Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous)

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Internet Archive

As you might have seen, a federal judge in New York ruled Friday in Hachette v. Internet Archive that the Internet Archive's practice of lending out digitized copies of copyrighted books for free (aka controlled digital lending) constitutes copyright infringement that can't be defended on fair-use grounds. [1][2] This will be appealed, but in the very plausible event that it's upheld, one of our best ways to access reliable sources could be off the table. It's worth thinking about what we could do if that happened. Any ideas? Additional funding for The Wikipedia Library (which is already doing great work) might help, but it'd be awfully hard to compensate for the literally millions of free online books that could disappear in the not-so-distant future. Extraordinary Writ (talk) 07:19, 26 March 2023 (UTC)

Thank you for letting us know about this. I think our links in citations would continue to be all right (unless links are broken by IA) because the judgment says "The Publishers do not challenge certain uses IA makes of the Works in Suit, including 'indexing them for the purpose of searching, displaying short excerpts in response to searches and citations, and supporting research in text and data mining.' Def.’s Memo., ECF No. 106, at 16-17. The Publishers limit their claims to IA’s digital lending of entire ebook versions of the Works in Suit". However our future research would be seriously hampered by editors being unable to "read" the works. Also more limited availability (via Wikipedia Library) might be lawful under the law's dispensations for libraries rather than under "fair use", the matter at issue in this case. Thincat (talk) 11:13, 26 March 2023 (UTC)

This is fairly concerning for the future of reliable sourcing on Wikipedia. Since 80% of links are backed up on the Internet Archive (see List of web archives on Wikipedia), it's potentially catastrophic if the Internet Archive loses the legal right to store links. Fortunately, per Thincat, this hasn't happened yet and isn't happening right now. However, since that right may go in the near future, I think we ought to have a backup plan -- some way to, if needs be, archive everything on other servers. Opal|zukor^(discuss) 08:31, 3 April 2023 (UTC)

As I understand it, it is only the Intenet Archive's practice of "loaning" access to the full text of digitized books that are under copyright that is endangered. I will be disappointed to see that taken away, as I have "checked out" such books to find material to be used in an article. Again, as I understand the reports, the judicial ruling does not affect archived links to material that was publically and legally available on the Internet. Donald Albury 13:27, 3 April 2023 (UTC)

IPs are an existential threat to Wikipedia

IP editors have pros and cons. The cons are such an existential threat, I wonder why we allow them anymore. This from my watchlist this morning:

• Special:Diff/1146692897/1146722326
• Special:Diff/1146655702/1146722480

Most vandalism is from IPs and SPAs who are persistent and sneaky, they are determined experienced malicious editors. The downside is we loose some legit editors, that was a big issue in the early days when the Wiki was new. As we transition into middle age, maintaining the existing is increasingly important. IPs can always use talk page edit requests. This is such a big change to 'what is Wikipedia' I don't expect this thread to go anywhere but I want to voice this POV which in time is inevitable if Wikipedia is to survive. The number of articles to maintain increases linearly while the number of experienced editors watching stays flat. -- GreenC 16:24, 26 March 2023 (UTC)

Sadly, the world is heading towards that state. Are we there yet? I'm not sure. It's hard to tell when the gradual increase in vandalism crosses the threshold. Hiding IP addresses may soon make vandal-fighting impractical for the rank and file editor; that may be when we have to block the good IPs along with the bad. Certes (talk) 16:37, 26 March 2023 (UTC)

Actual research would disagree with you: Research:Value of IP Editing. Legoktm (talk) 17:01, 26 March 2023 (UTC)

That's a useful document. This document is examining and detailing the pros of IP editors, while only acknowledging cons (mainly vandalism) exists. The last time a vandalism study was conducted was 2007 Wikipedia:Counter-Vandalism_Unit/Vandalism_studies/Study1. I'd like to see more recent studies how much damage vandals are actually causing, even better with trends. -- GreenC 17:17, 26 March 2023 (UTC)

Certainly there's been more than 2007, I'm sure searching through e.g. the Research newsletter archives will turn up more things. In any case, it's important to look at IP editors in context, we have plenty of registered accounts that are engaging in the same "persistent and sneaky" behavior you called out (e.g. LTAs, paid editors, etc.) I would think that IP edits already get way more scrutiny than those accounts. Legoktm (talk) 17:34, 26 March 2023 (UTC)

