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Hello, Okeyes. Thanks a lot for the notice. RJay (official) (talk) 05:15, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the notification! Mugginsx (talk) 10:54, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for notifying me about the article feedback tool being down. i kan reed (talk) 13:49, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

Hi. Thanks for the notification about the tool. —C5st4wr6ch (talk) 15:00, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

Not knowingly have I used it. I seem to remember deleting something in the Feedback area - some bit of vandalism or a mistake or something like - that someone had tagged. I take it that this is a new version of that damned thing that I had great difficulty in persuading it to go away some while ago... Peridon (talk) 15:28, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

Hi Okeyes-- In your ongoing efforts to improve Wikipedia, and access to it, you might be interested in looking at a brief new exchange posted at Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Miscellaneous#Where_to_list_a_needed_project.3F. If it's gone before you get to it, I'm copying it to my own talkpage. Best wishes to you. Milkunderwood (talk) 03:55, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

Hi-- Thanks for your response. (I'm afraid I didn't understand all of your abbreviations.) The conversation I had captured and posted to my talkpage was a little confusing because it addressed two separate questions. One was simply whether there's a way to "watch" only one specific thread in the cluttered Ref Desk conversations. My much more significant question was at the beginning: a reader who is not familiar with the ins and outs of Wikipedia's protocols and procedures - and is not motivated to learn them - finds something that seems to need attention. You can leave a message on an article's talkpage, but for whatever reason this is nearly always going to be ignored, as any glance through talkpages will confirm. Or, where an article has a reader-response box at the bottom of the page, you might say the article is unsatifactory in some respect, but without specifying how. Would it be a good or bad idea to add "Suggestion Box" to the list of links beneath the Wikipedia logo on the left side of the display? "Help" is very confusingly organized, and I'm sure many readers get lost it its morass, giving up in frustration. A Suggestion Box would of course attract a lot of nonsense and garbage; and most editors would avoid ever looking at it. But enough might to make it worthwhile. I think the point is that many readers will never attempt to make edits to articles that seem unsatisfactory in some respect, but may feel they would like to leave a message to the effect that something needs attention. This would just be a more direct form of outreach to readers. Milkunderwood (talk) 19:14, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

Sure. Sorry if my response wasn't clear :). So, in order...

• On the refdesk thing; totally agreed. What we're looking at at the moment is a replacement for talkpages which will, amongst other features, allow you to watch individual threads (and to view them all from one central page...if we fit that in ;p).
• The suggestion box; as said, really it's something almost AFT5-like; the community has said that they're not comfortable having that in widespread deployment :/. Having said that, our talkpage replacement, combined with the visual editor, should not only lessen the barrier to making contributions on talk pages but also make paying attention to them a lot easier than it currently is. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 19:16, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

My own biggest frustration is with insufficient disambiguations and/or hatnotes. For instance, I think many readers come to WP knowing only a last name of a person, and getting lost in trying to find the wanted article. Where is the best place to say, Hey, I'm looking for someone, and Search isn't helping? This was the example I used in my initial post to Ref Desk. Long ago I was looking for "Cardinal Stritch", having no idea that his name was Samuel. With a lot of effort that I hadn't intended to spend at that time, I did manage to fix this situation myself. But I keep running across these - not only names of persons, but in all sorts of situations. Where do questions like this go? Some I fix myself; others I just say, to hell with it. (And what is AFT5?) (Gotta run now - RL calling - back later.) Milkunderwood (talk) 19:41, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

Okay, now I'm back at my computer and have had a chance to look up Article Feedback Tool. Question: where is a reader supposed to answer "Did you find what you were looking for?" if they were never able to find the article at all? Or, if they did eventually find it, where are they supposed to say "Searchbox led me astray - somebody needs to fix this name so it can be found"? In other words, it looks to me as though all of the feedback you're looking for is based on the assumption that a reader has already found and presumably read a wanted article, but feels it did not adequately address the issue. This is a different situation. Milkunderwood (talk) 22:13, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

Yes, because the tool only exists on articles. It's not a standalone thing; it lives at the bottom of pages. My point was not that it could be used for this, more that the community has explicitly rejected the idea of widely deploying a 'comments box' because of the signal:noise ratio they attract. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 23:48, 16 March 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the notice. --Cayman 5-1 (talk) 15:49, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

• same here. thank you. --Pedro (talk) 20:59, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

  No problem :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 21:06, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

Thank you too. Just a note: adding a link to a (short) list of whatever will change would be helpful. Is it the "Which features can I test?" listed on mw:Article_feedback/Version_5/Testing? - Nabla (talk) 10:07, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

Yep; auto-archiving, one click moderation, so on, so forth :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 10:09, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

tks - Nabla (talk) 23:06, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

I'm curious what you used to post your notice about the feedback tool being updated to my talk page. If I hadn't been watching my watchlist like a hawk waiting for replies on other nonsense, I would have missed it. I have my User: space set up with tab headers and my talk page is one of those header and is segregated by year. Usually it is not a problem, people click on my talk and get redirected to the current archive section for this year. However, your post did not follow the redirect, so I am wondering if you left a bot to post it. I'm wondering home many other's have redirected talk pages and might have missed the message. I'm wondering if in the future, your posting method could make sure to check and follow redirects. Just some thoughts on the matter. I think you guys are doing a great job!
 — T13   ( C • M • Click to learn how to view this signature as intended ) gives his support for this section's subject at 11:43, 16 March 2013 (UTC).

At the moment I use an automagical script written by User:Dcoetzee; I could theoretically adjust to your way of working but it's kind of an edge case. I'm not quite sure the precise rationale behind your talkpage dividing; are you familiar with the other archiving options available? Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 21:36, 16 March 2013 (UTC)

I'm aware of most of them, but I don't like the way they work all that much.. To be completely honest, I'm simply opposed to changing what I'm the most comfortable with, which is the method I devised on my my home wiki with my tabs, and custom ToC on my talk page there. Only difference is on my home wiki where I am the top editor, administrator "most" people go to for conflict resolution (we have little conflict), and the main template creation guy, I get a LOT more messages and have divided my page there quarterly instead of yearly. Would it be hard to make it follow redirects? Would it not be worth the extra couple handful of cases? Is there anyway I can opt out of these messages? — T13   ( C • M • Click to learn how to view this signature as intended ) 22:44, 16 March 2013 (UTC)

Sure, I'm unlikely to be sending another round. I'd note that we're planning on completely redoing talkpages as part of mw:Flow, which you may want to brace yourself for. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 22:46, 16 March 2013 (UTC)

Will this new proposed "Flow" address the question of frustrated readers trying to call someone's attention to Searchbox problems, as opposed to comments on specific articles or projects? See my posts above at Suggestion Box. Right now I'm not aware of any obvious place or way to do this. Milkunderwood (talk) 23:38, 16 March 2013 (UTC)

It will make leaving messages about possible articles a lot easier, when combined with things like the visual editor. Putting substantial effort into fixing this one thing with a dedicated software feature is not on our to-do list - I think probably quite rightly, since it's a small problem compared to some others we have to fix. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 23:47, 16 March 2013 (UTC)

I understand about the signal:noise ratio, which would be a major hassle for everyone. But I strongly disagree about the "smallness" of the problem of not being able to find an appropriate article to begin with, or only after trying several dead ends; and having no place to bring this to anyone's attention. Milkunderwood (talk) 00:08, 17 March 2013 (UTC)

As compared to consistently diminishing contributor numbers and the requirement to learn a markup language to edit? I'm not saying 'it's not a problem'; it is. But there are bigger ones. Engineering is not a massive department compared to Wikipedia's prominence, and we have to focus our efforts where we get the best returns. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 00:10, 17 March 2013 (UTC)

Fair enough. But I get the impression that what's being worked on is primarily for the benefit of WP editors. I ran across a wonderful tongue-in-cheek motto here, which I've appropriated for my own userpage: "Remember, the reader is the enemy." Milkunderwood (talk) 00:17, 17 March 2013 (UTC)

Yes and no. So: prepare for a ramble :).

