Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous)

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The miscellaneous section of the village pump is used to post messages that do not fit into any other category. Please post on the policy, technical, or proposals sections when appropriate, or at the help desk for assistance. For general knowledge questions, please use the reference desk.

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Volunteer retention, burnout and dropout in online voluntary organizations: stress, conflict and retirement of Wikipedians

I generally don't post information about my Wikipedia research here, but I feel this one is VERY relevant to our community, so here it goes :) I put my 10+ years of Wikipedia experience into writing this, as I think the issues I discuss there are something that is quite important for the project's (and our) well-being and future health. The official release is likely paywalled ([1]) but I did upload a pre-print copy to academia.edu ([2]), at worst, you need to create a free account to download it. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 04:09, 8 November 2018 (UTC)

Excellent paper; you made some really interesting points. I think everyone here should read this. Enterprisey (talk!) 05:19, 8 November 2018 (UTC)

Is there any chance that this could be made available at Wikibooks? --Guy Macon (talk) 05:25, 8 November 2018 (UTC)

[ https://books.google.com/books?id=DgZxDwAAQBAJ&pg=PR3&lpg=PA1 ]. --Guy Macon (talk) 05:30, 8 November 2018 (UTC)

@Guy Macon: An interesting idea, but it's an article, not a book. Well, a book chapter. Not sure if it is in-scope for that project.--_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 03:09, 13 November 2018 (UTC)

On reflection, it might be a better fit at Wikisource.[3] That is assuming that you own the copyright on your own words and that Emerald publishing didn't make you assign the copyright to them or not be published. See Open access and Copyright transfer agreement. --Guy Macon (talk) 14:46, 13 November 2018 (UTC)

TBH I don't know what is their archival policy and I can't be bothered wasting time to find it out, since I already put a non-paywalled copy up in academia. If someone finds out what policy they have, ping me and I'll see about uploading a free copy to wiki servers. It's pointless to do it before that, as some trigger happy paranoia admin may delete it just in case. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 09:24, 14 November 2018 (UTC)

Wiki Professionals Inc promises Wiki bio pages

I recently received this promotional spam. Most likely Wiki Professionals Inc is already known to the Wikipedia community, but just in case.  —Sothomensch (Tom Holzinger)

   WikiPedia <[email protected]>
   To: <redacted>
   Oct. 13 at 8:05 a.m.
   
   Thomas Holzinger,
   Do you think Gangnam Style, Justin Bieber and Adele went viral based on just the quality of their work? You’d be wrong if you thought so!
   Generating the right type and amount of exposure for yourself or your business is not just a matter of fate or chance but rather a focused and calculated work of digital sciences.
   In the digital age, businesses, actors, writers, singers and everyone else who wants to be popular have teams working for them to strategize and manage their content and reputation over the internet. We believe it’s time you took a step in the same direction to get the fire started.
   What do we propose? We will take you and your business truly global with a place on the world’s largest online encyclopedia, taking you instantly to the top of your league! It might look like a simple page on Wikipedia but here is what you really need to know to understand the real power of Wiki.
   1. Wikipedia is the largest and most popular general reference work on the Internet.
   2. It is ranked the fifth-most popular website.
   3. It comprises more than 40 million articles in 299 different languages.
   4. The encyclopedia has 18 billion page views and nearly 500 million unique visitors each month.
   5. Wikipedia's level of accuracy has approached that of Encyclopedia Britannica.
   We are not saying that this is all you’ll ever need to go from common to ‘famously known’ but this will surely be the smartest first step towards it.
   Interested to know more about it? Don’t wait any longer! We are offering a Special 85% discount on our Digital Services this New Year Click Here to Activate your 85% Off Deal Now.
   Your Sincerely,
   David Wilson
   Senior Consultant
   Wiki Professionals Inc
   4330 Clarence Court
   Fayetteville, NC 28306

— Preceding unsigned comment added by Sothomensch (talk • contribs) 05:12, 9 November 2018 (UTC)

@Jytdog: Your bailwick. I assume you know some admins who would be interested in this. --Izno (talk) 13:30, 9 November 2018 (UTC)

Yeah, I got one of those too a few days ago. How does the WMF address stuff like this? — AfroThundr ^{(u · t · c)} 09:11, 11 November 2018 (UTC)

"The real power of Wiki"? Now I want to make a Dark Dungeons / Wikipe-tan mashup... Eman235/talk 07:22, 13 November 2018 (UTC)

• Everyone should email them back and ask for a portfolio of their past work...for science. GMG^talk 11:30, 13 November 2018 (UTC)
  • Give them the sp@mnesty runaround. Eman235/talk 05:02, 14 November 2018 (UTC)

Interesting article from MIT about Wikipedia

I wanted to share this with the pump readers. Also posted on help desk and teahouse.

