Wikipedia:Simple talk/Archive 110

GoblinBot4

Hello, I am just curious about why GoblinBot4 is not editing again. --Reception123/Receptie123 (talk) 16:24, 31 March 2014 (UTC)

As the level of vandalism is kind of high recently we could use the bot's help. --Reception123/Receptie123 (talk) 18:48, 31 March 2014 (UTC)

Big Lakes Weekend (Second Try)

Is anyone interested in participating at this Big Weekend? I hope this time (the second time) we gather up more users for a fun weekend like this! --Reception123/Receptie123 (talk) 06:40, 12 April 2014 (UTC)

Very long & complex pages

Regular editors will remember we have problems with exceptionally long and technically complex articles. They are brought over from En wiki and left with minimal simplifications. Advice is more or less ignored, and the same editor brings over more and more articles...
The sheer length is almost as much a problem as the complexity, IMO. Have a look at Suicide, for example. It's not so technical as the advanced chemistry articles we had a couple of years ago, but it is really formidable from the readers' point of view. 65 thousand KB! Well, I raise this because it reminds me of our previous experience. If we do not act promptly at the start, very soon we have a major problem on our hands. Medicine in general is beginning to look like one of our trouble areas. Macdonald-ross (talk) 18:19, 12 April 2014 (UTC)

I am not scared of long articles, if they are well made. The big question I see though: Take the average reader of this project, and ask yourself to what extent such readers will read the whole article? - If we find parts that can be left out (or moved to annex articles) we should probably consider doing that. Before we do though, we should talk to the people involved in creating such articles; they spent a lot of time on the article, given the little manpower we have, it would be a bad idea to waste the decent parts of the article. --Eptalon (talk) 15:38, 13 April 2014 (UTC)

Those are good points. I think it is the combination of great length with low readability which is the most worrying feature. Using only continuous prose sections, I got these results: Flesch RES of 49, 34 and 41 for three passages (not chosen for their being especially difficult). I would say the article is not properly simplified and, also, the sections dealing with treatment are violations of our "we are not a how-to-do-it guide".
The history of this page is interesting. For some years it was about 6,000 bytes long. Then, on 19th March 2013 over 66,000 bytes were brought over by a user. For the past year the user has been simplifying the article, so there is no question he has tried to comply with our general approach. This is not a case of someone who is deliberately flouting the guidelines of our wiki. Yet the fact of the matter is that it is not anywhere near a simple article. Macdonald-ross (talk) 18:28, 13 April 2014 (UTC)

Sorry to say so, but I do not believe in the magic of "readability scores" such as Flesch-Kincaid, when it comes to scientific content. I think in the case of this article, the 'solution' would probably be to talk to the editors involved; they did a great job at simpilfying the content; but, as you point out, in some sections, the form of presentation is not optimal; we should identify the problem sections, and try to improve them, as a group. --Eptalon (talk) 19:31, 13 April 2014 (UTC)

I really was not looking to get pissed off early in the morning...but I am, par for the course on Wikipedia. Simple English is just that, explaining concepts with a reduced vocabulary. It not Simple Simon, operating on the assumption that the readers are all in kindergarten and have a reduced intellect. There are technical manuals on highly complex subjects written in Simple English.

"If we do not act promptly at the start, very soon we have a major problem on our hands." What I think the major problem is with Wikipedia, this one and the regular English and probably every other language, is a select group of a few people have parked their rear-ends and for reasons known but to themselves (probably little egos) enjoy dictating terms and conditions as if they have more clout. When you look at what they actually contribute however it is little more than blah, blah, blah BLAH.

If you were so concerned you have spoken to me directly, to do otherwise is rude.

"He investigated the influence of heredity and environment on social advancement. The terms had been contrasted previously, for example by Shakespeare (in The Tempest: 4.1).[2]"[1] You wrote that Macdonald-ross, it seems "complexity" as a "major problem" only applies to others not yourself. Anyway moot point, I'm done Simple English Wikipedia gets read by like 3 people a month, it's a waste of time. Plus I plan on creating a sock puppet account on the regular English Wikipedia so I can play with Heilman and his minions.

I bid a fond adieu.7mike5000 (talk) 13:31, 14 April 2014 (UTC)

(talk) 14:49 22 April 2014 (UTC)

"Anyway moot point, I'm done Simple English Wikipedia gets read by like 3 people a month, it's a waste of time."

I MUST disagree with you here, sir/madam - having just stumbled upon this simple section of wikipedia, I don't think you are you truly speaking from an ignorant perspective. It's incredible how simplicity can allow someone to bridge the gaps between no knowledge and technical knowledge. Do not give up on this.

Could use some help patrolling new pages

An IP editor has recently created a lot of new pages (mostly about things related to India and Pakistan), and I'm having trouble keeping up with them. Most need simplifying and new or different categories. I've deleted several because they weren't simplified enough from enwiki. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks. --Auntof6 (talk) 18:52, 12 April 2014 (UTC)

Is that by any chance the Pakistani POV pusher - some person creating lots of stuff related to India, Pakistan and related areas. I wouldn't say it's a vandal, but the edits aren't good either. I remember that some admins (Chenzw, me and others) blocked that user on sight. -Barras talk 19:31, 12 April 2014 (UTC)

I don't know. How would I tell if it's the same person? Most of the new pages I've seen aren't bad from a POV perspective, they just need simplifying. Of course, I've been starting with the articles I feel more comfortable evaluating, such as places, languages, animals, etc., not political stuff. --Auntof6 (talk) 19:33, 12 April 2014 (UTC)

Looking at it, I'm rather certain it is the Pakistani POV pusher. See here for some info. His problematic fields were mainly politically related changes. Most of the time he's been spotted, the pages have just been deleted and reverted, it's rather hard to ensure all pages are valid etc. If I recall correctly, there have been problems that he was unwilling to listen etc. -Barras talk 19:41, 12 April 2014 (UTC)

Well, more articles are being created and help in whatever form would be appreciated. I don't feel qualified to evaluate the political articles, but if you feel they should be deleted I'd have no problem with that. I'm not going to have much time today to do anything with it. --Auntof6 (talk) 17:26, 13 April 2014 (UTC)

OK, I finished the other thing I had to do today, and took care of this. I did a mass delete and blocked the user for 72 hours. This IP address was very similar to a previous one used by the suspected POV-pusher. I wouldn't be surprised if we see him/her back after that, though. --Auntof6 (talk) 23:27, 13 April 2014 (UTC)

Out of date pages

Nearly every page I've seen about British cars or car companies and Formula One seasons and teams is out of date. I've updated a couple of car company article, but don't have he time or knowledge to update all the Formula One pages. Can they all be deleted, or at least marked as out of date?

Examples:

• 2014 Formula One season - the season started in March 2014.
• 2013 Formula One season - the season finished in November 2013.
• Renault F1 - this hasn't been an F1 team since 2010.

We don't delete pages because of being out of date. If you don't have time or knowledge to update a page yourself, you can put the {{update}} tag on it, with something on the talk page to explain what needs to be updated.

Along these lines, the template {{update after}} can be useful when writing about a future event. It makes the article show up as needing update after a certain point in time. It can be used for things like future movie releases and future sports events. After the time specified, an editor can update the article to say that the event happened, was cancelled, was postponed, or whatever. It's preferable to write articles using language that doesn't go out of date to begin with, but sometimes that's not possible.

By the way, please sign your talk page posts with four tildes (~~~~). Thanks. --Auntof6 (talk) 05:42, 15 April 2014 (UTC)

I get it - thanks! MilliBucks (talk) 21:15, 15 April 2014 (UTC)

Great. Just be sure to put something on the article's talk page to explain what needs to be updated. Most people won't see it if you just put it in the edit summary. --Auntof6 (talk) 21:49, 15 April 2014 (UTC)

Could someone look at template {{Infobox MLB}}?

This template is displaying stray characters under "Current uniform" when no uniform information is given. For an example, see Atlanta Braves. Thanks. --Auntof6 (talk) 19:58, 19 April 2014 (UTC)

I am guessing its probably a mandatory field. I don't have the time at the moment to try and figure out how to change that to non-mandatory for our use at the moment but if someone else doesn't get it I will try to look tonight. -DJSasso (talk) 12:17, 21 April 2014 (UTC)

 Done -DJSasso (talk) 17:30, 22 April 2014 (UTC)

Thanks! --Auntof6 (talk) 18:19, 22 April 2014 (UTC)

WP:DYK

Is Wikipedia:Did you know still active? It seems that it has not been updated since March. If anyone knows the status of it, I would love to help; otherwise, I would be happy to help bring it back. MJ94 (talk) 17:20, 21 April 2014 (UTC)

It does still exist, people just need to nominate hooks. -DJSasso (talk) 17:21, 21 April 2014 (UTC)

It was an active group activity until an editor (no longer on the wiki) put up dozens of proposals. At some point other people got disinterested. We now limit the number of proposals any one person can put up, but have not yet got people into the swing of it. It's a good way to get a page noticed on our front page. Macdonald-ross (talk) 10:23, 22 April 2014 (UTC)

Requests for deletion

We currently have quite a few RfDs at Wikipedia:Requests for deletion that don't have many responses yet. If you're a registered editor, take a look and see if you have an opinion on any of them. If you do, add a response. In either case, it would be helpful if as many registered editors as possible check this page regularly to give their opinions on new RfDs as they come up. (It's OK if you don't have an opinion on some or all of them -- only respond if you do have an opinion.) If you're new to this process, read the information at the top of the page to learn how the process works. Thanks! --Auntof6 (talk) 03:21, 22 April 2014 (UTC)

Bug in Twinkle

I just left a message at Wikipedia:Twinkle/Development about a bug I've noticed lately. The two users listed as being the developers for Simple haven't edited in a while. Does anyone know who is supporting this nowadays? --Auntof6 (talk) 10:42, 23 April 2014 (UTC)

Not really anyone. It has always just been a bit of a use at your own risk thing since most of its code doesn't/didn't work on simple, although some has been fixed by people over the years. But I am sure if anyone knows how to fix it they will now that you posted here. -DJSasso (talk) 12:34, 23 April 2014 (UTC)

Redlink discussion

A discussion about redlinks is underway at Wikipedia talk:Red link.S. Rich (talk) 15:20, 24 April 2014 (UTC)

Using/Linking words that can mean more than one thing

I've noticed quite a few articles get created recently with links to disambiguation pages (also called "dab pages"). We usually don't want links to dab pages. Many of these links have been to words that can mean either a nationality or a language (or sometimes even other things), for example English or French. If you're using a word like that, please check to be sure that it links to the specific page you want and not to a dab page.

Special:DisambiguationPages lists the dab pages that we have. If you look at that, you will get some idea of how many English language words can mean more than one thing. This is one of the things that make it difficult to write simple English: a word can be a simple word, but have more than one meaning. (Sometimes a word can even be considered simple for one of its meanings but not for others, but that's another issue!)

