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Talkback script
So, I've installed the talkback script, and am getting into the habit of using it—but I do note that it asks for the question to be reentered—it seems possible that this could be done automatically, since the button is in the context of a header on the page regardless. I assume this has been discussed before?Remsense留06:49, 6 January 2024 (UTC)reply
You're referring to
User:Qwerfjkl/scripts/talkback? I haven't used that script and aren't too familiar with it, but you could share suggestions with the script's author, Qwerfjkl.
Putting talkbacks on users' talk pages has become less important now that the
WP:Talk pages project has rolled out the subscription feature, which makes it so that editors will now automatically be notified about replies to threads they start at the Teahouse, even if we forget to ping them (which we always should, since it'll result in a bolder red notification rather than a blue one). A talkback will still give them the orange bar, which is the most noticeable of all, but I don't tend to bother with it unless I see someone continuing a behavior seemingly unaware of a response at the Teahouse. In our role educating editors about how Wikipedia works, we should be modeling normal pinging behavior, and talkbacks aren't used anywhere else these days. {{u|Sdkb}}talk07:00, 6 January 2024 (UTC)reply
That makes sense, thank you—I did feel the TB was a bit of a "making extra extra sure" gesture—I just wanted to make sure I was acting inline with expectations in the Teahouse host guidelines. Perhaps they should be tweaked to reflect this?
Remsense留10:34, 6 January 2024 (UTC)reply
From the link on the Teahouse page, I was reading
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Teahouse, where it says Although the project will welcome all good faith new users, women are a particular target population. Is this true? I have been a Teahouse regular for many years and I have never seen anything at the Teahouse or anywhere else on Wikipedia that suggests it is targeting women users, only that it is supposed to be friendly for any new user. Was this a goal at one time that has since been dropped, or is there something I am missing that encourages women to come to the Teahouse?
RudolfRed (
talk)
20:17, 16 January 2024 (UTC)reply
@
RudolfRed: I noted that the phrase "women are a particular target population" was in the original version of the Wikimedia page from 29 November 2011. I'm not aware of people making a special effort now to encourage women in particular to come to the Teahouse (but there are many things of which I'm not aware).
GoingBatty (
talk)
20:38, 16 January 2024 (UTC)reply
The Teahouse arose out of a bunch of Foundation research on welcoming new users; the version that operates today has evolved a lot from that. Wanting to welcome women may have influenced some of the earlier decisions, such as the Teahouse's visual design. Today, I think the friendliness approach we take is naturally more likely to aid female editors who come here, given that women are less likely to endure hostile online environments than men. I also know that when culling the list of active Teahouse hosts in the past, we've given a bit more leniency to female hosts. Trying to make the Teahouse welcoming to women should be something we always have in mind as we try to fight systemic bias, but it dovetails pretty well with the things we do to make it welcoming for folks of all genders. Cheers, {{u|Sdkb}}talk20:42, 16 January 2024 (UTC)reply
"Today, I think the friendliness approach we take is naturally more likely to aid female editors who come here, given that women are less likely to endure hostile online environments than men." Not true.
"I also know that when culling the list of active Teahouse hosts in the past, we've given a bit more leniency to female hosts." Care to elaborate?
Biolitblue (
talk)
01:03, 17 January 2024 (UTC)reply
RudolfRed, while it is old verbiage, I do agree with Sdkb on the benefits offering a variety of social approaches may potentially have for editors of different genders. —
Remsense诉23:40, 16 January 2024 (UTC)reply
I was thinking it was a vandalism leftover, as a woman myself, it really confuses me, and I think it should be removed as to promote neutrality and/or positivity among all groups.
