Mdennis (WMF)

Answers/Process

I didn't really understand this. Was there some problem with those revisions? --MZMcBride 04:06, 25 August 2011 (UTC)

Hi. :) There was some clarification from legal as to what kind of promises I could and could not make regarding confidentiality. Since earlier revisions contained some seriously inaccurate information and we had not yet received any responses, it seemed best to eliminate any chance of confusion by pulling it down. While the seriously inaccurate information was earlier in the histories (as they were incrementally corrected), it seemed expeditious to just leave the last edit standing. :D --Mdennis 10:04, 25 August 2011 (UTC)

Follow-up to my questions on Meta some time ago: Contact us still lists answers@ as an address, but doesn't clarify the role of the address. Is it active? Can you please clarify its function on the page? Thanks, Nemo 21:07, 15 April 2013 (UTC)

Yes, it's very active. :) We receive emails daily from people who have requests or questions for the Wikimedia Foundation. I'm not sure what I would add to the contact us page - basically, it's for everything that doesn't fit into another category. --Maggie Dennis (talk) 21:21, 15 April 2013 (UTC)

Thanks. "Everything that doesn't fit into another category" seems more like info@ as described on the page: «Questions related to Wikipedia or other projects» is so generic as to cover everything we may be talking about. At least one of the two needs to be clarified.

Also: donations, press and business are very clear categories, but info@ and answers@ are extremely mysterious as regards who replies etc. As long as there's only info@ this doesn't matter much, but having two mysterious addresses means people will be confused. --Nemo 06:16, 16 April 2013 (UTC)

Of course, there's a pretty big distinction between the Wikimedia Foundation and the projects. :) I do not answer questions about whether somebody can write an article about their garage band, and info@ does not answer questions about whether a visiting group from Oxford can tour the office. Sometimes people do get confused - they send inquiries for and about WMF to info@ and the people at info@ send them to me. Sometimes people send questions about content to answers@, and I send them to info@, but on the whole the system seems to have been working pretty well for the past year and a half. :) Are people complaining about confusion somewhere that I haven't noticed? Finding out specifically what is confusing them might help determine if clarification is needed. --Maggie Dennis (talk) 10:10, 16 April 2013 (UTC)

Confused people who don't know where to write won't know where to express confusion either.

As 1) saying "projects" for our wikis is jargon, and 2) you seem to imply that answers is about the office/staff of the WMF (which makes sense given that the board has its own address), I've tried [1]. Please correct/clarify if wrong.

Now we only lack some clarifications about audience: press@ and business@ have an obvious audience, info@ is for everyone willing to contribute/comment/etc. the projects, now is answers@ for readers or what else? How does it relate to liaison@ (for community members) or legal@ (for any legal-related request, but including or excluding "community liaison-ing"?), etc. etc. --Nemo 10:34, 16 April 2013 (UTC)

Oh, believe me, Nemo, they do. :) They write to all of them. It happens frequently. As to the change you've proposed, I guess we can see what happens. If the number of misdirected emails rises, then we might need to revert and figure out a different way, although I'm not sure this is an actual problem so much as a theoretical one. Answers@ is used by readers and editors - anyone who has a question for the WMF. They come in regularly, daily. Its audience seems to be finding it okay. :) --Maggie Dennis (talk) 10:47, 16 April 2013 (UTC)

So I guess said audience doesn't include me, because I, for one, am confused and don't know who to write. --Nemo 11:51, 16 April 2013 (UTC)

Okay, let's start there. What is your problem? If you tell me, then I can help you figure out who to write, and we can determine if the contact page can be changed to clarify. --Maggie Dennis (talk) 11:53, 16 April 2013 (UTC)

Page protections

Hi. Why did you protect Terms of Use (2012) and its subpages? --MZMcBride (talk) 22:09, 19 April 2012 (UTC)

Because I was told to. :) --Maggie Dennis (talk) 23:10, 19 April 2012 (UTC)

By whom and why? The protections seem like a very poor idea for a variety of reasons (some of which you seem to already have personally discovered). --MZMcBride (talk) 23:22, 19 April 2012 (UTC)

https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Foundation_wiki_feedback&oldid=3665286#Terms_of_Use_.282012.29.2Fpl

And of course this is just the beginning.

