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Counterfactual conditional

Counterfactual conditionals (also contrafactual, subjunctive or X-marked) are conditional sentences which discuss what would have been true under different circumstances, e.g. "If Peter believed in ghosts, he would be afraid to be here." Counterfactuals are contrasted with indicatives, which are generally restricted to discussing open possibilities. Counterfactuals are characterized grammatically by their use of fake tense morphology, which some languages use in combination with other kinds of morphology including aspect and mood.

Counterfactuals are one of the most studied phenomena in philosophical logic, formal semantics, and philosophy of language. They were first discussed as a problem for the material conditional analysis of conditionals, which treats them all as trivially true. Starting in the 1960s, philosophers and linguists developed the now-classic possible world approach, in which a counterfactual's truth hinges on its consequent holding at certain possible worlds where its antecedent holds. More recent formal analyses have treated them using tools such as causal models and dynamic semantics. Other research has addressed their metaphysical, psychological, and grammatical underpinnings, while applying some of the resultant insights to fields including history, marketing, and epidemiology.

Examples
An example of the difference between indicative and counterfactual conditionals is the following English minimal pair:

 * Indicative conditional: If Sally owns a donkey, then she rides it.
 * Simple past counterfactual: If Sally owned a donkey, she would ride it.

These conditionals differ in both form and meaning. The indicative conditional uses the present tense form "owns" and therefore conveys that the speaker is agnostic about whether Sally in fact owns a donkey. The counterfactual example uses the fake tense form "owned" in the "if" clause and the past-inflected modal "would" in the "then" clause. As a result, it conveys that Sally does not in fact own a donkey. English has several other grammatical forms whose meanings are sometimes included under the umbrella of counterfactuality. One is the past perfect counterfactual, which contrasts with indicatives and simple past counterfactuals in its use of pluperfect morphology:

 * Past perfect counterfactual: If it had been raining yesterday, then Sally would have been inside.

Another kind of conditional uses the form "were", generally referred to as the irrealis or subjunctive form.

 * Irrealis counterfactual: If it were raining right now, then Sally would be inside.

Past perfect and irrealis counterfactuals can undergo conditional inversion:

 * Had it rained, Sally would have been inside.
 * Were it raining, Sally would be inside.

Terminology
The term counterfactual conditional is widely used as an umbrella term for the kinds of sentences shown above. However, not all conditionals of this sort express contrary-to-fact meanings. For instance, the classic example known as the "Anderson Case" has the characteristic grammatical form of a counterfactual conditional, but does not convey that its antecedent is false or unlikely.
 * Anderson Case: If Jones had taken arsenic, he would have shown just exactly those symptoms which he does in fact show.

Such conditionals are also widely referred to as subjunctive conditionals, though this term is likewise acknowledged as a misnomer even by those who use it. Many languages do not have a morphological subjunctive (e.g. Danish and Dutch) and many that do have it do not use it for this sort of conditional (e.g. French, Swahili, all Indo-Aryan languages that have a subjunctive). Moreover, languages that do use the subjunctive for such conditionals only do so if they have a specific past subjunctive form. Thus, subjunctive marking is neither necessary nor sufficient for membership in this class of conditionals.

The terms counterfactual and subjunctive have sometimes been repurposed for more specific uses. For instance, the term "counterfactual" is sometimes applied to conditionals that express a contrary-to-fact meaning, regardless of their grammatical structure. Along similar lines, the term "subjunctive" is sometimes used to refer to conditionals that bear fake past or irrealis marking, regardless of the meaning they convey.

Recently the term X-Marked has been proposed as a replacement, evoking the extra marking that these conditionals bear. Those adopting this terminology refer to indicative conditionals as O-Marked conditionals, reflecting their ordinary marking.

The antecedent of a conditional is sometimes referred to as its "if"-clause or protasis. The consequent of a conditional is sometimes referred to as a "then"-clause or as an apodosis.

Logic and semantics
Counterfactuals were first discussed by Nelson Goodman as a problem for the material conditional used in classical logic. Because of these problems, early work such as that of W.V. Quine held that counterfactuals are not strictly logical, and do not make true or false claims about the world. However, in the 1960s and 1970s, work by Robert Stalnaker and David Lewis showed that these problems are surmountable given an appropriate intensional logical framework. Work since then in formal semantics, philosophical logic, philosophy of language, and cognitive science has built on this insight, taking it in a variety of different directions.

The problem of counterfactuals
According to the material conditional analysis, a natural language conditional, a statement of the form "if P then Q", is true whenever its antecedent, P, is false. Since counterfactual conditionals are those whose antecedents are false, this analysis would wrongly predict that all counterfactuals are vacuously true. Goodman illustrates this point using the following pair in a context where it is understood that the piece of butter under discussion had not been heated.
 * 1) If that piece of butter had been heated to 150°, it would have melted.
 * 2) If that piece of butter had been heated to 150°, it would not have melted.

More generally, such examples show that counterfactuals are not truth-functional. In other words, knowing whether the antecedent and consequent are actually true is not sufficient to determine whether the counterfactual itself is true.

Context dependence and vagueness
Counterfactuals are context dependent and vague. For example, either of the following statements can be reasonably held true, though not at the same time:

 * 1) If Caesar had been in command in Korea, he would have used the atom bomb.
 * 2) If Caesar had been in command in Korea, he would have used catapults.

