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Simple talk
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This is the place to ask any questions you have about the Simple English Wikipedia. Any general discussions or anything of community interest is also appropriate here.

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Contents

ReflinksEdit

Hi, I've recently added mw.loader.load( "https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Zhaofeng_Li/Reflinks.js&action=raw&ctype=text/javascript" ); {en:WP:Refill) to my common.js however when I click on the refill button it loads the article but for EN - Is there way to change this so that when I click the word the default is Simple?,
At present when using this on articles I'm having to change "en" to "simple" in the URL,
Thanks, –Davey2010Talk 16:55, 9 June 2018 (UTC)

No you would have to rewrite it to work here, which may be possible, but not always. User created scripts are always hit and miss here because they may depend on pieces we don't have on this wiki. When I get a chance I can take a look. -DJSasso (talk) 15:24, 11 June 2018 (UTC)
Ah right, I wasn't sure if there was a quick fix so thought I'd ask, Okie dokie no worries I mean I don't have a problem doing it that way but as I said just thought I'd ask, Many thanks as always :), –Davey2010Talk 16:20, 11 June 2018 (UTC)

Update on page issues on mobile webEdit

Update on page issues on mobile web

Please help translate to your language Hi everyone. The Readers web team has recently begun working on exposing issue templates on the mobile website. Currently, details about issues with page content are generally hidden on the mobile website. This leaves readers unaware of the reliability of the pages they are reading. The goal of this project is to improve awareness of particular issues within an article on the mobile web. We will do this by changing the visual styling of page issues.

So far, we have drafted a proposal on the design and implementation of the project. We were also able to run user testing on the proposed designs. The tests so far have positive results. Here is a quick summary of what we learned:

  • The new treatment increases awareness of page issues among participants. This is true particularly when they are in a more evaluative/critical mode.
  • Page issues make sense to readers and they understand how they work
  • Readers care about page issues and consider them important
  • Readers had overwhelmingly positive sentiments towards Wikipedia associated with learning about page issues

Our next step would be to start implementing these changes. We wanted to reach out to you for any concerns, thoughts, and suggestions you might have before beginning development. Please visit the project page where we have more information and mockups of how this may look. Please leave feedback on the talk page.

CKoerner (WMF) (talk) 20:58, 12 June 2018 (UTC)

Template:Uw-encopypaste and QD option A3 (direct copying and pasting from another Wikipedia)Edit

Since the content translation tool went online, we have had new articles created not only by directly copying from enwiki, but also by direct automated translation from other-language Wikipedias. Quick delete option A3 is for articles that have been "copied and pasted from another Wikipedia without simplifying complex text" (italics mine). However, when we leave a message asking an editor not to do that, the canned text in Template:Uw-encopypaste specifies "directly copied and pasted from the main English Wikipedia".

Personally, I'd like to disable to content translator for use here, because it can't produce simple English. In any case, It would be nice to have a way to leave a message saying that direct translation from another language is not allowed. I'd like to see us do one of the following:

  • Change Template:Uw-encopypaste to include mention of direct translations from non-English language Wikipedias (even though the template has "en" right in its name).
  • Add an option to the single issue notices dropdown menu to use when there has been a translations from a non-English Wikipedia.

Thoughts? --Auntof6 (talk) 05:12, 13 June 2018 (UTC)

Oppose That QD is only meant to stop straight copying from en.wiki when the text is complex. Copying from en where the language is already simple (as long as attributed) is perfectly acceptable, and translating from another language because it isn't the identical text (even if not simple) is also perfectly acceptable for the same reason that people writing articles that are unsimple only get tagged not QD'd. The only purpose of the QD reason is to prevent pure copy pastes of complex English Wikipedias. It does not apply to anything coming from anywhere else that isn't a copy paste or for simple English and it should not apply to any of those. I also think it is a bad idea to turn off the translator as the more ways we as a small wiki can get content here the better. -DJSasso (talk) 11:53, 13 June 2018 (UTC)
Something I think often gets forgotten here is that our Rfd does double duty as prod does on en.wiki. If it doesn't meet the speedy just put it on Rfd. Even if no one votes on it at the end of 7 days it gets deleted. So it is really simple for bad machine translations to be deleted through Rfd. We need less QDing here of content not more. Deciding on whether a translation is "good" or not is too much of a judgement/opinion for QD. Judgements and opinions have to go to Rfd. And I would point out per WP:BEFORE if an article can be fixed, it shouldn't be nominated anyway which is what a bad translation would be if the topic were notable. The appropriate action would be tag {{complex}}. -DJSasso (talk) 12:08, 13 June 2018 (UTC)