• http://news.mit.edu/2018/wikipedia-disputes-unresolved-study-1106

TimTempleton ^{(talk) (cont)} 22:46, 9 November 2018 (UTC)

Copyright of Automatically Derived Knowledge

Moved from Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)

While facts themselves are not copyrightable, at what point would a machine learning model that learned to ask and answer questions using wikipedia content be subject to the copyleft clause for wikipedia content? In terms of generative writing style, a model would be a statistical summary of the writing styles on wikipedia i.e. a derived work of the copyrightable presentation of the non-copyrightable facts. On the other hand, a reformulation of words based on reading other works is precisely what humans can and would do if they "ingested" wikipedia, and I don't believe there would be any issue with a human using wikipedia as a source of verifiable content and writing or synthesizing new text (for example question and answer texts) in their own words.

Related, is knowledge derived by analyzing meta data about wikipedia such as the link structure between articles considered derived content and therefore copyleft territory? Notabotyet (talk) 03:59, 10 November 2018 (UTC)

"Edits to this page are currently being throttled"

If I attempt to post to Wikipedia:Reference desk/Entertainment, I currently get:

Edits to this page are currently being throttled due to an automated vandalism attack. If your edit is constructive, please ensure you are logged in to your account and try again in a few minutes. If you feel this filter is malfunctioning, you can report it.

Now, first, I have no intention of ever having a Wikipedia account. I'm talking about posting from an IP address, as I am doing here. And second, I understand that this "throttling" is going on because there have been ongoing vandalism attacks on the reference desks, and I have no problem with such actions being taken.

But there are still problems. First, there is no notification at the top of the page (as there would be if it was semi-protected) to say that this is going on. I only found out after I had composed my posting. That's not nice.

Second, there is no option (as there would be if it was semi-protected) to post an "edit request" to a page where someone more privileged can verify that the posting is constructive and post it.

Third, there is no explanation of what "throttling" even means, or what "this filter" is blocking.

Would someone please arrange for better information to be provided? --76.69.46.228 (talk) 15:14, 10 November 2018 (UTC)

You were hitting an abuse filter, and it is only possible to warn/notify you after you hit it not before. No one will explain to you what the filter is blocking as that will defeat its purpose. –Ammarpad (talk) 17:55, 10 November 2018 (UTC)

Wikipedia, like life, is not perfect. The anyone can edit mantra means stuff happens and there can be unfortunate consequences. I understand that some people don't want to create an account (I was like that for a month) but that solution is available and it's a matter of choice. There will be no public proclamation about the limitations because that would encourage more silliness. Johnuniq (talk) 23:40, 10 November 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for the answers. --76.69.46.228 (talk) 15:28, 11 November 2018 (UTC)

Photo request petition - please sign

Hi! Can you please sign the petition to TASS and RIAN requesting them to release certain historic photos for Wikimedia by adding your signature to the signature section? Also, please do spread the word to other Wikipedians. Thanks, --PlanespotterA320 (talk) 16:15, 11 November 2018 (UTC)

template for requesting language check?

Hi, is there any maintenance template requesting that an article be checked by a native speaker of English for grammatical and/or spelling mistakes? Some hours ago, I overhauled some parts of maximal entropy random walk and wondered in some places whether the sentence order is correct (e.g. choose $S_{ij}$ stochastic matrix such that) or if nouns are missing articles (e.g. all vertices but the marked ones have additional self-loop or analogy to electrons in defected lattice of semi-conductor). However, not being a native speaker of English, I cannot decide whether this is just a matter of style.

If there is an appropriate maintenance template, please tell me so I can place it in the article; or, if someone just happens to have time, feel free to check the article now. --78.50.153.140 (talk) 19:31, 11 November 2018 (UTC)

Looks like {{Copy edit}} should do the job, since {{grammar}} and {{cleanup-english}} redirect to it. You can add a "reason=" parameter saying "grammar" or just "English" (I think that's clear enough). For that article specifically, I'm not a native speaker either, but indeed there are quite a few fairly obvious errors and your edits seem fine, so considering the backlog (~half a year), you could try fixing most of that yourself if you want. (For the first example, I believe that after adding the article, the style choose $S_{ij}$ a stochastic matrix such that... is correct, which may be useful when you want to clearly indicate the new notation before giving its very long definition, but otherwise it's too formal/archaic and the usual order is better). Tokenzero (talk) 11:46, 14 November 2018 (UTC)

Flickr

I recently got an email from Flickr.

"After February 5, 2019, free accounts that contain over 1,000 photos or videos will have content deleted -- starting from oldest to newest date uploaded -- to meet the new limit. Members may always choose to download content over the limit at any time prior to these dates."

I've noticed many of the images in Wikipedia articles came from Flickr.

Perhaps we should make an effort to transfer over as much as we can before it's too late?

