Wikiversity:Colloquium/archives/March 2017

Abuse Filter for File Uploads

We're having problems with copyrighted media files being uploaded by users who are not participating or intending to participate at Wikiversity. See phab:T129845 for background information. I'd like to implement an abuse filter that would prevent file uploads by new users. The way new users are recognized by an abuse filter, this would prevent file uploads by anonymous IP users, and would prevent users who have fewer than a given number of edits from uploading files. Is there support for such a filter, or are there any objections? -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 01:14, 4 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I personally would want this to be considered later, not now, as it has only been two users (most likely of the same user). -Atcovi (Talk - Contribs) 02:01, 4 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Six user accounts, 21 files over the last five days. See [1]. My concern is not just the effort, but the storage. These files are anywhere from 1 to 10 MB. Deleting the file doesn't remove it from the database. It just hides it. Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 02:31, 4 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Dave Braunschweig: For what it's worth, you can get an Oversighter to delete them permanently--we don't have one here but a Steward could do it. Also, the problem of hosting another ~40 MB of files on these servers is really nothing. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 07:24, 4 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

How to change font on Wikiversity?

This is for a project I have in real life (and I want to print it out). How do I change the font of my text when I'm writing.. let's say: I want to change to New Times Roman, how would I do so? ---Atcovi (Talk - Contribs) 23:29, 8 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

You would need to use inline CSS styling, such as in this example. The tags can be almost any tag, but <span>, <div>, or <p> would be most common. -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 01:24, 9 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Overview #2 of updates on Wikimedia movement strategy process

Note: Apologies for cross-posting and sending in English. This message is available for translation on Meta-Wiki.

As we mentioned last month, the Wikimedia movement is beginning a movement-wide strategy discussion, a process which will run throughout 2017. This movement strategy discussion will focus on the future of our movement: where we want to go together, and what we want to achieve.

Regular updates are being sent to the Wikimedia-l mailing list, and posted on Meta-Wiki. Each month, we are sending overviews of these updates to this page as well. Sign up to receive future announcements and monthly highlights of strategy updates on your user talk page.

Here is a overview of the updates that have been sent since our message last month:

Update 7 on Wikimedia movement strategy process (16 February 2017)
- Development of documentation for Tracks A & B
Update 8 on Wikimedia movement strategy process (24 February 2017)
- Introduction of Track Leads for all four audience tracks
Update 9 on Wikimedia movement strategy process (2 March 2017)
- Seeking feedback on documents being used to help facilitate upcoming community discussions

More information about the movement strategy is available on the Meta-Wiki 2017 Wikimedia movement strategy portal.

Posted by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of the Wikimedia Foundation, 19:43, 9 March 2017 (UTC) • Please help translate to your language • Get help

Debate censorship?

Is debate censorship occurring? If debate censorship is going to occur without prior discussion, I probably will not participate. See here. For anyone interested, a discussion of the potential censorship is taking place at Talk:Should suicide be legal?. Michael Ten (discuss • contribs) 22:44, 12 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I responded there, cheers! --Felipe (discuss • contribs) 23:04, 15 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Upcoming changes

There are a lot of small changes happening in the next couple of weeks, and I wanted to give you all a quick heads-up about them. Please share this information with other people/languages/projects that will be interested:

There's a change to how columns in reference lists are handled, at the request of the German Wikipedia. This change will improve accessibility by automatically formatting long lists of <ref>s into columns, based on each reader's screen width.
- What you need to do: Nothing visible is happening now. If your project uses the normal <references /> tag (or doesn't really use refs at all), then file a Phabricator task or just tell me, and I'll get your wiki on the list for the next config change. If your project uses a "reflist" template to create columns, then please consider deprecating it, or update the template to work with the new feature.
The label on the "Save changes" button will change on most projects tomorrow (Wednesday) to say "Publish page". This has been discussed for years, is supported by user research, and is meant to be clearer for new contributors. (Most of us who have been editing for years don't even look at the button any more, and we all already know that all of our changes can be seen by anyone on the internet, so this doesn't really affect us.)
- If you have questions or encounter problems (e.g., a bad translation, problems fixing the documentation, etc.), then please tell me as soon as possible.
- When we split "Save page" into "Save page" and "Save changes" last August, a couple of communities wondered whether a local label would be possible. (For example, the Chinese Wikipedia has some extra language on their "Save page" button; I think it's about the importance of previewing.) Whether the Legal team can agree to a change may depend upon the language/country involved, so please ask me first.
As part of the ongoing, years-long user-interface standardization project, the color and shape of the "Save changes" (or now "Publish page"), "Show preview" and "Show changes" buttons on some desktop wikitext editors will change. The buttons will be bigger and easier to find, and the "Save" button will be bright blue. (phab:T111088) Unfortunately, it is not technically possible to completely override this change and restore the appearance of the old buttons for either your account or an entire site.
Do you remember last April, when nobody could edit for about 30 minutes twice, because of some work that Technical Ops was doing on the servers? The same kind of planned maintenance is happening again. It's currently scheduled for Wednesday, April 19th and Wednesday, May 3rd. The time of day is unknown, but it will probably afternoon in Europe and morning in North America. This will be announced repeatedly, but please mark your calendars now.

