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The Wikimedia Forum is a central place for questions and discussions about the Wikimedia Foundation and its projects. (For discussion about the Meta wiki, see Meta:Babel.) This is not the place to make technical queries regarding the MediaWiki software; please ask such questions at the MediaWiki support desk; technical questions about Wikimedia wikis, however, can be placed on Tech page. You can reply to a topic by clicking the "[edit]" link beside that section, or you can start a new discussion.

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Wikinews viewership?

Hi! I can easily find how many people look at any one specific page of Wikinews. But I'm having trouble finding the monthly reach of the website as a whole. Is that stat available? Thanks! -- Zanimum (talk) 22:31, 2 October 2016 (UTC)

@Zanimum: Have you seen Stats? —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 22:43, 2 October 2016 (UTC)

@Koavf: I had, but didn't find anything but edit counts, user counts, etc. Just found viewership here, and I'm a little flummoxed. I could believe at most a quarter million views a month, but none of the new articles get more than a couple thousand reads in their first month.

Are there bots to find the most popular articles on a wiki, like what Signpost uses to find EN.WP's most popular articles? I'm wondering if it's an even spread of old articles, or if there's some juggernaut of an old article bringing in thousands of viewers. -- Zanimum (talk) 04:23, 3 October 2016 (UTC)

@Zanimum: Did you see the methodology here? —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 04:29, 3 October 2016 (UTC)

Hello, Zanimum! Here's the most viewed pages in October. Number 1 so far is "US Airways jet recovered from Hudson River" with 3,800 views. --NaBUru38 (talk) 20:30, 22 October 2016 (UTC)

CredKudo

An alleged "alluring new portal into Wikimedia projects and the Wikimedia movement" is proposed HERE and I'm seeking participants for reflection and comment. Credkudo would provide a new face and new fruit of the Wikimedia community's labors, focusing on the kernel of consensus underlying contentious issues. I would very much appreciate any observations you may have.

Global right Patroller

I have opinions for WMF Project. How if the wikimedia foundations have a global patroller or add right to member SWMT to global patroller? It make easy for patrol in small wiki is a not admin member. how your opinions?Murbaut (talk) 02:46, 22 October 2016 (UTC)

@Murbaut: Usually, stewards will fill this kind of role but that's not like the system can't be improved. Do you know of any small wikis that need more attention? —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 02:59, 22 October 2016 (UTC)

yes small wiki needs attention, if there is no board, highly vulnerable to vandalism. It easy to patrol for member SWMT to fight any vandalism. Murbaut (talk) 03:27, 22 October 2016 (UTC)

There are global rollbackers and global sysops as well. But you don't need either to help with the SWMT; you can join IRC and go to #cvn-sw to start patrolling edits! Hopefully someday we'll be able to integrate that more on-wiki as well, so external sites aren't needed. – Ajraddatz (talk) 03:35, 22 October 2016 (UTC)

@Ajraddatz oh. Do you know tools can show small wiki don't have member of admin right?:)Murbaut (talk) 13:51, 23 October 2016 (UTC)

• Comment To be honest, I do not see any need for this. We already have GRs and GSs to combat vandalism. No need to create redundant groups. Jianhui67 ^{talk★contribs} 05:45, 30 October 2016 (UTC)
• Yeah, we don't need another group for patrolling. But I Support giving GRs the ability to mark others' edits as patrolled. I wonder why they don't have the ability to patrol other edits yet... --Pokéfan95 (talk) 11:26, 30 October 2016 (UTC)
•  Oppose, uneeded. —MarcoAurelio 11:29, 30 October 2016 (UTC)
  • • • @MarcoAurelio okay I only give opinion :) Murbaut (talk) 12:00, 1 November 2016 (UTC)

Wikimania wikis

Hi. I was looking at Special:SiteMatrix and couldn't help noticing the whopping 14 separate wikis (and growing) for all the different Wikimanias, including a separate wiki for a "Wikimania team". Is there any current plans of a more sustainable or streamlined approach to running these wikis?

