Meta:Babel/Archives/2017-08

Increase AbuseFilter autodisable threshold for Meta-Wiki

Tracked in Phabricator:
Task T173633

Hello. It happened recently that in periods of low recent changes activity an insistent vandal can trigger the failsafe of the AbuseFilter extension and disallow the filter from taking some actions, such as blocking, by continuing to vandalize the wiki. See for example what happened on August 2nd with Special:AbuseFilter/57. As such I propose to increase the limit so filters can't be fooled even in periods of low activity to 0.30 as in Commons and 25 edits as in Commons as well. Thank you for your consideration. —MarcoAurelio (talk) 12:46, 7 August 2017 (UTC)

Some gadgets are using the thumbnailing backend very inefficiently (easy fix)

The following gadgets: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T168929#3381562 invoke thumb.php on the wikis directly. This is very inefficient on Wikimedia wikis, as it bypasses our cached thumbnailing infrastructure and forces these images to be rendered on the fly every time they are displayed. This makes them slow to the gadget users, in addition to be a wasteful use of infrastructure.

The fix is very simple, though, and I am looking for interface editors who could do it on those wikis.

Typically, those gadgets build URLs like this:

http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/thumb.php?f=Gnome-mime-application-msword.svg&w=18

Where in that particular example an 18px thumbnail of that SVG file is generated.

The same can be achieved and leverage all our caching goodness with the following syntax:

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:FilePath?file=Gnome-mime-application-msword.svg&width=18

That's it! It's really an easy win for everyone to update those URLs.

--GDubuc (WMF) (talk) 15:13, 8 August 2017 (UTC)

Adminstrators

Hello users, I would like to ask a question, how can I be an adminstrator in the meta (or better to give my name here)?--S--------D (talk) 06:48, 10 August 2017 (UTC)

Hi, you have to place your request at Meta:Requests for adminship, but I strongly recommend you to gain more experience in the project before requesting the rights. Regards.--Syum90 (talk) 07:40, 10 August 2017 (UTC)

"Please note: Ill-considered nominations for adminship can be draining and deflating to both the community and the candidate. Any successful candidate will need to be able to demonstrate sufficient experience within the Wikimedia community, in addition to a familiarity with Meta-Wiki. If a candidate is not already a local administrator or holder of advanced permissions on a Wikimedia content project, he or she is less likely to pass a request for adminship here at Meta-Wiki." —MarcoAurelio (talk) 10:50, 10 August 2017 (UTC)

Your feedback is welcome!

Hey everyone, TL;DR, see Technical Collaboration/Community collaboration in product development/Tech ambassadors and translators to provide feedback on the role of tech ambassadors and tech translators until August 22nd, or in person at Wikimania. All details on page. Any help spreading the word is certainly appreciated :) Ciao, --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 14:06, 10 August 2017 (UTC)

For some, 'diversity' = 'the uniformity of monolingualism'.

moved from Talk:Small Wiki Monitoring Team. Stryn (talk) 14:55, 15 August 2017 (UTC)

Banners are not being enabled by Meta Admins, even after they have been translated well in advance. Cy-wiki (Welsh Wicipedia) started a discussion here which is getting nowhere. All foreign language banners will be banned on cywiki in the next few weeks, and we suggest cooperation with other smaller language wikis which are being bullied in this way. Llywelyn2000 (talk) 08:24, 15 August 2017 (UTC)

You can always ping admins so they can then publish the banners. Stryn (talk) 14:54, 15 August 2017 (UTC)

@Llywelyn2000: I saw you post this here and at another forum as well. On the other thread, there was a fairly simple explanation that involved oversight rather than malice. Are you convinced that this is a deliberate strategy? If so, why even have projects in (e.g.) Welsh or Dinka? —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 16:20, 15 August 2017 (UTC)

Well, "deliberate strategy" makes it sounds like conspiracy theories, but if somebody enables a banner (or multiple) for all languages I'd call the effect (showing untranslated banners) quite deliberate. --Nemo 17:53, 15 August 2017 (UTC)

@Stryn: - yes, but the admins do not speak Welsh (and other languages); the ability to publish a banner should be given to the trusted translator.

