Wikipedia:Village pump (WMF): Difference between revisions

Per a recent update on the IP Masking project, Legal has apparently decided that IP masking is no longer desirable but mandatory, with consultation now limited to implementation form.

Thus far Legal have not provided reasoning on that, but they are set to give a statement (detail level unknown), likely in the next week.

As this will have a significant effect on anti-vandalism efforts, please provide your ideas, concerns, and comments on the discussion page on how to mitigate any negative consequences and utilise any potential positives. Nosebagbear (talk) 10:19, 19 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

This link will be useful here--Ymblanter (talk) 11:01, 19 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Looks like we need, and will have, an RFC on this. Alsee (talk) 09:38, 23 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I believe that our traditional workflow is as follows:

1. The W?F proposes something on an obscure meta page. Nobody notices.
2. The W?F posts it somewhere else, and literally everyone who replies hates it.
3. The W?F reaffirms their commitment to listening to user feedback.
4. The W?F announces that they are going to go ahead and do it anyway and you can all go and pound sand.
5. An RfC is posted. Hundreds of people contribute. The result is overwhelmingly negative.
6. The W?F goes ahead and does what they were always planning on doing.
7. The shit hits the fan, admins resign, The Signpost does a feature. Wikipediocracy does a feature. The Register does a feature. The Guardian does a feature. The New York Times does a feature.
8. The board of directors tells the W?F to knock it off. Nobody gets fired or demoted.
9. Return to start.

I will make popcorn. --Guy Macon (talk) 17:19, 23 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Sometimes they skip step 4 and go straight to step 6, which we then follow with step 5. Extra butter, please. – Jonesey95 (talk) 17:58, 23 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The W?F has thrown a lot of crap at us before, but basically saying "we want more vandals" is a new low. Popcorn tastes good. —pythoncoder (talk | contribs) 18:52, 24 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

• Came on this forum to discuss removal of the community voting on the board members. The scheme should include some Facebook discussion and a mention of Jimbo. ;-) Ain92 (talk) 20:07, 29 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

This might be a good next step. -- RoySmith (talk) 21:30, 1 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I've said this elsewhere, but didn't gain much traction. Showing IP info to logged-in users isn't a problem. Exposing it to every anon, scraper and mirror is a problem. But W?F want to hide it from all of us. Pelagic ( messages ) – (20:33 Thu 05, AEST) 10:33, 5 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

• There should be some freedom for project communities to decide which flag should include the technical right to see IPs. Some projects may decide to allow it to patrollers, other only for admins (W?F proposal doesn't even allow admins). Ain92 (talk) 20:07, 29 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

What is the exact legal issue? Can wikipedia just encrypt the ip address with a different id for each edit? Wakelamp d[@-@]b (talk) 13:16, 14 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

• I think every edit should be randomized, so you never know who made what edit, on talk pages and articles. 100% mystery, even admin actions and Arb discussions. That would fix all our problems and make Wikipedia a great place to be an admin at. Maybe they will bump it up to that. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 23:13, 10 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
• I never thought I would wind up advocating that we suspend IP editing, but that now seems to be the sensible option, at least until the WMF has a solution in place and working reasonably well on a sizeable Wikipedia. ϢereSpielChequers 23:34, 10 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • What do you mean? Which Wikipedia? Jason Quinn (talk) 15:27, 26 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    • If the WMF comes up with a design for IP masking that one or more of the 300 language versions of Wikipedia agrees to test then I would be interested to see the results. For EN I think we should follow Portuguese. ϢereSpielChequers 23:36, 8 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • WereSpielChequers, no kidding—I have always viewed IP editing as an integral part of Wikipedia, but this project is only making me think that can't last. I typically am blasé about general WMF/project governance decisions, but this one I have some serious concerns about. Perryprog (talk) 21:58, 14 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Announcement on the mailing list. --Yair rand (talk) 03:00, 5 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Dang, that's a bummer. –MJL ‐Talk‐^☖ 04:12, 5 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Well with luck it will go better than the last planned handover.©Geni (talk) 07:19, 5 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I do not see why, the procedure seems to be exactly the same.--Ymblanter (talk) 07:47, 5 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Different people. More experience.©Geni (talk) 09:45, 5 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Unfortunately, we had a few showcases recently which demonstrate that the collective learning curve of the WMF is, if not flat, not very steep. They continue making the same mistakes which they made 15, 10, and 5 years ago. And people making them are often different. We will see.--Ymblanter (talk) 09:54, 5 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The WMF is running a consultation on the nature of the Community trustees - both on the selection method (through a sub-committee vs through direct election), quotas, and more.

