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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Warnings about content(disclaimer)

I love wikipedia and love what I learn here. But I have noticed most of, if not all information gleaned is stated as unambiguous facts. When in fact some content is of opinions, or information garnished from biased opinions. Or proffered by "sources" or "experts" without requisite proof. Why not warn readers with a disclaimer that clarifies this, it approaches propaganda at some points. Otherwise you folks do a great job and Wikipedia is the best resource available. Just letting the reader know in italics or bold lettering to the source of said information would seem clearly more unbiased. Because some information ascertained on here points to fact when it is clearly of an opinion opined from sources. Citations in the reading also may give more of an unbiased look. Just something to think about. Coopaloop1984 (talk) 23:03, 5 August 2023 (UTC)

You mean, something like Wikipedia:General disclaimer? Donald Albury 00:30, 6 August 2023 (UTC)

I'm not the original poster, and I'm not defending his argument (at some point even putting up flashing yellow text still wouldn't be enough to inform some people), but to me expecting readers to acknowledge a waiver that not even 0.1% of the site's visitors yesterday saw or knew existed seems like a bit of a cop-out to me. 2603:8001:4542:28FB:8518:CAAE:38FE:66F0 (talk) 05:54, 6 August 2023 (UTC)

That's not really a useful metric for assessing anything; there's no reason for anyone to go back to read the general disclaimer once they know what it says, but people visit the main page multiple times – sometimes multiple times per day. The general disclaimer getting 0.1% of the number of views the main page does is honestly way more than I would have expected... Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 18:37, 6 August 2023 (UTC)

It might be useful to know what some of the (alleged) opinions are. I find that sometimes people use the word opinions when they probably should be saying factual errors or fact that I am unconvinced is true.

For example, it's a true fact that inflation has declined in the US, but that does not mean that prices have declined. "Inflation declined" means "prices are still going up, just not as quickly as they were before". Sometimes there can be a misunderstanding in which people think that "inflation declined" means "deflation is happening" (=prices are going down). WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:33, 6 August 2023 (UTC)

Introducing Adiutor Project

Dear fellow Wikimedia enthusiasts, we are excited to introduce the Adiutor Project, an initiative aimed at enhancing the Wikipedia editing experience! Adiutor is a user-friendly gadget designed to simplify various tasks for Wikipedia editors, making editing easier, faster, and more enjoyable. From creating deletion requests to conducting copyright checks, Adiutor streamlines repetitive processes, giving you more time to focus on creating valuable content for the community. If you're interested in using Adiutor on your local wiki, we'd love to hear from you! Drop us a message here or reach out to Vikipolimer with your Wikimedia community details. Let's collaborate to bring Adiutor to your language and wiki! Join the Adiutor Project, and together, let's make Wikipedia editing a more efficient and rewarding experience! For any questions or to express your interest in bringing Adiutor to your local wiki, feel free to contact Vikipolimer - we're here to support and work together with you! Looking forward to your enthusiastic participation! 𝗩𝗶𝗸𝗶𝗽𝗼𝗹𝗶𝗺𝗲𝗿 ℣ 00:51, 6 August 2023 (UTC)

I think that @Trizek (WMF) will be interested in this.

@Vikipolimer, what's your plan for measuring the effects on newcomers? Making things faster for editors like me can translate into making it quick and easy for editors like me to shut out the next generation of editors. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:36, 6 August 2023 (UTC)

Thank you for the ping, WhatamIdoing. Indeed it is an interesting project.

@Vikipolimer, I work with the Wikimedia Foundation's Growth team. our focus is to help newcomers making their first steps.

Like WhatamIdoing, I would be really interested regarding how these tools impact newcomers' workflows.

A research project showed that the gap between newcomers and experienced users is very large. Newcomers don't feel being at their place as they don't understand the processes that are applied to their work. Typically, they get a banner on "their" article, but they don't know what to do next as the banner is full of jargon, no one posts a clear message at their talk page and there is no human visible behind the process.

