This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.
Past: Wikidata team and volunteers were at 34C3. Check the videos, a new design made by Bleeptrack for a cake. Videos of Wikidata-related workshops will be published soon.
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
On Wikidata, the "save" button when you edit is now called "publish". This means all Wikimedia wikis have now changed from "Save page" to "Publish changes". This is to help new editors understand what it does. [1][2]
Some edits will get an automatic tag on all wikis. This will happen when making a page a redirect, blanking a page, removing almost all content, undoing an edit, or rolling back an edit. You can see the tags for example in the recent changes feed, article history, user contributions or on your watchlist. Some wikis had already marked edits like these in other ways. [3]
Special:UnusedFiles shows files that have been uploaded but are not used. It will show a file that is not used on the wiki it has been uploaded to, even if the file is used on another wiki. The new Special:GloballyUnusedFiles page on Commons only shows files that are not used on any wiki. [4]
Structured discussions now uses the 2017 wikitext editor instead of its old custom one. This will work with your preference for wikitext or visual editor. The documentation has been updated. [5][6]
Problems
Older versions of the Chrome web browser on mobile devices may see the PDF download button, but it does not work. The developers are looking into the problem. [7]
With the new filters in the recent changes, "Exclude selected" in "Namespaces" did not work for "Saved filters" between 13 December and 2 January. When you loaded the saved filter all other namespaces were excluded instead. This has now been fixed. If you made any changes to your saved filters between 13 December and 2 January, you need to save your filters with excluded namespaces again. [8]
The latest version of Google Chrome broke how section links are shown in the address bar. You now see #R%C3%A9sum%C3%A9 instead of #Résumé even if MediaWiki did not encode it that way. This happened in early December. This problem has been solved. The fix will be in Chrome 64 (23 January) or Chrome 65 (6 March). [9]
Some POST requests to the API took longer than usual in parts of December. This affected the Wikidata UI and some gadgets the most. It has now been fixed. [10]
Changes later this week
Wikidata will be moved to its own database servers. This is because it is growing and needs more resources. Because of this you will be able to read but not edit Wikidata and the German Wikipedia between 06:00 and 06:30 UTC on 9 January. You might lose edits if you try to save during this time. This includes editing the language links on other wikis. [11]
The font size in the editing window will change slightly for some users. It will now look the same on all browsers and operating systems. [12][13]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 9 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 10 January. It will be on all wikis from 11 January (calendar).
WikiEditor's ResourceLoader modules have been simplified to one: ext.wikiEditor. All the other modules are now deprecated aliases and should be removed. [14]
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 9 January at 19:30 (UTC). See how to join.
You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 10 January at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Prevented checking of constraints on "Wikidata property example" statements (phabricator:T183267)
Added link to the property's talk page to the constraint violation dialog to guide people there to discuss the constraint if necessary (phabricator:T164351)
Monthly Tasks
Add labels, in your own language(s), for the new properties listed above.
Part of Wikipedia's global 17th birthday celebration, Wikipedia Day NYC 2018 at Ace Hotel will include a mini-conference of scheduled panels as well as unconference style talks and discussions proposed by attendees on the day of the event. We are very excited to announce speakers such as Jason Scott (Internet Archive), Jackie Koerner (Visiting Scholar, Wiki Ed), and Andrew Lih (Wikimedia DC), as well as a fantastic line-up of panels that highlight projects and issues of relevance to the Wikimedia NYC community.
We also hope for the participation of our friends from the Free Culture movement and from educational and cultural institutions interested in developing free knowledge projects.
10:00am - 6:30 pm at Ace Hotel, 20 West 29th Street in Manhattan
We especially encourage folks to add your 5-minute lightning talks to our roster, and otherwise join in the "open space" experience! Newcomers are very welcome! Bring your friends and colleagues! --Megs (talk) 02:22, 13 January 2018 (UTC)
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
Bureaucrats on Wikimedia wikis where the Translate extension is installed can now add and remove the translation administrator permission by default. Administrators of wikis where this extension is enabled can add and remove this permission to or from themselves. Wikis that used a different configuration before have not changed. [15]
There is a new Discourse test support channel for Wikimedia developers. You can ask questions or answer others questions about MediaWiki and Wikimedia software development. [16]
Problems
Last week's MediaWiki update was rolled back. This was because of a bug that changed non-ASCII characters when a page was edited. [17][18]
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 16 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 17 January. It will be on all wikis from 18 January (calendar).
