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Editing News #2—2016

Editing News #2—2016 Read this in another languageSubscription list for this multilingual newsletter

Did you know?

It's quick and easy to insert a references list.

Screenshot showing a dropdown menu with many items

Place the cursor where you want to display the references list (usually at the bottom of the page). Open the "Insert" menu and click the "References list" icon (three books).

If you are using several groups of references, which is relatively rare, you will have the opportunity to specify the group. If you do that, then only the references that belong to the specified group will be displayed in this list of references.

Finally, click "Insert" in the dialog to insert the References list. This list will change as you add more footnotes to the page.

You can read and help translate the user guide, which has more information about how to use the visual editor.

Since the last newsletter, the VisualEditor team has fixed many bugs. Their workboard is available in Phabricator. Their current priorities are improving support for Arabic and Indic scripts, and adapting the visual editor to the needs of the Wikivoyages and Wikisources.

Recent changes

The visual editor is now available to all users at most Wikivoyages. It was also enabled for all contributors at the French Wikinews.

The single edit tab feature combines the "Edit" and "Edit source" tabs into a single "Edit" tab. It has been deployed to several Wikipedias, including Hungarian, Polish, English and Japanese Wikipedias, as well as to all Wikivoyages. At these wikis, you can change your settings for this feature in the "Editing" tab of Special:Preferences. The team is now reviewing the feedback and considering ways to improve the design before rolling it out to more people.

Future changes

The "Save page" button will say "Publish page". This will affect both the visual and wikitext editing systems. More information is available on Meta.

The visual editor will be offered to all editors at the remaining "Phase 6" Wikipedias during the next few months. The developers want to know whether typing in your language feels natural in the visual editor. Please post your comments and the language(s) that you tested at the feedback thread on mediawiki.org. This will affect several languages, including: Arabic, Hindi, Thai, Tamil, Marathi, Malayalam, Urdu, Persian, Bengali, Assamese, Aramaic and others.

The team is working with the volunteer developers who power Wikisource to provide the visual editor there, for opt-in testing right now and eventually for all users. (T138966)

The team is working on a modern wikitext editor. It will look like the visual editor, and be able to use the citoid service and other modern tools. This new editing system may become available as a Beta Feature on desktop devices around September 2016. You can read about this project in a general status update on the Wikimedia mailing list.

Let's work together

If you aren't reading this in your preferred language, then please help us with translations! Subscribe to the Translators mailing list or contact us directly, so that we can notify you when the next issue is ready. Thank you!

Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk), 21:09, 30 June 2016 (UTC)

The Signpost: 04 July 2016

Punjab edit-a-thon

Hello friend,
A multilingual national-level edit-a-thon is being conducted at this moment with an aim to create or improve Punjab-related articles. A community that will create or expand the most number of articles during this edit-a-thon contest will be awarded a trophy during WikiConference India 2016. Best contributors' recognition may also be considered. We need your help here. Please join right now as a participant and help your community.
Thanks and regards. --Tito Dutta (talk) 20:37, 5 July 2016 (UTC)

Eid Mubarak!

Eid Mubarak!
آپ کو اور آپ کے گھر والوں کو دل کی اتھاہ گہرائیوں سے عید کی خوشیاں بہت بہت مبارک۔

Sheriff | ☎ 911 | 05:03, 6 July 2016 (UTC)

The Signpost: 21 July 2016

The Signpost: 04 August 2016

The Signpost: 18 August 2016

The Signpost: 06 September 2016

The Signpost: 29 September 2016

New newsletter for Notifications

Hello

You are subscribing to the Notifications newsletter on English Wikipedia.

That newsletter is now replaced by the monthly and multilingual Collaboration team newsletter, which will include information and updates concerning Notifications but also concerning Flow and Edit Review Improvements.

Please subscribe!

All the best, Trizek (WMF) (talk) 10:51, 29 September 2016 (UTC)

Editing News #3—2016

Read this in another languageSubscription list for this multilingual newsletterSubscribe or unsubscribe on the English Wikipedia

Did you know?

Did you know that you can easily re-arrange columns and rows in the visual editor?

Screenshot showing a dropdown menu with options for editing the table structure

Select a cell in the column or row that you want to move. Click the arrow at the start of that row or column to open the dropdown menu (shown). Choose either "Move before" or "Move after" to move the column, or "Move above" or "Move below" to move the row.

You can read and help translate the user guide, which has more information about how to use the visual editor.

Since the last newsletter, the VisualEditor Team has mainly worked on a new wikitext editor. They have also released some small features and the new map editing tool. Their workboard is available in Phabricator. You can find links to the list of work finished each week at mw:VisualEditor/Weekly triage meetings. Their current priorities are fixing bugs, releasing the 2017 wikitext editor as a beta feature, and improving language support.

