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Hello Billinghurst, I don't know exactly whom I could address for my request but I've seen that you've blocked several global accounts and IPs and maybe you could help me. I've noticed that there's a user who's going on since december changing identity while making vandalic or useless edits a lot of wikis (cross-wiki). He hid himself both behind open proxies (forbidden) and by creating sockpuppets (forbidden). In some wikis a few of his accounts and IPs were blocked, but this isn't a single wiki problem, so it should be dealt with as a global wiki problem. May I call on you and tell you the name of his socks and the IPs of his proxies? May you take care of the problem yourself or at least report this problem to a specific Wikipedian user who could take care of it? I'll wait for your reply, thanks! 151.48.201.42 (talk) 10:10, 6 February 2018 (UTC)
There is no perfect answer nor one system that is going to resolve the issue that you identify:
Reports about vandalism initially belong at the local wiki for local administrators to address—all local actions. Where you are seeing xwiki spam that can be reported to m:vandalism reports though those tools are lesser than local tools.
stewards can undertake global actions like account locks, global IP blocks, global abuse filters [I resigned that role a couple of years back so I am not able to assist.] You can make reports and requests through m:Stewards requests then pick the appropriate page to your needs.
meta:administrators and stewards are able to edit global blacklists (titles or spam)
stewards and m:global administrators are able to assist at individual wikis where local wikis don't have sufficient or active administrators. Those requests generally are still best made at the local wiki, though where there is not response then you can ask at m:steward requests/miscellaneous
Thanks, I'll try following your instructions, even if I'm not sure that admins on meta will listen to an anonymous user as me, I hope they will. 151.48.204.139 (talk) 10:55, 6 February 2018 (UTC)
If you adequately explain the issue, with examples, and suggested solutions, they should listen. Whether there is adequate resources, or need for action will be up for discussion; and that is always a dependent situation. — billinghurstsDrewth 11:50, 6 February 2018 (UTC)
Okay, I'll make an attempt... 151.48.66.10 (talk) 14:41, 6 February 2018 (UTC)
Hi there, I've been reviewing the articles that I've made major edits to as I wish to add this information to my user page. Looking at the Pullman porter article I was surprised to find that you have been listed as a major contributor when I can only this edit [1] with your user name. This seems to be in error - can it be fixed? Thanks. Gandydancer (talk) 15:34, 14 March 2018 (UTC)
No idea what you are talking about. I reverted an edit. Anyone listing me as a major contributor is in error, though that is their problem, not mine. If it is a tool reporting that, then talk to the toolmaker. — billinghurstsDrewth 21:34, 14 March 2018 (UTC)
Your message on this subject is much mistaken. I expect an apology. Carlossuarez46 (talk) 17:04, 26 April 2018 (UTC)
@Carlossuarez46: What are you talking about? See subsequent edit Special:diff/838377670. As a sysop reading the history should be a requirement before commenting, especially if you think demands are the means to a resolution. — billinghurstsDrewth 22:11, 26 April 2018 (UTC)
Oh, it pinged. Grr, I was sure that I clicked it off. For that an apology, now I see what you are saying. — billinghurstsDrewth 22:14, 26 April 2018 (UTC)
The proposal includes downloading 30,000 open access papers, aiming (roughly speaking) to create a baseline for medical referencing on Wikipedia. It leaves open the question of how these are to be chosen.
The basic criteria of WP:MEDRS include a concentration on secondary literature. Attention has to be given to the long tail of diseases that receive less current research. The MEDRS guideline supposes that edge cases will have to be handled, and the premature exclusion of publications that would be in those marginal positions would reduce the value of the collection. Prophylaxis misses the point that gate-keeping will be done by an algorithm.
Two well-known but rather different areas where such considerations apply are tropical diseases and alternative medicine. There are also a number of potential downloading troubles, and these were mentioned in Issue 11. There is likely to be a gap, even with the guideline, between conditions taken to be necessary but not sufficient, and conditions sufficient but not necessary, for candidate papers to be included. With around 10,000 recognised medical conditions in standard lists, being comprehensive is demanding. With all of these aspects of the task, ScienceSource will seek community help.
Facto Post enters its second year, with a Cambridge Blue (OK, Aquamarine) background, a new logo, but no Cambridge blues. On-topic for the ScienceSource project is a project page here. It contains some case studies on how the WP:MEDRS guideline, for the referencing of articles at all related to human health, is applied in typical discussions.
