Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/Single/2012-08-13

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The following is an automatically-generated compilation of all talk pages for the Signpost issue dated 2012-08-13. For general Signpost discussion, see Wikipedia talk:Signpost.

Arbitration report: Youreallycan request for arbitration (839 bytes · 💬)

• While it may be unkind to lambast the person bringing the case, it is certainly true that policy is that ArbCom is the venue of last resort. I was under the impression from email received that ArbCom was set to turn this case down at this time, for this very reason, and, while I have sympathy for some of those complaining about YRC's behaviour, was pleased that at last ArbCom seemed to be handling something correctly. Alas! The majority of Arbitrators so far are voting accept, once again making a mockery of the intended purposes of the Committee. Rich Farmbrough, 22:03, 15 August 2012 (UTC).
  

Discussion report: Image placeholders, machine translations, Mediation Committee, de-adminship (1,078 bytes · 💬)

• Great job this week, really informative. Despite efforts to stay on top of things, you pointed out several important discussions I had no idea were happening. Thanks! Ocaasi ^{t | c} 13:44, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

I think the discussion on Image Placeholders is over. It appears now that Wikipedia:Image placeholders is simply not a guideline or anything of the sort and never was. Smallbones (talk) 16:20, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

• Any idea why this page does not show up on Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost? jcgoble3 (talk) 22:06, 14 August 2012 (UTC)
  • That would be because I missed it when manually updating the page. Thanks, Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 07:15, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

News and notes: Bangla-language survey suggests the challenges for small Wikipedias (10,676 bytes · 💬)

• Yesterday I was helping a new editor on the English Wikipedia, and their first language was Bangla. They were clearly struggling with English, so I gave them a link to the Bangla Wikipedia, and suggested it might be easier to contribute there. They said they were already aware of the existence of the Bangla Wikipedia, but were only interested in contributing on the English one, despite the language problems. Being utterly uncurious about such things, I didn't ask why. But one can speculate that search engine results might have a lot to do with it. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 11:01, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

• Demiurge1000, the editor you came across had better skills in Bangla, but wanted to contribute in English. It might be due to the reason that IT education in India is given only in English. Students are not taught to "type" in regional or national languages and if they wish to, they have to go for special classes which are not in the syllabus (which anyone will avoid as studies are not easy in India). This might be one of the reasons why they wished to stay on enwiki. TheSpecialUser ^TSU 14:22, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

• Typing in vernacular languages is what has kept me away from Bengali and Hindi Wikipedia. Learning to use the free software is a daunting task. Wonder if the Wikimedia India Chapter can arrange for typing classes for those interested in editing in vernacular languages in India.--  Forty two  17:57, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

• The language typing help is part of the standard coverage of Wiki Academy conducted for Non English audiences by Wikimedia India. As phonetic input methods are supported natively in Wikipedia, it is even more easier for people to overcome this hurdle. --Arjunaraoc (talk) 05:10, 21 August 2012 (UTC)

• This is a fascinating look into the community base of a small Wikipedia project associated with a major world language in a multinational population which is increasingly using Internet communication. I encourage anyone who is interested in the topic of expansion of Wikipedia into new languages to consider the extent to which this study accurately depicts the user base which establishes new projects. In every way that I have considered this data I found it very encouraging. I hope that this study has a follow up because I think this report is meaningful and that Bangla language would be an excellent target for Wikimedia development because of the great need and great potential. Blue Rasberry (talk) 14:07, 14 August 2012 (UTC)
• Style note: It might be helpful to spell out acronyms such as "FDC" at the point where they are first used. ~ Ningauble (talk) 14:59, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

I've done a lot of clean-up work on South Asian topics. I've also interacted with IPs from South Asia. Finally, I used to be an admin on Meta (our cross-wiki coordination site) and I did clean-up work across many small language Wikipedias - mostly spam removal. My observations:

