User talk:Philosopher/Archive 19

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Questions about Wikipedia & SuggestBot

Hi, we’ve been running a research experiment with SuggestBot and would like to ask you some questions about Wikipedia and SuggestBot. You can find more information and the questions on this page. It should take less than ten minutes to respond. We would greatly appreciate if you had the time to participate! Regards, Nettrom (talk) 17:11, 3 August 2012 (UTC)

Hi again, I noticed your question about needing to participate, thanks for volunteering! I've gotten enough responses now, so you can freely skip these questions. Thanks again! Cheers, Nettrom (talk) 18:46, 6 August 2012 (UTC)

Levi M. Hubbell

Hi I started an article about Levi M. Hubbell who served in the Iowa General Assembly. Please fee free to make any changes. There is also Levi Hubbell who served in the New York and Wisconsin Legislatures and was on the Wisconsin Supreme Court. Thanks-RFD (talk) 21:26, 3 August 2012 (UTC)

Help please

Hello sir, I wonder if I might trouble you for an advisory opinion on Wikipedia policy? I'm a relatively new user (about 2 months real experience, despite my 2007 sign-up date), and I've run into a thorny problem where the solution isn't obvious.

I've created a new article, you see, and it's on a controversial topic. Very quickly after it went live yesterday, 2-3 editors jumped on it and started blanking sections, then they moved it, then they finally blanked the entire page and turned it into a redirect. All within 3-4 hours.

If I understand correctly, this is a pretty flagrant violation of WP:PAGEBLANKING and WP:NOBLANKING. The complaints vary between NPOV, OR, SYNTH, etc. Maybe these are legitimate, maybe not, but if I understand the policies correctly, they are designed specifically to disallow what was done here. If the article is truly unsalvageable, the correct solution is to put an AfD nomination on it and let the community decide, no? Otherwise, it's just editors simply censoring what they don't like.

So, my question for you... am I allowed to revert to an earlier version of the article, pre-blanking? I've proposed this as a solution to the impasse, and I've invited, even encouraged them to nominate it for deletion if they so desire. And by the way, there has been no edit-warring at all - I have done my level best to talk this out.

Can you help? Belchfire-TALK 07:53, 6 August 2012 (UTC)

Thank you for your comment. For ease of reference, I've edited your comment to link the shortcuts for the policies. A more substantive response to follow in a few minutes... --Philosopher Let us reason together. 07:58, 6 August 2012 (UTC)
Okay, here goes. I assume you're talking about "Radical gay activism" - thanks for discussing it, by the way. To begin with the obvious, I can just give advice (not "authoritative" advice, just my own) and WP:PAGEBLANKING and WP:NOBLANKING are essays, which means they are just the opinions of some users, and are not necessarily a majority position.
Outright redirection should generally be reserved for exceptional circumstances. The creation of a "Duplicate, POV fork" would probably fit that category, however. I note that you dispute the assertion that it is such a fork, and are doing so on the appropriate talk page. Linking to that discussion on the talk page of the article it was redirected to (Talk:LGBT social movements) might bring in valuable additional viewpoints.
If you want to, you can undo the redirection (see WP:BRD - I'd only undo the redirection once, personally) - and request that if the others want it gone, they take it to WP:AfD. If they simply re-redirect it, I suspect that you could take it to WP:Deletion review, but I don't hang out there, so I don't really know. However, I would recommend simply publicizing the existing discussion in a neutral manner at Talk:LGBT social movements or a similar page and just having the discussion at its current location. As a last resort, there's always Wikipedia:Dispute resolution, but hopefully you can avoid that extreme. Hope this helps! --Philosopher Let us reason together. 08:42, 6 August 2012 (UTC)

The Signpost: 06 August 2012

I-80 potential FAC

This last week, I've been expanding I-80's article and I'm thinking it's going to end up at FAC before the year is up. Can you think of anything else I can mention in the article? I know roads aren't normally your thing, but I-80 is kind of a big deal. Thanks. –Fredddie™ 03:25, 11 August 2012 (UTC)

