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Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees 2024 Selection

1
MediaWiki message delivery (talkcontribs)

You can find this message translated into additional languages on Meta-wiki.

Dear all,

This year, the term of 4 (four) Community- and Affiliate-selected Trustees on the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees will come to an end [1]. The Board invites the whole movement to participate in this year’s selection process and vote to fill those seats.

The Elections Committee will oversee this process with support from Foundation staff [2]. The Board Governance Committee created a Board Selection Working Group from Trustees who cannot be candidates in the 2024 community- and affiliate-selected trustee selection process composed of Dariusz Jemielniak, Nataliia Tymkiv, Esra'a Al Shafei, Kathy Collins, and Shani Evenstein Sigalov [3]. The group is tasked with providing Board oversight for the 2024 trustee selection process, and for keeping the Board informed. More details on the roles of the Elections Committee, Board, and staff are here [4].

Here are the key planned dates:

  • May 2024: Call for candidates and call for questions
  • June 2024: Affiliates vote to shortlist 12 candidates (no shortlisting if 15 or less candidates apply) [5]
  • June-August 2024: Campaign period
  • End of August / beginning of September 2024: Two-week community voting period
  • October–November 2024: Background check of selected candidates
  • Board's Meeting in December 2024: New trustees seated

Learn more about the 2024 selection process - including the detailed timeline, the candidacy process, the campaign rules, and the voter eligibility criteria - on this Meta-wiki page, and make your plan.

Election Volunteers

Another way to be involved with the 2024 selection process is to be an Election Volunteer. Election Volunteers are a bridge between the Elections Committee and their respective community. They help ensure their community is represented and mobilize them to vote. Learn more about the program and how to join on this Meta-wiki page.

Best regards,

Dariusz Jemielniak (Governance Committee Chair, Board Selection Working Group)

[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Wikimedia_Foundation_elections/2021/Results#Elected

[2] https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/Committee:Elections_Committee_Charter

[3] https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/Minutes:2023-08-15#Governance_Committee

[4] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_elections_committee/Roles

[5] Even though the ideal number is 12 candidates for 4 open seats, the shortlisting process will be triggered if there are more than 15 candidates because the 1-3 candidates that are removed might feel ostracized and it would be a lot of work for affiliates to carry out the shortlisting process to only eliminate 1-3 candidates from the candidate list.

MPossoupe_(WMF)19:56, 12 March 2024 (UTC)

Reply to "Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees 2024 Selection"
M7 (talkcontribs)
M7 (talkcontribs)

Disable "Work in Progress" gadget

4
Summary by Jdforrester (WMF)

Gadget has been de-listed from the definitions configuration page, and emptied to disable its functionality for people cross-loading it, but not deleted.

Pppery (talkcontribs)

What it does is CamelCase the page title. It seems to be some admin having some fun in 2014, and is ancient cruft in 2023. I suggest it be disabled. Any objection?

P858snake (talkcontribs)
Krinkle (talkcontribs)

Do you mean "delete" instead of "disable"? The gadget was created as a demo during a MediaWiki workshop, I believe. It is disabled by default. I don't think it was ever enabled.

Strangely, it is enabled by 1000+ users per Special:GadgetUsage, though fewer than 10 of which are active users. In any event, I've deleted it now, since it was indeed not meant as a useful tool by itself.

Pppery (talkcontribs)

Global ban proposal for Slowking4

1
Seawolf35 (talkcontribs)
Reply to "Global ban proposal for Slowking4"

Move 'changetags' right from 'user' users group

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Iniquity (talkcontribs)

Hello! It seems to me that it is a little wrong that 'user' users can edit manual tags, since such vandalism is easy to overlook and quite difficult to rollback: https://www.mediawiki.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Log&page=Special%3ALog%2Fpagetranslation&type=tag

Ciencia Al Poder (talkcontribs)

I support this. There's another right called "applychangetags" that won't affect the ability to tag their own edits when using gadgets to perform actions.

Pppery (talkcontribs)

Agreed. We've had a years-long history of vandalism using this feature not being noticed or reverted.

Dinoguy1000 (talkcontribs)

+1; I blocked the most recent user vandalizing via tags but didn't go further with cleanup when I saw how many tags were added, we definitely shouldn't allow the cleanup problem to be compounded further.

Dinoguy1000 (talkcontribs)

Also as a general note, it's not just pagetranslation stuff that gets vandalized with tags: Special:Log/tag.

94rain (talkcontribs)

Support. And I feel this should probably be removed from 'user' user group by default. Is there a reason to enable it for users when we already have 'applychangetags'?

