Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous)

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The miscellaneous section of the village pump is used to post messages that do not fit into any other category. Please post on the policy, technical, or proposals sections when appropriate, or at the help desk for assistance. For general knowledge questions, please use the reference desk.

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Forking resources (current information)

I want to create a fork of Wikipedia.

The FAQ on forking cites information from 2008 for only part of what would need to be downloaded...the "Size of Wikipedia" article has information that doesn't exactly match apples and oranges... how much storage space would I actually need to download and extract and display what is available to be downloaded? (I wish there were files to download (for restoration) articles whose deletion I disagree with,but apparently that is not an option...obviously I do NOT want to download user pages or community stuff like this one or anything else related to this site in particular,but I want as much of the knowledge-base as is available). Are what-links-here and related tools automatic options with Wikimedia software or must they be created from scratch?

If a download of the big file is interrupted would it need to be restarted from scratch?...I figure that it would take a long time at all but the fastest bandwidths. Are the extracted files reachable when stored on multiple disks/partitions without any modification to URLs to accommodate this? I intend to be the only person with the authority to take revisions live but am open to letting visitors make pending revisions I could approve/reject (no account signup mechanism though). 71.105.190.154 (talk) 20:33, 14 November 2022 (UTC)

If you want to self-host, I think you'll want to start with mw:Manual:Installation requirements. Once you have the MediaWiki software up and running, you can import the content later. MediaWiki and its various extensions is what provides all of the Special: pages. Some other tools, including everything you see in Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-gadgets, are user scripts and have to be copied over after you install MediaWiki. If you don't want to self-host, then you might look at the list of known wiki farms.

In terms of disk space, I think the two biggest questions are whether you want all revisions (vs just the current version of an article) and whether you want images as well as the text. In addition, you will presumably also want a lot of the templates and the modules that support them.

The long list of copies in Wikipedia:Mirrors and forks proves that it can be done. However, I wonder if you've fully thought through what you're thinking about? If you spend every waking minute on a complete copy of the English Wikipedia, then going through articles at a rate of one article per minute means it will take you about 20 years to look at each one. I would not recommend this as a viable project for any lone human. If you want to work on a subset of articles, then you might look into the smaller batches of higher quality and higher-interest articles that the Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team have created. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 21:53, 14 November 2022 (UTC)

I certainly intend to "self-host",I note that the installation requirements for Mediawiki don't address how much storage is needed for a fork of Wikipedia.As I said,I want as much history as possible in order to do my own editorial review of past deletions.

I am well aware that I won't be able to keep everything up to date as fast as thousands of collaborators can,and I expect things I care about most will see the most work and those I care about least will see the least (I am sure things that have no interest at all for me I may well wind up deleting but I want to have it in front of me to do that).As for reorienting things to my preferences I think even getting rid of pinyin wherever it conflicts with the orthographic traditions of the English language for the Latin alphabet may be beyond my ability to complete,but I do want to try (the same with getting rid of non-ordinal dmy dates).But editing without edit wars is priceless. 71.105.190.154 (talk) 08:44, 19 November 2022 (UTC)

I'm not sure that the dumps contain deleted articles.

MediaWiki itself seems to be quite small. mw:Manual:Installation requirements#Hardware requirements suggests that you will not need to worry about it. The content, on the other hand, can fill disks quickly. There is file size information for the database dumps at Meta-Wiki. The answer appears to be that the size depends on which type of dump you are interested in. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 06:56, 21 November 2022 (UTC)

Featured content

Is there a list of featured articles across all the Wikipedia versions? From the list we could see which article has is the most featured on multiple versions of Wikipedia or which articles are featured no on ENWP. Eurohunter (talk) 17:04, 15 November 2022 (UTC)

@Eurohunter, are you looking for the Wikipedia:Featured articles in other languages? WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:50, 15 November 2022 (UTC)

@WhatamIdoing: It's interesting but I'm looking for a list with exact articles listed. Eurohunter (talk) 17:55, 15 November 2022 (UTC)

Click through to the specific pages from the "language" column, to reach pages like Wikipedia:Featured articles in other languages/German. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:58, 15 November 2022 (UTC)

Perhaps you could get them recursively from wikidata:Q4387444? — xaosflux ^Talk 19:37, 15 November 2022 (UTC)

@WhatamIdoing: @Xaosflux: Yes but I would like to see ranking - a summarised list with positions like Finland and number of Wikipedia versions where article is featured. Eurohunter (talk) 20:09, 15 November 2022 (UTC)

@Eurohunter Looking on Wikidata:

• Overall stats for all Wikimedia projects https://w.wiki/5yMa - the top is Mars, 30x WP featured articles
• ...plus a filter to say "is it FA on enwiki" https://w.wiki/5yMc - the top one without an enwiki FA is World War II, 22x WP featured articles.