Benjamin (talk) 05:10, 13 November 2018 (UTC)

The Commons thread on this covers this a lot more. As for deletions, they have changed course. The images will not be deleted but normal (non-pro) users with greater than 1,000 images will just not be able to upload new images. --Majora (talk) 05:21, 13 November 2018 (UTC)

Worth noting, as linked in that thread, that Creative Commons licensed images shouldn't be deleted (at least no by Flickr). Still, this raises the issue that external websites can't be trusted to keep content forever. Sam Walton (talk) 13:30, 13 November 2018 (UTC)

Change coming to how certain templates will appear on the mobile web

Change coming to how certain templates will appear on the mobile web

Please help translate to other languages.

Example of improvements

Hello,

In a few weeks the Readers web team will be changing how some templates look on the mobile web site. We will make these templates more noticeable when viewing the article. We ask for your help in updating any templates that don't look correct.

What kind of templates? Specifically templates that notify readers and contributors about issues with the content of an article – the text and information in the article. Examples like Template:Unreferenced or Template:More citations needed. Right now these notifications are hidden behind a link under the title of an article. We will format templates like these (mostly those that use Template:Ambox or message box templates in general) to show a short summary under the page title. You can tap on the "Learn more" link to get more information.

For template editors we have some recommendations on how to make templates that are mobile-friendly and also further documentation on our work so far.

If you have questions about formatting templates for mobile, please leave a note on the project talk page or file a task in Phabricator and we will help you.

Thank you!

CKoerner (WMF) (talk) 19:34, 13 November 2018 (UTC)

A quick note specific to English Wikipedia. This work is a follow up to the 2016 RfC related to the subject. The Reader web team made improvements in March 2018 in response – with this latest update being a continuation of that work. Thanks, CKoerner (WMF) (talk) 19:44, 13 November 2018 (UTC)

Headbomb is changing this OK with current English Wikipedia policy? -- Magioladitis (talk) 22:20, 13 November 2018 (UTC)

YouTube

Was there any discussion about YouTube using Wikipedia content? Benjamin (talk) 06:48, 14 November 2018 (UTC)

Yes. A little discussion here after the feature went live. There were also some discussions before then which I can't locate now. There's also Wikipedia:YouTube links to Wikipedia. –Ammarpad (talk) 14:21, 14 November 2018 (UTC)

Queen Street (Toronto)

At Talk:Queen_Street_West#Requested_move_13_November_2018 I requested a move and got 2 supports. The idea was to move Queen Street West to Queen Street (Toronto), but I've found some issues. First of all, Queen Street, Toronto exist, which would become a redirect. I created a page at User:BrandonXLF/Queen Street (Toronto), that would become the new Queen Street (Toronto). The issue is Queen Street (Toronto) exist, so do we need to do a history merge (meaning Queen Street (Toronto) would have to be deleted)? If so, do we move User:BrandonXLF/Queen Street (Toronto) to it (which takes content from Queen Street West), or do we merge Queen Street West to it then add the content at User:BrandonXLF/Queen Street (Toronto) to it (I added a lot of extra content and rewrote/created many sections of the article). Of course, Queen Street West isn't being deleted so we can just provide attribution using {{copied}} and an edit summery? Is that sufficient? – BrandonXLF ^(t@lk) 02:55, 15 November 2018 (UTC)

I'll just provide atrrubution. If anyone has issues with that, just let me know. – BrandonXLF ^(t@lk) 16:05, 15 November 2018 (UTC)

Erie is within Pennsylvania

Currently, Category:Unassessed Pennsylvania articles has Category:Unassessed Lehigh Valley articles‎ and Category:Unassessed Philadelphia articles, but not Category:Unassessed Erie articles. Please add Erie as a category within Pennsylvania.--Dthomsen8 (talk) 13:48, 15 November 2018 (UTC)

 Added @Dthomsen8: You should just add the parent category in the subcat like you do in normal article pages. –Ammarpad (talk) 14:29, 15 November 2018 (UTC)

Thank you very much for your help.--Dthomsen8 (talk) 17:26, 15 November 2018 (UTC)

RFC:Backlog at Wikipedia:Contributor copyright investigations

There is a serious issue with a backlog at this page that needs urgent attention by the wider community and some measure to fix this issue permanently.Lurking shadow (talk) 21:42, 15 November 2018 (UTC)

LinkLurking shadow (talk) 21:43, 15 November 2018 (UTC)

Backlog at New Pages Review - Vote NOW for better tools

NPR NEEDS YOU! New Page Reviewers operate the only firewall against junk, attack, spam, and undeclared paid editing which has aways made up the majority of a day's intake of new pages masquerading as articles. Community Wishlist Voting is taking place now until 30 November for the Page Curation and New Pages Feed improvements, and other software requests. The NPP community is hoping for a good turnout in support of the requests to Santa for the tools that are urgently needed. This is very important as the Foundation has been constantly asked for these upgrades for 4 years. The Page Curation suite of tools now stands a good chance of getting long awaited attention to the upgraded tools it needs, but it needs your help: whether you are an active patroller or just want a junk-free encyclopedia, the Community Wishlist Survey – needs you: Vote NOW, and do also consider applying to become a New Page Reviewer. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 12:01, 18 November 2018 (UTC)