Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/2023-04-26/News and notes

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Two Wikimedians currently have access to the new account according to its Meta-wiki page: * Legoktm and Annierau. Are there 2 Wikipedia mastodon accounts? Cause I thought TNT had access to it. Or have I been fooled by the fox..../lh ― Blaze Wolf^Talk_{Blaze Wolf#6545} 13:24, 26 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

You indeed have.

Tails Wx 13:29, 26 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@Blaze Wolf You are confusing @wikipedia@wikis.world and @mediawiki@wikis.world. AntiCompositeNumber (talk) 15:02, 26 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Oh... I see now. Similar but also different at the same time. ― Blaze Wolf^Talk_{Blaze Wolf#6545} 15:05, 26 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Sooner or later TNT will probably have access to the @wikipedia account too, it's mostly on me for not having done so already :) Legoktm (talk) 18:32, 26 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I'm curious if Signpost writers follow a different manual of style than the encyclopedia itself and, if so, where one might review it.--~T P W 13:55, 26 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@True Pagan Warrior Content in the Wikipedia namespace is not subject to the MOS because they are not articles. More info at WP:PRJ. – The Grid (talk) 16:35, 26 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I ask because there is value to any news source having a style guide, be it the one from the Associated Press, or the one for Wikipedia entries, or a house guide. Based on what @Bri provided, it looks like the Signpost style guide is more about navigating mediawiki formatting than what one might find in the AP or Chicago guides. ~T P W 17:18, 26 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@True Pagan Warrior Yes and no. When I'm copyediting I give credited authors a lot of leeway. But I routinely correct things that are WP standards like straight quotes and Oxford comma. The complete Signpost style guide is here. ☆ Bri (talk) 16:50, 26 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you! I've written a style guide for a news site, and will enjoy reading this one. ~T P W 17:09, 26 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

It would seem prudent if Wales were to retain the ability to view deleted pages and oversighted revisions. As a figurehead and de facto spokesperson, I suspect he occasionally gets asked about deleted content and BLP disputes involving oversighting. Read-only access to deleted material doesn't seem like a serious site security issue. Sandizer (talk) 14:54, 26 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I just wanted to say I love the use of the word "Abdicate" here, it seems to say just enough about the situation. Jimbo is still on the board of trustees, so at the end of the day I'm sure he has access to whatever info he needs through somebody else. ASUKITE 18:23, 26 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Regarding turnover of WMF staff, 7% in the first four months of 2023 would be - if continued - 21% for the full year. That's actually better than the December 2022 percentage ("Staff members are staying, on average, for about 3.8 years" is the equivalent of a 26% annual departure rate), and better than the departure of 142 of 472 employees in the June 2021 to March 2022 period (perhaps as high as 40%, depending on how many of the new hires during that nine-month period also quit during the period).

Regardless, for an organization that has had zero financial problems, losing 20 to 40 percent of employees every year seems higher than desirable. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 17:10, 26 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I wonder if anyone has looked into the reasons for this high turnover. Is it the workplace? Or just typical of the San Francisco region? (Silicon Valley is known for its employees moving back & forth between companies.) -- llywrch (talk) 19:23, 3 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the update about general quality assessments, I totally missed it! Does anyone know if extensions such as Rater will be updated to support the new setup? Oltrepier (talk) 19:21, 26 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Scripts and tools like Rater do not conflict with the updated assessment format. So, these are safe to use. However, we would ask the maintainer, or in their prolonged absence, ask anyone familiar with JS to take up the script and modify it such that complete functionality can be introduced. But a lot of BTS work remains to complete, and it may not be soon enough. —CX Zoom[he/him] ^{(let's talk • {C•X})} 09:22, 28 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Someone had to link it: Exploding Wales. —pythoncoder (talk | contribs) 21:12, 28 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
{{groan}} Minh Nguyễn ^💬 01:15, 29 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The Foundation has 711 staff members (up from 525 last I read)? Where is Elon Musk when we need him to cut that number in half, or quarters, or a tenth, and with the right people it would run fine. No wonder they are trying to seep into Wikipedia in numerous ways recently, they have to give 711 employees something to do. Randy Kryn (talk) 00:43, 2 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@Randy Kryn:, this is flawed in quite a few ways at once (and I say as someone who has spent 4 years disputing WMF overreach). Putting aside that it's somewhat crass at a point when there have just been a round of WMF layoffs, several aspects come to mind: that is a truly terrible analogy - Twitter has egregious issues since Musk slashed their staff count. Additionally, the areas where the WMF try to "seep into Wikipedia" aren't really "recently". Instead, they date more from 3 years ago. The staff count was about 60% of its current tally at that point, so that's not holding up. Nor would it really hold up generally, if you take some time to look at where the staff generally are - tech development remains the biggest area, and the biggest increase on the community side is in reps who can function in more languages. Which major languages would you suggest we drop a community liasion for? Finally, I'd finish with a note that AGF applies to Foundation staffers singularly and in aggregate as well, not just to volunteer editors. Nosebagbear (talk) 09:21, 2 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks Nosebagbear. You say the staff has grown by 66% in the last several years, even though it was very large even then. No surprise that they feel like they can reach into more control of Wikipedia. Tech and language functions are well and good, hopefully they continue. But a 711 member staff, up from 525 in a recent listing? Sounds like a fully functional organization, yet also an organization that promised the public and Wikipedia editors that a large amount (in the many millions of dollars) would be used on Wikipedia community projects, and those accumulated funds (how many years wasn't the announced amount spent?) should be both offered and provided to worthy projects. I and others have suggested many projects and other ways to spend the promised funding, and the foundation should also be funding major conferences around the world on an almost monthly basis. Randy Kryn (talk) 14:13, 2 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

