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Inexplicably popular article (by views)

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T366554

Neatsville, Kentucky in April was the 2nd most viewed Kentucky-related article and has been similarly highly viewed for several months. I cannot make sense of this. This is a small unincorporated community in the middle of rural Kentucky. I cannot find any TV show or movie referencing it. It also doesn't make sense that anyone would be gaming this outcome for months (although I suppose this isn't impossible). Am I missing something? Stefen Tower_{s among the rest!} ^{Gab • Gruntwerk} 21:00, 28 May 2024 (UTC)

Fascinating. Two-year pageviews are even higher on average, peaking in mid-2023. I see no news coverage or anything else that would drive this traffic. BD2412 T 21:28, 28 May 2024 (UTC)

The start of this climb in pageviews seems to have been on 24/25 August 2021 ([1]), when daily pageviews climbed from 2 to 410 to 1,717. Perhaps this may narrow the search for what is causing this. Curbon7 (talk) 22:39, 28 May 2024 (UTC)

Billy Joe in the same Kentucky county announced he saw a UFO on 8/24. LOL. Stefen Tower_{s among the rest!} ^{Gab • Gruntwerk} 23:47, 28 May 2024 (UTC)

Also, nearly all of the traffic coming to the article is from unidentified external routes (which is highly unusual), and there is virtually no traffic from this article to other articles (also highly unusual). BD2412 T 22:02, 28 May 2024 (UTC)

Maybe there's a viral post or tweet somewhere with an easter egg? Schazjmd (talk) 22:07, 28 May 2024 (UTC)

Possibly. Although I've not heard it, I can easily imagine a meme in which "Neatsville" (a redirect to the article) becomes a trendy term of approval. (Compare Coolsville.) Alternatively, someone may be trying to get it into a most-viewed listing. It would be interesting to know how many different IPs have accessed the article (perhaps counting each IPv6 /64 as one), rather than just the number of hits. Certes (talk) 22:20, 28 May 2024 (UTC)

Redirects seem to be negligible in their impact. Unchecking "Include redirects" makes virtually no difference. Regarding someone gaming this, that's an awful lot of such to sustain. Of course, this could be a script disguising itself as a real person. Stefen Tower_{s among the rest!} ^{Gab • Gruntwerk} 22:35, 28 May 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for the pointer on redirects: I hadn't spotted that. Yes, I assumed it was scripted. It does seem erratic and slightly seasonal, with peaks in spring 2023 and 2024, but does not vary much by day of week. Certes (talk) 22:49, 28 May 2024 (UTC)

That crossed my mind, but I think the incoming traffic would be more varied and identifiable for something like that, rather than a dark web monolith (speculation before further details). Stefen Tower_{s among the rest!} ^{Gab • Gruntwerk} 23:23, 28 May 2024 (UTC)

This sounds like a repeat of Mount Takahe, which also has inexplicably high reader numbers. And like Takahe, Neatsville has fairly average reader numbers when only counting the Mobile App and only slightly elevated reader numbers with by spiders. FWIW, neither News nor Twitter/X show many if any mentions. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 07:18, 29 May 2024 (UTC)

This is getting really ridiculous. It's skewing statistics, even to the point where new editors are noticing. I don't want make this into some huge problem, but I think "nipping it in the bud" is well called for now. Please admins block the access of this apparent script kiddie. Stefen Tower_{s among the rest!} ^{Gab • Gruntwerk} 21:51, 3 June 2024 (UTC)

I have logged a case in WP:ANI. Stefen Tower_{s among the rest!} ^{Gab • Gruntwerk} 22:10, 3 June 2024 (UTC)

Admins do not have the ability to block people from viewing articles, this would have to be handled by the system administrators. You would probably be best filing a ticket on Phabricator, though I'm not sure they'd take action. 86.23.109.101 (talk) 22:53, 3 June 2024 (UTC)

I'm not sure what action can or should be taken. This doesn't seem to be a denial-of-service attack (or, if it is, it's an incredibly lame one). Wikipedia's terms of service don't prevent anyone from viewing pages, even multiple times; in fact it's encouraged. I don't know whether the hosting system can, or should, rate-limit a particular IP address or range, even assuming that most of the unusual traffic comes from one IP or a small range. Certes (talk) 23:13, 3 June 2024 (UTC)

Indeed. I wouldn't be reporting this as a performance or security issue, but rather a data corruption issue. And I sense this might not be taken very seriously, but I have a thing against the presentation of false data and that in that presentation, the person doing it is getting away with it, possibly encouraging more of this kind of corruption by others. I think it is in our long-run interests to stop it or put some kind of brakes on it. Stefen Tower_{s among the rest!} ^{Gab • Gruntwerk} 23:52, 3 June 2024 (UTC)

If this is due to a malicious botnet, shouldn't you have WMF report this to law enforcement? –LaundryPizza03 (dc̄) 01:20, 4 June 2024 (UTC)

I don't know if it's malicious. It's just skewing our cumulative views data on a single article. I might rather have an ISP notified if that could be pinned down. Stefen Tower_{s among the rest!} ^{Gab • Gruntwerk} 02:10, 4 June 2024 (UTC)

The internet can be a bit of a wild west sometimes. I don't think calling the police to report a DDOS attack would result in anything. DDOS attacks are usually carried out by hacked zombie computers, and are often transnational. So it's a bit hard to police. –Novem Linguae (talk) 07:43, 4 June 2024 (UTC)

An inexplicable steady increase in readership to an article happened one time before, and the explanation was that it had been included as an example/default link somewhere. Will see if I can find the details. –Novem Linguae (talk) 23:20, 3 June 2024 (UTC)

That's a possibility if it's not a link from English Wikipedia but another project or website. I had already reviewed EN pages linking to the article and didn't see anything. Thanks for checking. Stefen Tower_{s among the rest!} ^{Gab • Gruntwerk} 23:46, 3 June 2024 (UTC)

It's tempting to put a banner on the top of the article: "Please tell us what brought you to this article" with a link to the talk page, see if any of the 17,000+ readers answer. Schazjmd (talk) 23:49, 3 June 2024 (UTC)

Many years ago I found – guess how – that the address anton@pobox.com was used as an example in what appeared to be a guide to email for new users (in Russian, but hosted in Israel). —Tamfang (talk) 22:17, 12 June 2024 (UTC)