Cometkeiko (
talk)
12:24, 17 January 2024 (UTC)reply
Cometkeiko, this seems perfectly reasonable, especially as it's not contingent to the goals of the Teahouse at present. I would be interested in hearing more from others about removing the passage. —
Remsense诉12:27, 17 January 2024 (UTC)reply
I think the meta page is at this point largely a historical report document indicating how the foundation thought about the Teahouse c. 2012. I wouldn't be opposed with a notice at the top indicating that more clearly, but I don't think it'd be appropriate for us to change it. {{u|Sdkb}}talk15:09, 17 January 2024 (UTC)reply
I remember that a very long Wiki-time ago (in about 2006 or so), a group received a "WikiMedal for janitorial services" (I was one of them). Not a barnstar per se, but I always took it that if an award is given to a group, everyone involved (say, Teahouse hosts) have been awarded the recognition.
Lectonar (
talk)
14:49, 31 January 2024 (UTC)reply
Bot inoperable
It
appears that the bot that leaves talk page notifications that Teahouse threads have been active archived has gone inoperable, and the operator hasn't been around in a few months. Would anyone be interested in taking over the task or filing
a request for it to be taken over? Sdkbtalk19:32, 15 February 2024 (UTC)reply
Hi folks, bot operator here. Thanks for the notification. I would like to get back to Wikipedia contributions and Muninnbot, but honestly I am not sure I can make that promise due to real-life events. I can however promise to stay around and answer queries in the next couple of weeks or so.
What stopped the bot was the migration of Toolforge server. I was supposed to move to the new server, but did not. (Just to be clear: I am not blaming the migration team, the messages were perfectly clear about what ought to be done and by what time.) The code itself should be still working. I have not tested, so changes to dependencies (deprecations etc.) could have broken it; but at least it’s worth a shot. Note also that it has a
dead man’s switch, running a couple of unit tests before posting notifications all around, and stopping if any of those fail; that is not guaranteed to catch every bug of course, but it will catch some of them. Looking at the code, it certainly is not perfect but it aged way better than my other years-old projects did. All the important Python code is in
this Python file, which should be run via a cron job.
The only problem I can envision to getting it back up is the one described at
User:Muninnbot/doc#Race_condition_with_lowercase_sigmabot_III: as it stands, the script must be run exactly once between two archival runs, else notifications are missed or duplicated. Back when I set it up, LS3 ran once every day around 5:00UTC, hence just running the bot once a day at a time different from that worked. However, looking at the TH history right now I can see timestamps at various points around the clock. This may be buggy behavior from LS3 (
User_talk:Σ seems to mention issues with the bot), but I do not think "runs every day at the same time" was ever a promise made by that bot, so relying on it is not good software design anyway. Fixing it would require development but should not be too hard (simple fix off the top of my head: have a log file that contains the ID of the last LS3 edit to be processed, process every LS3 edit that occurred after that one, update the log).
So... next steps that I see:
(done) Anyone interested in becoming co-maintainer (
Frostly,
usernamekiran, any others?) files the Toolforge paperwork for adopting the tool. Feel free to link to this post as proof I did not object. I will also specifically say that access to the Toolforge for the tool should include access to secrets therein (I am 90% sure there should be an OAuth token to post as
Muninnbot, but without it you cannot really run the bot).
(Optional but highly recommended) the same people send me a gitlab ID so I can add them on the gitlab repo (create an account beforehand if needed). Either here, on my user talk page, or
via email if you prefer (note that project members on public gitlab repos are public though, so there’s not much privacy point in using email).
The same people add themselves at the places they ought to (
User:Muninnbot for instance?)
Someone (the first one to code it I guess) fixes the LS3 issue mentioned above
Someone (the first one to cron it I guess) puts the bot back online at Toolforge
If it was me, I would mildly prefer doing #4 before doing #5, but honestly I could imagine myself
YOLOing it. If you do so, watch over the LS3 edits for a couple of days.
