasJN46611:41, 12 August 2022 (UTC)
The loss of fully community-appointed seats makes me uneasy and apprehensive about possible power struggles in the future between the community and affiliates, which could make whoever was elected by this split process suscpetible to feeling like they have to choose a side... should they stand for the affiliates or for the community? Meanwhile the WMF appointees are relatively shielded from having to owe allegiance to anyone, which could result in them voting as a bloc to advance WMF's superiority while the elected members wrangle with their confusion. I don't know, maybe the views of affiliates do not differ too much from those of the community, or maybe having six choices for every two seats (or a similar ratio) allows us to choose members sufficiently aligned with the community...
I don't think the current slate of WMF-appointed people would behave dictatorially, but this merging of affiliates and community makes it possible in the future. Not saying it will happen, but it could...W. Tell DCCXLVI (talk to me!/c) 11:46, 12 August 2022 (UTC)
So essentially the Board will end up with 8 elected members voted for by the mixed affiliate/community method, and 7 chosen by the elected ones. Sounds less bad, yes, but I still don't understand why the community-only seats were abolished. The affiliates need representation, yes, but not like this. W. Tell DCCXLVI (talk to me!/c) 11:57, 12 August 2022 (UTC)
The potential problem if this is the method that will be used for all future community-and-affiliate-selected seats is that all candidates will be filtered according to affiliate interests. For argument's sake, imagine a candidate arguing that former Wikimedia CEO Sue Gardner was correct when she said: "I believe that currently, too large a proportion of the movement's money is being spent by the chapters. The value in the Wikimedia projects is primarily created by individual editors: individuals create the value for readers, which results in those readers donating money to the movement ... I am not sure that the additional value created by movement entities such as chapters justifies the financial cost, and I wonder whether it might make more sense for the movement to focus a larger amount of spending on direct financial support for individuals working in the projects." What are the chances of such a candidate making it through today's affiliate selection process to get into the shortlist?
There is another potential effect of board enlargement on board vote mathematics. In the new 16-member board structure, the seven appointees need two community-and-affiliate-selected members to outvote the rest of the board. In the old board, this would have been five appointees joined by two affiliate or community representatives. The difference is that with the old board structure, two community or affiliate seats represented 40% of those 5 seats. Under the new structure, two community-and-affiliate-selected board members are 25% of those 8 seats. This is academic at the moment, as the board has not (yet) been expanded to 16 members, but perhaps worth bearing in mind. AndreasJN46614:05, 12 August 2022 (UTC)
This seems to be a misunderstanding of the election process. Reading m:Wikimedia Foundation elections/2022, it seems there was a pool of twelve candidates approved by WMF; the affiliates shortlist this to six, and then the community votes on those six. The "Analysis Committee" provides advice on the candidates to the affiliates, but did not decide the shortlist. The meta pages could perhaps be made a little clearer about this process, but it is not an "Iranian style sham election" by any stretch of the imagination. It's one method to balance the various interests; others have been tried in the past, and others will no doubt be tried in the future. Sure, we can debate how good they are, but we don't need to scream about shutting the whole thing down like this. Andrew Gray (talk) 12:14, 12 August 2022 (UTC)
12 candidates, affiliates narrowed the field to 6, now the community votes for 2 of those 6. That's the process this time around. There's no emergency. — Rhododendritestalk \\ 13:03, 12 August 2022 (UTC)
I've had a decent amount of my own concerns with this election process (ElectCom...), but the voting style wasn't one of them. The affiliates voted via STV on the 12 candidates to narrow it to 6, and a community election will select 2 from the 6. I didn't particularly agree with the Analysis Committee's results, and their second batch of results was basically completely unhelpful (almost everyone was ranked the same?), and we (Wikimedia Stewards User Group) basically ignored it in casting our vote. Best, Vermont (🐿️—🏳️🌈) 14:17, 12 August 2022 (UTC)
Pythoncoder rapid discussion was warranted here. The voting opens in a few dozen hours. Do you really think it wise to advocate a plan premised on disrupting an election in progress and demanding to invalidate votes that have already been cast? That would look like sour grapes over the election result (or sour grapes over how you think the votes have been going). Alsee (talk) 12:49, 13 August 2022 (UTC)
Fuck all if I know (summoned by bot). I write and edit articles, I don't know who any of these people are, what they do, or what their ultimate fate will be in this world. I only know three things: all organizations either eventually slide into corruption or become captive to entities that have done so, or both; and that all must perish and all this will all be forgotten, and God will judge the actions of the participants and dispose of them in whatever way He sees fitting; and there's not anything anybody can do about any of this. Carry on. Herostratus (talk) 21:02, 13 August 2022 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Open Call to Join the Northern and Western Europe (NWE) Regional Funding Committee
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Latest comment: 2 years ago4 comments4 people in discussion
About 3 years ago I heard WMF working on the way to hide IPes of anonymous users, not to reaveal unnecessary information about them. Is there any progress? Juandev (talk) 12:30, 25 August 2022 (UTC)
That would drive away potential good editors, but I fear that it may be necessary once we lose our counter-vandalism tools. Certes (talk) 10:02, 26 August 2022 (UTC)
Editing news 2022 #2
Latest comment: 2 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
The new [subscribe] button notifies people when someone replies to their comments. It helps newcomers get answers to their questions. People reply sooner. You can read the report. The Editing team is turning this tool on for everyone. You will be able to turn it off in your preferences.
