Wikiquote:Village pump archive 42

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Site notice

Hello, just a random passer-by here. For as long as I can remember (i.e. many years), Wikiquote's site notice (MediaWiki:Sitenotice) has contained a link to "Merge your accounts". The SUL account merging program began in 2008, if memory serves me well, and seems to me to no longer be something that needs promotion at the top of every page. Would you consider removing this link from your site notice? Thanks, This, that and the other (talk) 09:58, 25 April 2014 (UTC)

• Done. Cheers! BD2412 T 13:53, 25 April 2014 (UTC)
• Now the sitenotice looks rather barren. Should we add something else to it? BD2412 T 16:05, 25 April 2014 (UTC)

  We could dispense with the notice until such time as there is something new and important to notify everybody about; or perhaps we could add something like the MediaWiki:Anonnotice that is not being displayed to registered users. I dunno. ~ Ningauble (talk) 16:58, 25 April 2014 (UTC)

  We could add links to useful pages like Wikiquote:How to edit a page for newer contributors to be able to quickly see and access. Here's my idea of a sitenotice that looks less empty:

  Welcome to the English Wikiquote! · Learn how to contribute · Help copyright cleanup

  Does that look alright? Wording can be changed of course. --GeorgeBarnick (talk) 21:45, 7 May 2014 (UTC)

  I am not thrilled about using the sitenotice for this purpose, or adding things to it just to fill it up. A welcome message does not need to be included in every single page view.

  Note that at Wikipedia the sitenotice is usually empty, and is only used for announcements of the highest importance to all users. It was used there only twice in all of last year: once for about eight hours to warn about a serious bug in page rendering, and once for about a week to announce discussion of a major change to the editing interface. ~ Ningauble (talk) 15:40, 8 May 2014 (UTC)

Demotion of administrators hear with less than 10 logged action in 2 years?

I have been thinking that we need to demote inactive admins here with less than 10 logged action in 2 years, since admin position is not "get it and have it for life". --~ Golden_burg111 20:33, 8 May 2014 (UTC)

User:UDScott: I would like your opinion on this because you're a bureaucrat here, thanks! --~ Golden_burg111 20:24, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

I certainly would understand marking such admins as being 'inactive' (probably even before the proposed length of time), but I'm not sure I understand the value in "demoting" them. As we seem to chronically be in a state of having a shortage of admins, I don't see the harm in such users retaining the admin rights should they ever return to active work here. After all, it's not like we suddenly do not trust them. And I know it does not happen often, but I have seen some "inactive" admins return, albeit briefly, on occasion to fix something or revert some vandalism. Again, I don't see the harm, but I'd certainly listen to others' opinions on the matter... ~ UDScott (talk) 19:49, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

I would support this with due process, such as a talk page message and an email giving them a window in which to become active again before demotion. BD2412 T 19:43, 13 May 2014 (UTC)

We do something like this at Wikibooks, which is my main project. The idea when the project was busier (I think) was that polices could possibly change over a long time and people might need to readjust when they came back. And as BD2412 suggests we always contact them first, via a talk page note and email. Today I see it being realistic about who is around, together with the minor security feature that it is less likley a derilict privilaged account will get hacked and used for no good. But even I admit that is only an academic concern. Thenub314 (talk) 19:54, 13 May 2014 (UTC)

Wikidata Phase 2 for Wikiquote

Hey,

(Sorry for writing in English. I hope someone can translate this for me where necessary.)

Not long ago we enabled language links via Wikidata for Wikiquote. This seems to have gone rather smoothly. Thanks to everyone who helped! But as you know this was only the start. What is actually more interesting is access to the data in Wikidata. We have planned this for June 10th (unless any issues arise). You will then be able to use the data in your articles. I hope this will open up a lot of new opportunities for you.

If you have any questions d:Wikidata:Wikiquote is a good place to find help.

On behalf of Lydia Pintscher, John F. Lewis (talk) 16:03, 17 May 2014 (UTC)

I would like to know what data, specifically, is proposed to be used in Wikiquote articles. I note that the linked Wikidata:Wikiquote page "explicitly excludes the usage of Wikidata to store the actual content of Wikiquote articles." [emphasis in original] I think it should be proposed and discussed in concrete terms here, at Wikiquote, before any of this (non-content?) data is included in Wikiquote articles. ~ Ningauble (talk) 17:30, 17 May 2014 (UTC)

Nothing is being 'proposed'. This is the process of enabling the data access for Wikiquote so the local community can, through local discussions, use any data from Wikidata through Lua. No data is being included without the local community doing it thus a local discussion is unnecessary as this is being enabled on all Wikiquotes and is already enabled on Wikipedia and Wikisource with language links on Commons. John F. Lewis (talk) 20:05, 17 May 2014 (UTC)

Ok, I understand there is no proposal to use this data access mechanism for any particular purpose, just to enable its use for undetermined purposes. I am not sure discussion of purpose is entirely irrelevant, but if there is no proposal to actually use it then discussion might be considered moot if the rollout imposes no risk or overhead.

Looking for information about how Wikidata Phase 2 is used at our big sister project, I found Wikipedia:Wikidata, where Phase 2 is briefly described as specifically pertaining to infoboxes. This usage was discussed at the time the mechanism was being rolled out a year ago at Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Wikidata Phase 2, while other uses (i.e. in article text) were deprecated, at least for the time being.

(Regarding infoboxes in particular, this wiki does not use them. They were discussed briefly a couple years ago at Votes for deletion/Template:Infobox, and the decision to deprecate them was recently ratified at a second nomination. However, some other language editions of Wikiquote do use them.)

