Wikiversity:Babel/archive/2014

Call for comments on draft trademark policy

Hi all,

The Wikimedia legal team invites you to participate in the development of the new Wikimedia trademark policy.

The current trademark policy was introduced in 2009 to protect the Wikimedia marks. We are now updating this policy to better balance permissive use of the marks with the legal requirements for preserving them for the community. The new draft trademark policy is ready for your review here, and we encourage you to discuss it here.

We would appreciate if someone would translate this message into your language so more members of your community can contribute to the conversation.

Thanks,
Yana & Geoff 23:03, 18 November 2013‎

Request for comment on Commons: Should Wikimedia support MP4 video?

I apologize for this message being only in English. Please translate it if needed to help your community.

The Wikimedia Foundation's multimedia team seeks community guidance on a proposal to support the MP4 video format. This digital video standard is used widely around the world to record, edit and watch videos on mobile phones, desktop computers and home video devices. It is also known as H.264/MPEG-4 or AVC.

Supporting the MP4 format would make it much easier for our users to view and contribute video on Wikipedia and Wikimedia projects -- and video files could be offered in dual formats on our sites, so we could continue to support current open formats (WebM and Ogg Theora).

However, MP4 is a patent-encumbered format, and using a proprietary format would be a departure from our current practice of only supporting open formats on our sites -- even though the licenses appear to have acceptable legal terms, with only a small fee required.

We would appreciate your guidance on whether or not to support MP4. Our Request for Comments presents views both in favor and against MP4 support, based on opinions we’ve heard in our discussions with community and team members.

Please join this RfC -- and share your advice.

All users are welcome to participate, whether you are active on Commons, Wikipedia, other Wikimedia project -- or any site that uses content from our free media repository.

You are also welcome to join tomorrow's Office hours chat on IRC, this Thursday, January 16, at 19:00 UTC, if you would like to discuss this project with our team and other community members.

We look forward to a constructive discussion with you, so we can make a more informed decision together on this important topic. Keegan (WMF) (talk) 06:46, 16 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Universal Language Selector will be enabled by default again on this wiki by 21 February 2014

On January 21 2014 the MediaWiki extension Universal Language Selector (ULS) was disabled on this wiki. A new preference was added for logged-in users to turn on ULS. This was done to prevent slow loading of pages due to ULS webfonts, a behaviour that had been observed by the Wikimedia Technical Operations team on some wikis.

We are now ready to enable ULS again. The temporary preference to enable ULS will be removed. A new checkbox has been added to the Language Panel to enable/disable font delivery. This will be unchecked by default for this wiki, but can be selected at any time by the users to enable webfonts. This is an interim solution while we improve the feature of webfonts delivery.

You can read the announcement and the development plan for more information. Apologies for writing this message only in English. Thank you. Runa 12:30, 19 February 2014‎

Amendment to the Terms of Use

Hello all,

Please join a discussion about a proposed amendment to the Wikimedia Terms of Use regarding undisclosed paid editing and we encourage you to voice your thoughts there. Please translate this statement if you can, and we welcome you to translate the proposed amendment and introduction. Please see the discussion on Meta Wiki for more information. Thank you! Slaporte (WMF) 22:00, 21 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Call for project ideas: funding is available for community experiments

I apologize if this message is not in your language. Please help translate it.

Do you have an idea for a project that could improve your community? Individual Engagement Grants from the Wikimedia Foundation help support individuals and small teams to organize experiments for 6 months. You can get funding to try out your idea for online community organizing, outreach, tool-building, or research to help make Wikiversity better. In March, we’re looking for new project proposals.

Examples of past Individual Engagement Grant projects:

Organizing social media for Chinese Wikipedia ($350 for materials)
Improving gadgets for Visual Editor ($4500 for developers)
Coordinating access to reliable sources for Wikipedians ($7500 for project management, consultants and materials)
Building community and strategy for Wikisource (€10000 for organizing and travel)

Proposals are due by 31 March 2014. There are a number of ways to get involved!

Hope to have your participation,

--Siko Bouterse, Head of Individual Engagement Grants, Wikimedia Foundation 19:44, 28 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Proposed optional changes to Terms of Use amendment

Hello all, in response to some community comments in the discussion on the amendment to the Terms of Use on undisclosed paid editing, we have prepared two optional changes. Please read about these optional changes on Meta wiki and share your comments. If you can (and this is a non english project), please translate this announcement. Thanks! Slaporte (WMF) 21:56, 13 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Speedy deletion policy

A user made a change to Template:Delete that represents a change of policy. The user had been revert warring over the placement of a deletion template, and was insisting that removal of the template required a custodian.[] In spite of multiple warnings and notices and requests to discuss the deletion on the attached Talk page, the user kept replacing it, until finally a Chinese custodian showed up and removed the template. It was already obvious that the page would be kept, because that custodian had already edited the page.

Deletion on WMF wikis is traditionally subject to community consensus; the default, if there is no consensus to delete, is for the page to be kept. However, speedy deletion is a way to quickly delete files that, uncontroversially, should not be kept, without requiring discussion. Administrators have no special right to make deletion decisions; but routinely make such decisions when consensus is clear, or is reasonably expected to be clear.

If any user considers the deletion inappropriate, there is no consensus for deletion, hence, traditionally, any user may remove the speedy deletion template, and if anyone still thinks the file should be deleted, then they may start a discussion. Following en.wikipedia practice, and except for very clearly inappropriate or illegal pages, administrators do not speedy delete in the presence of any opposition; rather, the page goes to Articles for deletion or similar discussion pages.

The template has always stated this. In discussion on the attached talk page, I had pointed to the text of the template. So the user changed the template! I have reverted this (and accepted one change that was obvious.) However, if possible, the community should affirm policy. --Abd (talk) 15:12, 17 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The user reverted my change again,[1] and has now argued for the change,[2] showing that he thinks administrators are specially qualified to make deletion decisions without community discussion. His change requires custodians to do "thorough investigation" before deleting, but speedy deletion is designed for deletions not requiring such investigation. His idea places the burden on custodians, exclusively.

He has shown by recent behavior that he will revert endlessly, if not stopped, as he was stopped on en.wikiversity.[3]. I have had a request open on Wikiversity:Request custodian action/En for days now, with no action. I now have two choices: abandon Beta to this disruptive user, or revert war. Because of the warning of David.crochet, I'm risking being blocked at any time, so I might as well at least attempt to keep the deletion template, widely used, in its previous state. Hence I intend to do that, until this matter is resolved. Please, Beta users, act to defend your wiki and your community rights. --Abd (talk) 14:14, 19 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The immediate situation was resolved when a custodian edited the template, making it clear that the change the user was revert warring to try to make was rejected, and protected the template. However, long-term, I'm concerned by the lack of response here and on Wikiversity:Request custodian action/En. --Abd (talk) 23:21, 28 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Changes to the default site typography coming soon

This week, the typography on Wikimedia sites will be updated for all readers and editors who use the default "Vector" skin. This change will involve new serif fonts for some headings, small tweaks to body content fonts, text size, text color, and spacing between elements. The schedule is:

April 1st: non-Wikipedia projects will see this change live
April 3rd: Wikipedias will see this change live

This change is very similar to the "Typography Update" Beta Feature that has been available on Wikimedia projects since November 2013. After several rounds of testing and with feedback from the community, this Beta Feature will be disabled and successful aspects enabled in the default site appearance. Users who are logged in may still choose to use another skin, or alter their personal CSS, if they prefer a different appearance. Local common CSS styles will also apply as normal, for issues with local styles and scripts that impact all users.

For more information:

Summary of changes and FAQ
Discussion page for feedback or questions
Post on blog.wikimedia.org

-- Steven Walling (Product Manager) on behalf of the Wikimedia Foundation's User Experience Design team 23:04, 31 March 2014‎

Disable local upload

Please translate this message as you find it appropriate.

Per Requests for comment/Disable local uploads on smaller wikis, Local uploads policy, Commons:Turning off local uploads and the licensing policy resolution passed by the Wikimedia Foundation, it is hereby required that "[a]s of March 23, 2007, any newly uploaded files under an unacceptable license shall be deleted", unless and until Beta Wikiversity decides to adopt a policy for non-free files. This is a formal notification/proposal to turn off local upload following the policies of other wikis (e.g. French Wikinews) and to redirect the upload link in the sidebar "Importer un fichier"/"Upload file" to point automatically to the upload page at Commons. This will not only comply with the licensing resolution but also enable better file curation by Commons administrators to ensure files are uploaded properly and clearly designated with a free license. --TeleComNasSprVen (talk) 22:43, 10 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Well, I think we dont need non free files.--Juandev (talk) 12:47, 20 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I thought we accepted some fair use, didn't we? Vogone (talk) 13:14, 20 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Well, I dont know if fair use is under non free term. Regarding fair use, I dont know. But some languages doesnt tolerate them as their legal system doesnt recognise them (en versus cs).--Juandev (talk) 13:25, 20 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I am personally also against fair use but I think it should be allowed here in case a test community decides to use it. And yes, fair use counts as non-free as it isn't allowed to upload fair use content to Commons. Vogone (talk) 13:32, 20 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Vogone, can you please clarify why it should be allowed here? Are you saying that Wikiversity language editions hosted here should develop a translatable test EDP page for Beta Wikiversity? I'm not against establishing an EDP here to satisfy the licensing resolution, but as Juandev notes it might be difficult to enforce properly due to competing Wikiversity content jurisdictions (which "section" of Beta Wikiversity falls under which EDP), and Beta Wikiversity has no clear audience (e.g. English Wikipedia's EDP is sufficient because it targets English speakers, German Wikipedia targets German speakers, etc). Don't forget because Beta Wikiversity is accessible by anyone, someone from Chinese Wikiversity, which might not have suitable EDP, might access a non-free file intended for Turkish Wikiversity's EDP. TeleComNasSprVen (talk) 22:50, 20 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

"Non-free use" is a general term that covers "fair use," a term that applies under U.S. copyright law, i.e., one may use copyrighted material in certain ways, without requiring the permission of the copyright owner. This is especially relevant for nonprofit uses, where, usually, the remedy of a copyright owner is to request take-down of the material. It's not illegal, fair use, at least not in the U.S, and creates no liability if a takedown notice is properly respected (and the WMF handles that). Another form of fair use is cc-by-sa-NC, ie., freely usable material but only free for noncommercial use. It can occur, easily, that such material is valuable for an educational resource. The English Wikiversity has an EDP policy, based on the English Wikipedia policy. Such usage under the EDP is to be, by WMF policy, limited, and must be accompanied by a "non-free use rationale."

Having said this, administering file licensing can be a nightmare. It can get extraordinarily complex; my sense of Commons is that even experts get it wrong, fairly often, or, more accurately, even experts can't predict what Commons will decide. Local argument on licensing is often highly misinformed. So disabling local uploads is an option, let Commons handle it, but that does disallow fair use and other non-free usages, which are permitted if we have an Exemption Doctrine Policy. Having a separate policy for each language here would be a nightmare, again.

I have proposed simplified procedures on en.wikiversity for handling non-free use; with the more complex procedures in place, the result is that license issues are often not addressed at all, until later, when someone -- usually TeleCom! -- comes along and points out that the i's were not dotted and the t was missing a crossbar. The user is long gone, and the resource will be damaged if the file is deleted .... The crucial interest of the WMF in its resolution on licensing is that any non-free use be "machine-readably tagged." That will allow a re-user to identify this material and make choices about it. Nonprofit re-users will have no problem, they will generally protected by the same legal conditions as we are. But for-profit users may need to do some work. And the WMF is trying to lessen that work by forcing us to do it. I.e, finding or creating fully free files, when we already have something we could legally use.

There is nothing wrong with the goal of free use. However, if that conflicts with the quality of resources, which is more important? We are obligated, here, to follow WMF policy, but we do have substantial freedom as to how to do that.

Frankly, though, I don't see that Beta has the community resources to make the necessary decisions, it has often taken months to get a custodian promoted, requests for custodian action sit unattended for a long time, participation in discussions is weak, and the community is balkanized. So I would not oppose shutting down uploads here. --Abd (talk) 03:03, 21 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Vogone, can I please get a clarification of your opinion, before I send this off to the developers? Perhaps Incubator would have a better structured system to deal with fair use files for their respective test projects, but as it stands Beta Wikiversity lacks many of Incubator's structured systems. That was one of the reasons to move it off and merge it with Incubatorwiki. IMO, as explained having a separate EDP for each language wiki might be cumbersome to enforce. TeleComNasSprVen (talk) 18:39, 26 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I am not a lawyer but I always thought, regarding fair use, that we Europeans are only not allowed to upload unfree fair use files but can't be made responsible for accessing (not downloading) them through the web. So I believe we could enforce an EDP and those test projects who intend to continue using it after they got a wiki with an own subdomain could apply it to their test and those who don't (probably tests used and accessed mostly by Europeans) could still refrain from applying it to their test. Vogone (talk) 18:53, 26 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Lithuanian namespace aliases

Just for your information: Wikiversity:Kavinė diskusijoms#Namespace aliases. In case you have any strong objections to this change, please note it there. Thanks. Vogone (talk) 11:05, 20 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

List of active users for a specific language

I think it would be nice, to have a lists of users who has knowledge of a specific language and has an account here at Wikiversity Beta. Its for those language versions, which are for a long time in preparation. If someone new, comes and he'd/she'd like to continue with development, this person may easily contact former or whatever person, who has skills in that language and invite them to contribute.

For example. I noticed that user:Kusurija, who works on Lithuanian wv, founded the category:Contributors LT and moved some editors of lt, he knows to that category. Of course, you may have a look on the lithuanian page histories and dig users from there. But isnt this user unfriendly?

