Broken/wikipedia:Simple talk/Archive 142

Wikiprojects in Talk Pages

Hello. I have a question. From my time here, I am of the inference that we don't put Wikiproject banner things or whatever they're called in talk pages. Why don't we do this(or if we do that, tell me)? Thanks, MrMeAndMrMe_{Let's talk} 05:06, 13 March 2022 (UTC)

Due to our small community, we don't support Wikiprojects in project space like enWP does. While users may (and have) created Wikiprojects in their own userspace, they have never seen much use. With only 50 or so active editors (and that's being generous), many of whom focus on different aspects of the project, it simply doesn't make sense. Perhaps one day in the far far future. Griff (talk) 05:10, 13 March 2022 (UTC)

We don't put them on article talk pages, because WikiProjects here aren't official. They are managed completely in userspace. If you see any such banners being put in article talk pages, feel free to delete them and, if applicable, request deletion of the template that generates them. -- Auntof6 (talk) 05:10, 13 March 2022 (UTC)

It's what the two above said. WikiProjects are user projects that are usually abandoned (stop looking at me) and left to rot. Even the largest WikiProjects usually have 7-8 members, unlike the thousands on en-wiki. Even so, nobody usually takes the time to manage the article lists on them because to be fair, who uses them? Putting links on talk pages could link to long dead users who operate empty projects. 💠Ely - Talk💠 06:26, 13 March 2022 (UTC)

You are right! Ely! Wikiprojects are actually user projects. Lol! But true! Haoreima (talk) 05:44, 18 March 2022 (UTC)

It's not overly surprising tbh. On Wikivoyage, we have quite a couple of them (called "Expeditions"), but they don't usually get much support and there has only been one expedition that has been successful before and that was only before it too became abandoned. SHB2000 (talk) 09:18, 26 March 2022 (UTC)

Main Page/styles.css

Why is Main Page/styles.css in the main space and not in the wikipedia name space where it belongs? Does it actually do anything where it is? Looking at Wikidata, we are the onle wiki to have such a page. Creol (talk) 20:39, 13 March 2022 (UTC)

Looks like it was in the mainspace on EN until 2020, which is the last time it was changed here as well. I'd guess nobody has noticed or cared enough. Wouldn't be hard to fix. I can take a look when I'm back at my desktop, if nobody else feels like tackling it. --Gordonrox24 | ^Talk 20:45, 13 March 2022 (UTC)

Done, and I don't think I broke anything. --Gordonrox24 | ^Talk 02:39, 22 March 2022 (UTC)

Shouldn't .css pages be in template namespace? While it is true that namespace doesn't really matter, it is also true that src="Main Page/styles.css" is shorter than src="Wikipedia:Main Page/styles.css". NguoiDungKhongDinhDanh 00:29, 14 March 2022 (UTC)

Makes sense to follow what other wikipedias have done here, I think. --Gordonrox24 | ^Talk 02:40, 22 March 2022 (UTC)

Simplification team

I propose for the creation of a group of volunteers to simplify articles or atleast some passages whenever anyone asks for help for simplification. Like many volunteers join in many Wikiprojects here, they can do the same at this one too. Though the name of the team may be given a good one, I was thinking one like "Simplification volunteers team"! What does the community think over this idea? Haoreima (talk) 12:37, 16 March 2022 (UTC)

Sounds good to me. MrMeAndMrMe_{Let's talk} 12:48, 16 March 2022 (UTC)

Yep sounds nice --Tsugaru let's talk! :) 01:58, 17 March 2022 (UTC)

@MrMeAndMrMe, つがる: While waiting for others' opinions, could you suggest a good name for the project page? Haoreima (talk) 10:24, 17 March 2022 (UTC)

I think this is a good idea, but by creating a project page that discusses common ways to simplify topics, expanding on our existing guide. The "team" (I prefer the word "group" which is in the BE1500) could be hosted in userspace and perhaps referenced in the guide, with the knowledge that they could be called upon to help at any time. For example, I often ask Sakura emad (who leads the Article Rescue Squadron) to assist at RFD, in this case, I would ping Haoireima/MrMe whoever to assist a user with a difficult simplification. Griff (talk) 10:46, 17 March 2022 (UTC)

