Wikipedia:Village pump (WMF)

  Moved to Wikipedia:Community response to Asian News International vs. Wikimedia Foundation

The open letter has reached over 600 signatures, for those unaware. Aaron Liu (talk) 17:34, 10 November 2024 (UTC)Reply

In light of the fact that we now have an additional public court disclosure seeming to overwhelmingly indicate that the WMF will imminently be disclosing the personally identifying information of at least the three volunteers that ANI has identified as defendants in its suite, I am proposing we have as broad a community discussion as possible on what further response (up to and including large organized protest actions aimed to challenge the WMF's intended course of action) might be appropriate and feasible in the circumstances. Please see here, for further details. SnowRise ^{let's rap} 16:13, 14 November 2024 (UTC)Reply

There is a journal article titled Wikipedia’s Indian problem: settler colonial erasure of native American knowledge and history on the world’s largest encyclopedia.

I see a response to this in Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2024-06-08/Opinion and mention of this article in Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2024-10-19/Recent research, so Wikipedia community seems aware of it.

Given that it's recent (May 2024) and it has suggestions directed at Wikimedia Foundation, I was just wondering if Wikimedia Foundation is aware of this article. And I am not asking with respect to editor conduct, but with respect to any potential initiatives (such as partnerships with potential volunteer experts to audit few articles). Bogazicili (talk) 19:12, 4 November 2024 (UTC)Reply

Advice please on whether this sound file provided by the British Columbia government, Ministry of Environment, would be considered free and uploadable to Commons for Wikipedia articles about Osoyoos, the town and lake, and sw̓iw̓s Park. It comes from this provincial park website, and would be a useful example for pronunciation. Thanks. Zefr (talk) 15:29, 6 November 2024 (UTC)Reply

The best place to ask this sort of question is Wikipedia:Media copyright questions, but the answer to your specific question is almost certainly "no". The copyright page of the website says Copyright © 2024, Province of British Columbia. All rights reserved. Thryduulf (talk) 15:37, 6 November 2024 (UTC)Reply

 

Here is a quick overview of highlights from the Wikimedia Foundation over the first half of November 2024. Please help translate.

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Upcoming and current events and conversations
Talking: 2024 continues

• Commons Community Call: The first community call with Wikimedia Commons volunteers and stakeholders to help prioritize support efforts for 2025-2026 Fiscal Year will take place on November 21. The theme of this call will be about how content should be organised on Wikimedia Commons. The call will be hosted by Chief Product and Technology Officer Selena Deckelmann.
• Conferencia Justicia climática Perú 2024: Conference on climate justice, indigenous voices and Wikimedia platform will be held in Huaraz, Peru from November 8 to 10.
• Affiliations Committee: Applications for joining the Affiliations Committee is open until November 18.
• Ombuds Commission and Case Review Committee: Applications for joining the Ombuds commission and the Case Review Committee are open until December 2.
• Language community meeting: A language community meeting will be hosted on November 29, 16:00 UTC, discussing technical updates and problem-solving.

Annual Goals Progress on Infrastructure
See also newsletters: Wikimedia Apps · Growth · Research · Web · Wikifunctions & Abstract Wikipedia · Tech News · Language and Internationalization · other newsletters on MediaWiki.org