Anyway, my reason for writing this is to ask everyone to keep this in mind when working on articles. It's easy to link a term whose meaning seems obvious when you read the article, but the link might not go to the page it should. Feel free to let me know if you have any questions about this. --Auntof6 (talk) 11:01, 26 April 2014 (UTC)

Using Vandal Warner

I'm having trouble using the gadget Vandal Warner. The project page states that the gadget "adds some links to the toolbox", but I do not see any links or a "toolbox". However, this page states that Vandal Warner may possibly be for administrators' use only. Does anyone use or have experience with this gadget? --ȸ (talk) 07:35, 27 April 2014 (UTC)

I've used it in the past. It puts the links in the "Tools" section at the left of the page. That's the same box as the "What links here" link. I think it's less useful than Twinkle, so I stopped using Vandal Warner. Just to clarify, were you editing a user talk page when looking for the added links? The doc says the links only appear when you're editing a user talk page (not just looking at one, but editing it). --Auntof6 (talk) 08:00, 27 April 2014 (UTC)

Yes, I was editing a user talk page. I think I'll just use Twinkle instead. Thanks for the help! --ȸ (talk) 08:04, 27 April 2014 (UTC)

Shared user IPs and vandalism flags

While I was working on Snake I had a look at its history. Between September 2013 and January 2014 it had vandalism from a user at the shared IP address 198.163.212.17. Our editors had reverted his vandalism 17 times over this period. So far, so good. However, when I looked at the talk page of the IP address I see a strange pattern of warnings. Some editors (as we advise) move up the ladder of warnings step by step, while others are routinely putting in a bottom-level warning. Others are giving no warning at all. If we have a system, then I think we should all use it. And, with a shared-user site, it is helpful to mention the vandalised page name in the warning. Macdonald-ross (talk) 08:18, 1 May 2014 (UTC)

I don't think this is just on shared IPs, and I also wish people would always mention article names in warnings. I have reminded users that we have the graduated warnings for a reason and they should use them. I have also declined to block users who didn't get graduated warnings. On the other hand, I have blocked users before warning them if they were vandalizing too fast to keep up with.

I think one issue here is that we have some young editors whose view of what's acceptable as far as language isn't as mature as it could be. There's nothing wrong with that, but it does result in those users being more likely to see certain things as profanity, to revert those things as vandalism when they aren't vandalism, and to skip warning levels because the offense seems greater to them than it actually is. (I remember one such user who reverted a change as profanity because it used the word "poo"!) --Auntof6 (talk) 09:06, 1 May 2014 (UTC)

There is no set system because of the needed flexibility, it is up to admins to use their experience and discretion to determine if enough warnings were giving when they go to block. Some offenses are bad enough that they need to be blocked after only one. Others aren't so bad and its the gross total that rise to the level that they should be blocked. Not all situations fit one set of actions. I generally do 3 steps. But there are definitely accounts that are here only for trouble and know they are doing bad and they get blocked after only 1 warning. Every time an admin blocks they do have to go and look at the edits involved and not just trust the person reporting. Though that goes for all things, I saw someone once put an article up for speedy delete because it was just vandalism, but really what had happened was that the page had its contents completely replaced with vandalism so it needed a revert not a delete. Another thing to consider with shared IPs is that after a short period of time it could be another user so you have to make the call on if two different users making bad edits warrants a block. There are lots of considerations. -DJSasso (talk) 12:12, 1 May 2014 (UTC)

Pages that have been changed since you last visited them are shown in bold

This is not what I see on my Dell XPS-10. No entry in my watchlist is bold, regardless of whether I've looked at it or not. Am I doing something wrong? Jim.henderson (talk) 19:29, 4 May 2014 (UTC)

Are you talking about when you're looking at your watchlist? Mine show up in bold. Could it have something to do with the font you use? --Auntof6 (talk) 19:38, 4 May 2014 (UTC)

Nothing has ever shown as bold on my watchlist. I thought it was just me, but had never bothered to mention it. Kennedy ^(talk) 13:22, 5 May 2014 (UTC)

Works fine for me. It could be the skin you are using perhaps. Or I would bet that its because you are getting a mobile version of the site since you are on a tablet which might not do it. -DJSasso (talk) 16:40, 5 May 2014 (UTC)

Enable the gadget from your personal settings page; tick the checkbox next to Display pages on your watchlist that have changed since your last visit in bold. under "Browsing gadgets" section. Also if the gadget is not enabled by default (we could make it a default gadget, if we want), we should probably consider updating MediaWiki:Wlheader-showupdated. --Glaisher [talk] 17:20, 5 May 2014 (UTC)

It's odd if he's seeing that message without the gadget being enabled. --Auntof6 (talk) 17:37, 5 May 2014 (UTC)

Ah. The "Gadget".  Done. Splendid. Yes, it ought to be default for new users. Jim.henderson (talk) 15:16, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

@Djsasso: Do you mind if it is set back to default again? Asking you as you added the code to Common.css --Glaisher [talk] 04:27, 7 May 2014 (UTC)

Whatever the community wants is good with me. I believe that edit was just to bring us inline with en.wiki because alot of our code didn't work when people imported stuff here because our Common.css didn't match. -DJSasso (talk) 11:43, 7 May 2014 (UTC)

As no one has objected, I made it to be loaded by default now. Gadget also deleted. --Glaisher [talk] 05:03, 8 May 2014 (UTC)

No one needs free knowledge in Esperanto

There is a current discussion on German Wikipedia on a decision of Asaf Bartov, Head of WMF Grants and Global South Partnerships, Wikimedia Foundation, who rejected a request for funding a proposal from wikipedians from eowiki one year ago with the explanation the existence, cultivation, and growth of the Esperanto Wikipedia does not advance our educational mission. No one needs free knowledge in Esperanto. On meta there has also started a discussion about that decision. --Holder (talk) 10:49, 5 May 2014 (UTC)

I quite agree with the decision made, and that piece of his statement you've quoted in the header here. Why are you bringing this here? In an effort to canvass? I note that you disagree with Asaf Bartov therefore it seems obvious thats what you're trying to do - bring in other editors of small language wikis which you believe to be of a similar view to yours. Kennedy ^(talk) 12:09, 5 May 2014 (UTC)

You know, I wouldn't care about this decision if WMF just stated that this proposal won't be funded. But the reasons were "No one needs free knowledge in Esperanto". Has it occurred to you that someday someone from WMF could state "No one needs free knowledge in Simple English"??? --Holder (talk) 12:49, 5 May 2014 (UTC)

Except that we are a real language in which there are native speakers (ie children) who need the information in Simple English, which is sort of their point. And we have people trying to shut us down every year or two so its probably not a threat we are all that worried about at this point because if they ever wanted to they could have by now. Any funding we received in the end would also help the main English Wikipedia be simpler so we aren't really in the same boat. -DJSasso (talk) 12:58, 5 May 2014 (UTC)

 (change conflict) You're trying to deflect the argument against your "language" to us in hope that we will be roused to come to the defence of a similarly small wiki. Except we're not similar. Billions of people speak English, and all had to learn somewhere; this project aims to help with that, as DJSasso says above. Whereas Esperanto has ranging from 100,000 to 2 million speakers depending on which piece of info you choose to read into. It also appears to be declining in use - funnily enough the claims that its growing appears to be piggy-backing on the basis that the use of English is growing, which is bordering on ridiculous. No one needs Esperanto. Period. Kennedy ^(talk) 13:16, 5 May 2014 (UTC)

Hey guys, there is no need for attacking me. I'm no Esperanto activist. I don't speak Esperanto and I'm not active on eowiki. I'm an activist for languages. As in this case an employee of Wikimedia Foundation decided which languages "advance our educational mission" and which don't I thought that would be interesting for all language versions of Wikipedias. I think such a fundamental question which languages shall be supported by WMF shouldn't be decided by just one employee of WMF, that should be discussed by the international community. So, if you think that this was a right decision, please go on meta and write your statement there. Thanks and best regards. Holder (talk) 17:48, 5 May 2014 (UTC)

Except that not a single person on the Grant Advisory Committee voted to support funding so it wasn't just one person. -DJSasso (talk) 11:57, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

On a slightly tongue-in-cheek (but entirely relatable) note, Esperanto reminds me of this Kennedy ^(talk) 13:20, 5 May 2014 (UTC)

I would also like to point out that Holder has also supported the proposal to shut down Simple Wiki. --Reception123/Receptie123 (talk) 17:54, 5 May 2014 (UTC)

That's right. That was five years ago, I'm sorry. I've changed my mind, I wouldn't support such a proposal anymore. --Holder (talk) 18:04, 5 May 2014 (UTC)

What about Ido? Its also a constructed language, and while there may be 1000-5000 native esperanto speakers, there are 100-200 Ido speakers...--Eptalon (talk) 20:59, 5 May 2014 (UTC)

http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarafa_Baghajati can you please view this page...

can you please review this page.. ?

I have a problem in showing references properly. and I need to know if you think the editing is good so i can keep adding adding information .

thank you — Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.27.23.60 (talk • contribs)

I don't see any problem with the references, except that they are many but that isn't necessary a problem . --Reception123/Receptie123 (talk) 05:03, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

This page has been revised and edited by Eptalon. --Reception123/Receptie123 (talk) 18:07, 10 May 2014 (UTC)

Towns in Wales

Hi. Can someone please take a look at this page and suggest amendments. The Location map doesn't appear either, and I would appreciate a helping hand. :-) Llywelyn2000 (talk) 07:44, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

I fixed the location map for you. One of the templates you used had the wrong file name for the map. -DJSasso (talk) 11:55, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

Universal Language Selector will be enabled by default again on this wiki by 21 February 2014

On January 21 2014 the MediaWiki extension Universal Language Selector (ULS) was disabled on this wiki. A new preference was added for logged-in users to turn on ULS. This was done to prevent slow loading of pages due to ULS webfonts, a behaviour that had been observed by the Wikimedia Technical Operations team on some wikis.

We are now ready to enable ULS again. The temporary preference to enable ULS will be removed. A new checkbox has been added to the Language Panel to enable/disable font delivery. This will be unchecked by default for this wiki, but can be selected at any time by the users to enable webfonts. This is an interim solution while we improve the feature of webfonts delivery.

You can read the announcement and the development plan for more information. Apologies for writing this message only in English. Thank you. --Runa 08:30, 19 February 2014‎ (UTC)

Changes to the default site typography coming soon

This week, the typography on Wikimedia sites will be updated for all readers and editors who use the default "Vector" skin. This change will involve new serif fonts for some headings, small tweaks to body content fonts, text size, text color, and spacing between elements. The schedule is:

• April 1st: non-Wikipedia projects will see this change live
• April 3rd: Wikipedias will see this change live

This change is very similar to the "Typography Update" Beta Feature that has been available on Wikimedia projects since November 2013. After several rounds of testing and with feedback from the community, this Beta Feature will be disabled and successful aspects enabled in the default site appearance. Users who are logged in may still choose to use another skin, or alter their personal CSS, if they prefer a different appearance. Local common CSS styles will also apply as normal, for issues with local styles and scripts that impact all users.

For more information:

• Summary of changes and FAQ
• Discussion page for feedback or questions
• Post on blog.wikimedia.org

-- Steven Walling (Product Manager) on behalf of the Wikimedia Foundation's User Experience Design team 20:04, 31 March 2014 (UTC)

Attention math/science experts: input wanted on Vector Laplacian

This article is at least complex, and I'm not sure it makes sense. Could some of our math people take a look? Thanks. --Auntof6 (talk) 23:25, 15 May 2014 (UTC)

Well might you ask. We do have some reasonably simplified pages on vectors, such as vector space and vector calculus. I don't think the Vector Laplacian sentence can stand as it is for long. Either it can be explained and simplified, or it should go. Macdonald-ross (talk) 08:16, 16 May 2014 (UTC)

I tried, but it is not my field of study, so the articles I created may not be accurate...--Eptalon (talk) 19:59, 17 May 2014 (UTC)

We should at least give the definition of the operator... not everyone uses Cartesian coordinates.--Jasper Deng (talk) 20:56, 17 May 2014 (UTC)

As in Laplace operator? - Note that the article is a copy of enwp, and still needs simplification. --Eptalon (talk) 08:47, 18 May 2014 (UTC)

VisualEditor global newsletter—May 2014

This is a one-time mailing to projects that may need this information. Future newsletters will be available as opt-in only. To receive future newsletters (about one per month), please add your page to the subscribers' list at m:VisualEditor/Newsletter. You're welcome to translate to your language.