Does anybody have some bright ideas about how we might use this data access mechanism, or is the rollout purposeless? ~ Ningauble (talk) 17:25, 19 May 2014 (UTC)

I'm probably in the minority here, but I would move page content to Wikidata. Specifically, I would move every quote there and associate it with the information regarding the original author, work, publication date, topics, and notes on the quote, and make Wikiquote pages include quotes by calling them like a template. The actual pages would therefore only have a header providing biographical information about the person or a general description of the work or topic, and external links and categories. The quotes would be supplied automatically based on their relationship with the person or topic to whom the page related. Mechanisms would need to be devised to continue providing attributions and misattributions with the appropriate categorizations, but I think this would make many of our content pages much less haphazard in terms of the quotes that can be found on them. BD2412 T 03:29, 20 May 2014 (UTC)

re that, The monolingual data type is being worked on at the moment, this would allow for strings of text to be added with an associated language so this will allow the ability to move all quotes over to Wikidata and have them pulled from there. So what BD said is what will be possible in around a month. I'll speak with Lydia and see if I can get a rough date for this and discuss about the possibility of having this feature rolled out around the same date as this is being rolled out so Wikiquote users can start populating our database with quotes! :) John F. Lewis (talk) 14:58, 23 May 2014 (UTC)

Although I think that would be great, please note my own disclaimer that I expect that I am in the minority in thinking so. Cheers! BD2412 T 15:16, 23 May 2014 (UTC)

Maybe so but it is something the community can and should discuss. If anyone wants to start an official discussion over the matter in preparation, I'd be happy to check it regularly and throw in comments from a Wikidata user's perspective or a technical perspective. John F. Lewis (talk) 19:21, 23 May 2014 (UTC)

I spoke to Lydia (sorry for the long delay :p), she said she is expecting the monolingual datatype to be released within the next 4 to 6 weeksish. John F. Lewis (talk) 16:49, 26 May 2014 (UTC)

I have refrained from comment thus far, as I am not yet adequately aware of the intricacies of the proposals and options being considered, but I presently have a definite antipathy towards what I perceive might be pushes to eviscerate MOST of the work done here, and eliminate many of the options, and relative ease with which they are done here, and to perhaps even more greatly empower those more inclined to highly constrictive constraints upon the presentation options than they already have been.
I do not claim to know to what extent my suspicions or perceptions might be correct, but they are what they are, and at this point I can state that I am certainly NOT inclined to support any such proposals. ~ ♞☤☮♌Kalki·†·⚓⊙☳☶⚡ 17:15, 26 May 2014 (UTC)

An example of how data can now be imported from Wikidata is authority control (that's authority in the library sense). The English Wikipedia article w:Bill Thompson (technology writer) has the template {{Authority control}}; but if you edit the page source, you will see that it includes no data. However, on the page, it is data rich - all the values are puled in from Wikidata. That template already exists on Wikiquote, but without the Wikidata integration - currently, the data has to be entered manually. There's an example on the corresponding article, Bill Thompson. Pigsonthewing (talk) 13:13, 13 June 2014 (UTC)

Media Viewer

Greetings, my apologies for writing in English.

I wanted to let you know that Media Viewer will be released to this wiki in the coming weeks. Media Viewer allows readers of Wikimedia projects to have an enhanced view of files without having to visit the file page, but with more detail than a thumbnail. You can try Media Viewer out now by turning it on in your Beta Features. If you do not enjoy Media Viewer or if it interferes with your work after it is turned on you will be able to disable Media Viewer as well in your preferences. I invite you to share what you think about Media Viewer and how it can be made better in the future.

Thank you for your time. - Keegan (WMF) 21:29, 23 May 2014 (UTC)

--This message was sent using MassMessage. Was there an error? Report it!

I just wanted to say that I love these beta features. --Spannerjam (talk) 08:42, 6 August 2014 (UTC)

This is no longer in beta: it was rolled out as a default feature more than a month ago, and is described by Wikimedia Foundation Vice President of Engineering and Product Development Erik Moeller as an official "core site feature".

Personally, I never saw the need for a slideshow gadget "to discover other images in a page" – they are already right there, on the page. However, it might be very convenient for folks who want to browse just the pictures, without all those pesky quotations and bothersome citations that for some reason clutter our pages (e.g. to scroll through the 23 images on today's Main Page).

From my perspective, the best thing I can say about it is that it does not affect me. I always open images in a new browser tab, which does not launch the new gadget. This innovation only comes into play if you click through an image to leave the Wikiquote page you are reading – something I almost never do. Does anybody else here actually use this gadget to browse images?

Even though I don't like it, and consider it a waste of programming resources, I wouldn't question the developers about it because they have made it abundantly clear that they are not interested in the opinions of mere contributors. ~ Ningauble (talk) 16:31, 6 August 2014 (UTC)

I also find no use for the gadget here, along with many other things which get more vigorously imposed by some, but fortunately this is a development which can easily be turned off, on what is a prominent option on the image page, and I have done so immediately on each of the projects I have thus far encountered it. I suppose on some projects it might be useful for some, but I find it an impediment to actually accessing information on the images, and their use within projects and on others. I would actually prefer the default for it be "OFF" — but I do not consider it all that big a deal. ~ ♞☤☮♌Kalki·†·⚓⊙☳☶⚡ 21:55, 6 August 2014 (UTC) + tweak

Good and bad alterations in the new software

In the current iteration of software, the defaults for image displays seem to have extremely altered from previous ones, by which a regular column-like format for placement of most images could be maintained, with minimal disruption to the body text. I believe the new settings are aesthetically unpleasant, and sometimes devastating to the appearance of some pages where captions have become VERY narrow bands of text below very narrow images, much smaller than the previous default, which maintained a standard width for all thumbs that were not specified to have a different width. I have had to increase the default image size in my preferences to get most images to display to what I believe to be an adequate size, and this increases the size of some others to be far more than desirable sizes.

