Wikipedia:Village pump (WMF)

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The WMF section of the village pump is a community-managed page. Editors or Wikimedia Foundation staff may post and discuss information, proposals, feedback requests, or other matters of significance to both the community and the Foundation. It is intended to aid communication, understanding, and coordination between the community and the foundation, though Wikimedia Foundation currently does not consider this page to be a communication venue.
  • Discussions of proposals which do not require significant foundation attention or involvement belong at Village pump (proposals)
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  • Consider developing new ideas at the Village pump (idea lab).
  • This page is not a place to appeal decisions about article content, which the WMF does not control (except in very rare cases); see Dispute resolution for that.
  • Issues that do not require project-wide attention should often be handled through Wikipedia:Contact us instead of here.
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    Wikipedia:Emergency
    for that.

Threads may be automatically archived after 14 days of inactivity.

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against other users, including employees of the Wikimedia Foundation, will be met with sanctions.

« Archives, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7

 You are invited to join the discussion at meta:Universal Code of Conduct/Coordinating Committee/Charter/Voter information. –Novem Linguae (talk) 13:21, 19 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Katherine Maher named to head NPR Saw this about an hour ago on the Wikimedia General Chat Telegram channel, where a link to a paywalled article on the HY Times was posted. Her biography on Wikipedia has this free one to the announcement on
NPR.

My own opinion, based on her clumsy & ill-informed response to the FRAM debacle -- as well as routinely ignoring her talk page over at Meta -- is that she was selected for this position more due to success at networking than for her job performance at the Foundation. She may prove to not be up to the job. That said, I will be quite happy if she proves me wrong & flourishes there. -- llywrch (talk) 20:51, 25 January 2024 (UTC)[reply

]

I think she'll do ok as long as she has a good CTO to deal with the "technological turbulence". The job there seems likely to play more to her strengths than her weaknesses, and to see some of the kinds of things she pushed for while at WMF as desirable rather than undesirable. Anomie 21:48, 25 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Wikimedia Community Fund (General Support Fund) Round 2 announcement

You can find this message translated into additional languages on Meta-Wiki.

Hello everyone. The Community Resources team at Wikimedia Foundation announced the upcoming round 2 for the General Support Fund, which will run from February through May 2024. The Wikimedia Community Fund's General Support Fund provides flexible support for long-term projects contributing to Wikimedia projects. In the announcement, you can find information for new and returning applicants, as well as details about the round timeline and grant budgets. We will also reach out to you during the community review period. Read the full announcement on Meta-Wiki. On behalf of the Community Resources team. --I JethroBT (WMF) (talk) 21:49, 8 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Stewards Election and Confirmation

The Stewards Election and Confirmation is currently taking place until 27 February. Interested editors can participate in the election here and the confirmation here.

Currently, 11 editors are running to become stewards, and 27 stewards are running to be reconfirmed. I have attempted to provide a neutral[a] summary of the current status of each of these candidacies, including a summary of concerns that have been raised. BilledMammal (talk) 15:49, 10 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Jump to: Summary Confirmation Candidates Election Candidates Internal discussion

Summary of Stewards, Steward Elections, and Steward Confirmations

Stewards

Stewards are a global group of users with complete access to the wiki interface on all public Wikimedia wikis. They have the technical ability to modify all local and global user rights, change the status and name of global accounts, and access any of the permissions available to administrators and bureaucrats. The use of steward rights is restricted by policy; stewards will not use their technical access when there are local users who can use that access, except in emergencies.

On the English Wikipedia, this means their primary functions are to make editors a bureaucrat and to globally ban editors; this last aspect can be controversial when an English Wikipedia editor is globally banned for activity that we would not consider to warrant such an action. They are also able to access personal data and suppressed information.

Steward Elections

Between January and February every year Steward Elections are held, during which editors with at least 600 edits who have been an admin on at least one Wikimedia Project for at least 6 months can run. To be elected an editor needs to receive at least 30 votes in support and at least 80% support.

Steward Confirmations

Between January and February every year Steward Confirmations are held, during which current stewards must have their status reconfirmed. During a public comment period editors may comment for or against a current steward; after the public comment period is closed all existing and newly elected stewards consider the comments and issue their own votes; a steward is removed if a majority of stewards vote to remove them.