Wikimedia is best understood as a complex ecosystem - of readers, editors, developers, organisers, donors. We need all of these groups; if we don't have donors we won't have servers, but if we don't have readers we won't have a reason to have servers. If we have no editors, we'll quickly find ourselves lacking readers, and if we don't have developers, any readers we do have will find MediaWiki-based sites of increasingly limited utility. We need all of these groups. At the moment we're doing really well on a lot of fronts; I can't speak for our volunteer devs, but paid dev hours have gone up year-on-year. Organisations like Chapters are providing increasing outreach and organisation resources to bring third-parties into the movement. Two areas we are failing in are readers and editors.

Reader numbers aren't really going up as they should. Don't get me wrong; they're still going up! Year-on-year we're increasing the number of people using the site, particularly through mobile devices. But the increase is significantly more depressed than for other big web-properties, like *crosses self* Facebook - which it really shouldn't be given that Facebook has a higher barrier to participation (registration) than Wikipedia does. At the same time, editor numbers are not only going up but going down. So we're faced with one essential element of the ecosystem not growing as it should, and another that's shrinking. Now, I'll be frank with you; we're dedicating most of our spare bandwidth towards editor-centric software - things that make editing easier for newcomers, or for existing editors. Things that reduce the barrier to contributing in this fashion. But personally, I'm convinced this is the right thing to do, because while we have issues with both editors and readers, only one of those problems is sailing towards the iceberg - the other just isn't going away from it at the speed we'd expect.

So; yes, we're building most of our stuff for editors. But it's not like we're building it just for existing users, or just for metapedians; the goal is 'make contributing easier', not 'make contributing easier for existing users'. We have to factor existing users into account and avoid making things that are a detriment to their workflows, but we're certainly not navel-gazing in what we actually produce. I agree that readers should be a priority, and I hope that, when we've at least stabilised the current crisis, they'll be the group we move on to helping next. But for now, we're editor-centric - new editor-centric, old editor-centric, admin-with-7-featured-articles-centric. And I'm convinced that's where we have to be. This isn't to say we don't need people like you keeping us honest, though :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 09:32, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

It seems Hotcat is enabled by default for new editors, and it regularly causes things like this to happen, presumably by being mistaken for "click here to add a new comment".

Are you able to ask someone to make Hotcat not enabled by default for new editors, or would that discussion need to happen somewhere else? --Demiurge1000 (talk) 18:01, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure that's a change made by Enwiki's users and admins fiddling with the gadgets files, but I could be wrong; I'd suggest trying the village pump and then beating me with a trout if I'm talking crap ;p Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 18:05, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

Hello Okeyes (WMF), Eduemoni has given you a shining smiling star! You see, these things promote WikiLove and hopefully this has made your day better. Spread the Shining Smiling Star whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past or someone putting up with some stick at this time. Enjoy! Eduemoni↑talk↓ 15:54, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

Thanks! Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 17:29, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

Section "Is there any way to contact the operations folks at WMF?" -- your name was mentioned as a possible source of help. I couldn't get a response from Tim Starling. Thanks.

Thanks for letting me know; I'll mosey over now :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 21:47, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

Just in case you weren't aware since you haven't been active on your volunteer in the past week, I left a message for you there. Ryan Vesey 21:53, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

Thanks! Sorry :/. Things have been...very hectic - Sunday is going to be a day of much volunteering :D. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 21:54, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

Is there an update on the timetable? According to the page, the experimental release should have occurred last month. P.s., sorry for not getting back to you at your other account, will do so sometime soon here. Ryan Vesey 02:00, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

Well, if you get back to me here I can't handle the query :). Yep, the timetable is we're going to release in early April - I'm updating the docs, hence the edits. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 02:05, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

By "here" I didn't mean on this page. I can't really explain what I meant though, it's a colloquialism from where I'm from (or maybe one that only I use, who knows See User talk:Dennis Brown#RfC/U where the small text appears at the bottom. If I ever get famous, there will probably be a book on Veseyisms someday.) You can ignore the word here. Ryan Vesey 02:09, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

Oh, and should "When a page you have created is reverted" state "When a page you have created is reviewed"? Ryan Vesey 02:10, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

Yep, fixed; brainfart :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 02:16, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

When I click "Central feedback page" it displays for 17 - 19 seconds, but then says:

"Article Feedback page not enabled for this page."

Is it not released yet or something? Puffin ^{Let's talk!} 17:37, 29 March 2013 (UTC)

As the talkpage notes, it's currently disabled site-wide while we fix some cacheing issues :(. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 22:09, 29 March 2013 (UTC)

I personally find it interesting that this discussion was apparently partly prompted (or evidenced, perhaps) by feedback from the AFT. Medical articles are some of the most eagerly-sought by readers, the most problematic in maintaining appropriate quality, and also rival BLPs in possible real-world impacts of a serious nature. So it's interesting that apparently AFT was useful in helping to bring forward awareness of an article problem.

(Why use the same section title here? Because every time I see it at WT:MED I get confused and think it must be a section title on the refdesk, so I thought I'd share the confusion around a bit.) --Demiurge1000 (talk) 20:41, 31 March 2013 (UTC)

@ Wikipedia_talk:Page_Curation#Some_suggestions_for_improvements

I like the look/idea of Wikipedia:Editor engagement/Echo. Barney the barney barney (talk) 18:13, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

Great! Thanks for asking them :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk)

I'm not sure if it's appropriate to write one from the WMF point of view or if it would be better to use your personal account, but it would be interesting in seeing a signpost article on Wikipedia:In the news/Candidates#French homeland intelligence threatens a volunteer sysop to delete a Wikipedia Article. Is it legal? What is the WMF doing about it, if anything? Could Wikipedia:Office actions have applied? Ryan Vesey 01:16, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

Foundation's reply Bgwhite (talk) 01:33, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

(talk page stalker) Is it available in English? Technical 13 (talk) 01:38, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

The link he gives you is in English, look for the section "Wikimedia Foundation elaborates on recent demand by French governmental agency to remove Wikipedia content". English appears first then French. Ryan Vesey 01:44, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

My bad... The French page headers and stuff pushed that line in the contents off my short laptop screen and I was too lazy to scroll figuring the whole thing was French... Anyways, I retract my previous comment sheepishly... :) Technical 13 (talk) 01:47, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

It has been big in the geekosphere today, which is how I learned about the Foundation's reply. Bgwhite (talk) 01:56, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

The WMF statement appears to cover it; I'm totally not qualified to write it up anyway (non-US legal eagle, and not working in LCA to boot). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 02:00, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

Hmm, I hope France has some legal recourse for the administrator in question. If I was an administrator and the CIA made me do something comparable, I feel like I'd be able to win a chunk of money big enough to retire off of in a lawsuit. Then again, there's always the possibility that I'd end up with a bullet in my head or in a Romanian interrogation center. Ryan Vesey 02:04, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

Don't worry Mr. Ryan. We are already monitoring your situation. Just stay calm and a couple of people in black suits will be visiting your shortly. We are offering you a great Cuban vacation. Bgwhite (talk) 02:09, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

Shouldn't Guantanamo Bay detention camp be at Guantánamo Bay? I can't imagine that the detention camp isn't the primary topic and that Guantanamo Bay isn't the common name for the detention camp. Even if the detention camp is kept with its current title, Guantanamo bay should redirect there and Guantanamo Bay (disambiguation) should be linked to from the other articles. Ryan Vesey 02:15, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

Oh to be a young whippersnapper again. Back in my day sonny, Guantanamo meant the naval base. Depending on the context I think either the base or the detention camp. So, a case could be made that the naval base should be at Guantánamo Bay. Now, get off my lawn. Bgwhite (talk) 07:51, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

For the background, you can look at WP:ANI#User:Kavdiaravish/User:Stonex201 and Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Kavdiaravish. The editor in question creates articles on painting to spam wahooart.com and the vast majority of his articles include copyvio or other problems. The problem is, this can easily be overlooked by editors who are unaware of the situation. Can the page curation tool be made to flag either new articles about paintings or new articles containing links to wahooart.com? Ryan Vesey 04:56, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

Not really; that's sort of a...rather dramatic edge case ;p. Have you considered just using the abusefilter? Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 12:53, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

I tried that. :) It wasn't catching him, but KoH made some changes, so hopefully it will now. Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 13:04, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

Great! Fingers crossed :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 13:04, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

And you should feel bad for not substing the basepagename magic word. m.o.p 04:13, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

Agh! I was sure I had :/. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 14:24, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

smtchahal^(talk) 10:00, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

Hi

Thanks for letting me know - have been away (not pleasure unfortunately) and will take a look :¬) Chaosdruid (talk) 05:43, 28 April 2013 (UTC)

Sorry to hear that (I think? Good if it's the 'work' kind of not-pleasure, bad if it's aw-inducing. Although, work can be both!). Let me know if you have any thoughts on the redesign and new features :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 02:54, 29 April 2013 (UTC)

of a bug Thehelpfulone 20:23, 30 April 2013 (UTC)

User:Deskana needs to get out more ;p. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 14:58, 1 May 2013 (UTC)

no u --(ʞɿɐʇ) ɐuɐʞsǝp 14:58, 1 May 2013 (UTC)

For wading into the fray at WT:Notifications and doing your job well in the face of some trying circumstances, I present to you a comfort kitty. Hug it (gently!) every time you need to commune with something that doesn't want to beat you to death with your own limbs.