Found this through some searching, not really sure where it came from: urlscan1: Kepler's Supernova article, urlscan2: Neatsville, Kentucky article. The scan was for a different url, which redirected to those Wikipedia pages with some (ad tracking?) parameters. – 2804:F1...99:B28F (talk) 05:48, *edited:06:42, 4 June 2024 (UTC)

Mind you, the interesting thing would have been to know where that original link was from (possibly emails? unsure) - both were scanned on the 17th of last month and both articles have an increase in views, but without knowing where that's from and if it always redirects there, it doesn't really mean it's even related with the view count unfortunately. – 2804:F1...99:B28F (talk) 06:42, 4 June 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for bringing this here. Is it fair to say that Kepler's Supernova is also getting the same kind of fake views? Or could its extra recent views have a legitimate reason behind it? Stefen Tower_{s among the rest!} ^{Gab • Gruntwerk} 07:03, 4 June 2024 (UTC)

Not that I could find, both noticeably grew in views since April: Kepler's Supernova, Neatsville, Kentucky

According to wikitech:Analytics/AQS/Pageviews#Most viewed articles the most viewed list (same data as the graphs) tries to only count page request from "human users", so it's not clear if the views are fake, though a reason is also not obvious. Do you know why the Neatsville article had similar numbers in from March to June of last year? – 2804:F1...99:B28F (talk) 08:21, 4 June 2024 (UTC)

I have no idea, and I'm in Kentucky. This place really is "in the sticks". Stefen Tower_{s among the rest!} ^{Gab • Gruntwerk} 08:34, 4 June 2024 (UTC)

Talk page for Kepler's Supernova says Publishers Clearing House for some reason included a link to [the page] in email (promoting daily contests) for awhile. Page view patterns are the same as with Neatsville. Not sure if this IP is relevant either 107.128.181.22 (talk) 08:31, 4 June 2024 (UTC)

Publishers Clearing House for some reason included a link to [the page] in email (promoting daily contests) for awhile. This seems like the most plausible explanation so far. –Novem Linguae (talk) 12:10, 4 June 2024 (UTC)

I have reported this as a security issue (re: data integrity) to Phabricator. Stefen Tower_{s among the rest!} ^{Gab • Gruntwerk} 06:54, 4 June 2024 (UTC)

It might be very helpful to know how many different IP addresses access the page a lot (say >100 times a day) and whether they're in a single range. Obviously this requires access to non-public information, but it should be safe to pass on a digest with the actual IPs removed. Certes (talk) 11:04, 4 June 2024 (UTC)

@StefenTower could you add me to the phab ticket please? RoySmith (talk) 20:30, 25 June 2024 (UTC)

As it is still set as a security issue, I don't believe I am allowed to do that, and I don't know how to anyway. Stefen Tower_{s among the rest!} ^{Gab • Gruntwerk} 02:00, 27 June 2024 (UTC)

Of course you're allowed to. You created the ticket, right? RoySmith (talk) 02:06, 27 June 2024 (UTC)

Physically allowed to, apparently, but rules-wise, I don't know. I'd rather not do it if I'm breaching a protocol. Anyway, I have made a statement in the phab ticket if those administrating don't consider it a security matter and want to take that classification off, that would be fine by me. Then, anyone can subscribe. Stefen Tower_{s among the rest!} ^{Gab • Gruntwerk} 03:44, 27 June 2024 (UTC)

You can go to "Edit Task", type some more subscribers in the subscribers box, then click "Save Changes". –Novem Linguae (talk) 03:13, 27 June 2024 (UTC)

Thank you for pointing that out. I've never been asked to add anyone to a ticket before, so it didn't appear obvious to me how to do so. Stefen Tower_{s among the rest!} ^{Gab • Gruntwerk} 03:40, 27 June 2024 (UTC)

So, now that you know how, would you please add me? RoySmith (talk) 15:05, 27 June 2024 (UTC)

Update: Neatsville, Kentucky in May was the top most viewed Kentucky-related article. This effectively trashes the point of having a Popular pages list. There are bigger things to be outraged about in this world, but as far as Wikipedia goes, this really honks me off. Stefen Tower_{s among the rest!} ^{Gab • Gruntwerk} 17:00, 10 June 2024 (UTC)

The number of views 26k is so low it could easily be explained by a default link somewhere. The Publishers Clearing House explanation given above sounds reasonable, or something like it. These kinds of things are not uncommon. If the popular pages list is important, you could modify the list with another bot. -- GreenC 17:20, 10 June 2024 (UTC)

This isn't a very recent phenomenon. The views have been skewed off and on since over a year ago (see "Two year pageviews..." link above). Also, the explanation as such doesn't absolve this as not being a problem. There is no excuse for PCH or any entity for sending non-purposeful (junk) links to people. Whether or not it affects our system performance, it is abusive. As far as modifying Popular pages results, if there was a straightforward way to asterisk, strikethrough, hide or shade an entry based on particular criteria, that would suffice, but writing a new bot seems overwrought. I could temporarily strikethrough, hide or shade the top or nth entry via CSS but then that would require monthly maintenance. I think I'll just write a nasty letter to PCH - that may be our real solution (half-joke, half-serious). Stefen Tower_{s among the rest!} ^{Gab • Gruntwerk} 20:47, 10 June 2024 (UTC)

Meh, somebody put a link in an email or newsletter or something. That doesn't strike me as abusive; if people are clicking the links and reading our article that's really no different than anyone who sees one of our articles through a link in a tweet or Discord, that page was popular. It doesn't seem like there's anything to be done. The Wordsmith^{Talk to me} 21:24, 10 June 2024 (UTC)

We'll just have to disagree on this. They had no business skewing views to these articles. What on earth is the purpose? These are not legitimate views. Stefen Tower_{s among the rest!} ^{Gab • Gruntwerk} 22:37, 10 June 2024 (UTC)

Wait one min-u-ette here. If these are all genuine human visits off an e-mail or promotion, how come I'm the only one to edit the article (once) since September? With the huge amount of visits, that seems to defy reason. For a small rural town, it has a kind of interesting story, having been relocated twice – so it's weird that edits wouldn't have happened. These are highly likely bot hits disguised as human hits. That's not a problem?? Stefen Tower_{s among the rest!} ^{Gab • Gruntwerk} 22:57, 10 June 2024 (UTC)

Is it possible for Wikipedia articles to be embedded into a webpage, and if so, is it possible these collect pageview data without people clicking through? Curbon7 (talk) 23:43, 10 June 2024 (UTC)