That's everything on my mind at the moment, but I may have forgotten something. If you have questions (about this or any other WMF work), then please {{ping}} me, and I'll see what I can find out for you. Thanks, Whatamidoing (WMF) (discuss • contribs) 18:50, 13 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

IMPORTANT: Admin activity review

Hello. A policy regarding the removal of "advanced rights" (administrator, bureaucrat, etc. ) was adopted by global community consensus in 2013. According to this policy, the stewards are reviewing administrators' activity on all Wikimedia Foundation wikis with no inactivity policy. To the best of our knowledge, your wiki does not have a formal process for removing "advanced rights" from inactive accounts. This means that the stewards will take care of this according to the admin activity review.

We have determined that the following users meet the inactivity criteria (no edits and no log actions for more than 2 years):

Darklama (administrator)
Geoff Plourde (administrator)
Thenub314 (administrator)

These users will receive a notification soon, asking them to start a community discussion if they want to retain some or all of their rights. If the users do not respond, then their advanced rights will be removed by the stewards.

However, if you as a community would like to create your own activity review process superseding the global one, want to make another decision about these inactive rights holders, or already have a policy that we missed, then please notify the stewards on Meta-Wiki so that we know not to proceed with the rights review on your wiki. Thanks, Matiia (discuss • contribs) 04:53, 16 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Removed. Matiia (discuss • contribs) 15:10, 16 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you to all three for their time and effort. Hopefully we will see them on here again soon. Green Giant 15:58, 16 April 2017 (UTC)

Wiki 4 Coop

Hello everyone,

I come to you to invite to re-read the submission of a new partnership project between the Wikimedia movement and the Belgian NGOs. The project is titled Wiki 4 Coop and I invite you to discover its submission page on Meta-Wiki. Do not hesitate to endorse the project if you like it and even correct my English if you have a little time. A beautiful end of day for all of you, Lionel Scheepmans ^{✉ Contact} _{(French native speaker)} 11:37, 17 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

We invite you to join the movement strategy conversation (now through April 15)

This message, "We invite you to join the movement strategy conversation (now through April 15)", was sent through multiple channels by Gregory Varnum on 15 and 16 of March 2017 to village pumps, affiliate talk pages, movement mailing lists, and MassMessage groups. A similar message was sent by Nicole Ebber to organized groups and their mailing lists on 15 of March 2017. This version of the message is available for translation and documentation purposes

Dear Wikimedians/Wikipedians:

Today we are starting a broad discussion to define Wikimedia's future role in the world and develop a collaborative strategy to fulfill that role. You are warmly invited to join the conversation.

There are many ways to participate, by joining an existing conversation or starting your own:

Track A (organized groups): Discussions with your affiliate, committee or other organized group (these are groups that support the Wikimedia movement).

Track B (individual contributors): On Meta or your local language or project wiki.

This is the first of three conversations, and it will run between now and April 15. The purpose of cycle 1 is to discuss the future of the movement and generate major themes around potential directions. What do we want to build or achieve together over the next 15 years?

We welcome you, as we create this conversation together, and look forward to broad and diverse participation from all parts of our movement.

Sincerely,

Nicole Ebber (Track A Lead), Jaime Anstee (Track B Lead), & the engagement support teams

05:09, 18 March 2017 (UTC)

A local page for this at Wikiversity:Wikimedia Strategy 2017 has been created, if you'd prefer to participate here instead of on Metawiki. Please let your fellow editors know, in the optimum locations for you. Looking forward to your input! :) Quiddity (WMF) (discuss • contribs) 01:16, 22 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

References and Reflist

With the most recent MediaWiki update, the <references /> tag dynamically generates references columns based on user screen size. The use of column width and column count in Template:Reflist/doc are now unnecessary, and counter-productive in terms of user experience.

I created a replacement {{References}} template that generates dynamic columns by default, and redirected Reflist to the new template. This approach was easier / safer than editing Reflist, and I didn't want to replace Reflist itself, since Wikipedia is still using the old version.

I tested several different reference uses, including those with groups, and they appear to all work correctly. As you view pages this week, let me know if you find any problems with references.

Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 13:46, 20 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

User:RexxS has been working on the enwiki template. You may want to swipe what he's creating when he's done.

On a related point, do contributors here really need a template at all? We could change the settings to make plain old <references /> do that, and then you wouldn't need a new template (and to remember which one does what) to do that. Whatamidoing (WMF) (discuss • contribs) 22:38, 20 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Whatamidoing (WMF): I find users are better at remembering how to use a template than they are at remembering how to enter extended tags. In other words, {{References}} is easier than <References /> for many users. Also, we do have a few pages that are using the additional options (group and ref). Could we clean them all up? Sure. But old habits are hard to break. As to why I did the template rather than have you change the default, it's often difficult to get a community response approving change here. It was easier, and faster, to just make the change and have a way to reverse it if it blew up. -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 00:00, 21 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]