User talk:Vermont

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Question from George.barnes1945 (07:54, 24 August 2024)

Hello. are you a real person or a BOT? I am here NOW because I was trying to login to my existing account. Been here for many many years but not logging in. Donated etc. Just reading.

    Found out - dont know where - that I could save pages access from different devices. I usually use my cell phone, but have dozens of computers in multiple locations.  Not relevant.

.. BUT did not know my user name or password. Bumbled around using my usual suspects, my Google passwords did have record. Tried your password reset which just never knew who I was. Refused to let me use my usual default username: George.barnes45 saying user already exists. ... too much irrelevant detail...

   Slightly modified to George...1945 allowed me to create new setup account. 
   So what do I want.  MERGE any existing accounts. Save topics and pages I have save on my Cell phone to this account. Clean up mess. Dont want multiple accounts. Will confuse me by tomorrow. As obvious from 1945, I am 79 years old and dont want complication in what is left of my life. 
     Not relevant, but I may be 79 but not a dummy. I have a Ph.D in math, published, 35 years teaching University Math and was married to a University Provost. Your Wiki information notes seem to be purposely obscure like they were written by somebody in New Zealand. No offense intended. My wife was born in Minsk and got her doctorate in Christchurch. Will print this out, and toss it at her. --George.barnes1945 (talk) 07:54, 24 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Hi George.barnes1945! I'm a real person :)

So, there are a few things here:

Assuming you're referring to the "saved pages" list in the iOS mobile app, those are tied to your account and only available in the mobile app. On desktop, most browsers have easy ways to make bookmarks, which you can use instead.
If you've forgotten the password to your previous account (presumably George.barnes45, which was made ~5 years ago?), you can reset the password if you have an email attached. Without an email attached, you won't be able to reset the password.

While you're still logged in to your original account on your phone, it might be worth writing down the articles on your saved pages list. Then you can log into your current account and re-save those pages. I'm not sure if there's a better way to migrate saved lists from one account to another on mobile, but there is no way to merge Wikimedia accounts. Vermont (🐿️—🏳️‍🌈) 23:42, 24 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@George.barnes1945, for questions about the iOS app, you can email ios-support@wikimedia.org. Vermont (🐿️—🏳️‍🌈) 18:57, 28 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Question from GenEli1L1 (15:57, 26 August 2024)

Hey! So I've done quite a bit of editing without an account, and now that I have one I'm going to continue, but I wanted to know when to add/remove red links. And I also was under the impression that places get linked the first time they show up in the page, but I'm 100% sure that is the case. Thank you. --GenEli1L1 (talk) 15:57, 26 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Hi GenEli1L1! Welcome :)

This guide page on red links has the most specific information, but the short version is: you can link topics that should have articles but currently do not. For example, red links would not be useful for topics that don't meet the notability guideline, because an article shouldn't be created about that topic.

You're correct that topics get linked the first time they show up in the page/major section. There are some exceptions, like in citations or infoboxes. (or were you referring to geographic places?) Best, Vermont (🐿️—🏳️‍🌈) 16:27, 26 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

By info boxes you mean the thing in the top right, not the part at the top that summarizes the entire article...right? GenEli1L1 (talk) 16:43, 26 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@GenEli1L1: Yep! The top-right box, on the articles that have one, is an infobox. The summary bit at the top is usually called a lead. Vermont (🐿️—🏳️‍🌈) 21:22, 26 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2024-35

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Feature news

Administrators can now test the temporary accounts feature on test2wiki. This was done to allow cross-wiki testing of temporary accounts, for when temporary accounts switch between projects. The feature was enabled on testwiki a few weeks ago. No further temporary account deployments are scheduled yet. Temporary Accounts is a project to create a new type of user account that replaces IP addresses of unregistered editors which are no longer made public. Please share your opinions and questions on the project talk page.
Later this week, editors at wikis that use FlaggedRevs (also known as "Pending Changes") may notice that the indicators at the top of articles have changed. This change makes the system more consistent with the rest of the MediaWiki interface. [1]

Bugs status

Editors who use the 2010 wikitext editor, and use the Character Insert buttons, will no longer experience problems with the buttons adding content into the edit-summary instead of the edit-window. You can read more about that, and 26 other community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week.

