User talk:MPinchuk (WMF) (usurped)/Archive 5

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Talkback

Hello, MPinchuk (WMF) (usurped). You have new messages at Tow's talk page.
Message added 00:25, 12 June 2012 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

 TOW  talk  00:25, 12 June 2012 (UTC)

You've got mail!

Hello, MPinchuk (WMF) (usurped). Please check your email; you've got mail! The subject is Feedback dashboard.
Message added 04:50, 15 June 2012 (UTC). It may take a few minutes from the time the email is sent for it to show up in your inbox. You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{You've got mail}} or {{ygm}} template.

Cheers,
Riley Huntley talk No talkback needed; I'll temporarily watch here. 04:50, 15 June 2012 (UTC)

checkY Answered! Maryana (WMF) (talk) 16:48, 15 June 2012 (UTC)

Talkback

Hello, MPinchuk (WMF) (usurped). You have new messages at Riley Huntley's talk page.
Message added 17:59, 15 June 2012 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

Cheers,
Riley Huntley talk No talkback needed; I'll temporarily watch here. 17:59, 15 June 2012 (UTC)

an example of the editor retention problem

This is about blanking a user page. It had a brief bio. User is not very active and this is being used as a reason to stomp on their page. I'm seeing wiki-hostility issues. Br'er Rabbit (talk) (or Jack, or Alarbus, take-your-pick;) 04:25, 16 June 2012 (UTC)

This comes with the assumption that the various anonymous users who edited the userpage are the same as the user in question. Why not just move to a user subpage?--Jasper Deng (talk) 04:31, 16 June 2012 (UTC)
Why not leave the user page alone? Br'er Rabbit (talk) 04:39, 16 June 2012 (UTC)
Policy is policy, but we can ignore rules here.--Jasper Deng (talk) 05:10, 16 June 2012 (UTC)
There's no policy saying you get to go around being immature and kicking new users. (Maryanam Jasper once called a Checkuser a sock;). Br'er Rabbit (talk) 05:13, 16 June 2012 (UTC)
Only time can tell. I actually am a firm believer in being on-topic, but now that I see it things would be so much clearer if that user edited while logged in.--Jasper Deng (talk) 05:29, 16 June 2012 (UTC)
It's merely an assumption that the various IP are that user; they may-well be simply seeking to highlight problem users. You seem to have involved yourself to deflect criticism of Dave1185; FWIW, you're worthy of criticism, too. Br'er Rabbit (talk) 05:36, 16 June 2012 (UTC)

Talkback

You have new message/s Hello. You have a new message at Salma Vian#Feedback Dashboard Update's talk page. Cheers,
Riley Huntley   (Click here to reply)   17:42, 18 June 2012 (UTC), Salma Vian (talk) 18:53, 18 June 2012 (UTC)

Thanks

Thanks for the editor's barnstar User:Sidsahu--sids 07:15, 19 June 2012 (UTC)

You're very welcome! :) Maryana (WMF) (talk) 19:43, 22 June 2012 (UTC)

cupcake

Thank you so much for the cupcake! You're too kind, Maryana. I was just trying to keep {{Opentask}} somewhat 'fresh'.... Not sure how useful this is to do so, but I'm doing it anyway. Sorry about the delayed response. I was off-line. Happy editing. Cheers! --PFHLai (talk) 05:06, 1 July 2012 (UTC)

I've actually recently started a conversation/proto-proposal on the Community portal talk page. I'm hoping to solicit feedback from the people who currently use the CP (newbies and established editors alike), to get a better sense of how it can be streamlined and improved. For a page that gets around 10,000 views a day, I don't think the burden should fall on one person to maintain the task list on it! :) But thank you again for keeping it from going stale – you rock! Maryana (WMF) (talk) 17:01, 2 July 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Editor Retention

Hi. This is new, and I figure you'd be interested. Br'er Rabbit (talk) 20:27, 1 July 2012 (UTC)

Oh wow, yes, thank you! This is really encouraging to see happening. Maryana (WMF) (talk) 16:53, 2 July 2012 (UTC)

Hello Maryana

As we are right the middle of our Wimbledon here in the "good old United Kingdom", here is a bowl of strawberries for you!

The strawberry fruit (which is not actually a berry) is widely appreciated for its characteristic aroma, bright red color, juicy texture, and sweetness.

I have been on holiday, but have not forgotten your project. Shall submit again soon, if it is not too late ... hope not.

All the best! Gareth Griffith-Jones (talk) 12:21, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

  • Ack, I was away on holiday myself and missed this – but it's nice to come back and see it here :) Thank you, Gareth! Maryana (WMF) (talk) 05:32, 13 July 2012 (UTC)
  • Yeah, I guessed that. Trust you had a great time.
You will have lots to look now ... did you read the last paragraph of the message incorporated in with the strawberries?
-- Gareth Griffith-Jones (talk) 06:35, 13 July 2012 (UTC)
Yes, of course, take your time! I'm presenting some of my findings on editor motivations (distilled from other responses I've gotten) at Wikimania in Washington, D.C. (today, actually!) but it's an ongoing project and always good to hear more stories. Maryana (WMF) (talk) 15:17, 13 July 2012 (UTC)
Good. I shall write more for you soon.
I heard about the Wikimania in Washington, D.C. from Andrew G. West, the author and developer of STiki, who said that he is there now. Should be an interesting day.
Kind regards, -- Gareth Griffith-Jones (talk) 16:50, 13 July 2012 (UTC)

So, like... you're awesome

The work you and Steven are doing is absolutely amazing. Editor retention is one, if not the, most important resolvable issue we have here on Wikipedia. It was so cool to see your joint giddyness (made up word, I know) about this subject in your presentation. It wasn't just big numbers and shiny graphs, it was a real interest in making a positive change. Whatever the result of the warnings-RfC, I truly hope you continue your project with the same passion expressed this weekend.

