Water cooler

2009 2010 2011 2012

Request for comment

I am drafting a proposal at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Pine/drafts/ENWP_Board_of_Education and would like input from chapters. I would appreciate comments on the talk page. Thank you! Pine (talk) 10:52, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

How do we reduce the creeping "legalese" of our constitution and policy documents?

Hi, I have raised a question around how better to handle difficult wording on our key documents at Talk:Articles_of_Association#Difficult_legal_language, though I'm thinking that this is a more general problem that could do with rather more plain English advocacy. Anyone have good ideas on how to make this guff a bit more digestible? Cheers --Fæ (talk) 11:17, 13 May 2012 (UTC)

Does Navigation popups work for you on WMUK?

I just tried out Navigation popups (check your preferences, gadgets) but it does not display correctly for me, in fact it leaves a nasty mess of un-wiped text for every internal link I hover over. Anyone have a fix? --Fæ (talk) 13:46, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

I've had a look and they don't work for me either. Pretty nasty! --Stevie Benton (talk) 15:34, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

This is something I've noticed with the popups on some other wikis, too. Does some custom CSS need to be added to MediaWiki:Common.css? Rock drum (talk • contribs) 15:53, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

How commonly is the water cooler used?

Hello everyone. As you may be aware I'm working on reviewing our communications and writing our comms strategy at the moment. One thing I wanted to take a look at in my examination of the WMUK wiki is the water cooler. I'd like to get a handle on how many people come here. So, if you're reading this before Friday 8 June, would you please pop a note here? Many thanks. --Stevie Benton (talk) 15:36, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

I'm afraid this test isn't going to work. A lot of us follow this wiki by keeping an eye on recent changes, so having lots of people posting here will attract more people. It's not the kind of page that you specifically go to to see if anything interesting has been posted. You come here when you notice it on recent changes or your watchlist. --Tango (talk) 15:58, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

That in itself will have some value for me actually. I want to see how something on here develops in real time and how many people will respond to something without being directly pointed there. Thanks for the heads-up though, I appreciate it :) --Stevie Benton (talk) 16:06, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

You might be better off looking through the page history and seeing how actual discussions here developed. Asking people to respond is very artificial, which will severely limit the usefulness of your results. (I'm an actuary in real life, so I have a thing about statistically well-designed studies!) --Tango (talk) 17:33, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

I have recent changes on my RSS feed and that led me here. If the wiki gets busier and this becomes the place to announce new stuff I might switch to just having this page on my RSS (every history page is an RSS feed). Filceolaire (talk) 20:30, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

I agree, it's a matter of how long a piece of elastic might be. You start to get the Observer effect. I think you might find that what's most salient about your aim of trying to write a comms startegy is that you start developing relationships with different editors. These human interactions take place at a level somewhat distinct from the sort of formal assessment of what a strategy might be.Leutha (talk) 23:15, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

I tried to adapt a metric from Wikiversity at Water cooler/metrics but I couldn't suss out the right code, so the first one (April 2011) gets us to the Ukrainian wikipedia. (I left the others unchanged so you end up at WV.) I tried looking at Meta, but they seem to have a way of jumping from UK.Wikipedia to UK.wikimedia. Anyway, I need a break so I thought someone else might like to have a crack at this. Basically it allows you to set up a metric on the page and keep track of viewings. Leutha (talk) 23:37, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

It doesn't get that much use, but it's the most logical place to discuss things to do with the wiki itself (as opposed to the chapter). Stevie, it might interest you to know that the Wikipedia equivalent, the village pumps, also tend not to get very much attention except when people are pointed there. Harry Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 23:48, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

Thanks everyone for your comments, very much appreciated. --Stevie Benton (talk) 12:49, 6 June 2012 (UTC)