(1) Logged-in mobile web editors are not given a very strong indication that they have new messages. There's just a little number in a red circle. It's similar to what many other sites use for "Exciting! New! Offers!" and other garbage. There's nothing to say "A human being wants to talk to you."
(2) Mobile web IP editors are given no indication at all that they have new messages. Nothing. Every template warning, every carefully thought out personal message, and everything else just disappears into a black hole, unless the user stumbles across their talk page by accident, or switches to the desktop interface.
But I get it. Bugs happen. They can be fixed. Instead both problems were marked as a "low" priority.
This is baffling. Problem 1 is a serious issue. Problem 2 is utterly unacceptable.
We are yelling at users (or even dragging them to WP:ANI) for "ignoring" our messages that they have no idea exist. We are expecting them learn without any communication all sorts of rules from WP:V to WP:3RR to WP:MOS that don't even apply to most other sites on the web.
Until they get blocked, of course. What a terrible experience. How are we supposed to gain new users when their very first interaction with a human is being told to f--- off, for "ignoring" a message they didn't even know about?
I would like to point out that the majority of messages left to IPs will never reach the user in question anyways, ESPECIALLY on mobile connections. Due to shared ips, the chance of someone else viewing the message before the person you are trying to reach is probably about 50/50. I realise that sometimes leaving a message is effective, but there are serious questions about all the cases where it is simply leaving a very confusing and often aggressively toned message to a completely different user just randomly reading an article at the busstop a month later. What we really need is a completely new way to leave messages to anonymous users. Possibly with some sort of very short lived session or something. But as ip users are more or less stateless (the software concept) right now, that is probably hard to implement. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 09:26, 18 February 2021 (UTC)
@TheDJ: I would have no objection to expiring the OBOD if the talk page isn't clicked in a few days. Many messages come only a few minutes after the user makes the edit; most mobile carriers aren't that dynamic. Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 17:14, 23 February 2021 (UTC)
Equally baffling is that mobile app users do not see any notifications, including no talk page notifications, logged in or out. The link to talk is buried within the settings. Official mobile apps! They don't even see block messages! See T263943 and others. This block review and also this discussion where an editor also tested block messages. The editor was blocked multiple times for something that was not their fault but that of a poorly thought out app. They are not alone. Quote from phab task: Conclusion: Using the app is like being inside a bubble, without contacts with the exterior. It's no wonder there's so much people complaining here that using the app caused their Wikipedia account to be blocked, for reasons they don't understand.ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 09:33, 18 February 2021 (UTC)
I'm always surprised that anyone manages to edit with the mobile interface. As another example, if you're not logged in, there is no way to access the talk page of an article, or even any indication that it exists. If an unregistered user makes an edit and is reverted with a common summary like "see talk", I imagine many will have no idea what's going on. – Joe (talk) 09:39, 18 February 2021 (UTC)
@Joe Roe: Sorry if this is not the right place, but I'm trying to find out why you can't access an article talk page if you're not logged in (on mobile). This was the only mention I could find. Do you know if this issue is being addressed anywhere? Cheers, Fredlesaltique (talk) 07:50, 18 June 2021 (UTC)
The mobile web, and mobile apps, appear to be designed for readers and not writers. Having used mobile web occasionally, I think it's usable for logged in editing, but I do have to switch to desktop every now and then. I've used the iOS app only for a test - it is not usable for editing imo. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 09:55, 18 February 2021 (UTC)
The number of edits I have made with the mobile web or app interface is most likely less than 50 (out of 13,000). Even for reading, the mobile interface is borderline unusable. I do frequently edit from my 4-inch cell phone screen (in fact, I'm doing that right now)... but I use the desktop version. —pythoncoder (talk | contribs) 14:04, 18 February 2021 (UTC)
Thanks for the kind words, Barkeep49, but I simply use the fully functional desktop site on my Android smartphone. It's easy. If I was the king of the Wikimedia Foundation, I would shut down the mobile site and apps, because they are an ongoing impediment to serious editing. RoySmith, there is no need to invest more effort (money) on a good editing interface for mobile, because that interface already exists - the desktop site. Just change its name from desktop to universal or something, and the problem will be solved.Cullen328Let's discuss it18:34, 18 February 2021 (UTC)
In some parts of the world, laptops and desktops are common, and people's phones are their second screen. In an environment like that, yes, it makes sense for mobile devices to be thought of as a read-mostly interface. On the other hand, in other parts of the world (particularly India in the context of English language users), mobile is how people access the internet.[13] There's no doubt that building a good editing interface for mobile is a hard thing, but we should be investing more effort there. Poor mobile editing tools disenfranchises a large segment of the world's population. -- RoySmith(talk)14:41, 18 February 2021 (UTC)
