Difference between revisions of "Wikispooks talk:Community portal"

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As mentioned, I like to hover over references in other people's articles - today one in Consortium news - ([[Ford Foundation]] and the CIA)<ref>https://consortiumnews.com/2021/10/18/patrick-lawrence-psyops/</ref>
 
As mentioned, I like to hover over references in other people's articles - today one in Consortium news - ([[Ford Foundation]] and the CIA)<ref>https://consortiumnews.com/2021/10/18/patrick-lawrence-psyops/</ref>
 
[[User:Terje|Terje]] ([[User talk:Terje|talk]]) 00:20, 13 September 2021 (UTC)---
 
[[User:Terje|Terje]] ([[User talk:Terje|talk]]) 00:20, 13 September 2021 (UTC)---
 
==Some suggested improvements==
 
 
"Places" could need some general updates.
 
# <s>The Wikipedia link doesn't show.</s> - Fixed -- [[User:Robin|Robin]] ([[User talk:Robin|talk]]) 19:44, 19 February 2022 (UTC)
 
# <s>Image caption doesn't show</s> - Fixed -- [[User:Robin|Robin]] ([[User talk:Robin|talk]]) 12:04, 20 February 2022 (UTC)
 
# <s>The "description" could be moved to the side, like in most other articles</s>
 
: Fixed -- [[User:Robin|Robin]] ([[User talk:Robin|talk]]) 19:05, 17 February 2022 (UTC)
 
# "locations" might be improved, where smaller places get shown in bigger ones - [[Cernobbio]] nested in [[Lombardy]] nested in [[Italy]] nested in [[Europe]]. Or "subplaces" could be shown in the bigger entity, [[Cernobbio]] nested in [[Lombardy]].
 
: I see the general principle. Currently locations are a comma-separated (flat) list. Slickest of all would be to process that in a consistent way, e.g. small area, medium area, large area, but that might take a lot of work. I'll have a think... -- [[User:Robin|Robin]] ([[User talk:Robin|talk]]) 19:05, 17 February 2022 (UTC)
 
 
Again, I don't want you to work for hours and days with these things, but if these are simple things to fix, it would be fantastic.
 
[[User:Terje|Terje]] ([[User talk:Terje|talk]]) 08:29, 4 February 2022 (UTC)---
 
 
:A similar case to "employer": everyone with a "|political_parties=" could be listed under that party. [[Joschka Fischer]] showing up at the bottom of [[Alliance '90/The Greens]] etc
 
[[User:Terje|Terje]] ([[User talk:Terje|talk]]) 05:51, 20 February 2022 (UTC)---
 
  
 
==General info==
 
==General info==

Revision as of 12:17, 20 February 2022

Wikispooks logo pump.png

Welcome to the Wikispooks Community discussion page.
This is the place for Wikispooks discussions which relate to the site as a whole, rather than just particular pages.
All Wikispooks editors are encouraged to contribute thoughts relevant to developing the software and community behind the Wikispooks project.


Social media accounts

After realizing User:Peter(?) was managing the Reddit and Twitter accounts, I visited the pages and discovered we aren't using them anymore? If that's correct, imho - although I do myself only very seldom post or talk on social media but do "lurk" daily - someone should be managing these accounts and promote our best articles there. Google is gonna censor us in some way soon, the business insider article hints it I believe, I've followed some of my own articles that became top 150 ranked Wikispooks articles and I suspect some of my articles "are safe" to report on, explaining their rise to top google results, while other more popular ones from Terje for example are "deranked", similar to ISGPs censorship. We can't just rely on other independent media to keep linking to our pages. Younger audiences use social media. Just look at the new Netflix documentary on TWA Flight 800, it caused a massive surge in discussions for the missile theory.

