Wikiversity:Colloquium/archives/May 2016

Template:RC allows to filter the recent changes by category
Template:RC (inspired from the Wiktionary) displays one category pages evolution. JackPotte (discuss • contribs) 18:34, 30 April 2016 (UTC)
 * 1) Should we add it into a drop down menu?
 * 2) Would you be in favor of its deployment into every category?
 * 3) With CategoryTOC?


 * I'm not sure adding it as a drop-down provides value. I'm okay with it as a list. But I would like to see the list be shorter, and formatted more like our existing TOCright and Sidebar items. See right for an example. The idea behind shortening the list is that most brain studies show an ability to manage/grasp three to seven items. A list of 10 items, twice, is likely too much information. Formatting to match TOC and Sidebar provides a more consistent user interface. We could revise the code to provide the sort option as a parameter and add a count parameter to be more flexible. -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 20:13, 30 April 2016 (UTC)


 * Now also implemented as using Module:DynamicPageList. -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 01:40, 1 May 2016 (UTC)
 * I tried the two templates on Category:Music. is very interesting. I think CategoryTOC would be more efficient on categories which have more subcategories and pages. --Thierry613 (discuss • contribs) 09:01, 1 May 2016 (UTC)

Concerning your questions, JackPotte, IMHO : --Thierry613 (discuss • contribs) 09:09, 1 May 2016 (UTC)
 * 1) I don't know
 * 2) Yes
 * 3) Not systematically ; only on categories which have a lot of subcategories and pages.
 * Thanks, and what about Book Search in every course category to limit the researches into it? JackPotte (discuss • contribs) 17:55, 6 May 2016 (UTC)
 * I really have no idea. Thierry613 (discuss • contribs) 18:57, 6 May 2016 (UTC)

Wikidata: data access is here
Hi everyone :)

We just enabled access to the data on Wikidata for you. This means you can now access data like the number of inhabitants of a city or get a link to a picture for a famous person and much more. You can access the data in two ways - via a parser function and via Lua. How to use it:
 * Parser function: to get the capital (Property:P36) from the item about Germany (Q183)
 * Lua: see mw:Extension:Wikibase Client/Lua

I hope this will help you do great things here. If you have any questions please don't hesitate to ask. A good place to do that is d:Wikidata:Project chat.

Cheers Lydia Pintscher (WMDE) 08:40, 4 May 2016 (UTC)

Massive deletion spree
It appears to me that User:Thierry613 is conducting an indiscriminate mass nomination. I am seeing a large number of PRODs placed by him on what appear to be perfectly good pages. I note in particular that he gives no reasons for those PRODs and I can't see any conceivable justification for the vast majority of them. Judging from the prevelance of his PRODs in the sample of all PRODs that I have looked at, I suspect he is responsible for the vast majority of the 837 PRODs outstanding (when I last looked). It looks as if he is systematically PRODing a large proportion of the pages he comes across, possibly most of them. It looks, in particular, as if he might possibly be trying to delete all topics, which is at odds with Topics, which says that we are supposed to have them. At the rate he is going, I am apprehensive that he could soon delete most of the site. That would be extremely dangerous. A wiki of our very small size cannot survive Wikipedia-style deletionism. If we delete most of our content our traffic from search engines and interwiki links will plummet to almost nothing, and our volunteers will vote with their feet. I don't have the strength to check and remove hundreds of bad PRODs, nor to write out a list of hundreds of objectionable PRODs. I therefore feel that I have no choice but to state that I oppose all of his PRODs, since I infer the vast majority will be wrong, and I ask that he remove all of his PRODs himself. James500 (discuss • contribs) 11:38, 9 May 2016 (UTC)


 * Unfortunately, Topic pages are not perfectly good pages. The namespace itself is defective, because it is not directly searchable and conflicts with the use of Topic: in MediaWiki software. The vast majority of Thierry613's proposed deletions are appropriate, but there are many that need to be moved or merged instead. To help determine which Topic: pages should be moved or merged, see Topic Review, a sortable table of editors, length, subpages, and daily views. Thierry613 can't delete his own proposals, so the PRODs will remain until someone reviews them and either moves, merges, or deletes them. I don't have much time at the moment, but will later in June when most of the proposed deletions expire. -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 12:44, 9 May 2016 (UTC)