A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk) 17:52, 1 May 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, Fluffernutter :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 17:56, 1 May 2013 (UTC)

Greetings Okeyes. I just wanted to apologize if I offended you on Jimbo's talk page. My intention wasn't to offend you or the other developers. I don't really think that this was a needed change is all and there are a lot of other things that I think most would consider a higher priority/problem. With that said I commend you that you did something without waiting on the community. We (the community) have shown repeatedly we lack the ability to make any changes so its left up to folks at the WMF to make those decisions. I really do wish more folks there at the WMF would make more of them in other ways as well. We may not always agree these changes are needed but since the community is unable to do anything we deserve whatever we get. Take care. Kumioko (talk) 23:43, 1 May 2013 (UTC)

Just wanted to say thank you for Notifications/Echo and all your other hard work. I have a feeling with this, AFT, Page Curation and your other work, just about every editor has wanted your head at one time or another. I personally think you are a sadomasochist. I'm sure you kill puppies and steal candy from babies in your spare time. While the debate rages on about restoring the "orange bar of doom", I'm glad it is gone. Every time I saw that, I'd go, "Crap, what did I screw up this time". Bgwhite (talk) 07:23, 2 May 2013 (UTC)

Thanks :). Well...mostly thanks. Actually I steal candy from puppies and kill babies; puppies have less candy, and babies are more protected, so I find it makes it more of a challenge ;p. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 13:35, 2 May 2013 (UTC)

I just wanted to say thank you for all the hard work you've so obviously put in. I noticed you were taking a little heat on the notifications talk page over the orange bar thing, and though I miss it too, I wouldn't trade it for the new notifications system, which is definitely a step forward. Thank you again for all you do, and don't take the complaints too personally. (We editors do like to complain ;-) ~Adjwilley (talk) 20:20, 3 May 2013 (UTC)

There are already many supports Wikipedia_talk:Notifications#Yes. When you are bringing back the orange bar? I am constantly missing talk page messages! I suggested in VPP to add a "Dismiss" link in orange bar so that I can check the message after finishing work in an article. But, the new message system for talk page message is very confusing. In case you use(d) Gmail Buzz (or Google Plus or Facebook), for first few days all users check(ed) immediately after getting notifications (1, 2, 3... at the top of the page). But, few days later, when the initial excitement was over, they stopped checking those messages. I have seen many such accounts with 50, 60 or more pending notifications. Finding talk page messages notification in a long list is difficult. Orange bar is very much needed! --Tito Dutta (contact) 15:28, 2 May 2013 (UTC)

As explained on the talkpage, the team is currently working on a more prominent replacement. Whatever happens, they have made clear that the orange bar will not be coming back - at least, not permanently, although if things go really south it may make a temporary reappearance. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 15:56, 2 May 2013 (UTC)

Tito, you have to call it by its proper name... "The orange bar of doom". Oliver, Tito has a really slow connection with limited bandwidth. Could you personalise his bar to be 50Mb. Teach him not to complain. :). Bgwhite (talk) 16:46, 2 May 2013 (UTC)

	The Brilliant Idea Barnstar
	Yet more barnstars all around to those on the Echo team. Genius.  — TORTOISEWRATH 04:17, 4 May 2013 (UTC)

	The Original Barnstar
	Thank you for everything you do for Wikipedia. Your efforts have not gone unseen and we all thank you for your hard work and dedication. MJ94 (talk) 21:02, 1 May 2013 (UTC)

PS: I enjoy the irony of seeing all these talkbacks on your talk page. MJ94 (talk) 21:03, 1 May 2013 (UTC)

Thanks so much for your hard efforts. I know this hasn't exactly been the most pleasant experience for you and your team, but I think it's a great improvement and I'm glad to see the place improved. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 03:05, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

I just had a thought (unusual for this early in the morning). At WP:WER/EotW, we like to keep the whole nomination process secret until the award is actually distributed. No problem so far...except now... with the advent of this whole new "Notification" business. The nominee will "see" mention of his name and come and look what Its about. Any advice on how to assure that the nominee doesnt find out before the Award is distributed? Can the EotW Project opt out of the Notification Process? Maybe its not even a problem but I dont know.```Buster Seven Talk 00:00, 4 May 2013 (UTC)<

Buster7, I think if you avoid linking the name it won't show up, but I could be wrong. Let's do an experiment. User:Buster7. Now let's see if you get a notification that you were mentioned here. ~Adjwilley (talk) 02:08, 4 May 2013 (UTC)

OK.Good to go....no notification. Thanks.```Buster Seven Talk 05:36, 4 May 2013 (UTC)

One more thing. Can you go to Template:WikiProject Editor Retention/Editor of the Week/Project main page/sandbox. This is a storage page for future info boxes that are awarded to upcoming Editors of the Week. If you'll notice the users name is in blue within the box. Will they be notified? thanks. ```Buster Seven Talk 06:31, 4 May 2013 (UTC)

My guess is that the notification happens when the linking is first saved, and unlinking won't remove the notification, as that would require another action by the software that isn't likely to be in the code. Oliver can probably clear that up. Also, there is some question as to whether or not it will send a notify if you use the {{u|user name}} template instead of the traditional [[User:User Name]] brackets. Clarification on that would be handy, as it would be a neat workaround if that is true. And btw, Oliver, I know that you have taken a lot of heat on the changes, usually unfairly so, because you are the most visible member of the team. While there are tweaks to be done, the overall changes are a huge improvement that make working here much easier. I think you guys nailed the simplicity vs. utility aspects quite well. Dennis Brown - 2¢ © Join WER 12:23, 4 May 2013 (UTC)

Sure enough..our most recent nominee has become aware of his nomination..and has visited the nomination page. Not anyones fault, especially Oliver. Since I am the person monitoring the process I need to be sure that the nomination remains secret until the Award is dispensed. As I understand the new system (which is great) once the user is linked, he will be notified. Even de-linking moments later will NOT STOP the notification. Also, using the user name will NOT notify the user but will allow fellow editors to vett if they feel it is necessary. My guess is we need to post a prominent "can't miss it" sign at the nomination page. ```Buster Seven Talk 15:11, 4 May 2013 (UTC)

Sounds about right, yep :). Terribly sorry about this - one of the problems with software going on top of community workflows rather than the other way around; there's always going to be edge cases. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 14:23, 6 May 2013 (UTC)

This was a totally inappropriate response, though you may be aware of that by now. Taking away the orange bar without adequate warning was a thoroughly incompetent action, and you folks will have to get used to the thought. I find it particularly distressing how in that discussion you seemed to be primarily concerned about saving face by not restoring the orange bar for most users, rather than on mitigating the foreseeable impact on retention of new editors and recruitment of IPs as soon as possible.

I am glad to hear that at least for IP users the orange bar was restored. I just checked it, and it works. However, it would have been totally obvious in advance to every experienced Wikipedian why you can't just replace the orange bar with something barely noticeable by IPs (let alone just remove it for them, as actually happened), not even for a few hours, without causing lots of grief. You guys have a serious communication problem. And yes, it's your communication problem, because you are just a few and for some reason you manage to consistently fail to adequately inform the huge number of editors before making such major changes.

I am aware that Wikipedia's resistance to change is a serious problem. But sneaky roll-outs only makes things worse because they increase the appearance of a fundamental disconnect between designers and the editing community and deprive you of absolutely vital input before it is too late and you manage to, for example, completely disrupt our communication with IPs.

