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Editing news 2020 #2 – Quick updates

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The new features include a toolbar. What do you think should be in the toolbar?

This edition of the Editing newsletter includes information the Wikipedia:Talk pages project, an effort to help contributors communicate on wiki more easily. The central project page is on MediaWiki.org.

• Reply tool: This is available as a Beta Feature at the four partner wikis (Arabic, Dutch, French, and Hungarian Wikipedias). The Beta Feature will get new features soon. The new features include writing comments in a new visual editing mode and pinging other users by typing @. You can test the new features on the Beta Cluster. Some other wikis will have a chance to try the Beta Feature in the coming months.
• New requirements for user signatures: Soon, users will not be able to save invalid custom signatures in Special:Preferences. This will reduce signature spoofing, prevent page corruption, and make new talk page tools more reliable. Most editors will not be affected.
• New discussion tool: The Editing team is beginning work on a simpler process for starting new discussions. You can see the initial design on the project page.
• Research on the use of talk pages: The Editing team worked with the Wikimedia research team to study how talk pages help editors improve articles. We learned that new editors who use talk pages make more edits to the main namespace than new editors who don't use talk pages.

– Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:11, 15 June 2020 (UTC)

Editing news 2020 #3

On 16 March 2020, the 50 millionth edit was made using the visual editor on desktop.

Seven years ago this week, the Editing team made the visual editor available by default to all logged-in editors using the desktop site at the English Wikipedia. Here's what happened since its introduction:

• The 50 millionth edit using the visual editor on desktop was made this year. More than 10 million edits have been made here at the English Wikipedia.
• More than 2 million new articles have been created in the visual editor. More than 600,000 of these new articles were created during 2019.
• Almost 5 million edits on the mobile site have been made with the visual editor. Most of these edits have been made since the Editing team started improving the mobile visual editor in 2018.
• The proportion of all edits made using the visual editor has been increasing every year.
• Editors have made more than 7 million edits in the 2017 wikitext editor, including starting 600,000 new articles in it. The 2017 wikitext editor is VisualEditor's built-in wikitext mode. You can enable it in your preferences.
• On 17 November 2019, the first edit from outer space was made in the mobile visual editor.
• In 2019, 35% of the edits by newcomers, and half of their first edits, were made using the visual editor. This percentage has been increasing every year since the tool became available.

Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 02:06, 3 July 2020 (UTC)

Editing news 2020 #4

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Reply tool

The number of comments posted with the Reply Tool from March through June 2020. People used the Reply Tool to post over 7,400 comments with the tool.

The Reply tool has been available as a Beta Feature at the Arabic, Dutch, French and Hungarian Wikipedias since 31 March 2020. The first analysis showed positive results.

• More than 300 editors used the Reply tool at these four Wikipedias. They posted more than 7,400 replies during the study period.
• Of the people who posted a comment with the Reply tool, about 70% of them used the tool multiple times. About 60% of them used it on multiple days.
• Comments from Wikipedia editors are positive. One said, أعتقد أن الأداة تقدم فائدة ملحوظة؛ فهي تختصر الوقت لتقديم رد بدلًا من التنقل بالفأرة إلى وصلة تعديل القسم أو الصفحة، التي تكون بعيدة عن التعليق الأخير في الغالب، ويصل المساهم لصندوق التعديل بسرعة باستخدام الأداة. ("I think the tool has a significant impact; it saves time to reply while the classic way is to move with a mouse to the Edit link to edit the section or the page which is generally far away from the comment. And the user reaches to the edit box so quickly to use the Reply tool.")[1]

The Editing team released the Reply tool as a Beta Feature at eight other Wikipedias in early August. Those Wikipedias are in the Chinese, Czech, Georgian, Serbian, Sorani Kurdish, Swedish, Catalan, and Korean languages. If you would like to use the Reply tool at your wiki, please tell User talk:Whatamidoing (WMF).

The Reply tool is still in active development. Per request from the Dutch Wikipedia and other editors, you will be able to customize the edit summary. (The default edit summary is "Reply".) A "ping" feature is available in the Reply tool's visual editing mode. This feature searches for usernames. Per request from the Arabic Wikipedia, each wiki will be able to set its own preferred symbol for pinging editors. Per request from editors at the Japanese and Hungarian Wikipedias, each wiki can define a preferred signature prefix in the page MediaWiki:Discussiontools-signature-prefix. For example, some languages omit spaces before signatures. Other communities want to add a dash or a non-breaking space.