Recent changes

  • You can now set text as small or big.[1]
  • Invisible templates have been shown as a puzzle icon. Now, the name of the invisible template is displayed next to the puzzle icon.[2] A similar feature will display the first part of hidden HTML comments.[3]
  • Categories are displayed at the bottom of each page. If you click on the categories, the dialog for editing categories will open.[4]
  • At many wikis, you can now add maps to pages. Go to the Insert menu and choose the "Maps" item. The Discovery department are adding more features to this area, like geoshapes. You can read more on MediaWiki.org.[5]
  • The "Save" button now says "Save page" when you create a page, and "Save changes" when you change an existing page.[6] In the future, the "Save page" button will say "Publish page". This will affect both the visual and wikitext editing systems. More information is available on Meta.
  • Image galleries now use a visual mode for editing. You can see thumbnails of the images, add new files, remove unwanted images, rearrange the images by dragging and dropping, and add captions for each image. Use the "Options" tab to set the gallery's display mode, image sizes, and add a title for the gallery.[7]

Future changes

The visual editor will be offered to all editors at the remaining 10 "Phase 6" Wikipedias during the next month. The developers want to know whether typing in your language feels natural in the visual editor. Please post your comments and the language(s) that you tested at the feedback thread on mediawiki.org. This will affect several languages, including Thai, Burmese and Aramaic.

The team is working on a modern wikitext editor. The 2017 wikitext editor will look like the visual editor and be able to use the citoid service and other modern tools. This new editing system may become available as a Beta Feature on desktop devices in October 2016. You can read about this project in a general status update on the Wikimedia mailing list.

Let's work together

Do you teach new editors how to use the visual editor? Did you help set up the Citoid automatic reference feature for your wiki? Have you written or imported TemplateData for your most important citation templates? Would you be willing to help new editors and small communities with the visual editor? Please sign up for the new VisualEditor Community Taskforce.

If you aren't reading this in your preferred language, then please help us with translations! Subscribe to the Translators mailing list or contact us directly, so that we can notify you when the next issue is ready. Thank you! Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:18, 14 October 2016 (UTC)

The Signpost: 14 October 2016

Asian 10,000 Challenge invite

Hi. The Wikipedia:WikiProject Asia/The 10,000 Challenge has recently started, based on the UK/Ireland Wikipedia:The 10,000 Challenge and Wikipedia:WikiProject Africa/The 10,000 Challenge. The idea is not to record every minor edit, but to create a momentum to motivate editors to produce good content improvements and creations and inspire people to work on more countries than they might otherwise work on. There's also the possibility of establishing smaller country or regional challenges for places like South East Asia, Japan/China or India etc, much like Wikipedia:The 1000 Challenge (Nordic). For this to really work we need diversity and exciting content and editors from a broad range of countries regularly contributing. At some stage we hope to run some contests to benefit Asian content, a destubathon perhaps, aimed at reducing the stub count would be a good place to start, based on the current Wikipedia:WikiProject Africa/The Africa Destubathon which has produced near 200 articles in just three days. If you would like to see this happening for Asia, and see potential in this attracting more interest and editors for the country/countries you work on please sign up and being contributing to the challenge! This is a way we can target every country of Asia, and steadily vastly improve the encyclopedia. We need numbers to make this work so consider signing up as a participant! Thank you. --Ser Amantio di NicolaoChe dicono a Signa?Lo dicono a Signa. 02:02, 20 October 2016 (UTC)

WikiCup 2016 November newsletter: Final results

The final round of the 2016 WikiCup is over. Congratulations to the 2016 WikiCup top three finalists:

In addition to recognizing the achievements of the top finishers and everyone who worked hard to make it to the final round, we also want to recognize those participants who were most productive in each of the WikiCup scoring categories:

  • Featured Article – Cas Liber (actually a three-way tie with themselves for two FAs in each of R2, R3, and R5).
  • Good Article – MPJ-DK had 14 GAs promoted in R3.
  • Featured List – England Calvin999 (submissions) produced 2 FLs in R2
  • Featured Pictures – Adam Cuerden restored 18 images to FP status in R4.
  • Featured Portal – Yakutsk SSTflyer (submissions) produced the only FPO of the Cup in R2.
  • Featured Topic – Connecticut Cyclonebiskit (submissions) and Calvin were each responsible for one FT in R3 and R2, respectively.
  • Good Topic – MPJ-DK created a GT with 9 GAs in R5.
  • Did You Know – MPJ-DK put 53 DYKs on the main page in R4.
  • In The News – India Dharmadhyaksha (submissions) and New York City Muboshgu (submissions), each with 5 ITN, both in R4.
  • Good Article Review – MPJ-DK completed 61 GARs in R2.