Buildings in the City of LondonEdit

I remember we removed all pages on individual buildings in the City because they were being put up by a doubtful source of some kind. They were changed to redirects. An IP has started to remove the redirects, and I have asked him to stop while we discuss it. However, can anyone remind me of the details? Am I right in thinking the source was a spambot, perhaps set up to puff the architects? Macdonald-ross (talk) 08:12, 15 June 2018 (UTC)

It was not a spambot; it was long-term abuse. They mess with redirects. Thoughts on rangeblocking Special:Contribs/79.69.0.0/16? They've used other IP's (which I didn't write down) but this is one of the larger ones. Vermont (talk) 10:08, 15 June 2018 (UTC)
On seeing his full record, I was astonished that he was not blocked before. None of his behaviour was constructive, so I have blocked him for six months. I would not mind if another view is taken, but IMO we do not want this IP on our wiki. Macdonald-ross (talk) 16:12, 15 June 2018 (UTC)

Store closureEdit

Hi, If on an article it has what shops a retail park has and when those shops opened ... and then those shops close - Should the sentence "In 2018, X closed down" be added or should the sentence about the shop opening be removed completely ?, Thanks, –Davey2010Talk 15:48, 15 June 2018 (UTC)

Remove it completely. This shows the down side of trying to put up info which is almost bound to change. Macdonald-ross (talk) 16:15, 15 June 2018 (UTC)
Okie dokie will do, Thanks Macdonald-ross, –Davey2010Talk 16:50, 15 June 2018 (UTC)
@Davey2010: I would say it depends on the format of the article: use your own judgment. There could be value in having the history. --Auntof6 (talk) 18:51, 15 June 2018 (UTC)
Hi Auntof6, The format looks like this (Maplin and Carpet have closed), I feel adding a note on the closure would be better but I wasn't sure if that could confuse readers or even if it was needed, Thanks, –Davey2010Talk 19:33, 15 June 2018 (UTC)
It's not encyclopedic to have evanescent information unless it is of notable significance. Also, in practice, there's no way we could ever keep up with changing information in hundreds of pages. We can't even keep the football pages updated properly, with all their ever-changing lists of players. But the actual existence of a retail park is long-term, as are large malls. They are good content for pages on towns, along with other features of interest. In Europe, at any rate, virtually all malls and retail parks are within towns or cities. Many are small compared to those in North America or Dubai! Macdonald-ross (talk) 08:57, 17 June 2018 (UTC)

JapanEdit

Can an administrator protect Japan from new users. Seems like a sock-farm. //nepaxt 02:50, 18 June 2018 (UTC)

There has been only one edit in the last 13 days; you reverted that one (and didn't leave a warning for the user, by the way). The users who made the bad edits earlier this month have been blocked and/or locked. I don't think this requires protecting the article at this time. By the way, requests for admin action should be made at WP:AN instead of here. --Auntof6 (talk) 03:23, 18 June 2018 (UTC)
Thanks. And, sorry about the AN confusion. For some reason, Twinkle on Simple doesn't leave a warning on talk pages. //nepaxt 03:25, 18 June 2018 (UTC)
Not automatically, if that's what you mean. I usually click the user's talk page link after reverting, and Twinkle remembers the article name when I click on the warn option. --Auntof6 (talk) 03:28, 18 June 2018 (UTC)

Userpage Spam...Edit

on here //nepaxt 03:02, 18 June 2018 (UTC)

