Policy | Technical | Proposals | Idea lab | WMF | Miscellaneous |
- Table of contents
- First discussion
- End of page
- New post
Discussions are automatically archived after remaining inactive for a week.
Seeking recent editor stratification research
Does anybody know of recent work that updates the findings of m:Research:Editor classes or strategy:Editor Trends Study? I have poked around a bit but haven't found anything that works on the same issues; stats.wikimedia.org doesn't quite get into those issues AFAICT. Doesn't need to be formal research; I'd be interested in anything that people have found from just tooling around on toolserver or diving in the dumps. -- Visviva (talk) 18:06, 20 July 2022 (UTC)
As an update, I have been doing some initial poking around in the latest stub-meta-history dump. One thing that jumps out at me is that something odd was happening in 2014: that year saw a dramatic jump in new users in the 1-9 mainspace edits band (>70k absolute, >15% YoY), but also saw sharp drops in the absolute number of edits being made by editors in the 1k-9k and 10k+ mainspace-edit bands (which were largely reversed in subsequent years). I looked through the Signpost archives but didn't see anything that would indicate a titanic shift in wiki practice that year. But I wasn't very active at that time, so I don't really know what might have been happening that would have made 2014 special. Any ideas? -- Visviva (talk) 21:38, 23 July 2022 (UTC)
- Interesting work. The only thing I can think of re 2014 was that it was the first full year when both the VisualEditor and the notifications feature were enabled, though I'm not sure how much effect either of these things might have had. Mobile viewing and editing were becoming more popular as indicated by this, but once again, that probably wasn't a seismic shift. Graham87 08:42, 24 July 2022 (UTC)
- Ooh, thanks, good thought. Intuitively, that makes a lot of sense: barriers to editing come down so long-tail activity picks up, while "power users" get annoyed and their activity drops. (I recall having some rather cranky things to say about the VisualEditor myself, although my power user days were long behind me at that point.) And that same annoyance could explain the subsequent reversion to trend: annoyed power users make changes to policy and practice that push the balance back toward exclusion. Will be interesting to see if this holds once I've cleaned up the data a little better. -- Visviva (talk) 22:09, 24 July 2022 (UTC)
- @Visviva, is that the all-wikis database? If so, then I believe you will see a quite dramatic effect at the Portuguese Wikipedia, which (if memory serves) had unusually stringent CAPTCHA rules in place until December 2013. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 20:55, 25 July 2022 (UTC)
- @Whatamidoing (WMF): I've never heard of a database dump for all wikis and I can't find it on the relevant page. Can you point me to such a thing if it exists? Graham87 05:34, 26 July 2022 (UTC)
- I don't know how the dumps are arranged. I just saw on the page that there were 16,666,393 pages in the mainspace, which is 10 million more than our current 6,555,928 mainspace articles, and it sounded approximately plausible to me as the number of articles if you added all the Wikipedias together. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:09, 26 July 2022 (UTC)
- It's just the EN database. I believe 16.7M is accurate as the approximate total number of pages in mainspace (i.e. including redirects and other very short pages that NUMBEROFARTICLES excludes.) I found a version of that number ... uh, somewhere ... that jibed with my result, which was a nice feeling at the time -- although now I can't seem to find it. -- Visviva (talk) 22:00, 26 July 2022 (UTC)
- It's at Wikipedia:Database reports/Page count by namespace. We have a grand total of about 59,000,000 articles on all Wikipedias. Graham87 12:53, 27 July 2022 (UTC)
- @Whatamidoing (WMF): I've never heard of a database dump for all wikis and I can't find it on the relevant page. Can you point me to such a thing if it exists? Graham87 05:34, 26 July 2022 (UTC)
- @Visviva, is that the all-wikis database? If so, then I believe you will see a quite dramatic effect at the Portuguese Wikipedia, which (if memory serves) had unusually stringent CAPTCHA rules in place until December 2013. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 20:55, 25 July 2022 (UTC)
- Ooh, thanks, good thought. Intuitively, that makes a lot of sense: barriers to editing come down so long-tail activity picks up, while "power users" get annoyed and their activity drops. (I recall having some rather cranky things to say about the VisualEditor myself, although my power user days were long behind me at that point.) And that same annoyance could explain the subsequent reversion to trend: annoyed power users make changes to policy and practice that push the balance back toward exclusion. Will be interesting to see if this holds once I've cleaned up the data a little better. -- Visviva (talk) 22:09, 24 July 2022 (UTC)
Help needed
In article, which i will be expanding for month, i found a cite error at reference number 8. Someone pls fix it. See here Dalits in Bihar.Admantine123 (talk) 18:28, 23 July 2022 (UTC)
- I have fixed the error. Please check that I have done so correctly.