Please look into who asked you to do these full protections and why. It's your name attached to the actions. If you can't stand behind them, I strongly urge you to remove the protections and have whoever is standing behind them make them (or not, as the case should be). (And—not that it's really all that relevant—but the maner in which you protected the pages was rather daft. There's a title blacklist which would have meant one edit [or three, I guess] instead of 11 protections/unprotections/re-protections and it allows for future-proofing for future translations.) But that's completely tangential, really, as the point is that this is a wiki and you've fully protected a bunch of pages with the summary "policy," rather than "X said I must do this or we'll all surely lose our legal immunity and die the death of a thousand lawsuits."

I'm in no particular rush, but these protections seem wholly out-of-spirit with wiki principles and traditions and they seem as though they're only going to cause a headache going forward. People will inevitably want to change the link syntax on the Old Scots version or will want to fix an accent in the Klingon copy.

The annoying part here is that you're a wiki editor at heart and I don't even imagine you really disagree with me. But there you go, protecting all of these pages. Anyway, please look into this and get back to me when you have a chance. --MZMcBride (talk) 03:54, 20 April 2012 (UTC)

It was Philippe who gave me the assignment. I do not know if Philippe was conveying the request from higher up the command chain, although it's certainly possible. If you would like me, as community liaison, to ask Philippe for more information, I can do that, but given that you have a relationship with Philippe I'm not sure if you'd want me taking up this question on your behalf. Just let me know, though, and I'd be happy to send him an email to let him know that you'd like more information about this decision. --Maggie Dennis (talk) 00:00, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

Philippe and I connected here: <https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=3667057#Foundation_wiki_feedback>. Thanks for your help. I hadn't realized you'd been traveling. I hope you got some sleep. :-) --MZMcBride (talk) 22:37, 22 April 2012 (UTC)

Thank you; I did, although I will be a while getting back into my own timezone. :) I do not make that transition well. --Maggie Dennis (talk) 15:22, 24 April 2012 (UTC)

DMCA Random House Mondadori tweaked

Hey, I just wanted to let you know I tweaked DMCA Random House Mondadori a little. Let me know what you think. (I also want to tweak the deletion log msg but I guess that's impossible. so that the link to this wiki were clickable. and maybe make it an interwiki.) --Jeremyb (talk) 20:40, 21 March 2013 (UTC)

Fine by me. :) Easier to read and looks more cohesive. Thanks, Jeremy! --Maggie Dennis (talk) 20:43, 21 March 2013 (UTC)

Talk:Contact_us#Content_issues

FYI --Nemo 14:00, 10 April 2014 (UTC)

An important message about renaming users

Dear Mdennis,

I am cross-posting this message to many places to make sure everyone who is a Wikimedia Foundation project bureaucrat receives a copy. If you are a bureaucrat on more than one wiki, you will receive this message on each wiki where you are a bureaucrat.

As you may have seen, work to perform the Wikimedia cluster-wide single-user login finalisation (SUL finalisation) is taking place. This may potentially effect your work as a local bureaucrat, so please read this message carefully.

Why is this happening? As currently stated at the global rename policy, a global account is a name linked to a single user across all Wikimedia wikis, with local accounts unified into a global collection. Previously, the only way to rename a unified user was to individually rename every local account. This was an extremely difficult and time-consuming task, both for stewards and for the users who had to initiate discussions with local bureaucrats (who perform local renames to date) on every wiki with available bureaucrats. The process took a very long time, since it's difficult to coordinate crosswiki renames among the projects and bureaucrats involved in individual projects.