There is a complication here in that these figures include FAs from non-WP projects as well - Wikibooks, Wikinews, Wikivoyage, Wikiquote, Wiktionary and Wikisource all have FA-equivalent page statuses, and while they're not nearly as common, there's enough to make the numbers a little noisy. I haven't quite worked out how to filter those out yet (though am investigating!) but figured might as well post it - all the counts below are adjusted to be purely WP where needed.

The most frequently featured ones tend strongly towards planets, which I found very interesting - I guess they are a nice combination of a clearly very significant topic, with a lot of easily available literature, but without much in the way of controversial issues to work around. The top person on the list is Augustus (17x) then Julius Caesar (14x) and a handful more around 12-13x. We don't get a living person until Roger Federer & Michael Jordan (8x), though I guess you could make a case for counting The Beatles (12x), and if you go down that route there are a couple of football teams in the same range.

The top one with no enwiki article at all is possibly Lviv during the Middle Ages (Q18401624), found in five WPs and featured on az/ru/uk - though it's difficult to make a definitive statement at this end of things because things can get a bit fuzzy around how we define the boundaries of topics, what gets covered in a main article (History of Lviv) vs split out, etc. Andrew Gray (talk) 18:08, 16 November 2022 (UTC)

and thanks to @Tagishsimon over on WD, here is the corrected versions:

• Stats for the number of wikis which share a given featured article https://w.wiki/5yQe
• ...plus a filter to say "is it FA on enwiki" https://w.wiki/5yQf
• ...or restricting it to only ones which are FA on enwiki https://w.wiki/5yQq

So we can say there are 23,306 article clusters with at least one WP FA (wow!), ~78% of which are only FA on one wiki. About 60% of enwiki's FAs are only FAs on this project. There may be a little plus-or-minus on this - my query reports 6,182 FAs on enwiki and WP:FA reports 6,171, so I'll do a little tidying to get those numbers back in sync, and it's possible some of the other projects are similarly off a little. But it's probably good enough to be going on with. Andrew Gray (talk) 18:55, 16 November 2022 (UTC)

• Thanks, Andrew, but what is the point of all this? The standards of FAs vary wildly across the European languages I can understand, with most non-English wikis having the sort of standards we had in about 2008. The ill-fated OKA initiative thought it was a good idea to machine-translate Spanish and Portuguese FAs into English. It wasn't, & I'd advise anyone else thinking of similar efforts to be very cautious. Equally FAs on en:wp in the last decade have increasing been on obscure micro-topics, often only of interest to the Anglosphere, so I'm not at surprised if other wikis don't have them as FAs - I bet many aren't even covered at all. Look at WP:FAC now, or anytime. Johnbod (talk) 19:07, 16 November 2022 (UTC)
  • @Andrew Gray: Thanks. It's exactly what I have been looking for. Eurohunter (talk) 21:12, 16 November 2022 (UTC)

  @Johnbod sorry, missed this comment - yes, I would definitely agree with these points. Andrew Gray (talk) 13:59, 23 November 2022 (UTC)

Global preferences

I remember there was a way to set global preferences across all WP versions. What was that? Eurohunter (talk) 21:13, 16 November 2022 (UTC)

@Eurohunter: are you looking for Special:GlobalPreferences? Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 21:16, 16 November 2022 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Special:Preferences has a link to Special:GlobalPreferences. It's for all Wikimedia wikis where your account works. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:17, 16 November 2022 (UTC)

@Firefangledfeathers: @PrimeHunter: Can I set there expections for certain Wikipedias? Eurohunter (talk) 21:19, 16 November 2022 (UTC)