The more speed you add to the process, the more standardized and the less understandable the process becomes. Hence, it is more difficult for newcomers to understand what went wrong. How would you solve this, while providing a tool that increases speed?

Trizek_(WMF) (talk) 09:11, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

Hello @Trizek (WMF)! Thank you for your interest. The Adiutor project aims to make Wikipedia editing easier and faster. Our goal is to empower new users by providing a user-friendly tool that simplifies their tasks and helps them understand the processes better. Research has shown the importance of enhancing the experience for newcomers. While offering a tool to speed up workflows, we also aim to make the processes more comprehensible and user-friendly. In the upcoming phases, we will be adding sections to the user interface that explain the actions performed and provide brief information about the processes involved. This way, we hope to assist newcomers in understanding the processes while also increasing efficiency. 𝗩𝗶𝗸𝗶𝗽𝗼𝗹𝗶𝗺𝗲𝗿 ℣ 09:24, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

Thank you @Vikipolimer. I had a look at the list of available features, and I feel that they are all advanced tasks for established users. So, I wonder: which of them are designed for newcomers? Trizek_(WMF) (talk) 13:16, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

You may be interested in Twinkle, which we use to streamline a similar set of functions on English Wikipedia. Certes (talk) 14:36, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

@Certes, Thanks for comment, I know Twinkle but we're working on something with a nice UI and easy to adapt to local wikis. 𝗩𝗶𝗸𝗶𝗽𝗼𝗹𝗶𝗺𝗲𝗿 ℣ 15:36, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

Thanks. I read the meta page on it but I'm a little unsure regarding what it actually does. A lot of buzzwords. Is it sort of like Twinkle? Edward-Woodrow :) _[talk] 21:24, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

The list of capabilities answered that question for me. It happens to overlap with Twinkle for my needs, but I can see how a generalized project like this would be useful for editors who do more than I do, or for other wikis that don't have any tools like this at all. Orange Suede Sofa (talk) 21:30, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

@Vikipolimer: how about a feature that facilitates usage of WP:HATNOTES? Edward-Woodrow :) _[talk] 22:42, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

@Edward-Woodrow Sure, can you share this idea on meta talk page please? 𝗩𝗶𝗸𝗶𝗽𝗼𝗹𝗶𝗺𝗲𝗿 ℣ 22:44, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

WRating is a website that evaluates your contribution to Wikipedia traffic.

Hello. My name is Andrii. I am the developer of WRating, a rating system that has been evaluating the contributions of editors to the Ukrainian Wikipedia's traffic for almost 10 years. Now, it also evaluates your Wikipedia contributions https://wrating.ukrface.org/?le=en&l=en. It was a very interesting challenge, because the volume of data in English Wikipedia is 100x more than in Ukrainian Wikipedia. This website provides an opportunity for Wikipedia authors to assess their contribution to the project's promotion, namely: to find out how many pages were viewed on Wikipedia within one month due to their contributions.

For example, here are the TOP-10 contributors according to the WRating version (number of views in parentheses):

1. DerHexer (204 827 372)
2. J.delanoy (201 753 787)
3. Antandrus (156 911 632)
4. Luna Santin (142 244 903)
5. Alansohn (125 505 820)
6. KnowledgeOfSelf (101 531 346)
7. Oxymoron83 (100 521 616)
8. NawlinWiki (100 271 873)
9. Materialscientist (96 380 913)
10. Tide rolls (96 288 717)

The ranking is updated monthly, usually by the 5th day of each month.

