Meta:Babel

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Babel

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This is Meta's general and policy discussion page (post a comment); for discussions about multilingualism or translation, see the translator's noticeboard. If your comment relates to a matter relevant to a particular page, please post it there and only place a link with a brief description here.

Armãneashti: Cãndu comentarlu-a vostru easte ligat cu vãrã frãndzã spetsialã, Vã-plãcãrsim s-u publicats aclo shi sade s-bãgats ligãturã cu unã descriptsia shcurtã aoatse.

Беларуская: Калі гэта толькі магчыма, калі ласка, пакідайце свае каментарыі непасрэдна на старонцы «Talk» адпаведнага артыкулу Вікі, а на дадзенай старонцы пакідайце толькі спасылку туды.

Brezhoneg : E kement ha ma c'hallit en ober, laoskit ho kemennadennoù war bajenn gaozeal ar pennad zo e kaoz, ha na skrivit amañ nemet ur gerig displegañ gant ul liamm.

Català : En la mesura del possible, deixeu el vostre missatge a la plana de discussió de l'article corresponent, i aquí només poseu-hi un enllaç cap al mateix.

Čeština: Pokud je to možné, zanechte detailní zprávu na diskuzní stránce příslušného článku a sem dejte jen jednoduché vysvětlení s odkazem.

Dansk: Prøv så vidt muligt at skrive dine beskeder på de relevante artiklers diskussionssider og blot sætte et link til den her.

Deutsch: Sofern möglich, hinterlasse Deine Nachrichten auf der Diskussionseite des betreffenden Artikels und plaziere hier lediglich einen Link dorthin.

English:

Esperanto: Laŭeble metu vian plenan mesaĝon en la diskuton de la koncerna artikolo kaj ĉi tien nur unu linion kun ligo tien!

Español : En tanto sea posible, coloca tu mensaje en la página de discusión del artículo concerniente, y deja aquí solamente una línea con un enlace hacia el mismo.

Euskara: Posible bada, utzi zure mezua nahi duzun artikuluak duen eztabaida orrian, eta hemen lotura azaltzen duen lerro bateko lotura utzi.

Français : Dans la mesure du possible, veuillez laisser vos messages dans la page discussion de l'article concerné et n'insérer ici qu'un lien vers ce message.

Italiano: Nei limiti del possibile, lasciate i vostri messaggi nella pagina di discussione dell'articolo e inserite in questa pagina solo il link alla discussione.

日本語： くわしい話はなるべく関連するページのノートに書いておき、ここにはそこへのリンクを添えた1行程度のメッセージだけを残すようにお願いします。

한국어: 만일 당신의 의견이 특정 문서의 내용과 관련있을 경우, 그 내용은 그 문서에 적어주시고, 이곳에는 그 문서로 가는 고리와 간단한 설명만 적어주세요.

Ripoarisch: Wann mööshlesh, schriiv Dinge Bëijdrach op däm Attikkel singe Klaaf_Sigk un donn hee nur ene koote Henwiiß unn_enne Lengk drop henn.

Nederlands: Laat je gedetailleerde berichten zo veel mogelijk achter op de discussiepagina van het betreffende artikel en hier een enkele regel met een verwijzing daarheen.

Norsk: Prøv å gjøre din beskjed her så kort som mulig, og lenk heller til relevante diskusjonssider.

Occitan : Dins la mesura del possible, daissar vòstres messatges dins la pagina discutida de l'article concernat e inserir aquí pas qu'un ligam vèrs aqueste messatge.

Português : Se possível, poste sua mensagem na página de discussão da página concernente e deixe aqui um pequeno lembrete com um link para a discussão.

Русский: По возможности, оставляйте ваши комментарии непосредственно на странице обсуждения соответствующей статьи Вики, а на данной странице помещайте только ссылку туда.

Slovenščina: Kolikor je le mogoče, pustite svoja sporočila z vsemi podrobnostmi na pogovorni strani ustreznega članka, tu pa naj ostane le vrstica s povezavo nanjo.

ไทย: การอภิปรายเกี่ยวกับหัวข้อเรื่องใดๆ กรุณาเขียนไว้ที่ หน้าพูดคุย ของเรื่องนั้นๆ และทำลิ้งก์จากหน้านี้ไปสู่หัวข้อเรื่องนั้น โดยเขียนไม่ควรเกินหนึ่งบรรทัด.

Türkçe: Eğer tartışma konunuz ile ilgili özel bir sayfa varsa, lütfen mesajınızı oraya bırakın ve buraya yalnızca bir bağlantı ile kısa bir açıklama ekleyin.

中文： 请尽量在讨论页发表你的详细意见，只在本页用一行写下你的意见摘要，然后做个链接连到即可。/請儘量在討論頁發表你的詳細意見，只在本頁用一行寫下你的意見摘要，然後做個鏈結連到即可。

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This page experimentally allows language localisation.

Special:Userlogin translations

Can I suggest borrowing some from Commons:Special:Userlogin. We have some 20 languages there.

Again I wish there was better co-ordination between Meta and Commons specifically, especially on issues of multilinguality, since these are the only two multi-language wikis (at least that I'm aware of). :( --pfctdayelise 07:45, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

Incubator is multilingual in theory, but in reality the language used for administration is English. The same applies to Species. Daniel (‽) Check out Wikiscope! 14:46, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

Wikiversdad Beta is multilingual, Wiktionaryz is multilingual. In fact only few languages (<20) are actually being used, and the main language is english (at the moment, as everywhere in the internet). --Purodha Blissenbach 20:31, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

a common page for Wikipedias without standardized language?

Hi. There are now many Wikipedia projects in languages that don't have a standardized language, for instance the Scots wikipedia, the Low German wikipedia or the Sardic wikipedia. All these projects have to deal with some common questions, for instance: What to do about the variation in dialects and spellings and how to justify these projects? Therefore, I think it would be nice if there were some kind of portal for these projects, a page with links to the different projects and with a kind of non-standardized-language-FAQ that provides an overview of the different answers that have been found to the common problems. I have to say, however, that this is just an idea and don't know anything about what to do in order to make that idea come true. Or maybe there is already something alike? -- j. 'mach' wust ☞ ☏ 17:22, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

That sounds like a good idea, and I doubt that something like this already exists. All you need to make it come true is to set up a page for it on one of the relevant projects, and put out the message to everybody you think would be interested. Daniel (‽) Check out Wikiscope! 20:24, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Sock puppets suspicion in meta.wikimedia

Hello,

I have been taking a look at the contributions of the users Axx and Laqab, being both the only supporters of two new wikipedias. I have noticed that Axx seems to be a sock puppet of Laqab (as you can see, they have made almost the same contributions with just a few minutes of difference, and Laqab is the only who has a user in the Italian wikipedia), but I don't know how to report that here (I have read about how to do it in en.wikipedia, but it seems that here it is made in a different way).

Thank you! Eynar Oxartum 00:20, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Wik Bullies, Thugs and Ferals

Howcome the Australian editors with the help of some offshore admins are beign totally rude and ignornat to new editors and claimign they are using 'sockpuppets' when I had to look up what that was, and am not etc?

Registered user 'Gretaw' has been blocked along with my block when Gretaw is totally absolutely nil to do with me. The admins who did this are either Gretaw or they have attacked a totally not involved reg wik user.

Whatever, the go at me on wikipedia has been pretty disgusting and bad form wik that you allow this bully stuff to happen on your site. Check out that Gretaw stuff and what Thatcher131, Golden Wattle, Longhair/Durova, and any other whinney ones - oh I forgot the pompous Sarah Uhart. There was the spree slope Grahame something also.

Bad show wik. Poor form and disgusting org.

Copyscape

http://www.copyscape.com/ - I used this tool quite often to fight against copyright infrigment and it was most helpful, but now i see that its no longer available for free. I'm greatly dissappointed by this situation and looked for an alternative, yet i couldnt find.

Do anyone has an idea about what we can do? Any suggestions? Do you know any alternative free tools? Thanks in advance.

I even think about asking the company to let the tool run for free under wikipedia.org domain, but I'm not hopeful.. -Tembelejderha 08:28, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Well you can always use plain old Google... — Edward Z. Yang^(Talk) 18:06, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

Eml.wiki

Hi. We, the users of eml.wiki, would want the interlink which link to eml.wiki, now called Emilià , becomes Emiliàn e rumagnòl. Thank you very much and excuse me for my wrong english. --Ottaviano 20:55, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

Yes. Please do it. In fact, "Emilià" does not make sense in _any_ E-r variant. eml:User:Piffy 22:22, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

Localization of trademarked names

I wonder if anyone can give some advice for those of us who work on smaller Wikipedias about any potential legal problems that arise from "localisation" of trademarked names in various languages. What I mean by localisation are whatever changes are necessary to a name in order for it to conform to the normal form of names in the target language. For example, in English, this requires that non-Latin character sets be switched to the Latin alphabet, e.g., zh:福州 becomes en:Fuzhou. Esperanto requires that nouns end in -o, so en:Microsoft becomes eo:Mikrosofto, and so on. On the Lojban Wikipedia, (Here—conveniently in English) it has been suggested that it is legally problematic for us to localise trademarked names to fit Lojban phonotactics unless the holder of the trademark has specified a Lojbanic name (which is never). Thus, Microsoft must be referred to constantly in Lojban text as "Microsoft", Nintendo must be referred to as "任天堂", and the Saudi Binladen Group would be something like, "بن لادن السعودي" ... heck, I don't even know what it would be. This can be very awkward in Lojban, to say nothing of the reader who is subjected to all of these character sets. Although this issue came to my attention vis a vis Lojban, it seems to me that it is equally a problem with regard to many of the obscure natural languages that Wikipedia exists in, if they have their own requirements for localisation. I would very much appreciate some advice on whether there is a real legal issue here.—Nat Krause 19:59, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

Question regarding the size of Vietnamese Wiktionary

Does anybody know how Vietnamese Wiktionary have grown that big? Please see Talk:List_of_largest_wikis#How_did_Vietnamese_wiktionary_got_that_big.3F. --Acepectif 00:11, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

I don't know why as Chinese Wiktionary has also grown similarly big.--Jusjih 16:31, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

Image copyrights on en.wikibooks

We seem to have over 3,000 untagged images, some dating from the earliest days of the project (see toolserver page). We don't have enough admins to take care of this ourselves.