• Advisory Council: The new Product and Technology Advisory Council (PTAC) was announced. The PTAC will try to publish a set of community-validated recommendations that can serve as a potential 2-3 year blueprint for product and technical success.
• Wikifunctions: The Abstract Wikipedia team is working toward a rewrite of our backend services in a different programming language, likely Rust. More status updates.
• Tech News: The Guided Tour extension, which help newcomers understand how to edit, now works with dark mode; Wikipedia readers can now download a browser extension to experiment with potential features that making it easier for readers to discover information on the wikis. More tech updates from tech news 44 and 43.
• Temporary accounts: Logged-out editors on 12 wikis, including Norwegian, Romanian, Serbian, Danish, and Cantonese Wikipedia, receive temporary accounts now. This new account type enhances the privacy of logged-out editors and makes it easier for community members to communicate with them. Read the new Diff post to learn more about temporary accounts.
• Mobile apps: The Mobile Apps team has released an update to the iOS app’s navigation, now available in the latest App store version.
• Campaign Events Extension: The Campaign Events extension is now live on two more wikis, Wikidata and the Spanish Wikipedia.
• Admin Retention: A survey on Wikipedia Administrator Recruitment, Retention, and Attrition is open until November 11. As part of the Foundation's 2024-2025 Annual Plan, the research team and collaborators are studying recruitment, retention, and attrition patterns among long-tenured community members in official moderation and administration roles.
• Knowledge is Human: The campaign web page, which educates visitors on Wikipedia’s model and why it’s trustworthy, has earned over 140,000 clicks. The campaign has increased pageviews on WikimediaFoundation.org by more than 50%.

Annual Goals Progress on Equity
See also a list of all movement events: on Meta-Wiki

• WikiCelebrate: From making a minor maintenance edit in 2005 to being one of the most appreciated Wikimedians in the Central Eastern European (CEE) region: this month we celebrate Mārtiņš Bruņenieks.
• Wiki Loves Earth: Mountains, Birds and Lakes – Central Asia Edition
• Future of Language Incubation: As part of a new Future of Language Incubation initiative to support language onboarding, Wikipedia is now live for five languages: Pannonian Rusyn, Tai Nüa, Iban, Obolo, and Southern Ndebele.

Annual Goals Progress on Safety & Integrity
See also blogs: Global Advocacy blog · Global Advocacy Newsletter · Policy blog

• Global Advocacy: Reflecting on the anniversary of the EU’s Digital Service Act (DSA), Wikimedians share successes and public policy priorities at digital rights Global Gathering event, and more global advocacy updates.

Annual Goals Progress on Effectiveness
See also: quarterly Metrics Reports

• English Fundraising: The Road to Launch: Wikimedia’s 2024 English Fundraising Campaign.
• Fundraising Report: Our annual fundraising report for the 2023-2024 fiscal year is published. Last year, we had over 8 million donors giving an average donation of m:Fundraising/2023-24 Report0.58. We ran campaigns in 33 countries, 18 languages, and received donations from over 200 countries.

Other Movement curated newsletters & news
See also: Diff blog · Goings-on · Planet Wikimedia · Signpost (en) · Kurier (de) · Actualités du Wiktionnaire (fr) · Regards sur l’actualité de la Wikimedia (fr) · Wikimag (fr) · other newsletters:

• Topics: Education · GLAM · The Wikipedia Library
• Wikimedia Projects: Milestones · Wikidata
• Regions: Central and Eastern Europe

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Previous editions of this bulletin are on Meta-Wiki. Let askcac wikimedia.org know if you have any feedback or suggestions for improvement!

MediaWiki message delivery 22:33, 7 November 2024 (UTC)Reply

Interesting note buried in this about how IP addresses are going to be handled in future, thanks for the update on that timely issue. Espresso Addict (talk) 09:26, 8 November 2024 (UTC)Reply

We would prefer not to deploy on English Wikipedia at that time, though. A knee jerk reaction would be requesting otherwise and have enwiki be onboard as early as possible. – robertsky (talk) 08:48, 9 November 2024 (UTC)Reply

It makes sense to fine-tune implementation on smaller wikis before rolling out to larger ones, but I am a lot more comfortable about this implementation than I was with earlier reports, which merely talked of hiding IP addresses, with all the worries over how we then handle IP vandalism, and did not provide any benefits to the (logged-in) community of editors. Espresso Addict (talk) 08:57, 9 November 2024 (UTC)Reply

Currently, extended-confirmed editors -200 edits will have access to the ip information. It is a large pool of users (>70k here) who can look that data. – robertsky (talk) 09:12, 9 November 2024 (UTC)Reply

