Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous)
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Sign up for the language community meeting on August 30th, 15:00 UTC
[edit]Hi all,
The next language community meeting is scheduled in a few weeks—on August 30th at 15:00 UTC. If you're interested in joining, you can sign up on this wiki page.
This participant-driven meeting will focus on sharing language-specific updates related to various projects, discussing technical issues related to language wikis, and working together to find possible solutions. For example, in the last meeting, topics included the Language Converter, the state of language research, updates on the Incubator conversations, and technical challenges around external links not working with special characters on Bengali sites.
Do you have any ideas for topics to share technical updates or discuss challenges? Please add agenda items to the document here and reach out to ssethi(__AT__)wikimedia.org. We look forward to your participation!
MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 23:19, 22 August 2024 (UTC)
Notice: discussions on WMDE sub-reference project in progress at Meta
[edit]The WikiMedia sub-referencing project (parent project: Reusing references) is having multiple discussions about the development of a sub-referencing feature by WikiMedia Deutschland Engineering. Your feedback would be welcome at any of the discussons at m:Talk:WMDE Technical Wishes/Sub-referencing. Mathglot (talk) 21:07, 23 August 2024 (UTC)
- Just noticed that there is also a discussion about this at VPT: WP:VPT#Coming soon: A new sub-referencing feature – try it!. Mathglot (talk) 21:37, 23 August 2024 (UTC)
- There is another at Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates#Sub-referencing. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:38, 23 August 2024 (UTC)
Phobias navbox
[edit]I wanted to make a navbox for the different articles about phobias (such as fear of bees). Normally I'd just make it, but Template:Phobias was deleted at Templates for Discussion in 2007 and 2009. I can't imagine it will be an issue to create it since it would be the same as any other navbox, but for the sake of procedure I'm asking the community first, especially since I'd be adding it to roughly 100 articles. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 22:21, 23 August 2024 (UTC)
- Why do you want to do this?
- Are you trying to make a navbox with "things called -phobia", in which case Photophobia (which is not a specific phobia) would be included but Fear of needles (which was officially recognized in the DSM as a specific phobia 30 years ago) would be excluded? Or are you trying to make a List of specific phobias in navbox form? WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:43, 23 August 2024 (UTC)
- The arguments from the AfDs are still good. PamD 04:36, 24 August 2024 (UTC)
Less images being uploaded
[edit]Why are less images being uploaded today? It wasn't like that from 2006 to 2009, many images were uploaded at that time period. Is there a reason why the image uploads declined after that period of time? MJGTMKME123 (talk) 21:49, 25 August 2024 (UTC)
- Possibly because images to suit many purposes have already been uploaded, making new ones unnecessary? AndyTheGrump (talk) 21:53, 25 August 2024 (UTC)
- Okay but, why can't we upload new images that replace the old ones? MJGTMKME123 (talk) 21:54, 25 August 2024 (UTC)
- There is nothing preventing appropriate and policy-compliant images from being uploaded. As to when it is appropriate to replace an existing image with a new one, that will depend on the specifics: newer isn't necessarily better. AndyTheGrump (talk) 21:57, 25 August 2024 (UTC)
- What is the criteria that determines if an existing image should be replaced with a newer and less outdated version? MJGTMKME123 (talk) 22:00, 25 August 2024 (UTC)
- If someone finds it worth uploading in each particular instance? I have very little clue what sort of general rule you'd expect there to be. Remsense ‥ 论 22:03, 25 August 2024 (UTC)
- Thank you for the response. But how can contributors decide if a new image is worth uploading for a specific article? MJGTMKME123 (talk) 22:13, 25 August 2024 (UTC)
- There is no general answer to this line of questioning. Improved media are uploaded if editors discover or create them; what constitutes an improvement depends entirely on the media in question. Remsense ‥ 论 22:18, 25 August 2024 (UTC)
- Thank you for the response. But how can contributors decide if a new image is worth uploading for a specific article? MJGTMKME123 (talk) 22:13, 25 August 2024 (UTC)
- If someone finds it worth uploading in each particular instance? I have very little clue what sort of general rule you'd expect there to be. Remsense ‥ 论 22:03, 25 August 2024 (UTC)
- What is the criteria that determines if an existing image should be replaced with a newer and less outdated version? MJGTMKME123 (talk) 22:00, 25 August 2024 (UTC)
- There is nothing preventing appropriate and policy-compliant images from being uploaded. As to when it is appropriate to replace an existing image with a new one, that will depend on the specifics: newer isn't necessarily better. AndyTheGrump (talk) 21:57, 25 August 2024 (UTC)
- Okay but, why can't we upload new images that replace the old ones? MJGTMKME123 (talk) 21:54, 25 August 2024 (UTC)
- @MJGTMKME123, what do you mean by "less images being uploaded today"?