Iniquity (talkcontribs)

@94rain, I agree with you, the right should be removed from regular users by default.

Justman10000 (talkcontribs)

I've been wondering the whole time why we can do that 🤣

Reply to "Move 'changetags' right from 'user' users group"

Problem of translation, and edit request(s)

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Wang31 (talkcontribs)

I noticed that many translatable templates use code like {{#invoke:Template translation|renderTranslatedTemplate|template=<!--Template name-->|noshift=1|uselang={{int:lang}}}}. However, then translation will not show properly when using interface language like zh-cn or other variants of Chinese (zh), because templates were translated to Chinese only in zh.

For example, the Chinese translation of sandbox header only shows in (zh) but not in (zh-hans), (zh-cn), (zh-hant) etc.

I thought of two maybe practical solutions:

  1. Replace all {{int:lang}} with {{Zh other}}. This may be a big project.
  2. Edit Module:Template translation. When uselang input variants of Chinese(like zh-hans, zh-cn, zh-hant etc.), automatically change it into zh. This works like {{Zh other}}, and may be easier.

Hope someone would help with this problem.

(Sorry for my poor English)

94rain (talkcontribs)

I think there are some other languages with variants too (File:MediaWiki fallback chains.svg). I'd prefer a more generalized template name. Full support can be added over time.

Wang31 (talkcontribs)

Oh, maybe you are right. I did't noticed that.

TheDJ (talkcontribs)
Wang31 (talkcontribs)

Sorry, but I can't write Lua… Besides, according to the words of 94rain, I think maybe we need a separate template or module to deal with the Language fallback, and maybe I'm not able to make it.

Reply to "Problem of translation, and edit request(s)"

IMPORTANT: Admin activity review

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Superpes15 (talkcontribs)

Hello. A policy regarding the removal of "advanced rights" (administrator, bureaucrat, interface administrator, etc.) was adopted by global community consensus in 2013. According to this policy, the stewards are reviewing administrators' activity on all Wikimedia Foundation wikis with no inactivity policy. To the best of our knowledge, your wiki does not have a formal process for removing "advanced rights" from inactive accounts. This means that the stewards will take care of this according to the admin activity review.

We have determined that the following users meet the inactivity criteria (no edits and no logged actions for more than 2 years):

  1. Petrb (bureaucrat, administrator)
  2. VasilievVV (bureaucrat, administrator)
  3. AhmadF.Cheema (administrator)
  4. BRUTE (administrator)
  5. Catrope (administrator)
  6. Guillom (administrator)
  7. Isarra (administrator)
  8. Magnus Manske (administrator)
  9. Mardetanha (administrator)
  10. SVG (administrator)

These users will receive a notification soon, asking them to start a community discussion if they want to retain some or all of their rights. If the users do not respond, then their advanced rights will be removed by the stewards.

However, if you as a community would like to create your own activity review process superseding the global one, want to make another decision about these inactive rights holders, or already have a policy that we missed, then please notify the stewards on Meta-Wiki so that we know not to proceed with the rights review on your wiki.

Thanks,

Jdforrester (talkcontribs)

@Superpes15: Hi there, can you please point to where this wiki was notified that you think we follow this process? I don't recall any discussion, but I might have missed it. At first glance, many of the individuals you've listed are active but on other accounts, which is allowed on this wiki (as we're rather unlike normal SUL wikis), and so I don't think your assessment is necessarily valid. Where can we opt out?

Superpes15 (talkcontribs)

@Jdforrester: Mediawiki falls under the AAR as far as we know since it doesn't have an inactivity policy - see also AAR2022 for example (we removed some sysop flags last year)!

Jdforrester (talkcontribs)

Thanks for linking there. It shows that that posting also didn't get any response from the local community, sadly. :-(

Pppery (talkcontribs)
Bawolff (talkcontribs)

Catrope is wmf staff, i dont think he should be considered inactive unless his staff account is also inactive.

I also think gerrit commits should count towards activity, generally speaking.


Edit: guess this was discussed in the past... oh well.

Pppery (talkcontribs)

Fine with Catrope being kept. Guillom is also WMF staff, but their staff account also has no edits or logged actions in two years.

On Gerrit commits (aside from the WMF staff) the only people I could find Gerrit commits for are Petrb and Isarra, neither of whom appear to have committed anything in the last two years. Personally I'm more inline with Skizzerz's comment in the linked RfC and think that since MediaWiki.org adminship gives you no authority over Gerrit then Gerrit commits are irrelevant, but I'll respect the consensus that the community comes to.