Yes (<iframe>) and yes. Probably uncommon though. –Novem Linguae (talk) 23:53, 10 June 2024 (UTC)

No. it's not a problem. Who cares why any of our articles are read and who by? Phil Bridger (talk) 06:36, 11 June 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for your opinion, but it's not as simple as that. This is systems data used beyond the superficial aspect that you imagine. Note that if views data wasn't important, it wouldn't be collected and stored in the first place. It can be used for various purposes, like for instance, project prioritization. Corruption of data is a real problem. I am not suggesting this specific issue reported here is a huge problem but one that should be addressed lest it really get out of hand. Stefen Tower_{s among the rest!} ^{Gab • Gruntwerk} 06:53, 11 June 2024 (UTC)

I agree with Phil. Usually website backlinks are a good thing, for search engine optimization and brand awareness reasons. If it causes one aberrant data point in one report, that's fairly minor. –Novem Linguae (talk) 07:13, 11 June 2024 (UTC)

Through my background in database development and 20 years as a Wikipedian, I insist it's a real (though not currently huge) problem by what I've already stated. Also, there seems to be an insistent assumption these are true views. Based on information that's been made available, the strong suggestion is that these are effectively bot hits. Also, I highly doubt we are getting SEO benefits from distributed junk hits, and who doesn't already know our brand? The bottom line is this has a potential to really bollocks up various processes that use this data if it isn't nipped in the bud. "Fairly minor" is today. But tomorrow? Yeah, let 'em increasingly tarnish our data. Cool, man, cool. Stefen Tower_{s among the rest!} ^{Gab • Gruntwerk} 07:32, 11 June 2024 (UTC)

We really need to ask someone with access to private logs whether these views come predominantly from one IP (or a small range) or are widespread. If the latter then they may also be able to tell us (perhaps from the referrer) whether they are predominantly from one webpage, perhaps via an iframe embedded in HTML bulk e-mail. Certes (talk) 09:53, 11 June 2024 (UTC)

I concur. That's a part of why I logged the issue in Phabricator, so that an investigation can be conducted. Stefen Tower_{s among the rest!} ^{Gab • Gruntwerk} 19:37, 11 June 2024 (UTC)

Also, I realize that when I said "distributed", I was buying into an assumption but yes, it's possible this comes from one IP or a small range. Stefen Tower_{s among the rest!} ^{Gab • Gruntwerk} 19:39, 11 June 2024 (UTC)

Even that's not absolute proof. A significant portion of our page views from mainland China come to use through just two (2) IP addresses (used by a VPN service). If you find that most of the traffic comes from a single IP, that does not mean that a single person is reloading the same page every few seconds round the clock. It could mean that a lot of people are using a VPN or other shared service.

You might also be interested in https://theconversation.com/2022-wasnt-the-year-of-cleopatra-so-why-was-she-the-most-viewed-page-on-wikipedia-197350 and similar reports. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:41, 12 June 2024 (UTC)

I guess my view doesn't count because I have only been editing Wikipedia for 17 years and my background is in systems programming, but I'll state it anyway. It is that the only problem here is with people who place too much faith in reports. Measure what you actually want to measure, not what's easiest to measure, and don't try to change what you're measuring to make it easier. Phil Bridger (talk) 20:47, 11 June 2024 (UTC)

Some reports do weed out automated views, sometimes by limiting their scope to articles which have between 5% and 95% of their views from mobiles. (Example: Signpost.) This technique is helpful but not foolproof, especially if someone who reads the report is trying to appear on it in some sort of SEO game. Certes (talk) 21:51, 11 June 2024 (UTC)

As someone with a similar background, these are the kinds of arguments you find in IT departments, I suppose. The report isn't the problem but rather the report is indicative of a data problem, and it's the data problem that should be solved, because that problem could increase and cause other issues. And yes, we should change what we're measuring, rather, prevent bad data input (the case here), because you don't want "garbage in". Spending time to assure clean data going into further processing in other systems was a significant part of my IT work. Stefen Tower_{s among the rest!} ^{Gab • Gruntwerk} 17:01, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

I am inclined to concur that we aren't looking at genuine readers here - few people seem to go from Neatsville to other articles. Compare Donald Trump, where almost all readers then go on to read other articles. That might be an iframe deal or a bot, but not people directly reading the article. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 07:45, 11 June 2024 (UTC)

Of course we aren't. But what does any of this have to do with Wikipedia? Phil Bridger (talk) 20:47, 11 June 2024 (UTC)

There are lots of people who are interested in how widely shared information on a given Wikipedia page is. That tells us something about which topics are important, which ones need to be taken care of etc. Distributing information is the purpose of a Wikipedia page after all. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 06:01, 12 June 2024 (UTC)

This may be related (or unrelated), but my talk page received an unusual number of page views each day from late March to early April: see here. Besides a couple of messages from the bots, there weren't any other activity on my talk during that time [2]. I doubt those page views (at least on my talk page) are genuine. Some1 (talk) 03:40, 18 June 2024 (UTC)

Rename the article?

This constant pinging of our article could easily be disrupted by renaming the article without leaving a redirect, if only for a day or two. Of course that might still count as vandalism, and make Skynet very angry. NebY (talk) 19:02, 16 June 2024 (UTC)

• Done. I have temporarily boldly moved the page to Neatsville, Adair County, Kentucky. I will move it back in a week (at 16:00, 24 June 2024 (UTC)), and we will see what comes of that. BD2412 T 16:08, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

• Note: I have also temporarily changed all incoming links from reader-facing spaces. In case anyone is concerned that the above move will impede legitimate searches for this title, it is now the first search result that comes up when searching for Neatsville, Kentucky. Cheers! BD2412 T 16:25, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

  Neat! And nicely done. I'm looking forward to seeing how it turns out; already I've been surprised to find that the iOS app is still giving me the article at Neatsville, Kentucky (but a blank talk page and an "unexpected response from the server" for its history) as well as at Neatsville, Adair County, Kentucky. Maybe I'm the last to learn the iOS app uses a different database, which lags. NebY (talk) 20:38, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

Thank you both for the concept and implementation. I imagine at the very least the results will add to our body of knowledge. Stefen Tower_{s among the rest!} ^{Gab • Gruntwerk} 17:22, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

Seems a bit odd to let off-site pressures dictate the titles of our articles. Also if the Publisher's Clearing House explanation is accurate, we have now broken this link for regular users. Also may be a violation of WP:PMRC. –Novem Linguae (talk) 01:14, 18 June 2024 (UTC)