- Do you mean specifically what's being uploaded today, as in Sunday, the 25th of August? (If so, please go to Wikipedia:Village pump (technical) and sound the alarm, because a sudden downturn is probably technical in nature.) Or do you mean "in recent years"?
- How much less? Is this like a long-term leveling off? Are you talking about uploads directly to the English Wikipedia, or at Commons? How are you counting the number of uploads? WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:20, 25 August 2024 (UTC)
- I meant "in recent years". MJGTMKME123 (talk) 22:21, 25 August 2024 (UTC)
- We have made efforts to direct uploaders Wikimedia Commons whenever appropriate, so having less uploads here could be a good thing. — xaosflux Talk 22:32, 25 August 2024 (UTC)
- I'm talking about image uploads on Wikimedia Commons. MJGTMKME123 (talk) 22:36, 25 August 2024 (UTC)
- Are you thinking about any images in particular? Again, we can't really answer your question because it's way too broad. Remsense ‥ 论 22:38, 25 August 2024 (UTC)
- I'm just asking about the trend of fewer image uploads in the recent years, but I understand if it's too broad. I was wondering if there are any topics where image uploads have noticeably declined. MJGTMKME123 (talk) 22:43, 25 August 2024 (UTC)
- How do you know that there are fewer uploads? What page or tool are you using to determine the number of uploads? WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:56, 25 August 2024 (UTC)
- I didn't actually use a tool. I just noticed that most images were made around that time period by just analyzing the date of random images. MJGTMKME123 (talk) 22:59, 25 August 2024 (UTC)
- @MJGTMKME123, I suggest looking at c:Commons:Statistics of uploads vs deletions, which gives the number of annual uploads from 2003 through 2022, and which does not support your hypothesis that there has been a multi-year decline in uploads.
- If you know anything about SQL, you can run queries like this and get whatever numbers you want. I use the "check 10 pages in Special:Random" method a lot, but you've got to remember that it's really quite a crude estimate, and if your random images weren't actually random (e.g., they were images used in Wikipedia articles), then you'd be looking at a crude estimate of a biased sample, which is basically worthless. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:07, 25 August 2024 (UTC)
- Okay thanks, I just realized that there are actually more uploads on the recent years then I expected. MJGTMKME123 (talk) 23:11, 25 August 2024 (UTC)
- That's way more useful data than what I found just below. So uploads to Commons have risen steadily if non-monotonically, and there is no year for which the number of files uploaded was less than
anyall of the three previous years. Folly Mox (talk) 23:19, 25 August 2024 (UTC) edited 10:16, 26 August 2024 (UTC) - This wouldn't account for which images are actually being used in articles (plenty of Commons images aren't), but I'd be very surprised if those are mostly pre-2009. ― novov (t c) 10:10, 26 August 2024 (UTC)
- I think most of them are pre-2009, I'm not entirely sure though. MJGTMKME123 (talk) 11:04, 26 August 2024 (UTC)
- What do you base that on? The number of articles in the English Wikipedia has more than doubled since 2009 (3,144,000 on 1 Jan 2010, 6,764,355 on 1 Jan 2024), and images in older articles are often replaced, so I suspect a large majority of images in articles have been added since 2009. For your claim to be valid, editors would have had to be preferencially using images uploaded before 2009 to add to articles. However, an analysis of the upload dates of a large enough sample of images currently in use in articles would be needed to support your claim. Frankly, I don't think that is worth pursuing, as I don't see its relevance to building a quality encyclopedia. Donald Albury 13:49, 26 August 2024 (UTC)
- @Donald Albury Thank you for pointing that out. I guess I was mistaken about the upload dates of the images. MJGTMKME123 (talk) 14:06, 26 August 2024 (UTC)
- What do you base that on? The number of articles in the English Wikipedia has more than doubled since 2009 (3,144,000 on 1 Jan 2010, 6,764,355 on 1 Jan 2024), and images in older articles are often replaced, so I suspect a large majority of images in articles have been added since 2009. For your claim to be valid, editors would have had to be preferencially using images uploaded before 2009 to add to articles. However, an analysis of the upload dates of a large enough sample of images currently in use in articles would be needed to support your claim. Frankly, I don't think that is worth pursuing, as I don't see its relevance to building a quality encyclopedia. Donald Albury 13:49, 26 August 2024 (UTC)
- I think most of them are pre-2009, I'm not entirely sure though. MJGTMKME123 (talk) 11:04, 26 August 2024 (UTC)
