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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Commander Keane (talk | contribs) at 01:01, 26 February 2024 (→‎Ar-Wiki breaking neutrality on homepage: Reply). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

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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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Is wikipedia reliable?

Do you think think Wikipedia is reliable? And when and how. Outside you often hear about admins reverting falsehoods, tho thats obviously an oversimplification. On niche subjects? On known ones? I as someone who edits niche non_western cultures can tell you that modernizing ancient situations with exact dates and works of synthesis as sources is a problem. But overall, is wikipedia reliable? Encyclopédisme (talk) 14:59, 14 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

According to Wikipedia, Wikipedia is classified as "generally unreliable". Personally, I'm not sure that's a reliable source. Barnards.tar.gz (talk) 16:02, 14 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
More to the point, wikipedia is a WP:TERTIARY source. In theory, there's nothing in wikipedia which isn't sourced to some other reliable source, so there should never be any reason to cite a wikipedia article. Just cite the underlying WP:RS directly. Well written wikipedia articles are often a great way to get a broad understanding of a topic. But you always need to dig deeper to get down to definitive statements of fact. RoySmith (talk) 16:26, 14 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
You never know, the moment you look at an article, even a WP:FA, somebody might have slipped some unreliable/hoaxed content in. So like most Wikis it's unreliable. Theoretically, some timestamped versions of article may be reliable; ISTR there was a push a few years ago to have some medical articles peer-reviewed as good. Bon courage (talk) 16:52, 14 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Wikipedia cannot guarantee the validity of the information found here. We have an article on this topic (Reliability of Wikipedia) - which may or may not be reliable itself :D For a more general response - most of our articles that list facts have references, which you could then follow up with if you want to establish the reliability of a statement. — xaosflux Talk 19:32, 14 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It's pretty good in parts. Which parts those are, opinion may differ. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 19:45, 14 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Yes but only the pages I edit. LegalSmeagolian (talk) 16:24, 20 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Reliability is often a function of how good the citations are: formatting, metadata, archive URLs. Without quality citations, it's hard to verify, or it simply looks so sloppy it gives the appearance of unreliability - and appearance counts for a lot. Many editors don't cite at all, or leave bare links, or sloppy free-form cites without templates. It seriously degrades the reliability of the of the project. Furthermore I have found from personal experience, you have to revisit every citation every couple years to make sure it's still in good shape. URLs still working, can the templates be improved based on your evolving knowledge of best practices. It's a never-ending process. Unfortunately most editors write it down one time, consider it "done" and walk away - always chasing the new. If editors spent more time maintaining, rewriting, improving, the content they already wrote, and did so on a regular basis. I try to go through every article I wrote on a regular basis, checking every citation, and even though I've checked them multiple times over the years, invariably I keep finding new ways to make improvements with each pass. They get better and better that way, over many years. -- GreenC 15:26, 16 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I think the answer depends on what the word reliability means to you. For example, in Wikipedia:Reliable sources, in practice, the definition of reliable basically means "source that other editors agree (either passively or actively) to let you cite in support of a given claim". We have some criteria that are useful for predicting the general cases (e.g., scholarly papers are more likely to be accepted than social media posts), but no criteria except WP:Published is an absolute requirement. A self-published, self-serving social media post is 100% acceptable if the statement to be sourced is "In a Spacebook post, Chris Celebrity immediately denied any involvement". WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:39, 20 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
By reliable, I mean you can trust it, to whatever extent possible. On the wikilaw, other language wikis (i.e Fr.wiki, es.wiki, de.wiki) have different Guidlines. I remember having a big debate on the French wiki because of the use of an editorial, considered a primary source. The conclusion was that the author, a well respected expert, Alain Duhamel, was a political ennemy, and therefore a primary source. On the german wiki, if academic sources are a available, journalistic ones are ignored altogether. Encyclopédisme (talk) 17:49, 20 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
In the french case the Argument was that since it wasn't an article, but an editorial, Duhamel, right-wing, (it was about Mélenchon) couldn't be used (the editorial of duhamel couldn't be used). I would agree with that, I just gave it as an exemple. Cheers. Encyclopédisme (talk) 17:52, 20 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Here, we sometimes have to remind editors that Secondary is not another way to spell good. You can USEPRIMARY sources, as long as you use them sparingly and carefully. An editorial by Duhamel could be used to say, e.g., that Duhamel criticized Mélenchon in an editorial piece. The editorial is WP:Reliable for that; after all, one could not read an editorial by Duhamel, in which he criticizes Mélenchon, and still wonder whether Duhamel has criticized Mélenchon.
But: it is not enough to have a reliable source; the information must also be appropriate for the article, give WP:Due weight to different viewpoints, of encyclopedic relevance, and so forth. We might say that it's a reliable source, and therefore a WP:Verifiable statement, but that it still does not belong in the article. One cannot include every single time that a politician is criticized for something. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:15, 20 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Data Citation Corpus

DataCite launches first release of the Data Citation Corpus: https://makedatacount.org/first-release-of-the-open-global-data-citation-corpus/

This appears to be a large database of citations taken from open source journals. The first iteration is citations that contain DOIs.