I proposed a strategy for dealing with this on the staff lounge, but I'm wondering if there really are any stewards with image-deleting bots? --SB_Johnny|^talk|_books 13:28, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

Sep11 Wiki

Will User:WikiSysop on the September 11 Wiki please edit MediaWiki:Mainpage so that the underscore doesn't show up in the sidebar? Or can someone contact WikiSysop to get this done? Thanks. Timrem 19:29, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

Important: Please notice

Hi all. Please notice this thread. Any input would be important. Thank you. Redux 13:44, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

Daily newsletter

Hi Babellers. I'm wondering about the daily bulletin email thing/mailing lists/whatever it is called. We have on Wiktionary a neat little Word of the Day (WOTD) thing, which I reckon would fit in nicely on the daily bulletin/mailing list. How would one go about suggesting the WOTD be included on the newsletter? --Dangherous 10:51, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

Humm, I suppose it would depend on which channel you are referring to. Each mailing list has its administrators, so any regular mail or newsletter that is being sent through them would have their involvement at some level. For instance, if this were a newsletter that was being distributed on foundation-l, the mailing list of the Foundation, it would probably be productive to talk to Anthere or Austin, the admins of this channel. See Mailing list for a comprehensive list of mailing lists, figure out who distributes the newsletter you are interested in and talk to the relevant admins. They should be able to direct you on how to get your idea included. I hope this helps. Redux 20:49, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

Bot status for User:RoboMaxCyberSem

RoboMaxCyberSem (talk · contribs · page moves · block user · block log)

Hi, I'd like to request bot status for this account on Meta to accomplish task of mass page moves and recategorisation according to results of this discussion. It will use AWB and pywikipedia. After this is complete it will probably be used for maintenance tasks. Since there is no specific page to request community approval for bot, I've submitted my request here. MaxSem 11:30, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

I'm no expert in bot programming, but this one would appear to be no big deal. Should be ok. Redux 16:27, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

No objections. Korg + ⁺ 15:43, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

Can we assume that discussion is over and proceed? MaxSem 17:49, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

From where I'm standing, I'd say yes. It doesn't look like there's going to be any opposition to it. Maybe wait until tomorrow, 11:30 am UTC, which will be a full 7-day period since the request was posted, which is the minimal duration of RfAs (seeing as there's no procedure for this particular request on Meta). But barring the surfacing of any opposition, I don't believe there's any need to wait any longer than that. Redux 20:13, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

Hiding revisions

I'm wary about editing the policy section of this page without giving notice, so I'm posting here. The page currently reads:

Removal of nonpublic personal information such as phone numbers, home addresses, workplaces or identities of pseudonymous or anonymous individuals who have not made their identity public.

This should be edited to reflect the fact that oversight is commonly used not just for pseudonymous or anonymous individuals who have not made their identity public, but also for public individuals (i.e. people with articles) who have not made that personal information posted public. When a vandal posts a public person's non-public personal phone number or address, it is oversighted. Dmcdevit 07:51, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

Absolutely. Redux 18:22, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

Links from wikimedia to wikibooks and wikiversity

Wikimedia does not currently have links to wikibooks or wikiversity; maybe it should? Indeed123 16:20, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

Do you mean Wikimedia home page? If so, it should indeed have a link to Wikiversity (which is currently missing), but it already contains a link to Wikibooks. – rotemliss – Talk 16:30, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

Done. Added links to Wikiversity and Meta-Wiki, which was missing too. -- mzlla 17:20, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

Meta main page

There are no links from the meta-wiki home page to the other projects. Can someone post the template at the bottom? Indeed123 20:32, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

Sorry no. They were removed - too many links. I don't think it a good idea to put them back again. You can reach each project through one click to the list of parent projects.--Aphaia 04:21, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

How about removing "From Meta" written under every title?

1. These two words are redundant with the logo, only one centimeter left, and seem to me quite useless.
2. "From" is an English word and has nothing to do, say, on a Spanish page where it should be translated as "de Meta" or "desde Meta"... (Von Meta in German, and so on...)
3. We don't have "From Wikipedia" written on the top of every single Wikipedia article, do we ?

Teofilo 00:58, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

To 3.: Yes, we do. There is "From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia" shown below every page title in the English Wikipedia and a similar line appears on every Wikimedia project. — Timichal 01:01, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

I had not noticed this sentence appeared on the English language Wikipedia. There is none on the French language or on the German language Wikipedias. Teofilo 13:06, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

I don't understand why it should be removed. That text is visible also in printed versions, the logo isn't. And are there any harm with these two words? -- mzlla 13:20, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

These words are not inside the wiki and you cannot translate them into other languages, harming the multilinguality. Is there any harm removing these two words ? Teofilo 16:44, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

Well, if you change your interface language (changing the preferences or using the parameter uselang in the URL), it is translated. – rotemliss – Talk 17:04, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

It is hidden by default, but Meta (and English Wikipedia) was configured to show it (probably in MediaWiki:Monobook.css or MediaWiki:Common.css). Note that it is shown when printing in all the wikis. – rotemliss – Talk 16:23, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

Wik Bullies, Thugs and Ferals

Howcome the Australian editors with the help of some offshore admins are beign totally rude and ignornat to new editors and claimign they are using 'sockpuppets' when I had to look up what that was, and am not etc?

Registered user 'Gretaw' has been blocked along with my block when Gretaw is totally absolutely nil to do with me. The admins who did this are either Gretaw or they have attacked a totally not involved reg wik user.

Whatever, the go at me on wikipedia has been pretty disgusting and bad form wik that you allow this bully stuff to happen on your site. Check out that Gretaw stuff and what Thatcher131, Golden Wattle, Longhair/Durova, and any other whinney ones - oh I forgot the pompous Sarah Uhart. There was the spree slope Grahame something also.

bad show wik. Poor form and disgusting org.

What does Wik have to do with this? He was banned ages ago... 68.39.174.238 00:51, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

Suggestion re handling long interwiki (interlanguage) lists

I have a suggestion/request. Note on the English Wikipedia Main Page, at the bottom of the list of interwikis on the left, it now says "Complete List" in bold type, and you can click there and get to all 250 Wikipedias. This was done in reponse to a suggestion from me, and I think it's very important, because otherwise people who don't happen to scroll to the bottom of the Main Page were getting the impression that Wikipedia was in only 33 languages. It's not a great long-term solution because apparently it only displays for people with Java enabled.

Well, I'm thinking something like that may be useful on other pages, too. So my suggestion is this: that the mediawiki software have a feature added like this: if a Wikipedia article, say Vitamin for example, contains a link like [[meta:Interwiki/Vitamine]], then at the bottom of the list of interwiki links it would display a link called "Complete list" or "more languages", and if the user clicks on that, then they would see a list of links contained in the file "meta:Interwiki/Vitamine". This file could then contain a lot of interwiki links to Vitamin pages in various languages that wouldn't have to be added one-by-one to each language version of this article. An editor creating a version of the same article in a new language could just link to the one file with the list of interwiki links.

To illustrate the usefulness: suppose in a few years there are 1000 languages in Wikipedia and 500 of those have an article about Vitamin. Then people may start complaining that there are "too many" interwiki links on the Vitamin page. Personally, I don't think there's such a thing as "too many" interwikis. But it will happen, as it did on the English Main Page where they were first cut down to 33, then sometimes completely deleted. I think it would be better to provide an easy way for an editor to put in a link to "more languages", similar to the "Complete list" link now on the English Main Page. And another advantage: when the 501st language is added, with the current system 500 edits would have to be done (possibly by 500 different people) to insert the new language into the interwiki list on all the Wikipedias. With the system I suggest, the new language could just be added in one place, in a file on Meta, and would automatically be accessible to readers of Vitamin articles on all the Wikipedias. I don't know whether this idea is feasible, or is considered a good idea, or whether this is even the right place to suggest it, but thanks for listening. --Coppertwig 03:18, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

The right place for that is a feature request in bugzilla. – rotemliss – Talk 08:48, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

I've been told by more than one apparently knowledgeable person that this is two separate issues: (1) A change in mediawiki software to facilitate custom sidebars. I've put in a bugzilla request for this but suspect it'll wait a long time while other more urgent things are done. (2) A movement to store common lists of interwikis as I described, including a further software change. In my opinion, discussion needs to happen first about how it would work, (e.g. where would the interwiki lists be stored) so the software can be modified appropriately. Any comments? Is it a good idea? Bad idea? How might it work? Would meta be the appropriate place to store the common links, as I suggest above? --Coppertwig 02:54, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

A bot?

Well, look this pages: Special:Uncategorizedcategories, Special:Uncategorizedimages and Special:Uncategorizedpages. All of them has no categories, and I think that a bot can include provisory categories (category:!Categories, category:!Images and category:!Pages), until someone categorize them correctly. --Slade ♠ 19:14, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

What would be the point? It's useful to know which pages aren't categorised, which is the reason we have Special:Uncategorizedcategories. Pages should be properly categorised, not given fake categories to remove them from that special page. Angela 05:49, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

I proposed it because these pages just grow and grow. It's a possible solution. Thanks for your comment. --Slade ♠ 01:18, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

One Meta Login?

Would it be possible to have it so that one meta login will work for all official MediaWiki sites?

See Help:Unified login. —{admin} Pathoschild 05:44, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

Colaboration between the community of lmo.wiki, Wikimedia Italia and Wikimedia CH

All people concerned are kindly invited to discuss the issue at Proposed colaboration between the community of lmo.wiki, Wikimedia Italia and Wikimedia CH. See you there. --Snowdog 18:08, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

1000 done this evening

On December 18th in the evening we have 1000 pages (congratulations will be accepted on our Scriptorium - thx. -jkb- 20:18, 18 December 2006 (UTC) and the team of the Czech Wikisource

Attempted linkspamming in fundrasing comments

Browsing through the fundraising comments [1] I saw several entries like the one below.

Name	Date	Time	Amount	USD equivalent	Comment
Anonymous	2006-12-20	23:00:00	JPY 1	0.01	www.example.com

The format was always the same, a very small donation (typically $US 1, $CAN 1 or JPY 1) from an anonymous donator. The comment consists solely of a url, with no leading http://

While we must and do welcome small donations, how do we stop the system being abused like this? 1 Japanese yen is worth 0.8 US cents (US$0.008), and even if it were rounded up to 1 cent, the processing fee from PayPal/Moneybookers/WMF's bank will be 100% of this - see [2]. A 1 USD donation nets the Foundation $0.60-$0.70, which is better than nothing. Should we therefore not accept any donations that are less than the approximate equivalent of 1 US Dollar (JPY120, €0.80, £0.55, CAD1.20, AUD1.30 based on today's exchange rates)?

If this is not the right place to discuss this, please let me know where is. Thryduulf (en,commons) 03:04, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Honestly, I dunno. There isn't really anything we can do about that, unless we took out the field completley, which might not even be possible. Thunderhead 03:08, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Inflected languages

I wrote a proposal to simplify work for inflected languages (available at User:Eleassar/Inflections). I wanted to post it on Bugzilla at first, but then I thought perhaps we should discuss this more thoroughly as many languages are inflected and perhaps we could find a solution that would be more optimal. This is the first time I wrote something like this, so any help and input would be more than appreciated. What else should I do? Whom should I contact too? --Eleassar ^{my talk} 15:49, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

What happens on the arabian wikisource?

