Wikivoyage:Travellers' pub/2021

tr.voy is now open

Check out tr: and say hoş geldiniz to our fellow travellers. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 07:53, 20 January 2021 (UTC)

It's Turkish, for those of us who haven't memorised all the ISO 639 alpha-1 codes. Nurg (talk) 08:11, 20 January 2021 (UTC)

I'll just say congratulations and happy editing to our Turkish-speaking brothers and sisters! Ikan Kekek (talk) 08:34, 20 January 2021 (UTC)

Hooray! It's been a long time coming - something like five years or more in the incubator. I was going to suggest leaving a welcome message at their village pump, but there weren't any other posts and I didn't think they'd appreciate the first post of the live era being written in a language other than Turkish - maybe give it a few days. But best of luck to them.--ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 09:36, 20 January 2021 (UTC)

I've just created a redirect from Istanbul to İstanbul. I'm hoping this doesn't create an international incident. 😀 --Nelson Ricardo (talk) 08:56, 20 January 2021 (UTC)

I just noticed that Turkish/Türkçe isn't listed at the multilingual WV homepage at https://www.wikivoyage.org. I don't think mere mortals can edit this page. --Nelson Ricardo (talk) 21:08, 21 January 2021 (UTC)

I'm an administrator and I don't see an edit button there. My guess is that only WMF staff could add it to the list of wikis. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 21:42, 21 January 2021 (UTC)

I'm a bureaucrat and don't see an edit button there, either. Ikan Kekek (talk) 22:03, 21 January 2021 (UTC)

User:Whatamidoing (WMF), would you be able to add Turkish Wikivoyage to that page? Ikan Kekek (talk) 22:05, 21 January 2021 (UTC)

Those homepages are managed by the admins at Meta-Wiki. m:Www.wikivoyage.org template seems to be where the code is stored. I think it's already updated on wiki, but I don't know why it isn't showing in production yet. Someone like DannyS712 probably knows more about this process. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 02:33, 22 January 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for explaining. Ikan Kekek (talk) 02:50, 22 January 2021 (UTC)

There is a lag (not sure what it is) between updating the onwiki templates and the live pages changes, but if its on the meta page it should be on the actual site shortly DannyS712 (talk) 04:03, 22 January 2021 (UTC)

Great! Ikan Kekek (talk) 05:53, 22 January 2021 (UTC)

I see that it's up. Good stuff. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 23:53, 1 February 2021 (UTC)

"Commons files used on this page or its Wikidata item have been nominated for deletion"

Folks, please pay attention when you see that in recent changes. A lot of the time, the photos being deleted (or not deleted) aren't visible on the page, but right now, it looks likely that everything including the pagebanner will be deleted from the Pekanbaru article and a whole bunch of photos will be deleted from Commons just because a sockpuppet has been adding thumbnails of them to sister sites (but I added some to Venice, for example). I think we'd better at least locally upload photos of Indonesia that are being deleted for lack of super-official assurance of total freedom of panorama. Ikan Kekek (talk) 02:35, 30 January 2021 (UTC)

I uploaded the pagebanner and the photo of the mosque in Pekanbaru to Wikivoyage, but the sizes are smaller than the original. I don't understand the problem and hope someone else can fix it and explain what you have to do to download the full-size photos. Ikan Kekek (talk) 02:48, 30 January 2021 (UTC)

The solution was that I had to download the photo when it was fully open, not from the photo page thumbnail. Ikan Kekek (talk) 02:54, 30 January 2021 (UTC)

[answering the postings in Talk:Pekanbaru#Commons files used on this page or its Wikidata item have been nominated for deletion]

There seems to be a problem in that we don't have enough people that know Indonesian law. The law does not mention FoP, so interpretation relies on whether these photographs are regarded to infringe on the copyright of the architect, which in turn might depend on local tradition.

However, the "precautionary principle" is sound. Wikimedia Commons intends their media to be used also commercially by people who could not afford paying damages or losing an edition of a book because of an infringing photo. Even if that would be the first Indonesian FoP case ever, we don't want it to happen.

Perhaps we indeed should upload locally all photos we use of (new) architecture in Indonesia. I suppose collecting a list of photos and uploading them locally should be a bot job, with the list made in a way where a user easily could tick upload or don't upload for each photo. Are the photos many thousands?

–LPfi (talk) 14:11, 30 January 2021 (UTC)

I have no idea how many such photos we use. I'm skeptical that the "precautionary principle" is being applied well in a situation in which a country is leaving well enough alone and last I checked, it appeared that the participants in the discussion that actually have expertise and have read the sources in Indonesian don't agree that there's an issue, but I'm not a lawyer. I should say, though, there's also the issue of the need to substitute photos that look likely to be deleted just because they were uploaded to Commons by a sockpuppet. Those photos are not from Indonesia. Ikan Kekek (talk) 19:14, 30 January 2021 (UTC)

Those latter images should not be our problem. The uploader being a sockpuppet is no reason for deletion of files on Commons. Some change images to tout their business, somebody substituting their quality images, for whatever reason, is not the form of vandalism we should get overly worried about. The Indonesian images are a worse problem, and I suppose you are right that the problem is in handling the Indonesian law on Commons, but if I understood correctly, there is valid concern. –LPfi (talk) 20:01, 30 January 2021 (UTC)

I get the concern but would defer to the experts. But of course my opinion is not going to carry the day. Ikan Kekek (talk) 20:27, 30 January 2021 (UTC)

Impending deletion of nearly all photos of Italy on Commons?

This is very threatening and must be taken seriously. Look at Liuxinyu970226's comment in this thread and now look at the reference they link. I think we're going to have to upload every goddamned photo of Italy we want to use here, and we might want to consider forking from Wikimedia and declaring that any commercial use of the images on our site is forbidden. Ikan Kekek (talk) 11:13, 1 February 2021 (UTC)

Or maybe Commons should be split into two projects: one for the WMF wikis to use internally with a special licence, the other with a full CC licence that anyone (but primarily commercial entities) can use. It seems that the possibility that someone in charge of an ad campaign or editing a magazine may use a photo from Commons that turns out to be non-free (e.g. in a country with no FOP) is having an increasingly damaging effect on the wikis that Commons is there primarily for.--ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 11:32, 1 February 2021 (UTC)

The other thing Commons could do is have a special template that says "This photo may not be used for commercial purposes". But I doubt we're going to get Commons to change. I'll propose it, though. Ikan Kekek (talk) 12:39, 1 February 2021 (UTC)

@Ikan Kekek, ThunderingTyphoons!: Commons won't be changing its licensing. See m:NonFreeWiki (2). —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 13:06, 1 February 2021 (UTC)

I understand the frustration, but "all our media is free" is a founding principle of Commons. Expecting that to change -- and swearing about it -- is Sisyphean. Frankly, simply allowing non-free media on individual products is controversial in some quarters. Powers ^(talk) 14:56, 1 February 2021 (UTC)

Having looked at the links in a bit more detail, I'm not so sure there's an imminent threat to all the photos of Italy. Liuxinyu970226 certainly doesn't say as much, and there doesn't seem to be an actual mass-deletion process underway or even proposed, but then I don't know the ins and outs of Commons very well. Even if the worst case scenario comes true, don't expect me to be at all enthusiastic about a fork; better to fix the system from the inside than become irrelevant on the outside. --ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 15:50, 1 February 2021 (UTC)

I'm more or less in agreement with ThunderingTyphoons! about this. I support localizing all our images of Italy as a precautionary measure, but any reaction beyond that is overkill. As to the question of fundamental changes to Commons licensing, if what Ikan Kekek says is correct, and the stark choice Commons faces is to either change its licensing or else 1) allow entire countries to effectively declare themselves off-limits to Commons coverage and 2) face the prospect of Commons becoming an irrelevancy within the WMF as the individual wikis move more and more toward hosting images locally, then I think they'll find they have no choice but to change. And that's assuming the Italian government wouldn't reverse course in the event of a mass cull of images from Commons (and, ergo, from the much better-known Wikipedia), which would certainly generate negative press about the real-world effects of unnecessarily stringent interpretations of copyright law. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 15:57, 1 February 2021 (UTC)

In fact, upon further inspection, the Commons template referenced by Liuxinyu970226 (i.e. the second link Ikan Kekek cites in his original post) has been in existence since 2012, and the law itself has been in effect since 2004. Occam's Razor says Liuxinyu970226's personal interpretation of which images of Italy are permissible on Commons, as he expressed it in that thread, is not shared by the WMF. Otherwise, the "actual mass-deletion process" that ThunderingTyphoons! notes hasn't begun yet would have happened at least nine - or, more likely, 17 - years ago. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 16:17, 1 February 2021 (UTC)

@AndreCarrotflower: "allow entire countries to effectively declare themselves off-limits to Commons coverage": that is the situation at Commons. The WMF can't determine anyone's laws. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 01:56, 2 February 2021 (UTC)

@Koavf: You're missing the point. Regardless of whether countries hypothetically have the power "to effectively declare themselves off-limits to Commons coverage", as yet no country actually has done that. It's easy enough to be a hardcore dyed-in-the-wool free-media purist when the threat of being barred from an entire country is just a farfetched hypothetical, but would such a purist stance survive if that threat became an impending occurrence? For the reasons I cited, it's very, very doubtful that it would. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 06:31, 2 February 2021 (UTC)

"would such a purist stance survive if that threat became an impending occurrence?" Yes. To use media on Commons, it has to be freely licensed or in the public domain in the United States as well as whatever was the original jurisdiction of the creation of said media: there is a 0% likelihood of that changing, barring the United States essentially abolishing the public domain. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 07:09, 2 February 2021 (UTC)

Essentially, you're saying "Commons policy is to only use freely licensed media, and that won't change even if entire countries declare them off-limits because Commons policy is to only use freely licensed media." Not only is that circular logic, it's also quite a naïve view of human motivation. For reasonable people, which I believe most WMF contributors are, at some point preserving the integrity of the work to which they've dedicated so much time and effort becomes more important than stubbornly holding fast to some pie-in-the-sky philosophical ideal. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 08:10, 2 February 2021 (UTC)

"Not only is that circular logic, it's also quite a naïve view of human motivation..." No, it's not circular logic: I am not stating a premise as my conclusion. I'm saying that Commons only allows media that are freely licensed in the place of origin and the United States; if media are not licensed in the place of origin, then it's not allowed on Commons. That's just being consistent and explaining the most basic rules about licensing media on Commons to you. "For reasonable people, which I believe most WMF contributors are, at some point preserving the integrity of the work to which they've dedicated so much time and effort becomes more important than stubbornly holding fast to some pie-in-the-sky philosophical ideal." It seems like you have fundamentally misunderstood what Commons is: the entire point is that you know that you can use these media without restrictions. If there are some restrictions, then somewhere other than Commons is where that media should be. It could be localized on individual projects or it could be off-wiki but when you go to Commons, you have to know that you can use the media that you're getting with no restrictions other than (at most) -BY or -SA. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 08:40, 2 February 2021 (UTC)

The "new" Italian law is about a non-copyright restriction, and Commons policy is that such restrictions do not affect their willingness to host a file. There will just be a warning template. This is from the Commons viewpoint a restriction similar to trademarks or personality rights, something that the reuser has to take into account, possibly filing a request to the Italian authorities before using the file – or knowingly ignoring Italian law on the matter. –LPfi (talk) 18:52, 1 February 2021 (UTC)

If that's the case, Liuxinyu970226's deletion rationale is invalid. Ikan Kekek (talk) 21:45, 1 February 2021 (UTC)

Justin, the proposal for a "non-free Wiki" is more complicated than simply tagging some images as non-commercial use only. I don't really see a clear advantage in farming out local use of exemption doctrine based on fair use and important educational purposes when the only issue is that a file can be used for any purpose other than making money. Ikan Kekek (talk) 01:38, 2 February 2021 (UTC)

@Ikan Kekek: I'm just suggesting that there is an existing proposal to fix this issue in a systematic way rather than the piecemeal, panicked response offered here. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 01:55, 2 February 2021 (UTC)

Justin Do you mean NonFreeWiki? It is not much of a solution to this problem, I think. Fair use rationals depend on a file being in use, so you cannot store good files for potential use there. In most cases you have to find the image and upload it, just as you now upload it locally.

For the hardcore dyed-in-the-wool free-media purist issue, I'd say that it sometimes works. We wouldn't have GNU/Linux without them. WMF showed a similar stance when Wikipedia was blocked by Turkey. And Commons has lots more of free media than it would have if "free" hadn't been a requirement. Of course, not all contributers to Wikipedia and Commons are hardcore privacy-and-freedom-of-speech or free-media purists (most are probably "reasonable" it-works-so-who-cares types), but the movement has attracted quite a few of the hardcore ones.

–LPfi (talk) 12:18, 2 February 2021 (UTC)

At least this bunch of files is looking more likely to be deleted. We need to upload any of the ones we want to keep locally. Fortunately, there are many photos of Italy on Commons - for now. So as long as they're not all deleted en masse, we're likely to have options. Ikan Kekek (talk) 11:56, 7 February 2021 (UTC)

The argument in favor of deleting those files specifically doesn't seem to have anything to do with FoP in Italy. We at Wikivoyage have our own problems with sockpuppets, and I actually think it would be a nice show of solidarity to at least attempt to find other images to replace those for use on our site. As for a mass deletion of material from Italy, I feel confident in saying we have nothing to worry about, regardless of Liuxinyu970226's misconceptions. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 19:08, 7 February 2021 (UTC)

I agree that trying to find suitable replacements for those photos is a good idea. I had meant to include that in my post above. Ikan Kekek (talk) 21:56, 7 February 2021 (UTC)

Wikipedia WikiProjects

Swept in from the pub

I have just reached out to WikiProject Portugal (w:Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Portugal#Wikivoyage), hoping to entice participants of that project to contribute over here. I wonder if anyone thinks that similar outreach to other geographic WikiProjects would be fruitful. --Nelson Ricardo (talk) 18:39, 16 February 2021 (UTC)

In cases such as Portugal where there is already a Wikivoyage in the local language, we should be directing them there and not to en:. pt: is even more badly in need of new contributors than we are, and the same is true for most non-English Wikivoyages. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 19:37, 16 February 2021 (UTC)

I understand what you're saying and agree with you in principle. PT WV is basically dead, as evidenced by their Recent Changes. I am not confident enough in my Portuguese to contribute much, and the broken listing templates deter me from even trying. However, educated people in Portugal (and other Lusophone countries) are often conversant in English, as it's a required subject in school. They also recognize that English is largely a lingua franca among those most likely to travel internationally. People contributing to an EN WikiProject would seem to be the sort of folks who might enjoy contributing here at EN WV. I wouldn't advertise this on PT WP or other languages, though I would cross-advertise same-language WV and WP instances. --Nelson Ricardo (talk) 20:03, 16 February 2021 (UTC)

I did something like this once before on Wikiproject:Ireland; it didn't result in any interest expressed or in any apparent increase in edits to Ireland articles. Let's hope Wikipedia's lusophiles have a bit more gumption about them.--ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 21:11, 16 February 2021 (UTC)

If you're reaching out in the English-language Wikipedia, then editing at the English-language Wikivoyage makes most sense even if they usually edit and add content related to Portugal. You may meet people who are interested in the country for one reason or another but are not fluent in the language. The best way to attract editors at the Portuguese-language Wikivoyage would be to go to the Portuguese-language Wikipedia. Gizza ^(roam) 21:57, 16 February 2021 (UTC)

I think this is a great idea. Thanks for doing that. It's a low-traffic page, though, so it might be better to have equally low expectations. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:57, 16 February 2021 (UTC)

I also think we lack Aussie and Kiwi editors too. TravelAroundOz (talk) 09:05, 19 February 2021 (UTC)

Potential user to keep an eye on

There's a guy out at enwiki who's just come to the community's attention for writing a number of bizarre travel guides on exceptionally small towns. You can read all the dirty details here. I have the sinking feeling someone trying to get him out of enwiki's hair and noticing the details of his articles is going to point him at Wikivoyage, so I'm just giving a heads-up to the broader community that if this guy comes here we should at least be watching him. Vaticidalprophet (talk) 18:35, 22 March 2021 (UTC)

That discussion, where all the admins seem to think they have the right to belittle the user in question, is a good reminder why I'm not more involved in Wikipedia. Having said that, thanks for the tipoff, and let's hope the user doesn't discover Wikivoyage (frankly, let's hope none of them discover Wikivoyage, as they come across as bullies).--ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 18:43, 22 March 2021 (UTC)

w:Draft:Nugunek is a useful example of this contributor's work, and why we should be on the watch. The reader is told that "Nugunek is a town in Turkmenistan without earthquakes.", and given a table of sunrise and sunset times for the first and 15th days of each month. That would not be a useful travel article. Let's hope they don't find us. Ground Zero (talk) 20:07, 22 March 2021 (UTC)

@Ground Zero:, okay, I'm booking my flights now. :) SHB2000 (talk) 10:33, 25 March 2021 (UTC)

It would be useful if it had some content useful for travel. SHB2000 (talk) 20:25, 22 March 2021 (UTC)

I don't think any of the information in the article belongs in a travel article, so that leaves it empty. An empty article becomes useful only if someone adds travel-related info, which this user is not doing. Ground Zero (talk) 20:31, 22 March 2021 (UTC)

Hope he doesn't even know about Wikivoyage. SHB2000 (talk) 05:21, 23 March 2021 (UTC)

Additionally, the only good article that would be useful would be w:Draft:Bromley, Victoria, which I will start to work on with no research from en.wiki. This way, we hope he doesn't have good reason to come here. SHB2000 (talk) 05:37, 23 March 2021 (UTC)

Forget about it, the village has only 56 people and is nowhere close to Cooladi. SHB2000 (talk) 05:41, 23 March 2021 (UTC)

@Vaticidalprophet, Ground Zero:, I see the user is blocked on enwiki. SHB2000 (talk) 10:47, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

Unsurprising. For what it's worth, there are people here in good standing who are blocked on enwiki, and indeed I'm pretty sure that's true for every Anglophone sister project. But I've been following the discussion on this guy there, and it's turning out about how I'd expect. Vaticidalprophet (talk) 18:31, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

Unfortunately only blocked on enwiki. Hope no one points both Fram or TableSalt342 here. SHB2000 (talk) 02:20, 27 March 2021 (UTC)

Additionally. after reading this, we don't want them here. SHB2000 (talk) 02:23, 27 March 2021 (UTC)

Sort of related to this: One of the things that I like about Wikivoyage is that the community is basically good people. We all have different strengths and interest areas, but we try to help each other out, and even when someone has a bad day, or we have a disagreement, people try not to be nasty or hold grudges about it. I sometimes get to this page and feel like I've somehow lucked into finding a whole group of reasonable adults on the internet. Thank you for that. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:07, 27 March 2021 (UTC)

"and feel like I've somehow lucked into finding a whole group of reasonable adults on the internet" - What about User:AnglaisEP's students?

