User talk:MZMcBride

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• October 2009 – March 2013

Prod that you left for me

I have no objection, and have deleted it myself. Thanks for calling my attention to it; I'd quite frankly forgotten that page existed. Philippe (WMF) (talk) 22:28, 16 March 2013 (UTC)

Great, thanks. :-) --MZMcBride (talk) 01:30, 17 March 2013 (UTC)

Well the page isn't mine so is better go talk with Jay, but I have no problems with you deleting it :) Beria (talk) 01:54, 17 March 2013 (UTC)

Yeah, I've been notifying anyone I notice in the page history. The talk page section can be re-used for future deletion notifications, which is nice. --MZMcBride (talk) 02:53, 17 March 2013 (UTC)

Margins on homepage

Hi. You seem to be the wikicode whiz-kid for this site, so I'll float my idea to you. Do you think the Homepage of this site would look better with a negative top-margin, similar to the English Wikipedia's Main Page? I reckon it'd look a little less, well, amateur than it does now. AGK (talk) 09:44, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

Hi. I'm not sure what you mean. "margin" usually refers to a CSS attribute. As far as I can tell, the current version of en.wiki's Main Page doesn't use a negative margin anywhere. It does, however, have a hidden <h1> (page title). This is not done with margin hackery, but instead is done via w:en:MediaWiki:Vector.css and w:en:MediaWiki:Monobook.css. Is this what you meant?

Related: Talk:Home#Recent and upcoming changes to Home (March 2013). --MZMcBride (talk) 01:04, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

Ah, then yes, using a hidden level-1 header is what I meant. (I'm sure that Enwiki's Main Page used negative margin at some point, perhaps years ago.) I'll make my proposal at the Home talk page. Thanks, AGK (talk) 10:59, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

Go ahead

And delete all you wish. As the name suggest, /temp it was :). notafish }<';> 11:04, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

Question

I just noticed the more than one thousand pages in Category:Proposed Deletions. Can I ask why? I get the urge to clean-up, but it seems like in deleting pages such as Donaciones/EUR we may be removing history that we could need later. That sort of page was enormously helpful to me when I ran the fundraiser, in piecing together some of the history that I needed. Philippe (WMF) (talk) 07:00, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

Hi.

They're old and unneeded pages. What about <https://wikimediafoundation.org/w/index.php?title=Donaciones/EUR&oldid=8078> was helpful to you? It looks like a standard credit card input form. It's got two edits, both of which are trivial.

Generally, here's what I see:

• not much, if any, historical value in most of these templates and pages: they're mostly unoriginal text and designs that are duplicated a zillion times for every country and currency and that haven't been touched since they were used in a particular campaign (or test);
• anything valuable hasn't been marked for deletion and is available on Meta-Wiki or in the template namespace here;
• a massive store of pages (we've built up donation pages from 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, and 2011);
• a lot of broken or partially broken pages (notice the extra </div> here: Ecwårlaedje);
• more worryingly, a lot of pages still present what appear to be working input forms (or make your check payable to this random address in Florida that nobody has used for donations since 2005); and
• this wiki still allows raw HTML, so not being able to figure out what in this uncategorized, unlinked, pile of pages is legitimate and what was legitimate eight years ago (in terms of where these forms submit, what addresses are used, etc.) can actually be problematic, if you know what I mean.

And, of course, I believe most of the live infrastructure has been quietly moved to payments.wikimedia.org at this point. And with all of this, which should really just amount to me being able to say "housekeeping," there's a 30-day wait period and everyone is getting notified of the impending deletions via talk page note (which should trigger an e-mail), including the former staff who made hundreds of user subpages during their short time with the Wikimedia Foundation and can no longer login here, much less clean up their mess. Some of us are still here.

For a better picture of the scope, click here and keep clicking "next 500" till you understand what we're dealing with... and these are only the completely uncategorized pages (in the article namespace only, I think). Some pages there I've been categorizing. A lot of it is old junk, though. For the various reasons listed above, it's time to clean.