@Suffusion of Yellow: Thank you for basically expressing exactly the same problem I wanted to. I have blocked a few editors who seem to be editing in good faith but just don't communicate, which eventually end up at ANI and after much agonising, get hit with as friendly a WP:ICANTHEARYOU block as we can muster. In the last instance, Mdd97 (talk·contribs), I specifically made a custom block template that said "CLICK HERE TO READ YOUR MESSAGES" in a way that they surely couldn't miss .... but again, following the block they've not edited again. We have to get to the bottom of this; if it's got to the stage where I've got to block people and the root cause is a software fault, it needs to be fixed. Surely the WMF can't be happy that I've needed to issue blocks on good-faith editors in this manner. Ritchie333(talk)(cont)16:10, 18 February 2021 (UTC)
To address a reaction some might have, yes, the vast majority of users on mobile are readers, not editors, and no, I wouldn't want the community totally in charge of redesigning the mobile interface, since we'd end up with the phenomenon we have at desktop where e.g. the tools section of the sidebar is visible to every user on every page despite it being of zero use to 99.9% of them. But this request is not just editor-centrism; it applies to users who have already edited and who badly need a notification to help them not get lost. {{u|Sdkb}}talk18:55, 18 February 2021 (UTC)
I agree 100 % with the your 99.9 % comment. ( :-)). The user interface is editor-centric, is an example ofConway's law to extremes and [[Design_by_committee]]. To add to the list, the bottom part of the [[Main_Page]] and worse of all all the uncollapsed header tags on Talk and Article such [[WP:NPOV]], which emphasis Editing or reading. To continue the Cool Hand Luke topic name reference, we are making readers eat too many boiled eggs of information Wakelamp d[@-@]b (talk) 00:48, 9 November 2021 (UTC)
Pelagic: Thank you for the ping and highlighting how this is a related need for my current project. I've been following this thread and will be including the comments (and phabricator links - thank you for those!) in my work categorized under important requests for additional human or technical resources to assist with on-wiki workflows. Xeno (WMF) (talk) 15:02, 14 March 2021 (UTC)
@Mjroots: the orange bar of death never went away. Last I check, it's still there for non mobile IP editors. That's why they get an indication of new messages. AFAIK, it was never there for the mobile web editor, that's probably part of the problem. Nil Einne (talk) 03:06, 23 February 2021 (UTC)
What no one has ever told me is why it was left out in the first place. Was it a simple oversight? Did someone have such a little understanding of how the sites work that they thought communication was unnecessary? Some other reason, that I'm not thinking of? This is the most confusing part. Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 17:14, 23 February 2021 (UTC)
I wish it could be brought back for all editors. Looks like bringing it in for IPs on mobiles could be the cure here. Mjroots (talk) 18:40, 23 February 2021 (UTC)
Maybe WMF cares more about the app's aesthetics than they do its functionality (hence why they made dark mode the default even though it ruins tables by making their text blend in with the background, and why the mobile wikitext editor is missing features as basic as template insertion so it can fit on the screen). ☢️Plutonical☢️ᶜᵒᵐᵐᵘⁿᶦᶜᵃᵗᶦᵒⁿˢ20:33, 13 December 2021 (UTC)
This is alarming but not surprising. Since I do a lot of question answering at the Teahouse, I'll point out a random IP's post from yesterday, in the same vein as some of the sentiments noted above: "Also, why don’t they get rid of the mobile view? So terrible!".--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 00:29, 24 February 2021 (UTC)
Don't hold your breath. For most WMF employees, commenting on Wikipedia using a WMF account is a quick way to get yourself fired. You might, if you make enough noise, get a department head to respond by saying that mobile users are very important to us and we will do everything we can to address this, up to but not including doing anything differently that we are doing them now. --Guy Macon (talk) 17:39, 8 March 2021 (UTC)
Graphs are unavailable due to technical issues. There is more info on Phabricator and on MediaWiki.org.
When you spend three times as much money without the actual job you were hired to do changing, you start to focus more on spending all of that money instead of on doing your job. When you hire a boatload of new employees when the current bunch are more that enough to do the job, those new employees find something to do, whether that something needs doing or not. I'm just saying. --Guy Macon (talk) 18:31, 8 March 2021 (UTC)
Well, imagine this. Someone is standing on your foot. You politely ask them to move off of it. They don't. You repeat your request more loudly. They continue to ignore you. It still hurts. At some point, does shouting and shoving come into play?If WMF doesn't like being shouted at, well—certainly, no one does. But people do not like being ignored either, and doing so is an excellent way to get them started shouting just to be heard at all. SeraphimbladeTalk to me21:42, 14 March 2021 (UTC)
Action from the WMF! Onetwothreenew mobile bugs I discovered while investigating this have been triaged as "low" priority, and a fourth was lowered to "medium", after a volunteer developer had raised it to "high". All without a word of explanation. The first (unparsed spam blacklist messages) isn't a huge deal I'll agree. But why is not telling users why they're blocked or falsely telling registered users that they're blocked personally not a major concern? That's how we lose people. Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 22:55, 22 March 2021 (UTC)
@Fences and windows: Yes, this can be done with the edit filter. It could even be limited to users with no confirmed email address. But there's a catch. The apps don't properly display custom edit filter warnings, either! The iOS app just displays the title of the page where the message is stored. And the Android app doesn't display custom messages at all. The mobile web editor does display messages properly, however. Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 00:10, 26 March 2021 (UTC)
If this were a lower-priority issue, I would say we should come back in a month and see if the WMF fixed it. But this is such a glaring oversight that I feel this may be the only option if we want to fix this. Question: would this apply to just the app, or to the mobile site as well? —pythoncoder (talk | contribs) 15:06, 29 March 2021 (UTC)