It is also quite distressing that a top 10 website has apparently rolled out something like this without any testing at all on screen readers and other text-only browsers. After all, that's really standard nowadays. I have done it myself even for small academic department websites; it's not even particularly hard. Hans Adler 18:49, 5 May 2013 (UTC)

You seem to be operating under the assumption that I make any of the decisions, either in relation to the OBOD or otherwise. Let me be clear; my priority is very, very quickly developing a replacement for the orange bar. The possibility of simply turning the orange bar back on is one that, if you'll look through the discussion, you'll see I supported (and passed on to the development team) very early on. That they later rejected this option, at least permanently, is something that is beyond my control.

The rollout itself was not sneaky; there was a watchlist notice for a good week before the deployment, along with notices to the village pump and administrators' noticeboard. I confess to only actually being assigned to the project properly a couple of weeks before the deployment; I suspect this exacerbated problems around things like the OBOD turnoff. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 14:26, 6 May 2013 (UTC)

Sorry if I got the wrong impression. Some things went very wrong, and you were the only guy around to receive all the criticism. I hope you forwarded it on to more deserving parties!

I am actually very happy with the current notification (Echo + F2, a clear improvement over the orange bar), though the status quo is still a serious regression for blind editors. I hope someone is working on making the F2 notification visible in text-only browsers and moving it to the top of the page source code where blind users will notice it. My experience with CSS is too limited to predict if this can be done easily without breaking the site on old browsers with a poor CSS implementation. Hans Adler 11:59, 12 May 2013 (UTC)

Yo, Okeyes, just so you know, you're using square brackets instead of curly braces in your notification, so you end up calling everyone "{{subst:BASEPAGENAME]]". Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 14:43, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

Yep, just worked it out; thanks :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 14:50, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

Can you change the fmt to this:

Fmt

Those available:

1. Option D, fading out: importScript('User:Kaldari/bluealertfade.js');
2. Option D, no fade: importScript('User:Kaldari/bluealertdismiss.js');
3. Option E, not animated: importScript('User:Kaldari/topalert.js');
4. Option E, animated: importScript('User:Kaldari/topalert2.js');
5. Option F, importScript('User:Kaldari/toolbaralert2.js');

Currently

Those available:

1. Option D, fading out (importScript('User:Kaldari/bluealertfade.js');)
2. Option D, no fade (importScript('User:Kaldari/bluealertdismiss.js');)
3. Option E, not animated (importScript('User:Kaldari/topalert.js');)
4. Option E, animated (importScript('User:Kaldari/topalert2.js');)
5. Option F (importScript('User:Kaldari/toolbaralert2.js');)

The last semi colon is looking like smiley! Tito Dutta (contact) 15:13, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

Sure! Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 15:24, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

It dawned on me that anyone who has an SPI filed on them will automatically be notified. Per the SPI page, this isn't always optimal. Often it is handy to not notify them for various reasons that may or may not be obvious at first glance. Have the developers discussed these concerns? Didn't want to make a bigger deal of it at this stage and just curious if there is a way to exclude certain areas of the Wiki without a lot of fuss. Dennis Brown - 2¢ © Join WER 01:13, 6 May 2013 (UTC)

I think there are plans for a blacklist; I'll check :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 14:21, 6 May 2013 (UTC)

Thanks. I didn't even think about that until I saw a sock show up at SPI due to notification. Often, having an new editor/uninvited sock show up at SPI is potentially a form of self-incrimination. And in cases when they obviously are NOT a sock, it reduces drama to just close the investigation without them having to explain themselves. Dennis Brown - 2¢ © Join WER 14:40, 6 May 2013 (UTC)

Indeed :/. Yep, looks like there are definitely plans to have a blacklist of bots (see bug 47946); I've left a comment asking for a page blacklist as well. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 16:24, 6 May 2013 (UTC)

Excellent. Of course the nominations are for WP:WER is one area needing exemption. (...and while you and I have different ideas, we do share the same goals on retention, you should join us there. Your leadership would be helpful.) Dennis Brown - 2¢ © Join WER 19:27, 6 May 2013 (UTC)

I tend not to think of myself as a leader, or a potential leader (actually, I tend to get skeptical around those who do see themselves in that way) but the offer is much appreciated :). If you guys have any data or metrics you'd like to track, I can certainly help with that in my personal capacity - although (also in my personal capacity) I have found that the group at WER, with some notable and excellent exceptions, seem to be focused around 'how do we help problematic users stay'. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 20:05, 6 May 2013 (UTC)

I'm certainly not the leader there, I just act as a cheerleader and help when the bit is needed. Often, it helps just having admin around to answer policy issues, or keep it from getting too far off the reservation. That is experience more than the bit, honestly. As for problematic people, I would agree that sometimes a few editors focus on the "problem children", but again, I don't dictate the agenda there, and instead tend to just ignore those threads and focus on the good stuff, like the Editor of the Week, helping Teahouse, and just running to the rescue when a new quality editor gets bit. Things (and people) are not always what they seem at first glance, especially if you first see them on a bad day. I think if you just lurked, you would find something that fits into your goals, in time. Your skills with stats and such would be priceless to help us understand where to put our efforts. So I don't mean "leadership" like giving orders, I mean by offering good ideas, supporting other people's good ideas, planting seeds, and helping foster the ideals that we both share. I think you would fit in just fine there AND find some enthusiastic help in your own goals that pertain to retention. The talk page isn't really the best example of the real work we do, which is more often outside of the Project, that is just our hangout. Ping me or email me if you get curious, I'm very confident that there is some potential synergy you are missing out on there, things that matter to you. We all work on different things there, there is no central control. I'm sure you would easily find a few people who are members but aren't doing anything because they haven't found an idea they want to jump on. Maybe your idea. Dennis Brown - 2¢ © Join WER 00:58, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

Apologies for lurking but I complete agree with Dennis that the WER talk page is a poor barometer of what WER is all about. Actually, if Truth be told, WER has yet to focus its memberships energy in any clear direction. Editor of the Week is a big hit and does important workbut the potential efforts of over 100 members has yet to be explored. My guess is we are all waiting for the one great "lightbulb-ON" idea as to what to do. Maybe you'll see something? ```Buster Seven Talk 11:51, 19 May 2013 (UTC)

If I think of something, I'll certainly suggest it! Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 12:15, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

Hello there Mr. Keyes. First I want to thank you for your help interfacing between the community and the WMF. I think you've been doing a fantastic job.

The community here is often grumpy when it comes to things changing, so I was wondering if you could do a countdown to the VisualEditor. Ask the Signpost to run a series of stories, put notices at VPT and VPM and add a watchlist notice that counts down. Maybe even have a bot deliver talk page messages to active users with X amount of edits. Something that counts down so that people are continuously aware that the change will be coming in X number of days.

The community might find it helpful and it may keep some of the complaining down to a minimum. Thanks. 64.40.54.171 (talk) 17:06, 11 May 2013 (UTC)

Totally agreed :). As it happens, I've had several meetings this week already about the VE; we're going for full engagement (and by that I mean never-before-seen levels of resourcing for talking to people). More news to come in a bit! Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 06:09, 14 May 2013 (UTC)

OK, thanks. 64.40.54.136 (talk) 03:06, 17 May 2013 (UTC)

I'd prefer if you didn't respond to my comments at all since I know you don't care about what I have to say, but if you feel the need to respond, please don't blatantly misrepresent what I've said. --Onorem♠Dil 18:36, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

Onorem, as said, if you don't think we care what you have to say, disengage from the discussion; it's evidently a waste of your time. That's all I have to say on the matter; frankly, I don't want this to turn into a bigger deal than it is. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 18:40, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

I think some others involved do care. I don't think that you care. Community Liaison? Sad job of it. --Onorem♠Dil 18:42, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

If you've got concrete suggestions, make them; if you're just looking to cause hurt or vent, this is not the place for you. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 18:45, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

I am venting, but I'm not trying to 'cause hurt'

I think that comments like this are disruptive for someone who is supposed to help mediate issues. Making things up about what someone has said doesn't help fix anything. (You can also shove your threat about turning it into a bigger deal.) --Onorem♠Dil 18:53, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

