Wikimedia Forum

Shortcut:
WM:FORUM

The Wikimedia Forum is a central place for questions, announcements and other discussions about the Wikimedia Foundation and its projects. (For discussion about the Meta wiki, see Meta:Babel.)
This is not the place to make technical queries regarding the MediaWiki software; please ask such questions at the MediaWiki support desk; technical questions about Wikimedia wikis, however, can be placed on Tech page.

You can reply to a topic by clicking the "[edit]" link beside that section, or you can start a new discussion.

SpBot archives all sections tagged with {{Section resolved|1=~~~~}} and sections whose most recent comment is older than 30 days.

On a conservative estimate, there's probably been more than 1000+ articles related to airlines routes, train-lines, roads and so forth as well as their associated stations/airports deleted from EN Wikipedia for essentially being unencyclopaedic. In almost all cases these were at least verifiable, they just lacked notability.

I've been told multiple times that people actually find these articles useful. Having looked at WikiTravel, this is not travel information per se so it can't be interwikied there (or at least they don't want it). It seems like there's a corpus of useful content for which there are readers out there that could usefully be undeleted and hosted somewhere, just not on EN Wikipedia. For this reason a new Wikimedia wiki covering this kind of air/road/rail/sea transport link-and-hub information seems in order.

I've looked at Create a new Wikimedia wiki but it doesn't seem very helpful about what I'd need to do to set up something like this. Any words of advice would be welcome. FOARP (talk) 09:54, 30 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

@FOARP: I think you're looking for Proposals for new projects —Matrix (_{user page} ^{(@ commons)} - _talk?) 09:42, 3 June 2025 (UTC)Reply

WikiTravel is not a Wikimedia community project; you want WikiVoyage. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 12:50, 6 June 2025 (UTC)Reply

Didn't they fork off to a non-WMF platform? https://slate.com/technology/2023/12/wikipedia-road-highway-editors-wiki-railfans-roadgeeks.html Cabayi (talk) 10:01, 3 July 2025 (UTC)Reply

I don't see why this can't just be Wikidata. Aaron Liu (talk) 03:20, 7 July 2025 (UTC)Reply

I think this material is encyclopedic, and I think Wikipedia should include it. But I'd also be happy to see it on Wikidata in addition.

At the English Wikipedia, the usual argument against it is that we should include a complete list of connections for certain kinds of transportation infrastructure, but not for other kinds, based on their personal perception of whether that type is the sort that could change without building expensive, permanent infrastructure. (NB could, not actually does in all cases.) So, they say, train routes and highways should get reported in full, but air and bus routes should not.

Next, they say that you can report a "temporary" service (e.g., one that might last for decades) if it's covered in independent sources, but (a) they acknowledge that almost all such changes are reported in the newspapers covering the affected airport, and (b) they believe it would be better to have the Wikipedia article be incorrect and out of date than to cite any 'non-independent' source, even if it's authoritative. Double standards apply: Announcements from airlines about their routes are bad; announcements from train operators about their routes are acceptable. WhatamIdoing (talk) 14:53, 8 July 2025 (UTC)Reply

I feel like this is way more almanac/gazetteer-ish info than encyclopedic. I would not expect to find a list of routes in an encyclopedia. Wikidata probably, and maybe even a loose-fit for Wikibooks.

Going off a tangent here, but why would you document air connections? enwiki doesn't include articles on flight routes last I checked, and the possibilities are pretty infinite. Aaron Liu (talk) 23:58, 8 July 2025 (UTC)Reply

It might, but w:en:WP:5P1 says "Wikipedia combines many features of general and specialized encyclopedias, almanacs, and gazetteers", so that's not an inherent problem.

I wouldn't expect an article on "Flights from London to New York". But I would expect an article about an airport to indicate which other cities/airports (if any) are regularly flown to. There's a big difference between "Tinyville Airport has scheduled passenger flights twice a week, to Big City only" and "Heathrow Airport is a major hub, with direct flights to x domestic destinations and y international destinations, including Amsterdam, Berlin, Chicago, Dublin..." WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:13, 9 July 2025 (UTC)Reply

Hello everyone,

My name is Phil - I work in the Wikimedia Foundation’s Legal department, and I’m here to provide two updates on our legal challenge to the UK Online Safety Act’s “categorisation rules”. Those rules are written so broadly that Wikipedia could be lumped in as a “Category 1 service”. This would subject it to extra duties under the Act that could seriously impact the privacy, safety and empowerment of the Wikipedia community, and our collective ability to sustain the Wikimedia projects. For background on the OSA and our legal challenge, see here (Diff), or a more detailed post here (Medium).

First, an administrative note: the High Court has agreed to expedite our case, and set a two-day trial next month: July 22-23. We expect the hearings to be public, and can be observed in person at the beautiful Royal Courts of Justice in London.

Second: the Foundation will be joined in this case by a Wikipedian, as joint claimant. User:Zzuuzz, a longterm UK-based user, will play a pivotal role in articulating the human rights implications of this case, including for your rights to privacy, safety, free speech, and association.

