User talk:Steven (WMF)

pedia

Hi, Steven, I tried to write on your Wikipedia talk, was timed out several times, placed the message on your user page, only to find that it was already on the talk a few times ... - I have no other explanation than that the talk is perhaps a bit too long ;) --Gerda Arendt (talk) 14:15, 10 October 2013 (UTC)

Good point. I went ahead and am archiving a big chunk now. :) Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 19:11, 10 October 2013 (UTC)

Request for comment

As you previously participated in related discussions you are invited to comment at the discussion at Wikipedia:WikiProject Articles for creation/RfC for AfC reviewer permission criteria. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 05:10, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

Re: Level1 Warnings and a possible active voice make over

I wonder why some certain level 1 warnings still have passive voice like

• template:uw-agf1
• template:uw-create1
• template:uw-defamatory1
• template:uw-disruptive1
• template:uw-move1

• template:uw-mos1

• template:uw-own1

• template:uw-upload1

I know some templates might of have been slapped with the "Hello, I'm Jimbo." type at the beginning, You can also see my active voice version of uw-disruptive1 here. Cheers, Dreth(^talk) 13:12, 3 November 2013 (UTC)

@Dreth: I think your draft of uw-distruptive is great. Basically, some still use passive voice because we started with the most commonly-used warnings, and that's what the original RFC was about. I think it's been enough time that we can move remaining warnings like those you've listed to active voice as well. I can help, as can Maryana. Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 19:16, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

Thank youm I might as well make some active voices, might post them on my talk page. Cheers! Dreth(^talk) 20:31, 4 November 2013 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dreth (talk • contribs)

Helpdesks

Hi,

Given that WMF is planning research on AfC and related Article creation ways, could I also request you to do research on the very related topic of a help desk for new editors? Having been very active in this area through Teahouse, IRC help channels, and also through OTRS and Help me requests, where I've had the chance to reply to help requests, I think our current help systems, atleast on Enwiki are very much unsuited for effectively helping newer editors, especially when to familiarize them to Wikipedia rules. We also have the Help Desk, where I haven't been yet.

I think that we would greatly benefit from having some sensible research to look through the effectiveness of these help desks and to locally design something better to suit what I think is quite an important, if not urgent need. If used correctly, it has the potential to also convert several good faith editors.

Do tell me what you think of it, and if you'd be interested in further discussions on the same

Regards,

TheOriginalSoni (talk) 17:35, 9 November 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for your participation on the Draft namespace proposal

I have felt like Cassandra around here for a few years, declaring that our new user experience poses an existential challenge to our project. I know there are a lot of Cassandras over at WMF too who've had the same experience I've had, of seeing a problem not everyone can see and wanting to fix something not everyone knows needs fixing. :) Good work. --HectorMoffet (talk) 04:26, 10 November 2013 (UTC)

JSTOR

Hello. I see this is up for re-negotation.I hope this will be continued, and the original 100 can keep their links. I have been using it extensively in recent months to find background reading for a major project I have on to list all the Musical articles and biographies by Dr Burney from Rees's Cyclopaedia. I've been writing about Rees's Cyclopaedia for the last couple of years, and Burney's work was an important part of it. Commentators such as Scholes, Grant and Londsale all say how desirable a full listing would be. I will be severely hamstrung were my JSTOR concession removed. Kind regards Apwoolrich (talk) 19:06, 5 December 2013 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Civility Barnstar
	For dealing with the badgering of WMF employees (such as here), in a very civil manner. Happy editing! -- Ross Hill • Talk • Need Help? • 20:35, 14 December 2013 (UTC)

@Ross Hill: Thank you! I really appreciate it. Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 20:36, 15 December 2013 (UTC)

Thanks to the Growth team

Hi Steven. I just wanted to thank you and everybody on the Growth team for their help getting the Draft: namespace up and running. Please let everybody know that I sincerely appreciate their efforts and think this is a very positive step forward for the project. Thanks. 64.40.54.34 (talk) 05:19, 15 December 2013 (UTC)