@Koavf: / Justin - what you say here does not make sense. You say that "if admins are deliberately placing untranslated language banners on local wikis then why should small language wikis exist". What nonsense! Is that helping or hindering a discussion which aims at developing diversity of language rather than hindering it? If you want to engage with me then please be rationale and reasonable. 'deliberate strategy' - those are your words.

@Nemo bis: - yes, certainly the effect is deliberate; I think it boils down to laziness rather than malice.

Maybe the biggest problem smaller language wikis have is the lack of coordination, with no forum for a discussion. I'm certain that others are also outraged by untranslated banners. Is there one?

If no further changes are made then I will go ahead with the ban. And then I will try and find out if the other 250 smaller wikis are happy or unhappy about untranslated banners.

Llywelyn2000 (talk) 04:29, 16 August 2017 (UTC)

@Llywelyn2000: I'm not trying to put word in your mouth--I'm trying to understand your perspective. What is your allegation exactly? Are you saying that the leadership here is trying to undermine linguistic diversity? Or are you saying that they are being derelict in their duty? —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 05:10, 16 August 2017 (UTC)

@Koavf: Find solutions not attempt to lay blame. Llywelyn2000 (talk) 08:19, 16 August 2017 (UTC)

@Llywelyn2000: Excellent. Is there anything I can do (as a non-admin) to help make sure that due diligence is done for tranlsated banners? —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 08:24, 16 August 2017 (UTC)

There is something: CentralNotice/Calendar and its archive need to be filled with all the campaigns run in the past year or two. I noticed that someone removed items from the calendar without copying them to the archive, or even run campaigns without adding them to the calendar (there is information on some of those un-calendarised campaigns in the request page). --Nemo 08:52, 16 August 2017 (UTC)

Maintenance of Meta-Wiki Gadgets

It would be awesome if we could get a process or a page where requests for creation or updates on Meta-Wiki gadgets could occur, as well as active mantainers. Currently requests to have gadgets fixed or updated are spread all over the place with the result of no one working on those. At this thread, Nemo and MZMcBride were not opposed to use Phabricator for such requests as it happens with Wikidata. Some Gadgets such as Pathoschild's ones were ported to GitHub, others sitting here lack active maintenance. Andre and myself are worried that, if we create a #MetaWiki-Gadgets project at Phab, similar as we do on Wikidata, we could end creating yet another place where things are reported but no one looks at them. Therefore I'd like to ask you one more time for your opinion on this. Thanks. —MarcoAurelio (talk) 11:00, 10 August 2017 (UTC)

Well, I think we could create a page called Meta:Gadgets, Meta:Gadgets management, Meta:Gadgets maintenance or something similar for this.--Syum90 (talk) 14:51, 10 August 2017 (UTC)

@Syum90: Thanks. The problem is not the place but if there are people avalaible for that task. I know no JS/CSS, for example. Regards, —MarcoAurelio (talk) 16:45, 10 August 2017 (UTC)

I have the same problem than you :-/ Syum90 (talk) 06:28, 11 August 2017 (UTC)

• I am rather pro some on-wiki venue. It is not that I am opposed to Phab, but keeping it on Phab makes it difficult to navigate to and fro the requests and the gadgets. I know a little bit of JS and CSS to write simple scripts for personal use or port and create very simple gadgets but I cannot be a maintainer for anything complex either. --Base (talk) 19:31, 11 August 2017 (UTC)
• Question: what would the role of MediaWiki talk:Gadgets-definition be under this scheme? It looks like historically people did hold discussions on that page, but not so much in recent days. Harej (WMF) (talk) 16:43, 17 August 2017 (UTC)
• I have withdrawn my proposal on Phabricator. While it had some kind of support, the low level of participation here anticipates that the project would be just another place where things would be reported and nobody cared about them. —MarcoAurelio (talk) 19:52, 17 August 2017 (UTC)

XTools ArticleInfo gadget

There is currently a request to implement the XTools gadget here on Meta. This is a revival of older XTools user script at User:Hedonil/XTools. That one will eventually be retired and automatically source the new script, but we'd like to offer it as a gadget as well. Feedback most welcomed :) — MusikAnimal ^talk 17:58, 23 August 2017 (UTC)

Translations:Grants:IdeaLab/Content/34/xx

Please help,i'm improving pages, and i'm not knows every languages! 178.42.242.178 13:16, 30 August 2017 (UTC)

Stop doing your edits, they are not helpful. I had to revert them as they broke things. Stryn (talk) 13:19, 30 August 2017 (UTC)

This section was archived on a request by: —MarcoAurelio (talk) 11:00, 21 September 2017 (UTC)

Beta feature: advanced filters and more options for Watchlists, starting September 5

Hello!