The SUL finalisation will be taking place in stages, and one of the first stages will be to turn off Special:RenameUser locally. This needs to be done as soon as possible, on advice and input from Stewards and engineers for the project, so that no more accounts that are unified globally are broken by a local rename to usurp the global account name. Once this is done, the process of global name unification can begin. The date that has been chosen to turn off local renaming and shift over to entirely global renaming is 15 September 2014, or three weeks time from now. In place of local renames is a new tool, hosted on Meta, that allows for global renames on all wikis where the name is not registered will be deployed.

Your help is greatly needed during this process and going forward in the future if, as a bureaucrat, renaming users is something that you do or have an interest in participating in. The Wikimedia Stewards have set up, and are in charge of, a new community usergroup on Meta in order to share knowledge and work together on renaming accounts globally, called Global renamers. Stewards are in the process of creating documentation to help global renamers to get used to and learn more about global accounts and tools and Meta in general as well as the application format. As transparency is a valuable thing in our movement, the Stewards would like to have at least a brief public application period. If you are an experienced renamer as a local bureaucrat, the process of becoming a part of this group could take as little as 24 hours to complete. You, as a bureaucrat, should be able to apply for the global renamer right on Meta by the requests for global permissions page on 1 September, a week from now.

In the meantime please update your local page where users request renames to reflect this move to global renaming, and if there is a rename request and the user has edited more than one wiki with the name, please send them to the request page for a global rename.

Stewards greatly appreciate the trust local communities have in you and want to make this transition as easy as possible so that the two groups can start working together to ensure everyone has a unique login identity across Wikimedia projects. Completing this project will allow for long-desired universal tools like a global watchlist, global notifications and many, many more features to make work easier.

If you have any questions, comments or concerns about the SUL finalisation, read over the Help:Unified login page on Meta and leave a note on the talk page there, or on the talk page for global renamers. You can also contact me on my talk page on meta if you would like. I'm working as a bridge between Wikimedia Foundation Engineering and Product Development, Wikimedia Stewards, and you to assure that SUL finalisation goes as smoothly as possible; this is a community-driven process and I encourage you to work with the Stewards for our communities.

Thank you for your time. -- Keegan (WMF) talk 18:24, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

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How we will see unregistered users

Hi!

You get this message because you are an admin on a Wikimedia wiki.

When someone edits a Wikimedia wiki without being logged in today, we show their IP address. As you may already know, we will not be able to do this in the future. This is a decision by the Wikimedia Foundation Legal department, because norms and regulations for privacy online have changed.

Instead of the IP we will show a masked identity. You as an admin will still be able to access the IP. There will also be a new user right for those who need to see the full IPs of unregistered users to fight vandalism, harassment and spam without being admins. Patrollers will also see part of the IP even without this user right. We are also working on better tools to help.

If you have not seen it before, you can read more on Meta. If you want to make sure you don’t miss technical changes on the Wikimedia wikis, you can subscribe to the weekly technical newsletter.

We have two suggested ways this identity could work. We would appreciate your feedback on which way you think would work best for you and your wiki, now and in the future. You can let us know on the talk page. You can write in your language. The suggestions were posted in October and we will decide after 17 January.

Thank you. /Johan (WMF)

18:15, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

Terms of Use/nl

Hello Medennis, sorry to trouble you with a small detail, but in the text Gebruiksvoorwaarden en Beleid the word Beleid should not be capitalized. Capitalization would only be necessary in German. Thank you for your time. Lotje (talk) 11:22, 26 September 2022 (UTC)

Only me again, would you be so kind as to change

===5. Wachtwoordbeveiliging===

U bent verantwoordelijk voor het geheim houden van uw eigen wachtwoord... into U bent verantwoordelijk voor het geheimhouden (one word) van uw eigen wachtwoord. Thank you :-) Lotje (talk) 16:16, 27 September 2022 (UTC)