This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.
Complicated words
I understand that articles should contain words listed in Basic English. But as I think about writing a typical article, I feel the need to use other words. Some that come to mind are "type" for a kind of object or concept, and "parts" for the constituents of an object or concept. What is one to do about such cases? How to tell when a non-Basic word is Simple enough? David spector (talk) 20:30, 17 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Generally, try to stick to the Wikipedia:Basic English combined wordlist as much as possible. When this can not be done, link the term if an article exists. Also, try to keep words as unambiguous as possible. When given a choice, use the word with as little different meanings as possible. Movie has one meaning, film has many and motion picture has one but is not as simple of a term so movie would be the best choice. As an article exists, it should still be linked to the first time the term is used. This handles many cases, but at times you will just have to wing it and hope for the best. Another, possible larger issue, is sentence structure. Short and precise sentences should be used. "Flowery" adjectives and big words to fluff up the language should be avoided. Keep it simple, direct and to the point. Pure Evil (talk) 20:56, 17 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@David spector: Good summary by @Pure Evil. It's true that the word lists aren't enough in many cases. Here are some other things you can do:
Aim for an 8th-grade reading level. There are some websites that analyze text and give you a reading level.
When possible, replace a complex word or phrase with other words that explain it. You can also explain it, maybe in parentheses, after including the term.
Link to a related term, if the term itself doesn't have an article. If closely enough related, you can even create a redirect for the term, as I just did for Gastroenterologist.
There's one more that I hesitate to mention because I discourage its use, but I'll mention it anyway because it is used sometimes: linking to Simple English Wiktionary. That should only be done if Simple English Wiktionary actually has a page for the term. I discourage doing this for a couple of reasons. One is that it makes the reader have to go to a different site. The other is that there is often already a local page that can be linked instead, but even if there isn't it's acceptable to leave the link red here. If terms are linked to Wiktionary and we later have an article created that could be used, nothing and no one is checking all those Wiktionary links to see if they could be changed to point to the new article. We also lose the red link that could let us know an article that is needed here.
By the way, if you'd like to know some ways that this wiki is different from other Wikipedias, you can look at this list that I keep. The list itself is unofficial -- not policy or guideline -- but it does link to relevant policies and guidelines where possible. If you have any questions about it, feel free to ask. -- Auntof6 (talk) 21:25, 17 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Two cheap tricks: #1) Linking, like Ao6 says. I write lots of articles about frogs. Scientists use the term snout-vent length when they say how big an amphibian's body is, because then they can compare animals to each other without fussing with legs or tails. So I put The frog is 44 mm long [[snout-vent length|from nose to rear end]]. The casual reader gets simple words. The interested reader can click for the specific term.
#2) Don't translate from another wiki. Write from scratch. When you see that en.wiki used the exact right term (like saying "term" instead of "word," for example) it's soooooo tempting to think that no lesser term will do, even if you would have thought of "word" with no trouble working from scratch. (I write froggie articles here on Simple and then translate TO en.wiki, heh heh heh). Darkfrog24 (talk) 20:21, 19 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
As an opposing point, I almost never create from scratch. I find that doing so tends to leave out many important points and can lead to other issues. When discussing a topic, it is usually best to start with an outline of what is going to be said. Without one, the editor is more likely to ramble on. In this case, for me, the outline is the other wiki's page on the topic. It normally has all the key information that is needed, it just needs to be made easier to understand. This part requires a bit of skill and practice to translate and restructure syntax on the fly. The editor need to rewrite as they go and quickly decide what they need to keep and what can be edited out. Trimming sentence structures, rewording statements, linking words and terms, removing fluff.. over time it becomes second nature. This can often lead to a more thorough and accurate article and helps avoid original research and bias as the editor is not the source of the information only its translator. Pure Evil (talk) 20:45, 20 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Hello. I wanted to give you an update about the Desktop Improvements project, which the Wikimedia Foundation Web team has been working on for the past few years. Our work is almost finished! 🎉
We would love to see these improvements become the default for readers and editors across all wikis. In the coming weeks, we will begin conversations on more wikis, including yours. 🗓️ We will gladly read your suggestions!
The goals of the project are to make the interface more welcoming and comfortable for readers and useful for advanced users. The project consists of a series of feature improvements which make it easier to read and learn, navigate within the page, search, switch between languages, use article tabs and the user menu, and more. The improvements are already visible by default for readers and editors on more than 30 wikis, including Wikipedias in French, Portuguese, and Persian.
The changes apply to the Vector skin only, although it will always be possible to revert to the previous version on an individual basis. Monobook or Timeless users will not notice any changes.
The newest features
Table of contents - our version is easier to reach, gain context of the page, and navigate throughout the page without needing to scroll. It is currently tested across our pilot wikis. It is also available for editors who have opted into the Vector 2022 skin.
Page tools - now, there are two types of links in the sidebar. There are actions and tools for individual pages (like Related changes) and links of the wiki-wide nature (like Recent changes). We are going to separate these into two intuitive menus.
On wikis where the changes are visible by default for all, logged-in users can always opt-out to the Legacy Vector. There is an easily accessible link in the sidebar of the new Vector.
I tried to set my Appearance option to Vector (2022), but the entire Appearance tab is grayed-out and I can't make changes. None of the other tabs are grayed-out. David spector (talk) 18:25, 24 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@David spector Usually they are grayed out because you have a global override. You would need to go back to the main wikipedia you work on to make the change or just on the bottom below the skins check the box next to Set a local exception for this global preference.PDLTalk to me!OMG, What have I done?20:58, 24 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Relative clauses and gerunds
Is it recommended to use relative clauses or gerunds here? Which would be considered simpler? Is it important to totally avoid both of them?
For reference, a relative clause often starts with a word like which, whom, or that. A gerund is a verb ending with "-ing" that functions as a noun and can be some kind of modifier, although I don't know the exact terminology. For example, the sentence using a relative clause:
Electrons sometimes move to one side of the atom, which gives a negative charge to that side, and a positive charge to the opposite side.
which could also be written, using a gerund, as
Electrons sometimes move to one side of the atom, giving a negative charge to that side, and a positive charge to the opposite side.
or alternatively, separated into two sentences with a period, semicolon, or dash(?) as
Electrons sometimes move to one side of the atom. This gives a negative charge to that side, and a positive charge to the opposite side.
@Lights and freedom I think 'Electrons sometimes move to one side of the atom, giving a negative charge to that side, and a positive charge to the opposite side.' sounds much more simpler and -ing and other endings are in the simple english dictionary. However, I also feel the 1st one is just as good. PDLTalk to me!OMG, What have I done?23:29, 24 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Another example of a relative clause:
Atoms that are used in nuclear fission, such as uranium, are heavier than iron atoms.
which could also be written as
Atoms used in nuclear fission, such as uranium, are heavier than iron atoms.
as a non-native speaker I can see the second being more confusing. Gerunds can be many things, they can be nouns or adjectives. As for the first set of examples, I see the third option being the most simple, followed by the first. — *Fehufangą ♮ ✉ Talk page23:47, 24 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
How to write Simple English pages tells what kind of sentences to use. Use simple ones. "Simple sentences are easier to understand than complex ones. The simplest sentence structure in English is subject-verb-object-period, subject-verb-object-period and so on. Try to use the simplest sentences that make sense."