Over the course of the 2016 WikiCup the following content was added to Wikipedia (only reporting on fixed value categories): 17 Featured Articles, 183 Good Articles, 8 Featured Lists, 87 Featured Pictures, 40 In The News, and 321 Good Article Reviews. Thank you to all the competitors for your hard work and what you have done to improve Wikipedia.--MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 01:52, 2 November 2016 (UTC)

We will open up a discussion for comments on process and scoring in a few days. The 2017 WikiCup is just around the corner! Many thanks from all the judges. If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove yourself from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. Sturmvogel 66 (talk · contribs · email), Figureskatingfan (talk · contribs · email), and Godot13 (talk · contribs · email)

WikiProject Good Articles's 2016-2017 GA Cup

WikiProject Good Articles's 2016-2017 GA Cup

Greetings, all!

We would like to announce the start of the 4th GA Cup, a competition that seeks to encourage the reviewing of Good article nominations! Thus far, there have been three GA Cups, which were successful in reaching our goals of significantly reducing the traditionally long queue at GAN, so we're doing it again. Currently, there are over 400 nominations listed. We hope that we can again make an impact this time.

The 4th GA Cup will begin on November 1, 2016. Four rounds are currently scheduled (which will bring the competition to a close on February 28, 2017), but this may change based on participant numbers. We may take a break in December for the holidays, depending on the results of a poll of our participants taken shortly after the competition begins. The sign-up and submissions process will remain the same, as will the scoring.

Sign-ups for the upcoming competition are currently open and will close on November 14, 2016. Everyone is welcome to join; new and old editors, so sign-up now!

If you have any questions, take a look at the FAQ page and/or contact one of the judges.

Cheers from 3family6, Figureskatingfan, Jaguar, MrWooHoo, and Zwerg Nase. We apologize for the delay in sending out this message until after the competition has started. Thank you to Krishna Chaitanya Velaga for aiding in getting this message out.

To subscribe or unsubscribe to future GA Cup newsletters, please add or remove your name to our mailing list. If you are a participant, you will be on the mailing list no matter what as this is the easiest way to communicate between all participants.

--MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 01:40, 3 November 2016 (UTC)

The Signpost: 4 November 2016

ArbCom Elections 2016: Voting now open!

Hello, Faizan. Voting in the 2016 Arbitration Committee elections is open from Monday, 00:00, 21 November through Sunday, 23:59, 4 December to all unblocked users who have registered an account before Wednesday, 00:00, 28 October 2016 and have made at least 150 mainspace edits before Sunday, 00:00, 1 November 2016.

The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail.

If you wish to participate in the 2016 election, please review the candidates' statements and submit your choices on the voting page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 22:08, 21 November 2016 (UTC)

The Signpost: 4 November 2016

WikiCup December newsletter: WikiCup 2017

On 1 January 2017, WikiCup 2017 (the 10th Annual WikiCup) will begin. This year we are trying something a little different – monetary prizes.

For the WC2017 the prizes will be as follows (amounts are based in US$ and will be awarded in the form of an online Amazon gift certificate):

  • First place – $200
  • Second & Third place – $50 each
  • Category prizes – $25 per category (which will be limited to FA, FL, FP, GA, and DYK for 2017). Winning a category prize does not require making it to the final round.

Note: Monetary prizes are a one-year experiment for 2017 and may or may not be continued in the future. In order to be eligible to receive any of the prizes above, the competing Wikipedia account must have a valid/active email address.

After two years as a WikiCup judge, Figureskatingfan is stepping down. We thank her for her contributions as a WikiCup judge. We are pleased to announce that our newest judge is two-time WikiCup champion Cwmhiraeth.

The judges for the 2017 WikiCup are Godot13 (talk · contribs · email), Cwmhiraeth (talk · contribs), and Sturmvogel 66 (talk · contribs · email).

Signups are open now and will remain open until 5 February 2017. You can sign up here.

If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove yourself from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send.MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 20:02, 14 December 2016 (UTC)

The Signpost: 22 December 2016

Merry, merry!

From the icy Canajian north; to you and yours! FWiW Bzuk (talk) 21:40, 25 December 2016 (UTC)

The Signpost: 17 January 2017

The Signpost: 6 February 2017

The Signpost: 27 February 2017

Copyright problem on History of Gilgit-Baltistan

Material you included in the above article appears to have been copied from the copyright web page http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03086530903538269. Copying text directly from a source is a copyright violation. Unfortunately, for copyright reasons, the content had to be parphrased, and some was removed. Please leave a message on my talk page if you have any questions or if you think I made a mistake. — Diannaa 🍁 (talk) 21:27, 31 March 2017 (UTC)

March 2017 WikiCup newsletter

And so ends the first round of the competition, with 4 points required to qualify for round 2. It would have been 5 points, but when a late entrant was permitted to join the contest in February, a promise was made that his inclusion would not result in the exclusion of any other competitor. To achieve this, the six entrants that had the lowest positive score of 4 points have been added to the 64 people who otherwise would have qualified. As a result, some of the groups have nine contestants rather than eight. Our top four scorers in round 1 were:

  • Scotland Cas Liber, last year's winner, led the field with two featured articles on birds and a total score of 674.
  • European Union Iry-Hor, a WikiCup newcomer, came next with a featured article, a good article and a tally of 282 bonus points for a score of 517. All these points came from the article Nyuserre Ini, an Ancient Egyptian pharaoh,
  • Japan 1989, another WikiCup newcomer, was in joint third place at 240. 1989 has claimed points for two featured lists and one good article relating to anime and comedy series, all of which were awarded bonus points.
  • South Australia Peacemaker67 shared third place with five good articles and thirteen good article reviews, mostly on naval vessels. He is also new to the competition.