That...doesn't really answer any of my rebuttals at all. Some are worthwhile additional points to your initial post, but my answer was never intended to be a complete defence of the WMF's spending focuses, but a response to your statement above. Nosebagbear (talk) 15:27, 2 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Wikis World[edit]

Thanks for featuring all the efforts that have been going on to improve Wikipedia's presence on Mastodon and the broader Fediverse. If anyone wants an invite to the Wikis World Mastodon server, let me know :) Legoktm (talk) 19:11, 26 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@Legoktm: Do you prefer invitation requests on your Meta user talk page? ☆ Bri (talk) 19:43, 26 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Anywhere that I'll get notified about is fine :) I just need to be able to email you the invite link or some other private communication mechanism. Legoktm (talk) 19:50, 26 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The change to the Wikipedia portal allowing @wikipedia@wikis.world to be verified has been reverted for now. Nevertheless, that account remains active, helping this project to reach the Fediverse/Mastodon audience. – Minh Nguyễn ^💬 19:35, 28 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@Mxn: Was hoping someone else would ask, but: what does "verified" mean in this context? ☆ Bri (talk) 14:03, 2 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@Bri: Verification makes the profile look more trustworthy by confirming that the website link in the account profile “belongs to” the account in some fashion. For the @wikipedia@wikis.world account, the idea is that the account belongs to the Wikipedia community. Minh Nguyễn ^💬 15:34, 2 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry, new to Mastodon. So the website has to do something to attest that the Mastodon account is connected to itself? In other words, account verification is something the website provides to "the world"? ☆ Bri (talk) 16:18, 2 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@Bri: No worries, we’re all rookies, it’s the Wild West! It’s sort of a handshake protocol: the Mastodon account claims to be controlled by the same entity as a website, and the website claims to be controlled by the same entity as the Mastodon account. Once Mastodon sees the link in both directions, it adds the verification checkmark so readers can see that it wasn’t just someone randomly claiming to be Wikipedia. I don’t know if it’s possible for a site to claim to be multiple Mastodon accounts, but it isn’t a general service the way that, say, Twitter was deciding on a list of verified accounts. Minh Nguyễn ^💬 03:56, 3 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

So, I think it works like this (I couldn't access Mastodon from where I was yesterday). If your Mastodon profile links to a website, and the website links back to the same Mastodon account with a rel="me" attribute, then Mastodon will display that account profile to others with a "verified" checkmark on the website. And we had this all set up for a while for the @wikipedia@wikis.world account linking to enwp, until WMF un-verified the account. Correct? ☆ Bri (talk) 14:44, 3 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Essentially, yes. There’s some uncertainty about when the wikis.world Mastodon instance or other Mastodon instances will actually notice that the account has been unverified, but long-term the verification does depend on the wikipedia.org portal. Minh Nguyễn ^💬 16:10, 3 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Is it OK with you if I condense this conversation and include it in News and notes with both of our names listed as author for the item? ☆ Bri (talk) 16:17, 3 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

That’s fine with me, though note that the discussion is still ongoing with the Communications Department about Mastodon and this account in particular. Minh Nguyễn ^💬 16:36, 3 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Graph extension[edit]

The Graph extension is used widely on Wikipedia to display charts and graphs of all sorts, as well as on sister projects, and even on non-Wikimedia sites – it's included in MediaWiki, so there are about 884 public sites using it.

What does "included in MediaWiki" mean here? HaeB (talk) 01:10, 29 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

MediaWiki is the wiki software that provides the platform on which Wikipedia and sister projects run, as well as many other sites. Presumably the phrase means that the Graph extension is included in the standard release of MediaWiki. I suspect, though, that many sites that run on the MediaWiki platform do not make actual use of Graph. --Lambiam 20:12, 29 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

means that the Graph extension is included in the standard release of MediaWiki...except it isn't though, which is probably why HaeB was asking. Legoktm (talk) 03:50, 30 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Most of those 884 are probably just wikimedia websites (and maybe miraheze, i don't know if they were using it, but they usually enable any extension wikimedia uses). Its certainly still a popular extension (Most extensions that wikipedia articles depend on are, as people often want to copy stuff from wikipedia), but the 884 number is very misleading without context. Bawolff (talk) 06:19, 3 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]