So, you're awesome. Steven is awesome. With your help, the community can do this. That's what our website's about, and its that reason (Mission, Self-expression, Finding my voice...) that I stay here. It was great to meet you two; hopefully, it won't be the last time.

Wishing the best, Lord Roem (talk) 23:32, 14 July 2012 (UTC)

Thank you – it means so much to hear that! We really do care, a lot (...sometimes too much), about the community, because we're not some corporate suits trying to solve an economic problem; we're both a part of the community and have a deeply personal stake in seeing it grow and thrive. I'm happy to hear that the enthusiasm is infectious :) Thanks for coming to our talk and participating in the RfC. Your comments/suggestions/critiques on our work are greatly appreciated and welcome. Please keep them coming! Maryana (WMF) (talk) 17:38, 15 July 2012 (UTC)

Reverts of IP in portuguese wikipedia

Hello Maryana! How are you? I hope you had a great time in wikimania!

Portuguese community have been discussing about grant rollbackers the right to block IP and non-confirmed accounts for the maximum period of 24 hours. So far, we noticed a reduction from 40% to 26% % in request for block to IP's by admins. But we'd like to know if there was a reduction about reverts by rollbackers so my question is: is it possible run a query to count how many reverts of IP's the rollback group did from april 12th to july 12th and in other period, like january 11th to april 11th? If it's not possible filter reverts of IP, just reverts by roolbackers would help us with a general idea. Thank you very much!OTAVIO1981 (talk) 14:22, 16 July 2012 (UTC)

If you do this, can I ask for more?
Dont count only from january ~ july 2012. We also need data from jan-dez 2011, cause its possible that an increase / decrease in reverts in apr-jul is normal (like, vacation from school).
And, if possible, include the reverts of all users not just rollbackers, because a fast block (done by a rollbacker) will also reduce the reverts done by non-rollbackers. Rjclaudio (talk) 16:43, 16 July 2012 (UTC)
Hmm, this sounds like a somewhat difficult Toolserver query (reverts are tricky), but I do think it could be done. You might want to ask Jonas AGX, since he probably has the most experience running these kinds of queries (and he actually knows pt.wiki and speaks Portuguese :D). I could poke one of our regular researchers to do this, but I'm afraid they would have a hard time working with edit comments and user rights in a wiki they don't know/language they don't speak. Maryana (WMF) (talk) 17:43, 17 July 2012 (UTC)
Okay. I'll ask him. Thank you.OTAVIO1981 (talk) 18:06, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

User warning templates for AFT5

Hi Maryana, and Oliver suggested we talk to you about it. When you get a chance would you mind having a look at them, they're at User:Callanecc/sandbox/AFT5. Thanks, Callanecc (talk • contribs) talkback (etc) template appreciated. 06:25, 18 July 2012 (UTC)

Sure! Should I leave comments/alternate suggestions on the talk page of the sandbox drafts, your talk page, somewhere else...? Maryana (WMF) (talk) 16:57, 18 July 2012 (UTC)

Hi Maryana, I've pretty much started from scratch with the templates, so they will be different to what you helped with. Would you mind having a look (they are still in the same place)? Thanks, Callanecc (talk • contribs • logs) 08:10, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

Left a few comments there; otherwise, looks good to me. Thanks so much for working on this! Maryana (WMF) (talk) 16:26, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

Hi again Maryana I've made some more changes, would you mind having a look for me. I planning for this to be a final draft before I ask for comments at WT:AFT5 so any help or advice you have would be appreciated. Thanks, Callanecc (talk • contribs • logs) 08:11, 6 September 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia user interface and helping new users

Here I made some suggestions for some very simple Wikipedia search interface improvements that would surely result in more Wikipedia volunteers, and your name was mentioned as someone who might be interested. (Please scroll down to the bottom of that post for a very brief summary of the essence of my suggestion).

You must be very busy, but I believe that this would surely make everybody's job easier by:

  • giving the user a choice of search results, as Google does, and
  • "advertising" where prospective Wikipedia volunteers can learn more...

Best regards LittleBen (talk) 03:59, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

Related post on "Apparently-broken Special:Search page" is here. User:Okeyes suggested that I suggest this here.  Best regards  LittleBen (talk) 04:43, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

Help Project newsletter : Issue 3

The Help Project Newsletter
Issue III - August 2012
Project news summary
  • Final results and conclusions from the help pages survey were released.
  • The wub gave a presentation at Wikimania 2012 about help pages, and the slides are now on Commons.
  • A discussion is taking place about the purpose and future of the venerable Community portal.
  • New designs for tutorial pages have been proposed, comment from project members is welcome.
From the editor

Welcome to the (slightly delayed) third issue of the Help Project newsletter.