The largest number of DYKs have been submitted by Vivvt and The C of E, who each claimed for seven, and MBlaze Lightning achieved eight articles at ITN. Carbrera and Peacemaker67 each claimed for five GAs and Krishna Chaitanya Velaga was well out in front for GARs, having reviewed 32. No featured pictures, featured topics or good topics yet, but we have achieved three featured articles and a splendid total of fifty good articles.

So, on to the second round. Remember that any content promoted after the end of round 1 but before the start of round 2 can be claimed in round 2. Invitations for collaborative writing efforts or any other discussion of potentially interesting work is always welcome on the WikiCup talk page. Remember, if two or more WikiCup competitors have done significant work on an article, all can claim points equally.

If you are concerned that your nomination—whether it is a good article candidate, a featured process, or anything else—will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews. If you want to help out with the WikiCup, please do your bit to help keep down the review backlogs! Questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup, and the judges are reachable on their talk pages or by email. Good luck! If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove yourself from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. Godot13, Sturmvogel 66 and Cwmhiraeth 13:52, 1 March 2017 (UTC)

== Pakistan ==

Thank you for your recent edit to Pakistan. You are, of course, free to edit any article on WP, including this one, but this article is in the midst of being copy-edited in response to a request at Wikipedia:WikiProject Guild of Copy Editors/Requests. I began yesterday and will continue today. I would appreciate it if you would wait to make further edits until I finish copy-editing the article and post the GOCE template on the article's talk page. If you think the article has major problems regarding content and sourcing that should be addressed first, let me know and I will put the copy-edit request on hold.  – Corinne (talk) 17:24, 30 March 2017 (UTC)

Hello, again, Faizan - I've been rather busy in real life, so didn't get back t the article right away. I was about to resume copy-editing but first decided to review the edits that had been made in the interim. When I saw this edit and, before that, this edit, and, before that, this edit, and, before that, this edit, I was astonished. Did you not see that I had just added the no-break space templates while carrying out a copy-edit for Wikipedia:WikiProject Guild of Copy Editors/Requests that you knew I had begun? Did you bother to check the information about the template at Template:Spaces? If you did either of those, and still wondered why I had placed the in the article, you could have asked me instead of undoing all my work, which, if I wanted to re-do those edits, I would now have to do manually (instead of a revert to an earlier version) because of intervening edits. I use the no-break space template so that numbers or dates are not separated at the end of a line from the following letters such as "BC", "AD", "BCE", "CE", and even day + month, or month + day in dates. It creates a nicer appearance for an article.
Also, there was no reason for you to re-add an extra space between sentences. The extra space is not rendered (that is, does not appear) in the main article text, so is unnecessary. The tighter appearance of the text is easier for me to read in edit mode; it enables me to see the overall flow of the sentences and organization in paragraphs, which is part of copy-editing. I don't remove unnecessary spaces between sentences unless I come across them as I am making other edits.
Finally, I really don't understand why you removed hidden notes to editors in this edit. They are only visible in edit mode, and someone must have placed them there because there was an issue, or a problem, and the editor wanted to avoid the repetition of the problem.  – Corinne (talk) 01:08, 6 April 2017 (UTC)
Hi Corinne. I was engaged in a cleanup of that article. If you like I can restore these hidden notes. Faizan (talk) 01:13, 6 April 2017 (UTC)

April 2017

You currently appear to be engaged in an edit war according to the reverts you have made on 1947 Jammu massacres. Users are expected to collaborate with others, to avoid editing disruptively, and to try to reach a consensus rather than repeatedly undoing other users' edits once it is known that there is a disagreement.

Please be particularly aware that Wikipedia's policy on edit warring states:

  1. Edit warring is disruptive regardless of how many reverts you have made.
  2. Do not edit war even if you believe you are right.

If you find yourself in an editing dispute, use the article's talk page to discuss controversial changes; work towards a version that represents consensus among editors. You can post a request for help at an appropriate noticeboard or seek dispute resolution. In some cases it may be appropriate to request temporary page protection. If you engage in an edit war, you may be blocked from editing. Kautilya3 (talk) 08:35, 6 April 2017 (UTC)

ARBIPA sanctions reminder

This message contains important information about an administrative situation on Wikipedia. It does not imply any misconduct regarding your own contributions to date.