In indirect ways, even low-quality contributions (from IP editors and others) can be valuable. A study by Gorbatâi suggests that low quality contributions by IP editors has an important effect by catalyzing additional high quality contributions by established editors. Chilling. Vandalism is valuable, because it triggers that "gotta-fix-it" itch and gets us to waste our time? DFlhb (talk) 10:44, 27 March 2023 (UTC)

That summary is a misrepresentation of the Gorbatai study, which did not specifically measure IP vandalism but instead measured contributions by novice editors vs. expert editors. Orange Suede Sofa (talk) 16:51, 27 March 2023 (UTC)

Indeed, and I support IP contribs. DFlhb (talk) 16:54, 27 March 2023 (UTC)

You may or may not be right in your conclusion, but your methodology is certainly wrong. Even at the very naïve level the metric to look at is the percentage of IP edits (I'll use this term although every editor uses IP) that are bad, not the percentage of bad edits that are made by IPs. Those can be very different. Then we get into the number of IP editors who then go on to register. Remember that correlation is not causation. Phil Bridger (talk) 20:04, 26 March 2023 (UTC)

I check through a lot of IP edits on my watchlist. Some are flagged by ORES, some not. Anecdotally, for me, on the whole, IP editors make more positive than negative edits. However, I cannot say the same for Wikidata. If it were up to me, I would ban IP edits in Wikidata, except for language linking edits. Again, anecdotal, but except for the language linking, I find IP edits to be more damaging than not in Wikidata. Peaceray (talk) 22:12, 26 March 2023 (UTC)

Which is a serious issue for Wikipedia… because these vandalism edits to Wikidata can get transferred to Wikipedia without notification on our watchlists. Data could change and we would not even realize it had. Blueboar (talk) 22:31, 26 March 2023 (UTC)

This is already happening. (This comment reminded me to go do some searches on Wikidata and, lo and behold, 5 minutes later I have already found an instance.) Gnomingstuff (talk) 00:00, 27 March 2023 (UTC)

Wikipedia watchlists can show edits at "an associated Wikidata page". However, it's disabled by default, doesn't work with grouping, and excludes any other Wikidata pages which may contribute to the article. As others have said, preventing IP edits to Wikipedia wouldn't solve that problem. The one consolation is that Wikidata has a much lower profile than Wikipedia, so many casual vandals won't know it exists, but security through obscurity is rarely a good solution. Certes (talk) 09:38, 27 March 2023 (UTC)

I fix a lot of vandalism, primarily undetected vandalism (more than a few days old, sometimes years or even a decade-plus old). IPs are responsible for the vast majority of this vandalism, and it's not remotely close. However, most of this is not by "persistent and sneaky" editors. It's by probable teenagers who found it funny to change "Brown Sugar" to "Brown shit poop" and having done so, most likely never thought of it again. Or it's by someone on their school's shared IP that makes dozens or hundreds of edits, many actually constructive. Gnomingstuff (talk) 00:00, 27 March 2023 (UTC)

Ironically that particular vandalism was fixed by an unregistered editor — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 12:17, 27 March 2023 (UTC)

Good catch! Seems like an existential benefit to me... Gnomingstuff (talk) 15:05, 28 March 2023 (UTC)

The self-congratulatory research referred to above misses some points relevant for the 2023 English Wikipedia which is a very different place from the early days. First, while many IP editors are great, it's likely that those very experienced contributors use an IP from habit or because they enjoy being a rebel (they see making an account as following the herd). Many of them would probably be grateful to be forced to make an account so they can say to themselves that they only did it because that's how the world is these days. Second, it's likely that significant degradation occurs from IPs who enjoy changing numbers or making other hard-to-check edits. Third, the drip-drip of nonsense, even if quickly reverted, can be very de-motivating for good editors. I have seen a retired academic leave Wikipedia due to the idiocy of needing to constantly monitor articles. Fourth, apart from those writing open-source software, the English Wikipedia is #1 for anyone wanting to make a contribution to the common good. People capable of helping the encyclopedia will be highly motivated to join the premier website—so long as the process of making an account is simple and carefully explained, they probably will join. Johnuniq (talk) 05:10, 27 March 2023 (UTC)

