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The miscellaneous section of the village pump is used to post messages that do not fit into any other category. Please post on the policy, technical, or proposals sections when appropriate, or at the help desk for assistance. For general knowledge questions, please use the reference desk.

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Special:Export and Wikidata QID?

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Hello everyone, the Wikidata for Wikimedia projects team is investigating the benefit of adding a new <tag> for a Wikidata item QID into the XML file output from the Special:Export function.
Have you used this function before? If yes, we would like to hear from you.

  • Would adding a new <tag> for a linked Wikidata item (e.g. <wikidataid>) aid you?
  • What types of pages did you export? (article, template, talk etc.)
  • What did you do with the exported content?

Please leave your comments or questions as a reply to this message, thank you. -Danny Benjafield (WMDE) (talk) 15:36, 27 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

What does this new tag do? Blueboar (talk) 18:25, 27 November 2024 (UTC)tag.[reply]
@Blueboar The message is referring to tags in the XML file you get from exporting a page, not tags that are used in wikitext. The tag doesn't "do" anything, XML files use HTML like tags to mark up data fields. 86.23.109.101 (talk) 20:32, 27 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I can see this being useful to others, but the tag name (wikidataid) seems suboptimal. Could "wikidata-id", "wikidata-qid", or even just "wikidata" or "qid" be used? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 16:41, 30 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Hello @Pigsonthewing, yes it can be different, although <wikibaseitem_id> was suggested to fit with an existing schema. However, we have put the task on hiatus due to the potential consequences this addition could have on the size and time required for the weekly Wikipedia database dumps. -Danny Benjafield (WMDE) (talk) 16:55, 2 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Desblock my account in Wikipedia spanish

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Hi wikis,please asked to the User:Taichi (hes blocked my account and e-mail indefinitely from this https://es.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Solicitudes_de_verificaci%C3%B3n_de_usuarios?markasread=58923216&markasreadwiki=eswiki) I'm not a sockpuppet of these users. AbchyZa22 (talk) 10:47, 29 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

But im a good faith so please asked this user Taichi AbchyZa22 (talk) 10:48, 29 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

AbchyZa22, as this is the English Wikipedia, we have no authority over the Spanish Wikipedia. Each language Wikipedia is a separate project. If you are blocked on Spanish Wikipedia, you will have to appeal your block there; you can find instructions here in regards to that. Seraphimblade Talk to me 10:54, 29 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Hello, AbchyZa22. This is the English Wikipedia. The Spanish Wikipedia is a separate autonomous project with its own policies, guidelines and administrators. We have no influence or power over them. We cannot help you here. You must use the block appeal processes on the Spanish Wikipedia. Cullen328 (talk) 10:57, 29 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Ok, thank you AbchyZa22 (talk) 10:58, 29 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Cullen328@Seraphimblade:Can't edit (https://es.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Especial:UsuariosBloqueados&wpTarget=%239201891) look AbchyZa22 (talk) 11:05, 29 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry to hear it, but there's really nothing we can do about it. You will have to follow whatever appeals process the Spanish Wikipedia has; we can neither do that for you nor do anything about it. Seraphimblade Talk to me 11:07, 29 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
AbchyZa22, I hope that you understand that English Wikipedia editors and adminstrators have no power whatsoever over the Spanish Wikipedia. We are not their bosses in any way. Cullen328 (talk) 11:33, 29 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Temporary Accounts - introduction to the project

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A temporary account notification after publishing the first edit

The Wikimedia Foundation is in the process of rolling out temporary accounts for unregistered (logged-out) editors on multiple wikis. The pilot communities have the chance to test and share comments to improve the feature before it is deployed on all wikis in mid-2025.

Temporary accounts will be used to attribute new edits made by logged-out users instead of the IP addresses. It will not be an exact replacement, though. First, temporary users will have access to some functionalities currently inaccessible for logged-out editors (like notifications). Secondly, the Wikimedia projects will continue to use IP addresses of logged-out editors behind the scenes, and experienced community members will be able to access them when necessary. This change is especially relevant to the logged-out editors and anyone who uses IP addresses when blocking users and keeping the wikis safe. Older IP addresses that were recorded before the introduction of temporary accounts on a wiki will not be modified.