It wasn't a threat; I meant I don't want us spending lots of hours arguing through something :). I'm sorry if I misrepresented your comment; it was never my intention to do so, but your comment read very much as "our standard should be online encyclopedias, so why do we care what these sites are doing". If it's more of a general "we are an encyclopedia, not Trello or Facebook or LinkedIn or etc, etc, etc" I'm totally happy to have that discussion - honestly, the "Wikipedia is not a social network" conversation is something I genuinely enjoy having. If that's something you want to discuss, we can discuss it - but I'd suggest both of us step back from venting. It's not going to be helpful or aide the conversation. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 18:57, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

In a discussion with D. Brown he mentioned that it may be possible to "exempt" the page Wikipedia:WikiProject Editor Retention/Editor of the Week/Nominations from the Notification/Echo project. The clerks (or anyone interested in supporting the nominations) would then still have the valuable userlink tool available in order to investigate the nominee. Thoughts? ```Buster Seven Talk 06:25, 19 May 2013 (UTC) Additional Thought:There is also a sandbox and a Template page that have the potential of "announcing" the Award months in advance and ruining any "SURPRISE!" moment.```Buster Seven Talk

Yes; we're looking at building a page blacklist. I can't promise it, but it's being investigated. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 13:10, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

BTW, loving the new system still. The only feature that I miss is being able to use one click to see all the changes to my talk page since my last look in one diff, the one feature of the annoying OROD that made it useful. I find I sometimes miss something, or have to click back to history now regularly to make sure I didn't overlook something. I'm sure I can adjust, but that one feature was handy. Dennis Brown - 2¢ - © - @ - Join WER 13:45, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

Not to speak for Oliver, but that's been a very frequently-requested feature, and i think the devs are working on it. Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 13:46, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

We are :). I'm going to post something about it as soon as I get done with this darn hiring process; as with so many things at the WMF, hiring is a lot more painful and finnicky inside than out :/. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 15:30, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

Thanks to you both for your rapid replies. I haven't followed all the discussions, but I know the devs have been bludgeoned unfairly by some over these changes. Of course there would be bugs or modifications after implimentation, any rational person knows this is unavoidable. The praise gets lost in the shuffle, but praise is deserved. Dennis Brown - 2¢ - © - @ - Join WER 15:40, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

I've tried to get a hold of some people on IRC, and made a post at the Help Desk, but this is rather critical. End users cannot use the citation tools and other tools to aid their contributions. This is effected in all browsers. I understand a release was rolled out about half hour ago or so, this broke all JavaScripts. I can't confirm the dev team at Wikipedia is aware so I thought I'd drop you a line. Also how did QA miss this? — MusikAnimal ^talk 18:38, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

This is already posted at the Village Pump (technical); probably best to centralize discussion there. The problem is with the Vector skin only; switching to the Monobook or either of the other two skins should fix your issues until Vector is repaired. Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 18:41, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

Gotcha, I had no idea where to go to discuss this. Thank you! — MusikAnimal ^talk 18:42, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

For future reference, I sit on IRC as Ironholds; you can ping me any time :). But yep, this is now being handled - thanks, everyone, for bringing it to our attention so quickly! Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 18:54, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

Oliver, has anyone asked about a way to have a second watchlist? For a while now, I've wanted one for short term watching of new articles, editors, things that I want to follow closely for a week or two, then unwatch. I could manually do such a thing with some effort and in a public way, but was wondering if there is a script you know of, or some other easy hack to accomplish this with a couple of clicks. Organizationally, I could probably find a use for a dozen watchlists, but two would be a good start. Dennis Brown - 2¢ - © - @ - Join WER 19:14, 22 May 2013 (UTC)

I think you may be interested in some of the thinking around a "Watchlist" module for Flow.--Jorm (WMF) (talk) 21:30, 22 May 2013 (UTC)

What Brandon says, basically :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 14:21, 24 May 2013 (UTC)

I forgot to say thank you, but thank you. I guess I will have to wait, but that does look like something worth waiting for. Speaking of which, is there any idea on a timeframe for implementation? Or are you laughing at me for asking such a silly question? Dennis Brown - 2¢ - © - @ - Join WER 00:55, 25 May 2013 (UTC)

The implementation for Flow generally, or the watchlist module specifically? Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 12:19, 27 May 2013 (UTC)

Yes. Dennis Brown - 2¢ - © - @ - Join WER 12:27, 27 May 2013 (UTC)

Helpful :P. So, Brandon is the dude qualified to answer for Flow generally - I'm not sure if we've really confirmed that the watchlist module will definitely get in. At the moment I'm mainly working around the VisualEditor. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 13:12, 27 May 2013 (UTC)

Glad to help :) I take it that this means it will be a while. I know that when it comes to software, it is impossible to say "January 15, 2014", so I will just have to be patient. Flow really looks interesting and I do look forward to it. I did mention your alter ego at ANI, btw. Dennis Brown - 2¢ - © - @ - Join WER 13:21, 27 May 2013 (UTC)

I tried Flow. Something I couldn't figure out is if we still have a talk page, with barnstars and DYK templates that we can archive and search. Also, I'm reading The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains, so I'm a bit distracted. Drmies (talk) 13:38, 27 May 2013 (UTC)

Spookily, templates were some of the things I brought up in my use case document as 'things we absolutely totally must have some way to support'. I don't know if that will constitute template support, or a better way of handling things currently dealt with via template. We'll see :). I know the VisualEditor team managed to get templates working this weekend, however! Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 15:10, 27 May 2013 (UTC)

I may have to save all my "you have been blocked" templates in a subpage. Drmies (talk) 23:48, 27 May 2013 (UTC)

I asked the following question at the notifications talk page that seems to have been forgotten in the conversation; would you mind replying here or at my talk? What if you added a "Did you click the right button?" option? I like the idea a lot, but given the link's location, I can imagine administrators accidentally thanking people when they're trying to click the (block) link, and the same is true for anyone trying to click the (undo) button. Thanks for your help! Nyttend (talk) 00:18, 31 May 2013 (UTC)

+1 I'd like a confirmation as well. Theopolisme (talk) 03:24, 31 May 2013 (UTC)

That is actually a good point I hadn't thought of. I can see the confusing and drama that would cause on the talk page of a blocked editor "Admin abuse! Taunting! Thanking me for editing just so he could block me!". Probably a simple box "Send a thanks for this edit?" would be plenty. A Clippy style popup might be too much. ;-) Dennis Brown / 2¢ / © / @ / Join WER 08:04, 31 May 2013 (UTC)

A confirmation would work well; I'll see what we can do :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 11:15, 31 May 2013 (UTC)

Thanks! I agree with Dennis' idea, but a Clippy popup was the first thing that came to mind :-) Nyttend (talk) 17:18, 31 May 2013 (UTC)

"It looks like you're trying to turn Wikipedia into facebook. Would you like some help?" Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 17:44, 31 May 2013 (UTC)

Like T.S. Eliot said it best: Good authors borrow, great authors steal. Wikipedia is nothing but the borrowed text and images from other people, I see no conflict in borrowing ideas from successful companies as well. Dennis Brown / 2¢ / © / @ / Join WER 19:09, 31 May 2013 (UTC)

Always wondered where that quote came from. In programming it is misquoted as: Good programmers write good code; great programmers steal great code. Eric S. Raymond stated in The Cathedral and the Bazaar (the open source bible): Good programmers know what to write. Great ones know what to rewrite (and reuse) Bgwhite (talk) 22:39, 31 May 2013 (UTC)

This idea would be helpful beyond the blocking thing that I mentioned earlier; I just thanked someone for removing important links from a page (a pretty egregious violation of WP:UNDERLINK) and am probably going to confuse him badly. Nyttend (talk) 19:48, 2 June 2013 (UTC)

Maybe we could make it a feature rather than a bug? Start screwing with vandals' heads. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 20:14, 2 June 2013 (UTC)

I'm opposed to an "are you sure" popup or requirement for a second click for this feature. I agree that placement of the link may make it difficult to get used to, but I would rather see an unthank option for the mistake clicks than a requirement for all thanks to be a two click process... Technical 13 (talk) 00:25, 3 June 2013 (UTC)

This blows my mind. This is a one click operation with an undo option. The user clicks "thanks". The system waits a full 60 seconds before sending the notification. During that time, the user can click "Undo" and cancel the "Thanks" notification. --Jorm (WMF) (talk) 00:44, 3 June 2013 (UTC)

