Wikimedia Forum

The Wikimedia Forum is a central place for questions, announcements and other discussions about the Wikimedia Foundation and its projects. (For discussion about the Meta wiki, see Meta:Babel.)
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Wikiwebsites[edit]

Hi, we did add a proposition for a new project. We would be glad to have your feedbacks. Here it is : https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikiwebsites

It's about a "Library of free projects" (excluding software). Art, science, architecture, comics, movies, pictures,... which can be found under Creative commons licences, but also Open hardware, GFDL, public domain, Art Libre, FOIA… Graineahumus (talk)

Reusing references: Can we look over your shoulder?[edit]

Apologies for writing in English.

The Technical Wishes team at Wikimedia Deutschland is planning to make reusing references easier. For our research, we are looking for wiki contributors willing to show us how they are interacting with references.

The format will be a 1-hour video call, where you would share your screen. More information here.
Interviews can be conducted in English, German or Dutch.
Compensation is available.
Sessions will be held in January and February.
Sign up here if you are interested.
Please note that we probably won’t be able to have sessions with everyone who is interested. Our UX researcher will try to create a good balance of wiki contributors, e.g. in terms of wiki experience, tech experience, editing preferences, gender, disability and more. If you’re a fit, she will reach out to you to schedule an appointment.

We’re looking forward to seeing you, Thereza Mengs (WMDE)

RfC in progress[edit]

Hi,

As tradition dictates, I am communicating here a question that may concern Stews, GS, Sysops and AbuseFilters, or even interest you. I would be happy to have your feedback

Requests for comment/New global filter for "bot"

Good continuation. ―Eihel (talk) 01:46, 23 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Question about controversial political views[edit]

I'm wondering how much "global" control can be applied to users expressing controversial political views. If a user expresses support for ISIL, Hezbollah, Hamas, or the Houthi movement, on some wikis, they may be forced to remove such statements, while on other wikis, they may be banned. However, what if a wiki decides to permit such statements? Can stewards or other advanced global user groups take action against the user expressing such views, or even desysop admins on the wiki for allowing this? Does the Universal Code of Conduct or some other policy have provisions for such cases? Kk.urban (talk) 00:19, 25 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

About the Chinook Jargon Wikipedia (incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wp/chn)[edit]

Chinook Jargon (chinuk wawa) Wikipedia has somehow been of the most active wikis on the Incubator for the past few months, with three active (with more than 10 edits in the past month) contributors: Jon Gua, ISO 369-3 nds, and myself. Apparently that is enough contributors for a language to be made official and added to Wikipedia. There are about 200 pages on the entire wiki, which is only about as big as the smallest Wikipedias. However, this wiki has been growing ridiculously rapidly, and the pages are longer than those found in most wikipedias of its size (compare Inupiaq Wikipedia). We're even trying to create plugins for the wiki and translate the interface on translatewiki.net. Chinook Jargon Wikipedia has one of only a few location map templates on the Incubator that actually (kind of) works.
hayu masi pus mayka nanich ukuk tʼsəm!! POSSUM chowg (talk) 20:32, 1 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Why Wikivoyage is terrible[edit]

I was banned from Wikivoyage for a year for writing about my own country's politics. Not even criticizing them, just explaining the current situation. The article was locked for a month, and then a sysop with a history of being overly cautious decided to ban me for "promoting a political agenda." I appealed the decision, but another sysop, who had a personal grudge against me, upheld the ban. 70.68.168.129 15:17, 9 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Was it travel-related content? —Justin (koavf)T C M 15:18, 9 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@—Justin (koavf)T C M Yes, the content was about a trip to British Columbia. I came across an article on Wikivoyage about the area, but it didn't mention anything about an AMBER Alert system or how to respond in case of an emergency. This is particularly concerning because I have children traveling with me. I'm wondering if Wikivoyage is up-to-date with their information or if there are better resources out there for planning a safe and informed trip. 70.68.168.129 15:31, 9 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

You have one perspective, it seems like the rest of the community disagrees with your perspective. Wikis work on a consensus model - if your view is not supported by others, it won't be implemented. Nothing further to discuss here. – Ajraddatz (talk) 16:26, 10 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Article of all racial slur as featured article on mobile app[edit]

Somehow, an article that's all just the hard-r n-slur is the featured article on the explore page of the Wikipedia mobile app. I'm unsure if it's vandalism or a hack, so I'm reporting it to here. The issue needs to be dealt with ASAP. Sedecpikem (talk) 15:38, 10 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Sedecpikem please provide the exact URL of the page you referring to and we can try to direct you to the correct project to follow this up with. — xaosflux ^Talk 15:43, 10 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telopea_speciosissima?wprov=sfti1#

It was this article. It's normal, but the preview card thing on the mobile app explore feed only had the hard-r n-slur in all caps repeated. Sedecpikem (talk) 16:04, 10 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Looks like it was vandalized, but the vandalism has been reverted. It may take a bit of time for the preview card to be updated - if you check back now I imagine it will look normal. – Ajraddatz (talk) 16:27, 10 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Collaboration with Internet Archive[edit]

As far as I know:

Internet Archive's Wayback Machine provides vital resources to Wikimedia projects (references for Wikipedia articles, source URLs for Wikimedia Commons images, etc, especially when the original pages no longer exist).
According to their own website and Wikipedia's Internet Archive page, they host all their content in only 2 copies, both across their 3 datacenters, all of them in San Francisco area. There are mentions of "partial" copies in Amsterdam and Egypt (this last one was at least 20 years old, without updates, and is now offline), and even a 2016 project for a full copy in Canada, but there's no evidence it was ever implemented.
An earthquake of 8 magnitude at Richter scale will strike San Francisco area. We don't know when, but we know that it will.
Most buildings in San Francisco will resist such an earthquake. Probably, Internet Archive datacenters will be among them. But, even with the building itself resisting, racks of servers inside it will possibly be damaged. Electricity and network connectivity will be cut off for days or weeks.