- The problem was that there were two separate uses of the ref name HRW ('<ref name="HRW">'). When someone enters '<ref name="HRW"/>', MediaWiki doesn't know which source they are trying to cite, so it generates the error message. The problem is, I also don't know which source was intended. But I have assumed that the refs before the second HRW ref are meant to refer to the first one, and the refs after the second HRW ref are meant to refer to that second ref (which I have renamed "HRW-pattern"). To avoid the problem in the future, I would recommend using more specific ref names. -- Visviva (talk) 21:28, 23 July 2022 (UTC)
Database dump with the very beginning of 9/11's edit history
I'd like a link to a database dump which includes the very first edits to the article about 9/11. 103.166.10.57 (talk) 08:30, 24 July 2022 (UTC)
- A comprehensive database dump from that time period is not publicly available and probably doesn't exist, but the earliest history of that article can be found at World Trade Center/Plane crash. I've just imported the redirect edit there from the Nostalgia Wikipedia. Graham87 08:52, 24 July 2022 (UTC)
Creating a new page
Wanting to create a redirect page for a common term, I find we have a new layer of bureacratic form-filling; it has to be a draft, am I a lizard, how many false teeth does my grandmother have? No, I do not do that shit, you will never get another page from me if this is to be the bright New World of conformant droids. — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 07:58, 25 July 2022 (UTC)
- Maybe the issue would become more obvious if you reformulated this without the allusions to Little Red Riding Hood and lizardpeople (?), but none of the obvious steps necessary for the creation of the redirect (go to page, paste
#REDIRECT [[XY]]
, click "Publish changes") would seem to involve the draft namespace – certainly not if your account is autoconfirmed, which it is. Dr. Duh 🩺 (talk) 08:42, 25 July 2022 (UTC)- Thanks for the prompt reply, but you misread the problem. The page (in this case, Minus number) is not there to be redirected, it has to be created. That used to be straight forward, now it is not - even for autoconfirmed users. Sorry, wrong grandmother too. ;-) — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 09:41, 25 July 2022 (UTC)
- I'm afraid I still don't get it. To my personal embarrassment, I have to admit that I've never actually written an article myself (one of my reasons for finally creating an account, but have yet to get around to it) – however, when testing for any unexpected roadblocks by momentarily breaking my recently created redirect Peri Rossi and technically turning it into a normal, non-redirect article, I didn't get as much as a warning, much less a cabal-mandated trip to draftspace. We might have to wait for someone less clueless to drop by, because I'm stumped. Dr. Duh 🩺 (talk) 12:10, 25 July 2022 (UTC)
- The trouble has now vanished and I have happily turned my red link above here blue. For what it's worth, your creation of Peri Rossi predates the trouble which sparked this thread. Let us hope it does not recur. Thanks for engaging, anyway. — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 12:51, 25 July 2022 (UTC)
- @Steelpillow Were you having a technical problem? There shouldn't be anything that is preventing you from creating new pages the way you have been. If this isn't a problem now, that's good to hear; if you are can you please give us the exact steps you are following, what you expect to be happening, and what is happening instead - so we can look in to this further. Best regards, — xaosflux Talk 14:02, 25 July 2022 (UTC)
- Your description above sort of sounds like you were logged out, if so - non-logged in and confirmed users are actually prevented from creating new articles or article redirects. — xaosflux Talk 14:04, 25 July 2022 (UTC)
- @Xaosflux: As I said above, all is now back to normal. I was logged in all right - my IP address is currently blocked from editing if I am logged out, and it was the first thing I checked. One of life's little mysteries. — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 15:37, 25 July 2022 (UTC)
- @Steelpillow thanks for the update, if it happens again and you can get a screen shot that could help, it shouldn't be that hard and if it is a recurring problem fixing it would be a good idea! — xaosflux Talk 15:47, 25 July 2022 (UTC)
- If it does happen again, it probably won't be to me. But if it is, I'll be back. — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 16:11, 25 July 2022 (UTC)
- @Steelpillow thanks for the update, if it happens again and you can get a screen shot that could help, it shouldn't be that hard and if it is a recurring problem fixing it would be a good idea! — xaosflux Talk 15:47, 25 July 2022 (UTC)
- @Xaosflux: As I said above, all is now back to normal. I was logged in all right - my IP address is currently blocked from editing if I am logged out, and it was the first thing I checked. One of life's little mysteries. — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 15:37, 25 July 2022 (UTC)
