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Questions and answers will not remain on this page indefinitely (otherwise it would very soon become too long to be editable). After a period of time with no further activity, information will be moved to other relevant sections of Wikiquote, (such as the FAQ pages) or placed in one of the village pump archives if it is of general interest, or deleted. Please consider dating and titling your discussions so as to facilitate this.

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Connecting new pages to wikidata?

A few months ago I posted here trying to obtain the community's support for a BOT which will automatically link new pages added to enwq to the appropriate page at WikiData (WD). Such a BOT is already operated by User:Mike Peel, and he told me that he can do this for us if we can get consensus. Without this BOT, individual volunteers must take care of adding new enwq pages to WD.

I don't know if we had enough support, but it does not appear that new pages are being added to WD right now. This is a shame because WD is a source of a lot of information that can help content developers produce better quote pages.

FYI here is the original post on this topic: wq:Village pump archive 62#Need consensus from members of this community for connecting pages to wikidata. Thanks in advance for any of your thoughts. Ottawahitech (talk) 00:09, 5 November 2023 (UTC)

We have several thousand unconnected pages, including 289 in the main namespace, so having a bot do this work--particularly for the many administrative pages--would be helpful. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 00:15, 5 November 2023 (UTC)

I did not know that.

The bad news is that the number of unconnected mainspace pages has increased from 289 to 370 since @Koavf had posted the message above. The good news is that, the English Wikiquote has gained at least another 81 new pages in just a few days. Ottawahitech (talk) 03:27, 9 November 2023 (UTC)

If User:Mike Peel still wants the bot to run on English Wikiquote, a request can be made here. Saroj (talk) 12:57, 8 November 2023 (UTC)

@User:Mike Peel,

Just wondering if the 8 support votes are enough to get you going? Ottawahitech (talk) 21:27, 14 November 2023 (UTC)

• I'm fine with it, and I'm fine with gaining community consensus here at VP. WQ:BOTS is pretty dead. There hasn't been any activity there in almost four years. GMG^talk 13:06, 8 November 2023 (UTC)

  This is because no one has requested bot flag in four years. Saroj (talk) 14:36, 8 November 2023 (UTC)

• Please test for at least 50 edits before approve, thanks. Misfunction on wiki Data will lead to serious troubles Lemonaka (talk) 03:47, 9 November 2023 (UTC)
• Thanks all. The bot wouldn't make any edits here, just on Wikidata, so it doesn't need formal approval here. However, I wouldn't want to start it running without community support - which it looks like there is from this discussion. :-) There are two separate parts to this. One part is checking for existing Wikidata items that might be matches for new mainspace pages here - which would be put into a Wikidata game, like [1] - except I can't figure out how to do this for non-Wikipedia projects (I think it needs a bugfix from Magnus Manske - I have it running for the back-end database, but I can't get the candidates to load properly into the Game). The second part is then to create new items for mainspace pages that don't have a possible match (or all possible matches have been declined) after a wait of 14 days - I could set this running in a couple of weeks (I'm traveling right now). I could also just get the bot to create new items for all mainspace pages, which would then require more merging on Wikidata, and avoids the Wikidata game issue. Happy to hear thoughts, and I plan to come back to this in early December to get it running. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 23:00, 14 November 2023 (UTC)

  Thank you, @Mike Peel. I did not know that the BOT you operate not only connects unconnected pages to an existing WikiData (WD) page, but can also create a new WD page if one does not exist.