I just thanked you for your edit, and then tried to undo, and it just asked me if I wanted to undo your edit. I can't see any way of undoing the thanks.--Gilderien Chat|List of good deeds 07:45, 3 June 2013 (UTC)

I can corroborate. I tried the same last night with the same result. Go Phightins! 10:17, 3 June 2013 (UTC)

Jorm, I personally can't see an undo button. There is an "undo", of course, but that's nothing to do with Thanks. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 12:19, 3 June 2013 (UTC)

No, I'm saying that's how it should behave. It shouldn't ask for confirmation; it should ask for an undo.--Jorm (WMF) (talk) 16:05, 3 June 2013 (UTC)

Ah, gotcha. That totally makes sense - although building it into the current UI could be problematic (there's a button called undo right next to it, after all). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 16:13, 3 June 2013 (UTC)

As I've said multiple times in multiple places now.... I think that two clicks for something so simple that some users may actually intend to use to thank for 25-40 edits a day is too much... That being said, I'm not opposed (as mentioned on the related bugzilla) to having it so that when you click (thank) instead of it changing to (thanked) that it instead changes to (un-thank) or (de-thank) allowing you to undo it if it wasn't intentional. Technical 13 (talk) 16:45, 3 June 2013 (UTC)

Hello, could you move the target of this to Work#Songs? Thank you.--Launchballer 20:07, 3 June 2013 (UTC)

I'm a staffer, and this is my professional account, so, ah. No :p. Sorry! Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 20:07, 3 June 2013 (UTC)

Then where is your regular account...!--Launchballer 20:13, 3 June 2013 (UTC)

User:Ironholds, but I'm not going to be using it today. Have you considered going to WP:RM? Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 20:21, 3 June 2013 (UTC)

Nope. In theory, this should be a simple addition of about six characters to somewhere it should redirect to in the first place. I'm going to find another admin.--Launchballer 20:34, 3 June 2013 (UTC)

Sure, but I'm at work and it's not something I can do as an employee. Hope the next admin isn't a staffer! Best of luck :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 20:35, 3 June 2013 (UTC)

Dear Okeyes:

I presume that the Thanks notifications are your project and I want to apologize for messing up your talk page with what turned out to be a digression. If you want to hide any of that discussion it is all right with me. I really was naive enough to think that the technical staff were there mainly to support the editors and I have never been able to deal effectively with those in a discussion who skilfully change its focus (for example, "I think this feature will be detrimental to Wikipedia." -->"Yes, change is difficult but you'll get used to it.")

I have something else that I want to talk to you about. I have been reviewing articles at the Afc for some time now, and I noticed that a lot of our time there is spent in dealing with articles with no references at all. I have some expertise in software design and human/computer interfaces (rather outdated Masters degree in computer applications, former network administrator, library specialist, software author) and I thought that I could help. I sought advice about how to go about this, and ended up creating a proposal for an added step in the submission process. I posted it at User:Anne Delong/AfcBox and started a request for comment at User talk:Anne Delong/AfcBox. Eventually the discussion was closed with mostly support votes. I then posted on Village Pump Technical and other places and contacted several users who seemed to have technical knowledge to get it implemented. While I have some programming experience in C++ and Java, I don't know Javascript (yet).

However, I have run into a perplexing problem. Whenever one of the coding experts looks at my proposal, they immediately think of their own ideas, which usually include making bots. I presume that bots are more fun to make than scripts. I can't get anyone to even look at implementing it, even those who supported it. Maybe I shouldn't have put the proposal and the discussion on two different pages; it's obvious from some of the comments that some people have seen only one or the other.

In the meantime, those who know how seem to be running around making constant changes, causing all kinds of strange error messages and glitches which gradually get fixed up. There are so many bots running around that I had two edit conflicts with them yesterday.

I guess I let my frustration boil over yesterday. I have really been trying to follow all of the proper protocols and as I learn more I hope to become an administrator. I don't want to be seen as a pest and a stick-in-the-mud, and I really have no trouble adapting to new technology, when I see a value in it.

Can you give me any advice as to how to get my proposal implemented? Or if no one is interested is this my queue to drop it and stop wasting my time?

Thanks. —Anne Delong (talk) 15:16, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

• (talk page stalker)@Anne Delong: I think it is less of an issue of people not wanting to help you, and more of an issue of the fact that this is a fairly large sized project and people don't have time, are intimidated by the scope, or are at very least still trying to wrap their minds around how to code such a thing. I personally don't know how a bot would work, and recursive templates just seems like a bad idea to me as well. The best option is for a JavaScript option that will help guide the user through creating an article and make sure all of the concerns in your proposal are met. This option will have to be enabled by default as a gadget for it to work in the capacity needed. That means it will need extensive testing and research throughout the development process to become a reality. Personally, I do not have that in depth of a knowledge of JavaScript or more specifically all of the MediaWiki specific library hooks and such that would be needed to create such a beast. The people I know that may are possibly, Kaldari, Writ Keeper, kipod (Yeah, I can't do the Hebrew spelling here), mabdul, and I am sure there are others, but those are the ones on the top of my head. Technical 13 (talk) 15:57, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

  I think Technical is likely right on this; User:Writ Keeper (ping!) is excellent at this sort of thing, and I know Mabdul has worked on AfC-related scripts in the past. One thing I must take issue with, however, is the idea that the WMF staff are not here to help the community. We are; my job, the totality of it, is having conversations with editors about what we're doing and how we're doing it. But helping the community is distinct from "we do what the community wants, and only what the community wants". The community we see and interact with is mostly power users who have been active for a very long time, and that's great when it comes to some changes - alterations to admin tools or core workflows, for example - and for pointing out problems with incoming software that would only impact highly-active users.

  But it's not so great at putting issues in context. Software changes we make impact all users, not just those with N thousand edits, and all potential users; with the declining number of Wikimedians, that's the point. Frankly, if we exclusively worked to make the lives of our power users easier, and only built stuff consensus supported, we wouldn't be able to effectively tackle this problem. I appreciate the issue you've raised, I do, but it appears to me to be an edge case; it's not going to happen that often, and I expect that it's going to be stamped on hard by the community without any need for technical changes. The alternative - completely disabling the software - means negating all of the benefits that it brings. And this is what I mean about context; that may appear attractive to power users, because a lot of the features of this software aren't primarily aimed at power users. The loss of the positives may not figure highly in their mental calculations. But for the ecosystem of wikimedians as a whole, this tool has the potential to be incredibly beneficial. So: I appreciate the problem, and if people can demonstrate that it actually happens in practise and can't be solved through social, rather than technological, means, I will look at a solution. But I've yet to see any evidence that it has happened, or that it will happen that often, and the only solution I've heard is 'get rid of it completely'.

  That's only workable if we only listen to the power users. And the community is meant to be so much more than that. So I take offence to the idea that we're not here to help the community; what we're here to do is help all the community, not just those who can navigate the village pumps. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 16:28, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

Yes, Technical 13, I have already asked some of these people; that's why I thought I would ask here. Okeyes is the first member of the foundation I have come across. (Okay, as I read that comment suddenly Isaac Asimov's Second Foundation comes to mind...) I am counting on him/her to either know who can do it or to tell me it's not practical and why. Either way I will learn something. (sorry this reply written before the previous one). —Anne Delong (talk) 16:33, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

Dear Okeyes: I was confused by your answer until I realized that you were referring to the Thank feature. Serves me right for mentioning two topics in one post. Please say more about my proposal. Is it practical? I don't think it's aimed at power users, and I can assure you that the situation that it is meant to address happens 20-30 times every day at the Afc. I have already mentioned it to the people that you suggested above, and (although you wouldn't know it from my behaviour yesterday) I am a basically timid person, so I don't like to ask them again. —Anne Delong (talk) 16:49, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

Heh, my fault for mixing topics in my reply, too :). It looks good! I think 7 options may be too many, however; have you considered dividing it into a simple yes/no/cancel and then having the "why not?" as a separate interstitial? Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 17:59, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

I agree. I started out with fewer and added as people expressed concerns. I was trying to keep from having another layer, but maybe it could go: 1st screen (1)yes, ready to submit (2)no I'll do it and submit later, (3) hey, help me out here. The rest could be an extension of #3. —Anne Delong (talk) 18:31, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