I use that page to set my preferences across all Wikimedia projects. If I then want to have something special happen on a particular sister project, I set the local preferences to be slightly different. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 21:22, 16 November 2022 (UTC)

Firefangledfeathers, is it better to set global preferences here or on meta:Special:GlobalPreferences? — Nythar (💬-🎃) 21:26, 16 November 2022 (UTC)

Nythar, as far as I can tell, it does not make a difference where you change your global preferences. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 21:32, 16 November 2022 (UTC)

@Eurohunter: Not at Special:GlobalPreferences but you can set local exceptions at Special:Preferences in the individual wikis. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:23, 16 November 2022 (UTC)

@PrimeHunter: How to do exceptions at Preferences? Eurohunter (talk) 15:20, 17 November 2022 (UTC)

@Eurohunter: Set a global preference first. Then you get an option "Set a local exception for this global preference" at that preference when you view Special:Preferences. PrimeHunter (talk) 19:11, 17 November 2022 (UTC)

@PrimeHunter: Global preference settings are greyed out for me. Why? Eurohunter (talk) 19:22, 17 November 2022 (UTC)

If the first checkbox is off in global prefs, you can't change it (as you have it not-applied globally). — xaosflux ^Talk 19:28, 17 November 2022 (UTC)

@Eurohunter: There should be a working checkbox to the left where you can say you want to set a global preference. Then you can choose how to set it. PrimeHunter (talk) 19:29, 17 November 2022 (UTC)

@PrimeHunter: What about gadgets section? I need "Enable the legacy (2006) editing toolbar. This will be overridden by the "Enable the editing toolbar" option in the Editing tab." and eventually "Add extra buttons to the legacy (2006) editing toolbar". Eurohunter (talk) 19:49, 17 November 2022 (UTC)

@Eurohunter: Gadgets are coded locally at each wiki so there is no concept of global preferences for gadgets. Special:Gadgets shows that the gadgets you mention use code in MediaWiki:Gadget-legacyToolbar.js and MediaWiki:Gadget-extra-toolbar-buttons.js. If you load them in your global JavaScript at meta:Special:MyPage/global.js then their code will be loaded at all wikis:

mw.loader.load( '//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=MediaWiki:Gadget-legacyToolbar.js&action=raw&ctype=text/javascript' );
mw.loader.load( '//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=MediaWiki:Gadget-extra-toolbar-buttons.js&action=raw&ctype=text/javascript' );

I don't promise the code of those gadgets will actually work at other wikis. It was written for the English Wikipedia. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:05, 17 November 2022 (UTC)

@PrimeHunter: Thanks. It looks like atleast basic toolbar works. Do you know how to make HotCat tool globally? Eurohunter (talk) 14:37, 19 November 2022 (UTC)

@Eurohunter: Special:Gadgets shows it uses MediaWiki:Gadget-HotCat.js. It doesn't work for me to load that page with:

mw.loader.load( '//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=MediaWiki:HotCat.js&action=raw&ctype=text/javascript' );

But it appears to work to copy the load command in the page:

mw.loader.load( '//commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=MediaWiki:Gadget-HotCat.js&action=raw&ctype=text/javascript' );

PrimeHunter (talk) 23:34, 19 November 2022 (UTC)

Second version works. I didn't tried the first. Thanks @PrimeHunter: Eurohunter (talk) 09:52, 20 November 2022 (UTC)

@PrimeHunter: There is tool that bolds and moves to the top of the list of user-defined interwiki but I can't make it to work. Do you know how to import it?

Original local version:

importScript('Wikipedysta:Lampak/MyLanguages.js');
var mylangsArray = ["en"];

Doesn't works globally (?):

mw.loader.load('https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedysta:Lampak/MyLanguages.js');
var mylangsArray = ["en"]; — Preceding unsigned comment added by Eurohunter (talk • contribs)

@Eurohunter: Use a load command like the others above to load pl:Wikipedysta:Lampak/MyLanguages.js from another wiki:

mw.loader.load( '//pl.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedysta:Lampak/MyLanguages.js&action=raw&ctype=text/javascript' );
var mylangsArray = ["en"];

PrimeHunter (talk) 21:58, 21 November 2022 (UTC)

@PrimeHunter: I have tried it now but it doesn't works. Is that possible it's limited only to PLWP? Eurohunter (talk) 17:16, 22 November 2022 (UTC)

@Eurohunter: I don't know why it fails in meta:Special:MyPage/global.js but it also fails for me. It works in Special:MyPage/common.js at the local wiki, for example de:Special:MyPage/common.js for pages viewed at de:. PrimeHunter (talk) 18:04, 22 November 2022 (UTC)

Online Safety Bill (United Kingdom)

The WMF policy team posted this article regarding the UK's Online Safety Bill.