The past month has once again been a busy one for my fellowship. The full results and conclusions from the extensive user survey on help pages are now available, and make interesting reading. These do confirm a number of our suspicions about Wikipedia help, and suggest that the current plan for the remainder of the fellowship is a sound approach.

Also last month I was fortunate enough to attend Wikimania 2012 in Washington DC, where I gave a presentation about help pages and the aforementioned survey results. You can find the slides from this on Commons. Wikimania was also a great opportunity for many discussions with staff and community members, and these brought up some interesting ideas which I hope to follow up on.

One of the things much discussed was the planned tutorial pages. I've been working on a new design for them which can be seen at User:The wub/sandbox/1, please let me know what you think (especially if you spot any bugs!).

Any comments or suggestions for future issues are welcome at Wikipedia:Help Project/Newsletter. If you don't wish to receive this newsletter on your talk page in future then just edit the participants page and add "no newsletter" next to your name.

the wub "?!" 13:24, 3 August 2012 (UTC)

Opentask

Hello, Maryana. I thought I should let you know that I had moved the line "Here are some open tasks that you can do ..." out of Wikipedia:Community portal and back onto Wikipedia:Community portal/Opentask. Apart from being used on Community portal, {{Opentask}} is also a standalone template in userspace. It's also sometimes transcluded in welcoming messages (without substitution). It looks weird without its first line at the top. Hence my edits to put it back. I hope I did not mess up your reforms at Community portal. Thanks. Happy editing. Cheers! --PFHLai (talk) 03:48, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

No worries – thank you for fixing it! I didn't even think about the fact that it gets used elsewhere; good catch :) Maryana (WMF) (talk) 16:27, 7 August 2012 (UTC)


Hello, Maryana. I have made some tweaks to the wikiformatting of your tabulated Opentasks, done to help maintain the shape and layout of the 3X5 Matrix. Let's just say it's a pre-emptive strike against articles with an extra long title that may wreck the layout. Hope this helps. Cheers! --PFHLai (talk) 01:31, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

An invitation for you!

Hello, Maryana (WMF). We are in the early stages of initiating a project to plan, gain consensus on, and coordinate adding a feature to the main page wherein an article will be listed daily for collaborative improvement. If you're interested in participating, please add your name to the list of members.

 Happy editing!  Ryan Vesey 03:31, 10 August 2012 (UTC)

In particular, I sent this to you because of it's possible use on the Community portal, which you have shown an interest in revitalizing. Ryan Vesey 03:31, 10 August 2012 (UTC)
What a brilliant idea – thank you for the invite and for working on putting this together! Maryana (WMF) (talk) 05:15, 10 August 2012 (UTC)

Main page redesign

Hey Maryana! I wondered if you'd have any feedback on my rough draft of a main page redesign? The discussion is here :) thanks! — Pretzels Hii! 12:38, 10 August 2012 (UTC)

Hey! I'm a UX Designer at WMF and I sit with Maryana. I'm also working on some redesigns of my own (unreleased thus far). I think this is a good start, and definitely one of the better redesigns I've seen submitted. The Picture of the Day is well-styled, and I'm digging the "Timeline" view for anniversaries. My personal preference is that "In the News" should be more prominent than "Best of Wikipedia" - perhaps swapped in positioning and restyled accordingly (with a less prominent border as well). I do like that you used contrasting typefaces (Georgia with sans-serif). I think you could probably do that a bit more to create some content hierarchy - perhaps by using Georgia for section headings and sans-serif for content. One other thing that jumps out is that the "Did you know" section could be more scannable. One thing that might make those bullet points more appealing to read is not starting with the classic "..." even though that's the pattern we use today. All in all - I like it! Please keep it up. MAssaf (talk) 17:15, 10 August 2012 (UTC)

Test-1 template

Hi Maryana, I reverted your edits to template:uw-test1 because when I used it this is what came out:

Hello, I'm [[User:{{subst:REVISIONUSER}}|{{subst:REVISIONUSER}}]]. I noticed that you recently made an edit to Enterprise resource planning‎‎ that seemed to be a test. Your test worked! If you want more practice editing, the sandbox is the best place to do so. If you think I made a mistake, or if you have any questions, you can leave me a message on [[User_talk:{{subst:REVISIONUSER}}|my talk page]]. Thanks, Pine✉ 07:54, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

Can you please fix the substitutions so that they work correctly? Thanks, Pine✉ 07:51, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