Indeed, I was very pleased that the ability to look at IPs had been extended to patrollers. Is there somewhere better that we can highlight this useful update, which allayed many of my concerns as an administrator about the upcoming change, as I fear the WMF page is not much read? Espresso Addict (talk) 09:33, 9 November 2024 (UTC)Reply

I see the option in the Preferences page. It wasn't there before. Enabling now. :D – robertsky (talk) 11:59, 9 November 2024 (UTC)Reply

How will this change the WP:OUTING policy? For example can I include the IP address or cidr range of a temporary account in the suspected sock list? Would that be considered outing? Because anyone(logged out editors too) can see a SPI report.Ratnahastin (talk) 09:38, 9 November 2024 (UTC)Reply

Most likely not, as you're required to agree to certain terms when opting in to view IPs (as you already are on this wiki when enabling IP info). It would be a violation of not only local policy but ToS. Nardog (talk) 11:51, 9 November 2024 (UTC)Reply

I think there should not be a need to include the IP address or the CIDR range in SPI report. Just the list of temporary accounts will do. Any CU, clerks, or patrolling admins will to have updated their checking processes to account for temporary accounts. – robertsky (talk) 12:02, 9 November 2024 (UTC)Reply

Has anyone seen an indication of how many buttons you have to click to see IP info? In the past, people might post half-a dozen IPs at ANI and someone else would point out that that was a /64 that should be blocked with no collateral damage. At least one template ({{blockcalc}}) can extract IPs from wikitext and show the ranges involved. We will have to see how much hassle will be involved with the new system. Johnuniq (talk) 02:02, 10 November 2024 (UTC)Reply

You can ask for the permissions and try it on testwiki: or, if you have enough edits, on any other wiki where it's been rolled out. Nardog (talk) 06:23, 10 November 2024 (UTC)Reply

@Johnuniq: I have the global version of edit filter helper, so I have access on the wikis where it's just been rolled out (plus testwiki). If I recall correctly, it's just one button agreeing to the IP information policy to reveal IPs, but there are more boxes in Special:Preferences that allow for things like revealing IPs in the edit filter and using IP information on contribution pages. There's also a global preference available to CU/OS and certain global groups (global rollback/sysop, and global abuse filter helper/maintainer) to enable IP information cross-wiki. EggRoll97 ^(talk) 23:32, 10 November 2024 (UTC)Reply

Temporary accounts can be changed if one clears cookies or uses a different browser, not the same case with a cidr IP range. This will certainly make it a bit of a hassle to list out every temporary account associated with the IP range, anyway let's see how this feature is implemented first. Ratnahastin (talk) 02:06, 10 November 2024 (UTC)Reply

If you (the WMF) are not already aware of it there is an open letter here with over 600 signatures. Phil Bridger (talk) 18:46, 10 November 2024 (UTC)Reply

Trump has a tendency to cause disruptions in a number of different ways. He seriously interfered with a government directed radio station of some sort when he was in office last time (https://www.npr.org/2020/06/18/879873926/trumps-new-foreign-broadcasting-ceo-fires-news-chiefs-raising-fears-of-meddling). Will it be necessary for you to move Wikipedia operations overseas or is it already handled in some other way? I'm sorry to voice my concern this directly, but: I'd rather this didn't turn into conservapedia mkII and have Trump attempt to re-write history. 75.142.254.3 (talk) 19:15, 10 November 2024 (UTC)Reply

The Wikimedia community is editorially independent of the foundation and has remained so during Trump's first presidency, so I see no reason to be worried. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 19:22, 10 November 2024 (UTC)Reply

Do you mean the users or a part of the body of wikipedia itself? As in, could Trump take over the website or otherwise exert significant pressure that would otherwise be alleviated by relocation? If not, then I guess no action necessary.