The short version is that it threatens to expose and erode the privacy of contributors to Wikipedia because of mandatory age verification requiring the collection of data on those who make contributions. Our article details a variety of other critiques Seddon ^talk 03:30, 18 November 2022 (UTC)

Protesting this would be a significantly better use of banner space than asking for donations. If the Online Safety Bill passes and Wikipedia is affected, we'd be in trouble immediately. If the WMF gets no donations in the next three years, we should still be fine. —Kusma (talk) 11:34, 19 November 2022 (UTC)

This could have a similar effect in the UK to the US SOPA proposals, and may require a similar response. If passed, Wikipedia would lose most of its UK editors, resulting in a reduction in manpower and loss of coverage of a significant part of the English-speaking world. This is an area where the WMF has expertise and should be concentrating its resources urgently. Certes (talk) 11:53, 19 November 2022 (UTC)

“If passed, Wikipedia would lose most of its UK editors…” How so? Blueboar (talk) 13:39, 19 November 2022 (UTC)

Because (if I've understand the legislation correctly, and it may well get watered down) it would become illegal for editors who have not gone through an age (i.e. identity) verification process to contribute to Wikipedia from the UK. I haven't been through such a process, I don't intend to do so, and I'm guessing that many of my compatriots hold a similar position. Certes (talk) 13:51, 19 November 2022 (UTC)

British law has nothing to do with ENWP. ENWP is as British as German or French Wikipedias are so it would be frivolous if Britsh law could affect ENWP only. Actually it's not "English Wikipedia", it's American Wikipedia available in English or any other language. Eurohunter (talk) 14:44, 19 November 2022 (UTC)

Of course, the bill is not specific to English-language Wikipedia, but it might be expected to affect enwp much more than Wikipedias in languages not widely used in the UK, most of which have low levels of contribution from UK-based editors. Proportionately, cywp and gdwp might suffer even more. Certes (talk) 15:11, 19 November 2022 (UTC)

Meh… I suspect that the majority of UK editors won’t have an issue with proving their age. And for those that aren’t… that’s what VPNs are for. Blueboar (talk) 16:06, 19 November 2022 (UTC)

We would also lose the contributions from junior editors, and deny their potential to become future adult editors. We haven't even mentioned non-editing readers, whom we'd be obliged to protect by CENSORing content and possibly even hiding it behind a age-check wall. Using a VPN to circumvent these checks would presumably become illegal too. Do we really want an encyclopedia anyone can edit only after sending in proof of identity, and can read only by committing a criminal offence? I hope this is a flag run up the proverbial pole with the aim of forcing a compromise on something less draconian, but even that might be very bad for both the British public and Wikipedia. Certes (talk) 19:53, 19 November 2022 (UTC)

As Wikipedia doesn't let you edit from behind a VPN, suggesting that as a solution isn't helpful. These sorts of laws are what the community should expect when it goes out of the way to oppose online safety - for example see [1] and related discussions where our articles are accused by Suicide prevention charities of promoting suicides, even if you ignore the toxic nature of much of Wikipedia's talk page , and the rejection by the community (or at least the loud parts of it that dominate notice boards) of all and any attempts to make things better.Nigel Ish (talk) 20:07, 19 November 2022 (UTC)

@Nigel Ish: Wikipedia is a reference work, all of those articles are heavily cited to academia articles working to understand and prevent it. If the articles don't reflect that, we should try to fix the problem. RAN1 (talk) 21:56, 19 November 2022 (UTC)