There have been a few user space wikiprojects for this. I think User:Thesixthstaff/WikiProject Simplification is the most recent I can recall. I think the page just has been moved to various peoples user spaces over the years since officially we don't do wikiprojects on this wiki. -Djsasso (talk) 19:32, 17 March 2022 (UTC)

That's quite a while ago. Perhaps a new userspace for WPSimplification(or whatever we decide to name it) would be slightly more permanent as there seems to be a few more active users that have just resurfaced and come over here and won't quit for a while, but that's just speculation. MrMeAndMrMe_{Let's talk} 19:55, 17 March 2022 (UTC)

Thing is, these wikiprojects pretty much never maintain activity, its why we don't officially have them here. People are always very gungho in the discussion to create them, but then they die often within a week or two. We don't really have the user base to make wikiprojects function. The best way on this wiki to get people involved is to talk on this page about it, not hide discussion away on some project somewhere. -Djsasso (talk) 20:03, 17 March 2022 (UTC)

It's not hidden if you do it well, the way I see it. If you mention what you're doing in edit summaries, have people refer to them(referring to what griff said here) and have general activity, then you're fine. I have been saving articles for the articles rescue squadron for a month now and Griff has asked Sukara to save more than a few articles, and it's doing fine(though it only has two members). MrMeAndMrMe_{Let's talk} 20:07, 17 March 2022 (UTC)

Well that is sort of the point right? For example I didn't even know we had someone doing an Article Rescue squadron here until like 2 weeks ago. And like you say it only has two members, at that point, just posting on someones talk page or on simple talk gets what is happening seen by more people. Most people won't really pay attention to anything outside of this page. Super active editors will, but the vast majority of people won't. Its why we centralize all our discussion and deletion pages to one place etc, so they aren't spread out and discussion happening everywhere. (I should make clear I am not saying we shouldn't have one, just that wikiprojects tend to die whereas just posting on this page if you need help tends to work. Just look at all the help with cleanup Creol has gotten done by doing that lately.) -Djsasso (talk) 20:20, 17 March 2022 (UTC)

Archived notifying bot

In regular English Wikipedia, there are bots that inform people something like this:- "You created a thread called ABCXYZ at Wikipedia:Teahouse, but it has been archived because there was no discussion for a few days. You can still find the archived discussion here. If you have any additional questions that weren't answered then, please create a new thread." Why not we engage one of our bots to do this at simple English Wikipedia for notifying whenever there's archiving of threads at AN or ST? There are lots of bots working here too! It won't be a difficult task for bots. The significance of doing this is that it will improve the efficiency of our Wikipedia. Haoreima (talk) 05:41, 18 March 2022 (UTC)

We don't have nearly the amount of traffic for that to be necessary, we have maybe a few threads archived every few days. The link to and search box for archives are right at the top of the page. Having bots do this is just spam. -Djsasso (talk) 11:39, 18 March 2022 (UTC)

idk why you say it's a spam. Haoreima (talk) 13:06, 18 March 2022 (UTC)

I don't think anything will actually be archived in simple talk again because of the redirect discussion. MrMeAndMrMe_{Let's talk} 13:09, 18 March 2022 (UTC)

Lol. 🤣 True! Haoreima (talk) 13:10, 18 March 2022 (UTC)

Because they would be messages that most people would not want/need. We generally frown on automated messages here from bots as they are impersonal. It is why we don't use bots to welcome people here for example whereas some other wikis do. Most people are aware that after a couple weeks the topics get archived after no discussion, and its a fairly long time of no discussion before that happens so they should be aware that the discussion has died on it by that point. -Djsasso (talk) 14:11, 18 March 2022 (UTC)

I still have one doubt. Is there any mechanism/system to block/stop bots from leaving messages into talk pages of certain people (if they wish)? If this exists, it would be a solution too! What do you think about this? Haoreima (talk) 04:46, 19 March 2022 (UTC)

There's the {{nobots}} template, which a bot may use to tell if a user wants bot messages. -- *Fehufangą ♮ ✉ Talk page 02:16, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

Update on Universal Code of Conduct Enforcement guidelines ratification vote (as of 18 March)

Dear all,

About 11 days ago the ratification voting for the Enforcement Guidelines of the UCoC started. There are three more days left before the voting closes. So far, 1569 voters from across several projects have cast their votes.