Anyway, I have a similar number of edits on en.wiki. 96% are reverting vandalism. There's more vandalism on enwiki per minute than total edits per minute here on WV. SHB2000 (talk) 05:04, 28 March 2021 (UTC)

@WhatamIdoing:, Considering that KevRobbAU has retired (meaning no personal admin attacks on User:Ground Zero) I'd sort of agree with you there. SHB2000 (talk) 11:13, 28 March 2021 (UTC)

Global bot policy changes

Hello!

According to the list, your wiki project is currently opted in to the global bot policy. As such, I want to let you know about some changes that were made after the global RfC was closed.

• Global bots are now subject to a 2 week discussion, and it'll be publicized via a MassMessage list, available at Bot policy/New global bot discussion on Meta. Please subscribe yourself or your wiki if you are interested in new global bots proposals.
• For a bot to be considered for approval, it must demonstrate it is welcomed in multiple projects, and a good way to do that is to have the bot flag on at least 5 wikis for a single task.
• The bot operator should make sure to adhere to the wiki's preference as related to the use of the bot flag (i.e., if a wiki doesn't want a bot to use the flag as it edits, that should be followed).

Thank you for your time.

Best regards,
—Thanks for the fish! ^{talk•contribs} 18:48, 6 April 2021 (UTC)

I'm not sure what our policy on global bots should be. Some like the Community Tech bot that gives the message "A Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion" are really useful, but are there any we'd want to block? Has anyone been keeping track of all the global bots? Ikan Kekek (talk) 03:23, 7 April 2021 (UTC)

It'd be easier if the Meta userpages for the global bots described their function, but many don't. (Do we have any local bots here?) I've had experiences with problematic bots on other projects; I can't think of any prior experiences with global bots, problematic or otherwise. Vaticidalprophet (talk) 05:15, 7 April 2021 (UTC)

There are local bots here, but I'm not sure which ones been run lately, other than the graffiti wall reversion bot. Ikan Kekek (talk) 05:28, 7 April 2021 (UTC)

I don't remember any problems over here, so I suppose there haven't been any major ones. Watching the bot discussions would do no harm, although I trust the global bot users to be sensible and considerate. –LPfi (talk) 10:29, 7 April 2021 (UTC)

I agree with LPfi. If anyone notices any issues or has any concerns about a global bot, they can always start a discussion here at the pub. Off the top of my head I can't think of any problems I've noticed related to global bots, here or on the other wikis I frequent, so it seems to me the folks at Meta make sensible decisions about whether to approve them. When I notice global bots at work, they usually seem to be doing uncontroversial crosswiki maintenance (for example, keeping interwiki links and image filenames up to date). In an emergency, a malfunctioning or problematic bot can be blocked by any admin. —Granger (talk · contribs) 15:54, 7 April 2021 (UTC)

I agree that there haven't been problems so far. It's just that the word "changes" focused my mind a little. Ikan Kekek (talk) 16:23, 7 April 2021 (UTC)

That makes sense. Rereading my comment, I might have come across too strong. No harm in raising the question. —Granger (talk · contribs) 18:29, 7 April 2021 (UTC)

I didn't think you came across too strong at all, no worries! Ikan Kekek (talk) 18:30, 7 April 2021 (UTC)

Once the interlanguage links moved to Wikidata, the global bot policy became less than useful, to the point that some editors have run bots without authorization or disclosure, because (a) the work really needed to be done, and (b) it didn't involve repairing Special:DoubleRedirects, which was the only remaining approved task according to the global bot policy. As an example, the WMF's Parsing team identified some wikitext errors few years ago (remember Special:LintErrors?), and much of that could be fixed by bot. Some smaller wikis didn't have enough volunteers to do it, and the global bot policy didn't approve it. Everyone wanted the errors fixed, so some bot ops did it "unofficially". There were no complaints.

I agree with LPfi: I trust the global bot folks to be sensible. Also, if they do accidentally screw up, any admin can block the bot locally. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:56, 7 April 2021 (UTC)

@WhatamIdoing: I'm curious - is User:CommonsDelinker considered a global bot? If the only remaining approved task was double redirects, how has it been allowed to operate? —Granger (talk · contribs) 20:36, 7 April 2021 (UTC)

Would I count it that way? Yes. The policy has been so broken in practice that nobody's been enforcing the policy. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:49, 8 April 2021 (UTC)

GFDL-only local uploads

I'm curious about if we should have a local upload policy for files uploaded under the GNU Free Documentation License alone. It's a copyleft license and many images across projects are uploaded with it, but Commons has phased out GFDL and no longer permits the uploading of new files licensed under it (old ones are grandfathered). I've been making banners lately, and I've made a pretty good one for Sale (Victoria), but noticed after creating that the Commons file it was derived from was GFDL-licensed -- meaning I can't upload it there. Most of the projects I know of with local uploads permit GFDL uploads and treat them as other free images are treated, so I'd support us having that policy. Vaticidalprophet (talk) 08:49, 12 April 2021 (UTC)

Support – Considering that we don't have to go cross-wiki to do this, I'd support it. SHB2000 (talk) 10:06, 12 April 2021 (UTC)

Thinking about and expanding on this proposal, I think a significant objection people might raise would be using this as a loophole to preferentially upload free files to Wikivoyage rather than Commons by granting them a free license Commons doesn't use. Personally I don't think "preferring local uploads" is a huge issue -- people have reasons for what they do -- and GFDL files can be used cross-wiki by uploading them to other projects that accept them. However, it is something there are reasons to oppose, and Wikivoyage generally has a culture of only having local uploads when absolutely necessary.

I'd be inclined to say there's no reason to put a hard limit on "if something isn't in this category you must upload it to Commons" rather than "we prefer anything that doesn't have to be GFDL go to Commons", but similarly I have absolutely no qualms with a hard rule as to when and where we could make local GFDL uploads. I'm happy to have a position that says we can have GFDL uploads that are either Wikivoyage-related derivative works of a pre-existing GFDL file (so the Sale banner, for instance) or cross-project imports of GFDL files relevant to Wikivoyage (as an example, there's a couple hundred or so GFDL files on the English Wikipedia of towns and locales around the Western United States that would be pretty excellent to have here and that I plan to import several of if we decide to implement GFDL local uploads) if people want those restrictions/clarifications.

Also, more broadly, I've been thinking about our local image licensing templates -- which are currently rarely used, but will be moreso should this get consensus. Right now, they all have very small text (80% of normal size). This strikes me as an accessibility issue, as they're tough to read even with normal vision and could be unreadable with poor vision. Vaticidalprophet (talk) 13:38, 12 April 2021 (UTC)

By my reading of commons:Commons:Licensing#GNU_Free_Documentation_License, you can upload the banner on Commons, as the photo was (I presume) licensed before 2018. If that's correct, I think there is no need for a special local upload policy for GFDL. —Granger (talk · contribs) 17:18, 12 April 2021 (UTC)

I don't think that permits new derivative works of pre-2018 uploads, and it definitely doesn't permit transferring other local files that I'd want to use on Wikivoyage licensed after that time. Having poked around a bit, it seems we have a couple GFDL local uploads already, so it might be worth formalizing. Vaticidalprophet (talk) 05:48, 13 April 2021 (UTC)

• Hello! GFDL is not a very good license for photos, video and audio. That is why WMF decided that wiki projects should not use GFDL as the only license. They did not forbid it completely but left it for the wikis to decide.

commons:Commons:Licensing#GNU_Free_Documentation_License mention "licensed on or after 15 October 2018" so if a file is uploaded to Commons or any other wiki and licensed GFDL before that date then it is still possible to upload a crop of the file to Commons. It is also possible to move a file from xx.wiki to Commons if the file was uploaded before that date.

So I do not think there is any reason to allow local uploads of files licensed GFDL. --MGA73 (talk) 18:16, 13 April 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for the clarification. I just stumbled across this page, which is worth reading too: Wikivoyage:Why Wikivoyage isn't GFDL. —Granger (talk · contribs) 18:43, 13 April 2021 (UTC)

Line numbering coming soon to all wikis

Example

From April 15, you can enable line numbering in some wikitext editors - for now in the template namespace, coming to more namespaces soon. This will make it easier to detect line breaks and to refer to a particular line in discussions. These numbers will be shown if you enable the syntax highlighting feature (CodeMirror extension), which is supported in the 2010 and 2017 wikitext editors.

More information can be found on this project page. Everyone is invited to test the feature, and to give feedback on this talk page.

-- Johanna Strodt (WMDE) 15:08, 12 April 2021 (UTC)

Finally! SHB2000 (talk) 02:51, 13 April 2021 (UTC)

@SHB2000, please tell me more. I would have expected editors to either not notice (because we're not using CodeMirror) or to be irritated (because the line number clutter up the interface). WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:34, 13 April 2021 (UTC)

It ain't live yet. I'll decide then whether to be irritated or not.--ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 16:48, 13 April 2021 (UTC)

When I did my first edit 12 mo. ago, I was surprised that it didn't have one, considering C, python, BF and javascript, all do SHB2000 (talk) 21:36, 13 April 2021 (UTC)

No, they don't. It's just your editor adding them. The only programming language with line numbers that I know is BASIC. But the reasons your editor adds them might be good reasons for the wiki editor to add them too. –LPfi (talk) 14:14, 14 April 2021 (UTC)

It's the 15th, where's the line numbering??? SHB2000 (talk) 00:53, 15 April 2021 (UTC)

m:WMDE Technical Wishes/Line Numbering#Status and roadmap says, "only for the template namespace" "Deployment on more namespaces is planned for the near future" Nelson Ricardo (talk) 01:34, 15 April 2021 (UTC)

Wikivoyage discussion for m:Universal Code of Conduct/2021 consultations

Formerly Invitation to m:Talk:Universal Code of Conduct/2021 consultations/Discussion, where comments can also be left

I am interested in hearing the input of Wikivoyage users about the application of the Universal Code of Conduct, especially from the perspective of interactions on Wikivoyage. Xeno (WMF) (talk) 23:59, 17 April 2021 (UTC)

Hi, Xeno. This is a small wiki, and that probably makes it harder for harassers to hide among a crowd, as it's still pretty possible for users to patrol all recent changes every day (at most, some will patrol some edits and others will patrol others, but the number of new edits isn't crushing). We don't tolerate harassment. People who threaten violence or lawsuits against other Wikivoyagers are blocked indefinitely (or if IP addresses, for a month or more, as IP addresses are not blocked permanently). People who are not acting threatening but are for example making life miserable for valuable content-providers by edit warring and writing nasty edit summaries are engaged in discussion and blocked when necessary, as we want to support users who are making good edits. Most of the harassment on this site is from vandals and trolls, most of them cross-wiki, and that's a problem that WMF should continue to work hard on because it really makes things less fun around here. Of course there are also misunderstandings and people who think any reversions or further edits to their work constitute harassment per se. If you engage in any moderation, you know that kind of thing goes with the territory, and we try to smooth over hard feelings, but there are limitations to the faceless communications we engage in here and if push comes to shove on matters of site policy, guidelines and basic style, the existing consensus and procedures by which a new consensus might be formed generally have to be enforced against edit warriors and people who make huge unilateral changes to site organization and the like, because as some of us are old enough to remember, most Usenet newsgroups proved the theory that if anyone can post any kind of thing they want any time with no moderation, a venue ends up as a cesspool of spam, flaming, trolling and vandalism.

Is this the kind of answer you were looking for? Any other questions we could address? Ikan Kekek (talk) 00:21, 18 April 2021 (UTC)

This is quite useful! I'm glad to hear of the positive interactions on this project. From the perspective of a smaller wiki, what more could be done to help make dealing with cross-wiki abuse easier to address when it lands here? Xeno (WMF) (talk) 00:35, 18 April 2021 (UTC)

That's a technical matter better not discussed openly. And don't get me wrong, there are certainly conflicts here, and there are times when people have frayed nerves or otherwise misunderstand people's intentions, and as we're all human, it shouldn't be surprising that many people who have lots of interactions with other users have probably been guilty of misjudgment, overreaction, a bit of intemperance or unintentional offense, yours truly certainly not excepted, but we try to advise each other when we think things may have gone overboard, etc.

Part of the history of this site is that we used to let edit warriors run rampant for years, and that chased away several very valuable members including long-time admins. We therefore thrashed out a policy of Wikivoyage:How to handle unwanted edits#Escalating user blocks to deal with problem users who unilaterally buck consensus to edit war or otherwise hassle people in a way that makes the site unpleasant. I think most of us long-timers consider such policies part of the growing pains of the site. When then-Wikitravel was a tiny backwater, it could afford to have an indulgent policy toward vandals and disruptive gadflies. Wikivoyage still welcomes original thinking when not introduced through edit warring and insulting remarks, though we could probably be better in that regard (there is somewhat of a status quo bias on all wikis, I suppose, by the nature of consensus, and there is somewhat of one here), but we learned the hard way that discussion is great but that users have to be willing to tolerate consensuses that are contrary to our preferences and pick their spots for when to start or resume arguments for changes in site organization, guidelines or style, which should be or at least eventually go on the appropriate pages. Ikan Kekek (talk) 01:38, 18 April 2021 (UTC)

Another way of looking at his question (he's w:en:User:Xeno in his real-wiki life, by the way):

What could we do to make some of the struggling wikis be more like this one? We have wikis that try to exclude editors because they live in the "wrong" location or have the "wrong" religious affiliation or the "wrong" political view. We men who get called "girls" as part of a campaign to drive them away. We have women who get rape threats because they dared to disagree. Some of these communities are a mess. What advice could we give them, to help them through their problems and their growing pains? WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:22, 18 April 2021 (UTC)

Which wikis are trying to exclude people and being abusive toward them on those bases? That's shocking! My immediate reaction is that I wouldn't give advice to such wikis but would instead recommend for them to get an ultimatum from the WMF that they have x-amount of time to shape up, and otherwise, they'll be taken over from outside and those engaging in such abuses will be banned - or if that's too much work for stewards, expel such wikis from the Wikimedia Movement, as the WMF shouldn't associate itself with that kind of behavior. Ikan Kekek (talk) 20:49, 18 April 2021 (UTC)

Appalling behaviour. These communities should be ashamed of themselves and definitely get expelled from the WMF movement. SHB2000 (talk | contribs) 22:41, 18 April 2021 (UTC)

It's not "the WMF movement". It's the Wikimedia movement, and the WMF is only one part of it. (The one with the most money, but not the one with the most control.) But: don't you think that before you expel whole communities that you should write down the rules? And take into account some other factors, like whether the community supports that behavior, or if it's something they've tried to stop? For example, I know a woman who gets rape threats. (These were not made-up examples.) She's an admin at the English Wikipedia. Would you expel the entire English Wikipedia, just because they haven't been able to stop one criminal? WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:59, 19 April 2021 (UTC)

No, I wouldn't, and I agree with your points. Ikan Kekek (talk) 17:37, 19 April 2021 (UTC)

I got the impression that you talked about small wikis dominated by users with that kind of behaviour. For ones with a larger editor base, where most do not support the harassment, closing them down is obviously a suboptimal solution, with grave problems (the self-government of communities is important). I suppose IK gives some valuable advice above, from the history of WV.

