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.

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VR + Wikipedia...?

I joined WP today to talk about how WP is great. But could be greater. Not in content, but layout. I am a strong believer in VR and AR lays the future of learning. How VR ready is WP?

Ok, science could be shown in the way of maps. To get a birds view first. A big continent, the highest mountain mathematics. Like a globe, connected spheres of interests, but also unconnected, where the ocean is, the not known, or unknowable. This would allow a child, or child minded person, to enter a BIIIG picture. There lays the continent of humanities. And there the continent of mathematics, with a hillside full of trickeries around numbers, computer science in a separate valley, watered by streams of specific sources. So, instead of on a book cover, you oversee a whole globe of nothing than science. And here you, as Peter Pan. Wander the long road of knowledge, jump on little islands, esoteric science, neither recognized by the hard science, nor the humanities. It would be a chance to exibit what we know. In total know. All things considered. A globe of knowledge. Overseeable, as a bird, as an astronaut. Good science has also be seen in a bundle, like an archipelago, inhabited by different highly specialised faculties. There can be capitals, where stuff gets remixed, but it would then be more about the little CRACKS, you start to see, when you go REALLY deeep down on this planet of knowledge. I see it as Google Earth, the closer you go, the higher is the resolution. The fine grain of content from WP, what only miles below you, like a map, or a globe, is your starting point. Above that is a new knowledge ordering.

This old idea of mine (I am 67 btw.) would not bring me here, but a rather new one. I am fishing in my own ocean maybe, when I think this globe of knowledge inverted, turned around like a sock. And giving it VR appeal with a beautiful side effect, that now you see all the knowledge, all around you. And then, zoom down, zoom in, go in the detail, let the veins pulse reddish, where distant relations exist. Make it possible to overfly the world of facts, just join them together in the best appropriate way. As map. Not by an alphabet. I suppose my idea will not be taken serious, but I do not mind. I just would KNOW, that I would be every day on WP, if I could fly like Peter Pan over the wide territory of what is known.

Something like this should be done open source, crowdfunded and enginered. Not to touch any of its content, this would in my eyes be the book cover of the most interesting book ever written. While the content is basically traditional, like a paper version, this cover would be the widest funnel to let more people getting to look at your interesting book. Mappify what you have to say, so the lonely walker at night can follow better the springs of wisdom. Make a never ending map, a globe. Buy them from dump shops, repaint them. And then turn the whole concept around, like a sock, so by turning your head with your VR glasses, you get an idea how still big the ocean is. The stuff, we do NOT know....

Tell me what uou think about my vision. I do this in photography already. Check out invearth.com for the GENERAL look, of how an inverted globe looks like.

All this will not make WP look even smarter, than you already are (?), but would maybe suck kids away from Tik Tok. Or such...... Dreamers of all walks of life, who nose in books with appealing covers.

It is just an idea....

Greetings from New Zealand. 2/8/2023

Fitzgeraldo Fitzgeraldo Absentree (talk) 06:15, 2 August 2023 (UTC)

That would be a very ambitious project. For comparison, there is a project to produce audio versions of English Wikipedia articles. After many years, there are 1,710 (out of more than six million) articles with audio versions, and some of those have not been updated in 17 years. Remember, all (with very specific and limited exceptions) of the content in Wikpedia is contributed by volunteers, so what you propose would require large numbers of volunteers to contribute time and effort to the project. Donald Albury 13:38, 2 August 2023 (UTC)

These are very different arts. Many millions of people have been taught how to write a crude essay or research paper, and when I teach people from among the small fraction who have done these things outside class, it's easy. I just have to explain how a Wikipedia article differs; they already know things like exposition vs persuasion and the structure of a paragraph. Few have been taught how to organize an illustrated lecture or a drama, so the pool of easy candidates is small. Even elementary things like paragraph structure are different, and then, the script is only a small part of the work of video production. As for VR; c'mon! Hardly anybody is good at that; it's a pioneer art. So yes, when such products are made, they should be uploaded to Commons and appropriate articles should link to them. But it's going to be very small for many years. Jim.henderson (talk) 13:55, 5 August 2023 (UTC)

Reminds me of the time my boss suggested we video my training sessions for staff and show the video to later groups. I knew just enough about what it would take to do that properly to know I didn't have the experience, time or desire to attempt it. Donald Albury 17:21, 5 August 2023 (UTC)

Whole different art. In the 20th century cheap videotape came along, and since the 2000s everybody carries a video camera / recorder in their pocket. Cheap laptops can run decent editing software with timelines, splices, dissolves, and so forth. The result is, as hoped, a vast output of video shorts on many topics, but it ain't Hitchcock or Goddard or Kubrick.

