Wikispooks talk:Community portal

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.

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

• Adding the possibility of linking to https://militarist-monitor.org/, like to Sourcewatch, Powerbase, Spartacus etc in the metadata section.Terje (talk) 23:21, 21 December 2020 (UTC)---

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. -- 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)

• 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)

• February 2022 - In template:place, "|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... -- 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)

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)---

Tagging censored Youtube videos

Is it possible to create a tag (like ^[Who?] 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.

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.

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?]

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".

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

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) 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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