Wikipedia:Simple talk

Simple talk
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Contents

US history/geography categories maintenance task

In Category talk:19th century establishments in South Dakota, I've outlined a problem with category and subcategory names associated with the pre-statehood Dakotas. Are there identified "project people" among the regular contributors here, e.g. American history or geography buffs? I'd rather refer tasks like this one to them, or to solely Anglophone contributors, while I focus on the less-served and larger global sphere aligned with my particular (peculiar) skills set. -- Cheers, Deborahjay (talk) 12:33, 19 November 2018 (UTC)

Why presume it's a problem first and then discussion afterwards? As I pointed out before elsewhere, these categories have existed for years here. We also have categories like Category:19th century establishments in Germany even though Germany as a country didn't exist in the 19th century (at least the exact German borders didn't exist). Nevertheless, then we should have a policy-based discussion about it. Perhaps propose that category for renaming and allow for a general discussion there and see if the people who proposed and created the vast amount of those categories support renaming on that basis. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 08:06, 24 November 2018 (UTC)

@Ricky81682: I won't insist on precise grammar when the resultant rename process would badly impact the pragmatic allocation of editing resources. So let's focus on one concern: the correspondence of each Simple English category with an English WP category to which it can be interwiki-linked in Wikidata. Here the value lies in accessing the additional and likely larger bodies of content via the left-hand sidebar links under "Languages." As each Wikidata item may link only to a single page in the other WP projects, linking a pre-statehood North Dakota or South Dakota to the item for the "Dakota territories" is problematic. Should an editor noticing this be unable to individually complete the indicated changes - or perhaps to explore the possibility of a purpose-made bot to accomplish part of the work (with which I have no experience, just supposing) - would the proper move be to comment on the related category's talk page, and then - on which Simple English editors' forum? -- Deborahjay (talk) 20:07, 24 November 2018 (UTC)

Interface administrators policy

Hi all. I've been working on an interface administrators policy draft (since we do not have one yet) based on the corresponding policy at simple.wikt. Please feel free to suggest improvements (or add to the draft directly), we need some sort of consensus on how to handle this right. Hiàn (talk) 19:57, 24 November 2018 (UTC)

I think we already did in a previous discussion unless I am totally imagining it. It will be handed out the same way we hand out flood. Temporarily and the person who hands it out will be responsible for checking what the editor did to make sure it was ok. Don't need the whole formalized request area like rollback etc. Just like we don't for flood. Just grab a crat and ask them. -DJSasso (talk) 21:29, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

I think you're right (looks like my memory's failing me already). Sorry for wasting your time. Hiàn (talk) 03:50, 7 December 2018 (UTC)

Class editing China-related articles

There is currently a class working on China-related articles. Their teacher is User:Mr Spear. I recently acquainted him with our processes for school projects, so I hope he will follow them the next time he has students work here.

Some of the students have been changing Talk:Main Page. The teacher said he would tell them not to do that when they next meet, which I believe he said would be Monday. In the meantime, could we not escalate warnings for that too far? I'm sure that would be appreciated. --Auntof6 (talk) 13:13, 25 November 2018 (UTC)

Local change to Template:Infobox album

This template was assigning the category Category:Album infoboxes lacking a cover‏‎. That category makes sense for English Wikipedia, because when there is no usable album cover image on Commons (which there often isn't, because album cover art is often copyrighted), they can host local images. We don't host local images, however, so this category would just fill up even though there's nothing we could do about most of the entries.

Therefore, I removed Category:Album infoboxes lacking a cover‏‎ from the template. If anyone strongly objects, we can discuss and possibly restore it (and create the category), but I don't think that category helps us here. --Auntof6 (talk) 05:58, 26 November 2018 (UTC)

Advanced Search

Advanced Search will become a default feature on your wiki on November 28. This new interface allows you to perform specialized searches on the search page, even if you don’t know any search syntax. Advanced Search originates from the German Community’s Technical Wishes project. It's already a default feature on German, Arabic, Farsi and Hungarian Wikipedia. Besides, more than 40.000 users across all wikis have tested the beta version. Feedback is welcome on the central feedback page.

Johanna Strodt (WMDE) (talk) 11:03, 26 November 2018 (UTC)

911 (emergency telephone number)

911 is the number people in the us and Canada dial in case of an emergency. There is also a 999 emergency telephone number used in other countries. I believe it is vitally important to document the number used in each country, since people’s lives may depend on it.