New requirements for user signatures

• The new requirements for custom user signatures began on 6 July 2020. If you try to create a custom signature that does not meet the requirements, you will get an error message.
• Existing custom signatures that do not meet the new requirements will be unaffected temporarily. Eventually, all custom signatures will need to meet the new requirements. You can check your signature and see lists of active editors whose custom signatures need to be corrected. Volunteers have been contacting editors who need to change their custom signatures. If you need to change your custom signature, then please read the help page.

Next: New discussion tool

Next, the team will be working on a tool for quickly and easily starting a new discussion section to a talk page. To follow the development of this new tool, please put the New Discussion Tool project page on your watchlist.

Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:48, 31 August 2020 (UTC)

Precious anniversary

Precious

Two years!

--Gerda Arendt (talk) 10:44, 21 December 2020 (UTC)

"Ridley Tsui Po-Wah" listed at Redirects for discussion

A discussion is taking place to address the redirect Ridley Tsui Po-Wah. The discussion will occur at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2020 December 28#Ridley Tsui Po-Wah until a consensus is reached, and anyone, including you, is welcome to contribute to the discussion. Zeke, the Mad Horrorist ^{(Speak quickly)} _{(Follow my trail)} 20:19, 28 December 2020 (UTC)

pangrams

Hi, I'm trying out some fonts for irish-gaelic ("Cé hÉ bhfuil tú?"), but cant find any pangrams in irish. How might I see the old list-of-pangrams page, that might have some ?

Buíochas, Is mise, le meas, Seén O'MhailAoidh — Preceding unsigned comment added by 31.200.177.147 (talk) 16:12, 22 January 2021 (UTC)

Editing news 2021 #1

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Reply tool

Completion rates for comments made with the Reply tool and full-page wikitext editing. Details and limitations are in this report.

The Reply tool is available at most other Wikipedias.

• The Reply tool has been deployed as an opt-out preference to all editors at the Arabic, Czech, and Hungarian Wikipedias.
• It is also available as a Beta Feature at almost all Wikipedias except for the English, Russian, and German-language Wikipedias. If it is not available at your wiki, you can request it by following these simple instructions.

Research notes:

• As of January 2021, more than 3,500 editors have used the Reply tool to post about 70,000 comments.
• There is preliminary data from the Arabic, Czech, and Hungarian Wikipedia on the Reply tool. Junior Contributors who use the Reply tool are more likely to publish the comments that they start writing than those who use full-page wikitext editing.[2]
• The Editing and Parsing teams have significantly reduced the number of edits that affect other parts of the page. About 0.3% of edits did this during the last month.[3] Some of the remaining changes are automatic corrections for Special:LintErrors.
• A large A/B test will start soon.[4] This is part of the process to offer the Reply tool to everyone. During this test, half of all editors at 24 Wikipedias (not including the English Wikipedia) will have the Reply tool automatically enabled, and half will not. Editors at those Wikipeedias can still turn it on or off for their own accounts in Special:Preferences.

New discussion tool

Screenshot of version 1.0 of the New Discussion Tool prototype.

The new tool for starting new discussions (new sections) will join the Discussion tools in Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-betafeatures at the end of January. You can try the tool for yourself.[5] You can leave feedback in this thread or on the talk page.

Next: Notifications

During Talk pages consultation 2019, editors said that it should be easier to know about new activity in conversations they are interested in. The Notifications project is just beginning. What would help you become aware of new comments? What's working with the current system? Which pages at your wiki should the team look at? Please post your advice at mw:Talk:Talk pages project/Notifications.

–Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 01:02, 23 January 2021 (UTC)

Happy First Edit Day

Happy First Edit Day, Joe Decker, from the Wikipedia Birthday Committee! Have a great day! Ajshul 😀 (talk) 05:47, 11 March 2021 (UTC)

Pending suspension of administrative permissions due to inactivity

Established policy provides for removal of the administrative permissions of users who have not made any edits or logged actions in the preceding twelve months. Because you have been inactive, your administrative permissions will be removed if you do not return to activity within the next month.