75.142.254.3 (talk) 19:35, 10 November 2024 (UTC)Reply

The only thing he could do is hire a troll farm of some sort, which I don't expect us to have much trouble defending against. Aaron Liu (talk) 19:58, 10 November 2024 (UTC)Reply

Are the servers located in the United States? It's looking like the answer is no, and I'm sorry for being paranoid, it's just that he has done things in this country that we didn't anticipate because we didn't expect anyone to have the sort of character that it would be a problem in that position. 75.142.254.3 (talk) 20:01, 10 November 2024 (UTC)Reply

The primary Wikimedia data centers are located in the U.S., with caching centers distributed around the globe. I think you'd be hard pressed to find a country with better legal protections for online free speech, but as you note, it shouldn't be taken for granted. Legoktm (talk) 20:13, 10 November 2024 (UTC)Reply

Yeah, the 1st amendment provides stronger protections than almost all countries have; even if Trump tried he'd be hard pressed to find a court that would agree with Wikipedia censorship (unlike in India...). Galobtter (talk) 04:34, 11 November 2024 (UTC)Reply

You are correct about the strength of free speech protections in the US being more robust than just about anywhere else in the world, from a perspective of well-enshrined constitutional protections and the historical jurisprudence and respect from institutions. That said, if there were to be a concerted push by the incoming president and his allies to suppress certain information streams and target free speech that aligns against him, it would not be the first time that he sent shockwaves through the legal world by finding success in overturning long-established doctrines that were until recently thought iron-clad and inviolable, by appearing before a federal judiciary that is now showing the influence of decades of concerted efforts by the GOP and the Federalist Society to pack those courts to the gills with ideologically-aligned and personally loyal jurists. In short, nothing is certain in the current political and institutional landscape. I just don't think a whole-sale move of the organization and its technical infrastructure is either feasible or likely to substantially obviate the risks. The only answer is to take up the fight when and where it occurs. SnowRise ^{let's rap} 20:19, 17 November 2024 (UTC)Reply

The Wikimedia Foundation, which hosts Wikipedia, is based in the United States, and has to comply with US laws. Unless a relevant law is passed or legal action is taken, there isn't much Trump can do. ARandomName123 (talk)^{Ping me!} 20:17, 10 November 2024 (UTC)Reply

If Trump goes authoritarian, which at this point I'm not going to rule out, US Law could be changed on a whim. But, I'm going to try to not be paranoid as much on this and WMF may already have evaluated appropriate courses of action given how they've managed to handle a wide variety of different kinds of disruption already. 75.142.254.3 (talk) 20:20, 10 November 2024 (UTC)Reply

The bottom line is, we just don't know. I'm sure the WMF has contingencies in place for if US law ever becomes prejudicial to the project. Until he actually becomes president, we don't know what will happen. We just have to wait and see. TheLegendofGanon (talk) 20:22, 10 November 2024 (UTC)Reply

I might have agreed with you a month ago, but considering the current crisis over the ANI matter, I am not at all confident that the WMF does have a proper contingency plan for a concerted litigation campaign from a Trump presidential administration or aligned parties. And actually, in that case, I could forgive their not having one: in that case, it's hard to predict for once bedrock civil and constitutional principles flying out the window, or know the exact combination of legal angle of attack and political pressure which may lead to such outcomes. Unlike certain other recent scenarios where the manner in which things have played out was mostly predictable, there is a lot that could very much be up in the air. The Justice Department will certainly be headed by a political loyalist for the next four years, and SCOTUS and many of the other federal courts are incredibly friendly to right wing causes, but the MAGA movement as a whole has not tended to attract the sharpest of legal minds for advocates, and not withstanding the election results, there is a lot of cultural attachment remaining in the U.S. for robust free speech protections--which afterall, conservative politicians are typically as happy to invoke and benefit from as anyone. So it's very difficult to know how concerned to be or what angle to expect the erosion of expression rights to set in from, if it does occur. In this case, I would sympathize if the WMF felt as much ina holding pattern as the rest of us. SnowRise ^{let's rap} 20:34, 17 November 2024 (UTC)Reply