Sometimes an additional word or repetition can link two short sentences to make the relationship clear and to add coherence.
Electrons sometimes move to one side of the atom. This gives a negative charge to that side, and a positive charge to the opposite side.
Electrons sometimes move to one side of the atom. This movement gives a negative charge to that side. It gives a positive charge to the opposite side.
Its just me (also non-native speaker), but I have tried to replace gerunds with relative clauses, or whole sentences. To take the example sentence: Electrons sometimes move to one side of the atom. This movement gives a negative charge to that side. It also gives a positive charge to the other side.--Eptalon (talk) 07:43, 27 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Fhones Hi. Thank you for pointing this out. It does not need to be removed. It can be removed individually or left blank when it is used without causing any issues. There is nothing wrong with it being in the template, especially since it can be called in as a what is called a "child template". Thank you though for bringing your concern to us. PDLTalk to me!OMG, What have I done?04:00, 25 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@PotsdamLamb: Actually, since we periodically refresh our templates from enwiki, we would eventually lose this parameter anyway. Enwiki removed it last month following this discussion. I actually think removing this could be good, because I've seen some articles that go way overboard with how many things they list as associated acts, and the association isn't clear. -- Auntof6 (talk) 00:51, 26 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Will it also remove the data with it or will it become orphaned, i.e. "associated acts=auntof6" and when cleared will it just say "auntof6" or will it remove that as well? If it removes all of it I do not see an issue, but if not, then all the articles that have that property would throw errors. PDLTalk to me!OMG, What have I done?00:53, 26 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Category:Pages using infobox musical artist with associated acts was created today to hold pages that use the parameter. We could use that to find articles that need to be changed. If we remove the parameter from the template, then nothing would display in the articles and we could take our time dealing with it. Some pages could just have the parameter removed, but with some we might want to replace it with other things. Maybe you'd like to read the enwiki discussion to find possible answers to other questions you might have. -- Auntof6 (talk) 01:03, 26 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Get rid of one to create 4 more works like a clock going back in time lol. I see the justification. Hopefully we could get a generated list through AWB and someone who has the knowledge to be able to remove that parameter and put it into another, however, the computer will not know if they are current or past or a spin off. PDLTalk to me!OMG, What have I done?01:11, 26 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Hello all, I recently created the category "Women judges from the United States", to reflect the fact that probably about half of the "American judges" will be women. I also hooked the category in "American judges", and started populating it. The problem is though, "American judges" seems to be well-populated, with over 200 entries (still remaining). So If anyone got some free time, feel free to move a few women into the new category. Eptalon (talk) 13:01, 30 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I don't mean to be unhelpful, but "Women judges" is crass and ungrammatical. Likewise "Men judges". "Female" is the adjective for women, so the terms for categories should be "Female judges", and "Male judges". Being simple does not mean "being simple even if it's not correct".
Next I looked at the geographic word "American". If unqualified, it applies to the whole of the Americas. If intended for the U.S.A. the category would read "Female judges in the U.S.A." If the category includes Canada, it becomes "Female judges in North America". All this is standard use of the English language. Macdonald-ross (talk) 08:39, 3 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Eptalon I would say "Female judges in the U.S." and "Male judges in the U.S." Our judges from the U.S., to my knowledge, do not go to other countries and be judges as they are only familiar with our laws from local to federal (depending on their appointment). PDLTalk to me!OMG, What have I done?22:13, 3 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The problem starts with the American judges. If the American Judges are truly American, some are form Canada, and possibly some are from Mexico. If we truly wanted to introduce gendered categories, we'df need a Male American Juges, Female American juges (and possibly LGBT+ ones). Being gender-aware is a lot of work, that's why its not done for most categories. Eptalon (talk) 22:21, 3 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I do not think we want to really go that deep into these categories though, do we? There are a lot of judges who do not release personal information about themselves. I also know here in California, all of their information is redacted including their license plates so they cannot be traced. I think if we leave it "in the U.S." we would not need to go deeper as we are not saying where they are from or their sexuality. So IMHO I think just the two I listed will be good enough coverage. PDLTalk to me!OMG, What have I done?22:27, 3 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Let's not get into the discussion about what the word American means. It's the standard used as an adjective form for the United States. That's how enwiki uses it for the judges category. If we want to avoid using the word as a demonym, we could do what Commons does and not use demonyms in page names at all. That would mean saying things like "Foo from the United States" instead of "American foo". -- Auntof6 (talk) 22:38, 3 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@PotsdamLamb: "In the U.S." means inside the borders. That could mean female judges from elsewhere who are visiting the US. If we have to categorize by gender, I think "of the United States" (we spell things out) would be better. -- Auntof6 (talk) 22:34, 3 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Auntof6 I agree on the United States. But I also wanted to point out that "From the United States" could mean the opposite of "In the United States." What if we did something along the lines of licensed, active United States judges, etc. That would take out both of the In and From portions? PDLTalk to me!OMG, What have I done?22:42, 3 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@PotsdamLamb: "From the US" is not the opposite of "in the US". "From the US" can mean multiple things the way it's used here: it can mean the person was born here, lived here, worked here, or something else. "In the US" means inside the borders, no matter what they're doing or whether they lived or worked here. "Of the US" would mean judges that work in the US judicial system, which I think is what is intended by these categories.
I don't think we need to specify anything about licenses or being active. The category would contain people who are not active for various reasons: they might have been disbarred, or they might have died. Also, judges far enough back in US history might not have been licensed at all, but were still considered judges. -- Auntof6 (talk) 22:49, 3 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I was trolling through pages on racism, when I came on White Australia policy. It describes the many ways the government used to make sure it got "the right kind" of immigrants. One way was to give unwanted people tests in a language they did not speak. So I looked at the source, and found that it was unreadable!! Macdonald-ross (talk) 07:54, 1 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Haha! I see! Well it's a good software you are using! Also would you mind translating this message down below to English? I am not trying to be rude, but this is the Simple English Wikipedia, and I think we should refrain from not using English on discussion pages, just so everyone can understand. I wouldn't mind if this was a conversation on a user talk page. Thanks! :) --Tsugarulet's talk! :)02:42, 2 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks, @つがる. I agree with your comments. Even in English, though, it would be helpful if personal conversations were kept on user talk pages instead of here. Thanks, all. -- Auntof6 (talk) 03:09, 2 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
{Message Translation for english speakers} PotsdamLamb said to me "long time no see how are you" and I responded to him "Hi. I am doing well Thanks for the message, how are you? Your Japanese is good!" Next message I wrote "Please see the above message" Note the translation may not be 100% direct, but very close --Tsugarulet's talk! :)02:39, 2 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
So the past couple of days I have seen some really weird things popping up in articles. One such example is in Chris Stewart where when you go into edit mode and go to the bottom you will see a mass of text that starts with ((Persondata <!-- Metadata: see [[Wikipedia:Persondata]]. -->. I have also seen box like things on Stephanie Morgenstern and you can see it on the bottom of the page where it has a succession and predecessors type box that is usually not used in actors articles. Typically I see those types of things in something that has some meat behind it like royalty, presidents, etc. Does anyone know what this about and where it is all of a sudden coming from? This just started happening about 3 days ago. Those are two I found today. Admins, any thoughts? Should they be removed if we find them? Thanks, PDLTalk to me!OMG, What have I done?03:08, 2 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@PotsdamLamb: The persondata template is a deprecated template that is still in a lot of articles. I remove it when I see it. It should not be added to existing articles, but it isn't causing any issues for the articles it's in.