Since the last newsletter, the VisualEditor team has mostly worked on the new citation tool, improving performance, reducing technical debt, and other infrastructure needs.

Did you know?

The cite menu offers quick access to up to five citation templates.  If your wiki has enabled the "⧼visualeditor-toolbar-cite-label⧽" menu, press "⧼visualeditor-toolbar-cite-label⧽" and select the appropriate template from the menu.

Existing citations that use these templates can be edited either using the "⧼visualeditor-toolbar-cite-label⧽" tool or by selecting the reference and choosing the "⧼visualeditor-dialogbutton-reference-tooltip⧽" item in the "Insert" menu.

Read the user guide for more information.

The biggest change in the last few weeks is the new citation template menu, labeled "⧼visualeditor-toolbar-cite-label⧽". The new citation menu offers a locally configurable list of citation templates on the main toolbar. It adds or opens references using the simplified template dialog that was deployed last month. This tool is in addition to the "⧼visualeditor-dialogbutton-reference-tooltip⧽" item in the "Insert" menu, and it is not displayed unless it has been configured for that wiki. To enable this tool on your wiki, see the instructions at VisualEditor/Citation tool.

Eventually, the VisualEditor team plans to add autofill features for these citations. When this long-awaited feature is created, you could add an ISBN, URL, DOI or other identifier to the citation tool, and VisualEditor would automatically fill in as much information for that source as possible. The concept drawings can be seen at mw:VisualEditor/Design/Reference Dialog, and your ideas about making referencing quick and easy are still wanted.

• There is a new Beta Feature for setting content language and direction.  This allows editors who have opted in to use the "Language" tool in the "Insert" menu to add HTML span tags that label text with the language and as being left-to-right (LTR) or right-to-left (RTL), like this:  <span lang="en" dir="ltr">English</span>. This tool is most useful for pages whose text combines multiple languages with different directions, common on Right-to-Left wikis.
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• The developers merged in many minor fixes and improvements to MediaWiki interface integration (e.g., edit notices), and made VisualEditor handle Education Program pages better.
• At the request of the community, VisualEditor has been deployed to Commons as an opt-in. It is currently available by default for 161 Wikipedia language editions and by opt-in through Beta Features at all others, as well as on several non-Wikipedia sites.

Looking ahead:  The toolbar from the PageTriage extension will no longer be visible inside VisualEditor. More buttons and icons will be accessible from the keyboard.  The "Keyboard shortcuts" link will be moved out of the "Page options" menu, into the "Help" menu. Support for upright image sizes (preferred for accessibility) and inline images is being developed. You will be able to see the Table of Contents while editing. Looking further out, the developers are also working on support for viewing and editing hidden HTML comments. VisualEditor will be available to all users on mobile devices and tablet computers. It will be possible to upload images to Commons from inside VisualEditor.

If you have questions or suggestions for future improvements, or if you encounter problems, please let everyone know by posting a note at mw:VisualEditor/Feedback or by joining the office hours on Thursday, 19 June 2014 at 10:00 UTC. If you'd like to get this newsletter on your own page (about once a month), please subscribe at w:en:Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Newsletter for English Wikipedia only or at Meta for any project. Thank you! --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 17:39, 22 May 2014 (UTC)

Media Viewer

Greetings, my apologies for writing in English.

I wanted to let you know that Media Viewer will be released to this wiki in the coming weeks. Media Viewer allows readers of Wikimedia projects to have an enhanced view of files without having to visit the file page, but with more detail than a thumbnail. You can try Media Viewer out now by turning it on in your Beta Features. If you do not enjoy Media Viewer or if it interferes with your work after it is turned on you will be able to disable Media Viewer as well in your preferences. I invite you to share what you think about Media Viewer and how it can be made better in the future.

Thank you for your time. - Keegan (WMF) 21:29, 23 May 2014 (UTC)

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Wiki Loves Pride

You are invited to participate in Wiki Loves Pride 2014, a global campaign to create and improve LGBT-related content throughout the month of June, culminating with a multinational edit-a-thon on June 21. There are many ways to help, including translating the Wiki Loves Pride page at Meta (or Wikipedia), hosting an LGBT edit-a-thon, uploading media files related to LGBT culture and history, or supporting an LGBT initiative at any Wikimedia project. Of course, creating LGBT content here at Simple Wikipedia would be most welcome! Content could be displayed at the main WLP page at English Wikipedia, which could cause some new and established Wikipedians to wander over to Simple Wikipedia. :) Thank you for your consideration, and please let me know if you have any questions. --Another Believer (talk) 21:44, 23 May 2014 (UTC)

Archiving

I archived a couple of pages, that look like we have to manually archive. I started looking here at Simple Talk & at Administrators' Notice Board both appear to be set up for bot archival. I know mizabot was taken over by another bot, and no changes were needed for the new bot to take over, but it does not appear that it is working. Does anyone know anything about this or should we clean up those 2 areas also, since they are getting cluttered? Enfcer (talk) 21:38, 23 May 2014 (UTC)

I'll run my bot over them tomorrow. -DJSasso (talk) 22:29, 25 May 2014 (UTC)

Ok, Thanks. -- Enfcer (talk) 03:38, 26 May 2014 (UTC)

Alright I ran my bot and archived everyones pages that usually get it done by Miszabot. Since Miszabot seems to be flaking out on us alot this past year I am going to set up my bot to run every day when I get home tonight. So if you want your page to automatically archive Enfcer just add the Miszabot code to your page and my bot will catch it. -DJSasso (talk) 13:40, 26 May 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for doing this, Djsasso! --Auntof6 (talk) 15:36, 26 May 2014 (UTC)

Ok, Thanks, I will probably set it up here in the next couple of days. -- Enfcer (talk) 21:13, 26 May 2014 (UTC)

20-20 Vision - Wales

20-20 Wales - a Challenge

We have listed 20 ESSENTIAL articles which we believe will complement your Wikipedia. You can take part by creating articles on Welsh places, people and some of the things which make our hearts beat: Wales is a small nation, but we have a large heart!

It would be lovely to have you on board. :-)

Diolch yn fawr - many thanks! We look forward to seeing you! Llywelyn2000 (talk) 10:29, 24 May 2014 (UTC)

Many thanks for joining the party! I'm very happy to inform you that over 80 articles were written in the last 24 hours!!! Join in the fun - while there's still room (see the table)! Llywelyn2000 (talk) 17:03, 25 May 2014 (UTC)

• We now have Coracle.--Peterdownunder (talk) 08:08, 26 May 2014 (UTC)
• And Wales Coast Path.--Peterdownunder (talk) 07:08, 28 May 2014 (UTC)
• Snowdonia is better too --Peterdownunder (talk) 22:25, 28 May 2014 (UTC)
• And now Pentre Ifan ---Peterdownunder (talk) 11:22, 29 May 2014 (UTC)
• And the island of 20,000 saints, Bardsey Island - --Peterdownunder (talk) 08:24, 1 June 2014 (UTC)

Boy bands

Can someone have a look at a recent wave of changes to articles about bands? IP [2] has been adding the category Boy bands to any band made up of males. My understanding is that a boy band was a type of band based on the way it performed rather than just the sex of the members. Lots of singing and dancing, and very little playing of instruments. So One Direction would be a boy band but Guns N' Roses would not. Before I revert all the changes, could some one else give me a second opinion?--Peterdownunder (talk) 23:22, 7 June 2014 (UTC)

I reckon our page boy band has it about right. In addition to the points you suggest, they also have to be young: teens or early twenties, say. Guns n' Roses are certainly not! (even when younger they were never described as a boy band) I suggest you put up a defn. on the category page, and remove the cat from any pages which do not qualify. Oh, I see En wiki has a great page on it: [3] gives examples of those groups which qualify... Macdonald-ross (talk) 07:20, 8 June 2014 (UTC)

I reverted one of these last night. My edit summary ended up being pretty much that "Band made of Males ≠ Boy Band". 'Nsync is a boy band, Creed for example is not. CRRaysHead90 | ^#RaysUp 21:37, 11 June 2014 (UTC)

Twinkle

It looks like we are having the same problems here as on enwiki with the Twinkle tab. --AmaryllisGardener ^talk 21:05, 13 June 2014 (UTC)

Should be fixed now. Please clear your browser's cache. I also noticed it but was too lazy to look into it until today. --Glaisher [talk] 17:16, 15 June 2014 (UTC)

BLP no source and no source tags

Excuse me, I don't really agree with the idea BLP no source notices are used for people born in the last 115 years that are deceased. Examples include Patricia Highsmith, Cass Elliot, Linda Gary, Joanna Moore and Anna Lee. One user, however, appears to think otherwise (thinks that people born in last 115 years who don't have any sources on their articles need BLP no source notices). The truth is, regular no source notices apply because the person is no longer living. We must follow policy. Now sometimes, I put "no sources" due to some sources used on English Wikipedia not being recognized by the spam filters on Simple English Wikipedia. You have to be really careful when you add biographies here. Angela Maureen (talk) 02:59, 18 June 2014 (UTC)

Although I think one or more editors have been a bit overzealous about it lately, that actually is in accordance with policy. The part about 115 years is at en:WP:BDP. It says, in part, "Anyone born within the past 115 years is covered by this policy unless a reliable source has confirmed their death." On this Wiki, we have been lax about requiring sources, but really, all articles should have them. You could address this issue by including a source for each person's death date (or at least for the fact that they are dead, if you can't find a source for the actual date). Just be sure it's a reliable source. --Auntof6 (talk) 03:46, 18 June 2014 (UTC)

Using only UploadWizard for uploads

Hello! It was noted that on this wiki upload is not fully functional for users, who will experience a very difficult and/or illegal uploading. In fact, the licenses/copyright tags dropdown is empty, making it hard or impossible to comply with copyright requirements during upload itself.

Presumably, you don't have interest nor energies to have hundreds templates with the now required HTML, even less a local EDP. I propose to have

• local "Upload file" restricted to the "Administrators" group (for emergency uploads) and
• the sidebar point to commons:Special:UploadWizard,

so that you can avoid local maintenance and all users can have a functioning, easy upload interface in their own language. All registered users can upload on Commons and existing files will not be affected.

All this will get done around 2014-07-03.

1. If you disagree with the proposal, just remove your wiki from the list. Remember also to create MediaWiki:Licenses locally with any content (see a simple example), or uploads will be soon disabled anyway by MediaWiki itself (starting in version 1.24wmf11).
2. To make the UploadWizard even better, please tell your experience and ideas on commons:Commons:Upload Wizard feedback.

Nemo 13:09, 19 June 2014 (UTC)

That would be because we don't allow uploading of pictures here so no need to do things like fill in the licenses section. That being said your proposal does make sense as it would help users upload to commons instead. Although we do use local uploading for audio versions of articles, but no one has made an audio version of an article in a few years. -DJSasso (talk) 13:14, 19 June 2014 (UTC)

92.14.70.85

IP 92.14.70.85 has been making a lot of complex articles. They should probably be checked. Cheers. Del_♉sion23 (talk) 11:34, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

LT-POV pusher. I mass deleted the pages and did a block. --Glaisher [talk] 17:03, 3 June 2014 (UTC)

They appear to be editing again as of 19 July. Del_♉sion23 (talk) 18:05, 23 June 2014 (UTC)

Media Viewer is now live on this wiki

Media Viewer lets you see images in larger size

Greetings,

The Wikimedia Foundation's Multimedia team is happy to announce that Media Viewer was just released on this site today.