Non-monotonicity
Counterfactuals are non-monotonic in the sense that their truth values can be changed by adding extra material to their antecedents. This fact is illustrated by Sobel sequences such as the following:

 * 1) If Hannah had drunk coffee, she would be happy.
 * 2) If Hannah had drunk coffee and the coffee had gasoline in it, she would be sad.
 * 3) If Hannah had drunk coffee and the coffee had gasoline in it and Hannah were a gasoline-drinking robot, she would be happy.

One way of formalizing this fact is to say that the principle of Antecedent Strengthening should not hold for any connective > intended as a formalization of natural language conditionals.

 * Antecedent Strengthening: $$ P > Q \models (P \land R) > Q $$

Possible worlds accounts
The most common logical accounts of counterfactuals are couched in the possible world semantics. Broadly speaking, these approaches have in common that they treat a counterfactual A > B as true if B holds across some set of possible worlds where A is true. They vary mainly in how they identify the set of relevant A-worlds.

David Lewis's variably strict conditional is considered the classic analysis within philosophy. The closely related premise semantics proposed by Angelika Kratzer is often taken as the standard within linguistics. However, there are numerous possible worlds approaches on the market, including dynamic variants of the strict conditional analysis originally dismissed by Lewis.

Strict conditional
The strict conditional analysis treats natural language counterfactuals as being equivalent to the modal logic formula $$\Box(P \rightarrow Q)$$. In this formula, $$\Box$$ expresses necessity and $$\rightarrow$$ is understood as material implication. This approach was first proposed in 1912 by C.I. Lewis as part of his axiomatic approach to modal logic. In modern relational semantics, this means that the strict conditional is true at w iff the corresponding material conditional is true throughout the worlds accessible from w. More formally:

 * Given a model $$M = \langle W,R,V \rangle$$, we have that $$ M,w \models \Box(P \rightarrow Q) $$ iff $$M, v \models P \rightarrow Q $$ for all $$v$$ such that $$Rwv$$

Unlike the material conditional, the strict conditional is not vacuously true when its antecedent is false. To see why, observe that both $$P$$ and $$\Box(P \rightarrow Q)$$ will be false at $$w$$ if there is some accessible world $$v$$ where $$P$$ is true and $$Q$$ is not. The strict conditional is also context-dependent, at least when given a relational semantics (or something similar). In the relational framework, accessibility relations are parameters of evaluation which encode the range of possibilities which are treated as "live" in the context. Since the truth of a strict conditional can depend on the accessibility relation used to evaluate it, this feature of the strict conditional can be used to capture context-dependence.

The strict conditional analysis encounters many known problems, notably monotonicity. In the classical relational framework, when using a standard notion of entailment, the strict conditional is monotonic, i.e. it validates Antecedent Strengthening. To see why, observe that if $$P \rightarrow Q$$ holds at every world accessible from $$w$$, the monotonicity of the material conditional guarantees that $$P \land R \rightarrow Q$$ will be too. Thus, we will have that $$ \Box(P \rightarrow Q) \models \Box(P \land R \rightarrow Q) $$.

This fact led to widespread abandonment of the strict conditional, in particular in favor of Lewis's variably strict analysis. However, subsequent work has revived the strict conditional analysis by appealing to context sensitivity. This approach was pioneered by Warmbrōd (1981), who argued that Sobel sequences do not demand a non-monotonic logic, but in fact can rather be explained by speakers switching to more permissive accessibility relations as the sequence proceeds. In his system, a counterfactual like "If Hannah had drunk coffee, she would be happy" would normally be evaluated using a model where Hannah's coffee is gasoline-free in all accessible worlds. If this same model were used to evaluate a subsequent utterance of "If Hannah had drunk coffee and the coffee had gasoline in it...", this second conditional would come out as trivially true, since there are no accessible worlds where its antecedent holds. Warmbrōd's idea was that speakers will switch to a model with a more permissive accessibility relation in order to avoid this triviality.

Subsequent work by Kai von Fintel (2001), Thony Gillies (2007), and Malte Willer (2019) has formalized this idea in the framework of dynamic semantics, and given a number of linguistic arguments in favor. One argument is that conditional antecedents license negative polarity items, which are thought to be licensed only by monotonic operators.

 * 1) If Hannah had drunk any coffee, she would be happy.

Another argument in favor of the strict conditional comes from Irene Heim's observation that Sobel Sequences are generally infelicitous (i.e. sound strange) in reverse.

 * 1) If Hannah had drunk coffee with gasoline in it, she would not be happy. But if she had drunk coffee, she would be happy.

Sarah Moss (2012) and Karen Lewis (2018) have responded to these arguments, showing that a version of the variably strict analysis can account for these patterns, and arguing that such an account is preferable since it can also account for apparent exceptions. As of 2020, this debate continues in the literature, with accounts such as Willer (2019) arguing that a strict conditional account can cover these exceptions as well.

Variably strict conditional
In the variably strict approach, the semantics of a conditional A > B is given by some function on the relative closeness of worlds where A is true and B is true, on the one hand, and worlds where A is true but B is not, on the other.

