User talk:Steven (WMF)

Well, thanks to you too!

I certainly did not expect a Barnstar; you are very kind. It was great to meet you and, as I said that evening, your presentation was exemplary: hip, cool, just funny enough to engage our sense of humor and very informative. I had a really nice time at the fundraiser and would do it again in a heartbeat. I value your kind offer and will contact you if I think of, or come across, anything that seems to be apposite. (I am so used to being sort-of self-contained within just the editing community that it is hard to remember sometimes that there are people out there at Wikimedia Foundation that can help too!) Hugs, Invertzoo (talk) 18:19, 10 October 2010 (UTC)

Tenwiki

Hey, I'm glad to help. Just let me know how. I'm already promoting the idea on our local mailing list. --Slashme (talk) 09:10, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

Your input is needed

[1]  Chzz  ►  23:49, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

IRC invitation

Because I have noticed you commenting at the current RfC regarding Pending Changes, I wanted to invite you to the IRC channel for pending changes. If you are not customarily logged into the IRC, use this link. This under used resource can allow real time discussion at this particularly timely venture of the trial known as Pending Changes. Even if nothing can come from debating points there, at least this invitation is delivered with the best of intentions and good faith expectations. Kind regards. My76Strat 08:07, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

I am often in IRC during the work day, but I didn't know that channel existed. Thanks! Steven Walling at work 08:13, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

Hi

Hi Stephen

Would you mind adding a talk link to your sig? Type in this for example [[User:Stephen (WMF)|Stephen Walling at Work]] [[User talk:Stephen (WMF)|hello?]]

Note:This is only an example. If you want to do it differently, that's fine, but include a talk page link.

Another note:If you want to use colour, use my signature as a guide (but try not to copy it!) or see the link that I will put here after I find the link.

Changing your signature

--The Master of Mayhem 16:18, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

I've always taken the talk link out of my signature (see my regular, volunteer account). I feel like signatures should just be... signatures, you know? And I kind of like people having to find out who I am a little before talking to me directly. But if it makes it a huge pain in the butt to get to my talk page, then I'll think about changing it. What do you think? Steven Walling at work 19:04, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

The lack of a talk/contributions link is viewed as "obstructive".--The Master of Mayhem 16:40, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

How is it obstructive? Anyone can still view/edit my talk page and my contributions are still open via the normal Special:Contributions. For a relevant example: you don't put a contributions link in your signature, but that doesn't obstruct me or anyone else from seeing them. Steven Walling at work 18:22, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

It isn't really obstructive, or a massive problem, Steven_(WMF), but it might be worth thinking about. Actually, more important to me would be that you should probably call yourself "Steven (WMF)" in the sig, instead of "Steven Walling at work" - or rename the user account, or get a doppelganger for the purpose. Reason being, it can be quite confusing for (especially new) users if the name in a sig is different from the actual user-name.

So...I don't see this as a massive concern, and it is your choice.

It certainly doesn't bother me, because I use pop-ups, so I'd use that to navigate directly to your talk. I could imagine it being a slight irritation for non-popup-people though, because let's face it, 99% of the time they are clicking your sig, it's to leave a message on your talk page.

Personally, I'd recommend you keep it simple - and in fact, due to your specific role (and thus being exemplary), I'd recommend you use an absolute plain vanilla sig with this account, ie no custom sig at all, just Steven (WMF) (talk · contribs) - to keep things as clear as possible for new users.

