User talk:MPinchuk (WMF) (usurped)

Template test?

Hey Carnildo,

Steven Walling and I have been running some A/B tests on common user talk templates (check out our task force for more info), and I was wondering if you'd let us tinker with the warning templates that your bot sends (not in the technical sense, just with the actual content of the warning). Right now we're working with Beetstra and Versageek on some redesigned warnings for XLinkBot and with Kingpin13 on an SDPatrolBot warning test, and since ImageTaggingBot is another bot that hits a huge number of talk pages, it would be awesome if we could test out some different warnings with it.

Let me know what you think – you can catch me on IRC if you hang out there at all (nick:Maryana), or just play talk-page tag. Thanks! Maryana (WMF) (talk) 20:33, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

I'd be interested in it. The current user messages the bot uses are:

• User:OrphanBot/deprecated: the uploader used a deprecated license tag (extremely rare; the bot's logs don't show it having happened at any time in the past year).
• User:OrphanBot/nosource nolicense: the uploader did not provide anything that the bot could recognize as source or license information. The bot is extremely liberal in what it will accept, so this usually (but not always) means a blank image description page.
• User:OrphanBot/nosource untagged: the uploader did not provide anything the bot could recognize as potential source information, but did provide something that might be license information. I don't think the bot's current logic actually permits it to use this message: anything that meets the bot's criteria of "might be license information" also meets the critera for "might be source information".
• User:OrphanBot/nolicense: the uploader provided something the bot recognizes as source information, but did not provide anything that the bot could interpret as license information. This usually means the user filled out a template such as {{information}}, but did not provide a license template.
• User:OrphanBot/nosource-new: The uploader provided a license template, but did not provide anything the bot could recognize as a source.
• User:OrphanBot/untagged-new: The catch-all situation: the uploader did not provide a license template, but there's text on the image description page. The bot isn't smart enough to tell the difference between a free-form description of the source and license (rare), a vague description of the image's source (common), or a brief description of what the image depicts (very common), so it makes the most conservative assumption and marks the image as not having a license template.

The corresponding templates placed on file description pages are:

• {{no copyright information}}: deprecated, nosource nolicense, nolicense
• {{no copyright holder}}: nosource nolicense, nosource untagged, nosource-new
• {{untagged}}: nosource untagged, untagged-new

These are the actual messages ImageTaggingBot uses, so changing them on the wiki will change what the bot puts on users' talk pages.

What's the best way to have the bot change what it uses? I can modify the bot to randomly select a message from a group, or the pages I linked to above can be modified from time to time. I'd rather not try any sort of fancy wikimarkup to switch messages: I'm not sure how template coding interacts with "subst:", and I'd like to keep the actual markup on users' pages as clean as possible. --Carnildo (talk) 02:59, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

Fantastic! So happy to have you on board :)

When testing on Huggle and Twinkle, we've been using a template randomizer that our summer researchers hacked together. You can take a look at how it works here (substituting is no problem). With bots, we've just let the bot ops change their code as they see fit. I'm not a bot expert, but Beetstra, Versageek, and Kingpin13 are, so you can ask them about how they've done randomization if you're interested. So it's really up to you – the template randomizer is fairly simple and effective and doesn't leave any extraneous code on user talk, but you certainly don't have to use it. The one thing that would be nice to have is a log of all users warned during the test (which is something that bots are great at doing, of course).

Steven and I can take a stab at tweaking the templates and drop you a link to make sure you're happy with them, and then we should be all set to go. Thanks again for volunteering your bot! Very excited to see how this test goes :) Maryana (WMF) (talk) 19:15, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

repectfully

I will not contribute to wiki until the copyright rules are changed so that my work can't be reused by for profits. I just find that this sticks in my craw.68.236.121.54 (talk) 14:38, 12 December 2011 (UTC) sorry cinnamon colbert user — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.236.121.54 (talk) 14:38, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

Template testing

Hey there.