This is effectively an experiment to determine whether moving the article — for one week — resolves the issue that has been reported. It may well be that these views are the result of an internal glitch rather than on off-site one, and this resolves that all the same. It may be that when the article is moved back, the issue will resume. The only way to find out is to perform the experiment and gather the data for analysis. As noted, the correct article is still the number one article that comes up when using the search function, and given the page views prior to this situation arising, actual inconvenience to regular users should be nominal. BD2412 T 02:50, 18 June 2024 (UTC)

I would oppose a permanent rename for a flimsy reason like that, but all along, this was set up as a one-week test, and I don't see a big problem there. Anyway, I saw that Neatsville, Kentucky was redirected after this test was started, so I wonder if that defeats the point of the test. Stefen Tower_{s among the rest!} ^{Gab • Gruntwerk} 02:58, 18 June 2024 (UTC)

I don't think it will defeat the point, since pageviews of redirects are tracked separately from pageviews of their targets. But then I could be misunderstanding. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 03:04, 18 June 2024 (UTC)

Yes that's true, but now these miscreant/fake hits will be hitting a live mainspace page that happens to be the same page they were targeting before. So, they won't be getting any indication they are hitting a nonexistent page like they would have when the test was first set up. Stefen Tower_{s among the rest!} ^{Gab • Gruntwerk} 03:10, 18 June 2024 (UTC)

(edit conflict) The point of moving without the redirect was to see whether the absence of anything at this target would "break" whatever is causing the excessive page views. Perhaps the few hours during which there was no redirect was enough to do that. The test does not have to run for a week, that was an arbitrary time set figuring that whatever process was involved might itself be on a week-long clock. Maybe a few days would do. BD2412 T 03:11, 18 June 2024 (UTC)

New data: This is remarkable. Two days after moving the article, Neatsville, Kentucky continues to average close to 20,000 pageviews per day, but Neatsville, Adair County, Kentucky is averaging 50 pageviews per day. Anyone actually navigating to the Neatsville, Kentucky link would be redirected to Neatsville, Adair County, Kentucky, which should therefore also have those tens of thousands of views. This definitively means that visits to Neatsville, Kentucky are not organic views from regular readers, but are queries of the URL itself that therefore do not get redirected. BD2412 T 17:15, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

That's maybe not so clear; I find that if I click "include redirects" then Neatsville, Adair County, Kentucky is receiving 20,000+ pageviews a day[3]. On the other hand, toying with the Agents setting gives me another puzzle. Over the last 90 days, the ratio of "User"[4] to "Automated"[5] views of Neatsville, Kentucky varied from 1:1 to 8:1 and more, but both peaked on 01 June 2024. Even assuming some views misidentify themselves, I can't even start to explain both the variation and the coincidence. NebY (talk) 18:26, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

My understanding (and this may be incorrect) is that including redirects merely adds the number of views to the page and the number of views to the redirect. I do not believe it is possible to have a view of the redirect that results in the viewer being redirected to the page, but does not also lead to a view to the page itself, such that pageviews alone should always be higher than redirect views alone (compare pageviews of "FBI" versus "Federal Bureau of Investigation"). BD2412 T 19:09, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

Ah, that it's simple addition does make sense. Still, the FAQ does say If a user browses to a redirect, a pageview is registered for the redirect but not for the target page. That suggests to me that it's technically feasible that ~20,000 human readers went to Neatsville, Kentucky, were redirected, and did read Neatsville, Adair County, Kentucky - but I've little experience of this tool, could be very wrong. NebY (talk) 19:42, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

I have yet to find a working redirect that has more pageviews than the page to which it redirects. BD2412 T 04:12, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

I think the question can be definitively answered by looking at Meghan Markle versus Meghan, Duchess of Sussex. The page was moved back and forth between titles a few times while her "official" name was being disputed, and the higher pageview count always jumped to the article title at the moment. BD2412 T 18:03, 23 June 2024 (UTC)

I just want to note that I haven't lost interest in this. I just don't know what to add. I'm just going to hope that system admins take this up at some point, using various findings here. Stefen Tower_{s among the rest!} ^{Gab • Gruntwerk} 10:23, 24 June 2024 (UTC)

Personally, I agree with earlier comments that any improvements should be made in data analysis, and not by rejecting page requests. If the triggers to detect denial-of-service issues haven't been set off, by net neutrality principles, the Wikipedia servers shouldn't be filtering page requests. isaacl (talk) 14:18, 24 June 2024 (UTC)

If you mean let's have a better way of detecting what are not genuine views by people, then of course that is a useful band-aid for views reports. But the rampant fake access for no discernible reason remains, and who knows where that is going if the systems admins don't know where it's coming from and gets worse and becomes a DOS. Net neutrality isn't a web server matter but an ISP one. Websites can choose to block whoever they want. Stefen Tower_{s among the rest!} ^{Gab • Gruntwerk} 17:00, 24 June 2024 (UTC)

I'm not speaking from a legal perspective, but a conceptual one. The Wikimedia Foundation's mission is "to empower and engage people around the world to collect and develop educational content under a free license or in the public domain, and to disseminate it effectively and globally." ([6]) It shouldn't decide what requests to process and which to not until necessary to protect its infrastructure. Triggers can include monitoring incoming flows and dynamically setting conditions. But until the triggers are met, it shouldn't play favourites in deciding what clients get access. isaacl (talk) 15:45, 25 June 2024 (UTC)

The infrastructure in terms of data integrity *is* being harmed. Performance isn't a concern, yet, and I haven't pretended that this is the case as of now, but it could become one if something isn't done. Bad data should trigger a response. Also, we're not talking about picking and choosing which access to accept willy-nilly - anything done about this would target a specific access producing said bad data. It's all right to stop access done for nefarious purposes (given it is technically feasible to do so), and I see no way this violates any concept of neutrality. This is not "playing favourites". All traffic is considered legitimate unless it demonstrates that it is not. And these views run-ups are almost certainly illegitimate (of course, to be fully determined in the Phab task). Stefen Tower_{s among the rest!} ^{Gab • Gruntwerk} 06:14, 27 June 2024 (UTC)