I really don't want to rush into an RFC, though. There are many questions. Should we also disallow mobile IP web editors? Should we disallow edits from users with a confirmed email address? Which bugs, exactly, do we want fixed? How long do we give the WMF to fix them? This is a nuclear option. It should not be taken lightly. But please don't move the whole thread to VPT. It's here so it doesn't get buried in the archives. Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 00:33, 30 March 2021 (UTC)
(edit conflict) Two-question RfC maybe? Initial brainstorm - Question 1: consensus 'letter' to WMF requesting resources be allocated to promptly fix the issues. Question 2: if not done within 90 days, mobile apps blocked from editing enwiki by edit filter. Best to move this particular matter to VPI. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 00:36, 30 March 2021 (UTC)
It has to be noted though that disallowing edits, if it comes to it, is really not great and rather bitey, as the editors will hardly have any clue what's going on due to EF messages being iffy. Maybe bugging Jimbo and/or Doc James to contact someone in engineering is a viable option? ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 00:43, 30 March 2021 (UTC)
Yes, IDEALAB is the best place (for a new thread). That will discourage any supporting and opposing until we figure just what we're asking for. Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 01:09, 30 March 2021 (UTC)
This needs caution—an overly enthusiastic RfC or proposal at WP:VPI is bound to be voted down and that would cause a lot of people to automatically vote down any future proposals of a similar nature. I'm thinking of masked IPs—any proposal to impede or block such users could easily fail if it appeared to be similar to an earlier idea to block "good faith" users who were unaware that communication was even possible, let alone required. Johnuniq (talk) 08:34, 30 March 2021 (UTC)
I wish I could say I was surprised by any of this but I've long assumed that something like this was the cause of numerous editors I've come across who display quite clearly that they have never seen their IP/user talk page, and simply have no idea why their edits "aren't going through" (because a human editor keeps undoing them). A thorough waste of thousands of hours of volunteer time, on both ends. There are some countries or regions in which accessing the internet is only financially possible for the everyday person via a mobile phone, so the WMF's inaction here is another built-in systemic bias which prevents some cultures from effectively contributing their knowledge and skills to Wikipedia. — Bilorv (talk) 06:51, 29 March 2021 (UTC)
Hi everyone, thanks for raising these issues, and documenting the problems so thoroughly. We're going to get a group of people from the Product department together next week to talk about these problems, and see what we can do about it. I'll let you know what we figure out. I appreciate you all bringing it up. — DannyH (WMF) (talk) 22:17, 7 April 2021 (UTC)
Hi everyone, we talked in the Product department about the issues that are being raised in this conversation.
We're currently showing notifications to logged-in editors on mobile web, which appear as a number in a red circle at the top of the page. It's the standard design on mobile that indicates that there are messages for you.
We've been reluctant to do that for IP editors on mobile web, because mobile IPs shift around so much. Desktop IPs can change as well, so there's some risk of not reaching the right person on desktop, but the risk is a lot greater for mobile. People walk around with their phones and move from one wifi or cell tower to another. We haven't wanted to show a message bar to a mobile reader who happens to be picking up the same cell tower or wifi access point as someone who made an edit a year ago.
On the apps, the Android team has released improvements to the talk page experience in February and March. Echo notifications currently exist in the Android app, and user talk pages are also discoverable through the watchlist. Users can access article talk using a dropdown menu at the top right; you can see how this works in this walkthrough gif. There are some further improvements planned, including enabling in-line replies, and building onboarding features to help people discover both the watchlist and talk pages. You can learn more, and ask the team questions, on their Android communication project page.
The iOS team is also looking at improving the talk experience on their app. They're currently in the initial design and technical planning phase for enabling Echo notifications on iOS. Later this year, they're planning to fill in some of the missing collaboration features on the app, including making editing tools and talk pages more prominent.
About IP users: As myself and others have suggested, there's a solution to the "random unrelated reader" problem: Don't show the alert if the new message is over X days old. Or (if the privacy policy permits) set a cookie anytime they click "publish", and only show any new message alert to people who have edited in the past X days. Or even both. I think most people already understand that messages sent to IP users are not guaranteed to reach the user. But we do expect that when 1.2.3.4 edits Foo, we leave them a message, and then an hour later 1.2.3.4 edits Fooagain, that they've seen our message. That's the disconnect between expectations and reality that's been bothering us. You're also making the assumption that users on mobile devices are also on mobile connections. What about the phone user on their home WiFi? That could be stable for months.
About logged in users: No, the red circle is not (only) the standard "you have new messages" alert. It's also the standard "we have some spammy garbage we'd like to sell you" alert. Of course experienced users know Wikipedia doesn't do that, but inexperienced ones are the people we're trying to reach. As matter of habit, I ignore similar-looking notices on unfamiliar websites.
About the Android app: Again, what about spam-weary users who have turned off push notifications. With no in-app alert, how are they supposed to know that there is an urgent message on their talk page?
About the iOS app: If users are currently in a total bubble, why enable editing at all? Why not wait until basic communication features are implemented, and keep the app read-only in the meantime?