For suicide-related issues, much of the issues are to do with how information is presented. We have articles like Suicide bag which can easily be interpreted as a how to kill yourself using this method, even if it well cited, and there is a general refusal to consider adding suicide helplines and the like to relevant pages, unlike virtually all mainstream media. Then, of course, there is as I said before, the general toleration of toxic behaviour.Nigel Ish (talk) 22:49, 19 November 2022 (UTC)

Then our opinions differ, and you may wish to support the Online Safety Bill as a way of making that content unavailable in the UK. Certes (talk) 22:57, 19 November 2022 (UTC)

The problem is that these sort of issues, if not handled properly, will make it harder for Wikipedia to make the case that the potentially more draconian interpretations of the bill shouldn't apply to entities like Wikipedia. We should aim to avoid making enemies and appearing to act like edgelords when we are trying to argue that regulation should have a soft touch.Nigel Ish (talk) 23:30, 19 November 2022 (UTC)

The community has no say in UK policy. RAN1 (talk) 01:05, 20 November 2022 (UTC)

Wikipedia should certainly not contain material which promotes suicide. I hope we don't have any and, if we do, I support its removal. Unfortunately, any discussion of methods or equipment will contain information useful to those contemplating their use, but articles such as Suicide bag is clearly a definition and description rather than a how-to. The UK's attempts to block one page of Wikipedia in 2008 was a fiasco: see Internet Watch Foundation and Wikipedia. (Warning: top of linked page contains a small image which may be illegal in some jurisdictions.) Certes (talk) 17:00, 20 November 2022 (UTC)

"The majority of UK editors won't have an issue with proving their age..." That assumes that Wikipedia provides some method of doing that. It also assumes that it is relevant - the act doesn't appear to explictly state that age verification is required, and while there seem to be extra requirements to protect children if the website is likely to be used by children (which probably applies to Wikipedia - both due to editors and readers, some of the requirements apply to everybody. The draft act appears vague enough that we don't know what the effects will be - we will only know when secondary legislation and regulations get implemented under the terms of the bill.Nigel Ish (talk) 23:10, 19 November 2022 (UTC)

...The thing I am most concerned about with this act is how Wikipedia may be required (depending on its categorization) to keep certain WP:POLEMIC content just because it relates to UK politics. –MJL ‐Talk‐^☖ 02:11, 25 November 2022 (UTC)

Why so many California politician, Georgia politician...?

Kevin McCarthy (California politician) puzzles me. why is the noun not modified by an adjective? other countries' are Thomas Mann (German politician), John Griffiths (Welsh politician), Kim Song-il (North Korean politician)... instead of "Germany politician", "Wales politician"... RZuo (talk) 18:20, 18 November 2022 (UTC)

That's an interesting question. Per the sample of people at Category:21st-century American politicians noun is how "we" do it for American states here. I see no Floridian, Washington, D.Cian or Wisconsinian. Perhaps it's easier as a rule of thumb? I don't know if there's written guidance on this particular qualifier somewhere. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 18:54, 18 November 2022 (UTC)

I think it is that we don't adjectivize sub-national entities. Short descriptions operate the same way. Curbon7 (talk) 18:56, 18 November 2022 (UTC)

I'm not sure "adjective" is the right term. Looking at my own usage, I say "I am a native Floridian", or "I am a Florida native." I.e., "Floridian" is used as a noun, and "Florida" as an adjective". Donald Albury 20:59, 18 November 2022 (UTC)

"Demonym"? Certes (talk) 21:46, 18 November 2022 (UTC)

For some states in the US the demonym can also work as an adjective ("Hawaiian", "Alaskan" - the non-contiguous-48 states, as it happens), but for most states such use feels, at best, as awkward to me. Some demonyms feel terribly awkward to me in any use (Utahn/Utahan, Arkansan/Arkansawyer). Now, I have no problem with Britain/Briton/British, or using French, Canadian, Brazilian, or Congolese as adjectives as well as demonyms. It is just with US states and places within them that my idiosyncratic grammar rejects using demonyms as adjectives. Donald Albury 22:19, 18 November 2022 (UTC)

there're Luis Díaz (Colombian footballer) Aisha (Latvian singer) Charles Taylor (Liberian politician) The Lemons (Mongolian band)... being a native speaker of an analytic language but having reinforced inflecting the language while learning english, i find it so odd to read "California politician". RZuo (talk) 16:54, 19 November 2022 (UTC)

then there's another strange thing. why are Tobias Müller (footballer, born 1993) and Tobias Müller (footballer, born 1994) disambiguated by year of birth but not Saxon footballer vs Baden-Württemberger footballer? why are US politicians not American politician, born 1955 vs American politician, born 1966? RZuo (talk) 17:06, 19 November 2022 (UTC)