- I didn't actually use a tool. I just noticed that most images were made around that time period by just analyzing the date of random images. MJGTMKME123 (talk) 22:59, 25 August 2024 (UTC)
- As one potentially interesting pair of datapoints, I see that c:Commons:Database reports/Page count by namespace (current as of June 2014, almost exactly a decade ago) shows 22,097,492 pages in the
File:
namespace, of which fewer than 2% were redirects. Executing the Magic word{{NUMBEROFFILES}}
on Commons today returns 107,994,945. So there have been some uploads. Folly Mox (talk) 22:59, 25 August 2024 (UTC)- @Folly Mox Thanks for sharing that data, that means I might have underestimated the number of uploads. MJGTMKME123 (talk) 23:04, 25 August 2024 (UTC)
- How do you know that there are fewer uploads? What page or tool are you using to determine the number of uploads? WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:56, 25 August 2024 (UTC)
- I'm just asking about the trend of fewer image uploads in the recent years, but I understand if it's too broad. I was wondering if there are any topics where image uploads have noticeably declined. MJGTMKME123 (talk) 22:43, 25 August 2024 (UTC)
- Are you thinking about any images in particular? Again, we can't really answer your question because it's way too broad. Remsense ‥ 论 22:38, 25 August 2024 (UTC)
- I meant "in recent years". MJGTMKME123 (talk) 22:21, 25 August 2024 (UTC)
- On a related point, please consider looking through the popular articles for a favorite subject area – most WikiProjects have a page like Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/Popular pages – and seeing what new images could/should be added. Not having an adequate number of images in each article is a constant complaint from readers, and it even has benefits beyond the obvious value of the image itself (e.g., helping people with dyslexia keep their eyes on the right part of the article). WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:08, 26 August 2024 (UTC)
- Another source for images (which I suspect has been under utilized) are family photos. For example, over his lifetime my Dad took approximately 4,000 photos which are in slide format. While some will be of little interest to Wikimedia in general -- I doubt anyone is eager to see photos of llywrch's first birthday -- there are a number of images that I know will be of interest, such as photos of his business trips to Sudan & Nigeria, photos Oregon from as far back as 1960, & so forth. (I have some of a railway train that ran between Banks & Vernonia back in the 1960s that no longer exists. The trackway has since then been converted to the Banks–Vernonia State Trail. I've already uploaded a few of these to Commons. I'd be far more along with sharing these on Commons except that for many I'm missing information. For example, he visited an agricultural station in a town in Western Sudan -- for which I'd be surprised if we had any photos -- however I don't remember/know the name of that town.I expect there are countless Wikipedians with older family members who were hobbyist photographers, so this is a resource begging to be exploited. (PS, I had discussed doing this with my father before he passed, so I definitely have permission to do this.) -- llywrch (talk) 22:43, 30 August 2024 (UTC)
RFC: Which cover for the infobox of And Then There Were None ?
[edit]More opinions would be helpful to settle this long-standing issue. Which book cover should be displayed in the infobox of And Then There Were None: the 1939 cover with the original UK title that includes a racial slur, or the 1940 US cover with the current title And Then There Were None? Please help by giving your view at Talk:And_Then_There_Were_None#RFC Deciding which cover should be displayed in the infobox. MichaelMaggs (talk) 08:12, 27 August 2024 (UTC)
Candidate for the Board of the Wikimedia Foundation – Maciej Nadzikiewicz / User:Nadzik
[edit]Hello everyone! I am coming here to get feedback from you and ask for your support.
I am a candidate in the upcoming elections for the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees (a volunteer body that oversees the Wikimedia Foundation) and I want to make sure that I represent the voices of as many contributors as possible on the Board.
I am an active Wikimedia contributor (140,000+ edits on 462 projects & 3,000+ administrator actions) with advanced global permissions. I have experience as a Board Member of Wikimedia Europe, representing 29 Wikimedia affiliates from Europe. I have presented the Wikimedia movement values multiple times as an expert in the Polish Parliament. I was one of the organizers of Wikimania 2024. I generally understand the challenges the editors face, but I want to learn about particular issues that are relevant to your wiki that you’d want to bring to the attention of the Wikimedia Foundation.
I am willing to address any questions you may have. Please contact me here: (wiki-mail, meta-talkpage). See my candidate video; I prepared captions in 12 languages, including English.