I am aware that this has been discussed a few times before, but no significant effort was put into it. Wikimania project domain is the most significant discussion which I could find, but participation was quite low on that, with no(?) WMF staff comments.

From what I understand from the above linked discussion, some key points against a unified Wikimania wiki was that:

1. We will not be able to preserve old Wikimania wikis as a "time capsule"
2. Older Wikimania organizers may face new organizers "steamrolling" over their pages
3. Organizers will not have complete control over the site as old admins might interrupt for whatever reasons. (or vice versa)

My though for these points was:

1. Why not have each Wikimania project branch their pages as wikimania.wikimedia.org/wiki/2016/Main page, or alternatively, have separate namespaces for each project (i.e. 2016:, 2017:, etc). We could then protect all pages under a project (i.e. 2016/ or 2016:) once a project is over.
2. This could be avoided by protection, as stated above.
3. Make it much less complicated. Once the project is over, all previous admin rights will be revoked, and the new organizers will get the rights. New admins can be advise to not modify previous project namespaces, or if better, if we can block previous projects' namespaces from editing? Furthermore, there could be a bot logging all changes made to old project namespaces, for transparency.

Is there any other views on this? Did I miss something obvious? Looking forward to your comments. Cheers, Rehman 08:53, 22 October 2016 (UTC)

Hi Rehman, thanks for the thoughts - they're well lined out. However, I'm not sure I agree with your conclusions or solutions. A few things also play a role here, I think:

1. As Wikimania's are being prepared more in advance, the preparations will overlap more and more. This would be tricky if you have to work from the same wiki, which will potentially hinder the use of the wiki.
2. A big argument in favor for the same wiki would be re-using a bunch of pages that carry over from the previous years. Information that remains valid. I'm not sure that is actually the case - the contrary might be true. It might get confusing for visitors, because they will find information through the search engine from previous years, while they think it is relevant for the current year. The more years we're talking about - the more likely we return to the same country at some point, and this might get tricky.
3. Re-using the same space would also limit the ability to experiment with styles, with preferences for organizing information. It would force teams to some extent to use the same group of templates, which would be a pity. They will typically take templates from the projects they're most at home. Given our international nature, this might very well be a non-English Wikipedia project. This also counts for a level of bilingualism that they may or may not want to experiment with.
4. One advantage of having a unified wiki would be that it would become easier to maintain those archived pages a bit with additional information, to link them to follow-ups a year later, etc. Information could be linked together. I'm not sure if we would use that oppportunity though.

All in all, I mostly see obstacles here, things that would make life (the way we live it) harder. The costs of unification should also not be underestimated (these old wiki's have not been maintained, I'm not sure how easy it will be to just transfer them into one place, interwiki links may no longer work etc), and I'm afraid that while there are some potential benefits, the actual use of them would be limited. Effeietsanders (talk) 09:30, 22 October 2016 (UTC)

Along with what Effeietsanders is saying, there wouldn't be much functional difference between your proposal and the status quo. As it is, when the Wikimania is over and the wiki is no longer needed, the site is locked and all permissions are removed. From a technical standpoint, it's frozen in time. If anything, it might be more of a hassle trying to accomodate it all on one wiki, especially since you'll have "common pages" (i.e. with the same title) that have different content based on the year. – Ajraddatz (talk) 09:46, 22 October 2016 (UTC)

(PS: I was working from the assumption that there is no technical need or desire to get rid of these wiki's. If there is, it becomes a different trade-off of course. I guess this is not a solution we would want to scale to every single conference we organize. Effeietsanders (talk) 10:03, 22 October 2016 (UTC))