QRpedia coordination page

I know that outreach:GLAM/QR_codes exists, but I'm wondering if a page on :wmuk would be useful to point to for folks to understand the QRpedia agreement with WMUK, the status of the open source code, trademark agreement and where to report bugs in an emergency; or should we just point to the :outreach page and improve that? --Fæ (talk) 09:45, 3 June 2012 (UTC)

How to attract an administrator's attention

We have a template for recommending the speedy deletion of a page (Template:Delete), which does sometimes get used by non-administrators when they need a page deleted. This includes the page in Category:Speedy deletions so an administrator can spot it and delete it. However, as an administrator, I never look at that category. I keep an eye on this wiki simply by looking at recent changes. I do sometimes spot and delete pages tagged with that template, but only because I saw it on recent changes, so the template didn't actually help. Do other administrators check that category on a regular basis? If not, should we come up with a better way to find an admin? Or is having admins looking at recent changes enough, in which case we don't really need the template? What are people's thoughts (admins and non-admins alike)? --Tango (talk) 13:38, 24 June 2012 (UTC)

I didn't even know that category existed. Whenever I delete something, it's always from the recent changes. I think the template is mostly used by people who do small wiki monitoring. With this being a fairly quiet wiki, there's probably no need for a dedicated system for reaching an admin (there are plenty of us compared to the amount of work for us to do), but the template does no harm and it might be useful if the wiki gets busier. Harry Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 17:12, 24 June 2012 (UTC)

Personally, I did know that template & category existed, but I do things from recent changes as well given that the wiki is small enough to do that and not miss anything. The template does no harm, and maybe useful for some. Any other potential methods for contacting admins would probably be more bureaucracy than is worth. KTC (talk) 19:31, 24 June 2012 (UTC)

More about the footer

I just saw the thread #Huge foot and looked at the footer.

I thought "About Wikimedia UK! That would be a useful place to put info like an address..." But then discovered that the page explicitly isn't about Wikimedia UK, it is about the the Wikimedia UK wiki.

Maybe where the footer says "About Wikimedia UK" it should say "About the Wikimedia UK wiki"

And another thing... if the linked page is about the wiki, why is it called Help:Contents? Surely it should be called Wikimedia:About. (Wikimedia:About is currently a redirect to Help:Contents)

Yaris678 (talk) 17:10, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

Good points. Perhaps you could be bold and improve the pages and links? :-) Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 19:12, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

OK... well... I have moved Help:Contents to Wikimedia:About... But that is about as far as I can take it. I can't edit MediaWiki:Aboutpage (I would need to be an admin)... so unfortunately if you click on "About Wikimedia UK" you now get the little message saying "(Redirected from Help:Contents)".

Someone with admin rights will also need to edit MediaWiki:Aboutsite so that it says "About the Wikimedia UK wiki".

Happy to make these changes myself if someone gives me admin rights.

Yaris678 (talk) 21:28, 3 August 2012 (UTC)

I have changed MediaWiki:Aboutpage. I'll leave any changes to MediaWiki:Aboutsite to someone else to decide whether the above suggestion is the best wording. KTC (talk) 21:49, 3 August 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for doing that change.

Anyone got an idea for a better phrase to put in the footer?

Would anyone like to argue in favour of the current situation (where it says "About Wikimedia UK" and then you click on it and the page says "This page is not for those seeking help in contacting WMUK (instead, see here), and more details about the exact structure of WMUK are on the main page. Instead, this page gives advice for editors of the wiki.")

Anyone think we should do something completely different? Like make "About Wikimedia UK" link to Contact us?

Yaris678 (talk) 00:59, 4 August 2012 (UTC)

Page of volunteers?