In searching the Preferences for some form of option to change what appears to be new default settings, I saw that the new software includes an option in the "Gadget" section to "Hide thumbnail images". This should be be a useful and welcome change to those with slower connections or who for any reasons simply do not wish to view any of the thumbnail graphics on pages. The settings do eliminate all "Thumbnail" images from pages of the wiki, while still permitting the fewer images that are not associated with Thumbnails to display, such as those on the Main Page and archives of the QOTD layout on it, such as Quote of the day/April 2014.

This new and very useful option addresses a long standing problem for some, and the programmers should certainly be thanked for adding it, but I also believe that the previous behavior of HOW the thumbnails display, when displaying, should be restored for aesthetic and practical reasons. I am posting this note to provide opportunities to make immediate use of the new good options to eliminate thumbnails from one's personal viewing of the wiki pages, and for anyone else to make comments on what I believe to be bad aspects of the new default displays of thumbnails, which now makes using them without specific "pixel" specs a far more haphazard process, as to how they will appear in relation to other images and other elements on the page. ~ ♞☤☮♌Kalki·†·⚓⊙☳☶⚡ 09:40, 28 May 2014 (UTC) + tweaks

Gadget-hideimages is not new, it has been around since last July. Note that it is not, as advertised[1], useful for users with slow connections. The css attribute "display:none" affects how the page is rendered, but the whole page is still loaded, images and all. The same thing happens when banners and closed discussions (and, formerly, interwiki links in the sidebar) are "hidden". ~ Ningauble (talk) 16:46, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

Yes, I am seeing this now too - and I am also dismayed. The uneven picture size makes the pages look much worse - and often the size is so small that it looks ridiculous (as does the caption). Not an improvement as far as I am concerned. On the positive side, having that new gadget is good and hopefully help those with slow connections. ~ UDScott (talk) 15:19, 28 May 2014 (UTC)

I do not actually understand precisely what is determining the current rendered size of various images, which can vary greatly, but believe a return to a relatively standard rendering width (which can be altered in preferences), is far more appropriate for use with captions, and for creating relatively predictable appearances of the images on the pages, than any other options could be. I hope that this can swiftly be restored. ~ ♞☤☮♌Kalki·†·⚓⊙☳☶⚡ 15:27, 28 May 2014 (UTC)

Fully agree. ~ UDScott (talk) 15:41, 28 May 2014 (UTC)

Another thing I have begun to notice with the new coding is that some pages apparently retain their old relatively stable arrangement when I open them, even with a browser with all caches purged, but if they are edited in any way the new coding alters the appearance of some images radically. This just occurred on a minor edit I did at Unitarian Universalism, and I had also previously noticed it on the G. K. Chesterton page and a few others. ~ ♞☤☮♌Kalki·†·⚓⊙☳☶⚡ 12:03, 29 May 2014 (UTC)

This is common for newly implemented changes in html generation: the effect is not seen until the cached version of the page on the server is refreshed. ~ Ningauble (talk) 16:35, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

I agree that the new default thumbnail sizing, where the width varies with the aspect ratio, is not an improvement. Given that thousands of manual width overrides have been removed in recent months in order to use uniform default widths, suddenly making the default non-uniform is an ill-considered and highly disruptive change! ~ Ningauble (talk) 16:35, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

Background: The change in image sizing was proposed at mw:Requests for comment/Square bounding boxes (wherein there was scant comment), tracked at bugzilla:63903, and implemented in MediaWiki release 1.24wmf6. It was apparently decided without consulting the user base on any of the content wikis, but there is currently some discussion after the fact at w:Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#Infobox Image.

Objections to this change have been raised at bugzilla:65945, where interested users may wish to join the discussion. ~ Ningauble (talk) 18:20, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

• I'm not sure bugzilla is the best place to have a discussion, it's not really meant for that. I will be following the discussion here, and there is some discussion at en:Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)#Infobox_Image as well. Can you describe to me: (a) the scope of the problem on wikiquote (can you give me some example pages), (b) whether this is an issue that can be fixed by altering templates (if so, which), (c) why wikiquote can/cannot use explicit width specifications, if that is important to the display, (d) how wikiquote dealt with differing user preferences in the past, and (e) more details on the changes "in recent months" which User:Ningauble refers to above? I'd like to gather more information about exactly how wikiquote is using "default-sized" thumbs. Thanks! cscott (talk) 19:27, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

I believe that it was more or less agreed to by most people in discussions on the matter, that the formerly widely used px specs on images should generally be removed, as they prevented those who wished to use smaller or larger px specs for various reasons from having these take effect on the images. I believe most involved here at this point strongly agree that for most images a standard width for most of them is preferable to the highly variable widths which the new software produces. I don't have time to comment much more, as I must be off again on a couple excursions soon, but I believe that whatever can be done to return to the previous defaults will probably be welcomed by most of us. ~ ♞☤☮♌Kalki·†·⚓⊙☳☶⚡ 20:38, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

Thanks, User:Kalki. There's some more discussion over on enwiki. Are there templates in use on wikiquote which would make it easy to add a new image option uniformly? That is, if the solution is a semantic image option (like, say, "onecolumn") could that be added to the images in question? What would the best layout for wikiquotes be? Cscott (talk) 23:48, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

In reply to many questions from Cscott above:

