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2021 Ombuds Commission nomination process now open!

Hi everyone! It's coming close to time for annual appointments of community members to serve on the Ombudsman commission (OC). This commission works on all Wikimedia projects to investigate complaints about violations of the privacy policy, especially in use of CheckUser and Oversight tools, and to mediate between the complaining party and the individual whose work is being investigated. They may also assist the General Counsel, the Executive Director or the Board of Trustees in investigations of these issues. For more on their duties and roles, see Ombuds commission.

This is a call for community members interested in volunteering for appointment to this commission. Volunteers serving in this role should be experienced Wikimedians, active on any project, who have previously used the CheckUser/Oversight tools OR who have the technical ability to understand these tools and the willingness to learn them. They are expected to be able to engage neutrally in investigating these concerns and to know when to recuse when other roles and relationships may cause conflict.

Commissioners are required to identify to the Wikimedia Foundation and must be willing to comply with the appropriate Wikimedia Foundation board policies (such as the access to non-public data policy and the privacy policy). This is a position that requires a high degree of discretion and trust.

If you are interested in serving on this commission, please write me an email at kbrownwikimediaorg to detail your experience on the projects, your thoughts on the commission and what you hope to bring to the role. The commission consists of ten members; all applications are appreciated and will be carefully considered. The deadline for applications is end of day on 31 December, 2020.

Please feel free to pass this invitation along to any users who you think may be qualified and interested. Thank you! Kbrown (WMF) (talk) 14:05, 1 October 2020 (UTC)

Allowing the use of global locks for disruptive socks

It seems there is some limitation in policy that sometimes results in more bureaucracy than needed.

It could be considered to allow global locks for alternative accounts (not the main account) where:

• The main account has a community-supported block (does not have to be indefinite) on at least two projects
• The alternative account has been used to circumvent that block
• There is a reasonable expectation that the alternative account may also be used to circumvent community-supported blocks on other projects. (otherwise you're just making stewards waste time, this is also why the main account must be blocked on at least two projects)

The main benefit of this is probably that disruptive socks can be globally locked without going through an RfC for a global ban, which may not be desirable anyway. None of this would affect policies like w:WP:CLEANSTART. This is just a rough idea, it may be bad, just putting it out there to brainstorm. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 16:27, 13 October 2020 (UTC)

Accounts are locked in line with the guidance at and interpretation of global locks, and that alone, is my understanding.  — billinghurst sDrewth 11:31, 18 October 2020 (UTC)

@Billinghurst: I know, some of the reasons on that page could probably be combined into one (there is little difference between vandalism and spam for this purpose), but the above could be an additional reason. But since nobody else has replied to this topic, I'm not so sure it would be worth creating an RfC. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 14:54, 18 October 2020 (UTC)

The issue is global locks is a bit unclear and not a policy either. In my opinion it is a fundamentally broken process. For your proposal I will not support it as 1. the criteria does not indicate that a steward action is needed (probably they may be resolved locally) and 2. Not every wiki have "community-supported block"; for example it does not exist in Chinese Wikipedia.--GZWDer (talk) 15:13, 18 October 2020 (UTC)

@GZWDer: If an alternative account already has been used to circumvent one community-supported block and there is a reasonable expectation the account will be used to circumvent more, wouldn't that be enough to warrant a steward action? As for wikis that don't discuss blocks at all, those are supposed to be excluded. Can you really not discuss blocks on Chinese Wikipedia? That sounds like dictatorship, how.. appropriate? If people are blocked by a single dubious admin and/or for violating a dubious policy, creation of alternative non-abusive accounts (my suggestion/proposal does not require active vandalism) to circumvent that shouldn't be faced with global locks without an RfC. But anyway, I'm thinking all this may be too complicated to deal with globally. Well, it was just an idea. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 15:31, 18 October 2020 (UTC)

1. Multiple account is usually permitted unless they are used abusively, so there should only be blocked in wikis that blocks are evaded (unless the edits are also disruptive in other wikis, which may be a case for global blocks). 2. Chinese Wikipedia does discuss blocks, but admins does not only follow the result of community discussion (such an action is similar to ostracism). Admins decides whether there are valid and sufficient grounds for a block. Similarly, an unblock is not decided by community either.--GZWDer (talk) 15:40, 18 October 2020 (UTC)

@GZWDer: 1. That is a description of the current policy practice, which could change if the community decides so. 2. In that case there can be community-supported blocks on Chinese Wikipedia. My suggestion/proposal doesn't require community-imposed blocks, only community-supported. If a single admin places a block, the community discusses the block and the consensus is that it is a good block, then the block is community-supported. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 17:35, 18 October 2020 (UTC)

Please do not concatenate accounts and people. Stewards are able to lock an account where it is problematic from a global perspective, just let them do their job.