Confirmation Candidates

Steward[b] Home wiki Concerns[c] Current status[d]
S O N %
AmandaNP English Wikipedia 82 0 0 100%
AntiCompositeNumber Wikimedia Commons 67 0 0 100%
Base Ukrainian Wikipedia 52 2 0 96%
Bsadowski1 English Wikipedia 51 1 0 98%
DerHexer Wikimedia Commons 72 0 0 100%
Elton Portuguese Wikipedia 34 0 0 100%
HakanIST Wikidata Some concerns about their activity levels 46 3 0 93%
Hasley Spanish Wikipedia 47 0 0 100%
Hoo man German Wikipedia Some concerns about their activity levels 31 7 0 81%
Jon Kolbert Wikimedia Commons 41 0 0 100%
MarcGarver English Wikibooks 23 1 1 96%
Martin Urbanec Czech Wikipedia 66 2 0 97%
masti Polish Wikipedia Concerns about their failure to respond to queries; effectively, concerns that they are failing to meet the steward equivalent of
WP:ADMINACCT
40 16 9 71%
Mykola7 Ukrainian Wikipedia 61 2 0 97%
RadiX Portuguese Wikipedia 36 0 0 100%
Sakretsu Italian Wikipedia Concerns about their involvement in the Gitz affair, specifically use of steward rights while under a potential conflict of interest. For context see Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2023-06-19/In the media and Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/2023-06-19/In the media. 62 13 3 83%
Schniggendiller German Wikipedia 39 0 1 100%
Sotiale Korean Wikipedia 50 0 0 100%
Stryn Finnish Wikipedia 41 0 0 100%
Superpes15 Italian Wikipedia 78 0 1 100%
Tegel Swedish Wikipedia 43 0 2 100%
Teles Portuguese Wikipedia 41 0 1 100%
Vermont Simple Wikipedia 66 1 0 98%
Vituzzu Italian Wikipedia Concerns about their involvement in the Gitz affair, specifically use of steward rights while under a potential conflict of interest,
WP:OUTING, and behavior during the confirmation process. For context see Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2023-06-19/In the media and Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/2023-06-19/In the media
.
57 34 2 62%
Wim b Italian Wiktionary 51 0 0 100%
Xaosflux English Wikipedia 51 0 0 100%
علاء Arabic Wikipedia Concerns about their involvement in the Arabic Wikipedia black out and auto-logout. 62 4 1 94%

Election Candidates

Candidate[b] Home wiki Concerns[c] Current status[d]
S O N %
Ajraddatz English Wikipedia 190 1 2 99%
Albertoleoncio Portuguese Wikipedia Concerns about level of cross-wiki activity 113 14 8 89%
EPIC Swedish Wikipedia Concerns about experience, cross-wiki activity, and hat collecting 104 14 17 88%
JJMC89 English Wikipedia Concerns about level of cross-wiki activity 98 12 12 89%
Johannnes89 German Wikipedia 187 2 4 99%
K6ka English Wikipedia Concerns about level of cross-wiki activity 39 46 17 46%
Lee Vilenski English Wikipedia Concerns about level of cross-wiki activity 18 71 14 20%
Melos Italian Wikipedia Concerns about activity levels 147 10 11 94%
Turkmen Azerbaijani Wikipedia Concerns about re-using statement from a previous attempt 65 41 24 61%
Yahya Wikidata 147 2 4 99%
~aanzx Kannada Wikipedia Broad range of concerns, including cross-wiki activity, experience, and views on spam. 14 67 22 17%

English Wikipedia Discussion

Nice summary. Thanks for taking the time. –Novem Linguae (talk) 17:09, 10 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Agree with Novem, thank you! As you mention, it'd be awesome to have this automated in the future (maybe as a Toolforge tool instead of a bot, to avoid the update edits needed). — Frostly (talk) 23:41, 12 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
There already is a toolforge tool for the election candidates (though not the confirmation candidates) - https://stewardbots-legacy.toolforge.org/Elections/elections.php stwalkerster (talk) 13:09, 14 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Notes

  1. ^ For full disclosure; I have currently participated in two of the discussions, with a vote for Xaosflux and a vote against Vituzzu
  2. ^ a b Link takes you directly to the voting page; candidate statements may be found there.
  3. ^ a b Column is left empty when there is little or no opposition. Concerns are summarized from the votes in the linked discussion.
  4. ^ a b Manually updated; last updated at 23:24, 12 February 2024 (UTC). It would be useful to automate this for future elections.

No relicensing template

How is Template {{

Afd? Even if legally void, why encourage that with a template, even if it's just a pointless sign of an ornery user strutting some attitude on their user page, like a lot of userboxes are. Adding Slaporte (WMF). Mathglot (talk) 19:02, 4 March 2024 (UTC)[reply
]

It looks like there about eight users active in the past year who display that template on their user page. Most users displaying the template have not edited in 10 years or more. I don't see how displaying that template can override the terms of use. I don't see it as a major problem. If the template does not have any legal effect, then trying to delete it may create more drama than it is worth. Donald Albury 20:43, 4 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
 You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2024 March 4 § Template:WikimediaNoLicensing. — Frostly (talk) 21:12, 4 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Al-Quds University

Why is Al-Quds University not only mirroring the English Wikipedia—which I presume is permitted by law—but also using Wikimedia logos? TrangaBellam (talk) 15:13, 9 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Slaporte (WMF): - FYI. TrangaBellam (talk) 15:17, 9 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Conversations with the Trustees - next call this Thursday 21st!

Hi all. I just wanted to give you a heads-up, in case you didn’t already know, that there are regular ‘Conversation with the Trustees’ events that you are welcome to attend and ask questions to the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees (who oversee and guide the Foundation). I’m hosting the next one, taking place this Thursday 21st March at 19h UTC and, speaking as a long-time enwiki editor, it would be really nice to see people from here attending and engaging in the discussions. Please see m:Wikimedia Foundation Community Affairs Committee/2024-03-21 Conversation with Trustees for details! Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 21:51, 18 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]