Wikimedia Forum/Archives/2012-11

Wikimedia Highlights from September 2012

Highlights from the Wikimedia Foundation Report and the Wikimedia engineering report for September 2012, with a selection of other important events from the Wikimedia movement

• Wikimedia Foundation highlights
  • "Page Curation" tools make it easier to review new Wikipedia articles
  • New volunteer-based model for distributing donation money launched
  • New travel project site, and legal activities
• Data and Trends
• Financials
• Other movement highlights
  • Worldwide Wiki Loves Monuments photo contest with record participation
  • Conflict of interest discussions
  • First EduWiki Conference

About · Subscribe/unsubscribe · Distributed via Global message delivery, 08:01, 2 November 2012 (UTC)

Democratizing the Wikimedia Foundation

Because it wasn't linked here yet: please give a look at this page (created by effeietsanders) and weigh in. The same for WMF Board portal created by lyzzy. --Nemo 22:23, 5 November 2012 (UTC)

Am I correct in guessing that this is an unofficial discussion by anyone interested in giving unsolicited advice to the Board, rather than one planned by the Board for the purpose of seeking suggestions? WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:03, 6 November 2012 (UTC)

Yes, but something like 4 board members out of 10 said they appreciate it. --Nemo 21:28, 6 November 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedias by impact

I cant find a List of Wikipedias which ranks them by impact (number of readers, pageviews, etc). List of Wikipedias by sample of articles is good at presenting the potential impact based on quality of vital articles on each wiki, but the realised potential may differ significantly in countries with low uptake of Wikipedia, either due to lack of internet or another dominate online encyclopedia.(Baidu?)

I believe that the data for pageviews per wiki should be easy to obtain, and is visible on http://stats.wikimedia.org . Any tips on how to do this? John Vandenberg (talk) 05:54, 6 November 2012 (UTC)

If it's easily obtainable there, why do you want to copy it elsewhere? --Nemo 21:29, 6 November 2012 (UTC)

Stats include small projects. e.g. the report card provides "Pageviews for All Wikimedia Projects", which only contains the total and the top six.

All:19.1B

English:9.2B

Japanese:1.6B

Spanish:1.4B

German:1.1B

Russian:837.2M

French:808.1M

[1] is huge. My computer cries when I load it.

[2] and [3] are nice, but they are percentages. John Vandenberg (talk) 00:05, 7 November 2012 (UTC)

Ehm, so what do you need? Not tops, not percentages, not super-detailed... so what are you missing from stats:EN/Sitemap.htm sorted by pageviews? --Nemo 00:14, 7 November 2012 (UTC)

Proof Reading in German/Deutsch

Who will do these few lines? http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Translate&taction=proofread&limit=100&language=de&group=page-Fundraising+2012%2FTranslation%2FSrikeit%26Noopur+Appeal

Dankeschön --Hans Haase (talk) 22:34, 2 November 2012 (UTC)

Me! --MF-W 01:35, 10 November 2012 (UTC)

Kolega2357

Do any of the stewards may return protection on my user page? To be like [edit=autoconfirmed] (indefinite) [move=autoconfirmed] (indefinite). The administrator has done it by mistake. --Kolega2357 (talk) 10:49, 10 November 2012 (UTC)

Stewards won't revert a local sysop action. Brest seems regularly active on mk.wiki, ask him. --Nemo 11:00, 10 November 2012 (UTC)

Donations, ethical issue

The error page still says

The Wikimedia Foundation is a non-profit organisation which hosts some of the most popular sites on the Internet, including Wikipedia. It has a constant need to purchase new hardware. If you would like to help, please donate.

The target "donation" page is a little more forthcoming, though still a little misleading.

Where your donation goes

• Technology: Servers, bandwidth, maintenance, development. Wikipedia is the #5 website in the world, and it runs on a fraction of what other top websites spend.
• People: The other top 10 websites have thousands of employees. We have fewer than 100 employees, making your donation a great investment in a highly-efficient not-for-profit organization.

It is, I think, important, not to give a misleading impression that the error page is caused because we don't have enough servers.

And the donate page should not imply that technology (as distinct from people) is our major expenditure when hosting and capex combined come round about 15% of spend. --Rich Farmbrough 18:42 21 October 2012 (GMT).