I hope you’ll join us in expressing deep appreciation to User:Zzuuzz for volunteering to take this extraordinary step, and standing up for the Wikimedia movement worldwide. This might be legal history in the making: our early searches haven’t turned up any legal precedent of a website’s host and its users proactively joining forces to bring a legal challenge.

We’ll aim to provide further updates on Meta, and we’ll watch discussions for a few days in case there are questions we can usefully answer. As this is a critical moment in active litigation, we apologise for not commenting as freely as we’d like. Best regards,

PBradley-WMF (talk) 08:10, 26 June 2025 (UTC)Reply

Hi all! I’m pleased to report that the court hearing this week went well.

The judge was switched on, and very engaged with the issues we were raising. He seems to understand why Wikipedia is so important, how it works (in general terms), and why it’s not like the UK OSA’s classical targets (e.g. social media platforms). We think he saw how this law’s flawed design can have some very unfortunate - and unintended - consequences. However, he also seemed to be a strong believer that English courts should offer the government significant leeway when making technical policy decisions. Unsurprisingly, that’s also the government’s central argument -  that courts should not hold it accountable for “imperfect” decisions.

We therefore do not know how the judge will rule. Timing-wise, the judge indicated that we shouldn't expect a ruling before the end of July; August is more likely.

We'll provide a further update once we have news, but in the interim, we wanted to once again offer our tremendous appreciation to user:Zzuuzz, and to the external legal team in this case.  Both were essential to putting in what was a passionate and well-argued plea for rational, rights-respecting regulation. PBradley-WMF (talk) 17:43, 24 July 2025 (UTC)Reply

Why does the Government think Wikipedia should be in Category 1? There really are not any "forwarding or sharing" features as the law defines them, at all. Recommendation features exist for new editors; everyone else has to go to a specific page to get them if they want them. It would be far easier to just disable those features for people in the UK than struggle through a Category 1 classification. 2603:800C:1200:596A:831C:A3FA:2D50:44FD 01:30, 31 July 2025 (UTC)Reply

It's complicated. For example, one of the definitions[1] is concerned with "content that is generated directly on the service by a user of the service, or uploaded to or shared on the service by a user of the service" (e.g., posts something in the comments section on a news website) that could "be encountered by another user", even if it's not technically "forwarded or shared" (or even encountered) by anyone.

Another definition, of "user",[2] could be interpreted (or not!) as saying that editors/contributors to the wikis are not "users", but all readers are – the opposite of how we think about who a User: is. It's also possible that, since editors see themselves as volunteering for "the project" ("Wikipedia" or "Commons") rather than "the organization" ("Wikimedia Foundation, Inc."), someone would classify them the other way.

Even if they clear up these vaguenesses, how are we supposed to track how many people are actually reading Wikipedia, without violating their privacy? Is my laptop plus my phone "two users"? Is the shared laptop at school, used by six students a day, "one user"? Is someone who clears cookies every day "30 users"?

AIUI the usual thing for legislators to do is to decide whether they want to include Wikipedia, and if they don't, then they write a clear statement in the law saying "BTW, Wikipedia is exempt" (e.g., that the law applies only to services hosted by for-profit entities). And if they do intend for Wikipedia to be covered, then it would be nice to have them say so directly. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:26, 31 July 2025 (UTC)Reply

The Meta Wiki is always expanding, and for its better administration, there is no longer a concrete decision to provide opportunities for volunteers in the area of information technology.

Methodologies are created for the insertion of goodwill conducts in the administration of information technology, with a focus on high school students, with a focus on institutions such as ETEC and FATEC, an example in Brazil. Chadecesio (talk) 11:06, 3 July 2025 (UTC)Reply

@Chadecesio, não estou entendendo isso. Por favor, escreva em português. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:23, 3 July 2025 (UTC)Reply

A Meta Wiki esta sempre em expansão, e para sua melhor administração, nao ha mais concreta decisao de dar oportunidades para voluntários na area de tecnologia da informação. Se cria metodologias de inserção de condutas de boa vontade da administração da tecnologia da informação, com foco em estudantes do ensino médio, com foco nas instituições comp ETEC e FATEC.

Resumindo, criar uma espécie de GitHub da WikiMedia. Chadecesio (talk) 18:11, 3 July 2025 (UTC)Reply

• https://developer.wikimedia.org/
• https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/
• https://www.mediawiki.org/
• https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/How_to_contribute

WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:48, 3 July 2025 (UTC)Reply

Significa que estou no caminho certo? Pretendo expandir meus horizontes! Chadecesio (talk) 22:24, 3 July 2025 (UTC)Reply

If you want to know more about the software, look at those sites. Volunteers are welcome. Also, look at phab:.