Rehman hank for your post. I'm also an advocate of rationalization. So I'll follow this discussion when I have time. Other aspects are the flag system: when can recycle the old sysops directly if they're partially involved in the new wiki, so newbies can focus on content and we can create a real continuous expertise. The point is that even if it takes time to absorb the old ones, it does not take more time to start do thing right from now, for the future wikimanias. Offering a good new flexible infrastructure for the future is IMHO a good idea.--Alexmar983 (talk) 05:22, 23 October 2016 (UTC)

• I don't think that bringing all the Wikimania wikis together is a good idea. Even with very good navigation prompts, the site would quickly become very confusing to potential attendees. (Example: is this great-sounding session proposed for the next Wikimania? the one two years ago? Why are there links for accommodations in other cities? How come the visa requirements are wrong - oh wait, that was for Wikimania Hong Kong...) The Wikiconference held two weeks ago in San Diego (formerly Wikiconference USA, now targeted at the Americas) re-uses the same site year after year. I found it so difficult to find things - my ten years of figuring out how to find stuff on wikis notwithstanding - that I can honestly say the website was a factor in my deciding not to attend. I wasn't certain, after more than an hour of looking, what the program was going to be or even what was proposed for it; when I'm paying full freight to attend something, the program is going to be one of the most important factors in my decision whether or not to attend. I would have much preferred not having to sort my way through years of past history to piece together this year's event (or worse yet, thinking I'd found the right page only to discover it applied to another year). No, I think it's pretty important to keep each Wikimania site separate. Risker (talk) 06:22, 23 October 2016 (UTC)
• I appreciate the desire for tidyness, but I think this would cause more problems than it solves. EdSaperia (talk) 08:58, 24 October 2016 (UTC) (Conference Director Wikimania 2014)

Interwiki project and interwiki transclusion

Hi. Italian Wikisource and Wikiversity have discussed the idea of starting a joint project. (Link to previous discussion). This could possibly involve other projects, such as Wikibooks, and, if the experiment succeeds, projects in other languages might be interested as well. From the point of view of Wikintegrationism, we feel that a close collaboration could help smaller communities grow and promote their activities.
An important part of the collaboration would be to provide explanations and comments to Wikisource texts on Wikiversity, enabling readers to view both, side by side, within the same page. This would greatly enhance the educational value of both projects, but it would require effective interwiki transcusion.
Where would you suggest the joint project to be discussed?
Is such an interwiki transclusion possible? Where can we enquire about the technicalities? --pegasovagante (tell me) 17:45, 23 October 2016 (UTC)

Interwiki transclusion is one of the oldest requests. See phab:T6547. Helder 12:20, 24 October 2016 (UTC)

COLEMETER

Some East Asian countries (China) insist on using "COLEMETER" for measuring equipment. Does anyone have a real definition?

Wikipedia tagline not showing on Google

I don't know if this is the right place to put this, and would like some direction as to where is the right place if it isn't here. So, when I search for something on Google and Wikipedia has an article about it, the tagline "the free encyclopedia" doesn't appear anymore. This doesn't happen with the spanish Wikipedia, who still has the tagline. Why is that?--DGT15 (talk) 08:22, 25 October 2016 (UTC)

en:Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#Proposal: Amend page title element to remove "Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia". Anomie (talk) 14:26, 25 October 2016 (UTC)

New Wiki project WikiFastFacts

I have started a new wiki project proposal for WikiFastFacts. WikiFastFacts will be a bullet point version of Wikipedia. It will contain concise facts about a topic without the added verbiage often seen in Wikipedia and even Simple English Wikipedia. Most people remember basic facts about a topic. WikiFastfacts will become the repositiory for that kind of information. It will be useful to all readers but particularly the less literate. A sample page can be seen here I hope you all will discuss this and help move it forward to become a reality. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Hhamilton (talk)

@Hhamilton: Have you seen Concise Wikipedia? —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 16:52, 25 October 2016 (UTC)

Yes I have looked a t [Concise Wikipedia]]. It still does not reduce verbiage to fast facts bullets —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Hhamilton (talk)

AIpedia

Hello,

I'd like to know if the idea of an encyclopedia written by (and only by) an Artificial Intelligence has already been raised. IA which would be fed with high quality sources, able to synthesize all the stuff.