Fixed the staff count in this edit. The error page has to be changed by filing a bug, I think. It's somewhere in Git (or should be!). --MZMcBride (talk) 01:11, 22 October 2012 (UTC)

I think "technology (as distinct from people)" is not what that sentence means. The WMF collapses under the title "technology" the majority of its budget, including of course the staff costs. --Nemo 07:49, 22 October 2012 (UTC)

I also think, it should be clear defined: "Your donation will not pay for their work, contibuting to the WP, it will be used to keep the WP alive and growing." --Hans Haase (talk) 17:46, 26 October 2012 (UTC)

Did anyone ever figure out where the source for this page is stored? Is there an index of error pages and other weird HTML pages ([[www])) anywhere? --MZMcBride (talk) 17:43, 3 November 2012 (UTC)

Its in the squid deb repo (operations/debs/squid.git). --Hydriz (talk) 13:16, 11 November 2012 (UTC)

Abusefilter-log-detail

Hi, it is proposed in bugzilla:42012 that the right abusefilter-log-detail (View detailed abuse log entries) to autoconfirmed users on all wikis (currently it is set to sysops). It allows to see, on Special:Abuselog, the number of the filter which was triggered, and a link to further details about the action. Note that the showing of details does not apply to filters which are marked as private (these still can only be seen by sysops). To see the difference of this, compare en:Special:Abuselog and sv:Special:Abuselog If you are a sysop on one of these wikis, or a global rollbacker, log out first for the comparision. Some wikis already have such a setting, see Abuse filter. It will also not be changed per default on wikis which have specific abusefilter rights settings already. --MF-W 18:03, 11 November 2012 (UTC)

Problem with D:prefix

Tracked in Phabricator:
Bug 41980

Hello, in the Finnish Wikipedia we have a redirecf called D:A:D. But because d: goes to Wikidata nowadays, it's not possible to delete redirect. --Stryn (talk) 11:18, 17 November 2012 (UTC)

Sounds like bugzilla:41980: Articles starting with "D:" no longer reachable due to d: interwiki prefix. --MZMcBride (talk) 17:34, 18 November 2012 (UTC)

MediaWiki translation - buryat

Hello! I am an admin of Buryat Wiki. I have transleted everything here, and I want it, to appear in Buryat Wiki. Now you have there:

(user name) * My talk * My preferences * My watchlist * My contributions * Log out

And it must be:

(user name) * Минии хэлэлсэл * Минии тааруулга * Минии хаража байгаа зүйл * Минии оруулһан зүйл * Log out

Can somebody help me? Thank you!--Gubin 18:29, 18 November 2012 (UTC)

Hello, see translatewiki:FAQ#Special:AdvancedTranslate: namespace aliases are not updated daily as everything else, you have to wait more than one week as you did.

However, your problem is that your language is still not enabled for export to/update of MediaWiki, because it has too few translations (only 28 % of core messages): I suggest you to translate more of the core messages [4], then you can request your translations to be made "live" with a request at translatewiki:Support. Thanks, Nemo 18:52, 18 November 2012 (UTC)

Thank you very much! And how many % I must translete?--Gubin 19:29, 18 November 2012 (UTC)

I don't know exactly, I'm not the one who decides. Consider that those 500 most used messages of MediaWiki core are really the bare minimum to make your wiki usable. --Nemo 20:15, 18 November 2012 (UTC)

Secure login

I notice that if I log in using the secure log in I can only edit securely, but if I log in using the unsecure login I can edit both secure and unsecure pages, presumably because of the cookies set on the browser, which either are for "Any type of connection" in the case of unsecure login, or "Encrypted connections only" in the case of secure log in. While there are certainly situations where someone does not want anyone to know about their edits, and wants to edit securely, there are also those who want to log in securely, but do not care about their edits being visible to anyone. If that is the case, would it make sense to make two changes to the secure log in page - one add a box that can be checked saying "Allow edits using unsecure connection.", and second, change the heading "Log in" to "Secure log in", to emphasize that it was a secure log in - the color could also be changed of the background or a gold band added at the top, to make it more obvious. If the box was checked, and I would suggest it be unchecked by default, then the page returned to could be an unsecure, http: protocol, instead of the https: protocol.