Out of the 58 eligible voters on Simple Wikipedia, only 1.724% of the eligible voters from this project have voted. If you haven’t yet voted, now is the time. Please vote or share your feedback on the guidelines from the perspective of this project here]

Best, Zuz (WMF) (talk) 15:25, 18 March 2022 (UTC)

Reference issue

List of named minor planets: 1–999 is currently showing in Category:Pages with reference errors but im not seeing the cat on the page nor any ref error either. Right now things are being screwy so that could be part of the issue. Im not always getting ref error indicators currently (debugging Mandy Rose was a terror without alerts though it was showing the error cats). Some pages I see them, others i dont.. but the cats are always there except in this case,, The page has no indication it should be in a cat at all, let alone why its there. Normally I would just prune away and preview to see when the cat falls of to narrow it down but without it even showing the cat, im at a loss.

Can anyone see something that might be causing it?

Was also getting the IPA input thing on the Search block and couldnt use search outside of the Article space (User:c... no suggestions at all) Got that turned off and back to working normally but no clue what started it or if it could also be behind my not seeing all errors.Creol (talk) 23:51, 18 March 2022 (UTC)

It may be on your end because the only page I see in that cat is Ossetian language. Have you tried purging the cache? Griff (talk) 00:34, 19 March 2022 (UTC)

I went to dinner, came back and it was gone.. didnt even reload the page. PFM... Creol (talk) 01:55, 19 March 2022 (UTC)

When I first made the page, there were reference errors which was then fixed from the use of a template, probably just took a while to update. Wikipedia's strange like that. MrMeAndMrMe_{Let's talk} 14:46, 19 March 2022 (UTC)

Wikiproject Years

I would like to announce that I have just read Wikipedia:WikiProject and realize that I am supposed to announce the creation of your WikiProjects. Therefore, I am announcing the making of Wikiproject years. This is a Wikiproject task-force type thing in which you can write, maintain, manage and help out articles that are relating to almost any year to ever exist. To learn our full scope and see how to contribute, view this link.

We wish to have more users in the future and quite possibly even be one of the most active WikiProjects here. Whether you want to make articles on here to help others, or to set the record of most active Wikiprojects to have your name go down in history, make sure be an active member of Wikiproject Years. Ciao, MrMeAndMrMe_{Let's talk} 05:46, 20 March 2022 (UTC)

@ColorfulSmoke interest for you. 💠Ely - Talk💠 10:18, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

@MrMeAndMrMe: This sounded like something I might be interested in, but I'm unsure. I left a message on the talk page. -- Auntof6 (talk) 18:32, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

Join the Community Resilience and Sustainability Conversation Hour with Maggie Dennis

You can find this message translated into additional languages on Meta-wiki.

⧼interlanguage-link-mul⧽ • ⧼please-translate⧽

The Community Resilience and Sustainability team at the Wikimedia Foundation is hosting a conversation hour led by its Vice President Maggie Dennis.

Topics within scope for this call include Movement Strategy, Board Governance, Trust and Safety, the Universal Code of Conduct, Community Development, and Human Rights. Come with your questions and feedback, and let's talk! You can also send us your questions in advance.

The meeting will be on 24 March 2022 at 15:00 UTC (check your local time).

You can read details on Meta-wiki.