Second, "social media is toxic and our userbase/we shouldn't be using it." It is toxic if you let it intoxicate you. I'd happily take over those accounts and upload some links from time to time if this idea gains traction. --Jun (talk) 06:04, 26 February 2021 (UTC)

What about a clean break from legacy social media and go over to Gab or Telegram, which have so far not been affected by censorship? The Wikispooks social media offensive will need a total restart anyway (no follower base), so we might as well start from a more promising foundation. Terje (talk)---

I'd happily support that tactic as well, although I do believe combining using legacy and "new" media can benefit us as many people probably won't visit Gab or Telegram 'cause of the enemy images about them formed by commercial media. --Jun (talk) 20:04, 26 February 2021 (UTC)
Btw, do you have any ideas about what types of engagement we should be using on those platforms in case we would be re-opening them User:Terje? --Jun (talk) 23:41, 28 February 2021 (UTC)
I agree, social media can bring recognition. But should be managed by someone who can put the time into it (maybe shared at times if too much?). It makes sense to leave all legacy now I think. Everything here makes you an untouchable anyway (look at some recent videos at Vice to see it is getting ever more intense). An account there can and will get nuked at some point - so not worth putting time into it.

Where to go? Some do avoid Gab since it's userbase is associated with the Bowers shooting, but they stand by free speech, which is good. Parler has it's issues (see the comments by GAB on the Parler page here). Telegram, if I remember correctly, was set up by the ousted CEO of VK, when the feds of Russia have taken over there. I remember something that they are using servers of Facebook (cant say if that was valid or not, could also be nonsense). VK could work, Minds too. How many social media accounts overall should be opened (maybe at least two?)? -- Sunvalley (talk) 02:14, 1 March 2021 (UTC)

Hmmm good points... Interesting, so we're split on continuing legacy media, but there are concerns as to which new media to use. I planned to follow Corbett's "strategy", with an engagement difference: I wanted to lightly and playfully react to others as many companies are doing that nowadays instead of the "long/outspoken political statements" most folks get banned for. I'll take care of the 2 legacy accounts if this goes ahead so that others don't have to bother. After the concerns raised here, I'll message Robin with the additional request to open up accounts on new uncensored social media as well and get back to everyone on which, how to time-manage and use those. --Jun (talk) 04:19, 1 March 2021 (UTC)

Go for it with the new social media channels. I suspect there might be a bit of moving from service to service as the censorship intensifies, even with the new social media companies. If Robin sets up one or more accounts (Telegram?) and has the master key, it would be natural to share the posting responsibility on social media between the regular Wikispooks contributors. Terje (talk)---

How is it going? If this is set up like a forum, it could be might be a could a point to start as well. -- Sunvalley (talk) 13:57, 15 March 2021 (UTC)

I've set up a Telegram account https://t.me/Wikispooks - but haven't a clue on how to use it. I'll experiment the next few weeks, and keep you updated. Terje (talk) 07:58, 17 March 2021 (UTC)

We're trying to also get the old accounts, but so far I've heard nothing from User:Robin yet, and as we'd need to link all of our accounts on the main page we'd need his help as well, he did sign off on just opening new accounts in the meanwhile. So I've opened up a (new) Twitter account [1], a Gab account [2], and a (new) Reddit account [u/WikispooksOfficial], I've communicated the passwords of all accounts to both of you. Feel free to contribute, if you wish. I'm still setting up security systems to protect the accounts but they're decently safe to use for now. --Jun (talk) 16:26, 17 March 2021 (UTC)

Requested features

Someday, maybe...