Please carefully read this information:

The Arbitration Committee has authorised discretionary sanctions to be used for pages regarding India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan, a topic which you have edited. The Committee's decision is here.

Discretionary sanctions is a system of conduct regulation designed to minimize disruption to controversial topics. This means uninvolved administrators can impose sanctions for edits relating to the topic that do not adhere to the purpose of Wikipedia, our standards of behavior, or relevant policies. Administrators may impose sanctions such as editing restrictions, bans, or blocks. This message is to notify you that sanctions are authorised for the topic you are editing. Before continuing to edit this topic, please familiarise yourself with the discretionary sanctions system. Don't hesitate to contact me or another editor if you have any questions.

Kautilya3 (talk) 08:38, 6 April 2017 (UTC)

Please note also that all Kashmir conflict-related articles have additional edit restrictions. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 08:41, 6 April 2017 (UTC)

Citations

Hi there. Are you writing the citations in cite books format by hand? If you are, please consider using the: Wikipedia citation tool for Google Books. All you need to paste the URL of the book you are looking at in the Google Books page, and click "load." The page will then give you some choices (such as author name: straightforward or last/first etc, or citation style "cite book" or "citation" and it will automatically generate the reference tag, which in the case of the Google book you used, will give you: <ref name="KosinskiElahi2012">{{citation|last1=Kosinski|first1=L.A.|last2=Elahi|first2=K.M.|title=Population Redistribution and Development in South Asia|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=tGiSBAAAQBAJ&pg=PA6|date=6 December 2012|publisher=Springer Science & Business Media|isbn=978-94-009-5309-3|page=6}}</ref> which is more complete, and quicker, than the one you have. It also changes the URL to the more neutral (books.google.com). I typically remove the date and month of publication, just leave the year, and sometime also shorten the publisher's name, in this case just to Springer. Best regards, Fowler&fowler«Talk» 16:52, 5 April 2017 (UTC)

Hi Fowler&fowler. Thank you for the help. I will hence forth apply your words. In the meantime can I ask you to take a look at the quality of citations and sources being used [here]and [here]? I have recently begun to edit these pages and have had some issues with the sources being used. Faizan (talk) 23:17, 5 April 2017 (UTC)
BTW, You can now undo your last edit to Kashmir. It was already in the article, but someone removed it. I have now restored it. It is in the Princely State section. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 11:49, 6 April 2017 (UTC)

Partition of India

Please try to understand that this is a contentious page with a long history of nickel and diming by Indian and Pakistani editors. Such a page require a high level history; otherwise everyone and their brother will find some author, perfectly reliable, who is seemingly supporting their favorite family prejudice or nationalist history. I'm not saying you are doing that, but that you are opening the page to that. The page requires high-level source, preferably well worn textbooks that have already been vetted somewhat for UNDUE etc. It is true that after the 1946 elections, the League's case became stronger, but to cherry pick words such as "plebiscite" is to distort the history. The truth is that the Congress won 90% of the seats in the Central Legislature that were not reserved for Muslim candidates and formed the Central Government. Further, it won absolute majorities in eight out of 11 provinces, including NWFP, and formed provincial governments there. The League did not win an absolute majority in any state, but did win the vast majority of the Muslim vote, including all 30 seats reserved for Muslims in the Central Legislative Assembly. You can't do Google searches for a particular view point, or worse yet, a particular politically charged expression and then add that viewpoint or expression by adding the sources you found in your search. Otherwise, the page will become a mess. You have to understand a topic in some depth first, as treated in the high-level sources, and then summarize it. There are Wikipedia pages Indian general election, 1945 and Indian provincial elections, 1946 and Nehru was he prime minster of the Interim Government of India until August 1947. Your edits need to be in consonance with other Wikipedia pages. Best regards, Fowler&fowler«Talk» 00:21, 7 April 2017 (UTC)

Pakistan

Hello, Faizan - I saw your recent edits to Pakistan. Of course you are completely free to edit the article, but I thought I'd mention that the article is still in the middle of a copy-edit by the Wikipedia:WikiProject Guild of Copy Editors in response to a request made at Wikipedia:WikiProject Guild of Copy Editors/Requests. If you read Talk:Pakistan#There is a lot of blue going on in parts of this article, or User talk:Corinne#Mind if I help out on Pakistan?, you'll see that Jasphetamine offered to help me (it's a long article, and I've been rather busy), and we agreed to complete different sections of it. I just finished my sections today and handed it over to Jasphetamine. But, of course, if you hadn't seen either of these two discussions, you wouldn't have known that. If, for some reason, s/he does not take up the rest of the article in a day or two, I will finish the sections that I did not do. Perhaps you wouldn't mind waiting until the copy-edit is finished before making further edits. Your input is, of course, entirely welcome. Best regards,  – Corinne (talk) 02:13, 24 April 2017 (UTC)

Disambiguation link notification for April 24

Hi. Thank you for your recent edits. Wikipedia appreciates your help. We noticed though that when you edited Gilgit-Baltistan, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Zorawar Singh. Such links are almost always unintended, since a disambiguation page is merely a list of "Did you mean..." article titles. Read the FAQ • Join us at the DPL WikiProject.