Media Viewer displays images in larger size when you click on their thumbnails, to provide a better viewing experience. Users can now view images faster and more clearly, without having to jump to separate pages — and its user interface is more intuitive, offering easy access to full-resolution images and information, with links to the file repository for editing. The tool has been tested extensively across all Wikimedia wikis over the past six months as a Beta Feature and has been released to the largest Wikipedias, all language Wikisources, and the English Wikivoyage already.

If you do not like this feature, you can easily turn it off by clicking on "Disable Media Viewer" at the bottom of the screen, pulling up the information panel (or in your your preferences) whether you have an account or not. Learn more in this Media Viewer Help page.

Please let us know if you have any questions or comments about Media Viewer. You are invited to share your feedback in this discussion on MediaWiki.org in any language, to help improve this feature. You are also welcome to take this quick survey in English, en français, o español.

We hope you enjoy Media Viewer. Many thanks to all the community members who helped make it possible. - Fabrice Florin (WMF) (talk) 21:54, 19 June 2014 (UTC)

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List of 1000 basic words

Hello!

Does someone know where does this list come from? How were those words selected for that list?

Thanks! --Racso (talk) 03:18, 25 June 2014 (UTC)

I believe its a combination of coming from WP:BE850 and WP:BE1500. Essentially that is an in house created list so to speak, whereas the other two are from Ogden. -DJSasso (talk) 12:04, 25 June 2014 (UTC)

Color table format change

I begun changing the format of the color comparison charts. with about 82 of them and 50 completed this will be a very slow process. It might take up to 2 week or 4 to complete the the change. In the meantime please do not revert it.

Advantages to the new format:

• sortable, which means you can have the colors the order you want.
• clean and organized, sources in one column hex codes in another, not all over the place.
• HSL codes, you can have it in a rainbow order (H), gray to color order(S), or dark to light order(L). 8:53PM, 24 June 2014 (EDT) --Toran107 (talk) 00:53, 25 June 2014 (UTC)

I NEED HELP!!!

After a 3rd evening switching the color format from the bad table to a new user friendly color table, I realized the only ones left are the long ones. It would take an hour, 2, or 3 to complete 1 of the long ones. I only have Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday to do this from 4pm to 9pm, meaning that 6 of the long ones would be completed per week, with 32 of them, it would take 6 weeks (rounded up) to covert every single color page to the new format. I cant do all of this alone without spending 2 months (rounded up) myself. Anyone else come and help covert some of it, I did 50 of them. 9:17pm, 30 June 2014 (EDT) --Toran107 (talk) 01:17, 1 July 2014 (UTC)

Suggested change to Twinkle warning

For the warning on copying and pasting from English Wikipedia, could we add some text about being sure to include attribution? Maybe something like this at the end of the existing text:

In addition, be sure to include attribution on the article's talk page.

I'm not sure who the arbiter of this is, so I'm asking here. Thanks. --Auntof6 (talk) 05:43, 28 June 2014 (UTC)

 Done (diff) --Glaisher (talk) 11:43, 28 June 2014 (UTC)

Thanks, Glaisher! --Auntof6 (talk) 01:17, 29 June 2014 (UTC)

Add images to articles, the simple way.

Hi all,

the last two days I have been adding images to Wikipedia. So far images were added to 400 articles. I am using a little project that makes locating articles and images very easy. See the project page. 8 wikipedias (nl, da, de, pl, pt, fr, zh, simple) have added images to 4000 articles in the last month, and 10.000 images were added to wikidata. I have started with soccer players, but will eventually cover more topics as we progress. The first goal is to add images to pages that have no images. Later on we can add second images to articles with a single image. We can probably improve 5.000-10.000 articles on simple.wiki that have no image at the moment. All edits are done by hand. No existing images are changed in any way. All images are available on Commons under a free licence. This can go alot faster with your help. Come and join, and if you have any questions, let me know on my talkpage. One done, 5000 to go.

All the best, Taketa (talk) 07:01, 2 July 2014 (UTC)

Template sandbox pages: proposal for cleanup

We have a lot of unused template sandbox pages. I don't think we need to keep them around when they aren't actively being used for testing. I wonder if we can come to a consensus that they can be deleted if they meet certain conditions. I'll throw these out to start with:

• Either they haven't been changed in a certain amount of time (maybe a year?), or they haven't been changed to reflect a significant change that was made to the base template.
• Nothing meaningful links to them. Some things I think are not meaningful are the base template (because any template using the {{Documentation}} template links to the sandbox whether or not it exists), and lists of templates on user pages.
• Either they are the same as the base template, or they appear to have been created by clicking the "create" or "mirror" links on the base template without any further changes being made. (See note below.)

Reasons for this proposal:

• We have had users create sandbox templates with no plans to use them, just to have them there. I think some such users were trying to eliminate red links to the sandboxes that exist when the {{Documentation}} template is used.
• A template sandbox isn't very useful if it gets out of synch with the base template.
• The unused template sandboxes clog Special:UnusedTemplates.

Note on the create and mirror functions:

• The "create" function creates a template sandbox that doesn't do anything. It has only two things in it: a commented section with a note saying where the experimental code should go, and the {{Documentation}} template inside <noinclude> tags.
• The "mirror" function creates a template sandbox that is the same as the base template, but without the template documentation (if any) being included.

An example of one I would get rid of is {{Template other/sandbox}}. This is an example of a template that appears to have been created with the "mirror" function, and then had no further changes.

Comments? --Auntof6 (talk) 23:29, 2 July 2014 (UTC)

Watchlist: no button to mark all pages as visited

Some time in the last week or so, something changed so that the button on my watchlist page to mark all pages as visited doesn't display. Well, actually, it briefly displays when the page loads, but then it disappears. Has anyone else noticed this? Does anyone know if we've had a recent software update that could have done this? I don't think I changed any options. --Auntof6 (talk) 07:09, 6 July 2014 (UTC)

What skin are you using? For me the button shows up as usual (using monobook). -Barras talk 11:03, 6 July 2014 (UTC)

There is no current discussion that I can find on english at the Village Pump technical regarding this issue or any updates. I have the button just fine and I use the Modern skin. Fylbecatulous talk 14:36, 6 July 2014 (UTC)

I use Monobook. --Auntof6 (talk) 16:25, 6 July 2014 (UTC)

I tried switching to Vector; same thing. Switched back; same thing. It does it on both my PC and my tablet. It doesn't do it on other projects (Commons, English Wikipedia), just here. --Auntof6 (talk) 09:42, 7 July 2014 (UTC)

Have you added any gadgets or custom java recently? Perhaps there is a conflict. Seems to be localized to you at the moment. -DJSasso (talk) 15:04, 7 July 2014 (UTC)

This is happening for me as well. Debouch (talk) 16:15, 7 July 2014 (UTC)

User:SarahStierch is User:Missvain - help! (I'm Sarah :) )

Hi everyone! I'm User:SarahStierch, and on English Wikipedia and other pedia's I changed my name back to my original Wikipedia name - Missvain. I screwed up (I think?) and I just logged into Simple under Missvain. How do we fix that? If possible? If not, that's OK, I can live with a low edit count and just move my userpage information over....but I'm not a sockpuppet...I just want to be Missvain, not my real name, anymore (even though it's history is OK, and ya'll can still call me Sarah :) ).... so what's the best way to deal with this? Thank you! Missvain (talk) 05:19, 10 July 2014 (UTC)

Log in as Sarah and go to WP:CHU requesting a take over of Missvain and then log in as Missvain confirming the request. Missvain will then be renamed to something like "Missvain (usurped)" and then SarahStierch can be renamed to Missvain. However, you will so lose the edits which you've now done with Missvain as those can't be merged, which probably isn't much of a problem. Regards, -Barras talk 08:11, 10 July 2014 (UTC)

Please take care

Can one please take care that the article of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 is not being vandalized? Ophedi (talk) 21:50, 17 July 2014 (UTC)

I have looked at the history of the article and it has not yet been vandalised. However seeing as it is in the headlines of most newspapers and news programs it is going to get alot of attention. But I am one of many editos here who are keeping an eye on it so if it is vandalised it will be quickly reverted.--Mr Wiki Pro (talk) 20:13, 18 July 2014 (UTC)

One cannot speculate in articles in this manner. Wikipedia is an objective encyclopedia and not a crystal ball. Especially on subjects like in this particular case, one should be very keen on what is said and whether objective resources are used. When I'm concerned, case is closet now. Ophedi (talk) 21:51, 18 July 2014 (UTC)

Personal settings

I recently changed my settings to include a few provisional ("beta") features. I think the way to implement such setting changes needs to be made more transparent. There is a button to revert to default but no button to implement changes. I just guessed and hit the enter key, which resulted in the changes being saved (according to a pop-up). How about a "save changes" button next to or under or over the revert button? (Myabe there already is one, but I sure couldn't find it.) Kdammers (talk) 03:50, 19 July 2014 (UTC)

I see a "Save" button to the left of the link that says "Restore all default settings (in all sections)". Is that anything close to what you're talking about? --Auntof6 (talk) 04:55, 19 July 2014 (UTC)

Where? How far left? Is it in the column on the left some-where?Kdammers (talk) 05:47, 19 July 2014 (UTC)

It's not in the far left column (the column that includes the interwiki links and has the Wikipedia logo at the top). It's right in line under where the names of the features and text about them are. I'm using the Monobook skin. If you're using a different skin, it might appear different. If you need me to, I can post a screenshot to Commons and give you a link to it. --Auntof6 (talk) 06:22, 19 July 2014 (UTC)

I didn't see any-thing right in line under the names of the features. Please send me a screenshot. Thanks. Kdammers (talk) 06:47, 19 July 2014 (UTC)

Here it is. If you click on it, you can see it in a bigger size. It shows the very bottom part of the display on the Beta preferences screen here on Simple. --Auntof6 (talk) 06:59, 19 July 2014 (UTC)

Thank you. I don't see that button on my screen. I am using Mozilla on MS 7,in Korea. Kdammers (talk) 09:33, 19 July 2014 (UTC)

I guess it's just a local or personal problem. So, if no one else has it, it's no big deal, since I can just hit "Enter" to save changes. Kdammers (talk) 09:35, 19 July 2014 (UTC)

User:Kdammers, are you sure that you're the only person having this problem? Is it still happening? Does it happen to you at other projects? What language do you have set under "Internationalisation" in your User profile for Special:Preferences? If you want, I can file a bug report about this. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 17:09, 19 July 2014 (UTC)

I don't know any other current editors, so I don't know if I'm the only one who had this problem. I am on a different computer with , I believe, the same settings (a crazy mix of Korean and English for languages,but my Wiki pages seem to come up entirely in English). Here, the button is quite visible. If I get to it, I'll check on the other computer.Kdammers (talk) 05:07, 21 July 2014 (UTC)

Kdammers, I'm glad that one computer is working, but if it's still a problem on the other one, then please let me know your web browser, operating system, and anything else that you think might be useful. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 17:37, 24 July 2014 (UTC)

Transport categories

A while back we had a discussion about the fact that some transport-related category names used the word "transport" and some used "transportation". I have just gotten finished standardizing them: they now all use "transport" (at least all the ones I could find). This is simpler and in line with other Wikimedia projects. Please use this standard when creating new categories. Thanks. --Auntof6 (talk) 01:49, 20 July 2014 (UTC)

Boy bands?

