WikiEN-l October 2012

wikien-l@lists.wikimedia.org

18 participants
9 discussions

Improving dialogue between editors and "tech people"
by Guillaume Paumier 26 Oct '12

26 Oct '12

Hi, [Posting this from my personal address because I'm not subscribed to the list with my work account.] I've started a discussion on the technical Village pump on how to establish a better dialogue between editors and "tech people" (developers, Wikimedia engineers, etc.): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_%28technical%29#Improv… I'd love to get more comments and suggestions, so that the outcome isn't only representative of the subset of the community who reads VP/T. You can participate there or here on the list, I'll follow both. Also, feel free to advertise this discussions to fellow editors, particularly those whom you know to be interested in these issues. Thanks! Below is the text I've posted on VP/T: ------------------------------------------------------- Hi. I'm posting this as part of my job for the WMF, where I currently work on technical communications. As you'll probably agree, communication between Wikipedia contributors and "tech people" (primarily MediaWiki developers, but also designers and other engineers) hasn't always been ideal. In recent years, Wikimedia employees have made efforts to become more transparent, for example by writing monthly activity reports, by providing hubs listing current activities, and by maintaining "activity pages" for each significant activity. Furthermore, the yearly engineering goals for the WMF were developed publicly, and the more granular Roadmap is updated weekly. Now, that's all well and such, but what I'd rather like to discuss is how we can better engage in true collaboration and 2-way discussion, not just reports and announcements. It's easy to post a link to a new feature that's already been implemented, and tell users "Please provide feedback!". It's much more difficult to truly collaborate every step of the way, from the early planning to deployment. Some "big" tech projects are lucky enough to have Oliver Keyes who can spend a lot of time discussing with local wiki communities, basically incarnating this 2-way communication channel between users and developers. The $1 million question is: how do we scale up the Oliver? We want to be able to do this for dozens of engineering projects with hundreds of wikis, in many languages, and truly collaborate to build new features together. There are probably things in the way we do tech stuff (e.g. new software features and deployments) that drive you insane. You probably have lots of ideas about what the ideal situation should be, and how to get there: What can the developer community (staff and volunteers) do to get there? (in the short term, medium term, long term?) What can users do to get there? I certainly don't claim to have all the answers, and I can't do a proper job to improve things without your help. So please help me help make your lives easier, and speak up. This is intended to be a very open discussion. Unapologetic complaining is fine; suggestions are also welcome. Stock of ponies is limited. -- Guillaume Paumier [[m:User:guillom]] http://www.gpaumier.org

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Fwd: [MediaWiki-l] removing support for older MediaWiki skins (Legacy skins Nostalgia, Simple, MySkin, and Standard)
by David Gerard 25 Oct '12

25 Oct '12

---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Sumana Harihareswara <sumanah(a)wikimedia.org> Date: 25 October 2012 02:15 Subject: [MediaWiki-l] removing support for older MediaWiki skins (Legacy skins Nostalgia, Simple, MySkin, and Standard) To: MediaWiki announcements and site admin list <mediawiki-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org> https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/25170/ is a MediaWiki change that's under discussion right now; it would completely remove all core skins other than Monobook, Modern, CologneBlue & Vector. I thought you might be interested in reading or weighing in on this discussion. Anyone with Developer Access can comment in Gerrit -- for an account, just ask at https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Developer_access . Some more resources to look at, linked in the Gerrit comments: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/New_skins_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Database_reports/User_preferences#S… https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:Dantman/Skinning_system/Skin_examination Sometimes we have to shed some backwards compatibility. And it sounds like removing support for these particular skins will enable us to innovate and move faster. But it's a good idea to publicize this sort of thing so legacy skin users can say "I'll maintain the legacy support because I love this skin so much!", or prepare to reskin, or find some new third way. :-) Also, thanks to MatmaRex who has taken this opportunity to refactor the CologneBlue skin. -- Sumana Harihareswara Engineering Community Manager Wikimedia Foundation _______________________________________________ MediaWiki-l mailing list MediaWiki-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l

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Fwd: [Wikimedia-l] Info action
by David Gerard 22 Oct '12