  • (Old) - "Export to PDF" (like Wikipedia has) could be good. I printed one of these pages once, and it came with a lot of unneeded fluff.
  • 2019 - Property:MaybeConstitutes - Not yet implemeted, to interpret '?' in the constitutes argument
  • 2019 September - VisualEditor - To ease the learning curve or new editors -- User:Sirjamesgray
    • 2021 Jul - any news on this VisualEditor upgrade? If need be, I'd be happy to temporarily take on admin permissions to install it myself and then turn in my admin badge thereafter. -- User:Sirjamesgray
This shouldn't be hard. Are there any other recommended sites that you (or any other editors) think are worthy of this option? -- Robin (talk) 23:17, 31 December 2020 (UTC)
I come across GlobalSecurity.org, which is helpful at times, just a suggestion, not entirely sure about their content -- Sunvalley (talk) 15:38, 8 January 2021 (UTC)
GlobalSecurity.org is good, has much information from the military perspective, rather grass roots.[1] -- Sunvalley (talk) 00:39, 21 October 2021 (UTC)
  • 2020 February - I have no idea what kind of work is involved to enable this, but since deletion on Youtube is getting so severe, being able to use some more video platforms would be great. Especially Bitchute, which is established now in terms of capacity, security, reliability and which has a free-thought approach that is fair enough. Also to consider: Mike Adams Brighteon, which is younger but much in the same direction - Vimeo, since it has not the strongest monitoring and will allow HD content - also Dailymotion Sunvalley (talk) 15:53, 4 February 2020 (UTC) || "archive.org" I forgot, another viable source for video hosting Sunvalley (talk) 10:05, 8 February 2020 (UTC)
  • 2021 January - the letter/text size in QB quote should be bigger IMO, like regular text would be best, readability is to bad at it's current size -- Sunvalley (talk) 15:38, 8 January 2021 (UTC)
Note that for quotes, Template:SMWQ is preferred due to the semantic nature. Could you point to an example page for discussion purposes? -- Robin (talk) 17:09, 28 February 2021 (UTC)
The "QB quote" "box" that I mean is used with Keith Raniere for example. Sometimes it is faster like this, or it has been used throughout the text already, or SMW is not necessary. At the Keith Raniere article it could/should be used. The letter/text size can be drawn bigger (as in the rest of the article), like here: Karen Kwiatkowski, but this also changes the typesetting. Getting the box drawn with the same size and typesetting would be nice. -- Sunvalley (talk) 16:55, 13 March 2021 (UTC)
I just upgraded increased this from 10px to 13px. Let me know here if you think needs further adjustment. -- Robin (talk) 13:59, 29 June 2021 (UTC)
Thanks, the text in the regular QB box is now at a very good size:

Very good readability like this.

but it seems that the two other variants I use have increased in size as well:

I think this is a little bigger than before.

“this is much bigger as before, too much imo”
' [citation needed]

So if your increase in text size does influence the others by default then we should summarily decide if this is good or not. SMWQ looks too big in my opinion. What are the others saying? -- Sunvalley (talk) 23:22, 2 July 2021 (UTC)

Ehm, I do notice it's bigger, but not annoyingly IMHO. I am working from a 4k monitor, so I guess people's experiences will differ according to their display sizes. --Jun (talk) 04:30, 3 July 2021 (UTC)
On a HD monitor I see the issue, it's slightly too big compared to normal text. Maybe lower it by two knows indeed. --Jun (talk) 10:38, 3 July 2021 (UTC)
  • 2021 January - there is the abolition of property talk going on, but property cant be used since it's technical here, we could use the term wealth, but that would be a little bit beside the point if we go from the context of the article by Ida Auken at WEF, not sure what can help, or what can be a workaround -- Sunvalley (talk) 15:38, 8 January 2021 (UTC)
  • Can webp be enabled for picture upload? -- Sunvalley (talk) 22:45, 13 April 2021 (UTC)
  • 2022 February - Playing around with "employment", I think it would be an great improvement if the person shows up in the organization they work for - ie a "journalist" working for "employer" CNN shows up at the bottom of the CNN article. This would be excellent to show the connection to junior employees.
Good idea. Now implemented with Template:Employees -- Robin (talk) 19:05, 17 February 2022 (UTC)
  • Quote subjects could be visible, so that editors can discover typos. Presently it is impossible to discover even big/small letter typos that make the link invalid.
This is deliberately hidden, in order not to distract. The onus is on editors to check subjects when they add them. -- Robin (talk) 19:05, 17 February 2022 (UTC)

Cleaner Imports from Wikipedia

  • If references in Wikipedia were more compatible with Wikispooks, it would allow for neater and faster imports of whole paragraphs. At the moment, when importing I have to go through the references one by one to remove "{{cite web" etc, which all Wikipedia references have, to avoid the error message "Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css must have content model "Sanitized CSS" for TemplateStyles (current model is "CSS")", which makes the whole Wikispooks page look unprofessional.