• (a) scope of the problem – I would describe the scope as very large relative to the size of this wiki. A couple examples are already cited in Kalki's post of 12:03, 29 May 2014 above. Further examples using a couple particular high aspect ratio images may be found here and here. (As noted above, you may need to refresh the server cache to see what has been wrought by the change.)
• (b) altering templates – Image use in Wikiquote articles is not templatized. See examples cited above for typical image usage employing standard wiki markup.
• (c) why wikiquote [sic] can/cannot use explicit width specifications – Of course we can. MediaWiki programmers can change the rendering of thousands of existing pages at one stroke. I don't think asking what is possible or impossible will shed much light on what is the best practice.
• (d) how wikiquote [sic] dealt with differing user preferences – It has not been discussed much. User preferences settings are enabled on this wiki by the default WMF configuration, which we have not messed with.
• (e) details on the changes "in recent months" – Here are two detailed examples, recent and older. Multiple users have been doing this, though not I myself. You can get some idea of the quantity by querying data dumps for edit summaries containing "strip out 144px spec" or similar language since about March 2013, though not all are tagged that way.
• (other 1) exactly how wikiquote [sic] is using "default-sized" thumbs – We have been using them exactly the way they have consistently worked for years, and had expected them to continue to do.
• (other 2) Are there templates in use – No. See (b) above.
• (other 3) could (like, say, "onecolumn") be added – As stated this is contingent on (other 2), so no.
• (other 4) What would the best layout for wikiquotes [sic] be? This question need not be couched in the subjunctive mood. As Kalki has already indicated above, common practice here has long preferred that images be aligned on the right with uniform width.

I would also like to comment on rationales given in the code commit for this change, which are two:

• A "Thumbnails for portrait-orientation images have always been 'too big'" – This opinion, however sincerely felt, does not appear to be widely shared in the community of Wikimedia contributors. Is there evidence of which I am unaware that community consensus on some content wikis have called for deprecating them?
• B "Parsoid/Visual Editor, which prefers square bounding boxes" – Notwithstanding the absurd anthropomorphism of this remark, I think the esthetic judgment of people in the community takes precedence over the putative preferences of a software construct that exists to serve them.

Let me also offer some answers to the all-important unasked question:
Why has Wikiquote been using the default?

• (i) Not to belabor the obvious, when the default result is satisfactory it is more convenient than fiddling with parameters.
• (ii) Heretofore, the default has provided the uniform widths referred to at (other 3) above. The desirability of this uniformity is indicated in an edit summary here. As mentioned by others above, the change wrecks this, which is the principal impetus for this thread.
• (iii) Consistent use of defaults avoids edit warring over individual cases. Our Image use policy has not even needed to provide size guidelines because wide acceptance of the default makes it a non-issue.
• (iv) As the size and resolution of computer screens in general use has increased over the years, the default width has been increased from time to time, and pages that use the default adjust automatically. I believe this underlies much of the activity at (e) above, as well as similar activity on past occasions when the default width increased.
• (v) I am not sure this has been foremost in most people's minds when using defaults but, as mentioned by others above, overriding the default overrides user preference settings.

Don't get me started on whether Bugzilla is the right place for users to address program issues. I will only mention that users are regularly advised to do so, and that you would probably be unaware of this discussion had I not taken the advice. ~ Ningauble (talk) 19:38, 1 June 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for all the input, everyone. The change has been reverted and we'll return to the drawing board on this one. It's likely the 'upright' flag will be next to be examined (see bug 63904), so keep your comments and use-cases coming. We'll try to do a better job soliciting input outside the wikitech-l community next time, my apologies for that. But again, thank for you everyone who patiently provided input and feedback. The benefit of a quick dev cycle is that we can also quickly revert things when we get them wrong. Cscott (talk) 02:53, 2 June 2014 (UTC)

Thank you much, for the quick reversion to the previous norm. I just noted the circumstances as I edited the Sri Aurobindo and Rainbow pages, and edited Chesterton just as a third confirmation. Like I believe most would agree, the even width is MUCH better overall to view and to work with. ~ ♞☤☮♌Kalki·†·⚓⊙☳☶⚡ 11:37, 2 June 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for taking the user feedback seriously Cscott. (The commit message for the revert seems to indicate that only the Wikipedia discussion was deemed consequential, but we are used to being overshadowed by the mother ship here.)

As a retired software professional myself, I fully appreciate the difficulty of anticipating the impact that changes will have on user needs and expectations. Who knew that users considered width more important than largest dimension as the defaulting parameter? (From a user perspective, who knew that was what "square bounding box" meant?) I used to tell people, somewhat overstating the case, that nailing down user requirements is the hardest part of the job and everything else is easy.

"Agile" and "rapid" development methodologies can indeed make it easier to recover from missteps, but it is still the case, as Fred Brooks sagely said, that "much of the essence of building a program is in fact the debugging of the specification." Discovering requirements by an incremental process of trial and error is certainly better than committing to mistaken specifications in an all-or-nothing process, but it takes a thick skin when users and developers are each baffled about what the other is thinking. When users sometimes seem a bit testy, bear in mind that it is the developer's responsibility to figure out what the requirements are, one way or another.

I wish you the best of luck back at the drawing board. ~ Ningauble (talk) 14:32, 2 June 2014 (UTC)

Harlan Wolff

"There is a very simple reason that our democracies are destroying our freedoms and taking us on a cycle of endless violence. Medical opinion is that about three per-cent of the human race suffers from an absence of empathy. Unfortunately the greatest flaw in democracy is we don't get to choose who we want to lead us - it is the candidates that decide they should be in charge and we merely choose between these self-appointed megalomaniacs. As Plato said - anybody that wants to make a career in politics must clearly have something wrong with them. At the end of the Nuremberg Nazi war crimes trials the conclusion of academia was that 'evil is the absence of empathy.' It seems clear that democracy means we are merely offered the opportunity to choose our next psychopath. If you accept this simple conclusion then the enslaving of populations and the warmongering is explained, and the dreadful condition of the world we live in ceases to be an enigma." - Harlan Wolff —This unsigned comment is by 58.10.144.190‎ (talk • contribs) .