Ok, it looks like science fiction, but with the progress as Watson's, it doesn't seem to me unreachable. Is there already a project on this ?--Markov (talk) 22:00, 29 October 2016 (UTC)

@Markov: I don't know of one but for many years bots have been creating articles on Wikipedia and one of the functions of d: is to seed potential new articles in WMF projects. I don't think we are at the point where creating an encyclopedia from scratch is possible (that may never occur) but we are doing some babysteps. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 23:36, 29 October 2016 (UTC)

@Koavf: Some softwares are already able to generate text for media as economic publications. And I don't think that Watson uses the same kind of database as Wikidata does. The next step would be to use deep learning to create articles from scratch (but not the basic way the bots already do). --Markov (talk) 09:51, 30 October 2016 (UTC)

Some Big Picture perspective (and I'll remark separately, at the end, on what it implies about courses of action). The value of the wikimedian sisterhood to civilization lies in empowering ordinary human beings to have a voice in information providing. People downstream having access to the information provided — yes, that matters, but the point goes further than that, into what information they have access to: they have access to information by The People. When Wikipedia was first created, the obvious threat to this empowerment was simply ownership of web sites: the way things were headed in the late 1990s, it looked as if in the future all non-propaganda information would be paywalled. We've avoided that (not that it's "over", obviously it never ends), but a more subtle threat has been rising to ordinary people's voice in information providing, which is naively factoring humans out of the equation through failing to recognize the importance of keeping them in the equation. Our technological information processing can do some things that we can't, and there are immensely powerful capitalist motives to emphasize these things and ignore (or, not even look for) the things that we can do that our technological information processing can't; and educators, in struggling against superstition-based resistance to science and technology, have also strongly emphasized what technology can do while demphasizing what we can do that technology can't; and, insidiously, we lack good means to quantify what we're good at because we keep trying to measure things using some structured means, and anything sufficiently structured can be assigned to technology (even the Turing test suffers from this problem). The benefits of having information pass through human hands on its way to being provided are subtle and cumulative, and we don't have means to quantify them — it may even be that the nature of the benefits prevents them from being quantified — but if we don't work at preserving that passing-through-human-hands, the cumulative result will be the loss of something important without our ever really understanding what it was that we lost. It's conceivable this might even be the explanation for the Fermi paradox.

As for courses of action, my conservative conclusion from all this is that the greatest benefit to civilization lies in keeping the wikimedian sisterhood a bastion of human empowerment in the information flow. --Pi zero (talk) 14:23, 4 November 2016 (UTC)

Global autopatrolled

I am not sure about global patrollers. But I am sure that a global autopatrolled status is needed for administrators and filemovers of the Wikimedia Commons since they correct file names in many wikis, and also for other trusted users who edit in many wikis. Gamliel Fishkin 05:30, 30 October 2016 (UTC)

• Support This would be a good idea for Commons admins and filemovers who do a lot of renames and who process a lot of duplicates. This would save some patrolling time. I personally have the autopatrol right at 16 different wikis. lNeverCry 05:59, 30 October 2016 (UTC)
• Support Sounds like a good idea. Jianhui67 ^{talk★contribs} 06:24, 30 October 2016 (UTC)
• Support - Per INC. Wikicology (talk) 06:31, 30 October 2016 (UTC)
• Support per rationale, also useful when images are undeleted. --HakanIST (talk) 06:42, 30 October 2016 (UTC)

  Along that same line, this would be helpful when a mistaken deletion occurs, the file is restored, and the delinker has to be reverted at the wikis where the file was in use (barely ever happens of course... ). lNeverCry 08:09, 30 October 2016 (UTC)