Deleted. We don't usually delete talk pages, but no actual talk had ever been on this page. By the way, as above, ST is not the place for this kind of request. --Auntof6 (talk) 03:25, 18 June 2018 (UTC)

Usage of A4 QD tagsEdit

Recently, I've seen articles marked for quick deletion and some even QD'd that did claim notability, but were QD'd as not-notable. For some of those articles QD'd, or marked for QD, I would have (and with some, have) !voted keep on an RfD. I'm attempting to get a idea of community consensus on this: Is A4 strictly for articles that do not claim notability, or can it be used for articles that are likely not notable? I tend to agree with the former, and believe that articles where notable is questionable or borderline belong at RfD rather than QD. Vermont (talk) 23:47, 18 June 2018 (UTC)

The QD option is for when there is no claim of notability. People might disagree about what constitutes a claim. What was in the articles that looked like a claim? --Auntof6 (talk) 23:59, 18 June 2018 (UTC)
I see a claim of notability as any subject that could possibly be notable, like a television show, whereas a subject not claiming notability would be something like an athlete who has only played in a semi-professional or lower league where the sports notability guideline sets out that semi-professional athletes are not notable, and thus there is no claim. Vermont (talk) 00:36, 19 June 2018 (UTC)
The example that used to get talked about on en all the time was something along the the lines of A4 is for pages that say "Joe is a cool dude." where as a claim would be "Joe is a cool dude who was on a television show". The fact they invoked something like being on a show would make a non-editor go whoa he must have been notable was enough to pass QD, even if he was only an extra. The idea being it was only ever meant for people talking about their buddies. The problem on simple is that some admins started using it as a judgement of notability so gets used on all kinds of people that it was never intended for. Even people who played on semi-pro teams would likely not be valid for A4. The idea being as long as the writer states why they have put them on the wiki then it isn't QDable. Even if the reason they put isn't a good one. If its a bad one it goes to Rfd for deletion. -DJSasso (talk) 01:00, 19 June 2018 (UTC)
I believe the intent would be QD for no notability. If I created an article about myself in the main space called "Operator873" and supplied no proof of my notability, that article should be QD'd. However, the Alternate Vice President's Assistant For Information Processing of Adhesive Notes at Company A who was recently included in a news story on Forbes for their contributions to the Information Processing of Adhesive Notes field has extremely weak notability and may not meet WP:ANYBIO... but should be deleted by consensus at RfD instead of QD'd. I'm not 100% sure if my analogy makes any sense, so please ask for clarification if needed. TLDR: No claim: QD. Weak claim: RfD. Operator873CONNECT 00:17, 19 June 2018 (UTC)
(edit conflict) It is only for when there is no claim made. The claim doesn't even have to be a true claim or actually make them notable. It just has to be a claim that an average person would likely believe could make a person notable. It is a very strict QD that unfortunately does sometimes get over used by some admin. Deciding whether something is actually notable or not has to go to Rfd. No proof is required to avoid this QD, only a claim. If you see some that made a claim and were deleted, undelete them. I often find I have to do that despite my constant reminders you can't delete like that. -DJSasso (talk) 00:18, 19 June 2018 (UTC)````
I want to clarify a misunderstanding here: "no notability (of the subject)" is not equivalent to "no claim of notability". A subject that is notable will remain notable even if an article does not state any such claim (of course, this article would qualify for A4). This also works in reverse, and is the true intent of QD A4 as it is written: as long as an article makes a claim to notability, even if you do not agree with the notability of the subject itself, the article can only be brought to RFD. Chenzw  Talk  01:34, 19 June 2018 (UTC)

There's a new proposal to close down Simple English WikipediaEdit

See m:Proposals for closing projects/Closure of Simple English Wikipedia 2. --Auntof6 (talk) 09:02, 19 June 2018 (UTC)

Also Talk:Main Page#This project is not reaching a target audience. Propose closure and integration with En Wiki. --Auntof6 (talk) 09:03, 19 June 2018 (UTC)

July In case anyone's interested, there has been quite a bit of discussion so far. --Auntof6 (talk) 02:57, 22 June 2018 (UTC)