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 16 January at 19:30 (UTC). See how to join.
You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 17 January at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
A few hundred wikis with less than ten high-priority errors in Linter categories will switch to use the Remex parsing library. This is to replace Tidy. It will happen on 31 January. Other wikis will be recommended to switch soon when they have fixed the errors that must be fixed. Tidy will be removed in the middle of 2018. [19][20]
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
Filters on Special:RecentChangesLinked will get the new look similar to on the recent changes page. Special:RecentChangesLinked will also get some new features. [21][22]
Problems
With the new OOUI look menus and popups can open upwards instead of downwards. This was meant to make long dropdown menus easier to use. Sometimes these menus have been overlapped by other things. This is now fixed. [23]
Changes later this week
There is no new MediaWiki version this week.
Meetings
You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 24 January at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
irc.wikimedia.org will be rebooted on 22 February. Some bots use this to get the recent changes feed. They need to be able to reconnect automatically or they will not work until they have been fixed. Most bots can reconnect automatically. [24]
Please be aware that your signature uses deprecated <font> tags, which are causing Obsolete HTML tags lint errors.
You are encouraged to change
~ <font color="#F09">Amory</font><font color="#555"><small> ''([[User:Amorymeltzer|u]] • [[User talk:Amorymeltzer|t]] • [[Special:Contributions/Amorymeltzer|c]])''</small></font> : ~ Amory(u • t • c)
to
~ <span style="color:#F09">Amory</span><small style="color:#555"> ''([[User:Amorymeltzer|u]] • [[User talk:Amorymeltzer|t]] • [[Special:Contributions/Amorymeltzer|c]])''</small> : ~ Amory(u • t • c)
Note that the #555 color affects only the parentheses and bullets; link colors override colors set outside wikilinks. (Wikipedia also replaced the talk page "link" because pages don't link to themselves.) If you want the #555 color to work in the wikilinks, do it this way:
~ <span style="color:#F09">Amory</span><small style="color:#555"> ''([[User:Amorymeltzer|<i style="color:#555">u</i>]] • [[User talk:Amorymeltzer|<i style="color:#555">t</i>]] • [[Special:Contributions/Amorymeltzer|<i style="color:#555">c</i>]])''</small> : ~ Amory(u • t • c)
This markup fits exactly within the limit of 255 characters. —Anomalocaris (talk) 08:18, 26 January 2018 (UTC)
Hey thanks! Appreciate the note, and the extra effort on the link color. That's just for me — I find the black when I'm on my own talk just too harsh. ~ Amory(u • t • c) 12:29, 26 January 2018 (UTC)
Thank you for updating your signature! —Anomalocaris (talk) 18:35, 26 January 2018 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Changes later this week
There is no new MediaWiki version this week.
Meetings
You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 31 January at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.
An RfC has closed with a consensus that candidates at WP:RFA must disclose whether they have ever edited for pay and that administrators may never use administrative tools as part of any paid editing activity, except when they are acting as a Wikipedian-in-Residence or when the payment is made by the Wikimedia Foundation or an affiliate of the WMF.
Editors responding to threats of harm can now contact the Wikimedia Foundation's emergency address by using Special:EmailUser/Emergency. If you don't have email enabled on Wikipedia, directly contacting the emergency address using your own email client remains an option.
Technical news
A tagwill now be automatically applied to edits that blank a page, turn a page into a redirect, remove/replace almost all content in a page, undo an edit, or rollback an edit. These edits were previously denoted solely by automatic edit summaries.
