Wikinews:Water cooler/technical/archives/2023/March

Who?

Who is checking/monitoring the scoop email these days? Bddpaux (talk) 20:03, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

@Bddpaux: There are two people on scoop who can actually be considered active (they edited in the last year), you and RockerballAustralia. Heavy Water (talk) 21:38, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

I don't check my scoop attached email every day. I'd be lucky to check it more than one day a week on a regular basis. It will get checked if I know someone has sent something (an interview transcript for example) to it. RockerballAustralia contribs 00:58, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

Global RfC filled to enable global abuse filters on large Wikimedia projects by default

Hello!

On Meta-Wiki, a set of global abuse filters is maintained by Meta-Wiki's administrators and the stewards. Global abuse filters are a powerful tool designed to fight against long-term abusers that operate cross-wiki. It is especially useful (and often irreplaceable by other means) when a cross-wiki LTA starts to rapidly change IP addresses (when that happens, regular blocks are significantly limited due to the IP hopping).

As of today, all small/medium Wikimedia projects (as-determined by number of articles) are automatically subscribed to global abuse filters. They are not, however, enabled on several Wikimedia projects classified as large (except several large Wikimedia projects who opted-in, such as Wikidata). This makes it possible for global long-term abusers to vandalize a project with no global filters enabled, which makes it significantly more difficult for the Stewards to fight against the abuse.

By this message, I'd like to let you know I submitted a global RfC (request for comments), where I propose enabling global abuse filters on large Wikimedia projects as an opt-out feature. This change will make global abuse filters an even more effective tool for combating long-term abuse at the global level. Please feel free to participate in the discussion, which happens at Meta-Wiki.

Thank you for your time.

Sincerely,
--Martin Urbanec (talk) 17:15, 12 March 2023 (UTC)

Wikinews editing and reviewing template feature request

I'm not sure if this is the right place to post this. If it isn't please direct me to the proper location.

I think it would be useful to have a set of templates that aid in the developing and reviewing stages of article generation. One key function that is missing is the ability to cite sources in-line to assist reviewers. Conversely, reviewers have no easy way of flagging statements requiring a citation.

One way to skin this cat may be a 'visibility' flag on inline templates used in Wikinews. For example, a visibility flag is placed in a <ref> template. That flag can then be toggled by other templates, namely the {{publish}} template. If the publish template is present in an article, it sets "visibility" on other included templates to "false." That would hide any inline templates from view in published space, but they would still be present.

We could incorporate a number of templates around this. For example, a "citation needed" template that reviewers can use to clearly signal to authors/editors what needs a citation and exactly where.

Going back to the <ref> example, it may also be possible to have the ref template handle the Sources section, formatting it and ordering sources chronologically. In this way, the workflow of an author would be to cite sources inline, add a Sources template in the Sources section, and the Sources template scrapes all the inline citations, formats them, and displays them in the proper/desired order.

With a visibility flag, other templates could be used to draw attention to things needed in the article. Banners could be displayed on the article, etc. A "better source needed" template could be deployed.

It would also be useful if the 'preview' function in the editor sets visibility = false so that authors/editors can see what the article will look like as published.

Michael.C.Wright (talk) 18:34, 25 March 2023 (UTC)

If we really need to, we can use {{color}} templates to flag stuff, then point it out on the talk page with a ping, instead of importing enwiki's billion templates. Here, there's usually one author the reviewer will be directing comments at, so a general public template is not necessary; additionally, templates are Wikipedians' most visible way of commenting on an article's quality, whereas we can review it or at least ping the authors on the talk page. Heavy Water (talk) 18:40, 25 March 2023 (UTC)

And another thing: there's a running gag at Wikipedia about drive-by tagging with "improvement" templates, which are really quite ineffectual in my experience. Heavy Water (talk) 00:20, 26 March 2023 (UTC)

A reviewer's recent comments on an article illustrate the usefulness of linked, inline citations present in articles prior to publication. Reviewers who use visual editor won't see hidden HTML comments used as citations.

My proposal here would create linked, inline citations visible in visual editor. That improves the reviewing experience by:

1. Providing visible links to sources
2. Eliminating the need to ascertain the source cited, find it in the list of sources, copy and paste the URL into a new browser, all before evaluating the source

A workaround/test I thought of today is that I can link citations instead of using the hidden html comments. I could do it a couple of ways:

• As a simple link.[1]

• As a modified citation.(NPR)

I am happy to do this for my next article so that we could test it and see how useful the result is. The goal would be to test visible, linked, inline citations. I understand this is going to add text that a reviewer must remove before publication. Therefore, I will offer to also go in and remove all citations myself once the reviewer is ready to publish the article. That way the extra work is on me for the test, not the reviewer.

The goal of the test is to see how useful linked, inline citations are. The process used in the test is not meant to become a new process all authors/editors use. The ultimate goal would be to have the functionality available via a template that both authors and reviewers can easily and seamlessly use with minimal effort.

Is there a reviewer interested in me testing this on my next article?

Michael.C.Wright (^Talk/_Published) 14:38, 30 March 2023 (UTC)

I have utilized the 'modified citation' method in the new, developing article titled Senate votes to repeal 20-year-old authorization of force against Iraq, as mentioned above. If it is inappropriate for pre-publication, let me know and I will convert all inline citations to hidden HTML comments. I have also started a topic in that talk page regarding this, to make sure editors and reviewers understand what I've done. Michael.C.Wright (^Talk/_Published) 18:12, 30 March 2023 (UTC)