Project updates

Please review and vote on Focus Areas, which are groups of wishes that share a problem. Focus Areas were created for the newly reopened Community Wishlist, which is now open year-round for submissions. The first batch of focus areas are specific to moderator workflows, around welcoming newcomers, minimizing repetitive tasks, and prioritizing tasks. Once volunteers have reviewed and voted on focus areas, the Foundation will then review and select focus areas for prioritization.
Do you have a project and are willing to provide a three (3) month mentorship for an intern? Outreachy is a twice a year program for people to participate in a paid internship that will start in December 2024 and end in early March 2025, and they need mentors and projects to work on. Projects can be focused on coding or non-coding (design, documentation, translation, research). See the Outreachy page for more details, and a list of past projects since 2013.

Learn more

If you're curious about the product and technology improvements made by the Wikimedia Foundation last year, read this recent highlights summary on Diff.
To learn more about the technology behind the Wikimedia projects, you can now watch sessions from the technology track at Wikimania 2024 on Commons. This week, check out:
- Community Configuration - Shaping On-Wiki Functionality Together (55 mins) - about the Community Configuration project.
- Future of MediaWiki. A sustainable platform to support a collaborative user base and billions of page views (30 mins) - an overview for both technical and non technical audiences, covering some of the challenges and open questions, related to the platform evolution, stewardship and developer experiences research.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

MediaWiki message delivery 20:30, 26 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Question from GenEli1L1 (23:48, 26 August 2024)

I feel like i'm asking a lot of questions, but when I do the citations, what does it mean by ref. group, ref. name, or the ref with the little question mark in the top. --GenEli1L1 (talk) 23:48, 26 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@GenEli1L1: No worries re: asking a lot of questions! That's what I signed up for :P

ref group: as you've noticed, articles have in-line citations that show up in a big list ("References") at the bottom. Sometimes we'll want to add in-line notes that are clarifications rather than references, and these can be differentiated (and shown in separate lists) with ref groups.
ref name: reference names allow us to define a source once and cite it in that article as many times as we need.
Not sure what you mean by question mark, can you link to an example?
As a note: when it comes to citing sources, we try to cite them in-line, generally at the end of the sentence they support. This helps both readers and other editors quickly find which source is being used to support which claims in the article.

Also, I see you're editing American Civil War articles, which is awesome! As a fun fact, my only good article is Charles Mattocks, who was a Colonel in the Union Army. And for future questions, while I'm more than happy to continue talking on my talk page, if it'd be easier I'm also on Discord and a few other platforms. Vermont (🐿️—🏳️‍🌈) 01:03, 27 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Question from GenEli1L1 (19:56, 27 August 2024)

what do the + green thingys and the -red thingys next to my edits mean (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/GenEli1L1). --GenEli1L1 (talk) 19:56, 27 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@GenEli1L1: they're the change in the number of bytes of the page, which is basically the number of characters added or removed. Vermont (🐿️—🏳️‍🌈) 01:59, 28 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Voting for coordinators is now open!

Nominations for the upcoming project coordinator election have opened. A team of up to ten coordinators will be elected for the next coordination year. The project coordinators are the designated points of contact for issues concerning the project, and are responsible for maintaining our internal structure and processes. They do not, however, have any authority over article content or editor conduct, or any other special powers. More information on being a coordinator is available here. If you are interested in running, please sign up here by 23:59 UTC on 14 September! Voting will commence on 15 September. If you have any questions, you can contact any member of the current coord team. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 06:41, 1 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2024-36

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Weekly highlight

Editors and volunteer developers interested in data visualisation can now test the new software for charts. Its early version is available on beta Commons and beta Wikipedia. This is an important milestone before making charts available on regular wikis. You can read more about this project update and help to test the charts.

Feature news

Editors who use the Special:UnusedTemplates page can now filter out pages which are expected to be there permanently, such as sandboxes, test-cases, and templates that are always substituted. Editors can add the new magic word __EXPECTUNUSEDTEMPLATE__ to a template page to hide it from the listing. Thanks to Sophivorus and DannyS712 for these improvements. [2]
Editors who use the New Topic tool on discussion pages, will now be reminded to add a section header, which should help reduce the quantity of newcomers who add sections without a header. You can read more about that, and 28 other community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week.
Last week, some Toolforge tools had occasional connection problems. The cause is still being investigated, but the problems have been resolved for now. [3]
Translation administrators at multilingual wikis, when editing multiple translation units, can now easily mark which changes require updates to the translation. This is possible with the new dropdown menu.