However, as you can clearly see, I'm a hypocrite on that score.  Chzz  ►  18:32, 4 March 2011 (UTC) although, that does a) have my actual user-name, and b) have a link to my talk to the right of it

Those are all good points. Steven Walling at work 18:53, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

Haha

After deleting the straw poll created by another user, I never really went back to the top of the Pending Changes discussion, now archived. I have now upon viewing the archive seen your comment here for the first time. In serious discussions I like trying to inject a little light humour once in a while in the right places, so I'm glad I was able to give you a chuckle. =) CycloneGU (talk) 17:06, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

Phase three

Well, I've gotten some feedback on the proposed phase three, but none whatsoever on the time frame issues. So I'm making them up myself sonce apparently nobody wants to discuss that particular topic. On Saturday the nineteenth phase two will have been open for ten days. Participation seems to be slacking off and we are seeing some of the same problems as in phase one, where users are adding at the bottom apparently without making sure they are actually adding something new because the thing has got so big. So, I figure we shut down phase two on Saturday. Not sure how to go about the actual mechanics of that, maybe just archiving it again. Then we post phase three and a new page for users to post links to their filled out questionnaire. Given that this is intended to be "the big show" part of the process and we want as much input as possible I propose we leave phase three open for a full month. We've had the watchlist notice for the first two phases, but maybe we could get a full-on site notice for phase three. That will give ip users a chance to participate and will notify users who may not have realized this was still going on. I'm thinking we try to get the signpost to do a story as well so we can maximize visibility and participation in this phase. Some users are calling for a fourth phase, either a poll or a specific policy proposal. I'm not sure we will be able to tell if we really need that or not until we have analyzed the results from the first three phases. Beeblebrox (talk) 20:30, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

I think we want to specifically resist the addition of a fourth phase, and instead encourage very wide participation in the third phase you've designed. Then, we can use the consensus that comes out of that participation to make specific recommendations for action. If you want help from an uninvolved party to analyze the consensus in a trustworthy way, let me know -- Risker and some others have suggested that jury idea before, so they may be able to help round up smart people able to fairly analyze the results of the third phase. Also, I'm about to note on the talk page that I've asked the developers for data to answer two important questions here. Steven Walling at work 20:33, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

The very idea of a fourth phase gives me the heebie jeebies. If that's what the people want they are probably going to be doing it without me. I absolutely do need help analyzing what I expect to be a rather large number of responses, and possibly formulating a jury. That's been another aspect that it has been difficult to get feedback on, so again I suppose we'll have to just make something up. I asked at WP:BN of the crats wanted to take it on, so far no response at all there either. Beeblebrox (talk) 21:07, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

The crats are overworked and underpaid, as usual. ;) Steven Walling at work 21:52, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

• We'll we're pretty much fucked at the moment. Phase three has been derailed and the only way I can see to get it back is by edit warring, which I obviously won't do. Discussion has wandered off in a thousand different directions, exactly what I have been trying to avoid, and forward progress is basically stalled indefinitely. I don't know what to do now. Beeblebrox (talk) 17:33, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

• In the interim since I left that message I have tried to get things moving again. I have failed. I don't know what is going to happen once phase three is closed. There is no agreement whatsoever as to how we proceed from here. One proposal after another is being floated and none of them are gaining broad-based support. Some of the proposed ideas seem deliberately designed to take as long as possible. I know I'll probably get some flak for suggesting that but that's what it looks like to me. Beeblebrox (talk) 22:35, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

I'm afraid I have become extremely exasperated with the state of affairs at the RFC and have decided to end my involvement in it. The goals I set for it in the beginning do not appear to be any closer to being reached now than they were 43 days ago when I started it, and it has been taking up far too much of my time and energy for too little reward. Thanks for your help along the way, and good luck. Beeblebrox (talk) 06:14, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

PC on template namespace

Apparently, this is currently not possible - either on enwiki, or on the test wiki. Can you find out why? Please see here (and probably, best to respond there), thanks.  Chzz  ►  14:43, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

Replied on the RFC thread. Steven Walling at work 19:31, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

Patrolled revisions

Hi. You may know that the community in addition to the "flagged protection" part, which became "pending changes", asked also for an implementation of "patrolled revisions". The intent of this is to provide a way for users to silently, collectively patrol articles, all articles, without in any way affecting the version which users see (if PC is not enabled). This would greatly enhance our capacity of reviewing new changes (in particular allow us to find and remove BLP violations in little watched articles, one of the most important problem faced by WP), as watchlists and recent changes have proved to be largely ineffectual, and Huggle and other tools not comprehensive enough. I know Aaron had considered this, but that development for this was not prioritized at all, is there anything new to know ? Cenarium (talk) 20:39, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