Close to home also, a template, called ((medrs)) for short, is used to express dissatisfaction with particular references. Technology can help with patrolling, and this Petscan query finds over 450 articles where there is at least one use of the template. Of course the template is merely suggesting there is a possible issue with the reliability of a reference. Deciding the truth of the allegation is another matter.
This maintenance issue is one example of where ScienceSource aims to help. Where the reference is to a scientific paper, its type of algorithm could give a pass/fail opinion on such references. It could assist patrollers of medical articles, therefore, with the templated references and more generally. There may be more to proper referencing than that, indeed: context, quite what the statement supported by the reference expresses, prominence and weight. For that kind of consideration, case studies can help. But an algorithm might help to clear the backlog.
Officially it is "bridging the gaps in knowledge", with Wikimania 2018 in Cape Town paying tribute to the southern African concept of ubuntu to implement it. Besides face-to-face interactions, Wikimedians do need their power sources.
Hackathon mentoring table wiring
Facto Post interviewed Jdforrester, who has attended every Wikimania, and now works as Senior Product Manager for the Wikimedia Foundation. His take on tackling the gaps in the Wikimedia movement is that "if we were an army, we could march in a column and close up all the gaps". In his view though, that is a faulty metaphor, and it leads to a completely false misunderstanding of the movement, its diversity and different aspirations, and the nature of the work as "fighting" to be done in the open sector. There are many fronts, and as an eventualist he feels the gaps experienced both by editors and by users of Wikimedia content are inevitable. He would like to see a greater emphasis on reuse of content, not simply its volume.
If that may not sound like radicalism, the Decolonizing the Internet conference here organized jointly with Whose Knowledge? can redress the picture. It comes with the claim to be "the first ever conference about centering marginalized knowledge online".
Plugbar buildup at the Hackathon
Links
ScienceSource focus list (shortcut WD:SSFL on Wikidata), project to tag a first-pass open access medical bibliography on Wikidata, and also overcome the systematic biases in the medical literature by curation.
Thank you for quality articles such as Philip Pye-Smith, for welcoming hundreds of new users, for your specialty: disambiguations, for admin services, for "... is compiled from information from reputable sources, not personal opinions or personal insights", for missing, - you are an awesome Wikipedian!
@Gerda Arendt: You are too kind, and I wouldn't rate myself that highly as a Wikipedian, though I am more active as a generalist Wikimedian. At Wikipedias, compared to the edits and tasks that you make here, my stuff is predominantly mopping corners, and occasionally taking the bins out. Have a lovely day, and thanks for taking the time to leave a nice note. Appreciated! — billinghurstsDrewth 22:29, 22 July 2018 (UTC)
merging user accounts question
I was wondering if you could answer a question for me. I discovered just now that I apparenrtly orphaned an old Commons user account [2] and suddenly got a new one [3] about 3 years ago. Can these be merged? cOrneLlrOckEy (talk) 17:56, 26 July 2018 (UTC)
@Cornellrockey: There is some limited scope, though I cannot say that I am fully current on what is recoverable, and what isn't. I would suggest that you take this to m:SRUC and see what they can manage. — billinghurstsDrewth 21:55, 26 July 2018 (UTC)
Anti-parasitic drugs being distributed in Côte d'Ivoire What's a Neglected Disease?, ScienceSource video
To grasp the nettle, there are rare diseases, there are tropical diseases and then there are "neglected diseases". Evidently a rare enough disease is likely to be neglected, but neglected disease these days means a disease not rare, but tropical, and most often infectious or parasitic. Rare diseases as a group are dominated, in contrast, by genetic diseases.
A major aspect of neglect is found in tracking drug discovery. Orphan drugs are those developed to treat rare diseases (rare enough not to have market-driven research), but there is some overlap in practice with the WHO's neglected diseases, where snakebite, a "neglected public health issue", is on the list.
From an encyclopedic point of view, lack of research also may mean lack of high-quality references: the core medical literature differs from primary research, since it operates by aggregating trials. This bibliographic deficit clearly hinders Wikipedia's mission. The ScienceSource project is currently addressing this issue, on Wikidata. Its Wikidata focus list at WD:SSFL is trying to ensure that neglect does not turn into bias in its selection of science papers.