Many thanks for your kind words. It's very much appreciated, and I'll be sure to pass it on. Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 20:36, 15 December 2013 (UTC)

I think we need more eyes

Wikipedia_talk:Drafts#Deletion_and_Draft: is all well and good, but I think it needs exposure to being ripped to shreds by the usual suspects. The question is where to suggest that happens from. Fiddle Faddle 23:06, 17 December 2013 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Original Barnstar
	Thank you for effectively handling the Draft namespace and making sure it was implemented quickly. Hope to see more of such pro-active responses from the Foundation :) TheOriginalSoni (talk) 02:17, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

Thanks! Much of the accolades should really go to Superm401 who did much coding and testing to get this done. Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 02:34, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

Thanks and more

Firstly, I want to thank you for all the great work you've been doing on Draft space. Several years ago, we noticed the editor retention trends. Later, Sue announced a fear that we've "lost our way". Drafts has restored my hope that WP can still show the kind of adaptability and openness we did in our youth.

More boringly, I want to point your attention to the proposition that some editors should be alerted to the existence of related drafts-- for example, if I go to ArticleName, I want to know if Draft:ArticleName exists. I think that's a change that would require staff.

Thanks again for all your hard and inspiring work. --HectorMoffet (talk) 14:11, 22 December 2013 (UTC)

question about active-editor-counts

"I think you probably would be surprised how much we know about activities like page creation." —Steven(WMF) in Nov'13

Sounds like a challenge!  :-)   If so, perhaps you can help. I'm trying to make a logical argument based on pragmatic number-of-editors information, but I don't have the data I need. Do you know, or do you know where I can find out the number of humans...

1. +with rollbacker-and/or-reviewer-and/or-admin userright, who avg'd 005+edits/mo during the past year, and what percentage of them have 500+edits (total) to mainspace
2. +with rollbacker-and/or-reviewer-and/or-admin userright, who avg'd 025+edits/mo during the past year, and what percentage of them have 500+edits (total) to mainspace
3. +with rollbacker-and/or-reviewer-and/or-admin userright, who avg'd 100+edits/mo during the past year, and what percentage of them have 500+edits (total) to mainspace
4. w/out rollbacker-and/or-reviewer-and/or-admin userright, who avg'd 005+edits/mo during the past year, and what percentage of them have 500+edits (total) to mainspace
5. w/out rollbacker-and/or-reviewer-and/or-admin userright, who avg'd 025+edits/mo during the past year, and what percentage of them have 500+edits (total) to mainspace
6. w/out rollbacker-and/or-reviewer-and/or-admin userright, who avg'd 100+edits/mo during the past year, and what percentage of them have 500+edits (total) to mainspace

All questions are on enWiki only, ignoring other namespaces, global-cross-wiki-userright-holders, and other such corner-cases. I'm happy to do the queries myself, if there is already a page or a tool of some sort that will give me the answers... I just haven't found such a thing.

p.s. Motivation... somebody has proposed that to be an AfC reviewer, ought to require that the candidate-reviewer have (or be given) the pending-changes-reviewer-userRight. Back-of-the-envelope guesstimates suggest there are only about 3000 people *active* on enWiki with reviewer-userRights today... but WP:REVIEWER only gives the *total* count, many of whom could now be retired/inactive/etc. Rather than trust my guesstimate, I'd like some actual figures. Here is the motivating-discussion,[1] if you're curious. Thanks. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 01:48, 30 December 2013 (UTC)

Update, OKeyes has kindly offered to help me out with this, see their enWiki talkpage. You are free to help out as well, of course, if you're interested.  :-)   Thanks, see you around. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 21:09, 30 December 2013 (UTC)

Template:DraftChecker

There is a discussion at Template talk:DraftChecker#Redirects that you maybe interested in. Thank you.--TriiipleThreat (talk) 14:57, 3 February 2014 (UTC)

FYI

A proposal has been made to create a Live Feed to enhance the processing of Articles for Creation and Drafts. See Wikipedia:WikiProject Articles for creation/RfC to create a 'Special:NewDraftsFeed' system. Your comments are welcome. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 06:23, 4 February 2014 (UTC)

Account creation tip

Hi Steven,

Awhile back I asked - somewhere, I've searched through my contributions and can't find it! - where the text for the account creation page was kept, and you answered. You asked why I wanted to know, and I never got back to you; I've just seen something that reminded me to.