Arbitration
The Arbitration Committee has enacted a change to the discretionary sanctions procedure which requires administrators to add a standardizededitnotice when placing page restrictions. Editors cannot be sanctioned for violations of page restrictions if this editnotice was not in place at the time of the violation.
I was thinking about my comment about the merits of a redirct or redlink for the genera on the Helochelydridae. Rather than leaving them unlinked to prevent the circular linking, a pipe could be used for force a redlink, e.g. Solemys. What do you think? Jts1882 | talk 16:06, 4 February 2018 (UTC)
You'll notice that doesn't work. What it actually does is take the user to a nonexistent article titled Redlink only and encourage the creation of it. Tricking users isn't a good or helpful thing to do. I missed in my quick, initial review that a number of pages actually link to these genera, which I think helps bolster the possibility that someone will be disappointed there isn't a specific article on the genus and might start one. ~ Amory(u • t • c) 16:11, 4 February 2018 (UTC)
Good point. I hadn't thought that though properly. I wasn't aware of the {{R with possibilities}} which is a better solution. Jts1882 | talk 16:17, 4 February 2018 (UTC)
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
Bureaucrats can now add and remove the accountcreator permission by default. This means the user can help create a large number of accounts, for example for an editathon. Wikis can change this if they want to. [26]
The Wikidata vandalism dashboard is a new tool to monitor vandalism on Wikidata labels and descriptions. It is filtered by language. [27]
Info pages for file pages now show the file's SHA1 hash value in the table of basic information. This is so users can see that the file is the same as the one they uploaded. [28]
Problems
Special:Export has a higher error rate right now. This means that the export does not always work. You should check to make sure your page exports worked. The developers are working on fixing this. [29]
Changes later this week
When you review an edit made with the visual editor you can check a visual diff of your changes besides the wikitext diff. If you pick one diff type it will remember and show you that in future. The visual diff will now be the type first shown to new users. [30]
When you use a gallery to show images you can define the size, like gallery widths="150px". You could use em or % instead of px but it would make no difference. You can now only use 150px or nothing (150). If you write something else, instead of treating it like px, it will not work. [31]
The wording when you send a thanks message will change. Instead of Yes or No it will say Thank and Cancel. It will also be easier to understand that all thanks are public. [32]
Redirects connected to Wikidata can create double Wikidata items. There will now be a tracking category for this. Wikis that don't want it can disable it. [33]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 6 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 7 February. It will be on all wikis from 8 February (calendar).
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 6 February at 19:30 (UTC). See how to join.
You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 7 February at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Thanks for fixing the indefinite block that I accidentally extended 2601:5C0:106:E9F3:E2F8:47FF:FE0C:183C to while yanking talk page access away from that user. I appreciate it very much :-) ~Oshwah~(talk)(contribs) 04:54, 9 February 2018 (UTC)
Jeremy McKinnon is not one of it’s founding members. Jeremy was in a ska group that put out 0 albums and could not be considered noteworthy by even the barest of standards. There is, however, an actual band called All For Nothing that has nothing to do with Jeremy that has put out 5 albums and 1 ep since 2004 and has done several international tours. Try. Again. https://nl.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_for_Nothing_(Nederlandse_band)Robo042 (talk) 23:29, 10 February 2018 (UTC)
I've noted the source of your creation for proper copyright attribution. ~ Amory(u • t • c) 01:47, 11 February 2018 (UTC)
XFDcloser
Just wanted to give you a heads up that your use of XFDcloser is creating broken section redirects in edit summaries due to inserting a space (or, more technically, a "_") between the "#" and the section name. (See the edit summary for the deletion of Carrot geyser for reference.) I don't use this tool so I'm not sure how to fix that, but I know of some administrators who also use XFDCloser; my guess is that it's some sort of configuration issue. Steel1943 (talk) 15:33, 9 February 2018 (UTC)
Looks like this issue is also occurring with the automatic placement of {{Old RfD}} as well: diff. Steel1943 (talk) 15:45, 9 February 2018 (UTC)
Thanks for the heads-up, I actually just caught this today. I'm about to raise it with @Evad37:, but as best I can tell from a cursory search, it's just me? Ugh. No idea why. ~ Amory(u • t • c) 15:48, 9 February 2018 (UTC)
Takencare of. ~ Amory(u • t • c) 01:30, 10 February 2018 (UTC)
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
TemplateStyles has been deployed to the Swedish Wikipedia. TemplateStyles is a feature to make it easy to add CSS to templates without administrator privileges. This allows for better adaptability to screen sizes, especially on mobile where are half our total page views. If your community would like to be the next to have the feature, please submit a task on Phabricator. [36][37][38]
You can opt in to a new beta feature that lets you use visual diffs on history pages. [39]
The visual editor shows and lets you edit templates in one way, and reference lists in another. This meant that templates that only contain a fake reference list, like {{reflist}}, would not get updated as you edited. Now they will update as you edit, but you will no longer be able to visually edit them as templates. [40]
The abuse filter extension has a new feature contains_all that you may use to check if one or more strings are all contained in another given string. [41]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 13 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 14 February. It will be on all wikis from 15 February (calendar).