(talk page stalker) I've put Maryanna's version back. Pine as with pretty much all templates put on a user talk page you need to subst: it onto user talk pages, for example: {{subst:uw-test1|Enterprise resource planning‎‎}} ~~~~. I'll fix it on User talk:117.218.4.39. Callanecc (talk • contribs • logs) 08:02, 16 August 2012 (UTC)
I see. This wasn't necessary with the previous version. Thanks. Pine✉ 08:18, 16 August 2012 (UTC)
You should do it will all notification templates you put on user talk pages (including welcome, deletion notifications, user warnings and so on). WP:Substitute#Benefits explains why it's good. But think of this: you warn someone with uw-3rr cause they broke the rule, but just after you transclude it onto their talk page someone completely changes the template (to say that 3RR has been changed to 10RR, they see the 10RR template and keep going. However, had you substituted it then it will always remain exactly the same as when you hit the save button. Callanecc (talk • contribs • logs) 08:47, 16 August 2012 (UTC)
Thanks, Callanecc! Pine, you might be confusing this with article and article talk templates, maybe? Things like cleanup templates and WikiProject assessment templates are transcluded, but user warnings (including the previous version of uw-test1) are always substituted. Maryana (WMF) (talk) 16:02, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

A request

Hi Maryana, can I ask you to reconsider your criteria for handing out barnstars to new users? I've just noticed that you gave one to an editor (here) whose only activity on WP (that I can see) is removing fixed image sizes, including on featured articles, reverting over objections and leaving articles looking a mess. But you thanked him for doing it, in the name of the Wikimedia Foundation. :) SlimVirgin (talk) 17:22, 21 August 2012 (UTC)

Ah, that's unfortunate! I tried to check the contribs of the people I was barnstarring beforehand to make sure I didn't run into problems like this, but human error is inevitable when you're doing five to ten of these a day, I suppose. Regardless, it was a short-term experiment/fun side project, but I stopped months ago because it didn't seem to be having a measurable effect on folks one way or the other. My suspicion is that speaking from "The Foundation" might actually have freaked people out a bit, and that a volunteer-delivered barnstar may have had more of a positive effect. Maryana (WMF) (talk) 18:08, 21 August 2012 (UTC)
Okay, thanks for the response. I'm glad that has stopped, to be honest. I had noticed a few others that were a bit problematic too, though I don't recall what they were, but I remember thinking, "oh, please stop thanking them"). :) But of course it's the ones we don't like that we notice. I'm sure most of them were fine and much appreciated, so my apologies for only mentioning the negative. Best, SlimVirgin (talk) 19:08, 21 August 2012 (UTC)
No worries! Thanks for letting me know. I got a flood of really happy talk page messages and even emails during that period, so my qualitative experience was skewed way more toward the positive. Good to have some balance in perspectives for a more NPOV :) Maryana (WMF) (talk) 20:15, 21 August 2012 (UTC)

For your information...

Thanks to Ryan Vesey we have our first nomination in the WP:TAFI project, so I'm notifying all the project members. AutomaticStrikeout 20:18, 25 August 2012 (UTC)

Captcha

Hello Maryana! How are you?

We got some data about reverts at pt.wiki and I hope we could achive any conclusion at any moment! :D But I'm here to ask other thing: Do you know (or can point a path for me) which wikipedias had captcha in the past and removed after? Do you have any idea if one of them wrote a report or something like to justify removing captcha? Regards!OTAVIO1981 (talk) 21:23, 27 August 2012 (UTC)

I don't know of any projects that have documented their CAPTCHA use, but I know the debate about CAPTCHAs has been going on for some time on the Wikitech-l mailing list, among others. Are you on that list? I know Helder is... you might have some luck sending an email and asking people what the CAPTCHA policy is on their wiki and how they arrived at it. The trouble is, most experienced editors probably don't even know that the policy exists, because they don't remember it anymore :-/ Maryana (WMF) (talk) 06:52, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

I mentioned one of your Wikimania talks ...

here. You may want to check it to make sure I'm not taking your name in vain :) - Dank (push to talk) 15:07, 30 August 2012 (UTC)

Yes! And that's exactly my objection to/fear of P.C. Thanks for sticking up for the quiet, humble workers in the 99%! :) Maryana (WMF) (talk) 15:44, 31 August 2012 (UTC)
They're actually not so quiet over at WP:Milhist, we've got a lot of exopedians who generally like to stick to the articles and ignore the hubbub :) Thanks so much for your presentation ... before I saw the video, I was sweating how to approach the next round of RfCs ... you made it easy. - Dank (push to talk) 16:41, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

Community Portal

Can you get a link to Culture onto the community portal as today's article for improvement? I don't know exactly where to put it. Ryan Vesey 13:33, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

Done! I wasn't sure if you all had created any kind of template for displaying the article, so I thought it might be nice to just copy FA format and add lead + a nice image. Feel free to edit if you're not a fan. (I think it looks quite lovely, and honestly I kind of want it to go at the top of the page! Let's see if my new to-do list gets any hits, and if not I'll move it up there.) Maryana (WMF) (talk) 21:38, 1 September 2012 (UTC)
Btw, I see on your talk page that you're pretty busy with school right now – I'm happy to take on the task of updating this on the CP daily with whatever article y'all choose for awhile (since I'm the self-appointed guardian/nanny of the portal days :-P). I'll be able to give you some cool data on the % of visitors to the page who click on the link, too. Maryana (WMF) (talk) 21:46, 1 September 2012 (UTC)
Just so you know, the article will be changing on a weekly basis, so you won't have to update it every day. AutomaticStrikeout 22:01, 1 September 2012 (UTC)
Ah, sweet. That makes it easier. Thanks for fixing the blurb about that on the page! Maryana (WMF) (talk) 22:07, 1 September 2012 (UTC)
No problem. Thanks for your help! AutomaticStrikeout 22:22, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