Relatedly, if you could give (the other) Ryan admin powers here, that would be great. Please don't make me wake the dead. ;-)

You're welcome. :-) --MZMcBride (talk) 07:26, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

Thank you for the explanation. As I told Ryan, I'm in conversations with Comms right now about how to move forward with userrights here. I hope that we'll have something soon. Philippe (WMF) (talk) 19:18, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

Update: Comms (specifically Jay) has requested that I not issue any further userrights here until a conversation has been had about the direction of the wiki and its management. I know that Jay intends to reach out to you on this and to make sure you're an active player in that conversation. Philippe (WMF) (talk) 19:49, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

Hi Philippe, does this also apply to temporary flood flags for maintenance related tasks such as User talk:Thehelpfulone#Links (which is now complete)? Thehelpfulone 20:04, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

No. I thought that would be self-evident (it says "sysop and above" on the userrights page), but I can spell out that it doesn't apply to flood if necessary. Philippe (WMF) (talk) 21:05, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, I did see that but then you wrote "not issue any further userrights here" above so wanted to confirm. Thehelpfulone 21:36, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

Yeah, Jay seems to only attempt to take ownership of this wiki whenever someone else tries to get active here. I say "attempt" as the notion that this wiki is owned or operated by the Wikimedia Foundation communications department is rather novel, given the wiki's history and primary active membership/community. At this point, I believe we've been in discussions for years without any action. I don't find this acceptable.

I hope you can feel me rolling my eyes at MediaWiki:Userrights-summary. And as though we needed further evidence of a mess having been left behind here, I'll just cross-reference this insightful post from yesterday: <https://wikimediafoundation.org/w/index.php?diff=90216&oldid=90171>. --MZMcBride (talk) 21:15, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

Proposed deletions

In general I think the 2011 stuff is likely okay, but that is up to Megan and Zack as to whether or not they want to keep them around for posterity. Also note that we get a not-insignificant number of donations to the old pages. If you can leave behind a redirect to https://donate.wikimedia.org that would be awesome. For the 2012 stuff, those are WMFr pages, so it would probably be best to check with them. Thanks. -Pgehres (WMF) (talk) 00:39, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

Hi. Thanks for the note. I'll ping Megan and Zack again about the proposed deletions. I think I'm also going to go ahead and bump the proposed deletion time to 90 days. We just had a report trickle in today about a particular page that's apparently still being used and it was tagged for over 30 days.

I already pinged the fundraising people on their mailing list. There wasn't much feedback. I think most of the live infrastructure is now living at donate.wikimedia.org. I don't think an automatic redirect is a great idea. Technically, we could #REDIRECT all of these pages, but I think de-cluttering is a good idea. The proliferation here has been a bit nasty. So much repetition and nearly identical content.

That said, I think we should be able to hack something up, basically prettifying the page a user sees when a page has been deleted... include a "donate" link and a "return to home" link. And a few old fundraising pages will be marked historical with a note at the top telling people how they can donate today. Most of these pages seem to have very little historical value, though. --MZMcBride (talk) 03:28, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

P.S. Thanks for this edit. That had been bothering me.

Apology for removal of admin rights

MZ, I'm sorry for the abrupt removal of admin rights on this wiki, which wasn't announced in advance. We've been talking internally for a while about making the governance structure of this wiki more clear, i.e., decisions regarding content and practices in this wiki are ultimately up to WMF staff. There may be projects during which it makes sense to assign temporary adminship to volunteers, as well, but we wanted to start with a clear separation of roles and responsibilities.

I apologize, though, for the hasty implementation of this decision! I didn't intend to express any disrespect or distrust. On the contrary, I'm very grateful for all the work you and other volunteers have done on the Wikimedia Foundation wiki over the years, and I hope you won't be too discouraged by this experience. I'll be posting an update about the next steps for wikimediafoundation.org on the wikimedia-l mailing list soon.

I'll take a look at understanding what you're working on when I get back from vacation next Monday and we can talk more then. Gyoung (talk) 05:04, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

Hi Gayle.

You've engendered a lot of ill will toward both yourself and the Wikimedia Foundation with your actions. You didn't give any advance notice or warning. You were borderline dismissive in your original e-mail. And the timing of your actions (at the end of the day on Friday, before you were apparently taking a week-long break) was either comically bad or simply sinister, depending on who you ask.

But here's the worst part: while Wikimedia often has its critics, you deliberately stripped (and in many cases, antagonized) hard-working and dedicated volunteers of their user rights without any good reason. Many of these people built the Wikimedia Foundation. You simultaneously did not strip administrator rights from staff members here who literally have never made a single contribution to this wiki. I hope you can see how hurtful your actions are: you abruptly removed every volunteer administrator, but left staff administrators who have never participated here (even once), much less helped maintain the site. And to date, you've still not answered why you decided to take this series of actions. Or perhaps more revealingly, why you didn't follow the old way.

But luckily for you, these people who you've snubbed and scorned are friends of the Wikimedia movement for a reason: they're (for the most part) smart, quirky, compassionate, tolerant, understanding, and forgiving.

