Wikipedia:Geonotice

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to navigation Jump to search

A geonotice is a notice on Special:Watchlist that is displayed only to users who are physically located in some subset of the Earth. The configuration page of geonotices is on Wikipedia:Geonotice/list.json.

The purpose of geonotices is to announce events that would be of great interest to people in a specific region, but that would not be interesting to most of our readers. The use of targeted messages allows us to scale our communication better; rather than flooding people with multiple messages or avoiding messages entirely, we can display messages only to the people who are most likely to find them useful.

Example uses for targeted messages are: to announce upcoming Wikipedia meetups and local events, for local chapter activities and to advertise mailing lists focused on geographical areas.

Geonotices requested here are only displayed on the watchlist on the English Wikipedia. If you want to target users of all Wikimedia Foundation wikis in a particular geographical area, you can go to meta:CentralNotice to request a geotargeted banner.

No data or personal information is gathered from users to make this notice possible, nor does this notice share any user's personal information with outsiders.

Technical details[edit]

Geonotices are a type of watchlist notice, a type of top of page message similar to a MediaWiki:Sitenotice, MediaWiki:Anonnotice or MediaWiki:Watchlist-messages notice.

The current implementation works by loading the user's latitude and longitude from geoiplookup.wikimedia.org and using a small bit of JavaScript (Geonotice-core.js and Geonotice-list.js) to determine whether or not to display a notice to the user. The location detection is IP address-based, using a lookup system at m:Geo IP lookup. Currently, MediaWiki:Gadgets-definition specifies the geonotices to be listed at MediaWiki:Gadget-geonotice-list.js (IAdmin-protected), which is turn is updated automatically by User:MusikBot II by synchronizing from Wikipedia:Geonotice/list.json (Sysop-protected).

The notice can be persistently dismissed using a hide button that is displayed with the message. It can permanently be hidden by disabling the Geonotice gadget in your preferences. It will also be hidden if you have opted to hide other watchlist notices.

Geonotices are currently a candidate to be integrated into MediaWiki proper. One significant open question is how best to allow users to specify the locations of interest for a message. Right now, the location range must be hard-coded in the the JavaScript itself.

See this auto-generated map of currently pending and running geonotices (Note: temporarily out of order due to Toolserver change).

Guidelines[edit]

Create request

To propose a geonotice, simply create a new third level section (using ===) under the "Requests" section, using the boilerplate text below, and follow the instructions in this section.
=== [[Related page name (e.g. meetup page)]] ===
<syntaxhighlight lang="json">
  "begin" : "18 September 2018 00:00 UTC",
  "end" : '25 September 2018 00:00 UTC',
  "corners" : [[45, 10], [46, 12]],
  "text" : "Replace this with your message. You can add [[Wikipedia:Meetup|Wikilinks]] or [https://en.wikipedia.org external links]."
</syntaxhighlight>

'''Discussion'''
* ''User requesting:'' ~~~~

Locations

Try to be as specific as possible with the location. For example, a Washington, D.C. meetup would not be appropriate to advertise to everyone in the United States. Be aware that the detection is not flawless; due to varying boundaries and the inaccuracies of IP locating, the result cannot be perfect.
It makes things much easier if you can give us geographic coordinates. To identify appropriate bounding boxes, the Flickr API offers a handy reference database - eg/ British Columbia. If in doubt, pick a central point and go a degree or two in all directions. To get a bounding box, you can use http://boundingbox.klokantech.com/ . Drag and drop the yellow handles to position and size your bounding box, then under "Copy & Paste" (at bottom), choose DublinCore. You can include that string in your request.
For country-wide geonotices, we can target the geonotice to a specific country with something such as country: 'US' instead of the corners: specification. The geonotice tool uses ISO 3166 Country Codes. (see full list). This method is generally more reliable.

Messages

Messages should be one or two sentences in length, and they should not contain any flashy text or images. It is a good idea to provide at least two options, in case one is deemed inappropriate.
Messages exceeding four sentences are deemed too large, except in cases where the sentences are short.
Geonotices should always be used with the understanding that some of the intended audience will be excluded and that some unintended people will be included. As such, the message should be written in a way that would be suitable for display to all users. For example, write "The New York City Wikipedia Meetup will be on August 12" rather than "Hello resident of Long Island...".
Remember to link the event signup page (where appropriate) in the notice - and please use a wikilink (to Wikipedia, Meta, etc) rather than a URL. External URLs do not always work reliably.

Date range

Try to post your request at least five days (preferably seven to ten days) in advance. It may take a while for requests to be handled.

Notify geonotice maintainers

In case there is no feedback in a few days after posting the request, ask an interface administrator to take a look.

Requests[edit]

Add new requests to the top of this list. Please include coordinates where possible, as this will speed up processing. Note that this page is quite low-traffic - if you've had no response after a day or two, or if it's urgent, please poke an interface administrator.

Wikipedia:Bay Area WikiSalon November 2018[edit]

Locations required:

  • San Francisco Bay Area: [ [40.3, -124.6], [34.7, -118.3] ] (from Santa Cruz to Napa, and from SF to Sacramento)

Possible messages:

  • You are all invited to participate in the bi-monthly Bay Area WikiSalon series on Wednesday, November 28 from 6:00 pm to 8:00 pm in downtown San Francisco at the Wikimedia Foundation offices! RSVP here!