Computers are getting faster, reducing the time required to make the encryption. But where I see the change more noticeably is if I do a google search it is going to take me to the unsecure page showing that I am not logged in, when I am, requiring me to add https:// or go through the whole log in process again, even though I was already logged in. If I had left the "edit unsecured" box unchecked, and I went to an unsecure page, one of those options are necessary, but not if I had checked the box. Apteva (talk) 23:04, 18 November 2012 (UTC)

I doubt this is the correct place to ask: you might have more luck at wikitech-l. I don't know anything about all this, but I remember Roan Kattouw mentioning the cookies feature you're describing as quite an important one, so I doubt they'll get rid of it (we're trying to get more secure, not less).

Finally, I'm sure no more preferences or checkboxes will ever be added: interface clutter has huge costs in terms of lost editors etc. Nemo 23:13, 18 November 2012 (UTC)

Чахъу

Can someone from the stewards to delete this because without relevant content? --Kolega2357 (talk) 18:07, 19 November 2012 (UTC)

Adding {{delete}} on any wiki is enough to request deletion (they wait less if there are no local sysops). --Nemo 18:22, 19 November 2012 (UTC)

Interwiki list

I am interested in writing the code to implement the grand scheme for interwiki prefix standardization. What do you think of the idea of hosting the interwiki list on this wiki? It would be a page with all the interwiki prefixes and their urls, e.g.:

wikipedia|http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/$1|1
wikiquote|http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/$1|1
wikisource|http://wikisource.org/wiki/$1|1

The list would include not only Wikimedia Foundation wikis, but almost all the 20,000+ wikis in the wikisphere. The idea is to supersede the current 93-wiki list that is distributed with MediaWiki installations, and allow wikis to poll this list instead every 10-15 minutes for new data, much as they currently poll the spam blacklist using mw:Extension:SpamBlacklist. Leucosticte (talk) 12:31, 11 November 2012 (UTC)

Of course you know that we already host the Interwiki map? --Nemo 13:45, 11 November 2012 (UTC)

No, but thanks for pointing it out. Well, it looks like that takes care of the metawikipedia side of the prefix standardization scheme; now all that remains is to write the extension! Leucosticte (talk) 14:09, 11 November 2012 (UTC)

dumpInterwiki.php in WikimediaMaintenance extension contains some logic you might want to rely on. --Nemo 14:36, 11 November 2012 (UTC)

Eh, I just wrote my own code, relying on siprop=interwikimap. It seems to work pretty well. But I see that the interwiki map we have here won't suffice for the whole wikisphere, because it won't allow wikis to be listed that aren't extensively linked from WMF sites. And Wikiindex didn't seem too interested in helping implement this proposal, although they were supportive of the general concept. Therefore, I propose that the wikisphere use Meta-Inclu as the repository for the central interwiki list, unless someone has a better idea. Leucosticte (talk) 16:40, 18 November 2012 (UTC)

A useful step in this process would be to update the 93 interwiki links shipped with mediawiki with a current snapshot of the meta page. –SJ talk  05:47, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

It wouldn't hurt, but will anyone keep it up to date? Probably a script should be written to auto-generate a new interwiki.list from the interwiki map; then it would just be a matter of pushing an updated version to git from time to time. E.g., maybe monthly, or at least in time for each new major release of MediaWiki. In other words, about twice a year. Leucosticte (talk) 07:15, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

Updating the default interwiki map is definitely useful, in the long-term it has vast effects. I'm not sure, however, that it would be a good idea: we have a lot of interwikis which are useful only to Wikimedia wikis. For the extension it's fine, because those who install it want to have many interwikis.

It's also not a problem to include interwikis which are not useful for Wikimedia wikis but are clearly useful for others and not harmful for anyone; usage in Wikimedia projects is used by default when no other rationale is provided (it's also easier to check thanks to our anti-spam tools). Nemo 08:02, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

an Idea to help Wikimedia Fund itself without compromising its purpose.