Commented already on this one. I'm disgusted that it's even being considered for closure. The English Wikipedia is hardly even close to accessible for ESOL and EFL speakers, so losing this project will fly in the face of what we stand for - making the sum of all human knowledge available to everyone. Shouldn't we centralnotice this proposal and have it as a banner, warning of the potential closure? DaneGeld (talk) 18:48, 22 June 2018 (UTC)
At the moment, it looks about 2:1 in favor of keeping the project open (about 45:25)...--Eptalon (talk) 21:08, 22 June 2018 (UTC)
  • I have just left a note to the LANGCOM on Meta, hopefully it won't get removed, but who knows. It's still looking nominally in our favour, but I have a feeling there are a few single purpose accounts voting there who have no idea what the hell we do. Anyway, have a read of this and let me know what you think. Or you can read it at meta, on the proposal - whatever takes your fancy! DaneGeld (talk) 18:01, 23 June 2018 (UTC)

This isn't the first go around at this, and it won't be the last even if it goes in our favour. This happens relatively regularly, someone who doesn't edit here thinks they know better so they try to close it. No point getting too worked up about it, just go have your say there on either side of the issue. -DJSasso (talk) 01:13, 24 June 2018 (UTC)

Well my note at meta seems to have done the intended job, I've attracted the attention of Doc James, who's board liason to LANGCOM. I will defend this project to death, Djsasso. Until ENWP's articles are written in a much easier way, we have a place and no way am I letting it go down! DaneGeld (talk) 08:29, 24 June 2018 (UTC)
When I just saw this title, I checked to see that it wasn't an old post from April 1 that i had missed. Simple English Wikipedia is really useful for my EFL students. In many cases, the English version is unusable for them. Kdammers (talk) 10:32, 24 June 2018 (UTC)
@Kdammers: Then please give that input at the discussion on Meta-Wiki: that would be very helpful, because several people are arguing that EFL/ESL students don't know about Simple or don't use it. To address the questions in your edit summary: the content of every Wikipedia is independent. However, they all live on WikiMedia servers, so WikiMedia has the right to say who can be there. --Auntof6 (talk) 11:00, 24 June 2018 (UTC)
Just saw the L O M G E R vandal at Meta had been here too. Ironic isn't it, that one of the reasons EN want to shut us down is because we attract vandals, and then the proposal to shut our project down also attracts a vandal! Some days, you just cannot win! I would LOL, but I'm not sure how to feel. DaneGeld (talk) 21:38, 24 June 2018 (UTC)
Should probably add I unfortunately support the proposal.... I enjoy editing here don't get me wrong but yeah I've said my peace over there, I'd prefer change over closure tho. –Davey2010Talk 22:21, 24 June 2018 (UTC)
Thanks for your vote of confidence. Maybe we can start change from the inside then. You first! >:( DaneGeld (talk) 22:30, 24 June 2018 (UTC)

Putting stub templates in articles; stub typesEdit

I'd like to remind everyone that when you put a stub template in an article, please leave two blank lines before it. That is so that the output from the template visually stands out from any text that's right above it. You can see the difference by looking at the following versions of an article:

If there is more than one stub type that applies to an article, you can use the {{multistub}} template. This allows specifying between two and six stub types at a time.

I believe the current thinking on where to place stub templates is at the very end of an article, even after the categories. However, that used to be different, so you sometimes see them before the categories, and AWB sometimes moves them higher.

Finally, a reminder that new stub types/templates/categories need to be approved before being used. One of the ways this wiki keeps things simple is by limiting the number of different stub types. We don't need the stub categories to mirror the main content categories. It's also not seen as useful to have a stub type if no one is specifically working on the articles in it.

If you have any questions, feel free to ask. --Auntof6 (talk) 22:42, 23 June 2018 (UTC)

Yeah they are supposed to be below the categories like en does with them, AWB has a bug and moves them because I believe it doesn't recognize our templates as being stubs and templates that are not stubs go ahead of categories, I keep meaning to ask the devs to fix it but I never seem to get around to it. -DJSasso (talk) 01:16, 24 June 2018 (UTC)

Content Translation will expand Machine Translation support for Simple EnglishEdit

Based on several editor requests, we plan to update the configuration of Content Translation to expand the Machine Translation support to include Simple English. Users translating content from and into Simple English will be able to use an automatic translation as an initial version for them to improve (and the tool will encourage them to do so).