What happens on the arabian wikisource? They deleted over night some 200 pages, and there are no other activities. And I am not sure, if the image on their main page is published by them. -jkb- 11:53, 28 December 2006 (UTC) (better here: oldwikisource:User:-jkb- or s:cs:User:-jkb-)

Just a vandalism spree, I've fixed it. MaxSem 12:56, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

I have seen it, :-), -jkb- 12:58, 28 December 2006 (UTC) - - - bzw, once I made interwikis on ja: and also ar: - it is quite funny, isn't it? Здравcтвуй, -jkb- 13:02, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

Two questions

1. Talk:EasyTimeline
2. Why help pages are repeated on Meta and on other wikis?

And sorry if it is the incorrect place, but I posted this also on Meta Talk:Babel --Nethac DIU 20:49, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

Questions by Nethac DIU

Moved from Meta talk:Babel. —{admin} Pathoschild 20:40, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

1. Talk:EasyTimeline
2. Why help pages are repeated on Meta and on other wikis?

--Nethac DIU 20:49, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

You should ask your first question of the extension developer; you probably won't get any more answer here. The help pages are often mirrored on local projects to make them easier to read and refer to. Not all projects mirror them; the English Wikisource deleted them, for example. —{admin} Pathoschild 04:13, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, but who is the EasyTimeline extension developer? I don't know where look it. --Nethac DIU 13:29, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

The developer seems to be Erik Zachte. —{admin} Pathoschild 20:34, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

1. Why, when I edit, almost everything is in bold face?
2. There are two spanish messages untranslated in preferences, watchlist tab: "Hide minor edits from the watchlist" and "Add pages I delete to my watchlist"
3. In what do Meta:Babel and Meta Talk:Babel differenciate from each other?

--Nethac DIU 13:37, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

1. Please clarify the question. You can attach a screenshot.
2. There are new and were not yet translated. They can be translated here locally, and can be translated globally – see MediaWiki localisation.
3. The first is for general discussions. The second is for discussions about the first page. Therefore, this page is not the place for your questions.

– rotemliss – Talk 16:51, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

1. Image:Bold face error.PNG
2. Thanks for saying that. I asked that because I wanted those messages to be translated... (only locally, in Wikipedia they are translated as "No mostrar ediciones menores en la lista de seguimiento" and "Vigilar páginas borradas", although if is the same as here, it should be "Vigilar páginas borradas por mí"). They are at tog-watchlisthideminor and tog-watchdeletion.

--Nethac DIU 19:02, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, I've updated these messages. MaxSem 19:28, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

Sorry, but I found other two errors:

ADVERTENCIA: Estás editando una versión antigua

de esta página.

Si la grabas, los cambios hechos desde esa revisión se perderán. (editingold)

And in my tools, it says "my preferences" instead of "mis preferencias" (mypreferences). And thanks for updating those messages. --Nethac DIU 19:01, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

Top ten guidelines

Would it be possible to have a page that summarizes all of the guidelines that are currently spread out on many pages, aka have a page that says

1. Be courteous to other people; do not insult the other people who work on the wikimedia project
2. Do not put down material that degrades from the page; do not put down redundant information, overcomplicated information, information that is to prove a point, or pointless information
3. Respect the source of your information: cite your source and don't plagarize your source.
4. Avoid edit wars; don't undo the changes of other people endlessly. Color is colour is color!
5. Stay unbiased; keep debates for the discussion page
6. Always put material onto the appropiate wikimedia project

• Encylopedic material goes to Wikipedia
• Dictionaries of all sort go on Wiktionary
• Learning material goes on Wikiversity
• Textbook material goes on Wikibooks
• Species material goes on Wikispecies
• Quotes go on Wikiquote
• Uploaded material goes to Wikicommons

Etc., etc. Indeed123 19:23, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

Eml.wiki 2

Hi. We, the users of eml.wiki, would want the interlinks which link to eml.wiki, now called Emilià , becomes Emiliàn e rumagnòl. Thank you very much and excuse me for my wrong english. --Ottaviano 16:03, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

PS: Please do it. In fact, "Emilià" does not make sense in any eml-variant. It's quite horrible... :)

Bug the devs --.anaconda 17:18, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

Restricting page moves to autoconfirmed

Hello. Meta is a place where many vandals come and vandalize using page moves [3]. What about restricting page moves to autoconfirmed (users registered for 4 days)? Would there be any inconvenience setting that up? guillom 09:22, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

I don't think so. There doesn't really seem to be a need for relatively new users to abuse Meta by going on page-move sprees. I'd support this being enacted. Nishkid64 23:56, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

Willy on Wheels or his impersonators do this. --.anaconda 16:27, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

 Support --Slade ♠ 22:37, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

 Support --Nethac DIU 17:14, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

 Support Thryduulf (en,commons) 20:28, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

 Support--Aphaia 14:28, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

 Support--Jusjih 14:26, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

Support. --.anaconda 14:32, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

 Support --Brownout (msg) 04:14, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

 Support Cbrown1023 talk 21:58, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

Support We've done this on en:wp: and rarely have issues with it. xaosflux ^Talk 18:16, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

On en-wiki, we have page creations restricted to logged-in editors as well. Cbrown1023 talk 18:38, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

 Support drini ^[es:] _[commons:] 22:44, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

 Support --Filip (§) 22:05, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

No objection. I think we can request this at http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org --.anaconda 16:27, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

Added as Bug 9014. – rotemliss – Talk 17:14, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

Please help and voice your opinion on sysop abuse of very small Wikipedia

The Yiddish Wikipedia has virtually no community at all, and we need your help in a conflict. please comment here Thanks--יודל 08:02, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Request for admin assistance

The Interwiki Map contains several links that no longer work, are barely in use because of narrow scope, or are possibly inappropriate linkspam. A project has started on enwiki to examine this. For starters we've identified about a dozen defunct mappings that should arguably be removed, but of course the map page is protected. Would it be best if I requested temporary adminship to deal with this, given that I'm an admin on enwiki? Or could one of the existing admins here take a look at it? The request is at Talk:Interwiki_map#Nonexistent_sites. Thanks, Radiant! 09:07, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Latin Wikipedia + Bess = blocked

I cannot access Latin Wikipedia or who knows how many else from school because the filtering software, the infamous Bess, blocks it under the heading of Personal Pages. Isn't there someone who contacts places like filtering companies to tell them to unblock it? There's no facility from my end to do it since we're the ones being filtered and they don't want us to request that. I didn't know where to post this, so I posted it here. Luigi30 18:05, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

ang.wikisource needs a help (or a closure)

Since the start of the proposal for closing ang.wikisource I see the vandalism increasing on that wiki. The page W/index.php is now the second most edited page (with 4 revisions; the first is Hēafodsīde, the Main page, with 9 revisions). Please someone do anything on that wiki: del/revert the vandalized pages, close the wiki and make a redirect to en.wikisource... please, anything.

Also, if possible, del the W/w/index.php and W/index.php pages on ht.wikisource, W/index.php on fo.wikisource and W/index.php on zh-min-nan.wikisource. 555 04:24, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Strange! WP:EN and WP:FR have different policies (nothing to do with cultural or linguistic differences)

I have written an article that WP:EN policy allows but WP:FR does not allow. If there were linguistic or cultural reasons for this, I'd have no problem with this. But it is not the case. It would appear different languages have different basic policies. And I find that quite bizarre!

It seems natural to me to have the same basic principles. If an article is allowed in one wikipedia it should be allowed in another. I presume this issue has been discussed before - could someone point me in the right direction to read up on it. Thanks! Pgkr 13:46, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

Could you please cite the policies in question? I agree that if an article is allowed in one wikipedia it should be allowed in another, though verifiable sources are vital, sometimes unavailable in certain languages.--Jusjih 14:11, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

This is the discussion and vote that led to the deletion of the article. The WP:EN policy is cited below. The vote seems to have overridden the WP:EN policy even though it was cited in discussion.

Individual chapters of national and international organizations are usually not notable enough to warrant a separate article unless sufficient notability is established through reliable and verifiable sources. However, chapter information is welcome for inclusion into wikipedia in list articles as long as only verifiable information is included. [4]

Sorry for the external links, I haven't mastered interwiki links yet. Pgkr 14:33, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

I see what you mean, but did the deleted French article have any interwiki links? When you have no userpage here, I cannot readily determine which Wiki sites you use.--Jusjih 18:31, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

Yes, Jusjih, there were some interwiki links (maybe half a dozen). Although I put some effort into creating a page that was deleted, I'm not interested in focusing on that. The general issue is more interesting: does each Wikipedia have its own set of guidelines? Was that a deliberate choice or just a natural progression? Should each wikipedia be re-inventing policy? Is there a general guideline like: use EN:WP policy unless there are cultural or linguistic reasons to do otherwise? As I said before, I'm sure this issue must have come up before. PS Updated my user page. Pgkr 10:41, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

There should be interlanguage coordination, but everything is not so ideal. As my French is limited to very basic skill, I am not ready to administer any French-language Wiki sites. Otherwise, I could read the deleted materials in non-public areas limited to admins only. I suggest that you appeal undeletion at French Wikipedia while your French skill is much better than mine.--Jusjih 15:03, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

I agree some kind of interlanguage coordination would be a good idea. Thanks for the appeal suggestion, I'll mull it over. Pgkr 18:34, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

Notability criteria are decided by local communities. The vote seems to have overridden the WP:EN policy even though it was cited in discussion. Exactly; fr:wp doesn't have to follow en:wp policies. Does en:wp follow the banning of fair use images of de:wp? guillom 15:37, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

Exactly my point. I agree with Jusjih that some kind of interlanguage coordination (assuming it doesn't already exist) seems a logical and sensible thing in the long run. Is it productive for different communities to be re-inventing policy on the different language sites?. It obviously wouldn't be right for any one community to dictate policy to others, but some kind of policy alignment is desirable.