@DannyH (WMF): Thank you for your time working on and responding to this. I recognize the difficulties in developing a good software product for the diverse projects that rely on MediaWiki software. However, I am deeply frustrated that this has been allowed to occur. Ensuring that existing community mechanisms for communicating with other editors, especially new editors, continue to function is a bare-bones requirement for any Wikimedia minimum viable product. To paraphrase Risker's related thoughts on Wikimedia software development in a different area: the intention behind a lot of this has been good, but sometimes I think engineers have no idea how our projects actually function and how significant some of these problems are. Frankly, if logged-out mobile editors don't have an interface to see messages, then the logged-out mobile interface should not contain editing functionality. Otherwise, this software is wasting many many hours a day of volunteer time tracking down and reverting and warning (not that they'll see the warnings) and blocking good faith IP users who are oblivious to community norms and this software is wasting just as much time spent by new editors trying to help out but unable to access any feedback about their editing. Best, KevinL (aka L235·t·c) 10:01, 28 April 2021 (UTC)
Let me make more explicit a position that I suspect a broad swath of the English Wikipedia community may support: If the Foundation feels that it is impractical to build a communication system to communicate with logged-out mobile editors, then logged-out mobile users should be required to log in to edit. Wikipedia is a collaborative project; we simply cannot allow users to edit without being able to communicate with them effectively. KevinL (aka L235·t·c) 10:05, 28 April 2021 (UTC)
Absolutely, thank you for the clear description of the situation. I was thinking of going rogue and just blocking any uncommunicative user/IP after a single warning. That would avoid mega-frustration and wasted time and would focus minds on fixing the problem rather than ticking boxes for the number of new edits from new users. Johnuniq (talk) 10:23, 28 April 2021 (UTC)
@DannyH (WMF): If fixing all the issues is going to take some time, and you don't want to disable editing entirely, can you break the Android app a bit more? See this. Using that hack a message can be conveyed to iOS users but the same can't be done for Android. It shouldn't take long to make the tweak, which would at least allow a custom mechanism to communicate a message to Android editors. Perhaps directing them to login via their browser app, for example. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 03:16, 30 April 2021 (UTC)
Hi everyone, thanks for posting more thoughts. As usual, there's lots to respond to here.
It's true that the apps are late to including talk page features. That's partly because we didn't have a clear strategy for how we could improve talk pages sitewide — we knew that we wanted to improve the usability of talk pages, but the Flow project was not successful, and we knew that we needed to find a new direction. We determined that new direction with the Talk Pages Consultation in mid-2019, and then the Editing team started their Talk pages project to build tools for replying, starting new discussions and being notified when people comment in specific talk page sections. (If you haven't yet, you can turn on the new tools for replying and starting new discussions in the Beta preferences tab.)
As part of that project, the Editing team has developed the ability to break down wikitext conversations into individual comments, and all of that work is now informing the work that both the Android and iOS teams are doing to improve the talk page experience on the apps as well.
Now, one of the things that we do when a product team is working on a feature is to look at both the usage numbers and the revert rate for edits that are made using the feature. If the revert rate is higher than average, then clearly there's a problem with the feature that we need to fix.
Comparing the revert rates across desktop, mobile and apps, we see a similar pattern with both logged-in and logged-out editors. Looking at the last 30 days on English Wikipedia, mobile web edits have a higher revert rate compared to desktop edits. That's true for both logged-in users (10.2% revert on mobile web to 3.7% revert on desktop) and IP editors (35% revert on mobile web to 22% revert on desktop). Edits made through the apps are closer to the desktop revert rate. For logged-in app users, about 6.5% of app edits are reverted, compared to 3.7% on desktop. For IP app users, it's around 24% app edits reverted vs 22% IP edits on desktop. So while every single revert is a waste of time for somebody, we don't see app editing causing significantly more problems than desktop editing, especially compared to mobile web.
As I said earlier, the Android team has recently released improvements for talk pages just last month, and has plans to continue work on it, and iOS will be working on communication features later this year. So while those teams had a late start on these features, they are currently getting attention.
Some more specific points: Suffusion of Yellow, your suggestion about offering a time-limited message is interesting, and started a conversation in a couple of teams, so thanks for bringing that up. For your question about the assumption that mobile devices are used on the go: yes, there are definitely people who use mobile devices on stable IPs. However, it's a lot more likely that any given mobile device will be on an inconsistent IP than a desktop device.
Regarding people who ignore red circles and turn off push notifications, it's true that banner blindness is very strong, and that's a problem for web designers in general. However, we've found that when someone takes a specific step like turning off push notifications, responding with larger and more insistent notifications is not likely to help.
Danny, I'm intrigued and puzzled by your statement here. You have people here (and in many previous conversations) expressing frustrations at an inability to communicate with users. Some prior discussions have been about specific editors who have a mixture of constructive and troubling edits which are the kind of editors who can frequently be helped to stop the troubling edits. Your response, if I'm understanding it correctly, is that because there is no difference in revert rates for these editors compared to those on other platforms that the lack of communication doesn't matter. This might be true but would be a radical shift in culture in terms of how we handle disruptive editing and would be at odds with other foundation sponsored initiatives, including obligations to help new users in the UCoC. Can you help me either understand where I am failing to get what you're saying or if I do understand what you're saying how we, as an enwiki community, can square this circle. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 19:17, 30 April 2021 (UTC)
Hi Barkeep49: What I shared about the revert rate was in response to a couple of things. First, Johnuniq commented on the fact that I'd only talked about edits from app users, and didn't acknowledge the impact on the editor community who have to clean up a mess. (The part about "ticking boxes for the number of new edits from new users.") It was also a response to the suggestion made in a few places that the apps shouldn't allow editing if the communication features aren't up to desktop standard. My point is that we do try to take the impact on the community into account, by making sure that features that we build don't result in a mess that's noticeably bigger than the mess that already exists.