- Your description above sort of sounds like you were logged out, if so - non-logged in and confirmed users are actually prevented from creating new articles or article redirects. — xaosflux Talk 14:04, 25 July 2022 (UTC)
- @Steelpillow Were you having a technical problem? There shouldn't be anything that is preventing you from creating new pages the way you have been. If this isn't a problem now, that's good to hear; if you are can you please give us the exact steps you are following, what you expect to be happening, and what is happening instead - so we can look in to this further. Best regards, — xaosflux Talk 14:02, 25 July 2022 (UTC)
- The trouble has now vanished and I have happily turned my red link above here blue. For what it's worth, your creation of Peri Rossi predates the trouble which sparked this thread. Let us hope it does not recur. Thanks for engaging, anyway. — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 12:51, 25 July 2022 (UTC)
- I'm afraid I still don't get it. To my personal embarrassment, I have to admit that I've never actually written an article myself (one of my reasons for finally creating an account, but have yet to get around to it) – however, when testing for any unexpected roadblocks by momentarily breaking my recently created redirect Peri Rossi and technically turning it into a normal, non-redirect article, I didn't get as much as a warning, much less a cabal-mandated trip to draftspace. We might have to wait for someone less clueless to drop by, because I'm stumped. Dr. Duh 🩺 (talk) 12:10, 25 July 2022 (UTC)
- Thanks for the prompt reply, but you misread the problem. The page (in this case, Minus number) is not there to be redirected, it has to be created. That used to be straight forward, now it is not - even for autoconfirmed users. Sorry, wrong grandmother too. ;-) — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 09:41, 25 July 2022 (UTC)
Let's talk about the Desktop Improvements
Join an online meeting with the team working on the Desktop Improvements! It will take place on 26 July 2022 at 12:00 UTC and 19:00 UTC on Zoom. Click here to join. Meeting ID: 5304280674. Dial by your location.
Read more. See you! SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 16:19, 25 July 2022 (UTC)
Is "speed of light" misleading?
- The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Is it misleading to use the phrase "speed of light" in an article such as "International System of Units" when what is really being referred to is the speed of electromagnetic radiation in a vaccum? Is "speed of causality" more appropriate? Jc3s5h (talk) 18:38, 26 July 2022 (UTC)
- No. See also WP:COMMONNAME. Also, why is this here? This belong on the article talk page. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 18:41, 26 July 2022 (UTC)
- The important qualification is "in a vacuum", which seems to be used in that article where needed. Phil Bridger (talk) 20:40, 26 July 2022 (UTC)
- The constant being refereed to is 'C' which literally stands for causality. Marrew (talk) 21:49, 26 July 2022 (UTC)
- c comes from the latin celeritas, which simply means speed. It does not stand for causality. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 22:47, 26 July 2022 (UTC)
- Either way, c does not stand for speed of light, and calling the speed of light a constant is misleading, and more confusing. Marrew (talk) 23:10, 26 July 2022 (UTC)
- Celeritas, meaning speed, of what? The answer is still the celeritas of causality, not the speed of light. Marrew (talk) 23:13, 26 July 2022 (UTC)
- "of what?" Of light. Duh. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 23:23, 26 July 2022 (UTC)
- Ad hominem aside (no need to insult my intelligence here), the issue is listing the speed of light as a constant, when it is not a constant. Whether c stands for celeritas or causality is not really the issue here. This is confusing to people studying optics, which relies on the existence of refraction, a phenomenon that relies on the fact that the speed of light is not a constant. The table should include "in a vacuum" at the very least, as the paragraph talking about it does, to avoid this confusion.
- The speed of causality, also known as the fastest speed that any one point in the universe can communicate any data to any other point in the universe that is separated in space, is far more specific, and could lead people to reading further on the topic rather than being misinformed.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_of_light#Upper_limit_on_speeds is a better part of the article to link to in this regard, and is what a link for "speed of causality" automatically corrects/scrolls to. Marrew (talk) 00:09, 27 July 2022 (UTC)
- "of what?" Of light. Duh. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 23:23, 26 July 2022 (UTC)
- c comes from the latin celeritas, which simply means speed. It does not stand for causality. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 22:47, 26 July 2022 (UTC)
- The speed of light is NOT a constant. If it were, the field of optics would not exist. This is more confusing. Marrew (talk) 21:50, 26 July 2022 (UTC)
Updated contributor study?