Very cool - as you say, I-80 is kind of a big deal. I'll try to find time to look it over, but may not be able to work on it until mid-September, due to RL busyness. --Philosopher Let us reason together. 03:30, 11 August 2012 (UTC)
Sweet! I'm not exactly done doing the writing I want to do, so this will give me plenty of time. By then I imagine it will be at ACR by then. –Fredddie™ 03:45, 11 August 2012 (UTC)
I figured I might as well answer the GA review request while I was at it. See Talk:Interstate 80 in Iowa/GA1. --Philosopher Let us reason together. 17:12, 5 September 2012 (UTC)

TFD closure

When closing TFD discussions, please note that Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Administrator instructions states that the {{subst:tfd top}} should go after the section header, not before it. On a daily log page like this, it makes more sense this way as otherwise the start of the closing box is actually at the end of the previous section in the wikitext. It also confuses the clerk bot if you put it in the wrong place. Thanks. Anomie⚔ 16:19, 12 August 2012 (UTC)

Oh, thanks for the note, I'll be more careful next time. --Philosopher Let us reason together. 23:59, 12 August 2012 (UTC)

Lieutenant Governors of Iowa

Hi-There are articles for all the Lieutenant Governors of Iowa. I just got finished with the last article. I am impressed with the Iowa General Assembly database and wish the Wisconsin Legislature had a database also. That still leaves articles for the various Iowa constitutional officers that needs to be done. Many thanks-RFD (talk) 20:52, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

You finished the Lieutenant Governors? That is awesome! Hopefully I'll have more consistently free time in September to finish creating articles for the uncreated office articles and for the current Iowa officeholders. And yes, the Iowa database is awesome.  :-D --Philosopher Let us reason together. 22:33, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

The Signpost: 13 August 2012

Talkback

Hello, Philosopher. You have new messages at Gold Standard's talk page.
Message added 00:36, 15 August 2012 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

Gold Standard 00:36, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

My RfA

I don't believe I've yet thanked you for participating in my recent RfA. I appreciate your explanation of where Q8 went wrong, and I have come out with a much better grip on copyright policies. On that wholly unrelated note, I notice that "Q8" sounds quite similar to "Kuwait" — just thought it was worth pointing out as an interesting triviality. =)

Take care. Kurtis (talk) 13:24, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

Interesting trivialities are always appreciated.  :) Thanks for running! --Philosopher Let us reason together. 19:34, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

Articles you might like to edit, from SuggestBot

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Stubs   Cleanup
Readership: Medium Quality: Low Robert Bacon (Iowa politician)   Readership: High Quality: Low Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe
Readership: Medium Quality: Low Joni Ernst   Readership: Medium Quality: Low Jeff Kruse
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Readership: Medium Quality: Low Rick Bertrand   Readership: High Quality: Low International Trade Centre
Readership: High Quality: Low OECD Anti-Bribery Convention   Readership: High Quality: Low Barker-Karpis gang
Readership: High Quality: Low West Slavic languages   Expand
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The Signpost: 27 August 2012

Talkback

Hello, Philosopher. You have new messages at Wikipedia_talk:Wikipedia_Signpost.
Message added 15:43, 1 September 2012 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

(And, as an update, the bot should create these now upon the publication of a new issue.) - Jarry1250 [Deliberation needed] 15:43, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

The Signpost: 03 September 2012

The Signpost: 10 September 2012

Articles you might like to edit, from SuggestBot

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SuggestBot predicts that you will enjoy editing some of these articles. Have fun!