So...I have an idea about how to provide wikipedia with funding without "selling out" to advertisers etc. Grid computing: If you have been involved in the internet for a while you might have come across a project called Seti@home. Seti@home is basically a screensaver that uses the computer it is installed on to crunch numbers for the SETI project. Seti@home is based on Open Source Software called BOINC. Why not make a similar project to fund Wikipedia? I am no programmer, but here is some parts to my idea: Wikipedia would make a project that used BOINC and the HUGE wikipedia user number to crunch numbers for universities, companies, governments etc.. Either users would install a "wikipedia app" that used the computers down-time (like when a screensaver was being used) OR it perhaps it would be possible to embed an applet of some sort in each wikipedia page.......when an article was accessed the computer would display the article but also process a small amount of information for a wikipedia data project partner. This would allow everyone that uses wikipedia to "contribute their way" to wikipedia. People.....the community would provide the means.....companies would provide the money for the service...there would be no need to have "advertising". Like I said, Im no programmer, but I am an IT repair expert of sorts......when most computers nowadays being sold have FAAAAAR more computing power than the user would ever need....why not utilize that? Would a person with a dual core machine with 4GB of ram and a 12mb connection notice if their computer downloaded 512KB of data and processed it? I highly doubt it. (when I say notice I do not mean that this feature of the site would be secret....im saying they would not notice a performance difference) Michaelagaudio (talk) 08:33, 25 November 2012 (UTC)

strategy:Proposal:Distributed Infrastructure. Nemo 08:36, 25 November 2012 (UTC)

this would be a little different than Distributed Infrastructure though....in that the users would be crunching data for external "clients" of wikimedia---and wikimedia would be getting paid for it.—The preceding unsigned comment was added by Michaelagaudio (talk • contribs) .

This is an interesting fundraising model and I can see it working in at least the short term, and possibly for the medium term, but not for decades. With the trend away from desktops and fixed lines to mobile computing the potential donors of such resource may actually be diminishing. More importantly as with any IT outsourcing project you will continually be competing with en:Moore's Law, with clients going in house to do on a £5,000 machine processing that took a supercomputer a decade or so earlier. You'd also be vulnerable both to security issues - this sort of project only works with low risk data such as SETI has, and also to reputational issues - if one of our clients turned out to be doing something that some saw as unethical then this could rebound on us. With computing costs falling each year and our readership still growing faster than the Internet, our current fundraising model looks more sustainable for the foreseeable future especially if we can move donors from one off donations to longer term commitments. However I can see that another charity with different funding needs might be interested in this concept. WereSpielChequers (talk) 11:59, 26 November 2012 (UTC)

The idea of donating

I think Wikipedia is a wonderful, marvelous tool. But with so many worthy causes in which to donate, causes that save lives, heal illnesses, fight against social injustices, I have a real problem with donating to an organization that has an incredibly strong brand and could certainly figure out a viable way to monetize what it does without diverting money from the many worthy charities of the world. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 74.107.105.57 (talk • contribs) .

There are indeed lots of other charities out there, and millions of people who give a higher priority to eradicating AIDS, supporting their local Donkey sanctuary and so forth. Wikimedia only needs a miniscule part of the world's charitable giving, so it isn't a problem that most people don't give to us, and I suspect most who do give to us also give more to other charities. Thus far we have had no difficulty persuading enough donors that our vision of giving the whole world free access to the sum of human knowledge is worth part of their charitable giving. I'd also question your assumption that we are competing with other charities for our money. I'm pretty sure that most people don't have a precise budget for how much they give to charity each year, so in reality we are competing for people's discretionary spend and like all charities we are competing not just against other charities but against everything from nicer seats at the theatre to a new sunlounger for the garden.

As for the idea that we could use our brand to raise money in other ways, yes we could; But can we do that in ways that are compatible with our mission? Unlike say selling ads on Wikipedia we can ask for money directly without compromising the integrity of our mission and dividing the community of volunteers who write the pedia. WereSpielChequers (talk) 11:39, 26 November 2012 (UTC)

Accounts

Is it possible to combine the two global accounts? Tsebeen and Jargal - it is one and the same person, but he can't restore login info for Tsebeen. He asked me to combine under the name Jargal. Can somebody do it?--Gubin 15:24, 26 November 2012 (UTC)