  The implication is that contributors of content to the English WikiQuote (ENWQ) have to reach consensus about which of our pages should be connected to a WD page. As it stands now there are three different types of pages on ENWQ (I think?):

  • pages with an English Wikipedia (ENWP) equivalent example 1
  • pages with no ENWP equivalent but with an existing WD equivalent example 2
  • pages without an existing ENWP that also do not have a WD page example 3

  Note: pages belonging to the last two should all be listed in Category:Articles with no corresponding English Wikipedia article Ottawahitech (talk) 12:50, 18 November 2023 (UTC) updated Ottawahitech (talk) 20:22, 2 December 2023 (UTC)

Do you want a BOT that will automatically connect new pages to WikiData

• support Ottawahitech (talk) 03:38, 9 November 2023 (UTC)
• Support in principle. I would need to know a little more details, but honestly, the worst thing that can happen is duplicate Wikidata items. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 04:05, 9 November 2023 (UTC)
• support for the Idea, but please avoid a bot malfunction a lot. Lemonaka (talk) 04:22, 9 November 2023 (UTC)
• +1 given the above caveat that a test run be done before full implementation. GMG^talk 13:02, 10 November 2023 (UTC)

FYI discussion:Why is it so hard to start pages about women?

FYI: Why is it so hard to start pages about women? -- have your say Ottawahitech (talk) 23:53, 5 November 2023 (UTC)

Trimming quotes that are too long

Some editors here have taken it upon themselves to shorten quotes contributed by others. It would be interesting to hear what rationale they use.

When I first joined here I was trying to add quotes that were as short as possible thinking that if anyone was really interested in a particular quote they could follow the ref/link and see the context. The problem, I have discovered, is that few websites, maybe with the exception of the BBC, maintain archives of their articles. The end result is that both here and also on the English Wikipedia you would be lucky to be able to follow most refs that are older than a few years.

Here's one example: Talk:Ariel Sharon#"I know I have been portrayed as a general looking for war...".

I would be curious to find out how others feel about shortening quotes contributed by others. Ottawahitech (talk) 16:46, 7 November 2023 (UTC)

As I recently noted, we have basic rules on quotation length which are routinely ignored. Whether or not someone else initially adds a quotation, it still needs to meet these guidelines, so someone else bringing a lengthy quotation into conformance with our rules is a good thing. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 16:53, 7 November 2023 (UTC)

Interviews: Tell us about your experiences using Wikidata in the Wikimedia sister projects

Hello, the Wikidata for Wikimedia Projects team at Wikimedia Deutschland is investigating the different ways Wikidata is being used in the Wikimedia projects. If you would like to speak with us about your experiences with integrating Wikidata in Wikimedia wikis, please sign up for an interview in this registration form. Please note that currently, we are only able to conduct interviews in English.

For more information, visit our project page. Feedback is always welcome here. Thank you.--Danny Benjafield (WMDE) (talk) 13:33, 8 November 2023 (UTC)

@Danny Benjafield (WMDE), Thanks for posting an invitation for the English Wikiquote community.

I use WD a lot, and do have comments to share about possible improvements. I was going to register for an interview after assuming that it would be done online, and only discovered that it would be conducted through a phone call after reading more than half of the page you linked us to.

Just to let you know that you may be missing an opportunity to have many more participants in your study by not allowing contributors to participate online. Just my $.02 Ottawahitech (talk) 22:59, 2 December 2023 (UTC)

Hello @Ottawahitech, you absolutely can participate online, in fact that is the only way we have currently been conducting our interviews, via Google Meet calls, however we can probably arrange alternatives such as Zoom. I encourage you to sign up as we would dearly like to hear your input. However I believe I see why you have thought this with our usage of "recorded call", this was intended that we record the audio of the call so we can refer to it later to ensure we ave recorded all important insights for our research...with the audio being deleted at a later date for your privacy and our adherence to GDPR laws. I will bring this matter up with the rest of the team so we can amend the language and make it clearer that no cell/mobile/landline phone calls are a requisite. Thank you for making me aware of this! --Danny Benjafield (WMDE) (talk) 20:24, 3 December 2023 (UTC)

Webservice request timed out

I got this notice when I clicked a link on ENWQ just a moment ago. This happens to me occasionally, so I stopped to read what the small print says:

• The tool responsible for the URL you have requested [long url] is taking too long to respond.

If you have reached this page from somewhere else...

This URI is managed by the supercount tool, maintained by Cyberpower678, Ladsgroup.

You may wish to notify the tool's maintainers (above) about the error.