The article has now been moved back. Moving the page does not appear to have had any effect on incoming views, but appears to have confirmed that these views were just calling the URL, and not actually looking at it (i.e., not following to the redirect target while it was a redirect). My going theory is that this is itself a test by some outside entity that intends to manipulate page views for some other page in the future, probably for commercial or political ends, and is confirming its ability to do so. BD2412 T 20:16, 25 June 2024 (UTC)

I'm not sure why people are making such a big fuss over this. The main concern here seems to be that it messes up our internal page view stats. I agree that can be annoying, but it's also inevitable that things like this will happen. It's a truism in the Big Data world that there will be garbage in your data. You need to accept that and be able to deal with it on the analysis side. You're never going to track down and correct all the sources of garbage, so don't bother trying. RoySmith (talk) 14:31, 26 June 2024 (UTC)

It's funny how folks keep coming here to tell us that it's all right for this site to be pummeled with fake visits (on edit: in the process, harming data integrity - my point all along) and just be cool with that. This isn't a few odd hits we're talking about. Sure, we can apply a band-aid to analyze views differently but we can also have the miscreants blocked and/or shut down (as long as that is technically feasible - something yet to be determined). Nobody is talking about chasing down any or all crap views. This is clearly a special case. And if it's not taken seriously, whoever is doing so will be emboldened to go further. If we do nothing, we are inviting worse. Stefen Tower_{s among the rest!} ^{Gab • Gruntwerk} 01:58, 27 June 2024 (UTC)

"all right for this site to be pummeled with fake visits and just be cool with that"

Oh noes, some weirdo spends the day pressing F5 on his browser to increase the views on one article. Or that Publishers Clearing House links to that page in promotion or something.

What changes on our end? Absolutely nothing, except an article has more views than if they didn't do that. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 04:19, 27 June 2024 (UTC)

@StefenTower., please Wikipedia:Don't worry about performance. There are people paid to worry about this. If they're not worried, we don't need to be worried. They are not worried about someone racking up 20K page views per day. That represents something around 1/50,000th the normal daily traffic. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:33, 27 June 2024 (UTC)

I *am* leaving it up to the people who run this site to make decisions about this. That's why I created the Phab ticket. I'm not the one finding a resolution. My trust is placed in them. If they decide to let it go, that's their decision. Stefen Tower_{s among the rest!} ^{Gab • Gruntwerk} 05:47, 27 June 2024 (UTC)

And again, it's the data integrity more than the performance. I thought I had made that clear before. Stefen Tower_{s among the rest!} ^{Gab • Gruntwerk} 06:00, 27 June 2024 (UTC)

If it was simply "more views", it wouldn't bother me in the least. If one reads above what the issue is about in total, they would see that data that is likely used in decision support, such as in WikiProjects, is being skewed to such a degree as to screw up top rankings. It may not seem so alarming now, but if nothing is done about it, what stops it from ballooning into something that even affects performance? But for me, the harm to data integrity is enough to warrant some kind of action. At the very least, we need a band-aid to look at these kinds of views and recategorize them. I don't think that is close to a complete solution, but I will take that for now. Stefen Tower_{s among the rest!} ^{Gab • Gruntwerk} 05:59, 27 June 2024 (UTC)

TL;DR: A data integrity problem (but not currently a performance problem) is being caused by some entity running up hundreds of thousands of fake views per month of select articles, particularly Neatsville, Kentucky, leading to corrupted presentations in reports based on this views data. Apparent solutions include more smartly identifying such views and recategorizing them (as they highly likely aren't views from real people) and figuring out what exactly is the origin or origins of this access and taking steps such as blocking to handle them. Stefen Tower_{s among the rest!} ^{Gab • Gruntwerk} 06:37, 27 June 2024 (UTC)

Doesn't it seem very likely that this traffic is being caused by a client-server botnet that is waiting for instructions?

It's normal for bot-nets to connect to a webserver to get instructions. But that's tricky for the bot-operators, because it has to be a website they have no legitimate connection to, and if the server is shut down, then all their bots are effectively worthless. Instead, If you point your bot-net to an obscure Wikipedia page it not only saves you the trouble of hacking into an unsecured web server, but it also means that sys-admins are unlikely to spot the uptick in traffic.

If this theory is correct, one day the "owner" of the bot net would insert some command into the page and all the infected devices would do some horrible thing. Perhaps the article should be be edit protected before that day comes. ApLundell (talk) 01:45, 28 June 2024 (UTC)

Wikipedia in Fiction

Nature magazine has been running a series of Science Fiction short stories called "Futures". The latest one -- "Plastic-eating fungus caused doomsday:[2][3] A collaborative effort" -- is told as a series of entries to a Wikipedia talk page. Never thought of Wikipedia as a genre. AFAIK, this is the first Wikipedia fiction -- not counting hoax articles, of course.

I don't know how long this link will be good, so I downloaded a pdf copy of this story in case it goes away. -- llywrch (talk) 02:44, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

Good find, thanks! Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 07:59, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

@Llywrch see lena by qntm Mach61 23:20, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

I have to do this:

References

Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 08:11, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

AFAIK, this is the first Wikipedia fiction Nope! Pre-dated by works like Neurocracy (2021), Missing Links and Secret Histories (2013), and I'm sure there's many more examples. – Teratix ₵ 10:02, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

@Gråbergs Gråa Sång, Llywrch, and Teratix: I have redirected Wikipedia in fiction to Wikipedia in culture. If the use of the above mentioned works is discussed in sources, it would be worth adding mention of them to that article. BD2412 T 19:49, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

I'm surprised that I missed Missing Links and Secret Histories, since I've read every issue of the Signpost since its creation years ago. But my oldest daughter was 6 at the time & having children that young limits every activity outside of work, eating & sleeping -- & sometimes the last two are also affected. -- llywrch (talk) 06:57, 18 June 2024 (UTC)

Another example of fiction in the form of a Wikipedia article is "Basilisk collection" by Blackle Mori. Jruderman (talk) 11:27, 26 June 2024 (UTC)

GPT-4 user-created template at top of page

I just came across the Moto G54 5G article which has a rather peculiar template at the top of the page, saying it was written with GPT-4. At first I thought it was a new official template I didn't know about, then I looked at the source and noticed it's a template sitting in userspace, which looks like it was made to mimic the design of standard header templates. What is the right way to deal with a situation like this? Do we just remove the template from the page, or do we need to deal with the AI-written content in the article somehow? – numbermaniac 18:23, 23 June 2024 (UTC)

