Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous)/Archive 78

Upcoming numerological apocalypse

This seems like the default to ask this question, though I hope some of the people I'm trying to reach actually check this page:

Long-term IP editors, you are my favorite class of editor. How are you taking the news of the upcoming temporary accounts for unregistered editors|temporary accounts for unregistered editors roll-out? I hope you all will still feel whole after this comes to pass, and you are IP editors no longer. Remsense 16:50, 5 April 2024 (UTC)

I very strongly support that (the temporary accounts), but then I'm not an IP editor. It seems wonderful for privacy, which if I only edited as an IP I would be concerned about. Cremastra (talk) 19:42, 5 April 2024 (UTC)
I edit as an IP from time to time and I think an increased layer of privacy is only great. Especially since those seeking to find use for such public-facing IP information are generally doing so for bad faith purposes. (The administrative purposes of site maintenance is done with non-public user IP logs.)
I'd suggest for future consideration, for editor recruitment and retention studies, making available additional features for anonymous editors, inspired by that used in other social media. Some message boards allow limited customization of signatures for anonymous posters, for example, such as flair colors and flag icons; one can hypothesize (and test quantitatively) that giving anonymous editors some extra means to express individuality might encourage eventual creation and retention of accounts. SamuelRiv (talk) 04:41, 7 April 2024 (UTC)
Anyone seeking to find your IP information may be acting in bad faith, but most investigations concern the minority of IPs which are used to vandalise Wikipedia. Tracking them down so they can be educated or blocked is very much a good-faith activity in the interests of Wikipedia and its readers. As for customisation, the problem is identifying when two visits are by the same person. In many schools and businesses and some homes, multiple editors share a connection or even a device. Wikipedia can only customise appropriately for each person if they log in. We really don't want one editor displaying another's signature because the server can't tell them apart. Certes (talk) 08:29, 7 April 2024 (UTC)
This seems to be missing something. Identical IPs have identical temporary masks, so abuse can still be tracked by casual editors. The point is that the IP address itself, with all the security concerns attached, is only visible to those with elevated privileges. As for my suggestion of signatured customization, I only made suggestions of what is termed in other forums "flair" or "flags" -- i.e. supplements -- not changing the actual displayed IP mask/username. SamuelRiv (talk) 20:46, 8 April 2024 (UTC)
There are some relevant comments in a VPM archive. Details of IP masking are still hazy but it may rely on cookies, allowing a vandal to get a new identity by clearing them or browsing privately (e.g. Chrome's incognito mode). It will also be difficult to work out whether two IPs are in a similar range, or to check neighbouring IPs for vandalism. (Hopping within an IPv6/64 is so trivial it often happens accidentally.) Certes (talk) 21:30, 8 April 2024 (UTC)
I don't have much of an opinion on it yet, to be honest. It'll certainly be nice if it gives me the ability to receive pings, and it may possibly give me a stable talk page across IP addresses on this range - even a separate talk page from that of other users on the range - which would be neat. But if there turn out to be a lot of downsides for English Wikipedia as a whole, the final result may be the entire loss of IP editing here, masked or not, which I would regret. It'll be interesting to see what happens when it's actually turned on. 57.140.16.57 (talk) 15:10, 8 April 2024 (UTC)
It's a leap into the dark. We have no idea whether we will still be able to fight unregistered vandals effectively or will have to reject the millions of useful IP contributions. I fear that we may soon no longer have an encyclopedia anyone can edit, but I hope to be proven wrong. Certes (talk) 16:25, 8 April 2024 (UTC)

For the interested, WP:IPMASKING. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 16:49, 7 April 2024 (UTC)

Does anyone know how long the temporary accounts last and if they last more than 4 days can a temp account become autoconfirmed? I didn't see anything about this in the linked pages but it is a lot to go through. The closest I could find is a comment that there is awareness of the impact on anti-vandal efforts but that is quite vague. RudolfRed (talk) 22:30, 7 April 2024 (UTC)

One document states that temporary accounts will last a year, but I see nothing about them becoming autoconfirmed and think it very unlikely that it will happen. Certes (talk) 16:27, 8 April 2024 (UTC)

Adding notice about image copyright

The footer of our pages says:

Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 4.0; additional terms may apply. By using this site...

I think it would be sensible to change it to something like (additions emboldened for clarity):

Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 4.0; additional terms may apply. Images may be subject to copyright or require attribution if reused; see individual image pages for details. By using this site...

My reasoning is that images may be open-licensed or fair-use, and in neither case do we display any notice of this to readers on the page.