• I've been amazed by how much Wikipedias for some major language groups are languishing. Bangla is a prime example. Yes, most of those 200 million speakers are poor and many may be poorly educated -- yet 100,000s have doctorates and millions more are very well-educated.
• We have 1000s of very active South Asian editors -- both established accounts and IPs. Probably most of those people aren't editing South Asian language Wikipedias.
• I've only run cross-wiki contribution checks on anonymous vandals and spammers; I've noticed that the South Asian IPs seldom have done any editing on the South Asian Wikipedias. On the one hand, that's good -- we're drawing some undesirable edits away from these smaller projects. But it's also bad, since most of those are shared IPs (colleges, Internet cafes, dial-up modems) used by multiple people to edit Wikipedia, so I see so many good edits from those IPs -- also not being made on South Asian wikis.
• I've sometimes wondered if perhaps the South Asian intelligentsia look to English for educational and technical topics at work or school, then use their native languages out in town or at home. Could this be why our English Wikipedia has such a vibrant South Asian readership and editing community?
• I've noticed this English vs. local language gap most with South Asian contributors. Tens of millions speak Yoruba and our Yoruba Wikipedia is tiny and not very active, yet Nigerians, Togolese and Beninois seem proportionally less active on the English Wikipedia than South Asians.
• These are just observations and speculation. I've never even been to South Asia although I am appreciative of how much my own country and even my own street have been enriched by immigration from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka (still no Bhutanese in my town).

Some suggestions:

• For our South Asian topics (geography, culture, Bollywood, etc.) -- ditch the fund-raising banner ads. Instead, serve up banner ads cross-promoting the associated Wikipedia. In some cases, the language for promotion will be obvious -- Tamil culture article, Tamil Wikipedia. In other cases, there may be multiple languages -- our India article covers a country with dozens of languages; in such cases, maybe have the banner ad lead to a landing page with links to all the candidate projects.
  • A variation on this idea requiring a little work on the server side: tailor the banner ad to the originating IP address -- if it's a Bangladesh IP, serve up a banner ad promoting the Bangla language. If it's a generic Indian IP, serve up a banner ad leading to a multi-language landing page.
• Conduct a study of edits per language area in each language by Wikipedia to determine which projects have the biggest gap between English language and native language participation. Compare that with the languages and areas that have the least gap. Use that as a starting point to better understand what's going on.
• The English Wikipedia was initially seeded with a lot of public domain content such as the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica. There may be similar resources in some of these other languages that are in the local public domain (government documents, etc.)
• Similar things can be done with other languages (such as Yoruba) as well.

--A. B. ^{(talk • contribs)} 10:59, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

Here's an example of what I pointed out above --115.248.130.148, located in Mumbai, is the source of 829 English Wikipedia edits and just 5 combined edits to our Hindi and Telugu Wikipedias. --A. B. ^{(talk • contribs)} 11:40, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

• re: Questia accounts Kudos to Ocaasi for his work on getting the community much needed sources for referencing our articles. Referencing is difficult work, but our reliability depends on it. His proposed WP:The Wikipedia Library will be a great resource for improving our quality and I thank him for his dedication in this area. 64.40.54.119 (talk) 19:22, 15 August 2012 (UTC)
• Comments and questions.

  AB is right, I suspect. Ironically, those with university degrees and in professional and management positions are more likely to have a knowledge of English, which is seen as prestigious because it opens up the outside world. They are among those who you'd want to attract into the Bangla-WP editing community. BUT, alongside those people there is surely a demographic of educated, motivated, internet-connected people who can be motivated to contribute to Bangla. How can their motivation be reinforced? And what is the state of internet connections in the language area—possibly an important part of the jigsaw puzzle for us to know.

  Perhaps it should be a multi-pronged approach, both through real-life activities by the Bangladesh and Indian chapters, and through explicit invitations at relevant en.WP article talk pages to translate and/or improve equivalent articles in the Bangla WP. What kind of chapter activities would be the most effective? Is there scope for collaboration between the two chapters, and if so, are key personal relationships being built as a platform for serving the Bangla-language community? What inhibiting factors work against the participation of women? And more: who's got ideas for building the narrative of the inside world of Bangla-speakers? Tony (talk) 02:00, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

• Not too many people search in world wide web in Bengali language too! --Tito Dutta ✉ 18:06, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

Op-ed: Small Wikipedias' burden (1,901 bytes · 💬)