Terje (talk) 23:21, 21 December 2020 (UTC)---

Do we have any mediawiki experts (extant or aspiring) who would like to look into this? I wonder whether a simple re-write of (or just a close look at) Template:Cite web might help? I do remember looking into this and failing to fathom it. -- Robin (talk) 14:18, 1 January 2021 (UTC)

I'm technically illiterate, but I've noticed Wikipedia likes <ref and /> to open and close many references. If they could be accepted here equally to <ref> and </ref> it might help get rid of some of the very ugly Cite error: Closing </ref> missing for <ref> tag errors that are scarring this site. Terje (talk) 21:20, 1 January 2021 (UTC)---

2020 End of Year Summary

If Robin has time and the inclination, it would be nice with a summary of what has happened on Wikispooks in 2020. Suggestions: Peter's retirement, increased or decreased traffic, increase in database size and quality, censorship and attacks, posts with most interest, which subject areas in general have more interest, Wikispooks finances, any possibility to increase database speed (on some days, like yesterday, it is so slow as to be impossible to read or edit for me), how to recruit and keep quality editors, the long term view of keeping it the site active, 'famous' writers linking to Wikispooks in articles, etc. etc. Terje (talk) 12:09, 30 December 2020 (UTC)---

Tagging censored Youtube videos

Is it possible to create a tag (like [Who?][citation needed] etc) to mark pages with deleted Youtube videos? I have a feeling half the videos here are gone. Presuming creating a tag isn't a big job, of course. And is there a point to have this tag? Are the videos replaceable at all, or have most of them gone down the memory hole for ever? Most of them don't have a name that can be searched other places. Terje (talk) 11:17, 12 April 2021 (UTC) <

These templates are indeed easy to make. I just made {{nla}} for this purpose, which renders as [No longer available]. It is good practice to have such a tag. It might also be helpful to know by when they were deleted. What do you think about adding a date parameter, e.g. {{nla|12 April 2021}}?
With Corbettreport deleted from Youtube there will indeed be many videos not active anymore. To look it up, you can just take the video code as we have it here: |code= yuC_4mGTs98 and put that code on any YT video URL that still works, like: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FzVd7XCTu28. That URL is what you would use to see it on YT, which is also an URL that you can use to look it up on archive.org. Sometimes it does save the video in low quality as well, but in most of the times you can at least get the name. There are at times also longer URLs that use some stuff at the end that is not actually required, but as long as you just want to get the video name from one of the "video boxes" here, this is how it should work. -- Sunvalley (talk) 20:12, 12 April 2021 (UTC)
I've found one deleted Youtube video on archive.org (Klaus Eberwein), but they can't be embedded or downloaded. But a good emergency solution to find the name of the video.
What about a bit more dramatic name for the tag, such as 'deleted by Youtube', 'memory-holed by Youtube' or 'censored by Youtube'; and yes, having a date parameter is useful. Terje (talk) 23:24, 12 April 2021 (UTC)
I did think of this, but [No longer available] is more inclusive, since the uploaders may have deleted the videos themselves. If you know that it was censored, I could easily add that. I'll now add a date argument. -- Robin (talk) 16:14, 14 April 2021 (UTC)
Terje, you can actually download videos that have been archived on archive.org with this URL combination: https://web.archive.org/web/2oe_/http://wayback-fakeurl.archive.org/yt/k1jj0mUYJ_g - replace: k1jj0mUYJ_g with the ID of your video and the browser should be starting the download.[2][3]

Subpages

More standardisation might improve their utility.