In response to the lucid but rather pessimistic outlook represented by the quote of this post, I respond with a quote of one my favorite optimistic princes of paradox, which I was just about to post at Now:

• The cause which is blocking all progress today is the subtle scepticism which whispers in a million ears that things are not good enough to be worth improving. If the world is good we are revolutionaries, if the world is evil we must be conservatives. These essays, futile as they are considered as serious literature, are yet ethically sincere, since they seek to remind men that things must be loved first and improved afterwards.

• G. K. Chesterton, "In Defence Of A New Edition" - Preface to the second edition of The Defendant (1902)

So it goes… ⨀∴☥☮♥∵ॐ …Blessings. ~ ♞☤☮♌Kalki·†·⚓⊙☳☶⚡ 11:42, 2 June 2014 (UTC)

Can we get some kind of a Wikiquote to Wikipedia page title comparison?

As a general rule, I like to match our titles to Wikipedia's corresponding titles, with the notable exception that Wikipedia uses singular titles for common nouns like Horse while we use Horses. However, Wikipedia also has frequent page moves when new topics occupy old names, and is inconsistent with how it treats those plural forms of singular common nouns. Basically, I'd like a list of all of our titles comparing them to whatever the corresponding title is at Wikipedia so that, for example, we can see if we have a common noun where they have the title of a work. Since most of our pages also link to the corresponding Wikipedia page, this will also help us to avoid misdirected links. If at all possible, I would also like to see when the title of the corresponding Wikipedia article changes, so that we can determine if we need to make a change to our own title. BD2412 T 15:43, 7 June 2014 (UTC)

Template:Authority control

Could someone good at template/ Lua please help at Template talk:Authority control#ORCID? Pigsonthewing (talk) 17:31, 9 June 2014 (UTC)

Wikidata Phase 2 is here

Hey,

(Sorry for writing in English. I hope someone can translate this for me where necessary.)

Today the ability for all Wikiquotes to query and access the data available in Wikidata has been enabled. This will open the opportunity for all Wikiquote's to start sharing the same data as other languages as well as other projects. You can read up on the Lua implementation of Wikidata at this page which includes basics of how to query the data and display certain properties. This section may also be of use to the community.

If you have any questions d:Wikidata:Wikiquote is a good place to find help.

Thanks, John F. Lewis (talk) 18:48, 10 June 2014 (UTC)

Some questions

• How you check the edit count of other users, is there any list?
• How you check the number of articles created by a user?
• How you check the recently created articles?

Thanks. OccultZone (talk) 14:10, 17 June 2014 (UTC)

There are a couple external edit counters shown at the foot of Special:Contributions/username called "supercount" and "yaec" (Yet Another Edit Counter). You can also see edit totals for each WMF wiki at Special:CentralAuth/username. Some discrepancy between the counters may be expected.

Articles created by a contributor can be seen at Special:Contributions/username by selecting Namespace = "(Main)" and checking the box for "Only show edits that are page creations". It includes non-article pages in mainspace, such as redirects.

Recently created articles are listed at Special:NewPages. ~ Ningauble (talk) 15:29, 17 June 2014 (UTC)

(You may also want to see: WQ stats) ~ DanielTom (talk) 16:55, 17 June 2014 (UTC)

Thanks both! OccultZone (talk) 12:11, 18 June 2014 (UTC)

Twitter: WeAreWikipedia

The @WeAreWikipedia account on Twitter is run by a different Wikipedian each week. This week it's me, and I'm trying to include something about each sister project. Do drop by, and follow it if that's your thing. Pigsonthewing (talk) 14:43, 17 June 2014 (UTC)

Media Viewer is now live on this wiki

Media Viewer lets you see images in larger size

Greetings,

The Wikimedia Foundation's Multimedia team is happy to announce that Media Viewer was just released on this site today.

Media Viewer displays images in larger size when you click on their thumbnails, to provide a better viewing experience. Users can now view images faster and more clearly, without having to jump to separate pages — and its user interface is more intuitive, offering easy access to full-resolution images and information, with links to the file repository for editing. The tool has been tested extensively across all Wikimedia wikis over the past six months as a Beta Feature and has been released to the largest Wikipedias, all language Wikisources, and the English Wikivoyage already.

If you do not like this feature, you can easily turn it off by clicking on "Disable Media Viewer" at the bottom of the screen, pulling up the information panel (or in your your preferences) whether you have an account or not. Learn more in this Media Viewer Help page.

Please let us know if you have any questions or comments about Media Viewer. You are invited to share your feedback in this discussion on MediaWiki.org in any language, to help improve this feature. You are also welcome to take this quick survey in English, en français, o español.

We hope you enjoy Media Viewer. Many thanks to all the community members who helped make it possible. - Fabrice Florin (WMF) (talk) 21:54, 19 June 2014 (UTC)

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"Further reading" sections

Last year October 2013 (see here) on the Village pump there was that further reading section should be added to a corresponding Wikipedia article, and successively (see here) a discussion to update the Wikiquote:What Wikiquote is not.

Now I just noticed the Wikiquote:Citing sources still has instructions, how to create Further reading sections, see here. This might be updated as well. -- Mdd (talk) 11:24, 24 June 2014 (UTC)

Request for comment at Talk:Isaac Newton#Quotes about Newton trimmed down

Removing 7 out of 42 quotes about Isaac Newton, see here, led to the dispute at Talk:Isaac Newton#Quotes about Newton trimmed down. Your further comments will be very much appreciated. -- Mdd (talk) 10:56, 14 July 2014 (UTC)

found the origin of this particular quote

I found this on www.warboats.org and SB2 Troy Norrell is the guy who quoted this saying. This has been a term that is now used in military and Police training for the past couple of years. Makes a lot of sense.