What we get from Youtube and Vimeo and their competitors are a few somewhat useful Khan Institute items, even fewer, somewhat better TED talks, and a huge volume of poor shooting, poor editing, and very poor reading of a badly written script. As a fairly experienced still photographer, when I point my camera on a tripod at a Wikimedia Lightning Talk podium and set it for video, I don't bother viewing the result; I hand it over to someone who might edit and upload it. Generally they do their job at least as well as I do mine, but it doesn't much matter.

So, when we read an article and wish for a video version, what we should do is search for someone else's already not-bad online video that is relevant, and link to that. Maybe we should have a task force or other organization to search, catalog, and link useful videos. Running our own video operation, analogous to the way we organize text production, is unlikely to create much. And VR? Well, sure, if someone has already put something relevant online. Jim.henderson (talk) 17:37, 6 August 2023 (UTC)

Whole different art. In the 20th century cheap videotape came along, and since the 2000s everybody carries a video camera / recorder in their pocket. Cheap laptops can run decent editing software with timelines, splices, dissolves, and so forth. The result is, as hoped, a vast output of video shorts on many topics, but it ain't Hitchcock or Goddard or Kubrick.

What we get from Youtube and Vimeo and their competitors are a few somewhat useful Khan Institute items, even fewer, somewhat better TED talks, and a huge volume of poor shooting, poor editing, and very poor reading of a badly written script. As a fairly experienced still photographer, when I point my camera on a tripod at a Wikimedia Lightning Talk podium and set it for video, I don't bother viewing the result; I hand it over to someone who might edit and upload it. Generally they do their job at least as well as I do mine, but it doesn't much matter. So, when we read an article and wish for a video version, what we should do it look for someone's already not-bad video that is relevant, and link to that. Maybe we should have a task force or other organization to search, catalog, and link useful videos, but making our own video operation is unlikely to create much. And VR? C'mon. Jim.henderson (talk) 00:37, 11 August 2023 (UTC)

FWIW, Google Earth VR does something close, and I think they take snippets from Wikipedia. SWinxy (talk) 20:18, 9 August 2023 (UTC)

Online News Act

The Online News Act is a new law in Canada which gives news organisations the right to claim funding from "digital news intermediaries". It takes effect at the end of 2023 but is already having an effect as Meta is now blocking Canadian news links from its platforms such as Facebook and Instagram.

This may affect Wikipedia as it is a digital news intermediary too. I noticed the issue when working on the Yellowknife evacuation story at In the News where the issue is having an impact – see Yellowknife wildfire: communication issues and Facebook news ban hamper evacuation efforts.

Andrew🐉(talk) 09:27, 18 August 2023 (UTC)

What is your point here? If Wikipedia is or will be affected by the Canadian law, then that is something the WMF have been/are/will be dealing with there is nothing we can do here. The ITN link seems to be just you disagreeing with a very clear consensus (something that is quite common at that venue). Thryduulf (talk) 10:06, 18 August 2023 (UTC)

No idea why @Thryduulf is balking at the thread. Per the header of this 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. Andrew Davidson has information, a concern that may be of significance to the community. So it belongs here to be discussed. Regards, Thinker78 (talk) 03:35, 22 August 2023 (UTC)

I do indeed expect that the WMF will be taking an interest in this. And so that's why I started some discussion here, as this page is for such WMF-related issues, right? There's another act in the offing in the UK – the Online Safety Bill – and that may have some impact too. "Forewarned is forearmed"! Andrew🐉(talk) 11:16, 18 August 2023 (UTC)

I very much doubt that the Online News Act has direct relevance for Wikipedia. I see nothing that affects citing and linking to sources. Unlike Meta or Google Wikipedia doesn't show snippets or previews, nor does it embed content. -- Random person no 362478479 (talk) 15:31, 18 August 2023 (UTC)

The Online Safety Bill on the other hand could have very real implications.[1] -- Random person no 362478479 (talk) 15:33, 18 August 2023 (UTC)

Indeed, although the WMF is clearly well aware of it, since they formally stated they wouldn't carry out age checks in direct response to the OSB. It's terrible in both core aspects and in actual execution of those aspects, and despite a majority of parliamentarians disliking it, I suspect whipped votes will see some form into being. Nosebagbear (talk) 01:32, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