No, not that I'm aware of, though I could be misunderstanding exactly what difference you mean from the current version. My understanding is that all the WMF resources for PC in the last trial run went into requested fixes on the implementation currently used in the en trial. If there's something you'd like to see happen and think there's potential consensus for, then I'd write a spec for that here if there isn't one already somewhere. Steven Walling at work 22:04, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

I've already mentioned that over there. The original proposal that has been approved and requested to be implemented is Wikipedia:Flagged protection and patrolled revisions, only the flagged protection part has been implemented in the form of PC. Not the patrolled revisions part. Strange, it's exactly two years since the proposal has been approved, see Wikipedia talk:Flagged protection and patrolled revisions/Poll ! Cenarium (talk) 22:23, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

Question

I'm thinking of volunteering to manage the task of rewriting all of the Pending Changes policies to make them something more acceptable to the community. I am thinking of getting volunteers both in support of and against PC, setting my own view aside, and just doing a complete rewrite with community input. Do you think I might be in over my head, or might this be something that we can get done in an attempt to move forward?

I've also asked Chzz whether he thinks rewriting everything now is a good idea. I quoted the second-most endorsed item when originally making the suggestion: "PC is confusing" (61 endorsements in total). It certainly can't hurt if it's being removed from pages this week (which is obviously not decided yet). CycloneGU (talk) 06:48, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

I would wonder if the "PC is confusing" meant the policy, the software itself. Probably both. Anyway, if it does get kept in the long run, then the policy about where and how much to use it might change drastically, so I wouldn't want you to expend a lot of energy reworking the policy only to have your work be meaningless. So I think the best thing to do for now would be to simplify the existing policies as much as humanly possible, while leaving them to fit the current set of use cases as the trial laid out. Make sense? Steven Walling at work 07:11, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, I was sorta hoping that would be something we could hammer out as part of the RfC as well. Even if we don't write the final version of that document, it would be nice to get an agreement for its use. CycloneGU (talk) 13:39, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

Hey, thanks for the further reply. I actually am following up on the events at the current discussion and it seems that Cenarium is trying to put out something moving things in that direction, so it looks like he might already have the idea in mind. At first I thought it was a proposal to have the community vote on whether we should rewrite everything; obviously, such a pointless vote should not need to take place because 61 people endorsed that PC is confusing, so I spoke against such a vote. Apparently I am mistaken. Respectfully, I referred to your initial comment to me in my remarks (as you'll see there) in bringing up the suggestion to simplify things. Whether we CAN simplify much before going into a new draft proposal I do not know, and in the meantime we have to wait for this RfC to close before moving forward. I will keep looking for ways forward. CycloneGU (talk) 19:55, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

Research survey

Hello, I saw you closed this thread at AN regarding a research survey. I wanted to alert you to this situation (links: User:Cooldenny User talk:Cooldenny User:Cooldenny/Questionnaire contribs edit count (no article edits)) where the user is spamming hundreds of users in the same manner that was rejected in the AN thread. I was wondering if you could help nudge this user to the proper methods of doing his research survey and stop his spamming. Thanks. (Dynamic IP, will change when I log off.) --64.85.214.234 (talk) 17:41, 24 April 2011 (UTC)

Hello again, please disregard the above as it appears that User:Philippe (WMF) has taken the initiative here. Rgrds. (Dynamic IP, will change when I log off.) --64.85.221.143 (talk) 11:37, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

Huggle experiment and the Signpost

Hullo Steven, I noted your announcement of the Huggle experiment with interest and would like to cover it in next week's Signpost. I wonder is the project documented anywhere (i.e. meta/wmf wikis), or if you could give any background on what motivated the study? I understand it's early days, but if you or anyone on the team would like to give an interview on your motivation, hopes, and tactics, we could give this admirable initiative some broader publicity. Cheers, Skomorokh 14:01, 20 July 2011 (UTC)