An IP user has added boy band categories to a number of music group articles (see here). I'm not sure it applies to all the groups where it was added, but I'm not clear when a group is considered a boy band. Could someone take a look at the user's changes and see what you think? Thanks. --Auntof6 (talk) 03:22, 25 July 2014 (UTC)

We've already been round this once recently. 'Boy bands' does not mean bands with only male members. It is specifically: band of young males delivering music and lyrics aimed at a female pre-teen or "tweeny" age-group. The lyrics have a characteristically saccharine style. Definitely not rock groups or older men. The En wiki article says they are mostly vocal groups. Type species: The Monkees or The Osmonds. Macdonald-ross (talk) 06:21, 25 July 2014 (UTC)

Thanks, Mac, and thanks for taking the category back off of some of them. I figured it was something along those lines. I definitely don't think of Queen as a boy band! --Auntof6 (talk) 07:04, 25 July 2014 (UTC)

Pack animals?

Hello,

I just wrote the article Pack (canine), but I see several problems, that I am not able to resolve:

• The German article (which talks about the behaviour of mammals forming 'packs') also has an image of a group of lions, hunting together. Last I checked, the lion was classified as cat-like, and not dog-like.
• The article lacks references
• English is not my mother tongue; so I am not the ideal candidate to describe flocking behaviour

I would be gateful if the community could take a look....--Eptalon (talk) 08:39, 18 July 2014 (UTC)

OK, I'll take a look. Yes, cats are not dogs! There are a large number of mammal species which live socially in large or small groups: Baboons, elephants, wildebeest, deer... It's almost easier to list the exceptions! Most are treated on their own pages. We have more general pages:

• Herd
• Collective animal behaviour

I'll write to you again after I've thought about it. Macdonald-ross (talk) 08:54, 18 July 2014 (UTC)

It's fine now: didn't need much work. Macdonald-ross (talk) 17:49, 28 July 2014 (UTC)

TV duplicates?

Sony Pictures Entertainment, Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, RCA/Columbia Pictures Home Video, Columbia Pictures Home Entertainment and Columbia TriStar Home Entertainment all appear to be about the same general topic and should be merged.. Del_♉sion23 (talk) 21:50, 29 July 2014 (UTC)

As does Fox Video and 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment. Key Video, Playhouse Video and CBS/Fox Video. MGM/CBS Home Video, MGM/UA Home Video and MGM Home Entertainment Del_♉sion23 (talk) 22:01, 29 July 2014 (UTC)

Yes, they should be merged. A couple may have merge requests on them already. Rus793 (talk) 03:07, 30 July 2014 (UTC)

How can you say they're about the same topic? They're all about entertainment companies, but they are/were separate companies. Why shouldn't they have separate articles? --Auntof6 (talk) 06:28, 30 July 2014 (UTC)

Ah, that's where you are both right and wrong at the same time. A relatively few gigantic holding companies spawn tiers of sub-companies which exploit markets every which way. There is certainly a sense in which these pages could be merged providing articles listed the sub-companies involved. Whether we do this or not depends on what editors think is most suitable in a particular case. We might have both synoptic articles and articles for individual companies. For example, it must be right to have, on the one hand, an article on the Murdoch media empire, and also several articles on those elements which were sufficiently notable in themselves. I don't think articles on a sub-company should be allowed unless the page tells us why it is significant. Many of the tiny stubs do not address the issue of notability. Macdonald-ross (talk) 06:56, 30 July 2014 (UTC)

In this case the history section of en:Sony Pictures Entertainment gives some idea of how all these iterations of this particular media conglomerate fit together. Also, Plunkett's Entertainment & Media Industry Almanac 2009 gives more information on the brands (and potentially the names of stubs yet to come). From a reader's standpoint, which would be better? A collection of small stubs linked together or articles showing the history of one entity? Either choice would still involve simplifying and sourcing. Given the burst of stubs these came with, some being QDd for A3, at least two for A6, I'm not convinced these aren't intended to be confusing. If we want to keep them as a collection of stubs, then keep only those which can show notability. Rus793 (talk) 12:00, 30 July 2014 (UTC)

Updates related to VisualEditor

Please help translate this message in your language. Thanks :)

Hi, everybody. This is a reminder that we invite you to discuss VisualEditor's recent development and plans ahead during the next office hours with James Forrester (Product Manager):

• Thursday, August 14, 9:00 UTC;
• Thursday, September 18, 16:00 UTC.

If you are not able to attend but have a question for James, you can leave your question at mediawiki.org or on my talk page by the day before, and I will try to get a response. We plan to continue these monthly sessions as long as there is community interest, and to announce them through the VisualEditor global newsletter as well (please subscribe your talk page there to get the latest news about the software).

Most of the VisualEditor team will be at Wikimania in London in August! You'll be able to meet the developers during the Hackaton or at the following sessions:

• VisualEditor — helping users edit more easily, Saturday, August 9;
• VisualEditor — engineering against the odds, Sunday, August 10.

WMF community liaisons will share a booth with community advocates at the Community Village and look forward to talking to you there. Thanks for your attention! --User:Elitre (WMF) 16:02, 31 July 2014 (UTC)

VisualEditor global newsletter—July and August 2014

The VisualEditor team is currently working mostly to fix bugs, improve performance, reduce technical debt, and other infrastructure needs. You can find on Mediawiki.org weekly updates detailing recent work.

Dialog boxes in VisualEditor have been re-designed to use action words instead of icons. This has increased the number of items that need to be translated. The user guide is also being updated.

The biggest visible change since the last newsletter was to the dialog boxes. The design for each dialog box and window was simplified. The most commonly needed buttons are now at the top. Based on user feedback, the buttons are now labeled with simple words (like "Cancel" or "Done") instead of potentially confusing icons (like "<" or "X"). Many of the buttons to edit links, images, and other items now also show the linked page, image name, or other useful information when you click on them.

• Hidden HTML comments (notes visible to editors, but not to readers) can now be read, edited, inserted, and removed. A small icon (a white exclamation mark on a dot) marks the location of each comments. You can click on the icon to see the comment.
• You can now drag and drop text and templates as well as images. A new placement line makes it much easier to see where you are dropping the item. Images can no longer be dropped into the middle of paragraphs.
• All references and footnotes (<ref> tags) are now made through the "⧼visualeditor-toolbar-cite-label⧽" menu, including the "⧼visualeditor-dialogbutton-reference-tooltip⧽" (manual formatting) footnotes and the ability to re-use an existing citation, both of which were previously accessible only through the "Insert" menu. The "⧼visualeditor-dialogbutton-referencelist-tooltip⧽" is still added via the "Insert" menu.
• When you add an image or other media file, you are now prompted to add an image caption immediately. You can also replace an image whilst keeping the original caption and other settings.
• All tablet users visiting the mobile web version of Wikipedias will be able to opt-in to a version of VisualEditor from 14 August. You can test the new tool by choosing the beta version of the mobile view in the Settings menu.
• The link tool has a new "Open" button that will open a linked page in another tab so you can make sure a link is the right one.
• The "Cancel" button in the toolbar has been removed based on user testing. To cancel any edit, you can leave the page by clicking the Read tab, the back button in your browser, or closing the browser window without saving your changes.

Looking ahead

The team posts details about planned work on the VisualEditor roadmap. The VisualEditor team plans to add auto-fill features for citations soon. Your ideas about making referencing quick and easy are still wanted. Support for upright image sizes is being developed. The designers are also working on support for adding rows and columns to tables. Work to support Internet Explorer is ongoing.

Feedback opportunities

The Editing team will be making two presentations this weekend at Wikimania in London. The first is with product manager James Forrester and developer Trevor Parscal on Saturday at 16:30. The second is with developers Roan Kattouw and Trevor Parscal on Sunday at 12:30. There is a VisualEditor Translation Sprint going on during Wikimania; whether you're in London or not, any contributions are welcome!

Please share your questions, suggestions, or problems by posting a note at the VisualEditor feedback page or by joining the office hours discussion on Thursday, 14 August 2014 at 09:00 UTC (daytime for Europe, Middle East and Asia) or on Thursday, 18 September 2014 at 16:00 UTC (daytime for the Americas; evening for Europe).

If you'd like to get this newsletter on your own page (about once a month), please subscribe at w:en:Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Newsletter for English Wikipedia only or at Meta for any project. Thank you! --Elitre (WMF), 14:40, 9 August 2014 (UTC)

Proposed changes to wording of some QD criteria

I have proposed some changes to the wording of two QD criteria. Please see the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Deletion policy#Criteria A3 (copypaste) and G12 (copyright) and comment there. --Auntof6 (talk) 07:12, 7 August 2014 (UTC)

We have had some discussion on this, but more would be very welcome. If you have any interest in this topic, please visit the link above. Thanks. --Auntof6 (talk) 01:31, 11 August 2014 (UTC)

UTRS

Should Simple English Wikipedia include the Unblock Ticket Request System (UTRS) to request a block appeal to be unblocked? 2602:306:CC2E:EFB0:7D06:70F8:7EFE:F051 (talk) 22:57, 14 August 2014 (UTC)

Can you give some information about the system, or at least a link to where more information is available? --Auntof6 (talk) 23:34, 14 August 2014 (UTC)

No, we have too few unblock requests to justify the need for such a system. Chenzw  Talk  00:46, 15 August 2014 (UTC)

Nope not necessary here. We maybe do 10 unblocks in a year if that. -DJSasso (talk) 01:20, 15 August 2014 (UTC)

More special caracters?

I would love to have the a Wikilove button!! I too miss having easy access here. Also , if anyone can tell me how to find {{}} , [[ ]] caracters, easilly accesable? I am realy tired off copying it all the time. --Hafspajen (talk) 17:40, 16 August 2014 (UTC)

Why don't you just type them? Would be far faster than either option. -DJSasso (talk) 17:45, 16 August 2014 (UTC)

Because, DJSasso, I don't have them, this is a Swedish computer - I am editing from Sweden, and this is what I have, !"#¤%&/()=?`^*'¨½@£$€, easily accesable. --Hafspajen (talk) 17:58, 16 August 2014 (UTC).

Yes, that's a problem. I've been copying a multiply sign from elsewhere too, to talk about hybrid plants like Petunia × atkinsiana. It must be extremely painful to do anything with mathematics. Here there's no pull-down menu for wiki markup, symbols, Latin, Greek, Cyrillic, Hebrew, Arabic, IPA, math and logic. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 18:05, 16 August 2014 (UTC)

Yes, a wiki markup menu would be extremly useful. There is though some menu at Advanced /Special characters/ Help - on the top of the editing - EDITING SQUARE - is that Simple English -?- but no Wiki markup. --Hafspajen (talk) 18:12, 16 August 2014 (UTC)

Thank you, that solves my hybrid symbol problem. I'll think hard about this. I wonder if there is some way to set up a .js file for you that would provide the symbols you need. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 18:24, 16 August 2014 (UTC)

@Hafspajen: Some good news here, maybe. If I were better at php and jquery (just tried to learn them both last week), this could be good. I have a partial solution, which involves the individual editor creating a common.js file, so I'll transfer this discussion to your talk page. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 22:22, 16 August 2014 (UTC)

Request for article: HipHop Virtual Machine

I am not sure where new requests belong. Would someone care to try and do a simple version of w:HipHop Virtual Machine. Thank you. 103.254.5.99 (talk) 20:19, 16 August 2014 (UTC)

They go at Wikipedia:Requested pages. I've added this one for you. --Auntof6 (talk) 21:00, 16 August 2014 (UTC)

Letter petitioning WMF to reverse recent decisions

The Wikimedia Foundation recently created a new feature, "superprotect" status. The purpose is to prevent pages from being edited by elected administrators -- but permitting WMF staff to edit them. It has been put to use in only one case: to protect the deployment of the Media Viewer software on German Wikipedia, in defiance of a clear decision of that community to disable the feature by default, unless users decide to enable it.