On Lewis's account, A > C is (a) vacuously true if and only if there are no worlds where A is true (for example, if A is logically or metaphysically impossible); (b) non-vacuously true if and only if, among the worlds where A is true, some worlds where C is true are closer to the actual world than any world where C is not true; or (c) false otherwise. Although in Lewis's Counterfactuals it was unclear what he meant by 'closeness', in later writings, Lewis made it clear that he did not intend the metric of 'closeness' to be simply our ordinary notion of overall similarity.

Example:
 * If he had eaten more at breakfast, he would not have been hungry at 11 am.

On Lewis's account, the truth of this statement consists in the fact that, among possible worlds where he ate more for breakfast, there is at least one world where he is not hungry at 11 am and which is closer to our world than any world where he ate more for breakfast but is still hungry at 11 am.

Stalnaker's account differs from Lewis's most notably in his acceptance of the limit and uniqueness assumptions. The uniqueness assumption is the thesis that, for any antecedent A, among the possible worlds where A is true, there is a single (unique) one that is closest to the actual world. The limit assumption is the thesis that, for a given antecedent A, if there is a chain of possible worlds where A is true, each closer to the actual world than its predecessor, then the chain has a limit: a possible world where A is true that is closer to the actual worlds than all worlds in the chain. (The uniqueness assumption entails the limit assumption, but the limit assumption does not entail the uniqueness assumption.) On Stalnaker's account, A > C is non-vacuously true if and only if, at the closest world where A is true, C is true. So, the above example is true just in case at the single, closest world where he ate more breakfast, he does not feel hungry at 11 am. Although it is controversial, Lewis rejected the limit assumption (and therefore the uniqueness assumption) because it rules out the possibility that there might be worlds that get closer and closer to the actual world without limit. For example, there might be an infinite series of worlds, each with a coffee cup a smaller fraction of an inch to the left of its actual position, but none of which is uniquely the closest. (See Lewis 1973: 20.)

One consequence of Stalnaker's acceptance of the uniqueness assumption is that, if the law of excluded middle is true, then all instances of the formula (A > C) ∨ (A > ¬C) are true. The law of excluded middle is the thesis that for all propositions p, p ∨ ¬p is true. If the uniqueness assumption is true, then for every antecedent A, there is a uniquely closest world where A is true. If the law of excluded middle is true, any consequent C is either true or false at that world where A is true. So for every counterfactual A > C, either A > C or A > ¬C is true. This is called conditional excluded middle (CEM). Example:

 * (1) If the fair coin had been flipped, it would have landed heads.
 * (2) If the fair coin had been flipped, it would have landed tails (i.e. not heads).

On Stalnaker's analysis, there is a closest world where the fair coin mentioned in (1) and (2) is flipped and at that world either it lands heads or it lands tails. So either (1) is true and (2) is false or (1) is false and (2) true. On Lewis's analysis, however, both (1) and (2) are false, for the worlds where the fair coin lands heads are no more or less close than the worlds where they land tails. For Lewis, "If the coin had been flipped, it would have landed heads or tails" is true, but this does not entail that "If the coin had been flipped, it would have landed heads, or: If the coin had been flipped it would have landed tails."

Causal models
The causal models framework analyzes counterfactuals in terms of systems of structural equations. In a system of equations, each variable is assigned a value that is an explicit function of other variables in the system. Given such a model, the sentence "Y would be y had X been x" (formally, X = x > Y = y ) is defined as the assertion: If we replace the equation currently determining X with a constant X = x, and solve the set of equations for variable Y, the solution obtained will be Y = y. This definition has been shown to be compatible with the axioms of possible world semantics and forms the basis for causal inference in the natural and social sciences, since each structural equation in those domains corresponds to a familiar causal mechanism that can be meaningfully reasoned about by investigators. This approach was developed by Judea Pearl (2000) as a means of encoding fine-grained intuitions about causal relations which are difficult to capture in other proposed systems.

Belief revision
In the belief revision framework, counterfactuals are treated using a formal implementation of the Ramsey test. In these systems, a counterfactual A > B holds if and only if the addition of A to the current body of knowledge has B as a consequence. This condition relates counterfactual conditionals to belief revision, as the evaluation of A > B can be done by first revising the current knowledge with A and then checking whether B is true in what results. Revising is easy when A is consistent with the current beliefs, but can be hard otherwise. Every semantics for belief revision can be used for evaluating conditional statements. Conversely, every method for evaluating conditionals can be seen as a way for performing revision.

Ginsberg
Ginsberg (1986) has proposed a semantics for conditionals which assumes that the current beliefs form a set of propositional formulae, considering the maximal sets of these formulae that are consistent with A, and adding A to each. The rationale is that each of these maximal sets represents a possible state of belief in which A is true that is as similar as possible to the original one. The conditional statement A > B therefore holds if and only if B is true in all such sets.

The grammar of counterfactuality
Languages use different strategies for expressing counterfactuality. Some have a dedicated counterfactual morphemes, while others recruit morphemes which otherwise express tense, aspect, mood, or a combination thereof. Since the early 2000s, linguists, philosophers of language, and philosophical logicians have intensely studied the nature of this grammatical marking, and it continues to be an active area of study.

Description
In many languages, counterfactuality is marked by past tense morphology. Since these uses of the past tense do not convey their typical temporal meaning, they are called fake past or fake tense. English is one language which uses fake past to mark counterfactuality, as shown in the following minimal pair. In the indicative example, the bolded words are present tense forms. In the counterfactual example, both words take their past tense form. This use of the past tense cannot have its ordinary temporal meaning, since it can be used with the adverb "tomorrow" without creating a contradiction.