No. See also bugzilla:23459 in case you want to reopen the discussion. --Nemo 15:28, 26 November 2012 (UTC)

it.wiki in trouble, once again, this time is worse than last year

Hi, this is just to let you know that the dangerous law that wasn't issued last year, when we blacked-out the site, is once again under discussion at the Italian Senate. This time things seem to be much much worse than one year ago. The act is now harder and contains many more obligations, so many and so dangerous that no sysops would work at such conditions because it would definitely be too risky. Very few among our users would go on editing BLPs or "spicy" topics any more because it could be very costly: up to 100,000 euros! And any legalised troll saying that something in our articles disturbs him, would be entitled to request an addition (inside the article) which actually we are not going to accept because the troll is not required to be honest and tell the truth, any liar would be legally welcomed and we couldn't even comment... (I'm not kidding, it's incredible but true...)
Moreover, this time the approval could more probably be forced by the so-called technical government (headed by Mr. Monti), and all the bigger Italian parties toghether (Berlusconians hands in hands with former communists - both had separately tried to enforce such an act before) are working for strengthening the act. So, this time we need a critical help from anyone, we need it now because the scheduled vote on next Monday could be the last time we can freely work on it.wiki. We need it strong because main Italian media are simply ignoring our protest, and we can't read any news about it outside the web.
So, please, please, please, do whatever you can in order to avoid at least that this can happen in a complete silence. Inform your deputy, call the closest Italian embassy, spam your papers and/or our Senators (open individual files for addresses), use your fantasy and do whatever you think might be strongly helpful in protecting Wikipedia, starting from spreading the news across the WikiWorld.
Any little thing you can do will be vitally important for it.wiki.
Thank you in advance --g (talk) 00:09, 27 October 2012 (UTC)

By the way, this proposed law is not dead yet. There seems to be an end-of-mandate sprint in the next 20 business days for the Parliament to either pass or abandon this law and a few dozens other decrees, so we'll know soon. --Nemo 12:59, 26 November 2012 (UTC)

I thought about suggesting that someone send them an Italian translation of wikisource:Cato's Letter No. 15, but it occurred to me that perhaps the very reason for governments' wanting to destroy freedom of speech is that it's inseparable from public liberty. wikisource:Cato's Letter No. 100 and wikisource:Cato's Letter No. 101 are also pertinent reading. I disagree, though, with the statement, "Wikipedia is already neutral, why neutralize it?" Wikipedia may be moderate (or slightly left of center, as the case may be) but it can never be neutral, if only because of the need to choose which facts are relevant and important (and therefore worthy of inclusion and greater weight, prominence, etc. than others) and which aren't. Leucosticte (talk) 23:07, 26 November 2012 (UTC)

A "wikikultur" project ?

Hello,

Excuse me if this is not the right place to talk about this topic, please tell me where to post my message if this is not the relevant place.

So, I see that wikimedia release "new projects" (after months/years of less mediated work, of course), like wikivoyage and wikidata. That's really great, and I want to congratulate all the wikmedia employes and thank all wikimedia project contributors. Now there are still some digital works which can not be published on a wikimedia project, because none of them have the right editorial guideline to host them. Things like original poetry, songs, essays, theses, novels, etc., wether they were already previously published or not.

I would be very happy to see wikimedia launch a project to host this kind of works. Who should I contact for such a suggestion ? Is there some "incubator" for that kind of ideas (as far as I know, the incubator wiki is to test if a language would worth the host) ? --Psychoslave (talk) 14:00, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

There's wikibooks. Other than that, I don't think there's a WMF project that hosts the kinds of works you're talking about; I think they would view original poetry, songs, essays, theses, novels, etc. as original research, which is something they've tended to not want to host. But there are plenty of non-WMF wikis that will host such content, although they typically want it to meet some criteria for being on-topic for the wiki in question. E.g., a fan wiki for a TV show will usually want posted essays and such to be related to that show. Leucosticte (talk) 14:17, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

I understand the no-original-research for wikipedia, which is important of course. Now as it's said in the page you pointed to, what's relevant for an encyclopedia may not feet others editorial guidelines. Wikibooks is too pedagogic works oriented, and wikisource won't accept works which were not previously published elsewhere.

Moreover, to my opinion, it would be a good way to softly evacuate originals works from wikipedia, with a message like "your contribution contains original claims, wikipedia is not the place to publish this kind of content, but you could share your original work on wikisomething". Then eventualy, the wikipedia article could use wikisomething arcticles as references. This would give access to authoring information (eventually anonymous/IP claims), and all avantages of a free work on a wiki. For example, we may have statistics on articles, so we can check if it's not an over represented point of view in an wikipedia article.