I have my background on sv-wp, with, I think, some 100 active regulars. Like here, I think most people there really try to cooperate for the good of the project and the community. We have some problems with groups and individuals with an agenda, especially some connected to the Swedish populist party, who manage to balance their edits enough not to be blocked, but often reverted, with endless discussions. Then we have some good-faith editors incapable of following the social norms (easily provoked, and easily taking to ad hominem arguments). I optimistically think we are doing a good job, having enough of us taking the fights so that those who would be vulnerable don't have to. Handling these users is a delicate balance, and some of them regularly get blocked. I am afraid hard rules imposed by the WMF might make it easier to intentionally provoke these users to get them banned (even those who otherwise don't bother anybody), and more difficult to apply one's best judgement as admin.

One choice that might have been important is to have admins have to pass a vote yearly. You normally get 30–40 support and 0–2 oppose every year, but there is much less drama when somebody loses trust than if you would have to start a process to remove the status. There are just fewer support votes and more oppose votes, and everybody knows why (there would be a discussion also, but one much less heated than on en-wp; you need 3/4 to pass, so 20 support and 8 oppose means failing).

–LPfi (talk) 10:15, 20 April 2021 (UTC)

A yearly vote on continuing or ending admin status (and I guess bureaucrats, stewards, etc.?) is an interesting idea and I could see how it could be useful on large wikis. I feel like it might just take up unnecessary time here and won't produce any desysopping except of inactive admins (with perhaps a somewhat more stringent standard of activity than we currently apply), but if you feel like it could be useful here, let's take up the idea at Wikivoyage talk:User rights nominations. Ikan Kekek (talk) 11:58, 20 April 2021 (UTC)

I haven't seen any need for it here – I don't know what drama around our admins wood look like. On sv-wp it was introduced after drama around a few admins (I think – it was before my time). At least one regular has been turned down with the new system on his nth re-election for not being enough keen-eared, and he has stayed around writing articles and doing unprivileged administrative tasks. I'd recommend the system for any middle size wiki, and once in a while I miss it e.g. on Commons, where I think some admins have become presumptuous. On sv-wp I don't think it takes up much time. Casting a vote takes less time than tidying a listing, and unless there are unusually many oppose votes you don't have to weight in on every election (30–40 votes by 100 regulars shows not everybody does, I suppose there are more people who lurk, and will cast a vote if there are irregularities). I think the odd discussion helps vent any critic there may be, and the voting and comments confirm your status as actively trusted by the community – these aspects grow more important with the size of the wiki. –LPfi (talk) 14:49, 20 April 2021 (UTC)

I'm not sure that an annual re-election is needed here, but I don't object in principle, and I do suggest that if we want one, then it would be better to create such a process now than to wait until there is a problem. I heard of a California city that created a protest-related rule a while ago (something like "you can protest anyone you want, but you can't keep their neighbors awake all night"), and their reason for doing it at that time was because there weren't any protests happening then, so the rule couldn't be "about" a particular person/cause/protest. I think that was smart of them, and, if we are to have any such rule, then I think we should follow their example.

LPfi, I'm not sure that the WMF Board is creating "hard rules". It's not my project (or my team's, or even my department's), but my impression is that this is more or less like when they imposed the BLP rules years ago. They named some basic principles (they're in favor of helping newcomers and against vandalism – aren't we all?), but they're not making detailed rules. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:01, 20 April 2021 (UTC)

LPfi, how much bigger is sv.wp than en.voy? WhatamIdoing, the bias on Wikivoyage has been not to make changes that are considered to be solutions in search of a problem. Of course that's not proactive, but people here generally aren't willing to spend the time to discuss and debate things that aren't (yet) needed and prefer to spend the time working on the travel guide. And the problem I'd immediately see would be to determine at which point yearly (re)votes on admins and bureaucrats would be triggered. Would we have to use some kind of arbitrary metric of website size? I don't object to the idea in principle, either, though. Ikan Kekek (talk) 19:09, 20 April 2021 (UTC)

Sounds sensible. Yes, making up the rules before they are needed avoids a lot of drama – if you can foresee the need. And not creating hard rules sounds good, if there is a community that can handle the issues flexibly.

Swedish Wikipedia has, according to WMF statistics: 620 active editors, 100 very active editors and 120,000 edits a month (→ 4,000 a day, 150 an hour). English Wikivoyage has about 150 active editors, 35 very active editors and 20,000 edits a month. So sv-wp is three to six times bigger. On sv-wp the elections are four times a year (for 4·15 admins or so). Here once a year could suffice, but not having to vote on others when one's own term is at play is good. It could be a problem if most voters are admins themselves, as on sv-wp, which is big enough that sporadic users could get the impression of a cabal – sv-wp gets such accusations from time to time, and even if they are mostly from trolls, it is good to be able to show clear papers. Here i don't think trustworthiness is an issue, but it can still feel awkward in some situations.

My hesitation on recommending the system for us here is because I don't trust the dynamics to be the same. I think the 0–2 oppose votes are important: they show it is OK not to support everyone. There are regularly some conflicts that make those votes understandable (harsh tone and perceived bias during edit wars etc.). We have some conflicts also on Wikivoyage, but they are of a different nature.

–LPfi (talk) 20:17, 20 April 2021 (UTC)

Yes, it'd be good to have a certain amount of oppose votes, as a sort of normal background noise. Otherwise people might feel singled out.

Another number to consider: The Swedish Wikipedia has 62 admins right now, and the English Wikivoyage has 48. I suspect that the annual re-election process means that the Swedish Wikivoyage has fewer admins than it would otherwise, as less active editors would not choose to stand for re-election. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:36, 21 April 2021 (UTC)

← Hey all, I've been following along and wanted to thank everyone for the great comments so far. I noticed a question, and can refer to an essay that was linked in the EnWp version of this consultation: m:User:Rschen7754/Help, my wiki went rogue! which can provide some context.

Let me know if you have any more thoughts about this, or answers to the other key questions being asked to participants of all Wikimedia projects.

I'm intrigued by the mention below of "sweeping"! Is that something that originated here? Where will this thread be swept off to, I wonder!

Thinking more about advice this community can offer, being more closely-knit:

In what ways should reporting pathways provide for mediation, reform, or guidance about acceptable behaviours? Xeno (WMF) (talk) 00:55, 23 April 2021 (UTC)

Threads are swept to talk pages where they're particularly relevant after they've been inactive for some time in the pub. This thread won't be swept anywhere until it's inactive for several weeks. I don't know where it would be swept.

That essay by Rschen7754 is very interesting. On this site, I can think of only one user who was desysopped on en.voy for reasons other than 2 or more years of inactivity or their own request, and that user continued to be an extremely constructive content-provider, was resysopped a couple of years later, and served in an exemplary fashion without any further incident until he got too busy in real life to continue. Desysopping is discussed at Wikivoyage talk:User rights nominations when it's applied to a list of inactive admins. If someone wanted to nominate an admin, bureaucrat, etc. for desysopping, they would do so at Wikivoyage:User rights nominations, but that's not specifically mentioned there, and if it were, I think it would attract a lot of trolls and vanishingly few good-faith nominations for desysopping. Do you have an opinion about this? Ikan Kekek (talk) 04:41, 23 April 2021 (UTC)

A quick thought about reporting harassment: Users here who are experiencing harassment should report it to any admin, but at this point, it's most likely to be coming from a banned user who constantly creates new sockpuppets and sends crazy rants by email. If they believe an admin is harassing them, especially if they get no resolution from discussing it with the admin in question, they should report that to any other admin (but in our experience, it's way more likely that there's been a misunderstanding or the user objects to the application of site policies such as don't tout or to any editing of their work). Ikan Kekek (talk) 04:48, 23 April 2021 (UTC)

📍 Travel destinations - a little suggestion

Over at the Hebrew Wikivoyage I've recently added a little pin point emoji (looks like this - 📍 ) next to the "Travel destinations" link in the side menu. I also added the talking bubble emoji (this one - 💬) next the "Travelers' pub" link on the side menu. I decided not to add any more emojis to the side menu as that would probably be too much.

Just thought you might be interested in considering doing the same to help direct more users to those sections of the Wikivoyage. ויקיג'אנקי (talk) 17:37, 28 April 2021 (UTC)

Te map of Destinations is broken (again), so let's not direct any more users there at the moment. AlasdairW (talk) 20:30, 28 April 2021 (UTC)

It appears that all maps relying on https://wikivoyage.toolforge.org/w/poimap2.php (such as those accessible from the the upper right icon on most destination articles) are broken. I noticed a few days ago that controls (like +/- icons for zoom in/out) are missing. Maps using {{mapframe}} seem to be okay. Nelson Ricardo (talk) 20:58, 28 April 2021 (UTC)

That's weird. It works for us at the Hebrew Wikivoyage. ויקיג'אנקי (talk) 22:07, 28 April 2021 (UTC)

That appears to use {{mapframe}}. Maybe we need to change ours over here? Nelson Ricardo (talk) 23:12, 28 April 2021 (UTC)

@Andyrom75, Atsirlin, Torty3: There is an error on line 6241 of the https://wikivoyage.toolforge.org/w/data/en-articles.js file that is causing poimap2 to fail. I'm assuming maybe a bad article name is corrupting the file, but since it is generated on Toolforge I'm not sure how we would fix it or even how to investigate further. https://admin.toolforge.org/tool/wikivoyage shows that you are all admins on Toolforge, is this something you can look at? -- Ryan • (talk) • 02:58, 29 April 2021 (UTC)

I can give someone the rights, but I won't be able to look into it myself in the next days, unfortunately. --Alexander (talk) 08:57, 29 April 2021 (UTC)

Here is what ויקיג'אנקי's emojis look like on the Main Page of Hebrew Wikivoyage. Ground Zero (talk) 22:53, 28 April 2021 (UTC)

Hebvoy not appearing in the list

Does anyone know why Hebrew Wikivoyage does not appear in the list of other language Wikivoyages? Are there other Wikivoyages that are not linked? Did I read about Turkish Wikivoyage recently? Ground Zero (talk) 22:10, 28 April 2021 (UTC)

Here is the list of Wikivoyages, with the date created. The versions in boldface are linked: Ground Zero (talk) 22:16, 28 April 2021 (UTC)

№
1	2006-12-10	Deutsch	de
2	2007-12-10	italiano	it
3	2012-09-23	English	en
4	2012-09-29	Nederlands	nl
5	2012-10-03	français	fr
6	2012-10-06	svenska	sv
7	2012-10-18	русский	ru
8	2013-01-07	español	es
9		português	pt
10	2013-02-06	polski	pl
11		română	ro
12	2013-03-21	עברית	he
13		українська	uk
14	2013-05-17	Ελληνικά	el
15	2013-08-11	Tiếng Việt	vi
16	2014-01-15	中文	zh
17	2014-10-02	فارسی	fa
18	2016-11-30	suomi	fi
19	2017-09-25	हिन्दी	hi
20	2018-06-07	বাংলা	bn
21		پښتو	ps
22	2020-08-27	日本語	ja
23	2020-12-15	Esperanto	eo
24	2021-01-19	Türkçe	tr

Do you have Languages - "Use a compact language list, with languages relevant to you." selected in Preferences - Appearance? This may be selected by default. I recall discussing this when it was introduced, and decided it was a bad idea as the compact list did not necessarily include the language of the destination. AlasdairW (talk) 22:44, 28 April 2021 (UTC)

@AlasdairW: Ah, that would be it. I don't know why Wikivoyage would decide that Bengali is relevant to me, but Hebrew isn't. The problem goes away when I change that setting. Thanks. Ground Zero (talk) 22:53, 28 April 2021 (UTC)

It changes the list based on which projects you've clicked through recently. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:34, 29 April 2021 (UTC)

It does not solve the problems for newcomers, if the compact list is the default. I got the impression you could not opt out as a project, only individually, hopefully I remember wrongly.

Is there some way you can check the defaults without resetting your own and without registering a new username? Ideally, of course, the preferences tabs would show the defaults as part of the interface. Is there a way to save your current preferences and reload them after resetting?

–LPfi (talk) 06:39, 29 April 2021 (UTC)

Using a private window, I see:

• Deutsch
• Español
• Français
• हिन्दी]]
• Italiano
• Português
• Русский
• Tiếng Việt
• 中文
• 14 more

Clicking on that last one brings up a list of all languages. Nelson Ricardo (talk) 08:05, 29 April 2021 (UTC)

This was discussed when it was introduced Wikivoyage:Travellers'_pub/2016#Compact_Language_Links_enabled_in_this_wiki_today. There were several objections, but it still went ahead. It looks to be a "solution looking for a problem". For most articles it isn't an issue, as the place or topic isn't covered in enough languages. AlasdairW (talk) 08:20, 29 April 2021 (UTC)

There are 200+ wikipedias, many of which have articles on some popular subjects; I'd gues it was on en-wp the iw-list was felt problematic. On sv-wp we have many regulars who can read more than 10 languages or otherwise work with many language editions and the main page and the village pump where handled as special cases. I suppose WMF saw it as an editor/reader conflict where they wanted to stand up for the readers – thus not allowing the community to opt out. –LPfi (talk) 10:29, 29 April 2021 (UTC)

I saw some of the research back in the day. If your goal is to get readers to the language they want, then CLL works better than the former long list. Readers are more likely to use the short list than to use the long list.

Of course, for the tiny number of people who can easily read more than 10 languages, or for those of us who visit a large number of wikis regardless of our language skills (e.g., global sysops, work-me), it's not always convenient, but for the average reader, it really does seem to work better. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:38, 29 April 2021 (UTC)

Yes, I do believe the research results – but they don't tell the whole picture.

In Finland it is common to study 3–4 languages in school (+your mother tongue), and Swedish is close to Norwegian Nynorsk and Bokmål, and Danish. If you happen to additionally understand some German and Dutch (which also are reasonably close), you have your ten languages. If I check the Polish wikipedia for a picture, I lose one of "my" languages. This is not in any way exceptional for a Swedish Speaking Finn with university degree, even without having an interest e.g. in Latin, Greek or Esperanto, or languages in general. And you don't need to master ten languages to get languages pushed out by checking a few Wikipedias for whatever reason. For an American who knows English, Spanish and French the limit of ten looks quite different.

Of course, many Nordic people restrict themselves to their native language and English. But our concern is not to get people to find that English – which they are aware of anyway – but to find the wealth of languages. Often the ten languages include a few truly odd ones (Romani and Jiddish, say), which means several languages that they might click are absent from the compact list. This, of course, is a concern for that tiny minority that mind losing Bokmål or Dutch from the list. But the problem is real: I usually don't get Finnish on the compact list (on projects where I haven't disabled it), even though I am bilingual and live in Finland (doesn't my babel box at Meta count?).

–LPfi (talk) 20:28, 29 April 2021 (UTC)

Apparently, most people find the wealth of languages more easily when they can type the name of their favorite language(s) into a search box than when we give them long list of names in scripts they mostly can't read, alphabetized according to a logical but not necessarily intuitive system (so that, e.g., Greek is alphabetized before Basque and Farsi).

As for why you don't get Finnish, it's supposed to give you the links for wikis you have personally visited recently, plus some other calculations. @Amire80 could probably tell you if there's an easy way to make Finnish appear more frequently. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:16, 1 May 2021 (UTC)

I might not visit Finnish frequently enough, as I visit also other languages quite often (copying domestic spelling, checking images on wikis that could have good articles etc. – and even facts in e.g. Icelandic or Portuguese, which I don't speak). Perhaps that's why I always have wikis in some odd languages among the ten. I could tell my web browser to prefer a few languages that I know better (e.g. sv,fi,en,fr,es), but that might compromise my privacy, as it could make me recognizable across devices. If WikiMedia gave my Meta babel box high priority, at least that problem would go away, but searching for a language is still very clumsy compared to scrolling the list. The somewhat confusing order is no big problem for me, as I am used to using it. –LPfi (talk) 13:21, 1 May 2021 (UTC)

Yes, your country and your Babel boxes are taken into account. If you are connecting from Finland, and you have fi in your {{#babel}} box, and you are looking at a page that has a corresponding page in Finnish, and you don't see Finnish in the initial list, this may be a bug, and I want to know which page this is. Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 20:31, 1 May 2021 (UTC)

@Amire80: Is also the Babel box at Meta counted? I might have been doing something odd, so don't take my word for it right now. My impression is true, but the factual circumstances might not be. Next time it happens, I'll check carefully and report back to you. –LPfi (talk) 07:09, 2 May 2021 (UTC)

When I now tried, I was not able to get Finnish to disappear. I might have been looking for Finnish in the wrong place in the list (sv-wp orders the languages by native name). –LPfi (talk) 07:33, 2 May 2021 (UTC)

Make working with templates easier: Does English Wikivoyage want to have early access to several improvements?