Stubs   Cleanup
Readership: Medium Quality: Low Mary Lazich   Readership: High Quality: Low Norwegian Armed Forces
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Readership: Low Quality: Low Amos Noyes Currier   Readership: High Quality: Low James Van Allen
Readership: High Quality: Low Volksmusik   Merge
Readership: Medium Quality: Low John Arthur Smith   Readership: High Quality: Medium Charlotte, North Carolina
Readership: High Quality: Low John Lamb Lash   Readership: High Quality: High Lechites
Readership: Medium Quality: Low Mark Chelgren   Readership: Medium Quality: Low Lake Hood Strip
Readership: Medium Quality: Low Cathy Stepp   Add sources
Readership: Medium Quality: Low Michael Bond (politician)   Readership: High Quality: Medium Political party strength in U.S. states
Readership: Medium Quality: Low David Boswell (Kentucky politician)   Readership: High Quality: Low Boreal Kingdom
Readership: Medium Quality: Low Franco Coladipietro   Readership: High Quality: Low Remembrance days in Slovakia
Readership: Low Quality: Low Duhulla   Wikify
Readership: High Quality: Low Brent R. Appel   Readership: Medium Quality: Low KLLL-FM
Readership: High Quality: Low Kevin Raye   Readership: Low Quality: Low Jahdai
Readership: High Quality: Low Bendir   Readership: Low Quality: Low L.A.P.I.D.A. (LPD)
Readership: High Quality: Low Łebsko Lake   Expand
Readership: High Quality: Low Pigeon drop   Readership: High Quality: Low NATO Operations
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The Signpost: 17 September 2012

Charles F. Crosby

Hi-I came across an article about Charles F. Crosby who served in the Minnesota House of Representatives. I found out that he returned to Wisconsin and served in the Wisconsin State Senate from District 21. I expanded the article. However, the infobox needs to be revised to reflect his service in the Wisconsin Senate. I was wondering if you would please look at the article and see what changes needs to be made. The info box needs to be corrected. Thank you-RFD (talk) 21:36, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

I added the Wisconsin Senate to the article. --Philosopher Let us reason together. 11:57, 27 September 2012 (UTC)

New message from Gareth Griffith-Jones

Hello, Philosopher. You have new messages at Talk:Ring road.
Message added 11:10, 24 September 2012 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

I have commented in reply to your question there. I have also copy-edited the category article lead. Sincerely, Gareth Griffith-Jones (GG-J's Talk) 11:10, 24 September 2012 (UTC)

Thanks. What would you think about renaming the Category? --Philosopher Let us reason together. 11:18, 27 September 2012 (UTC)
I believe that should be done, but don't know how to go about it. Could you do the deed? -- Gareth Griffith-Jones/GG-J's Talk 11:43, 27 September 2012 (UTC)
It's been nominated for renaming. I've thrown a notice up at Talk:Ring road. --Philosopher Let us reason together. 14:48, 21 October 2012 (UTC)
Excellent! I have added my support. Thank you for drawing it to my attention here. -- Gareth Griffith-Jones/GG-J's Talk 20:16, 21 October 2012 (UTC)

The Signpost: 5 June 2023

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Administrators' newsletter – June 2023

News and updates for administrators from the past month (May 2023).

Guideline and policy news

  • Following an RfC, editors indefinitely site-banned by community consensus will now have all rights, including sysop, removed.
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Arbitration

  • The arbitration case World War II and the history of Jews in Poland has been closed. The topic area of Polish history during World War II (1933-1945) and the history of Jews in Poland is subject to a "reliable source consensus-required" contentious topic restriction.

Miscellaneous

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Tech News: 2023-23

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  • The RealMe extension allows you to mark URLs on your user page as verified for Mastodon and similar software.
  • Citation and footnote editing can now be started from the reference list when using the visual editor. This feature request was voted #2 in the 2023 Community Wishlist Survey. [1]
  • Previously, clicking on someone else's link to Recent Changes with filters applied within the URL could unintentionally change your preference for "Group results by page". This has now been fixed. [2]

Problems

  • For a few days last week, some tools and bots returned outdated information due to database replication problems, and may have been down entirely while it was being fixed. These issues have now been fixed. [3]

Changes later this week

  • The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 6 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 7 June. It will be on all wikis from 8 June (calendar).
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Tech News: 2023-24