22 Oct '12

---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: MZMcBride <z(a)mzmcbride.com> Date: 22 October 2012 22:41 Subject: [Wikimedia-l] Info action To: Wikimedia Mailing List <wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org> Hi. This is just a heads-up that you'll start seeing a "Page information" link in the sidebar (under "Toolbox") in the coming days on Wikimedia wikis. It is deployed now to a few wikis already. This "Page information" link leads to a newly reimplemented info action: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Main_Page&action=info Many, many years ago, the info action was added to MediaWiki, but due to performance issues, it was quickly disabled by default and was mostly forgotten about. This year, with the wonderful help of Madman, Krenair, and others, we have reimplemented the info action to provide an information dashboard of sorts about a particular page title to users. This dashboard includes a variety of metadata about the page, including the page's protection status, length, default categorization sort key, internal page ID, templates used on the page, and more. The content is somewhat dynamic: for some pages it will omit certain irrelevant fields and for some users (such as administrators), certain additional fields (such as the number of page watchers) will be displayed. This will slowly allow for the deprecation of outside tools that currently provide information of this nature. The hope is that this action will evolve over time to become a valuable resource for users. If you can think of data points that are missing from the current action's output or have other ideas to improve the info action (it desperately needs a little design love), please feel free to e-mail this list or file a bug at <https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/>. MZMcBride _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l

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Fwd: [Wikimedia-l] The new narrowed focus by WMF
by David Gerard 19 Oct '12

19 Oct '12

---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Theo10011 <de10011(a)gmail.com> Date: 18 October 2012 13:48 Subject: [Wikimedia-l] The new narrowed focus by WMF To: Wikimedia Mailing List <wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org> Hi Sue Gardner started working on this document on Meta a couple of weeks ago - http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Sue_Gardner/Narrowing_focus The document outlines some rather big changes in the priority for WMF and future responsibilities it will agree to keep. I am surprised by how little attention this is getting from the larger community. There are comments but mostly from the same individuals on Meta, little to none from some of the most active voices and the larger English Wikipedia community. This is the new direction being considered by the WMF, to basically abandon or cut back on majority of activities from the last few year. Here are some points- 1) No more Fellowships. 2) No more direct work in the developing markets (aka Global South- India, Brazil, MENA) 3) No more support for International events, and cutting back on Wikimania Instead of these, things like Editor engagement, Mobile and FDC/grant making are being made priorities for WMF in the future. A large majority of editors have had no interaction with grants and are unlikely to have so with FDC as well, same with some of the mobile initiatives like Wikipedia Zero which are limited to certain developing markets. A lot of these changes will have a lasting impact, its not just relevant to those interested in governance issues. Some of the implications are - Fellowships would be removed all together, little to no spending on Hackathons, possibly GLAM camps and other international events all together, less spending on Wikimania and scholarships, the work in India and Brazil will be moved away from WMF completely for a "partner" organization to take over with a grant from WMF. If you do find some time, please consider taking a look and commenting on these developments before they are approved. http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Sue_Gardner/Narrowing_focus Regards Theo The document has some interesting quotes - "The Wikimedia Foundation is not a think tank or a research institute. We're not an advocacy organization or a lobbyist, and our core mission isn't to keep the internet free and open. We are not a general educational non-profit. (We are a website, or set of sites, and everything we do needs to be understood through that lens.) We don't just reactively "support the community"—responding to requests from editors and doing what they ask us to do. Our purpose isn't to provide MediaWiki support for third parties (but it's in our interest to ensure that a healthy third party ecosystem develops around MediaWiki). We're not, ourselves, content creators. Our purpose is not to ensure the chapters grow and develop, nor is it to support the chapters in their growth and development: rather, chapters are our partners in supporting editors and other content creators. The Wikimedia Foundation is not the only fish in the sea of free knowledge; not everything that needs to be done must be done by the Wikimedia Foundation, and it's not our job to do work that other individuals or entities are better positioned or mandated to do, however important that work may be. When we try to do work that more properly belongs to other individuals or groups, we imperil our ability to get our own core work done, and we arguably make it less possible for other entities to do what they're supposed to be doing." _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l

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Bizarre entry blp
by michael west 12 Oct '12

12 Oct '12

Sorry to bother you, but i am writing from my mobile phone and cannot edit the page. Earlier, on twitter i was alerted to a bizarre blp entry at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abz_Love relating to a lawsuit with Stella Macartney. The entry gives no sources and is highly unlikely as wikipedia is the only source. Can somebody rollback on this?