Hey! On a slightly different but very much related topic: Noticed the format change to the list of open tasks, I stopped SuggestBot's cronjob so it doesn't break it. Is that the design you're going with, meaning I should make sure SuggestBot's script creates proper lists? Won't get around to it until Tuesday at the earliest, though, as I'm busy travelling. Cheers, Nettrom (talk) 22:17, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

Yeah, I wasn't sure if it would affect the bot since I left the span tags intact, but it's fine if you need to update the code – take all the time you need! And good seeing you at WikiSym! You have about a year's worth of blackmail material on me & my trash-talking mouth now... use it wisely ;) Maryana (WMF) (talk) 22:33, 1 September 2012 (UTC)
I've got a copy of the tablified list of open tasks in my sandbox, will start working on it shortly, we'll probably see it updated again later today. Was great meeting you too! I'll try to keep my wise-old-man-hat on at all times ;) Cheers, Nettrom (talk) 15:59, 4 September 2012 (UTC)
Apparently I'm older and wiser than I thought, or someone pushed the easy-button. I've got the code working with the new format now and the cronjob is set to run again. First update in a little more than half an hour and every hour after that, as usual. Cheers, Nettrom (talk) 16:45, 4 September 2012 (UTC)
Sweet! Thanks, Nettrom :) Maryana (WMF) (talk) 17:36, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

Study by Halfaker et al.

Hi Maryana, you are listed along with others as having aided this study by Halfaker et al. The page mentions that the study will appear in an American Behavioral Scientist issue devoted to wikis. Do you know the likely publication date? I don't think the issue is out yet. Best, Andreas JN466 00:35, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

I'm not sure... the best person to ask would probably be Aaron Halfaker himself :) He's User:EpochFail. Cheers, Maryana (WMF) (talk) 00:52, 2 September 2012 (UTC)
Thanks! I'll drop him a line. Best, JN466 01:29, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

Blanket use of diacritics in article titles

I wonder if WMF is aware of the relentless push—by a small bunch of editors and admins—towards the blanket use of diacritics in article titles as described here and here (article titles with diacritics bolded). The war started with European languages, and now is moving to Vietnamese. The situation seems a bit like Orwell's Animal Farm. LittleBen (talk) 06:32, 5 September 2012 (UTC)

Sometimes it's claimed that diacritics makes us look "encyclopedic." But the current level of usage is far beyond Britannica`s and IMO makes us look like amateurs pushing foreign language use. Britannica certainly doesn't use Vietnamese diacritics. The 8-bit character set, which includes diacritics for French, German, and Spanish, should be more than enough for titling articles. (This style is recommended by the New York Times Manual of Style and Usage, although the newspaper itself often drops all the diacritics.) Slavic, Scandinavian, and Vietnamese diacritics look really odd to most English speakers. The current guideline says to "follow the general usage in reliable sources that are written in the English language" (WP:DIACRITICS). Very few diacritics meet that standard. Kauffner (talk) 07:52, 5 September 2012 (UTC)

fyi, there are also a small bunch of editors that oppose use of diacritics on sight. One of them, User:GoodDay, was taken to ArbWorld and topic banned from diacritics, "broadly construed" (as tehy 👍 ' to say;), and spent most of the summer blocked for slips. Kauffner, above, needs the same restriction (I've not seen LittleBenW, before...).

I quick peek at the xhtml source of any wiki page will show that the site uses charset=UTF-8, not Latin-1. Welcome to Unicode, which enables Vietnamese, Cyrillic, and many more. Malayalam is quite the lovely script, although you may have to install it. ml: ;) And, fwiw, vi: is one of the fastest growing wikis. Br'er Rabbit (talk) 10:17, 5 September 2012 (UTC)

Are you saying that English Wikipedia should use Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese in article titles—regardless of whether the majority of English Wikipedia users can read Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Vietnamese—"because, with Unicode, you can"? And that you believe that people who "use English" as per Wikipedia title guidelines, should be baited, bullied, and banned? LittleBen (talk) 12:41, 5 September 2012 (UTC)
This sounds like a job for... the actual editors involved! I'm not sure how the Wikimedia Foundation can help in a content dispute like this, or if it should. As far as the technical aspect, I'm certainly no character encoding expert – you should get in touch with the Localization team, who will might have actually useful things to say about diacritics and such :) Maryana (WMF) (talk) 15:40, 5 September 2012 (UTC)
That localisation team would be about localising MediaWiki for various locales. The problem with the 'actual editors involved' approach is that the "anti-dios" types roam around being mischievous with their agenda. Kauffner, for example, got in hot water for assorted IP usage hiding prior move discussion. Anyway, this is not the place for this; I just noticed this 'cause you're on my watchlist. Cheers, Br'er Rabbit (talk) 20:42, 5 September 2012 (UTC)
Maryana, as you can see from this, Wikipedia is rapidly degenerating into a "I can do what I like, regardless of guidelines, if I have a bigger band of cronies with sticks and am more determined". LittleBen (talk) 01:14, 6 September 2012 (UTC)
Please Don't Feed The Wales ;) Br'er Rabbit (talk) 06:00, 6 September 2012 (UTC)
Br'er Rabbit: It's too bad that the trivial-edits-made-while-logged-out case never went to Arbcom. It was the War and Peace of SPI cases. I am gunning for something big with my name on it. I focus on 'Nam because I live in Saigon. Kauffner (talk) 04:23, 6 September 2012 (UTC)

Help Project newsletter : Issue 4

The Help Project Newsletter
Issue IV - September 2012
Project news summary
From the editor

Hi, and welcome to the fourth issue of the Help Project newsletter.