"Amateurs train until they get it right," said Norrell of the intensive training. "Professionals train until they can't get it wrong."

 SBT-22 is the U.S. Special Operations Command's premier riverine command, focusing on insertion and extraction of SEALs and other special operations forces in special operations around the world.
 
 For more news from Naval Special Warfare Group 4, visit www.navy.mil/local/nswg4.

Europe decimated

I just moved more than half the quotes in Europe to the talk page for being unsourced or undersourced. BD2412 T 18:15, 17 July 2014 (UTC)

TYT cite WQ

Cenk Uygur from The Young Turks, in a segment on the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, yesterday, shared a powerful quote by Martin Luther King, Jr. about love, citing the source from "WikiQuote" [sic]. Here is the video, for anyone interested. ~ DanielTom (talk) 19:08, 17 July 2014 (UTC)

He provides a good presentation of ideas, but it took me a while to actually notice the "Wikiquote" text — and once I did, I believed that I had noticed it before on some of his presentations — I am aware of other journalists and commentators who also prominently refer to us. Overall we are probably the most appropriate "first place" to look, though we still have many ranges of pages to develop. ~ ♞☤☮♌Kalki·†·⚓⊙☳☶⚡ 21:14, 17 July 2014 (UTC)

Categorization of Husbandry under Category:Management, request for comment

When 4 out 5 dictionaries mention Husbandry as specific type of management (see Talk:Husbandry#Definitions of husbandry), it should be evident that husbandry could be listed under the Category:Management, yet this is removed see here. Please comment here or at Talk:Husbandry. -- Mdd (talk) 19:52, 20 July 2014 (UTC)

NPOV dispute at Category:Business

A minor disagreement between two editors about Categorizing Business under Science has escalated into an NPOV dispute about the Introduction defining scope for the category. The opinions of a few other editors would be welcome on the category talk page. Thank you. ~ Ningauble (talk) 14:47, 21 July 2014 (UTC)

I have commented there. ~ UDScott (talk) 15:13, 21 July 2014 (UTC)

The initial idea is to simply mirror Wikipedia and Commons, how can this be considered NPOV? When there is support for initiatives like a Structured Wikiquote, why not support synchronisation between Wikiquote, Wikipedia, Commons and the other sisterprojects. -- Mdd (talk) 21:24, 21 July 2014 (UTC)

There are a lot of categorization elements for which we don't echo other projects - for example, not having categorization by year of birth and death, not categorizing films by studio, not having tons of categories about what town people were born in, what school they went to, and what illness they died of. Our categorization must serve the best ends of our particular project, after all. BD2412 T 11:29, 22 July 2014 (UTC)

This is not about some random specific Wikipedia categorization feature, but about a well established category, not only in Wikipedia or Commons, but in every mayor classification system for decades/centuries. -- Mdd (talk) 14:02, 22 July 2014 (UTC)

I understand that there is a scientific study of the economic relationships that define business. Nevertheless, I think it is a mistake to therefore consider all of "business" to fall under science. BD2412 T 15:17, 22 July 2014 (UTC)

Well that is something we both agree on, and is also stated at the beginning of the discussion. -- Mdd (talk) 16:41, 22 July 2014 (UTC)

┌─────────────────────┘
Two procedural points about this:

1. Please discuss this at Category talk:Business, not here. This Village Pump notice is a request for comment there, not a fork for arguing the issue in multiple venues. Forking the discussion impedes the consensus process.
2. Interested contributors are encouraged to seek consensus on the talk page, and to refrain from continuing to make tendentious edits to the content page (like this) until a consensus is reached.

Thank you. ~ Ningauble (talk) 18:38, 22 July 2014 (UTC)

RfC for new proposal to categorize the Category:Business under Category:Applied sciences and Category:Society

Please comment here. -- Mdd (talk) 08:44, 23 July 2014 (UTC)

Cezanne quotes

Looking for the origin and reference for the following quotes, supposedly said by Cezanne:

“I want to paint as I see,as I feel.”

"The turmoil of the world is resolved, deep down in the brain, into the same movement sensed by the eyes, the ears, the mouth and the nose, each with its own poetry"

“A work of art which did not begin in emotion is not a work of art”

The second one may or may not be authentic Cézanne, as it comes from Joachim Gasquet's Cézanne: A Memoir with Conversations, in a passage where scholars think Cézanne sounds suspiciously like Gasquet. I haven't looked, but my guess is that you should be able to find the others via Google Books and a bit of effort tracking down clues. - Macspaunday (talk) 13:20, 27 July 2014 (UTC)

Updates to Wikidata documentation for Wikiquote

Hi all!

I am a current Wikimedia OPW intern working specifically on Wikidata outreach and wanted to let you know that the Wikidata documentation for Wikiquote has recently been updated and hopefully will prove useful for the Wikiquote community and encourage further collaboration. If interested, please have a look at Wikidata:Wikiquote. You can also leave any feedback on the talk page.