One approach might be a comparison table that compares policies across different languages. This would highlight differences and might encourage alignment or provoke debate. Waste of time or not? Pgkr 18:34, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

Policy comparison across languages/projects was suggested sometimes (not here but on foundation-l mainly) but not has realized until now. You can begin it here on meta, if you want. --Aphaia 22:57, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

It is an excellent idea to compare policies among different Wiki sites. An example is fair use. As I administer eight Wiki sites and use many others, I have gathered as many as I can. Speaking of policies and guidelines, fair use is a very important copyright policy, but notability is a less important guideline. As I have translated some articles from Chinese Wikipedia to English Wikipedia (shown at w:en:User:Jusjih#Newly_created, I have not seen any of them deleted. Why would I create w:en:Sixty-Four Villages East of the Heilongjiang River with just around 100 Google hits? The answer is simple as its Chinese version w:zh:江東六十四屯 has about 34000 Google hits with some historical importance. Chinese people know 江東六十四屯 well even though typical English-speaking people may not even know what Sixty-Four Villages East of the Heilongjiang River are. Even so, my article has not been nominated for deletion. Based on your opinions, I now consider it more important to coordinate notability criteria, i.e., if someone or something can be proved notable in a language subdomain, articles should generally be admitted in any Wikipedia subdomains.--Jusjih 17:45, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

Foundation issues

I recently found this page, by a link from enwiki. It seems often referred to at enwiki; I am note sure that is true about other projects. I wonder what kind of status does this page have, currently? Is it important? Is it forgotten? Has it been replaced by the mission statement, or some other pages?

This page is one of two I have found that mentions the "wiki process" as important. The other one is Jimmy Wales's Statement of principles, on a subpage of his user page. Is this concept lost? I think it is important, somehow, especially what concerns the various tries to define what is "consensus" on a wiki. // habj 01:22, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

I think this page is outdated, while the core concept could survive still today. Mission statement is a bit different, I think, since "Foundation issues" seems more to intent more practical matters; what the Foundation does. As other documents, it tries to handle the middle area where the volunteer world of community/wiki process and the responsibility and obligations of the real-life entities and to explain how the latter affects the former. --Aphaia 03:44, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

Please unblock Template:Information thread ; Template:Announce Foundation List Summary

Template:Information thread is being blocked. How are people supposed to write news if the Information thread is blocked ? Teofilo 22:55, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

Please unblock Template:Announce Foundation List Summary. I have to edit it.

The error message displayed when one tries to edit these templates refers to "cascading block" of the Main Page.

Teofilo 22:55, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

You should be able to edit these templates now. Please, use WM:RFH if you need help from an administrator. Thank you. --.anaconda 23:18, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

Thank you, Anaconda. I feel relieved. This edit in Template:Announce Foundation List Summary was the last one in a long series of syntax changes and page renamings, and not being able to make the final change was quite frustrating. I'll try to remember to use WM:RFH next time. Sorry for bothering "babel" with this request. Teofilo 23:40, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

Wikijunior objective

I have persistently attempted to build a series of mathematical books though I thought their location was no suitable. I have now seen Wikijunior at Wikibooks but I have been deterred by its niche target audience. I would like to discuss if the age range of 8 - 11 could be widened to 4 - 16/18. I can be contacted at under the alias of Herraotic at Wikibooks. --82.10.202.139 15:54, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

Wiktionary

Hi. I'm a student at Colorado State University. Whenever I try to edit Wiktionary, I get this message:

Your user name or IP address has been blocked by Connel MacKenzie.

The reason given is this:

reblocking CSU now that identity has been verified

Does this mean that my university is blocked from editing? I waited a week and the message is still there. Thanks. 129.82.41.233 22:00, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

It doesn't appear that you are blocked on the English-version of the site. You need to give all your information (namely your IP address) or we can't help you in solving his problem. Cbrown1023 22:14, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

IP address are normally blocked due to heavy vandalism. If you are IP address is blocked, and it is used by the University, then yes, the University is currently blocked. Unfortunately, without your IP address, we don't know exactly why or for how long and cannot do anything to unblock you. Cbrown1023 22:17, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

I just looked through that log and found this: http://en.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ALog&type=&user=&page=User%3A129.82.0.0%2F16. It looks like we've been blocked since June! 129.82.41.233 22:48, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

You shouldn't have been reblocked in the first place after an OTRS complaint for the same reason. I suggest e-mailing your blocking admin at mailto:SomeWiktAdmin@gmail.com (I looked up his user name and his e-mail was posted there). Please be sure to include your IP address in your e-mail and the other information you have provided here. Cbrown1023 23:05, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

Hello. Someone directed my attention here, but I'm unclear on a few things. What OTRS complaint? --Connel MacKenzie 02:05, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Check the block log, I know as much as is publicly available. Cbrown1023 02:41, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

So ... I'm still blocked. What's the problem? 129.82.41.234 09:05, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Can someone please respond?? I would apprreciate some sort of explanation or solution of this issue. 129.82.41.234 21:29, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

I e-mailed Connel MacKenzie right after you posted the first one (9:05, 5 February), but it seems like he has not recieved it yet. Cbrown1023 22:23, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Sorry - I've had e-mail problems recently. (I was e-mail-bombed, and spamgourmet trapped it, but didn't inform me that I needed to reset the various counters.) I've bypassed that mechanism now, so e-mail messages will go straight to mailto:somewiktadmin@gmail.com. If you are on the IRC invite-only channel #wikimedia-checkuser, I am often available as "Connel" (or just use /msg Connel ...) if you still cannot reach me. --Connel MacKenzie 04:22, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

This was the block notice sent to CSU, by the way. Let me know how much more on the topic you'd like me to dig up from the archives. There is quite a lot, on both Wiktionary and Wikipedia regarding this very prolific sock-puppeteer. --Connel MacKenzie 04:47, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

It says on Wikipedia's Primetime page under 'Physical location': "Formerly Colorado State University". For ISP it names CSU, and below that, Comcast. So, if he isn't using CSU computers anymore, why is CSU blocked? 129.82.41.234 22:34, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

Relieving the amount of data transferred

I had an idea to relief the amount of data passed to the computers.

We could establish that when some computer has Javascript turned on, it doesn't access to that wikipedia direction (if we can do that). Instead, he sends an special petition to the Wikimedia server.

Then the server sends the wikicode of the page.

The computer would translate that code into HTML and put it in the screen, subsituting the text that was previously. There, the menu wouldn't be downloaded again, and the update would be almost instantly.

(Another thing: first the computer looks in the code for templates and images, and sends another petition if they aren't in the cache)

What do you think? Is it possible? Is it worth the pain?

--Nethac DIU 17:54, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

Protection of Privacy and Checkusers on zh.wikipedia

According to the CheckUser policy of wikipedia，

• • The community must approve at least two CheckUsers per consensus. Activity will be checked mutually. The user requesting check user status must request it within his local community and advertise this request properly (village pump, mailing list when available, ...). The editor must be familiar with the privacy policy. After gaining consensus (70%-80%) in his local community, with at least 25-30 editors' approval, the user should list himself under Requests for permissions with a link to the page with the community's decision.If an insufficient number of voters do not allow to vote for two checkusers on a wiki, there will be no checkuser on that wiki. [5]

I am greatly astonished to see that user:Shizhao [[6]] whose status has never been approved by anyone is now the SOLE user with access to CheckUser in the chinese wikipedia![[7]] This situation is totally against the wiki CheckUser policy cited above.

In fact,not only user:Shizhao never has the approval of any chinese wiki user to gain the access to CheckUser right, but the very idea of having access to CheckUser right by any chinese wiki user is NOT approved in chinese wikipedia! (See the discussion in chinese Wikipedia talk:Checkuser)

It is well known that thousands of Chinese internet users are jailed and toutured by the Police for their daring FREE SPEECH; and the wikipedia site is offically blocked by the Chinese Communist Government. Those who have find some way to bypass "the Great Firewall" and write articles here like "6.4 Tiananmen massacure" ,"Falungong persecution","Human right in Chia"... risk grave danger if their PRIVACY is leaked by Wikipedia.

A Chinese journalist Shi Tao was imprisoned for 10 years for releasing a document of the Communist Party to an overseas Chinese democracy site,the Chinese government can get him only beacuse Yahoo!cn released his Email information, Yahoo! is currently being suited in US for this.

User:Shizhao claims to live in Beijing now(according to his blog). What can he do if the THOUGHT POLICE of the Chinese Communist Party demand him to reveal the IP addresses of wiki users? Who can say that User:Shizhao is not himself a THOUGHT POLICE of the Chinese Communist Party?

Dear Wikipedia, Please

• 1. immediately REMOVE User:Shizhao's UNAUTHORIZED CheckUser right.
• 2. check out how this happened.
• 3. find a way to protect the privacy of wiki users from being abused like this.

THANKS! --Protect-our-PRIVACY 20:59, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

Shizhao is a steward, and therefore has checkuser rights on any wiki without an existing checkuser. Perhaps he should remove the right himself, however, given that he is already an authorized steward of the Wikimedia foundation, there is little more point to this. Bastique 21:10, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

to protect the privacy of chinese wikipedia users and to follow the checkuser policy,Shizhao must be removed from having checkuser right by another person OR be removed from steward status.--Protect-our-PRIVACY 21:15, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

If he was not elected he has to remove his status; but I'm convinced he uses the checkuser tool only when needed, in accordance with policy, and he doesn't release any data. --.anaconda 21:23, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

As Shizhao's omnipresent checkuser access is against policy, I have removed it. I am sure, however, that he has been acting in good faith, as he is a well-trusted member of the community. Please note that the checkuser logs are available to all stewards and checkusers, and if any checkuser is abusing the privelege, it is transparent to all of us. Bastique 21:32, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

Thanks! The protection of privacy of the chinese wiki users deserve special attention beacuse of the potential risk they have to face.--Protect-our-PRIVACY 01:45, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

According to some users on Zh.wikipedia, they attacked other users, destroyed other user’s contributions, registered multiple IDs to keep acting the same when other ID were banned, or simply logon as IP only user to acted (or pretended) as different users.

This has been an issue when some users could not have or continue having the response or interaction with others and started doing things not in good manner. Just ban the ID or IP obviously is not enough as I suggested in the past. There are other mechanism should be implemented or considered to deter this kind of behavior. However, I do not believe Shizhao is trying to violate wikipedia’s policy according to his record and who he is trying to check. There are registered and anonymous users in recent days trying to stop anyone who bag them to respect other users and wikipedia’s policy and attack those users who bag them. Due to the situation and experience I had, I do not feel this so called Protect-our-PRIVACY is really trying to tell the whole story.--Cobrachen 02:38, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Because user:影武者 on , vi, en, fr, de, ko wp register user:Louer, pretend to be user:Louer and personal attack (see zh:Wikipedia:互助客栈/求助#有人冒認 User:Louer, zh:User talk:Louer#其他语言的用户名), User:Tomchiukc request me CheckUser these users.--Shizhao 02:29, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

PS: Protect-our-PRIVACY is new user on zh wp --Shizhao 02:33, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Due to the recent attacks on Chinese Wikipedia, Shizhao was just acting on behalf of protecting Chinese Wikipedia because many Chinese Wikipedia users had asked for checking the IP address of the attackers. I do not think it's fair to say Shizhao is against the policy.

