Wikiversity:Colloquium/archives/April 2023

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The Wikimedia Foundation tests the switch between its first and secondary data centers. This will make sure that Wikipedia and the other Wikimedia wikis can stay online even after a disaster. To make sure everything is working, the Wikimedia Technology department needs to do a planned test. This test will show if they can reliably switch from one data centre to the other. It requires many teams to prepare for the test and to be available to fix any unexpected problems.

All traffic will switch on 26 April. The test will start at 14:00 UTC.

Unfortunately, because of some limitations in MediaWiki, all editing must stop while the switch is made. We apologize for this disruption, and we are working to minimize it in the future.

You will be able to read, but not edit, all wikis for a short period of time.

You will not be able to edit for up to an hour on Wednesday 26 April 2023.
If you try to edit or save during these times, you will see an error message. We hope that no edits will be lost during these minutes, but we can't guarantee it. If you see the error message, then please wait until everything is back to normal. Then you should be able to save your edit. But, we recommend that you make a copy of your changes first, just in case.

Other effects:

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We expect the code deployments to happen as any other week. However, some case-by-case code freezes could punctually happen if the operation require them afterwards.
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This project may be postponed if necessary. You can read the schedule at wikitech.wikimedia.org. Any changes will be announced in the schedule. There will be more notifications about this. A banner will be displayed on all wikis 30 minutes before this operation happens. Please share this information with your community.

MediaWiki message delivery 00:41, 21 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

dead-url in cite web template

Hello! In the template:cite web the parameter dead-url doesn't work. See Research in programming Wikidata/Anime#References. I need technical help :) --Andrew Krizhanovsky (discuss • contribs) 08:00, 21 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@AKA MBG: I would cheat and link through https://archive.org/. Then it won't be a dead url. -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 00:29, 22 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Seeking volunteers for the next step in the Universal Code of Conduct process

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Hello,

As follow-up to the message about the Universal Code of Conduct Enforcement Guidelines by Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees Vice Chair, Shani Evenstein Sigalov, I am reaching out about the next steps. I want to bring your attention to the next stage of the Universal Code of Conduct process, which is forming a building committee for the Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee (U4C). I invite community members with experience and deep interest in community health and governance to nominate themselves to be part of the U4C building committee, which needs people who are:

Community members in good standing
Knowledgeable about movement community processes, such as, but not limited to, policy drafting, participatory decision making, and application of existing rules and policies on Wikimedia projects
Aware and appreciative of the diversity of the movement, such as, but not limited to, languages spoken, identity, geography, and project type
Committed to participate for the entire U4C Building Committee period from mid-May - December 2023
Comfortable with engaging in difficult, but productive conversations
Confidently able to communicate in English

The Building Committee shall consist of volunteer community members, affiliate board or staff, and Wikimedia Foundation staff.

The Universal Code of Conduct has been a process strengthened by the skills and knowledge of the community and I look forward to what the U4C Building Committee creates. If you are interested in joining the Building Committee, please either sign up on the Meta-Wiki page, or contact ucocproject wikimedia.org by May 12, 2023. Read more on Meta-Wiki.

Best regards,

Xeno (WMF) 19:01, 26 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Licenses for files

Hi! According to wmf:Resolution:Licensing_policy all wikimedia projects must make sure that all files have a free license or meet the requirements of an Exemption Doctrine Policy (EDP).

The best way to do that is to add to all license templates either {{Free media}} to make files show up in Category:All free media or {{Non-free media}} to make files show up in Category:All non-free media. The license templates are protected so I can't add it.

According to Special:Statistics there are 37,785 files here but less than 200 are in the 2 categories above. So it would be great if it could be fixed.

I also noticed that there are licenses like {{Cc-by-nc-sa-3.0}}. Licenses with NonCommercial or NoDerivate are not valid free licenses so the files can only be kept if the file meet the requirements in the EDP (fair use).

Looking at Category:CC-BY-NC-SA-3.0 I would say that most of the files can't be used as fair use. However some of the files are there because they use {{Cc-by-sa-any-3.0}} so the problem can be fixed by removing the NC license.

Are there any users here that check files? If yes I would like to hear more so we do not check the same and do double work. --MGA73 (discuss • contribs) 19:08, 29 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@MGA73 Thank you for helping us clean up our file licenses. I agree that CC-BY-SA and CC-BY-NC-SA are incompatible. I checked the history and any resource that included the "any" template would have been released under CC-BY-SA, so I've redirected that template to CC-BY-SA.

Regarding Fair Use files, most of the files tagged that way were uploaded by students for course projects they were working on. Unfortunately, no one was checking file licensing at the time and the files were uploaded without any license. I believe we can legitimately assume that the user who created and uploaded the file was able to use their own creation for academic purposes under Fair Use guidelines. You are correct in recognizing that most of these files can't be used by anyone else as fair use, but this approach effectively allows the files to remain without reuse by others. If I'm missing something in applying this logic and you have a better solution, please let me know.

There is another large set of Fair Use files that have been recognized as not being legitimate fair use. So far, no one has had the time to go through and figure out which ones, if any, should remain. If you'd like to review some of those and provide an informed assessment, that would be very helpful.

To make sure I don't miss anything, can you list the templates you want tagged as Free media and Non-free media?

Thanks!

Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 03:39, 30 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@Dave Braunschweig Thank you for your reply. It is actually an interessting point you mention. On all other wikiprojects we judge fair use by the purpose of a large number of reusers. Here it is a question about what one or very few users (the student(s)). I wonder if you could argue that the files qualify for fair use as long as the projects are in progress and untill the course endend but perhaps 1 year after it no longer qualify as fair use? Anyway thats something that should be discussed more widely.

Based on your argument I think that the best solution is to add a fair use tag to the unlicensed files if they are used in a valid project. If they are unused (Special:UnusedFiles) they should be deleted unless we can safely classify them as free files and we think they are usable.

I noticed that there are other problems. For example File:Mok Storyboard Sheet.png it says "Public Domain" but the license added is {{GFDL}}.

Because of the large number of files (37k) it is not a good idéa just to check the files one by one. So I will work a little and try to make some lists and come up with a plan. So It may take a few days before you hear from me again.

Usually the best way if to have the users that are still active involved in the project and make them check their uploads. If they have a large number of files a bot could assist them.

If you or any other have some time then unused files could be a good place to start. Delete those that are non-free or have no license unless uploader is still active and can fix. Keep those with a free file that looks usable. --MGA73 (discuss • contribs) 09:04, 30 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I had a quick look at the discussion about the non-valid fair use. I'm not sure where to comment. At the top it says discussion should be archived. Anyway I fully agree with uploader that "No free use or Public Domain image known" but that is not the point. The point is

could a free image be created? For example what prevent uploader from creating a diagram of the earth? A map of Africa? A map of Hudson Bay?
are there no other way to explain the topic than to use a copyrighted photo of group therapy or "a girl from China with her tongue colored to match the Union Jack"?

If not allready done perhaps delete all the unused files first? But as I said I will try to make some lists. --MGA73 (discuss • contribs) 09:26, 30 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@MGA73: Unused Fair Use files were deleted. There may be more now if supporting pages have been deleted since then. Files clearly violating the Wikiversity:EDP (by location or for other reasons) were deleted. But no one has had time to look at every file and decide whether it is a violation. I do have a bot available to assist if you have suggestions on what it should look for. Thanks! -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 14:16, 30 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I've created Wikiversity:File Review and Wikiversity talk:File Review to continue this discussion. -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 14:43, 30 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]