Cheers, -Thepwnco (talk) 20:04, 31 July 2014 (UTC)

The above linked overview of Wikidata:Wikiquote concludes the section on What is Wikidata? with this prospectus:

"Wikidata will provide structure for all the knowledge stored in its sister projects including Wikiquote."
[emphasis added]

When I last checked, this wiki's 55,330 articles contained more than 200 megabytes of content.[2] I do not doubt that the structure of Wikiquote might be improved in various respects, but from the Wikidata overview it is not clear to me how Wikidata will structure all of the knowledge represented herein, which consists mostly (What is Wikiquote?) of quotations. ~ Ningauble (talk) 15:30, 1 August 2014 (UTC)

Dr Dobb's Journal

I've just created Dr Dobb's Journal and added an anon quite; I'd be grateful if someone could check (and perhaps improve) my work, please. Pigsonthewing (talk) 11:19, 9 August 2014 (UTC)

I've added a similar quote, at Burnett Streeter. How should these related items link to each other? Pigsonthewing (talk) 14:02, 9 August 2014 (UTC)

You could add a note after the quote & source, saying "Compare: [the other quote]", or just "Cf." ~ DanielTom (talk) 22:55, 16 August 2014 (UTC)

Help page link in left column?

Hello,

I apologize if this is the wrong place for this, but I'm not familiar with Wikiquote and have never done any editing here or even used the site as reader/visitor. Which is why I was clicking the link mentioned.

Is there a reason that "Help" in the main column on the left takes you to here, which is the MediaWiki Help page? Nothing there seems to mention Wikiquote and appears to be exclusively meant for MediaWiki users. Does Wikiquote really not have any help pages of its own/pages in help namespace? Not even a single general introduction page? I thought I would let someone know in case it's not supposed to link there. If I'm mistaken however, can someone please explain the reason for the lack of such a page? (It seems rather vital IMHO.) Thanks! LibertyOrDeath (talk) 22:18, 16 August 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for bringing this up, it needs to be fixed. It should be linking to Help:Contents. ~ DanielTom (talk) 22:50, 16 August 2014 (UTC)

Y Fixed. Good catch. (I am not sure when the default system configuration was broken – it used to work just fine.) ~ Ningauble (talk) 15:16, 17 August 2014 (UTC)

Bot activity should be shown by default

Why has the default on bots in the Recent changes list become "Hide bots" and one must manually select "Show bots" ? There were extensive alterations and deletions from pages by CommonsDelinker‎ (talk · contributions) earlier today, caused by an overzealous and quite idiotic deletion at the commons, which fortunately was soon reverted. I restored the material here, but I would not have noticed ANY of these removals at all, had not the image deleted been a very prominent one on my "Chalkboard" page which I soon noticed. I do not believe registered users should need to "opt in" at every glance of "Recent changes" to keep track of bot edits. ~ ♞☤☮♌Kalki·†·⚓⊙☳☶⚡ 12:15, 17 August 2014 (UTC)

"Hide bots" has not recently become the default, it has been that way since before my time here. The way I deal with this is to maintain browser shortcuts ("bookmarks" or "favorites" or whatever various browsers call it) for permanent links to extended versions of "Recent changes", "New pages", &etc. I always use the extended versions, but I doubt that most users are interested in them. ~ Ningauble (talk) 14:07, 30 August 2014 (UTC)

You might be right, but I was responding to the fact that I previously saw MUCH of that bot's activities, and could remedy or even revert the often extensive losses to pages that occurred. It probably relates to some relatively recent changes in that bot's status here. I have taken that into consideration, and will attempt to do a manual "Show bots" display of changes on a more regular basis. ~ ♞☤☮♌Kalki·†·⚓⊙☳☶⚡ 14:22, 30 August 2014 (UTC)

CommonsDelinker has been a locally registered bot since 2012,[3] but may not have been using the flag consistently. It is not registered at every wiki, and would need to keep track of where the flag is and is not allowed. ~ Ningauble (talk) 14:52, 30 August 2014 (UTC)

Letter petitioning WMF to reverse recent decisions

The Wikimedia Foundation recently created a new feature, "superprotect" status. The purpose is to prevent pages from being edited by elected administrators -- but permitting WMF staff to edit them. It has been put to use in only one case: to protect the deployment of the Media Viewer software on German Wikipedia, in defiance of a clear decision of that community to disable the feature by default, unless users decide to enable it.

If you oppose these actions, please add your name to this letter. If you know non-Wikimedians who support our vision for the free sharing of knowledge, and would like to add their names to the list, please ask them to sign an identical version of the letter on change.org.

• Letter to Wikimedia Foundation: Superprotect and Media Viewer
• Letter on change.org

-- JurgenNL (talk) 17:35, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

Process ideas for software development

Hello,

I am notifying you that a brainstorming session has been started on Meta to help the Wikimedia Foundation increase and better affect community participation in software development across all wiki projects. Basically, how can you be more involved in helping to create features on Wikimedia projects? We are inviting all interested users to voice their ideas on how communities can be more involved and informed in the product development process at the Wikimedia Foundation.

I and the rest of my team welcome you to participate. We hope to see you on Meta.

Kind regards, -- Rdicerb (WMF) talk 22:15, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

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Usurpation being usurped.

Just a friendly notice to the community that (if my understanding of the situation is correct) as of September 15, there will no long be local usurpation of usernames for editors requesting a name change. All of that is going to be done globally, at Meta. BD2412 T 20:51, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

Not just usurpation, but all username changes:  My understanding is that as of September 15 the ability to rename user accounts will be removed from the bureaucrat toolkit, and will be handled only by Global renamers and by Stewards. ~ Ningauble (talk) 16:36, 26 August 2014 (UTC)

Those bastards! Well, people had better start seeking adminship, or we'll be sitting around with nothing to do. BD2412 T 18:42, 26 August 2014 (UTC)

And they say technology isn't destroying jobs... ~ DanielTom (talk) 22:04, 26 August 2014 (UTC)

It is About time that that the utterly RIDICULOUS blacklisting of About . com be removed.