I will be glad to see you among the users of the rating. UkrFace (talk) 21:11, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

@UkrFace: Potentially interesting, but the top users in this list have all done extensive anti-vandalism work at some stage, mostly before the introduction of tags and filters to Wikipedia. You'd have to filter out edit summaries containing links to anti-vandalism tools like Twinkle and Huggle as well, at the very least. Graham87 04:11, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

This is a well-known complex problem. I'm still considering how to solve it. This issue is particularly noticeable for the TOP-100 ranking. The site also features a TOP-100 for the month and a personal mark, which are much less affected by this problem. UkrFace (talk) 06:06, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

You might be able to filter out Special:Tags like mw-reverted, mw-undo, and mw-manual-revert. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:27, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

This has already been added, all revisions with such tags are discarded. The problem now lies with revisions written before 2018, as Wikipedia did not mark them before 2018. UkrFace (talk) 17:10, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

Regarding how many pages were viewed on Wikipedia within one month due to their contributions, isn't that a correlation fallacy? For example, if I frequently edit the article for subject X, and then the subject of article X becomes a huge news item for an unrelated reason and page views go up, it's not because of my edits. Orange Suede Sofa (talk) 04:53, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

The idea here is that all Wikipedia views are the result of the joint work of the entire community. Accordingly, it is advisable to distribute all revisions among all editors.

In your example, the WRating rating can be interpreted as follows: What proportion of the views are accounted for by your edits. UkrFace (talk) 06:28, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

I don't understand how the "Calculation algorythm" <sic> works. -- GreenC 05:09, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

Very simplified: article A, 500 characters long, 10 000 views last month. You have added 100 characters in this article.

Your result is: (100 / 500) * 10 000 = 2 000.

In general, the algorithm works much more complicatedly, because usually users make more than one edit, and not just in one article. Additionally, amendments related to patrolling and vandalism are also partially rejected. UkrFace (talk) 06:39, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

It looks like a "Who Wrote That?" style attribution, but that has its limits. For example, if User:Vandal blanks a page I've never edited before and I revert, do I deserve credit for the entire article? Certes (talk) 12:33, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

@UkrFace: Some articles can be made better by deleting text, so that would be a negative byte count. How does your algorithm account for that? Does negative bytes added count against the editor? RudolfRed (talk) 15:43, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

@RudolfRed The rating will take this into account, but not quite correctly. Due to the fact that editing operations are very large-scale (in the English Wikipedia, there are more than 1 billion edits), there is no way to analyze the text. The algorithm works purely with the size of the edits and takes the result with a plus sign. Here's an example: an article of 2000 characters, you removed 1000 characters, then added 400 characters. You will be credited with 600 characters for such an article, and then (600 / 2000) * 'number of views of the article'. UkrFace (talk) 17:35, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

Since 2018, such changes have been marked on Wikipedia (theoretically, vandals can trick Wikipedia, but you have to try), and the WRating algorithm ignores such revisions. The revisions up to 2018 have the issue you mentioned, where 'points' are credited to both users. UkrFace (talk) 17:21, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

The techie in me always gets excited about automated ways to score things, but this looks like a variation on WP:Editcountitis which has been afflicting wikipedians since day zero. We've had highly prolific editors, with long lists of good articles, who ended up being banned because eventually people figured out they were churning out garbage. RoySmith (talk) 17:39, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

@RoySmith This rating does not encourage you to make many edits, as it does not affect the outcome. The only negative consequence is that some individuals may be motivated to post more frequently on the most visited articles. The primary objective of this rating is to demonstrate to the editor how many people they have benefited. UkrFace (talk) 21:01, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

Long tail distribution

I was excited by my score of 0.0356%, which I initially read as 3.56%, but it's actually three-and-a-half-one-hundreths of one-percent. One idea is it could display as "0.0356 of one-percent", to avoid confusion by the math impaired like myself. Have you looked into the 80/20 Rule? This pattern is everywhere on Wikipedia. It predicts 20% of the users on Wikipedia are responsible for 80% of the results. Which is to say if you ranked all the users in a list and took the top 20% they would account for 80% of the traffic as measured by your algo (give or take some percent). Likewise the Rule can be applied to that list of 20% of users again, and so on, forming a power law curve with the few top users forming the "greatest hits" and everyone else spread out along a long tail. -- GreenC 19:21, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