The succession template can be used anywhere there is a succession of something. It's usually used in cases of political office or royal positions, but it can also be used for other things. It makes sense to me on the Morgenstern article. Auntof6 (talk) 03:16, 2 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@PotsdamLamb: No. Look at the documentation for the template. The predecessor and successor parameters refer to things specified in the title or office parameters. Being the voice of a cartoon character is not a title or office. -- Auntof6 (talk) 03:24, 2 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Does anyone here (fluent in English) know Greek? I need help with translation on an article that was brought over with a lot of Greek references so I can find the citations and fix the article. Please let me know. Thanks! PDLTalk to me!OMG, What have I done?03:52, 3 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@PotsdamLamb: What do you mean by "find the citations"? If you mean find them on the internet, it's very possible they aren't there. References can be from print media, not just online media. -- Auntof6 (talk) 04:06, 3 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@PotsdamLamb: I don't understand what you're thinking at all, but that's OK. You seem to be saying that without translating the titles in the sources, you won't be able to do the translation. That seems circular to me. Even if you get the titles translated, they may not help you find anything. -- Auntof6 (talk) 05:39, 3 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
That won't solve the problem. If a source is really needed, it must be possible for the reader to read it in English. Sources which cannot be read are just gestures, because many readers will not be able to see that they do verify the text. Which is their sole point. If you are concerned to read it yourself, you will need a translation good enough to put in the article. Macdonald-ross (talk) 09:59, 7 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
We are happy to share with you winning images for this year's edition. This year saw over 8,584 images represented on commons in over 92 countries. Kindly see images here
Our profound gratitude to all the people who participated and organized local contests and photo walks for this project.
We hope to have you contribute to the campaign next year.
I want to explain why I use "mya" in the text and infobox of biological pages. In En wiki they use mega-annum (Ma) for a million years. Now that is a term from Latin, which is no longer a subject taught in schools.
Instead I use "mya", which stands for "million years ago".
On the other hand, I continue to use the Latin names of animals and plants because they are the official names, and avoid the ambiguities one gets by using informal local names. It is always possible to add the common name in English if it is well known. One ought not invent a popular name just to avoid the Latin.
@Macdonald-ross: I agree with using scientific names because of the reasons you state. As for the mya abbreviation, I think that's likely to puzzle our readers unless you explain it the first time you use it. Abbreviations can be hard for English learners to understand.
Because it is different from En, who use Ma for milliard annum, which I think asks for something simpler on our wiki. In my father's time all good schools taught Latin at least at secondary level. Now it looks unnatural to use abbreviations based on Latin. I suppose we could use BC, but for something tens of millions of years ago that seems not right. To shift English wiki from their practices is an almost impossible task. I try and make these little changes quietly, in the hope that readers accept them in the way they are intended: to make the text easier to understand. Macdonald-ross (talk) 13:34, 7 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I know of that singer! I think "Ma" is a Latin language-derived term which means "Milliard". That is quite beyond our readers, and few schools now teach Latin. My use of "mya" is a commonsense solution, standing for "million years ago". I don't think there is a better solution. It is part of a broader issue, since many En wiki pages have vastly complex infoboxes which are far beyond the understanding of most of our readership. I've looked at virtually all the textbooks on (for example) vertebrate palaeontology, and not of those designed for ordinary readers uses Ma. Its use was a bad decision on the part of En wiki writers 20+ years ago, and we should not be stuck with it. The infoboxes are scary enough without that. Macdonald-ross (talk) 08:31, 9 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@PotsdamLamb: It's actually an abbreviation that has been used for a long time, well before the ones like lol, etc. If I saw it used in the text of an article, I would replace it with the spelled-out words. Using it in infoboxes might be different: it would still be difficult for English learners, but space in infoboxes is tight. -- Auntof6 (talk) 21:20, 9 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Page Moves (rename title)
I do not think I have permission to move a page. What is the preferred process in Simple English wiki to rename a page title? An example is Nēnē which has a diacritic macron (ē) in it, and should most likely be called Nene instead. The English version of the article is called "Nene (bird)" and says "The nene, also known as the nēnē". Also all of the linked references call it a Nene, not a Nēnē (with the exception of the first reference which uses neither, calling it Hawaiian Goose, which is also correct). Actually, an argument can be made that calling it Hawaiian Goose (which is mentioned as an alternative name in the English wiki) is more appropriate for Simple English wiki. Ericwikman (talk) 00:07, 11 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Ericwikman: You can't move a page because your account isn't yet autoconfirmed. I believe that takes 4 days and 10 edits. If you plan to do more work here, you could just wait until you are autoconfirmed and move the article yourself.
As for the page name, I don't think it should be called just "Nene", because there are apparently other things called that (see en:Nene, a dab page). Naming it the same as the enwiki page should be fine, and we could keep the existing title as a redirect. -- Auntof6 (talk) 00:49, 11 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Understood. I'm not positive if I will do more work here or not, I really need to focus on my main work right now, so I'm working on this procrastination project instead. I grabbed the simple dumpfile of all articles, and the langlinks for all simple articles, parsed/imported the XML of the dumpfile and imported both into MariaDB and built a query to compare the Simple English title with the English title and there are 24,826 articles that the titles do not match (out of 280,053 simple articles linked to English articles out of 293,969 articles with the namespace of 0/main on simple). I'm guessing about 85% of the differences are fine/normal, 5% are punctuation/capitalization typos, 5% are linked to the wrong English document (like simple Fecund universes was linked to Lee Smolin which may have been fine when the Fecund Universes article was written, but Cosmological natural selection is a more appropriate link now (I fixed it on WikiData)), and 5% are not named appropriate for Simple English.
I'll put together a list of 100 examples or 25 in each of the above categories that I think need attention and then post it somewhere for review to get feedback on what changes I propose are worthwhile and which should be ignored.
It appears that the place to post that would be in my userspace as a WikiProject and link to it from Wikipedia:WikiProject. Is that correct? And then maybe announce when the WikiProject is posted in my userspace here to get feedback on the sample items? Ericwikman (talk) 09:17, 11 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
An Election Compass is a tool to help voters select the candidates that best align with their beliefs and views. The community members will propose statements for the candidates to answer using a Lickert scale (agree/neutral/disagree). The candidates’ answers to the statements will be loaded into the Election Compass tool. Voters will use the tool by entering in their answer to the statements (agree/disagree/neutral). The results will show the candidates that best align with the voter’s beliefs and views.