As you may already know, the Global Collaboration team has created a Beta feature. This feature is on your wiki since few months: "⧼eri-rcfilters-beta-label⧽". You can activate it in your Beta preferences.

What is this feature again?

This feature improves Special:RecentChanges and Special:RecentChangesLinked. It adds new features that ease vandalism tracking and support of newcomers:

• Filtering - filter recent changes with easy-to-use and powerful filters combinations, including filtering by namespace or tagged edits.
• Highlighting - add a colored background to the different changes you are monitoring. It helps quick identification of changes that matter to you.
• Bookmarking to keep your favorite configurations of filters ready to be used.
• Quality and Intent Filters - those filters use ORES predictions. They identify real vandalism or good faith intent contributions that need help.

You can know more about this project by visiting the quick tour help page.

What's new?

On September 5, the Beta feature will have a new option. Watchlists will have all new features available on Recent Changes Beta now.

If you have already activated the Beta feature "⧼eri-rcfilters-beta-label⧽", you have no action to take. If you haven't activated the Beta feature "⧼eri-rcfilters-beta-label⧽" and you want to try the filters on Watchlists, please go to your Beta preferences on September 6. It will not be possible to try the filters only on Recent Changes or only on Watchlist.

Please also note that later in September, some changes will happen on Recent Changes. We will release some features at the moment available in Beta as default features. This will impact all users, but we will provide an option to opt-out. I'll recontact you with a more precise schedule and all the details very soon.

You can ping me if you have questions.

All the best, Trizek (WMF) (talk) 15:20, 24 August 2017 (UTC)

Revisiting Abuse filter editors

Hi all, I'd like to spark some conversation about the currently defunct global group "Abuse filter editors". I'm an administrator on the English Wikipedia, and I try to help out here and there on other projects when they get a spike in vandalism - a lot of the time (and especially recently), this vandalism is actually automated bots who proxy-jump and cause a lot of damage in a short space of time. When this happens, we often find ourselves developing edit filters to identify or disallow the edits. A fair few times, we've shared filters with other projects to help them once the bot moves on to their wiki, and although this works when there is a AbuseFilter-confident administrator around, sometimes on smaller wikis there just aren't available administrators, or those who are active don't use the Abuse Filter.

The Abuse Filter extension is due be improved through the Community Health Initiative, with possible features such as user agent matching being discussed. I think it's about time we consider bringing back the Abuse filter editors group, and allowing trusted, technically able editors to help our smaller communities. Today zh.wikinews was hit by one of their LTAs whilst their four active administrators were unavailable - in this situation I would have been able to create a rather simple filter to keep the disruption to a minimum whilst our stewards worked to lock the proxy IPs. Yes, this could have been resolved with more local administrators, and yes this could have been limited by the actions of global sysops - however, I along with many other able editors, don't have the xwiki-ness sought after to be assigned global sysop, and I don't speak Chinese

The abuse filter extension is one of the most powerful tools we have access to, and by bringing back the abuse filter editors group, we can enable more projects to benefit from the extension and focus on the important things like writing content -- There'sNoTime ^{(to explain)} 13:25, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

Filters which apply to many wikis should be global filters, rather than be copied manually to many wikis. Nemo 14:11, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

Entirely agreed, and the original `abuse filter editors` group had the ability to create or modify global abuse filters -- There'sNoTime ^{(to explain)} 14:30, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

It is not clear what is your specific proposal. Ruslik (talk) 20:10, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

Re-enabling abuse filter editors -- There'sNoTime ^{(to explain)} 07:02, 1 September 2017 (UTC)

In the past, the group was open only to WMF staff and a couple of technically-minded volunteers who helped develop it. It was not widely available for "normal" users. As to the utility of bringing it back, it could let some people help out as with editinterface, but would be significantly more powerful. We would need to establish some clear guidelines around where and when to use it in line with editinterface, and membership would need to be quite restricted. – Ajraddatz (talk) 07:07, 1 September 2017 (UTC)