In my experience people will always want more options, yep. So, one of the things I built as a volunteer is the contact us page; compare that to the old version. One thing I learnt from that; people tend to like/approve of finished things. If you have endless discussions, there will be much bikeshedding, but implementing something that is better than the old system and then going "shall we replace the old system with this?" works much better. Then people can tweak it post-implementation if there are problems, rather than trying to anticipate all possible problems in advance. I'd suggest reaching out to Mabdul or Writ Keeper and just getting them to build it; see what people say after that :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 18:50, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

I'll take a look. Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 19:46, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

@Ann, Oliver: first version is out: User:Writ Keeper/Scripts/afcDialog.js. Test it at User:Writ Keeper/sandbox. It's not totally done; the choice of next step for the "I need help" option isn't done yet (right now it just goes straight to the Teahouse), and I'd like to add some stylins as far as position on teh page and effects go, but it's a good first draft. Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 22:14, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

Dear Okeyes: In response to your reply about WMF tech people helping editors, I must apologize if I have once again been offensive. I was just trying to explain why I reacted so negatively in the discussion yesterday. I wasn't meaning to be complaining again. Sorry. —Anne Delong (talk) 17:10, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

That's okay :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 17:59, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

...at User talk:DanielTom where they "Thanked" me for reverting some IPs on their talk page, so when the 2nd IP reverted, I restored to the previous state as DT clearly indicated that was the preferred state, then attacked me for doing so in an edit summary. Is there a way to show my notifications in diff form? I can't help but wonder if the user is using the system in a manner to create a false impression. Not sure if that is accidental or an exploitation and abuse of the system. Dennis Brown / 2¢ / © / @ 22:54, 8 June 2013 (UTC)

• Their comment since seems to confirm the abuse. I hadn't thought of it being used that way. Dennis Brown / 2¢ / © / @ 23:03, 8 June 2013 (UTC)

Dennis Brown, could you clarify your comments/request? On the bugzilla thread tracked to the right, I requested that some method for users in higher groups be implemented to confirm or deny claims of abuse of the feature. The method I suggested was that at least some users would have access to what edit was being thanked for in Special:Log/thanks. I think that is what you are looking for here, or that would at least be useful in this case. Technical 13 (talk) 00:16, 9 June 2013 (UTC)

I'm not sure what the best solution is, but I'm confident Oliver will understand the problem once he sees it, and have some ideas. Not sure if it was required, but I authorized any WMF or other editor to view my notifications at that talk page in a comment there. Dennis Brown / 2¢ / © / @ 00:19, 9 June 2013 (UTC)

• This seems like a pretty big edge case. Frankly, speaking personally, he sounds like he's acting...bizarrely malicious. You can totally see that he has thanked you in Special:Logs, but there's no way to see a specific diff; this is deliberate, and Technical 13, as I have explained to you, we are not solving for this. The negatives far outweigh the positives. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 03:06, 9 June 2013 (UTC)

• • This is one of those editors that manages to strike out at every admin that passes by, as to make them "involved". He has sent a number of harassing emails to Drmies as well, and while I'm loathe to do so right now since I'm about to leave town for a week and one friend is sure to cause a drama-fest over it, it appears they need blocking with email and talk page access removed. This editor has been an ongoing problem. This is a well documented case of "admin abuse" and several admin are tired of being abused. Thanks for the log tip. Dennis Brown / 2¢ / © / @ 10:48, 9 June 2013 (UTC)
    • No problem :). I wish there was something I could do to help; my suggestion, if they're engaging in email abuse, would be to report it to arbcom or someone. If people are arguing "OMG CABAL" having more names involved makes it less plausible that there's, well, a cabal ;p. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 21:22, 9 June 2013 (UTC)
      • No, it just makes it a bigger Cabal, and now you are implicated as a member ;-) DanielTom has now been blocked with email and talk page revoked. I never understood the whole "all admin act together" mentality. If you put any 4 in a room, you couldn't get them to agree on toppings for a pizza. There is always one that insists on pineapple or anchovies. Dennis Brown / 2¢ / © / @ 21:27, 9 June 2013 (UTC)
        • Which sort of lends credence to the argument that we're all soulless hell-sprites. Anchovies are the devil's topping. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 21:31, 9 June 2013 (UTC)
          • Case in point: No, eff you, anchovies are the best. Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 04:12, 10 June 2013 (UTC)
        • Can't we all just get along? I like Pineapple AND anchovies... Technical 13 (talk) 11:04, 10 June 2013 (UTC)
          • Simultaneously? Just no. Anyway, this conversation's been dead for almost seven hours. Please don't flog the dead horse.--Launchballer 11:24, 10 June 2013 (UTC)
            • Yes, Launchballer, and why are you poking me with a sharp stick? Actually, I don't care. Let this tangent die now... Okeyes (WMF), this likely doesn't get said enough, but I want to thank you for your hard work on this project and your consideration of my ideas (and ideas of others whether I support the idea or not) even when they are rejected. Keep up the good work. Technical 13 (talk) 13:56, 10 June 2013 (UTC)
              • Technical 13: Thank you very much :). I'm happy to keep doing so (which is good, really, because it's my job). Launchballer, it was dead for 7 hours....from 4am. Being, as it is, a communications mechanism that is asynchronous, that doesn't worry me too much. And Writ Keeper; well, you're a developer. We already knew you lacked a soul before you declared your allegiance to anchovies :P. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 15:33, 10 June 2013 (UTC)

Okeyes, you might be interested in WT:Notifications#.22watchlist_page_has_been_nominated_for_deletion.2Fmerge.2F.28mumble.29.22_notifications.3F where I mentioned you as well. If this is something the dev team wants to implement, I would love to be a part of offering any help I can to it. I can add it to the list on bugzilla also if you would like. As for the death of the thread, I live in UTC-4 so the timespan of which it was "dead" to me was from 12:12am to 7:04am. So, I would say it was "sleeping" more than "dead" Technical 13 (talk) 18:13, 10 June 2013 (UTC)

It sounds difficult to scale, frankly, but that's an engineering decision. I'm transitioning over to the VisualEditor very soon, so I'd recommend contacting Fabrice for new features suggestions :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 18:17, 10 June 2013 (UTC)

• DanielTom spammed more admins' mailboxes than is generally known. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 00:44, 14 June 2013 (UTC)

Hello. You have a new message at Patrick87's talk page. In case you actually wanted to communicate with me and not just "blow off steam" yourself. --Patrick87 (talk) 17:15, 12 June 2013 (UTC)

Hi Oliver. I'm rather disappointed in your long posting here. I appreciate that you are very busy and that memories may run short, and that your afforts are in the right spirit, but your (slightly off topic) descriptions of the Foundation's involvement in WP:ACTRIAL and Page Curation aren't entirely accurate, are they? I'll just remind that those two projects were entirely different and that one was not the Foundation's answer to the other. ACTRIAL was responded to by the promise of the development of Article Creation Workflow (since discretely renamed and partially archived, and even I can longer locate Brandon's original mock up) whose aim was to better inform new users / new, new page creators more clearly about (without reducing their editing privileges as requested by ACTRIAL which was supported by a healthy consensus) what they can, and cannot create here, and help them get it right, which would also have had the knock-on effect of reducing the backlogs at WP:AFC . Only indirectly would this have possibly reduced the number of new articles to be policed by the NPPers.

In spite of many promises - and the latest one AFAIK, over a year ago - was that the Work Flow project was being 'revisited' but appears to have seen no further deelopment since. Page Curation is an excellent tool (but only in the hands of experienced patrollers) but was also not exactly what the community asked for; it was launched after significant voluntary work to find solutions to improve the quality and competency of page patrolling - which have still not been addressed, and the issues still persist. The bottom line is that the WMF appears to usurp community initiatives, claims them for its own, and then goes off tangentially to develop what it thinks the community wants. I do realise that this is beyond your control, and that your brief (if I have understood correctly) is to coordinate such projects between the Community and the Foundation - which in fact, you do very well. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 00:37, 14 June 2013 (UTC)

I disagree with your initial assertion; ACTRIAL was most definitely the Foundation's answer to ACTRIAL. The sole answer? No, workflows continue to be, in my mind, an important way of triaging incoming article ideas, and one I'm sad we haven't found time to build yet; last time I heard it was the responsibility of Steven Walling's team, and I'd hope they're working on it since I'd very much like it to be available before the upcoming VisualEditor launch. But, yes, Page Curation was a response to ACTRIAL and part of the solution for ACTRIAL.