• Strong support Mainly per INC and nom. There's no reason not to trust us Commons filemovers... --Pokéfan95 (talk) 11:20, 30 October 2016 (UTC)
•  Oppose This is a solution for no problem as far as I can see. This permission is content-related and should be handled by individual communities if they think the user is okay for it. Plus, it is not really worth the effort to add 300+ users to this group, flooding the stewards for no real reason. This is different from OTRS members which get flagged to avoid licensing-tag fraud issues. —MarcoAurelio 11:28, 30 October 2016 (UTC)

@MarcoAurelio: it is possible to define, who are eligible for such a status: if an ineligible person would ask for a status, the application would be closed automatically. And is it a hard work for 30+ stewards to give a status to 300+ users? Gamliel Fishkin 12:48, 30 October 2016 (UTC)

@MarcoAurelio: The number of active filemovers and admins at Commons is likely under 100. I would suggest this right be given on request from Commons admins and filemovers who can show a significant amount of activity. You'd might end up with 100 passable requests for the right, but those 100 editors account for thousands of cross-wiki moves and replacements. Also, how do local communities give somebody a right who can't request it in their language? I've nostly been surprised by an email saying my rights on another wiki have been changed. lNeverCry 02:05, 31 October 2016 (UTC)

•  Oppose some wiki's don't even want separate autopatroll groups. We should not force this change upon local communities. Plus trusted Commons users often are problematic for other wiki's. (Global replace wars, renames in closed archives, removing files from the user namespace because they fancy the svg, you name it.) Natuur12 (talk) 13:22, 30 October 2016 (UTC)

  @Natuur12: But they're fine with Global Sysop which includes the block and deletion functions, or Global Rollback? What? Global Autopatrol seems like less of a risk than the other two. As I suggest above, people should have to apply for this right here just as they do for GRollback and GSysop. As regards problems at other wikis, you and I don't have any, and neither do most of our highly active filemovers and admins at Commons. These concerns, if present, would very likely be brought up and addressed at an editor's request for the right here. Obviously any abuse of the right would warrant removal of it. lNeverCry 02:05, 31 October 2016 (UTC)

  Global sysop follows a WikiSet. --Vogone (talk) 05:01, 1 November 2016 (UTC)

• Support as per INC. Yann (talk) 22:27, 30 October 2016 (UTC)
• If this is an idea for commons admins, I would suggest to make it part of the Global file deletion review which still lacks technical implementation, instead of creating an entirely new user group. --Vogone (talk) 22:55, 30 October 2016 (UTC)

  That's not true, it's fully implemented on a technical level. See phab:T16801#191940. Legoktm (talk) 23:29, 30 October 2016 (UTC)

  It lacks community implementation, i.e. when the RfC was closed and taken to stewards we disagreed that there was consensus to create the group. – Ajraddatz (talk) 23:32, 30 October 2016 (UTC)

  This is interesting. Is there any public record of this decision? The RFC at least speaks of a consensus for implementation. --Vogone (talk) 00:06, 31 October 2016 (UTC)

  Stewards' noticeboard/Archives/2015-04. Note that it was essentially vetoed by myself and Billinghurst, with no other stewards offering their opinion. That wasn't my intention at the time, however, and it might be worth revisiting this. – Ajraddatz (talk) 00:12, 31 October 2016 (UTC)

  How did we get global sysop and rollback, but no autopatrol? Global sysop is 2nd only to steward... lNeverCry 02:05, 31 October 2016 (UTC)

  @INeverCry: To be fair, bureaucrats are above sysops but below stewards. (And oversight/suppressor and checkuser have very specific privileges...) —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 02:16, 31 October 2016 (UTC)

  @Koavf: But there's no global crat group. Having been a checkuser myself for a couple years, I can tell you there were many many times when I wished I was a global checkuser because another wiki had a fresh sock I wanted to look at, or because I would've loved to run check on a certain range to see who was on it on Commons after it was found to be dirty on en.wiki, etc. In the end, though, have you ever seen a crat actually do anything? lNeverCry 02:54, 31 October 2016 (UTC)