Howdy hello folks. A friend had been telling me about how male dominated the open source community is, and it made me look up the gender breakdown of Wikipedians. As far as I could tell, our data is almost comically outdated at this point: the most recent data is from 2013, when we were 84% male (see Wikipedia:Wikipedians). Does anyone know of any more recent data? If not, anyone know how we could get that number updated? I think it would be very good to track our progress (or lack thereof) of diversifying the community. CaptainEek Edits Ho Cap'n!⚓ 19:27, 27 July 2022 (UTC)
- Hi CaptainEek, thanks for drawing attention to this. A couple of recent sources:
- The Community Insights survey 2021 report (paragraph 3 of the linked section)
- The 2019 Surveys on the gender of editors of English, Arabic, and Norwegian-language Wikipedias
- However, there are many more. For some lists of data sources on the gender breakdown of Wikipedians:
- The Gender Gap section on meta has a nice list of research by year
- As well as the Taxonomy of Knowledge Gaps for Wikimedia Projects (meta page for this project)
- I hope this helps a bit! -TAndic (WMF) (talk) 10:34, 29 July 2022 (UTC)
Vote for Election Compass Statements
- You can find this message translated into additional languages on Meta-wiki.
Hi all,
Volunteers in the 2022 Board of Trustees election are invited to vote for statements to use in the Election Compass. You can vote for the statements you would like to see included in the Election Compass on Meta-wiki.
An Election Compass is a tool to help voters select the candidates that best align with their beliefs and views. The community members will propose statements for the candidates to answer using a Lickert scale (agree/neutral/disagree). The candidates’ answers to the statements will be loaded into the Election Compass tool. Voters will use the tool by entering in their answer to the statements (agree/disagree/neutral). The results will show the candidates that best align with the voter’s beliefs and views.
Here is the timeline for the Election Compass:
July 8 - 20: Volunteers propose statements for the Election CompassJuly 21 - 22: Elections Committee reviews statements for clarity and removes off-topic statements- July 23 - August 1: Volunteers vote on the statements
- August 2 - 4: Elections Committee selects the top 15 statements
- August 5 - 12: candidates align themselves with the statements
- August 15: The Election Compass opens for voters to use to help guide their voting decision
The Elections Committee will select the top 15 statements at the beginning of August
Best,
Movement Strategy and Governance
This message was sent on behalf of the Board Selection Task Force and the Elections Committee
MNadzikiewicz (WMF) (talk) 21:22, 27 July 2022 (UTC)
Insects, athletes?
Has anyone else noticed, in the course of magnanimously contributing editing ideas to random WP articles, that insects and athletes seem to outnumber everything else on Earth? – AndyFielding (talk) 11:34, 29 July 2022 (UTC)
- Easy to resolve, just feed the insects to the athletes (or perhaps vice versa). Blueboar (talk) 11:42, 29 July 2022 (UTC)
- Well, at least in terms of insects, they DO outnumber everything on earth. Over 50% of all described eukaryotes...are insects. As J.B.S. Haldane is said to have noted versions of on several occasions, "the Creator, if he exists, has a special preference for beetles." It would appear it's their planet, we just live on it... --Jayron32 17:38, 29 July 2022 (UTC)
History of article on Bernard Cribbins
If one goes to the article Bernard Cribbins, and then looks at its history, you will see that some of its revisions are not in wikilinks, and have been crossed out, making it impossible to compare them. Why is this? YTKJ (talk) 17:46, 29 July 2022 (UTC)
- They have undergone revision deletion. It seems like there was a copyright violation in that article. Revision deletion makes sure it cannot be easily put back. Femke (talk) 17:51, 29 July 2022 (UTC)
- Per Femke, while Wikipedia maintains a database copy of every version of every page, sometimes those versions need to be hidden from public view for any number of reasons. In the case of the Bernard Cribbins article, some of the text in an earlier version was a blatant copyright violation, and needed to be removed. There are actually two levels of removal we have; there's simple reversion deletion, whereby admins remove the versions, but admins still have access to those versions. Given there are many hundreds of Wikipedia admins, sometimes versions are so egregious, even they shouldn't be allowed to see them, and in those cases higher level functionaries have access to oversight, which even admins cannot view. WP:CRD contains reasons why information may be removed from an article history. --Jayron32 18:13, 29 July 2022 (UTC)
Try out the new edit wizard
User:Ankit18gupta/Editwizard is a new script aiming to make it easier for beginners to edit. It is a step-by-step form for filing an edit request. Please try it out; your feedback would be greatly appreciated.