Sure, I'd like to help if I can. There is one technical hurdle to handle, however: my bot needs to recognize some of the templates it leaves on articles and on maintenance pages; any randomization would have to be in a parameter rather than switch the template itself to avoid problems.

That said, it substs the actual user notices so those can be safely randomized. The templates it uses are:

• {{csb-pageincludes}}, {{csb-pageincluded}} or {{csb-wikipage}} are transcluded at the top of potentially problematic articles; and
• {{csb-notice-pageincludes}}, {{csb-notice-pageincluded}} or {{csb-notice-wikipage}} respectively to the talk page of the original editor of an article tagged with one of the previous templates. Those are substituted.

Additionally, it will subst {{welcomelaws}} if the editors' page is entirely blank to begin with, and it uses a half-dozen internal templates that only go on maintenance pages in project space we probably don't want to mess with.

Just tell me what you need from my end; it's trivial for me to pick from a set or add parameters to templates as needed. — Coren ^(talk) 02:25, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

Taking a crack at rewriting these templates, and I have a question for you: how is {{csb-notice-pageincludes}} different from {{csb-notice-pageincluded}}? I.e., what's the criteria the bot uses to decide between "material copied directly from" and "a substantial copy of"? Is the latter used for cases of wholesale article copyvio and the former for just individual sentences/paragraphs? No huge rush... I'm still trying to knock out some ImageTaggingBot alts at the moment. Too many nice bot herders letting us play with their bots! :) Maryana (WMF) (talk) 00:43, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

It's a question of which is a subset of the other. Pageincluded is used when the wiki page contains (most of) the external page along with other stuff – all or most of the external page has been copied; pageincludes is when the wiki page is an excerpt from the external page – so it might be one section of a large page, or a very long quote. In theory, the former is "worst" of the two, and was worded a little more strongly. — Coren ^(talk) 00:58, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

Hi Maryana!

Nice reply @ ANI.

Good luck with this work. – SJ + 22:31, 11 December 2011 (UTC)

Heh, thanks, Sj! Appreciate the support :) Maryana (WMF) (talk) 18:45, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

Treatment of newbies: example

Hi,

I ran another training course today, for staff from various GLAMs; here's the history of an article created by one of the participants, during it:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=William_John_Wainwright_(artist)&action=history

Note the third edit, and the state of the article at that point - a useful example for you, perhaps? We could easily have lost another new editor; and a useful contribution about a notable subject. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 14:55, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

and then (this). Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 17:50, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

Ooof. Thanks, Andy. That's so unfortunate, but I see it all the time, too. I wish we could clone you and bring you to help out all the newbies making their first edits, but unfortunately science hasn't progressed that far... so I guess we'll have to look for other options :) That COI template, for example, is pretty bitey – could definitely stand to get added to the testing list! Maryana (WMF) (talk) 18:31, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. Another editor has recently reverted the CoI template to a version which, while not perfect, is much less aggressive. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 09:57, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

One of the participants has now written a blog post about the event, including the aggressive response to new editors. The rapidly-PRODed article he refers to is Martineau Gardens. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 10:17, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

CoI example

and here's an example of a CoI debate where an involved editor has followed policy precisely, but the article has still been tagged aggressively. (I assume such examples are useful to you; please let me know if not) Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 10:38, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

Offer

Hi, Maryana. I've talked a bit with Andy, and pretty much agree with him on things. Mostly this talk has been about WP:HLIST (and Internet Explorer's deficiencies;), and I've helped make a few thousand navigation templates more accessible. I heard Sue Gardner call out to you during her talk in the UK, which I know Andy did the video of. I've watched (listened to, at least) that three times. I've been considering trying to have a talk with Sue, but expect I'd be directed your way. And today, you appeared in a banner which prompted me to click-through and actually read the message. I also got asked to participate in the lastest WMF Survey some hours ago, which I did, and I expect that you'll be one of the people going over that data. You'll notice mine, I'm sure.

Anyway, I think I could give you some very useful feedback on the Wikipedia editing experience. Interested? Alarbus (talk) 11:54, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

p.s. I'm skilled. I saw your comment to Fred Gandt about template appearance. I could help you (and Fred) with this.