But yes, this conversation is mostly about reaching specific editors who might be helped to stop making troubling edits. I agree that the communication features are important, and both apps teams have been and will continue to work on communication features. Some of the problems that we're talking about have already been addressed on Android; I think that in the case mentioned in the thread on Jimbo's talk page, they would have received talk page notifications as of March 30th — but that was sadly too late to reach that user. These conversations have inspired us to talk more about the communication features as a product team, and I appreciate the folks who have brought it up here. — DannyH (WMF) (talk) 20:37, 3 May 2021 (UTC)
DannyH (WMF), the desktop site is fully functional on modern mobile devices. The solution to this problem to shut down all apps and sites that are not fully functional, and redirect all users to the desktop site, which should be renamed the "fully functional site". That would save enormous amounts of money and draw a gigantic worldwide pool of new editors into the WMF free knowledge websites. Right now, we are erecting barriers to collaboration with people editing with mobile devices, and that is terribly sad. I speak as an editor who has been editing and more recently administrating with Android smartphones for ten years. 99+% of my edits are on smartphones. The WMF is spending buckets of money on a problem that does not exist, and making matters worse in the process. Cullen328Let's discuss it
While this may have been a hypothetical, I would personally oppose such a proposal, solely because while the desktop site is functional on mobile, the text is still really small. The probably-crazy solution that immediately comes to mind is to switch the site skin to the new Responsive MonoBook, because that would display the content at a reasonable size on mobile while presumably allowing IPs to see the Orange Bar of Doom. (I haven't tested this, but I assume it works because unlike Minerva, MonoBook is maintained by the editing community.) Also, there are some plans to make Vector responsive too, but I don't know anything about that. —pythoncoder (talk | contribs) 22:19, 5 May 2021 (UTC)
At least a couple of us have disagreed with your view a few times, Cullen. The desktop site is not at all well optimised, and the apps are better for reading already. The solution is not to delete everything, rather than fix the issues. It's such an overly simplistic view anyway; compare this to this in terms of page size. I mean, the suggestion just isn't considerate of all the language projects and global users, and is just so unlikely to happen that it distracts from real solutions, which really is to disable editing in the interim / provide a roadmap, or at least allow the community to do that if it wishes to by consensus. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 01:36, 6 May 2021 (UTC)
I agree that just nuking mobile and forcing everyone to use desktop is the wrong solution. What many people don't quite grasp is that not everyone is like them. They assume that because they have a large screen smartphone and a fast connection, then of course everyone does, and if a desktop website works for them then of course it works fine for for everyone else.
In the real world some people access Wikipedia on old flip phones, satellite phones with huge packet delays, rugged industrial phones with tiny screens, and ancient computers using modems.
I recently finished a preliminary design for a major toy manufacturer that includes a very low performance web browser with a really cheap display. That one got cancelled (90% of toys that make it to prototype do) but sooner or later you are going to see something similar in the toy aisle at Wal-mart for $29.95 USD. --Guy Macon (talk) 11:02, 6 May 2021 (UTC)
@DannyH (WMF): is this a joke or am I misunderstanding? You're saying that it's a deliberate design choice that mobile app editors are not seeing the messages being left for them? How do you suggest that we contact CejeroC, or does it not matter that thousands of volunteers' time (both newbie and experienced) are being wasted? — Bilorv (talk) 23:33, 29 May 2021 (UTC)
Hi @Bilorv: I think that you're misunderstanding slightly. It's a deliberate design choice not to show notifications for IP editors on mobile web, because there's a higher chance that we'll show the notification to the wrong person. It's more likely that a mobile web edit was made by someone who's moving around, so the notification would appear for a random reader who happens to be picking up the same cell tower or wifi access. We are showing notifications for logged-in editors on mobile web, and both logged-in and logged-out editors on the Android and iOS apps.
CejeroC was an editor on the Android app, which added talk page notifications in some changes made in February-March 2021. This was too late for the people trying to contact CejeroC, unfortunately, but it should be easier to contact Android app editors from now on. — DannyH (WMF) (talk) 18:35, 4 June 2021 (UTC)
Thanks for the reply, DannyH (WMF). I'm glad that I was misunderstanding, as the other option was deeply undesirable. My new questions are as follows: you're saying that it's a deliberate design choice that unregistered mobile web editors are not seeing the messages being left for them? Where can I see the WMF's data on the percentage of IP talk page messages that would have been seen by someone who was not the intended target, versus the percentage that would have been seen by the intended target? And how should a volunteer attempt to get in contact with an IP editor tagged as making mobile web edits, particularly when the IP has clearly been static for a non-trivial amount of time (based on the length of the editor's contributions)? — Bilorv (talk) 18:57, 4 June 2021 (UTC)
@Bilorv: I wish we could get data on who sees which notifications; it would make life easier. Unfortunately, we don't know. (There are a lot of stats that are typically collected by other big websites that we don't collect out of respect for users' privacy.) The judgment call that we're making right now is based on our understanding that a large number of IPs move around and are unreachable even on desktop, and that problem is obviously magnified for mobile IPs. For the question of how a volunteer could get in contact with a stable mobile IP editor, one potential workaround would be to leave them a message on the IP's talk page, and then when you revert one of their edits, you put a link to their talk page in the edit summary. That's obviously a hack, but IP editors having a talk page at all is kind of a hack. — DannyH (WMF) (talk) 20:58, 8 June 2021 (UTC)
I don't believe that the users I'm thinking of are aware that there's a page history—in fact, I often see behaviour that makes me think they are going "my edit didn't go through, why is it not there when I look again a few hours later?" after a revert (and I don't think the layout makes the page history obvious). I need to send a big fuck-off banner saying "SOMEONE IS TRYING TO TALK TO YOU ABOUT THE EDIT YOU DID" in order to engage attention. Unfortunately, no such functionality exists. I do appreciate the privacy afforded to readers and editors, but you're making a judgement call based on not very much—certainly not what the community wants—and using a 2001 IP-based system is not the solid foundation for communication that I need. (I understand the WMF is planning to anonymise IPs but not change them as the method of tracking unregistered contributors.) I don't necessarily want us to start tracking people with cookies, so I know every solution comes with a disadvantage, but this situation is honestly ridiculous. So much of my time is wasted with sending out messages to people who will never see it, and the alternative is just undoing what they did without explanation (what message is that to send to a newcomer? How can we get new editors involved by doing that?). — Bilorv (talk) 21:25, 8 June 2021 (UTC)
@Bilorv: As you say, the 2001 IP-based communication system is very flawed. The big f'off banner doesn't even work for desktop IP editors all too often, because IPs shift around, or just because the person who's making the edits doesn't understand or doesn't respond to talk page messages. For mobile IP editors, you're even less likely to make a connection. I think that if the folks who created MediaWiki twenty years ago were creating it today, they probably wouldn't use IP addresses as the foundation for communication, but this is the legacy system that we have.