 * 1) Indicative: If Natalia leaves tomorrow, she will arrive on time.
 * 2) Counterfactual: If Natalia left tomorrow, she would arrive on time.

Modern Hebrew is another language where counterfactuality is marked with a fake past morpheme:

im Dani haya ba-bayit {maχa ɾ} hayinu mevakRim oto

if Dani be.PST.3S.M in-home tomorrow be.PST.1PL visit.PTC.PL he.ACC

"If Dani had been home tomorrow, we would've visited him."

Palestinian Arabic is another:

iza kaan fi l-bet bukra kunna zurna-a

if be.PST.3S.M in the-house tomorrow be.PST.1PL visit.PST.PFV.1PL-him

"If he had been home tomorrow, we would've visited him."

Fake past is extremely prevalent cross-linguistically, either on its own or in combination with other morphemes. Moreover, theoretical linguists and philosophers of language have argued that other languages' strategies for marking counterfactuality are actually realizations of fake tense along with other morphemes. For this reason, fake tense has often been treated as the locus of the counterfactual meaning itself.

Formal analyses
In formal semantics and philosophical logic, fake past is regarded as a puzzle, since it is not obvious why so many unrelated languages would repurpose a tense morpheme to mark counterfactuality. Proposed solutions to this puzzle divide into two camps: past as modal and past as past. These approaches differ in whether or not they take the past tense's core meaning to be about time.

In the past as modal approach, the denotation of the past tense is not fundamentally about time. Rather, it is an underspecified skeleton which can apply either to modal or temporal content. For instance, the particular past as modal proposal of Iatridou (2000), the past tense's core meaning is what is shown schematically below:

 * 1) The topic x is not the contextually-provided x

Depending on how this denotation composes, x can be a time interval or a possible world. When x is a time, the past tense will convey that the sentence is talking about non-current times, i.e. the past. When x is a world, it will convey that the sentence is talking about a potentially non-actual possibility. The latter is what allows for a counterfactual meaning.

The past as past approach treats the past tense as having an inherently temporal denotation. On this approach, so-called fake tense is not actually fake. It differs from "real" tense only in how it takes scope, i.e. which component of the sentence's meaning is shifted to an earlier time. When a sentence has "real" past marking, it discusses something that happened at an earlier time; when a sentence has so-called fake past marking, it discusses possibilities that were accessible at an earlier time but may no longer be.

Fake aspect
Fake aspect often accompanies fake tense in languages that mark aspect. In some languages (e.g. Modern Greek, Zulu, and the Romance languages) this fake aspect is imperfective. In other languages (e.g. Palestinian Arabic) it is perfective. However, in other languages including Russian and Polish, counterfactuals can have either perfective or imperfective aspect.

Fake imperfective aspect is demonstrated by the two Modern Greek sentences below. These examples form a minimal pair, since they are identical except that the first uses past imperfective marking where the second uses past perfective marking. As a result of this morphological difference, the first has a counterfactual meaning, while the second does not.

An eperne afto to sirpoi θa γinotan kala

if take.PST.IPFV this {} syrup FUT become.PST.IPFV well

'If he took this syrup, he would get better' An ipχe afto to sirpoi θa eγine kala

if take.PST.PFV this {} syrup FUT become.PST.PFV well

"If he took this syrup, he must be better."

This imperfective marking has been argued to be fake on the grounds that it is compatible with completive adverbials such as "in one month":

An eχtizes to spiti (mesa) se ena mina θa prolavenes na to pulisis prin to kalokeri

if build.IPFV the house {} in one month FUT have-time-enough.IPFV to it sell before the summer

"If you built this house in a month, you would be able to sell it before the summer."

In ordinary non-conditional sentences, such adverbials are compatible with perfective aspect but not with imperfective aspect:

Eχtise afto to spiti (mesa) se ena mina

build.PFV this {} house in {} one month

"She built this house in one month."
 * Eχtize afto to spiti (mesa) se ena mina

{} build.IPFV this {} house in {} one month

"She was building this house in one month."

Psychology
People engage in counterfactual thinking frequently. Experimental evidence indicates that people's thoughts about counterfactual conditionals differ in important ways from their thoughts about indicative conditionals.

Comprehension
Participants in experiments were asked to read sentences, including counterfactual conditionals, e.g., "If Mark had left home early, he would have caught the train". Afterwards, they were asked to identify which sentences they had been shown. They often mistakenly believed they had been shown sentences corresponding to the presupposed facts, e.g., "Mark did not leave home early" and "Mark did not catch the train". In other experiments, participants were asked to read short stories that contained counterfactual conditionals, e.g., "If there had been roses in the flower shop then there would have been lilies". Later in the story, they read sentences corresponding to the presupposed facts, e.g., "there were no roses and there were no lilies". The counterfactual conditional primed them to read the sentence corresponding to the presupposed facts very rapidly; no such priming effect occurred for indicative conditionals. They spent different amounts of time 'updating' a story that contains a counterfactual conditional compared to one that contains factual information and focused on different parts of counterfactual conditionals.