This is just how we do it in American English. See Florida Man. BD2412 T 17:09, 19 November 2022 (UTC)

Picture of the Year voting open

Voting is now open in the sixteenth annual Picture of the Year contest - please vote! There is one week left for voting in the first round.

Any user with more than 75 edits before Jan. 1, 2022 is eligible to vote; if you're not sure the voting tool will automatically check for you. If you have any questions, please see the help page.

Thanks! Legoktm (talk) 15:58, 20 November 2022 (UTC)

Talk:Main_Page#Nanook_of_the_North

Just a heads up that an upcoming POTD deals with a controversial film. Levivich asked me to try and provide a bit more warning in future for potentially controversial Picture of the Days, and I really have no objection to that. Adam Cuerden ^(talk)_{Has about 8.2% of all FPs. Currently celebrating his 600^th FP!} 20:07, 20 November 2022 (UTC)

One Love solidarity

@WanderingWanda:

Those who have access to the social media could publicise the following:
User:Steue/Solidarity

Ping welcome, Steue (talk) 17:19, 22 November 2022 (UTC)

Banners and changes at the Wikimedia Foundation

I've been the CEO of the Wikimedia Foundation for nearly 11 months now. I am posting here as a follow up to the Request for Comment to change fundraising banners.

I agree that it is time to make changes at the Wikimedia Foundation, including more direct community input into fundraising messaging. We have taken the guidance provided by the close of the RfC to change banners on the English Wikipedia campaign as early as Tuesday. The fundraising team welcomes your help and ideas on the specifics.

The task at hand in responding to the guidance provided by the RfC is that Wikipedia's existence is dependent on donations. Donated funds are used primarily to support Wikipedia. I think what we heard is that while this may be true, how we say it matters. We need banners that better recognize the real stake our communities have in how we communicate to our donors.

In the next few months, the fundraising team will work more closely with local communities to guide future campaigns. The Foundation will measure the financial results of using new banners in this year's English campaign, and we will share this information when the campaign is completed.

I will briefly address a few other areas of concern that were raised about the future direction of the Wikimedia Foundation, and commit to writing again in January after we finish this campaign. I believe some things at the Foundation can in fact be different, because they already are:

• I agree that the Foundation has grown very rapidly over the past years and that the budget should be stabilized. In my first six months, I did two things to act on this: first, I informed the Board that we would dramatically reduce hiring until we were sure that we were getting the maximum benefit from the resources we already had. Second, I started reversing the trend of prior growth by setting this year's budget to account mainly for year-on-year costs like inflation.
• I brought in a Chief Product & Technology Officer, @SDeckelmann-WMF:, who has experience supporting online communities and collaborating with technical contributors. She has been on the job for 17 weeks and has already directly responded to community concerns on New Pages Patrol and Wikimedia Commons. In March 2023, Selena will be ready to host forums on- and off-wiki with what she thinks are needed improvements to the Foundation's processes, including technical support and collaborative product development. We collectively have to respond to decades of growing technical debt, poor processes for maintaining software, and staying relevant in a world where technology keeps going faster.
• I have already started frank conversations with the Board and Foundation staff about what roles the Foundation should grow (like support for technology), and what activities we should hand over to others or stop altogether. Looking ahead, the size of our budget should be driven by what the Foundation should be doing, and can actually do well. I think the 2030 movement strategy provided guidance (and motivated much of our historic growth), but was short on the specifics. I await the Movement Charter for further clarity, but believe we'll need to make some decisions sooner.

None of these things may happen as quickly as those of you who have been very frustrated for many years would like. I think we are heading more in the right direction, and I am sure you will tell me if we aren't.