I would imagine the BRFA is still valid - although technically the bot has not edited for two years, it was not due to a change of consensus, and I see no opposition to restarting it in the discussion here. Of course anyone is free to object at any point.
thanks for theresponse
Tigraan. I have only one doubt. I'm not sure if OAuth is required with pywikibot. Years ago when I setup my tool/bot, to post as
KiranBOT II, all I had to do was create BotPassword, and use it in the config file. Regarding other stuff, I'll respond in 18ish hours. Courtesy ping to
Frostly. —usernamekiran
(talk)20:22, 9 March 2024 (UTC)reply
Thanks so much for the reply,
Tigraan! The easiest / least bureaucratic way to accomplish #1 would be to add myself and
usernamekiran as maintainers in the
Toolforge admin console. My Toolforge username is EpicPupper (it was my previous Wikimedia username); usernamekiran's looks like it's the same. Re #2, my GitLab username is "frost-ly". Long-term, I'd love to potentially migrate the project to
Wikimedia's instance of GitLab. There's a new
Toolforge jobs framework that "replaces" cron, which is probably the best-practice way to get the bot up and running again. I agree that the BRFA is likely still valid :) Looking forward to hearing usernamekiran's perspective. Cheers, —
Frostly (
talk)
03:14, 10 March 2024 (UTC)reply
I have added you both on the Toolforge admin account, and frost-ly on Gitlab.
@
Rotideypoc41352: Hi, apologies, I thought this one was taken care of. I will be busy for 40ish hours from now. But this will be the first thing I will take a look at as soon as I get time. —usernamekiran
(talk)17:54, 13 May 2024 (UTC)reply
@
Rotideypoc41352: I just logged in to the bot's account on toolforge. @Tigraan, and Frostly: I have created a file named "usernamekiran.log" in root directory. I will soon look into the cronjob issue, and I will keep you guys posted. —usernamekiran
(talk)19:50, 13 May 2024 (UTC)reply
@
Usernamekiran @
Frostly You should be able to use botpasswords and OAuth on Toolforge. Tho OAuth in my experience is relatively easier to setup with custom containers. I run a cross-wiki(source) bot with a similar cronjob configuration in the wsstats account on the new Toolforge infrastructure. (The code for my bot is at
https://github.com/sohomdatta1/wsstats.git feel free to copy over parts of the boilerplate code if you want).
Sohom (
talk)
05:17, 21 May 2024 (UTC)reply
@
Sohom Datta: Hi. Using OAuth, I was able to login to enwiki with Muninnbot on the first attempt, but I am getting an error with the script. I tried to fix it, but couldnt. I have mailed Tigraan, hopefully they will respond soon. —usernamekiran
(talk)11:17, 22 May 2024 (UTC)reply
Teahouse Hosts!
Is Teahouse Host a formal position here, like Administrator? Or is it more like Editor in Wikipedia at large, referring to anybody who ever comments on a question (or adds a comma to an article)?
Uporządnicki (
talk)
15:05, 1 March 2024 (UTC)reply
I haven't joined the official list because I don't want to feel an obligation to contribute regularly. There are several regular contributors who are not on the list and a few that are on the list but almost never contribute. Nick Moyes occasionally removes those who have stopped contributing. The only important requirements for contributors, IMO, is that their answers are largely accurate and made politely.
Mike Turnbull (
talk)
16:08, 1 March 2024 (UTC)reply
I believe it's a holdover from when the Teahouse was first established, but the concept doesn't hold any significance as to who may answer questions, so long as said answers are accurate, courteous, and helpful. —
Tenryuu 🐲 (
💬 •
📝 )
18:18, 1 March 2024 (UTC)reply
@
AzseicsoK As has been said, it's a very informal title which people who do feel they help out here quite a lot here might wish to give themselves. But anyone is free to answer other users' questions at any time without signing up as a Host (so long as they give helpful answers!). I regard it is a very good first step for some editors who are becoming interested in some of the behind-the-scenes administration and support work to do. That's probably how I started my own journey to becoming an admin when @
Cullen328 suggested I participated here as a Host. It taught me so much (and I'm still learning from other people's answers to this day)
All that said, a very tiny number of editors do occasionally sign themselves up as a 'Host' for the wrong reasons (see
WP:HATCOLLECT or
WP:CIR) and they do get removed in due course, as do those who have never made much - or any - contribution here, or have got themselves blocked or regularly warned for inappropriate behaviour. The key things any Host needs is to be polite, patient, helpful and welcoming.