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

Recent changes

  • The content attribution tools Who Wrote That?, XTools Authorship, and XTools Blame now support the Dutch, German, Hungarian, Indonesian, Japanese, Polish and Portuguese Wikipedias. This was the #7 wish in the 2023 Community Wishlist Survey. [5]
  • The Search Preview panel has been deployed on four Wikipedias (Catalan, Dutch, Hungarian and Norwegian). The panel will show an image related to the article (if existing), the top sections of the article, related images (coming from MediaSearch on Commons), and eventually the sister projects associated with the article. [6]
  • The RealMe extension now allows administrators to verify URLs for any page, for Mastodon and similar software. [7]
  • The default project license has been officially upgraded to CC BY-SA 4.0. The software interface messages have been updated. Communities should feel free to start updating any mentions of the old CC BY-SA 3.0 licensing within policies and related documentation pages. [8]

Problems

  • For three days last month, some Wikipedia pages edited with VisualEditor or DiscussionTools had an unintended __TOC__ (or its localized form) added during an edit. There is a listing of affected pages sorted by wiki, that may still need to be fixed. [9]
  • Currently, the "Sort this page by default as" feature in VisualEditor is broken. Existing {{DEFAULTSORT:...}} keywords incorrectly appear as missing templates in VisualEditor. Developers are exploring how to fix this. In the meantime, those wishing to edit the default sortkey of a page are advised to switch to source editing. [10]
  • Last week, an update to the delete form may have broken some gadgets or user scripts. If you need to manipulate (empty) the reason field, replace #wpReason with #wpReason > input. See an example fix. [11]

Changes later this week

  • The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 13 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 14 June. It will be on all wikis from 15 June (calendar).
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Future changes

  • From 5 June to 17 July, the Foundation's Security team is holding a consultation with contributors regarding a draft policy to govern the use of third-party resources in volunteer-developed gadgets and scripts. Feedback and suggestions are warmly welcome at Third-party resources policy on meta-wiki.

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The Signpost: 19 June 2023

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Tech News: 2023-25

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

Recent changes

  • Flame graphs are now available in WikimediaDebug. [13][14]

Changes later this week

  • There is no new MediaWiki version this week.
  • There is now a toolbar search popup in the visual editor. You can trigger it by typing \ or pressing ctrl + shift + p. It can help you quickly access most tools in the editor. [15][16]

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MediaWiki message delivery 20:07, 19 June 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-26

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

Recent changes

  • The Action API modules and Special:LinkSearch will now add a trailing / to all prop=extlinks responses for bare domains. This is part of the work to remove duplication in the externallinks database table. [17]

Problems

  • Last week, search was broken on Commons and Wikidata for 23 hours. [18][19]

Changes later this week

  • The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 27 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 28 June. It will be on all wikis from 29 June (calendar).
  • The Minerva skin now applies more predefined styles to the .mbox-text CSS class. This enables support for mbox templates that use divs instead of tables. Please make sure that the new styles won't affect other templates in your wiki. [20][21]
  • Gadgets will now load on both desktop and mobile by default. Previously, gadgets loaded only on desktop by default. Changing this default using the |targets= parameter is also deprecated and should not be used. You should make gadgets work on mobile or disable them based on the skin (with the |skins= parameter in MediaWiki:Gadgets-definition) rather than whether the user uses the mobile or the desktop website. Popular gadgets that create errors on mobile will be disabled by developers on the Minerva skin as a temporary solution. [22]
  • All namespace tabs now have the same browser access key by default. Previously, custom and extension-defined namespaces would have to have their access keys set manually on-wiki, but that is no longer necessary. [23]
  • The review form of the Flagged Revisions extension now uses the standardized user interface components. [24]

Future changes

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Administrators' newsletter – July 2023

News and updates for administrators from the past month (June 2023).

Administrator changes

added Novem Linguae
removed

Bureaucrat changes

removed MBisanz

Guideline and policy news

Technical news

Arbitration

  • Two arbitration cases are currently open. Proposed decisions are expected 5 July 2023 for the Scottywong case and 9 July 2023 for the AlisonW case.
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The Signpost: 3 July 2023

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Tech News: 2023-27

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Recent changes

Changes later this week

  • The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 4 July. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 5 July. It will be on all wikis from 6 July (calendar).