There is both a general discussion page and subpages for specific proposals.

Please participate and spread word to other suitable locations as appropriate.

Cheers, Nosebagbear (talk) 17:11, 5 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

What's the point? The board clearly doesn't care what we say and nothing we say matters. Jimmy Wales already stabbed us in the back after insisting he wouldn't vote for taking away our vote -- which he did -- and the community has largely stood by and watched this happen. This ending of any semblance of community control of Wikipedia should have been fought with 100 times the passion of FramGate or WMF changing its name and...nothing. CoffeeCrumbs (talk) 02:41, 7 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

There doesn't seem to be an UCOC survey for enwiki, but you can participate in e.g. the Wikidata one, here. Most questions are not Wikidata specific anyway, and a fair number are hardly intelligible. E.g. "In the event consensus will be reached about the establishment of an "enforcement body", either on Wikidata or within the Wikimedia community, to address harassment and threats, how much do you agree with the following statements? ... Larger communities should have the possibility to opt-in the scope of action of such "enforcement body", should there be consensus about it." Do you agree or disagree with this? No idea, I don't know how a community can "opt-in the scope of action"[sic] if the enforcement body is established locally in the first place. Fram (talk) 14:35, 12 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I have seen that a survey has been sent to some people on Commons though the questions are different between the two surveys seemingly reflecting that the two "facilitators" are different people. Xeno (WMF) what can you tell us about enwiki? Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 16:07, 12 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the questions Fram & Barkeep49: some local consultations started earlier as they required more time due to the translation workflows or multilingual nature of those projects (and while I've been following along, the individual facilitators would be better placed to discuss).

For enwiki, the upcoming consultation planned for March (entitled "Meta-wiki consultation") which I'm designing will involve global discussions as well as discussions that are tailored to individual projects. I hope to ensure that any points where the global policy is impractical in individual community contexts are identified and clearly highlighted to the drafting committee writing the application section.

Please let me know about any other ongoing local discussions, or if you have any thoughts about the upcoming consultation. Xeno (WMF) (talk) 20:40, 18 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Xeno (WMF) I feel like I have less of a grasp on what will happen than before i started reading this message. Enwiki editors will be expected to participate in meta conversations if they want a voice? Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 21:11, 18 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Barkeep49: The goal is seek feedback from editors of all communities, so discussions that happen locally will be considered and are linked from meta:Universal Code of Conduct/Discussions#Community discussions. Since the formal consultation will involve many different languages and project types, we're still finalizing the exact process to ensure all the feedback is properly organized and considered. Xeno (WMF) (talk) 21:49, 18 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Well it seems to me that the goal is to solicit feedback from everyone but especially the Arabic, Bangla, Indonesian, Italian, Korean, Malay, Nepali, Polish, and Yoruba Wikipedias plus Wikimedia Commons and Wikidata. Like the nice part of me wants to be sympathetic to the idea that there are probably some really great ideas being planned behind the scenes that just aren't finalized enough for you to reveal yet and if I'm patient there will be some comparable consultation with enwiki.

