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The following is an automatically-generated compilation of all talk pages for the Signpost issue dated 2015-11-04. For general Signpost discussion, see Wikipedia talk:Signpost.

Featured content: Christianity, music, and cricket (0 bytes · 💬)

Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/2015-11-04/Featured content

Gallery: Princess of Asturias Awards 2015 ceremony (0 bytes · 💬)

Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/2015-11-04/Gallery

In the media: Ahmadiyya Jabrayilov: propaganda myth or history? (2,211 bytes · 💬)

  • Pyramids - tombs is probably a poor word. To cite... um.. Wikipedia:

... a pyramid was a resting place, rather than a tomb, providing the occupant with all the requirements both physical and mystical for the journey of the ka to the afterlife to become an akh, ...

All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 18:37, 7 November 2015 (UTC).
  • Looks like we have another case of Wikipedia contradicting itself. The intro to Egyptian pyramids states "Most were built as tombs for the country's pharaohs". Gamaliel (talk) 18:59, 7 November 2015 (UTC)
Does anybody else think that Stevo's pic looks phoney?
  • The Ahmadiyya Jabrayilov story/article reflects a bigger problem of what to do with Communist propaganda sources. Sure we could completely disallow these as not being reliable sources, but then there would be almost no "reliable sources" on 50 years of Soviet history (at least for the smaller, internal stories; wars, spaceshots and such are a different matter), and a big chunk of mainland Chinese history. This type of problem has come up at Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya and Pavlik Morozov and Stjepan Filipović. The 2 first-named articles now look like they've handled it pretty well. Smallbones(smalltalk) 19:07, 7 November 2015 (UTC)
    • The thing is that he did exist and is not a myth. It's largely about what to write and how without risking WP:Original research. Brandmeistertalk 12:50, 9 November 2015 (UTC)
      • Since the shit hit the fan, just wait and see what mainstream write. Staszek Lem (talk) 03:33, 11 November 2015 (UTC)

News and notes: Wikimedia Foundation finances; Superprotect is gone (6,165 bytes · 💬)

  • Superprotect: Most welcome news as a sign that the WMF "gets it". All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 18:31, 7 November 2015 (UTC).
  • The issue in German Wikipedia that caused the introduction of Superprotect is often described somewhat inaccurately - sadly, this Signpost article isn't an exception. The administrator on the German Wikipedia disabled the Media Viewer completely for the German WP, without an opt-in option, which isn't what the local consensus was. The outcome of de:Wikipedia:Meinungsbilder/Medienbetrachter was that the Media Viewer should be disabled per default, but with an option to enable it for those who wish to use it. I'm sure that the admin acted with the best of intentions, believing that entirely disabling MV (probably given technical limitations that made an opt-in option not feasible) was closer to the community consensus than just leaving it enabled, but the community actually wasn't pleased. It wasn't what we wanted. So, a large part of the community disagreed with the WMF enforcing the Media Viewer as well as with the admin who disabled it wholly. Consequently, the admin was recalled and not re-elected. That doesn't mean people welcomed Superprotect, quite the contrary - but we were protesting against Superprotect and at the same time not agreeing with the admin action that caused it. Most, I think, believe that this was a matter that we could have resolved locally. Gestumblindi (talk) 18:43, 7 November 2015 (UTC)
    • Thanks, Gestumblindi. Edited. Andreas JN466 20:42, 7 November 2015 (UTC)
      • Thanks as well, Andreas! :-) For the convenience of readers: This was about the original, now edited phrasing "implementing local consensus". Gestumblindi (talk) 20:48, 7 November 2015 (UTC)
        • It was already correct before. It said before “implementing local consensus to disable” and that IS and WAS true. It was consensus to disable it. You CAN argue about the way, about side-affects or completeness, but not about the fact itself. --DaB. (talk) 11:54, 9 November 2015 (UTC)
          • @DaB.: You know that local consensus was "disable by default, with opt-in". That's very different from just "disable", and you have seen how the community responded... You can't just assume that people who voted for "disable with opt-in" accept disabling the feature entirely as an "incomplete" step towards their goal. Gestumblindi (talk) 19:32, 9 November 2015 (UTC)
  • Hosting only costs the foundation $2 million? Do they get a lot of donations from tech companies? That figure seems very low just for the English Wikipedia alone, never mind all the hundreds of other Wikimedia projects! Cynical (talk) 20:29, 13 November 2015 (UTC)

Page view stats: Technical note

Note that a technical note has just been added to the Wikimedia Foundation page view stats, which reads as follows:

While the decline in page views started well before May this year, this adjustment means it is less severe than the Foundation's figures and graphs show. 20:38, 7 November 2015 (UTC)

Donations processing expenses?

Why 2.6M??? Nergaal (talk) 21:48, 7 November 2015 (UTC)

Credit card processing fees? 2.5/75.8 = ~3%, which feels about right. --PresN 00:46, 8 November 2015 (UTC)
Of note, while donations increased 45%, the cost of processing them increased 65%. The reason is not immediately apparent. I do recall some discussion about expanding the number of payment options for countries that had certain limitations, but do not know if this is related. Risker (talk) 02:00, 8 November 2015 (UTC)

Control expenses now!