Hello! Our team, Wikimedia Germany’s Technical Wishes project, is developing a series of improvements to make working with templates easier. Maybe you’ve already heard of some of the projects that have recently been deployed: [1] [2] [3]. We plan to release more improvements to make working with templates easier over the course of this year:

• It will become easier to find templates and to insert them into a page.
• Removing a template from a page (with Visual Editor) will become easier.
• Several problems with the existing interface for editing templates in the VisualEditor will be tackled.
• Template creators and maintainers will be offered more guidance when they are managing TemplateData with the template documentation editor.

Now we’re looking for a few wikis who want to be the first to benefit from these changes, and ideally that includes a few of Wikipedia's sister projects. If your wiki community is interested, all the improvements listed above would be deployed to your wiki in a series of releases, likely between May and July 2021. Of course, each deployment would be announced beforehand.

If English Wikivoyage is interested to have early access to these improvements, give me a ping here, or let me know on my talk page. It would be great to have English Wikivoyage on board! -- Best, Johanna Strodt (WMDE) (talk) 16:12, 19 April 2021 (UTC)

I'd think Wikivoyage could be a good testbed for some of these changes, as our use of templates is both broad and shallow -- only a few, widely-used templates. Powers ^(talk) 17:49, 19 April 2021 (UTC)

@Johanna Strodt (WMDE), has your team spent much time editing Wikivoyage? I'm sure we could put together a little video-based editing party if the team wanted to explore how we do things here.

We're a little strange about templates here. We use them a lot, but we only use about six or eight of them in articles. The things that would be most useful to us here are probably phab:T96710 (drop-down menu of our most commonly used templates VisualEditor, to match what we've got in the 2010 wikitext editor) and phab:T275457 (we use complex but extremely predictable formatting, which the visual editor screws up). WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:17, 19 April 2021 (UTC)

@WhatamIdoing: Thanks for your remarks and for the offer! I'm sorry for replying so late, there's a lot going on right now. As for the most useful changes for this wiki, we have already decided which projects we'll be working on in our focus area Templates. And we hope those will be helpful for Wikivoyage as well. I have forwarded your wishes anyway, it's good to have them in mind in case we come across potential opportunities for improvement. -- Best, 95.91.213.7 10:48, 28 April 2021 (UTC) —The preceding comment was added by Johanna Strodt (WMDE) (talk • contribs)

Maybe log in and sign that comment?--ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 11:07, 28 April 2021 (UTC)

Hi ThunderingTyphoons!, I deliverately didn't because – at least in dewiki – it's common practice to use a template like {{unsigned}}, which is why I did that. -- Best, Johanna Strodt (WMDE) (talk) 08:37, 14 May 2021 (UTC)

Sorry, that makes no sense. You made the comment while logged out, so nobody knew who was writing.--ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 08:44, 14 May 2021 (UTC)

@ThunderingTyphoons!: Yes, not signing the comment was a mistake. I tried to fix it by adding the {{unsigned}} template so people would know it was me. In dewiki it's common practice not to sign a comment when you forgot to sign it before, but to use such a template instead. -- Best, Johanna Strodt (WMDE) (talk) 09:22, 14 May 2021 (UTC)

Thanks.--ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 09:42, 14 May 2021 (UTC)

Hello, sorry for asking again, but it would be great to have English Wikivoyage on board: Would your project like to get the set of planned changes early, to be able to give early feedback? If so, please let me know on my talk page on Meta. -- Thanks a lot, Johanna Strodt (WMDE) (talk) 09:20, 18 May 2021 (UTC)

Hi everyone. I still think this would be useful but I don't want to tell Johanna to go ahead without more buy-in. Powers ^(talk) 02:18, 21 May 2021 (UTC)

I'm not seeing any downside. I think we should participate. Nelson Ricardo (talk) 02:25, 21 May 2021 (UTC)

"Hack" for toggling static and dynamic maps on destination articles

I just shared this at Template talk:Regionlist#"Hack" for toggling static and dynamic maps on destination articles, but decided to post it here as well for greater visibility. This template can be "hacked" without listing regions in order to offer both a static map and a dynamic map on city/destination articles without cluttering the article. (Sharing this idea came to me thanks to the above discussion.) Nelson Ricardo (talk) 21:29, 5 June 2021 (UTC)

I think it'll be better if we properly extend {{mapframe}} to allow such switchable maps (currently it only allows them one above the other). The hack works works/looks nicely, but it's a nasty hack nevertheless :) -- andree.sk(talk) 19:36, 6 June 2021 (UTC)

Absolutely! I requested this last month at Template talk:Mapframe#Enhancement suggestion: Switch between static map and dynamic map Nelson Ricardo (talk) 19:39, 6 June 2021 (UTC)

Please provide input here or on Meta and during an upcoming Global Conversation on 26-27 June 2021 about the Movement Charter drafting committee

Hello, I'm one of the Movement Strategy and Governance facilitators working on community engagement for the Movement Charter initiative.

We're inviting input widely from users of many projects about the upcoming formation of the Movement Charter drafting committee. You can provide feedback here, at the central discussion on Meta, at other ongoing local conversations, and during a Global Conversation upcoming on 26 and 27 June 2021.

“ The Movement Charter drafting committee is expected to work as a diverse and skilled team of about 15 members for several months. They should receive regular support from experts, regular community reviews, and opportunities for training and an allowance to offset costs. When the draft is completed, the committee will oversee a wide community ratification process. ”

—Creating the drafting committee

Further details and context about these questions is on Meta along with a recently-updated overview of the Movement Charter initiative. Feel free to ask questions, and add additional sub-sections as needed for other areas of interest about this topic.

If contributors are interested in participating in a call about these topics ahead of the Global Conversation on 26 and 27 June, please let me know. Xeno (WMF) (talk) 15:20, 20 June 2021 (UTC)

The three questions are:

1. What composition should the committee have in terms of movement roles, gender, regions, affiliations and other diversity factors?

2. What is the best process to select the committee members to form a competent and diverse team?

3. How much dedication is it reasonable to expect from committee members, in terms of hours per week and months of work?

A bundle of changes related to adding templates to a page and removing them

The Technical Wishes team at Wikimedia Germany is working on a number of projects to make working with templates easier. This focus area was selected by members of the German-speaking wiki communities in 2019. Your wiki is part of a group of a few wikis to get these improvements early. A set of changes from this focus area will come to your wiki soon:

1. When you add a template to a page using the VisualEditor, 2017 wikitext editor, or 2010 WikiEditor, an improved search will help you find relevant templates even if you’re not sure of their exact name. This means, for example, that the search will look for matches for your keyword within the entire template name, not just its beginning. (more info)
2. In VisualEditor, after searching for a template, you had to close and reopen the whole template dialog if you had selected the wrong template. Now, a back button will be added to the dialog that appears when inserting a new template, making it easier to explore different templates. (more info)
3. For the same dialog, a warning will appear if you have entered data and close the form without saving. In the past, all changes were just lost. (more info)
4. In VisualEditor, it will become clearer how to remove a template from a page. So far, users needed to know that they can select a template and press the backspace/delete key. With this change, they can click on “delete” in the context menu next to the “edit” option, the same way as with tables or images. (more info)

We plan to deploy all of these changes on several wikis, including this one, on 23d of June on 12th of July (MediaWiki deployments do not happen in weekly intervals as usual because of summer activities). All other wikis will follow over the course of this year.

We would love to know what you think of the improvements! Please let us know on these talk pages: finding and inserting templates & removing a template. -- Thanks a lot! For the Technical Wishes team at Wikimedia Germany, Timur Vorkul (WMDE) (talk) 15:10, 8 June 2021 (UTC)

Hi Timur, how do I sign up another wiki to this group? (part of a group of a few wikis to get these improvements early) SHB2000 (talk | contribs | en.wikipedia) 21:25, 8 June 2021 (UTC)

Leaving a note on the talk page for User:Timur Vorkul (WMDE) or User:Johanna Strodt (WMDE) would probably work. However, as a practical matter, the other wikis might be in the next batch instead of this one. It's typical to try changes like this in small groups first, and share them further only if the changes work. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:30, 9 June 2021 (UTC)

I wanted to do this on the Nauruan Wiktionary, which I'm the only editor there, so doing testing there wouldn't affect anyone much, except myself. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | en.wikipedia) 00:23, 10 June 2021 (UTC)

@SHB2000: thank you very much for your interest in the work of the Technical Wishes team. Would you like the Nauruan Wiktionary to be added to the group and get all the upcoming changes of our focus area “Make working with templates easier” early? This includes the aforementioned bundle and also VisualEditor template dialog and TemplateData editor improvements in the next months. We would be happy to have you on board and receive additional feedback. Best, Timur Vorkul (WMDE) (talk) 13:38, 10 June 2021 (UTC)

Yes, I'd love for that to happen. I've already left a message on m:User talk:Johanna Strodt (WMDE), and yes, I'm happy to join (I think it needs consensus, but I'm the only editor, so does that make it consensus?). Thanks, SHB2000 (talk | contribs | en.wikipedia) 13:49, 10 June 2021 (UTC)

Perfect. We have added you to the group (for this bundle see this Phabricator ticket). Since you are the only editor on the wiki, you can set your own rules, I suppose. Thanks and best, Timur Vorkul (WMDE) (talk) 09:03, 11 June 2021 (UTC)

I suppose I could, but I'm not the owner of the wiki (and infact no editor is). SHB2000 (talk | contribs | en.wikipedia) 10:45, 11 June 2021 (UTC)

Universal Code of Conduct News – Issue 1

Universal Code of Conduct News
Issue 1, June 2021Read the full newsletter

---

Welcome to the first issue of Universal Code of Conduct News! This newsletter will help Wikimedians stay involved with the development of the new code, and will distribute relevant news, research, and upcoming events related to the UCoC.

Please note, this is the first issue of UCoC Newsletter which is delivered to all subscribers and projects as an announcement of the initiative. If you want the future issues delivered to your talk page, village pumps, or any specific pages you find appropriate, you need to subscribe here.

You can help us by translating the newsletter issues in your languages to spread the news and create awareness of the new conduct to keep our beloved community safe for all of us. Please add your name here if you want to be informed of the draft issue to translate beforehand. Your participation is valued and appreciated.

• Affiliate consultations – Wikimedia affiliates of all sizes and types were invited to participate in the UCoC affiliate consultation throughout March and April 2021. (continue reading)
• 2021 key consultations – The Wikimedia Foundation held enforcement key questions consultations in April and May 2021 to request input about UCoC enforcement from the broader Wikimedia community. (continue reading)
• Roundtable discussions – The UCoC facilitation team hosted two 90-minute-long public roundtable discussions in May 2021 to discuss UCoC key enforcement questions. More conversations are scheduled. (continue reading)
• Phase 2 drafting committee – The drafting committee for the phase 2 of the UCoC started their work on 12 May 2021. Read more about their work. (continue reading)
• Diff blogs – The UCoC facilitators wrote several blog posts based on interesting findings and insights from each community during local project consultation that took place in the 1st quarter of 2021. (continue reading)

Server switch

Read this message in another language • Please help translate to your language

The Wikimedia Foundation tests the switch between its first and secondary data centers. This will make sure that Wikipedia and the other Wikimedia wikis can stay online even after a disaster. To make sure everything is working, the Wikimedia Technology department needs to do a planned test. This test will show if they can reliably switch from one data centre to the other. It requires many teams to prepare for the test and to be available to fix any unexpected problems.

Unfortunately, because of some limitations in MediaWiki, all editing must stop while the switch is made. We apologize for this disruption, and we are working to minimize it in the future.

You will be able to read, but not edit, all wikis for a short period of time.

• You will not be able to edit for up to an hour on Tuesday, 29 June 2021. The test will start at 14:00 UTC (07:00 PDT, 10:00 EDT, 15:00 WEST/BST, 16:00 CEST, 19:30 IST, 23:00 JST, and in New Zealand at 02:00 NZST on Wednesday 30 June).
• If you try to edit or save during these times, you will see an error message. We hope that no edits will be lost during these minutes, but we can't guarantee it. If you see the error message, then please wait until everything is back to normal. Then you should be able to save your edit. But, we recommend that you make a copy of your changes first, just in case.

Other effects:

• Background jobs will be slower and some may be dropped. Red links might not be updated as quickly as normal. If you create an article that is already linked somewhere else, the link will stay red longer than usual. Some long-running scripts will have to be stopped.
• There will be code freezes for the week of June 28. Non-essential code deployments will not happen.

This project may be postponed if necessary. You can read the schedule at wikitech.wikimedia.org. Any changes will be announced in the schedule. There will be more notifications about this. A banner will be displayed on all wikis 30 minutes before this operation happens. Please share this information with your community.

SGrabarczuk (WMF) 01:19, 27 June 2021 (UTC)

Editing news 2021 #2

Read this in another language • Subscription list for this multilingual newsletter

When newcomers had the Reply tool and tried to post on a talk page, they were more successful at posting a comment. (Source)

Earlier this year, the Editing team ran a large study of the Reply Tool. The main goal was to find out whether the Reply Tool helped newer editors communicate on wiki. The second goal was to see whether the comments that newer editors made using the tool needed to be reverted more frequently than comments newer editors made with the existing wikitext page editor.

The key results were:

• Newer editors who had automatic ("default on") access to the Reply tool were more likely to post a comment on a talk page.
• The comments that newer editors made with the Reply Tool were also less likely to be reverted than the comments that newer editors made with page editing.

These results give the Editing team confidence that the tool is helpful.

Looking ahead

The team is planning to make the Reply tool available to everyone as an opt-out preference in the coming months. This has already happened at the Arabic, Czech, and Hungarian Wikipedias.

The next step is to resolve a technical challenge. Then, they will deploy the Reply tool first to the Wikipedias that participated in the study. After that, they will deploy it, in stages, to the other Wikipedias and all WMF-hosted wikis.

You can turn on "Discussion tools" in Beta Features now. After you get the Reply tool, you can change your preferences at any time in Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-editing-discussion.

–Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk)

14:14, 24 June 2021 (UTC)

One more key finding: non-junior editors fail to leave their comment more often when they get the reply tool enabled. I don't buy the explanation about us sticking to what we have and doing more corrective edits. If I read the report correctly, that would have resulted in a later succeeding edit, unless one couldn't get rid of the reply tool. Some more edit statistics would have been nice: how big part of the sample did try to make comments, how many made a big number of comments?

I tried to read the report, ignoring the statistics on different projects. It was difficult to grasp what actually had been done. The Introduction and Methodology sections in the beginning explains only part of the methodology and terminology used.

In the beginning of the report, the A and B grouops were defined. All statistics for the next pages is however for "editing experience", explained only in a footnote towards the end of the report.

It is difficult to grasp, based on the report, the interaction between whether the reply tool was enabled by default, the tool actually used and the resulting (non)success. If somebody used the tool for one edit and not for another, under what heading is the (non)success reported? Sample sizes and frequency of events would be nice to have. There is now an oversampling discussion that I don't understand, which may have something to do with sample sizes and samling rates.

It is unclear where the A and B groups actually were used: are we evaluating the effects of enabling the reply tool or of using it? If the latter, are seasoned vandals and spambots introducing bias?

I do want to comment some more, but preferably when I get more information to base my comments on.

–LPfi (talk) 19:40, 24 June 2021 (UTC)

10 000 articles reached on Italian Wikivoyage

Feel free to join the Italian lounge to celebrate this important milestone. PS Any language will be appreciated :-) --Andyrom75 (talk) 11:09, 28 June 2021 (UTC)

Congratulations! But on an English-language website, that's 10,000 articles. 10.000=10. :-) Ikan Kekek (talk) 15:54, 28 June 2021 (UTC)

Ok Ikan, now I've written it with the "wiki-syntax" to avoid misinterpretation ;-P --Andyrom75 (talk) 21:22, 28 June 2021 (UTC)

What version has just a space for thousands separators? Ikan Kekek (talk) 17:45, 29 June 2021 (UTC)

It seems to be an IS/ISO/IUPAC standard (w:Decimal separator#Digit grouping), but the convention is not common in Anglophone or Continental European cultures. Nelson Ricardo (talk) 19:18, 29 June 2021 (UTC)

Confirmed Board Election Candidates

Hi everyone,

The 2021 Board of Trustees election opens 4 August 2021. Candidates from the community were asked to submit their candidacy. After a three week long call for candidates, there are 20 candidates for the 2021 election.

The Wikimedia movement has the opportunity to vote for the selection of community-and-affiliate trustees. The Board is expected to select the four most voted candidates to serve as trustees. Voting closes 17 August 2021.

The Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees oversees the Wikimedia Foundation's operations. The Board wants to improve their competences and diversity as a team. They have shared the areas of expertise that they are currently missing and hope to cover with new trustees.