Extended confirmed question

Dummies 101 question, with apologies for this many years on Wikipedia and not knowing how to deal with this, but most of my editing experience was at the FA level. After viewing a seriously marginal article, I have encountered a prolific user who has 466 (!!!!!) deletion discussions on their talk page, and just keeps churning out low quality articles. Is that a case for asking that extended confirmed be removed so they can't keep creating content that is not checked, or is there another way I should approach this? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:48, 11 August 2023 (UTC)

Autopatrolled may be more relevant than extended confirmed (EC) here, as the relevant pages are unlikely to be under EC protection. Autopatrolled doesn't come automatically with EC, and it can be revoked. If the user is the one I'm thinking of, they don't have autopatrolled, and so their creations go through NPP. Certes (talk) 22:56, 11 August 2023 (UTC)

Thanks so much for your help, Certes ... next dumb questions ... I have now located the user rights log, and see the user has never been granted extra rights, so I think that is good news, because they weren't given them to later have them revoked? So I guess that means all of their articles have to be patrolled by someone else, which is good? Which I guess means that isn't happening very well ... sigh ... I think that means the only route for dealing with someone creating boatloads of marginal content is ANI. Unless I have that wrong, thanks for the direction! SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:07, 11 August 2023 (UTC)

Yes, their new articles should be being patrolled, though not necessarily by a specialist (so, for example, a plausible article about a non-notable attorney might slip past a patroller without legal training). If I have the right user, their talk page is half a megabyte, which makes it hard to see whether anyone has started a general discussion about notability rather than specific AfDs. They've also produced quite a few articles which survived AfD, so they're operating on the margins of notability rather than producing clear and obvious junk, and seem to be acting in good faith. Maybe have a word with one or two experienced new page patrollers first? Certes (talk) 23:20, 11 August 2023 (UTC)

Ummm, I think that's where the problem lies. I've encountered a couple of the new page patrollers before, and I think we have issues in that those most experienced are seriously overworked (particularly when we have editors putting up work with bare URLs). But I appreciate your help in knowing that I'm at least on the right track in terms of user rights. Best, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:23, 11 August 2023 (UTC)

Do not speak of bare URLs. Bare URLs?! Actually, it's totally fine! Only 63K articles – and those are only the ones that are tagged!! Edward-Woodrow :) _[talk] 12:44, 12 August 2023 (UTC)

Community collaboration around English fundraising banners continues - banner examples, in person collaboration at Wikimania, and upcoming call

Dear all,

As mentioned earlier, the WMF is now actively engaging interested editors to work with us on creating messaging for fundraising banners for the upcoming English fundraising campaign.

Thanks to all of you who already came to the community collaboration space for the English banner fundraising campaign. We are having some fruitful and interesting discussions on the page.

If you are interested in joining these discussions, or are curious about some of the banner language we are working on, come across to the collaboration page.

Julia will be attending Wikimania this week and will be hosting a banner messaging collaboration workshop (Thursday, 17th of August at 9am local time). Come and join or send her an email (jbrungs at wikimedia dot org) if you’d like to set up a time to meet at Wikimania.

We will also be hosting a community discussion call on the 7th of September at 16:30 UTC. If you are interested in joining the call, please email Julia (jbrungs at wikimedia dot org) to register.

Best, JBrungs (WMF) (talk) 08:38, 14 August 2023 (UTC)

Oh my, that's a relief

This morning I went to login and got presented with a captcha. Yes, a captcha! Just when the rest of the world is starting to move on from the wretchedly unpopular and increasingly useless things. I very nearly never came back. Glad I did try again later, as it has now gone. If it ever comes back, I won't. Anybody who needs that explaining to them, never will understand. (And before you ask, yes I am an infosec expert in my day job). — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 16:16, 22 August 2023 (UTC)