The chart shows support+revenue, expenses, and net assets all rising exponentially with a growth rate much greater than the economy as a whole. This cannot and will not continue. Inevitably, donations will level off (or go down) in the not too distant future. If expenses continue to grow rapidly when that happens, then we will quickly go into the red and then go bust. The time to start limiting expenses is now before support levels off. JRSpriggs (talk) 13:15, 9 November 2015 (UTC)

Op-ed: You are invited to participate in the Community Wishlist Survey (5,073 bytes · 💬)

Hurrah! Another survey! I wonder how it's going to differ from the Product Survey done last December ([1]) and the Project Ideas survey done last May. Seems to me we need less surveying and more developing. --NeilN talk to me 18:42, 7 November 2015 (UTC)

@NeilN: The results of the All Our Ideas Survey from December were converted into a workboard for community tech. We've already fixed and improved many of the tools identified from that survey and are continuing to work on others. The Project Ideas page was just a page to brainstorm ideas. Hopefully many of the ideas from that page will be turned into formal proposals for the current Wishlist survey. Ryan Kaldari (WMF) (talk) 19:45, 9 November 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for the article. IMO the WMF engineering and development teams should consider using 3rd party software like in features.cpanel.net to quickly and easily let anyone suggest features at any time. We don't need one-time feature surveys because an editor might think of the greatest idea precisely one day after the survey ends, plus ideas proposed in a one-time survey aren't trackable. —Ynhockey (Talk) 20:53, 7 November 2015 (UTC)

@Ynhockey: Commenting in my volunteer role, isn't that what Phabricator is for? (I'm genuinely not sure) Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 18:51, 11 November 2015 (UTC)
@The ed17: Not really, and if that's what the WMF is using it for them we're in trouble (although I'm pretty sure they aren't). Phabricator is a bug tracker, and while like other bug trackers it allows feature requests, it's really not built for that kind of stuff. It actually has nothing in common with a request system like in cPanel, except a smiliar GUI. For one, it's mostly for technical users, while the other system is built to be easily navigable by anyone. Secondly, it's mostly for bugs while the other system is exclusively for feature requests. Thirdly, it lists thousands of tiny issues, while the other system is built for bigger requests. Finally and perhaps most importantly, it's missing the whole voting system (by the general public).
In general, Phabricator is built from the ground up for internal project management, with an optional ability to expose the information to the public. What's needed (in addition to, not instead of Phabricator) is a system built from the ground up to let the public request features, and if it has the side effect of having internal management tools then that's fine too. —Ynhockey (Talk) 21:50, 11 November 2015 (UTC)
Ah, gotcha—thank you for the clarification! Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 04:44, 12 November 2015 (UTC)
Agreed. Many companies use UserVoice or any other alternative to get feedback with very good results. A combination of surveys and UserVoice (or any other 3rd party feedback system) is ideal. --207.235.126.210 (talk) 21:10, 11 November 2015 (UTC)

Is it just me, or does the pic on the right look horribly like one of those diagrams of the human intestinal system? Hope that's not indicative of the fate of our lovely suggestions.... :-) Jheald (talk) 21:34, 7 November 2015 (UTC)

Isn't this redundant to Wikipedia:Feature request? Are there developers assigned to every item on phabricator, and is that list so trimmed down that you have some developers sitting on their hands waiting for new assignments? Sorry, but my general impression is that most of the recent significant enhancements that are relevant to my Wikipedia work are still being developed by volunteers, not the WMF engineering staff, so pardon me for not putting any more time into this. Wbm1058 (talk) 14:41, 9 November 2015 (UTC)

This survey is for surfacing and prioritizing technical needs from the community. We certainly don't have a shortage of existing bugs and tasks, but historically the WMF has given few opportunities to the community to help prioritize the work of development teams. That's what we're trying to accomplish with this survey. Ryan Kaldari (WMF) (talk) 19:57, 9 November 2015 (UTC)

Technology report: Tech news in brief (1,700 bytes · 💬)

  • Is this last weeks? All the "future events" have already happened. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 18:32, 7 November 2015 (UTC).
I believe it's taken from this report, dated November 2nd. Liz Read! Talk! 18:42, 7 November 2015 (UTC)
  • Our time machine broke. Gamaliel (talk) 18:59, 7 November 2015 (UTC)
Oh, poo. I've been having issues with Featured content not wrenching the right date, now Tech/News too? ResMar 20:13, 7 November 2015 (UTC)
Manually updated. Apologies all, I will investigate this issue now that I am aware of it. ResMar 20:18, 7 November 2015 (UTC)

Traffic report: Death, the Dead, and Spectres are abroad (1,204 bytes · 💬)

British films won the Oscars for best movies in 2010 and 2008. ==Dweller (talk) 14:28, 11 November 2015 (UTC)

Bhutan made a great film too a few years back, but they're not likely to be film industry leaders in the near future. Serendipodous 14:57, 11 November 2015 (UTC)
Snark spotted. Perhaps you'd like to turn these redlinks blue: 1 2. Here's a starter for the second one. And while we're at it, while the film you mention was written by someone who is Bhutanese, the lead Producer of the film ... is British. --Dweller (talk) 15:24, 11 November 2015 (UTC)


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