I decided to answer ALL of the questions asked by the community members this year. My Candidate Statement is available in 19 languages
I hope for your support in the election, which starts on September 3. The time to change things is now! Nadzik (talk) 11:59, 27 August 2024 (UTC)
Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees Election - Introduction
[edit]Dear colleagues,
In a week's time, polls open for the community to vote on the selection of four trustees to the Wikimedia Foundation Board. More information about the process and timeline is outlined here.
I am one of twelve candidates running to fill these seats, and ask for your support in this process.
My name is Farah Jack Mustaklem (Fjmustak), and I am a long-time Wikimedian with extensive on- and off-wiki experience. I seek to bring about change and reinforcement to the Board in the following areas:
- Bring more diversity into the Board
- Build a Charter
- Combat misinformation/disinformation
- Focus on human rights
For more about my candidacy, I invite you to visit my user page (including my answers to the community questions) as well as my candidate page. The short video to the right is a brief summary of my Board candidacy.
If you feel passionately about any of the issues outlined above, I urge you to consider voting for me and to spread the word. Please feel free to reach out to learn more or share your concerns.
--Fjmustak (talk) 10:44, 28 August 2024 (UTC)
"In the news" section on the homepage?
[edit]Seems to be a primary spot for the site, but not updated very much. Is someone overseeing this section or is there some reason it doesn't get refreshed regularly? 2600:6C4A:4E7F:8D9D:6519:3F9A:34BF:6983 (talk) 11:32, 28 August 2024 (UTC)
- There's a reasonably sized subcommunity who decide which news stories are linked at "In the news". The conversations are held at WP:ITN/C. You should be able to participate without an account, assuming some knowledge of Wikipedia policy. Folly Mox (talk) 11:53, 28 August 2024 (UTC)
- In my experience, knowledge of policy is not a prerequisite and in fact conflicts with common practice. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 21:21, 28 August 2024 (UTC)
- I think you have a common misunderstanding of what this section actually is. It is not meant to be a continuously updated news ticker, it is a way of showcasing articles that have been updated to reflect recent events. --User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 12:42, 29 August 2024 (UTC)
- We don't updated ITN particularly quickly compared to a normal news website. I think the normal cadence is a new news item in the ITN box every few days. And there's only around 4 bullets so not that many total news items either. I'm not sure the reasoning for this... maybe limited space, and the editor time it would take to do more voluminous or more frequent updates? –Novem Linguae (talk) 14:15, 29 August 2024 (UTC)
The dubious template
[edit]What should be done to overhaul the {{dubious}} template? Literally every time I've seen it on an article, there is zero discussion on the talk page about what may be dubious in the article. I discussed this on the talk page a while back, but the discussion just went around in circles and fizzled out. Should a drive be done to remove drive-by instances of this tag where no discernible discussion exists? Ten Pound Hammer • (What did I screw up now?) 19:40, 28 August 2024 (UTC)
- I see that you have asked this exact same question at three different locations (here, and at the WP:V and WP:RS talk pages). That is not helpful, as the discussions may end up working at cross purposes. Please choose one location for us to discuss this, and close the other threads. Thanks. Blueboar (talk) 20:34, 28 August 2024 (UTC)
- I think of the "– discuss" as an invitation, rather than a requirement. Start a discussion if you want one. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:03, 30 August 2024 (UTC)
- The position taken by Jason Quinn (pinging) in the discussion you linked, especially
So rather than a red link for "discuss" appearing if the parameter is not used, the "discuss" link should only appear if it is used
and emphasis on the tag as a marker of dubious content seems rather reasonable. Ifly6 (talk) 16:33, 30 August 2024 (UTC) - Nothing, users should at least fill out the reason =, and if that's not sufficiently obvious, start a discussion on talk like one would for any other tag. If not, some enterprising soul will likely revert the tag.Selfstudier (talk) 16:52, 30 August 2024 (UTC)
- I think sometimes the
|reason=
is obvious enough that it doesn't need to be explained, too. I think that sometimes {{dubious}} gets used when the material really ought to have been removed instead, but the editor doesn't feel like it's okay to do that. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:09, 30 August 2024 (UTC)- I thought after reading your first sentence, "if it's that obvious then surely the dubious claim should be removed", but then I read and agreed with your second sentence. Too many people are too diffident about removing things. I must say that I think I have used this template a few times, but, as far as I can remember, I have always started a discussion. Phil Bridger (talk) 19:57, 30 August 2024 (UTC)
- Agree with this too. Re
Should a drive be done to remove drive-by instances of this tag where no discernible discussion exists?