Date range required:

  • 2 November 2018 to 29 November 2018

Misc info:

  • Reason for requesting: Monthly Bay Area WikiSalon meetup
  • User requesting: {{u|Checkingfax}} {Talk} 23:41, 2 November 2018 (UTC)

Discussion:

  •  Done. Deryck C. 12:56, 5 November 2018 (UTC)
  • Deryck Chan, can you remove this? Unfortunately we have to cancel due to scheduling conflicts. Ben Creasy (talk) 23:22, 18 November 2018 (UTC)
    • @Ben Creasy: Removed. Please update the event page to show that the event has been cancelled. The geonotice should disappear in the next few hours as updates propagate and caches expire. Deryck C. 10:39, 19 November 2018 (UTC)

November Wikipedia meet up and Dublin2019 Edit a thon in Cork[edit]

Locations required:

Possible messages:

Date range required:

  • 1 November 2018 - 14 November 2018

Misc info:

  • Reason for requesting:

Requesting geonotice to increase awareness

  • User requesting:

☕ Antiqueight chatter 11:14, 25 October 2018 (UTC) Discussion

  •  Done. I've set it to go live today because there are no competing notices for most of Ireland anyway (only partial overlap with the UK geonotice). Deryck C. 13:17, 25 October 2018 (UTC)

Middle Eastern Human Rights editathon[edit]

Locations required:

  • United Kingdom

Possible messages:

  • Join a Wikimedia UK editathon in East London to help improve Wikipedia articles about Middle Eastern Human Rights subjects.

Date range required:

Wikidata meetup in London[edit]

Locations required:

  • United Kingdom

Possible messages:

  • Wikimedia UK invites you to their London office for a meetup to discuss Wikidata projects and plans in the UK. We want to organise and connect the Wikidata community in the UK and improve collaboration and skill-sharing.

Date range required:

Wikimedia UK Skillshare in London[edit]

Locations required:

  • United Kingdom

Possible messages:

  • Come to the Wikimedia UK office on November 21 from 18.00 for the first in a series of new skillshares, with the first meeting concentrating on 'How to write a Featured Article on Wikipedia'.

Date range required:

Wikipedia:Meetup/Belgium/Wiki Club Brussels/6 November 2018[edit]

Locations required:

  • westlimit=4.0437; southlimit=50.691; eastlimit=4.7138; northlimit=51.0066

Possible messages:

Date range required:

  • until 6 November

Misc info:

Discussion

  • @Ainali: Thanks for the suggestion. Do you mean "Women in Tech Edit-a-Thon"? Deryck C. 17:31, 23 October 2018 (UTC)
    • @Deryck Chan: No, I actually meant Editions. (We are going with other themes further on.) Ainali (talk) 18:23, 23 October 2018 (UTC)
      • @Ainali: Done, please check that it works for you. Deryck C. 11:07, 25 October 2018 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Meetup/Belgium/23 October 2018[edit]

Locations required:

  • westlimit=4.0437; southlimit=50.691; eastlimit=4.7138; northlimit=51.0066

Possible messages:

Date range required:

  • until 23 October

Misc info:

Discussion

  • @Ainali: Sorry we've missed this... Would you please tell us earlier next time? We welcome geonotices that are put up a few months in advance of the events they advertise, if there are no other geonotices for the same location. Deryck C. 15:07, 23 October 2018 (UTC)
    • @Deryck Chan: No worries, I knew I was quite late. I'll set up the page for the event that is coming in two weeks now and do a new request with a better heads up. Ainali (talk) 16:31, 23 October 2018 (UTC)

Asian Month Editathon in Hong Kong, 2018[edit]

Locations required:

  • Hong Kong

Possible messages:

Date range required:

  • Until 3rd November.

Misc info:

  • Reason for requesting: To invite local Wikipedians to a Hong Kong-based Asian Month Edit-a-thon on 3rd November.
  • User requesting: Spring Roll Conan ( Talk · Contributions ) 10:22, 14 October 2018 (UTC)

Discussion

October Wikipedia meet up and Dublin2019 Edit a thon in Cork[edit]

Locations required:

Possible messages:

Date range required:

  • ASAP-10 October 2018

Misc info:

  • Reason for requesting: Requesting geonotice to increase attendance

Discussion

  •  Done. Following the discussion below, I've stuck to the coordinates you provided so it will capture Northern Ireland as well. Deryck C. 10:04, 2 October 2018 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Meetup/NOW[edit]

Locations required:

  • New York, US
  • 43.0857° N, 79.0603° W

Possible messages:

  • OpenEd is hosting an edit-a-thon! Join new and veteran Wikipedians in creating articles for local New York newspapers. More info at: Wikipedia:Meetup/NOW

Date range required:

  • October 10-11

Misc info:

  • Reason for requesting: First edit-a-thon of the newspapers on wikipedia project. Trying to get the word out!
  • User requesting: User:ktcauliflower 04:36, 1 October 2018 (UTC)

Discussion

  •  Done. @Ktcauliflower: I have made the notice to start now so people have at least a week to see it, and made the bounding box [ [-83.3,34.8],[-66.5,47.6] ] which covers most of the Northeastern Corridor. Next time please give a bounding box. Deryck C. 10:10, 2 October 2018 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Meetup/Atlanta/Wikipedia Loves Libraries 2018[edit]

Locations required:

  • Georgia, US
  • westlimit=-85.4; southlimit=30.54; eastlimit=-80.85; northlimit=34.94

Possible messages:

Date range required:

  • 1 October 2018 to 3 November 2018

Misc info:

  • Reason for requesting: General meetup, please see page linked above.
  • User requesting:TadgStirkland401 (TadgTalk) 22:53, 23 September 2018 (UTC)

Discussion

San Pasqual staff ride[edit]

Locations required:

Possible messages:

Date range required:

  • 11 November 2018 to 2 December 2018

Misc info:

Discussion

Previous requests[edit]