On the other side, we use to have categories of congributors by language using {{Babel}}, unfortunately some of us, push to use Magic Word instead, which doesnt have such option. And the tool linked by Crochet.david lists all contributors, so if you import here pages from other projects, these users are on the list too, which according my opinion is not intended.--Juandev (talk) 12:43, 20 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I strongly agree with Juandev about that tool linked by Crochet.david is for this problem useless. Former {{Babel}} was much more useful. Properly working former {{Babel}} not being is great loss for some (maybe all?) Mediawiki projects. This not being makes co-operations very hard (also as for to find co-laborers). --Kusurija (talk) 13:09, 20 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

It's possible to enable categorisation for the babel magic work. It only requires consensus and a request on Bugzilla and I personally would support enabling that. Vogone (talk) 13:12, 20 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

If it will work properly, I strongly agree. If will not work properly, I'd not be sure as much. --Kusurija (talk) 13:19, 20 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

See e.g. my userpage on Wikidata or on Minang Wikipedia where #babel plus categorisation works perfectly. Vogone (talk) 13:22, 20 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I was wondering if that is an option. Yes, I think it would help. Even not all users use Babel on their user page it still helps. Moreover, we may ask newbies to use babel than.--Juandev (talk) 13:23, 20 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I'm very sorry, but I can't use bugzilla or IRC canals, as my PC is weak and crashes after joining. --Kusurija (talk) 13:36, 20 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I'm trying to understand what happened here. Juandev added the Babel template to his user page. David.crochet changed that to the "magic word," which creates a similar display, but does not add the user to language categories. Since I know that Juandev is also User:Juan de Vojníkov, I looked there, and see that his user page had the Babel template, which was changed by Crochet.david.bot to use the magic word.[4] These raised my eyebrows a bit, since normally the wikis don't allow others to edit one's user page. The bot made this change to 117 user pages.[5] Looks like he also made this change manually to about 12 pages that day, and may have made others earlier. There were also elimination of manual addition of language categories, replaced with the magic word, thus removing these users from categories they had explicitly placed themselves in. Was this change ever discussed?
If there is a reason to use the magic word, then the magic word could be used in Template:Babel, which could still add categories. And then perhaps Crochet.david.bot could replace those templates.... It would have been better just edit the template instead.
Okay, reading the documentation for mw:Extension:Babel I see that there is a configuration that adds the user to categories. Looks like this was not enabled here, a configuration error, I'd say. It is in LocalSettings.php. In 2011, the category configuration was moved moved from MediaWiki namespace messages to the $wgBabelCategoryNames configuration variable. I.e, up to then, any admin could fix a problem. Now it takes a developer, if I'm correct. (Vogone was right.)
A bit of bait-and-switch here. #Babel was sold as locally configurable.[6] Then that was changed. Maybe a good reason for that, but ... local control slips away....
Again, I don't know why this was an improvement, but if it is, and short of going to Bugzilla, we can handle it by using the Babel template with the magic word #Babel incorporated. The template would simply add the magic word, using the supplied parameters, and then the categories, using the same. --Abd (talk) 02:40, 21 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=64168 has now fixed this. TeleComNasSprVen (talk) 22:00, 24 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Vogone, general consensus in this discussion appeared to tend toward maintaining categories of certain speakers opted into the babel system before the new extension came about, in order to know who to reach when improving a certain language area. I'm not aware of any consensus for maintaining category "User xx-0", which is for users not fluent at all in that particular language, but I may be wrong. Can you please explain to me what needs to be done, and why? (And let's keep bugspam out, discuss consensus here.) TeleComNasSprVen (talk) 00:52, 25 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

See the initial request, the idea was to replace Category:Contributors LT. Since it is also possible to contribute to a project with little knowledge of the language (which -0 also stands for), listing these users in a category makes sense. If the decision was not to list "-0" at all then also the "User xx" categories should exclude -0 users which they currently don't. Furthermore, previously on this project created -0 babel boxes also enabled -0 categories so it makes sense not to change that in #babel. Vogone (talk) 04:34, 25 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

User XX-0

I am sorry. I am lost in the above discussion about user xx-0 categories. You are saying the previous decission of Beta Wikiversity community was not to maintain user xx-0 categories? Can you link that, we can read it, please.

On the other side, now I see I am set in category Category:User lt together with others, who speak the language? Does it make a sense? Maybe I should remove lt item from my Babel box not to confuse others and not to behave ilogical.--Juandev (talk) 07:57, 25 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I was saying, the bugzilla report was filed in response to consensus on this thread. However, in the code configuration change, "User XX-0" categories were set to false, meaning no such categories were created. Reading over this thread, I saw no discussion about maintaining "User XX-0" categories, or consensus decision to maintain them. Previous to this, Beta Wikiversity community was probably unaware of Babel extension. We could have "User XX-0" categories enabled if you want, but please tell the developers that it is what Beta Wikiversity community wants. (Vogone's arguments are quite convincing though.) TeleComNasSprVen (talk) 09:12, 25 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

In this thread, this was the proposal: "I think it would be nice, to have a lists of users who has knowledge of a specific language and has an account here at Wikiversity Beta...If someone new, comes and he'd/she'd like to continue with development, this person may easily contact former or whatever person, who has skills in that language and invite them to contribute." "User XX-0" categories were for users who do not have knowledge of a specific language, thus they were not in the scope of the original proposal, and were not created. If there was also consensus for them, they may be created. Note that there were some that existed before the Babel extension was introduced, at Special:PrefixIndex/Category:User, some of which Vogone had just deleted. TeleComNasSprVen (talk) 09:19, 25 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

"You are saying the previous decission of Beta Wikiversity community was not to maintain user xx-0 categories?" No, I'm saying I have not found a previous discussion about "user xx-0" categories yet. But if there is consensus to create them they will be created.

The proposal above was for "lists of users who has knowledge of a specific language" who could be contacted, but the proposal did not mention the "user xx-0" categories, which are for "lists of users who do not have knowledge of a specific language". We still don't know if the community wants these categories or not, but Vogone supports them. TeleComNasSprVen (talk) 09:38, 25 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I would be fine with both solutions either enabling User xx-0 categories or disabling -0 also for User xx. But the mix of both solutions like we are having it at the moment doesn't look right to me. Vogone (talk) 10:19, 25 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Well, this is Babel. Here we can talk.--Juandev (talk) 20:14, 25 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

We have two options:

Ask for a developer to change the settings to include "User xx-0" categories.
Delete "User xx-0" categories from Special:PrefixIndex/Category:User and remove from the Babel boxes of other users.

Juandev et al, which do you prefer? TeleComNasSprVen (talk) 01:32, 26 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Though I personally would never make use of a User xx-0 category, I think we should let users freely decide whether they want to be included in such a category or not. Thus, I prefer #1. Vogone (talk) 10:40, 26 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

If there are no objections within a week, I think we can resubmit the request to developers at https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=64168 TeleComNasSprVen (talk) 20:16, 27 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

That sounds good.--Juandev (talk) 06:46, 28 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

It seems like it was implemented already. Vogone (talk) 23:22, 29 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Media Viewer

Greetings, my apologies for writing in English.

I wanted to let you know that Media Viewer will be released to this wiki in the coming weeks. Media Viewer allows readers of Wikimedia projects to have an enhanced view of files without having to visit the file page, but with more detail than a thumbnail. You can try Media Viewer out now by turning it on in your Beta Features. If you do not enjoy Media Viewer or if it interferes with your work after it is turned on you will be able to disable Media Viewer as well in your preferences. I invite you to share what you think about Media Viewer and how it can be made better in the future.

Thank you for your time. - Keegan (WMF) 21:29, 23 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

--This message was sent using MassMessage. Was there an error? Report it!

Media Viewer is now live on this wiki

Greetings,

The Wikimedia Foundation's Multimedia team is happy to announce that Media Viewer was just released on this site today.

Media Viewer displays images in larger size when you click on their thumbnails, to provide a better viewing experience. Users can now view images faster and more clearly, without having to jump to separate pages — and its user interface is more intuitive, offering easy access to full-resolution images and information, with links to the file repository for editing. The tool has been tested extensively across all Wikimedia wikis over the past six months as a Beta Feature and has been released to the largest Wikipedias, all language Wikisources, and the English Wikivoyage already.

If you do not like this feature, you can easily turn it off by clicking on "Disable Media Viewer" at the bottom of the screen, pulling up the information panel (or in your your preferences) whether you have an account or not. Learn more in this Media Viewer Help page.

Please let us know if you have any questions or comments about Media Viewer. You are invited to share your feedback in this discussion on MediaWiki.org in any language, to help improve this feature. You are also welcome to take this quick survey in English, en français, o español.

We hope you enjoy Media Viewer. Many thanks to all the community members who helped make it possible. - Fabrice Florin (WMF) (talk) 21:54, 19 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

--This message was sent using MassMessage. Was there an error? Report it!

Status van Wikiversity

Dit Nederlandstalige bericht is geplaatst in De Kroeg of soortgelijke pagina op de projecten Wikipedia, WikiWoordenboek, Wikibooks, Wikiquote, Wikisource, Wikiversity, Wikivoyage, Commons, Wikidata in de bestaande taalversies Nederlands, Fries, Limburgs, Nedersaksisch en Zeeuws van deze projecten.
Dit bericht is in de eerste plaats bedoeld voor mensen die in Nederland wonen.
Voel je vrij om dit Nederlandstalige bericht te vertalen in het Fries, Limburgs, Nedersaksisch of Zeeuws.
De Vereniging Wikimedia Nederland ondersteunt onder andere het werk van de vrijwilligers die op Wikipedia of een van de zusterprojecten daarvan actief zijn.

Wat zullen ze tijdens Wikimania in Londen zeggen over Wikiversity?

Over drie weken komen Wikimedianen uit meer dan zestig landen bij elkaar in Londen. Gedurende drie dagen wisselen ze verhalen uit over wat er speelt op hun wiki project. Na Wikimania vliegen ze geïnspireerd terug naar huis, gevoed met verhalen uit de hele wereld. Welk verhaal over Wikiversity zal de wereld overgaan?
Vanuit Nederland bezoeken zeker 16 mensen Wikimania. Met welk verhaal zullen zij naar Londen gaan? Schrijf mee aan Wikiversity:Status van de wiki juli-augustus 2014 en help mee de tien punten op te sommen die Wikiversity nu tot een geweldig, grandioos, voortreffelijk project hebben gemaakt. Leef je uit en benoem wat het voor jou fantastisch maakt om mee te werken aan Wikiversity.
Nadat er tenminste tien punten zijn opgesomd die goed gaan met Wikiversity kan op Wikiversity talk:Status van de wiki juli-augustus 2014 overlegd worden over wat er minder goed gaat. Dan kan eventueel na die discussie een verbeterpunt toegevoegd worden aan de tien positieve punten op Wikiversity:Status van de wiki juli-augustus 2014.
Dank je wel! In Nederland is het nu zomer en zouden we geneigd zijn dit een zomerrapport te noemen. Het is nu op het zuidelijk halfrond winter en vandaar de aanduiding van de maanden in plaats van het jaargetijde. Ad Huikeshoven (talk) 12:57, 19 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

newer announcements?

Please see: e.g. Wikiversity:Announcements/En, last item from 13 months ago.
Feel free to add (e.g. from other Wikiversities' language template), ----Erkan Yilmaz uses the Wikiversity:Chat (try) 13:41, 7 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Is there a problem?

I see some discussion at English Wikiversity by a user from here who complains about (his) contributions here at beta being deleted, and other things. I have asked that user here to make/link some info also here, also posted a comment here: User_talk:Romaine#Why (so many) deletions?
If someone here has additional info, please contribute in gathering all pieces from these actions. Thx, ----Erkan Yilmaz uses the Wikiversity:Chat (try) 16:44, 18 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The user who is complaining doesn't do anything with the feedback many users (incl. custodians) have provided him over time. This includes copyright violations, harassments towards living people, creating pages about unknown people who do not want such, made advertisements for his own company, and much more. Here is a summary of what kind of problems there were. This also have been discussed on Wikiversity:Forum, the Dutch central discussion page. I also explained on my talk page the history. What I forgot to mention that the user who is complaining is very good in telling only half the story, especially the one which fits him. Romaine (talk) 17:43, 18 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I have another story to tell. In 2011 there was no Dutch wikiversity. Until june 2014 I was the only person who was adding information. My tactic was to write down what I found interesting. This resulted in more than 4000 pages. I agree that most of the pages were just a beginning but some learning projects were, in my opinion, actually quite good. The last couple of months we had some discussion about rules and all of a sudden a lot of pages were nominated for deletion. Regarding the future. In my opinion we should discuss about a vision on wikiversity. In think the wikiversity should be a place for learning (not only learning materials). For me learning is: having a discussion, giving your opinion and also about creating learning materials. I also believe that the wikiversity is about freedom. The learning circles/ learning communities decide how they want to set up their learning project. I asked Wikimedia Nederland for help in facilitating this discussion and I hope that people from other wikiversities will join the discussion. One of the questions is on which platform (wikimedia project) we could have a discussion. On this babel site? or can we create some sort of project page? Timboliu (talk) 05:42, 20 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Responding to Timboliu, your general vision is correct, as to the declared project goals for Beta, but you were attempting to implement it, more or less, on your own, and without experience and restraint. Beta was, in fact, designated as a place to develop general Wikiversity approaches, but the individual Beta projects became balkanized by language. As what may be the most active Wikiversity, en.wikiversity can develop projects on "wiki studies." However, it has never developed its own clear implementation of vision, because various disagreements often left proposals without consensus, in limbo, status unclear. However, in spite of this, en.wikiversity does have functioning processes and traditions, with reasonably predictable outcomes, and we can take the hint from what happened here and develop guidelines and policies that reflect these traditions to prevent future disruption. In any case, the issues and questions are welcome on en.wikiversity. The en.wikiversity community will not, as such, make decisions for other wikis and, ultimately, Dutch users will decide policies for a Dutch Wikiversity, which can be discussed here and even implemented ad-interim. --Abd (talk) 17:13, 20 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

(edit conflict with above comment from Timboliu.) The above (comment from Romaine) is a view, there are other ways to look at the situation. Any way that blames wiki problems simply on a user or set of users is unlikely to point to resolution; the habit of blaming users for problems is strong on the 'pedias. It produces only transient "improvements" that, long-term, damage the projects and the communities. So, here, by way of counter-balance, I will present a different view and conclusion. What I come to first is not my conclusion, except that parts of it do represent my personal views.

[later insertion, not included in the original comment]. The context established by what I have now bolded above was lost, and response to this characterized this as an attack, and pointed to alleged errors. Yet what I was presenting was an appearance, in some cases, not fact. For example, Romaine has claimed that his custodian candidacy was not the result of an off-wiki agreement, but was his personal decision. I have no evidence to the contrary on that, and accept his testimony on the common-law basis that testimony is presumed true unless controverted. (That is the same as the Wikipedian principle of Assume Good Faith). I presented evidence for the appearance, which remains that there was off-wiki communication over the situation here, leading to several new users who then brought a certain point of view, not experience with Wikiversity. Reality and appearance may differ greatly. --Abd (talk) 12:42, 13 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Wikiversity was started not only for the creation of "educational materials," i.e., materials to be used in a classroom somewhere, in "traditional education," which tends to be very formal and structured, but also it was created for "learning by doing" and nontraditional educational projects. In addition, by the university level, much education is collaborative, in seminars where students engage with each other as well as with experts and "professors."