It's OK to remove this message. Also, to stop receiving these messages, follow these opt-out instructions. Thanks, DPL bot (talk) 10:13, 24 April 2017 (UTC)

Partition of India

I have added my comments at Talk:PoI. If you think there is consensus, please add your text to the article body; otherwise somebody else will :) Fowler&fowler«Talk» 02:30, 25 April 2017 (UTC)

Editing News #1—2017

Read this in another languageSubscription list for this multilingual newsletter

VisualEditor
Did you know?

Did you know that you can review your changes visually?

Screenshot showing some changes to an article. Most changes are highlighted with text formatting.
When you are finished editing the page, type your edit summary and then choose "Review your changes".

In visual mode, you will see additions, removals, new links, and formatting highlighted. Other changes, such as changing the size of an image, are described in notes on the side.

Toggle button showing visual and wikitext options; visual option is selected.

Click the toggle button to switch between visual and wikitext diffs.

Screenshot showing the same changes, in the two-column wikitext diff display.

The wikitext diff is the same diff tool that is used in the wikitext editors and in the page history.

You can read and help translate the user guide, which has more information about how to use the visual editor.

Since the last newsletter, the VisualEditor Team has spent most of their time supporting the 2017 wikitext editor mode which is available inside the visual editor as a Beta Feature, and adding the new visual diff tool. Their workboard is available in Phabricator. You can find links to the work finished each week at mw:VisualEditor/Weekly triage meetings. Their current priorities are fixing bugs, supporting the 2017 wikitext editor as a beta feature, and improving the visual diff tool.

Recent changes

A new wikitext editing mode is available as a Beta Feature on desktop devices. The 2017 wikitext editor has the same toolbar as the visual editor and can use the citoid service and other modern tools. Go to Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-betafeatures to enable the ⧼Visualeditor-preference-newwikitexteditor-label⧽.

A new visual diff tool is available in VisualEditor's visual mode. You can toggle between wikitext and visual diffs. More features will be added to this later. In the future, this tool may be integrated into other MediaWiki components. [8]

The team have added multi-column support for lists of footnotes. The <references /> block can automatically display long lists of references in columns on wide screens. This makes footnotes easier to read. You can request multi-column support for your wiki. [9]

Other changes:

  • You can now use your web browser's function to switch typing direction in the new wikitext mode. This is particularly helpful for RTL language users like Urdu or Hebrew who have to write JavaScript or CSS. You can use Command+Shift+X or Control+Shift+X to trigger this. [10]
  • The way to switch between the visual editing mode and the wikitext editing mode is now consistent. There is a drop-down menu that shows the two options. This is now the same in desktop and mobile web editing, and inside things that embed editing, such as Flow. [11]
  • The Categories item has been moved to the top of the Page options menu (from clicking on the "hamburger" icon) for quicker access. [12] There is also now a "Templates used on this page" feature there. [13]
  • You can now create <chem> tags (sometimes used as <ce>) for chemical formulas inside the visual editor. [14]
  • Tables can be set as collapsed or un-collapsed. [15]
  • The Special character menu now includes characters for Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics and angle quotation marks (‹› and ⟨⟩) . The team thanks the volunteer developer, Tpt. [16]
  • A bug caused some section edit conflicts to blank the rest of the page. This has been fixed. The team are sorry for the disruption. [17]
  • There is a new keyboard shortcut for citations: Control+Shift+K on a PC, or Command+Shift+K on a Mac. It is based on the keyboard shortcut for making links, which is Control+K on a PC or Command+K on a Mac. [18]

Future changes

  • The VisualEditor team is working with the Community Tech team on a syntax highlighting tool. It will highlight matching pairs of <ref> tags and other types of wikitext syntax. You will be able to turn it on and off. It will first become available in VisualEditor's built-in wikitext mode, maybe late in 2017. [19]
  • The kind of button used to Show preview, Show changes, and finish an edit will change in all WMF-supported wikitext editors. The new buttons will use OOjs UI. The buttons will be larger, brighter, and easier to read. The labels will remain the same. You can test the new button by editing a page and adding &ooui=1 to the end of the URL, like this: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Project:Sandbox?action=edit&ooui=1 The old appearance will no longer be possible, even with local CSS changes. [20]
  • The outdated 2006 wikitext editor will be removed later this year. It is used by approximately 0.03% of active editors. See a list of editing tools on mediawiki.org if you are uncertain which one you use. [21]

If you aren't reading this in your preferred language, then please help us with translations! Subscribe to the Translators mailing list or contact us directly, so that we can notify you when the next issue is ready. Thank you! User:Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:18, 9 May 2017 (UTC)

Blocked for sockpuppetry

The Signpost: 9 June 2017

This blocked user is asking that his block be reviewed on the Unblock Ticket Request System:

Faizan (block logactive blocksglobal blocksautoblockscontribsdeleted contribsabuse filter logcreation logchange block settingsunblockcheckuser (log))


UTRS appeal #18484 was submitted on Jun 10, 2017 12:47:16. This review is now closed.