How can you get involved? Learn more about candidates. Organize campaign activities. Vote.

Read the full announcement.

Best,

The Elections Committee

Zuz (WMF) (talk) 16:26, 5 July 2021 (UTC)

Now available: A bundle of changes related to adding templates to a page and removing them

Just a quick note that the changes announced in June have just been deployed to your wiki. Our team would love to hear your thoughts on these talk pages: finding and inserting templates & removing a template.

Regarding the template search, I'd like to highlight a feature that already existed before, but might be more visible now with the more powerful search: Template descriptions are shown in the search results, if you add descriptions to your template in TemplateData (example). (By the way, we are also planning to make managing TemplateData easier within the next few months.) -- Best, Johanna Strodt (WMDE) (talk) 12:35, 12 July 2021 (UTC)

Universal Code of Conduct News – Issue 2

Universal Code of Conduct News
Issue 2, July 2021Read the full newsletter

---

Welcome to the second issue of Universal Code of Conduct News! This newsletter will help Wikimedians stay involved with the development of the new code and will distribute relevant news, research, and upcoming events related to the UCoC.

If you haven’t already, please remember to subscribe here if you would like to be notified about future editions of the newsletter, and also leave your username here if you’d like to be contacted to help with translations in the future.

• Enforcement Draft Guidelines Review - Initial meetings of the drafting committee have helped to connect and align key topics on enforcement, while highlighting prior research around existing processes and gaps within our movement. (continue reading)
• Targets of Harassment Research - To support the drafting committee, the Wikimedia Foundation has conducted a research project focused on experiences of harassment on Wikimedia projects. (continue reading)
• Functionaries’ Consultation - Since June, Functionaries from across the various wikis have been meeting to discuss what the future will look like in a global context with the UCoC. (continue reading)
• Roundtable Discussions - The UCoC facilitation team once again, hosted another roundtable discussion, this time for Korean-speaking community members and participants of other ESEAP projects to discuss the enforcement of the UCoC. (continue reading)
• Early Adoption of UCoC by Communities - Since its ratification by the Board in February 2021, situations whereby UCoC is being adopted and applied within the Wikimedia community have grown. (continue reading)
• New Timeline for the Interim Trust & Safety Case Review Committee - The CRC was originally expected to conclude by July 1. However, with the UCoC now expected to be in development until December, the timeline for the CRC has also changed. (continue reading)
• Wikimania - The UCoC team is planning to hold a moderated discussion featuring representatives across the movement during Wikimania 2021. It also plans to have a presence at the conference’s Community Village. (continue reading)
• Diff blogs - Check out the most recent publications about the UCoC on Wikimedia Diff blog. (continue reading)

Thanks for reading - we welcome feedback about this newsletter. Xeno (WMF) (talk) 02:53, 21 July 2021 (UTC)

Call for Candidates for the Movement Charter Drafting Committee

Movement Strategy announces the Call for Candidates for the Movement Charter Drafting Committee. The Call opens August 2, 2021 and closes September 1, 2021.

This Committee will have around 15 members. It is expected to represent diversity in the Movement. Diversity includes gender, language, geography, and experience. This comprises participation in projects, affiliates, and the Wikimedia Foundation. You can read the full announcement here.

Will you help move Wikimedia forward in this important role? Submit your candidacy starting from next week here. Please contact strategy2030wikimedia.org with questions. Best, Zuz (WMF) (talk) 12:57, 31 July 2021 (UTC)

Board Elections Postponed Until August 18th

Hello, all.

As you know, the Board election was due to open on August 4th. Due to some technical issues with SecurePoll, the election must be delayed by two weeks. This means we plan to launch the election on August 18th, which is the day after Wikimania concludes.

For information on the technical issues, you can see the Phabricator ticket here.

You can also read this announcement in other languages here.

We are truly sorry for this delay and hope that we will get back on schedule on August 18th. We are in touch with the Elections Committee and the candidates to coordinate next steps. We will update the Board election Talk page and this channel as we know more. Best, Zuz (WMF) (talk) 09:40, 3 August 2021 (UTC)

(Editors: okay to archive this message after 31 Aug.) Nelson Ricardo 2500 (talk) 21:12, 11 August 2021 (UTC)

2021 Voting Opens

Voting for the 2021 Board of Trustees election is now open. Candidates from the community were asked to submit their candidacy. After a three week long Call for Candidates, there are 19 candidates for the 2021 election.

The Wikimedia movement has the opportunity to vote for the selection of community-and-affiliate trustees. By voting, you will help to identify those people who have the qualities to best serve the needs of the movement for the next several years. The Board is expected to select the four most voted candidates to serve as trustees. Voting closes 31 August 2021.

The Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees oversees the Wikimedia Foundation's operations. The Board wants to improve their competences and diversity as a team. They have shared the areas of expertise that they are currently missing and hope to cover with new trustees.

Learn more about candidates. Learn about the Board of Trustees. Vote.

Read the full announcement.

Best, Zuz (WMF) (talk) 07:11, 18 August 2021 (UTC)

Universal Code of Conduct - Enforcement draft guidelines review

The Universal Code of Conduct Phase 2 drafting committee would like comments about the enforcement draft guidelines for the Universal Code of Conduct (UCoC). This review period is planned for 17 August 2021 through 17 October 2021.

These guidelines are not final but you can help move the progress forward. The committee will revise the guidelines based upon community input.

Comments can be shared in any language on the draft review talk page and multiple other venues. Community members are encouraged to organize conversations in their communities.

There are planned live discussions about the UCoC enforcement draft guidelines:

Wikimania 2021 session - 16 August @ 11:00 UTC - 11:45 UTC

Conversation hours - 24 August, 31 August, 7 September @ 03:00 UTC & 14:00 UTC

Roundtable calls - 18 September @ 03:00 UTC & 15:00 UTC Summaries of discussions will be posted every two weeks here.

Please let me know if you have any questions. Best, Zuz (WMF) (talk) 09:34, 17 August 2021 (UTC)

Wikimania

Wikimania is free this year, because it's online. It's not too late for us to set up a 30-minute Wikimania:2021:Unconference meeting (or several) if anyone wants to have a chance to talk about Wikivoyage. The informal Wikimania:2021:Community Village is another way that we could meet up. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:25, 5 August 2021 (UTC)

I'm down. Would be nice to finally put a face/voice to some of the editor's usernames. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 06:23, 6 August 2021 (UTC)

Pinging @WhatamIdoing: Will you schedule a meeting during the Wikimania? OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 04:31, 14 August 2021 (UTC)

Sure, I've scheduled us for Tuesday. It's 15:30 UTC, which is 8:30 a.m. Pacific time. (Find your timezone here.) Scheduling an unconference session just requires writing your name down here.

This will be in "Remo", building 6, on floor 1 at table A. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:38, 14 August 2021 (UTC)

I've created the meeting link. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 23:23, 15 August 2021 (UTC)

We are starting in 10 mins. If you couldn't access the Remo platform, you can participate in the discussion and Q&A at the Etherpad. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 15:20, 17 August 2021 (UTC)

I've posted the notes from the Wikimania Unconference session onto the Wikimania page. One of the theme we heard in the session is the accessibility issue around visibly impaired users of this site. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 03:04, 19 August 2021 (UTC)

Thank you for organizing this session. Sorry I didn't attend.

1. Regarding "Accessibility listing (blank line in between bullet points)", is this just when editors leave an actual extra hard return between listing templates or is there an issue with the template itself?
2. Yes, Portuguese WV is not where it should be considering it's in the world's top 10 most spoken languages. I would contribute there despite my imperfect Portuguese, but lack of listing editor (after initial addition) drives me away. Broken page banner also doesn't help.

-- Nelson Ricardo 2500 (talk) 04:20, 19 August 2021 (UTC)

Regarding #1, that's correct. If there is a continuous list of items, there shouldn't be an extra blank line between each item. See this for detailed explanation for how it impacts screen readers. I think the listing template itself is not at fault, but rather when editors use "edit source" to add lines directly. Ideally, there should be a bot that scans the mainspace for things like these and automatically remove the extra line. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 13:49, 19 August 2021 (UTC)

Such bots exist elsewhere, and some of their operators would be happy to do it here. I don't see this error at the English Wikivoyage nearly as often as in the past (e.g., five years ago). It can also be done by editors using AWB/similar script. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:58, 19 August 2021 (UTC)

Somebody went over most articles correcting those, and I nowadays remove the extra lines when I stumble upon them. Also images on a line of their own will break the list; I usually <-- comment out --> the line break in those cases. –LPfi (talk) 09:07, 20 August 2021 (UTC)

An AWB bot will be useful to track down the remaining pages and frequently scan pages when entries are added or removed. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 04:32, 21 August 2021 (UTC)

I agree and support introducing the AWB bot to WV. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 10:40, 21 August 2021 (UTC)

And extra lines in bullet point conversations like this also make it hard for screenreader users to follow the conversation. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 20:18, 23 August 2021 (UTC)

In bullet conversations yes (those are "unordered lists"). But the example conversation was indented by ":" ("definition", standard here although totally wrong in HTML) and I don't see any change in the HTML output from the removal of the extra line. –LPfi (talk) 05:34, 24 August 2021 (UTC)

Hm, or are the tl/td closing tags missing in one version? How can that be? Where are they? –LPfi (talk) 05:40, 24 August 2021 (UTC)

Feedback on improved template search needed

Hello! The Technical Wishes team kindly asks for your feedback on a specific part of an improvement we’re working on. Please take a minute to let us know what you think:

We are currently implementing several improvements regarding templates. As part of this, the search in the “add a template” dialog has been changed to make finding relevant templates easier. Before, you had to know the exact title of the template you wanted to add – now you can search for keywords within the whole template name and template documentation pages. This change is already deployed on a few wikis, and our plan is to deploy it on all other wikis by the end of 2021.

The question: The improved template search currently also returns subpages of templates (that include the keyword) in the results, but we have received individual feedback that this is not wanted. Before we change this behavior, we want to ask a broader audience: Can and should subpages of templates be ignored in this search? Or are there cases in which a subpage of a template may host a template, and is therefore a relevant result?

In cases where a template’s subpages are relevant to the search, examples are very much appreciated. More info about the feature can be found on this page. You can leave comments and share your thoughts until September 8th here below or on this talk page. Thanks for your help! For the Technical Wishes team, --Timur Vorkul (WMDE) (talk) 14:03, 26 August 2021 (UTC)

Fellow Wikivoyagers, when Timur Vorkul says "already deployed on a few wikis", it appears that English Wikivoyage is among the chosen people. --Nelson Ricardo 2500 (talk) 14:15, 26 August 2021 (UTC)

We opted in quite a while ago. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 14:19, 26 August 2021 (UTC)

Edit-a-thon for one or more Spanish-speaking countries?

Let's discuss which Spanish-speaking countries could use the most help on this site. Here's some background behind why I'm asking:

In User talk:Ikan Kekek#WikiSP Annual Plan, Galahad, who coordinates Wikimedia Small Projects in Spanish on Meta, approached me for suggestions on non-Spanish speaking projects the group could support. Some of you might want to participate at Meta and suggest your own ideas there, and that would be great, but I think a good alternative would be for us to figure out what is likely to be most useful to this site, and I'd be happy to present those ideas to the group as a consensus of en.wikivoyage and have a discussion there.

I haven't checked figures, but my feeling is that the Spanish-speaking countries that get the most visits are probably Spain, Mexico and Argentina, followed by Costa Rica, Chile and Peru, in some order, and then maybe the Dominican Republic and Cuba. (I'm excluding the U.S. as a Spanish-speaking country in this context, for what should be obvious reasons.) My guess is that Mexico could use more help than Spain, and that seems to be borne out in that Spain is a usable article and Mexico is an outline. Bumping both up a level (or better yet, both to guide) is a worthy goal, though, and I could also see the possibility of edit-a-thons on larger geographical areas, such as the Caribbean, Central America, even South America, though perhaps that starts to get too fuzzy in its focus. What do you all think? Ikan Kekek (talk) 13:18, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

• Support Our Latin American articles are long neglected so this would be a great way to lift them up. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 13:34, 28 August 2021 (UTC)
• Support. Would it make sense to start an expedition? If so, what would be its title? --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 14:37, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

This is the kind of topic I really want to discuss, but mainly the scope, not the title, which can be easily decided on later. I wasn't really asking for support votes (though thanks for those), because I am asking for feedback and suggestions. So to make things (hopefully) clearer:

If we can have two edit-a-thons during the next year related to Spanish-speaking countries, what scope should we have for each one and why? Ikan Kekek (talk) 18:16, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

I think your thought to focus on the hispanophone countries that are of most interest to travellers is a good one. I think Mexico would geothermal be the obvious first choice, followed by Spain. But if Spain already in good shape, then Peru would be my second choice. Ground Zero (talk) 18:47, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

Weird autocorrect alert.--ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 19:02, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

• If Spain needs the least attention as a country, it would be strange to dedicate a whole editathon to that, IMO. But equally, even a Peru editathon might be too narrow to attract a large slew of edits. How about an all-Latin America editathon, which even though it would leave Spain and Equatorial Guinea out in the cold, could also include Brazil, Belize etc.? Yes, the scope would be huge, but the potential pool of knowledgable editors that much greater.--ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 19:02, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

I really think that scope is way too wide. Maybe an "Andean countries expedition" that covers Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador and maybe Colombia and/or Chile could be reasonable? Ikan Kekek (talk) 19:25, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

Following the discussion, I think some options stand out: Mexico is clearly in need of some attention (it has received some lately). Argentina hasn't been mentioned much here, but it and Uruguay merit some attention as tourist destinations. Perhaps we can divide the Spanish-speaking countries into a few expeditions. If we start with the Americas, Mexico, Central America, and South America (with the obvious exceptions) could be one way to organize the expeditions in preparation for upcoming edit-a-thons, which seem currently like the best way to grow our content beyond our editor base. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 19:30, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

"Too wide" for what? We had an editathon back in 2018 that covered the whole world, and that attracted loads of edits from loads of editors, because it was broad in focus. If the goal is to improve coverage of Spanish-speaking countries, then launch an editathon that covers the region of the world with the most Spanish speakers. Having an editathon for e.g. Peru may attract loads of edits to Peru articles, but all the other Hispanophone countries will be broadly left as they are. Even splitting Latin America into three separate editathons, as I think SC is suggesting, may result in diminishing returns for the second and third editathons, unless they were held one a year.--ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 19:47, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

[Edit conflict] Thanks for your thoughts. I think that when I post on Meta, I'll link to this thread and mention everyone's suggestions while making proposals. We could certainly propose 3 edit-a-thons, although I think 2 are more likely. Argentina, or maybe Argentina, Chile and Uruguay are good ideas. I think South America is too wide a scope, but I could be wrong. I'm in no rush to post at Meta and would love more opinions or suggestions. I'm thinking, if we have 3 edit-a-thons, Mexico, Bolivia/Peru/Ecuador/Colombia and Argentina/Chile/Uruguay might be possible. On Central America, we should keep in mind that several of those countries are high-crime and suffering from droughts and other global warming-related climate devastation. Costa Rica is a popular destination, and Guatemala has great Mayan attractions though it suffers from the problems I mentioned above.

That said, Thundering, I can present your thoughts and suggest either a single editathon for the entire Spanish-speaking world or some alternatives and see what they think. Ikan Kekek (talk) 19:52, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

Picking specific countries might discourage participation by people who are unfamiliar with those countries. What do you think about recommending that one editing event focus on a theme, rather than a geographical location? Food is a popular and accessible topic, so maybe all Spanish-speaking destinations could have their ==Eat== sections improved, and travel topics like Mexican cuisine could be expanded (or created) for each country/region.

Another broadly applicable theme is national parks or other opportunities for outdoor recreation. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:17, 29 August 2021 (UTC)

The theme idea sounds like a much better idea (particularly with parks). As mentioned on User:DaGizza, Countries that are Anglophone or developed (if not both) obviously and inevitably have better coverage than countries that are neither. Sometimes obscure, middle-of-nowhere destinations of the former have an article while the destination containing the most prominent attraction of a latter country doesn't yet exist., but in this case, even for some Anglophone countries, parks are so poorly covered, I can only imagine those for Spanish speaking countries. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 01:23, 29 August 2021 (UTC)

My question ("Too wide" for what?) still stands, but I agree with the idea of putting all the different ideas to a group of users who may wish to take part, as logically the proposal(s) that receive the most interest should attract the most participation. For an editathon, I think we should prioritise chasing after a high volume of edits, so getting an idea of which proposed topics appeal to the most people is a great idea.

