This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Swept in from the pub

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This discussion in a nutshell: The Wikimedia Foundation is seeking input about the application of the Universal Code of Conduct. The goal of this consultation is to help outline clear enforcement pathways for a drafting committee to design proposals for a comprehensive community review later this year. The proposals may integrate with existing processes or additional pathways that may be suggested. For more information about the UCoC project, see Universal Code of Conduct overview.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hebvoy not appearing in the list

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Using a private window, I see:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The three questions are:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The key results were:

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

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

Looking ahead

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

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

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

–Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk)

14:14, 24 June 2021 (UTC)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hi everyone,

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

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

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

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

Read the full announcement.

Best,

The Elections Committee

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hello, all.

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

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

You can also read this announcement in other languages here.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Read the full announcement.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hello!

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

Agenda

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

Format

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

We can answer questions asked in English, French, Polish, and Spanish. If you would like to ask questions in advance, add them on the Community Wishlist Survey talk page or send to [email protected].

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

Invitation link

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

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

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

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

The main goals of the Flow project are to:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(out of chrono) Please Tony1 stop sending me emails. I've started th