This feature has been available for many languages, including some partial support for Simple English using Apertium, but it requires further adjustments to support those languages provided by Yandex. We plan to enable this extended support in the following days.

We don’t expect this change to have a big impact in article creation or disrupt the workflow of reviewers on Simple English Wikipedia. Content Translation is more often used to create content by translating from English into other languages, rather than the other way around. In the last three years, about 425 articles have been created in Simple English Wikipedia using Content Translation, and more than half of them have been created from English Wikipedia, where Machine Translation will not be available in any case.

In case you want to take a closer look to the content created with the tool, an edit tag allows to filter recent changes to review articles created with Content Translation. We are very interested in supporting contributors in the best possible way. If there is any issue related to this, please let us know in the project talk page and we’ll adjust the configuration and consider further suggestions for the upcoming version of the tool.

Thanks!

--Pginer-WMF (talk) 08:51, 25 June 2018 (UTC) - on behalf of the Wikimedia Foundation’s Language team.

This will be really helpful! -- Ricky81682 (talk) 10:23, 25 June 2018 (UTC)

Module:Module sandboxEdit

We have acquired a module sandbox, which I guess could be useful. However, it appears to have interlanguage !inks to regular article-type sandboxes. Can someone see where those are coming from and fix it? Thanks. --Auntof6 (talk) 18:55, 25 June 2018 (UTC)

Really sorry: I marked this as patrolled before seeing this. Milo, Talk, Contribs 18:57, 25 June 2018 (UTC)
Probably not a big deal. However, as part of patrolling, please consider whether a new page is even needed. The editor who created this also created a disambiguation sandbox, which I deleted because the regular sandbox can be used for that. --Auntof6 (talk) 19:00, 25 June 2018 (UTC)
I thought that it would be useful, since the normal sandbox can't be used for the same purposes as this one? Milo, Talk, Contribs 19:10, 25 June 2018 (UTC)
Yes, this one probably is: when I wrote that I was thinking of some of the others that the user created. --Auntof6 (talk) 19:19, 25 June 2018 (UTC)

ISBN errorsEdit

Hello all. This is just a small notice. You may or may not be aware that magic links (like using the word ISBN followed by a number of digits) will probably be removed from MediaWiki as a feature sometime in the near future. If you are interested, you can read the discussion at mw:Requests for comment/Future of magic links and phab:T145604. The solution is to use the {{ISBN}} template to preserve the links, i.e. outwardly there is no difference in how the link appears and where it points to. If you fancy helping, there is a considerable collection at Category:Pages using ISBN magic links. Just be aware of ones that have red letters after the ISBN number, because that indicates the number is wrong. Those errors need to more careful checking e.g. you can search at WorldCat.org. Any help is welcome. Cheers. Green Giant (talk) 17:44, 26 June 2018 (UTC)

Thanks, Green Giant. If I understand correctly, different versions of a given book (for example, different editions, or hardcover vs. paperback) have different ISBNs. That means that the page numbers could be different in different versions. For that reason, if we find an incorrect ISBN that has a page number associated with it, extra care might need to be taken when correcting the ISBN to make sure we don't end up with incorrect page numbers. Possible actions in these cases:
  • Look at the actual book to verify the ISBN and page number.
  • Leave the bad ISBN as it is.
  • Remove the page number.
  • Check the enwiki article to see if they have a good ISBN with a page number.
However, I am not an expert in this, so input is welcome from anyone who knows more about it. --Auntof6 (talk) 20:37, 26 June 2018 (UTC)
Yeah I can put something together to take care of the ones that don't have errors easy enough. -DJSasso (talk) 18:12, 27 June 2018 (UTC)
Cool. I'm sure you can do it more easily than I can. --Auntof6 (talk) 20:47, 27 June 2018 (UTC)
You probably could too. I ran a small run earlier, I will do some more now. Any errors my changes make will end up in Category:Pages with ISBN errors. There are already some there from before me. Anything in there will need to be looked at manually as mentioned above. -DJSasso (talk) 23:20, 27 June 2018 (UTC)

Tidy to RemexHtmlEdit

The Parsing team will be replacing Tidy with RemexHtml at this wiki on 5 July 2018.