In an ideal world ... no, bear with your editor for just a minute ... there would be a format for scientific publishing online that was as much a standard as SI units are for the content. Likewise cataloguing publications would not be onerous, because part of the process would be to generate uniform metadata. Without claiming it could be the mythical free lunch, it might be reasonably be argued that sandwiches can be packaged much alike and have barcodes, whatever the fillings.
The best on offer, to stretch the metaphor, is the meal kit option, in the form of XML. Where scientific papers are delivered as XML downloads, you get all the ingredients ready to cook. But have to prepare the actual meal of slow food yourself. See Scholarly HTML for a recent pass at heading off XML with HTML, in other words in the native language of the Web.
The argument from real life is a traditional mixture of frictional forces, vested interests, and the classic irony of the principle of unripe time. On the other hand, discoverability actually diminishes with the prolific progress of science publishing. No, it really doesn't scale. Wikimedia as movement can do something in such cases. We know from open access, we grok the Web, we have our own horse in the HTML race, we have Wikidata and WikiJournal, and we have the chops to act.
Enslaved: People of the Historic Slave Trade, Michigan State University project for a linked open data platform. Quote: "Disambiguating and merging individuals across multiple datasets is nearly impossible given their current, siloed nature."
Around 2.7 million Wikidata items have an illustrative image. These files, you might say, are Wikimedia's stock images, and if the number is large, it is still only 5% or so of items that have one. All such images are taken from Wikimedia Commons, which has 50 million media files. One key issue is how to expand the stock.
Indeed, there is a tool. WD-FIST exploits the fact that each Wikipedia is differently illustrated, mostly with images from Commons but also with fair use images. An item that has sitelinks but no illustrative image can be tested to see if the linked wikis have a suitable one. This works well for a volunteer who wants to add images at a reasonable scale, and a small amount of SPARQL knowledge goes a long way in producing checklists.
Gran Teatro, Cáceres, Spain, at night
It should be noted, though, that there are currently 53 Wikidata properties that link to Commons, of which P18 for the basic image is just one. WD-FIST prompts the user to add signatures, plaques, pictures of graves and so on. There are a couple of hundred monograms, mostly of historical figures, and this query allows you to view all of them. commons:Category:Monograms and its subcategories provide rich scope for adding more.
And so it is generally. The list of properties linking to Commons does contain a few that concern video and audio files, and rather more for maps. But it contains gems such as P3451 for "nighttime view". Over 1000 of those on Wikidata, but as for so much else, there could be yet more.
Go on. Today is Wikidata's birthday. An illustrative image is always an acceptable gift, so why not add one? You can follow these easy steps: (i) log in at https://tools.wmflabs.org/widar/, (ii) paste the Petscan ID 6263583 into https://tools.wmflabs.org/fist/wdfist/ and click run, and (iii) just add cake.
Hi Billinghurst, as you are taking care of this cross-wiki case: Frank07081975 underwent a process at de:wp when asked for it, called user verification, according to which he is associated with Galerie Frank Fluegel (see here and ticket:2018103010006573). Hence, he edited in violation of WP:PAID at de:wp and apparently here at en:wp as well. In the meantime, his account was indef'd at de:wp, see [4] and [5]). Thanks for your cross-wiki support, this is appreciated. Regards, AFBorchert (talk) 12:33, 1 November 2018 (UTC)
Hi @AFBorchert:. I wasn't so much watching the user, more the link addition, and managing the matter that way, and you will know that I do keep a watching brief xwiki. I personally don't flog users over paid contributions declarations, though I will nag, and I will revert all egregious conflict of interest edits, and do it openly so that the community will be aware. I believe that even paid contributors where they enter our Wikipedia walls with the mind of editors and improving our articles can be valued editors, though as long as they acknowledge and manage their conflicts through our processes. I will give them enough rope to edit, if they choose to use to hang themselves after having the safety instructions explained to them, that will be their choice. — billinghurstsDrewth 04:50, 2 November 2018 (UTC)
Hi Billinghurst, we do not handle this much differently at de:wp. This is one of the reasons why we have this user verification process in place which is refered to by Frank07081975 in his response to you. I just wanted to give you the background to that. Frank07081975 was not just indef'd for initially adding these links, unfortunately the situation escalated further at de:wp. Regards, AFBorchert (talk) 07:53, 2 November 2018 (UTC)
Relative to ((alox1)), the example on Hugh Wyndham does work to link into the BHO online page. My pipe dream, certainly, is that that BHO version could at some point be converted into Wikisource articles, by around three weeks bot work. Well, not by me at present.