Reasoning
Experiments have compared the inferences people make from counterfactual conditionals and indicative conditionals. Given a counterfactual conditional, e.g., "If there had been a circle on the blackboard then there would have been a triangle", and the subsequent information "in fact there was no triangle", participants make the modus tollens inference "there was no circle" more often than they do from an indicative conditional. Given the counterfactual conditional and the subsequent information "in fact there was a circle", participants make the modus ponens inference as often as they do from an indicative conditional.

Psychological accounts
Byrne argues that people construct mental representations that encompass two possibilities when they understand, and reason from, a counterfactual conditional, e.g., "if Oswald had not shot Kennedy, then someone else would have". They envisage the conjecture "Oswald did not shoot Kennedy and someone else did" and they also think about the presupposed facts "Oswald did shoot Kennedy and someone else did not". According to the mental model theory of reasoning, they construct mental models of the alternative possibilities.

title: Counterfactual conditional


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Wikipedia talk:Meetup

Meetup for Western Massachusetts
Would anyone would be interested in a meetup in the Western Massachusetts area? If enough people sign below I'll try and pull one together. ⇌ Jake   Wartenberg  03:05, 19 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Sure. —Emufarmers(T/C) 03:22, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

 * No. – Juliancolton  | Talk 02:57, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
 * hmmm, I'm from Boston but go to school (for a couple more months) in Rochester,NY... I may be able to get there :)  James  ( T | C ) 03:05, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

Recent page move activity
Today User:BjörnBergman moved Wikipedia:Meetup and Wikipedia talk:Meetup to Wikipedia:Meetups and Wikipedia talk:Meetups respectively. While I appreciate user's boldness, I agree with the move back by User:Pharos, an editor well-known by the meetup pagewatcher community and the New York chapter meetup community in particular. I'd add my own rationale: "meetup" refers to the subject in the abstract, and as such should be singular, referring to the concept, but facilitating the individual meetups. BusterD (talk) 23:30, 29 April 2010 (UTC)

Testing new geo location service
Were thinking of retooling the existing watch list geo functionality that our various meetups use in favor of having it centralized within central notice. In order to work well for the meetup community were going to have to purchase one of the better commercial db's and we'ld love some testing and community feedback before we go with it.

Could we get a couple of testers to try out this max mind link and report back how accurate the results were. Please post results on meta —Preceding unsigned comment added by Tfinc (talk • contribs) 10:36, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

Age
How old do I have to be to be allowed to do a Wikipedia meetup? -- PK2 (talk) 01:49, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

 * There's no age requirement to attend, but I'd say if you're under 13 you probably wouldn't want to hang out with a bunch of boring old people anyway :) Or if you want to organize your own Wikipedia meet up you're free to do that too, but let people know if it's going to be young-person's event, and either way, if you are a minor be sure to tell your parents about it. -- œ ™ 23:08, 24 December 2010 (UTC)

 * You actually might want to come with a parent to a meetup; that's totally cool- we've had a number of past Meetup/NYC participants escorted by their "chauffeurs".--Pharos (talk) 22:55, 25 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Some meetups, whilst not having a minumum age as such, are held in premises that have their own restrictions which the meetup organisers need to abide by. For example, the London meetups are held in a public house; such buildings are subject to the alcohol licensing laws of the United Kingdom - laws which non-British people often find strange. These laws do not just restrict the ages of customers buying alcoholic drinks, but also restrict the ages of other persons entering the room in which such sales are made. -- Red rose64 (talk) 12:01, 26 December 2010 (UTC)

The Great American Wiknic
The Great American Wiknic will be held in cities across the US in June 2011. Add an event for your town!--Pharos (talk) 19:28, 17 April 2011 (UTC)

Changing pictures
Is it possible for us to change the pictures on the page? I think we're giving too much weight to India with all their meetups. Perhaps we should make it more geographically representative by replacing some of them with pictures of meetups from other parts of the world? --Sky Harbor (talk) 10:12, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

Do we have a userbox for Wikipedia meetups?
Not spotting any userboxes for folks who enjoy Wikipedia meetups. Do we have any? Djembayz (talk) 15:32, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
 * A fun one would be a good way of promoting them. Searching WP:meetup userbox I found a couple mentions, but I don't think any were general. CarolMooreDC 22:44, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
 * how about this:
 * --RightCowLeftCoast (talk) 01:57, 8 June 2017 (UTC)
 * --RightCowLeftCoast (talk) 01:57, 8 June 2017 (UTC)

In regards to raising €/$/¥/£ for the WMF: A charity journey from the 1,000,000th to the 4,000,000th article locations could raise a lot!
It could be a caravan of buses all ridden by Wikipedians. (Or if the community wishes, a group of Wikipedian cyclists, or a posse of Wikipedian train-riders if you all decide to take (most of) the journey on a train.)

Numerous charity events involved journeying thousands of miles in order to promote and raise funds for noble causes. Therefore, what say there be a trip that editors who start from Jordanhill Railway Station and finish at Izbat al-Burj?

This is the route from Jordanhill to Izbat al-Burj. It will take about a week, in order to account for fuel, food, resting, and recreational (sightseeing) stops. (The 86-hour figure would not.)

This is the no-toll route, but slightly longer.

Yes, both would involve ferries, but that's another sort of excitement.

Such an event could raise significant media coverage, which would lead to even more funds raised for the Wikimedia Foundation.