We would like to invite you to read the first of a series of posts dedicated to temporary accounts. It gives an overview of the basics of the project, impact on different groups of users, and the plan for introducing the change on all wikis.

We will do our best to inform everyone impacted ahead of time. Information about temporary accounts will be available on Tech News, Diff, other blogs, different wikipages, banners, and other forms. At conferences, we or our colleagues on our behalf are inviting attendees to talk about this project. In addition, we are contacting affiliates running community support programs.

Subscribe to our new newsletter to stay close in touch. To learn more about the project, check out the FAQ and look at the latest updates. Talk to us on our project page or off-wiki. See you! NKohli (WMF) and SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 17:39, 29 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

My main question is: will people still be allowed to mention the IP adresses onwiki in e.g. sockpuppet investigations? If not, then this seems like a severe nuisance for such investigations. But if this will be considered a form of outing or confidentiality breach, then that should be made very clear and taken into consideration before deciding whether this is a blocker for this project or not. Fram (talk) 17:47, 29 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Great question. The Wikimedia Access to Temporary Account IP Addresses Policy says
When it is reasonably believed to be necessary, users with access to temporary account IP addresses may also disclose the IP addresses in appropriate venues that enable them to enforce or investigate potential violations of our Terms of Use, the Privacy Policy, or any Wikimedia Foundation or user community-based policies. Appropriate venues for such disclosures include pages dedicated to Long-term abuse. If such a disclosure later becomes unnecessary, then the IP address should be promptly removed.
In short, it's better not to do it unless you have a good reason and you do it on the right page (like Wikipedia:Long-term abuse). SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 17:55, 29 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks, I presume any "official" page dealing with abuse (WP:AN, WP:ANI, WP:SPI, and arbcom) may be considered acceptable locations then. Of course within reason, not gratuitously disclosing IPs for the sake of it. Fram (talk) 18:06, 29 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Yup, exactly! SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 18:12, 29 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
My hope, although I've not seen this spelt out anywhere, is that temporary accounts will end CUs deliberately tying their own hands regarding IP socking, due to privacy concerns linking accounts to IPs. As CUs can still see IPs from temporary accounts, and IPs will not usually need to be revealed even on SPI pages, what would before have been socking that can't be technically examined (one tool among others but a useful one), will now be temporary accounts that can be listed alongside permanent accounts at SPI pages and similar. CMD (talk) 02:27, 1 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I believe all admins and also some power users (account age 6 months, 300 edits, opts in) will still be able to see temporary account IP addresses. So the checkuser practice of declining to link IPs to permanent accounts may still continue. –Novem Linguae (talk) 03:22, 1 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The opt-in is already in our preferences, even though we don't have the full system yet. I do hope the SPI practice could change though, trying to get a benefit from this shift. CMD (talk) 12:35, 1 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
In the screenshot, a popup says "An auto-generated account has been created for you by adding a cookie to your browser."
What if the user has cookies disabled?
This is likely to alarm novice users (has the message been user-tested?). It would probably be wise to add a few words of explanation, say: "A temporary auto-generated account has been created for you by adding a cookie to your browser, in order to preserve your anonymity and not reveal your location." and changing "creating an account" to "creating a permanent account"Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 16:48, 30 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Pigsonthewing, I believe you are looking for mw:Trust and Safety Product/Temporary Accounts/FAQ#How long does a temporary account last? WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:43, 30 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

 You are invited to join the discussion at Talk:2024 Bangladesh anti-Hindu violence § Disinformation in Introduction of the page. Rotideypoc41352 (talk · contribs) 04:51, 1 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The last time I posted about an earlier version of this discussion at Wikipedia:Neutral point of view/Noticeboard#Talk:2024 Bangladesh anti-Hindu violence#Article protected, it received no response; this discussion would really benefit from additional viewpoints. Thank you. Rotideypoc41352 (talk · contribs) 04:51, 1 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Avoiding conflicts with WikiEd course work

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Two days ago I created an article on Ann Trevenen Jenkin, as part of WP:Women in Red's "Women who died in 2024". Yesterday there was a message on its talk page to say it is part of a WikiEd project, and I find that a student has been working on their draft article on this topic since 2 October. In the nature of student projects, they have been working step by step, week by week. Their draft is not yet fit for mainspace, and the course continues until 18 December. This must happen fairly often, when students pick notable topics which are missing from the encyclopedia but other editors spot the same gaps.