Problem is when I click on Cyberpower678 and on Ladsgroup I find that they are located on another wiki (wikitech) that requires me to "create a Wikimedia developer account to edit any page on this wiki".

Any suggestions for those trying to do the right thing and provide feedback to wiki maintainers? Ottawahitech (talk) 15:16, 9 November 2023 (UTC) corrected Ottawahitech (talk) 15:28, 9 November 2023 (UTC)

@Ottawahitech Which link did you click? Lemonaka (talk) 15:55, 9 November 2023 (UTC)

@Lemonaka: I don't immediately recall. Why do you ask? Ottawahitech (talk) 14:55, 10 November 2023 (UTC)

Flood flag

I propose the creation of a new user group, "flood flag," on English Wikiquote to prevent repetitive changes from flooding the RecentChanges feed. This will streamline the feed and enhance the user experience for contributors. Saroj (talk) 03:20, 10 November 2023 (UTC)

The group can be added by sysops and removed by sysops and the users themselves. --Saroj (talk) 17:47, 12 November 2023 (UTC)

@Saroj, There is no consensus for Fabricator Task T351250 which you started merely two days after posting here. Can you please cancel it until such time that there is proper wq:consensus.

Thanks in advance, Ottawahitech (talk) 03:31, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T351250

Comments

•   Support —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 04:14, 10 November 2023 (UTC)
•   Support Lemonaka (talk) 10:24, 10 November 2023 (UTC)
•   Oppose Ottawahitech (talk) 14:50, 17 November 2023 (UTC)
• Thanks for adding this information, Saroj. I really have no idea what a "user group" is and how it works. I am speculating that if your suggestion gets implemented it would help those users who are looking at recent changes? Ottawahitech (talk) 17:52, 12 November 2023 (UTC)

  If the user is granted this right, their edits will not be shown in recent changes. They can then perform maintenance or repetitive tasks without tampering with recent changes. --Saroj (talk) 18:25, 12 November 2023 (UTC)

  Who would benefit from this? Sorry to be so obtuse. Ottawahitech (talk) 20:22, 12 November 2023 (UTC)

  I would like you to read this page for better information about this user group. --Saroj (talk) 16:27, 13 November 2023 (UTC)

  @Saroj, Me too (I would also like to have enough volunteer time to read all the non-mainspace documentation available on WQ). However as it stands now I am way behind working on content additions that I was hoping to contribute today.

  Thank you for providing the link above. Ottawahitech (talk) 21:41, 14 November 2023 (UTC)

  @Saroj, I just realized that the link you provided for the Simple Wikipedia documentation about Flood flag does not work for me, even though I can find the page when I go to Simple. I hope I am making sense? (sorry I got logged off in the middle so forgive me if I do not make sense) Ottawahitech (talk) 21:54, 14 November 2023 (UTC)

  I fixed the link. It seems to be working now. --Saroj (talk) 02:33, 15 November 2023 (UTC)

•   Support I believe the recent floods (AWB, Cat-a-Lot etc.) at this project suggests the need of such user group. MathXplore (talk) 05:40, 18 November 2023 (UTC)

  @MathXplore: How would the creation of a flood flag user group help you make better contributions to wikiquote? Ottawahitech (talk) 16:48, 28 November 2023 (UTC)

  If floods can be reduced by the flood flag, then it would make me easier to check the recent changes. MathXplore (talk) 03:17, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

•   Oppose - While I get the point that you wish to not have a flood of changes in the RC list, the down side I see to this approach is that when those users (myself being one of them that routinely works on categories, causing a lot of changes in short order) are not doing this work, their "non-mass change" edits will also be hidden. I don't think this is a good idea. If there was a way to hide only edits using AWB or Cat-a-lot I would support. ~ UDScott (talk) 16:53, 28 November 2023 (UTC)

  We can also choose to develop and approve bots for every type of AWB or Cat-a-lot action. MathXplore (talk) 03:19, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

  Any idea if it would be possible to make a tag for those and then ignore only those tags??? —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 03:22, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

  I don't know how to make tags, but I know that Wikimedia Commons have a specific tag for Cat-a-lot, can our admins import that feature to here? MathXplore (talk) 03:46, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

  Making AWB or Cat-a-Lot tags can be done. I'm just ignorant about if you can filter them out. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 03:47, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

  Sorry, I have no idea for that. Should we contact Phab for such features? MathXplore (talk) 03:59, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

Are we allowed to create new pages that are a list?