Disallow access to the world's encyclopedia? That would be playing with political dynamite. In the free world, access to this essential knowledge resource has become a cherished civil right. If the UK blocked Wikipedia as the Guardian suggests could happen, [2] imagine the backlash. Disgruntled users may protest en masse, very well flooding the streets. Therefore, blocking Wikipedia as a whole is highly unlikely.    — The Transhumanist   06:26, 5 September 2023 (UTC)

It's more likely that the UK will follow China and Russia in allowing only partial access to Wikipedia. The UK government has form for this, when requests to Wikipedia were routed via a proxy which blocked an article about an album illustrated by its cover which depicts a naked child. It caused chaos for editors, whose contributions (including those from vandals) all appeared to come from one IP address, and was quickly reverted. That's still not a great result for anyone, and would put the UK firmly on the list of repressive regimes. Certes (talk) 10:25, 5 September 2023 (UTC)

Russia allows full access to all Wikimedia projects at this point. Ymblanter (talk) 14:33, 5 September 2023 (UTC)

"Disgruntled users may protest en masse". Sadly, I doubt it. I mean governmemnts historically have committed the worse atrocities many times without people doing anything about it. People are more likely to riot because their sports team won or lost. If there are concentrated efforts to organize protests by powerful groups (like with the BLM situation), people are more likely to protest than waiting for organically to happen. Spontaneous protests do happen but they are a whim of randomness. Regards, Thinker78 (talk) 00:11, 6 September 2023 (UTC)

@Random person no 362478479 Per the lead of the article Online News Act, "or facilitating access to their content via their platforms.". Wikimedia projects including Wikipedia does facilitate access to their content. Besides, governments often love to abuse their power and many times come with novel and sometimes even arbitrary interpretations of their laws. Regards, Thinker78 (talk) 03:39, 22 August 2023 (UTC)

I assumed that the ONA restricts directly presenting (parts of) the content of a news site, e.g. in the form of previews or snippets. I don't think that any news corporation has an interest in restricting mere links to their content. But the law is indeed hopelessly vague in this respect. The text is:

Making available of news content
(2) For the purposes of this Act, news content is made available if
(a) the news content, or any portion of it, is reproduced; or
(b) access to the news content, or any portion of it, is facilitated by any means, including an index, aggregation or ranking of news content.
— http://www.parl.ca/DocumentViewer/en/44-1/bill/C-18/royal-assent#ID0E02D0AA

It is indeed possible (maybe even natural) to read (2)(b) as including simple linking.[3] -- Random person no 362478479 (talk) 18:31, 22 August 2023 (UTC)

[...] the news content, or any portion of it, is reproduced. This is literally Wikipedia! @SMcCandlish:. Regards, Thinker78 (talk) 00:38, 23 August 2023 (UTC)

I'm no expert in Canadian media and free-expression law, but that does sound vaguely worded enough to accidentally net Wikipedia and anyone else who ever just quotes ("any portion of") or links to ("access ... is facilitated") any Canadian news source for any reason. It's apallingly poor policy writing, and I think the Canadian courts would recognize that such a strict interpretation would be overreaching in the face of section 2 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Candian Supreme Court caselaw permits the government to impose some "reasonable" limits on freedom of expression, but this clearly wouldn't be reasonable. However, a test case could take years to work its way through the court system, and one might not happen anyway if no enforcement action is taken in the direction of this strict interpretation.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:58, 23 August 2023 (UTC)

It sounds as if we need someone who is an expert in Canadian media and free-expression law. I trust that the WMF can find funding to consult such a person. Certes (talk) 13:16, 23 August 2023 (UTC)

What can we do about it, anyway? The Canadian government will not be able to charge the Wikipedia community with breaking the law. Most of us are beyond their reach. Their target for enforcing a strict interpretation of the law, if they should choose to do so, would be the Foundation, but the Foundation is a corporation in the US. Also, the Foundation has a legal staff, who are better qualified than I and almost all other editors are to judge the impact of that law on the operations of Wikipedia. This is something that I will gladly leave to the Foundation to worry about. Donald Albury 02:38, 23 August 2023 (UTC)

@Donald Albury you stated, "The Canadian government will not be able to charge the Wikipedia community with breaking the law." Except of course, Canadian Wikipedians.