Bawolff (talkcontribs)

Given Project:requests states "Being a developer (someone with merge access who uses it to maintain code that runs on Wikimedia sites) automatically entitles you to at least administrator status", it seems weird that someone could be both "inactive" and meet the criteria for being promoted to admin. I'd argue that one of these two policies should change for consistency.

Nemo bis (talkcontribs)

I agree it sounds weird but it's not a contradiction. The user would need to make at least one edit to request the flag, so they would no longer be eligible for automatic deflag in the moment they're flagged.

Charitwo (talkcontribs)

I think establishing our own policy so we can manage it ourselves would be more practical than worrying about AAR being done on our behalf regardless of the disposition of the above list of users.

P858snake (talkcontribs)

@Charitwo Do you think mwwiki is large enough to self maintain and run the process reliably every year?

Charitwo (talkcontribs)

I believe so. I also believe in project autonomy, and the less the stewards have to worry about, the better. This wiki has also been sort of unique from other projects and has always had a degree of autonomy, this process shouldn't be any different.

Jdforrester (talkcontribs)

@Charitwo I think you're right, especially with the special rule that @Bawolff highlighted for this wiki that gerrit (and GitLab?) activity counts as "activity". Do you want to start an RfC?

Skizzerz (talkcontribs)

@Jdforrester: @Charitwo: I started an RfC a few years ago to adopt AAR because we weren't doing anything about it otherwise. The rule before then was "you just keep admin forever." While we might be large enough to self-sustain and run a yearly process, historical evidence has proven otherwise. If an RfC is opened for us to do our own thing, I think the point of "who is doing this work" needs to be tackled.

I'm not necessarily opposed to us adopting some other criteria, although my stance remains that activity off-wiki isn't sufficient to maintain sysop bits here. Sysop bits shouldn't be a mark of community status, but rather an indication that you're willing and able to perform cleanup/maintenance tasks on the wiki. If you've literally never edited the wiki once in 2 years, well, it's pretty obvious you aren't doing that.

Jdforrester (talkcontribs)

I think the point of "who is doing this work" needs to be tackled.

Why? What problem does reducing the number of people who can help out in an emergency fix?

Skizzerz (talkcontribs)

You can read the RfC I linked for reasoning as to why I believe people should not have advanced privileges if they are inactive, or the reasoning behind why AAR as a thing was established globally (the reasoning is much the same). I don't see a particular need to re-hash that here.

Given my stance that we need some process to deflag inactive accounts, and since before my RfC that adopted AAR we were not deflagging anyone, I believe that any RfC to regain autonomy in this area would need to answer the question of "who will be performing the work in enforcing the new policy" because adopting a new policy that says we'll do something but then never enforcing it would run counter to why the policy exists in the first place.

Jdforrester (talkcontribs)

In that entire thread you linked there's only one active developer who voted in approval, and then you closed it in your own favour. I feel extremely uncomfortable about you pushing this POV about how to run this wiki, but of course it's policy until we overturn it.

In terms of "who will run this process", I'm happy to do so each January or whatever if that's the will of the community.

Skizzerz (talkcontribs)

The poll was open for almost two months, and I believe it was linked on IRC a couple of times as well during that period (although I haven't gone back and checked that to confirm). I don't appreciate that you seem to be implying that I somehow acted inappropriately in closing the straw poll simply because it ended up going in my favor.

If you want to open an RfC to change the process, go for it. My request above was simply to identify who would be doing the enforcement of the changed process. If the community opts to go forward with it, then all is well.

Charitwo (talkcontribs)

Not arguing against the above list, if you're inactive here you're inactive here. Especially if you seem to not care about the rights being removed. My comment was centered around it being nice if we were more autonomous.

As far as off-wiki activity, I agree with you completely. The rights don't benefit you on off wiki, on platforms with their own access system.

Leaderboard (talkcontribs)

I don't see the need for us to deviate from AAR (which on its own is lenient) - as people pointed out, having activity elsewhere doesn't mean that you need it here. Worst case someone can easily (re)-request adminship here, which isn't really a big deal with the laid-back nature we have on this wiki.

Superpes15 (talkcontribs)

Hi all, 1 month passed, could you please confirm if we can remove all the flags (except for Catrope) or if you reached a consensus to keep some other flags (or if you created a new local policy)? Thanks!

94rain (talkcontribs)

If any of them responded that they want to keep the flags during the notification period, I'll probably agree to let them keep it.

But it looks like most of them are either just not around (even counting Gerrit commits per Pppery's comment) or do not care.