As a bonus, if traveling on the route through Spain, the traveling group could meet the cast & crew of El Hormiguero at their studio. Or if not through Spain, if the bus and/or train receives international TV broadcasts, the passengers can tune to the subject of the 2,000,000th article. If that can't happen, they could order DVDs of it to watch throughout the trip. Moreover, I would recommend inviting Beate Eriksen to come along!

If the motorcoach has a microphone & PA system, any of the passengers could feel free to lecture the articles about Joe Connor and the kanab ambersnail, word-for-word.

After the 1M-4M trip concludes, some of the travelers may feel like flying to Hastings, New Zealand, or prefer to fly to Russia to visit the former Forced settlements in the Soviet Union first.

Just thought to pass along a suggestion with a lot of fundraising potential! --129.130.239.163 (talk) 04:26, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

PS: If any Wikipedians live or will be anywhere near along the route, we should feel free to pick them up as seats are available! --129.130.239.163 (talk) 04:26, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

Contribution days
Is there a separate place on English Wikipedia for Contribution days? Amqui (talk) 20:22, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

Meetup
I am planning a meet up for San Diego Comic Con for this July (2013). I have started a page, and a talk page for it. This will be my first time attempting to host a Wikipedia event, so please let me know if there is anything I should be doing, that I have not yet.--RightCowLeftCoast (talk) 18:25, 17 April 2013 (UTC)

Meetup Request
I am excited to hear the announcement for Wikipeida Meetup at New Delhi, India, it is requested that please bring the news as soon as possible and don't forget to knock me on my talk page. —  C ute st Penguin Hangout 05:53, 6 October 2014 (UTC)

Non English meetups
Hi. I'm active on the Swedish Wikipedia where there are a few meetups organized every month. Those meetups are mostly in Swedish and the information (on the Swedish Wikipedia) is only in Swedish. However, people of every language are welcome. I think everyone speaks English and quite a few speaks one or two more languages. Now to my question. Should I add add those meetups here in your calendar? Regards Averater (talk) 14:41, 9 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Hi -- Sorry no one has written back to you before now. If you are still interested, yes please definitely add them to the Future meetups calendar section for each month, i.e., Template:Meetup/July 2016, etc. It looks like Swedish Wikipedia is doing a lot of cool events at Wikipedia:Wikiträffar and I know I would love to hear more details about what you are accomplishing. Info sharing would be great amongst meetup initiatives. -- Best, Erika aka BrillLyle (talk) 13:22, 16 July 2016 (UTC)
 * Hi! Finally an answer. Thanks! I have not added any yet both due to the lack of responses and also because of that there are a lot of meetups in Swedish. Maybe should filter them? There are different kinds of meetups (photo walks, regular meetings, weekly edit meetings and different kinds of workshops). Should I add all or just the regular meetups? What do you think? Regards Averater (talk) 10:29, 18 July 2016 (UTC)
 * Hi -- This is just my opinion but I think that it would be great if you would like to add as many or as few meetups as you would like to the meetup calendar. Please let me know if you need any help figuring out how to update the    template. It's not difficult once you've done it a few times. On this topic, I have been trying to figure out a good solution for Wikipedia meetups to be on some sort of consolidated -- or even automated -- calendaring system (see Phabricator task to consolidate tech calendars). At Wikimedia NYC, we have been using Google calendars to keep track of events so they don't get double-booked -- and so people can copy the events to their personal Google calendars. The Art+Feminism initiative has found that many people are most comfortable with Facebook event pages but they do not always export easily, so we've been relying on the Google calendar. I've found that separating out initiatives like AfroCROWD, Art+Feminism, and WM NYC planning (with duplication between initiatives) has helped to keep things straight -- at least for me. Assume because you are so active someone might be doing this for your country chapter? Please continue this dialog here and/or reach out privately if I can be of any assistance or if you have suggestions and/or any good ideas to solve this. :-) All the best, Erika [mailto:wp.brilllyle@gmail.com email] aka BrillLyle (talk) 15:40, 18 July 2016 (UTC)
 * Hi again Erika. Some events at Svwp do also get a Facebook event created. But most do not... It depends on those engaged in the event and who they are inviting. Interesting regarding both the Google calendar and the Phabricator calendar system. I hope something works out as a convenient system for us all to use. The current system with all different calendars is quite suboptimal I think. I'll start by adding the more "major" events now and ask the others at Svwp for more input. Averater (talk) 16:20, 18 July 2016 (UTC)
 * Done. I had to make a few null-edits though to make everything appear. --Averater (talk) 16:31, 18 July 2016 (UTC)
 * Hi -- 1000% agree it is suboptimal and duplication of efforts. I'm really glad you added events. I hope other chapters will do the same. Yay! -- Erika aka BrillLyle (talk) 17:02, 18 July 2016 (UTC)

How to add a meetup to the calendar?
In the Procedure and advice section, could we have formal instructions on how to add a Wikipedia:Meetup page to the central calendar? I've been trying to do it and have run into issues. This isn't formally explained anywhere. Lugevas (talk) 23:43, 26 April 2015 (UTC)

+1! I'm going through this process and there's no instruction on categories, or adding your page to the calendar or the Meetup box.

For example, is this page - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Meetup/Calendar#October - supposed to update automatically when you add yourself to the Template:Meetup/Month Year page?