PS: Protect-our-PRIVACY is not only a new user on zh.wp but also a new user on meta. I doubt what he requested here can be trusted. --H.T. Chien / 眼鏡虎 02:46, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Let me state that as a fellow steward I am not questioning Shizhao's judgment or capability. My removal of the Checkuser access should be considered a favor to Shizhao, as none of us are to retain those authorizations indefinitely without community support. Bastique 02:53, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

I am not here to charge user:Shizhao for any crime that he has done or not done, I simply demand everyone to follow the formal WIKI POLICY。 What user:Shizhao and his mate User:Cobrachen are talking about is simply irrelevent. According to the record [8], user:Shizhao has auto-authorized the checkuser right well before 2006.5.14. --Protect-our-PRIVACY 03:40, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

What crime he has done or not done? Any real evidence? At Zh.wikipedia there are so many false accuses in recent days. He definitely has done something to trigger those "USERS" to attacked others, but it doesn't mean it's crime. So, until you have good evidence, you could not say it's crime, not matter he was involved or not. It's just some decision he or other steward made.--Cobrachen 03:11, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

To Bastique: I am just curious. Is it right for you to remove shizhao's checkuser function without having an in-depth discussion with the whole community, especially people from the Chinese Wikipedia?--Seasurfer 03:25, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Bastique is right. I did not promptly remove checkuser on zh wp --Shizhao 03:38, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Folks, I have two proposals about the discussion above

1. How about setting a section or a subpage about user:影武者 and his impersonifications on Vandalism reports? I assume Westerner Wikimedians (and currently they are majority of actively involved into the global community) currently have no idea how heavily Eastern Asian language projects suffer this sequel of vandalism, and it will be beneficial for us all to have a hub about relevant informations. I know another page about him or her on Japanese Wikipedia and suppose there is another somewhere else.
2. And how about moving this discussion once to Requests for comments/Checkuser right on the Chinese project? This page is not aiming to have a lengthy discussion anyway, and I assume all of you would agree it continues for a while... --Aphaia 03:45, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

A problem: how process Cross different Wikimedia wikis Request for CheckUser? --Shizhao 04:00, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

I agree with Aphaia, we should bring this issue back to Chinese Wikipedia and reach a consensus. Let's try not to clog this place.--Seasurfer 04:38, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

• • It is not a surprise that User:Shizhao,User:Seasurfer and User:Cobrachen etc..are all in the same line, because they know each other well before;theese chinese wiki administrators have formed a gang to suffocate any voice against the abuse of their status, a really sad situation. Since no one can stop Shizhao and his comrades's abuse of "power" in chinese wikipedia, the discussion here is justified.--Protect-our-PRIVACY 04:48, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

• Where is the evidence you could provide that we know each other as you described here? Just because we are all users of zh.wikipedia or just because we are all living in the same planet? You keep acting like this without evidence, you are just pushing yourself into more troubles and discrediting anything you said and going to say. Think twice before your next posts.--Cobrachen 05:44, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

This is blatantly not right. You accused Shizhao in chinese wikipedia without prove and disseminated the wrong idea has already violated the rules in wikipedia. Moreover, you still cannot prove that Shizhao violate his position as a steward. I strongly suggest you to show evidence before bringing up such a serious accusation.--Seasurfer 05:00, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

• "Bastique is right. I did not promptly remove checkuser on zh wp --Shizhao 03:38, 8 February 2007 (UTC) "

I simply donnot care who Shizhao or User:Seasurfer is, what I care is to how to protect the privacy of millions of chinese wiki users from illegal access by any unauthorized person.--Protect-our-PRIVACY 05:15, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

• To Bastique:According to this so called Protect-our-PRIVACY;spost on zh.wikipedia, he also accused you and other stewards which could chnage your own group menberships from another to Nonoe are abusing wikipedia's policies and rights. Since he used the same log list as evidence in the beginning of this post. I believe someone would want to explain to him what this log really means so he would not make more mistakes.--Cobrachen 05:40, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

• The Zh: wikipedia has no Arbitration Committee. According to CheckUser policy#Access, the community has two options:
  1. The community must approve at least two CheckUsers per consensus (which, so far as I can tell, has not happenedzh:Wikipedia talk:Checkuser)
  2. There will be no checkuser on that wiki. Editors will have to ask a Steward to check if UserX is a sockpuppet of UserY. To do so, simply add your request to Requests for CheckUser information listing these users and explaining why you ask for such a check (with links).
• As far as I know, no such request has been filed on RfCU. And, in any case, stewards are not supposed to work for their own (home) wikia, in fear of any potential conflict of interest.

--Hillgentleman | 書 |2007年02月08日( Thu ), 06:02:10+06:02 06:07, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

On the page of RfCU，it stated "If there are no users with CheckUser rights on your project, and you wish for information on an editor or an IP address, please make a public request on this page, or contact a steward privately via email or IRC." It seems to allow user contact steward privately for the Checkuser request. Therefore, the request might not be filed on RfCU.--Charlotte1125 06:33, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

I agree with Charlotte1125; using checkuser without open request isn't necessarily equal to abuse in my opinion. Also I think it may not be a case of "conflict of interest". As far as I know conflict of interest for steward means non-self requested desysoping on the project the steward is active. --Aphaia 08:30, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

• Shizhao has said "Bastique is right". What user:shizhao has done and seen can not be reverted;we can do nothing if user:shizhao has releashed any personal information of wiki users to a third party. What we should consider is to find a way or make a rule to prevent any unauthorized person, steward or not, from assessing the IP addresses of chinese wiki users.--Protect-our-PRIVACY 07:06, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

You have misunderstood what Shizhao said here because you do not fully understand how the account management on MediaWiki is working. Maybe you should know it better before you say anything. Try to install MediaWiki on your PC from MediaWiki.org and then do some admin tasks, then you will know what Shizhao means.

I'm a little sick about this argument now. Can you just stop the complain because you do not understand how the account management works in Wiki-projects? Thanks. --H.T. Chien ( Talk / Contributions ) 16:29, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

• • It is not a surprise that User:Shizhao,User:Seasurfer and User:Cobrachen etc..are all in the same line, because they know each other well before;theese chinese wiki administrators have formed a gang to suffocate any voice against the abuse of their status, a really sad situation. User:Htchien's words above gives us another example of this situation. It is interesting to notice the talk of the 4 chinese wiki adminstraters (User:Htchien,User:Seasurfer; User:Charlotte1125and User:Cobrachen) above show no sign of care of the real point: the Protection of Privacy. It's understandble that User:Htchien,User:Seasurfer; User:Charlotte1125and User:Cobrachen do not care about the PRIVACY of chinese wiki users who live in China since these 4 do not live in mainland China,what they only care is to defend their friend user:shizhao.

• • For clarity, I summarize the points again:
• 1.The chinese wiki community has already rejected the idea that anyone there should be authourized to the CheckUser status for the reason of potential risk of leaking privacy ro the chinese government.

• 2.User:shizhao's status as steward gives him the access to the IP address of all chinese wiki users, User:shizhao has used this privilige since 2005 without being approved by any Cn wiki community member. This situation is centainly contray to the CheckUser Policy cited above.

• 3.User:shizhao has been the sole user in chinese wikia who has the CheckUser right, the way he uses CheckUser can not be checked by any chinese wiki user.

• 4.Due to the special situation that nealy all Chinese wiki users have to face, having their real IP addresses checked by someone unauthorized by the chinese wikia community constitutes grave potential personal danger for all Chinese wiki users, especially when the only chinese wiki user who enjoys the Checkuser status acually lives in Beijing, that's to say,under the direct rule and watch of the Chinese Communist Party — the infamous BigBrother of internet.

• 5.No one wants to challenge the good faith of user:shizhao or his co-administers in Cn wikia,that's not the point.

• 6.My conclusion is: The best way to protect the privacy of all wiki users is to follow strictly the wiki CheckUser Policy  :“If an insufficient number of voters do not allow to vote for two checkusers on a wiki, there will be no checkuser on that wiki”etc... Metawiki should consider to make a rule to avoid the possible conflict between CheckUser Policy and a steward's omnipotent privilige in the case of chinese wikia: the steward status of a wiki user should not automatically give him/her the right of acting as the sole CheckUser user in the wikia he belongs to. --Protect-our-PRIVACY 18:37, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Agree. I'm convinced that this right has potentially put user:shizhao in a political dilemma. Under chinese strick rule on internet censorship, powerful user on Wikipedia where many sensitive information has been written will potentially be targeted by the govnerment and it's not necessary for him to have such great risk to deal with Thought Police.

P.S. Protect-our-PRIVACY seems to be banned in Chinese wiki without breaking any rule, after proposing checkuser issue. [9] --歲月流星 06:48, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

There are no checkusers in Chinese Wikipedia. With the same username Jusjih, I am in the USA while being an admin of Chinese and English Wikipedias, Chinese and English Wiktionaries, Chinese, English, and multilingual Wikisources, and Wikimedia Commons, may I nominate myself to eventually become a steward here? I am planning for adminship here first.--Jusjih 09:52, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

You will be able to nominate yourself to the next election someday occurs. Currently we have no plan of steward election. And there is no explicit relevance between stewardship and meta sysopship. I rather recommend you to nominate you as checkuser on Chinese Wikipedia or whatever the local project you are interested in and big enough have their own checkusers. --Aphaia 10:52, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

The highest userclass that I have at Wiki sites is being a bureaucrat at Chinese Wikisource, Chinese Wiktionary, and Wikimedia Commons. I am thinking whether to run for a steward eventually becuase I see distrusts toward Shizhao here. Shizhao from Beijing, the capital of Red China, is the only Chinese-speaking admin and steward here. At various Wiki sites, I am highly concerned of my fellow admins who are physically in Red China because they are much more vulnerable to politically motivated criminal arrests and prosecutions (persecutions indeed). Based on your suggestion, I will consider requesting checkuser privilege at needed Wiki sites and prepare myself for adminship here, before I consider running for a steward here, as the steward policies are somewhat complex and serious. After all, I consider Red China and American non-acceptance of the rule of the shorter term in our way improving Wiki sites.--Jusjih 16:19, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

What do you mean by highest?--Hillgentleman | 書 |2007年02月23日( Fri ), 16:10:49

W:En:WP:OFFICE

Is there a meta page for the Office Action (=BradPatrick) Policy?--Hillgentleman | 書 |2007年02月08日( Thu ), 16:02:33+16:02

As far as I know, no. I don't know any other wikis WP:OFFICE applied than the English Wikipedia nor on which office actions were taken. You found something on meta? --Aphaia 17:09, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

But it seems that the page belongs here:

This page is a Wikimedia-wide official policy. It was established by Jimbo Wales as necessary for the Foundation's governance.