A well-chosen theme could certainly be an 'in' to pique the interests of lots of people. But even with a theme, you've got the question of how wide or narrow to define your geographical scope: macro (e.g. Latin American cuisines), or relatively micro (e.g. national parks in Mexico)? --ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 10:37, 29 August 2021 (UTC)

I suppose many of the participants get thrills from seeing results. Concentrating on a few countries and getting them to usable (or whatever) would mean there is a clear result. With a more broad focus, we might need to develop (or choose) some metric to show the advancement. Created park articles are of course easy to count, and counting usable ones we encourage doing a good work on one before creating the next. Some system to show were work is needed would be good to have, for the parks idea, a "please check this article for things still missing" might help. –LPfi (talk) 11:31, 29 August 2021 (UTC)

That's a good point I hadn't considered. If the results are good (and tangible) it might encourage some user retention, which I think the last editathon, popular as it was, struggled with.--ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 16:00, 29 August 2021 (UTC)

The 2022 Community Wishlist Survey will happen in January

Hello everyone,

We hope all of you are as well and safe as possible during these trying times! We wanted to share some news about a change to the Community Wishlist Survey 2022. We would like to hear your opinions as well.

Summary:

We will be running the Community Wishlist Survey 2022 in January 2022. We need more time to work on the 2021 wishes. We also need time to prepare some changes to the Wishlist 2022. In the meantime, you can use a dedicated sandbox to leave early ideas for the 2022 wishes.

Proposing and wish-fulfillment will happen during the same year

In the past, the Community Tech team has run the Community Wishlist Survey for the following year in November of the prior year. For example, we ran the Wishlist for 2021 in November 2020. That worked well a few years ago. At that time, we used to start working on the Wishlist soon after the results of the voting were published.

However, in 2021, there was a delay between the voting and the time when we could start working on the new wishes. Until July 2021, we were working on wishes from the Wishlist for 2020.

We hope having the Wishlist 2022 in January 2022 will be more intuitive. This will also give us time to fulfill more wishes from the 2021 Wishlist.

Encouraging wider participation from historically excluded communities

We are thinking how to make the Wishlist easier to participate in. We want to support more translations, and encourage under-resourced communities to be more active. We would like to have some time to make these changes.

A new space to talk to us about priorities and wishes not granted yet

We will have gone 365 days without a Wishlist. We encourage you to approach us. We hope to hear from you in the talk page, but we also hope to see you at our bi-monthly Talk to Us meetings! These will be hosted at two different times friendly to time zones around the globe.

We will begin our first meeting September 15th at 23:00 UTC. More details about the agenda and format coming soon!

Brainstorm and draft proposals before the proposal phase

If you have early ideas for wishes, you can use the new Community Wishlist Survey sandbox. This way, you will not forget about these before January 2022. You will be able to come back and refine your ideas. Remember, edits in the sandbox don't count as wishes!

Feedback

• What should we do to improve the Wishlist pages?
• How would you like to use our new sandbox?
• What, if any, risks do you foresee in our decision to change the date of the Wishlist 2022?
• What will help more people participate in the Wishlist 2022?

Answer on the talk page (in any language you prefer) or at our Talk to Us meetings.

SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 00:23, 7 September 2021 (UTC)

2021 Wikimedia Board of Trustees Election Result

Thank you to everyone who participated in the 2021 Board election. The Elections Committee has reviewed the votes of the 2021 Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees election, organized to select four new trustees. A record 6,873 people from across 214 projects cast their valid votes. The following four candidates received the most support:

• Rosie Stephenson-Goodknight
• Victoria Doronina
• Dariusz Jemielniak
• Lorenzo Losa

While these candidates have been ranked through the community vote, they are not yet appointed to the Board of Trustees. They still need to pass a successful background check and meet the qualifications outlined in the Bylaws. The Board has set a tentative date to appoint new trustees at the end of this month. Read the full announcement here. Best, Zuz (WMF) (talk) 10:22, 8 September 2021 (UTC)

Call for Candidates for the Movement Charter Drafting Committee ending 14 September 2021

Movement Strategy announces the Call for Candidates for the Movement Charter Drafting Committee. The Call opens August 2, 2021 and closes September 14, 2021.

The Committee is expected to represent diversity in the Movement. Diversity includes gender, language, geography, and experience. This comprises participation in projects, affiliates, and the Wikimedia Foundation.

English fluency is not required to become a member. If needed, translation and interpretation support is provided. Members will receive an allowance to offset participation costs. It is US$100 every two months.

We are looking for people who have some of the following skills:

• Know how to write collaboratively. (demonstrated experience is a plus)
• Are ready to find compromises.
• Focus on inclusion and diversity.
• Have knowledge of community consultations.
• Have intercultural communication experience.
• Have governance or organization experience in non-profits or communities.
• Have experience negotiating with different parties.

The Committee is expected to start with 15 people. If there are 20 or more candidates, a mixed election and selection process will happen. If there are 19 or fewer candidates, then the process of selection without election takes place.

Will you help move Wikimedia forward in this important role? Submit your candidacy here. Please contact strategy2030wikimedia.org with questions.

---

This message may have been sent previously - please note that the deadline for candidate submissions was extended and candidacies are still being accepted until 14 September 2021. Xeno (WMF) 17:16, 10 September 2021 (UTC)

Server switch

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The Wikimedia Foundation tests the switch between its first and secondary data centers. This will make sure that Wikipedia and the other Wikimedia wikis can stay online even after a disaster. To make sure everything is working, the Wikimedia Technology department needs to do a planned test. This test will show if they can reliably switch from one data centre to the other. It requires many teams to prepare for the test and to be available to fix any unexpected problems.

They will switch all traffic back to the primary data center on Tuesday, 14 September 2021.

Unfortunately, because of some limitations in MediaWiki, all editing must stop while the switch is made. We apologize for this disruption, and we are working to minimize it in the future.

You will be able to read, but not edit, all wikis for a short period of time.

• You will not be able to edit for up to an hour on Tuesday, 14 September 2021. The test will start at 14:00 UTC (07:00 PDT, 10:00 EDT, 15:00 WEST/BST, 16:00 CEST, 19:30 IST, 23:00 JST, and in New Zealand at 02:00 NZST on Wednesday, 15 September).
• If you try to edit or save during these times, you will see an error message. We hope that no edits will be lost during these minutes, but we can't guarantee it. If you see the error message, then please wait until everything is back to normal. Then you should be able to save your edit. But, we recommend that you make a copy of your changes first, just in case.

Other effects:

• Background jobs will be slower and some may be dropped. Red links might not be updated as quickly as normal. If you create an article that is already linked somewhere else, the link will stay red longer than usual. Some long-running scripts will have to be stopped.
• We expect the code deployments to happen as any other week. However, some case-by-case code freezes could punctually happen if the operation require them afterwards.

This project may be postponed if necessary. You can read the schedule at wikitech.wikimedia.org. Any changes will be announced in the schedule. There will be more notifications about this. A banner will be displayed on all wikis 30 minutes before this operation happens. Please share this information with your community.

SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 00:46, 11 September 2021 (UTC)

Talk to the Community Tech

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Hello!

As we have recently announced, we, the team working on the Community Wishlist Survey, would like to invite you to an online meeting with us. It will take place on September 15th, 23:00 UTC on Zoom, and will last an hour. Click here to join.

Agenda

• How we prioritize the wishes to be granted
• Why we decided to change the date from November 2021 to January 2022
• Update on the disambiguation and the real-time preview wishes
• Questions and answers

Format

The meeting will not be recorded or streamed. Notes without attribution will be taken and published on Meta-Wiki. The presentation (first three points in the agenda) will be given in English.

We can answer questions asked in English, French, Polish, and Spanish. If you would like to ask questions in advance, add them on the Community Wishlist Survey talk page or send to sgrabarczuk@wikimedia.org.

Natalia Rodriguez (the Community Tech manager) will be hosting this meeting.

Invitation link

• Join online
• Meeting ID: 898 2861 5390
• One tap mobile
  • +16465588656,,89828615390# US (New York)
  • +16699006833,,89828615390# US (San Jose)
• Dial by your location

See you! SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 03:04, 11 September 2021 (UTC)

Proposal to allow Flow in beta features

For those not aware of Flow, see mw:Flow.

I'm proposing to allow flow in beta features, because it makes discussions more cleaner. It is currently used on the French Wikivoyage, however to only user talk pages, and only for those wishing to use it, and I should make it clear that using this gadget is completely optional. What was some of the arguments given in the original proposal on fr.voy definitely applies everywhere, including here:

The main goals of the Flow project are to:

1. Make the wiki discussion system more accessible to new users.
2. Making it more efficient for experienced users.
3. Encourage more constructive conversations that promote collaboration.

Now of course, I'm not proposing that we fully abolish the current talk page system, I'm just asking it if we could enable it on this wiki for the small minority who wish to use this tool. It is not mandatory to use this, as is on the French Wikivoyage. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 10:15, 1 September 2021 (UTC)

I don't know its present incarnation, but the original Flow had several drawbacks. The main showstopper is that it isn't compatible with normal talk pages, so once you start using Flow, you cannot revert it, only move the page away to the archive and start from scratch. It is a second system to learn, so not easier for beginners, who need to learn using normal talk pages anyway (and get confused by the differences), and a big frustration for seasoned editors (old dogs ...). Search and archives work in a different way (at some point they didn't work at all, do they now?). I usually end up not following discussions on Flow pages, as I don't get the normal overview. And it is not about some choosing to use the tool. If a page is converted to Flow, everybody visiting that page needs to use Flow. I contest Flow making for "more constructive conversations that promote collaboration" – it might have been a design goal, but is there any evidence? –LPfi (talk) 16:38, 1 September 2021 (UTC)

Ah, and Flow pages cannot be moved away to revert them to normal talk pages. Even if the Flow discussion is deleted, the page remains a flow page, if I understand correctly. –LPfi (talk) 16:54, 1 September 2021 (UTC)

The WMF has been declining all requests to add Flow to additional wikis for at least two years now. (Work-me uses Flow every day. It can be turned off, but you have to be an admin to do it. I find that following discussions is easy, but search is "limited", or maybe "non-existent" would be fairer.)

To see an alternative that I'm excited about, go to Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-betafeatures and turn on the "Discussion tools" item. The latest feature isn't visible yet; it allows you to subscribe to a single discussion thread, without having to put the whole page on your watchlist. If you want to see that, click on https://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Wikivoyage:Travellers'_pub?dtenable=1 and look for the new [subscribe] buttons. (This will also show you the features that are currently available via the Beta Feature in Special:Preferences, such as the [reply] button.) @PPelberg (WMF), could we prioritize the English Wikivoyage for the Reply tool? WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:26, 2 September 2021 (UTC)

Agreed, although I’m not familiar with Flow. It sounds as though the alternative has fewer drawbacks than the Flow program. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 19:05, 2 September 2021 (UTC)

I did a quick test on voy:fr:Discussion utilisateur:SHB2000 and I haven't had much of a problem with disabling it. All it did was unarchive my old talk page and it was easily restored. Here's a quick quote from there though:

Enables a new structured discussion system on your user talk page. Structured Discussions simplifies talk page discussions with clear places to write and reply, and allows conversation-level notifications. This feature is not auto-enabled; users will have to enable it separately.

Existing wikitext discussions are moved to an archive. Disabling this feature will move the Structured Discussion board to a subpage and un-archive the previous talkpage. Learn more about activation.

Doesn't seem to have too many drawbacks. The drawback for me with the reply tool is the autosignature, and the only reason why I've disabled it is because of that very reason. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 09:12, 5 September 2021 (UTC)

I just tested on your FR user talk. It does seem like a cleaner, better organized, easier-to-use, modern interface. Nesting could be improved, but maybe it just can't deal with me talking to myself. If we're voting, that's a thumbs up and a Support from me. --Nelson Ricardo (talk) 17:21, 5 September 2021 (UTC)

Seems like it worked when I replied. Maybe it just doesn't allow you to talk to yourself. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 01:41, 6 September 2021 (UTC)

They stopped working on Flow before they sorted out the "indentation" model. If you reply to the last comment, yours goes at the end, full width. If you reply to a comment that isn't the last, then it sticks yours in the middle. This helps identify comments that are out of chronological order, but if you expect a talk-page thread to look like one side of an upside-down pyramid, then you will be surprised. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:42, 6 September 2021 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ Given what has recently happened on my French Wikivoyage talk page, I will myself oppose flow then, given that it's hard to revert vandalism. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 11:31, 26 September 2021 (UTC)

If you are having trouble figuring out how to remove vandalism in Flow, then you might talk to mw:User:Clump, who is extremely experienced with it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:00, 26 September 2021 (UTC)

I'd ideally do that, but unfortunately numerous vandals just hate me that at least one of my talk pages from any WMF project gets vandalised about every three days. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 23:19, 26 September 2021 (UTC)

la.wikivoyage

If anyone's interested in participating in this discussion on a new Latin Wikivoyage, here it is. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 23:00, 15 September 2021 (UTC)

No use to start the project with a non-existent editor base. In 2013, there were two active editors, at least one of which remains at la-wp. In 2013 they tried to engage people from la-wp, without success. I think the target group (Latin-proficient travellers) is quite small, so there is little practical benefit of such a project for the time being. If la-voy could catch all the target group, then it could be useful, but until Wikivoyage as a whole has a larger audience, I think chances of succeeding are too small for an effort being worthwhile. The potential contributors spend their time better at la-wp and the bigger wikivoyages. –LPfi (talk) 14:13, 16 September 2021 (UTC)

+1. Projects without active editors attract vandalism and spam. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:59, 16 September 2021 (UTC)

But isn't that the job of the SWMT? SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 23:59, 16 September 2021 (UTC)

Do you suppose a Latin Wikivoyage would have an English phrasebook? ;-) Ikan Kekek (talk) 00:10, 17 September 2021 (UTC)

lol ;). Although I do wonder if there is one on the Esperanto Wikivoyage. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 00:12, 17 September 2021 (UTC)

It's not kind to knowingly create extra work for global sysops and the Small Wiki Monitoring Team. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:28, 17 September 2021 (UTC)

Esperanto Wikivoyage does have an English phrasebook. I figured out how to search for it after finding their French phrasebook by looking at random pages. Ikan Kekek (talk) 20:57, 30 September 2021 (UTC)

Movement Charter Drafting Committee - Community Elections to take place October 11 - 24

This is a short message with an update from the Movement Charter process. The call for candidates for the Drafting Committee closed September 14, and we got a diverse range of candidates. The committee will consist of 15 members, and those will be (s)elected via three different ways.

The 15 member committee will be selected with a 3-step process:

• Election process for project communities to elect 7 members of the committee.
• Selection process for affiliates to select 6 members of the committee.
• Wikimedia Foundation process to appoint 2 members of the committee.

The community elections will take place between October 11 and October 24. The other process will take place in parallel, so that all processes will be concluded by November 1.

We are very happy about the wide range of diverse Wikimedians that are running for the election and selection processes for the drafting committee of the Movement Charter! As the number of candidates is quite large and thus informing yourself about them might be a bit more complicated, we want to try something different this time: We want to organize a so-called “Voting Advice Application (or “Election Compass) with statements related to the Movement Charter. All candidates can propose their statements here.

For the full context of the Movement Charter, its role, as well the process for its creation, please have a look at Meta. You can also contact us at any time on Telegram or via email (wikimedia2030@wikimedia.org). Best, Zuz (WMF) (talk) 10:38, 21 September 2021 (UTC)

User:Tony1

I've received a long email of the blocked user in the subject with a request of unblock. Since I have no idea of who is the user and why he was blocked (I have no time to look for the history), I was wondering if any or maybe all the en:voy admin have received such email. However, I suggest to anyone that can be interested on this case, to discuss here before taking any autonomous action.

(out of chrono) Please Tony1 stop sending me emails. I've started this topic because from one side it's fair and I'm fine with the fact that you want to rediscuss your block in one single wiki (not a global block) after several years, but from the other side I would avoid that an admin would remove a block without a public discussion. My personal suggestion to you is to wait the en:voy community will discuss about it and, after a reasonable time, if you want to add something, feel free to write it on your talk page of your main wiki (i.e. en:w) pinging anyone involved on this discussion and anyone you think may be interested (pings works from/to any wiki). Thanks for your understanding. --Andyrom75 (talk) 08:29, 8 October 2021 (UTC)

@Andyrom75: It seems @Andre Carrotflower: blocked them per NOTHERE, but personally, I would Oppose an unblock. They're also blocked on frwiki as well for being disruptive as well. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 09:52, 8 October 2021 (UTC)

This guy sent me an email too. I'm not going to fully out the email, but one of the reasons in his appeal was "The block prevented me from voting in the recent election of WMF board members.". Uhm, nope. I still would not trust someone who broke community trust, which gave him consequences globally. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 10:10, 8 October 2021 (UTC)

This user did ask me to paste their reasons here, so here it is:

• The block prevents me from accessing the Wikipedia Library of non-free academic journals to provide sources for articles at en.WP I edit.

• The block prevented me from voting in the recent election of WMF board members.

• Crucially, I do not expect to edit Wikivoyage again.