I did a spot check of some statements in that article and failed to verify them in the cited sources. I think it’s generally undesirable to use an LLM to write an article and then slap on a template saying the article might contain errors and copyvios. Any human edit might contain errors and even copyvios unwittingly, but if you’re going to use an LLM at all, you need to take much more responsibility for verifying these issues aren’t present. The current template reads too much like an excuse: “I took a shortcut and might have created a mess, so if you find the mess please go ahead and clean it up”. Plus, the current version of that template states: has been visited by many readers and is unlikely to include false information or fake references which seems fallacious. Barnards.tar.gz (talk) 19:51, 23 June 2024 (UTC)

Just say no. RoySmith (talk) 19:57, 23 June 2024 (UTC)

Given the proven unreliability of LLMs, we can not trust anything that is not explicitly supported by the cited sources. Prune it severely. Then remove the template. Blueboar (talk) 20:17, 23 June 2024 (UTC)

Replace it with a real template. (In this case, I did so with {{AI-generated}}; {{db-hoax}} might be more appropriate, depending on how false the article is - I didn't check.) Userspace should never be transcluded into articles. —Cryptic 20:24, 23 June 2024 (UTC)

There is a mainspace redirect at Template:AI-generated-GPT-4-checked. CMD (talk) 06:09, 25 June 2024 (UTC)

Interesting. I noticed it in this edit when going through a bit of the revision history later, and figured the template he had replaced it with was a modification of that first, official, template. Didn't realise both templates had been created by the same user! If it's a redirect to userspace, should it be deleted? – numbermaniac 13:50, 25 June 2024 (UTC)

@Numbermaniac: It should, in principle, because it's not an appropriate use of userspace, but as others above noted, the templates (for the record, there are three of them, actually) really shouldn't exist at all and would be no better in template space, as the implications of their content are very concerning. After looking into it a bit I decided to AGF and leave a message for the user in question. Kinsio (talk ★ contribs) 21:51, 26 June 2024 (UTC)

Chatbots assault?

What a weird coincidence; I came here with my "cyberthriller story". A user asked WPRussia to help with one reference in Assault they found suspicious, but it was to a text in Russian, so they asked for assistance. Indeed, the ref was nonsense and I removed it. At first I thought is was cut'n'paste error, but nasty me decided to find the author for mild trout-slapping. Well, it was a "drive-by editor" Ugwuowo samuel (talk · contribs) and at first (well, at second :-) I just shrugged, but I noticed that the user used the same edit summary "added few words and references" for all its edits. Then I noticed another editor in same page Ifyeke (talk · contribs) with exactly same edit summary, and all of them were the same as well. So I felt something fishy. Then in the page edited by Ifyeke I saw edits by blocked Onyebuchi Echezona (talk · contribs).... Oh people, You have to waste a minute of your time and read its unblock request! It is a poem written on a wall..... by a chatbot.

So, in two minutes I run into three apparently chatbots. In one page the edits of one of them were reverted, but it gives me goosebumps to think how much more of them are roaming unnoticed. I am wondering whether Wikimedia is aware of this threat? The prev section say failed to verify them in the cited sources -and tghat's one of severe issues: the bot generates fake refs (as I explained at the beginning, one was really fake, so the "page owner" (in a good sense) spotted it. But otherwise the texts look legit; Turing test, you know.

Another thing worries me is that I suspect Wikipedia is being (ab)used as a testbench for chatbots at all our's expense. If one may remember, in these gooden olden days of Wikipedia various smartasses loved to insert typos and nonsense into wikipedia to see how quickly they will be spotted. And quite a few had an arrogance to write news articles reporting their findings. Fortunately our antivandalbots became strong. Repeating: are there any "antiChatBots" in development? Or waiting until it hits the fan? - Altenmann >talk 05:35, 25 June 2024 (UTC)

Easier said than done I imagine. Because it produces natural language, it's kind of hard to know definitively when text has been written by a chatbot. There are some amusing examples where tools made to detect AI writing will say that the US constitution was written by an LLM.

The contribution histories of those 2 accounts look rather spammy - seems like it might be worth reporting to administrators. – numbermaniac 15:44, 25 June 2024 (UTC)

Not just text, but images too. The NY Times ran a quiz yesterday asking readers to identify 10 images as real or AI-generated. I got less than 50% right, and I know some of the things to look for (weird fingers and gibberish text). The tech will only get better and this is not going to go away. RoySmith (talk) 15:52, 25 June 2024 (UTC)

P.S. The sectkion above suggests to use template that says " may still include false information " - IMO it is an insult to the common sense. AFAIK such texts must be deleted on the spot, not tagged. If a user knowingly adds fake references by whatever means, they must be blocked for disruption of wikipedia. - Altenmann >talk 06:41, 25 June 2024 (UTC)

Do you think that the people using LLMs actually know that the refs are fake? Maybe they think it's great because (they wrongly believe) it looks up real references. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:52, 27 June 2024 (UTC)

There was a situation just like that last year where some lawyers used ChatGPT to do their "research" for them, and it came up with a bunch of fake citations and fake cases that got them in a lot of trouble with the judge. I remember watching a YouTube video about it at the time. – numbermaniac 15:17, 28 June 2024 (UTC)

@Altenmann: Inclined to agree with WhatamIdoing's thinking. I had to think about this when I was trying to work out how to gently warn the user whose edits are discussed above without WP:BITING: there's a meaningful difference between "knowingly adding fictitious references" and "adding references without checking them". Neither is good, but the latter case isn't as clearly malicious. There's a reason warning templates have multiple levels. And as far as the idea that such texts must be deleted on the spot, that's part of the challenge with LLMs. They're unreliable because of their inherent flaws, and have a significant risk of producing incorrect information, fictitious references, and copyvios, but it's not a given that LLM output is complete nonsense and there's nothing in it that could be salvaged. (As opposed to something like plagiarism, which absolutely should just be removed on sight.) Kinsio (talk ★ contribs) 17:45, 28 June 2024 (UTC)

@Kinsio: - I dont see any "meaningful difference" in terms of harm to wikipedia. ChatBot-generated text looks so strikingly real that it takes a real intellectual effort to pinpoint nonsense and it is twice as hard to prove that it is nonsense or WP:UNDUE or WP:OR. One lazy Wikipedian (or, I suspect, a chatBot tester) creates a huge workload on fellow wikipedians who have to verify the contribution of a 'bot. And without this extra scrutiny, as my initial story shows, bot-produced nonsense can sit there for years. I firmly believe it is an intellectual dishonesty and abuse of Wikipedia to pump chatBot texts into the widely read encyclopedia, on par with the abuse by lawyers mentioned above. - Altenmann >talk 17:55, 28 June 2024 (UTC)