If you oppose these actions, please add your name to this letter. If you know non-Wikimedians who support our vision for the free sharing of knowledge, and would like to add their names to the list, please ask them to sign an identical version of the letter on change.org.

• Letter to Wikimedia Foundation: Superprotect and Media Viewer
• Letter on change.org

-- JurgenNL (talk) 17:35, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

Process ideas for software development

Hello,

I am notifying you that a brainstorming session has been started on Meta to help the Wikimedia Foundation increase and better affect community participation in software development across all wiki projects. Basically, how can you be more involved in helping to create features on Wikimedia projects? We are inviting all interested users to voice their ideas on how communities can be more involved and informed in the product development process at the Wikimedia Foundation.

I and the rest of my team welcome you to participate. We hope to see you on Meta.

Kind regards, -- Rdicerb (WMF) talk 22:15, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

--This message was sent using MassMessage. Was there an error? Report it!

How to pronounce?.

Hi.

I want to know what are the simple english vowels, are similar to the vowels of natural english or are similar to the 5 vowels of spanish?

I have searched in many places( Google, Wikipedia... ) but I didn't find the answer. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mikemizi001 (talk • contribs) 23:26, 23 August 2014 (UTC)

Simple English is pronounced the same as regular English. The difference between simple English and regular English is that simple English uses fewer words and simpler sentence structure. All the words in simple English are also in regular English, and are pronounced the same. --Auntof6 (talk) 23:53, 23 August 2014 (UTC)

And which dialect is "regular English"? The British? The American? The Canadian? Regards, Vogone (talk) 01:27, 1 September 2014 (UTC)

By "regular English", I meant English without the restrictions of simplifying that are put on simple English. There would be "regular" and "simple" versions of all varieties of English. Simple British English would be pronounced the same as "regular" British English. Simple Canadian English would be pronounced the same as "regular" Canadian English. The same is true for other varieties of English. Pronunciation is not a factor in simple English. If there's a word other than "regular" that you'd prefer to use (non-simple?), feel free to use it. --Auntof6 (talk) 03:01, 1 September 2014 (UTC)

Twinkle problems

When I go on "dif" I see rollback vandal and all the others twice (there are two rows). When I revert it doesn't go green and tell me it has been reverted it stays blue. Is everyone having this problem? --Reception123/Receptie123 (talk) 04:54, 1 September 2014 (UTC)

I'm not sure I understand the question. I'm seeing the rollback (agf), rollback, and rollback (vandal) options only once. I don't use those, though, so I don't know what normally happens when you use them. Can you first explain just what you normally do and what you normally see? --Auntof6 (talk) 06:01, 1 September 2014 (UTC)

So when I click the "dif" I see rollback (agf), rollback and rollback (vandal) on two rows (so twice) when I normally see just one row. Here below is what I am talking about.

.

--Reception123/Receptie123 (talk) 06:07, 1 September 2014 (UTC)

I only see it once. --Auntof6 (talk) 06:12, 1 September 2014 (UTC)

So then what could the problem be? --Reception123/Receptie123 (talk) 06:14, 1 September 2014 (UTC)

I have no idea. Did you change any Wikipedia settings recently? Or maybe some settings on your computer? By the way, when I said I only see it once, I mean when I display it for myself. I do see it twice in your screenshot! --Auntof6 (talk) 06:29, 1 September 2014 (UTC)

I understood that. I did not change any setting recently. This happens on the Romanian Wiki also. Is there a site or something that explains what I could do? Reception123/Receptie123 (talk) 06:55, 1 September 2014 (UTC)

I don't know if there is such a site. I wonder if it has anything to do with what you have in User:Reception123/monobook.js. (I assume you use the Monobook skin, is that right?) I just compared it with my monobook.js file, and I see some differences that might be related. First, you have a lot of "WarnVandalCustomItems.push" items that I don't have. I don't know what those are, but they seem related to automated warnings, such as those that Twinkle does. Second, I have the line "mw.loader.load(['ext.gadget.Twinkle']);" in my monobook.js, and you don't. I was told a while back that Twinkle works better with that line. I have no specific reason to think that any of that might be causing the problem, but it's worth noting.

Whenever I see something like this that has changed for some users but not all, and the users haven't changed any of their own settings, I suspect a software change. There could be something in the combination of settings you use that works differently now, whereas other users who have a different combination of settings aren't seeing anything different. There are one or two things that stopped working for me a while back that I just wrote off to that kind of thing.

That is the limit of what I can do here. Let's see if anyone else has any ideas. --Auntof6 (talk) 07:44, 1 September 2014 (UTC)

Thank you for the help Auntof. Even when I go on monobook I see "Go to twinkle preferences..." twice exactly like the DIF. So there is a general problem I think. As you said, let's see if anyone else figures out what the problem is. --Reception123/Receptie123 (talk) 11:16, 1 September 2014 (UTC)

┌─────────────────────────────────┘
A new change was deployed which allowed all users to load JS/CSS from their global.js at meta (see mw:Extension:GlobalCssJs). Any code which is already present on your global.js at metawiki will be loaded on all Wikimedia wikis. You are seeing this because Twinkle is loaded twice - once from the meta global.js, and one from this wiki's monobook.js. You can either remove the JS code from your monobook.js on this wiki, remove the JS code from your global.js on meta, or use something similar to what I am doing on my global.js so that the global.js code is not loaded on some wikis which you already have a monobook.js. Chenzw  Talk  11:45, 1 September 2014 (UTC)

Thank you very much Chenzw! --Reception123/Receptie123 (talk) 06:23, 2 September 2014 (UTC)

Grants to improve your project

Apologies for English. Please help translate this message.

Greetings! The Individual Engagement Grants program is accepting proposals for funding new experiments from September 1st to 30th. Your idea could improve Wikimedia projects with a new tool or gadget, a better process to support community-building on your wiki, research on an important issue, or something else we haven't thought of yet. Whether you need $200 or $30,000 USD, Individual Engagement Grants can cover your own project development time in addition to hiring others to help you.

• Submit your proposal
• Get help: In IdeaLab or an upcoming Hangout session MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:52, 2 September 2014 (UTC)

Wikilove button, can we discuss that again?

Adding a Wikilove button was discussed here and mentioned again here, apparently with no result. Some of us miss it when coming from the EN wikipedia and would like to use it here. I think I can accurately say that we miss the rapidity of using it, and want to use it for slightly off-the-wall purposes (mostly by choosing an image from commons and adding a message that refers in a humorous way to recent activities in the wiki). Not having it somewhat stifles interaction that could have been helpful to building the encyclopedia. I see that some people on EN objected to it, but were over-ruled, and as far as I can see their objections were handled in appropriate ways. A separate question would be whether the button would be enabled or disabled by default, so if many people objected here, it could be disabled by default, and turned on in each individual editor's preferences. Can we discuss this again? Sminthopsis84 (talk) 15:15, 16 August 2014 (UTC)

• I can't see why not... I think it should be up to individual editors as you said. It's not an important feature in any respect, so I can understand why this request would be rejected. George.Edward.C (talk) 15:22, 16 August 2014 (UTC)

I think it might be a fairly simple process, so being unimportant might not be a major hurdle. The Macedonian wiki reached a consensus to deploy it, and it looks as if the person responding to the bug report may have had a fairly straight-forward job. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 15:50, 16 August 2014 (UTC)

• Reading what Sminthopsis84 says above, I agree. I use it on English Wikipedia fairly frequently when interacting with other editors. I also like receiving it. I too miss having easy access here. To me, even though it might be not considered important, it is nice and potentially adds civility; one of the eternal issues in Wiki communities. Thanks. Fylbecatulous talk 16:39, 16 August 2014 (UTC)

• Looking into the subject further, I think it's a nifty feature. It seems to encourage interaction between users, thus I approve of this feature being added. I look forward to an administrator response! George.Edward.C (talk) 17:00, 16 August 2014 (UTC)

My comments from the previous discussions hold still. If you want to send a fuzzy message just do it manually. We have less than 20 regular editors here. We have no need for this kind of facebooky spammy stuff. -DJSasso (talk) 17:27, 16 August 2014 (UTC)

I would love to have the a Wikilove button!! I too miss having easy access here. Also , if anyone can tell me how to find {{}} , [[ ]] caracters, easilly accesable? I am realy tired off copying it all the time. --Hafspajen (talk) 17:40, 16 August 2014 (UTC)

 (change conflict) Agree with Djsasso here. I think we have a much smaller community than say enwiki & if you want to thank someone, you can post on their talk page / leave a barnstar or sth. Pmlineditor (t · c · l) 17:48, 16 August 2014 (UTC)

I agree too, it's too small a group to set something like this up. There must be other things we need more. Rus793 (talk) 20:35, 16 August 2014 (UTC)

I agree with George.Edward.C; Sminthopsis8 and Fylbecatulous; that it seems to encourage interaction between users. Well, if someone doesn't like it , then they don't have to use it - but that would be quite nice to have Wikilove. It improves the editing and the relations, I think. actually, almost all Wiki's have them - it is rather fairly unusual NOT having it, swedes have it, the Norwegians have it, (both Bokmål and Nynorsk, Hungarians have it... the Japanese have it - very pretty ones, indeed! [4] --Hafspajen (talk) 17:58, 16 August 2014 (UTC)

This Wikipedia is unusual in many ways, compared to the others. We like to keep things simple beyond just the language used in articles. According to what I'm reading here, some maintenance would be involved. Specifically, the text would need to be translated to simple English, and there would need to be a new configuration file. Who would maintain that? I'm not necessarily against this, but we have so few people to maintain that kind of thing that I'd be reluctant to add it. I'd only feel comfortable if very active, long-term editors here were willing and able to take that on. I'd also really, really like to see editors working on the content rather than this kind of thing: there is so much to do. --Auntof6 (talk) 19:09, 16 August 2014 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiLove can make Wikipedia a better place.

Well, yes, I agree, it is quite a lot to do here. Was thinking about having a go at the dog articles as soon as I figure out and read about how to edit in Simple ways. But how about thinking - here we have three new editors from the English Wiki who are willing to edit here - and who ask for Wikilove Wikipedia:WikiLove - and for a friendly enviroment? This is not a work anyone can force anyone to do. Wikilove is more than just a "Thank you for your edits" - it is quite an elaborate way of giving all kinds of awards, stars, a cup o tea, a cookies - or even one can make one of his own kind - with the help of a ready made template. Why not ask somebody from the English Wiki to help out - it would be a nice way of engaging even more editors over here? and also, think about the children, the children, they will think this is great fun. --Hafspajen (talk) 20:18, 16 August 2014 (UTC)

I have two comments on this:

• When you say that Wikilove is "quite an elaborate way" of doing something, that goes against what we are about here. This Wiki aims to keep everything simple -- not just the language in articles.
• When you talk about children thinking this is fun, are you suggesting that they might edit here? They certainly can, but we often find that the people who are our target audience -- children, people whose first language is not English, people with learning disabilities, etc. -- are not good editors here. That is because writing Simple English requires understanding the many nuances and complexities of English so that you can make good choices, both for individual words and for sentence structure. Even people with very good English skills can have trouble with that.