 * (I was writing my response but Dave has been faster than me...)
 * I hope the following points will adress your concerns :
 * If I have deleted a page you were interested by, I'm very sorry.
 * A PROD means "proposed for deletion". As its name says, it is just a proposition. I don' want to impose anything.
 * It is also a manner to ask to the community : "Do you really think this page is relevant in the Wikiversity ?" And it's also a manner to know who is interested by a particular subject.
 * As a new curator, I can make a mistake as anybody can, and anybody is welcome to say me when I'm wrong.
 * About Topics, as it has appeared that they are not useful enough, so they are to be abandoned and I followed Dave's advices for transforming them in portals.
 * I rarely deleted directly a page, and even so, a deleted page can be restored, so there is no reason to worry.
 * I don't understand what you call "Wikipedia-style deletionism".
 * My goal is not deleting just for deleting. I try to clean what deserves to be cleaned. The goal is not having the greatest number of pages but having the most relevant and interesting ones (and the traffic will come). Unfortunately, there is a lot of work to do...
 * --Thierry613 (discuss • contribs) 13:46, 9 May 2016 (UTC)
 * Permit me to step in as a neutral party (in what seems to be a friendly and cordial discussion of policy). It is important that this "deletion spree" (or "spring cleaning"?) does no harm.  Is the community of people with deletion powers small enought so that none of us engage in mass and indiscriminant deletions that will require later reivew?  That is not a retorical question, but if the answer is yes (we can use PROD with little harm), we have time to start a discussion regarding long term plans.
 * I think all of us want a place where there is a lot more freedom than on Wikipedia, but where quality documents can be highlighted. That leaves a lot of room for various points of view, and that is why we need a forum that is focused on this important issue.--Guy vandegrift (discuss • contribs) 14:45, 9 May 2016 (UTC)
 * Thanks, Guy, for your comment. Anyway, I can make a break, letting us time to discuss peacefully and decide what to do and how to do it. --Thierry613 (discuss • contribs) 17:35, 9 May 2016 (UTC)

A new "Welcome" dialog
Hello everyone. This is a heads-up about a change which has just been announced in Tech News: Add the "welcome" dialog (with button to switch) to the wikitext editor.

In a nutshell, later this week this will provide a one-time "Welcome" message in the wikitext editor which explains that anyone can edit, and every improvement helps. The user can then start editing in the wikitext editor right away, or switch to the visual editor. (This is the equivalent of an already existing welcome message for visual editor users, which suggests the option to switch to the wikitext editor. If you have already seen this dialog in the visual editor, you will not see the new one in the wikitext editor.)


 * I want to make sure that, although users will see this dialog only once, they can read it in their language as much as possible. Please read the instructions if you can help with that.


 * I also want to underline that the dialog does not change in any way current site-wide and personal configurations of the visual editor. Nothing changes permanently for users who chose to hide the visual editor in their Preferences or for those who don't use it anyway, or for wikis where it's still a Beta Feature, or for wikis where certain groups of users don't get the visual editor tab, etc.
 * There is a slight chance that you see a few more questions than usual about the visual editor. Please refer people to the documentation or to the feedback page, and feel free to ping me if you have questions too!
 * Finally, I want to acknowledge that, while not everyone will see that dialog, many of you will; if you're reading this you are likely not the intended recipients of that one-time dialog, so you may be confused or annoyed by it—and if this is the case, I'm truly sorry about that. This message also avoids that you have to explain the same thing over and over again—just point to this section. Please feel free to cross-post this message at other venues on this wiki if you think it will help avoid that users feel caught by surprise by this change.

If you want to learn more, please see https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T133800; if you have feedback or think you need to report a bug with the dialog, you can post in that task (or at mediawiki.org if you prefer).

Thanks for your attention and happy editing, Elitre (WMF)  16:49, 16 May 2016 (UTC)

Help for English check is welcome
Hi folks, I've just finished a essay with the title "Is anonymity for Wikipedia contributors desirable?". If some body want to check the English text form or post comment about substance on the talk page, he is very welcome ! Lionel Scheepmans ✉ Contact (French native speaker) 12:50, 24 May 2016 (UTC)