User:Timboliu somehow developed a concept of what Wikiversity was for and how to use Wikiversity for education. He began to use it this way, and found that it was, in effect, allowed, and he enjoyed what seemed to be a great degree of freedom.

Looking at his talk page archive for 2011, he first ran into some fairly normal problems over copyright, discussed by a custodian, Crochet.david. They seem to have been resolved. Other issues may have arisen later. Copyright can be a very complex issue. Beta has no Exemption Dotrine Policy; the English Wikiversity does, so fair use can be allowed there. there have been some suggestions to fix this on Beta; however, Beta has thin supervision, and a decent EDP requires some level of supervision. Still, very small quoted snippets would not normally be considered to violate copyright, even without an EDP.

In 2012, David asked about the stubs Timboliu was creating.[7]. Timboliu gave his opinion, and David did not follow up.

In that same year, there was a questionable contribution in Dutch, Floow2‎, and Sotiale (now a custodian) asked about it.[8] Timboliu said "some contributions contain useful information and are not advertisement." Sotiale was satisfied, but Timboliu also volumnteered that he would consult the nl.wiki community. (Did he? I don't know.) The page was left until recent deletion. The user who created the page was User:Floow2Wiki. If there was a concern about that user or the page, the matter would normally have been raised on the User talk page. The user has no remaining contributions here, but Central Auth shows 13 edits. See commons:User talk:Floow2Wiki. Email was enabled. The pattern is not that of a spammer, but may show a conflict of interest. On en.wikiversity, we encourage such accounts to disclose COI and participate.

User talk:Timboliu/Archief 2013 shows no problems.

So, this year, 2014, the first hint of any issue with Timboliu's contributions appears on 22 June 2014, from Vogone, a recent Lithuanian Beta custodian (April 2014). It mentions conversation on IRC. Above there is a link to an email on Wikimedia-l, which was a response to query about this email, Jun 23, 2014. The response cherry-picks from Timboliu's over 32,000 contributions, and presents examples that do not necessarily violate any Wikiversity policy, but that could seem as violations to non-Wikiversitan Wikipedians.

Romaine has the question "how to act?" That is, a group of Dutch users wants to use Beta for a project, and it's allegedly such a mess that it cannot be used. It is clear what they did. They decided, off-wiki, to support the creation of a Dutch Beta custodian, who could then handle the situation.

Romaine had a handful of contributions to Beta, mostly to his user pages, but appeared June 23 with Wikiversity:Candidates for Custodianship/Romaine. The user mentions "problems," which problems are not what we expect custodians to solve except as servants of a community. There is, at this point, no backlog of deletion requests. There is no Dutch community, to speak of, except for Timboliu. Votes immediately appear, and within a few minutes of each other, there are six supports, a red flag waving "canvassing." Timboliu, probably unaware of the off-wiki conversation, adds his support five hours later, and four days later comes Ad Huikeshoven, a board member of Wikimedia Nederland.

Crochet.david waited until 25 July to grant custodian status. Romaine had already set the stage by creating Wikiversity:Forum for Dutch users. As of 15 July 2014, the positions had been laid out. One of the clearest positions, which is contradictory to the Wikiversity mission, is a prohibition of original research. Romaine asks, (Google translation) "This I do not understand. Wikiversity is to offer learning and making. When in making teaching materials something own research?"

This is a very Wikipedian view of education, where education only covers what could be in an encyclopedia. Real education operates in a much larger realm. Imagine a "university" where the only writing allowed is notably verifiable. Call this Encyclopedia University. A professor or other expert or actual researcher at EU may not present the results of their investigations until they have been notably published elsewhere. And even then, they should not do it, because of conflict of interest, but someone else is allowed. Given that most experts are professionals in the field, no course at EU may be taught by experts. Imagine a university where only validated and approved research papers may be submitted as theses. Further, imagine a university where you cannot keep your own research notes and allow them to be seen by others. (I.e., your user space is only usable for material intended for mainspace, as is policy on the wikipedias.)

So, as soon as Romaine was a sysop, he created Wikiversity:Te verwijderen pagina's as a new deletion process, for the Dutch community. He created a newCategory:NL verwijderverzoeken, which would keep the massive deletion process he was setting up out of the view of regular Wikiversity custodians, who might have freaked out at the appearance of over 5000 deletion templates. That category was applied through Template:Weg The template created a notice with a process: After two weeks, the nomination will be judged by a custodian based on the primary principles of Wikiversity, the guidelines and the given arguments. Given that this is all happening in Dutch, Romaine was setting up a process where he would be the only judge, and possibly the only custodian aware that this was happening.

The concept of deletion being decided only by sysops has been asserted and rejected on Beta and elsewhere. What sysops do is to follow community consensus. Here, a custodian has set up a process that might indeed show apparent consensus, but canvassed and biased and designed to set him up to do what he wanted.

Normally, page creators will be notified of formal deletion process. That properly includes talk page notification, which can be particularly important for an irregular user who has email notification set up for the user talk page. This was obviously skipped. Where many pages are, allegedly improperly, created by a single user, on en.wikiversity, there can be a generic Request for Deletion. It is not necessary to list all the pages. In controversial cases, a special category has been created for "pages created by User:X". However, there is even better process, less disruptive, if the user cooperates, which would have been likely here, and that process would preceed a formal RfD. There was no attempt to negotiate a consensus, involving experienced Wikiversitans, beyond Timboliu complaining on en.wikiversity, and he did not mention the sheer scale of the issue. He was given generic advice about deletion, and there was no hint of the real problem. He was also attacked there.

30 July was a question about research outreach. It did not include sufficient information to attract comment, there was no response.
August 1 he wrote that "On the Dutch wikiversity a lot of content will be deleted." In spite of over 32,000 contributions to Beta, he is a naive user, and has no idea how to raise an issue effectively. Given that everything was happening in Dutch, I responded to him with generic advice. He was attacked, with the same kind of "you forgot to tell" argumentation as we see above.
August 3, he asked a question about resources regarding "Companies and markets," and again got generic advice. Yes, there can be resources on "companies and markets." None of this addresses the real problem, a user who is not disciplined in how he creates resources. That lack of discipline is not uncommon, we see it all the time, and handle it without disruption on en.wv. The difference here was that this user was active for years without problems being seriously addressed.
August 14, Timboliu this time reported page deletions on Beta. He did not disclose the scale of the problem. This time I checked. It was, at that point, 1551 deletions, a very large number. On August 18, Erkan Yilmaz, who is also a Beta custodian, notices the process, and points out that a bot can handle mass undeletions. Indeed. However, this is the problem: most of the deletions are likely proper; that is, an improvement in process would not change the outcome. Back to what happened before this:

By 27 July, there awere 7 nominations on the deletion page. A new user appears, Kattenkruid, a Beta registration (no SUL), with sole purpose being the nomination of pages for deletion, no other edits. (However, this is likely nl sysop Kattenkurid.) This was the page as of August 9, before the first archiving. All requests were granted. This, however, was only the tip of the iceberg. It is difficult for a non-custodian to research what happened. There may have been many speedy deletions. Still, the current deletion log for Beta shows the last 5000 deletions having been by Romaine [9], for the period from 8/13 through 8/18.

So it appears that a collection of Dutch users decided off-wiki to attack the work of the only major Dutch contributor to Beta Wikiversity. They then created a custodian to implement the plan, and the Wikiversities, in general, would be vulnerable to a plan like this, because of relatively low normal participation. It has occurred before that process decisions on en.wikiversity were warped by canvassing, but I never saw anything this blatant. Conclusion: the process was abusive.

I wrote above that this was not my conclusion. There was a real problem: lack of discipline in how Wikiversity was used. However, no guidance had been provided. en.wikiversity is still a bit of a mess as a result of years of page creation with no guidance, we are gradually cleaning it up; one will see very little conflict there over this. Treated with respect, users don't complain, they almost always cooperate.

The problem is not original research, the allowance of original research is a feature of Wikiversity. There are issues as to how original research is presented. The overall neutrality policy (WMF wide) effectively requires that original research be identified as such and not presented as if it were a scientific or other consensus.This cuts both ways. Just as a professor in a real university class may present material without providing citations, the general consensus in a field may simply be presented in a Wikiversity resource without having to "prove" it. If there is controversy, Wikiversity will present the controversy in such a manner as to avoid making resources into battlegrounds. The allowance of subpages in mainspace facilitates this. Subpages may be attributed to individuals, and, in some sense, "owned." Just as someone giving a lecture to a class, invited by the professor, may present their opinions, there is no requirement that such lectures be "neutral." The context shows neutrality. These subpages are not presented as "truth," but as attributed opinion or experience.

Stubs without substantial investment in content are routinely deleted on en.wikiversity, unless they are part of a larger structure, where stubs may exist as placeholders to hold real content underneath. Most of the stubs created by Timboliu would deleted on en.wikiversity with little fuss, and the user might be "warned," we'd prefer to call it guidance, and it is presented that way. Timboliu would be guided by more experienced users how to do what he wanted to do without damaging the project.

The massive deletions do not allow ordinary users to review his work and suggest organizational solutions. Most of the pages could have been deleted without fuss, probably. Encouraged to do so, my guess is that Timboliu would have explicitly consented to deletion of many of the pages; others could have been edited to make function clear, and organized under some learning resource. Some might have been appropriately moved to his user space (which is a generic solution often used ad-interim on Wikiversity, and it is common that a redirect will not be created, or will be speedy-deleted, leaving mainspace clean. Custodians routinely cooperate with regular users in this process.

My own concept of Wikversity mainspace is that material that would be appropriate in a university catalog, for some particularly eclectic University, as courses, or special collections of materials, belong in mainspace, that scattered notes and stubs are not appropriate, and actually can cause harm. Much of Timboliu's work was not organized from the point of view of how it affects Wikiversity as a whole. He has started to create resources on en.wikiversity, and did some of the same things there that he did here, and he was guided, and has been responsive to guidance.

We do not build a Wikiversity through deletion. We do build it through encouraging users and the organization of content.

An example of a page that I've seen, Timboliu created a lasagne recipe, I think it was given as an example of his ridiculous contributions. How about a Cooking resource, with a Recipe subpage listing recipes as subpages, and cetegories of foods under that, and eventually coming to a Lasagne recipe. There can be discussion, correction, variations, comment, related resources (nutritional content of foods, relative costs), etc. There would not be a resource in a university catalog on "Lasagne." But there certainly could be resources on cooking and on nutrition. So somebody's "notes" could become a piece of an educational structure. It might take years before the structure is fleshed out, but it will do no harm.

I suggest the following for Timboliu (but see below). He apparently has exports of his material. He may import material to his user space here and invite review and guidance from others. I suggest, however, that he not import any page that does not represent more work than simply creating a stub. He should be careful about certain possible policy violations (copyright issues, for example, still apply in user space). If those stubs are needed in the future, they can be readily created at the point where they would be part of some overall educational structure. Creating lists of possible pages, which then appear as redlinks, can be done. If resources are organized in in his user space as page/subpages, then the entire structure can be moved to mainspace, later, with a single move command, if appropriate. He should be careful about creating many pages with inappropriate names, even n his user space, because this creates more mess to be cleaned up, and possible custodian work. So, first, he should himself filter out what might be considered useless material; the rest he may import. He should test any import to make sure that the pages end up in the right place, which should be as subpages of User:Timboliu. If he imports a few thousand pages, which he could do with a single command, or a few (I think there is a flood restriction) and has made an error in the command, this can create a very irritating mess to clean up!

Ongoing, the process created by Romaine should be defanged. Template:Weg template should become more like en.wv Template:Proposed deletion], with a regular full community deletion process being managed on a deletion page, only if needed. Usually such can be avoided. I see a purpose to having a single-language deletion request page; ultimately, it would be Dutch users who would decide policy for an independent Dutch Wikiversity.

I advise Dutch users to study how en.wikiversity manages content. It avoids nearly all the contentious process that can afflict the Wikipedias. The response above from Romaine attempts to scapegoat Timboliu for what was really a community shortcoming. Timboliu is not on trial here, nor should he be. On-going, as community consensus is developed, a user who fights against consensus can and should be warned and possibly blocked, but this is a last-resort measure, and from Timboliu's behavior so far, completely unnecessary.

Romaine, I strongly advise you stop deleting pages, you are involved, clearly. Setting up a process to find community consensus, that's useful. However, setting it up to warp the conclusions, away from actual Wikiversity practice and policy and intention, and obviously in conflict with an involved user, not good. A mess existed, a mess addressable by fairly simple and ordinary measures. It has been replaced by a new mess, that only sysops can handle, pulling possibly useful pages out of a large pile of deleted ones.

I have expressed my opinion here. Timboliu should wait for some community consent before going ahead with imports to his user space; and if consent is withheld, should continue to seek advice before proceeding with what may be disruptive. --Abd (talk) 17:01, 20 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry, but the onliest thing that has happened offwiki was one time the communication between me and Timboliu in what I tried to explain was going wrong, and second two e-mails of mine to the public mailinglist about the problems there were in the Dutch part of Beta Wikiversity. On IRC several people have only stressed their concerns about the "contents" added.

Sentences like "They decided, off-wiki, to support the creation of a Dutch Beta custodian, who could then handle the situation." are nonsense. No decisions about anything have been taken outside the project.

"He created a newCategory:NL verwijderverzoeken, which would keep the massive deletion process he was setting up out of the view of regular Wikiversity custodians, who might have freaked out at the appearance of over 5000 deletion templates." - This I would call framing. You assume/conclude things without having the knowledge of why such action has done. On all Dutch projects it is normal to have two deletion procedures: one for speedy deletions, one for deletion requests that need a longer review period and includes community feedback on the nomination. I have been looking at Beta Wikiversity, but I haven't seen a nomination procedure where feedback from the community is asked. So I was practical: I create one, after having this proposed first to our community! Speedy is used on Dutch projects for pages that can't be used regarding the goal of the wiki, copyvio, nonsense, etc, the feedback procedure is used for pages which contain contents in line with the wiki goals. Depending on the wiki, this is more or less strict organized/specified. If something is nominated for deletion with {weg}, but falls in the category of speedy, it often gets speedily deleted.