My concern is that adding the Wikilove extension would require support that we might not be able to provide. --Auntof6 (talk) 11:00, 17 August 2014 (UTC)

THIS IS from the en: Wikipedia #Open collaboration= Wikipedians sometimes award one another barnstars for good work in order to appreciate a wide range of valued work extending far beyond simple editing to include social support, administrative actions, and types of articulation work. The barnstar phenomenon has been analyzed to determine what implications it might have for other communities engaged in large-scale collaborations. --Hafspajen (talk) 20:59, 16 August 2014 (UTC)

I don't know what your point is here. We have and use barnstars and Wikilove templates. I gave some recently myself. I'm not against that kind of thing. I'm just cautious about adding to our technical workload. From what I read, it requires some local maintenance and/or support. For that, we'd need users willing and able to manage the extension, who had been active here long enough to understand what we're about, and to whom we are willing to give the authority needed to do whatever it is that the extension requires. --Auntof6 (talk) 11:00, 17 August 2014 (UTC)

I'm sure there will be someone willing to manage the extension. I am George.Edward.C (talk) (contribs) 07:01, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

That's appreciated, but I think it should be an established editor. By established, I mean someone who has been here contributing actively in many ways for some time, just so we can feel they'll continue to be around. No offense, but you and the new editors asking for the feature don't fit that. --Auntof6 (talk) 07:59, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

The "I am" is part of my signature. I wasn't volunteering. Sorry for the misunderstanding. I am George.Edward.C (talk) (contribs) 16:36, 19 August 2014 (UTC)

Wikilove - Aunt Linda's profiteroles and chocolate mousse, with chocolate-covered strawberries. It looks kind of nice...

--Hafspajen (talk) 02:06, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

Speaking of maintenance, the configuration file will be in the MediaWiki namespace, therefore, only admins can maintain it... Pmlineditor (t · c · l) 07:38, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

I've looked at this some more, and from what I can see, it might not be available to a small project like Simple wikipedia anyway, at least not without making a special request, a special request that currently looks extremely unlikely to come from this consensus-seeking exercise. I've asked a question here, but there's no response yet. In any case this "don't even offer to help unless you are serious enough to sign on for long-term drudgery in this grumpy environment" attitude that I'm seeing here, is rather discouraging. The messages for the wikilove system would need to be translated, but even if I undertook that, it looks as if there might not be anyone with the stamp of Simple-English-Approved-Editor willing to review my translations. Apparently things here don't work by consensus and learning-as-we-work as in the other wikis. P.S.: for maintenance needs, people can learn how and then ask to be allowed to make changes in MediaWiki, and can ask admins to perform particular tasks, and can submit bug reports at Bugzilla. Sminthopsis84 (talk)

How about we stop the name-calling, Sminthopsis84? You don't call people grumpy or similar things, and we won't call you frivolous. Deal? People are allowed to have different viewpoints without there being anything wrong with either of them. --Auntof6 (talk) 03:52, 19 August 2014 (UTC)

Fine, and please add unwilling and incompetent to the list of names not to use. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 11:47, 19 August 2014 (UTC)

Those don't necessarily carry the same value judgements, Sminthopsis84, depending on how they're used. Most of us have something we're unwilling to do, and something we're incompetent at. --Auntof6 (talk) 16:34, 19 August 2014 (UTC)

Now, now, don't you two start quarreling here. Remember this is about Wiki - Love? It would be surely nice to have it - but if it is this complicated - well, shrug... --Hafspajen (talk) 16:41, 19 August 2014 (UTC)

I don't believe that any "maintenance" is required for WikiLove. You would want to add translations (standard English would be automatically supplied otherwise), and you would need to do a one-time configuration (make a list of barnstars) if you want specific barnstars in the list. However, you could probably just copy en.wp's set up, and I don't believe there any ongoing maintenance required.

If you want to have this, I can file the official request at Bugzilla. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 23:13, 2 September 2014 (UTC)

If that is true, then I would be fine with it. I guess the worst that would happen if maintenance were needed is that the gadget would stop working. I would even do or help with the translations. I'd be in favor of it not being enabled by default, if that's possible, so that people don't have new buttons show up unexpectedly. --Auntof6 (talk) 00:01, 3 September 2014 (UTC)

Still don't support having it. -DJSasso (talk) 12:33, 3 September 2014 (UTC)

Agreed with DJSasso - I don't see any need to introduce this functionality here. Most of my views have been aired above, although I just want to add that for such a small wiki this seems entirely pointless and a way of Facebook-ifying things. The last thing we need right now are hundreds of automated userspace edits flying around that don't actually contribute to our core purpose. If you want to give a barnstar, just do it manually. Goblin 14:03, 3 September 2014 (UTC) I ♥ Barras!

Today's articles for improvement project

On the English Wikipedia, we started a project called TAFI. Each week we identify underdeveloped articles that require improvement. Our goal is to use widespread collaborative editing to improve articles to Good article, Featured article or Featured list quality over a short time frame.

This is all about improving important articles in a collaborative manner, and also inspiring readers of Wikipedia to also try editing. We think it is a very important and interesting idea that will make Wikipedia a better place to work. It has been very successful so far, and the concept has spread to the Hindi Wikipedia where it has been well received.

We wanted to know if your Wikipedia was interested in setting up its own version of TAFI. Please contact us on our talk page or here if you are interested.--Coin945 (talk) 17:48, 2 September 2014 (UTC)

Moved here from Talk:Main Page by Mr Wiki Pro

This is pretty much how our GA and WP:VGA work already - at least in theory. Very little, if any, of our "better content" has gotten to that stage without involvement from most of the community here, so I can't see much merit in introducing yet another scheme here. That said, I wish you the continued best of luck at enwiki. Goblin 14:36, 3 September 2014 (UTC) I ♥ Barras!

It's not so much about getting the articles to GA/FA as it is about collaboratively editing in a fun supportive environment. Where stubby yet vital articles are worked on. Wikipedia can often be a solitary experience so this is a way to bring people together to work on topics not restricted to any one Wikiproject. Also it's allowed us to covert readers into editors. If it is decided a TAFI is needed on Simple Wikipedia, you know where to find us. We'd be more than happy to help you set it up/recruit etc.:)--Coin945 (talk) 16:14, 3 September 2014 (UTC)

Special:UnconnectedPages

Just a reminder that Special:UnconnectedPages is a good place to look for anyone wanting to find articles on Simple Wikipedia that may need flagging for deletion or merging. Not all of them of course, but it is a good indicator that an article may not pass Simple Wikipedia's notability criteria. It lists all Simple Wikipedia articles that have not yet been connected to a Wikidata item. Worth a check. Cheers. Del_♉sion23 (talk) 16:55, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

That list is not in any way an indication of pages that need deleting or merging, or that the subject is not notable. There are many reasons for a page not to be in Wikidata. It could be that there is no exact match for it in other Wikipedias (only exact matches should be added in Wikidata interwiki links). The person who created the article might not know about Wikidata or how to add things there. --Auntof6 (talk) 17:52, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

Have to agree with Auntof6 here. It would be very unwise to determine to delete articles based on them being on that list. -DJSasso (talk) 17:54, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

I go through this list most days. The ones that are left are generally the ones that I have not been able to connect with other articles on Wikipedia via Wikidata. I simply can't find another Wikipedia that has covered the topic. I believe it is a very good indicator of whether the topic in question is notable. If no other Wikipedias are covering the topic, it's an indicator that it may not be notable, and so it should be checked. It may turn out that it is in fact a notable topic that just happens to not yet have a topic on any other Wikipedia, in which case, no need for deletion or merging (of course). I'm in no way saying that the articles in the list should be merged and deleted, or that presence on the list is a justification for deletion or merging. I'm just saying that those articles are the best ones to check as you're going to have a better hit rate. Cheers. Del_♉sion23 (talk) 22:02, 6 September 2014 (UTC)

I still don't want to encourage people to look for things to change or delete based on that page. If no other Wikipedia is covering a topic, it might be a fairly new topic, a topic of little interest, a topic that's covered in a Wikipedia whose language you don't read, a topic that's covered as part of another article, a topic whose articles just haven't been added to Wikidata yet, or something else. We'd be able to review requests for deletion, but please do not merge any without a good reason. Getting a good match for Wikidata is not a good reason: not everything has a match there, and there's no requirement to have a match. Also keep in mind that pages with the same name on different Wikipedias might not match, and there is no requirement for them to match. For example, our page Android is about the artificial lifeform. On enwiki, en:Android is a dab page.

By all means, look at this page to find things that may need links added in Wikidata, but don't force any matches. Link pages in Wikidata only if the match is exact. Really, your suggestion about using this list makes me concerned for our articles. --Auntof6 (talk) 22:30, 6 September 2014 (UTC)

I give up. If you're concerned about my edits then specific examples would be more helpful. Del_♉sion23 (talk) 10:24, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

Note for vandalism fighters: hiding the most offensive stuff

Some of you might not know that the admins can hide the content and/or edit summaries of edits in some circumstances. It's called revision deletion, or "revdel". After using that function, most users can no longer see the parts that have been hidden. There are only certain things this can be used for. Some things it is not used for are personal insults and words that might make people uncomfortable but aren't actually considered offensive. (For example, a user once asked me to hide a change because a vandal had added the word "poo". I had to tell him that that word wasn't really offensive.) The link I gave has more detail.

When you undo vandalism that contains profanity or other truly offensive things, feel free to drop us a line to ask us to use revdel. --Auntof6 (talk) 21:18, 8 September 2014 (UTC)

Change in renaming process

Single-user login (SUL) finalisation's goal is so that every Wikimedia editor has a single, recognized global account with one username across all projects. As you may know, after a long delay, it's now underway as an effort between bureaucrats, stewards, and Wikimedia Foundation engineers. This will also allow for development of cross-wiki tools like global notifications and watchlists. There is no set date for the completion of single-user login finalization at this time.

The process involves changing all rename processes into one global renaming process. The ability for local bureaucrats to rename users on this wiki will be turned off on Monday, 15 September 2014, as one of the first steps. Global renamers are in the process of being created to make sure projects and languages are represented by the time this occurs. I sent a note to every bureaucrat about this process three weeks ago with an invitation to participate and many have begun requesting to be a part of the group. Together with the stewards, the global renamers will be empowered to help editors work through the often difficult process of getting a global name.

In parting, visit Special:MergeAccount to unify your account if you have never done so. If your local pages about renaming still need to be updated, please do so and consider pointing people to m:SRUC for future rename requests, especially if this project does not have bureaucrats that hold global renamer permissions. If you have any questions, you can read more on the help page on Meta. You can also follow the technical progress on mediawiki.org. Contact me on Meta any time with questions as well. Thank you for your time.

-- User:Keegan (WMF) (talk) 16:22, 9 September 2014 (UTC)

VisualEditor available on Internet Explorer 11

VisualEditor will become available to users of Microsoft Internet Explorer 11 during today's regular software update. Support for some earlier versions of Internet Explorer is being worked on. If you encounter problems with VisualEditor on Internet Explorer, please contact the Editing team by leaving a message at VisualEditor/Feedback on Mediawiki.org. Happy editing, Elitre (WMF) 07:29, 11 September 2014 (UTC).

PS. Please subscribe to the global monthly newsletter to receive further news about VisualEditor.