I do think that the work that the Anti-Harassment Tools team is doing on "IP masking" will help with this, especially if we use cookies on mobile devices to associate the device with an auto-generated user name. There's a lot of planning and discussion left to do on the IP masking project, and figuring out how to communicate with "masked" IP editors will be one of many things to figure out. — DannyH (WMF) (talk) 22:42, 9 June 2021 (UTC)
@DannyH (WMF):We are showing notifications for ... both logged-in and logged-out editors on the Android and iOS apps. Can you link me to the phab task where the the lack of iOS notifications was fixed? I don't have an iOS device handy and phab:T274404 and its subtasks suggest work is just getting started. Also, the Android app still isn't showing me any alerts for logged-out talk page messages. And least no one has responded to my simple question at phab:T95396. So what have I missed? Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 19:37, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
@Suffusion of Yellow: Sorry, you're correct about iOS. I just checked my own post at the top of the section and realized that I made a mistake when I replied to Bilorv. Android has already made the changes; iOS is getting started on that work. I looked at your question on that ticket, which I think was not the correct ticket for that bug report — it looks like that ticket was closed in May 2020, and may not have been the right ticket anyway. I just asked the PM to take a look at it, and tell me where that report should go; I'll let you know when I get an answer. — DannyH (WMF) (talk) 21:06, 8 June 2021 (UTC)
@DannyH (WMF): So I understand there is still a subset of logged-out mobile editors not getting talk page notifications, yet they are still editing? This is unacceptable.
As has been stated above, if an interface does not have basic communication capabilities, then the interface should not have editing capabilities. --DB1729 (talk) 02:17, 8 June 2021 (UTC)
@DB1729: I understand your dismay; I agree that communication is essential for productive wiki collaboration. I think that at the root, this is actually a flaw in the concept of allowing people to edit without an account on Wikipedia. Twenty years ago, it may have been roughly accurate to assume that IP addresses were mostly stable, because everybody had a desktop and mostly a dial-up connection, so if you posted a message for a particular IP address then you were likely to reach the same person. Today, the use of laptops at wifi hotspots and phones and tablets using cell service has basically broken that model. A few years ago, we reached the point when mobile pageviews hit 50% of our traffic, and by now the majority of Wikipedia readers are accessing our site with a mobile device.
I think that your suggestion of restricting IP editing on mobile is an interesting one, and it's possible to argue that that should apply to desktop as well as mobile. But that's a much bigger conversation, and I don't think we'd be able to settle it here. — DannyH (WMF) (talk) 21:19, 8 June 2021 (UTC)
I don't have the data, but edits I make using my phone usually come from the same IP (my home or work wifi) that my desktop edits come from. (I use responsive monobook, so my phone edits count as "desktop"). What's inhibiting communication with some mobile editors is not that their IP changes, it is that the software they use is not fit for purpose. Do you know any of the people who can fix the software? —Kusma (talk) 08:28, 10 June 2021 (UTC)
@DannyH (WMF): Speaking of notifications Danny, for some reason I never got that ping from your last reply.(ironic) Did you get a confirmation it was sent? Thank you for the reply and for sharing your thoughts. In the meantime, yes I understand the dynamic IP problem, but these users are notified (I hope) when their IP addresses are blocked, are they not? Presumably when they open an edit window? Similarly, a talk page notification could be displayed only when there is an attempt to edit. It could then time-out or become invisible after a set duration, much like I assume a block notice will disappear once the block expires. DB1729 (talk) 15:48, 12 June 2021 (UTC)
I think it would be a good idea to also bring up what I think is the related issue of the #suggestededit-add 1.0 process, as this seems to a mobile idea. See for example Jomart Allaguliyev (talk·contribs), a new mobile user who has made over 1000 edits exclusively through this process. Most are fine, but some are wrong, and some are almost nonsensical. Sometimes they re-do and worsen their own better work! [14][15]. They've also a few times made the same edit twice after being reverted [16][17], which feels like something popped up and they simply repeated the action? The only documentation seems to be on Wikidata, so it is unclear how exactly these are happening or where they're happening from. There is an old Phab task (T227623) closed suggesting the process is working as intended. CMD (talk) 02:42, 22 April 2021 (UTC)
I'm confused about how this is a suggestedit issue. That editor was given exactly one warning, as far as I can tell. If an editor is editing disruptively, the first step is to notify them on their talk page, isn't it? (Also, I have fixed your broken link above.) – Jonesey95 (talk) 04:26, 22 April 2021 (UTC)
Thanks for the fix. The user is not editing disruptively, on the whole. The point is, this user's edits are being solely guided by some program out there providing editing suggestions to new users, provided by WMF, of which there seems to be little documentation. How is it not a suggested edit issue, when any potential disruptiveness would presumably be due to this feature? It would be nice to have documentation. If the edit summaries are automatically generated, why don't they include a wikilink to such documentation? The Mediawiki FAQ states only that it is to "Add short descriptions to articles that are missing descriptions", which is clearly not the case given these are edits to existing short descriptions. CMD (talk) 09:14, 22 April 2021 (UTC)
As an update here, the page Wikipedia:Suggestededit-add 1.0 has been created by Guy Macon, but I'm still seeing edits like theseones which add the short description "Overview of the topic", and am no less enlightened as to whether these somewhat meaningless descriptions are being suggested by Wikimedia software. CMD (talk) 05:21, 13 September 2021 (UTC)
Another block. Any progress?