  • Integration with SMW. e.g. A fixed set of subpages which could be interpreted by software if found ".../murder", ".../perpetrators" etc.
  • .../Quotes - for quotations relevant to an article, or quotes made by someone (perhaps this is better in a subsection)
  • The need for Template:SubPages is slightly counterintuitive, so perhaps the subpages should appear by default in the infobox?
    • My main concern is that sub-pages should always have an obvious link to them on their parent pages. I was thrown by the David Kelly one for a while this morning. I'm not fussed about exactly how it is achieved, hence my installation of the subPages extension when I was having problems with the issue a while back --Peter P (talk) 11:19, 21 September 2014 (IST) Sep. 2014 - Infoboxes now display a list of subpages.

Documents

Template:Video, Template:YouTubeVideo, Template:Image and Template:Document fulfill analagous functions, but have different usage patterns and evolved separately.

  • The semantic objects produced should be standardised for compatibility
  • Some thought about transcripts/translations is in order

Timelines

The following developments are to be expected:

  1. Timeline pagenames will be standardised. i.e. Parent Event/Timeline
  2. All 'timeline events' should be upgrade to use the normal Template:Event ✓ July 2015 - All timelines were upgraded to integrate with SMW
  3. The earlier image strip has been replaced by a list of text links, which should be replaced in due course with a set of image links
  4. The timeline should automatically read data from the parent event
  5. All the hardcoded categories and forms should be replaced by dynamically generated ones
  6. No separate page for the two different timeline formats - they should be shown on a single page in a tabstrip
  7. A large proportion of the old events need upgrading since they are mostly little more than a label.

Semantic Mediawiki

All pages now have input from SMW. You do not need to know how to program SMW to use it, or to help develop it by suggesting new ways it could be used. Beginners to SMW should note that being precise is very important for it to work properly, so apparently small points from a human perspective can be of great importance from the point of view of SMW. If it's not working as expected, check syntax such as capitalization and singular/plural etc.

Upgrades

Ways to improve how SMW is currently implemented.

  • The "|perpetrators" field for events is too simplistic, since it doesn't distinguish, for example, the 'hired guns' from those who do the hiring.
  • The "|membership" field for groups is too simplistic, since it doesn't allow for dates and grades of membership (e.g. 'chairman')
  • Quotations by one person could appear on the page of whoever made them (or pointers to them) - Implemented in Template:SMWQ
  • ...

Known issues

2022

  • February - "Sponsors" leads to the "Event sponsored" at the bottom of the target page. For example, First Draft is sponsored by the Ford Foundation. It would be clearer if the headline on the target page was changed to "sponsored by" or something similar. I don't know where the original intention of "sponsored" is used on Wikispooks, but I believe the new use of "following the money" is more prevalent.