When I first started contributing content here I created a list that I found out much later was promptly deleted. To this day I don't know why it was deleted. Since then I tried to get around this restriction by building redirects to lists and then including those redirects in the appropriate categories.

I know that a few lists already exist on ENWQ. I am asking if the creation of new ones is allowed? Ottawahitech (talk) 15:53, 10 November 2023 (UTC)

I don't know of any rule we have prohibiting lists as such. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 18:30, 10 November 2023 (UTC)

Pmlineditor

Pmlineditor (talk · contributions)

For whom has been inactive on this project for nearly two years, we may need to notice them about possibly desysop process. Their last action on this project was [2] On Nov 14, 2021. Lemonaka (talk) 08:31, 15 November 2023 (UTC)

The Stewards will review inactive administrators periodically. (I think their threshold is two years, but the review may be infrequent.) They will provide ample notice before taking action to de-sysop anyone. ~ Ningauble (talk) 23:57, 15 November 2023 (UTC)

Greeting

Hi, I am Dastel. It's a pleasur for me! Dastel (talk) 20:39, 22 November 2023 (UTC)

@Dastel: Greetings to you too. Ottawahitech (talk) 14:57, 23 November 2023 (UTC)

Adding Audio pronunciations for Proverbs

I'm creating audio pronunciations for Tamil proverbs. I linked some audio in Tamil proverbs. It's allowed on en.wikiquote (Please Ping Me, I'm not active on this wiki) Thank you Sriveenkat (talk) 18:12, 28 November 2023 (UTC)

Uh, Thanks for the welcome. Verifiability? Citing Sources?

Having arrived to this project only a few minutes ago, I am baffled by a Wikiquote:Welcome,_newcomers page that tells me what Wikiquote is not, without first telling me that it IS a source of WQ:Verifiable quotes with WQ:Citations given.

Since those would be the only worthwhile "Policies" and "Guidelines" to bother reading, why bother with that page any more than with the tedious welcome?

But against my better judgement, I wasted a minute scanning WQ:Policies and guidelines for any sign of wit or wisdom. Sadly, my suspicions were confirmed. I hate to sound dire, but the situation is unlikely improve without surgery, and the same prognosis holds for the equivalent pages on wikipedia.

According to the "Find" tool on my web browser, the page contains not a single instance of the string "verify", "verifiable", "cite", or "citation". Since I'm sure that its buried somewhere and a search of the whole project namespace would yield an article for each, will you all please link them both to somewhere near the top of the welcome and policy pages?

Until then, I intend to be WQ:Bold and WQ:Ignore the rules, and I invite all others contributors to join me in adopting that strategy, as in w:WP:Ignore all rules, except not all of them, only the ones that stop you from improving it. I don't see why that should still be controversial. I for one am grateful for the w:WP:Five pillars, and intend to uphold them. I'm not going to ignore "ALL" of the so-called policies, of course. The all-or-nothing misrepresentation, a common type of exaggeration used as a w:Straw man fallacy tends to cause these unnecessary debates, and the problem of crufty essays being written and then cited as if they are policy, itself an auto-immune disorder to the problem of policy creep. (This critique also applies to corresponding pages of our sister project, of course, which is where y'all apparently learned this bad habit)