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 13 February at 18:30 (UTC). See how to join.
You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 14 February at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.
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 explanation of the abbreviations on the recent changes page could overlap with the list of changes. This has been fixed. [43][44]
You can now see statistics for pageviews per wiki per country. You can see this on maps or in a table. [45]
Problems
Linter is reporting estimated counts instead of actual counts for some wikis. This is because of performance problems. You might notice a false higher number in linter counts for some categories. This will be fixed as soon as the performance problem has been fixed. [46]
Last week the way that Visual Editor displays references lists was changed. As a result, the references generated by specific templates like {{sfn}} are not visible in the references list whilst editing. [47][48]
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 20 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 21 February. It will be on all wikis from 22 February (calendar).
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 20 February at 19:30 (UTC). See how to join.
You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 21 February at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
The way edit summaries and log comments are stored in the database is being changed. In the future this will make longer comments possible. [49]
Edit conflicts could be solved in a different way in the future. You can test a new prototype.
Thanks for the quick & thorough cleanup job relating to ultimate (sport) ! --JBL (talk) 13:25, 22 February 2018 (UTC)
Danke! The real tragedy is that my tea got cold... ~ Amory(u • t • c) 14:46, 22 February 2018 (UTC)
CSD
Hey, yeah i was guessing that was not correct. But that page was never an article and redirects to the national basketball team, makes no sense, tbh. Kante4 (talk) 21:09, 24 February 2018 (UTC)
The team article mentions Hamza Ruhezamihigo as a member of the current roster, that seems to make sense to me. Without knowing anything about the player or the team, it might be reasonable for the redirect to be deleted per WP:REDLINK, but G8 is definitely not the way to do that; WP:RFD if you think it'd be better gone. ~ Amory(u • t • c) 21:46, 24 February 2018 (UTC)
Thanks. Like i said i was not sure what would fit. ;) Thanks again. Kante4 (talk) 22:01, 24 February 2018 (UTC)
Welcome to the February 2018 GOCE newsletter in which you will find Guild updates since the December edition. We got to a great start for the year, holding the backlog at nine months. 100 requests were submitted in the first 6 weeks of the year and were swiftly handled with an average completion time of 9 days.
Coordinator elections: In December, coordinators for the first half of 2018 were elected. Jonesey95 remained as lead coordinator and Corrine, Miniapolis and Tdslk as assistant coordinators. Keira1996 stepped down as assistant coordinator and was replaced by Reidgreg. Thanks to all who participated!
End of year reports were prepared for 2016 and 2017, providing a detailed look at the Guild's long-term progress.
January drive: We set out to remove April, May, and June 2017 from our backlog and all December 2017 Requests (a total of 275 articles). As with previous years, the January drive was an outstanding success and by the end of the month all but 57 of these articles were cleared. Officially, of the 38 who signed up, 21 editors recorded 259 copy edits (490,256 words).