Basically, I was going to suggest that the account creation page has a small chunk of useful info added to it, perhaps as a tooltip on the user name field, explaining what can be included in user names - spaces, capitals and so on. That will hopefully save a bit of work for our bureaucrats by preventing rename requests like this one that only exist because people didn't realize that our user name policy is quite flexible.

Best, — Scott • talk 14:16, 18 February 2014 (UTC)

Yes, this is a good idea, and we logged it back in the day as Template:Bug. Our thinking was that the ideal case is that the "help me choose" link open a tooltip with a short explanation and a link to read more, rather than open the full policy page. Many many users click on that "help me choose" link, but the policy page is probably too much and I don't think we want to just dump a summary back in to the account creation form again. This is one of the laundry list of items I'd love to have time to fix in the new account creation... Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 18:16, 18 February 2014 (UTC)

Cool, thanks. I've subscribed to the bug. — Scott • talk 11:01, 19 February 2014 (UTC)

Getting Started edit suggestions

Hi Steven. I've noticed this new tag in edit summaries in the past few days. "These articles are derived from our simple category-based suggestion system..." - do you have a list of these articles (especially BLPs) so other editors can keep an eye on them? --NeilN ^{talk to me} 17:42, 23 February 2014 (UTC)

Hey Neil. So right now the suggestions come from two different places:

1. when you sign up, we remember what page you were on before going to create an account, and we send you back there. If that is an editable article, we give you a guided tour of how to edit that, and the tag is applied. That includes all kinds of different categories of articles, including some BLPs, since it's based on what the individual editor was reading before they signed up.
2. we also suggest a secondary selection of articles from Category:All articles needing copy edit. However, we don't just grab all pages from that category, we filter it some. That includes excluding all articles in the living people category, as well as more mundane stuff like no very long articles. If there's any article where it looks like it doesn't need anymore copyediting, then all you need to do to exclude it is remove the {{Copyedit}} banner which also removes the category. The system then automatically removes the article from the list of potential suggestions.

You can actually filter RecentChanges with the edit tag if you want to see all edits made via this interface. Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 22:20, 23 February 2014 (UTC)

Ok, I edit conflicted when you added the now first point (I wrote the BLP filter wasn't working). But now that makes sense. Thank you for explaining. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 22:31, 23 February 2014 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Original Barnstar
	As a Learner i am admire from your work. best wishes for your new project work. Bharat teacher (talk) 06:46, 27 February 2014 (UTC)

I'm kinda lost here

Hi Steven, I see you have thanked me for an edit i supposedly made, the thing is I don't recall ever doing it. I don't even know what it is about so I'm positive it's not mine. Any thoughts on this? Thank you!--Facu89 (talk) 23:24, 5 March 2014 (UTC)

You didn't edit the Article Feedback Tool settings for that page? Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 12:15, 6 March 2014 (UTC)

Stalker drive by link to Facu89: It appears you mad an edit. No?--Mark Miller (talk) 13:11, 6 March 2014 (UTC)

Sorry...I've just never seen anyone complain for getting thanked for an edit they made and couldn't remember so I am curious about this.--Mark Miller (talk) 13:13, 6 March 2014 (UTC)

It's okay, sometimes this stuff is confusing. He didn't actually edit the page content, but rather changed the AFT settings. Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 13:33, 6 March 2014 (UTC)