--Hillgentleman | 書 |2007年02月08日( Thu ), 17:02:12+17:02

The pagehistory suggests that the English Wikipedians took to themselves to expand its reach from on English Wikipedia --> English Wikipedia (And elsewhere) ---> Wikimedia-wide, after User:Jimbo Wales wrote the text without clearly specifying its scope [10]. Thus I take it that it does not automatically apply to other projects.--Hillgentleman | 書 |2007年02月09日( Fri ), 05:02:19+05:02

It accords with what I heard from office people last year; they seemed to intend to apply it to and only to the English Wikipedia, while they didn't clearly deny it should have been applied only to that, and admitted they could apply it to the other projects unanimously, specially in the circumstance they hadn't face the urgent necessity to act under this policy on other projects. We could discuss beforehand publicly if we would like to move or copy it to meta, perhaps on foundation-l, before we really move it to this project. --Aphaia 06:11, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

• The scope is vauge, as many things here are, but it has clearly been used outside of en:wp: see commons:Commons:Pantone color chart. There was quite a mailing list discussion about this, havent found it in the archives yet though. xaosflux ^Talk 18:14, 10 February 2007 (UTC)
  • Thank you. Let me be specific. We are trying to formulate a few policies on w:zh: more clearly. En:WP:OFFICE is a minor point; but if it should be there, it should be there with a proper references.--Hillgentleman | 書 |2007年02月11日( Sun ), 12:02:55+12:02

• • • Since that is Wikimedia-wide, that should probably be here.--Jusjih 09:54, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

Special bot in yi.wikipedia

Most Yiddish speaking users have English as second language and or Hebrew. we need a bot who should sort out automatically those 2 languages it should always appear on top of interlanguage list. in Hebrew wikipedia they have such a bot in use. can somebody help develop this important feature?--יודל 13:35, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

Fair use

Hallo, I am a new user. I have a question. I can upload images in fair use in meta? my english is not very well. Thank you.

Der kenner 22:00, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

Never. We accept only GFDL licensed data, and also we recommend you to upload your media to Wikimedia Commons, unless you find a strong reason not to share them project-wide. --Aphaia 01:48, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

There is no good reason here to upload "fair" use images here. When uploading media of your own, or with a free-use license including public domain, you should use Wikimedia Commons. (I suppose that you are commons:User:Der kenner?) Should you have a good reason to claim fair use on a copyrighted image, do not share it project-wide, but upload it to proper Wiki sites accepting fair use. English and Chinese Wikipedias both accept fair use images if there are good reasons to upload them, but even many Wikipedia language subdomains forbid fair use images when most of their users are in countries not allowing fair use as in the USA where the Wiki server is.--Jusjih 16:29, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

Publish Articles

Firstly sorry if i posted this in the wrong place, it has nothing to do with language issues but I was directed here from the main-page talk-page. I was wondering, is there any place in wikimedia projects where one can publish articles? I thought perhaps wikibooks, but it is purely for textbooks and manuals, not ordinary novels. It is my understanding that the wikiproject aims to offer free as much knowledge as copyright laws allow, and perhaps creating a compendium of the 'free' books on the internet would be possible? I would have no idea, but it would be an interesting resource. — The preceding unsigned comment was added by 203.208.92.26 (talk)

We have no project for novels or essays in general. If you published it already or granted some digree for it, it would be within the scope of Wikisource. It doesn't mean however they accept anything. Thank you. --Aphaia 17:35, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

As I administer English, Chinese, and Multilingual Wikisources, I would like to point out s:Wikisource:What_Wikisource_includes. Your original work cannot be published as an article in Wikisource when you are not notable unless you are making translations or annotations to existing notable published works. If you want to publish your own work to be licensed under GFDL you may want to create a username and publish your works as a subpage of your userpage but not as an article.--Jusjih 15:39, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

Administrators

Hi.

Is there any way to find all Meta:Adminstrator users?

Special:Listusers/sysop? – rotemliss – Talk 18:34, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

I hope someone knows what happened to my edit diff, becuase I don't. You are welcome to revert if necessary. – rotemliss – Talk 18:42, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

• It happened to me before. Perhaps there was an anonymous user who edited before you did, and the two edits were confused.--Hillgentleman | 書 |2007年02月24日( Sat ), 22:22:47

The confused edits would cause an edit conflict. Special:Listusers/sysop gives an automated list of admins. It does not tell admins' language skills, but manually prepared Template:List of administrators shows their language codes.--Jusjih 18:12, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

It doesn't always cause an edit conflict now we have automatic conflict merging. If 2 people edit close enough together, one can get lost from the history. It's happened to me before. Angela 18:24, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

Question

I have noticed that the Wikimedia Foundation servers have not been working quite well lately, so I'm experiencing constant lagging. Because my computer is quite obsolete, I would like to know if others have noticed this.--Orthologist 21:30, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

The same happens to me sometimes. Cbrown1023 talk 21:31, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

Block me

I am planning to run a Tor router from my computer. Please softblock me so I can continue to edit from my wikipedia accounts. 71.163.140.31 01:29, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

This is approved by the user editing at that ip. Firefoxman 01:31, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

Block here, or enwiki? Majorly _{(o rly?)} 01:42, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

Aromanian Wikipedia

Does it has an administrator? It's oftenly vandalized and it seems that there is nobody to react. That is nobody among administrators, to block vandalisers and to protect templates and so on. I'd like to take more care about this matters but I don't know how to acced to an administrator election there. Very little people works there, and only sporadically.ro:User:Alex:D

Yes, there is an administrator, User:Eeamoscopolecrushuva and the edits you are claiming are "vandalism" were endorsed by him (e.g. [11] and [12]). He is a native speaker of the language, so back off.--Slavomakedonec 23:10, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

The country is called by constitution Republica Makedonija, and so is recognised at other wikipedias. So don't tell me about that.ro:User:Alex:D

That's your POV. The Albanian Wikipedia for example sees otherwise as does the Greek one. Romanian nationalism not allowed here, let the native speakers do their work. Just because Eeamoscopolecrushuva is not a pro-Romanian Aromanian and doesn't subscribe to Romanian propaganda regarding the Aromanians, that doesn't make his views less important.--Slavomakedonec 23:26, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

Foundation issues

I'm interested in getting informed opinions about the question I asked at Talk:Foundation_issues#ultimate_authority.3. Cheers, Nat Krause 00:13, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

Meta:Protected uncreated articles

I created a page for Meta:Protected uncreated articles (editable only by sysops). Your comments to its talk will be apprciated. --Aphaia 08:01, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

After consluting with Aphaia, this was moved to Meta:Protected against recreation and the {{protected title}} template was introduced to make the information on pages blocked from being recreated a bit more informative. This is now parallel with how Commons and w:en do things in this area to reduce confusion. Comments welcomed! ++Lar: t/c 17:05, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

Community versus Principles

I would like to ask a general question and opinion (seeking to address a particular issue later on):
Into what extent can a particular community, participating on one of the language versions of one of Wikimedia projects, adapt the Wikimedia principles to its particular needs or desires? For example, consenting (or voting) on the inclusion of original research, or—the other way around—on the exclusion of some categories of information, just because some find it inappropriate? --AtonX 09:07, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

Non-wikimedia use of Mediawiki localisation

Hi, I'm not sure where to put this, but can someone point us in the right direction? On fy: we've had a question from another site who would like to set up a MediaWiki. They found the language file they got with it is rather "behind the times", and would prefer to use the messages of the Frisian Wikipedia as a starting point.

1. Our guess was they could export our messages by copying the text on the php-version of Special:Allmessages. Will this do?
2. How do they import those messages into their wiki?

fy:User:Mysha

The best way would be to submit updated West Frisian language files (see MediaWiki localization). These will benefit any future Wikimedia projects or third-party MediaWiki installations in the language. —{admin} Pathoschild 03:03:31, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. Obviously, since the advice there is to make small changes, this is never going to happen. All the more so because of all the guidelines here. But it's nice to know that, in theory, there is a way to do so. fy:User:Mysha

A question about a deleted page and a blocked user

en:User:Jason Gastrich is banned from enWP for disruption and vanispamcruftisement. His user page was deleted by Meta:Requests for deletion/Archives/2006/01#User:Jason Gastrich and protected against re-creation, but he has a sockpuppet account, user:Ruth Ginsling, and the same deleted vanity biography has now been posted at that user page and reverted a number of times. I don't know whether this is considered worth fixing or not. Just zis Guy, you know? 23:46, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

Looks to me like it needs some sort of attention. The contribution history is tangled and not completely instructive. Since the "Ruth Ginsling" user doesn't appear to be blocked, but also doesn't appear to be the person making the reversions to the deleted Jason Gastrich Bio version, it's not clear if protection of that page is the right approach or not. But that would be my first instinct. That and possibly block the user(s) reverting to that version. But I've been accused of being block happy elsewhere. ++Lar: t/c 10:37, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

I removed Gastrich's bio from page history. MaxSem 20:22, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

Crazy Blocking Policies at Wiktionary

The policies and guidlines at Wiktionary are probably the most crazy out there. If you make a mistake you are blocked without any warnings. This is fine if this is a new wiki that is just starting out, but this wiki is not brand new. This odd policy of blocking people on there first offense without any warning I feel will ruin the wiki by scaring away many good editors who mean no harm. For an example, in December 2006, I added a deletion tag to a article I did not already know was deleted. For this I got blocked for a hour! Then I got active in vandal fighting and was making a lot of mistakes, and warning people, wich is against policy there. I got a indef block. Fortunatly I was unblocked a few days later but because of there bad, ineffective policy they could of lost someone who was trying to help out. Today, March 18, 2007 I was blocked yet again for a week because I added a internal link to headers to a dead end article! When you vandalise at wikipedia you usualy do not get a block that long! The thing is I was not even vandalising. The sad thing is someone who was blocked for vandlaism right after me for vandalism by the same guy was only blocked for three days. I was helping out! I know that I am not the only one who this has happened to. The wiki would do far better if they would come up with a more lax blocking policy. —unsigned by Sir James Paul 03:19, 18 March 2007.