It's been another busy month in the world of Wikipedia help. The results from the in-person usability tests conducted as part of the help pages fellowship have been released. There are no great surprises here, the tests confirmed that people have trouble with the existing help system, and people looking for help on the same topic often end up at wildly different pages. Editors who experienced a tutorial and/or edited a sandbox as part of their learning were noticeably more confident when editing a real article.

Drawing on that, three new "Introduction to" tutorials for new users have been created: referencing, uploading images and navigating Wikipedia. These join the popular existing introductions to policies and guidelines and talk pages. Feel free to edit them, but please do remember that the idea is to keep them simple and as free from extraneous details as possible. All three have been added to Help:Getting started, which is intended to be the new focal point for new editors, and will also be seeing a redesign soon.

In other news, the Article Feedback Tool (AFT) can now be used to collect feedback on help pages. By default it has been deployed to all pages in the Help: namespace. It can be disabled on any page by adding Category:Article Feedback Blacklist, or enabled for pages in other namespaces by adding Category:Article Feedback 5 Additional Articles. Once a page has AFT applied, you can add feedback using the form which appears at the bottom of it. Feedback can be reviewed by clicking "View feedback" in the sidebar, or the "Feedback from my watched pages" link at the top of your watchlist.

I'm now entering the final month of my fellowship, and will be focusing my efforts on making much needed improvements to Help:Contents, the main entrance point to our help system. It's been a pleasure working as a fellow, and I just want to thank all the people who have helped me or offered advice over the past months. That definitely won't be the end of my involvement in the Help Project though, I'll be sticking around as a volunteer and continuing to write this newsletter.

Any comments or suggestions for future issues are welcome at Wikipedia:Help Project/Newsletter. If you don't wish to receive this newsletter on your talk page in future then just edit the participants page and add "no newsletter" next to your name.

-- the wub "?!" 20:00, 7 September 2012 (UTC)

Talkback

Hello, MPinchuk (WMF) (usurped). You have new messages at The wub's talk page.
Message added 20:50, 7 September 2012 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

sorry for slow reply, been a busy few days... the wub "?!" 20:50, 7 September 2012 (UTC)

main page redesign

screen cap
screen cap

fyi: User talk:Jorm (WMF)#main page redesign.

Br'er Rabbit (talk) 02:38, 18 September 2012 (UTC)

(Speaking as a not-designer) That looks really nice! I definitely think the fewer boxes and colors, the better. The appeal of Wikipedia for me has always been simplicity and lots of whitespace; if you think about it, Instapaper, the cool hipster designer delight du jour, is really just Wikipedia minus templates and navboxes and stuff. Anyway, thanks for working on this. I don't know how the community consensus thing will go, but it seems like having more (and more diverse) ideas on the table is always a good thing. Maryana (WMF) (talk) 04:56, 19 September 2012 (UTC)
Thanks; the pastels and nested boxes are a pox on the project; they're everywhere. The boxy look is years out of date; the main page has not significantly changed it's look or implementation in 6 years. “One despairs, one really does.”
I don't know Instapaper but the site as a clean, modern look. My prototype can be restyled by simply editing the stylesheet, which is how things are supposed to be styled. That framework could easily support any of the proposed redesigns just by tweaking the styling and making minor adjustments to the actual main page code. <poke>Go have a cup of coffee with Jorm and talk about this ;)</poke> The next step should really be a layer of DOM scripting of the main page to really liven things up. Isn't that Oliver's job? Br'er Rabbit (talk) 07:40, 19 September 2012 (UTC)

WikiProject Spam

Dear Maryana! Today I've found a link to my UserPage on the list Wikipedia:WikiProject Spam/LinkReports/onlinetonegenerator.com. I suppose that I'm a conscientious wiki-editor. I've translated the page Sensorineural hearing loss into Russian, this link was added into English version by another user from the IP 109.148.161.193 (12:27, 3 October 2011) and it is still there. I am not a spammer and value my good name in Wikipedia. What can I do now? Is it enough to delete this link from Russian version of the page, or I need to do anything else? Yours respectfully, Jeanne --JeanneMish (talk) 08:16, 29 September 2012 (UTC).