Inactive administrators are encouraged to rejoin the project in earnest rather than to make token edits to avoid loss of administrative permissions. Resources and support for reengaging with the project are available at Wikipedia:WikiProject Editor Retention/administrators. If you do not intend to rejoin the project in the foreseeable future, please consider voluntarily resigning your administrative permissions by making a request at the bureaucrats' noticeboard.

Thank you for your past contributions to the project. — JJMC89 bot 00:05, 1 April 2021 (UTC)

• This makes me sad. You were a great "wiki"-friend and Wikipedia:Unreferenced BLP Rescue is one of my fondest (and proudest!) Wikipedia memories (shoutout to Milowent and Whpq!). We earned every single one of these babies. I hope wherever life has taken you, you find yourself surrounded by beauty as breathtaking as your photographs. Cheers, -- Jezebel's Ponyo^{bons mots} 17:44, 1 April 2021 (UTC)

• I see you have been on a wikibreak for a while. I hope you are well and echo Ponyo's sentiments. The BLP Rescue project is something to be proud of and you did much heavy lifting. -- Whpq (talk) 17:49, 1 April 2021 (UTC)
• Hello old friends (with pings Ponyo Whpq)! What a nice reminder of that fun period, it turned me from a troll into a contributing member of internet society, perhaps even fit to associate with folks like you and Joe!--Milowent • ^hasspoken 14:25, 2 April 2021 (UTC)

• Pinging: Ponyo Whpq Milowent (and apologies if I missed anyone):

Hello my friends! I am deeply touched by the kind words! I am well, I had a couple years with a few challenges, but I have been handling those and I'm healthy and will be around for a good long time to come, and still hope to at least drop in occasionally more often starting soon. I've avoided the plague and now have a vaccine in me.

I still often tell the tale of our heroics on the BLP rescue work, the Gaelic hurlers, the .. laughs*, all of it, just all of it, and particularly you all.

How the heck are y'all?

I've done a perfunctory delete/restore, which will probably keep my bit alive a while longer, but I hope to be less perfunctory soon, days or weeks, not months or years.

And I'm serious when I say your notes here have put a huge smile on my face. Thank you! Feel free to poke me anytime. :) --joe decker^talk 22:34, 3 April 2021 (UTC)

I'm glad to hear you are doing well, and plan a return shortly. Cheers! -- Whpq (talk) 01:08, 4 April 2021 (UTC)

• glad to hear from you joe! amazing how time flies! looks like the the BLP Rescue Project ran from July 2010-Oct. 2011 - we were in the thick of it ten years ago! I guess about a year after we wrapped up I put together the Wikipedia:Top 25 Report, and that's now running strong without me for the past 5 years. Now I'm less active, but I putter about and occasionally create articles on subjects that interest me, and sometimes dip into AFDs. The drive to mass delete BLPs that started our project seems to have dissipated over time? The standards for article creation are higher, you effectively can't create articles without references anymore, and unsourced BLP insertions seem to be policed better. I do miss the camaraderie we had on our project, but until Joe mentioned it I had forgotten (blocked all memories of?) the Gaelic hurlers. We couldn't have gotten through those without group support!--Milowent • ^hasspoken 12:38, 5 April 2021 (UTC)
• The gang's all here. And we're OLD! Glad to hear you plan on dipping your toe back in, Joe. These 1,892 unreferenced BLPs won't source themselves!-- Jezebel's Ponyo^{bons mots} 17:53, 7 April 2021 (UTC)

Category:Organizations that support same-sex marriage has been nominated for deletion

Category:Organizations that support same-sex marriage has been nominated for deletion. A discussion is taking place to decide whether this proposal complies with the categorization guidelines. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the categories for discussion page. Thank you. Elshad (talk) 23:09, 19 April 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for the note. --joe decker^talk 04:13, 23 April 2021 (UTC)

Category:Organizations that oppose same-sex marriage has been nominated for deletion

Category:Organizations that oppose same-sex marriage has been nominated for deletion. A discussion is taking place to decide whether this proposal complies with the categorization guidelines. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the categories for discussion page. Thank you. Laurel Lodged (talk) 10:16, 27 April 2021 (UTC)

Help

How to make Administrators in Wiki Official TusharSahu (talk) 15:33, 16 May 2021 (UTC)

I'm sorry, I don't understand.