Hey, many thanks for the interest! I think it'd be great to have Signpost coverage of the test. However, if you're interested more in the results instead of just advertising the test (it's still in progress), I'd wait for not this Signpost but the next one. By then we'll have the dataset complete and the analysis publicly available on Meta. In the meantime, I'd be happy to give you an interview about it, and I'll ask Stu and Aaron if they're comfortable with that too. Did you want to do the interview on-wiki or over IRC? Steven Walling at work 17:00, 20 July 2011 (UTC)

That's great, I really appreciate it! The interview can be on-wiki or IRC (nick: Narodnik) if that's more convenient, though my prejudice would be that the former allows for more substantive, considered replies. We definitely mean to cover the outcome of the experiment, but I'm actually more interested in the planning side of things – the Signpost is constantly reporting on these initiatives after the fact, once the results are in, and I think this fails to give the readership a complete picture of how things get done at the Foundation. I think some sections of the editing community regard Foundation initiatives with undue suspicion, and shedding some light on the machinations planning stages of an enterprise like this could help alleviate that. The aspects that I would be interested in exploring would be the origin of the project, the collaborative process in designing the experiment, what you hope to discover and what form future usability/editor retention efforts might take. I can prepare some questions on-wiki here and you guys could answer there, or by email/scheduled IRC session if that suits better. Skomorokh 19:18, 20 July 2011 (UTC)

On-wiki sounds like the best option then. :) I'll take a look and get you answers by Sunday. Steven Walling at work 20:47, 20 July 2011 (UTC)

Fantastic, I look forward to it. Don't worry if some of the questioning is irrelevant or if there's redundancy in answers; it will be edited down to a coherent narrative by Monday. Thanks again, Skomorokh 21:19, 20 July 2011 (UTC)

Steven, apologies about this, but it looks like the Signpost will be covering the Summer of Research program more comprehensively and in greater depth than I thought (which is a good thing), but that this means that the sort of snapshot/day-in-the-life spotlight piece on the Huggle experiment might be out of place. I understand that HaeB is discussing with Dario Tarborelli a report on the research, so it might be best to direct efforts in that direction for the time being. Skomorokh 14:05, 22 July 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, I forgot the general research newsletter was happening. This week might not be the best, but in general that work is focused on the results so far. I think doing something about process is still a good idea, and will be sure to fill out the interview before the next upcoming Signpost (after this one). Our experiment is going to run until the 26th, or at least that's the plan for now, so there's still time to talk about your questions. Steven Walling at work 16:47, 22 July 2011 (UTC)

Yes

About this, I've been thinking for three days now about how to address the main limit on what the WMF owns. Perhaps you'll take a look at my further effort there and fix it if it seems wrong. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:56, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

No, that looks great. Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 03:03, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

re: your message

Hi Steven, I've left a reply to your message on my talk page -- Marek.69 ^talk 22:06, 25 September 2011 (UTC)

Hi Steven, I've left another reply on my talk page -- Marek.69 ^talk 23:44, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

Huggle test

Hi Steven, I was going to post this on the village pump thread but it has archived.