"After two weeks, the nomination will be judged by a custodian based on the primary principles of Wikiversity, the guidelines and the given arguments." - I am not sure how this is done otherwise at other language wikis, but this is very common on Dutch projects.

"Given that this is all happening in Dutch, Romaine was setting up a process where he would be the only judge, and possibly the only custodian aware that this was happening." -> At least two other custodians were aware of it. (Again you assume too much.) It would be strange to have a Dutch corner and let people from other languages decide about Dutch pages and guidelines. I have tried to do my work according the created guidelines, if I would do something wrong it is up to the Dutch community here to decide on such matter.

"What sysops do is to follow community consensus." -> That is what I have tried to do.

"Here, a custodian has set up a process that might indeed show apparent consensus, but canvassed and biased and designed to set him up to do what he wanted." -> Here again, making false statements about how I would think. Sorry, please go back to your own community, if they accept such accusations there it is their problem, but this is not a normal way of communication.

It is annoying that people who do not know what really happened, come from outside, make wild accusations, but lack themselves to inform themselves first properly. Romaine (talk) 18:30, 20 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Romaine, I'm not "coming from outside." I'm an experienced Wikiversity (former) sysop, community creator and maintainer (with many actions on en.wv and a strong habit of anticipating consensus there and working toward it), and with over 400 contributions on Beta, working supporting Beta process. Until the Custodianship request in June, you had 30 contributions here, and you still only have 155 (but over 5000 logged deletions!). You ask, please go back to your own community, when this is more my community than it is yours. This is Babel, not a Dutch page. This is an incubator wiki for Wikiversities, and it is not the property of a particular language community. I avoided getting involved with decisions about Dutch pages, per se, because of the language problem. However, the issue here is a general process problem, and has wider implications, and cuts to the core of the definition of "Wikiversity."

I presented clear evidence of off-wiki coordination in your custodian candidacy, above. No claim is made that all this was "wrong." However, it was definitely outside of wiki norms. Given how you just responded here, were this en.wv, I'd be starting a Community Review for desysop, and it would succeed, I'd predict, unless you radically changed your tune. But this is not en.wv, it's Beta, and you should have much more opportunity to learn how to cooperate and collaborate in building educational content and "learning by doing."

I understand there could be a language problem here. I deliberately presented fact ("evidence") and argument, as a point of view that could be expressed, with implications, stating that this was not my conclusion, necessarily. Those are no more "fact" than much of what you have presented about Timboliu, and that was my point. They are interpretations. however, are you denying, Romaine, that you came here with an intention to "clean up" the Dutch project here, by deleting what you considered inappropriate pages? Are you denying that this was a known plan among nl.wiki users and that your custodian candidacy was announced off-wiki?

I could present that evidence again, but it doesn't matter, unless you make it matter. I am claiming that you are involved, and I could prove it if I needed to. If, however, you recognize that avoiding the appearance of involved decision-making is important, you will simply stop making these deletion decisions yourself. Nobody is demanding that you undelete. Nobody is claiming that the deletions themselves were "wrong." And there is no emergency. Any legitimate deletion process can still proceed, and I'm prepared to support that, I know very well how to get things done on Beta, I have a history of it. I want the Dutch Wikiversity to succeed.

Please stop seeing this as an adversarial process, and instead see this as an opportunity for broad collaboration. I have suggested a way to handle the existing deletions which will generate educational value from them and from what was deleted.[10] If Erkan consents and acts, I will be responsible for that, and this will allow the Dutch community to proceed unimpeded. You get your clean-up and you can proceed to work on the educational content you want. Or would you rather argue and fight and blame? Your choice. --Abd (talk) 19:48, 20 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

"I'm not "coming from outside."" -> you come here with assumptions, false accusations, all totally not based on the situation here on this wiki. Also you don't understand Dutch, you don't seem to understand what happened, and still you think you can ignore the Dutch community here.

"I'm an experienced Wikiversity (former) sysop, community creator and maintainer" -> Than you should know better! If a community sets up guidelines, then you would know that you can't just ignore them because you think you are right. You can't ask another admin to do something for you, when you know the community has discussed a matter an agrees on it. And you certainly should know that you should talk with the community instead of acting above there heads, and there is no excuses for that.

"strong habit of anticipating consensus there and working toward it" -> Show me where you did that in this matter here, I haven't seen it! You start attacking members of the Dutch community, sorry, that is in no way working to consensus. You requested a custodian to restore all the deleted pages, without even searching for contact with the Dutch community here, and certainly not searching for consensus.

"you had 30 contributions here, and you still only have 155" -> Sorry, I do not have editcountitis. Also you know, as it has been said multiple times, that starting at Beta Wikiversity with all the pages without actual educational content is something which isn't considered a serious option.

"You ask, please go back to your own community, when this is more my community than it is yours." -> In the past months I have seen all edits that have been made by users on this wiki. Some edits were for some pages in foreign languages, the rest was in Dutch pages. Which community you are pointing at that is active on Beta Wikiversity? I see namely none in what you are involved... Also no edits here during more than three months and also no involvement in any of the foreign languages who try to build a Wikiversity here. You are clearly active on the English Wikiversity, I can't stress enough that that is another wiki and it is not this community here.

"This is an incubator wiki for Wikiversities, and it is not the property of a particular language community." -> I know, I am long term maintainer of Incubator.

"I avoided getting involved with decisions about Dutch pages, per se, because of the language problem." -> You clearly do not understand enough Dutch to understand a discussion, you clearly have wrong assumptions about what the community has thought/discussed/agreed on, and still you come here saying we are doing it all wrong, purely based on what you don't know and a users who is telling a sad story on the English Wikiversity in what he leaves out essential details. You don;t know the Dutch community, you don't know how they work, you do not understand what is the situation, you refuse to have a dialogue with the Dutch community, and you still think you can act over the heads of a community procedure...

"However, the issue here is a general process problem, and has wider implications, and cuts to the core of the definition of "Wikiversity."" -> No, the issue is that you think there is a general process problem. You haven't seen the deleted pages, you do not know anything about our thoughts of Wikiversity, but still you claim to know that we are cutting in the core of the definitions of Wikiversity.

"I presented clear evidence of off-wiki coordination in your custodian candidacy, above." -> You presented no evidence at all, the onliest thing what you presented were thoughts of what you think has happened, but I wrote in the message below already that you went to much ahead with your fantasy.

"However, it was definitely outside of wiki norms." -> No, it was outside your norms. You have a certain idea of how things should be, without realizing that things are organized differently in other languages.

"Given how you just responded here, were this en.wv, I'd be starting a Community Review for desysop, and it would succeed, I'd predict, unless you radically changed your tune. But this is not en.wv, it's Beta, and you should have much more opportunity to learn how to cooperate and collaborate in building educational content and "learning by doing."" -> This is exactly the problem, you act/think here like this is the English Wikiversity, while it is not. You think consensus on the English Wikiversity applies here as well, otherwise you would not have made such comparison. Also you still don't understand I respect the community when they agree on something, and in this case the Dutch community agrees with the deletions of the pages they have nominated. If the English community on the English Wikiversity agrees that sandbox pages in the main namespace there should stay, I respect their decision. But instead you don't respect the decisions of the Dutch community here. I don't like to name it, but you give me the impression that you want such reaction: If you had said the things in your message from 17:01 on another wiki, you would have been blocked for harassments and false accusations, if not an arbcom would have decided to block you.

"however, are you denying, Romaine, that you came here with an intention to "clean up" the Dutch project here, by deleting what you considered inappropriate pages?" -> The reason why I came here is perfectly described here. The number of problematic pages with issues I hadn't counted or estimated before, because I had seen some nice courses, I expected that only a small part of the pages needed to be deleted. Having now seen all the Dutch pages, I am very disappointed. I really had expected much more educational material. My goal was to "clean up" some problematic pages. I can fully deny that I am here to delete "what you considered inappropriate pages", as such should be determined by a community.

"Are you denying that this was a known plan among nl.wiki users and that your custodian candidacy was announced off-wiki?" -> There was no plan, nowhere. The onliest thing was the question how to solve the problems at Beta Wikiversity. On nl-wiki over the past two years, multiple people complained about the worse contents of Beta Wikiversity when Timboliu was asking attention for his work and request for more participants. At some point I received and noticed complaints from multiple people about Timboliu had created an article which they didn't like. For a long time I have let it go, but in combination that I was looking for a place to start up the education program in a serious way and complaints from people about pages about them, I started to ask questions with two mails 1 and 2, because something is needed if complaints keep coming and we really want to set up serious courses without having pages that would damage the credibility. This is all personal thinking of me. The only actual reply I got, was from a board member of WMF, with whom I had a conversation and it came clear to me that there is a need for a community and there must be an admin who understands Dutch. It appeared that some Dutch talking users were already nominating pages for speedy deletion, and it appeared it took a long time before they got deleted. At some point I thought, great that people are talking and thinking about it, but to improve an admin is needed to delete some pages. But I do consider it inappropriate to have some pages deleted, without a proper discussion before. To summarize: there was not really a plan, it was not announced on the Dutch Wikipedia (that is what I consider inappropriate, and many many more users would have been at the page for custodianship), I haven't announced that I am a candidate for custodian outside this wiki. As the problems in the Dutch part of Beta Wikiversity got much attention, also because some pages were nominated for speedy deletion by then already, some Dutch users have seen my candidacy in the recent changes and wrote about it on IRC.

"I could present that evidence again, but it doesn't matter, unless you make it matter. I am claiming that you are involved, and I could prove it if I needed to." -> There is no evidence as it didn't happen, the onliest thing you wrote were accusations without any proof including false assumptions.

"If, however, you recognize that avoiding the appearance of involved decision-making is important, you will simply stop making these deletion decisions yourself." -> I do not decide what guidelines we have, that is what the community does do. On Dutch projects it is normal that admins are involved in decision-making discussions, but in the end it is the community to decide and that an admin is part of the community. The same here. The deletions have been discussed for weeks, before most nominations have been done and before I performed those actions on request of the community. If I did/do something wrong, they certainly will tell me and I will act upon what they want. You ask me here to consider your opinion, which is based on misunderstanding and wrong assumptions, as more important, to put your opinion above those of the community, just because you think you are right, while you do not communicate with he Dutch community, while you not understand Dutch, even not with the use of Google Translate... Sorry, not you or any other individual user, the community is always right. Decisions are up to them.

"Please stop seeing this as an adversarial process, and instead see this as an opportunity for broad collaboration." -> If you really want to collaborate, you would already started a discussion with the Dutch community here instead of ignoring or going over their heads.

"If Erkan consents and acts, I will be responsible for that, and this will allow the Dutch community to proceed unimpeded." -> You just say: "I don't trust your decisions and I don't trust the Dutch community." Collaboration? It would be irresponsible to let a non-Dutch speaker judge on Dutch pages, while that person isn't able to understand the discussions and guidelines the Dutch community created. Also if the case arises that you think a Dutch page should be restored to the main namespace, you bypass again the Dutch community.

"Or would you rather argue and fight and blame?" -> If a user from outside the wiki, like you, thinks he can ignore the community and/or agreements of the community, that person needs help in understanding and learning that acting such way is inappropriate. Romaine (talk) 00:23, 21 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, there is a problem. And that problem is best described as substandard edits and articles written by Timboliu. A lot of pages concerned outdated news-messages. Another bunch of pages concerned totally non-notable persons, Beside that, you had a lot of pages concerned to programs/websites/management-thingies with a professional interest of Timboliu. Other pages were plain and utter nonsense or empty. Half finished pages might have some potential, but when two years old it is clear that they are not in view any more. Most of the pages I came across were rubbish. The Banner talk 23:50, 21 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

This is the problem

"I made two requests here" - In Babel you made things up, you are attacking me, I am sorry that your requests got lost.

"you wrote about "false accusations."" -> Yes, and incorrect statements. Examples:

"The response cherry-picks from Timboliu's over 32,000 contributions" -> I pressed random and all pages I got on my screen had issues. No "cherry-picks".
"They decided, off-wiki, to support the creation of a Dutch Beta custodian, who could then handle the situation." -> there was no "they", I thought I need to do something on my own. There is no "off-wiki", it all happened onwiki.
"That is, a group of Dutch users wants to use Beta for a project" -> A group of people wants to set up an education programme, one question which came up is "where?" I started personal thinking of Beta Wikiversity (where else?) and considered that if the education program gets more active, it needs a good place, and seeing all the negative comments on various places about the pages on beta Wikiversity, I thought something needs to be done.
"Votes immediately appear, and within a few minutes of each other, there are six supports, a red flag waving "canvassing."" -> That day some users wrote something on the IRC about the problems at Beta Wikiversity, went looking for issues and found out in the recent changes that I was going for custodian is something what actually happened. I did not announce it! That "Votes immediately appear" is not correct, see yourself and stop fantasizing!
"One of the clearest positions, which is contradictory to the Wikiversity mission, is a prohibition of original research." -> This proposal for a guideline was rejected!! Again you make up something! And yes, I do not understand why we should not allow original research, as this is a typical phrase from Wikipedia which isn't an issue for Wikiversity.
"This is a very Wikipedian view of education" -> You clearly do not understand what I meant, and then drawing such biased conclusion.
"where education only covers what could be in an encyclopedia" -> so far I know nobody has claimed such, you made that one up, again.
"So, as soon as Romaine was a sysop, he created Wikiversity:Te verwijderen pagina's as a new deletion process, for the Dutch community." -> Maybe it is fair to tell why: because nominations for deletion of pages with actual educational content should be community discussed, and not only just by me.
"He created a newCategory:NL verwijderverzoeken, which would keep the massive deletion process he was setting up out of the view of regular Wikiversity custodians, who might have freaked out at the appearance of over 5000 deletion templates." -> Incorrect. That category is only for pages with educational content which are nominated for deletion and (I think) the community must have a say in those. I can't decide for them.
- Also the hundreds of pages that got deleted were mostly nominated as speedy!
"and possibly the only custodian aware that this was happening." -> this is framing, and you make something up again. At least two other custodians knew this.
"Given that this is all happening in Dutch, Romaine was setting up a process where he would be the only judge" -> The judge is the community, they have two weeks the time to judge the nominated page, and afterwards I do the action for them. What do you expect otherwise? That the Dutch community wants non-Dutch speaks to judge Dutch content? (Like you did with terrible conclusions as result?)
"What sysops do is to follow community consensus." - That is what I was doing, you try to frame me that I have/had the intention to to otherwise. Highly disturbing.
"but canvassed and biased and designed to set him up to do what he wanted." -> I proposed it first, and then set it up. The way it is set up is the way it is done on all Dutch wikis and that works fine, for more than 10 years! Saying that I would have set it up to do what I wanted is a personal attack, and purely fantasy.
"Normally, page creators will be notified of formal deletion process." -> The creator of the nominated pages was aware of the nominations (was reacting many times), that is what counts. A bureaucratic way of thinking is maybe only needed on projects that became too large to see what is happening. Also I must stress that this is your personal vision, not a hard fact.
"There was no attempt to negotiate a consensus" - totally untrue, as there is one thing we did most was discussing and negotiating with each other.
"He was given generic advice about deletion, and there was no hint of the real problem." -> Also not true, many pages have been specifically explained what the problems were.
"He was attacked, with the same kind of "you forgot to tell" argumentation as we see above." -> So if he tells half the story and I say that, that is an attack? Sorry, not really. That is called a critical view on the behaviour. being critical about someone's behaviour is a need for wikis, otherwise collaboration among users is impossible. You mistake a personal attack on the person himself with critics on the way of acting, those are two very separate things.
"The difference here was that this user was active for years without problems being seriously addressed." -> Timboliu has been addressed with the several issues multiple times, both live as on wiki. Again you make this up.
"So it appears that a collection of Dutch users decided off-wiki to attack the work of the only major Dutch contributor to Beta Wikiversity." -> This is really shameful of yours, there was no "collection" of users, they did not "decide", and it was not "off-wiki", and certainly not with the goal of working someone off the wiki. You are multiple times violating the Assume Good Faith policy, an official English Wikiversity policy, but also on other projects.
"Treated with respect, users don't complain, they almost always cooperate." -> In the real world also users complain for other reasons, too much assumptions again.
"Looking at his talk page archive for 2011, he first ran into some fairly normal problems over copyright, discussed by a custodian, Crochet.david. They seem to have been resolved." -> We had recently a discussions and multiple pages and files on Commons which were created/uploaded with copyright issues. Your conclusion is not correct.