[18] Didn't seem like there was any other option. Any progress on resolving these issues? As I requested somewhere, any chance we can break the Android app some more so we can use a hack like 1139 (for iOS) for Android users as well? That hack works due to the fact that iOS edit filter disallows do not parse the page but just display the page title instead. Android unfortunately uses a hardcoded vandalism warning, so this does not work there. It should be trivial for WMF engineers to make Android behave the same as iOS while they do proper fixes. @DannyH (WMF)? ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 14:19, 15 July 2021 (UTC)
@ProcrastinatingReader: It looks like the fix for edit filter messages on Android has made it to the official (app store) release. So it should be possible to "communicate" with Android users through the filter now. However, links in the edit filter message will open in the browser. And if they're viewing a wiki that isn't their default language, the links will go the wrong language wiki. e.g., if we (on enwiki) send them to Special:MyTalk or WP:EF/FP/R, they might end up at fr:Special:MyTalk or de:WP:EF/FP/R. I don't know if that bug is being actively worked on, but we're getting somewhere. Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 23:34, 17 July 2021 (UTC)
Suffusion of Yellow I don't know a lot about edit filter, but I (maybe) have an idea for a work around. Can we redefine all edit filter links as fully defined [external links] and explicitly point them to https://en.wikipedia.org/_whatever_ ? Alsee (talk) 12:34, 18 July 2021 (UTC)
Yes, this was deployed a while ago but because of a caching bug it only worked some of the time. The caching bug has supposedly just been fixed, but I haven't tested this recently. I would not assume that all mobile IPs can "hear us" without extensive testing. But some certainly can. Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 04:57, 15 January 2022 (UTC)
Drop everything and focus on the collaborative issues!
While the apps may be works-in-progress, this project is a collaborative one, and an app that allows you to edit but does not allow collaborating means a lot of good-faith editors who would be competent if editing with a browser are getting blocked for reasons they don't even understand. WMF added dark mode to their app before they allowed IOS users to access the talk namespace. I say, if you want the app to be decent, drop cosmetics, drop the rare (or even somewhat common) bugs, and get this issue over with. While users may have issues viewing certain pages, or their eyes may be strained looking at certain layouts, or it isn't quite ergonomic enough, that's small potatoes compared to the inability to see other editors' warnings. And then AN/I is not viewable on Android. The version shown starts with a thread from 2020 about the BLM protests. All of this means that editors who edit on mobile are not able to collaborate properly.
A proposed roadmap would be
Drop everything until the issue is dealt with
Direct all resources to creating a way for mobile users to collaborate in the same way desktop users can (Especially IOS users, who are worse off than their android companions)
Fix the bug affecting AN/I, as it is one of the most important pages for dealing with certain editors or issues
Unblock any users who were blocked for CIR or refusal to communicate on mobile.
Return to whatever you were dealing with before.
Of course, you should take everything I say with a fifty-gallon drum of salt given that I have no background in web engineering and have no idea what issues WMF is facing. If someone more qualified than me steps up and says that this is not feasible, I will gladly retract it. ☢️Plutonical☢️ᶜᵒᵐᵐᵘⁿᶦᶜᵃᵗᶦᵒⁿˢ15:54, 10 February 2022 (UTC)
Mobile device users
In some parts of the world, laptops and desktops are common, and people's phones are their second screen. In an environment like that, yes, it makes sense for mobile devices to be thought of as a read-mostly interface. On the other hand, in other parts of the world (particularly India in the context of English language users), mobile is how people access the internet.
That post was 18 months ago on the top of this thread. I wonder how much RoySmith realises that a similar statement in a current appeal to the WMF from NPP (thanks for your support, Roy) for more software support met with pushback from a couple of users who as a consequence refused to sign the appeal. Roy means well, and I concur with him entirely, but there are people who take PC to ridiculous extremes and will look under every rock to see if there are the slightest grounds to make a big brouhaha and undermine serious efforts to get the the WMF to finally do something. In deference to them the text of the appeal was changed slightly but it doesn't make the work more pleasant for people like Roy and hundreds of others who just want the best for Wikipedia. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 05:59, 4 September 2022 (UTC)
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Moved from WP:VPP
Fundraising. The Wikimedia Foundation does not track the identity of IP addresses, so it doesn't know your age, income level or whether you donated in the past.
wikimedia.org and see if those guys will force the WMF to put its million dollar warchest on fixing a major issue from 15+ years ago. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 15:25, 18 December 2021 (UTC)
You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous) § Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees election 2022 Call for Candidates. 🐶 EpicPupper (he/him | talk) 01:09, 26 April 2022 (UTC)