However, there's another part of me that is less charitable. That part of me is based on past experiences with foundation initiatives. Not with foundation staff, I have worked with a variety of foundation staff and on the whole have found them just absolutely delightful and competent at their jobs. However, initiatives seem to be this other thing at the foundation and so my personal affinity and respect for a number of staff doesn't translate to good results. Perhaps it's the people who I haven't worked with driving those initiatives and overruling the good staff who I do know. That part of me says that I should be alarmed that you won't commit to a discussion with enwiki. That part of me is resigned to the fact that it's only large scale anger that has a prayer of getting foundation attention and has me already beginning to think how we would go about generating that kind of attention, perhaps building on our own ability to work cross wiki without the foundation in the middle. I don't like it when I can't convince myself that the nice part of me is what should win out. Sadly, Barkeep49 (talk) 22:52, 18 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Barkeep49, I had the impression (I'd have to look for diffs to support that claim) that the UCoC was written to codify the existing consensus on the projects that have robust behavioural policies. It was not supposed to conflict with existing enwp policies. As far as its authors are concerned, if I understand them correctly, nothing will change for English Wikipedia. Unfortunately, they are very quiet. Not one has engaged in the discussion of their work. Vexations (talk) 23:10, 18 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Vexations, I mean I've heard Maggie Dennis (noping: Mdennis (WMF) ) say something similar during office hours. And I don't actually have much to quibble with in the UCoC and certainly don't see anything that brings it into conflict with enwiki policies/guidelines. I would go so far as to say I support the UCoC in principle. However, enforcement is the whole ball game and if it is decided that the UCoC is to be regularly enforced on enwiki that's going to be a problem. And that's what phase two is about: how should the UCoC be enforced. So I would expect that enwiki is consulted so they don't just hear these concerns from me, but from the community writ large. And we're here because Xeno can't or won't say that enwiki will be consulted unlike 9 specific Wikipedias plus the two largest non-wikipedia projects. Instead Xeno seems to have written a response to a nice open ended question asking about what he can tell us about enwiki with an answer that boils down to "I can tell you nothing about enwiki". The answer maybe implies enwiki will be one of the "individual project" discussions are "tailored" to. Or maybe it doesn't imply that at all. And so rather than being patient knowing that our time will come, I'm forced to be a Talmudic scholar deciphering missives from a foundation representative. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 23:28, 18 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Vexations: I too have had this impression. Frankly, I am worried that communications from WMF staff on this front have been deceptive, and that enwiki will be more deeply affected by the UCoC and the Global Council than anyone would have reasonably anticipated. KevinL (aka L235 · t · c) 23:50, 18 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry Barkeep49 if I wasn't clear: input from enwiki will be integral to the consultation, and my goal is to ensure the input of this community (and every community) is given due attention, and that individual users are comfortable expressing their thoughts and opinions. I welcome input on how best to achieve that goal. Xeno (WMF) (talk) 00:09, 19 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

"input from enwiki will be integral to the consultation": I sure hope so, but that would be a first in this whole UCOC thing, where the actual UCOC is already finalized and the enforcement rules will be written before the largest communities (en, fr, de) are heard for the first time. I fear this is yet another token consultation which won't change a thing, with feeble excuses like "we are already too far in the process to change that now" or "we hear you" (without actually doing anything). All of this is yet another top-down WMF effort (like the rebranding and so many other things), with the same mistakes being made in all of them. The query I linked will probably used to justify some decisions as well, even though some of the questions are incomprehensible and thus the answers worthless (and some others are very leading in the choices given). Anyway, thanks for answering here. Fram (talk) 09:09, 19 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Xeno (WMF): I'm a bit confused. Should we be waiting for someone from the WMF to organise a survey or discussion on the UCOC on enwiki? Or should we start one ourselves and then link it at meta? – Joe (talk) 11:11, 19 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Over a year ago, I reported two problems to the WMF:

(1) Logged-in mobile web editors are not given a very strong indication that they have new messages. There's just a little number in a red circle. It's similar to what many other sites use for "Exciting! New! Offers!" and other garbage. There's nothing to say "A human being wants to talk to you."

(2) Mobile web IP editors are given no indication at all that they have new messages. Nothing. Every template warning, every carefully thought out personal message, and everything else just disappears into a black hole, unless the user stumbles across their talk page by accident, or switches to the desktop interface.

But I get it. Bugs happen. They can be fixed. Instead both problems were marked as a "low" priority.

This is baffling. Problem 1 is a serious issue. Problem 2 is utterly unacceptable.

We are yelling at users (or even dragging them to WP:ANI) for "ignoring" our messages that they have no idea exist. We are expecting them learn without any communication all sorts of rules from WP:V to WP:3RR to WP:MOS that don't even apply to most other sites on the web.

Until they get blocked, of course. What a terrible experience. How are we supposed to gain new users when their very first interaction with a human is being told to f--- off, for "ignoring" a message they didn't even know about?