Based on the points above with incorrect statements, I demand from you an apology and a clear statement in what you take a distance from your false accusations and/or redraw those statements. Romaine (talk) 22:49, 20 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

It appears that Romaine wants to argue. I don't. If it is necessary, I will cover the issues above. However, I now know and am proposing what will handle any remaining issues, with enhanced consensus, so who was right is irrelevant to me. I have evidence supporting everything I wrote, which does not mean that it was "right." Indeed, some of what I wrote was, deliberately, about appearance. I could not possibly know, for example, since he didn't say so specifically, what process Romaine used to choose pages to talk about in those original emails. Given that I know some pages were not necessarily problems, and others had problems that were exaggerated, I called it "cherry-picking," which does not make any specific claim about level of accuracy. (He did say "random," but, then, some of what he wrote was clearly not random, and every page he mentioned was presented as if clearly a problem, to a Wikipedian audience that has no clue about what can be useful on Wikiversity. I cannot look at the pages themselves, because they have all been deleted. Romaine has seized on any detail, important or not, that he can contradict, instead of seeing the sense of it all. So he may wait for a long time for an apology. Request declined.
I saw a problem on en.wikiversity, where Timboliu came to ask for advice. He was attacked there, including by Romaine. It was completely unnecessary. Timboliu was using Beta for educational purpose, his own education, and was essentially left without guidance, and then, without a serious and sustained effort to work with him, he was attacked. Many serious charges have been made against him, and, now, the evidence is deleted. I think that an apology may be due to Timboliu, in fact, but I don't know enough yet to be sure about that. Regardless, I'm acting to support a recognition of what really happened here. I've done this kind of work for years, with success. It is not always liked. Communities, however, need fact on which to base decisions, and hysterical claims of "emergency," which this began with, don't help. There was no emergency. There was an absence of Dutch community, the basic problem. It was not necessary to create a Dutch sysop, inexperienced with Wikiversity issues, to handle that basic problem. Romaine has essentially deleted almost the entire Dutch Wikiversity, and what Wikiversities need are users who will create resources. Assuming that a cleanup was needed, it was not necessary to attack Timboliu, with accusations and imprecations which I'd rather not document.

Romaine has a concept of what the "real world" is like. It is not the world of a functioning Wikiversity project. What I wrote about how people who are respected behave is coming from extensive life experience, I'm 70 years old, I have 7 children and 6 grandchildren, I've been a prison chaplain and have worked with very difficult people, "real world," where respect is crucial or you can be dead quickly, and we have found on Wikiversity that what I say about respect usually works. Not always, there can be exceptions, but they are rare.

Romaine, drop it, this is not going to serve any good purpose for you, and it could cause harm. "It all happened on-wiki" is preposterous, as shown by clear evidence, and you have essentially admitted already the off-wiki discussions that led to your participation here. The evidence that I have shown, by the way, does not prove that you canvassed. Someone else may have. But it's quite clear that there were off-wiki events that led to a pile of support votes in your custodial candidacy, within minutes. That would not come from Wikiversity participants directly, not like that. And this may be moot.

To repeat, I made two requests of you:

Because of an appearance of bias, conflict of interest, prejudgment, please do not delete any more pages, but work as an ordinary user, which can include seeking and finding consensus, to advise other custodians about deletion. Please consider Timboliu's arguments, some of them were sound. Many were not, a different problem.
Please stop attacking Timboliu. There is no doubt that there were problems with Timboliu's behavior, and some necessary criticism, but there were other attacks on him that he would reject, because they were not true, likely, and that would then lead him to reject legitimate complaints mixed with that poison. He had an understanding of Wikiversity projects that was more in line with the original intention, than your thinking, but then implemented this in a very poor way, precisely because he had no guidance from anyone with Wikiversity experience. When he finally did come to en.wikiversity for guidance, he was advised, and he even did a little work there, and was cooperative. We moved and edited his work, and deleted some extra pages that were not needed. He did not create disruption there or here over the deletions. He did not ask me to come here, I investigated, and was astonished to see over 5000 deletions in a few days. I did not conclude that this was wrong, but then investigated the history, and found what I reported, which report may not be accurate in every detail, though I was careful, but you are looking for what is wrong with it, not what is right. And so you works yourself into a frenzy. Not good sysop material, my opinion, unless you are willing to learn. Learning, of course, is what Wikiversity is for. So, welcome to Wikiversity. I'd rather not get involved further with you, however, unless it is forced, because, unlike Timboliu, you do not seem interested in learning anything.

What I've proposed does not harm the Dutch Wikiversity in the least, and it does not attack Romaine or any other Dutch user. I'm hoping we are done here. --Abd (talk) 00:40, 21 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry, but what you do is protecting a user who created scrap-pages and news-pages without any educational purpose. The Banner talk 23:54, 21 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

"It appears that Romaine wants to argue." -> I do not want to argue, I want to correct your wrong statements and false accusations. Also I do not place you above the community, the community is the one who should decide, not a single (and also external) user.
"I have evidence supporting everything I wrote" -> almost nothing you wrote was supported by evidence. I clearly summed al the problems in your messages up.
"He did say "random," but, then, some of what he wrote was clearly not random, and every page he mentioned was presented as if clearly a problem, to a Wikipedian audience that has no clue about what can be useful on Wikiversity." -> You apparently have very low expectations of Wikipedia users, very likely because you misbehaved wrongly on the English Wikipedia and are blocked indefinitely there. The assumption that on the Wikimedia mailing list only people read from Wikipedia is a very biased one, which can be very easily corrected by reading the e-mails there.
"So he may wait for a long time for an apology." -> Very clear, you are here to harass the Dutch community and me, and puts in false accusations as way of communicating. If that is your attitude, don't expect to be taken seriously by anyone, certainly not from the Dutch speaking users.
"Timboliu was using Beta for educational purpose, his own education, and was essentially left without guidance, and then, without a serious and sustained effort to work with him, he was attacked." -> You haven't seen any of the deleted pages, and still you think you make claims that that is what Timboliu was doing here. Also it is strange you missed all the communication with Timboliu in what we tried to help him. But as Timboliu hasn't told you that, such never happened. But with this kind of sayings you make yourself ridiculous and we can't take you seriously.
"but I don't know enough yet to be sure about that" -> You know only Timboliu's side of the story, you can't read Dutch, you haven't seen any of the pages, and still you put up here a large mouth that you know how it should be.
"hysterical claims of "emergency," which this began with, don't help" -> only in your mind it was an emergency. Not for the Dutch community, we communicated and acted calm and sensible.
"a Dutch sysop, inexperienced with Wikiversity issues" -> You don't know with what I have experience with.
"Assuming that a cleanup was needed, it was not necessary to attack Timboliu, with accusations and imprecations which I'd rather not document."-> Instead you create your own accusations and imprecations, based on fiction, dreams and fantasy. The problems with Timboliu as I have addressed them are simple: he tells only half the story and we haven't seen him doing anything with the constructive feedback we gave him.
"Romaine has a concept of what the "real world" is like." -> This is a personal attack, you don't know me, you certainly do not understand me.
"What I wrote about how people who are respected behave is coming from extensive life experience, I'm 70 years old," -> You are never to old to learn, your writings here on this project need huge improvements as they contain many false statements and accusations. Your behaviour is below any standard of decency or wikiquette.
"where respect is crucial or you can be dead quickly, and we have found on Wikiversity that what I say about respect usually works. Not always, there can be exceptions, but they are rare." -> With the way you are acting these days you only loose the respect you had. If you want respect, you should behave yourself.
"Romaine, drop it, this is not going to serve any good purpose for you" -> Rejected. If you are attacking me, I will rectify that.
"as shown by clear evidence" -> When are you going to provide such then? We haven't seen it yet, we only have seen things coming out of your fantasy world.
"The evidence that I have shown, by the way, does not prove that you canvassed." -> You haven't shown any evidence. If there was any canvassing going on, many more users have been active with comments.
"But it's quite clear that there were off-wiki events that led to a pile of support votes in your custodial candidacy, within minutes." -> As I said, it wasn't me, but someone have mentioned it on IRC. I am more surprised that so little users added a vote there. Also you forget to mention that from the 9 users who reacted in the candidacy, 7 of them had done edits before my candidacy on this wiki.

To answer your requests.

"Please, also, refrain from attacking Timboliu" -> I have not been attacking Timboliu. The only thing I have written down where some critical views on his behaviour. Also I must state that, pointing at all the bullets above here, it is very strange you still think you have the guts to request this, while you are attacking me in a large row of lines. As long as you think you can attack other, I can't take this request from you seriously.
- How can you ask this anyway, this is again another personal attack: "you do not seem interested in learning anything". Stop that!
"please do not delete any more pages" -> You have been framing much, drawing conclusions that are based on your fantasy only, that such request can't be taken seriously either. My accountability is towards the community here, and not towards an outsider, who comes here attacking people, doesn't understand Dutch, doesn't understand the guidelines, doesn't actually understand what has happened, but still has a (too) large mouth here. If it is true you have experience, than you would have known that a custodian can't obey single users like you, but you know that a custodian is forced and obligated to follow the decisions and guidelines from the community.

Again: Based on the points with incorrect statements in my previous message, and new ones here, I demand from you an apology and a clear statement in what you take a distance from your false accusations and/or redraw those statements. As long as you do not provide such your requests will be not taken seriously and denied. Romaine (talk) 02:15, 21 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Abd, you have no clear knowledge about anything that has been happening here. Since nlwikiversity is a Dutch project and all pages are written in Dutch you cannot comprehend beyond your own prejudgement. Stop harassing the people who have taken it upon themselves to clear up the mess that Timboliu has created here.

You are ofcourse free to feel differently about that, but that doesn't change the fact that you came here with prejudice after a desperate cry for help by Timboliu. The only thing you do understand is that cry for help and the fact that there are indeed pages being deleted. With that knowledge you decided to draw assumptions which are clearly not based on evidence, but on what you believe to be evidence. EvilFreD (talk) 05:26, 21 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I did not come here with prejudice, and I, in fact, assumed (and confirmed) that Timboliu had made many mistakes. It is not at this point necessary to establish the facts of the formation of the new Dutch community here, but what is completely obvious about it keeps being denied. If that keeps up, I'm motivated to document it, but not here, probably, beyond what I've already done (with links, above.) EvilFreD's comment is all personal assumption and prejudice, itself. There is no fact there.

In any case, I've warned Romaine about what I see, and as I have warned sysops before. He'll make his choices, as will the rest of us. At this point, so much has been deleted that it's largely moot.

Why is the history being denied? That could also be obvious. If this were Wikipedia, what happened here would be contrary to policy. It is not contrary to policy here. So a group of Dutch users saw a problem with Beta Wikiversity and decided to fix it? So what? My primary concern is precedent, because I see Wikipedian concepts being applied to Wikiversity, which has a very different design purpose, that includes "learning by doing," such that much of what might be considered off-mission by a Wikipedian, with a narrow concept of "educational materials," is not off-mission, when the whole mission is considered. --Abd (talk) 16:24, 21 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

"I did not come here with prejudice"-> ow certainly yes you come here with prejudice, you haven't seen any of the deleted pages but still you have a large mouth. You haven't read nor understood any of the discussions the Dutch community had, and still you think to know how everything should be.

"what is completely obvious" -> in your imagination and prejudice yes.

"EvilFreD's comment is all personal assumption and prejudice, itself. There is no fact there." -> Sorry, to say, but EvilFreD exactly describes facts here, instead of the rubish you produce in this page. Let me summarize it for you based on the comments of EvilFreD:

"you have no clear knowledge about anything that has been happening here" -> that is a fact, as you only know a sad one side story of Timboliu, and you haven't read nor understood the many discussions which have taken place during the past months. You only came here after the deletions were completed, you haven't seen any of the deleted pages, but still you think to know better than the whole Dutch community.
"you came here with prejudice after a desperate cry for help by Timboliu" -> This is exactly what happened.
"The only thing you do understand is that cry for help and the fact that there are indeed pages being deleted." -> Also that is completely true, as you haven't read and understood the Dutch discussions/guidelines and you only saw this wiki after it was completed.
"With that knowledge you decided to draw assumptions which are clearly not based on evidence, but on what you believe to be evidence." -> I have listed above here under the sub header a too large list of wrong assumptions and false harassments. You can deny it, but it is clearly visible for everyone.