Please see: Talk:9-1-1. Ottawahitech (talk) 13:55, 28 November 2018 (UTC)

Treatment of objectionable talk page content

How does the Simple English WP treat nonsense or offensive content on an otherwise valid article's Talk page, when it's the only posting? As it's over a year old and the last posting from that IP address, I didn't bother to apply the Template:Unsigned. I'm quite sure the content doesn't belong here, just need advice how to proceed. -- Deborahjay (talk) 19:27, 28 November 2018 (UTC)

I usually replace the bad content with {{talk header}}. I've made that change to the page. Vermont (talk) 19:29, 28 November 2018 (UTC)

Getting to simple articles from English

I know this is more an issue for Wik/En, but has anyone noticed that with the new language connection system, Simple English Wikipedia linking has become hard or impossible to find? When I tried to find the Simple English links to Bay City, Michigan and to Lake Huron on the English sites, I could not find them at all. The links used to be alphabetical (which made it easy to see if there was an SE link), but now they are grouped by geography: I couldn't find SE under global, Europe or North America. Subjects that only have SE and EN do have the link to SE easily visible. Can anyone help me understand what's going on? Are they there, but I just don't see them, or whatKdammers (talk) 14:15, 30 November 2018 (UTC)

I started a ticket at phab:T210840. Vermont (talk) 14:31, 30 November 2018 (UTC)

Wierd, I still have the old style interwiki links everywhere. Didn't know there was a new geographical version.-DJSasso (talk) 17:29, 30 November 2018 (UTC)

Mentorship?

I know that there's no formal mentorship or adoption process on this Wikipedia, but is there an informal one? I'm interested in creating articles to improve Simple, but my current articles are too complex. Is there an experienced editor able to help me with this? Thanks. Diadophis (talk) 01:41, 3 December 2018 (UTC)

How to merge and maintain both page histories?

While doing maintenance among Special pages/Uncategorized pages and then following up in Wikidata, I encountered the following:

• Shahmukhī (created 8 June 2017) with a fair amount of content, which I wikified.
• Shahmukhī alphabet (created 4 September 2016) with little content, somewhat mismatched with the above; the EN WP uses this page name.

Neither page has any sources. I could contact the earlier page's creator, who's only been active intermittently on any WP. But were I to perform a manual (?) merge myself, how are the two page histories maintained? -- Deborahjay (talk) 16:25, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

That requires a histmerge, which administrators can do. Vermont (talk) 16:32, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

Great! Reposted to the Admins' noticeboard. -- Deborahjay (talk) 16:55, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

Done. -DJSasso (talk) 21:25, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

New Wikimedia password policy and requirements

Please help translate to your language

The Wikimedia Foundation security team is implementing a new password policy and requirements. You can learn more about the project on MediaWiki.org.

These new requirements will apply to new accounts and privileged accounts. New accounts will be required to create a password with a minimum length of 8 characters. Privileged accounts will be prompted to update their password to one that is at least 10 characters in length.

These changes are planned to be in effect on December 13th. If you think your work or tools will be affected by this change, please let us know on the talk page.

Thank you!

CKoerner (WMF) (talk) 20:03, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

Adopt an editor program

Hello friends! After a few conversations with a other Wikipedians, I'm proposing beginning an "Adopt an Editor" program for Simple English Wikipedia. I'm volunteering to lead this effort to bring more editors to work on this project, even if it isn't their "home wiki." I would like to offer a way that new editors to our project can learn to constructively edit on SEWP and show them the unique ways our project is a bit different from other WP wikis. There will be some small requirements to admin this project which I'm happy to develop:

1. "WP:Adopt an editor" guideline page with space for volunteering to be a mentor and a space to request a mentor
2. Develop a template that can be placed voluntarily on an editor's talk page indicating they are being mentored
3. Develop a template that can be placed voluntarily on an editor's talk or user page indicating they are a SEWP Mentor
4. Develop a tracking category for tracking purposes
5. Experienced SEWP editors willing to volunteer their time to help new editors to our project

If community consensus for this project is attained, I'll begin developing the proposed implements immediately. If consensus is obtained, I want this project to be for the community, by the community... so I will need to receive input from all editors of this project on how to develop this program and make it a success. I suggest an independent, uninvolved sysop determine if consensus is obtained in 7 days. Thank you all! Operator873^talkconnect 04:29, 8 December 2018 (UTC)

We had one at one point, trying to think what the page was for it. Don't think it ever really accomplished much. With only 20-30 regular editors it often just became easier to have people just talk one on one to other editors. But hey if you want to give it a go have at er. -DJSasso (talk) 12:14, 10 December 2018 (UTC)

I believe we deleted the infrastructure for the process. --Auntof6 (talk) 12:58, 10 December 2018 (UTC)

Yeah I was thinking we might have done that. Too much admin effort for little gain. Figured it would be best if people just did it privately amoungst each other on their own talk pages. -DJSasso (talk) 15:35, 10 December 2018 (UTC)