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WikiCup 2023 July newsletter

The third round of the 2023 WikiCup has come to an end. The 16 users who made it to the fourth round had at least 175 points. Our top scorers in round 3 were:

Contestants achieved 11 featured articles, 2 featured lists, 47 good articles, 72 featured or good article reviews, over 100 DYKs and 40 ITN appearances. As always, any content promoted after the end of round 3 but before the start of round 4 can be claimed in round 4. Please also remember that you must claim your points within 14 days of "earning" them. When doing GARs, please make sure that you check that all the GA criteria are fully met. Please also remember that all submissions must meet core Wikipedia policies, regardless of the review process.

If you are concerned that your nomination—whether it is at good article nominations, a featured process, or anywhere else—will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews Needed (remember to remove your listing when no longer required). 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 your name from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. Sturmvogel 66 (talk) and Cwmhiraeth (talk). MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 15:18, 8 July 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-28

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

Recent changes

  • The Section-level Image Suggestions feature has been deployed on seven Wikipedias (Portuguese, Russian, Indonesian, Catalan, Hungarian, Finnish and Norwegian Bokmål). The feature recommends images for articles on contributors' watchlists that are a good match for individual sections of those articles.
  • Global abuse filters have been enabled on all Wikimedia projects, except English and Japanese Wikipedias (who opted out). This change was made following a global request for comments. [28]
  • Special:BlockedExternalDomains is a new tool for administrators to help fight spam. It provides a clearer interface for blocking plain domains (and their subdomains), is more easily searchable, and is faster for the software to process for each edit on the wiki. It does not support regex (for complex cases), nor URL path-matching, nor the MediaWiki:Spam-whitelist, but otherwise it replaces most of the functionalities of the existing MediaWiki:Spam-blacklist. There is a Python script to help migrate all simple domains into this tool, and more feature details, within the tool's documentation. It is available at all wikis except for Meta-wiki, Commons, and Wikidata. [29]
  • The WikiEditor extension was updated. It includes some of the most frequently used features of wikitext editing. In the past, many of its messages could only be translated by administrators, but now all regular translators on translatewiki can translate them. Please check the state of WikiEditor localization into your language, and if the "Completion" for your language shows anything less than 100%, please complete the translation. See a more detailed explanation.

Changes later this week

  • The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 11 July. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 12 July. It will be on all wikis from 13 July (calendar).
  • The default protocol of Special:LinkSearch and API counterparts has changed from http to both http and https. [30]
  • Special:LinkSearch and its API counterparts will now search for all of the URL provided in the query. It used to be only the first 60 characters. This feature was requested fifteen years ago. [31]

Future changes

  • There is an experiment with a ChatGPT plugin. This is to show users where the information is coming from when they read information from Wikipedia. It has been tested by Wikimedia Foundation staff and other Wikimedians. Soon all ChatGPT plugin users can use the Wikipedia plugin. This is the same plugin which was mentioned in Tech News 2023/20. [32]
  • There is an ongoing discussion on a proposed Third-party resources policy. The proposal will impact the use of third-party resources in gadgets and userscripts. Based on the ideas received so far, policy includes some of the risks related to user scripts and gadgets loading third-party resources, some best practices and exemption requirements such as code transparency and inspectability. Your feedback and suggestions are warmly welcome until July 17, 2023 on on the policy talk page.

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The Signpost: 17 July 2023

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Tech News: 2023-29

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Recent changes

Changes later this week

  • The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 18 July. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 19 July. It will be on all wikis from 20 July (calendar).
  • MediaWiki system messages will now look for available local fallbacks, instead of always using the default fallback defined by software. This means wikis no longer need to override each language on the fallback chain separately. For example, English Wikipedia doesn't have to create en-ca and en-gb subpages with a transclusion of the base pages anymore. This makes it easier to maintain local overrides. [33]
  • The action=growthsetmentorstatus API will be deprecated with the new MediaWiki version. Bots or scripts calling that API should use the action=growthmanagementorlist API now. [34]

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MediaWiki message delivery 23:06, 17 July 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-30

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Recent changes

Changes later this week

  • The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 25 July. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 26 July. It will be on all wikis from 27 July (calendar).