We have pages for Staff and the Board, which would naturally come together under the heading of 'People' (in particular thinking about the sidebar link), but that wouldn't include the most important people for the organisation - volunteers. I'm wondering if it's worth starting a similar page giving profiles of some volunteers, or whether that wouldn't be sustainable, or if there aren't volunteers interested in being featured on such a page. What do you all think? Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 00:10, 31 July 2012 (UTC)

We all have userpages don't we? I've no objection to others creating something else, but the first place I'd look for a profile would be someone's userpage. WereSpielChequers (talk) 18:04, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

How would you choose who to have on the page? We have lots of volunteers, contributing various amounts in various ways, and we'll hopefully have even more in the future - far too many to have profiles of all of them. --Tango (talk) 16:49, 4 August 2012 (UTC)

Maybe interested volunteers could give their User page a category, ie: volunteers? That way it would be self administering and opt in.Leutha (talk) 06:02, 4 August 2012 (UTC)

You could create a category for user pages & link that at a people page, or link to a Special: list (Eek, not Special:ListUsers!). Not sure it's worth doing more, per the above comments. But few people have much on their pages here, except links to WP. Johnbod (talk) 17:47, 5 August 2012 (UTC)

Something like Category:Active volunteers for Wikimedia UK? I think it's important to specify that we are talking about people who do stuff for WMUK... if we get onto people who voluntarily contribute to a Wikimedia wiki then the list is long and useless. Yaris678 (talk) 08:09, 6 August 2012 (UTC)

Not too keen on this particular idea - "active blah" categories always rot faster than you can update them. Deryck Chan (talk) 19:18, 24 August 2012 (UTC)

Perhaps if we were to have volunteer cats they should be specific ones - this editor is willing to help do x or y. That way when you need a couple of volunteers to help out at an event you can contact people in that category rather than email the whole mailing list. WereSpielChequers (talk) 19:18, 11 August 2012 (UTC)

For what it's worth, I've been creating a UK "GLAM Connect" hub for GLAM professionals which includes (or at least, will include) a list of Wikimedians interested in GLAM and working with institutions. You can see this at Cultural partnerships/Connect; perhaps something like this could be created for other outreach projects, too. Regards, Rock drum (talk • contribs) 20:20, 11 August 2012 (UTC)

OK, thanks for the feedback. I've created People, and Category:Wikimedia UK volunteers to serve these roles, please help improve the former and/or add yourself to the latter. :-) Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 20:12, 27 August 2012 (UTC)

NB, I didn't go for specific categories as I was aiming for something simple that can organically grow, rather than going specific directly. Please feel free to create more specific categories as you think are needed, or want to categorise yourself into. :-) Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 20:14, 27 August 2012 (UTC)

en.wikipedia Meetups template

Just spotted this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Meetup-UK - which I think Pigsonthewing set up a couple of years ago. Looks like we could make use of it (I wouldn't mind putting it on my Wikipedia user page, for instance) but it doesn't seem to work at present... any idea whether this can be fixed? The Land (talk) 21:33, 12 August 2012 (UTC)

It looks like it has to be updated manually. There is nothing broken about it, it just hasn't been updated for 2 years. --Tango (talk) 22:17, 12 August 2012 (UTC)

meta:Template:Meetup list is probably a better template to use, since that's where most (all?) UK wikimeets tend to be listed. Cross-wiki inclusion would be a really nice feature to have... Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 20:16, 27 August 2012 (UTC)

The co-opted trustee

The press release says that the board would decide on a replacement for Joscelyn over the in-person board meeting last weekend, but I don't see anything along those lines in the minutes. What is going to happen? Deryck Chan (talk) 11:03, 10 September 2012 (UTC)

Hi Deryck. The Board are currently considering their options and there will be an update in due course. Thanks. --Stevie Benton (WMUK) (talk) 16:40, 10 September 2012 (UTC)

Hi Deryck, if you hadn't yet seen, the Board is pleased to announce the appointment of Saad Choudri to the Board. --RexxS (talk) 13:43, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

WMUK membership survey

We're currently in the process of developing a WMUK membership survey. A page has been popped up on this Wiki for comments and suggestions. Please do get involved with the discussion here. Thanks! --Stevie Benton (WMUK) (talk) 16:42, 10 September 2012 (UTC)