WMF, please explain to this community why this is a "low" priority. One year is long enough. Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 22:55, 16 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I'll just note that a majority of our users are accessing us on mobile so this isn't a niche problem either. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 23:26, 16 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Wow. Neglected high-priority phabricator tickets are nothing new, but this is another level. Jimbo Wales, this deserves your attention. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 08:11, 18 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I would like to point out that the majority of messages left to IPs will never reach the user in question anyways, ESPECIALLY on mobile connections. Due to shared ips, the chance of someone else viewing the message before the person you are trying to reach is probably about 50/50. I realise that sometimes leaving a message is effective, but there are serious questions about all the cases where it is simply leaving a very confusing and often aggressively toned message to a completely different user just randomly reading an article at the busstop a month later. What we really need is a completely new way to leave messages to anonymous users. Possibly with some sort of very short lived session or something. But as ip users are more or less stateless (the software concept) right now, that is probably hard to implement. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 09:26, 18 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Equally baffling is that mobile app users do not see any notifications, including no talk page notifications, logged in or out. The link to talk is buried within the settings. Official mobile apps! They don't even see block messages! See T263943 and others. This block review and also this discussion where an editor also tested block messages. The editor was blocked multiple times for something that was not their fault but that of a poorly thought out app. They are not alone. Quote from phab task: Conclusion: Using the app is like being inside a bubble, without contacts with the exterior. It's no wonder there's so much people complaining here that using the app caused their Wikipedia account to be blocked, for reasons they don't understand. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 09:33, 18 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I have filed T275117 and T275118. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 10:22, 18 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I'm always surprised that anyone manages to edit with the mobile interface. As another example, if you're not logged in, there is no way to access the talk page of an article, or even any indication that it exists. If an unregistered user makes an edit and is reverted with a common summary like "see talk", I imagine many will have no idea what's going on. – Joe (talk) 09:39, 18 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The mobile web, and mobile apps, appear to be designed for readers and not writers. Having used mobile web occasionally, I think it's usable for logged in editing, but I do have to switch to desktop every now and then. I've used the iOS app only for a test - it is not usable for editing imo. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 09:55, 18 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The number of edits I have made with the mobile web or app interface is most likely less than 50 (out of 13,000). Even for reading, the mobile interface is borderline unusable. I do frequently edit from my 4-inch cell phone screen (in fact, I'm doing that right now)... but I use the desktop version. —pythoncoder (talk | contribs) 14:04, 18 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with Joe and have always found Cullen328 to be a bit of a superhero for being who he is on a mobile device. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 18:19, 18 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the kind words, Barkeep49, but I simply use the fully functional desktop site on my Android smartphone. It's easy. If I was the king of the Wikimedia Foundation, I would shut down the mobile site and apps, because they are an ongoing impediment to serious editing. RoySmith, there is no need to invest more effort (money) on a good editing interface for mobile, because that interface already exists - the desktop site. Just change its name from desktop to universal or something, and the problem will be solved.Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 18:34, 18 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

• In some parts of the world, laptops and desktops are common, and people's phones are their second screen. In an environment like that, yes, it makes sense for mobile devices to be thought of as a read-mostly interface. On the other hand, in other parts of the world (particularly India in the context of English language users), mobile is how people access the internet.[1] There's no doubt that building a good editing interface for mobile is a hard thing, but we should be investing more effort there. Poor mobile editing tools disenfranchises a large segment of the world's population. -- RoySmith (talk) 14:41, 18 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

• @Suffusion of Yellow: Thank you for basically expressing exactly the same problem I wanted to. I have blocked a few editors who seem to be editing in good faith but just don't communicate, which eventually end up at ANI and after much agonising, get hit with as friendly a WP:ICANTHEARYOU block as we can muster. In the last instance, Mdd97 (talk · contribs), I specifically made a custom block template that said "CLICK HERE TO READ YOUR MESSAGES" in a way that they surely couldn't miss .... but again, following the block they've not edited again. We have to get to the bottom of this; if it's got to the stage where I've got to block people and the root cause is a software fault, it needs to be fixed. Surely the WMF can't be happy that I've needed to issue blocks on good-faith editors in this manner. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 16:10, 18 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
• To address a reaction some might have, yes, the vast majority of users on mobile are readers, not editors, and no, I wouldn't want the community totally in charge of redesigning the mobile interface, since we'd end up with the phenomenon we have at desktop where e.g. the tools section of the sidebar is visible to every user on every page despite it being of zero use to 99.9% of them. But this request is not just editor-centrism; it applies to users who have already edited and who badly need a notification to help them not get lost. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 18:55, 18 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Broader concerns about difficulty of getting phab tickets resolved