Moved from the page "Crazy Blocking Policies at Wiktionary". —{admin} Pathoschild 03:03:14, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

I have never seen you sucessfully "help out" en.wiktionary.org. In fact, the damage you do often is not noticed right away (meaning you aren't blocked soon enough) causing considerable cleanup efforts, every time you visit. You claim to be trying to help, yet are unable to read even basic guidelines, or follow any rules at all? --Connel MacKenzie 04:39, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

Connel, probably James' behaviour was far from perfect, but I find it particulary hard to assume good faith in your issuing of this threat warning for this. MaxSem 20:17, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

Normal Wiktionary procedure (not having over a thousand sysops) is to block violently disruptive vandals/block evaders/persistent disruptors like "Sir James Paul". I actually gave him a warning, having taken the bait, feeling the troll, as it were. I gave him every benefit of the doubt, being as encouraging as possible. You'll note that he is not complaining about me blocking him (much to my surprise.) His trolling here, is a good example of his continued refusal to play by the rules. He could have e-mailed any number of Wiktionary admins, or taken a variety of other outlets. Sorry, but he psychodrama is best played out somewhere other than en.wiktionary.org. --Connel MacKenzie 03:17, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

All the blocks have to do with is bad reverts. Nothing that had to do with behavior. What I am blocked for now is adding a internal link to a header:) I am blocked for a week. No offense but I find that to be a little odd. The admins there are powerhungry, at least most of them are. I have not seen anythings like it:) Peace:) --James, La gloria è a dio 21:54, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

I'd say the week long block has something to do with you being warned no less than 3 times (and closer to 10 times), to take some time to familiarize yourself with the project, our guidelines and our formats. You completely disregard the advice given and went charging ahead doing whatever you felt like doing, most of which had to be corrected by other members of the community. By the time Connel snapped at you about your signature, you had gone well beyond exhausing the community's patience. Then, you come back a few months later, showing the same disregard for the community and the project.. what kind of welcome did you expect? --Versageek 22:38, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

I don't think this block was out of line. While some administrators can be rather curt with a block comment when frustrated, SJP was not certainly blocked without warning, nor without cause. He was disruptive, despite attempts by various community members to educate and warn him. Wiktionary's policies may be less formal than Wikipedia, but we have neither the need nor the support for that much detail, most of the time, and it's still a small enough community that common sense and community attention usually do the job well enough. --Dvortygirl 23:48, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

I tried to pick a task that I thought I would not break any policies and guidlines if I did it. I was wrong. Listen, I am not trying to troll the place or disrupt it. Take a look at my edits at en.wikipedia and that is clear. --James, La gloria è a dio 00:21, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

That is blatantly false. --Connel MacKenzie 03:18, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

Lang templates

Is it ok to create such templates:

• Template:Ref-ru-en
• Template:Ref-lang
• Template:Ref-info?--Vaya 12:42, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

A question from sweden

Hello, in the swedish version of wikipedia the administrators have begun using their administrative powers to ensure that the content of the articles are in their own personal liking. This expresses itself in the form that they may for example remove scientific sources which results they dislike and those who dare to protest get blocked if they dare to try to stop it. My question is simple, what can be done about it? All attempts so solve the problem within the swedish wikipedia itself has failed, so here I am. Drogheda 00:24, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

A spamblock question

Some of you may be aware of the passionate debate at Talk: Spam blacklist over touregypt.net. It appears that the debate over this website is dying down now, & I assumed that the dispute would be settled similar to how we resolve these disputes on en.wikipedia. However, it appears that I am wrong. So how can I expect this dispute to be settled? Will this website be removed from the spamblock blacklist if I have made persuasive arguments, yet the last few editors who object to my opinions still repeat their objections? -- Llywrch 23:05, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

I agree if there is no good reason, it would be for all to remove a link. The point is how we reach the consensus a particular link is harmless (not spammed). If you feel the discussion wheeling, you would like to move to Requests for comments from the talk to dig up the issue. --Aphaia 09:34, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Note that this discussion has a bit of background at the request for admin/bureaucrat help archives (Meta:Requests for help from a sysop or bureaucrat/Archives/2007/03), where I moved the thread since it seemed to be complete and shifted here. I would expect the admin who goes through and clears out the requests to either tag it with {{done}} or {{notdone}} and also give a brief explanation, given the contentious and lengthy nature of the debate already. Thanks! Flcelloguy (A note?) 23:38, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Flcelloguy, now I'm confused. I proposed the exact same resolution you have above on the Requests for help page -- however, Aphaia stated that this is not how conflicts on Meta are resolved. I am trying to find a way to resolve this outside of Meta, but I am concerned that if I succeed in one venue events in the other will cancel that success. -- Llywrch 00:17, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

I took the requests Flcelloguy means as the requests on Talk:Spam blacklist. It is helpful to refer to relevant discussions, if exists, as "see also" or somewhat, and if there is a lengthy debate already, it is nice to keep the explanation on that page as brief as possible, avoid having multiple lengthy discussions here and there. --Aphaia 04:20, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

I still don't see the difference between Flcelloguy's proposal & mine, Aphaia. However, too many electrons have been expended in this discussion, so I'll just assume that I was not clear in what I suggested (now archived at the link Flcelloguy has provided). -- Llywrch 20:04, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

This discussion is now moot: Eagle 101 has removed this website from the Spam blacklist. I believe this section can be archived. Thanks! -- Llywrch 23:31, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

Protection

Could someone unprotect Eliminating index.php from the url and/or its talk page? Both have been protect for MONTHS, in the latter case, almost an entire YEAR. 68.39.174.238 22:41, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Done, although for future reference Meta:Requests for help from a sysop or bureaucrat is probably more appropriate. Thanks! Flcelloguy (A note?) 23:41, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Automatic archiving

I've recently ported an automatic archiving bot from German to English. It has been running successfully on German Wikipedia since October 2006. As of a few days, the bot is also available on German and English Wikiversity. The bot moves old sections to archives based on the age of the last contribution within a section and a pattern configured for the page. So, for example, a page can be archived by month, week, quarter or year. Is there any interest in such a bot on meta? Sebmol 20:22, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

I'm interested. It would be a nice help to archiving some pages like this. Three months seem to me enough. --Aphaia 21:48, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

As am I, this seems like a good idea for pages like this that aren't "Requests" and don't get finished quickly. Cbrown1023 talk 21:58, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

I've ported the template to meta as Template:auto archive. If you're interested in using it, you need to place it on pages that should be archived automatically. There are a few examples listed on how it works but I'm also happy to answer any questions you may have. Also, the bot will probably need a bot flag. Where can I go to request that? sebmol ^? 19:16, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

I found Meta has not its own Bot policy. Requests for bot status may be the place, but if you prefer to know the community support beforehand, we can here have a straw poll I expect. --Aphaia 21:53, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

Many wikis use User:werdnabot which I think works in a similar way, you place a template denoting the base name of the archive and how many days threads should have had no activity (by the timestamps of signatures) before the thread is moved. (see this howto on commons. Does this bot allow that sort of configuration? (days of age rather than calendar months/quarters) Also has it had any test runs? I'd support it having a bot flag if the test runs were successful and it seems we have consensus here via a discussion as Aphaia suggests. Do we have other bots here? Is an approval process needed? Or can we just do this informally? ++Lar: t/c 04:03, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Age of a thread is based on the days since the last message in it counted in days (or hours for very high frequency pages). It has been running since October 2006 on German Wikipedia and is used on over 600 pages there with more being added every day. I'd be happy to leave it running without bot flag for a while so you can familiarize yourself with how it works.

One thing, that's different from Werdna's bot (IIRC) is that it distributes archied threads based on a pattern of archive pages. If, for example, an archive is set up to be separated into "threads by month", the bot will move threads to pages like "archive/January 2007", "archive/February 2007", etc. The path is fully customizable however and so is the distribution pattern, allowing for archives by day, week, month, quarter, semester or year. sebmol ^? 05:17, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

So you're aware of werdnabot then? cool. I wasn't sure you knew about it. It sounds like the filing structure is a lot more flexible. As I said, I'm thinking this would be a good thing to have around. That it is not Werdnabot may throw a few people since the template format may differ slightly but that's not a big deal. Automatic archiving is a very nice thing to have. Thanks for sharing! (I fixed the howto link, I forgot to interwiki, oops!) ++Lar: t/c 12:09, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Before I created my own bot, I was actually working with Werdna to see if we could adapt his to work on German Wikipedia. Unfortunately, lack of time on his side made localization and adapting difficult, especially since, in general, numbered archives aren't common on German Wikipedia. The more flexible filing structure supported by ArchiveBot is a direct result of those requirements. On the other side, the bot doesn't currently support numbered archives, but if there's a need for that, I'd be happy to add such a feature. sebmol ^? 12:18, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

duplicated IP addresses

Hi I am a frequent visitor to this site, but have never edited a page. On visiting today I found a message that says I have edited a page in an unhelpful way. This was certainly not me and from what I could glean from the information underneath it is possible that two or more people can share an IP address. Is this true? If not I cannot explain why my IP address is being used to edit wikipedia. 80.41.80.207 20:35, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Well I don't see where exactly your IP was warned, but you probably have a shared IP (depends on your internet provider) and that's why there were previous warnings on your user talk page. Since you're not the same person as the one who had vandalized under your IP address, just ignore them for now. Nishkid64 20:56, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks! (This is 80.41.80.207 but at his work address) 82.198.250.9 13:21, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

Problems with Romani (Gypsy language) Wikipedia

Basically, a small number of users--chief among them Desiphral--appear to be using wikipedia for language planning. The problem is illustrated at length on this discussion page. Basically, there exist no verifiable and credible sources (if indeed any exist that are not derived from the wikipedia entries of Desiphral) for the language being written in the Devanagari script.

But if you go to the Romani Wikipedia you will see that the script features as prominently (if not more) as the latin script. In fact the search box within the Romani wikipedia appears to allow only devanagari characters to be typed. Again... there is no proof or indication that there is any active use of devanagari by speakers/users of Romani, other than Desiphral and one or two enthusiastic up-takers that joined him on the Romani wikipedia since then.

I would suggest that the devanagari script has no more place on the Romani wikipedia, than cyrillic does in the French wikipedia.

If this is not the appropriate place to raise this complaint, please direct me to the correct page. Thank you in advance! --74.12.162.88 17:06, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

Anyobody? Anything? --74.12.141.73 06:08, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

Renaming some pages

Hello! I believe that in an effort to help improve the accessability of Meta, we should address an issue which to me is very concering: the page names of the discussion fora. According to Meta:Index, the four primary fora are:

• Babel, which is Meta-related discussion (you'd think it would be about languages)
• Metapub, which is about Wikimedia (you'd think it would be about Meta)
• Talk:ProposalPolicy, which is not only tangential to the conventional format of names, but it doesn't even make clear what it is about (proposed policies? what kind of policies? Meta policies? Wikimedia Foundation policies?)
• Babylon, which is about languages (but I thought Babel was about languages)

This is a big problem, especially since Meta is supposed to be easily usable by all members of Wikimedia Projects. To address this issue, I propose the following:

• Renaming Meta:Babel to Meta:Village pump (in line with other projects) or Meta:Discussion about Meta.
• Renaming Metapub to Wikimedia discussion.
• Renaming Babylon to Language discussion.