Here is the timeline for the Election Compass:
July 8 - 20: Community members propose statements for the Election Compass
July 21 - 22: Elections Committee reviews statements for clarity and removes off-topic statements
July 23 - August 1: Volunteers vote on the statements
August 2 - 4: Elections Committee selects the top 15 statements
August 5 - 12: candidates align themselves with the statements
August 15: The Election Compass opens for voters to use to help guide their voting decision
The Elections Committee will select the top 15 statements at the beginning of August. The Elections Committee will oversee the process, supported by the Movement Strategy and Governance team. MSG will check that the questions are clear, there are no duplicates, no typos, and so on.
Best,
Movement Strategy and Governance
This message was sent on behalf of the Board Selection Task Force and the Elections Committee
A year ago, and a few months before that, the idea was discussed to change the languages on the login page. I have looked at the data a bit more to see which languages would be best.
Here are the medians of February, March, and April monthly pageviews by country:
Extended content
In total, about 12M were listed by country. This is supposed to exclude bot views.
USA (3M)
India (3M)
South Africa (1M)
UK (655K)
Canada (390K)
Russia (344K)
Philippines (288K)
Germany (280K)
Pakistan (199K)
Australia (197K)
Uzbekistan (152K)
France (136K)
Italy (112K)
Netherlands (112K)
Nigeria (109K)
Singapore (107K)
Kazakhstan (98K)
Indonesia (96K)
Iran (89K)
Malaysia (75K)
Bangladesh (68K)
Turkey (64K)
Spain (63K)
Japan (62K)
Belarus (61K)
Sweden (59K)
Ukraine (53K)
Poland (53K)
So the most significant countries that might need accomodation are India, Russia, Philippines, Germany, and Pakistan, in particular.
I strongly support adding Russian. Not only does Russia have a lot of readers, but so do many other countries in Central Asia and Eastern Europe that do as well. All these countries have grown hugely in readers since February (probably due to the ongoing war and looking for outside media sources), but they were high even before. I estimated that about 6% of readership speaks Russian.
Chinese is the world's second most spoken language. There aren't many pageviews from China, but that might be because Wikipedia is banned there and they use VPNs that appear to be from other countries. How much is Chinese spoken in Malaysia and Indonesia?
There aren't that many readers from Arabic speaking countries. People might use it a bit in places like Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Iran, but I'm not sure. At least they use the Arabic script, which may be easier to read.
German: quite high on the list; Germany and Austria make up about 2.5% of pageviews. But I think most of them speak English.
Dutch: I've read 90% of people in the Netherlands speak English. Not that useful.
Esperanto: Remove. Not useful.
Hindi: although it's only spoken in one country, that country makes up 25% of pageviews. I've read only 10% of Indians speak English, but about 60% speak Hindi.
French: somewhat useful. France has a fairly high number of views, so does Canada.
Spanish: There aren't that many pageviews from Spanish speaking countries, but it makes up a large part of the world. Also, 25% of pageviews are from the US and there are a lot of Spanish speakers there. Maybe they make up a lot of readers of simple english. Spanish might also be somewhat common in the Philippines.
Portuguese: Portugal and Brazil together make up about 0.5% of pageviews. Not that useful.
Swahili was mentioned before, but although it could be good for inclusion to have an African language, less than 1% of views come from countries where that language could be used, and a lot of them speak English or Arabic.
English is an official language of the Philippines, so Tagalog is probably not needed.
I can tell you that the younger Chinese-Indonesians don't know a lot of Chinese, definitely not enough to read the login page in zhwiki. Some don't even speak Chinese at all! With how language education works here, people are more encouraged to use Indonesian. The fact that Chinese was restricted during Suharto's reign needs to be taken into account as well. As for Malaysia, I have no idea.
Thank you for bringing this up again. I've posted this twice previously, but it always got bogged down. A few comments. Esperanto and Dutch need to go at the very least. Some things to consider in the language selection: serving current users, attracting new users, and messaging. The data on where users come from is useful, but needs some thought, too. For example, English may be the official language of the Philippines, but native Tagalog and Cebuano speakers are 40M people. Official language does not always equate to readers. Selecting some languages that are very widely spoken even though we (currently) have fewer visitors from those countries may welcome them in (i.e., Arabic). Finally, Wikipedias in general are often perceived to lack diversity. The languages we select do say something about our intentions. Simple can be a useful center for translating articles. Being more open to an African language might be a good idea. At least one south Asian or Southeast Asian language should be added. That could be Hindi. Gotanda (talk) 01:53, 5 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
One more thing: another approach is to simply adopt a common standard from elsewhere. The official languages of the UN are Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian and Spanish. Thanks. Hope the login page gets an update. Gotanda (talk) 01:57, 5 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
At this point in the discussion we have unanimity among the participants that Esperanto should be removed and a very strong consensus for removing Dutch. There is also a pretty strong consensus for adding Hindi and Chinese. If nothing else, these improvements seem to have broad support and no opposition. What is required to make sure this doesn't drop by the wayside yet again? Thanks --Gotanda (talk) 08:35, 23 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Griffinofwales@Macdonald-ross@Auntof6@Eptalon @Ferien (I pinged the more active admins that I see but please feel free to bring in others) - Admins I wanted to ping you on this. As it’s stated it has been brought up a couple of times with no changes. There is input from 2 admins on this thread and appears to have consensus on the changes requested. I also just looked at the metrics and I am in agreement as well with what is being said. I believe admins can change the entry page and I feel that some of the main editors should be able to have some input on this. If it is rejected it would be good to know why it can’t be done. Thank you for your attention and I look forward to your responses. PDLTalk to me!OMG, What have I done?03:49, 3 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Hello, thank you @Lights and freedom for this invitation. Being a Wikipedia user, I believe that the language must be added only if it has higher demand to read. If Hindi is added it will be good as many Indian especially Hindi speaking people does accommodate with English yet. So they would prefer reading only hindi articles. So I do support for hindi.