The Constitution of the United States provides protections that would be very hard for Trump or any other president to circumvent, and the consent of 2/3 of both houses of Congress and 3/4 of the states is required to amend it, so I'm not too worried yet. QuicoleJR (talk) 15:24, 11 November 2024 (UTC)Reply

Not only that, but we already can handle dealing with edits from congress itself. Gaismagorm (talk) 14:15, 12 November 2024 (UTC)Reply

• As a basic precaution there should be a Wikipedia mirror with daily backups hosted on a server geolocated in a country with a higher democracy index and a higher internet freedom index than the US. I'd suggest Iceland, personally.—S Marshall T/C 04:23, 13 November 2024 (UTC)Reply

  Honestly, it's unneeded. Look, I get worrying about this situation but I doubt the situation will get so bad where wikipedia needs to move overseas. As stsated above, wikimedia also likely already has a plan for if this happens. Gaismagorm (talk) 11:40, 13 November 2024 (UTC)Reply

  In any event, I do believe the backups at least are already quite robust in that respect. I'm less certain about the current situation for the mirrors, but I'm sure that information is probably transparently located somewhere on-site or on Meta. SnowRise ^{let's rap} 20:39, 17 November 2024 (UTC)Reply

Just a thought, but if the WMF does have or in the future creates contingency plans for moving operations in response to political developments, publicly revealing such plans in advance might make it harder to carry them out. It would be like a business announcing that they will build a factory in a given location without having at least an option to buy the land they will build on. Donald Albury 16:11, 13 November 2024 (UTC)Reply

Stop worrying to much, I doubt Trump is going to do anything against Wikipedia. Attacking and threatening to block Wikipedia will only infuriate the centrist voters, which I didn't think anyone would want to do. Some of the editors here are Trump supporters as well! What is concerning for Wikipedia today is the above case in India, where WMF HAD agreed to disclose the editor's information because of a defamation suit. ✠ SunDawn ✠ (contact) 06:01, 14 November 2024 (UTC)Reply

This is also an important part of the analysis: we are hardly the most vulnerable collective entity in existence: for obvious reasons, we are meant to be apolitical, unaligned, and disinterested in directly influencing public perception of any matter (beyond the core mission of providing information, of course). But the one time this community was willing to flex its muscles to head off a legislative outcome that it felt was a danger to the fundamental viability of the project, the latent power of the project's reach, through the site/encyclopedia was made pretty obvious--and that strength was not trivial, utterly crushing legislation that had been sailing through congress. If pushed into a corner and forced to abandon its apolitical role, this movement is capable of coming back with potent counter-punches in terms of grassroots mobilization, and I think there is some perception of that fact out there now.

There's also the massive legal warchest of the WMF to contend with (which so many on this project have groused about over recent years, but which was well-advised to build up, for exactly this moment in time). Of course, the current ANI situation raises significant concerns about the ability of the WMF and the community to row together, which is one of the most concerning things about that situation. But the WMF will not have the same onerous sub judice principles giving it both legitimate and illegitimate reasons not to communicate clearly with us (at least nowhere near to the same degree) with regard to suits before U.S. courts. SnowRise ^{let's rap} 20:51, 17 November 2024 (UTC)Reply

Realistically, I doubt anything in particular will happen to Wikipedia. But if you want to prepare for the worst, as it were, and you have a machine with some extra disk space, consider periodically keeping an updated copy of the Wikipedia database dump. I get one periodically, just in case, since I've got plenty of spare space on this machine anyway. If worst ever came to worst, plenty of volunteers have the technical skill to get a DB dump up and working on a MediaWiki instance elsewhere, and run it at least while things are sorted out. I doubt it'll ever come to that, but if you want to be prepared just in case, well, the more widely copies of those are available, the better. Just remember that Wikipedia was completely run by volunteers once, from software development to sysadmins, and we could do it again if we had to. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 06:12, 14 November 2024 (UTC)Reply