It is funded by Wellcome Trust serious backing. The first version is available as a data file: https://makedatacount.org/data-citation/

You can explore it visually with a dashboard: http://corpus.datacite.org/dashboard -- GreenC 15:04, 16 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

List of codes of languages

Is there a full list of codes of languages and their WD codes? Eurohunter (talk) 14:59, 17 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know of a list of language tags and their wikidata qids. You might try assembling such a list.
https://www.wikidata.org/w/index.php?title=Special:WhatLinksHere/Property:P220&limit=5000 will return the first 5000 wikidata items that have ISO 639-3 code (P220) (the remaining 3000+ are available on a second page). You could take that list and match the qid title against the list of ISO 639-3 tags and names listed in Module:Language/data/ISO 639-3.
There are similar properties for ISO 639-1 code (P218) and ISO 639-2 code (P219) and there are Module:Language/data/ISO 639-1, Module:Language/data/ISO 639-2, and Module:Language/data/ISO 639-2B.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 15:50, 17 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Valid use of Wikipedia's name?

Check this video on YouTube and see how it's identifying itself with Wikipedia. Does Wikipedia take action over stuff like this? Largoplazo (talk) 04:03, 18 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I haven't looked at it, but you can always ask trademarks@wikimedia.org about potential misuse. Once you alert them, if they're concerned about it, they'll handle everything for you. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:42, 20 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the lead. Largoplazo (talk) 22:09, 20 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Meetups in Southern California

Thanks to the efforts of meta:Wikimedians of Los Angeles members the meetup Wikipedia:Meetup/Los Angeles/February 2024 was a success. I can only hope that the other meetup in Southern California this month in San Diego (Wikipedia:Meetup/San Diego/February 2024) will be a success as well. All are invited. RightCowLeftCoast (Moo) 11:15, 18 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Seeking feedback on Wikimedia Foundation draft "Infrastructure" objectives

Hello everyone! The Wikimedia Foundation has just posted the draft objectives for our product and technology work in next year’s annual plan. These represent the high level direction for our infrastructure work next year, and we’re asking for your ideas and feedback to shape our thinking. Later on in the planning process, we’ll share some draft key results (the measurable change we’ll aim to achieve) and a full draft annual plan with many of the details about our operations, budget, and work across departments. Long story short, we’d love to hear from you, and there will be further opportunities in the coming weeks. Thanks for your interest. KStineRowe (WMF) (talk) 17:21, 20 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Hey all,
This "infrastructure" plan is about:
  • what newcomers and experienced editors need
  • content creation and translation
  • how much emphasis to put on Wikipedia vs other projects
  • content curation and admin tools (e.g., CAPTCHAs, our increasingly impractical over-reliance on IPs to block IP-hopping abusers)
  • Community Tech and the need to support volunteer developers (e.g., the people who write and operate Wikipedia:Bots)
  • changing reader behaviors and expectations (e.g., reading Wikipedia via other sites, videos, AI/LLMs, chatbots?)
It's also about the things that aren't mentioned, such as:
  • Commons
  • Wikidata
  • any of the other sister projects
  • mobile readers (66% of our page views) and editors on mobile devices (much smaller percentage)
  • our request to change the default size of images, which would require several months of re-sizing images
  • whatever else is on your mind
What you need to do is:
  1. Go to m:Wikimedia Foundation Annual Plan/2024-2025/Goals/Infrastructure
  2. Find the section that seems most relevant to your concerns, and read it.
  3. Go to the talk page and post your comments (good or bad, but do try to be practical/constructive).
  4. Check back later to see if there are any follow-up questions or comments.
WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:39, 20 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
This looks like a heap of corporatese and buzzwords that talks big and communicates nothing. I have left feedback accordingly. 🌺 Cremastra (talk) 01:00, 21 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
IMO "high-level" would be a fairer description, but they're generally grateful for any feedback at all. It's discouraging to spend a month in meetings, write thousands of words, and then get no response at all (followed, all too often, by someone popping up months later to say "You never told anyone about any of this!").
@Cremastra, I see that you objected to them using the word content. That presumably refers to whatever is covered by our Wikipedia:Content policies and guidelines, but if you can suggest a better word, it might well be adopted. If nothing else, it might help the translators, who have to figure out which of several meanings is the relevant one. (Are you feeling content about our content?) WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:37, 21 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Party colour templates

Hello! Can somebody give me a link to the page dealing with various party colour templates? Thanks! Mbakkel2 (user talk) 21 February 2024 02:26 (CET)

Mbakkel2, I think that the last big discussion about that was Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Elections and Referendums/Archive 24#RfC about party colours. User:Thomediter, User:Howard the Duck, or User:Number 57 might be able to answer your questions. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:11, 21 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
You can edit Module:Political party/A and all other letters. Howard the Duck (talk) 20:35, 21 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Deploying Edit Recovery feature to English Wikipedia

Hello all,

Community Tech will be deploying the Edit Recovery feature (previously proposed as the Auto-save feature) to English Wikipedia following tests on test.wikipedia.org. It will be available for use by Thursday, 22 February 2024, as an opt-in user preference applicable to wikitext editor.