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Encyclopedia or Gossip Rag
by Marc Riddell 07 Oct '12

07 Oct '12

I came across this today in the English Wikipedia: "In 2011, it has been reported that [the subject] has been caught cheating on his wife with a 30 year old intern turned reporter." Is this worthy of a credible Encyclopedia or, if it needs reported at all, in a gossip tabloid rag? Marc Riddell

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show index number in body of wiki page
by Gordon Stewart 07 Oct '12

07 Oct '12

(this is for a private wiki - not wikipedia.org ) At the top of a wiki page, it automatically creates a table of content. But when you go down the page. it just shows the titles/headings in bold. But no 'number' is created automatically. do you know how to make it display the item number ? EG :- (table of contents) 1. Heading A 2. Heading B 2.1. HeadingC 2.2. HeadingD when you go down the screen & read the content, it only shows Heading A (content here) Heading B (content here) HeadingC (content here) HeadingD (content here) is there a way to show the numbers automatically ? - If i manually add numbers in - It will also show up in the table of contents (twice):- 2.2 HeadingD (content here) -- Gordon. Changing the world one gift at a time Auckland North Shore Freecycle - New Zealand http://www.freecycle.org/

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links to open courses?
by phoebe ayers 05 Oct '12

05 Oct '12

Hi all, Here is something I've been thinking about lately. Do we have a policy or a practice on linking to open courses in articles, for instance the MIT courses available at http://ocw.mit.edu? As universities increasingly move to posting their courses and lectures online, it seems to me like these would be useful links to curate and add to the relevant (broad) articles. I am mostly familiar with English-language courses from US universities, but I'm also curious if any Wikipedia edition in any language has had discussions on this subject. cheers, phoebe -- * I use this address for lists; send personal messages to phoebe.ayers <at> gmail.com *

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Re: [WikiEN-l] links to open courses?
by Texas Guy 04 Oct '12

04 Oct '12

Begin forwarded message: >Date: Wed, 3 Oct 2012 19:49:01 -0600 (MDT) >From: "Fred Bauder" <fredbaud(a)fairpoint.net> >All useful, interesting, or authoritative links on the subject of an >article should be included in "external links and further reading", >including important primary sources, open courses, and published books. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:What_Wikipedia_is_not#Wikipedia_is_n… I spend a lot of time cleaning up external link sections. There's a lot of wisdom and experience in this essay: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Spam_event_horizon A few good links beget more good links, then everyone starts adding their links to an article. Then we get junk and spam. At that point, some readers end up going to dodgy sites that have been "validated" in their eyes by inclusion in Wikipedia; they sign up for a course at Fastbuck U instead of MIT. This open courseware is a great movement and there's going to be more and more of it. Which courses' links will we OK for inclusion in our "History" article? Which won't we? How much time will our editors spend adjudicating this and explaining to frustrated link-adders why their links shouldn't be added? Several years ago, following some conference there was a movement within the museum and library world to add links to their resources from various Wikipedia articles. We had well-meaning museum staff spamming all sorts of stuff. A museum in some small town with a lock of Oliver Cromwell's hair adding links to our English History article (not just our Oliver Cromwell article). This wasn't really spam in the classic sense but it added clutter and wasted editors' time. I hope to take one of these courses so I'm very positive about the development -- I just don't think these links are good for Wikipedia. These links come whether we want them or not, time will be wasted and people will get frustrated. Let's not add to this by encouraging the phenomenon. Thanks, A. B. User talk:A. B. PS The Oliver Cromwell's hair bit was an exaggeration but we had a lot that was just about as silly, off-topic, well-meaning and unhelpful. There really was a small town museum with some obscure Cromwelliana spamming all over.

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WikiEN-l October 2012