But I refuse to give consent about other languages as I'm not aware of it and I don't want to give wrong facts. But as I said, adding languages having higher demand to read and understand may be a great initiative. That's all from my side. Jyoti Roy (talk) 03:27, 4 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
How is it done? I feel it might be an interface admin thing. I imagine there is probably a page where we can the languages on the login page can be set but I have no clue where it would be. --Ferien (talk) 18:19, 18 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I do want to ask Gotanda and Lights and freedom, why should we remove Dutch? While I understand not many people use it, it is already there and there is no limit to how many languages we can have - and it is a fairly major one. I think it is better to just keep languages you are considering removing as they are on all other WMF sites and I think it would be better uniform. --Ferien (talk) 18:54, 18 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I do not know where 6 votes came from. Looking at this page and the other discussion linked at the top of the page, I can only see 2 votes to remove Dutch. There certainly isn't any strong consensus to remove Dutch. --Ferien (talk) 19:05, 18 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
┌─────────────────────────────────┘ So, looking above, I am adding Chinese, Hindi and Russian and removing Esperanto. There is not a clear consensus for adding Arabic or removing Dutch, so I'm not doing either at this time. This can always be changed at a later date. --Ferien (talk) 19:08, 18 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Ferien Excellent! I guess there's no need to remove Dutch as there's no maximum to the languages allowed. It looks like everything translates into the those languages except "Simple Talk". I wonder if somebody who speaks Chinese, Hindi, or Russian could propose a translation. Lights and freedom (talk) 19:58, 18 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Lights and freedom It comes down to the way it is written as different "strokes" mean something different on the language from my understanding. Is that correct User:つがる? Also, L&F if they want the entire article in their language, they should be able to have their browser translate, but you have to remember, this is simple english. Each language can put the articles in their own wikipedia if they choose. I do not personally know of another way to convert the site to another language without going to their respective wikipedias. Da LambTalk to me!OMG, What have I done?20:32, 18 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@PotsdamLamb I mean that if you go to the login page and click on another language, all the links on the login page and the sidebar are in that language, except for "Simple talk". The link to "Simple talk" isn't translated even for the languages that were there before (like Spanish, German, Dutch, etc.) so I don't know if it's even possible to change it. Try logging out and then switching the language yourself: you'll see what I mean. Lights and freedom (talk) 20:43, 18 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I can't say for sure, Lights and freedom. However sometimes depending on the situation they might be different. For example this is the traditional way to write China 中國 and this is the simplified way 中国。I am not able to read Cantonese, but I can only speak and listen to it. To be honest my guess is it be situation dependent. You might end up with a time where a speaker of either language gets confused by what is written. The reason I ask this is because I don't want us to end up in a situation where we write in a Chinese translation, that it might end up confusing some readers. I would ask someone more about this who can read Chinese Characters. --Tsugarulet's talk! :)20:44, 18 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@つがる I speak and write Mandarin, and I can barely make out spoken Hakka that's used by my grandparents. I would personally go with Mandarin, since it's the most widely spoken variety. As for whether or not we use simplified/traditional, why not both? I've personally switched to typing using traditional characters only, but I can understand simplified perfectly fine. — *Fehufangą ♮ ✉ Talk page22:31, 18 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Dutch should be removed for space, number of users of the language, and concentration. Space: while more and more languages can be added, too many make selection in this format more difficult; removing it improves usability. Number of users: there are other languages with more speakers; there are dozens of languages with more speakers. Moreover, English is widely understood in Holland. Concentration: we have quite a lot of European languages. Wikipedias in general lack diversity. There have been programs for encouraging use in the global south. So, Dutch does not help us much. Arabic would be much better. --Gotanda (talk) 22:25, 19 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
┌─────────────────────────────────┘
So here is my thought. Let's list all the languages presented here as a vote. The only thing you need to do is either using the template for *support ((support)) or *oppose ((oppose)) and sign it with ~~~~. Only vote once per language presented if you change your mind from support to oppose or oppose to support, be sure to strike out your previous vote. If this sounds good, please let me know and I will set it up. This would be a good time to use the support or oppose templates :) Da LambTalk to me!OMG, What have I done?22:37, 19 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I'm tempted to be bold and draw a consensus here and make the changes, but a vote would make this easier and less likely for the action to be opposed. Also, I have spoken in this area before I believe, which makes me involved, which is the only reason I haven't done it. If anyone else agrees to a vote, one can be constructed. Do we have any admins that are active and not involved? This cannot be left to disappear again, considering the amount of work that has been done above. --IWI (talk) 21:23, 21 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Also, there are multiple ideas here, and it would be difficult for an admin to draw any valid consensus from it, which means a vote would be a good idea, or at least more discussion and more users involved preferably. --IWI (talk) 21:25, 21 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@ImprovedWikiImprovment - I offered to set it up. If you would like me to, I can. It would be a simple page with the languages listed individually based on all of them listed here as either the deletion or addition (again per above) and then a vote of support or oppose. I can create this page under a separate request for comments and we can link to it there. Da LambTalk to me!OMG, What have I done?21:27, 21 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I'd OpposeGotanda's idea because space is not really a problem for us. Just look at pt:MediaWiki:Loginlanguagelinks. We're doing fine. It's also on every other Wikimedia site unless you can think of another one that does not have Dutch. I don't see why it should be removed, the number of speakers is not all that low. We can add Arabic and keep Dutch. We do not have to swap them. --Ferien (talk) 21:29, 21 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@PotsdamLamb: That would be good, but keeping here is a good idea; seperating it to another page is unnecessery. Recent changes should draw attention, and I've also posted comments on both the main and admin IRC channels. --IWI (talk) 21:31, 21 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
To me, that linked list makes my point regarding space. It is long and not clear how it is organized so that languages can be found quickly. For example:
Hornjoserbsce|hsb
Magyar|hu
Italiano|it
日本語|ja
Ripoarisch|ksh
Latina|la
Lëtzebuergesch|lb
Plattdüütsch|nds
One of the principles here is not just Simple English, but simple organization. The linked list does not address my second and third points: speakers and concentration in Europe. --Gotanda (talk) 22:02, 21 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Gotanda, my point is not that we should be aiming to have as many languages as ptwiki, but that we are nowhere near any limit and space is not a problem. The amount of native Dutch speakers is 23.1 million, that is not small. Yes, a lot of our languages right now are concentrated in Europe, but if we could always just add more from other continents if we are worried about that. Yeah, if logging in in a different language was a whole new concept and we got to choose a few languages to put on there, Dutch would not be one we'd put on there today, but as it is available on most Wikimedia wikis and as there is a reasonable amount of Dutch Wikimedia users, I see no reason to remove this from our list now. --Ferien (talk) 22:08, 21 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
(change conflict)(change conflict)@PotsdamLamb: We tend not to create subpages for things like this (as far as I know). Like Gotanda said above, the spirit of simplicity does apply everywhere on this wiki. If other people think it is a good idea then sure, but it just seems like it will be less visible and thus fewer votes. --IWI (talk) 22:09, 21 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Where I'd be most concerned about space is on the mobile website, because of the smaller screen size and the different skin used there. Currently, the language links do not appear at all on mobile, so the issue of space isn't a big thing, and should only concern the desktop website. I Oppose removing Dutch, there's enough space for it, and I'm fine with the current selection of links. — *Fehufangą ♮ ✉ Talk page22:25, 21 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I've uncollapsed this discussion. The admin who eventually closes this fully should read the whole discussion, because discussion shows consensus, not polling. I would even suggest collapsing the second part instead of this section, because it is just to make sure the closing admin understands what everyone supports/opposes. --Ferien (talk) 12:01, 22 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Lights and freedom I separated them as Filipino is the official language of Pakistan, and Tagalog is the official language of the Philippines. That is why the are both listed. It is based on different countries, as it was brought up in the discussion so I listed them as the official languages for that country. Da LambTalk to me!OMG, What have I done?16:43, 22 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Lights and freedom Tagalog - Native to Philippines EN:Tagalog_language (look at infoxbox under native to). For Filipino vs. Tagalog, please see this. As far as Filipino I believe you are correct, as I may have misread it, but I would need to go back in my browser history and see where I pulled that from. However, irregardless of where it is from, this vote is based on the languages seen above in the discussion. Not whether they were considered valid for any particular country. The idea to be completely neutral is to list any and all that were brought for a consensus vote. So turning the vote into yet a 4th debate now, it is just to vote. Nothing was left out from the discussion that I know of and if there is a language I missed above in the discussion, please feel free to add it, but nothing should be removed from the list below as that would be unfair and defeat the entire purpose that we are trying to accomplish. Da LambTalk to me!OMG, What have I done?17:29, 22 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
While Cebuano has 22 mil native speakers (comparable to dutch at 25 mil), it seems most either do not use it on Wikipedia, or are not interested in contributing to Wikipedia. On the English Wikipedia I counted only 56 users at the ceb-N babel, and 20 at both ceb-4 and ceb-3 (nobody is at ceb-5). The apparently large article count of the Cebuano Wikipedia is greatly contributed by Lsjbot, which creates bot generated articles. — *Fehufangą ♮ ✉ Talk page21:57, 22 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Voting for languages
So first off, I collapsed the entire conversation for the sake of space. I apologize in advance if this offends you, but it is very long. The following will seek consensus for the entire thread above. Based on what I am reading, this will serve as the official consensus on what to add, keep, or remove from the languages on the login page on Simple Wikipedia. While I am included in the conversation and will cast my votes, this poll is being created strictly based on the topic and the languages listed. If I missed any, please add them to the respective area. This will be open for the standard 7-day period. If you have any comments, please put them in the section "Additional comments."