Hi Jeanne,
I got in touch with the operator of the bot who added your name to that list. You should remove that external link from both language versions of the article, but don't worry about the bot report; no one is going to think you're a spammer just because a bot screwed up :) In the future, the best strategy for dealing with this kind of situation is to get in touch with the human who's responsible for the robot. Most bot edits will contain a link to their handler, and if not, you can track him/her down from the bot's user page. Sorry about this and hope it doesn't happen again! Best, Maryana (WMF) (talk) 21:09, 1 October 2012 (UTC)
Thank you, Maryana! --JeanneMish (talk) 17:37, 7 October 2012 (UTC)

Thank you

Maryana, thank you very much for this. It brightened up a very miserable morning, and I really do appreciate that you took the time to mention me to Sue. I don't know what else to say... not often I'm speechless! WormTT(talk) 07:45, 2 October 2012 (UTC)

You're very welcome! Thanks for all you've done for the wikis, and I hope we get a chance to hang out again (in a pub or otherwise) sometime soon :) Maryana (WMF) (talk) 17:52, 2 October 2012 (UTC)

Mobile editing

Hello Maryana,

Yes, you are correct that I am an editor who TRIES to edit using mobile devices. I used to use a Droid X and now use a Droid Razr. My expectation is that editing on a mobile device will be identical to editing on a desktop computer, except with a smaller screen. My experience is that the editing process has deteriorated in the past few years, which is a great disappointment to me, with a negative impact on my editing. Just making this comment has been a struggle. Cullen328 Let's discuss it 04:56, 9 October 2012 (UTC)

I've got to say, I agree with Cullen. When trying to edit from a mobile, I find the edit window terribly hard to navigate, difficult to scroll, bouncing around. Mobile devices are not made for the great text box we have here. Another thing I find very annoying is accidentally pressing rollback - I'd love to see a way for that to be turned off for mobiles. By the way, I've got both Android and iOS systems, and have tried a multitude of browsers, and have experienced the same difficulties on all of them. WormTT(talk) 08:19, 12 October 2012 (UTC)
I totally hear both of you – I've tried to respond to talk page messages a few times on my phone (iOS), and it was a nightmare. When I saw Cullen328 actually editing on his phone during an editathon, I nearly fell out of my chair!
So, right now the mobile team is working on the official mobile site (en.m.wikipedia.org) which is very reader-centric, and a Beta version (bit.ly/wmoptin), where we're building and testing more editor-focused features to eventually merge into the main site. The very first thing we're tackling is the watchlist, since it's the de facto home page for a lot of Wikipedians. A mobile-friendly, read-only version should be ready to roll out in the next few weeks, and I'd be very grateful if you could both try it out and let me know what you think :) Once we have a solid foundation for a watchlist view in place, we can move on to more advanced contributory features like diff viewing, reverting, and editing. I'll ping you guys when we throw a watchlist prototype up on Beta – in the meantime, feel free to play around with the experimental features on the Beta (keeping in mind they'll change pretty much weekly). Not a whole lot there just yet, but you can log in by going to Special:UserLogin and add articles to your desktop watchlist. Maryana (WMF) (talk) 17:17, 12 October 2012 (UTC)
Cheers m'dear. How do we know what the experimental features are? Is there any documentation for the beta? WormTT(talk) 17:22, 12 October 2012 (UTC)
That's an excellent question! It appears there are dozens of documentation pages scattered across Meta and mediawiki.org, but there's not a single solid high-level summary. So I'm being bold and making one :D Link to my draft: meta:Mobile Projects/Beta. Maryana (WMF) (talk) 17:50, 12 October 2012 (UTC)

Mobile watchlist

Hi Maryana,

Did you catch my note on the technical pump about the mobile watchlist test I put together? Was it (if not, is it) it any use?

Cheers, — Hex (❝?!❞) 13:08, 22 October 2012 (UTC).

Nice! We're tinkering with designs similar to this – you can take a look at some of the early mockups here. The main thing we're juggling is how to structure information to make it both mobile-friendly (compact & visually compelling) and actionable (information-rich, condensed into a single view rather than a bunch of links to stuff). The nice thing about mobile is it allows us to basically start from scratch and design the watchlist of our dreams :)
There should be an early prototype of the read-only watchlist view up on the Beta site in a week or two... Care to join the volunteer Beta testing team which I am just now about to start? Maryana (WMF) (talk) 18:22, 23 October 2012 (UTC)
ETA: Here we go – mobile Beta testing is go! Plz join :) Maryana (WMF) (talk) 18:30, 23 October 2012 (UTC)

Mobile image uploads

Hey Maryana, since the WMF is in the middle of improvements to mobile Wikipedia, I thought I'd direct you to this discussion and see if there's any way we could allow mobile image uploads. Ryan Vesey 22:09, 30 October 2012 (UTC)

Replied! Thanks, Ryan. Maryana (WMF) (talk) 23:19, 30 October 2012 (UTC)
That was my post, actually (when I wasn't logged in). I'm in talks with a developer who might be able to create a basic iPhone Commons uploading app for free. :) We'll see. --Mahanga (Talk) 23:01, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