The research page was created in 2019, which is hardly "the early days." Gnomingstuff (talk) 14:28, 27 March 2023 (UTC)

According to Wikipedia:Counter-Vandalism Unit/Vandalism studies there have been 4 comprehensive attempts to study vandalism and only 1 study has finished to completion, in 2007, the first one. -- GreenC 16:44, 27 March 2023 (UTC)

IPs can vandalize and accounts can vandalize. It's more difficult to deal with users that create accounts to vandalize so we would actually prefer that they don't. Barriers to entry reduce the total number of both good and bad edits; most edits are constructive. Further reverts are cheap, they take all of 1 second. Content creation is not, it takes time and interest. Even today, many event articles are entirely updated and built out by IPs and SPAs. Will there be some new registrations if compelled? yes. Will it be enough to offset the loss? no. We already lack the interested editor base needed to continually update vast swaths of content, no need to make it worse.

I wouldn't be so confident that every long-term IP editor will register if forced to, I won't. Not a big deal in my case these years I'm not very active so my departure probably won't be noticed, but I know some of the others well enough to say that I won't be the only one to leave on principle, and while the community may not be as lively as in the past, there's more of us than many people realize.

Lots of people are already motivated to help, let's continue trying to keep it as easy as possible for them to do so. 74.73.224.126 (talk) 04:10, 3 April 2023 (UTC)

Is anyone aware of more recent analysis of pt.wiki than meta:IP Editing: Privacy Enhancement and Abuse Mitigation/IP Editing Restriction Study/Portuguese Wikipedia? CMD (talk) 09:59, 27 March 2023 (UTC)

I don't think there's anything else, but I'll ask around and see what I can find.

@GreenC, did you edit as an IP before creating an account? I did, and I think a lot of long-time editors did. (Someone used the wrong punctuation on the internet!) One of the concerns about requiring registration is that we might cut off the future generations of casual typo-fixers.

More generally, I have a problem that you all might be able to help me with. With m:IP masking coming up (and it is a "whether we like it or not" matter), I'm expecting to see parallel conversations like this:

• Alice: Let's require registration. Nobody will see any IP addresses, and we won't have these terrible IP editors around. Two problems solved.
• Bob: Noooooo, I always have to see everyone's IP addresses forever! If everyone registers accounts, I won't be able to see all of their IP addresses, and only CUs will be able to block vandals!

The plan as I've heard it is to convert "IP editors" to "temporary accounts". The page history will stop saying "User:127.0.0.1" and start saying "User:123456". Admins and some other users will be able to "reveal" the IP address for themselves for at least 90 days but probably not forever.

One of the challenges has been the number of different IP addresses. The English Wikipedia gets contributions from about a quarter million IP addresses each month. That's about 8,000 users per day here. (For reference, Cluebot reverts about 200 mainspace edits per day from IP addresses.) Some of these "different" IPs are the same person (edits made from your phone at home + on the bus + at school = three "different" editors), and some of the "same" IPs are different people (shared computers at school or library; shared network in an office). The new system will not resolve this perfectly either (me on my laptop at home in Safari + Chrome + Firefox = one IP address, but three separate temporary users), but it's possible that we will see a decline in the overall number of unregistered editors, and that it will be easier to differentiate between frequent editors whose IP address changes frequently vs newbies/one-off editors. OTOH, it's also possible that we'll see an increase, as every incognito/private window, and every shared computer that rejects cookies, is a "new" account.

One result that I'm hoping for is that it'll be easier to contact logged-out editors even if their IP changes.

So my question for all of you is: Does this plan seem basically workable? It'll require some changes (e.g., updates to {{welcome-anon}}), but does anything in here sound especially concerning?

Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:51, 27 March 2023 (UTC)

Are you saying that a vandal can change their User123456 number just by opening a new incognito window? If so then Special:Contributions may no longer show what else they've ruined recently. Of course, they can hop between IPs now, but not as simply as hitting ⇧ Shift+Ctrl+N. Certes (talk) 21:14, 27 March 2023 (UTC)

To spell out a couple of consequences: firstly, we couldn't easily list their other edits to examine and consider reverting; secondly, we wouldn't know that they've already been warned several times recently and may need blocking. Certes (talk) 22:44, 27 March 2023 (UTC)

Whether that's true depends on who you mean by "we". Any random person on the internet? True. An editor with the relevant user right and suitable tools? Not true. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 16:12, 28 March 2023 (UTC)

Will the proposal make it easier or more difficult to detect that 2A00:23C4:FB19:8301:9575:2322:47E4:3AC1 (talk), 2A02:C7C:AC60:B900:E482:1D08:8149:4E02 (talk), 86.45.142.178 (talk) and 86.24.213.229 (talk) are all the same person? --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 22:34, 27 March 2023 (UTC)

Right now, we have these situations:

• Traveling editor – same person, same browser, multiple IPs, difficult to connect.
• IP-switching LTA – same person, same browser, multiple IPs, difficult to connect.
• Incognito editor – same person, "different" browser, same IP, easy to connect.

In the future, we expect these situations:

• Traveling editor – Stable temporary username (plus Help:Notifications will work).
• IP-switching LTA – Stable temporary username.
• Incognito editor – Different temporary username every time, but the IPs can be revealed by admins+others with the relevant user right.

So if the four IPs you mention are all in the same browser, it'll be automatically connected. If they're the same person but different computers (e.g., on their phone, their laptop, a shared computer at school, etc.), then it will be just as difficult as it currently is. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 16:10, 28 March 2023 (UTC)

A good analysis, but I fear that any LTA clever enough to switch IPs will soon work out how to change their temporary username. Certes (talk) 17:19, 28 March 2023 (UTC)

I assume so, too, but is that really any worse than what we have now? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:56, 28 March 2023 (UTC)

Only for case six above (Incognito editor, future). I don't know how many of those we have, or how many will switch to that mode (there being little point in adopting it now other than concealing one's browsing history from Mummy and Daddy.) Certes (talk) 21:56, 28 March 2023 (UTC)

The incognito editor would be indistinguishable from a shared computer (e.g., in a library) that rests everything between users.

I'm pretty sure that this is going to work out okay in the end. I'm worried about a rocky entry, though. Does anything need to be done to Twinkle? To Navpops? To tools I don't use or haven't heard of? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 22:12, 28 March 2023 (UTC)

Yes, the incognito editor is now and will remain indistinguishable from a shared computer. Now, both have a constant IP address, allowing us to tie the edits together. After masking, both will have changing temporary usernames, making it harder to associate their edits. That's a good change for innocent library visitors, but also helps a vandal who's discovered the incognito button. Certes (talk) 23:06, 28 March 2023 (UTC)

Except that experienced editors will also be able to see the IP addresses for temporary accounts.

If we were requiring everyone to log in, you wouldn't be able to see anyone's IP addresses. This system will prevent readers/casual editors from seeing the IP address, but it won't prevent everyone from seeing the IP addresses. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 15:05, 29 March 2023 (UTC)

Being unable to see the IP addresses would make it worse, so impact would depend on how "some other users" and "probably not forever" shakes out. CMD (talk) 22:55, 28 March 2023 (UTC)

Is it not being able to see the IP address per se that would make things worse (how?), or is it not being able to see what other edits were made from this IP address that would make things worse? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 15:07, 29 March 2023 (UTC)

Mainly the latter. Connecting the edits of one IP is useful, but so is connecting those of adjacent IPs, especially within the same IPv6 /64, a range which often (but not always) denotes the same device and person. The exact IP only matters if tracking down a potential COI, such as an organisation's article edited from its own IP range. Some of us have suggested solutions such as Crypto-PAn, but received no response. Certes (talk) 16:38, 29 March 2023 (UTC)

The plan is to let most experienced editors be able to reveal the IP address itself, so for a single IP, it shouldn't be a problem. Legal's supposed to post their requirements this week, and it's going to be one of those "Legal's minimum, but you can set a higher standard if you want" thing. At a glance, I think every editor in this discussion would easily clear the minimum. You'll need to click something to promise you won't misuse private information, but it shouldn't be a big deal.

I'm not sure how they're handling the problem of adjacent IPs (e.g., for finding out which other temp users are in the same the IPv6 /64 range). I'd expect existing CU tools to be able to do that, but I'm not sure how it would work for the rest of us. Let me figure out who to ask...

