Template talk:See also

Rename

Any objection to renaming this template from the awkward "seealso" to "see also"? That would have the added benefit of being consistent with other Mediawiki wikis - it seems odd to have a template that is essentially shared across wikis but that uses different naming. -- Ryan • (talk) • 02:47, 29 August 2013 (UTC)

Rename now done. -- Ryan • (talk) • 01:03, 30 August 2013 (UTC)

"Seealso" phrasebooks

Swept in from the pub

Should we insert that template in every country article? I feel like it's unnecessary if the language name is linked, but I guess it really doesn't hurt and might help. I was about to delete it from San Marino when I looked at some article for larger countries, some of which had the template and some of which did not. What do you all think? Ikan Kekek (talk) 09:20, 15 March 2022 (UTC)

When I first looked at the Singapore page, I was first confused in seeing four "see also" articles linked. I think they should just be inline links, in a short paragraph saying "Wikivoyage has phrasebooks on xxx languages". SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 09:47, 15 March 2022 (UTC)

The normal way to do it is to just link the languages, either in the lead of the talk section or in the paragraph discussing each language. For those reading the Talk section I think this is quite enough and easy to grasp. The see alsos are a bit distracting, but may be handy for those just looking for a link to the phrasebook.

In Singapore#Talk the inline links to the languages are a bit hard to find, as the section doesn't have a logical structure: The first paragraph begins with a link to Malay and an unlinked mention of English, while the paragraph mostly discusses Singlish. Only at the end of the section other languages are discussed and linked. If the languages were presented and linked in the first paragraph, and language names in bold where they are principally discussed, they'd be easy to find without the see also – and most readers should read the discussion, not only the phrasebook.

A problem with the see also is that it presents the languages as equally useful, while mostly their usefulness varies greatly. If people who should read the discussion clicks on a see also link, perhaps due to prejudices, then we have done them a misfavour. I don't know whether the shorthand aspect is worth that problem.

–LPfi (talk) 08:44, 17 March 2022 (UTC)

Template:Seealso "Mitched"

Swept in from the pub

what happened to Template:Seealso and its variants being "mitched" ? i dont know how to revert the template or if i even should, but i feel like it shouldnt be that way InvitedRhino683 (talk) 15:39, 14 February 2023 (UTC)

@InvitedRhino683, I don't understand what your concern is. You have made one edit, during which you (incorrectly) placed terminal punctuation at the end of non-sentences (e.g., "Popular trekking region of Nepal with the world-famous Annapurna Circuit." – there's no verb in that phrase, which means there's no sentence, and therefore there should be no period/full stop at the end of it) and removed a {{seealso}} link to South Asian cuisine. Neither the template nor the linked article have been edited for a while. What is it that you think could be reverted? WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:40, 14 February 2023 (UTC)

what ? i saw that someone had posted some "wikivoyage has been mitched" into the nepal article, so i edited that article to remove that, and saw that it had been generated from the seealso template. as for the other thing, that was my bad, sorry. as for the template itself, i checked again and apparently it wasnt like that ?? i dont know what happened with it, i guess i must have just been really dumb. sorry for wasting your time - InvitedRhino683 20:06, 14 February 2023 (UTC)

ok so i just went back and checked the article history and it wasnt even there ??? in any edits before mine ?? i honestly dont know what i was thinking - InvitedRhino683 20:14, 14 February 2023 (UTC)

• it's a long-term-abuse vandal, very familiar to us admins. It was I who took action. If you are curious about this, take a look at WV:Deny recognition and its talk page, to familiarize yourself with the context. Welcome to Wikivoyage. Ibaman (talk) 20:17, 14 February 2023 (UTC)

  @InvitedRhino683, you did the right thing. Thank you for reporting the problem. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:08, 15 February 2023 (UTC)

  thank you i guess lol - InvitedRhino683 04:25, 17 February 2023 (UTC)