Is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Meetup#Future_meetups loading automatically from that page, in turn?

How do I get into the Wikipedia meetup box?

Allanaaaaaaa (talk) 23:18, 18 September 2017 (UTC)

Meet ups for November?
Is anyone updating this page? I'd like to list a November Meet Up, which has a Meetup page in Wikimedia https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Meetup/New_Jersey/Aphra_Behn_Society_Editathon. Calliopejen1 recommended I move the page to Wikipedia so that users can have the links to their user pages. LLRungegordon (talk) 17:55, 10 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Sorry for the delay responding on this! I'll help now. The meetup shouldn't go on this page directly -- I'll create a good place for it. Calliopejen1 (talk) 17:56, 10 September 2015 (UTC)
 * I created a new page at Meetup/Aphra Behn Society Editathon and added the event to the page at WP:MEETUP/NYC (it seems that this is the nearest meetup community). November events aren't showing yet at the WP:MEETUP main page, but your event is in the queue for when they do. Another way to get your event advertised is with a "geonotice" -- which adds a banner-type notice to the watchlist of people in the immediate geographic area (based on their IP address).  It's too early to post that at this point, but ping me or create a request at Geonotice 3 weeks or so before the event. You can also ask at Wikipedia talk:Meetup/NYC to have someone send a user talk page message to all users on the list Meetup/NYC/Invite list. That sort of message probably should go out a week or two before the event.  It looks like when they send out messages to the list, they include a list of upcoming events at the bottom of the message (see e.g. User_talk:2much) so yours will likely be included in upcoming messages, even before a dedicated talk page message goes out.  Calliopejen1 (talk) 18:22, 10 September 2015 (UTC)
 * This is perfectCalliopejen1. I will follow up on each of these suggestions.  Thank you so much!Beachmirage Please see the new page.  This is set, and so we can use this in our promotion of the event.LLRungegordon (talk) 18:28, 10 September 2015 (UTC)

Wikipedia Meetup advertisement at a country Wikipedia page
Hi all,

I am thinking to boost the reach and promotion for any Wikipedia meetup event, is it possible (under Wikipedia rules) to advertise the meetup event at inside (the top position) of that particular country Wikipedia page? Let's say for the incoming Meetup/Singapore 8 in November 2015, is it possible to put the invitation template (Meetup/Singapore/Invite) at the top of Singapore Wikipedia article? Because it looks like generally, people browse more on country article pages instead of Wikipedia Meetup article pages. Thanks for the info. Chongkian (talk) 09:57, 22 October 2015 (UTC)

Real-time collaborative editing
Hey folks. For those of you involved in meetups of the edit-a-thon kind, there's an interesting proposal on phabricator to plan and develop a real-time collaborative editing environment, which could have a lot of positive outcomes amongst edit-a-thon participants who want to work on the same article. The proposal is submitted for the Wikimedia Developer Summit, and requires more community input at this time before it is accepted. If you're interested, please feel free to voice your support over at the phabricator page. For those of you who haven't used phabricator, you can sign in with your Wikipedia login using OAUTH. Thanks, I, JethroBT drop me a line 16:23, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

Next such event?
Hi, I want to know when will be next Wikimeetup Karachi, I am eager to join any such event of Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation in Pakistan.regardJogi 007 (talk) 05:04, 2 November 2015 (UTC)

El Paso Meetup
Hi! My event isn't on the front page. Can someone help me with that? It's an Art + Feminism event at the El Paso Public Library, this is the page: Meetup/El Paso/ArtAndFeminism 2016. Thanks! Megalibrarygirl (talk) 17:29, 5 March 2016 (UTC)

You won't be able to edit for 30 minutes in March 2016
Some planned technical work for the servers that host Wikipedia may affect some meetups and edit-a-thons:

All of the wikis (all languages, all projects) will be put into read-only mode briefly, three times in the next two weeks as part of a major data center project. The official schedule is on Wikitech, but what you probably need to know is this:

 * Nobody will be able to edit or save pages for five minutes early this coming week (probably 15 or 16 March, probably early morning UTC).
 * Nobody will be able to edit or save pages for 15 to 30 minutes on Tuesday, 22 March.
 * Nobody will be able to edit or save pages for 15 to 30 minutes on Thursday, 24 March.

The time of day has not been settled, but the most likely time is early morning in Europe/midnight in California. User:Pharos, assuming that the schedule doesn't change, this should all be finished some hours before the African Diaspora meet up starts.

I hope that this won't affect any events that you have planned. If you see the red error message that a wiki is in read-only mode, you should be able to wait (until the tricky bits are completed) and save your changes after read-only mode is disabled (but you might make a copy before you try to save, just in case something goes wrong). You will still be able to read all of the pages. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:42, 11 March 2016 (UTC)

 * The five-minute test was largely successful.
 * The rest of the schedule is being postponed until mid-April (the week of 18 April 2016). User:Pharos, this means that the Africa Diaspora event will definitely not be affected.  If anyone has any events scheduled during that week (other than WikiCon in Berlin, which I already know about), please ping me or leave a note on my talk page, and I'll see if I can get the exact days and times for you.  Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:01, 16 March 2016 (UTC)

PROBLEM
I really want to attend this meeting and not to say I am bit younger than anybody in this talk page. But the problem is that I live in India and don't know what to do! I really am anxious to meet such experienced editors and am really having trouble to know what to do in this situation. Please, please, please, please help me! Please!