The problem raised in ACTRIAL was "we have a disproportionate time to patrol:articles to patrol ratio". The point of Page Curation was to reduce the barrier to patrolling by creating a more intuitive interface that makes it a lot easier for people to jump into patrolling and a lot easier for people to patrol; reduce the problem by (1) reducing the amount of time it takes to patrol something, through a built-in tagging and reviewing mechanism, (2) allowing for an easy way to give an article writer feedback so they don't make the same mistakes next time and (3) making it easier to get into patrolling, hopefully boosting the number of patrollers. It wasn't anything to do with improving the quality and competency of page patrolling - I note you saying that that still needs to be addressed, but I've yet to see any detailed evidence that there's a problem with it (if you recall, you made this assertion last time we spoke on the subject as well; I did pull quantitative data on the subject, but I'm not sure if you ever got back to me).

So, as far as I'm aware, my summary of Page Curation as a response to ACTRIAL was perfectly accurate; it certainly wasn't the sole response, but it was a response. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 09:50, 14 June 2013 (UTC)

It doesn't take rocket science to read and understand: '16334 total unreviewed pages (oldest: 93 days)' - so that part of it hasn't been addressed by Page Curation, and the number of active patrollers online at any one time hasn't increased dramatically. When I still have the occasional stab at NPP, from the front of the queue looking at what's left after the low habging fruit has been picked, I still come across a significant number of pages that weren't really too hard to assess, and checking on those that had been patrolled, there are still too many that have been wrongly tagged. I'm still surprised that a proper landing page after 13 years of Wikipedia is still not a priority; I'll be watching with you with great interest what impact the VE has on the newbs. 12:08, 14 June 2013 (UTC)Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk)

As said, it may still be a priority, go ask Steven. It certainly doesn't require a rocket scientist to understand "16334 total unreviewed pages", but data needs to be put in context; I think we'd both agree that number is greater than the ideal, and presumably than would exist with the addition of ACTRIAL. However: yes, there are 16,334 unreviewed pages (although that's now gone down to 16,095, by my count) but that's not a terribly good gauge of the value of Page Curation when one of the points of the software was to eliminate the 30 day limit to relieve stress - or to put it another way, the software was built almost guaranteeing a higher than usual number of pages worth patrolling. The difference now is that we're not missing any pages. Yes, there are 16,334 unreviewed pages - but that's not valid as a comparator against against the prior data, either, because that includes every page moved to the article namespace, which other reviewing mechanisms don't. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 12:28, 14 June 2013 (UTC)

The problem remains: who knows what junk there is lurking among those 16,000+ pages? It's my guess most of them are BIOS (especially one-liners about footballers) and probably some corporate spam. It takes a massive effort to get a backlog like that down, as a handful of us voluntary servants (including you at the time) did two or three years ago - which precipitated the initiative for ACTRIAL which resulted in the Foundation's offer of Page Creation Workflow, but their rude rejection of ACTRIAL. A proper landing page is the only answer and I'll ask Steve about it, but the question still remains in my mind: What does the WMF do with all the donations, and why can't some of the huge surplus be accorded to such important issues instead of to ill fated Edu projects? (just to quote a bitter example, the IEP which cost the movement a seven figure sum, and the nerves of a lot of unpaid cleaner-uppers). Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 03:48, 15 June 2013 (UTC)

Hey, just dropping by here at Kudpung's request. Regarding "workflows" and "last time I heard it was the responsibility of Steven Walling's team"... we've used the term workflows to refer to a bunch of different stuff in the past. I'm going to assume here that you mean article creation workflows. Yes, my team is most likely to pick that project up. We've been progressively working through certain feature areas that are essentially the experience of brand new editors, including account creation, feedback when you make an edit, and suggesting first tasks that we can walk new editors through. We haven't yet touched article creation landing pages because they're a minority of first time editors, relatively speaking. In any case, I just want to say that my understanding of the justification for working on Page Curation is precisely the same as Olivers. Many times I heard Erik, Fabrice, and others state that we were doing this in order to make it easier to deal with new pages, since we rejected the idea of simply disallowing new page creation by brand new editors. Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 02:22, 16 June 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, Steven :). Now that this is cleared up, Kudpung, I would hope that you accept the accuracy of my initial statements. The alternative would have rather negative connotations for how much you trust the words of Steven or I, of course.

In regards to your last statement; who knows what junk there is lurking among those 16,000 pages? Well, you, me and the rest of the patrollers, presumably; in case you hadn't noticed, "at the time" is not an accurate descriptor for my work on new pages. I would be truly amazed to discover that your guess, as you put it, is accurate; would you like me to run some quantitative data to accurately assess that? I am only too happy to do so; as you know very well by now, I'm sure, I do hate to rely on guesses when something more epistemologically sound is available.

I don't agree that the initiative I was part of - well, it wasn't really an initiative, I did it of my own recognizance - precipitated ACTRIAL. If you remember, ACTRIAL was precipitated by a proposal from The Blade asking for more patrollers, not any change to the workload. On the subject of data, could you please provide evidence of a 'surplus' of Foundation funds? Suggesting that we run a surplus is a rather serious claim, as I'm sure you must be aware, given that we are a non-profit. Are you referring to the education projects that are being spun off to a distinct entity, by the way, and won't be handled by the Foundation?

As final notes; if you want to know what the Foundation does with 'all the donations', you are of course welcome to check the regularly published spending reports and budget plans on the Foundation websites. And, while I wouldn't speak for Steven, none of the people I know call him 'Steve'. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 02:53, 16 June 2013 (UTC)

To avoid any confusion whatsoever, and to refresh memories all round, this is what I have been talking about. I will call Mr Walling what I like until he complains - at least I had the opportunity of meeting him in person, and he didn't object then. I 'm also not sure that your preemptive claims that I would perceive Mr Walling's comments in a negative light are appropriate - he has always proven himself to be extremely helpful and objective in all interactions I have had with him. There have been enough claims in the past that the WMF is not short of a bob or two, so I'm not going to waste my time digging for diffs; my concern is the dissemination of them, particularly the Article Creation Work Flow, of which a mock up was published by Brandon very quickly, and then just as quickly swept under the carpet. Brandon was at least on the right track with it, and as the actual response to ACTRIAL it was every bit as exciting as the Page Curation and I'm still surprised that no follow up has been made to it. Perhaps Steven can look into it more closely and see why the idea has been put on ice; I'm sure if he were to recognise its merits, he would pull out all stops to get work resumed on it. In the meantime, after all these years, NPP and AfC are still backlogged. That said, if you really would like to pull out some quantitative data on the NPP backlog, please do, I'm not afraid of being proven wrong - it's part of a normal collaborative work process. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 04:00, 16 June 2013 (UTC)

I don't think anyone was unclear about what you were referring to. Indeed, you did have the opportunity to meet him in person. Of course, you had the opportunity to meet me as well - I was at Wikimania and did several presentations, so my presence should have been known. If you are interested in coming up to me for a conversation, I will be at this year's conference too, which I understand you will be attending. I certainly never intended to communicate that I felt you would find Steven's statements problematic, I was merely trying to say that, with those statements, I hoped you'd come to accept that PC was a response to ACTRIAL. If you look at the original design document for Page Curation you will note the goals are stated as being, essentially, to reduce user burnout - which was the core problem people complained of when undertaking ACTRIAL - and that this came a few weeks after the discussion was closed. Hopefully this, along with the statements by myself and Steven, are enough to convince you.

I'm not suggesting that the WMF is bankrupt, of course, but your initial claim was that we had a surplus; again, this is a pretty serious statement to make. This is also distinct from having an income allotted to projects - governments, similarly, tend to have a lot of money allotted to projects, but that doesn't mean they can simply decide to pursue something regardless of other long-term plans. I personally do hope that Steven's team finds the time and resources to pursue it, but again, all teams have long-standing plans, and while ACW is important that does not make it the most important thing the E3 team could be working on.

I'm glad to hear that you're comfortable with me pulling quantitative data; it's something that, as you know, I enjoy doing. I will try to make some space for it in my schedule, and let you know if and when I have retrieved it. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 04:24, 16 June 2013 (UTC)