"In any case, I've warned Romaine about what I see, and as I have warned sysops before." -> You haven't seen anything happening, you haven't read anything of the Dutch discussions and guidelines, you only see your own prejudgement what is based on bogus. My responsibility and accountability is towards the community here and not towards an outsider like you who has absolutely no clear ideas what has happened. Nobody can take such warning seriously.

"He'll make his choices" -> on request of the community, yes.

"Why is the history being denied?" -> You mean, "why is the fantasy I dumped here on this wiki being denied?", the answer is simple: it is your fantasy which lives only in your imagination.

"If this were Wikipedia," -> This is not Wikipedia.

"So a group of Dutch users saw a problem with Beta Wikiversity and decided to fix it?" -> There was no combined decision to fix anything. The only thing that happened is that individual users got involved in this project wanted to improve it.

"because I see Wikipedian concepts being applied to Wikiversity" -> Where? The Dutch community has created different guidelines than the ones there are on Wikipedia. But that you don't know, as you haven't read the guidelines and haven't understood them either.

So again, you draw here conclusions you base on nothing more than your own assumptions and your personal bad experiences on Wikipedia. When are you intended to actually learn from your mistakes on this project? Romaine (talk) 17:05, 21 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Loaded question, eh? I learn from everything. What "bad experiences on Wikipedia?" Wikipedia is an encyclopedia project, which creates certain inherent conflicts, many of which have never been truly resolved. Those accustomed to working in that environment will bring, to a Wikiversity, expectations that are very different from the Wikiversity vision. The style of Romaine is very familiar to me, it's the worst of Wikipedian style. One goes over the post of another and finds a way to make every detail wrong. "If this were Wikipedia," for example, was simply a fact (if you read it in context). "This is not Wikipedia" is obvious, and I actually went on to say that. So why did he say it? Because he wants to make me wrong. It's obvious, it drips from every word. Enough! I still have work to do with respect to this affair, and I'll do it as I have time. The history of this sequence is completely transparent, it's all in the record, I have no need to repeat it. The wiki doesn't forget, normally. I write for the future. I have no need to convince Romaine of anything, I've warned him about what I consider quite obvious, what he does with that is up to him. Arguing about it is useless, does he imagine that he'll convince my with a barrage of assumptions of bad faith? Does that ever work? Or is he just grandstanding, preaching to the choir that he brought with him?
Okay, I'll assume a sincere question above. "Where" are Wikipedian concepts being applied to Wikiversity? I've given examples: no original research, for example. A tight understanding of what is allowed in user space. Notability requirements, perhaps. Neutrality by exclusion of opinion and point of view. (Wikiversity still has a neutrality policy, but normally handles it with inclusion and balance instead of exclusion.) Exclusion of self-promotion. Strong conflict of interest rules. Simple deletion as a common solution to page controversies. Each one of these could be a substantial discussion by itself. Really, Romaine, if you had any experience with an operating Wikiversity project, you'd already know some of the answers.
We at en.wikiversity have been remiss. We do have strong traditions and operating procedures, that work, that encourage the creation of content and organization and cleanup. And we have not documented this. So that's something I intend to support. --Abd (talk) 01:24, 22 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

"I learn from everything." -> How long does it take before the learnings of you get into effect, because it would time to understand you made here you largest failure ever.
"What "bad experiences on Wikipedia?"" -> You are blocked on Wikipedia and you act like Calimero.
"Wikipedia is an encyclopedia project, which creates certain inherent conflicts," -> That is not true, you are inherent to conflicts. Your actions on this wiki this month are nothing else than causing conflicts.
"The style of Romaine is very familiar to me, it's the worst of Wikipedian style." -> You are acting like a troll, that is the worst internet style.
""If this were Wikipedia," for example, was simply a fact" -> As this is not Wikipedia, it is an irrelevant fact.
"I've warned him about what I consider quite obvious" -> You have been warned as well, your behaviour here is considered inappropriate and not welcome.
"what he does with that is up to him" -> If you really had so much experience, you would have known that if you act like a troll, just as you do this month in this wiki, nobody takes you seriously.
"does he imagine that he'll convince my with a barrage of assumptions of bad faith?" -> I have no intention to convince you. If someone is making false harassments and wrong assumptions, those should be rectified, and that is what I do.
"Okay, I'll assume a sincere question above." -> No, you did not, you assume a complete fantasy world.
""Where" are Wikipedian concepts being applied to Wikiversity? I've given examples: no original research, for example. -> Oke, you are actually trolling now. You have been explained multiple times that that that proposal was rejected and that it isn't part of the guidelines the Dutch community created.
"Really, Romaine, if you had any experience with an operating Wikiversity project, you'd already know some of the answers." -> If you had any real experience, you would have known that your actions are futile.
"We do have strong traditions and operating procedures, that work" -> As said before, Dutch communities everywhere in the Wikimedia movement have a strong tradition and operating procedures that work.
But you didn't answer my question, when do you stop your actions that are solely intended to disturb a community process here? Romaine (talk) 06:05, 22 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

progress

My original "fear" has gone down, since I saw "both parties" chatting and also they'll be working together on some plan how to proceed: en: User talk:Abd#Good conversation with Romaine, ----Erkan Yilmaz uses the Wikiversity:Chat (try) 09:21, 22 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Letter petitioning WMF to reverse recent decisions

The Wikimedia Foundation recently created a new feature, "superprotect" status. The purpose is to prevent pages from being edited by elected administrators -- but permitting WMF staff to edit them. It has been put to use in only one case: to protect the deployment of the Media Viewer software on German Wikipedia, in defiance of a clear decision of that community to disable the feature by default, unless users decide to enable it.

If you oppose these actions, please add your name to this letter. If you know non-Wikimedians who support our vision for the free sharing of knowledge, and would like to add their names to the list, please ask them to sign an identical version of the letter on change.org.

-- JurgenNL (talk) 17:35, 21 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Process ideas for software development

Hello,

I am notifying you that a brainstorming session has been started on Meta to help the Wikimedia Foundation increase and better affect community participation in software development across all wiki projects. Basically, how can you be more involved in helping to create features on Wikimedia projects? We are inviting all interested users to voice their ideas on how communities can be more involved and informed in the product development process at the Wikimedia Foundation.

I and the rest of my team welcome you to participate. We hope to see you on Meta.

Kind regards, -- Rdicerb (WMF) talk 22:15, 21 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

--This message was sent using MassMessage. Was there an error? Report it!

Disruptive behaviour of User:Abd on this wiki

As Abd doesn't want this text below to be public, I add it here. The reply is on his message on his talk page, which is full of false harassments and wrong assumptions, but also applies on many other messages of Abd elsewhere on the wiki.

As long as you think you can act here with disturbing the community process by adding false harassments and wrong assumptions, you will be corrected.
"so I remove what I consider useless to continue" -> By such action you try to influence the public opinion by removing the critics about your words. Such is unacceptable. That it is in the history of the page is insufficient as nobody who reads it afterwards knows that it was commented and criticized.
"Romaine is demanding, that I go away. He apparently believes that he owns this wiki." -> You are disturbing the community process on this wiki by your actions and reactions containing false harassments and wrong assumptions. The only purpose you seem to have is to disturb this wiki. Users have been blocked for such. I certainly do not own this wiki, I am here in service for the Dutch community to prevent people like you damaging/harming this wiki.
"There has been no "attack" on the Dutch community" -> Yes there was, by you here and multiple other messages from your hand. Do you deny you wrote those messages?
"nor have individual users been "attacked."" -> A long list of your false accusations can be found on Babel, but also on other pages.
"he holds advanced privileges" -> Being an admin on some wikis is nothing advanced and are no privileges. Having extra buttons is only advanced for those people who do not understand them.
"at the same time pointing out a complete lack of experience with any Wikiversity" -> At the same time I pointed you at your complete lack of normal communication with any wiki at all, but you are still here. (But you have been blocked for such on the English Wikipedia.)
"following up or in connection with IRC and Wikimedia-l discussion" -> Again you are infringing my words.
"He did not disclose those prior conversations in his request," -> What happens outside a wiki can't have effects on the wiki itself, a clear rule on most wikis.
"Timboliu simply assumed that the "Dutch community" was now going to take an interest in the Dutch Beta Wikiversity project." -> Yes as Timboliu understands Dutch and he has read that Dutch users are interested in setting up courses.
"Timboliu did not know that Romaine had essentially defined him as the problem, and was coming here to demolish his study." -> My expectation was that there were some pages with a problem that needs to be fixed. I have not defined Timboliu as a problem. The onliest person on this wiki I define as a problem is you, User:Abd.
"Romaine wants no criticism, it's obvious." -> Criticism is fine, but I have seen from you mainly false harassments and wrong assumptions. Sorry, that is not what criticism is.
"Yet he has gone way outside of wiki traditions, and without any necessity, most clearly shown by today's actions." -> Your disruptive behaviour is outside of wiki traditions, but equal to your previous traditions of disruptive behaviour. That kind of behaviour asks attention itself. Don't blame me that I pay much attention to you, you have requested it yourself.
"It is blatantly obvious that Romaine is highly involved in a dispute with me" _> You made the whole community involved here as you attacked almost everyone active.
"the dispute being over two matters: my claim that he should recuse from deletion of pages here, having come with a predetermined agenda on that, and having participated in the creation of a "deletion community."" -> The only dispute here is that you perform disruptive behaviour which is clearly unwanted. I have accountability and responsibility towards the Dutch community, and not to you. You only know about a sad story and and started to fantasize.
"And, secondly, my request that he refrain from attacking users" -> As I said before, I did not attack users, I made critical comments towards the behaviour of Timboliu. You, Abd, were asked to refrain attacking users for example here, but you refuse. It is still a mystery why you expect others to do something while you don't yourself.
"highly uncivil" -> You still have the guts to talk about uncivil after all your personal attacks, attacks on the community, false harassments and wrong assumptions?
"Romaine's behavior in subsequent deletion actions shows that he had a predetermined agenda, and was not following community consensus" -> the Dutch community fully agrees that the pages should be deleted. As you can't understand Dutch, you are unable to make such claims. You are only here to disturb a community process.
"because there were examples where there was either no consensus for deletion, or there was actually consensus for a different result" -> You do not understand the deletion process the Dutch users are used to. You haven't seen, nor read, nor understood the discussions on the various talk pages and Forum about the various pages. You haven't read guidelines nor understood them. You are not capable of concluding anything based on what you don't know.
"Romaine, here, refers to the "same disturbing behavior" on the English Wikipedia. That's radically false. Essentially, he has no clue what I was blocked for, or if he does, he's stating it in a way that was never stated on en.wiki." -> So you are still in denial about your personal problems? Interesting, that is worth a research. The research question will be: how long does it take for User:Abd to understand that he is himself the problem and is acting like Calimero? Now you gave me an extra reason to give you special attention. I hope you enjoy it. But let me point to the Administrators' noticeboard on the English Wikipedia
- "Abd has been a disruptive presence on this wiki for several years now." -> I haven't checked the rest of the time here, but this month you clearly have here a disruptive presence.
- "This disruption is characterized by attempts to influence project governance in ways orthogonal to accepted modes" -> You do here as well.
- "placing huge walls of text inside collapse boxes which "you don't have to read" but will be referred to nevertheless as being accepted if not read" -> The collapse boxes I still miss, but for the rest you try to do this here as well.
- "a pattern of disruptive editing (including, but certainly not limited to, his communication style)" -> Yes, here as well!
- "massive communicative issues" -> Present!
- "one of en.wiki's preeminent experts in WP:IDIDNTHEARTHATese" -> Present!
- "perhaps the single most concentrated example of WP:RANDY, -> Present!
  - "contributions are edited away by Randy in Boise who heard somewhere that sword-wielding skeletons were involved" -> Abd heard a sad story, and then jumps in without knowing what actually happened. The only thing is, we are not edited away!
- "bad-faith edits" -> Present! Babel and other pages are full with that.
- "a manipulative wiki-lawyer and process wonk when it suits him" -> Present!
- "the games playing" -> Present!
- "long history of disruptive editing" -> I haven't checked the length on this wiki, but almost from the first moment you got in action, you started with disruptive editing.
- "problematic behaviour and a refusal to abide by community sanctions or modify their behaviour" -> Present!
- "a large net negative for the project, wasting a lot of other contributors' time and goodwill." -> Present!
- "shown that they are not going to be constructive, by the socking and documenting it on wikiversity" -> Interesting!
- "Seems necessary here due to many past editing problems noted by various editors above." -> Present!
- "Abd is wasting the time of other users and we need to make our disapproval explicit." -> I think it is time for that here as well.
- "It's time for his departure to become permanent." -> Idem dito.
It is clear Abd has a long history of disruptive behaviour.
"I made two requests here" - In Babel you made things up, you are attacking me, I am sorry that your requests got lost.
"you wrote about "false accusations."" -> Yes, and incorrect statements. Examples:
- "The response cherry-picks from Timboliu's over 32,000 contributions" -> I pressed random and all pages I got on my screen had issues. No "cherry-picks".
- "They decided, off-wiki, to support the creation of a Dutch Beta custodian, who could then handle the situation." -> there was no "they", I thought I need to do something on my own. There is no "off-wiki", it all happened onwiki.
- "That is, a group of Dutch users wants to use Beta for a project" -> A group of people wants to set up an education programme, one question which came up is "where?" I started personal thinking of Beta Wikiversity (where else?) and considered that if the education program gets more active, it needs a good place, and seeing all the negative comments on various places about the pages on beta Wikiversity, I thought something needs to be done.
- "Votes immediately appear, and within a few minutes of each other, there are six supports, a red flag waving "canvassing."" -> That day some users wrote something on the IRC about the problems at Beta Wikiversity, went looking for issues and found out in the recent changes that I was going for custodian is something what actually happened. I did not announce it! That "Votes immediately appear" is not correct, see yourself and stop fantasizing!
- "One of the clearest positions, which is contradictory to the Wikiversity mission, is a prohibition of original research." -> This proposal for a guideline was rejected!! Again you make up something! And yes, I do not understand why we should not allow original research, as this is a typical phrase from Wikipedia which isn't an issue for Wikiversity.
- "This is a very Wikipedian view of education" -> You clearly do not understand what I meant, and then drawing such biased conclusion.
- "where education only covers what could be in an encyclopedia" -> so far I know nobody has claimed such, you made that one up, again.
- "So, as soon as Romaine was a sysop, he created Wikiversity:Te verwijderen pagina's as a new deletion process, for the Dutch community." -> Maybe it is fair to tell why: because nominations for deletion of pages with actual educational content should be community discussed, and not only just by me.
- "He created a newCategory:NL verwijderverzoeken, which would keep the massive deletion process he was setting up out of the view of regular Wikiversity custodians, who might have freaked out at the appearance of over 5000 deletion templates." -> Incorrect. That category is only for pages with educational content which are nominated for deletion and (I think) the community must have a say in those. I can't decide for them.
  - Also the hundreds of pages that got deleted were mostly nominated as speedy!
- "and possibly the only custodian aware that this was happening." -> this is framing, and you make something up again. At least two other custodians knew this.
- "Given that this is all happening in Dutch, Romaine was setting up a process where he would be the only judge" -> The judge is the community, they have two weeks the time to judge the nominated page, and afterwards I do the action for them. What do you expect otherwise? That the Dutch community wants non-Dutch speaks to judge Dutch content? (Like you did with terrible conclusions as result?)
- "What sysops do is to follow community consensus." - That is what I was doing, you try to frame me that I have/had the intention to to otherwise. Highly disturbing.
- "but canvassed and biased and designed to set him up to do what he wanted." -> I proposed it first, and then set it up. The way it is set up is the way it is done on all Dutch wikis and that works fine, for more than 10 years! Saying that I would have set it up to do what I wanted is a personal attack, and purely fantasy.
- "Normally, page creators will be notified of formal deletion process." -> The creator of the nominated pages was aware of the nominations (was reacting many times), that is what counts. A bureaucratic way of thinking is maybe only needed on projects that became too large to see what is happening. Also I must stress that this is your personal vision, not a hard fact.
- "There was no attempt to negotiate a consensus" - totally untrue, as there is one thing we did most was discussing and negotiating with each other.
- "He was given generic advice about deletion, and there was no hint of the real problem." -> Also not true, many pages have been specifically explained what the problems were.
- "He was attacked, with the same kind of "you forgot to tell" argumentation as we see above." -> So if he tells half the story and I say that, that is an attack? Sorry, not really. That is called a critical view on the behaviour. being critical about someone's behaviour is a need for wikis, otherwise collaboration among users is impossible. You mistake a personal attack on the person himself with critics on the way of acting, those are two very separate things.
- "The difference here was that this user was active for years without problems being seriously addressed." -> Timboliu has been addressed with the several issues multiple times, both live as on wiki. Again you make this up.
- "So it appears that a collection of Dutch users decided off-wiki to attack the work of the only major Dutch contributor to Beta Wikiversity." -> This is really shameful of yours, there was no "collection" of users, they did not "decide", and it was not "off-wiki", and certainly not with the goal of working someone off the wiki. You are multiple times violating the Assume Good Faith policy, an official English Wikiversity policy, but also on other projects.
- "Treated with respect, users don't complain, they almost always cooperate." -> In the real world also users complain for other reasons, too much assumptions again.
- "Looking at his talk page archive for 2011, he first ran into some fairly normal problems over copyright, discussed by a custodian, Crochet.david. They seem to have been resolved." -> We had recently a discussions and multiple pages and files on Commons which were created/uploaded with copyright issues. Your conclusion is not correct.
Based on the points above with incorrect statements, false harassments and wrong assumptions, you are here waste of everybody's time and not welcome as long you conduct this disturbing behaviour. Romaine (talk) 19:26, 22 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]
- PS: Messages of Abd are not welcome here. Romaine (talk) 22:46, 22 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I responded to Romaine, briefly, in this position, with [11]. Romaine reverted that with the edit summary, (Undo revision 162763 by Abd (talk) sorry, if you tink you can censor my messages, yours shouldn't be here either) I have not censored any messages. Romaine has confused the right of a user to maintain their own talk page, with the much more restricted right of users to remove comments from others from community pages. Now that a Request for custodian action has been filed, and has a response, perhaps everyone will calm down and actually start working on the wiki. I see the comments below (which were added after my original response) and may respond to them separately. --Abd (talk) 22:33, 22 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Romaine continued to revert war to remove my comment; this was mentioned as a problem on Wikiversity:Request custodian action by a neutral custodian. I stopped reverting him to avoid further disruption, for a week, as suggested on my Talk page by that custodian. However, the removal was very much improper and I have now restored my comment. Romaine stopped all disruptive activity, as far as I know. There are overall policy issues raised by this sequence of events, which will be dealt with gradually and carefully. I may comment below, or not, most of the angry charges and claims are dead letter now. Let's hope they stay that way. --Abd (talk) 00:19, 1 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