--Amy2563 (talk) 16:53, 2 June 2016 (UTC)

Amy, is there a meetup in your area? If not, maybe you can try to find advice from this article on how to create a meetup. That’s my advice. — TadgStirkland401 (TadgTalk) 00:36, 24 August 2018 (UTC)

Calendar
Would someone be prepared to write a simple guide or code template to explain how to add events to the calendar? This is really important for making sure that people know about these things and it just seems to be beyond most users. Blythwood (talk) 04:17, 1 February 2017 (UTC)
 * As a second choice, simply getting people to add categories to their event listing for the right month would be nearly as good so people can find it. Might suggest that. Blythwood (talk) 04:43, 1 February 2017 (UTC)

Editing outages on 19 April and 3 May
The Wikimedia Foundation will be performing some maintenance and testing on the servers. One test will make sure that Wikipedia and the other Wikimedia wikis can stay online even after a disaster.

They will switch all traffic from the main data center to the secondary data center on Wednesday, 19 April 2017. On Wednesday, 3 May 2017, they will switch back to the primary data center. The time has not been finalized; however, the test will probably begin at 14:00 UTC (15:00 BST, 16:00 CEST, 10:00 EDT, 07:00 PDT).

Unfortunately, because of some limitations in MediaWiki, all editing must stop during those two switches. You will be able to read, but not edit, all pages at all wikis for approximately 20 to 30 minutes on Wednesday, 19 April and Wednesday, 3 May 2017. We apologize for this disruption, and we are working to minimize it in the future.

There will also be a code freeze for the weeks of 17 April 2017 and 1 May 2017. No non-essential code deployments will take place.

This project may be postponed if necessary. You can read the schedule at wikitech.wikimedia.org. They will post any changes on that schedule. There will be more notifications about this project later, at the Village Pumps.

If you have scheduled any meet-ups or edit-a-thons around this time, please leave a message for me on my talk page at the English Wikipedia as soon as possible. Thanks, Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 21:01, 22 March 2017 (UTC)

 * The time has been confirmed: 14:00 UTC on both days.  Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 21:46, 29 March 2017 (UTC)

For meetup in my city
Can you run meetup in my city (Bhopal madhyapradesh, india ). Pawantiwari9575 (talk) 16:48, 13 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Pawantiwari9575, see Meetup/Bhopal.
 * If you add your signature to the list at Meetup/Bhopal, you will be notified of future meetings. --Pipetricker (talk) 14:09, 14 April 2018 (UTC)

Reminder: read-only mode on September 12 and October 10
Hey everyone,

This is a reminder that, because of a server test to make sure we can still function in case of a catastrophe, there will be a short period of time (up to an hour, probably shorter) when you can read but not edit the wikis on September 12 and October 10. This will start at 14:00 UTC. You can read more at Tech/Server switch 2018. /Johan (WMF) (talk) 12:16, 10 September 2018 (UTC)

Adding a Meetup Page
Hi everyone, I wanted to check if (and if so how best) to add a planned edit-a-thon to these listings? The draft event details are in my sandbox right now but I just wanted to check how best to add the page, if it's allowed? The event is in Germany but will be held in English so my (probably hamfisted) attempt to add the event on the de meetup pages was deleted for being in the wrong language and not strictly a "Stammtisch". So I don't want to make a similar mistake again! Thanks in advance.--Lozmatron (talk) 13:42, 1 October 2018 (UTC)

 * Hi! Did everything work out from creating it in your sandbox and adding it somehow here? Thanks! Bumusiclibrary (talk) 19:04, 14 February 2024 (UTC)

Reform the page January 2019
I just changed some parts of this page.
 * before
 * after

Here are the changes as I see them:
 * 1) Changed emphasis from targeting experienced meetup organizers to targeting people who are new to organizing
 * 2) Pushed many of the showcase resources to the bottom of the page to emphasize instructions over linking out to instances of events
 * 3) Introduced the Wiki NYC event model of role differentiation (wiki person, outreach, expert, host)

 Blue Rasberry  (talk)  19:01, 26 January 2019 (UTC)
 * , that's terrific. thanks for these edits!!!! --Sm8900 (talk) 18:20, 21 January 2020 (UTC)

Template
I suggest use meta:template:online or derived (but with similar parameters) and put online meetings, as Spanish Wikimedia is doing just now, with very interesting topics. And add subtitles / captions for deaf people (this can be recieved before and be put as in YouTube or similar).BoldLuis (talk) 09:53, 18 May 2020 (UTC)

Looking forward to planning and hosting one of these!
Wow, this looks like so much fun to plan and run one of these and it looks like there hasn't been one in Minnesota, USA in a while, so I am hoping to organize one in the Twin Cities area sometime yet this year. Any particular advice for organizing one of these in 2023? Have people ever managed to do a hybrid model with some attending in person and some virtually? How has that worked? Thanks for any insights or ideas you may have! -- Helvishmelvi (talk) 03:33, 16 July 2023 (UTC)

Creating a Meetup page
I think there needs to be more instructions here, I still don't understand how to create the page (the extent of the instructions in this article) Bumusiclibrary (talk) 19:02, 14 February 2024 (UTC)

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Wikipedia talk:Meetup