Yes, it's bad, but when you're dealing with humans older than preschool age, you need to differentiate between "made a mess accidentally" and "made a mess on purpose". If the former are educated, they might be both willing and able to help us clean up the mess. The latter need to be shown the door. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:52, 28 June 2024 (UTC)

Export a TimedText to Commons

How do I get TimedText:Stalin_Speech_Life_Has_Become_Better.webm.en.srt moved to Commons? The associated file was recently moved to Commons. –LaundryPizza03 (dc̄) 06:12, 24 June 2024 (UTC)

You could ask a commons admin to transwiki it at commons:Commons:Administrators' noticeboard. Once done you can nominate it for speedy deletion here. — xaosflux ^Talk 10:23, 25 June 2024 (UTC)

 Done —Matrix(!) {user - talk? - _uselesscontributions} 18:16, 2 July 2024 (UTC)

Voting to ratify the Wikimedia Movement Charter is now open – cast your vote

You can find this message translated into additional languages on Meta-wiki. Please help translate to other languages.

Hello everyone,

The voting to ratify the Wikimedia Movement Charter is now open. The Wikimedia Movement Charter is a document to define roles and responsibilities for all the members and entities of the Wikimedia movement, including the creation of a new body – the Global Council – for movement governance.

The final version of the Wikimedia Movement Charter is available on Meta in different languages and attached here in PDF format for your reading.

Voting commenced on SecurePoll on June 25, 2024 at 00:01 UTC and will conclude on July 9, 2024 at 23:59 UTC. Please read more on the voter information and eligibility details.

After reading the Charter, please vote here and share this note further.

If you have any questions about the ratification vote, please contact the Charter Electoral Commission at cec@wikimedia.org.

On behalf of the CEC,

RamzyM (WMF) 10:51, 25 June 2024 (UTC)

• Oppose. Respectfully, personally I would recommend that people please vote "No." this is just my own opinion, and I am just an ordinary editor, with no official roles. Sm8900 (talk) 14:11, 27 June 2024 (UTC)

  Feel free to elaborate on your reasoning. –Novem Linguae (talk) 16:10, 27 June 2024 (UTC)

the charter arbitrarily creates a solitary and arbitrary new hierarchical body which is not needed by anyone, called the "Global Council," with a highly questionable role. the rest of the charter is just vague-sounding platitudes.

also the WMF board has some designated liaisons, who have recommended to vote AGAINST the charter. I don't use the board to govern my opinion on most things. but if even the board and the WMF are against this, then how does this serve any purpose in any way???!! who exactly is in favor of this, or even sees a need for this, if even the board is against this??!! Sm8900 (talk) 16:38, 27 June 2024 (UTC)

the link below provides highly valuable data on some of the multiple concerns raised by the board's review process:

link: meta:Wikimedia Foundation Board noticeboard/Board liaisons reflections on final Movement charter draft/Brief

important points from above:

• The Global Council is the most anticipated aspect of the Movement Charter recommendation. Overall,the proposed Global Council's purpose is not clearly connected to advancing Wikimedia's public interest mission. It lacks a compelling explanation of how it will ensure more equitable decision-making and support the mission of sharing free knowledge. It also does not guide us as the Movement on how to address many of the most pressing issues facing community governance on Wikimedia projects.
• The Wikimedia Foundation is willing to delegate some powers to the Global Council. At the moment, we have not read similar statements from other parts of the movement - and without that, the Global Council cannot really act as a body that goes beyond the Wikimedia Foundation.
  • Would volunteers accept a decision made by the Global Council, even if they don’t like it, just because they had a chance to vote in their elections?

why do we need a Global Council? Who is asking for this to be established? that's my own concern and my own questions on this. ok here is another comment, from someone connected to two members of the board, from the page below

link:Wikimedia Foundation Board liaisons reflections on final Movement charter draft: 

• We believe that approving this version of the Charter, despite the tremendous amount of work and resources already put into it, would not be the right call. Instead, we think it is better to continue pursuing the same goals the draft Charter also sought to pursue in a different way, by identifying key areas where the final draft Charter provides us with guidance on concrete steps that can be taken towards increasing volunteer and movement oversight of certain core areas of responsibility.
• addl excerpt: For an all-encompassing document the support required to ratify the threshold -- 55% plus a minimum of 2% of eligible voters participating in vote -- is quite low.

--Sm8900 (talk) Sm8900 (talk) 16:52, 27 June 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for that food for thought. I also voted no. My reasoning was it is written in product manager speak, doesn't clearly state who is pushing for it and what problems it is trying to solve, appears to give too much power to affiliates, and creates bureaucracy without clearly stating the upside. I also worry that the creation of top-level movement documents like this puts pressure on folks to express their opinions on talk pages within the frameworks of these documents, and opinions that do not fit within these frameworks are more easily discarded. –Novem Linguae (talk) 17:23, 27 June 2024 (UTC)

Yes! Exactly! And also which governmental body defines the role of the Global Council and keeps them accountable?! It seems no one does! And also why are we enthroning this new hierarchy with no mission or defined role?!! Why couldn't a focused task force or maybe a whole set of them, been enacted here instead of this nebulous new authority??!! Sm8900 (talk) 18:24, 27 June 2024 (UTC)

So far, I have seen no independent evidence whatsoever that a significant proportion of people who use the various WMF-hosted websites actually consider themselves to be a part of any single 'movement', let alone that they ascribe to the objectives the WMF seems to think this supposed entity should be pursuing. AndyTheGrump (talk) 16:07, 28 June 2024 (UTC)

"movement" is simply the term used to refer to the people who actively pursue editing activities, on the entries, items, and contents of "various WMF-hosted websites." so by definition that term would include them. Sm8900 (talk) 17:24, 28 June 2024 (UTC)

I'm torn. I like the idea of a formalized body to move some decision-making powers from the WMF to the broader community and have no problem with the involvement of affiliates for the way doing so means the English Wikipedia doesn't simply decide everything for everyone every time. I also don't want perfection to be the enemy of good enough, with there being no guarantee of a serious follow-up proposal if this fails. But it's also hard to understand exactly what this would do, what the WMF would let it do, and how exactly it would work in relation to all of the other entities. We have affiliates, we have thematic organizations, we have user groups, we have hubs, we have various committees, we have the UCOC folks, we have the Wikimedia Foundation, and we have the body of users on each project; we have meetings just for the WMF, meetings about strategy, meetings about UCOC, meetings just for affiliates, meetings within affiliates, and extensive, splintered discussions about all of this on meta, enwiki, and every other project. Part of me says we don't need yet yet another formal entity thrown in the mix, creating yet more bureaucracy, but I also feel like there's the potential for this to be the organization that actually gets things done on behalf of regular volunteers. The big problem, here and as usual, is this is all simply way too much to fully understand for anyone with a full-time job outside of the wiki world -- especially for people who, you know, are here to write articles or take photos or link data or whatnot.