The HTML anchor points function, but I was once told that that they don't provide "real" identifiers. They seem to be good enough for this application.
Thank you for your suggestion. I will add those sites. RaymondSutanto (talk) 04:03, 15 November 2018 (UTC)
blocked on id.wikisource?
Heya, BillinghurstI am confused by this indef block on id.wikisource (i've been tagging and deleting spam there) and can't discern the reasoning. Praxidicae (talk) 12:36, 16 November 2018 (UTC)
Nah, I f'ed up. Working from RC, and clearly thought I was clicking the spammers block link. BTW I would prefer that you talk global matters at Meta. For me, this is a local page only. — billinghurstsDrewth 23:19, 16 November 2018 (UTC)
No worries! I'm constantly afraid of doing that! Will do in the future. Praxidicae (talk) 16:05, 17 November 2018 (UTC)
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GLAM ♥ data — what is a gallery, library, archive or museum without a catalogue? It follows that Wikidata must love librarians. Bibliography supports students and researchers in any topic, but open and machine-readable bibliographic data even more so, outside the silo. Cue the WikiCite initiative, which was meeting in conference this week, in the Bay Area of California.
Wikidata training for librarians at WikiCite 2018
In fact there is a broad scope: "Open Knowledge Maps via SPARQL" and the "Sum of All Welsh Literature", identification of research outputs, Library.Link Network and Bibframe 2.0, OSCAR and LUCINDA (who they?), OCLC and Scholia, all these co-exist on the agenda. Certainly more library science is coming Wikidata's way. That poses the question about the other direction: is more Wikimedia technology advancing on libraries? Good point.
Wikimedians generally are not aware of the tech background that can be assumed, unless they are close to current training for librarians. A baseline definition is useful here: "bash, git and OpenRefine". Compare and contrast with pywikibot, GitHub and mix'n'match. Translation: scripting for automation, version control, data set matching and wrangling in the large, are on the agenda also for contemporary library work. Certainly there is some possible common ground here. Time to understand rather more about the motivations that operate in the library sector.
Links
Wikidata and Libraries: Facilitating Open Knowledge, book chapter by Mairelys Lemus-Rojas, metadata librarian and Lydia Pintscher, Wikidata Product Manager, from Leveraging Wikipedia: Connecting Communities of Knowledge (2018)
LD4P and WikiCite: Opportunities for collaboration, WikiCite 2018 program abstract, Christine Fernsebner Eslao of Harvard Library Information and Technical Services and Michelle Futornick, Linked Data for Production Program Manager at Stanford University
The earlier reference you restored in this edit is a permanent dead link since December 2017. Maybe you can find a replacement source, Wikipedia prefers sources that actually work and can verify the information. Thanks.Isaidnoway(talk) 06:38, 7 December 2018 (UTC)
@Isaidnoway: I was reverting link spam, nothing more. And ... umm, I think that I know how things work around here. — billinghurstsDrewth 07:54, 7 December 2018 (UTC)
Besides the handiness of Zotero's warehousing of personal citation collections, the Zotero translator underlies the citoid service, at work behind the VisualEditor. Metadata from Wikidata can be imported into Zotero; and in the other direction the zotkat tool from the University of Mannheim allows Zotero bibliographies to be exported to Wikidata, by item creation. With an extra feature to add statements, that route could lead to much development of the focus list (P5008) tagging on Wikidata, by WikiProjects.
Zotero demo video
There is also a large-scale encyclopedic dimension here. The construction of Zotero translators is one facet of Web scraping that has a strong community and open source basis. In that it resembles the less formal mix'n'match import community, and growing networks around other approaches that can integrate datasets into Wikidata, such as the use of OpenRefine.
Looking ahead, the thirtieth birthday of the World Wide Web falls in 2019, and yet the ambition to make webpages routinely readable by machines can still seem an ever-retreating mirage. Wikidata should not only be helping Wikimedia integrate its projects, an ongoing process represented by Structured Data on Commons and lexemes. It should also be acting as a catalyst to bring scraping in from the cold, with institutional strengths as well as resourceful code.
T115158Write a Zotero translator and document process for creating new Zotero translator and getting it live in production, long Phabricator thread 2015–17.
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