Please let me know if you have favorite tools that you'd like to keep using for this – it's 9–12 months away, but there's no point in waiting until the last minute. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 21:00, 29 March 2023 (UTC)

I just found this vandalism from a year ago while checking the contribs of an IP on my watchlist. I don't think I'd be able to do that sort of thing under the new system. (I'd previously done things like this before but it was hard to find examples ... this just happens to be a really good one!) Graham87 03:59, 5 April 2023 (UTC)

References

Insect images appear in each article preview linked to Template:Meals

Template:Meals(File:Ch.megacephala_wiki.jpg)--Vcvfou698069 (talk) 01:10, 1 April 2023 (UTC)

@Vcvfou698069: It's due to this edit, since reverted. If you're still seeing it, try a WP:PURGE. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 14:02, 1 April 2023 (UTC)

A new edit filter may prevent this from recurring. Discussion: WP:EFR#Transclusions of articles in templates. Certes (talk) 19:22, 1 April 2023 (UTC)

Discussion required at Can You Duet

I would like to know if anyone here can help me find better sources for Can You Duet. It doesn't seem to be notable per WP:NTV and every time I try to initiate a discussion, it fizzles out immediately. Please see Talk:Can You Duet for further analysis of sources. Thank you. Ten Pound Hammer • ^{(What did I screw up now?)} 18:30, 1 April 2023 (UTC)

Wikipedia's new look making tables less readable

This new look of Wikipedia has introduced two fixed blocks on either side of the browser window, forcing the actual wiki content in between them, making the layout of the content narrower. With normal prose text, this isn't much of a problem, but it is making tables containing large lengths of text less readable, at times to the point of ridiculousness. One example is at the article Turing Award, linked from today's In The News. If this new look is going to stay, should something be done to fix this? I personally don't see any solution other than to reconstruct the tables in an entirely different format. JIP | Talk 20:53, 2 April 2023 (UTC)

How well do such tables fit in Vector 2022 with full width toggled on? (That question may be an unanswerable because screen widths vary.) Although the WMF shows no signs of making full width the default again, plans are in hand to restore it locally in CSS. Certes (talk) 21:54, 2 April 2023 (UTC)

I made the table go below the infobox which makes it a normal width (although with now a gap above it). Galobtter (pingó mió) 22:06, 2 April 2023 (UTC)

The Vector 2010 version of the page, prior to Galobttr's fix, was also ridiculously squished on narrow screens. It's good that editors with wide screens are now being prompted to consider how their content might appear to others, and to make layout choices with that in mind. Sojourner in the earth (talk) 04:56, 3 April 2023 (UTC)

+1 - Wikipedia layouts should not be designed only to work on a wide-screen desktop monitor. Galobtter (pingó mió) 05:00, 3 April 2023 (UTC)

How removable are the IA Bot's "external links modified" sections?

In the past, the Internet Archive Bot used to add a report to an article's talk page containing every archive it added to the article. (example: here) According to this discussion at Village pump (proposals), it is acceptable for editors to delete the talk page posts added by the IA Bot, but there was no consensus for a mass removal of these posts. Interestingly, though, there doesn't seem to be an agreed-upon method of removing these posts. For instance, if a user reviews these archives and finds that they are live and well, can they subsequently remove the post? Probably. But what if they decided to do the same to, say, 100 talk pages? Would that be acceptable? I understand that many users are worried that this would flood their watchlists, but that's not necessary. An editor could perhaps carefully select articles that likely aren't watchlisted, and they could keep their removals at a low level, perhaps 20-30 a day, from the least watched articles; that wouldn't be disruptive. Instead of discussing why someone would want to remove these posts, let's discuss what would be a reasonable number of removals, if any number is even necessary. Perhaps no limit is necessary if the removals are done reasonably? — Nythar (💬-🍀) 00:25, 4 April 2023 (UTC)

I'd say same as anything else on a talk page, unless the page is long - just leave it be, if it is too big to read easily - archive some of it using the archive method that is already in use. — xaosflux ^Talk 01:42, 4 April 2023 (UTC)

The previous discussion resulted in consensus in favor of Option 2, which states in part: "the wording of the post is modified to give users permission to delete posts if they want to. Since talk page posts normally can't be deleted by other users, it would remove that restriction." So apparently, these posts don't need to be treated like posts created by actual editors (for example: are they worth archiving?). I think it'll be helpful if we can clarify where the limits exist. — Nythar (💬-🍀) 03:42, 4 April 2023 (UTC)