"We also want WQ:Wikiquote to become a reliable resource", says the lede sentence, the "common goal" of the PAG page, which I share, but where is the link to WQ:Reliable? And a "free compendium of quotations" is what I too had in mind. Whether or not it is or becomes the "world's largest" is totally irrelevant to me, and I think we should get over this peculiarly American obsession with size, already. But in furtherance of all these goals would be a policy of WQ:Original research needed, (a sort of antidote to the mind-numbing tendencies of the w:WP:NOR when applied over zealously to exclude quotation of WQ:Primary sources. Therefore, WQ:ORN back at you. Although a Quotes project is obviously not a place for w:WP:AEIS, and therefore WQ:NAEIS also appies (No Analysis, Evaluation, Interpretation, or Synthesis), it is most definitely and fundamentally a place for WQ:Original Research in reading and quoting WQ:Primary Sources, especially those from our other sister project Wikisource, which can and should be additionally cited and linked whenever a quote is attributed to a WQ:Secondary source that cites a public domain primary.

Thus, a policy that favors WQ:Scholarly ethics would enable and encourage all our readers and contributors to analyze the quote in context of its primary source text, and also enable them to acquire whatever book, article, or magazine is also quoting it. Once this starts to happen consistently, it will greatly improve the quality of wikipedia. What we need there is scholarly w:Dialectic and better definitions by means of w:Diaresis. And original researchers should be encouraged to contribute on Wikiversity, as I began to do rather than insulted as incompetent and bullied into giving up. Or worse, banned from editing because of alleged "incompetence".

The thought experiment of my inaugural edit is about to complete when I hit enter, and we'll all find out together how many of these links will be red. Since I probably won't bother to waste any more time by clicking through the blue ones, I invite you all to join in improving those linked policy articles, along with the two I've here criticized, by first clicking through one of the red ones. Feel free to WQ:Cite this mini-WQ:Essay on any policy or guidelines you might be bold to write or rewrite, or on discussion pages thereunto appertaining. I probably won't bother, but will rather continue my far more important work of mining valuable information from WQ:Reliable sources, along with my colleague w:WP:WikiDwarf tribe (see prev version), along with defectors and rebel clans from among the w:WP:WikiElf population who are fed up with the current regime. Beware ye knights and navy, for w:Here be dragons.

I'm not interested in regulating anyone here anymore than I'm interested in listening to what you all have to say, unless you are actively engaged with me to WQ:Make them blue, or as they may someday say on wikipedia, w:WP:Make it blue. This is apparently unique coinage is often found on advice and contentious talk page and village pump discusssions surrounding large scale WQ:Content disputes or questions on the hebrew wikipedia, so I'm going to propose a dedicated article for it there, if there isn't one already. w:he:וק:הכחילו אותו (Content disputes are something I don't anticipate becoming a problem on Wikiquote, thus probably no need for an article dedicated to that, but you never know.) The best way I know of to handle such an event is not to delete, but rather to add - to add as much as possible from all sides of an conflict, hence the necessity of such a guideline. Deletionists should be willing to move w:WP:Disputed content to a subpage, before doubling down, once they are w:WP:Obverted. Thus together we will cooperate and w:WP:Bold-refine.

Wiktionary cites a poem by s:he:משה גיורא אלימלך as the source for the definition of wikt:he:הכחיל, although its referring to the sky after a storm and a ships weighing anchor at sea.

This provides an interesting contrast to absurd proof often cited on Wikipedia that the w:WP:Sky is blue in the context over debates on its w:WP:Verifiability policy, when everyone who has ever editing at night knows that it is not. Not right now, at least, in my location. I don't know about you, and I don't take your word as proof. Yes, the w:WP:Sky was blue for us both, and yes the w:WP:Sky will be blue again, as we both know, and this is such a well known w:WP:Fact of nature that it need not be cited. I'm sure we could all stipulate to that, but we need a better essay to explain it to newcomers, along with a new or better essay on w:WP:Self-evident truths and matters that are w:WP:Trivially deduced.

Interestingly enough, the quoted poem by w:he:משה גיורא אלימלך makes the very same point (in the third person plural future conjugation, of the verb "to make blue", itself the hifil binyan, the causative construction, of the root that means blue), by predicating of "the clouds" that "the skies" (which are always plural in hebrew, and quite wisely so), will "make them blue". And some volunteer could do that now by translating his article from the hebrew to english with this red link (which due to technical shortcomings of Help:Interwiki linking, incorrectly appears blue along with some of the others linked here from wikipedia): w:Moshe Giora Elimelech.