Happy to hear you're interested in improving the editing experience, Alarbus :)

My main focus for the past few months has been template A/B testing, a project you should definitely sign up for if you're interested. Steven and I are always looking for help, whether it's ideas for new tests, crafting templates from scratch, or giving feedback on stuff we create. Anything you can do to help would be greatly appreciated! And if you have ideas for other projects to improve the editing experience, you should think about applying for a WMF fellowship. You can propose an idea for someone else to work on, or you can apply to work on something yourself. Check out the fellowships page and let me know if you have any questions. Cheers, Maryana (WMF) (talk) 18:55, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

Hi, Maryana. I understand the template/bot problem. See the first post to my talk page. ClueBot NG reverted "my vandalism". I reverted the bot, because it wasn't vandalism. I've kept the warning on my talk, too, and this incident gave me a theme for my user page (although Alarbus is a character from Titus Andronicus). I do believe the templated messages and bots could be more friendly. Maybe 'gentle' would be a better way of viewing it, as some firm messages are quite warranted. I see the wiki-community as incredibly hostile. Sue said the n00bs feel the website is attacking them, but it's not, it's the regular users attacking people. I believe that back in the early years when participation was very low, the project attracted a high proportion of idealistic people. After a few years, however, it had attracted everybody, and that's when the real problems began. Some of the early adopters were more interested in the power structure, and had a hand in moulding the overall structure of the now-established processes. A lot of these are quite arbitrary. With the huge influx of people came a consensus gridlock. I don't think the consensus model is capable of changing anything that has been set for a long time. The default is not to innovate; if something is proposed, megabytes of discussion follow and no consensus is achieved. WP:HLIST is an interesting example. We don't really have "consensus", just acceptance of a good idea. We had a series of fairly low-profile talks and just did it. We've now refactored maybe 100,000 templates and more every day. Many people are quietly starting to help, too. This hits well on several issues: it's better markup semantics, it's more accessible to everyone (visual impairments and readership, as well as typical editors and the editbox), and it's a significant reduction of the load on the servers processing the millions of {dot}-type templates. BOLD can still work.

People that have been here a while have often carved out a niche for themselves. Too often these are fitted out with ramparts, boiling oil, and all the other traditional means of defending a pulled-up drawbridge. This would be the 'hide' Sue referred to in her UK talk, and part of the fightiness. Another part of the fighty nature of The Streets of Wikipedia is the wiki-as-video-game phenomenon. People see other users as targets in a shoot'em-up-game. Take vandals. They should be reverted, of course. But the whole process of running up warning counts (ClueBot NG's edit summary to me was "Warning Alarbus - #1") is feeding a game-play paradigm. ClueBot NG also gave "my vandalism" a score: 0.899497, which I expressed concern over. The bot-parents didn't see it.

Wikipedia is full of factions and groups defending a spot of turf. To a large extent, the spirit of collaboration that is much talked-of is actually absent. People are territorial creatures; "mine", "yours". Wikimedia's intent is that people contribute to the commons, but many simply don't get that. People should contribute what they can and allow others to as well. In reality, it often does not work out that way.

Wikimedia's projects are huge, and all is not lost. All the good and desirable things are occurring, too. But far too much of the discourse is incredibly rancourous. Your user page describes you as a Community Organizer. You're going to need to do a lot of reorganizing of the way things work, as too much is stuck in vicious cycles.

I will look at the template testing pages and sign-up for that. I'll be helpful. I don't know much about the WMF fellowship program other than having read that it was your route to what you're now doing, and I find the page you linked to intriguing; it links to more and I need to read further. Thanks, Alarbus (talk) 00:22, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

Re:WP:UWTEST update

Hi, Maryana, I saw this news bots, and I support the creation. Who knows if Wiki-pt can have this bots too. Thanks. Vitor Mazuco ^Talk! 11:03, 15 December 2011 (UTC)