On artistics topics, I think it would really help to boost the free-libre culture movement to have a place where every artists can directly experiment what it means to share and build together, with an audience intertwinned with other mediawiki projects. --Psychoslave (talk) 14:53, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

Have you considered doing this at Wikia? You can start a wiki there for just about anything, so they may even have a wiki like this already. There is always Proposals for new projects if you want to pursue this here, but I really don't see a WMF project ever being created for this, considering the scope of the other projects. – Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 15:47, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

No, it looks like wikia is full of ads, which is a no way for what I'm thinking about. But your link to proposals for new projects seems far more interesting, thank you ! --Psychoslave (talk) 15:53, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

I created Wikikultur. Thank for your help ! --Psychoslave (talk) 16:30, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

People interested

}}

Does anyone know what's the problem ? --Psychoslave (talk) 23:30, 28 November 2012 (UTC)

There were have been quite some transclusion problems in the last three days, and some "deployments" of software updates had to be reverted. If this still happens currently and *if* this is a regression (the same code still worked last week) it could be worth to file a bug report in https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org so the developers get aware of it. --Malyacko (talk) 12:03, 29 November 2012 (UTC)

Wikiprocess creation proposal

Hi everybody, I am here to present this project I have in mind for many years, to your judgment :

In our day, Wikipedia has become a primordial vector of extention of Open Source Knowledge ; but, with born of 3D printer and the growing of Home-Made culture, the importance of a wikipedia of procedures and process is become really evident. Because we are all, in earth, creator and productor of things not only buyer nor consommer of it.

The objective of Wikipedia is like any encyclopedia : A complete access of the knowledge, only for the fondamental principe ; but Knowledge is also procedure of production and Open Source Schematics : the classical Wikipedia is not adapted for this and now we need this kind of stuff.

The Wikiprocess project have for objective to create a new Sister for wikipedia ; adapted to the production procedure of all manufactured things and Open Source Schematics.

Production procedure are :

1. Procedure for Chemical Production ; How to make myself Sulfuric Acid or Food Preservative ? (For exemple)

2. Procedure for Manufacturing Product ; like screwdriver, automotive, motor or anything else ; If I want, for any reason, product an electric engine myself, what is the procedure and can I have Open Source schemes ?

3. Procedure for Cooking and Cultivating (Only for the exemple), If I want to prepare anythings, what is the process ?

And all of other process and schemes imaginated and created by humankind.

For more information, go to the Wikiprocess main page. Ordre Nativel (talk) 03:46, 29 November 2012 (UTC)

Ethical considerations of Wikimedia donation methods

Today, while browsing Wikipedia, I saw a banner requesting donations. I clicked through for more info, because I value Wikipedia's contribution to the world's knowledge. I was disappointed to find no option to donate Bitcoins. I searched page after page without an explanation as to why Wikipedia won't take my money. There's no mention of Bitcoin on the FAQ, on the Other Ways to Give page, or on the Donor Policy.

I did finally find an explanation:

The Wikimedia Foundation, as a donor-driven organization, has a fiduciary duty to be responsible and prudent with its money. This has been interpreted to mean that we do not accept "artificial" currencies - that is, those not backed by the full faith and credit of an issuing government. We do, however, strive to provide as many methods of donating as possible and continue to monitor Bitcoin with interest and may revisit this position should circumstances change.

I acknowledge that the startup costs and regulatory risks may dissuade Wikimedia from setting up a wallet and accepting Bitcoin donations themselves (although I bet if they asked their team, many would be willing to receive their wages in Bitcoin.)

But I am not satisfied. Wikipedia can accept my Bitcoin donations through a third party payment processor such as BitPay.

They would receive fiat currency without ever touching Bitcoins.

Doing so would give those without access to bank accounts an easy way to donate to Wikipedia. It would also let users maintain their financial privacy and still support Wikimedia.

---

Several commentators have written excellent discussions on this topic.

Jon Matonis points out, in his article Wikipedia Accepts 'Enemies Of The Internet' Currencies:

Wikipedia will accept donations in four of the 12 ‘Enemies of the Internet’ currencies ... Bahrain, China, Saudi Arabia, and Vietnam ... But just don’t try to donate safely in bitcoin - it’s not accepted.