  @INeverCry: That makes sense--in terms of global status. I wasn't thinking. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 04:08, 31 October 2016 (UTC)

•  Oppose Sounds like collecting of privileges. Unclear what problem is solved by this. The Banner (talk) 23:48, 30 October 2016 (UTC)

  In this case, if a Commons admin moves a file and tries replacing its global usage through his or her account, there are many wikis where the edit will be flagged by pending changes as needing to be reviewed (major wikis like de.wiki and ru,wiki for example). This review is unneeded. The file is moved already, so all the reviewer is doing on the local wiki is wasting his or her time confirming something that's already been done. They can't even revert it locally since the original will be a redirect. lNeverCry 02:05, 31 October 2016 (UTC)

• Comment I've been autopatrolled at 17 different wikis. I would think the reason for those autopatrols was mostly people on those wikis were sick of having to review pending changes that were simple filemoves or dupe processes. It seems strange to me that other wikis are willing to have people with global sysop privileges, but autopatrol would be going too far. BTW, I've actually had people on other wikis revert my edits when I replaced a file through a file move. Then they had to go through the hassle of figuring it out by seeing a redlinked file name, and going back to my good edit. This right would allow other communities to see that the person doing the move is trusted with a global right. I would certainly agree that granting of this right should be done as carefully as global rollback. lNeverCry 02:05, 31 October 2016 (UTC)

Even more, I seen a case, one of the Commons' filemovers was indefinitely blocked at one of the wikis: a sysop thought it is an unauthorised bot (the block was cancelled after my intervention). Gamliel Fishkin 04:00, 1 November 2016 (UTC)

•  Oppose Centralizing rights like this weakens the local projects, in fact it's interesting that local projects don't get to run their own votes on fundamental changes to their own project rights or a chance to opt-out of changes. --Fæ (talk) 14:00, 31 October 2016 (UTC)
• Support It makes sense to me for cases like those mentioned by Gamliel. Files move in Wikimedia Commons are just innecessary extra work for wikis with a revision system in place --Poco a poco (talk) 23:09, 1 November 2016 (UTC)
• Support Global rollbackers's edits automatically marked as patrolled, and it is central permission and no conflicts before, so the idea is not new nor impossible, I thinks this permission will make some users like filemovers's work easier --Ibrahim.ID ✪ 20:59, 5 November 2016 (UTC)

  Strange comparison, global rollback follows a pretty high standard (only very few applications are successful). The proposed user right however would probably be given out to many more users. Whether that is a bad thing is a different question, but the comparison with global rollback seems inappropriate to me. Plus, I don't see how autopatrolled makes filemover's life easier, it's a very passive user right. If anyone "profits", then it's likely the group of local administrators/patrollers; and whether they want this external review is probably different per wiki. --Vogone (talk) 21:45, 5 November 2016 (UTC)

  @Vogone: global autopatrol would be a less strong right then global rollback. Yes, such a right can be dangerous if given to a vandal; but stewards are not bots to make something without thinking. This right would make filemover's life easier at least in the sence that their risk of being blocked in some wiki would be less high (I seen such an error block). Gamliel Fishkin 02:50, 6 November 2016 (UTC)

  I don't understand. Why would an error block be less likely in case of patrolled edits? Because admins don't check edits without red exclamation marks? --Vogone (talk) 07:28, 6 November 2016 (UTC)

  Sysop of one of the wikis seen edits by one of the Commons' filemovers and thought there is an unauthorised bot (that filemover is a human being and so has not local and global bot statuses). The sysop written to the filemover in a language he does not understand; there was no reply, and the sysop blocked locally the filemover for 15 minutes. 16 minutes after the end of the first block, the sysop blocked the filemover for one day. Six days after the end of the second block, the sysop blocked the filemover indefinitely. More then three years after these events, I written to the sysop with a link to global replace, and he unblocked the filemover with description "File renaming/Global replace". I think the problem would not occur, if the sysop would see at the filemover some global status like global autopatrolled (most edits of that filemover on that wiki have edit summaries starting with "(GR) File renamed"; so, these links in edit summaries are not enough). Gamliel Fishkin 17:31, 6 November 2016 (UTC)