Still no for me. And I'm confused on the first reason. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 10:19, 8 October 2021 (UTC)

And I’m confused on the third reason. If he does not want to edit Wikivoyage, why ask us for an unlock request? --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 10:35, 8 October 2021 (UTC)

I presume it's because of reason 2: "The block prevented me from voting in the recent election of WMF board members." Personally, if he abused the trust of the community, that's too bad he can't vote in the WMF board members election. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 10:39, 8 October 2021 (UTC)

In my opinion he should be unblocked. It was not a community ban. The 2019 ban did not go through Wikivoyage:User ban nominations. The only ban nom was one from 8 years ago that resulted in a 3 day block. In 2019 Andre accidently pinged Tony (which he regretted), got into a brief argument with him, then unilaterally banned him. He should be unblocked and in the unlikely event that he starts problematic editing it can go through User ban nominations. Nurg (talk) 11:22, 8 October 2021 (UTC)

It'd be an ideal solution, but I'm also concerned about his behaviour on frwiki. This person seems to have cross wiki issues as well. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 11:26, 8 October 2021 (UTC)

I took a quick look at discussions I found on his contribution page and I certainly got the impression he was a problem user. I did not look carefully enough to see whether this was his fault or whether he had been badly treated, and I did not look through his contributions. Anyway, on one hand problem users are not given the privilege of being able to vote on the WMF board or of having literature access financed through the WMF, and being banned (on several projects?) is seen as a measure on being a problem user. Having seen those discussions I am not too eager to give him these privileges.

On the other hand, if he was banned against our policy, I don't see how we can keep him banned, and I don't see it worthwhile to now have several users evaluate his edits, which might still not be a reason to ban him, as none of them is recent. If denying him privileges depend on us, then the system is broken, and fixing it is not our responsibility.

–LPfi (talk) 13:23, 8 October 2021 (UTC)

SHB2000 - If by pinging me you're soliciting my opinion, I'd echo other commenters in saying that voting for WMF board members is a privilege, not a right, and it's a privilege that is rightly denied to those who edit disruptively on any wiki. It is also correct to say that the problems with Tony1 aren't confined to his behavior at Wikivoyage; I don't have time to link diffs right now as I'm away from my office and editing on mobile, but a search through pages that link to his English Wikipedia userpage ought to be enlightening for anyone who's curious. And I'll also add with respect to Nurg's remarks that it's especially disappointing and shameful to see my actions as an admin, which were not against Wikivoyage policy and which had the broad support of the community at the time, being impugned and dismissed years after the fact by a user who was only marginally active in Wikivoyage affairs at the time the drama went down. -- Andre Carrotflower (talk) 16:02, 8 October 2021 (UTC)

I apologise to Andre – I didn't word my comments as carefully as I would have liked. Andre banned Tony1 with this comment, "Per exceptions list at Wikivoyage:How to handle unwanted edits#User ban; user obviously is not here to help build a travel guide". Neither I nor anyone else (AFAIK) who was aware of the ban commented on it. In that sense, there was silent consensus. Accordingly one could say it was a community ban by silent consensus. No-one who was aware of the action said that explicit consensus needed to be gained through Wikivoyage:User ban nominations. I have not said, then or now, that Andre did anything wrong. And, until this present request from Tony, I had not said that the ban should be lifted. I apologise to Andre for any implication that his actions were wrong, as I had not intended that. Nurg (talk) 22:20, 14 October 2021 (UTC)

Not to mention the fact that, if I'm reading this correctly, being blocked on any wiki is grounds for being denied the opportunity to vote for WMF board members? If that's the case, then unblocking him here wouldn't make a difference anyway; fr.wp would have to unblock him as well, and we have no control over that. -- Andre Carrotflower (talk) 17:43, 8 October 2021 (UTC)

If there was consensus at the time, or him not contributing positively was evident, then I don't think he needs to be unblocked (above I was too rule fixated, which is not the wiki way). The policy on not banning users is for contributors who might have a bad temper and get in conflict with individual admins; we do not need to protect users who don't intend to contribute. –LPfi (talk) 19:18, 8 October 2021 (UTC)

@Andre Carrotflower: Yeah just wanted to get your opinion as you were the one who blocked this user. But regardless, even if all this didn't happen, I would still oppose an unblock for spamming my email (+Andyrom's as well).

But as both of you said, if he doesn't want to contribute, then we don't need to defend him into having the privilege of voting at the WMF board elections. OTOH, if we wasn't banned on frwiki for his behaviour, it's a different case, but I'm still not convinced that unblocking him is a good idea here. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 23:11, 8 October 2021 (UTC)

I'd say unblock, for approximately the reasons Nurg gives above. Pashley (talk) 22:31, 8 October 2021 (UTC)

I don't support unblocking this user. Tony was nominated by Andre for a user ban back in 2013, and the latter commented at Wikivoyage:User ban nominations/Archive#User:Tony1, "This user has been a thorn in our side almost from Day 1. His interactions with the community have been almost uniformly combative, unconstructive, and insulting. He has no evident interest in advancing our project; on the contrary, he seems to openly resent the existence of Wikivoyage as a WMF project, and has even gone so far as to gleefully predict this site's demise on a frequent basis." After discussion, a three-day block was applied, but Tony was again nominated for a ban only a month later, which was met with a mixed response but ultimately, failed to gain consensus to block.

Since this incident WV's admins have tried to be patient with some new users, and found that despite apologies and requests for a clean start following troubled editing patterns, the same M.O. of each problem user has re-appeared and resulted in another block. WP has experienced this as well, but as a smaller site, we don't have Wikipedia's resources to support the rehabilitation and unblocking of banned users only to re-block them. WP's administrative body is dedicated to this, and I'd guess some of their administrators enjoy the administrative side of their project, but I think most of our administrators are more interested in writing travel content than administering bans or fighting vandalism, and do these activities only out of duty to the project.

In the last couple years since we took a stricter stance on contributor's M.O.'s, WV has become a more peaceful and enjoyable place to contribute, but re-instating this user wouldn't help us achieve this. It's clear that Tony was opposed to our goals when he contributed, and I don't see why unblocking him would benefit this wiki, even if he doesn't intend to edit here. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 15:03, 9 October 2021 (UTC)

• Oppose. This issue is new to me — 2013 is before my time here. I've read through the various discussions, and I have no concern about continuing this block. He was disruptive, combative, and generally a problem for those who were trying to build a travel guide. If there wasn't consensus then, I think there would be now because of our less patient mood, as noted by SelfieCity. This change in mood has resulted from spending too much time giving the kid-glove treatment to people like Tony1 who are not here to build a travel guide, as Andre Carrotflower pointed out. Someone as angry and disruptive as Tony1 has proven himself to be isn't going to make a constructive contribution to WMF elections. Ground Zero (talk) 16:24, 9 October 2021 (UTC)

• I can't think of a good reason to revisit this all these years later. If he wants to appeal to the Wikimedia Foundation for permission to vote in board elections or whatever, that's up to him, not us. Ikan Kekek (talk) 17:08, 9 October 2021 (UTC)

• I support unblocking him. I don't see any need to maintain the block. For those that don't know, The Wikipedia Library offers free access to a variety of reliable sources, mainly useful for verifying content in Wikipedia articles. Being blocked anywhere means you can't use it. Tony's made a couple hundred thousand edits at the English Wikipedia, and he has been highly active in the Featured Article process. I don't think that we need to prevent that. Also, it seems a bit strange to jump from a three-day block in 2013 to an indef block six years later. I'm also not impressed with the excuse for the 2019 block. Basically, Andre pinged Tony1, in a comment in which Andre insults an opinion piece that Tony1 wrote on a different site as "a horribly one-sided hack job". Tony1 hadn't edited here for more than five years. Then Andre blocks Tony1 because he's apparently shocked, shocked to discover that authors feel angry when you insult their writing. See the discussion and Andre's edit summary here, in which Andre takes responsibility for triggering the angry exchange while removing Tony's replies (but not Andre's original insulting remarks). I wouldn't necessarily say that blame is equally divided here, but I don't think that a multi-year block is either a necessary or a proportional response to this situation. "Sorry, neither of us should be insulting anyone in public" would IMO have been a more proportional response. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:54, 9 October 2021 (UTC)

• I still think that him being able to access the Wikipedia Library was a privilege that he lost. Even if we unblock him, he's blocked on the French Wikipedia as well, and frwiki is known to be very harsh with blocks (they blocked a user (will not get into names) who was blocked only because they made a grammatical error). Even if, I was thinking to remove his email access for spamming our inboxes.

• Meanwhile, we have the same issue with the English Wikipedia. Unfortunately, some admins there think that the English Wikipedia is the only WMF project (most of them who think that have almost zero edits outside enwiki and Commons + 1 edit on their meta userpage), and so if a user gets blocked on the English Wikipedia and its preventing them from doing something on another wiki, then they would remain blocked. If the English Wikipedia as a community wants to lose editors from other projects, then too bad. It's too bad that the community that Tony1 is a part has their actions backfire.

• And I think he should still be blocked per NOTHERE and agree with everyone who opposed an unblock. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 23:28, 9 October 2021 (UTC)

• I’m confused. I just went to this library, and I can find links to databases such as JSTOR, but JSTOR isn’t part of WP and can be accessed without using WP if you have an account with the third party. And while we are Wikimedia, we aren’t Wikipedia, so I don’t understand why a block on a different wiki would block access to a Wikipedia source. To me the fundamental question here is more why WV-blocked users can’t access a part of WP, rather than whether Tony should be unblocked. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 00:29, 10 October 2021 (UTC)

I would also say that I can't think of a good reason why Wikipedia would prevent someone from accessing their library because they're blocked on another Wiki project. Ikan Kekek (talk) 00:59, 10 October 2021 (UTC)

I'm not sure whether its his voy based block, or is it his French Wikipedia block that's preventing him from accessing the library. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 01:00, 10 October 2021 (UTC)

A French Wikipedia block seems the more likely explanation, I agree. In that case, does he need to be unblocked on WV at all? Or is this a matter solely for French Wikipedia? --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 01:40, 10 October 2021 (UTC)

I don't think so. Wikivoyage doesn't follow Wikipedia's standard offer (which ArticCynda claims is valid on WY), but in this case, Tony having 200k edits on Wikipedia is not a "get out of jail free card". He's never been constructive here, and by him spamming our emails, it's another sign of him not wanting to build a travel guide. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 01:49, 10 October 2021 (UTC)

I went into a deeper look, and all it says was no active blocks. These seem to be the ToS:

• At their last login, did this user meet the criteria set forth in the terms of use?

• Satisfies minimum account age?

• Satisfies minimum edit count? (I don't what is the threshold for this)

• Is not blocked on any project?

So it does appear that it's a block on any WMF site. Regardless, I'm still not convinced that they should be unblocked. Even if we wanted him to use this library, he lost the privilege of voting in the WMF board elections. This isn't really a Georgian Wikipedia block (I say this in risk of getting blocked on kawiki, but over there, if you criticise the behaviour of admins on kawiki, you get blocked for "personal attacks") SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 02:36, 10 October 2021 (UTC)

I also don't think we can let him unblocked when he makes comments and edit summaries like this or disruptive comments like this or this towards non-English Wikipedia projects. Other disruptive comments by this user:

• This thread beggars belief. It is symptomatic of a sick, isolationist, xenophobic culture that cannot tolerate criticism. How did WV get this way, or has it always been like this? [- on UBN]

• Rschen, yes, you're the one who spat all over me a while ago. Not the kind of behaviour I'd expect from someone like you. [- also on UBN]

• How more skewed and ego-centric could you get? [- User talk:Tony1]

This one is more ridiculous

• I've not been uncivil to anyone [- on UBN]

• You will condemn the site to failure if you hound out people who make systemic criticisms, since those criticisms are one way of thinking through solutions. [- on UBN]

For more matters, I don't feel comfortable unblocking someone who for the most part is disruptive, and makes personal attacks and harsh accusations against other editors. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 04:32, 10 October 2021 (UTC)

What does "[- on UBN]" mean? Pashley (talk) 06:12, 10 October 2021 (UTC)

On User ban nominations. What's in the square brackets is just where he mentioned it. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 06:44, 10 October 2021 (UTC)

I am not going to plough through archives to be able to judge whether the ban was justified at the time, but it is evident that he is a problem user. There are productive and valuable problem users, and he might be one of those at Wikipedia, but he isn't one over here. If the Wikipedia community feels he is valuable, they can ask us to unblock him; I'd be glad to consent. –LPfi (talk) 07:45, 10 October 2021 (UTC)

He's also a problem on the English Wikinews as well, so I guess we're not alone in having to deal with Tony1 SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 07:49, 10 October 2021 (UTC)

If the unblock reason is mainly because he can't vote in the WMF election or access the Wikipedia Library because of the current blocks, he should be making a discussion at their respective talk pages, not asking the projects to overturn the blocks. Personally, I find that disqualifying someone from voting by having just a single block (whether for a certain length while the election is happening or indefinitely) in any project quite problematic and leads to the spectre of disenfranchisement. So for that reason, I oppose the unblock request but I am sympathetic to his situation. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 22:33, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

I'm uncomfortable with focusing on comments people made eight and nine years ago. SHB, I know your account is only eight months old, but imagine what it would be like. Do you want someone, eight or nine years from now, to come back to you and say "Yeah, well, I remember you edit warring with a Steward on Meta-Wiki, with you changing a line in a template that said right there next to the words you were changing, back in August 2021, and in October 2021, you were edit-warring with one of the official Wiki Loves organizers over how to organize the project pages [Also: multiple reverts in less than an hour, while insisting the the organizers were required to explain themselves to you? Really?], so you're obviously NOTHERE and need to be blocked forever". Would you feel a little dismayed to have years-old mistakes thrown up at you, as if you couldn't possibly have learned from those and would certainly make the same mistakes again if you were given the ability to edit?

I don't see a problem with an edit summary of "My prediction is that WV is going to fade over the next few years, and then die". What's the charge: "Failure to be sufficiently enthusiastic"? It feels like we're holding a permanent grudge because someone hurt our feelings (and by "our", I mean "people who were editing here in 2012", which does not include several of us in this discussion). The way to address a prediction of failure is to succeed, not to block people who were skeptical. Rejecting people because they're not enthusiastic about your hobby is something you expect from children. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:17, 12 October 2021 (UTC)

At least, for the most part, when Tony spammed our emails, he could have explained what got him blocked, just like what you need to do when you appeal a Wikipedia block (or really, a block anywhere). In those cases, the three reasons he gave in his appeal:

• The block prevents me from accessing the Wikipedia Library of non-free academic journals to provide sources for articles at en.WP I edit.

• The block prevented me from voting in the recent election of WMF board members.

• Crucially, I do not expect to edit Wikivoyage again.

None of those reasons explain why he got blocked, and what benefit the project will get if you unblock him. What more, he never apologised to Andre and Rschen after this personal attacks directed at him.

Regarding "My prediction is that WV is going to fade over the next few years, and then die", that's a matter of opinion on how you interpret it. In my opinion, that could have been a little more acceptable if he had a good record here, but as Andre mentioned "This user has been a thorn in our side almost from Day 1". If you take cross wiki issues out, and a brand newbie comes and all they do is bicker on how Wikivoyage is going to fail, or negatively distract the community from project goals, then literally, it's easy to assume that they're not here to build a travel guide. Now Tony1 is a little different case since he has 200k edits on the English Wikipedia. But he's not just been an issue here, he's also a problem on frwiki as well, and unblocking him here will do little to benefit us. Given the fact that he has zero good contributions here, I'm not convinced he should get unblocked. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 04:40, 12 October 2021 (UTC)

Why would we expect anyone to follow the unblocking rules from another project?