... it might become extremely dangerous for some of those citizens to be personally attached to a traceable Wikimedia credit card donation. Accepting anonymous bitcoin in addition to political currencies can be a way of declaring that freedom of speech still does matter.

Erik Vorhees of BitInstant says in a blog post:

Wikipedia doesn’t mind accepting donations backed by a regime that has institutionalized the beheading of women for adultery or “witchcraft,” but it won’t accept Bitcoin, because it’s not backed by such an organization...

[on Wordpress's recent decision to accept Bitcoin:]

Surely, WordPress also has “a fiduciary duty to be responsible and prudent with its money.” What anomaly of WordPress enables it to prudently accept Bitcoin payments while Wikipedia stands idly by? Why was it worth WordPress’s time to integrate Bitcoin payments (which is incredibly easy, by the way) yet Wikipedia refuses to do so, even while they desecrate their own website with an unpleasant yellow banner soliciting donations?

To paraphrase Jimmy Wales's donation plea:

"Commerce is fine - but only if you involve a central bank."

Therealplato (talk) 19:45, 29 November 2012 (UTC)

---

I can only guess at the reasoning behind the policy, as the information you have quoted about it is not particularly explanatory of underlying reasoning. One such guess, however, is that the Wikimedia Foundation (as a very high-profile supporter of online free speech) may be consciously avoiding acceptance of "non-state currencies" (for lack of a better term) that may draw unwanted attention from state agencies. The technical ease or difficulty of accepting Bitcoin may be irrelevant when there is concern over whether high-profile dealers in BTC may at some point in the near future be targeted by state action to make an example out of those who might choose to bypass state issued currencies. If that is not the underlying reason, though, I have a very difficult time imagining a good reason. (Disclaimer: I used to work for the Wikimedia Foundation, and its well-being has a special place, all its own, in my heart.) - Apotheon (talk) 19:58, 29 November 2012 (UTC)

---

The en:Electronic Frontier Foundation has clearly articulated three reasons for not accepting Bitcoin; I think these generally apply to WMF as well. See here. -Pete F (talk) 20:30, 29 November 2012 (UTC)

---

If you want to make an anonymous donation, then you can get a en:money order in the U.S. and mail it to the WMF's office. I'm sure that they and the post office would both prefer that you didn't mail cash, but that, too, is another option. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:15, 29 November 2012 (UTC)

True, but that's not viable for many others (poor/corrupt postal infrastructure, desire to send micropayments, etc.) It's also a hassle. Therealplato (talk) 22:02, 29 November 2012 (UTC)

People interested

}}</nowiki>

Does anyone know what's the problem ? --Psychoslave (talk) 23:30, 28 November 2012 (UTC)

There were have been quite some transclusion problems in the last three days, and some "deployments" of software updates had to be reverted. If this still happens currently and *if* this is a regression (the same code still worked last week) it could be worth to file a bug report in https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org so the developers get aware of it. --Malyacko (talk) 12:03, 29 November 2012 (UTC)

New namespace on Meta

Moved to Meta:Babel#New_namespace_on_Meta by Nemo bis (talk · contribs) at 15:20, 30 November 2012 (UTC)

Using transclusion of an other subpage

Hello,

Translating Wikikultur to french, I meet a technical problem to include Wikikultur/supporters, as in the People interested section of the english version.

This code : {{#ifexist: Wikikultur/supporters | {{Wikikultur/supporters}} | = = People interested = = <inputbox> type=create preload=Proposals for new projects/supporters-preload editintro=Proposals for new projects/supporters-intro default=Wikikultur/supporters hidden=yes break=no buttonlabel=Add your signature </inputbox> }}

Will result in :

{{#ifexist: Wikikultur/supporters | {{Wikikultur/supporters}} | = = People interested = = <inputbox> type=create preload=Proposals for new projects/supporters-preload editintro=Proposals for new projects/supporters-intro default=Wikikultur/supporters hidden=yes break=no buttonlabel=Add your signature </inputbox> }}

Does anyone know what's the problem ? --Psychoslave (talk) 23:30, 28 November 2012 (UTC)

There were have been quite some transclusion problems in the last three days, and some "deployments" of software updates had to be reverted. If this still happens currently and *if* this is a regression (the same code still worked last week) it could be worth to file a bug report in https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org so the developers get aware of it. --Malyacko (talk) 12:03, 29 November 2012 (UTC)