•  Oppose, I do not think is is a good idea to give a user autopatrolled rights on the project X if the user does not speak the language X. These edits are not so many and are better checked manually.--Ymblanter (talk) 22:27, 5 November 2016 (UTC)

  @Ymblanter: renames at Commons "are not so many": few thousands per week. It would be a hard task for local patrollers to explore all such edits; it is the cause, why many of the Commons' administrators and filemovers have big collections of local autopatrol statuses. If some person do not make, on some local wiki, edits which require to understand a language, but modifies file links often, and that person is trusted by few other wikis, what is the cause not to trust that person in that wiki? Local administrators explore such trusted persons and give to them an autopatrol status; would not it better if a steward would make this work one time instead of local wikis' administrators to make it many times? Gamliel Fishkin 02:50, 6 November 2016 (UTC)

• Oppose I think this proposal doesn't even solve what the proponents want. The only effect of autopatrol is that no red exclamation mark will appear next to a user's edit on Special:RecentChanges, if this annoying setting is at all turned on (see mw:Manual:Patrolling), which on WMF wikis it is by default for new page creations. Flagged revisions rights are completely unrelated. --MF-W 01:38, 6 November 2016 (UTC)

  @MF-Warburg: I speak not about these red exclamation marks, but just about a right, given locally by statuses like autoeditor, autopatrolled, autoreview, etc. Gamliel Fishkin 02:50, 6 November 2016 (UTC)

  Please read his message again, he said: The only effect of autopatrol is that no red exclamation mark will appear next to a user's edit on Special:RecentChanges, in other words: users have their own edits automatically marked as patrolled. If that is not the point in granting this right to filemovers & commonswiki admin, what is it? Matiia (talk) 03:48, 6 November 2016 (UTC)

  Well, I read her message again because you asked me for it; I found in the message nothing I not replied yet. I already replied, that I speak not about these useless red exclamation marks, but about that patrolling who is named in other words as flagged revisions. Gamliel Fishkin 17:31, 6 November 2016 (UTC)

  Please read mw:Extension:FlaggedRevs#User rights. Here you are proposing to create a global user group with autopatrol right, not autoreview. Matiia (talk) 18:23, 6 November 2016 (UTC)

• Oppose - on the basis of essentially no change with or without the rights. As people have said above, removing the red ! beside an edit isn't going to make much difference, and could infringe on how local communities want to handle content evaluation. That said, I'm not at all opposed to making the lives of commons users easier because I understand how cross-wiki in nature their activities are. I would be glad to support another attempt at the global file deletion review group along those lines. – Ajraddatz (talk) 07:49, 6 November 2016 (UTC)

  Such a global status would make the work of Commons' sysops and filemovers easier just a bit, but it would make work of sysops and especially patrollers of other wikis much easier. If some Commons' sysops and filemovers rename mostly unused or poorly used files, they do not need such a status. But many of them rename files, many of which are widely used. If a renamed file is used in hundreds of wikis, local patrollers at those hundreds of wikis have to explore just the same edit to flag it as good; one work is made hundreds of times. The local patrollers do not need to make it, it the person has a local autoeditor/autopatrol/autoreview status. I am a sysop of Wikipedia in Esperanto; when I see a person, who just correct file links, makes nothing bad and is already trusted by some wikis, I ask him/her for an agree and grant an autoreview status (for now, fifteen persons, in this number five Commons' sysops and five Commons' filemovers). Why this work have to be repeated many times by local sysops, when it can be done one time be a steward? Gamliel Fishkin 17:31, 6 November 2016 (UTC)