Unless someone clarifies what ProposalPolicy is about, I have no idea what could be done with it. I am open to alternative name suggestions. Any thoughts? —Signed, your friendly neighborhood MessedRocker. 03:02, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

ProposalPolicy has only been edited twice ([13]), both having to do with its creation; nothing has ever been discussed there, so it should probably just be deleted. I support the rest of this proposal, good idea. --Rory096 03:47, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

I don't think there is anything glaringly inaccessible about these naming conventions, but if you think it would help, go for it! 24.218.204.54 20:32, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

I think it's a good idea, but we would have to ensure that the different languages (i.e. the translations of this page) are in line as well, to prevent further confusion for multilingual users Gaillimh 20:33, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

Babylon was once renamed into a more generic but language specific name, but the people didn't like it and someone renamed it again. Therefore I would ask the proposer to withdraw this part of his proposal for preventing further confusion.Meta:Babel has been known in this name for years and I have never heard anyone complained. I am afraid confusion after renaming instead. As for Metapub it makes a sense for French, Italian, Dutch ... many Wikipedians who named their discussion place somewhere to drink. On the contrary I have been complained they couldn't understand what "Village Pump" means; It is a sort of esoteric name for non involving people. I would friendly recommend the proposer to improve his own project. --Aphaia 14:29, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

I haven't thought of that! That's a good point. I still think the names can be confusing for potential Meta contributors -- perhaps we'll work something out. Anyways, whether you like it or not, I am not going away. I am a newcomer (please don't bite) and with success I will become a more-informed regular. Anyways, as a compromise, I decided to only improve the Meta:Index pages because those could stand to be improved. —Signed, your friendly neighborhood MessedRocker. 14:52, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

MediaWiki:Sitenotice

What the bloody hell? Cbrown1023 talk 19:36, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

This new policy might explain :P Majorly _{(o rly?)} 20:33, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

But it did not even last 5 minutes :-( 134.76.10.66 22:59, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

Renaming of ga-wiki

Hi! I was wondering if we might change the name of the Irish Wikipedia from Vicipéid to Uacípéid or something similar, as there is no "v" (or "w", for that matter) in the Irish language. I can understand the difficulty in creating a new word, but it seems odd that the word would contain characters not present in the language's alphabet Gaillimh 20:38, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

You should discus it localy and then ask the devs to rename it. MaxSem 20:40, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

Will do! Thank you for pointing me in the right direction! Gaillimh 20:44, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

Wikimedia site feedback/main

It is noticed the page is concerning on the Foundation wiki, some people submit other wiki (supposedly English Wikipedia, but I am not sure). I ask every regular editor to give a look to the page periodically, and if you find inquiries which should be related to your home wiki, bring it to the more appropriate places, like your VP, Help desk etc, specially if you think simple rollback as unfrinedly. --Aphaia 08:50, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

Appendix namespace

Brought from Metapub

At Spanish language Wikipedia, community took a decission to have an appendix (anexo in Spanish) namespace for including contents such as tables and lists that are not encyclopedic articles per se, but that does complement an encyclopedia.

The idea came from a suggestion in the proposal of Wikilists, that instead of a separate project, a new namespace should be used instead. Also, in the original proposal for Portal namespace at German language Wikipedia (see Special namespaces for portals and lists) the idea was that the new namespace would also content lists and related material. Contents in this new namespace would be subject to all Wikipedia policies including free contents, neutral point of view, ban of original research, etc., except that contents would not be articles, so a simple list of links might be appropiate.

Fact is that, after a post in the local pub^(here), an informal consultation^(here), and a formal poll^(here), the community decide to: Adopt a definition of Encyclopedic support contents as official policy^(here), and to create a new namespace Anexo (appendix) for placing this kind of content.

Is there any other Wikipedia or another Wikimedia project that would benefit from this new namespace?

— Chlewey 13:08, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

PS. Request for the new namespace is reported as Bug 9304, at Bugzilla.

Bugzilla and minor requests

Brought from Metapub

Currently Bugzilla is the correct place to ask Developers to perform some tasks, but this include at least three different kind of tasks:

1. To solve bugs (incorrect or inconvenient behavior of software). This changes will usually help the whole MediaWiki community.
2. To request development of new features, such as having categories be listed in a natural order to each language, instead of machine order (e.g. Bug 164). This changes will usually help the whole MediaWiki community.
3. To request minor changes in the Wikimedia projects, that just need shell access, such as adding a new namespace, allowing subpages in them, etc.. This changes usually affect only one or few Wikimedia projects, and many times are changes that the requester knows how to implement, as they are included in any MediaWiki manual, but, for security reasons, neither local sysops or bureaucrats are allowed to perform. (Administrators of non-Wikimedia wikis would not need bugzilla for this)

Some how, this last implementation, which is an administrative task rather than something needing developement, seems out of place in the Bugzilla system.

At some point I saw a discussion about new MediaWiki releases would allow bureaucrats to manage local namespaces (without shell access), however this seems not to have been implemented or released into Wikimedia implementations.

So, my proposal is that:

1. that kind of requests, that just need shell access but not actual development, would be moved from bugzilla to some other place, such as this meta-wiki. (compare Requests for bot status)
2. if namespaces can be managed without shell access, but just not open to local bureaucrats in Wikimedia projects, at least allow Steweards for this task.

— Chlewey 13:33, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

WaffenSS on the Korean Wikipedia

I hope I'm posting this at the right place. ... Nilfanion 16:41, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

I moved the discussion to Metapub#WaffenSS on the Korean Wikipedia. Thanks. --Aphaia 18:09, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

Linking whole content-boxes onto Wikipedia entries from other more specialized Wiki sources' corresponding entries

If Wikispecies shows the most accurate, detailed, complete taxonomic hierarchies, then is there a way for Wikipedia and Tree-o-Life authors to code their entries to automatically display the corresponding Wikispecies taxonomic hierarchy? Otherwise it seems there's a lot of effort being duplicated.

I know the two projects are not entirely parallel with regard to purpose, but I don't see what harm a one-way means of linkage (from the data source of greatest integrity outward) could do. The same principle could be (and maybe already has been) applied to other specialty wikiprojects......

User:COIBot

This bot makes uncontroversial edits to its own userspace. It floods recent changes significally, and botmaster's request for bot flag at RFP and WM:RFH did not receive any input for several days. I'll flag it soon if there will be no objections. MaxSem 15:34, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

Please flag this bot as it is severely impacting viewing recent changes. Naconkantari 04:00, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

Done. MaxSem 05:18, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

More than one Wikipedias

Do I have to sign up for a new account for each wikipedia that I intend to become a member of? Because I'm wanting to edit 3 wikipedias (English, Chinese, Classical Chinese) and my English account doesn't seem to work on the other ones. Please reply on http://zh-classical.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:LaRoseNoir-CC --LaRoseNoir-CC 18:37, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

Currently you have to, while the single sign-on is planed to be introduced. Stay in tune, thanks. --Aphaia 05:16, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

Strange bug

This is so strange that I prefer commenting it here. I have in a small wiki this sig:

—Nethac DIU, always would speak here—
17:15, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

It has some parameters for changing the big and the small text, and other for language, though in that wiki it is not used.

And sometimes it fails. It seems that when I do a indented answer and put the sig right after the texts, it shows like this:

—Nethac DIU, always would speak here—

17:15, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

Why?

(if there is something more involved, the sig is at http://www.flashwiki.net/wiki/User:Nethac DIU/Sign). The wiki is that, as you can suppose :)--Nethac DIU 17:15, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

EDIT: Links fixed.

Access denied by ACL to xxx.wikimedia.org

Nearly since 4 weeks, access to some pages of wikimedia (e.g. meta.wikimedia.org) has been denied by

Forbidden

You were denied access because:

Access denied by access control list.

Since 1 or 2 weeks, I cannot access most of all pages from wikimedia. Affected are help pages, pictures (e.g. if I call http://de.wikipedia.org) and even the software download site.

I invoke the pages through our enterprise proxy (IP should be 217.5.231.249).

In the beginning I thought it was a temporary problem caused by some actions on wikimedia. But when I'm working at home, all pages are reachable.

I took a look at the 'blocked IP list', but I cannot find the ip of our enterprise proxy.

I did not edit any page (definitely not intentionally, no vandalism). I'm looking only for help and inspiration for our enterprise wikis and my private wiki.

I also cannot believe that any of my colleagues (most of them are software developers and windows/unix adminstrators too) has carried out vandalism intentionally.

What is the reason for 'access denied'? What can I do to unblock access?

It seems that it is not Wikimedia blocking your enterprise proxy but rather your enterprise proxy blocking Wikimedia.

— Chlewey 18:18, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

Stewards by activity

Is there something like this? If no, I think I can generate such thing - VasilievVV 14:11, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

Polling is evil → Polling has its problems

Greetings, I moved the "Polling is evil" essay to a new title, "Polling can be problematic" and edited it correspondingly six days ago. At that time I proposed an alternate title, "Polling has its problems" which another editor expressed sounded better. I extensively explained the logic for this move and responded to inquiries about it. The page sat for six days at the "Polling can be problematic" title. Today prior to joining any discussion about the move User:Radiant! moved the page back to "Polling is evil" and undid my edits. Afterwards we engaged in a bit of an edit/page move war with my moving the page in correspondance to User:Hillgentleman's preference to the title "Polling has its problems" and the page was subsequently put into full protection. I admit that edit warring is wrong but I was not appreciative of my edits being undone prior to any discussion and responded accordingly. It would be better if this matter could be settled and this protection lifted. Being that I am not very familiar with how Meta works I am wondering what would be the best way to address this dispute? Thanks. Netscott 14:56, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

• First off, the edits were made without any discussion (let alone consensus). There's nothing special about "six days"; during those six days there was no discussion at all on the talk page, just a few explanations and one user adding a one-liner response. Ironically Scott kept up move warring even after the page was protected.
• Second, "polling is evil" is a long-standing meme on Wikipedia. Not everybody agrees with the vision of the page, and hence there is also a page that says the opposite. What we have here is a user who does not like this oft-referenced page and is attempting to substantially change the angle, in essence changing the meaning of whomever references it.
• Third, this is an unfortunate spillover from a forest fire on enwiki. Netscott is engaged in a lengthy campaign to remove all language discouraging voting from Wikipedia, generally through edit warring. This has resulted in several page protections, most recently here. Radiant! 15:17, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

Well I'll let folks decide if this "forest fire" is the result of one user... personally the old adage that "it takes two to tango" is applicable here in my view. I'd rather not cruft up this page with discussion trying to resolve this dispute if this is not the place to have such a discussion. Is there anyone a bit more exprienced here on meta that knows if this Is this the best place for this or not? Netscott 15:30, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

A stupid question: why it was moved from Votes are evil in the first place? MaxSem 15:35, 12 April 2007 (UTC)