Project updates

A new draft text of a policy discussing the use of Wikimedia's APIs has been published on Meta-Wiki. The draft text does not reflect a change in policy around the APIs; instead, it is an attempt to codify existing API rules. Comments, questions, and suggestions are welcome on the proposed update’s talk page until September 13 or until those discussions have concluded.

Learn more

To learn more about the technology behind the Wikimedia projects, you can now watch sessions from the technology track at Wikimania 2024 on Commons. This week, check out:
- Charts, the successor of Graphs - A secure and extensible tool for data visualization (25 mins) – about the above-mentioned Charts project.
- State of Language Technology and Onboarding at Wikimedia (90 mins) – about some of the language tools that support Wikimedia sites, such as Content/Section Translation, MinT, and LanguageConverter; also the current state and future of languages onboarding. [4]

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

MediaWiki message delivery 01:04, 3 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Question from Tiel xx (23:45, 3 September 2024)

I want to publish my article --Tiel xx (talk) 23:45, 3 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2024-37

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Feature news

Starting this week, the standard syntax highlighter will receive new colors that make them compatible in dark mode. This is the first of many changes to come as part of a major upgrade to syntax highlighting. You can learn more about what's to come on the help page. [5][6]
Editors of wikis using Wikidata will now be notified of only relevant Wikidata changes in their watchlist. This is because the Lua functions entity:getSitelink() and mw.wikibase.getSitelink(qid) will have their logic unified for tracking different aspects of sitelinks to reduce junk notifications from inconsistent sitelinks tracking. [7]

Project updates

Users of all Wikis will have access to Wikimedia sites as read-only for a few minutes on September 25, starting at 15:00 UTC. This is a planned datacenter switchover for maintenance purposes. More information will be published in Tech News and will also be posted on individual wikis in the coming weeks. [8]
Contributors of 11 Wikipedias, including English will have a new MOS namespace added to their Wikipedias. This improvement ensures that links beginning with MOS: (usually shortcuts to the Manual of Style) are not broken by Mooré Wikipedia (language code mos). [9]

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

MediaWiki message delivery 18:49, 9 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Question from Lotetree99 (04:49, 12 September 2024)

Hi there, I wanted to do a page for AbudQudoos Azhari, but seen a page that has been made but has yet to be uploaded to Wiki. I did some changes to it, can it go live?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draft:Abdul_Quddoos_Al-Azhari --Lotetree99 (talk) 04:49, 12 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The Bugle: Issue 221, September 2024

Your Military History Newsletter

Project news: From the editors; awards and honours; contest results
Articles: Last month's new featured and A-class content
Book review: Hog Farm looks at the bayou battles for Vicksburg

The Bugle is published by the Military history WikiProject. To receive it on your talk page, please join the project or sign up here.
If you are a project member who does not want delivery, please remove your name from this page. Your editors, Ian Rose (talk) and Nick-D (talk) 21:57, 15 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2024-38

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Improvements and Maintenance

Editors interested in templates can help by reading the latest Wishlist focus area, Template recall and discovery, and share your feedback on the talkpage. This input helps the Community Tech team to decide the right technical approach to build. Everyone is also encouraged to continue adding new wishes.
The new automated Special:NamespaceInfo page helps editors understand which namespaces exist on each wiki, and some details about how they are configured. Thanks to DannyS712 for these improvements. [10]
References Check is a feature that encourages editors to add a citation when they add a new paragraph to a Wikipedia article. For a short time, the corresponding tag "Edit Check (references) activated" was erroneously being applied to some edits outside of the main namespace. This has been fixed. [11]
It is now possible for a wiki community to change the order in which a page’s categories are displayed on their wiki. By default, categories are displayed in the order they appear in the wikitext. Now, wikis with a consensus to do so can request a configuration change to display them in alphabetical order. [12]
Tool authors can now access ToolsDB's public databases from both Quarry and Superset. Those databases have always been accessible to every Toolforge user, but they are now more broadly accessible, as Quarry can be accessed by anyone with a Wikimedia account. In addition, Quarry's internal database can now be queried from Quarry itself. This database contains information about all queries that are being run and starred by users in Quarry. This information was already public through the web interface, but you can now query it using SQL. You can read more about that, and 20 other community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week.
Any pages or tools that still use the very old CSS classes mw-message-box need to be updated. These old classes will be removed next week or soon afterwards. Editors can use a global-search to determine what needs to be changed. It is possible to use the newer cdx-message group of classes as a replacement (see the relevant Codex documentation, and an example update), but using locally defined onwiki classes would be best. [13]