Best, Zuz (WMF) (talk) 11:39, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

Hmm.. dunno about you all, but this list just about sums up things I will never contribute to! Macdonald-ross (talk) 11:50, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

Looking at the topics section on that page as well, I can't say Im in disagreement. I have no interest at all in ever talking to that person. My "Universal Code of Conduct": try not to be an a@#hole too often. /code. Looks about as touchy-feely as a preist at a Boy Scout jamboree and yet a lot more preachy. Creol (talk) 21:33, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

Questions on how to use reset talk

How does one use reset talk 1.1? It sounds like a useful tool but I don't know how to access it and/or if you can access it. Thanks, MrMeAndMrMe_{Let's talk} 20:05, 22 March 2022 (UTC)

Use importScript or mw.loader.load to load the script. You can place it in your common.js or your current skin's javascript file. -- *Fehufangą ♮ ✉ Talk page 01:20, 23 March 2022 (UTC)

Thanks. MrMeAndMrMe_{Let's talk} 01:30, 23 March 2022 (UTC)

You'll need to load the actual script: User:DannyS712/Reset talk.js -- *Fehufangą ♮ ✉ Talk page 01:35, 23 March 2022 (UTC)

I'm not seeing anything on the talk page. Any reason why? MrMeAndMrMe_{Let's talk} 01:43, 23 March 2022 (UTC)

try mw.loader.load("//simple.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:DannyS712/Reset talk.js&action=raw&ctype=text/javascript"); //[[User:DannyS712/Reset talk.js]], it should appear under the "more" dropdown menu. -- *Fehufangą ♮ ✉ Talk page 01:46, 23 March 2022 (UTC)

┌────────────────┘
Just a side note, tt tag is deprecated. Use <code> (for code) or <kbd> (for keyboard keys). NguoiDungKhongDinhDanh 11:40, 23 March 2022 (UTC)

Force of habit :P -- *Fehufangą ♮ ✉ Talk page 11:41, 23 March 2022 (UTC)

Universal Code of Conduct Enforcement guidelines ratification voting is now closed

You can find this message translated into additional languages on Meta-wiki.

⧼interlanguage-link-mul⧽ • ⧼please-translate⧽

Greetings,

The ratification voting process for the revised enforcement guidelines of the Universal Code of Conduct (UCoC) came to a close on 21 March 2022. Over 2300 Wikimedians voted across different regions of our movement. Thank you to everyone who participated in this process! The scrutinizing group is now reviewing the vote for accuracy, so please allow up to two weeks for them to finish their work.

The final results from the voting process will be announced here, along with the relevant statistics and a summary of comments as soon as they are available. Please check out the voter information page to learn about the next steps. You can comment on the project talk page on Meta-wiki in any language. You may also contact the UCoC project team by email: ucocprojectwikimedia.org

Best regards,

Movement Strategy and Governance

Zuz (WMF) (talk) 09:18, 23 March 2022 (UTC)

Negligence of Simple Wikipedia on enwiki and all other languages

While using the English Wikipedia for over 11 months only for around 4 have I been aware of this wikis existence, and looking around all the articles it is obvious that this wiki is heavily neglected, despite being very important. For example, Water tower has not been edited in six years. This is due to the fact that Simplewiki is not mentioned on the enwiki at all, and is only shown under the less than 100,000 articles section at the very bottom of the main page, dont you think in Help they should say ¨If this is too complex for you, check out Simple Wikipedia!¨ or something? Furthermore, there are only around twenty featured articles and maybe sixty at most good articles.

• Option A - Show Simplewiki higher up on the main page, or some other high traffic help page
• Option B - Show simplewiki not on a mega high view page, but do show it on some other page
• Option C - Do some form of external advertisement
• Option D - Do nothing
• Option E - Other (Specify what)

Im leaning towards option A, but what you think? Lallint (talk) 15:39, 24 March 2022 (UTC)

I was thinking about this. I can see many newer-english speakers are driven away from enWiki because they cannot understand it and most views on this Wiki are from the 50 or so editors that will ever appear, rarely are there actual readers. MrMeAndMrMe_{Let's talk} 15:47, 24 March 2022 (UTC)

MrMeAndMrMe Note we are currently at around 400,000 siteviews/day. --Ferien (talk) 19:46, 24 March 2022 (UTC)

Oh, fair enough, I guess I'm wrong. MrMeAndMrMe_{Let's talk} 20:07, 24 March 2022 (UTC)