  That reminds me: there were two bouts of widespread vandalism in the last few weeks. (As an example, one of them caused a photo of handguns to appear in a large number of articles, even though the photo wasn't "in" the article.) If you (=anybody) ever see something strange that you can't figure out how to fix, please post. It may be part of a bigger problem. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:49, 17 February 2023 (UTC)

Vandalism on Template:See also

Swept in from the pub

I don't know what's going on but instead of showing a redirect, it now shows a photo of Tom Hiddleston at ComicCon. I wanted to revert the vandalism, but there was no vandalism on this template itself, so it must have been in some module that I don't know about. The dog2 (talk) 21:05, 21 June 2024 (UTC)

I have just rolled back vandalism edits on 10 templates which had been changed to show this picture. One of them was Template:Seealso. I think that there are several templates which should be semi-protected. AlasdairW (talk) 21:34, 21 June 2024 (UTC)

Done User blocked by Antandrus + reported to SRG. --SHB2000 (t | c | m) 21:46, 21 June 2024 (UTC)

Now globally locked by Bsadowski1. --SHB2000 (t | c | m) 22:02, 21 June 2024 (UTC)

The template page itself still shows Tom Hiddleston's picture. How can it be reverted? The dog2 (talk) 22:11, 21 June 2024 (UTC)

That has been fixed by adding and then removing a space on the template to force an update. AlasdairW (talk) 22:23, 21 June 2024 (UTC)

I have the opinion that such template pages should be protected for admin-only editing by default, to prevent this type of vandalism. I tend to apply this protection whenever they are vandalized. Unfortunately I'm on phone mode right now, commuting, and not much able to act. Ibaman (talk) 23:56, 21 June 2024 (UTC)

Why admin-only, though? We should be using template editor protection at the very most. --SHB2000 (t | c | m) 02:02, 22 June 2024 (UTC)

Templates are often fixed by editors from other projects, with little edit history over here, and no extended rights. If this kind of vandalism happens infrequently, I think protecting the templates may cause more harm than the occasional vandalism. If there is a way to check group membership on the editor's home wiki, then that could make a base for a filter. –LPfi (talk) 14:53, 22 June 2024 (UTC)

Unfortunately, there is no way to check for local user rights at other wikis. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:39, 22 June 2024 (UTC)

Yeah, I was going to say this :-( (maybe some food for thought for the next community wishlist?). However, unlike other wikis, we're very liberal in giving out template-editor permissions, so any editor willing to make changes can request such perms and it'll often be granted. However, this wouldn't be possible if we admin-only protected those templates. --SHB2000 (t | c | m) 22:53, 22 June 2024 (UTC)

I think all templates which are used on more than about 20 pages should be semi-protected. Admin only protection is probably a step too far, it is a pity that there doesn't appear to be an intermediate level like autopatroller. I have seen a few occasions where a vandal has edited templates or modules, and have only noticed that this has happened due to unexpected changes to pages I was looking at. On this occasion, I was looking at page which had just been flagged as having a dead link, found an unexpected image and traced it to Template:Quote. The vandal has used a new account on all these occasions, so semi-protection would have helped. (We might also need to raise the bar for confirmation - some other wikis have it set a bit higher.) AlasdairW (talk) 22:58, 22 June 2024 (UTC)

It may be worth pointing out that the vandal targetted Template:Seealso, which has no protection and is used on 950 pages rather than Template:See also used on several thousand, which was protected. AlasdairW (talk) 23:10, 22 June 2024 (UTC)

Perhaps redirects should be protected. WhatamIdoing (talk) 14:47, 24 June 2024 (UTC)

We do have an intermediate protection level – that's template editor (I'm happy to grant them to you if you want – just request on my talk page). Other than that, I do agree that we should increase the bar for autoconfirmed – 4 days + 0 edits makes it very easy for vandals to create sleepers (I think enwiki's or meta's levels are about right, but that's for a separate discussion). --SHB2000 (t | c | m) 23:34, 22 June 2024 (UTC)

Enwiki is 4 days + 10 edits. The '4 days' part is generally considered the bigger barrier. WhatamIdoing (talk) 14:48, 24 June 2024 (UTC)