E.g. User talk:Diadophis/Geranium, perhaps in response to the recent appeal above, re:Mentorship. Props to @Macdonald-ross: for stepping up. -- Deborahjay (talk) 12:50, 11 December 2018 (UTC)

Attributing content to another WP

What's the template I needed for this? All guesses failed. Meanwhile I faked a piped link to the relevant content, i.e. URL for current version of the EN WP page I copied to simplify here. See Talk:Ryukyu black-breasted leaf turtle#Content from EN WP. -- Deborahjay (talk) 17:42, 11 December 2018 (UTC)

The best one to use is Template:Translated page. -DJSasso (talk) 18:20, 11 December 2018 (UTC)

Um, @Djsasso: I neglected to specify above that I was only referring to content from the EN WP. Not only am I uncomfortable with the Template:Translated page text stating "...translated from...", I note the following, possibly historical (and abandoned?) options:

• That template populates the Category:Pages translated [sic] from English Wikipedia, just shy of 3.7K pages
• In the Category:Articles using content from the English Wikipedia there are over 12K pages, but its parent category is "translated [sic] pages"
• In Category:Attribution templates I see the intriguing option of Template:Enwp based, which is a "template with category" though I don't know how to find it.

I didn't check dates when these various templates (populating the various categories) were in use, nor do I know the background of using "page" vs. "article." To be clear, my intention is to improve skimpy pages (e.g. Special pages/Short pages) by copy/pasting (including references) and simplifying content from Enwp, and to give attribution. I'd like to support the most informative, consensus-accepted practice and not waste anyone's time (unless a bot can be engaged...?). Thanks for your guidance. -- Deborahjay (talk) 11:14, 12 December 2018 (UTC)'

Moving from complex English to Simple English is translating just like from any other language. That being said. Template:Enwp based is the other popular option, though I have slowly been changing the uses from that one over to the one I mentioned above when I see them and it is easy to do so (ie we already know the diff id's etc) so that it is more standard between all the different languages. I am not as big a fan of the Enwp based one because people often forget to use the whole URL which includes the exact diff they copied over, whereas the other makes it more obvious when that is missing and as I mentioned it is a variant from what any other language would look like. However, all that being said there is no one way to do it, use whichever you like. The one I personally use is just a note in my edit summary without using either template. Legally all we have to do is make a note of its origin when its copied over, how we do it is up to the individual. -DJSasso (talk) 11:42, 12 December 2018 (UTC)

Oh and the category for Template:Enwp based was Category:Articles using content from the English Wikipedia. If you go to any page using the template and hit change and go to the bottom of the page and expand hidden categories you can see them. That being said I thought I had already fixed this category on the template to Category:Pages translated from English Wikipedia. It is fixed now. -DJSasso (talk) 11:56, 12 December 2018 (UTC)

Import Request

Can we get en:Module:ISO 3166/data/IN imported to simple? Mynagappally is throwing an error because its missing. Nunabas (talk) 14:43, 12 December 2018 (UTC)

 Done. -DJSasso (talk) 14:52, 12 December 2018 (UTC)

What would you say

...could (or must) be improved in these articles?

• Qızqala Kurgans
• Nakhchivan Tepe (N.B. almost verbatim from en:Nakhchivan Tepe)

Of note is a massive simplification by an experienced contributor soon reverted by the page creator. With my interest in improving existing pages, I'm still unfamiliar with the banner template messages which would indicate what sort of treatment is needed, particularly if it puts the page in category for that purpose. -- Deborahjay (talk) 19:47, 12 December 2018 (UTC)

First article: (Qizala Kurgans) is nearly incomprehensible, as it does not give any context. Apart from formatting issues, I'd exppect sentences of the form "Q. is a history site located in Azerbaijan. Today it is known mostly for its pottery, which dates from the stone age, around 7.000 to 5.000 years ago. The people who lived there have be called K., and several details about their culture have been found....". In its current form, the article is probably a deletion candidate; as it is difficult to understand and does not give any context. Second article: N. tepe: Apart from makup, mostly reading fluency, and simplification of sentences: " Although the existence of these connections was sometimes demonstrated by single finds, now however these connections are demonstrated by a complex of archaeological materials." - What does this sentence say? - what do we lose by leaving it out? - Also avid first person plural, "We". Compare, for example Hallstatt culture, Arkalochori Axe, Phaistos disc or Linear A. All the articles I cited are factually correct short stub-like articles, sometimes with references. The basic idea is always to get to something that our readers will understand, even if it is shorter than the original. --Eptalon (talk) 20:17, 12 December 2018 (UTC)