--UTRSBot (talk) 12:47, 10 June 2017 (UTC)

The Signpost: 23 June 2017

WikiCup 2017 July newsletter

The third round of the competition has finished in a flurry of last minute activity, with 288 points being required to qualify for round 4. It was a hotly competitive round with all but four of the contestants exceeding the 106 points that was necessary to proceed to round 4 last year. Coemgenus and Freikorp tied on 288, and both have been allowed to proceed, so round 4 now has one pool of eight competitors and one of nine.

Round 3 saw the achievement of a 26-topic Featured topic by MPJ-DK as well as 5 featured lists and 13 featured articles. PanagiotisZois and SounderBruce achieved their first ever featured articles. Carbrera led the GA score with 10, Tachs achieved 17 DYKs and MBlaze Lightning 10 In the news items. There were 167 DYKs, 93 GARs and 82 GAs overall, this last figure being higher than the number of GAs in round 2, when twice as many people were taking part. Even though contestants performed more GARs than they achieved GAs, there was still some frustration at the length of time taken to get articles reviewed.

As we start round 4, we say goodbye to the fifteen or so competitors who didn't quite make it; thank you for the useful contributions you have made to the Cup and Wikipedia. Remember that any content promoted after the end of round 3 but before the start of round 4 can be claimed in round 4. Remember too that you must claim your points within 10 days of "earning" them (some people have fallen foul of this rule and the points have been removed).

If you are concerned that your nomination, whether it be for a good article, a featured process, or anything else, will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews. It would be helpful if this list could be cleared of any items no longer relevant. If you want to help out with the WikiCup, please do your bit to keep down the review backlogs! Questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup, and the judges are reachable on their talk pages or by email. Good luck! If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove yourself from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. Godot13, Sturmvogel 66 and Cwmhiraeth 05:38, 30 June 2017 (UTC)

The Signpost: 15 July 2017

Nomination for deletion of Template:East Pakistan

Template:East Pakistan has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. Ten Pound Hammer(What did I screw up now?) 20:10, 27 September 2017 (UTC)

Unblock request

This user's unblock request has been reviewed by an administrator, who declined the request. Other administrators may also review this block, but should not override the decision without good reason (see the blocking policy).

Faizan (block logactive blocksglobal blockscontribsdeleted contribsfilter logcreation logchange block settingsunblockcheckuser (log))


Request reason:

Hi. I would like to bring this to attention that my account was hacked by an Australian user User:Towns Hill in 2017. I admit that my account security was insufficient and that my passwords were stolen and the ID was hijacked. I apologize to the Wikipedia community, This was my last edit on 4 July 2016. I have been too depressed due to the block in particular and life in general. I and Towns Hill are not the same individual and that can be seen with the difference of style in edits starting 2017. All the socks belonged to Towns Hill but since Towns Hill was associated with me, I had to get all the users as my sock puppets. I am a responsible user and that was evident by 5 years of my editing history. I never had socked nor I did this time, only the fact that Towns Hill hacked my account got me maligned. I know that does not clear me of SP, but I just wanted to tell it to the community. Nevertheless, I take full responsibility that my account was used inappropriately and against the Wikipedia policies. I assure the Wikipedia community that I have got everything back in control and have reset the password. I request you kindly for a second chance please. I assure you that this will not happen again and I will take care of it in the future. Please give me a second chance. Faizan (talk) 13:35, 28 September 2017 (UTC)

Decline reason:

I'm sorry, but once an account has been compromised it can not be unblocked. For one thing, we have no way of telling if this is the original user talking to us now or the hacker. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 13:43, 28 September 2017 (UTC)


If you want to make any further unblock requests, please read the guide to appealing blocks first, then use the {{unblock}} template again. If you make too many unconvincing or disruptive unblock requests, you may be prevented from editing this page until your block has expired. Do not remove this unblock review while you are blocked.