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MediaWiki message delivery 02:18, 25 July 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-31

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

Recent changes

  • The Synchronizer tool is now available to keep Lua modules synced across Wikimedia wikis, along with updated documentation to develop global Lua modules and templates.
  • The tag filter on Special:NewPages and revision history pages can now be inverted. For example, you can hide edits that were made using an automated tool. [35][36]
  • The Wikipedia ChatGPT plugin experiment can now be used by ChatGPT users who can use plugins. You can participate in a video call if you want to talk about this experiment or similar work. [37]

Problems

  • It was not possible to generate a PDF for pages with non-Latin characters in the title, for the last two weeks. This has now been fixed. [38]

Changes later this week

  • The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 1 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 2 August. It will be on all wikis from 3 August (calendar).
  • Starting on Tuesday, a new set of Wikipedias will get "Add a link" (Georgian Wikipedia, Kara-Kalpak Wikipedia, Kabyle Wikipedia, Kabardian Wikipedia, Kabiyè Wikipedia, Kikuyu Wikipedia, Kazakh Wikipedia, Khmer Wikipedia, Kannada Wikipedia, Kashmiri Wikipedia, Colognian Wikipedia, Kurdish Wikipedia, Cornish Wikipedia). This is part of the progressive deployment of this tool to more Wikipedias. The communities can configure how this feature works locally. [39]

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

MediaWiki message delivery 23:52, 31 July 2023 (UTC)

The Signpost: 1 August 2023

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 03:38, 1 August 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-32

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

Recent changes

  • Mobile Web editors can now edit a whole page at once. To use this feature, turn on "⧼Mobile-frontend-mobile-option-amc⧽" in your settings and use the "Edit full page" button in the "More" menu. [40]

Changes later this week

  • There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 21:19, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – August 2023

News and updates for administrators from the past month (July 2023).

Administrator changes

added Firefangledfeathers
removed

Interface administrator changes

added Novem Linguae

Technical news

Arbitration

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 08:54, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-33

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

Recent changes

  • The Content translation system is no longer using Youdao's machine translation service. The service was in place for several years, but due to no usage, and availability of alternatives, it was deprecated to reduce maintenance overheads. Other services which cover the same languages are still available. [41]

Changes later this week

  • The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 15 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 16 August. It will be on all wikis from 17 August (calendar).
  • Starting on Wednesday, a new set of Wikipedias will get "Add a link" (Latin Wikipedia, Ladino Wikipedia, Luxembourgish Wikipedia, Lak Wikipedia, Lezghian Wikipedia, Lingua Franca Nova Wikipedia, Ganda Wikipedia, Limburgish Wikipedia, Ligurian Wikipedia, Lombard Wikipedia, Lingala Wikipedia, Latgalian Wikipedia, Latvian Wikipedia, Maithili Wikipedia, Basa Banyumasan Wikipedia, Moksha Wikipedia, Malagasy Wikipedia, Armenian Wikipedia, Kyrgyz Wikipedia). This is part of the progressive deployment of this tool to more Wikipedias. The communities can configure how this feature works locally. [42]

Future changes

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MediaWiki message delivery 05:58, 15 August 2023 (UTC)

The Signpost: 15 August 2023

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 14:17, 15 August 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-34

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

Recent changes

Changes later this week

  • The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 22 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 23 August. It will be on all wikis from 24 August (calendar).

Future changes

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

15:23, 21 August 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-35

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

Recent changes

  • As part of the changes for the better diff handling of paragraph splits, improved detection of splits is being rolled out. Over the last two weeks, we deployed this support to group0 and group1 wikis. This week it will be deployed to group2 wikis. [53]
  • All Special:Contributions pages now show the user's local edit count and the account's creation date. [54]
  • Wikisource users can now use the prpbengalicurrency label to denote Bengali currency characters as page numbers inside the <pagelist> tag. [55]
  • Two preferences have been relocated. The preference "Enable the visual editor" is now shown on the "Editing" tab at all wikis. Previously it was shown on the "Beta features" tab at some wikis. The preference "Use the wikitext mode inside the visual editor, instead of a different wikitext editor" is now also shown on the "Editing" tab at all wikis, instead of the "Beta features" tab. [56][57]