How to vote: Use either Keep ((keep)) or Oppose ((oppose)) and sign with your name by typing in ~~~~
Comment: It is better to open up this entire section and vote for each language than to open up each and every language section. It eliminates watchers from getting a ton of alerts. I know I would appreciate it. Thanks, Da LambTalk to me!OMG, What have I done?21:50, 22 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Comment: For those that have not voted or want to change their votes, this is a reminder the poll closes in 2 days. I have started tabulating the results and will be available for this discussion at the end of the polling time. Thanks - Da LambTalk to me!Please don't eat da 🐑!23:11, 27 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
This is only a poll though... we should not make edits to the language list based on a poll. It should be a discussion not a vote. --Ferien (talk) 15:47, 28 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Ferien Once again, minus you removing 'Chinese' even though it was mentioned, so you went against the neutrality of the entire thing, this poll covers all of the languages discussed over and over and over and over again. I do not think anymore discussion is needed as the horse has been beaten to death already. This poll is an easier way to achieve the consensus needed based on all of the discussions. This was something that many people saw as a good idea, including IWI if you see above. You citing an essay is just an essay. Every is welcome to read the discussion and review it before making a decision. You shooting this down is not showing anything other than you do not agree with how the community is trying to make a clean area to gather consensus because reading through years of discussions will be time consuming. I asked you a while back to put Chinese back and you failed to do so. Thanks - Da LambTalk to me!Please don't eat da 🐑!16:23, 28 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@PotsdamLamb: There is no Chinese language. "Chinese" is covered by Mandarin and Cantonese. Also, you added languages like Urdu that have not been mentioned at all this whole discussion and a few languages that were only mentioned once or twice above. Maybe I linked the wrong thing - Wikipedia:Consensus is a policy and states clearly that voting does not show consensus and we can only act on this with consensus. "Some people may confuse consensus with other things. These are: Voting: consensus is not about seeing who has the most people on their side." --Ferien (talk) 16:33, 28 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Ferien It is in the top line under the green bar where it states "So the most significant countries that might need accomodation are India, Russia, Philippines, Germany, and Pakistan, in particular." I had added any language listed or if the country was listed, I looked up the primary language for that country and that is what got listed. Thanks - Da LambTalk to me!Please don't eat da 🐑!21:30, 28 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The polling has been closed. Below are the results from what I’ve added up based on the above. If I made a mistake, please feel free to correct it.
Entrance Page Languages Vote (aka login page)
Language Name
Support votes
Oppose votes
Total votes
Results
Arabic
5
0
5
Keep
Cantonese
4
1
5
Keep
Cebuano
0
4
4
Delete
Filipino
4
0
4
Keep
French
4
0
4
Keep
German
4
0
4
Keep
Hindi
5
0
5
Keep
Indonesian
5
0
5
Keep
Italian
3
2
5
Keep
Mandarin
5
0
5
Keep
Russian
5
1
6
Keep
Spanish
5
0
5
Keep
Swahili
4
2
6
Keep
Tagalog
2
3
5
Delete
Urdu
1
2
3
Delete
Dutch
3
2
5
Keep
Esperanto
0
6
6
Delete
Portuguese
4
1
5
Keep
```Net support:``` Thanks for the vote and tabulation, PDL. Another way to look at this is to consider both views. For example in voting for the Translation of the Day uses net support. That might change how we consider the keep / delete decisions depending on where the cut off should be. --Gotanda (talk) 05:28, 31 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Gotanda The idea was not to complicate this even more. I did this as a simple majority vote, so which ever side had more votes wins. It’s just like an election. The higher votes win. That was the way I set up and was (what I thought) was pretty much clear by having only two vote options, basically for or against having the language. I am in no way shooting down your thoughts but that was the way I set it up so it is simple. Thanks - Da LambTalk to me!Please don't eat da 🐑!06:06, 31 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Entrance Page Languages Vote (aka login page)
Language Name
Support votes
Oppose votes
Net
Results
Arabic
5
0
5
Keep
Cantonese
4
1
3
Keep
Cebuano
0
4
-4
Delete
Filipino
4
0
4
Keep
French
4
0
4
Keep
German
4
0
4
Keep
Hindi
5
0
5
Keep
Indonesian
5
0
5
Keep
Italian
3
2
1
?
Mandarin
5
0
5
Keep
Russian
5
1
4
Keep
Spanish
5
0
5
Keep
Swahili
4
2
2
?
Tagalog
2
3
-1
Delete
Urdu
1
2
-1
Delete
Dutch
3
2
1
?
Esperanto
0
6
-6
Delete
Portuguese
4
1
3
Keep
The poll is now closed.