You will find a tiny handful of names of editors on the host list who are not actively answering questions nowadays, but have nevertheless played a very significant role in the establishment and running of the Teahouse in the past, or who still do research or bot-related activities here. I hope this additional info is of interest.
Nick Moyes (
talk)
20:31, 7 March 2024 (UTC)reply
and I'm still learning from other people's answers to this day is probably the most relatable thing here. I've got this place watchlisted primarily to answer questions I feel I can answer, but also just to learn stuff I probably never would've done by contributing anywhere elsewhere. There's such a wide array of questions asked here that you'll never stop learning.
CommissarDoggoTalk?22:23, 12 March 2024 (UTC)reply
Meet your hosts formatting
In signing up to be a Teahouse host I have managed to mess up the formatting of
my entry (specifically the image). Obligatory Self-trout. If anyone knows how to retroactively amend this do let me know! Unexpectedlydian♯4talk‽22:05, 12 March 2024 (UTC)reply
I'm curious to hear from other hosts about what you've been encountering with editors being confused by the button to save an edit when creating a new page being labelled "publish" rather than "save," as it used to be. It seems that this has caused a lot of confusion, e.g.
here,
here (both handled by @
331dot),
here, and
here, among many others. We have the ability to change it at
MediaWiki:Publishchanges if we decide to do so. Sdkbtalk02:36, 17 March 2024 (UTC)reply
I don't think we can change it; as I understand it was Wikipedia's lawyers who wanted it changed, to emphasize that every edit is public. Apparently "save" does not carry that implication. I think we just have to live with it.
331dot (
talk)
08:00, 17 March 2024 (UTC)reply
Users think, understandably, that "Publish" means "put in mainspace". Some want to put their draft into mainspace and are puzzled when "Publish" doesn't do that. Others just want to save edits to their draft but can't find a "Save" button. It's strange that lawyers think WP's legal position is stronger when its users don't understand what they're doing.
Maproom (
talk)
14:17, 17 March 2024 (UTC)reply
I've wondered if there was a way to reword it to both make it clear what the button does and satisfy the concerns of the lawyers(who I think are trying to avoid users saying "I didn't know that would be public!" or some other legal concern) but I feel like that would be hard to do in a concise manner with a minimum of confusion.
331dot (
talk)
14:46, 17 March 2024 (UTC)reply
I've thought about it a bit and think the solution isn't in the wording (as both put us in a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" situation), but in a warning dialogue box that says something along the lines of:
Warning: Your edits will be publicly viewable. If you wish to keep your edits private you will have to do it off-site.
This would be enabled by default for non-autoconfirmed users and removed once they become autoconfirmed. Unfortunately, IP addresses would most likely have to be left out as there's no way to differentiate between veteran editors who wish to remain anonymous versus complete newbies. —
Tenryuu 🐲 (
💬 •
📝 )
14:57, 17 March 2024 (UTC)reply
Save & publish, instead of the current Publish changes.
Speculating about what's legally necessary rather than seeking clarification is a surefire way for us to get bogged down in circles. @
Slaporte (WMF), can you let us know if there's any legal reason the button needs to say "publish" rather than "save"? Sdkbtalk16:26, 17 March 2024 (UTC)reply
I do regularly (though not frequently) encounter questions from new users who are confused by the publish button. I find it somewhat embarrassing to have to trot out the "it's a legal requirement that's been forced on us" explanation on each occasion. It is time-consuming to have to explain what the difference between 'publish' and 'Publish' means. But I haven't experienced the constant confusion amongst large numbers of new editors that I had actually expected. If I could change it back, I would, as it's the most logical title when saving edits in a draft. But I suspect most new users manage to understand it well enough, and that we are where we are, and are stuck with it.
Nick Moyes (
talk)
23:11, 20 March 2024 (UTC)reply
Hi,
Crylophosaurus. The Teahouse is just a place where beginners can ask questions about how to edit Wikipedia. Actually, anybody can ask, but it is aimed at beginners. It is just like the
Help desk except that people here at the Teahouse make an extra effort to be patient and not "bite" the newbies.--
Gronk Oz (
talk)
06:11, 12 April 2024 (UTC)reply
@
Marchjuly I'm not sure closing is really necessary. Looks to me like it's come to a natural end and isn't going to continue. But feel free to close it if you wish. (As you know, I commented, too).