Technical project updates

Next week, all Wikimedia wikis will be read-only for a few minutes. This will start on September 25 at 15:00 UTC. This is a planned datacenter switchover for maintenance purposes. This maintenance process also targets other services. The previous switchover took 3 minutes, and the Site Reliability Engineering teams use many tools to make sure that this essential maintenance work happens as quickly as possible. [14]

Tech in depth

The latest monthly MediaWiki Product Insights newsletter is available. This edition includes details about: research about hook handlers to help simplify development, research about performance improvements, work to improve the REST API for end-users, and more.
To learn more about the technology behind the Wikimedia projects, you can now watch sessions from the technology track at Wikimania 2024 on Commons. This week, check out:
- Hackathon Showcase (45 mins) - 19 short presentations by some of the Hackathon participants, describing some of the projects they worked on, such as automated testing of maintenance scripts, a video-cutting command line tool, and interface improvements for various tools. There are more details and links available in the Phabricator task.
- Co-Creating a Sustainable Future for the Toolforge Ecosystem (40 mins) - a roundtable discussion for tool-maintainers, users, and supporters of Toolforge about how to make the platform sustainable and how to evaluate the tools available there.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

MediaWiki message delivery 23:59, 16 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Voting for WikiProject Military history coordinators is now open!

Voting for WikiProject Military history coordinators is now open! A team of up to ten coordinators will be elected for the next coordination year. Register your vote here by 23:59 UTC on 29 September! MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:35, 18 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Question from Shaji Civiyadhen (14:24, 22 September 2024)

how can I upload my profile photo >? --Shaji Civiyadhen (talk) 14:24, 22 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2024-39

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Weekly highlight

All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on Wednesday September 25 at 15:00 UTC. Reading the wikis will not be interrupted, but editing will be paused. These twice-yearly processes allow WMF's site reliability engineering teams to remain prepared to keep the wikis functioning even in the event of a major interruption to one of our data centers.

Updates for editors

Editors who use the iOS Wikipedia app in Spanish, Portuguese, French, or Chinese, may see the Alt Text suggested-edit experiment after editing an article, or completing a suggested edit using "Add an image". Alt-text helps people with visual impairments to read Wikipedia articles. The team aims to learn if adding alt-text to images is a task that editors can be successful with. Please share any feedback on the discussion page.
The Codex color palette has been updated with new and revised colors for the MediaWiki user interfaces. The most noticeable changes for editors include updates for: dark mode colors for Links and for quiet Buttons (progressive and destructive), visited Link colors for both light and dark modes, and background colors for system-messages in both light and dark modes.
It is now possible to include clickable wikilinks and external links inside code blocks. This includes links that are used within <syntaxhighlight> tags and on code pages (JavaScript, CSS, Scribunto and Sanitized CSS). Uses of template syntax {{…}} are also linked to the template page. Thanks to SD0001 for these improvements. [15]
Two bugs were fixed in the GlobalVanishRequest system by improving the logging and by removing an incorrect placeholder message. [16][17]
View all 25 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week.

Updates for technical contributors

From Wikimedia Enterprise:
- The API now enables 5,000 on-demand API requests per month and twice-monthly HTML snapshots freely (gratis and libre). More information on the updates and also improvements to the software development kits (SDK) are explained on the project's blog post. While Wikimedia Enterprise APIs are designed for high-volume commercial reusers, this change enables many more community use-cases to be built on the service too.
- The Snapshot API (html dumps) have added beta Structured Contents endpoints (blog post on that) as well as released two beta datasets (English and French Wikipedia) from that endpoint to Hugging Face for public use and feedback (blog post on that). These pre-parsed data sets enable new options for researchers, developers, and data scientists to use and study the content.

In depth

The Wikidata Query Service (WDQS) is used to get answers to questions using the Wikidata data set. As Wikidata grows, we had to make a major architectural change so that WDQS could remain performant. As part of the WDQS Graph Split project, we have new SPARQL endpoints available for serving the "scholarly" and "main" subgraphs of Wikidata. The query.wikidata.org endpoint will continue to serve the full Wikidata graph until March 2025. After this date, it will only serve the main graph. For more information, please see the announcement on Wikidata.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

MediaWiki message delivery 23:33, 23 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]