Please do not conflate it with a block, community issues etc. as stewards are not dealing with community level disputes; nor bans which are the community's response and direction to stewards.

The community, as I see it, has not wished to implement partial measures against PEOPLE (please do not talk accounts). If you wish to talk about the discipline and control then take the recent discussions from a failed global ban, and look to discuss more broadly how we implement controls that are in between the current binary of globally banned or not. Talking about accounts is symptom chasing.  — billinghurst sDrewth 21:38, 18 October 2020 (UTC)

Policy regarding people won't change anytime soon I think, so I thought about accounts. By now I'm also doubting this could work well and don't expect any change in this area anytime soon either. This thread can be archived as far as I'm concerned, unless someone else wishes to discuss it, though I doubt that. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 09:08, 19 October 2020 (UTC)

Important: maintenance operation on October 27

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

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

They will switch all traffic back to the primary data center on Tuesday, October 27 2020.

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

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

• You will not be able to edit for up to an hour on Tuesday, October 27. The test will start at 14:00 UTC (14:00 WET, 15:00 CET, 10:00 EDT, 19:30 IST, 07:00 PDT, 23:00 JST, and in New Zealand at 03:00 NZDT on Wednesday October 28).
• If you try to edit or save during these times, you will see an error message. We hope that no edits will be lost during these minutes, but we can't guarantee it. If you see the error message, then please wait until everything is back to normal. Then you should be able to save your edit. But, we recommend that you make a copy of your changes first, just in case.

Other effects:

• Background jobs will be slower and some may be dropped. Red links might not be updated as quickly as normal. If you create an article that is already linked somewhere else, the link will stay red longer than usual. Some long-running scripts will have to be stopped.
• There will be code freezes for the week of October 26, 2020. Non-essential code deployments will not happen.

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

-- Trizek (WMF) (talk) 17:09, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

Not sure

Iam not sure what to do here. Can I have a wiki? Garboshareem39 (talk) 08:42, 25 October 2020 (UTC)

No. Personal wikis are not available from the Wikimedia Foundation.  — billinghurst sDrewth 12:09, 25 October 2020 (UTC)

@Garboshareem39: Not from the Wikimedia Foundation. However, the wiki software is free and you can download it from https://www.mediawiki.org/. You will need webhosting if you want to launch your own wiki. Setting that up isn't trivial though. Various web hosting services offer MediaWiki (along with other content management systems such as Wordpress) so you don't have to configure everything yourself. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 07:59, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

translation

Hi

I have tried to translate farsi ( probably) text to english. How to do it? TIA --Adam majewski (talk) 18:04, 27 October 2020 (UTC)

@Adam majewski:

{{en|1=Part of Mendelbrot's fractal pattern}}{{fa|1=بخشی از الگوی فرکتالی مندلبروت}}

— Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 07:54, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

Farssi

I have made so many pages and admins and users keep deleting them they seem to not care at all ,local politics, geography, economy, culture articles are bashed only global articles.fawiki rules is mistranslated and misjudg3d.https://fa.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D8%B1%D8%AF%D9%87:%D9%85%D8%AF%DB%8C%D8%B1%D8%A7%D9%86_%D9%88%DB%8C%DA%A9%DB%8C%E2%80%8C%D9%BE%D8%AF%DB%8C%D8%A7 — The preceding unsigned comment was added by Baratiiman (talk)

@4nn1l2: Do you know how a user can have 1,846 edits on fawiki while being unable to spell "Farsi"? — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 07:45, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

They are writing in English and it happens. The fact that they have used "Farsi" instead of "Persian" means a lot to me. 4nn1l2 (talk) 08:23, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

Undoubtedly, Fawiki is a problem project, more or less like azwiki or hrwiki. I also hear a lot about arwiki and ptwiki. 4nn1l2 (talk) 08:23, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