• Wikipedia admin jailed for 32 years after alleged Saudi spy infiltration
• The DCRI (French intelligence agency) forced Rémi Mathis, an administrator of the French-language Wikipedia and president of Wikimedia France, under threat of detention and arrest, into deleting an article about the Pierre-sur-Haute military radio station.
• A country has the right to prevent the world’s Internet users from accessing information, Canada’s highest court ruled

Really worrisome! Regards, Thinker78 (talk) 03:52, 23 August 2023 (UTC)

@Oshwah, Koavf, and The Transhumanist: Thinker78 (talk) 04:00, 23 August 2023 (UTC)

Super-interested in the topic, but not 100% clear on why I was pinged. Is there something you think I in particular can add to this conversation? ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 04:30, 23 August 2023 (UTC)

I can't see where this actually impacts Wikipedia at large. It's a US corporation. It might suck for Wikipedia users in Canada, though. --Rockstone^{Send me a message!} 05:00, 24 August 2023 (UTC)

First, I think it is important to display empathy for Wikipedia editors in Canada (I mean, I shouldn't really need to say this). They are Wikipedia. Second, it may have legal repercussions to the display of information in Canada. Third, the world is interconnected. Laws in Canada and their influence in other countries could have impacts in Wikipedia around the world. Regards, Thinker78 (talk) 01:42, 25 August 2023 (UTC)

I agree with you that this sucks for Canadian users who could lose access to Wikipedia. I just don't think this is something WMF will be affected by. I'm not entirely sure what Canada intends to do if they don't comply. -- Rockstone^{Send me a message!} 00:29, 26 August 2023 (UTC)

Unless "digital news intermediary" ends up being defined to include individuals with no formal relationship with an on-line organization, I do not see how individual editors, Canadian or otherwise, can be forced to enter into bargaining with Canadian news organizations for payment for linking to stories published by those news organizations. Donald Albury 11:48, 23 August 2023 (UTC)

OK. An extreme reading could indeed include quoting. This is really worryingly vague language. -- Random person no 362478479 (talk) 13:38, 23 August 2023 (UTC)

I must state that I do not see how the Online News Act would apply to Canadian Wikipedians. The act affects "digital news intermediaries", not individuals. The act defines "digital news intermediary" as an online communications platform, including a search engine or social media service, that is subject to the legislative authority of Parliament and that makes news content made by news outlets available to persons in Canada. The Foundation, as the operator of an "online communications platform", is a potential target of this legislation. If the Canadian government succeeds in enforcing this law against the Foundation, it will harm Wikipedia. However, I do not see how an individual editor could be made a target of this legislation. - Donald Albury 12:03, 26 August 2023 (UTC)

References

Significant uptick in spam messages

Not helpful.
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
There's recently been a series of spam messages cropping up on Wikipedia. They've started appearing on certain articles lately, where they do their spiel and then there's a link to where the reader can give their money to the people who published the message. These messages make several explicit or implied claims about where the money is going, but some of these claims are untrue. The spam messages are easy to spot, because they all start with the same phrase: "Wikipedia is not for sale. A personal appeal from Jimmy Wales". Others have already demonstrated that the premises of these messages are misleading. I'm worried that readers might be duped by the messages and part with their money based on a false premise (I believe there's a technical term for that, but it's escaping me). I'm asking the WMF to investigate these spam messages, remove them from the site wherever they appear, and see to it that whoever is responsible for them is caught. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 16:59, 27 August 2023 (UTC) The sarcastic tone of this comment is really not helpful. * Pppery * it has begun... 17:01, 27 August 2023 (UTC) I've also heard of some spammy-sounding emails with a false sense of urgency, a tactic also used by spammers. Edward-Woodrow :) [talk] 17:33, 27 August 2023 (UTC) Isn't there a page setup for discussing these banners, comments there might be more constructive. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 19:10, 27 August 2023 (UTC) The WMF has been somewhat unresponsive. Edward-Woodrow :) [talk] 19:13, 27 August 2023 (UTC) Wikipedia:Fundraising/2023 banners would be a great place to offer constructive feedback. WMF has listened to community feedback regarding the banners quite a bit over the last 9 months or so and made major adjutments. –Novem Linguae (talk) 08:56, 28 August 2023 (UTC) I would agree with Novem and also say that the Foundation has been more receptive to community feedback regarding the banners recently from my point of view. I also feel that the sarcastic tone of the first comment was not helpful. It only makes WMF staff feel less welcome to comment here. Dreamy Jazz talk to me | my contributions 09:13, 28 August 2023 (UTC) @Dreamy Jazz I agree. I think it's unacceptable post such comments - we should be trying to work with WMF staff, not against them. Doug Weller talk 16:52, 28 August 2023 (UTC)