@Bbb23:, Please reconsider! Faizan (talk) 14:08, 28 September 2017 (UTC)
How exactly did Towns Hill steal your password? Give us the full details. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 16:37, 28 September 2017 (UTC)
Maybe he is telling the truth. I also recently received a failed log in attempt notification.  sami  talk 20:10, 29 November 2017 (UTC)
He could be telling the truth. But we need clarity on what is meant by "stealing" the password. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 09:46, 30 November 2017 (UTC)
Indeed, there was a few months' break in edit history in 2016 but edits before and after the break are in the same style, concern the same topic and same articles and also have identically styled edit summaries (e.g., using - and + signs). The argument of "password stealing" does not hold IMHO. There were also other cases of sockuppetry confirmed by CU. — kashmiri TALK 15:43, 30 November 2017 (UTC)
Not exactly. I have looked through the edit histories and found enough evidence to convince myself that the edits from March 2017 are Towns Hill's edits. I will be happy to provide it to an oversighter when it is time to do so.
The issue that Faizan needs to address here is to explain how Towns Hill managed to hijack his account. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 12:27, 1 December 2017 (UTC)
  • Without going into too much detail of these user's edit histories and behavior which I can clearly see were different before July 2016 and after March 2017. The hacking claim by Faizan looks right to me. @Kautilya3: How can an aggrieved party (hacked user) tell, how they were hacked? Stealing the password is not the only way an account can be hacked, there are many ways of hacking!
@Boing! said Zebedee: User has already been blocked for eleven months. There are many folks who were given second chances even after long term abuse of multiple accounts such as in this case then why Faizan is not given a chance while he had a very clean four year history and over 40,000 edits. Wikipedia's blocking policies are not supposed to be punitive but in this case it is a double punishment, first his account was hacked and then he is punished with such a long block. We are not supposed to keep users blocked forever. Maybe he can be allowed to create another account or you can unblock his declared alternative account and his edits history can be transferred over to the other account that should address your concern of not blocking a previously compromised account. Sheriff | ☎ 911 | 16:09, 25 March 2018 (UTC)
It's a compromised account, and compromised accounts are not unblocked unless convincing evidence can be provided that the original owner is back in control of it. If the original owner of the User:Faizan account wants to make an appeal and provide such evidence, or wants to ask about whether they can start afresh, they'll have to do that themselves - we can not accept a proxy request from you on their behalf. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 16:29, 25 March 2018 (UTC)
@Boing! said Zebedee: Sorry, you took it as a proxy request but it was rather an observational comment on this whole process same as everyone else such as Kautilya3, kashmiri and Samee above. It was more in relation to his already declined request and reconsideration to unblock based on previous request.
So, that everyone knows, what is considered a convincing evidence to prove that original owner is in control of the account? Sheriff | ☎ 911 | 16:48, 25 March 2018 (UTC)
The ideal thing would be to use {{Committed identity}}, but that needs to be set up ahead of the compromise and so it's no use here. Other than that, it's really something that would need to be discussed between the blocked user and someone with access to private account details (like someone with WP:Checkuser access, or with the WP:Arbitration Committee). It might be something like communicating via the email system, then proving they had communicated with another editor via email prior to the compromise, and then confirming the account still has the original and genuine email address registered. I also vaguely remember a case where another trusted user confirmed they had seen the person in real life back in control of their account. Having said that, it is often impossible to prove the original owner is back in control, as they would need to be able to provide some verifiable information that the hacker could not provide. In such cases, it's down to negotiating a fresh start with a new account, but in this case I'd say that would have to be by discussion with a Checkuser (eg the blocking admin) or the Arbitration Committee, as it is a Checkuser block that a non-Checkuser admin is not allowed to overturn. As I say, it would all have to start with a request from the account's owner. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 17:59, 25 March 2018 (UTC)

Operation Zarb-e-Azb

Operation Zarb-e-Azb, an article that you or your project may be interested in, has been nominated for an individual good article reassessment. If you are interested in the discussion, please participate by adding your comments to the reassessment page. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, the good article status may be removed from the article. I know you are blocked, but there are options for you to get unblocked or make a fresh start. I don't think this article will retain its status without your help so I hope you avail yourself of one of these options AIRcorn (talk) 05:01, 27 March 2018 (UTC)

Nomination for deletion of Template:Islamic Greetings

Template:Islamic Greetings has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. Brandmeistertalk 20:29, 27 February 2019 (UTC)

Nomination of Shahzad Malik for deletion

A discussion is taking place as to whether the article Shahzad Malik is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

The article will be discussed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Shahzad Malik until a consensus is reached, and anyone, including you, is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.

Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion notice from the top of the article. Störm (talk) 12:53, 6 April 2020 (UTC)

A discussion is taking place as to whether the article The Start and Restart of Play (association football) is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

The article will be discussed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/The Start and Restart of Play (association football) until a consensus is reached, and anyone, including you, is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.

Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion notice from the top of the article. Prisencolin (talk) 19:35, 17 July 2020 (UTC)

Asia challenge

The Asian
10,000 Challenge

Improve/create any article on anywhere in Asia whenever you feel like it and list it!...

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