If you are looking for assistance from administrators on the English Wikipedia, Wikipedia:Requests for administrator attention may help you find the right resource. --joe decker^talk 03:05, 17 May 2021 (UTC)

Editing news 2021 #2

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When newcomers had the Reply tool and tried to post on a talk page, they were more successful at posting a comment. (Source)

Earlier this year, the Editing team ran a large study of the Reply Tool. The main goal was to find out whether the Reply Tool helped newer editors communicate on wiki. The second goal was to see whether the comments that newer editors made using the tool needed to be reverted more frequently than comments newer editors made with the existing wikitext page editor.

The key results were:

• Newer editors who had automatic ("default on") access to the Reply tool were more likely to post a comment on a talk page.
• The comments that newer editors made with the Reply Tool were also less likely to be reverted than the comments that newer editors made with page editing.

These results give the Editing team confidence that the tool is helpful.

Looking ahead

The team is planning to make the Reply tool available to everyone as an opt-out preference in the coming months. This has already happened at the Arabic, Czech, and Hungarian Wikipedias.

The next step is to resolve a technical challenge. Then, they will deploy the Reply tool first to the Wikipedias that participated in the study. After that, they will deploy it, in stages, to the other Wikipedias and all WMF-hosted wikis.

You can turn on "Discussion Tools" in Beta Features now. After you get the Reply tool, you can change your preferences at any time in Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-editing-discussion.

–Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk)

00:27, 16 June 2021 (UTC)

Happy Adminship Anniversary!

Wishing Joe Decker a very Decker happy adminship anniversary on behalf of the Wikipedia Birthday Committee! CAPTAIN RAJU^(T) 21:39, 29 July 2021 (UTC)

Undelete Request: from Lucy Layton

@Joe Decker:: Dear Joe, please could you restore the Wikipedia page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucy_Layton – it was deleted by the musician's manager at the time. She'd like to have the page restored, please. - 13:34, August 18, 2021 (GMT)

@KirkJTorrance: Joe Decker has been away from Wikipedia for the last few months. I've restored the draft article for you at Draft:Lucy Layton. Note that it will need significant sourcing improvements before it will be eligible to be moved to article space. Please also ensure you are aware of our conflict of interest guidelines if you are at all associated with Lucy Layton.-- Jezebel's Ponyo^{bons mots} 16:13, 18 August 2021 (UTC)

Precious anniversary

Precious

Three years!

--Gerda Arendt (talk) 07:16, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

Wishing you a happy 2022!

• 
• 
• 

Happy New Year!

• 
  MMXXII Lunar Calendar

Joe Decker,
Have a great 2022 and thanks for your continued contributions to Wikipedia.

---

   – Background color is Very Peri (#6868ab), Pantone's 2022 Color of the year

Send New Year cheer by adding {{subst:Happy New Year 2022}} to user talk pages.

– North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 17:43, 3 January 2022 (UTC)

How we will see unregistered users

Hi!

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

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

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

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

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

Thank you. /Johan (WMF)

18:13, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

New administrator activity requirement

The administrator policy has been updated with new activity requirements following a successful Request for Comment.

Beginning January 1, 2023, administrators who meet one or both of the following criteria may be desysopped for inactivity if they have:

1. Made neither edits nor administrative actions for at least a 12-month period OR
2. Made fewer than 100 edits over a 60-month period

Administrators at risk for being desysopped under these criteria will continue to be notified ahead of time. Thank you for your continued work.

22:52, 15 April 2022 (UTC)

Karam Family

Hello! I was told to address my concerns to you about the deletion of Karam Family (discussion) you made a while ago in 2014. The reason for deletion was due to a notability issue and it lacked sources (from what I understood). This is understandable since the article was created in 2014. But many sources today show that the family has a long history in its region and members of the family include fighters and politicians such as Youssef Bey Karam, Youssef Salim Karam and Salim Karam. Now it's possible that some of the members written in the article may be wrong but I would love to change that. I don't know what your admin powers are but I would really appreciate it if you considered undeletion. Thank you. Prodrummer619 (talk) 16:21, 27 May 2022 (UTC)

@Prodrummer619: Joe Decker has not been active on Wikipedia for several months. In this case the article was deleted by community consensus. If you believe the reasons for the deletion no longer apply, it would be best for you to create the article yourself (preferably as a draft) as opposed to restoring the version that was deleted by unanimous consensus. The deleted copy was just three section headers followed by a sea of red linked entries. The only prose was the sentence "Karam (كرم), is a prominent Lebanese family".-- Jezebel's Ponyo^{bons mots} 16:29, 27 May 2022 (UTC)

Editing newsletter 2022 – #1

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New editors were more successful with this new tool.