To avoid duplicated work like this, it would be very helpful if topics which are the subject of assignments in WikiEd courses could be flagged in some way, so that when an editor starts to create an article they are alerted, just as we are routinely alerted to the fact that an article on the topic has previously been deleted. Unless the editor feels that an article on the topic is needed with some urgency, they could then leave it aside (perhaps watchlisting it in case the student work needs some improvement), and choose a different topic. Could this be done? Where should I suggest it? PamD 09:37, 3 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I suppose that on a practical level the course tutor could create an article and then speedy-delete it G7 (requested by author) after adding the course banner to the talk page...? PamD 09:40, 3 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I wouldn't like to see that done. The expectation is that WikiEd should not be disruptive to the rest of the project, and should work within its normal operations. That includes that if you're drafting an article, someone else may "beat you to it"; that's a normal part of editing and something students who are learning to edit Wikipedia should be expected to deal with. They could always offer ideas for improving the newly-created article instead. Seraphimblade Talk to me 09:41, 3 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I didn't see it as disruptive, it wouldn't be an instruction not to create an article, but a nudge that an article was under construction so that it might be a good idea to put ones efforts elsewhere. I'll be interested to see what happens at course end, and I hope the student won't expect to be able to upload their article regardless! I suppose a difference from a normal drafting is that students are forced to work over a matter of months, while normal editors can in most cases work faster. PamD 09:50, 3 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Wikipedia:Wiki Ed/University of Mary Washington/Writing and Literacy in the Digital Age (Fall 2024) has a useful scope table. AllyD (talk) 09:50, 3 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, that's a standard course dashboard, but only useful if you know to look at it ... ah, just had a thought. Special:WhatLinksHere/Ann_Trevenen_Jenkin includes the Brigham Young course. So, if I remember, my process for starting an article will now include a "What links here" with particular care to look for WikiEd courses. PamD 09:53, 3 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I was going to mention "what links here"; I think that's a good idea anyway. Back in 2012 while creating Petite Suite (Debussy), I encountered a similar situation while checking links because there was an articles for creation submission at Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Petite Suite (Debussy) (requires admin goggles to view). Nowadays draftspace exists (it was created a year later) and editors do get alerts when there's a draft page at the same title as an article. Graham87 (talk) 14:59, 3 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It happens outside of WikiEd. Early last year I was working on an article on my user sub-page when I realized a new editor was drafting an article on the same topic. In that case, I merged what I had written into their draft. I'm not sure it is worth worrying about such collisions ahead of time. Donald Albury 15:02, 3 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Population by tribes Guyana and Venezuela

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Is there any statistics Population by tribes for Guyana and Venezuela? Kaiyr (talk) 16:02, 4 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

See Indigenous peoples in Guyana, which has links to articles about tribes, and Indigenous peoples in Venezuela, which has population figures. Donald Albury 17:43, 4 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