Making Wikipedia:Teahouse searchable

Wikipedia's advanced Special search allows one to search just part of Wikipedia, like Categories or Talk pages. I think it would be trivial for Wikipedia engineers to extend this so that a simple text box on the Teahouse page searches just Teahouse Q&A.   I mention this because I spent some time writing a response to How can one add diacritics? (also appears here) but it doesn't appear in the Archive Index, and it proved very difficult to track down in the archives. The reason for it appearing twice seems to be that there were two quite different questions about diacritics and heather walls ("Will it simplify or confuse things if I copy this back up here? Let's find out heather walls") seems to have copied the second one over the top of the first. LittleBen (talk) 10:43, 6 November 2012 (UTC)

This sounds more like something that a volunteer could do if he or she wanted, not something you have to wait for an engineer to work on – you could try copying and pasting the template markup at the bottom of the MilHist navbox, for instance, and changing the relevant bits to point to Teahouse. Maryana (WMF) (talk) 18:25, 20 November 2012 (UTC)
  • Somebody appears to have changed the original user interface of the top page such that there no longer appears to be any clear link to the browsable past questions at Teahouse/Questions. There is already a search box at the top right of the talk page, and it should be a simple job to transplant this—perhaps minus the archives link and plus a "search past Q&A" label—to the top page. It would be nice to have a "browse recent questions and answers" link from this top page to Teahouse/Questions as well. I wonder who created the Teahouse top page—would they be prepared to fix these usability problems? I will post a copy of this suggestion on the talk page. LittleBen (talk) 20:43, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

My Post

Listen I need help I made a post on the Community Portal that is called "Book Creator?". However I also made another one called "The Book Creator". Could you please delete "The Book Creator". I would do it myself by hacking (although it is illegal) but that takes time and seeing that you have all the time on your watch to help others would you delete it pls? — Preceding unsigned comment added by PredatorJ228 (talk • contribs) 18:27, 6 November 2012 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

The Original Barnstar
You seem pretty good at what you do. PredatorJ228 18:29, 6 November 2012 (UTC)
Seconded. You do a great job of updating the mobile documentation (including lots of helpful images!) and providing status updates. Keep it up! :) --Mahanga (Talk) 23:02, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

Another mobile improvement

I don't know if anything of this sort is in place, but while experiencing some problems with iPod app I thought of some changes to the search tool. Let's say I search for US national. I am unable to access an area like on the online search where I can find articles that contain the word US national in the text. (They technically appear, but there is no way to see what the text is, it only gives the title). That might be impossible to change, but the real issue is this: If I choose something from the search menu, and decide it is the wrong thing, I can't go back to the search. If I press back, I end up on the last article I was on (or the main page). Is it possible to at least change that second part? Thanks, Ryan Vesey 17:27, 9 November 2012 (UTC)

Thanks, Ryan, that's good feedback. There's a third-party Wikipedia app that does this, and it might be worthwhile to catch up to our competitors on the advanced search front :) Right now the mobile team is putting the bulk of its time into building contributory features like editing and photo uploads (not something the competitors care about so much), but there's definitely a slow burn of reader features like this that they'll be working on in the meantime, too. Maryana (WMF) (talk) 22:25, 9 November 2012 (UTC)

Template:Opentask-short

Since you've edited this template in your official capacity, I'd appreciate it if you'd comment at WP:VP/Pr on my request to protect it fully or to move its contents to userspace in order to prevent vandalism. Section title is "Protecting templates used in MediaWiki pages". Nyttend (talk) 14:13, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the heads up; responded there! Maryana (WMF) (talk) 18:36, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

Greetings Maryana!

Gareth Griffith-Jones – The WelshBuzzard – is wishing you the season's greetings.
Whether you celebrate your hemisphere's solstice or Christmas,
Diwali, Hogmanay, Hanukkah, Lenaia, Festivus,
or the Saturnalia,
this is a special time of year for (almost) everyone.

  • Aww, thanks so much! Happy holidays to you, too! (Saturnalia is my personal favorite :D) Maryana (WMF) (talk) 19:07, 21 December 2012 (UTC)
    • Lovely to hear back from you. I feel ashamed that I did not resume replying to your questionnaire. Should you want anything/any detail, please do not hesitate to ask me for it. Have fun! –
       – Gareth Griffith-Jones |The Welsh Buzzard| 19:44, 21 December 2012 (UTC)

Holiday Cheer

Holiday Cheer
Michael Q. Schmidt talkback is wishing you Season's Greetings! This message celebrates the holiday season, promotes WikiLove, and hopefully makes your day a little better. Spread the seasonal good cheer by wishing another user a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past, a good friend, or just some random person. Share the good feelings. - MQS
  • Thanks so much! Best holiday wishes to you and yours, as well :) Maryana (WMF) (talk) 00:31, 26 December 2012 (UTC)

Merry Christmas!


TheGeneralUser (talk) is wishing you a Merry Christmas! This greeting (and season) promotes WikiLove and hopefully this note has made your day a little better. Spread the WikiLove by wishing another user a Merry Christmas, whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past, a good friend, or just some random person. Happy New Year!

Spread the cheer by adding {{subst:Xmas2}} to their talk page with a friendly message.

Hello Maryana! Wishing you a very Happy Merry Christmas :) TheGeneralUser (talk) 20:23, 25 December 2012 (UTC)

  • Thanks, TGS! Have a very merry Christmas yourself :) Maryana (WMF) (talk) 00:32, 26 December 2012 (UTC)
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