2020

  • A week or two ago I did notice that COVID-19/Premature death listed only one person, although it were three or four already (like now, 4). I did get them all listed when I was forwarded to the page ie from Covid-19/Premature Deaths, but not when I went there directly via search or some link in the wiki. This took a while and then it seemed to get updated. Today I read about Franz Klein (Hamburger Dehoga-boss) and was shortly thinking about placing him, maybe in the future ... So I see the same issue again, but after login they are all there. I have opened many tabs before login so I could go back there to take a screenshot. Similarly, the "Covid-19" main page before login is missing the premature death subpage (which was there already), but after login it is getting displayed again. I dont know the details, but I could think that this is due to a configuration issue that you discussed when financing came up, but if so, this would be a very long cycle to still deliver an older version of that page. -- Sunvalley (talk) 20:52, 24 November 2020 (UTC)
Now it all shows up when not logged in. -- Sunvalley (talk) 13:30, 2 December 2020 (UTC) - Sorted by rebuilding the SMW database
  • It may work differently with Java active in the browser, but without, browsing from a page that links to conspiracy theories, like Conspiracy theory/Academic research does, brings you to the page Conspiracy Theorist (which says (Redirected from Conspiracy theories)) and forwards to Conspiracy theorist. Going one back to Conspiracy theories from there, however gives a different result, forwards to Conspiracy theory. In other words, there appears to be a bug that does not forward correctly when the link conspiracy theories is used. Robin can you confirm? -- Sunvalley (talk) 02:54, 23 November 2020 (UTC)
Well spotted. This is a bug, and is not dependent on browser options. It may happen with other pages as well. I am looking into it. -- Robin (talk) 13:53, 24 November 2020 (UTC)
Please have a look at my edits that I just started with the Agenda 21 export to Agenda 2030. Did I just trigger similar circumstance or am I getting it wrong? As explained I want to export to Agenda 2030, but with all tabs open I ended up with redirecting Agenda for Sustainable Development (from the 2030 page) to Agenda 2030 first, which at the time forwarded to Agenda 21. Then changed Agenda 2030 to separate article. Now I end up with Agenda for Sustainable Development going to Agenda 21 straight, and one link back tells me it is Agenda 2030 ..? Is it database thing that gets updated? Otherwise these redirects never had a problem and always worked immediately. thx -- Sunvalley (talk) 00:11, 30 January 2021 (UTC)
Not sure if helpful but this I can give in addition: Picture looked like this at URL: https://wikispooks.com/w/index.php?title=Agenda_for_Sustainable_Development&redirect=no -- Sunvalley (talk) 00:20, 30 January 2021 (UTC)
Update: It appears that going to "conspiracy theories" or "Agenda for Sustainable Development" - blanking and then putting the redirect back in solves the issue. -- Sunvalley (talk) 02:19, 4 March 2021 (UTC)


  • It appears that |image_description=xxx does not render the text, cant get it to work here Foundation funding, not working here Libya ... I may have seen it in one place but that was possibly an older page that hasn't been updated in a while. -- Sunvalley (talk) 21:09, 16 September 2020 (UTC)
Use |image_caption instead. -- Robin (talk) 11:43, 17 September 2020 (UTC)

2019

  • Some titles of page need "," in them ideally, but this conflicts with comma as a list separator. This will probably never be fixed, since "," is so useful as a separator, but please be aware of this and do not use commas in titles.
  • document incorrectly handles uploaded documents:- meaning that it is necessary to add File: after "|local=" to fix the PDF link. This is a small, but hard to diagnose problem for MW editors.
  • Object pages (e.g. Event, Person...) display examples, but only for the first 50. Clicking on the "next" button changes the SMW query, so that the images are displayed as text - and also, the pagename is doubled. e.g. See here
  • The coordinates parameter of Template:Event and Template:Place sets semantic data but does not display on the page. There is probably a useful template on Wikipedia that could be imported to fix this.
  • Some SVG images are not rendering here properly for unknown reasons.[4]
  • Sometimes the templates do not properly create page sections but display as ordinary text beginning with "==".[5]
  • Unique icons are missing from the year pages references on the coverpage -- Robin (talk) 18:54, 19 October 2019 (UTC)

Outstanding bugs manifested by the June 2019 software upgrade:

  • Some job icons not rendering correctly when they link to pages which exist but which have no icon. This may be connected to redirects.[6]
  • Ratings not rendering correctly at the bottom of pages.[6]
  • Some office holders not shown[7] -- Robin (talk) 18:59, 29 August 2019 (UTC)