I'm awaiting your update on next steps (as are others). However, I cannot and will not accept your apology until you make this right. It isn't enough to simply say you're sorry. Wikis are designed to be resilient and every action is reversible for a reason. --MZMcBride (talk) 02:48, 22 May 2013 (UTC)

Template:Contact header

It looks a bit odd when transcluded, for example at Press room - is this intentional? Thehelpfulone 14:41, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

Yes, I believe so. The color is supposed to indicate the active state of the "tabs." --MZMcBride (talk) 03:00, 13 July 2013 (UTC)

Sorry, I should clarify with a screenshot, the small strips of colour underneath "Contact us", "Press and media" etc seem to be displaced too much to the right? The only page that doesn't have a problem (for me) is Local chapters all the others are displaced so that the small strip isn't underneath the corresponding coloured tab? I see it looks fine on Monobook though, so probably a Vector problem? Thehelpfulone 21:01, 13 July 2013 (UTC)

Looks fine to me on Vector. What browser are you using? PiRSquared17 (talk) 03:57, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

Hmm, I'm using Chrome 28 on a Windows 7 laptop, it looks like if I zoom in to 110% then it's fine though? Thehelpfulone 11:06, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

I've noticed that the template looks fine when transcluded in Monobook, but not in Vector. Perhaps this accounts for the discrepancy? I'm on Chrome 28 on Windows 7 too, for what it's worth. --Deskana (talk) 16:11, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

I can't duplicate this on Chrome, but I'm not on Windows 7 if that matters. Maybe MZMcBride can provide a more insightful comment. PiRSquared17 (talk) 16:33, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

(unindent) The issue appears to be due to resolution. For example, through my own testing, I have found the template looks fine on:

• Chrome 28, Windows 7, Monobook, 1920x1080.
• Chrome 28, Mac OS X Lion, Monobook, 1680x1050.
• Chrome 28, Max OS X Lion, Vector, 1680x1050.

However, the template is broken on:

• Chrome 28, Windows 7, Vector, 1920x1080.

Perhaps it's to do with resolution? --Deskana (talk) 22:50, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

Catalyst Programs Re: "Soon"

Hi. Actually, I was helping to hire the two new contractorswhilst I was quiting and that hapenned more than two months ago - Rodrigo Padula and Celio Filho are the new ones. I thought someone who knows better internal decisions of Wikimedia Foundation would update it. Since there is going to be a partnership of Wikimedia Foundation with a Brazilian organization in the Catalyst context, I think it is better check with Anasuya and Oona Castro if all these names of people in the Catalyst are going to be maintained there - India was dropped out. I don't have time to check this now, but I think these are the names to ask. --Everton137 (talk) 01:50, 10 September 2013 (UTC)

Thanks!

I had no idea interwiki redirecting worked here. Thank you for fixing that. :-) PiRSquared17 (talk) 22:57, 21 September 2013 (UTC)

Re: Template:Staff and contractors

I disagree. No more time today though. --Nemo 13:45, 24 April 2014 (UTC)

To ensure accuracy of the content, would you mind checking with people before writing their self-description for them? As Heather indicated, this was a really misleading summary of the team's work. And while I don't mind some of your rewording, this edit introduced inaccuracies again - it's kind of weird to include journalists or the general public as part of "Wikimedia", and assign the team responsibilities regarding other WMF staff that are not in our actual job descriptions. Regards, Tbayer (talk) 21:23, 24 April 2014 (UTC)

Tilman: Well, I'm not sure that's what Heather was saying in that edit... you're putting words in her mouth. But, generally, it's a wiki. Be bold in updating pages.

I think one of the primary responsibilities of any communications team related to Wikimedia (whether it's a Chapter or the Foundation or a small hobby group) is to explain Wikimedia to people. Wikimedia is not just the Wikimedia Foundation. Wikimedia is not just Wikipedia. I think the blurb was better when it communicated something useful and helpful to readers. And I think it provided a fairly decent segue into a description of the work that the Wikimedia Foundation communications team does specifically. --MZMcBride (talk) 23:27, 24 April 2014 (UTC)

P.S. We've entered the third stage. :-)

Why did you remove the "hackish translation" stuff? That was actually used on a number of pages, e.g. Huidige staf. PiRSquared17 (talk) 21:47, 24 April 2014 (UTC)

Hm, that page does not seem to actually use it. Sorry for the confusion. But it is used on Сотрудники. PiRSquared17 (talk) 21:49, 24 April 2014 (UTC)

PiRSquared17: No confusion here. I was the person to most recently edit Сотрудники. I'm familiar with it. :-) The edit preceding mine is from 2011. We stopped linking to that page from Staff and contractors in 2012, maybe. I wasn't too concerned about it or its siblings... should I be? --MZMcBride (talk) 23:32, 24 April 2014 (UTC)