Some pages at this wiki use outdated HTML. This change may change the appearance of those pages. Special:LintErrors has a complete list of affected pages.

Read this e-mail message for more information. Read the instructions at mw:Help:Extension:Linter. You can ask questions at mw:Talk:Parsing/Replacing Tidy. Thank you for helping fix these problems.

m:User:Elitre (WMF) 14:38, 2 July 2018 (UTC)

MalumelEdit

Could someone take a look at the mythology section of this article? I think it's ungrammatical, needs simplifying, and maybe should even be removed (this article is about the village, not the temple). The same text is was added to the enwiki article a while back. However, not being very familiar with Hindu mythology, I thought I'd ask for a second opinion. Thanks. --Auntof6 (talk) 04:52, 4 July 2018 (UTC)

I have had a look, and it so badly written to be incompressible, recommend deleting it.--Peterdownunder (talk) 21:27, 6 July 2018 (UTC)
I have removed the whole section. If anyone feels it should be included, I would expect it to be at least intelligible, not to say easy to understand for our audience.--Eptalon (talk) 21:06, 8 July 2018 (UTC)

Thanks, both of you. --Auntof6 (talk) 21:38, 8 July 2018 (UTC)

Help needed with Template:InfoboxEdit

This template appears to add Category:Infobox templates to all templates that use it. I'm looking for a way to suppress that, because some of the templates that use it are in a more specific infobox template category. However, since this template now invokes a module, I don't know how to read it to see if there's a way to suppress the category. Can someone who can read Lua take a look and see if there's a way or if we can create a way? Thanks.

For an example of what I'm talking about, look at Template:Infobox ballet: it's in both Category:Infobox templates and Category:Entertainment infobox templates. It shouldn't need to be in both. --Auntof6 (talk) 06:30, 7 July 2018 (UTC)

To be honest I think the more specific ones are the ones I would get rid of in this case since there are so few infobox templates. For some categories being in both are acceptable as well. I think this is possibly one of those situations. Either way I am not a huge fan of changing our infobox templates from being the same as en (unless its a complex language issue), because when some people did it in the past what it did was cause the templates to never be updated because it became too much work so people didn't do it. So our templates have become a huge mess, which is why I have been updating them over the last several months to try to fix them all cause man they are a mess. -DJSasso (talk) 13:20, 8 July 2018 (UTC)

Created the Wikiproject RussiaEdit

I just created the Wikiproject Russia. Join if you'd like! :)

--Alicezeppelin (talk) 10:08, 8 July 2018 (UTC)

Global preferences are availableEdit

Global preferences are now available, you can set them by visiting your new global preferences page. Visit mediawiki.org for information on how to use them and leave feedback. -- Keegan (WMF) (talk)

19:19, 10 July 2018 (UTC)

Just conveying messageEdit

Hi, can someone explain to user:AThousand why their article was quick deleted under A4, they seemed to ask on zhwiki reference desk.here, Google translate if need be, I don't bother to translate. I think this is better venue than a reference desk where none of us are editors here. FYI if necessary.--Cohaf (talk) 05:00, 14 July 2018 (UTC)

title is 关简易英文版一速删方针疑问 if needed.--Cohaf (talk) 05:01, 14 July 2018 (UTC)
@Macdonald-ross: You deleted: care to do the honors? --Auntof6 (talk) 05:32, 14 July 2018 (UTC)
For context, the zhwiki version is now tagged with {{notability}} after the query and will be AFD or RFD per the alphabet soup here in 30 days if not improved.--Cohaf (talk) 07:18, 14 July 2018 (UTC)
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