LTAs

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What research, if any, has been done into the motivations of LTAs? Polygnotus (talk) 20:08, 4 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia specifically, or more like the kind of person who would do this in general? WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:21, 5 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@WhatamIdoing: Wikipedia specifically. The reason I ask is because of User_talk:Polygnotus#808s_&_Heartbreak and then I discovered that someone had tried to have a conversation (at User_talk:MariaJaydHicky2). There are various creative ways to deal with such things, like that conversation or shadowbanning or forcing people to do a boring game for 30 seconds when their edit triggers an editfilter (which would be not too bad for someone who makes one such change a month but terrible for genrewarriors who want to change the genre of an entire catalogue of an artist).
Or perhaps we could just be less specific when talking about musical genres. I don't even know the difference between synthpop and electropop for example, and very little information would be lost if we simply used x toplevel genres (these are the options in ID3v1, perhaps better to use Eric Kemp's original list of 80 genres).
I wonder if someone (perhaps but not necessarily the WMF) had ever done any research to discover motivations and commonalities. How does an LTA become an LTA? How does an LTA stay an LTA (what dopamine reward do they get). How can we minimize the chances that they become an LTA and make being an LTA as unrewarding as possible? What can we learn from them (e.g. via an interview or analyzing data)?
I do, somewhat, understand the motivation of people who just write "poop" or blank a page, just to see if they can. But with LTAs the motivations and origin stories are quite a bit deeper. Polygnotus (talk) 00:29, 5 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not aware of any research on LTAs specifically for Wikipedia.
I believe that there is research on Trolling (e.g., low empathy, anti-social attitudes, Online disinhibition effect, emotional sensation seeking) and on some "one-off" overreactions ("They rejected me, so I will fight them to the death", or at least until something more fun or interesting comes along), but not specific to Wikipedia.
On Wikipedia, they may not even agree that what they're doing is harmful. We had one LTA many years ago whose main "motivation" was a developmental disability. There was a long string of easily detected socks, but the itch to make the article "right" was apparently irresistible for years. My best guesses about how it stopped are either that the LTA found something else to do all day, or the parents restricted internet access.
Even getting in touch with Wikipedia's LTAs is difficult, and getting an accurate answer might be impossible. Occasionally we will have information about the person's identity, but even then, you hardly want to call someone and say "Hello, this is Wikipedia. You've got a student/employee/user with this e-mail address. Could you please block them from Wikipedia on your network, and maybe send a note home to their parents or guardians? Thanks." WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:19, 5 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@WhatamIdoing: Thank you. Interesting. Do you think it would be a good area for someone to research? Perhaps someone at the WMF? It looks like the current approach of dealing with LTAs is not very effective, considering they can keep going for years and this one person created hundreds of accounts. I just mentioned a couple ways one could theoretically discourage LTA behaviour, and there are surely many other creative approaches (these were just the first ones that came to mind, and this was the first LTA that showed up on my talkpage). One could use a proof of work approach like Hashcash but with time instead of computational power. To me, it looks like the community could use some help dealing with this problem, and perhaps the WMF is willing to help. Polygnotus (talk) 02:47, 5 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
There is a strong sentiment in the community that paying attention to serial vandals, trolls, and LTAs after they have been blocked/banned is counterproductive. See the essay at Wikipedia:Deny recognition. Donald Albury 16:35, 5 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Donald Albury: The idea is obviously to reduce their impact and give them less recognition and less dopamine rewards. Spending hours reporting and tagging and blocking hundreds of socks is time that could've been spent writing an encyclopedia. And it would be counterproductive to not try to understand the problem, and to not use that knowledge to deal with them better. Polygnotus (talk) 19:34, 5 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

How do you choose which articles to work on ?

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Greetings! My question is the next. How do you choose the articles you want to work on ?

In my case, it's simple. I read articles on topics that interest me and I read the related articles (For example, internal links).

If I don't have time to work on it. I write a note on my user page to work on it later. Anatole-berthe (talk) 01:57, 5 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I think that really depends on who you ask. Polygnotus (talk) 22:29, 5 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Everybody's different. Some people are on a mission to document every professional cricket player, every TV station, every species of reptile, every politician in their home country, etc, etc. I like to explore the history of where I live and as often as not, my interest in a topic is sparked by going past some building or park and wondering if there's more there than meets the eye. And, just like Anatole-berthe, my user space is littered with stubs of future articles that never went anywhere. RoySmith (talk) 22:39, 5 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Aye, I figure that everyone will have different motives. I've ceased article writing because this list of articles I have worked on is also a list of articles I need to maintain, and it's gotten too long. Every year I do maintain that list. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 10:51, 6 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]