Yes these are 100% removable by anyone, anytime. In fact a proposal to remove all of them via bot would be a good idea. It's an old system that came about via compromise by committee in the early days of the bot when the community was unsure about the quality of the work and we have long since moved on from it. -- GreenC 13:48, 4 April 2023 (UTC)

GreenC, does this mean I can go ahead and very carefully test-remove 100 of these messages without being warned? — Nythar (💬-🍀) 04:15, 5 April 2023 (UTC)

Sure, why not. I remove them all the time whenever I see them. There is no justification for them, and some justification to remove them. -- GreenC 12:35, 5 April 2023 (UTC)

@Nythar I'm a bit lost here, how will the edits you are proposing improve the encyclopedia? — xaosflux ^Talk 09:53, 5 April 2023 (UTC)

@Xaosflux I suppose by decluttering talk pages they might make life easier for editors, and thus improve editor experience and editor contributions. On the other hand, it would flood the watch lists of people who have already been mildly irritated once by the announcement by IABot, so is probably not worthwhile. Perhaps a better approach would be to add automatic archiving to all talk pages which have reached some size limit. If all talk pages had archiving enabled it wouldn't be a problem, the IABot posts would just disappear from sight! PamD 10:03, 5 April 2023 (UTC)

I'm not really arguing too much for or against this, but that is a good test for "should I do x" here, if the answer is "no" or "I don't know" - then the answer is rather evident. — xaosflux ^Talk 10:12, 5 April 2023 (UTC)

Xaosflux I personally compared the benefits and disadvantages of removing these posts. Say for instance an editor disruptively, but not vandalistically, adds long posts to 1,000 talk pages (for some reason). We'd normally remove such posts because they are simply unnecessary. In IABot's case, decluttering those talk pages would certainly be an improvement. We also wouldn't have to archive them, which would leave an article's archives uncluttered. Uncluttered talk pages are more advantageous and easier to edit than cluttered ones. Since Wikipedia is supposedly unlimited in terms of storage space and the edits made removing these posts won't cause us to reach some sort of limit, the only disadvantage that could arise from deleting these posts is perhaps one or two watchlist updates someone might receive (which is the reason I'm not proposing a bot remove them all). Since the benefits outweigh the disadvantages, I think this does improve the encyclopedia, albeit in the more hidden regions. — Nythar (💬-🍀) 13:34, 5 April 2023 (UTC)

Why not just encourage the removal of the IA Bot posts when making any unrelated edits to a talk page? BTW, archiving IA Bot posts on a talk page will generate a watchlist notice, so that will not reduce the number of watchlist notices an editor receives compared to simply removing the IA Bot posts. - Donald Albury 14:34, 5 April 2023 (UTC)

Upcoming WMF fundraising campaign in India

Dear all,

I would like to inform our community members in India about the upcoming annual Wikimedia Foundation fundraising campaign in India.

The fundraising campaign will have two components.

1. We will send emails to people who have previously donated from India. The emails are scheduled to be sent between the 2nd of May and the 1st of June.  
2. We will run banners for non-logged in users in India on English Wikipedia itself. The banners will run from the 30th of May until the 27th of June.

Prior to this, we are planning to run some tests in April and May, so you might see banners a couple of times before the campaign starts. This activity will ensure that our technical infrastructure works.

We have now launched a community engagement page where you can find more detail around the campaign. We are also sharing some banner examples there and are inviting you to give feedback on the examples as well as provide your own messaging on the talk page.  

I will also be hosting a community call on the 23rd of April at 19:30pm IST to which you can bring your questions and suggestions.