Fixed issues

  • The Export to RDF (e.g. https://wikispooks.com/w/index.php?title=Special:ExportRDF/Margaret_Thatcher ) prints a space character before the "<", causing it not to display properly in some browsers (such as Firefox) - Removed a stray newline from an earlier fix:-) -- Robin (talk) 01:22, 10 January 2018 (GMT)
  • The edit dialog which comes up after using the top right button to publish and entry states "Publish to {{SITENAME}}". - Fixed by editing the source file. -- Robin (talk) 02:35, 10 January 2018 (GMT)
  • The "Interest of" list has an upper limit on the #entries it will display. This doesn't affect many pages (probably only "Terrorism"), and is due to the #arraymap parser function in Template:ArrayMapBulletedList. - Fixed by adding |limit=200 to Template:Concept -- Robin (talk) 02:16, 10 January 2018 (GMT)
  • The infoboxes are not behaving with some unusual characters.[8] Fixed 2017-11-18 by tweaking the substring extension to use multibyte functions. -- Robin (talk) 16:24, 18 November 2017 (GMT)
  • Some government employment names are common between different countries[9] - Best practice here is to prefix the ambiguous jobs with "CountryName/" to make them unique.
  • Some pages sometimes do not display an infobox, but instead report "Lua error: Internal error: The interpreter has terminated with signal "24"." - this tend to be those people with several jobs, (e.g. Dominik Suter) so it is suspected to be a resource limitation.
  • Icons not displaying correctly on the coverpage
  • Junk text when Display properties are set.
  • Ratings:
    • The "highly rated" tab of coverpage is empty
    • Ratings not rendering correctly at top of infoboxes[6]
  • Some items have no text on the coverpage, although they don't have {{t|titular_logo=1}} Seems fixed as of 2022 -- Robin (talk) 18:54, 19 February 2022 (UTC)
  • Some pages have problems with displaying references[10] - Seems fixed -- Robin (talk) 18:54, 19 February 2022 (UTC)

Design

The design intended to be fairly staid but functional as befits an encylopaedia.

Space usage

  • Some of the labels in the infoboxes still appear as plural even if the matching data is singular.[Which?]
  • Some of the labels in the infoboxes might benefit from reordering.[Which?]


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Community Portal discussion

IMO, this community portal is set up all wrong.

Firstly, it does not convey community. The utility is good (could be improved) but the community aspect needs promotion, and maybe a nice image for collective achievement.

The Wikispooks:Community portal page is not editable. I wanted to alphabetize it and update from 5 to 6 the Wikispooks:Projects list - which IMO Projects should be added to this other "Wikispooks Categories" list and maybe copied to the left margin menu:

  • About Wikispooks
  • Help
  • Semantic Mediawiki
  • Wikispooks Policy
  • Wikispooks Technical
  • Wikispooks To Do

Maybe add "Wikispooks SaidIt" below "Wikispooks Twitter" and "Wikispooks Reddit" in the left margin, under "Misc" or a new "Social Media".

Maybe make that "Wikispooks Categories" list into a template to add on Wikispooks:Projects somewhere, and elsewhere where appropriate.

The large icons list and the second short list are confusing. IMO, small icons in a vertical list would be good enough. But the categories and the page seem to be very different creatures. This is very confusing and may need clarification/cleaning/unifying - or more discussion on how to best present the content and rework thereafter as necessary.

And now I've discovered this discussion page.

First, IMO, this whole discussion page should be moved to the main page below an appropriate header (maybe in a locked template) - then this discussion page can be deleted/locked. Sadly, many/most people don't even look in the talk pages. In this way it puts this community discussion front and center. Resultant goal: Easy access to community discussion. Perhaps in the future community divisions may be necessary. Presently this "Wikispooks talk:Community portal" seems more like another To Do list. Maybe all the To Do lists need to be consolidated, or not. Maybe there need to be several community discussions on different aspects of Wikispooks - the admin, the maintenance, the to do, the topics, the projects, the content, the design, etc. But until there is an overflow, it seems like one discussion might be enough, for now.

Second, I haven't even read this page yet.

