Wikispooks talk:Community portal/Archive

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Here are archived discussions from the Wikispooks Community discussion page.

Requested features

  • 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)

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)---

Known issues

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)
A fix of Template:Concept, which fixed it. -- Robin (talk) 12:37, 20 February 2022 (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.[1]
  • Sometimes the templates do not properly create page sections but display as ordinary text beginning with "==".[2]
  • 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.[3]
  • Ratings not rendering correctly at the bottom of pages.[3]
  • Some office holders not shown[4] -- 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.[5] 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[6] - 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[3]
  • 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[7] - Seems fixed -- Robin (talk) 18:54, 19 February 2022 (UTC)
  1. The Wikipedia link doesn't show. - Fixed -- Robin (talk) 19:44, 19 February 2022 (UTC)
  2. Image caption doesn't show - Fixed -- Robin (talk) 12:04, 20 February 2022 (UTC)
  3. The "description" could be moved to the side, like in most other articles
Fixed -- Robin (talk) 19:05, 17 February 2022 (UTC)
  • February 2022 - 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 Terje (talk) 05:51, 20 February 2022 (UTC)---
Should now appear, but may take some time to propagate. -- Robin (talk) 12:21, 20 February 2022 (UTC)
  • February 2022 - 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)

SMWDocs

  • 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. It is now renamed "Sponsors", which works OK. Please re-file at Wikispooks talk:Community portal#Known issues if it's still misbehaving -- Robin (talk) 16:22, 28 February 2022 (UTC)

Article status symbols

Wikispooks is very uneven in coverage - certain topics are well covered, others of major significance are stub class, or completely missing. This state of affairs is likely to remain so in the future, so how about some system of helping visitors quickly locate good content - i.e. a system of grading articles, or just marking out the most complete?

That would be useful. Enhancement/development to the existing Template:Stub is probably the way to go. --Peter P (talk) 15:11, 25 September 2014 (IST)
I imagined something like Portal:Featured_content. Robin (talk) 05:02, 28 September 2014 (IST)

comment: Rating and stubs cover this

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)
  1. ↑ Bolivia, Iraq, Poison
  2. ↑ Document:Fifty Years of the Deep State
  3. ↑ a b c George_H._W._Bush
  4. ↑ MI6/Chief
  5. ↑ Jean Chrétien‎
  6. ↑ Secretary of State for Defence
  7. ↑ Edward Bernays
    8. Retrieved from "https://wikispooks.com/w/index.php?title=Wikispooks_talk:Community_portal/Archive&oldid=238748"