Improvements to the Trustee Code of Conduct

I have raised some suggestions for improvements to the code at Talk:Trustee_Code_of_Conduct#Conflict_of_Interest_Policy. I would welcome comments and further suggestions on how we can take a conservative approach to trustee interests without excluding anyone with reasonable expertise to bring to the board. We may be at a point where the consensus is that no trustee can serve who has any financial interest (as opposed to direct financial interest), though this might become difficult to interpret at the time of the next election if members come forward prepared to serve, who have related valuable experience to bring to the board that they claim is "manageable" and therefore allowable under Charity Commission guidelines. That word "manageable" is tripping us up right now, and some on-wiki discussion may help define it in a way that is credible to the outside world (such as the WMF) and yet pragmatic for the benefit of our charity. --Fæ (talk) 10:22, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

Glad to see such efforts. -- w:User:Lexein 19:51, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

Resignation

Thanks, WMUK, but it's not enough. This does nothing to a) address the public perception of Wikimedia/Wikipedia's ability to police itself (follow both the letter and spirit of all pillar/policy/guideline), or b) repair the damage done to Wikipedia's credibility and reputation.

• A public list of edits by whom at WMUK, related to Gibraltarpedia (including DYK promotions) should be published in a press release, with classification of each as non-controversial, promotional of Gibraltar, self-promotional of Wikipedia, or inappropriately collaborative with an external entity.
• The Gibraltarpedia project itself should be, as I've said elsewhere, shut, disavowed, and salted, and all involved editors should publicly self-topic-ban for one year. The independence and status of Wikipedia as an encyclopedia which documents, but does not serve, any entity or individual, must be firmly reasserted, and if it has never been asserted before, it should be asserted now.
• I can't help thinking that none of these remedial actions would have been needed if clean hands had been kept at WMUK, with only independent volunteer public editors doing the edits, in the tradition of IRC:en-wikipedia-help, with no meatpuppetry. --w:User:Lexein 19:51, 20 September 2012 (UTC)
• Oh, and by the way, I know this is self-draconian and extreme, but what else will strongly indicate Wikimedia/Wikipedia's commitment to independence, unalloyed neutrality, and ability to recognize and respond to even the appearance of impropriety? --w:User:Lexein 20:46, 20 September 2012 (UTC)
  • AFAIK The only WMUK trustee involved (beyond the odd edit) in Gibraltarpedia is Roger (now ex-trustee of course). You can see his contributions at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Victuallers, which do include edits to some Gibraltarpedia articles, as well as organizing stuff on talk pages etc. Whether the 500-odd bytes he added to the 18th century Great Siege Tunnels, one of the articles he has added most to, are "non-controversial, promotional of Gibraltar, self-promotional of Wikipedia, or inappropriately collaborative with an external entity" I'll leave you to judge. He has stated that the consultancy he is doing does not include editing, though it does include training editors. It is not within the power of WMUK to shut down the project, even if we wished to do so. I have not seen any suggestion that the vast majority of edits to project articles are not being done by "independent volunteer public editors", as they have been in all the other very successful projects Roger has been involved with. Finding, channelling and enthusing such editors is Roger's special talent. Johnbod (talk) 21:47, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

Yes, it's officially only one person. I shall repeat: Resignation may be necessary, but it cannot be sufficient. This does nothing to a) address the public perception of Wikimedia/Wikipedia's ability to police itself (follow both the letter and spirit of all pillar/policy/guideline), or b) repair the damage done to Wikipedia's credibility and reputation. Organizational or procedural changes must also follow. If I'm wrong, correct me. Roger placed a well-detailed development report at w:Wikipedia talk:Did you know‎, and I responded there. IMHO, full public disclosure like that, early, and instantly, would have gone far to blunt the damage done. Given that that's now impossible, WMF/WP has to do something else. --w:User:Lexein 04:48, 21 September 2012 (UTC)