I will write again in January with more information. In the meantime, you can reach me on my talk page or by email. MIskander-WMF (talk) 23:28, 25 November 2022 (UTC) (I am getting on a long flight shortly but will check this thread afterwards.)

@MIskander-WMF: Can you clarify Second, I started reversing the trend of prior growth by setting this year's budget to account mainly for year-on-year costs like inflation? The year or year budget increase is over 20% (after an even larger 29% increase the year before), which is more than twice inflation; can you provide a breakdown of where this extra money is flowing to?

Regarding the movement, the current format deters most editors from participating; most editors don't leave their home wiki to participate on meta, and of those that do even less will register and regularly check an unrelated forum. Would you consider acting to encourage a broader range of participation, such as shuttering the forum and returning the conversation to meta, as well as looking at technical changes to allow editors to participate in discussions on meta without leaving their home wiki? BilledMammal (talk) 23:48, 25 November 2022 (UTC)

I agree that the movement strategy forum may be better placed on-wiki, since that is the software that Wikipedians are used to. –Novem Linguae (talk) 06:15, 26 November 2022 (UTC)

I second that question by BilledMammal. For reference, the relevant board meeting minutes state: FY22-23 is not anticipated to be a year of rapid growth. The Foundation anticipates 17% growth to a budget of $175 million with moderate growth in terms of staffing. Next year, the fundraising team will be increasing targets in each of their major streams, with a particular focus in Major Gifts. (Expenses in 2021–2022 were just under $146 million, so $175 million does in fact represent a 20% increase).

I have an additional question. Last year, an INSEAD fellow published an article containing the following passage: The vast majority of Wikimedia’s value to ordinary people – the website we know and use – costs the firm about 30 percent of their $112.5 million operating budget ($33.75 million) to maintain according to Lisa Seitz Gruwell, Chief Advancement Officer at Wikimedia. Would you please provide a comment on this that my colleagues could quote in the WP:Signpost? Thanks, Andreas JN466 08:41, 26 November 2022 (UTC)

@MIskander-WMF: Thank you so much for posting here Maryana, it really is a refreshing change. While it is obvious you cannot be expected to micromanage the WMF, this comes as a welcome respite from a lack of direct engagement by people at the top with the volunteers since around 2014. This new trend in dialogue is also evidenced by the video meetings I and the NPP team have had very recently with Selena. While the role of the CEO is extremely important as an ambassador for the movement, most of us feel reassured when its leaders know about what needs to be done on the factory floor to keep the volunteers happy and retain their enthusiasm. I am aware that my comments do not always come across as particularly friendly towards the Foundation, but over the years I and others have had to strive very hard on occasions to impress upon some its engineering departments that they can sometimes help by rethinking their practice and policies - and it worked. Thank you again. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 01:09, 26 November 2022 (UTC)

+1 to what @Kudpung said for both you and Selena. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 17:36, 26 November 2022 (UTC)

• Thanks for your statement. While I have your attention, can a staff member please summarize how us volunteers can best participate in 1) movement strategy and 2) annual plan? It seems that these two processes direct what WMF staff work on and where our donation dollars go so they are very important. But I have no idea how to participate. One question I left on a meta talk page has gone unanswered. If we are given real, effective channels to discuss and vote on these issues, I think that would go a long way towards reducing tensions. If the existing channels are poor or non-existent then the processes should be overhauled. Thanks. –Novem Linguae (talk) 06:14, 26 November 2022 (UTC)

Thank you for this very welcome statement. I understand that an organisation as large as the WMF has become can't turn instantly, but it gives hope for movement in the right direction. I had planned to stop editing Wikipedia on 29 November when the banners appear, possibly returning in January, but I'll carry on while we see whether your good words fall on the right ears. Certes (talk) 20:08, 26 November 2022 (UTC)

Paywalled 1970s biochemical articles used widely as references

When looking at a recent AfD on an article about a company, I saw an unusual use of a 1975 biochemistry journal article as a reference. Looking further, I could see it also used as a reference for articles on a document destruction firm, on athletic records, to support a summary of later writings by Cornell West, etc. and could also see similar use of other journal articles.