Changes later this week

  • The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 29 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 30 August. It will be on all wikis from 31 August (calendar).
  • New signups for a Wikimedia developer account will start being pushed towards idm.wikimedia.org, rather than going via Wikitech. Further information about the new system is available.
  • All right-to-left language wikis, plus Korean, Armenian, Ukrainian, Russian, and Bulgarian Wikipedias, will have a link in the sidebar that provides a short URL of that page, using the Wikimedia URL Shortener. This feature will come to more wikis in future weeks. [58]

Future changes

  • The removal of the DoubleWiki extension is being discussed. This extension currently allows Wikisource users to view articles from multiple language versions side by side when the <=> symbol next to a specific language edition is selected. Comments on this are welcomed at the phabricator task.
  • A proposal has been made to merge the second hidden-categories list (which appears below the wikitext editing form) with the main list of categories (which is further down the page). More information is available on Phabricator; feedback is welcome!

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

MediaWiki message delivery 13:58, 28 August 2023 (UTC)

The Signpost: 31 August 2023

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:44, 31 August 2023 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – September 2023

News and updates for administrators from the past month (August 2023).

Guideline and policy news

  • Following an RfC, TFAs will be automatically semi-protected the day before it is on the main page and through the day after.
  • A discussion at WP:VPP about revision deletion and oversight for dead names found that [s]ysops can choose to use revdel if, in their view, it's the right tool for this situation, and they need not default to oversight. But oversight could well be right where there's a particularly high risk to the person. Use your judgment.

Technical news

Arbitration

  • The SmallCat dispute case has closed. As part of the final decision, editors participating in XfD have been reminded to be careful about forming local consensus which may or may not reflect the broader community consensus. Regular closers of XfD forums were also encouraged to note when broader community discussion, or changes to policies and guidelines, would be helpful.

Miscellaneous

  • Tech tip: The "Browse history interactively" banner shown at the top of Special:Diff can be used to easily look through a history, assemble composite diffs, or find out what archive something wound up in.
Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 09:22, 1 September 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-36

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

Recent changes

Problems

  • The LoginNotify extension was not sending notifications since January. It has now been fixed, so going forward, you may see notifications for failed login attempts, and successful login attempts from a new device. [63]

Changes later this week

  • The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 5 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 6 September. It will be on all wikis from 7 September (calendar).
  • Starting on Wednesday, a new set of Wikipedias will get "Add a link" (Eastern Mari Wikipedia, Maori Wikipedia, Minangkabau Wikipedia, Macedonian Wikipedia, Malayalam Wikipedia, Mongolian Wikipedia, Marathi Wikipedia, Western Mari Wikipedia, Malay Wikipedia, Maltese Wikipedia, Mirandese Wikipedia, Erzya Wikipedia, Mazanderani Wikipedia, Nāhuatl Wikipedia, Neapolitan Wikipedia, Low German Wikipedia, Low Saxon Wikipedia, Nepali Wikipedia, Newari Wikipedia, Norwegian Nynorsk Wikipedia, Novial Wikipedia, N'Ko Wikipedia, Nouormand Wikipedia, Northern Sotho Wikipedia, Navajo Wikipedia, Nyanja Wikipedia, Occitan Wikipedia, Livvi-Karelian Wikipedia, Oromo Wikipedia, Oriya Wikipedia, Ossetic Wikipedia, Punjabi Wikipedia, Pangasinan Wikipedia, Pampanga Wikipedia, Papiamento Wikipedia, Picard Wikipedia, Pennsylvania German Wikipedia, Palatine German Wikipedia, Norfuk / Pitkern Wikipedia, Piedmontese Wikipedia, Western Punjabi Wikipedia, Pontic Wikipedia, Pashto Wikipedia). This is part of the progressive deployment of this tool to more Wikipedias. The communities can configure how this feature works locally. [64][65]