I think the thing that would most likely happen is option D, I like Option A or B the most, though. kolva | chat? 15:55, 24 March 2022 (UTC)

I don't think this can actually be solved. I agree the standard of writing on English Wiki is appalling, and very much worse than the old printed version of Encyclopaedia Britannica. There are some exceptions where, by accident, a subject has editors who can really write. If you're interested in music you will find some good examples. But it doesn't surprise me that many pages on English wiki are badly written. American school and basic degree education is dependent heavily upon MCQs. The difficulty foreign language readers have is just made worse by the generally poor quality of the prose. Macdonald-ross (talk) 16:17, 24 March 2022 (UTC)

I am more talking about that Enwiki is simply more difficult to understand with it's larger words. MrMeAndMrMe_{Let's talk} 16:27, 24 March 2022 (UTC)

1) This isn't really a question for the SEWP community. The question is "How should the English Wikipedia let readers know there is a SE option available to them?" and we cannot answer that question for the En.Wiki community. 2) COVID-19 just left hundreds of thousands of people with clinical and sub-clinical cognitive issues, not all of which will self-resolve. There is a greater need for accurate simple English information than ever. Darkfrog24 (talk) 18:41, 24 March 2022 (UTC)

I cannot start a discussion on enwiki because I am indef blocked Lallint (talk) 11:49, 25 March 2022 (UTC)

Promoting the Simple English Wikipedia on the English Wikipedia would be wonderful and would be very helpful to readers. However, I believe (I may be wrong) that this has been suggested before and the English Wikipedia community have chosen in the past to not promote simplewiki on pages. External advertisement would be nice, I'm not sure how we would do that though. --Ferien (talk) 19:46, 24 March 2022 (UTC)

There would also be the problem that such advertisements may attract more vandalism than editors. Vermont (talk) 22:02, 24 March 2022 (UTC)

I like the idea of possibility moving us up in the interwiki links, but this is really something that has to be sent through the RFC process at enWP. Griff (talk) 00:32, 25 March 2022 (UTC)

This comes up about once a year or so. And the short answer is: It's not likely to happen. Why? Mainly because this community could be and typically is all for additional exposure (especially considering how useful our project is to schools and people learning English); but the onus falls on the English Wikipedia since that's the project that would have to be altered. There's even been past suggestions to merge the projects or present the Simple English Wikipedia as another tab at the top. Since none of these have so far succeeded to impress, woo, and sway the English Wikipedia community into action, the best to offer is the current iteration of user made tabs (found here and here). I didn't write these, I'm just the latest keeper of the code, as it were. But I simple could not imagine my UI without the tabs. Operator873 ^connect 02:13, 25 March 2022 (UTC)

The truth is that it isn't easy to write the kind of simple English that this wiki wants. That's one reason articles here could be seen as neglected. (I think "neglect" is a better term than "negligence" for what you describe.) Many of the articles here don't meet our stated goal of being in simple language, because we don't have a good way of checking all of them or of vetting the writers. They may be written in clear language, but that's not the same as simple language.

Also, be aware that some people on enwiki would resist publicizing this wiki because they think it should be shut down. -- Auntof6 (talk) 03:03, 25 March 2022 (UTC)

I agree with your points, perhaps 30% of articles here are complex and confusing.

I don't this wiki will be shut down, however — it is generally helpful to schools and significantly better than some other smaller wikis. MrMeAndMrMe_{Let's talk} 03:51, 25 March 2022 (UTC)

@MrMeAndMrMe: I didn't mean to say I thought it would be shut down, just that there have been several attempts to shut it down. -- Auntof6 (talk) 07:19, 25 March 2022 (UTC)

Do you happen to have a link to those discussions? MrMeAndMrMe_{Let's talk} 12:00, 25 March 2022 (UTC)

I swore i saw a few shut down the simple english wikipedia things on langcom, let me find it kolva | chat? 14:47, 25 March 2022 (UTC)

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposals_for_closing_projects/Closure_of_Simple_English_Wikipedia_(3)