Proposal to deprecate Template:Geobox
I have started a discussion on deprecating Template:Geobox. To participate, please go to Template talk:Geobox#Proposal to completely deprecate this template. Thanks. -- Auntof6 (talk) 00:54, 26 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
There has been no objection to this (only one other editor commented, and they approved), so I am going to proceed. It will probably take a little time to completely eliminate use of the template, but we'll get there. --Auntof6 (talk) 20:45, 31 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Question about patrolling
Do all new pages, except those started by patrollers, eventually get patrolled? I'm asking because this impacts the urgency of catching problems in new pages before they leave the page creation log? Lights and freedom (talk) 02:33, 6 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
That's a good question. I am not sure, but I've come across years old pages, and they are patrolled, but when checking the patrol log I can't find who patrolled the page. --Tsugarulet's talk! :)02:49, 6 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Some pages don't end up getting patrolled. I think new pages stay in non-patrolled status for a limited time (30 days maybe?). After that they no longer show as needing to be patrolled even if no one has looked at them. -- Auntof6 (talk) 03:53, 6 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Okay, thanks. If that's the case, I'd suspect a lot of copies from enwiki, hoaxes, and nonnotable articles end up getting through. There have been a number of these today. Lights and freedom (talk) 04:00, 6 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
In that case, I wonder why they drop off after 30 or so days? Is there anything wrong with letting them remain marked as "unpatrolled" until they are actually checked? I try to patrol new pages at least a little bit every time I log in. It seems like an important task for the reasons Lights and freedom raised. --Gotanda (talk) 22:24, 17 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Gotanda: I think it's determined by the software. I don't know if an individual wiki can customize it or not. I do think that if pages stayed indefinitely, things would accumulate to a very large number. -- Auntof6 (talk) 23:02, 17 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Auntof6@Gotanda@Lights and freedom@つがる - So from what I found out is that the software that runs it needs to be copied over to simple as it has some special pages we cannot create. As Auntof6 stated it could accumulate a lot of pages, but on the flip side, it will cut down on the nasty stuff we see as well. So it's a give and take situation. The difference with the NPP software is that it eliminates the 30 day hold and will keep it until it is reviewed and action is taken. Based on the script I can see we would also need to create a draft namespace (which from a developer point of view will not be that hard to do. What I can do, since I have a developer account on wikipedia already, is dig and ask around to see what all it would take and what types of customizations we could do. We would also need customized scripts of which I did one already but it doesn't work because we do not have the software on simple. To do this though, as it will be a few hours of research and questions, I would like to get feedback not only from the community, but also from administrators to see if this is something we would want to do here. I do subscribe to this page so I will get alerts but let me know your thoughts and for admins, if you think it would help or hinder your work that you have to do. I do not know the number of people with patroller rights as we are very small. I did a quick glance and I would say ~ 50 editors with one blocked for sockpuppetry is on the list, however, I do not know how active they are. Let me know what you would like and we can go from there. Da LambTalk to me!OMG, What have I done?00:26, 18 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
pink vector skin
does anyone know of a script to change the colour of the vector skin to pink? I had dark theme before but the script broke. This is so I can tell if I am logged in or not. --Tsugarulet's talk! :)20:39, 6 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you. However even after this change the skin still looks the same, is it only supposed to change a certain part of the skin? You can see my changes here here thanks Tsugarulet's talk! :)00:05, 17 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
OK for the sake of my sanity can someone start archiving the main pages please! I offered to do this, but it was declined by an admin. I was simply going to move them to the latest archives but these pages are just getting longer and longer and longer. It has made trying to navigate things a lot harder and I have a very large screen and on some pages, I have to scroll just to get through the TOC. PDLTalk to me!OMG, What have I done?19:06, 14 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I cleared everything older than 21 days (150% of current settings) it looks like the archive bot isnt running like it should. Nunabas (talk) 02:34, 15 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Nunabas To let you know the admins did not want that. That is why I didn't do it. They wanted to do it. They are aware the bot's are not working. It is a back end issue for one bot and IRL busy for another bot. I would suggest you put it back how it was please so you don't get the wrath :) PDLTalk to me!OMG, What have I done?02:40, 15 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Similar to Village Pump - Proposal
Hello all. I am proposing we have an addition section on Simple similar to the Village Pump on English Wikipedia. As we go through changes and ideas, I am thinking of one centralized place where everyone can go to provide their input or suggest their ideas about the technical layout of simple (a perfect example is if we had one already, I would be putting this up there). I see simple talk more as the tea house on enWP. Sometimes we need to make a technical change to something and since no one watches say a templates talk page, it would be better to have a place to put that suggested change on a higher visibility page so more people see it and can provide input. I already have one idea I would like to propose but it spans on two different pages. This would eliminate the issue and keep the conversation in the same place and would be similar to the RfD layout. Putting these kinds of things on a users Talk Page will likely get lost (a good example of that is above at Wikipedia:Simple_talk#Again:_Change_the_languages_on_the_log_in_page) which has been brought up repeatedly but no action gets taken and it falls off of the list even when their is consensus amongst the users and a couple of admins. The new area would be a great place to post that so it does not get mixed into other user issues. So I would like to get feedback from the community and if you think it is a good idea, feel free to bold yes, no, comment, etc in the beginning of your input. Then we can go from there and I could work on a mockup. PDLTalk to me!OMG, What have I done?01:39, 15 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. We use Simple talk for this and for many other things. Adding another page would be one more thing people had to watch. We try to keep the infrastructure to a minimum here, partly so that our small user base can keep up with maintaining it. --Auntof6 (talk) 23:44, 15 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose - Simple Talk does that job well enough. There is much, much less activity here compared to enwiki, hence less activity in the community boards. It would be easier to keep everything in one place, for now. — *Fehufangą ♮ ✉ Talk page14:35, 17 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
This is a small community, and this board (together with the Admin Noticeboard) serve their purpose well. Suppose we introduced the other board, there would be very little traffic. For the editors: they need to watch/read one more board, there may be confusion as to whether post here or there, so some posts may appear twice. When bots still worked (no idea if they do now), "stale" discussions got archived. And be honest: if there's no post on a discussion in two weeksa, that discussion is likely stale. Note also, there are discussion pages on individual articles, where there's no automatic archival, or it is set differently. So, except for extra complexity, and extra work, I really don't see a benefit of having another "specially-themed" general discussion board. So: oppose--Eptalon (talk) 15:58, 17 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose - Just put it here on Simple Talk. Let's not add another page until we need one. However, if not enough people are finding out about important proposals, then perhaps some kind of notification system leading them to Simple Talk would be in order... Darkfrog24 (talk) 01:03, 19 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
This is such a good idea, and I can see why you are proposing this, however due to the size of SEWP, and the fact that opening another page will just add a bunch of page histories it will use up more server space. As such I will have to vote an oppose for now. However maybe if things change in the future we can consider this! If this idea doesn't get passed we can always look at it again in the future! --Tsugarulet's talk! :)01:33, 19 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Comment: Thanks all for your input. Based on the replies there is a strong consensus for a no. I appreciate all the feedback.
As most regulars know, we have links to most everything on simple for policies, guidelines, etc that start very basic then point to enWP where it is harder for non-english native speakers/readers to follow. I have come up with a very basic guide on how an article should be laid out, which also leaves all of the freedom necessary for the creation as there are very few set, hard rules on the layout, however, the MOS dictates where things go and it is complicated and very long. I am looking for more input on the layout to get more suggestions while keeping it simple. You can find the layout here and to follow along the conversation and add more information, you can visit the talk page at User_talk:PotsdamLamb/List_of_Article_Layout. It has not been yet decided if this would become part of a guideline or an essay and could simply just complement the existing pages. Let me know! I look forward to hearing from everyone. PDLTalk to me!OMG, What have I done?01:45, 15 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Please do not remove red linked categories
Hello all - I wanted to ask that you not remove red links on categories that I have added as I am working on some articles that are parts of a series and I will link it to the cat with the correct heading when I have it ready. An example is on Jane Pauley where the cat is The_Interviews_name_ID_same_as_Wikidata and this links to wiki-data. I have already created the templates for them from enWP to verify it works, so as I cross-check with wd and simple, I will be adding the interviews in other websites. Thank you. PDLTalk to me!OMG, What have I done?00:20, 17 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Welcome to the 7th issue of Movement Strategy and Governance News! The newsletter distributes relevant news and events about the implementation of Wikimedia's Movement Strategy recommendations, other relevant topics regarding Movement governance, as well as different projects and activities supported by the Movement Strategy and Governance (MSG) team of the Wikimedia Foundation.