Third, I'm shocked at how short it is. This is evidence that this "community" needs help. Or maybe it doesn't. While I'm not surprised it exists, I wasn't aware of the Wikispooks presence on Twitter and Reddit. (Now on SaidIt.net too.) Maybe there are other forums where people discuss things. I know there's an email list that I have to catch up on too. While all of that is good, this seems like the most logical centralized place to start for community to check in. All the other social media, etc can be linked to in a dedicated header or sidebox list.

I don't mean to shit on Wikispooks. I'm just offering my first impressions. Maybe they can be addressed in time, no rush, or considered and solved in other ways. ~ JasonCarswell (talk) 23:02, 3 February 2020 (UTC)

Wikispooks mentions

I think this is probably worth putting into a page of its own, since the sort of people who cite this site are likely of interest to readers. User:Tony Gosling is a UK journalist who mentions Wikispooks sometimes on his weekly "Not TheBCFM politics show".[11]

Swiss Policy Research mentioned our Young Global Leaders in a piece on the World Economic Forum and COVID[12]

Just FYI, "famous writers linking to Wikispooks in articles", Vanessa Beeley reads the Bio of Lucy Morgan Edwards from Wikispooks here. -- Sunvalley (talk) 19:00, 12 September 2021 (UTC)

I do actually catch myself hovering over the links when reading independent media, Wikispooks gets used every now and again. Rainer Rupp at the newly rebranded KenFM did one recently on 911, which made the statistics here boom.

As mentioned, I like to hover over references in other people's articles - today one in Consortium news - (Ford Foundation and the CIA)[13] Terje (talk) 00:20, 13 September 2021 (UTC)---

General info

From the current Marc Dutroux article: "As of August 2019, Wikipedia had a Mark Dutroux page, but did not have a separate page for the affair." - Because I see this argument here and there on WS .. My understanding is, that WP standard is, that if a person is only known for what he/she has done (in connection to an event), then there would not be a separate page for that person, but only a section on the page of the "event". Why it is the other way around for M. Dutroux I can't tell. FI -- Sunvalley (talk) 15:08, 18 February 2022 (UTC)

The Standardisation page doesn't have a section on this, but probably should have; mid-level deep events deserve a separate page from those of the people involved. There is "Epstein Affair" and "Dutroux Affair", and maybe others. A subpage might help navigation, e.g. Marc Dutroux/Affair, but ties the event perhaps a bit too closely to that one person. What other examples are there? -- Robin (talk) 19:10, 18 February 2022 (UTC)
What I mean is, that here on WS, sometimes there is the remark that an "event" on Wikipedia does not have a separate page for people involved, especially the perpetrator. In this case, there is the remark (here on WS) that there is a page for M. Dutroux on Wikipedia, but not for the affair. Only wanted to mention that Wikipedia standard, as I understand, is, that when there is a page for the event, and in case the perpetrator is only known for this event, then there is no extra page for him, only a section (like here). Just to clarify why Wikipedia does often not have pages for people that would be relevant in our view here. As for Wikipedia in that case, could well be that there is no affair by their view, just a murderer and rapist. So just the page for him .. there might be something about the reasoning in archived discussion but haven't looked. -- Sunvalley (talk) 20:07, 18 February 2022 (UTC)
Wikipedia plays fast and loose to try to minimise the space available for certain material, as if space were at a premium. Here the SMW encourages clear distinctions between people, events, groups etc. So for the events we have, there should be more pages than Wikipedia. -- Robin (talk) 18:42, 19 February 2022 (UTC)

This page is hard to read/navigate, and I agree with Jason Carswell that the structure is not helping discussion. I would, if nobody minds, little by little, move older stuff to new sub-sites, try to get a section at which current discussions can take place and keep relevant info from "archived discussions" on the main page. -- Sunvalley (talk) 15:08, 18 February 2022 (UTC)

I agree, this page is a shambles, and needs taking in hand. It could definitely do with some organising/archiving of the old discussions. At least. -- Robin (talk) 19:10, 18 February 2022 (UTC)


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