It is far more likely that he was so annoyed by your disruptive behaviour that he took a wikibreak. That is the chilling effect that your disruptive behaviour has on others here. The Banner talk 00:29, 1 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

He asked you to stop your provocative responses.[12]. However, apparently based on an IRC conversation between Romaine and Vogone, Vogone warned him, requesting he "stop any kind of off-wiki and on-wiki harrassment, no matter against whom."[13]. Romaine reverted without comment (which, in spite of the position Romaine took about my reverting him on my own talk page, was totally proper, it means he read it). Romaine had already stopped harassment, what I later reported of his comments was not about harassment, but about project policy.

I wrote to Vogone about that warning, pointing out that Romaine had stopped anything that looked like harassment.[14]

There was no hazard to Romaine in that warning from doing any ordinary work on the Dutch Wikiversity, it would only refer to action outside of the NL project. So if he has stopped, it wouldn't be from my behavior, though it might have to do with the warning. But he did continue to edit after that warning, concerned about process issues.[15].

It would be just as likely that he stopped editing because he was disgusted with the user he had to work with: you, refusing to follow his advice to stop provocations. You reverted your most provocative comment here,[16] which was sane. But the edit summary, referring to trolls, then made it worse, which is why I took this back to WV:Request custodian action for an update. Just stop it, The Banner! Nobody is going after you. I requested you be warned, not blocked. If you stop, that's the end of it.

Again, "what disruptive behavior?" You make that claim, but you don't point to it. What was allegedly disruptive, so that I may review it and possibly retract or apologize, or so that others may assess the edits, warn me, etc.?

Or don't respond, just drop it as Romaine suggested! I'm not like some, I am not demanding an apology. But attacking constructive comments as if they were insults, no, don't expect me to tolerate that when I see it coming from anyone. It's not personal! --Abd (talk) 01:54, 1 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

You know quite well that you are following people around and are harassing them. Your dodgy understanding of the Dutch language (through Google translate, as far as I remember, and that is a rotten translator) and claiming all kinds of fantastic things that we would have been writing. If you want to make a positive commitment, start writing content in Dutch. The Banner talk 10:03, 1 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

No evidence of "harassment" has been shown anywhere. It might be arguable that I was "uncivil," but this could be a cultural difference. Certain users consider any provision of helpful advice to be "arrogant" or "patronizing" or "harassment," and also consider normal review of editor activity, part of how the community manages a wiki, to be "stalking," here called "following people around." However, I have made isolated edits to Dutch user talk pages, nothing that could rise to the level of harassment. I have not reverted the comments of Dutch users, other than on my own user talk page, after attempted civil discussion failed. On the other hand, there are the edits following. Any one of them alone would not be harassment, or even a few might not, but the repeated pattern would be, and that could be why Vogone warned Romaine. The Banner was initially encouraged by Romaine, but then Romaine saw the damage being done and asked The Banner to stop. He has not stopped. So following is the harassment; this is not a complaint, but is placing what The Banner alleges in context. Only one editor has continued the pattern of behavior, The Banner.

Evidence

What I was working on, which only began to assess my being harassed by certain Dutch users, will be recorded here but self-reverted. It's incomplete, it only assessed Romaine's behavior, which is now, for the time being, moot, only establishing that I was harassed (as many already knew.) I would then have covered The Banner's behavior, but that will only be necessary if The Banner continues harassment and disruption. --Abd (talk) 16:36, 1 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Reading this I cannot help but feel worried about all of this. On one hand we have a user who was using beta for his own personal interests, rather than adding material for the benefit of the project and on the other hand we have someone who is utterly clueless about anything that happened in regards to the nlwikiversity project, but deceided to step in after a (now absolete) cry for help by first mentioned person. Timboliu, who did not seem to understand why his addings were being removed, now seems to have gained enough understanding about the project to be concidered a potentially worthfull contributor, rendering previous troublesome editing of his a passed issue. Abd however, upon reading mentioned cry for help still is in the process of making false accusations and assumptions based on his prejudice. He's attacking any and all users who took it upon them to clear up the mess that was created by Timboliu. He did not bother to verify the story of Timboliu with other users. He neglected to assume good faith, but instead assumed bad faith in any of the other Dutch users, even assuming their actions were an orchestrated attack on Timboliu. Had he done any research prior to his accusations, he would have known that Timboliu evoked the streissandeffect upon himself and his "project" by bringing it to the attention of the nlwiki community.

Rather than being part of the solution, Abd, by exclusion, is part of the problem and may very well be the only remaining problem, seeing as Timboliu may no longer be concidered a problem. As a matter of fact, Abd forms a problem that is importing itself from the old and absolete nlwikiversity to the next iteration of the project. And even if Timboliu were to remain a problem, Abd should be considered a maleficent troll if he chooses to disrupt the Dutch community any longer. Seeing as he doesn't even understand Dutch (which is basically obligatory to understand any part of (the history of) nlwikiversity), but chose to attack Dutch users based on wild accusiations and false assumptions, his actions remain worrysome, as they are disruptive and withholding any efforts to start building on a Dutch wikiversity. EvilFreD (talk) 20:46, 22 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

(after edit conflict) In all honesty I didn't care to read up on everything leading to this message (it would please me a lot if you all could write shorter and more to the point replies). From what I understand, user Abd's main problems are with the mass deletion of over 5000 pages created primarily by user Timboliu and the way the deletion process is set up. I also see accusations of canvassing and a conspiracy behind Romaine's custodianship.

Let me first state that in my opinion, even though different languages are hosted on beta-wikiversity, this does not mean the Dutch community cannot set up its own deletion policy. I don't know how this is done on other projects, but on Dutch projects like the Dutch Wikipedia (which I fully understand is not the same as Wikiversity, just so), deletion (and deciding not to delete) is a sysop prerogative. While he takes into account input from the community, it is up to the sysop to decide. It is also very normal to have two ways to request deletion: speedy or deletion discussion. On the Dutch Wikipedia we do not have a process similar to "proposed deletion", nor do I think it is necessary to implement such a policy on the Dutch Wikiversity. If anything, deletion discussion limits rather than expands the power of a custodian, as whether or not a page qualifies for speedy deletion has to be interpreted strictly.

Given community consensus on the deletion of the pages, undeleting them is, in my opinion, out of the question. I say this having seen almost all of the deleted pages and having come to the conclusion that they absolutely lack educational value. It is definitely not up to an outsider who does not comprehend the Dutch language to review all deletions. We have placed our trust in Romaine as a custodian and expect him to abide by the guidelines we set up. All deleted pages have been nominated by a member of the Dutch community. If we have reason to suspect Romaine has abused his tools - which we do not - we will request desysop. Under no circumstance will we have an outsider review all the decisions he has made.

Concerning finally the custodianship itself. The Dutch Wikiversity has for some time been subject of discussion on our IRC channel (#wikipedia-nl). There has, however, never been a plan to attribute custodianship to Romaine with the goal of breaking down the Dutch Wikiversity. It was his personal decision to submit a candidacy while some users, myself including, were already nominating pages for speedy deletion (primarily empty pages or pages with copyright problems), which were handled by Vogone at the time. It was only after Romaine became a custodian that a second deletion process, modeled after the deletion process on the Dutch Wikipedia, was set up and other users started participating.

I am convinced that the deletion of all these pages was absolutely necessary and that we needed a fresh start if we ever wanted the Dutch Wikiversity to become an independent language version. I am of the belief that the content as it was was deterring potential users from participating in a constructive manner. Rather than undeleting all these pages (again, out of the question if you ask me), I believe it is now time to focus on creating an infrastructure and actual content.

I apologize if any of my assumptions are wrong, but as I said, I do not have the patience to read up on everything that was said so far. Woodcutterty (talk) 20:56, 22 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

PS: Abd is not welcome here. Romaine (talk) 22:42, 22 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

There are many problems with the above comments, but I'm not correcting them here, because I see it as serving no useful purpose now. The complaints here were taken to Wikiversity:Request custodian action and a counterclaim was filed. One user was definitively warned (Romaine). The request that I be blocked and a request that The Banner be warned are still technically pending, with expressed custodian opinion that I should not be blocked, and the matter of The Banner not having been addressed. If provocations stop, further action at this time is unlikely.

The deletions will be properly reviewed, which is going to take time. This is not a deletion or undeletion request page, and I have not yet decided how to best proceed with the review. It is over 5000 pages, no small task. I do not know at this time how many pages could be rescued (I know of a few), and Beta content inclusion policies should be studied and consensus found before any massive changes are made.

What happened here, how it happened, should not happen with any Beta project. For a user to be effectively encouraged to contribute for three years, no problems, and then new users show up, with no Wikiversity experience, and organize a deletion effort that deletes the entire project, including work by others than user in question, with little notice by the general community and no consultation, is very poor process. This is not about any specific deletion, most pages were probably deletable without harm, it's about how we treat members of the community, and, as well, it's about the half of our project goal that the new users clearly did not understand: learning by doing. We deal with malformed, poorly placed, and incomplete projects all the time on en.wikiversity. We do it in a way that continually organizes and improves Wikiversity, and normally does not alienate the user, and we see those "incomplete projects" as educational for the user, if for nobody else. As a result, we see very, very little "disruption," just the ordinary, boring flow of spam and vandalism, easily handled. --Abd (talk) 01:54, 1 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Where must I be...

... for a block request?

I am not happy with this personal attack. Especially, because he earlier said that it is irrelevant here what you do on other Wikipedias... The Banner talk 20:54, 22 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I think here: Wikiversity:Request custodian action. Romaine (talk) 20:57, 22 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Language wiki identification

Beta is two things: a place for Wikiversities to coordinate and a place for the incubation of individual language Wikiversities. The former purpose has, for a long time, been neglected, probably because of the balkanization of the individual language projects.

Individual language Wikiversities have been defined by language category tags on pages. I've been unable to find specific documentation on this, it probably exists somewhere. When an individual language wikiversity is founded, the pages tagged are then transwikied and deleted here. Further, the tags identify the language project content.