The goal is to show this to logged-out editors on select articles soon, and maybe on every article eventually; a VPPR discussion will be opened about that once there's enough feedback here. Enterprisey (talk!) 21:04, 29 July 2022 (UTC)
- @Enterprisey: Installed it on my alt account common.js. While using vector 2022 on desktop version on a smartphone, clicking on the "Edit Wizard" button at the top produces a pop-up above that button. The pop-up is mostly not visible because it exceeds the the page's top margin. Only the two blue buttons, "Verify" & "Next" could be seen. Thanks! —CX Zoom[he/him] (let's talk • {C•X}) 07:10, 30 July 2022 (UTC)
- @Enterprisey Haven't debugged it completely, but looks like it is having to funnel something through toolforge, that does not seem to be documented as a tool (c.f. wikitech:Category:Toolforge tools)? Is this really necessary for an edit request script? — xaosflux Talk 14:25, 30 July 2022 (UTC)
- Looks like it only works on vector and vector-2022, the landing page needs more documentation. — xaosflux Talk 14:36, 30 July 2022 (UTC)
- Got it to run in Vector. Tried to use it, went out and found a source and a quote - then loaded the wizard. It wanted the source URL (so assuming this is useless for off-line references?) - gave it; clicked next - it said I had to Verify, so clicked Verity - it just hung at "Loading..." : END OF TEST - dead end of the workflow there. — xaosflux Talk 14:46, 30 July 2022 (UTC)
- FWIW my reliable source url was: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40681013 (
<ref>{{cite journal|last1=Tonry |first1=John L. |last2=Burke |first2=Barry E. |last3=Schechter |first3=Paul L. |title=The Orthogonal Transfer CCD |url=http://www.jstor.org/stable/40681013 |access-date=30 July 2022 |work=Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific |date=1997 |pages=1154–1164}}</ref>
) — xaosflux Talk 14:49, 30 July 2022 (UTC) - @Xaosflux, that bug is fixed now. Enterprisey (talk!) 04:12, 31 July 2022 (UTC)
- FWIW my reliable source url was: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40681013 (
- Got it to run in Vector. Tried to use it, went out and found a source and a quote - then loaded the wizard. It wanted the source URL (so assuming this is useless for off-line references?) - gave it; clicked next - it said I had to Verify, so clicked Verity - it just hung at "Loading..." : END OF TEST - dead end of the workflow there. — xaosflux Talk 14:46, 30 July 2022 (UTC)
- Looks like it only works on vector and vector-2022, the landing page needs more documentation. — xaosflux Talk 14:36, 30 July 2022 (UTC)
- I haven't tried it yet, but my first thought was that anything which requires you to go through a multi-step installation process is going to be a non-starter for beginners. I do see that "The hope is to eventually deploy this as a part of the regular interface shown to logged-out users", so I guess all I'm saying is, "Yes, please do that". -- RoySmith (talk) 15:00, 30 July 2022 (UTC)
- As a more productive comment, I tried this out, attempting to add "http://en.wikipedia.org" as a source URL, and was informed that I couldn't do that because it's an unreliable source. This seems like a good thing, thanks for making it available! -- RoySmith (talk) 15:06, 30 July 2022 (UTC)
- @RoySmith the notes above suggest this would either be some sort of click-to-load (using a url parameter to load the script) or a default gadget (ehhh.... that's gonna take some convincing!). — xaosflux Talk 15:09, 30 July 2022 (UTC)
- Likely can be done as a click-to-load in Module:Submit an edit request without needing a default gadget. But that's putting the cart before the horse. * Pppery * it has begun... 16:02, 30 July 2022 (UTC)
- @RoySmith the notes above suggest this would either be some sort of click-to-load (using a url parameter to load the script) or a default gadget (ehhh.... that's gonna take some convincing!). — xaosflux Talk 15:09, 30 July 2022 (UTC)
- As a more productive comment, I tried this out, attempting to add "http://en.wikipedia.org" as a source URL, and was informed that I couldn't do that because it's an unreliable source. This seems like a good thing, thanks for making it available! -- RoySmith (talk) 15:06, 30 July 2022 (UTC)
- Thanks everyone for the comments. @CX Zoom, the tool was not originally developed with mobile users in mind but that will be fixed at some point. In the meantime I've filed a bug for the popup location thing. @Xaosflux, the backend is for bypassing the same-origin policy: we can't make requests to URLs provided by users from the script. wikitech:Tool:Edit Wizard created. Bug with the URLs filed. @RoySmith, thanks, and yes that's right. @Pppery/xaosflux, hopefully people will think this is useful enough that we can finagle it into MW:Common.js - putting it in that module will be a bonus, but the main goal is to add it as a tab next to the current edit tab. Enterprisey (talk!) 19:49, 30 July 2022 (UTC)