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Movement sustainability: Wikimedia Foundation's annual sustainability report has been published. (continue reading)
Improving user experience: recent improvements on the desktop interface for Wikimedia projects. (continue reading)
Safety and inclusion: updates on the revision process of the Universal Code of Conduct Enforcement Guidelines. (continue reading)
Equity in decisionmaking: reports from Hubs pilots conversations, recent progress from the Movement Charter Drafting Committee, and a new white paper for futures of participation in the Wikimedia movement. (continue reading)
Stakeholders coordination: launch of a helpdesk for Affiliates and volunteer communities working on content partnership. (continue reading)
Leadership development: updates on leadership projects by Wikimedia movement organizers in Brazil and Cape Verde. (continue reading)
Internal knowledge management: launch of a new portal for technical documentation and community resources. (continue reading)
Innovate in free knowledge: high-quality audiovisual resources for scientific experiments and a new toolkit to record oral transcripts. (continue reading)
Evaluate, iterate, and adapt: results from the Equity Landscape project pilot (continue reading)
Other news and updates: a new forum to discuss Movement Strategy implementation, upcoming Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees election, a new podcast to discuss Movement Strategy, and change of personnel for the Foundation's Movement Strategy and Governance team. (continue reading)
Should we keep a redirect page if it confuses the list of articles every Wikipedia should have?
I recently made Clutch (eggs) and set up a redirect via Clutch. Once I saw how many pages linked there from car articles, I translated Clutch (disambiguation) from en.wiki and changed the redirect so that Clutch pointed there. I also went into every bio article and changed links so that they point at the egg article.
The problem is that the list of articles that every Wikipedia should have includes "Clutch" in the mechanical/car sense. Now that red link is blue. Someone looking for a good article to write might not know we need that one. Should we delete the "Clutch" redirect page? I'm asking here because this issue may have come up before and may come up again. Darkfrog24 (talk) 01:42, 19 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
When there is a redirect between the qualified title -- that's the title that includes "(disambiguation)" -- and the non-qualified title, the qualified one should be the redirect. That's so that if someone wants to deliberately link to the dab page, they can link to the qualified one and we know they didn't mean the other one. So we need to either make Clutch the primary topic instead of a redirect, or move the page with the qualified title over the one without.
In case that didn't make sense, we should have one of the following situations:
Situation 1: "Clutch" to be the dab page and "Clutch (disambiguation)" to redirect to it
Situation 2: "Clutch" to be an article about the main topic and "Clutch (disambiguation)" to be the dab page. In this situation, if we don't have an article about the main topic, then "Clutch" should not exist.
@Auntof6 But as you always say it’s a great guideline! Lol. It’s like a 50/50 technically we can link it to any page but since the automotive clutch is listed on the list, shouldn’t that one be the main page when you type clutch in on the search bar and the hat note to the disambiguation page so it stays aligned to the list? Da LambTalk to me!OMG, What have I done?06:11, 19 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@PotsdamLamb: Right: a hatnote would go on "Clutch" if we had the article. But we don't have the article, so the article would just remain redlinked until and unless someone created the article. -- Auntof6 (talk) 07:07, 19 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Guys, my concern is not which article gets to be the main one with the unqualified title. My concern is because 1) we don't have an article on mechanical clutch (and I am not interested in writing one) and 2) having ANY redirect there makes it look like we do already have an article on mechanical clutch, which 3) might deter anyone browsing the "articles we need" list from writing it, 4) maybe we're better off with no redirect, a red link and not a blue. Thoughts? Darkfrog24 (talk) 11:13, 19 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Auntof6 So here are my thoughts (and it won't take long for me to do it):
TWI Permissions or TWI Rights can be the name for it
I can create a template, similar to what we use for RfD's
This would create the appropriate discussion page (like mine is)
It can also post on simple talk so editors know about it and they can participate
Same time limit as an RfD for 7 days since it was opened, but may be closed early either for snowball or at the discretion of the administrators
Need to create a cat for it like we have for admin, cu, etc
A page where those with these rights can be posted. Would prefer to put it on the same list with admins, cu, etc
Also need to create a special page prefix for it (that would have to be done by an admin I believe) as I do not see a tab to make it or to see the underlying code.
Maybe, if I can figure out how to is have it cross post over automatically to meta for stewards to grant the right, only if successful. If it fails, then just close and archive.
@Auntof6 I was looking at this one and the category is "Unsuccessful requests for adminship." At the very top of the discussion it states "The following discussion is preserved as an archive of a request for importer that did not succeed. Please do not modify it." It looks like a request for admin was used and also not labeled correctly as it did succeed but since we do not have the appropriate infrastructure in place, I feel this will help out and not mis-categorize these requests. It will also track better since these are not requests to have the mop. Da LambTalk to me!OMG, What have I done?22:26, 19 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Auntof6 If you are ok with it, I can start on it and before sending it live I will test it then post for you or others to test as well. Would you agree to all of what I proposed above under #1 and #2? Did you want anything different? This will help me in creating it. As soon as I get the green light, I can begin. Thanks, Da LambTalk to me!OMG, What have I done?22:39, 19 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Comment: PDL Has been indefinitely blocked for incivility, and he has used wikibreak enforcer to lock himself out of his account until 2030. Lallint (talk) 15:29, 3 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Reminder to watch very good articles
This is a reminder for everyone: Very good articles should be watched closely to prevent them from degrading over time. I have just reviewed the edits to Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. In the mere 7 months since it was promoted to very good article, it has faced additions of incorrect grammar, additions of complex text, removal of links, editing of quotes, and other bad changes. If we do not watch these articles, they will eventually have to be demoted. We know these articles are already well-written, so maintaining them should be easier than maintaining other things.
You may see more information about the Results and Statistics of this Board election.
The Affiliate organizations selected representatives to vote on behalf of the Affiliate organization. The Affiliate Representatives proposed questions for the candidates to answer in mid-June. These answers from candidates and the information provided from the Analysis Committee provided support for the representatives as they made their decision.
Please take a moment to appreciate the Affiliate Representatives and Analysis Committee members for taking part in this process and helping to grow the Board of Trustees in capacity and diversity. These hours of volunteer work connect us across understanding and perspective. Thank you for your participation.
Thank you to the community members who put themselves forward as candidates for the Board of Trustees. Considering joining the Board of Trustees is no small decision. The time and dedication candidates have shown to this point speaks to their commitment to this movement. Congratulations to those candidates who have been selected. A great amount of appreciation and gratitude for those candidates not selected. Please continue to share your leadership with Wikimedia.
Hello community - After two days, I am ready to start getting consensus going (even though I cannot test it anymore until approval is given to run tests; BCs see request for test note) for the PDLBotArchiver robot. So what exactly does it do? It is replacing the archiving bot that is not longer attached to simple (found this out today) and the manual one created is not being run regularly. So please do take a look and cast your opinion in the appropriate section. Here are all the links:
There is no need for a consensus for bots from editors. You can offer your opinion if you want to but for many bot requests, bureaucrats just offer their opinion on it, maybe approve a trial and then approve the bot and then move on. --Ferien (talk) 12:06, 22 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]