• Also, I hope that this specific issue gets handled here, but the larger point that I think this highlights is that it's incredibly difficult to get phab tickets resolved. I sympathize that there are limited developer resources, but Wikipedia has fallen really far behind most of the rest of the web in the basics, and the focus seems to be on building new (sometimes desired, sometimes not) products rather than patching up the core. Having a wishlist once a year where the community collects together hundreds of urgent problems that have already been reported (in some cases for years) and then a tiny team tackles the top 10 is nowhere near enough. Items 10-50 are essential, too. When a problem like this has been on phabricator for a year, we shouldn't have to come here to beg for it to get attention. I could point to plenty of other tickets in a similar situation. What steps could be taken to get significantly more phab tasks out of the backlog? {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 18:55, 18 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  Sdkb, To be fair to the MWF, the focus seems to be on building new (sometimes desired, sometimes not) products rather than patching up the core has been true on every project I've ever worked on. New stuff is sexy. It's what everybody wants to work on. Most engineering organizations overtly encourage this attitude by putting their best people on new projects, and by rewarding shipping new stuff with raises and promotions, to a greater extent than doing maintenance. -- RoySmith (talk) 19:08, 18 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  RoySmith, for the foundation, the cause is slightly different. The original idea was that they would work 'on the big things' and that the MediaWiki community can pick up the smaller tasks. This concept really stems from around 2009. Unfortunately since then volunteer development hasn't really increased, while MediaWiki itself has become a lot bigger and more complex. I've indicated multiple times in multiple interviews with WMF that I think it is not wise to have so many smaller problems in existing code, with NO owner, and that it creates quality problems.

  Since 2015 there is a core team that thinks about such problems in core, but that team is rather invisible to most of the community (they deal mostly with database, caching, api and authentication issues, keeping things running rly). I have also stated multiple times that we should have at least a 1000 developers.... but this seems to be impossible/unwanted. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 09:58, 19 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  I agree that the urge to work on shiny new features persists everywhere - maintaining things is often boring and repetitive, with little 'to show' for your work, while developing new features has an obvious impact. However, maintenance is incredibly important lest a project accumulate an unworkable amount of technical debt. I'd be happy to look at contributing a pull request for this myself if I can dust off my rather rusty PHP skills, and figure out just how you actually go about submitting a PR for MediaWiki. ƒirefly ( t · c ) 10:43, 19 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  Firefly, please see mediawikiwiki:New_Developers —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 10:48, 19 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  Aha, that looks like what I need. Thanks! ƒirefly ( t · c ) 10:51, 19 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  Firefly, and more specifically for MediaWiki: How to become a MediaWiki hacker —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 11:07, 19 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  Yeah, found that - thanks! ƒirefly ( t · c ) 11:43, 19 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  For me, the issue I have with contributing to MediaWiki development is: (1) I really dislike Gerrit; (2) code reviews are irritating; (3) it's irritating to get WMF sign off on various things I'd want to work on. WMF don't really respond to tickets half the time (fair enough there's a limited amount of attention to go around). Some projects (like FlaggedRevs) are totally abandoned; I wanted to work on improvements to that codebase but there's nobody that will actually code review changes to it. The idea that volunteers work on all the boring/maintenance/smaller stuff and paid devs get to work on the fun stuff is icky. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 12:01, 19 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Hi all, I want to announce the second office hours for the Call for Feedback: Community Board seats.

The Call for Feedback about Community Board seats selection processes is happening between February 1 and March 14. With the help of a team of community facilitators, we are organizing conversations and gathering feedback. It is not too late to join the conversation! Talk to you all soon! Best, JKoerner (WMF) (talk) 22:52, 16 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

[Copied across from WP:VPM]

• For ease, the second office hours are on Saturday 20th February at 4 different times. Whatever your views, please attend. Nosebagbear (talk) 10:13, 18 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]