Se quiser saber mais sobre o software, dê uma olhada nesses sites. Os voluntários são bem-vindos. Além disso, dê uma olhada no phab:. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:33, 4 July 2025 (UTC)Reply

Hello! I've just proposed a new project, Wikifamily. Wikifamily would be a universal family tree for humanity. Please check it out! Tell me your thoughts too. User01938 (talk) 23:12, 5 July 2025 (UTC)Reply

Your input and response would be greatly appreciated, see my question at mw:Talk:Platform Evolution § Progress?. Waddie96 (talk) 02:27, 12 July 2025 (UTC)Reply

reposting from Wikimedia-L

Hello all,

The Call for Candidates for the 2025 Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees selection is now closed. After verification by the Elections Committee and the Wikimedia Foundation, 12 (twelve) candidates are eligible. In order to be eligible, all candidates had to complete the required questions in the candidate application and meet the eligibility criteria.

See the list of the all eligible candidates on this meta-wiki page and learn more about the experience, diversity, and expertise they hope to bring to the Board.

As we have more than 10 eligible candidates, a shortlisting process will take place. Representatives of Wikimedia movement affiliates that are currently compliant with their reporting obligations (list of all Affiliates currently compliant) will soon receive a communication detailing how they can participate in the shortlisting process.

Key dates of the next steps:

• July 15 – 28: Shortlisting process

• By July 29: Announcement of the final list of 6 (six) shortlisted candidates
• July 29 – August 26: Campaigning period
• August 27 – September 10: Voting period

Learn more about the full timeline on this meta-wiki page.

On behalf of the Elections Committee,

Abhishek Suryawanshi

01:08, 15 July 2025 (UTC)

Hi!

While browsing through some photos I took of Pope Francis on September 28, 2024, I was surprised to see that the photos were used in three French-language articles: w:fr:Catholicisme en Belgique, w:fr:Liste des visites pastorales du pape François hors d'Italie and w:fr:Abus sexuels dans l'Église catholique en Belgique. The text below the image read: "Le pape François au stade Roi Baudouin." Now, I don't speak French, but I knew immediately what it meant: "Pope Francis at the King Baudouin Stadium." I scratched my head for a moment, because this information wasn't right. That photo wasn't taken at the King Baudouin Stadium, but at the ING Arena at Brussels Expo. In retrospect, the description I had provided was unclear, so it was my fault that this mistake was made. (I corrected the descriptions on the file pages on Wikimedia Commons and the French articles, so that should be fine now.)

Now I came up with an idea, but I don't know if it already exists and, if not, whether it is technically possible. My idea is that every time a file is added to a page, no matter the location or language, anywhere on Wikipedia, the uploader and/or followers of that file will receive a notification that the file is being used in an article. Not only is this useful so that the description can be checked, but it is also fun to see where your images are being used.

Of course, it remains to be determined which Wikimedia projects and namespaces will be involved in this feature, but I think it would be a good idea to implement such feature! I hope I'm in the right place for this idea on the Wikimedia Forum, and if not, please let me know where I can better initiate this idea!

I would love to hear what others think about this idea.

Kind regards,

S. Perquin (talk) 00:12, 27 July 2025 (UTC)Reply

Hi @S. Perquin. Thanks for the details in your post here. I've linked your post in the existing task documenting this feature request, phab:T77154.

Unfortunately, it's more complicated than it might seem, because there are some high-impact edge-cases that need to be covered/coded to make the feature both useful but also not-annoying, such as "opt-out" per-file (e.g. for people who upload flags and similar images/icons that sometimes become very-widely used). I hope that context helps. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 22:49, 28 July 2025 (UTC)Reply

This has also previously been here: c:Commons:Village pump/Proposals/Archive/2024/09#Notifications when one's uploaded files get used. Would be motivating, make contributing more fun and interactive and incentivize people to upload the most useful media. Prototyperspective (talk) 22:56, 28 July 2025 (UTC)Reply

Dear Quiddity and Prototyperspective, thanks for your responses! Nice that someone else came up with that idea before; at least it doesn't surprise me! And unfortunate that it technically is very complicated. Still, I hope this idea could one day be implemented! Perhaps the uploader could categorize images with: "Category:Send notifications when file in use" or something. The uploader could then choose to automatically add this category during the upload process by marking a box. It's just an idea! 😄 Kind regards, S. Perquin (talk) 06:12, 29 July 2025 (UTC)Reply

I've been indefinitely blocked on Commons since 10 October 2024 and I would like to know if I have the right to appeal. Could someone explain me if and how I have it? ArionStar (talk) 04:59, 27 July 2025 (UTC)Reply

@Ingenuity: could you tell me (if you known about)? ArionStar (talk) 13:58, 29 July 2025 (UTC)Reply

Sorry, I'm not a Commons admin and I'm not sure what your path to appeal is there. Ingenuity (talk) 14:07, 29 July 2025 (UTC)Reply

You lost your right to appeal through your block evasion using sockpuppets. As your socks did exactly the same what you were blocked for I see no reason why we should consider to accept an unblock request. GPSLeo (talk) 16:04, 29 July 2025 (UTC)Reply