Leaderboard (talkcontribs)

@Superpes15, I think you can remove all the rights.

Superpes15 (talkcontribs)

@94rain and Leaderboard: Thanks, I think I'll remove the flags in some hours, except for Catriope (since two users asked to keep their rights)!

Jdforrester (talkcontribs)

@Superpes15: Yes, you can go ahead, clearly the community won't come to a decision here.

Superpes15 (talkcontribs)

@Jdforrester: Many thanks for your confirmation! I proceeded removing the flags (except for Catrope). Please note that some users in the list above (if I remember correctly there are 2) are also translation admins, and I didn't remove this flag, which should be handled by bureaucrats in accordance with local policies. Thanks again for your assistance and I hope you could find a decision soon :)

Report of the U4C Charter ratification and U4C Call for Candidates now available

1
MediaWiki message delivery (talkcontribs)

You can find this message translated into additional languages on Meta-wiki. Please help translate to your language

Hello all,

I am writing to you today with two important pieces of information. First, the report of the comments from the Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee (U4C) Charter ratification is now available. Secondly, the call for candidates for the U4C is open now through April 1, 2024.

The Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee (U4C) is a global group dedicated to providing an equitable and consistent implementation of the UCoC. Community members are invited to submit their applications for the U4C. For more information and the responsibilities of the U4C, please review the U4C Charter.

Per the charter, there are 16 seats on the U4C: eight community-at-large seats and eight regional seats to ensure the U4C represents the diversity of the movement.

Read more and submit your application on Meta-wiki.

On behalf of the UCoC project team,

RamzyM (WMF) 16:24, 5 March 2024 (UTC)

Reply to "Report of the U4C Charter ratification and U4C Call for Candidates now available"

Translation issues (AF)

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M7 (talkcontribs)

Hi, I've tried to amend two typos and a conceptual error in one of the Italian language translations, but my edit was rejected by the Abuse Filter as invalid additions. The attempted edit was

from: Puoi usare la tua pagina utente come blocco per gli appunti. Un area per sviluppare idee senza ingombrare i princiapli "spazionomi" (vedi $h-nspace).

to: Puoi usare la tua pagina utente come blocco per gli appunti. Un'area per sviluppare idee senza ingombrare i "namespace" principali (vedi $h-nspace).

Please note that the term "namespace" is not translated into Italian language, as you can see here

Can you update the translated text, please?

94rain (talkcontribs)

I have added Autopatroller status to your account. Hopefully you won't run into similar issues again. The AF false positive will be looked into. cc @Ciencia Al Poder

M7 (talkcontribs)
Ciencia Al Poder (talkcontribs)

Your edit was split in two lines, while the original text doesn't contain newlines. That's why your edit triggered the filter. While you didn't add the newline in your edit (it was there before), you didn't remove it neither.

Reply to "Translation issues (AF)"

Could we start maintaining an unmaintained extension again?

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BugCatcher2019 (talkcontribs)

My team have recently started maintaining an unmaintained MediaWiki extension called Extension:OAuth2 Client again, and we want to put our library to the page mentioned above and update some information on the page. I wonder if we can do so.

Jdforrester (WMF) (talkcontribs)

I see that you've changed that extension's repo link to your fork – though that works for on-wiki documentation and people finding the extension for the first time through this wiki, it might be smoother to fork it to a new name and set of pages for more visibility? Other than that, I don't think there's a proper process.

BugCatcher2019 (talkcontribs)

You mean that we should take it as a new extension?

Bawolff (talkcontribs)

Generally i think its fine as long as the original author doesn't object. An attempt should be made to contact the original author first and get their blessing (but if they don't respond, then i still think its fine).

If there is ever any sort of disagreement over which version is "real", then i think the original author should take precedence.

BugCatcher2019 (talkcontribs)

Thanks. I'll try to contact the original authors, though they seem to be inactive.

BugCatcher2019 (talkcontribs)

@Jdforrester (WMF)@Bawolff I have received the reply of the original author Joost de Keijzer, who allowed us to modify the extension. Meanwhile my teammate noticed that the author mentioned above is the real original author, which means the other people mentioned on that MediaWiki.org page had just forked the repo before, so could we start maintaining formally?

Bawolff (talkcontribs)

If you have the original author's blessing, then i certainly don't see why not.

There's nothing really formal to be done, its just where the link on the page points to, and anyone can change it.

BugCatcher2019 (talkcontribs)

OK, maybe what my said is easy to misunderstand... I mean I have got the original author' blessing. Sorry for my poor English (; w ;)

Reply to "Could we start maintaining an unmaintained extension again?"