I wrote a program to generate tables summarising their uses across articles (at User:AllyD/BiochemReferences). I was hoping to identify a pattern, but, while this does show them being used to reference all manner of topics (from entertainer's biographies, to town patron saints, to geo-political disputes), and shows they are being added to more articles recently, I am not really seeing why these references are appearing. (I had expected to find them to be "Potemkin village" references to bolster new articles, but that doesn't seem to be the pattern.)

I am not sure if this is an appropriate forum, and what can and should be done about this, but felt it could be useful to bring this to others' attention. I have removed some of the more infeasible uses but while the likelihood of some others being relevant is vanishingly-small, have left them in place becauss of being unable to confirm or deny the relevance of the paywalled articles. AllyD (talk) 10:23, 26 November 2022 (UTC)

I notice they both have unusually low PMIDs of 1 and 3. Maybe that has something to do with it? PMID 3 has the same metadata as appears in the references, but a totally unrelated abstract. the wub "?!" 10:34, 26 November 2022 (UTC)

Perhaps someone has used the reference generator and put a 1 or 3 in the pmid box by accident. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 10:46, 26 November 2022 (UTC)

Yes I think that must be it. PMID 2 shows up in a bunch of unexpected places too [2]. the wub "?!" 10:51, 26 November 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing that out. I had been bogged down in the typical human pattern search thing of looking for intent rather than accident. It could be worth a bit of validation in reference generation tools, for example insisting that a single-digit PMID be input as "01" etc.? AllyD (talk) 11:56, 26 November 2022 (UTC)

I can offer a similar example of irrelevant/inappropriate IDs. While editing an article, I researched several databases to collect references on the subject and then proceeded to drill down to the individual references. One of the database aggregators was EBSCOhost, which supplies its own identifier known as an "accession number" to quickly retrieve the particular document. However, the identifier is not present in all EBSCOhost records. It seems that when an established identifier (such as PMID) is already assigned to a document, it is used by EBSCOhost as a defacto accession number. Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be any routine to avoid an EBSCOhost-assigned accession number being the same as a PMID-assigned number. If one adds the (duplicate) identifier to a reference (as an EBSCOhost id), the wrong document may pop up. One example from EBSCOhost is below. When querying the identifier 14297630 the result is 2 entries:

• "The Kenotic Convict: A Divertissement on Contemporary Contemplative Spirituality in its Social Context." Merton Annual. Nov2003, Vol. 16, p152-171. 20p. EBSCOhost accession number 14297630
• "SENSITIVITY OF VIRUSES TO BILE SALTS AS TESTED IN TISSUE CULTURE SYSTEMS." The Indian journal of medical research [Indian J Med Res] 1965 Apr; Vol. 53, pp. 304-8. PMID 14297630 (defacto EBSCOhost accession number)

Emphasis added for clarity. 50.75.226.250 (talk) 19:00, 26 November 2022 (UTC)

Yep, this is mostly coming from VisualEditor users. I suspect people either are trying to reuse existing reference, or think they need to manually assign a number to each reference. In any case, all you need to do is open in a page in VisualEditor, click "Cite", then type in "1" and out comes a citation to "Formate assay in body fluids: application in methanol poisoning". Edit filter 979 (hist · log) tracks these. Perhaps it should tag or warn, also. It's very easy to mistakenly assume bad faith when someone is doing this; if you don't know about this VisualEditor "feature", it looks like https://xkcd.com/906/. Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 21:48, 26 November 2022 (UTC)

• Question… does this mean the visual editor is generating inaccurate citations? Blueboar (talk) 22:27, 26 November 2022 (UTC)

  Yes and no. It's not spitting out random citations when used correctly, AFAIK. But it's a very easy mistake to make. Suppose you are new to Wikipedia and want to reuse citation number 2. The natural thing is click "cite" and type in the number "2". The correct process is to click "cite", then click "re-use", then type in "2" but some people miss the middle step. Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 22:39, 26 November 2022 (UTC)

Agree with comment above. I never use VE, but I doubt the tool is solely to blame. The editor is supposed to check the generated citation before it is committed. If it looks foreign to the article's subject matter, why should one agree to insert it? Unless the source has been examined manually, in detail (as it should happen for every citation) and passes requirements for context and relevance, despite the strange title. 172.254.222.178 (talk) 22:51, 26 November 2022 (UTC)