The biggest problem would be providing sufficient server capacity to handle the traffic. Anybody can put up a static mirror of WP as it was on the download date (Lord knowns there are a lot of those on the Internet), but providing an editable version that would be used by a large proportion of current editors would be pretty expensive. And if there were more than one editable version out there, it would be very difficult to ever merge the changes back into a single database, with some clones becoming permanent forks, perhaps sponsored by governments and other large entities. Donald Albury 18:19, 14 November 2024 (UTC)Reply

Yes, I have the entirety of the English Wikipedia as of a few months ago downloaded onto my laptop, plus a few other Wikimedia projects. TheLegendofGanon (talk) 21:08, 16 November 2024 (UTC)Reply

Worst comes to worst, execute WP:TERMINAL. 2400:79E0:8071:5888:1808:B3D7:3BC1:B010 (talk) 08:43, 17 November 2024 (UTC)Reply

In case of emergency, one should always know how to use the terminal. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 23:07, 17 November 2024 (UTC)Reply

Fyi, the US House narrowly stopped a legislation that would give Trump the keys to revoke non-profit status of any non-profit organisation in US. [1], [2]. – robertsky (talk) 01:43, 17 November 2024 (UTC)Reply

To be frank, I am greatly surprised by the faith you put in the US Constitution. Many of you seem unaware that the threats you are facing are unprecedented. Trump attempted a coup in 2020 and during his campaign he actually said he wants to be a dictator. Or how else are we to interpret such things as "If you vote for me, you don't have to vote at all in four years"? He didn't say all this back in 2016. Neither did he employ such rascals in his government as he is planning to do know. Therefore I find the argument that we lived through Trump's first presidency unharmed very unconvincing.

He and his loyal servants have expressed their contempt of science on numerous occasions, most recently J.D. Vance by saying "professors are the enemy". With both houses of the Congress and the Supreme Court in Republican hands, checks and balances aren't worth much, especially since the party has shown an unfaltering loyalty for its Great Leader over the past few years. A major Gleichschaltung operation is to be expected. What matters most in situations like this is not the law but the sentiment of the people. And that sentiment seems to be strongly in favour of an authoritarian dictatorship. Under such conditions, laws are easily explained the way that best fits the regime.

So for goodness' sake, move! Not just the servers, but also the WMF as a legal entity. I am well aware that no country on Earth is entirely safe of a populist threat, but the situation isn't as dire everywhere as it is in the US. Canada could be an option. Or Spain, one of the few European countries that still welcomes immigration of some sort. Do it, before it's too late! Don't let yourselves and our work be ground among the cogwheels of this vile, narcissistic despotism! Steinbach (talk) 10:56, 17 November 2024 (UTC)Reply

Steinbach, you write that the sentiment of the people seems to be strongly in favour of an authoritarian dictatorship and yet the current popular vote count has Trump at 50.1% and dropping as California votes continue to be counted. So, the sentiment is not as strong as you portray it. I too am deeply concerned about the path that the United States is on, but we should not overstate public sentiment for dictatorship. Cullen328 (talk) 22:55, 17 November 2024 (UTC)Reply

Billions of people rely on Wikipedia. Trump won't be able to do anything without the world going against him. Tons of his very voters shame his fake news big lie narrative. Aaron Liu (talk) 17:20, 17 November 2024 (UTC)Reply

What you are urging is not really feasible, at least not in the short term, and if the fight you fear is coming, it will go best for the movement on the ground that a U.S. base provides. If you think that moving to Spain and putting the project even further under the auspices of EU law will lead to greater free speech protections, I have bad news for you: a substantial portion of the content on this site would be much more amenable to exclusion and state interference under petition by private parties under GDPR principles than it would under U.S. jurisprudence. This is one area of civil and human rights where the EU is much more laissez-faire about suppression than is the U.S., especially when you consider "right to be forgotten" stances. SnowRise ^{let's rap} 21:02, 17 November 2024 (UTC)Reply

Cross that bridge if we get there. I don't imagine this would be seriously considered at the current time. –Novem Linguae (talk) 22:39, 17 November 2024 (UTC)Reply