  Yes, I did in fact read the proposal. But I disagree with your conclusion that removing the ! would make things any easier. Not all wikis even use that system of patrolling, and even among those that do, I imagine that people will still review edits that they find suspicious, regardless of whether they have been marked as patrolled. – Ajraddatz (talk) 18:51, 6 November 2016 (UTC)

how can a new user/member paticipate everywhere?

thank you. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Kain&abel (talk) 06:40, 31 October 2016 (UTC)

({Ping|Kain&abel}} Each project is different, so what it needs and how it operates is different. I'd suggest getting started at one that interests you and find out its rules and guidelines and then dive into another one. They all have a lot of work to do. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 13:24, 31 October 2016 (UTC)

Arabic Wikipedia violates terms of use?

During my short experience with the Arabic Wikipedia (see here, here, and here) I was repeatedly told that the Arabic Wikipedia is not governed or influenced in anyway by the other Wiki projects, and I believed that, but thanks to User:Luca Polpettini I now know that there are terms of use for Wikimedia which should apply to the Arabic Wikipedia, so it is seems untrue that the Arabic Wikipedia is free to do whatever they want. In the terms of use it is said that harassment and threats are not allowed. I think I was harassed and unfairly banned in the Arabic Wikipedia (please refer to the links for details). It is unfortunate that the terms of use seem to say nothing about resolving conflicts through discussion. This is a loophole which can allow the Arabic Wikipedia to get away with what they do. They told me that I am not allowed to discuss with them and that I must obey what they say without asking questions (one of them actually banned me because I asked him a question). I asked them to come here and discuss, and also User:Hindustanilanguage asked them several times to come here and respond to what I say, but they did not care to respond. They can get away with that because they can say that there is nothing that obliges them to discuss anything with anybody.--HD86 (talk) 03:40, 1 November 2016 (UTC)

New Wikipedia Library Accounts Available Now (November 2016)

Hello Wikimedians!

The TWL OWL says sign up today!

The Wikipedia Library is announcing signups today for free, full-access, accounts to published research as part of our Publisher Donation Program. You can sign up for new accounts and research materials from:

• Foreign Affairs - Journal of international relations and U.S. foreign policy
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Expansions

• EBSCO - Many new databases added
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Many other partnerships with accounts available are listed on our partners page. Sign up today!
--The Wikipedia Library Team 18:30, 1 November 2016 (UTC)

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I am blocked from wiki

As discussed earlier i want to contribute to wikipedia but i can't find any reliable medium in getting this through that is why i get blocked.Suggest something better that i can learn this effectively and contribute effectively as well. Mudasir18 (talk) 08:02, 5 November 2016‎ (UTC)

SineBot for Meta?

The licensing discussion here is overflowing with unsigned comments. I have asked the maintainer of SineBot to step in and yield some comprehensibility from the chaos. Hopefully, that will occur. However, his talk page does state that he is currently very busy and might not respond promptly. If that is the case, is there anyone else with the ability to run SineBot (or equivalent) on the licensing discussion once or twice a day until the discussion closes? Thanks! Zazpot (talk) 20:13, 5 November 2016 (UTC)

Information about ongoing policy discussions, requests, etc.

I noticed with shock that I only noticed the proposal to create a global right in the above section #Global autopatrolled a week after it was created. Even when I count in that I was on holidays until the 2nd of November, that are still 4 days. Shockshock. This made me remember an idea I had some time ago: to create a template which links to ongoing policy proposals, rights requests etc. of global effect. Meta-only things might or might not be included as well, or get their own template. Such a thing exists on dewiki with de:Vorlage:Beteiligen, and it seems like en:Template:Centralized discussion is also an equivalent. I believe this could be helpful both for "regular" Meta users and for users who aren't very active here but who would like to stay informed about what "global discussions" are being had at the moment, which might after all, affect them as well. So, are there others who would find such a template useful? Others who also would help to keep it updated? Is a template the most suitable means, or would it be better to deliver it as a weekly(?) massmessage? --MF-W 02:17, 6 November 2016 (UTC)