(The enwiki rules are not perfect, and I would not recommend adopting them. The most common complaint is that they expect editors who were wrongly blocked to grovel about how wrong they were to do something that they thought, and still think, was reasonable. If you've got friends among the admins, you can usually get around this, but when the real problem is "hot-headed admin over-reacted instead of asking for a second opinion", most blocked editors are expected to say that they agree with the admin that it is harmful to Wikipedia to have editors who hold a different viewpoint, and that they'll never do that again.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:21, 12 October 2021 (UTC)

Agree with the enwiki things. An IP who has now retired from editing Wikivoyage (82.3.185.12), was blocked there for trouting another user per "not here", which is a little silly IMO (Tony is different though, as he's made a tireless amount of personal attacks against Andre). SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 10:37, 13 October 2021 (UTC)

The Wikipedia Signpost piece detailing what a piece of shit the English Wikvoyage is (and that other languages do not exist at all) is a dealbreaker for me. I oppose an unblock.--Ymblanter (talk) 10:16, 13 October 2021 (UTC)

To be clear, I think people have a right to write criticisms if our site if they want, but if they do, they can’t realistically expect us to accept those people as part of the Wikivoyage community — they don’t support our goal to be a travel guide. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 11:21, 13 October 2021 (UTC)

130% agree. But even then, their personal attacks against Andre Carrotflower and Rschen7754 in my opinion, was unacceptable. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 11:26, 13 October 2021 (UTC)

Oppose unblock. Sucks that Tony is unable to do some stuff he wants to do now because of earlier misconduct, but who knew that actions had consequences? --ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 13:01, 13 October 2021 (UTC)

Other than COVID and the anxieties that come along with it, and other than just plain being busy with other stuff, comments like those from WhatamIdoing are a good example of a reason I've yet to resume active Wikivoyage editing. Here is someone who, out of one side of their mouth, has waxed rhapsodic about the friendly editing environment here and how much more pleasant it is than Wikipedia, yet on the other hand, seems to be doing everything they can to degrade that friendly environment through a longstanding pattern of making veiled personal attacks on myself and other editors, performatively opposing popular proposals for nonsensical reasons and seemingly only for the sake of fomenting confrontation and obstruction, and rolling out the welcome mat for users whose conduct is uniformly disruptive and abhorrent. I have tried hard to stay patient and continue assuming good faith, largely for the sake of said friendly editing environment, but now it appears the disparagements, which were annoying enough when I was here and active, continue behind my back even in my absence. So now that I'm in a period of inactivity with no defined endpoint, the stakes are lower for me, and I can be more open about the fact that this conduct is hypocritical, bad-faith, and unbecoming a user who has the (WMF) suffix on their [alternate] account. -- Andre Carrotflower (talk) 15:26, 13 October 2021 (UTC)

Yes, as TT says, actions have consequences, and Tony should have thought about his actions in the first place. I must say, I'm not a fan of the WP practice of, as some have identified it, groveling to admins in order to be unblocked. The requests for apology haven't worked on WV and I think in future we shouldn't be as willing to give opportunities for apologies. When someone like Tony does what he does, we need to say enough is enough when the harm is done, and not leave the door half-open for these users to continue to cause us problems in the future. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 17:51, 13 October 2021 (UTC)

I've had run-ins with Tony1 on multiple projects (mostly English Wikipedia), some positive, some unfortunately negative. He has a lot of skill when it comes to professional writing and citations which is unparalleled and which is largely why he has not been blocked from the project where he has the most edits, English Wikipedia. Unfortunately, he has also made personal attacks as well as attacks on the English Wikivoyage (namely, the Signpost article mentioned earlier). Personally I think that an indefinite block was excessive and I would suggest unblocking him, but warning him that future disruptive conduct would lead to a block (possibly indefinite) being quickly reinstated. But, that is not an opinion that I hold strongly and would defer to the active community on that question. (And as far as the global consequences, he would have to get unblocked on French Wikipedia too in order to be reinstated in the areas he mentions). --Rschen7754 18:10, 13 October 2021 (UTC)

As far as the question of legitimate criticism, I as a former steward really do question the legitimacy of a few Wikimedia projects, and sometimes openly discuss those criticisms, but then I don't go around writing one-sided articles in venues like the Signpost. --Rschen7754 18:14, 13 October 2021 (UTC)

From an envoy perspective, I wouldn't like the precedent that would be set if Tony was unblocked. Other recurring banned editors like AC and LM may also try to seek forgiveness after 8 or 9 years and it will open a can of worms here. From a WMF perspective, I do agree that it's unfair that a block/ban on a WMF wiki prevents a user from accessing the Wikipedia Library of non-free academic journals but that's an issue that should be resolved at the WMF level. There are likely to be other editors who were disruptive and net negatives in one project but net benefits to others and are stuck in a similar position to Tony1. A solution should be sought that will help all editors in the same boat as Tony1 and not just him. Gizza ^(roam) 01:25, 14 October 2021 (UTC)

AC tried to appeal his ban a couple of days ago as well, so if we do unblock this guy and leave AC blocked, AC will accuse us of discrimination, since he got banned for a similar behaviour. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 01:31, 14 October 2021 (UTC)

If it would help, I would be willing to advocate access to the Wikipedia Library for all Wikipedia users in good standing (i.e., not blocked there), in the appropriate forum. Since he doesn't plan to make any edits here, his petition for reinstatement shouldn't be relevant. I don't agree that AC was banned for similar behavior. He made edits to destination articles here that were inaccurate, on the basis of bigotry. Tony1 was banned for these two posts, though with the previous baggage of this userban thread and this one, neither of which resulted in bans. It's unpleasant to relitigate this, but my feeling is, he went out of his way to defame the site and was openly hostile to the admins, not simply disagreeing with decisions but going much further than that. In no way do I think we would tolerate that kind of hostile behavior now, the way we did then. All that said, I sincerely wish him well and repeat my offer to speak up on his behalf elsewhere, but not here. Ikan Kekek (talk) 01:43, 14 October 2021 (UTC)

When I meant "AC was banned for similar behaviour", I was talking in the sense he was disruptive and not what he actually did (both Tony and AC were disruptive, and so both got banned but AC was banned for bigotry, while Tony was banned for personal attacks which are both disruptive). SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 01:49, 14 October 2021 (UTC)

Yeah, but to be honest, I don't care what AC or his anti-Wikivoyage allies think of us. It's pretty rich coming from AC to accuse us of discrimination, so that doesn't concern me. I agree with the comments above that we ought to remove this restriction from the Wikipedia Library, which doesn't make sense. If someone is accessing Wikipedia Library who shouldn't, the response is for Wikipedia to block that person. Wikivoyage blocks shouldn't be affecting other websites; that's equivalent to someone being banned from Gmail and consequently not being able to use Google Search. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 02:17, 14 October 2021 (UTC)

Forgetting about AC, and back to Tony, but even if we manage to remove this restriction from the Wikipedia Library, he needs to get his French Wikipedia block sorted out. And being blocked on the French Wikipedia is a good reason to prevent someone accessing the library given that they are actually Wikipedia, not a sister project. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 02:22, 14 October 2021 (UTC)

Agreed. Do we know if he's contacted French Wikipedia yet? --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 02:36, 14 October 2021 (UTC)

Last edit by him on the French Wikipedia was in 2011, and checking "WhatLinksHere", the only links about him were seen on ANI were in 2009. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 02:41, 14 October 2021 (UTC)

Hi all - just a quick note here that Tony emailed us and we have whitelisted his account for access to the library, so that needn't be a concern for you here with respect to his block status. Samwalton9 (WMF) (talk) 08:32, 14 October 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for letting us know. I'm glad you did that. Ikan Kekek (talk) 08:41, 14 October 2021 (UTC)

Thanks :-). So the only concern of Tony's was not being able to vote in the board elections, but... as Andre Carrotflower mentioned, that's a privilege, not a right. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 08:51, 14 October 2021 (UTC)

Coming soon: Template dialog improvements for VisualEditor and new wiktext mode

/ Apologies for writing in English. It would be great if you could help translate this message. /

Hello! Here is more news from the focus area “Make working with templates easier” by Wikimedia Germany’s Technical Wishes project:

Your wiki will soon receive an overall improved interface for editing templates in VisualEditor and in the new wikitext mode (beta feature). This includes several improvements:

• general redesign (more spacing, bigger window for better usability),
• a better overview of parameters that are available for a template,
• an easier way to add parameters via checkboxes and search filters,
• better visibility of important information,
• added links to documentation and help pages.

More in-depth information can be found on the project page on Meta. The planned deployment date for these changes is October 6.

Please note: The official VisualEditor help page on mediawiki.org will only be changed later this year, when all wikis have received the feature. If you have a local help page about the feature, you can update it based on information on this page, which we will fill with content in late September.

We would be very happy to hear what you think of these changes. Please let us know on this talk page. -- Johanna Strodt (WMDE) (talk) 14:09, 22 September 2021 (UTC)

Hello again! Unfortunately, this deployment will be postponed a bit:

• Our team is currently still working on a few optimizations for mobile and for screen readers, so we’re planning to deploy the feature to your wiki in late October/beginning of November.
• That also means that the texts on this subpage are not finished yet. We’ll give you an update here on your village pump once the texts are done. Then you can update your help page accordingly.
• For those who are curious what to expect, here are two videos: One shows the current interface on English Wikipedia, the other one shows the improved interface which you’ll get soon (currently on betawiki):

• Current view on English Wikipedia
• Coming soon: Improved version

Sorry for the inconvenience! – Johanna for the Technical Wishes team, Johanna Strodt (WMDE) (talk) 10:45, 6 October 2021 (UTC)

The documentation of the improvements on the Visual Editor template dialog is finally complete and can be found here. Sorry for the delay. The deployment of these changes is planned for November 16th. – For the Technical Wishes team, Timur Vorkul (WMDE) (talk) 15:40, 4 November 2021 (UTC)

Final deployment date: template dialog improvements for VisualEditor and new wiktext mode

The extensive template dialog improvements for VisualEditor and new wiktext will finally be available from November 24th on your wiki. Deployments on more wikis are planned in the next months. If you have any feedback, please let us know on the project’s talk page. -- Timur for Wikimedia Germany’s Technical Wishes team

P.S.: We are still working out the final details with the new keyboard navigation which should be working smoothly soon. Timur Vorkul (WMDE) (talk) 14:10, 23 November 2021 (UTC)

Why is the reply tool automatically enabled?

Does anyone know why it randomly appeared around 09:00 today (AEST: UTC+10)? I checked Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-betafeatures and I haven't enabled the tool. Is there a way to opt out of the reply tool or am I stuck with it forever? SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 04:49, 1 October 2021 (UTC)

You can disable it in Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-editing-discussion. This was announced in m:Tech/News for the last two weeks. I see that the latest copy is still on your talk page at User talk:SHB2000#Tech News: 2021-39. It's the last item. WhatamIdoing (talk) 14:30, 1 October 2021 (UTC)

Oh. Haven't read my tech news this week, but thanks for pointing it out. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 14:40, 1 October 2021 (UTC)

I'm not particularly keen on this, but the crucial factor to watch will be new user participation via comments, and whether it improves. If so it will justify keeping this tool. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 21:33, 1 October 2021 (UTC)

Sorry for being late to this conversation but as a fairly new user I much prefer using reply over the visual editor. Tai123.123 (talk) 01:08, 2 November 2021 (UTC)

Let's talk about the Desktop Improvements

Hello!

Have you noticed that some wikis have a different desktop interface? Are you curious about the next steps? Maybe you have questions or ideas regarding the design or technical matters?

Join an online meeting with the team working on the Desktop Improvements! It will take place on October 12th, 16:00 UTC on Zoom. It will last an hour. Click here to join.

Agenda

• Update on the recent developments
• Sticky header - presentation of the demo version
• Questions and answers, discussion

Format

The meeting will not be recorded or streamed. Notes will be taken in a Google Docs file. The presentation part (first two points in the agenda) will be given in English.

We can answer questions asked in English, French, Polish, and Spanish. If you would like to ask questions in advance, add them on the talk page or send them to sgrabarczuk@wikimedia.org.

Olga Vasileva (the team manager) will be hosting this meeting.

Invitation link

• Join online
• Meeting ID: 829 3670 1376
• Dial by your location

We hope to see you! SGrabarczuk (WMF) 15:09, 4 October 2021 (UTC)

Universal Code of Conduct Draft Enforcement Guidelines review still needs your ideas and opinions

Hello everyone,

This is just a reminder that the Universal Code of Conduct Draft Enforcement Guidelines are open for review and comment. The Drafting Committee will start working on revisions and improvement in less than two weeks (October 17), so it is important that you give them your ideas and opinions soon!

There is now a short, simple version of the Draft Guidelines here to make your review easier. If possible, also help translate the short version into more languages!

We will also hold one last conversation hour on October 15, 2021 03:00 and 14:00 UTC.

On behalf of the Drafting Committee, much thanks to everyone who has given ideas so far. We hope to hear from more of you - the Guidelines will be much stronger if more opinions are included.

Best, Zuz (WMF) (talk) 10:49, 6 October 2021 (UTC)

Auto-number headings

I miss the Auto-number headings option in the Advanced options section of the Appearence tab of Preferences. Why did it disappear? --FredTC (talk) 07:48, 14 October 2021 (UTC)

I'm not too sure either. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 07:52, 14 October 2021 (UTC)

Apparently, the answer is cache fragmentation and other serious server-side performance problems.

It is theoretically possible for a technically inclined editor to write a user script that does the same thing. I haven't heard of anyone doing this (yet). WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:21, 14 October 2021 (UTC)

Yesterday the option was still available for Wikipedia; now it has disappeared there as well. Without the numbering you need to browse the whole wiki source code, to check correctness of the hierarchy of the headings. That is why I'm missing the option. I don't understand the remark about "cache fragmentation ..."; I don't see the relation to a simple numbering function. --FredTC (talk) 08:00, 15 October 2021 (UTC)

Tracked in Phabricator ^(?)
Task T284921

The auto-number headings preference option was removed (announced on m:Tech/News/2021/26). If necessary, this former core function can be replaced by a Javascript snipped as demonstrated in mw:Snippets/Auto-number headings. --RolandUnger (talk) 13:35, 15 October 2021 (UTC)

Thank you for the explanation. I'm not happy with the change, but I guess it was necessary. --FredTC (talk) 09:48, 17 October 2021 (UTC)

Would the javascript solution work for you? I haven't tried it, but I am sure somebody can try to help you to get it work, if it doesn't out of the box. –LPfi (talk) 15:57, 19 October 2021 (UTC)

Voting begins for the MCDC Election

Voting for the election of the members for the Movement Charter drafting committee is now open. In total, 70 Wikimedians from around the world are running for 7 seats in this election.

Voting is open from October 12 to October 24, 2021.

The Movement Charter committee will consist of 15 members in total: The online communities will vote for 7 members, 6 members will be selected by the Wikimedia affiliates through a parallel process, and 2 members will be appointed by the Wikimedia Foundation. The plan is to assemble the committee by November 1, 2021.

You can learn more about each candidate to inform your vote here

You can also learn more about the Drafting Committee here

We are piloting a voting advice application for this election. Click through the tool and you will see which candidate is closest to you! To try out this tool, visit: App

Go vote at SecurePoll: Vote

Read the full announcement: here

Best, Zuz (WMF) (talk) 17:44, 13 October 2021 (UTC)

Learn how Movement Strategy Implementation Grants can support your Movement Strategy plans

Movement Strategy Implementation grants now provide more than $2,000 USD to put Movement Strategy plans into action. Find out more about Movement Strategy Implementation grants, the criteria, and how to apply here.

Also, the Movement Charter Drafting Committee election is still ongoing. It would be great to increase community participation. If you haven't voted now is the time. Please vote here before October 24. Regards, Zuz (WMF) (talk) 13:55, 20 October 2021 (UTC)

Talk to the Community Tech

Read this message in another language

Hello!

We, the team working on the Community Wishlist Survey, would like to invite you to an online meeting with us. It will begin on 27 October (Wednesday) at 14:30 UTC on Zoom, and will last an hour. Click here to join.

Agenda

• Become a Community Wishlist Survey Ambassador. Help us spread the word about the CWS in your community.
• Update on the disambiguation and the real-time preview wishes
• Questions and answers

Format

The meeting will not be recorded or streamed. Notes without attribution will be taken and published on Meta-Wiki. The presentation (all points in the agenda except for the questions and answers) will be given in English.

We can answer questions asked in English, French, Polish, Spanish, German, and Italian. If you would like to ask questions in advance, add them on the Community Wishlist Survey talk page or send to sgrabarczuk@wikimedia.org.

Natalia Rodriguez (the Community Tech manager) will be hosting this meeting.

Invitation link

• Join online
• Meeting ID: 83847343544
• Dial by your location

We hope to see you! SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 23:00, 22 October 2021 (UTC)

Meet the new Movement Charter Drafting Committee members

The Movement Charter Drafting Committee election and selection processes are complete.

• The election results have been published. 1018 participants voted to elect seven members to the committee: Richard Knipel (Pharos), Anne Clin (Risker), Alice Wiegand (Lyzzy), Michał Buczyński (Aegis Maelstrom), Richard (Nosebagbear), Ravan J Al-Taie (Ravan), Ciell (Ciell).
• The affiliate process has selected six members: Anass Sedrati (Anass Sedrati), Érica Azzellini (EricaAzzellini), Jamie Li-Yun Lin (Li-Yun Lin), Georges Fodouop (Geugeor), Manavpreet Kaur (Manavpreet Kaur), Pepe Flores (Padaguan).

The Wikimedia Foundation has appointed two members: Runa Bhattacharjee (Runab WMF), Jorge Vargas (JVargas (WMF). The committee will convene soon to start its work. The committee can appoint up to three more members to bridge diversity and expertise gaps.

If you are interested in engaging with Movement Charter drafting process, follow the updates on Meta and join the Telegram group.

You can read this announcement in other languages here.

With thanks from the Movement Strategy and Governance team

Zuz (WMF) (talk) 19:50, 1 November 2021 (UTC)