Edit Recovery was voted the #8 wish in the Community Wishlist Survey 2023. Edit Recovery allows for restoring edits when a browser is closed, or crashes or a power or network outage occurs during editing.

Turn on the feature by selecting ‘Enable the Edit Recovery feature’ in the Preferences ‘Editing’ section. Please give feedback till 31 March 2024 on the feature’s talk page.

Looking forward to hearing from you,

Community Tech. –– STei (WMF) (talk) 12:29, 21 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@MusikAnimal (WMF), mw:Help:Edit Recovery says this will work on "the" wikitext editor. Which one(s) will it work in? WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:13, 21 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It should be any wikitext editor, except the 2017 editor as it already has an edit recovery feature. MusikAnimal (WMF) (talk) 20:06, 21 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oh, thank God. Finally. I guess after 23 years is better than never. jp×g🗯️ 21:50, 22 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Personhood

The Supreme Court of Alabama just ruled on Friday that frozen embryos have the same rights as children. I'm surprised there are not more specific articles on this, but I just updated Personhood and did some cleanup. That article is still a mess, though, and has several cleanup tags. If anyone is interested, now would be a good time to fix it up, in case it starts getting millions of page views as this debate becomes hot. -- Beland (talk) 00:43, 22 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

This seems like an WP:UNDUE issue. The judiciary of one sub-national government issuing a ruling doesn't change anything about the academic understanding of the concept. The article already gives disproportional coverage to unborn personhood as opposed to general personhood and to the ideas of specific nations as opposed to the actual concept as a whole. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 21:02, 22 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Vector 2022 flashed before my eyes

OOOPS, WRONG TAB
I'll pick this up at VPT

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.


Today is Thursday, so anything is possible, but this was a weird one. A page I was looking at rendered in Vector 2022 for no reason that I could detect. I tried reloading the page. That didn't help. I went to some other page thinking I might have turned on V22 by accident, but no; other pages were fine, it was just this one. Eventually, I did a force refresh (which I believe flushes the browser cache for just that one page) and got back to normal. By "normal", I mean "not Vector 2022". I remember looking at the URL bar and didn't see anything unusual there. Anybody have any clue what might have been going on? RoySmith (talk) 22:04, 22 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Just a wild stab in the dark, but I see (two talk sections up) there was a deployment of a new feature. Possibly related? Barnards.tar.gz (talk) 22:36, 22 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I posted at WP:VPT about the same issue, everythings fine bar one page that forces Vector 2022. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 23:27, 22 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I recommend moving this to WP:VPT so technical editors can see this and help you out. –Novem Linguae (talk) 23:33, 22 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Finding non-redirects that have class=redirect

I want to find articles under a specific category that have a wikiproject 'class' hard set to 'redirect', but that are not actually redirects. Is there a tool to do this? I took at look at PetScan but I don't see a suitable combination of filters. Thanks. Praemonitus (talk) 14:57, 24 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Ar-Wiki breaking neutrality on homepage

For the past few months, Ar-Wiki hosts a banner against "Israeli propaganda" and "Genocide in Gaza" on the frontpage. WMF does not mind it (after a huge number of attempts contacting them), and the chatter at the relevant meta-wiki is full of "justifications". Personally, I'm stopping my donations and contributions for now, as I don't donate to a website / organization endorsing a political opinion on the frontpage, especially not one that is against the alleged "propaganda" of the country I was born in. In my view they have broken the contract with us Wikipedians, promising a free and neutral encyclopedia.

I hope each and every contributor here will make their own decision whether to support the political opinion on ar-wiki's frontpage. By contributing to WMF, you're of course contributing to and are part of that message. Eventually donating to WMF (through the English Wikipedia) means donating for the hosting of a website influencing Arab readers and attempting to sway public politics. Have a good day, Bar Harel (talk) 05:17, 25 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

This has nothing to do with enwiki, and the village pump is not a soapbox for ranting about "wmf bad." Firestar464 (talk) 21:36, 25 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I don't donate to the WMF, and en.wiki has nothing to do with ar.wiki's affairs. Go complain there. 🌺 Cremastra (talk) 22:02, 25 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Personally I do not mind the occasional update about what is going on with other Projects, and this is probably the best place on English Wikipedia for those updates. Commander Keane (talk) 01:01, 26 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
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