I wish that we could be like the skies, and do the same for the clouds of bias and night of omission, and the storms of uninformed discussion and w:WP:Deletion war that make well-waged w:WP:Edit wars sometimes a necessity, the hurricanes of user banning and blocking debates, and the winter fog of confused policies and pointy essays, all of which so often darken the day of wikipedia.

Insofar as it is, unfortunately, the limit of many peoples knowledge or scholarly research, the metaphor is apt, and it will not be not unfair to say that we are its skies. As we all should know, w:WP:Wikipedia is not a reliable source. On the contrary, and fortunately for us, WQ:Wikiquote is a reliable source, or should be. At least to the question of what people once said. As for those sources themselves, of course w:WP:Caveat emptor: WQ:Let the buyer beware. Who first said that? I hope it will be easy to find out.

And that, colleagues, is why we are here. Not for ourselves as "Editors", but rather for ourselves as "Readers". Any "encyclopedia" editor who is not first and last a reader, but who is willing to delete and fight against constructive contributors, is not much more than a w:WP:Tendentious ignoramus, and it is WQ:Not a personal attack to critique words and rebuke bad behavior in this way. All wikipedians should willing to w:WP:Do the research when called upon to do so in a discussion, or when offered an uncited quote from an anonymous or intermediate editor, and to provide the reference to a quote cited from w:WP:Source unknown, by learning how to w:WP:Search wikiquote before tolerated to regularly use the undo link in version histories.

That should be the basis of our WQ:Scholarly ethic: WQ:Readers first, writer/contributors second, editors last. Jaredscribe (talk) 04:01, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

• @Jaredscribe: I would suggest you spend more than a "few minutes" contributing to a project before you try to write your doctoral disseration on how it should work. GMG^talk 17:47, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

@Jaredscribe: I did not read your complete post above, but I do agree with your sentiments regarding the Welcome message.

When I joined the ENWQ I received a welcome message that started like this:

• Hello, Ottawahitech, and welcome to the English Wikiquote, a free compendium of quotations written collaboratively by people just like you!
  • For a quick overview of what Wikiquote is, read Wikiquote:Wikiquote.
    • See also What Wikiquote is not for common activities that Wikiquote does not support...

Ottawahitech (talk) 20:15, 2 December 2023 (UTC)

WALLOFTEXT, the previous one tried to argue like that is Ilovemydoodle (talk · contributions). If you want to reform this project, please do it step by step instead of requesting like a DDOS attack. Lemonaka (talk) 00:04, 3 December 2023 (UTC)

I am flagged by the spam filter, again

I tried to restore a quote removed from Colombia in 2018, but I get the following message:

• The text you wanted to publish was blocked by the spam filter. This is probably caused by a link to a forbidden external site. The following text is what triggered our spam filter: worldaffairsjournal.org

Just wondering where is the documentation that says worldaffairsjournal.org is a forbidden external site? Ottawahitech (talk) 20:08, 2 December 2023 (UTC) Corrected wq-link Ottawahitech (talk) 02:10, 3 December 2023 (UTC)

@Ottawahitech I've checked your abuse log, no recent log has been found, can you specify the page you edit? Lemonaka (talk) 00:05, 3 December 2023 (UTC)

So sorry @Lemonaka, I guess I was too much in a hurry and not thinking:

• I misspelled the page I was trying to edit
• It was the spam filter not the abuse filter this time

However my question still stands: where is the documentation that says worldaffairsjournal.org is a forbidden external site?

Thanks in advance, Ottawahitech (talk) 02:15, 3 December 2023 (UTC)

The site is listed on the Global Blacklist. Saroj (talk) 02:25, 3 December 2023 (UTC)

If you believe a site on Global Blacklist should be added for specific use, you can add them by using <nowiki></nowiki> Lemonaka (talk) 09:25, 3 December 2023 (UTC)