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposals_for_closing_projects/Deletion_of_Simple_English_Wikiquote_and_Wikibooks

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposals_for_closing_projects/Closure_of_Simple_English_Wikiquote

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposals_for_closing_projects/Closure_of_Simple_English_Wiktionary

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposals_for_closing_projects/Closure_of_Simple_English_Wikibooks

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposals_for_closing_projects/Closure_of_Simple_English_Wikipedia

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposals_for_closing_projects/Closure_of_Simple_English_Wikipedia_(2)

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposals_for_closing_projects/Closure_of_Simple_English_Wikiquote_(3) kolva | chat? 14:50, 25 March 2022 (UTC)

Moving simple up has been proposed on en.wiki in the past and defeated. There is a fairly strong sentiment there that we shouldn't be promoted over any other wiki. Especially due to our "quality". -Djsasso (talk) 12:26, 25 March 2022 (UTC)

Football vs association football?

If we look at Category:Football, it's a bit of a mess in my opinion. There are two different names used a lot, football and association football. Some cats use football, while other use association - I think it's about 50/50 so whatever the consensus is here / or whatever consensus there has been already, a lot of category moving will have to be done. Do/should we use football or association football? Shall we go simpler or follow en? --Ferien (talk) 19:40, 24 March 2022 (UTC)

Mainly football is a family of ball sports. (mainly as footballer is an exception) It included Association football (fooyball, futbal, soccer, etc) and Gridiron football (US football). The two groups should be entirely seperate in the main cat but not everyone knows to keep it that way and things leak out of the subcats into the main improperly.

• tldr; football - group of sports, Association football - a type of football. Creol (talk) 19:52, 24 March 2022 (UTC)

Added note: Once past the entry cat and into the subbat, Association is dropped from the cat names for ease of use. Football in England would be about Association football in England. For the other versions, the sport uses a name which is not ambiguous, atleast locally ie. Football in the United States vs soccer in the United States. In the US football means Gridiron not association so the common names are used. For countries that have Association football named as football and any other "football" sport (say rugby or Australian rules) Association gets the name football and the others use their proper names. Because of the size and scope of US football, football in the US tends to be the exception to the way cats are done. With 350 million people and about 340 million of them using the term in the same way.. They can name the cat what they want.. Commonname and what have you. Creol (talk) 20:38, 24 March 2022 (UTC)

I'm all for following enWP's method simply for ease of use, and I believe American/gridiron football should be in an entirely different category tree with no cross-over except at the very highest category level. A mention on the Category page may be useful. Other than that, I'm fine with Creol's suggestion. Griff (talk) 02:21, 25 March 2022 (UTC)

Curently the only cross-over is at Cat:Football. That cat includes most ball sport played by people running around on grass type surfaces ie. Assoc, gridiron, Australian Rules, rugby, etc. After that, each sport goes its own seperate way. Cat:football is basically one of the super-cats such as motor sports, water sports, athletics, baseball (baseball, softball, cricket, etc) and net sport (tennis, badmitton, volleyball) --Creol(talk) 02:54, 25 March 2022 (UTC)

Football = group of sports

Association football = soccer

American football/Australian rules football and Canadian football should remain as it is. Rugby is only considered football in most of Oceania. SHB2000 (talk) 09:52, 26 March 2022 (UTC)

Feminism and Folklore 2022 ends soon

Feminism and Folklore 2022 which is an international writing contest organized at Wikipedia ends soon that is on 31 March 2022 11:59 UTC. This is the last chance of the year to write about feminism, women biographies and gender-focused topics such as folk festivals, folk dances, folk music, folk activities, folk games, folk cuisine, folk wear, fairy tales, folk plays, folk arts, folk religion, mythology, folk artists, folk dancers, folk singers, folk musicians, folk game athletes, women in mythology, women warriors in folklore, witches and witch hunting, fairy tales and more

Keep an eye on the project page for declaration of Winners.

We look forward for your immense co-operation.

Thanks Wiki Loves Folklore international Team MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 14:28, 26 March 2022 (UTC)