Generally, before and during the campaign, you can contact us:

• On the talk page of the fundraising team
• If you need to report a bug or technical issue, please create a phabricator ticket
• If you see a donor on a talk page, VRT or social media having difficulties in donating, please refer them to donatewikimedia.org

Thanks you and regards, JBrungs (WMF) (talk) 07:00, 4 April 2023 (UTC)

@JBrungs (WMF): I am not convinced we should be running any campaigns in the global south, but while we are can you please post all banners that you use so that we can ensure they meet the requirements of the 2022 Banners RfC? BilledMammal (talk) 03:30, 8 April 2023 (UTC)

Not sure where to ask

So I was looking up some obscure city and happened upon this article about the Loray Mill strike and was surprised to see the lead describe it as a “notable” labor strike in US history. Now I have studied the labor movement in the 19th-20th century US and have never heard of this before. But I’m humble enough to admit I don’t know everything about everything much less anything, but I can’t find any sources to back this nor many other claims made throughout — like in the “impact” section. I don’t know, but it feels like some sort of “agenda” based editing. Now I don’t want to accuse anyone of bad faith editing, but at the same time something smells fishy is going on. Any advice? Artificial Nagger (talk) 04:31, 6 April 2023 (UTC)

(I have not done any research and have no opinion on this article, just answering the question as asked.)

You can tag questionable parts with Template:Citation needed or Template:POV or Template:Disputed (or the inline/section equivalents) as appropriate, or if you're fairly confident something's nonsense, just be bold and remove it.

If it's more of a "this needs changes but we should discuss what sort of changes first" sort of thing, you should post on Talk:Loray Mill strike. People who frequently edit the article will have that on their watchlist. ℰmi1y_⧼T·C⧽ 04:42, 6 April 2023 (UTC)

Or at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Organized Labour, which has a lot more watchers. Nardog (talk) 04:48, 6 April 2023 (UTC)

Have you checked the sources cited in the article for those claims? Phil Bridger (talk) 07:17, 6 April 2023 (UTC)

The article began by calling it "influential", and then "one of the best known", and was switched to "notable" in 2011. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:47, 6 April 2023 (UTC)

I'm not saying this has to be the case here, but in general, when I see an editor calling something "notable", I usually suspect that's an attempt to convince other editors is passes WP:N. If there's no WP:RS which calls it "notable" then we shouldn't either. -- RoySmith (talk) 19:52, 6 April 2023 (UTC)

A few issues

Hello,

Just wondering if there may be a fix, without having to get a new computer. I have an old version of Windows and Firefox that can't be updated anymore. I know this.

1- Watchlist no longer offers live updates. When a watchlist edit was viewed already, it still shows like you never read it. 2- When editing a page -- it no longer has the advanced/symbol etc. drop tab on top. When you click 'show preview', no preview is shown, it keeps me on the same edit page. 3- Replying to a message on a talk page, there's no reply button. This message I'm sending may not be signed either. I have to edit in order to send a message.

If anyone knows anything about any of these problems, please reply.

Thank you in advance. Bringingthewood

P.S. I was here for exactly one year this April 6th (no problems at all).... this all happened overnight starting April 7th with no warning. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Bringingthewood (talk • contribs) 23:54, 8 April 2023 (UTC)

See phab:T178356 - Wikimedia recently dropped support for running JavaScript on old browsers. As far as I can tell there's nothing you can do other than upgrade to a browser that meets the requirements for "Grade A" at mw:Compatibility (what you are currently experiencing is "Grade C"). * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 01:29, 9 April 2023 (UTC)

Thank you, Pppery. Sorry for not having an official reply to send you. Options are really limited. I'll try searching for a browser upgrade. Looks like this old thing will have to go. Never thought it would all crumble on 4/7. Oh well. I thank you again for the info.

Regards, John (BTW) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Bringingthewood (talk • contribs) 02:24, 9 April 2023 (UTC)

@Bringingthewood: This was covered by Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#Tech News: 2023-14, the bit beginning "Some older Web browsers ..." and several of the posts afterwards. BTW, please always sign your posts. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 07:58, 9 April 2023 (UTC)

Easter Eggs

As roughly a third of the world marks the Easter holiday, some children around the world will go (or have already gone) hunting for eggs. Although the WP version isn't colored or filled with candy, I'd like to invite the community to help hunt down some of our own WP:EASTEREGGs during this season as well.

If you're unfamiliar, an WP:EASTEREGG link is a wikilink that requires the reader to open the link before understanding where it leads.

To help find links like this, a good while back I put together a very rough "EggHunt" script. The script can tag links in article prose that might be in need of review. If you use it, look for emojii like 🥚 and 🐣 to be added next to some links.

Script is available here: User:N8wilson/EggHunt.js, and a brief overview here. Happy Hunting! --N8_wilson 🔔 12:17, 9 April 2023 (UTC)