As an aside, can we please give it a rest with the "there is no movement" tedium? I do not know why a handful of editors jump in to bang this drum any time someone uses a collective noun to refer to the editors, uploaders, museum staff, professors, trainers, casual meetup attendees, researchers, activists/advocates, developers, lawyers, event planners, organizers, government staffers, nonprofit EDs, fundraisers, etc. who work with, participate in, or advocate for wikimedia projects and/or the many projects it intersects with. It comes off somewhere between a sovereign citizen or the jock in the chess club loudly proclaiming he's not really part of that bunch of nerds. You're "not part of a movement" -- that movement "doesn't exist". We get it. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 19:21, 28 June 2024 (UTC)

i have to say I agree 99% with 95% of your points above. so you get a hearty Agree from me, @Rhododendrites! nice to have you here!! Sm8900 (talk) 22:10, 28 June 2024 (UTC)

also, what i would suggest is that even if we need a "global Council," a formalistic document like the "Movement Charter" is NOT the way to do it. just form a Global Council by signing volunteers up up one by one, based on interest. and do so by creating the resources!!! not by imposing an obligation!!! and use a movement "charter" as a means of expression, not as some new type of permanent hierarchy that no one understands and no one wants. Sm8900 (talk) 22:14, 28 June 2024 (UTC)

One article about two different people?

Can someone else please take a glance at Bill Cook and Ron Herzman? It seems really odd to have one article about these two different people. Thanks! ElKevbo (talk) 22:51, 26 June 2024 (UTC)

• How about Glen and Les Charles or The Carpenters (Karen Carpenter and Richard Carpenter)? Same principles of WP:NBIO still apply, but I'm still looking for specific rules about two persons in the same article.

Of course, same rules don't apply to fictional characters, like Luke and Laura, but there's WP:AT at least. Also, Luke Spencer and Laura Spencer (General Hospital) have their own articles. George Ho (talk) 00:14, 27 June 2024 (UTC)

• It quite often happens that people dont have much notability outside the duo, i.e., if you write separate articles, there will be a heavy overlap beyond "born and raised" and "died and rests" So it makes perfect sense to have a single page. - Altenmann >talk 00:22, 27 June 2024 (UTC)

• Well, we have category:Duos, and, comparable is a subcategory Category:Business duos. Why would not that be academic duos as well? Heck, we have John and Paul after all :-). - Altenmann >talk 00:18, 27 June 2024 (UTC)

Two academics who co-author are not the same as a singing duo. The article should be split so they each have a separate page. PamD 05:21, 27 June 2024 (UTC)

If they are permanent coauthors then they are the same as Category:Business duos. - Altenmann >talk 05:40, 27 June 2024 (UTC)

No, because they have separate lives, and teaching careers, and in one case political aspirations. Not all their publications are joint: see https://bill-cook.com/resume/ and https://www.geneseo.edu/english/ronald-herzman. PamD 07:28, 27 June 2024 (UTC)

they have separate lives, and teaching careers, and in one case political aspirations. Those elements aren't indicators of notability, honestly. Per WP:N, WP:NBIO, WP:NACADEMICS, and WP:BLP if still living, everything about each of them comes down to what they are notable only for and how notable their own careers are outside the collaboration. Furthermore, the sources you provided are primary, so what about secondary and tertiary ones? George Ho (talk) 08:30, 27 June 2024 (UTC)

Some examples I have encountered are: Charles and Ray Eames, Mary Dann and Carrie Dann, Peter and Rosemary Grant. Johnuniq (talk) 09:09, 27 June 2024 (UTC)

CentralNotice for Bengla Wiktionary contest

A contest will take place from July 1, 2024, to July 31, 2024, on Bangla Wiktionary to enrich its content. A central notice request has been placed to target both English and Bangla Wikipedia users, including non-registered users from Bangladesh and the Indian state of West Bengal. Thank you —MdsShakil (talk) 16:19, 27 June 2024 (UTC)

Community Wishlist Survey is now Community Wishlist

Thank you everyone who has participated in the restructuring and rebranding conversations of the Wishlist so far.

Regarding the renaming, based on your feedback, we will keep the 'Community Wishlist' and remove 'Survey'.

Please read more about the renaming, check out the vote results and learn more about the re-opening of the Community Wishlist on July 15, 2024, in our latest update. –– STei (WMF) (talk) 20:06, 28 June 2024 (UTC)

Announcing the Product and Technology Advisory Council, and a call for applications

Hi folks - I wanted to announce and invite anyone interested to view and apply to the Product and Technology Advisory Council.

As part of the movement strategy recommendation for "Coordinating Across Stakeholders," the Product & Technology Advisory Council (PTAC) will bring technical contributors and Wikimedia Foundation together to co-define a more resilient, future-proof technological platform. The PTAC will meet over a one year pilot; upon its completion, members of the Council will make a joint decision to continue the program, its member base, and purpose.

This council is sponsored by CPTO Selena Deckelmann. Applications are open today, July 1, 2024, through August 10, 2024, and we encourage anyone interested to apply.

To read more and apply, please view the post on Meta. --- JWheeler-WMF (talk) 12:11, 1 July 2024 (UTC)

Subscribing to sub-sections

I see [subscribe] links on talk pages and noticeboards, but only for top-level sections (H2). On pages such as Wikipedia:Redirects_for_discussion, I would like to be able to subscribe to specific discussions that correspond to sub-sections or sub-sub-section. Is this possible? Jruderman (talk) 22:13, 1 July 2024 (UTC)

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T275943

No, it's not currently possible. I doubt that it will happen this year (and maybe not this decade). Some pages have been rearranged to use fewer ===H3 section headings===; that could be done for RFD. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:19, 1 July 2024 (UTC)