As an example, the "Chinese Wikiversity" is defined by Category:ZH, using the ISO code for Chinese. Until recently, the Dutch Wikiversity was defined by Category:NL and (redundantly?) by Category:Wikiversiteit. The latter was probably an error. In recent events, practically the entire Dutch Wikiversity was deleted, but in what remains, the categories have mostly been removed by Dutch users, apparently on the argument that there are Dutch categories and that this, then, identifies the Dutch pages. Example. This makes it very difficult to answer the question "What is the Dutch Wikiversity project here?"

From Category:ZH, there are 566 pages in Chinese Beta. The language categories are unique to Beta, these will not be maintained when the independent Chinese project is created. (We don't have pages on en.wikiversity with Category:EN). The transwiki process, handled by developers with the database directly, if I'm correct, will handle the process, but needs the basic category tags to be possible. Following the category tree won't work. The argument is "Wikipedian," where, indeed, it is not necessary to have a category on a page where the page is in a subcategory of the category, and that argument does apply here to further categorization of the page, but the language category should be on every language-project page. --Abd (talk) 14:57, 30 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Assuming good faith, I guess you are criticizing the use of categories as language-identifier? The Banner talk 22:42, 30 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

No, the opposite, I'm pointing to the problem of removing the language identifier category from Beta pages. A Beta language Wikiversity here is the set of pages with the language category. See this edit by a custodian here. Everything I've seen so far confirms that these categories guide the transwiki process when a Wikversity becomes independent, and before then, it serves as a guide to the local Language Wikiversity content. Category:NL should be on all "Dutch Wikiversity" pages, including categories and templates.

Ah, now I think I understand The Banner. Yes, a topic category doesn't identify the language clearly. And are the transwiki workers supposed to drill down and identify the categories and then the pages, or do they simply transwiki all pages in the category. It's easy to do an XML export of all pages in a category. --Abd (talk) 00:38, 31 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

It would be far better to move the NL-Wikiveristy to a separate project and out of reach of the Beta-custodians. The Banner talk 10:15, 31 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The "Beta-custodians" have done nothing to hinder "NL-Wikiversity," so that's an unwarranted slur. However, setting that aside, there are three ways to do what you suggest.

Incubator. You and two other users here have supported closure of Beta and the move of new Wikiversities to Incubator. One of them is an active Incubator sysop. Is Incubator willing to host Wikiversities? If not, the proposal to close Beta is face-palm stillborn.

Currently Incubator suggests using Beta for WV projects; however, there are hints at meta that Incubator might be used for these, and I add that this may be especially appropriate for Wikiversities with Wikipedia-like content policies, as you have been suggesting, i.e., incomplete educational resources and "learning circles," which may be essentially discussion groups or invitations to discussion groups, should be deleted, not hosted.

Get your own Wikiversity through the WMF Language Committee. You should know the requirements, it is not difficult. To do this, create educational resources here (or on Incubator) and use Category:NL on all of them. (Category Wv/nl on Incubator, presumably). However, at this point, with this set of users and community behavior, I'd oppose such a move, because the basic Wikiversity concept is being missed and actually opposed. Until there is a functioning, collaborative Dutch Wikiversity here, as with any language Wikiversity, the new project should not be born.

Set up your own server/host and demonstrate what you want to do. This is easy and cheap, compared to the labor involved in any project. If you do a better job than anyone else, faster, your wiki can be transferred to a WMF server.

Meanwhile, short of that, Beta remains completely open and welcoming to Dutch language educational resources. I will be reviewing what was deleted, it takes time. There will be content coming back from that. I will also be supporting the recreation or creation of Beta resources that represent "learning by doing," that allow original research, that support invitation to participation as distinct from "articles" which seem to be the model of the new Dutch users. If necessary, these will have a distinct category so as to not hinder any faction. (Later, when an independent Dutch Wikiversity is to be created, the community can make a choice about what is to be included.) This is what I'll call the "broad-wiki" way, that predates Wikipedia, which used a wiki, but which, because of the nature of the project, did not follow the ideals of high freedom and wide community trust that were characteristic of most wikis. There were always streams within the Wikipedia community that sought the same for Wikipedia, see wikipedia:en:WP:PWD.

Removing Category:NL from a page effectively "deletes" it from the Dutch Wikiversity project.

And meanwhile, it there are resources created or restored in Category:NL, considered inadequately developed or inappropriate for a project to be moved outside, instead of using deletion, just remove the category. If one believes that this is also a useless piece of garbage, or illegal in some way, then add Template:delete to it, but I'll again ask the Dutch custodian to not delete, absent open discussion and expressed consensus, resources where the speedy deletion template or proposed deletion (through the summary process created by that Custodian in Dutch) has been removed by a user, indicating controversy, and, as well, to restore any resources so deleted upon request by a regular Beta user. --Abd (talk) 14:00, 31 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Intention to restore Dutch language tags

Normally, we can see the activity in a single language Beta project with Special:RecentChangesLinked, for example: the Chinese Wikiversity, or the Dutch Wikiversity. The latter doesn't work, because the language category has been removed from most of the few remaining Dutch pages by users who are treating them as if they were content categories, that would be moved with the project to the independent project, and where being in a subcategory is considered adequate categorization. This makes it impossible to review Dutch activity with Recent Changes. So for pages in mainspace, my intention is to restore those categories. I'll notify Wikiversity:Forum as well, before doing this, unless reason not to do this shows up. --Abd (talk) 17:21, 8 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Done. Forum notified, no response. If I missed any pages, or incorrectly added a non-Dutch Wikiversity page to the category, please fix it! Pages not in a Dutch category at all may have been missed. --Abd (talk) 17:44, 12 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Grants to improve your project

Apologies for English. Please help translate this message.

Greetings! The Individual Engagement Grants program is accepting proposals for funding new experiments from September 1st to 30th. Your idea could improve Wikimedia projects with a new tool or gadget, a better process to support community-building on your wiki, research on an important issue, or something else we haven't thought of yet. Whether you need $200 or $30,000 USD, Individual Engagement Grants can cover your own project development time in addition to hiring others to help you.

Submit your proposal
Get help: In IdeaLab or an upcoming Hangout session MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:52, 2 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Change in renaming process

Single-user login (SUL) finalisation's goal is so that every Wikimedia editor has a single, recognized global account with one username across all projects. As you may know, after a long delay, it's now underway as an effort between bureaucrats, stewards, and Wikimedia Foundation engineers. This will also allow for development of cross-wiki tools like global notifications and watchlists. There is no set date for the completion of single-user login finalization at this time.

The process involves changing all rename processes into one global renaming process. The ability for local bureaucrats to rename users on this wiki will be turned off on Monday, 15 September 2014, as one of the first steps. Global renamers are in the process of being created to make sure projects and languages are represented by the time this occurs. I sent a note to every bureaucrat about this process three weeks ago with an invitation to participate and many have begun requesting to be a part of the group. Together with the stewards, the global renamers will be empowered to help editors work through the often difficult process of getting a global name.

In parting, visit Special:MergeAccount to unify your account if you have never done so. If your local pages about renaming still need to be updated, please do so and consider pointing people to m:SRUC for future rename requests, especially if this project does not have bureaucrats that hold global renamer permissions. If you have any questions, you can read more on the help page on Meta. You can also follow the technical progress on mediawiki.org. Contact me on Meta any time with questions as well. Thank you for your time.

-- User:Keegan (WMF) (talk) 16:23, 9 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Upload files, Upload Wizard?

Hello! Sorry for writing in English. It was noted that on this wiki there is little community activity around uploads: less than 50 "Delete" actions in "File" last year.

I guess this wiki doesn't have the interest or energies to maintain complex templates and metadata, especially for EDP files. I propose to

send users to commons:Special:UploadWizard from the sidebar and
limit local "Upload file" to the "Custodians" group (for any emergency uploads),

so that no new work is needed on this wiki and all users can have a functioning, easy upload interface in their own language. All registered users can upload on Commons.

All this will be done around 2014-09-30.

If you disagree with the proposal, just remove this wiki from the list.
To make the UploadWizard even better, please tell your experience and ideas on commons:Commons:Upload Wizard feedback.
In all cases, existing files will not be affected, but everyone is welcome to join m:File metadata cleanup drive. The goal is to give better credit to the authors who provided us their works.

Nemo 19:12, 18 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Meta RfCs on two new global groups

Hello all,

There are currently requests for comment open on meta to create two new global groups. The first is a group for members of the OTRS permissions queue, which would not contain any additional user rights. That proposal can be found at m:Requests for comment/Creation of a global OTRS-permissions user group. The second is a group for Wikimedia Commons admins and OTRS agents to view deleted file pages through the 'viewdeletedfile' right on all wikis except those who opt-out. The second proposal can be found at m:Requests for comment/Global file deletion review.

We would like to hear what you think on both proposals. Both are in English; if you wanted to translate them into your native language that would also be appreciated.

It is possible for individual projects to opt-out, so that users in those groups do not have any additional rights on those projects. To do this please start a local discussion, and if there is consensus you can request to opt-out of either or both at m:Stewards' noticeboard.

Thanks and regards, Ajraddatz (talk) 18:04, 26 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Global AbuseFilter

Hello,

AbuseFilter is a MediaWiki extension used to detect likely abusive behavior patterns, like pattern vandalism and spam. In 2013, Global AbuseFilters were enabled on a limited set of wikis including Meta-Wiki, MediaWiki.org, Wikispecies and (in early 2014) all the "small wikis". Recently, global abuse filters were enabled on "medium sized wikis" as well. These filters are currently managed by stewards on Meta-Wiki and have shown to be very effective in preventing mass spam attacks across Wikimedia projects. However, there is currently no policy on how the global AbuseFilters will be managed although there are proposals. There is an ongoing request for comment on policy governing the use of the global AbuseFilters. In the meantime, specific wikis can opt out of using the global AbuseFilter. These wikis can simply add a request to this list on Meta-Wiki. More details can be found on this page at Meta-Wiki. If you have any questions, feel free to ask on m:Talk:Global AbuseFilter.

Thanks,

PiRSquared17, Glaisher

— 17:34, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

VisualEditor coming to this wiki as a Beta Feature

Hello. Please excuse the English. I would be grateful if you translated this message!

VisualEditor, a rich-text editor for MediaWiki, will soon be available on this wiki as a Beta Feature. The estimated date of activation is Wednesday, 26 November.

To access it, you will need to visit the Beta features page after the deployment and tick the box next to "⧼Visualeditor-preference-core-label⧽". (If you have enabled the "Automatically enable most beta features" option, VisualEditor will be automatically available for you.) There will also be a "⧼Visualeditor-preference-language-label⧽" that you can enable if you need it.

Then, you just have to click on "Edit" to start VisualEditor, or on "Edit source" to edit using wikitext markup. You can even begin to edit pages with VisualEditor and then switch to the wikitext editor simply by clicking on its tab at any point, and you can keep your changes when doing so.

A guide was just published at mediawiki.org so that you can learn how to support your community with this transition: please read and translate it if you can! You will find all the information about the next steps there. Please report any suggestions or issues at the main feedback page. You will also receive the next issues of the multilingual monthly newsletter here on this page: if you want it delivered elsewhere, for example at your personal talk page, please add the relevant page here.

Thanks for your attention and happy editing, Elitre (WMF) 18:12, 21 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

VisualEditor coming to this wiki as a Beta Feature (errata)

Please notice the correct direct link to access Beta features is this one. Thanks for your understanding! Elitre (WMF) 18:35, 21 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

VisualEditor News #10—2014

Did you know?

Basic table editing is now available in VisualEditor. You can add and remove rows and columns from tables at the click of a button.

The user guide has more information about how to use VisualEditor.

Since the last newsletter, the Editing Team has fixed many bugs and worked on table editing and performance. Their weekly status reports are posted on mediawiki.org. Upcoming plans are posted at the VisualEditor roadmap.

VisualEditor was deployed to several hundred remaining wikis as an opt-in beta feature at the end of November, except for most Wiktionaries (which depend heavily upon templates) and all Wikisources (which await integration with ProofreadPage).

Recent improvements

Basic support for editing tables is now available. You can add and delete tables, add and remove rows and columns, set or remove a caption for a table, and merge cells together. To change the contents of a cell, double-click inside it. More features will be added in the coming months. In addition, VisualEditor now ignores broken, invalid rowspan and colspan elements, instead of trying to repair them.

You can now use find and replace in VisualEditor, reachable through the tool menu or by pressing ^ Ctrl+F or ⌘ Cmd+F.

You can now create and edit simple <blockquote> paragraphs for quoting and indenting content. This changes a "Paragraph" into a "Block quote".

Some new keyboard sequences can be used to format content. At the start of the line, typing "* " will make the line a bullet list; "1." or "#" will make it a numbered list; "==" will make it a section heading; ": " will make it a blockquote. If you didn't mean to use these tools, you can press undo to undo the formatting change.

There are also two other keyboard sequences: "[[" for opening the link tool, and "{{" for opening the template tool, to help experienced editors. The existing standard keyboard shortcuts, like ^ Ctrl+K to open the link editor, still work.

If you add a category that has been redirected, then VisualEditor now adds its target. Categories without description pages show up as red.

You can again create and edit galleries as wikitext code.

Looking ahead

The current VisualEditor design will be replaced with a new theme designed by the User Experience group. The new theme will be visible for desktop systems at mediawiki.org in late December and on other sites in early January. (You can see a developer preview of the old "Apex" theme and the new "MediaWiki" one which will replace it.)

The Editing team plans to add auto-fill features for citations in January.

Planned changes to the media search dialog will make choosing between possible images easier.

Let's work together

Share your ideas and ask questions at mw:VisualEditor/Feedback.
Translations of the user guide for most languages are outdated. Only Ukrainian, Portuguese, Spanish, French, and Dutch translations are nearly current. Please help complete the current translations for users who speak your language.
Talk to the Editing team during the office hours via IRC. The next session is on Wednesday, 7 January 2015 at 22:00 UTC.
File requests for language-appropriate "Bold" and "Italic" icons for the character formatting menu in Phabricator.
The design research team wants to see how real editors work. Please sign up for their research program.
If you would like to help with translations of this newsletter, please subscribe to the Translators mailing list or contact us directly, so that we can notify you when the next issue is ready. Subscribe or unsubscribe at Meta. Thank you!

— Elitre (WMF)

18:59, 26 December 2014 (UTC)