Ever few months for some time now I have encountered this problem when I have tried to cite some relevant article at About.com — which is a MAJOR source of info on the internet. I have NEVER understood by what ridiculous asinine irrationality this site was ever put on the blacklist here at all but it is about time that his ridiculous situation end. I just tried to cite an article at Urban Legends there, relevant to a bogus misattribution to Bill Cosby and was not able to make the necessary citation. This is just to post a note here to make this rather appalling situation a bit more prominent, and hopefully this idiocy will SOON be ended. ~ ♞☤☮♌Kalki·†·⚓⊙☳☶⚡ 23:34, 27 August 2014 (UTC) + tweak

• I would support the removal of About.com from the blacklist - I don't see the harm in being able to cite from this source. ~ UDScott (talk) 00:21, 28 August 2014 (UTC)
• Me too. About.com's articles are sometimes written by the experts and prolific writers on the subject. OccultZone (talk) 00:37, 28 August 2014 (UTC)
• Strictly speaking, the problem is not that we are unable to cite About.com, but that we are unable to link to it. There's no rule requiring a citation to contain a link. BD2412 T 12:53, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

  While an online source can be unambiguously identified without literally linking to it, that is rather inconvenient for readers. If it is citable then it ought to be linkable, and if it is unworthy of linking then it is probably unworthy of citing. In extreme situations, where a site is generally execrable but a particular page reference is important, the page can be individually whitelisted. ~ Ningauble (talk) 13:17, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

• I agree with de-blacklisting. It is listed under quote aggregators in the blacklist but that is an completely mistaken characterization for the whole site. About.com should be used with discrimination because its quality ranges from excelent research to utter rubbish, but the same may be said of many other sites that are allowed here.

  When linking to sites having uneven quality I think it is particularly important to avoid using bare links (of which I disapprove generally) and to be sure the citation text adequately describes the nature of the linked source, if only to demonstrate that it is being cited with thoughtful discrimination. ~ Ningauble (talk) 13:07, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

As their seems to be no significant opposition to the proposal, and I believe most people can recognize the site should never have been blacklisted in the first place, can this removal form the list now be expedited by an admin? I have already encountered another blockage to linking a relevant article there, from one here. ~ ♞☤☮♌Kalki·†·⚓⊙☳☶⚡ 16:09, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

Y Done without objection. ~ Ningauble (talk) 12:14, 31 August 2014 (UTC)

Thanks, and blessings. ~ ♞☤☮♌Kalki·†·⚓⊙☳☶⚡ 12:21, 31 August 2014 (UTC)

Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope

There has been long term suppression of attempts to add to or change the page for Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope and some other films beyond very narrow limits, often clearly excluding MAJOR statements from inclusion (as indicated by activity from November 2011 - present, and today, today, and today). This film certainly has been a major culture influence since its release, and, though I do not support treating ANY guidelines that might be devised as absolute mandates, ever, believe that this film, like the clearly major film Casablanca before it, should NOT be bound to the general guidelines for limits, which some would seek to treat as absolutely mandatory LIMITS for all.

As previously most people involved saw the clear good sense of REPUDIATING asinine absolutist ASSUMPTIONS in regard to Casablanca, I am requesting that another clear and definite exception to such general suggestions be made. This is to help prevent any further attempts at treating what should ALWAYS be regarded as guidelines developed as suggestions by users, and ALWAYS subject to EXCEPTIONS determinable by dialogue among those concerned with individual pages, AS IF they were ABSOLUTE mandates of either LEGAL requirements or of some "Absolute AUTHORITY" for ALL pages — which IS and has always been an assumption I hold to be fouler than any crock of crap, which I believe should always be denounced as firmly as possible by any responsible individual who rejects authoritarian absolutism in regard to all things of human value. ~ ♞☤☮♌Kalki·†·⚓⊙☳☶⚡ 17:58, 29 August 2014 (UTC) + tweaks

Oh so butthurt back there. You love ranting your mouth off when nothing's working your way have you? And that bold italics looks like lame comedy from where I'm sitting. Can't bear with the limits? You can leave. You're just as bad as AdamDeanHall and his sly editing. --Eaglestorm (talk) 05:49, 30 August 2014 (UTC)

I am just now checking in here, and I will state that you, Eaglestorm, whoever you are or whatever you might seek to seem, are someone who has long seemed a quite ignorant and confused person very prone to attempting to insult and denigrate those who do not agree with your obviously limited mental and moral capacities. I do not expect the truth of my words will be readily apparent to you, nor acceptable to your dispositions, but I do hope and trust what truths I indicate can and must become increasingly apparent to those who CAN be more aware and appreciative of general truths about MANY things, and that even you might grow to become more aware and appreciative of their truth and their worth. ~ ♞☤☮♌Kalki·†·⚓⊙☳☶⚡ 12:33, 30 August 2014 (UTC) + tweaks

I encourage everyone to please confine your remarks to the merits of the question, which is about improving the article, rather than the merits of people involved in editing or discussing the article. Thank you. ~ Ningauble (talk) 13:51, 30 August 2014 (UTC)

Examining the current version of the article, it seems to me that there is an excess of plot-centric material and a deficit of famously memorable lines. The Casablanca article is an instructive comparison: it features many quotes that are so widely repeated they are familiar to people who have never even seen the film – they have become proverbial – and it does not contain lengthy scenes of plot development (up to twice the recommended length for dialogues).

I am open to persuasion that an exception might be made for this film, but I think one might first give some attention to trimming less famously quoteworthy material and then see if there is room enough for famous quotes that have stood the test of time. It has been many years since I saw this film, first released before the average Wikimedian was born, but it seems to me that this arch melodrama had lines more memorable than much of what appears in the present article. ~ Ningauble (talk) 13:51, 30 August 2014 (UTC)