Typography on Signpost

Hi Steven. As the Tech editor on the Signpost, I want to ask how you would like the announcement to be presented. If I'm correct, it will be rolled out with 1.23wmf20 on enwiki on April 3rd? That means the article will have to be done by Wednesday (officially) to stay ahead of the rollout. — Edokter (talk) — 12:46, 23 March 2014 (UTC)

@Edokter: Hey there! Thanks for checking. So our current plan is to try and write an op-ed about it. We have a draft we need to move on-wiki this week, and we have been talking with The ed17 about it too. I'd be fine putting that in the Technology section if you want. There is right now an extensive FAQ to draw from as well on mw:Typography Refresh. Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 22:08, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

I'd love to have it on the Technology section, but it is ultimately up to ed17. If you need anything else, just tell me where I need to be. Is there somewhere I can read this draft? — Edokter (talk) — 23:56, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

The sort of piece they're going to run is definitely opinionated, so it'd have to run in an op-ed spot. However, you could do an explanatory piece alongside the op-ed to list the specific changes? Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 19:46, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

I'd love to. — Edokter (talk) — 21:01, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

The summary and FAQ I linked above are probably your best source for a secondary piece. There are screenshots there, etc. We are also happy to answer additional questions. As far as other communication: we're going to use a watchlist notice and do a blog post the week before as well. Quiddity has kindly posted our draft op-ed at User:Steven (WMF)/Typography refresh signpost which I am going to keep working on with Vibhabamba Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 21:03, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

I'm quite familiar with those pages. I also have my draft up. Perhaps a question not answered yet: Is the current design final, or is it still subject to change? — Edokter (talk) — 23:25, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

The design changes will exactly match those listed in the summary on mediawiki.org. That means we will not include the four things in the beta, that I mentioned on VPT. Other than that, it will not change, unless we encounter unexpected bugs. Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 23:33, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

Mobile version

As you mentioned the mobile version at VPT... I find it really irritating that there is no longer any way to permanently disable the mobile version on a device, or at least an obvious one. I have a feeling that this has been discussed before so thought I'd ask you why this was the case, rather than start a discussion somewhere. Dpmuk (talk) 23:07, 3 April 2014 (UTC)

You mean permanently like "even if I delete my cookies/clear data in my browser"? It should save your preference more or less permanently, if you choose "desktop" via the link in the footer. It will expire though, if your cookies get deleted. Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 23:55, 3 April 2014 (UTC)

Hmm, interesting. Thanks for the reply. I'll have to take a look at my setting then. I know it used to work like that but doesn't now so I must have changed something. Regardless of that can we have the desktop link on special pages such as the watchlist? This is my most accessed page and it's annoying to then have to browse to another page to select desktop - presumably this issue won't go away just get less common if I sort my cookies issue. Dpmuk (talk) 00:03, 4 April 2014 (UTC)

That's possible. Let me ping some folks who work on the mobile team: Jdlrobson Kenanwang Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 00:05, 4 April 2014 (UTC)

https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=56139 addresses the desktop link. It's almost done, it's just waiting for Kenanwang to pull the trigger. And yes when you switch to desktop it should remember this preference. Jdlrobson (talk) 00:22, 4 April 2014 (UTC)

Typography

Hi Steven, I'll reply here as the Village pump is a bit crowded. I am very sorry for my error regarding bugs, I had not come across the error before, and there was a talk on Wiktionary (?) about bugs being caused (which I assume was another GF error. With regards to the vote, I very much doubt anything will be changed, even if (as appears likely) quite a majority want the old font back. I think it is useful for the WMF to know the opinion of the people it matters to (but note that given the decision was made by the WMF rather than through consensus, an idea of who popular the new font is useful. Lastly, why is it that our conflict of interest editing had mass banners across all articles, visible by all, editors and readers alike, when an equally massive change had not mass notification to editors, of the hundreds of thousands of editors who use en.wikipedia, 10,000 doesn't seem like such a big number. Apologies if my post was insulting in any way. All the best, Matty.007 09:27, 4 April 2014 (UTC)