Lmao i was just banned for sockpuppetry along with 3 other accounts including an admin and there is this election in wikipedia farsi i voted in. admins are guessing who voted who.Baratiiman (talk) 12:14, 9 November 2020 (UTC)

is it fine they ask for identification in Iran?Baratiiman (talk) 08:30, 10 November 2020 (UTC)

Checkusers are ignoring us arguments reliying on their tools for IP, Interests , browser version and i just found out on the Deutche Weule this checkuser is the same one who tried to explain why fa wiki admins are cooperating with Iranian Ministry of Islamic Culture and Guidance btw wikipedia is working in the country wikinews is not.Baratiiman (talk) 15:52, 11 November 2020 (UTC)

@Baratiiman: What is the actual point of this discussion? If it is you getting something off your chest, then okay. I don't see that we are going to get any reasonable discussion if you are just complaining, we can do nothing. Some will agree, some will not, but nothing will be achieved.  — billinghurst sDrewth 03:00, 12 November 2020 (UTC)

There is too much autonomy i think just saying.Baratiiman (talk) 04:25, 12 November 2020 (UTC)

Sending us a postcard will only ever give us a postcard. If you want a proper structured conversation about something you are going to need to craft a proper conversation, and they are generally RFCs. It is my experience RFCs that are set up to bash things simply are ineffective.  — billinghurst sDrewth 19:58, 12 November 2020 (UTC)

• im getting a bit suspicuos that i got banned after i made this thread. the age of the accounts banned for sock puppetry are more 9 than years.they have more edits than me.Baratiiman (talk) 13:22, 13 November 2020 (UTC)

Just to ask one question .

Hi my name is Rémi KOUGBAKIN i really appreciate you to accept me. And these are my question = which languague it's the first languague in the world wide ?

I doubt there will be an authoritative answer to this, you can see some ideas in the pages linked from w:en:Oldest_language, I'm assuming you are at least limiting yourself to human languages. — xaosflux ^Talk 14:52, 4 November 2020 (UTC)

Movement Strategy priorities

With the approaching Movement Strategy events (virtual events that will take place on November 21st/22nd), communities and affiliates are having multiple meetings to select priorities for the implementation of the Strategy recommendations. These priorities will shape the implementation of Strategy in 2021-22. If you feel interested in joining the discussion (and perhaps in a written rather than a verbal a manner), you can check out the priorities discussion space on Meta --Abbad (WMF) (talk) 22:21, 4 November 2020 (UTC).

Random international projects sending welcome messages

Hi there. Every few years I get a random welcome message from a wiki I've never used or contributed to. Most recently, I got a message from the Russian Wiktionary -- despite having never contributed to it at all. Similarly in 2018, I got welcomed to the malay and indonesian wikipedias, despite never having used those either. Has anyone else experienced things like this before? Is there any way to stop it from happening? Thanks in advance. Techhead7890 (talk) 05:04, 5 November 2020 (UTC)

Personally I wouldn't fuss it, typically it is a welcome message. On those wikis you have triggered something to have a local account created by some sort of visitation or touch. Just the spiderwebs reaching out, and you would need to find someone experienced in the arcane subject matter of logins and local account creation to get the in depth explanation. — billinghurst sDrewth 09:19, 5 November 2020 (UTC)

As said above, you have triggered something to have a local account created. There is an extension called NewUserMessage, where it is enabled it leaves decided welcome message to every new local user account. You can simply ignore these messages, I don't think there is any way to stop them for a one user. -- CptViraj (talk) 09:37, 5 November 2020 (UTC)

@Techhead7890: "10:07, 29 July 2020 User account Techhead7890 talk contribs was created automatically". You probably visited a page on Russian Wiktionary. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 14:42, 5 November 2020 (UTC)

Wiki of functions naming contest - Round 2

Hello. Reminder: Please help to choose the name for the new Wikimedia wiki project - the library of functions. The finalist vote starts today. The finalists for the name are: Wikicode, Wikicodex, Wikifunctions, Wikifusion, Wikilambda, Wikimedia Functions. If you would like to participate, then please learn more and vote now at Meta-wiki. Thank you! --Quiddity (WMF)

22:10, 5 November 2020 (UTC)

Global ban proposal for Kubura

Hello. This is to notify the community that there is an ongoing global ban proposal for User:Kubura who has been active on this wiki. You are invited to participate at m:Request for comment/Global ban for Kubura. Thank you. Blablubbs (talk) 21:30, 14 November 2020 (UTC)