Is this in our gift, or is it a WMF issue? Where should a request be raised? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 14:14, 6 April 2024 (UTC)

The text comes from MediaWiki:Wikimedia-copyright, which is already locally customized. While some of the local customizations make sense, I have no idea why e.g. Special:Diff/546973720 wasn't also done in mw:Extension:WikimediaMessages. To me this seems like another one that should probably be done there first rather than only being done locally. Anomie 15:05, 6 April 2024 (UTC)
Thank you. I have asked there. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 15:20, 6 April 2024 (UTC)
@Anomie: I mentioned you in that discussion, but my attempt to "ping" you failed (the interface is not one I'm familiar with). Please take a look. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 18:55, 10 April 2024 (UTC)

April 8, 1974

Why no mention on home page of 50th anniversary of Henry Aaron hitting 715th home run to break Babe Ruth’s MLB record? Fairly significant; maybe more than formation of Progress Party in Norway? Pliny37 (talk) 07:32, 8 April 2024 (UTC)

@Pliny37: You can start a discussion at Talk:April_8. There was a previous suggestion to add it, but that was a few years ago. RudolfRed (talk) 19:11, 8 April 2024 (UTC)
Pliny37 apparently wanted it on Wikipedia:Selected anniversaries/April 8 so it would be on Main Page April 8. If there isn't even agreement about putting it on April 8 (it was added after the post) then forget about selected anniversaries. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:26, 9 April 2024 (UTC)

Wikimedia Foundation draft annual plan available for review

Hi everyone,

The Wikimedia Foundation’s draft annual plan for the 2024-2025 fiscal year is now available. This plan is shaped by many factors. These include external technological, regulatory, and social trends in the world about how people look for information and rely on the Wikimedia projects. Our planning was also built around small group discussions on wiki, via mailing lists and over 130 conversations with individuals in person and in scheduled calls. These discussions consistently highlighted the need to remain focused on upgrading our technical infrastructure and supporting volunteer needs for tool maintenance and metrics.

Our answer to these trends and needs is in this draft annual plan. You will see that it prioritises maintenance and upgrades for our technical infrastructure, such as MediaWiki core, data centre operations, and site reliability engineering services. There are also key results around a number of issues discussed here over the past year, such as ways to help volunteers connect to others who share their interests, building newcomer edit workflows that reduce the burden on experienced editors, building a new community wishlist that better connects movement ideas to Foundation activities, and improving tools for editors with extended rights.

You can read a summary of the plan in yesterday’s letter from Wikimedia Foundation CEO Maryana Iskander, with a slightly-longer version on the annual plan landing page. The summary also offers details about what we’ve achieved so far in this current year. You can also read about our financial model, revenue strategy, and budget breakdown.

The annual plan talk page is open for questions and feedback now through the end of May, after which we’ll summarise all of the responses across talk pages and community calls and publish a final version of the plan that considers this feedback. Thanks in advance for sharing your thoughts! KStineRowe (WMF) (talk) 21:59, 12 April 2024 (UTC)

How do you make your username a color or font?

I see everyone doing it and I want to try. Amoxicillin on a Boat (talk) 15:28, 15 April 2024 (UTC)

@Amoxicillin on a Boat I suspect you are referring to user "signatures" in discussions posts. If so, see Wikipedia:Signatures for all about that. — xaosflux Talk 15:33, 15 April 2024 (UTC)
Hey, I think I got it ~~~ Amoxicillin on a Boat (talk) 16:11, 15 April 2024 (UTC)
I think I got it now Xeno User : Amoxicillin on a Boat 18:19, 15 April 2024 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Amoxicillin on a Boat (talkcontribs)

Talk page subscriptions

Is there (or can there be) a bot to remove archived or stale talk page subscription from Special:TopicSubscriptions, or maybe there's a way to condense the page manually? I have not been able to find any documentation on this issue. - FlightTime (open channel) 20:53, 18 April 2024 (UTC)

@FlightTime, you have to manually click the red "Unsubscribe" item for each entry that you want to remove.
@Trizek (WMF), you might want to include this in the documentation at mw:Help:DiscussionTools#Topic subscriptions. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:17, 20 April 2024 (UTC)

Should this be reported to the Administrator's Noticeboard?

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.



Dalton Tan (talk · contribs) has described misinformation several times in railway-related articles, and it has escalated even if it is warned. Even if I have been warned many times, I don't seem to understand it, so should I report it to the Administrators' noticeboard? --H.K.pauw (talk) 09:55, 17 April 2024 (UTC)

User behavior issues should be posted to WP:ANI. I'd suggest copying this over. It may help to provide WP:DIFFs of misbehavior in your comment. –Novem Linguae (talk) 10:14, 17 April 2024 (UTC)
You would need to give a couple of examples of edits that you believe are a problem and explain why they are a problem in a way that people without inside knowledge can understand. Be brief. Johnuniq (talk) 10:18, 17 April 2024 (UTC)
  information
According to Talk page, it is the next page that is making the misrepresentation.
Dalton Tan has listed misinformation in these articles and has been warned four times, but it continues to escalate. --H.K.pauw (talk) 00:00, 20 April 2024 (UTC)
Please do. Their persistence and lack of communication are clearly disruptive – I think a block might be in order. Be sure to provide diffs! XtraJovial (talkcontribs) 20:16, 21 April 2024 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.