The New topic tool helps editors create new ==Sections== on discussion pages. New editors are more successful with this new tool. You can read the report. Soon, the Editing team will offer this to all editors at most WMF-hosted wikis. You can join the discussion about this tool for the English Wikipedia is at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#Enabling the New Topic Tool by default. You will be able to turn it off in the tool or at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-editing-discussion.

The Editing team plans to change the appearance of talk pages. These are separate from the changes made by the mw:Desktop improvements project and will appear in both Vector 2010 and Vector 2022. The goal is to add some information and make discussions look visibly different from encyclopedia articles. You can see some ideas at Wikipedia talk:Talk pages project#Prototype Ready for Feedback.

Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk)

23:14, 30 May 2022 (UTC)

"Joey's" listed at Redirects for discussion

An editor has identified a potential problem with the redirect Joey's and has thus listed it for discussion. This discussion will occur at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2022 June 24#Joey's until a consensus is reached, and anyone, including you, is welcome to contribute to the discussion. eviolite (talk) 00:02, 24 June 2022 (UTC)

Editing news 2022 #2

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The [subscribe] button shortens response times.

The new [subscribe] button notifies people when someone replies to their comments. It helps newcomers get answers to their questions. People reply sooner. You can read the report. The Editing team is turning this tool on for everyone. You will be able to turn it off in your preferences.

–Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 00:35, 26 August 2022 (UTC)

A brownie for you!

Good to see you drop by even for a little bit. Best wishes for the season, and I do hope to see you dropping in a little more often in the future. Cheers! Whpq (talk) 20:36, 10 December 2022 (UTC)

Thank you thank you! Me too. :). --joe decker^talk 01:38, 11 December 2022 (UTC)

Pending suspension of administrative permissions due to inactivity

Established policy provides for removal of the administrative permissions of users who have not made any edits or logged actions in the preceding twelve months. Because you have been inactive, your administrative permissions will be removed if you do not return to activity within the next month.

Inactive administrators are encouraged to rejoin the project in earnest rather than to make token edits to avoid loss of administrative permissions. Resources and support for reengaging with the project are available at Wikipedia:WikiProject Editor Retention/administrators. If you do not intend to rejoin the project in the foreseeable future, please consider voluntarily resigning your administrative permissions by making a request at the bureaucrats' noticeboard.

Thank you for your past contributions to the project. — JJMC89 bot 18:14, 3 December 2022 (UTC)

Sadly, I think that's the right call. I've been hoping for quite some time for my life to free up in ways that would permit me to meaningfully contribute again, and I still hope and expect that will eventually be the case, but in the meantime, I'm happy to be a regular (and very occasional) contributor until then. I have nothing for love for this project, and I'm well. My thank you to everyone here, with a special shout out to my colleages over the years at URBLP. --joe decker^talk 19:54, 10 December 2022 (UTC)

-- Ponyo^{bons mots} 19:30, 12 December 2022 (UTC)

Job Done

		Job Done
		Awarded to joe decker for good services as an admin, and for resigning the tools in a noble manner. SilkTork (talk) 10:06, 17 December 2022 (UTC)

Precious anniversary

Precious

Four years!

--Gerda Arendt (talk) 10:29, 21 December 2022 (UTC)

Happy New Year, Joe Decker!

Happy New Year!

Joe Decker,
Have a prosperous, productive and enjoyable New Year, and thanks for your contributions to Wikipedia.
— Moops ^⋠T⋡ 05:13, 2 January 2023 (UTC)

   Send New Year cheer by adding {{subst:Happy New Year fireworks}} to user talk pages.

— Moops ^⋠T⋡ 05:13, 2 January 2023 (UTC)

Joe's Null Bot

Hello. Is Joe's Null Bot still running? This notice seems very out-of-date. --MZMcBride (talk) 09:22, 20 January 2023 (UTC)