Deletion of userpages...

Hello all,

there are quite a few userpages up for deletion, from users who have not edited here for some time. Before going through all these deletion requests, I propose the following solution:

• The user in whose userspace the page is can ask for deletion (this is part of the regular deletion process)
• If the user is not under a long-term ban, and that the page does not violate any policy, there is no reason to delete their userpage; we might want to consider marking the page inactive/old at best (after a given time, eg. three years)
• Since we have no wikiprojects, some wikiprojects were created in userspace, we need to discuss what to do with those; they need to be handled separately, since their scope is different.

I would prefer a discussion here (possibly resulting in a guideline), rather than having the same discussion several times on the RFD board. As always, comments are welcome. --Eptalon (talk) 11:51, 8 July 2014 (UTC)

• Well, they are user sub-pages. The user pages themselves are not involved. In some cases there is no real content at all, so nothing is lost by deleting them. Where there is substantive content, at least a clear verdict should be required for deletion. Since we don't recognise projects officially, they have no "in principle" sanctity. In many cases they were just a whim, and nothing has been made of them. Macdonald-ross (talk) 12:13, 8 July 2014 (UTC)

• Personally I don't see why we are deleting them. Assuming they don't violate a policy (ie an attack page) then we have to remember en:WP:NOTPAPER. (obviously that is about content but the same principle applies) We aren't restricted to the amount of space we have so there is no need to delete them. -DJSasso (talk) 13:08, 8 July 2014 (UTC)

• Some of the user pages in questions are for WikiProjects. There is precedent for deleting inactive WikiProjects: see here, here, here, here here, and here.

Some of the articles in question are stale user drafts. There is precedent for deleting these: see here, here, here, and here.

Eptalon suggests marking user pages as old or inactive. English Wikipedia has a WikiProject for managing abandoned drafts. We have Category:Stale userspace drafts that appears to be for this. I'm not sure what good this category is if such pages aren't eventually cleaned up. The note on this category actually mentions nominating the stale pages for quick deletion (although they would actually have to go to RfD because there no QD option for this).

DJSasso mentions en:WP:NOTPAPER. I don't think that's a reason to leave unfinished, abandoned work in place.

Our guideline Wikipedia:User page says that user subpages can have "A work in progress, until it is ready to be moved into mainspace". I would say that a work is no longer in progress if the user has stopped working on it. How long we should wait before saying the user has stopped is open for discussion.

Having said all that, I understand the reluctance to delete user subpages. Maybe we could establish guidelines for deleting them that are different from the regular RfD. We might want to let the RfDs run longer to give the user a chance to respond. We might also require that extra efforts be made to contact the user by any means available (for example, email if they have an email defined, talk page messages here and on other Wikimedia projects where they are active).

Here are some suggestions for when stale userspace drafts might qualify for deletion:

• The page hasn't been edited in a certain amount of time
• The editor hasn't edited anything here in a certain amount of time
• The content on the page wouldn't be suitable for an article even if finished (not that I've seen any like that)

Since WikiProjects are for the community, and not just one user's work, not to mention that they're unofficial, criteria for removing them should be different. Possible criteria for this are:

• No project activity recorded on the project page in a certain amount of time
• The hosting user (if the project isn't under User:Project) and all listed project members are either banned, indefinitely blocked, or haven't edited anything here in a certain amount of time

Comments? --Auntof6 (talk) 04:59, 9 July 2014 (UTC)

Well, I go along with Aunt's general idea. As for timing, I suggest four years (which is an absolute age in wiki terms). Any project or subpage not changed for four years should be available for deletion via RfD. Should not need detailed discussion, just a period for editors to stop the deletion if they want to do something constructive with the page or project. That is the essence of these background pages. They are meant to be for preparation, helping and other active use. They are not there as some kind of decoration. It is always open to editors to write on the topics, but there is no sense to leaving unedited user sub-pages lying around permanently. Macdonald-ross (talk) 09:24, 9 July 2014 (UTC)

I was thinking one year. How would folks feel about three?

In any case, the RfDs in question are about to reach their one-week mark. I have moved them to a separate section where they can sit until we feel we have consensus here. More comments are welcome. --Auntof6 (talk) 03:19, 14 July 2014 (UTC)

Well, there might be a shorter period if the editor has done nothing at all with the page, but it's different when someone has put in some serious work. Macdonald-ross (talk) 04:33, 14 July 2014 (UTC)

Yeah I personally wouldn't want to seem them gone for quite a number of years. -DJSasso (talk) 15:19, 14 July 2014 (UTC)

I have a thought that unused 'project' pages make it less likely that others will venture onto the territory. That is why I think we should delete rather than mark "inactive". I see young editors very much like to 'own' something, and that is a main reason for their setting up projects. At the same time any ownership tends to put others off. I think we might have a rule that no-one was allowed to set up a project without showing that several others wanted to be a part of it. I think that would reduce the number of blank projects in future. Macdonald-ross (talk) 08:05, 15 July 2014 (UTC)

So for wikiprojects: (before they are set up): 1 month regular activity (in the field of the project), by at least 3 users?- If this really is a problem, we could also formalize the setup process:

1. activity
2. announcement on ST
3. Setup after the usual week, if there is consensus to do so

What do others think?--Eptalon (talk) 08:10, 15 July 2014 (UTC)

Remember WikiProjects aren't official in any way, making rules about them would effectively be doing so. The reason we ask them to be in userspace is so that we don't have to regulate them. -DJSasso (talk) 12:28, 15 July 2014 (UTC)

Yes and no; it's a good point but we do already have the guideline Wikipedia:WikiProject. If we can agree on how to streamline the process of deleting old pages, and the criteria, we can add it to the existing guideline. Rus793 (talk) 17:52, 15 July 2014 (UTC)

Well WikiProjects are the ones I mostly see no purpose to delete. Because that could lead to people recreating the same one over and over having lost anything that might have been achieved by previous incarnations. I can see deleting other user space stuff, but WikiProjects should just be left alone and marked inactive if they are inactive, just like is done in en.wiki. -DJSasso (talk) 14:13, 16 July 2014 (UTC)

WikiProjects here don't seem to ever stay active for long. We just don't have enough users to keep something continuously active for very long. None of the ones I've looked at even had records of what they've done, which is why I think we don't lose much by deleting them. I'd prefer cleaning them up. They can always be recreated when there is interest.

I don't really like the way that some of the WikiProjects are set up under a user called "Project", because there is no such user. However, having them in a central place other than userspace would make it easier for someone to say, "This project hasn't been active in X years. I'd like to reactivate it, so I'm going to take over the coordination." All the pieces could stay where they are and just be used by a different set of people. I'd have less trouble with WikiProjects being inactive in a central place like that than I do with them being in userspace. I realize that would make them more official than they are now, which could raise a different set of issues. I wonder if we could do something like that without making them official. --Auntof6 (talk) 02:03, 19 July 2014 (UTC)

Well, the something like that was the User:Project. It was intended as a way to centralize it without making it uber official. But of course like most things wikiproject here, it just fell to the wayside. -DJSasso (talk) 21:08, 23 July 2014 (UTC)

• The situation case by case is that most 'projects' have either no content at all, or very little. All or almost all the editors are no longer on the wiki, and some did nothing else but put up the project as a subpage. We delete pages which have no content, and we should delete sub-pages which have no content. I would be happy for projects with actual content to be collected together on a central page, including the chess page. This might help new editors to see what can be done with a project page. Macdonald-ross (talk) 15:31, 23 July 2014 (UTC)

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There hasn't been any more comment here for a while. Does anyone see any kind of consensus forming? --Auntof6 (talk) 20:51, 6 August 2014 (UTC)

• Here is a suggestion: Since it seems clear that most of us agree that stale pages or projects should at some point be deleted, why don't we. Notify each user on there user talk page, with something similar to the following.

You're User Sub-page or Project page has been inactive for some time, please revisit your page and do one of the following:

1. Mark it for deletion under QD U1 or in x amount of days (say 30 for argument sake) the page will be deleted.
2. Resume editing of You're page, at which point it won't be stale and no need to worry about deleting it.

Or something along these lines. Much like they do for inactive admins, give them a time to bring them current, or face in this case deletion instead of De-Sysoping. Enfcer (talk) 21:48, 8 August 2014 (UTC)

• That would work for me. My comments:

• We might want a guideline on how long to wait after the last edit before placing such a notice. I'm leaning toward a year at the moment, but three years and four years were mentioned before. Should it be the same for WikiProject pages as for other things?
• If the notice is placed on a draft article, I think any change by the owning user would be enough to "un-stale" it. On a WikiProject page, it would be nice to see something showing that the project is active, such as mention of current work done in the subject area by project members.
• With WikiProjects, if the notice is placed and there is no response, before deleting we could ask at Simple Talk if anyone would like to take it over.

Those are my thoughts. --Auntof6 (talk) 22:48, 8 August 2014 (UTC)

Does anyone object if I remove the {{in progress}} from those 14 pending deletion. Maybe its just me, but I see that and think we have a lot of discussions going on, and this could take awhile since this discussion has stalled out. -- Enfcer (talk) 22:04, 15 August 2014 (UTC)

I think we should delete them all except for the chess project. There is enough consensus. Macdonald-ross (talk) 07:16, 16 August 2014 (UTC)

This discussion seems to have stalled by nearly a month now, and we still have 12 user pages that are hanging around clogging up requests for deletion. I've read through the discussion above a few times now, and I think the 'outcome' of it could be summed up as follows:

• Where a user has been inactive for three years an inactive user page may qualify for deletion via RfD, but this time frame is flexible in the case of very new or very old editors.
• For WikiProject-style pages these should remain unless they are little more than an idea and a list of names. Some may require clean-up, but this requires further discussion as we don't currently have any real policies about them, beyond the fact that they are not officially 'allowed'.
• For all userspace pages efforts should be taken to contact the owners before an RfD is filed. This includes via email, talk page and other wikis where the user is active.

In relating this to the existing RfDs around half would be eligible for deletion at first glance, although I haven't dug too far. Either way, they would all meet the above "criteria" if we went with the lowest suggested activity time, which is one year. They all show little prospect of becoming active or used in the current community and, therefore, should probably be deleted.
However, that said, I am not sure whether there has been sufficient discussion here to create a new policy or guideline - the majority of the input has come from two users, with a further four commenting in total. Personally I have no opinion on the matter - they are not harming anything by existing, but I understand why others would want them removed.
With this in mind I think that each of the twelve RfDs needs re-opening and "resetting" to run for one week and each is discussed by its own merit. Any further userspace pages can also be nominated for discussion per normal policy. More discussion needs undertaking both with regards to criteria for userspace discussion and WikiProjects (I'd support re-visiting the guidelines there) at this time. I have carried out the work with regards to the RfDs, although if anyone feels this wasn't appropriate please do revert me. I also abstain from providing a !vote on the RfDs as a result of this.
Tl;dr: 12 RfDs have been re-opened and reset for discussion under standard RfD procedure. Further discussion is required on creating a variation to this policy for user pages, and with regards to WikiProject "policy". Goblin 00:13, 4 September 2014 (UTC) I ♥ Pmlineditor!

• Since the RfDs were re-opened under the standard procedure, I have started closing them. Mostly, the !votes supported deletion, so I have accordingly closed them. I'm assuming if people opposed deleting them, they would have posted on the RfDs by now. If anyone opposes a closure, feel free to revert it / bring it up in deletion review. Thanks. Pmlineditor (t · c · l) 17:30, 12 September 2014 (UTC)