If all what I said is right, the scenery is nasty. I think Wikimedia Foundation, which already collaborates with Internet Archive, and has a far larger budget than Archive has, could finance an additional, offsite backup of all its content, if it's confirmed than one doesn't exist (WMF already financially supports other external projects, such as Kiwix). Perhaps even it's possible Wikimedia Foundation, as part of the collaboration, could host in one of its datacenters (other than its San Francisco one), an offline backup of Internet Archive's collections (being offline, I think it imposes no special obligations or legal risks). But, returning to the first option (offsite backup hosted by Internet Archive itself), and considering what will happen at one moment in the future (because it will happen), we have that WMF has a yearly budget of 177 million dollars (for 2023-24). In 2019, Internet Archive had an annual budget of $36 million. An offsite and offline copy of all its content, would cost only a small fraction of that. I think that it's something in which WMF should collaborate. I'm not optimistic about my proposal being implemented, but I think it's sad to think about that thing that will some day happen, unless things change significantly. Many Wikipedia (an other wikis) articles will lose their citations, many media files in Wikimedia Commons won't be verifiable... and, although it goes beyond the scope of Wikimedia itself, a good part of the biggest collection of human knowledge by far ever built (it includes all Wikipedia content, and its sources, among many other things) will be lost. MGeog2022 (talk) 12:46, 16 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, we don't need to worry their infrastructure. They have their own ways to maintain and protect their data (e.g. they use local severs instead of cloud storage solutions due to quality of service, privacy and other reasons). Plus, I don't believe WMF can backup 200PB data. You may see this video (text version) to know more about their infrastructure. Thanks. SCP-2000 14:12, 16 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@SCP-2000, thanks for your response.

I became very happy when I read this: They have their own ways to maintain and protect their data.

... until I read this on video's transcription: All files uploaded to the Internet Archive are stored on more than 20,000 hard drives , divided among 750 servers located around the headquarters in California. A total of 200 petabytes of storage capacity, or rather 200 million gigabytes.. That is, what I already knew: all data is stored around the headquarters in California: that is, in San Francisco and its surroundings.

I'd like to read that I was wrong: that they follow the 3-2-1 backup rule (3 copies of your data (your production data and 2 backup copies) on two different media (disk and tape) with one copy off-site for disaster recovery), that they have at least 1 copy in a place with less natural risks, or at least that their server racks (not only the buildings that host them) are prepared to cope with a really strong earthquake.

For example, some years ago, media in Wikimedia Commons wasn't backuped. Despite having several (more than just 2) copies in 2 datacenters very distant from each other (and none in seismic areas), it was deemed that: While there is redundancy in place for media, high availability, while a must to protect against service loss, is not a substitute for proper backups. So it was later addressed with true backups.

Currently, the organization offers 475 billion archived websites; 28 million texts, books and studies; 14 million audios ( 220 thousand live shows), 6 million videos ( 2 million television programs), 3.5 million images and 580 thousand software.: for now, I can only reaffirm what I said: all of this is in danger (sadly, from Wikimedia perhaps we can do little about it, but I think that a new "fire of the Library of Alexandria" is highly likely to happen over the next decades, if things aren't changed). MGeog2022 (talk) 19:18, 16 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Other than using the "Save page now" feature in Wayback Machine, without logging in or having an account, I'm not involved at all with Archive as I am with Wikimedia; that's why I talk here about it. If there's someone around here that is also an active Archive user, it probably would be interesting to talk about it in Archive's forums. It strikes me that it doesn't seem like anyone has ever expressed concern about this there. MGeog2022 (talk) 19:28, 16 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Hello, MGeog2022. Although Internet Archive contents are available under various "open" licenses, the Archive might not want an external party to have a copy (not even a static snapshot) of ALL its content. Also, the process of copying 200 petabytes of data without impairing the normal operations of the Archive might be difficult. Both are possible reasons not to involve the WMF.

Like you, I am more active here than there, but I do have an Internet Archive account, I log in, and I have occasionally participated in their forums. We could coordinate further on my talk page if you wish, as it isn't easy to search by subject matter in Archive fora.--FeralOink (talk) 11:10, 17 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks @FeralOink, it would be great to know if their infraestructure is more resilient than it seems, and how it could be improved. I understand WMF not wanting to host a copy of Archive non-free content (or even worse: illegal, racist, defamatory, etc.; Wayback Machine content can be as bad as you can find on the Internet), even if it's only an offline backup, but the other option I have proposed (helping Internet Archive financially so they can have an offsite backup, if money is the reason for not having one), perhaps would be more feasible. OK, I'll write you on your talk page. I hope we can get good news and post them here. MGeog2022 (talk) 11:38, 17 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]