– I don't think there's much of a need to remove dubious without parameters. There are a lot of cases where editors are fearful of stepping on others' toes by just removing it. Ifly6 (talk) 22:14, 30 August 2024 (UTC)- The {{POV}} templates generally require an active discussion. It's one of our defenses against using then as a badge of shame, since we've had problems with people adding that template as a sort of public protest for not getting their way. I've occasionally cleaned out some old undiscussed ones, but even in an anti-tag-bombing mood, there have been a few never-discussed tags that I thought were very obviously deserved. I expect that some of the {{dubious}} tags are the same: there's no discussion, but you don't need an explanation to know why that's doubted.
- There are only ~7K articles with this tag. There are 1200 biographies, 1600 STEM articles (including 12 medicine/health articles), 1200 about Asia, 1300 about Europe, etc. We can get search results for any subject named here, if you happen to have an interest area or favorite WikiProject in mind. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:32, 30 August 2024 (UTC)
- I think sometimes the
Suggested edits tool - Dysfunctional
[edit]I decided to use the edit suggestion tool and focus on adding missing references on women's biographies, but the edit suggestion tool presents me with pages that have nothing to do with the topic even tho I only ticked "Biography (women)" and "Find references (sources for existing articles)"
The tool suggests biographies of men. Example : Jeff Schweitzer
The tool suggests topics related to women, but not biographies. Example : A caress of twilight / 2011 Malaysian open
And these erroneous suggestions are not rare; I see one every 2-3-4 suggestions.
I wasn't sure where to post it, sorry if it's the wrong place. ProudWatermelon (talk) 22:57, 28 August 2024 (UTC)
- I'm able to replicate. I'm not sure if suggestions such as 1999 Toray Pan Pacific Open – Singles and 2015 ITF Women's Circuit (January–March) are genuinely false positives or just a matter of the
articletopic
display name needing some modification, but Francis Erdmann, Duke of Saxe-Lauenburg, Palakuan, and Visual Focus Depth Art certainly seem erroneous.The LiftWing model probably needs some parameters tweaked. Anyone up for creating a phab task withMachine-Learning-Team
tagged? Folly Mox (talk) 00:07, 29 August 2024 (UTC)- Pinging @Trizek (WMF) WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:40, 29 August 2024 (UTC)
- After a brief sleep, I realised anyone can see this behaviour without going through the full Suggested Edits endpoint with a simple
articletopic:women
search like this one. Folly Mox (talk) 10:41, 29 August 2024 (UTC)- Have you observed similar issues with other topics? Trizek_(WMF) (talk) 14:28, 29 August 2024 (UTC)
- I edited David A. Louton yesterday, and it's no longer appearing in
articletopic:women
search results. I suspect that in some cases, especially when the page is short, the software makes the wrong guess about the subject. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:46, 30 August 2024 (UTC)
Template:Permanent dead link
[edit]{{Permanent dead link}}, currently a redirect to {{Dead link}}, needs to be modified so that it transcludes {{Dead link}} with the |fix-attempted=yes
template parameter already specified. Because then it would be a convenient shortcut to transcluding that template with that parameter, as right now it's a deceptive and rather useless redirect which doesn't do that. How can this be accomplished?
P.s. I took a look at an existing template that does a similar thing, {{Edit semi-protected}}, but it uses code that invokes a module in the Module: namespace, which this 'Dead link' template doesn't have. — AP 499D25 (talk) 11:58, 29 August 2024 (UTC)
- While I was writing this, I just thought of block notice templates like {{Uw-blocknotalk}}. However, I don't have a strong knowledge of template code, and so I don't know what a "safesubst:" is. I'm not sure if the includeonly and safesubst bits would be necessary in this 'Permanent dead link' template conversion, especially since it isn't going to be substituted when being used.
- Update: using the code from the blocking templates as said above, I wrote Special:PermaLink/1242911547 in Template:X1 sandbox, and tested out transcluding it in another sandbox, comparing it to a plain old transclusion of 'Dead link' with the parameter manually specified. All looks identical and normal to me. So can someone confirm with me that the code is all valid? — AP 499D25 (talk) 12:06, 29 August 2024 (UTC) updated 12:27, 29 August 2024 (UTC)
- You might want to ask on WP:VPT, the editors watching that page will be better able to help you. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 21:17, 29 August 2024 (UTC)
- AP 499D25, looks good to me. The safesubst: is necessary for allowing it to be both transcluded and subst:ed.
|bot=
is probably unnecessary, because bots should be using the normal template directly. — Qwerfjkltalk 09:21, 30 August 2024 (UTC)- Alright thanks! I'll be going ahead with publishing the redirect to template conversion now, and per your suggestion I'll take out the 'bot' parameter bit. — AP 499D25 (talk) 11:15, 30 August 2024 (UTC)