Why bother hatting this? It is on-topic... Edward-Woodrow :) _[talk] 14:41, 3 September 2023 (UTC)

The link to Wikipedia:Fundraising/2023 banners for discussion of upcoming fundraising banners is on topic. The rest is unlikely to lead to any constructive discussion an is better hatted IMO. Anomie⚔ 15:22, 3 September 2023 (UTC)

About a job posting at the Foundation

I'm probably over-reacting at this job posting, but at best the job title troubles me -- "Group Product Manager, Contributors". (So are we volunteers now a "product"?) At worst, this position should be put on indefinite hold until all of the volunteer communities have had a chance to offer input, & the duties re-written. Or maybe this is another case where all of the decisions were made & the die has been cast, & none of us volunteers can change anything about this. -- llywrch (talk) 07:26, 2 September 2023 (UTC)

Perhaps a little unfortunately worded (would contributor tools be better?), but the role seems to be a relatively standard software UX sort of thing? I wouldn't mind having someone to "understand and faithfully represent the needs and requirements" of the volunteer community, it would probably help with the changing things. Alpha3031 (t • c) 08:48, 2 September 2023 (UTC)

Yes, you're overreacting. "Contributors" refers to the area of work done by the former Contributors team at the WMF. The posting says, "..managing the product managers of the Editing, Growth, Campaigns, and Moderator Tools cross-functional teams", explicitly not contributors like us. Legoktm (talk) 09:42, 2 September 2023 (UTC)

Hello @Llywrch -- thanks for checking out the job posting and reflecting on it. I'm Marshall Miller; I'm a director of product at WMF and the hiring manager for the role. I know that our structure at WMF and the jargon we use can be opaque, so I'd like to take this opportunity to explain it a bit and see what you think.

Much of WMF staff are inside the Product and Technology department, which is run by the Chief Product and Technology Officer, Selena Deckelmann. I report to her. There are a lot of different teams inside the large department, but basically responsibility for all the different parts of the Mediawiki software and all the technologies that operate on the wikis are divided up amongst those teams. Many of the teams are responsible for parts that we don't really see as day-to-day readers and editors of Wikipedia, like the servers, the databases, the APIs, etc. But many of the things that day-to-day readers and editors do encounter are part of the "Core Experiences" group, which is responsible for the software behind much of the user experience -- things like the visual and wikitext editors, the skins for reading, the recent changes feed, discussion tools, notifications, and the iOS and Android apps. I'm the director of product for that group, which means I manage the product managers, who are the people that set the roadmap for their respective teams. There is another director for the group who manages the engineers, and another leader who manages the designers.

The Core Experiences group has about ten teams in it, and that necessitates some additional structure. We're going to be grouping together four of the teams that work mostly on editing functionality: Editing, Growth, Moderator Tools, and Campaigns. I actually used to be the product manager with the Growth team, but my role has since grown. We're calling the group "Contributors", not because it manages contributors, but because contributors are the people whose experience the group is going to be working to improve. The idea is that we always want staff in the group to remember who they're trying to help. And so this role that's posted is going to be working with those four teams and trying to think at a high level how all the different features should fit together to be a coherent whole for the editors, rather than a disjointed and confusing set of tools. For instance, right now there are a couple teams thinking about how machine learning can be used to prevent obvious vandalism -- but we don't want to end up building two features to do the same thing (without a good reason). Does that all make sense? Let me know if there's anything else I can try to explain.

And like @Alpha3031 said, this person will be listening closely and working with volunteers, since those are the people who will be using what the teams build. It's definitely not going to be an easy job -- because our communities of editors are so energetic, creative, and unique. Please let me know if there's anything in particular you're thinking about or caring about as we look for the right person for this job. MMiller (WMF) (talk) 18:01, 3 September 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for responding Marshall. I think it's great when WMF folks answer community questions clearly like you did here. –Novem Linguae (talk) 19:50, 3 September 2023 (UTC)

Soft Delete

Editors may be interested in a discussion on the possibility of creating two forms of deletion, currently at WP:VPI, that could only be implemented by the WMF. BilledMammal (talk) 18:31, 3 September 2023 (UTC)

Discussion at User talk:BilledMammal/2023 Wikimedia RfC § Just a reminder that there *are* other ways the foundation *could* raise money -- are they better for the project?

 You are invited to join the discussion at User talk:BilledMammal/2023 Wikimedia RfC § Just a reminder that there *are* other ways the foundation *could* raise money -- are they better for the project?. Edward-Woodrow :) _[talk] 12:04, 16 September 2023 (UTC)