Interesting work. Remember practically none of these vandals can be turned round short term, its really just a matter of how efficiently we warn and drive them away (some might come back years later in their mid or late teens - but they'll probably do so with new accounts and studying this is probably too long term for most researchers). I'm not surprised that images made little or no difference if they were warning type images. If we really want to drive vandals away you want to use images that make the kids realise they are playing cat and mouse in an old people's home. Check out user:RHaworth I rather suspect that vandals who visit his userpage are less likely to persist than the average.. I'd love to test an image of a carton of a mildly scolding granny in level 3 warnings. Among other possible tests, have you tested not actually warning them at all for the first vandalism? Just reverting them and ignoring them? One really big opportunity would be to test whether four warnings and a block at fifth level is the most efficient way to handle vandals. If we can combine two levels we would save a lot of vandalfighting, conversely if it emerges that each warning level turns a few around we could add a level (though my gut feel is that few editors turn productive after a third or fourth vandalism warning. ϢereSpielChequers 20:30, 1 October 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, I agree about the vandals being turned around. In the first test I think Stu and Aaron were really focused on the possibility of conversion, but I think it's clear that the positive results we got weren't really improvements in editing, but the fact that we could simultaneously drive away blatant vandals alright and still get constructive questions directed at vandalfighters by those who were confused or disagreed with a revert for good faith reasons. I also think it might be worthwhile to try and test the next levels of warnings, though I'd like your thoughts about that more since I've not really considered it yet. The next thing we were thinking of doing is testing the level 1 templates that are specific to a particular kind of revert, such as the test-1, npov, blanking etc. Steven Walling • talk 20:41, 1 October 2011 (UTC)

Test is kind of a euphemism for vandalism so I don't hold out great hope there. I'm more curious about NPOV it could be an interesting one to look at as I've rarely used it and I haven't a clue how effective it is. Do you have figures as to how often the various level 1 messages and welcomewarnings are used? You might find such variance that it would be obvious which ones are worth reviewing and which are used so rarely that it wouldn't make a difference how effective they were. Marek69 and I usually have a chat at the end of the London meetup, and I think HJ Mitchell is planning to join us on the 16th. It might be interesting for us all to have a skype chat then or subsequently - I don't know if you've spoken to him but Marek has done quite a bit of huggling. ϢereSpielChequers 22:18, 1 October 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, I think a group chat about it could be a good idea. I'll propose some time to talk about it after we get our new test warnings up on-wiki. Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 17:14, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

A3 change

Hi Steven, do you by any chance have some stats you could give us re this thread? More realistically we'd need to get some stats on A3 deletions, a random subset and then check enough to get a rough idea how many would be involved in this change. ϢereSpielChequers 23:12, 1 October 2011 (UTC)

I think you're looking for this? Let me know if that's what you were thinking of. Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 17:31, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

Yes. Of the A3s in that what proportion were "a question that should have been asked at the help or reference desks". If you don't have the resources to check a sample I can try and drum up some volunteers, just give me a list of a random 500 A3 deletions from 2010/2011. But I feel awkward proposing to no longer delete an unknown number of pages, especially if it then increases the workload at helpdesk and reference desk. ϢereSpielChequers 21:09, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

Just me being helpful again...

Just saw your post about needing helpers for research on Wikien-l. I'd be happy to help with the diff-reading...I think. As long as it's not too time- or brain-intensive, in which case my poor soul might not be up to it. Let me know how I can be useful! A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk) 22:14, 11 October 2011 (UTC)

Ditto, though I saw your note on the Village Pump. --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 23:07, 11 October 2011 (UTC)

I'd also be interested. – Luna Santin (talk) 23:22, 11 October 2011 (UTC)

Fantastic! Thanks for the interest, it's much appreciated. Fluffernutter, I've already introduced you to our two other collaborators on this -- User:EpochFail and User:Staeiou -- but Luna and Philosopher, if you can email me at swallingwikimedia.org then we can get you set up soon on our system. Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 23:25, 11 October 2011 (UTC)

Both myself and Nabla offered our services on the VP, so just letting you know that we are also interested. Ajraddatz (Talk) 16:56, 13 October 2011 (UTC)

Test

I have interrupted your huggle test, it apparently caused huggle to issue wrong templates, see feedback and latest edit in config for more details, once you fix issue, feel free to restore the test. In case you need some extra assistance, feel free to ask me or other huggle devs in our chat Petrb (talk) 16:51, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

Problem is that "unsor" contains delete messages instead of removing of references and so Petrb (talk) 17:30, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

This one: Template:Uw-unsor1-rand Petrb (talk) 17:34, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

Missing random warning template

Hi, just wanted to make you aware of this, in case you haven't seen it yet. Cheers and keep up the good work. DVdm (talk) 12:54, 21 October 2011 (UTC)