Right, but wouldn't it be more beneficial for us to change it to 4 days + 5 edits (meta's level) given how easy it would be to get past it using sleeper accounts? --SHB2000 (t | c | m) 21:42, 24 June 2024 (UTC)

The main thing autoconfirmed accounts should be able to do is to edit pages targeted by vandals with throw-away accounts. Do you have any feel for the distribution of good-faith editors between numbers of edits? I would think that anybody who creates an account for more than a single edit or a test soon reaches ten or more edits, and thus the edit count isn't a serious barrier for most, even if raised somewhat.

For sleeper accounts, the four days are no barrier, but edits require at least some work if you don't want them reverted (and thus possibly some attention; do reverted edits count?). The current limits seem to be targeted at touts and mistakes by pass-by editors. If we want to get some protection against vandals, higher limits are needed.

–LPfi (talk) 06:48, 25 June 2024 (UTC)

What do you think of meta's 5-edit limit? 5 edits IMO is enough to tell whether a user is a good-faith editor or not. --SHB2000 (t | c | m) 10:33, 25 June 2024 (UTC)

I don't think it is a problem. Zero edits makes no sense unless we believe that people register and keep logged in to be able to use personal settings. I don't know whether that is usual. If it is, then their first edit won't be denied with the current limit. If people register for editing, they surely would have done their first edits before the four-day limit. Whether the edit count should be three, five or ten, I don't know. Is there a significant population of active contributors having one or three but not ten edits? Those that made a certain amount of edits but then abandoned their account should not be counted. –LPfi (talk) 12:08, 25 June 2024 (UTC)

It seems many of us in this thread are in agreement on this issue – I have a few things I need to catch up IRL, but I'll propose we change the requirements sometime in the next few days. --SHB2000 (t | c | m) 12:23, 25 June 2024 (UTC)

Wikidata uses 4 days and 50 edits, decided here. A setting of 50 doesn't prevent an Admin from manually confirming earlier, but does require some editing time even if each of the edits is simple. AlasdairW (talk) 20:21, 25 June 2024 (UTC)

I wouldn't go overboard with 50 (I think zhwiki also has something similar IIRC with 30 days, but don't quite me on it), but maybe something in between could work. --SHB2000 (t | c | m) 21:36, 25 June 2024 (UTC)

Wikidata edits are not really comparable. Anyway, what we are trying to make harder is creating a large number of sleeper accounts. Even requirement of a few edits are a barrier when they are needed for every account. –LPfi (talk) 06:16, 26 June 2024 (UTC)

The numbers aren't difficult to calculate. We have 2.3 million registered accounts. Most of these are editors from other wikis (e.g., the English Wikipedia) who clicked a link one day and had their account autocreated. Only about 3% have ever made an edit here, and most of those have been inactive for years.

Of those 3% (i.e., excluding all IP/logged-out editors, and including only registered/logged-in accounts that actually made an edit here):

• 66,500 have made 1+ edits,
• 41,800 have made 2+ edits,
• 31,600 have made 3+ edits (this is the 50% level),
• 25,700 have made 4+ edits,
• 21,800 have made 5+ edits,
• 12,700 have made 10+ edits,
• 3,200 have made 50+ edits,
• 1,855 have made 100+ edits,
• 526 have made 500+ edits.

These are all "lifetime" edits: The 12,700 people who have made 10+ edits might have made them years ago, or one edit per year for the last ten years, etc.

As a bonus statistic, there are only 107 contributors here who are currently active (1+ edits during the last 30 days) and meet enwiki's "extended confirmed" requirements (account is 30+ days old, with 500+ total/lifetime contributions). WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:41, 25 June 2024 (UTC)

An interesting figure would be like the above, but only counting those with several days between the account creation and their newest edit. If they did all their edits at the one time they visited and then never return, they aren't very relevant, as they wouldn't have become autoconfirmed – unless we drop the account age requirement. –LPfi (talk) 20:55, 25 June 2024 (UTC)