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

MediaWiki message delivery 23:31, 4 September 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-37

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

Recent changes

  • ORES, the revision evaluation service, is now using a new open-source infrastructure on all wikis except for English Wikipedia and Wikidata. These two will follow this week. If you notice any unusual results from the Recent Changes filters that are related to ORES (for example, "Contribution quality predictions" and "User intent predictions"), please report them. [66]
  • When you are logged in on one Wikimedia wiki and visit a different Wikimedia wiki, the system tries to log you in there automatically. This has been unreliable for a long time. You can now visit the login page to make the system try extra hard. If you feel that made logging in better or worse than it used to be, your feedback is appreciated. [67]

Changes later this week

  • The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 12 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 13 September. It will be on all wikis from 14 September (calendar).
  • The Technical Decision-Making Forum Retrospective team invites anyone involved in the technical field of Wikimedia projects to signup to and join one of their listening sessions on 13 September. Another date will be scheduled later. The goal is to improve the technical decision-making processes.
  • As part of the changes for the Better diff handling of paragraph splits wishlist proposal, the inline switch widget in diff pages is being rolled out this week to all wikis. The inline switch will allow viewers to toggle between a unified inline or two-column diff wikitext format. [68]

Future changes

  • All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on 20 September. This is planned at 14:00 UTC. More information will be published in Tech News and will also be posted on individual wikis in the coming weeks. [69]
  • The Enterprise API is launching a new feature called "breaking news". Currently in BETA, this attempts to identify likely "newsworthy" topics as they are currently being written about in any Wikipedia. Your help is requested to improve the accuracy of its detection model, especially on smaller language editions, by recommending templates or identifiable editing patterns. See more information at the documentation page on MediaWiki or the FAQ on Meta.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 21:06, 11 September 2023 (UTC)

The Signpost: 16 September 2023

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 04:37, 16 September 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-38

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

Recent changes

  • MediaWiki now has a stable interface policy for frontend code that more clearly defines how we deprecate MediaWiki code and wiki-based code (e.g. gadgets and user scripts). Thank you to everyone who contributed to the content and discussions. [70][71]

Changes later this week

  • The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 19 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 20 September. It will be on all wikis from 21 September (calendar).
  • All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on September 20. This is planned at 14:00 UTC. [72]
  • All wikis will have a link in the sidebar that provides a short URL of that page, using the Wikimedia URL Shortener. [73]

Future changes

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

MediaWiki message delivery 19:18, 18 September 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-39

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

Recent changes

  • The Vector 2022 skin will now remember the pinned/unpinned status for the Table of Contents for all logged-out users. [74]

Changes later this week

  • The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 26 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 27 September. It will be on all wikis from 28 September (calendar).
  • The ResourceLoader mediawiki.ui modules are now deprecated as part of the move to Vue.js and Codex. There is a guide for migrating from MediaWiki UI to Codex for any tools that use it. More details are available in the task and your questions are welcome there.
  • Gadget definitions will have a new "namespaces" option. The option takes a list of namespace IDs. Gadgets that use this option will only load on pages in the given namespaces.

Future changes

  • New variables will be added to AbuseFilter: global_account_groups and global_account_editcount. They are available only when an account is being created. You can use them to prevent blocking automatic creation of accounts when users with many edits elsewhere visit your wiki for the first time. [75][76]

Meetings

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MediaWiki message delivery 16:49, 26 September 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-40

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

Recent changes

  • There is a new user preference for "Always enable safe mode". This setting will make pages load without including any on-wiki JavaScript or on-wiki stylesheet pages. It can be useful for debugging broken JavaScript gadgets. [77]
  • Gadget definitions now have a new "contentModels" option. The option takes a list of page content models, like wikitext or css. Gadgets that use this option will only load on pages with the given content models.

Changes later this week

  • The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 3 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 4 October. It will be on all wikis from 5 October (calendar).

Future changes

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

MediaWiki message delivery 01:25, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

The Signpost: 3 October 2023

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 20:31, 3 October 2023 (UTC)
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