• In contentious areas I've found Wikipedia:How to put up a straight pole by pushing it at an angle the most accurate reflexion of what I feel I have to do; they'll never change their minds we've just got to ensure we annoy everyone equally and hopefully that'll mean the flag is straight. Grandiose (me, talk, contribs) 14:59, 14 August 2012 (UTC)
• I'm pleased that you wrote this article and I tottaly agree"

Marion Strecker (Brazilian journalist living in the US)2604:2000:1009:C01D:ADC6:C857:28CF:8D19 (talk) 15:16, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

• I just wanted to add some compliments and appreciation to your writing. I was really pleased that I can read something so reflective and well written. I also like that you reflected the burden the smaller languages are facing up to. So true. Very nice. Thanks. Reo ⁺ 10:03, 16 August 2012 (UTC)
• I also liked this story very much, and it has made me reflect on just exactly what I am doing with all the hours I've put in here on this project ... well, I'm even more glad now that I edit here than I was before, and I want to redouble my efforts to try to persuade current editors to stay, and to keep recruiting new ones into the project. Nice job! Cliff (a/k/a "Uploadvirus") (talk) 09:23, 19 August 2012 (UTC)

Technology report: "Phabricating" a serious alternative to Gerrit (1,490 bytes · 💬)

Finally, a WMF initiative that is actually useful! From mw:Admin tools development: "Sadly, the resources of the Wikimedia Foundation are limited, and we do not wish for this to interfere with our timely delivery of appropriate tools". Hmmm. I wonder why. MER-C 11:05, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

Special:NewPagesFeed isn't useful? Ironholds (talk) 19:08, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

wondering why the toolserver problems effecting bots on enwiki isn't ever getting a mention been going on for weeks. Blethering Scot 11:25, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

Well, it's because it's nothing new: as you say, it's been going on for weeks. And also, this particular problem is affecting only one of the two s1-databases hosted by the Toolserver, limiting the damage. Thirdly, I'm not sure many readers have either noticed or care. But I agree, I should do an IB, particularly if the current plan to make the database read only and then reimport a dump goes ahead. - Jarry1250 ^{[Deliberation needed]} 12:05, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

WikiProject report: WikiProject Dispute Resolution (3,260 bytes · 💬)

I do not agree with user:Mr. Stradivarius' statement that "If all parties to a dispute were always perfectly civil, then there would be no need for dispute resolution. The parties would simply look to the policies and guidelines..." because I think that looking at the policies and guidelines is not simple even for people who want to do this. Wikipedia structure is too complicated for new editors and the barriers to become a Wikipedian are great. I am glad that the barriers are being lowered. I hope that the new dispute resolution workflow system proposed by user:Steven Zhang and others will both let people ask questions in appropriate places or perhaps direct them to policy in user:the wub's new help page redesign. I feel that many disputes happen because of horrible user interface, and that if people instinctively found what they wanted when they came to Wikipedia then disputes would be lessened or averted. Most people only become uncivil when they are frustrated, and I do not think it is reasonable to expect users to remain completely civil when they are frustrated. Blue Rasberry (talk) 13:55, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

Of course we can't expect everyone to know all of our policies and guidelines, especially users new to Wikipedia. I fully agree that Wikipedia can be a very confusing place for new users, and it's certainly not helpful to blame new users for their lack of knowledge. Quite the contrary, we should be helping new users wherever possible. I really was talking about editors who are perfectly civil - and no-one's perfect. A perfectly civil editor would always be willing to listen to advice, and would educate themselves about policy if they made a mistake. But we are all ignorant to a certain degree, and we all have our lapses, and it is for this reason that dispute resolution exists. At its heart, I regard dispute resolution as a process of education; educating users about policy, about community norms, about better ways to negotiate, and so on. In many ways, disputes are the perfect teachable moment, and if we handle disputes well we can do a double service for Wikipedia: we can get improved content, and more clueful editors, who might go on to educate other users in turn. I hope this goes some way towards explaining my comment in the report, but if you have any questions, feel free to ask. — Mr. Stradivarius ^{(have a chat)} 15:44, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

Can you be specific about an instance of "the horrible user interface" that would lead to a dispute? (I'm asking from a "What should we change" prespective) Bawolff (talk) 16:38, 14 August 2012 (UTC)