Nick Moyes (
talk)
19:59, 14 April 2024 (UTC)reply
You're right
Nick. I was actually going to self-revert this post first thing since I reached the same assessment, but I'll leave it here now just for reference. --
Marchjuly (
talk)
21:17, 14 April 2024 (UTC)reply
Hi
CanonNi. In my opinion, your best bet is to probably follow the guidance in
WP:TPO, particularly
WP:TPG#Off-topic posts. If you assess the post to be a serious violation of a policy like
WP:BLP,
WP:OUTING,
WP:COPY, etc., you can probably remove it asap but should leave an appropriate edit summary explaining why. You then probably should seek assistance from an administrator (there are usually a few active at the Teahouse at various times of the day but there's always one at
WP:AN) and ask them to review it because it might need to be
WP:REVDEL if it's really bad. If it's a case of someone posting too much of their own personally identifying information (email addresses, phone numbers, real names, etc.), you can use the template {{redacted}} as well, politely explain to the person who posted why, and then contact an admininstrator or
WP:OVERSIGHT to see if revdel or
WP:SUPPRESS is needed. If it's just someone rambling about something unrelated to the Wikipedia per editing or something not really within the scope of the Teahouse (i.e. a general reference question), you can politely respond that such a thing isn't within the scope of the Teahouse and redirect the person to another Wikipedia page or another external website (if one exists). You can try to answer the person's question if you want, but that might lead to further discussion that might end up needing to be closed at some point. A lot could depend on the context of the post. For certain things, sometimes this posting a
WP:DISCLAIMER like response works best because trying to delve into too much detail (especially about sensitive subject matters) might create a new set of problems.The account who made the post you're asking about has already been blocked for disruption, so there's no point in warning them about. The posts it made at the Teahouse have already been removed by an administrator named
Graham87. For reference, though, posts like this could probably be non-contentiously removed per
WP:R VAN or
WP:TPG#Off-topic posts if you want, but you might want to check the poster's contributions' history first to see whether they're just drive by posting and have already been dealt with or they could possibly be asking a "legit" question. --
Marchjuly (
talk)
13:11, 21 April 2024 (UTC)reply
There seems to be a coordinated effort to get "first Iraqi on Everest" into the article
Dadvan Yousuf. In these two days alone, there have been five accounts asking about it here and on the article's talk page. Is there something we can do? '''[[
User:CanonNi]]''' (
talk •
contribs)
09:47, 30 May 2024 (UTC)reply
Wikitia discussion seems to have moved beyond the scope of the Teahouse
@
Anachronist and
PrimeHunter: I think that
WP:THQ#Deleting a page probably should be closed down because it has moved beyond the scope of the Teahouse. Assuming that the OP isn't trolling, there's nothing Wikipedia can do about Wikitia anyway and the IP's/OP's last response has even further moved a discussion in a direction that's just might lead to some things being posted that shouldn't be posted. Since you two are admins and both responded to the OP, the discussion could be continued on the OP's user talk page if either of you want to, but I don't see anything further to be gained by doing so at the Teahouse. --
Marchjuly (
talk)
06:02, 3 June 2024 (UTC)reply
I'm aware of that anyone can close a discussion, but I figured I give one of you the chance to do so given that the two of you had posted several responses; moreover, as admins, you're also capable of
WP:REVDEL if you deem it to be necessary. Anyway, it's a moot point now since you closed the discussion and another user courtesy blanked it. --
Marchjuly (
talk)
00:23, 4 June 2024 (UTC)reply
Semi-protected edit request on 27 June 2024
This
edit request has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request.
Done – sorry, there was some spamming so editing is temporarily restricted. It'll be back to normal in a few hours. If you need to reply to a comment on your question, just reply here and notify the user with {{
ping|username}}.
Tollens (
talk)
17:00, 27 June 2024 (UTC)reply