February blitz: This one-week copy-editing blitz ran from 11 through 17 February, focusing on Requests and the last articles tagged in May 2017. At the end of the week there were only 14 pending requests, with none older than 20 days. Of the 11 who signed up, 10 editors completed 35 copy edits (98,538 words).
Thank you all again for your participation; we wouldn't be able to achieve what we have without you! Cheers from your GOCE coordinators: Jonesey95, Miniapolis, Corinne, Tdslk, and Reidgreg.
I have just one small point to clear up in relation to our conversation at User talk:CASSIOPEIA. It doesn't really concern CASSIOPEIA, and I get the feeling that she (or he?) doesn't want discussion to continue there, so I am posting here. You said "I don't know where you get three years from. This is not a consistently active editor since 2015." I evidently didn't express myself clearly, resulting in your misunderstanding me. When I wrote "the sole user of the IP address in question during the last three years " I didn't mean that this editor had been using the IP address for three years, I just meant that this editor was the only person to have used the IP address at any time since three years ago. Sorry that I evidently didn't make that clear. The editor who uses the pseudonym "JamesBWatson" (talk) 17:45, 26 February 2018 (UTC)
Gotcha, thanks for the clarification! ~ Amory(u • t • c) 17:59, 26 February 2018 (UTC)
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
Checkusers and stewards can now view private data such as the IP address in the abuse log. This data is removed regularly. [50]
Problems
Last week's MediaWiki version was rolled back because of a bug. [51][52]
Since the deployment train last week until late evening on 20 February UTC, when you thanked someone for an edit, the thank went to the latest unthanked edit to that page. It didn't matter which edit you tried to give thanks for. This has been fixed. [53]
Special:Statistics did not take newly created pages into account since 13 February 2018. Because of this the statistics are recreated. [54][55][56]
Changes later this week
Users with version 10 of the Internet Explorer browser will no longer get JavaScript on Wikimedia wikis. If you use this browser on your computer, you can try upgrading to a newer version. [57]
The Wikinews wikis will switch to use the Remex parsing library. This is to replace Tidy. It will happen on 27 February. Other wikis will be recommended to switch soon when they have fixed the errors that must be fixed. Tidy will be removed in the middle of 2018. [58][59]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 27 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 28 February. It will be on all wikis from 1 March (calendar).
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 27 February at 19:30 (UTC). See how to join.
You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 28 February at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Hello. I’ve come across a couple of accounts, User:Kitsunewarlock (quite possibly also using IP:216.7.144.60) and User:Kyrt-Ryder, who seem to have been trying to use their userpages to conduct a role playing game in 2013, although it didn’t get very far. It’s the first one I've seen for a while and I’ve tagged their pages but I thought it would be worth highlighting them to a sysop. I’m hesitant to suggest blocking because it was in 2013 and it seems unlikely they’ll come back. Cheers. Green Giant (talk) 14:06, 28 February 2018 (UTC)
Nice find! Your U5s have all been done, I think it's fine to leave things there. Seems to be folks from the Bleach Gotei site, which is basically what you describe. No need to block — should they come back, no reason they can't be productive — but thanks for picking it up! I can't find evidence of it, but I think there used to be more of this sort of thing a decade plus ago; talk pages were much more forum-y. ~ Amory(u • t • c) 14:47, 28 February 2018 (UTC)
Community ban discussions must now stay open for at least 24 hours prior to being closed.
A change to the administrator inactivity policy has been proposed. Under the proposal, if an administrator has not used their admin tools for a period of five years and is subsequently desysopped for inactivity, the administrator would have to file a new RfA in order to regain the tools.
A change to the banning policy has been proposed which would specify conditions under which a repeat sockmaster may be considered de facto banned, reducing the need to start a community ban discussion for these users.
Technical news
CheckUsers are now able to view private data such as IP addresses from the edit filter log, e.g. when the filter prevents a user from creating an account. Previously, this information was unavailable to CheckUsers because access to it could not be logged.
The edit filter has a new featurecontains_all that edit filter managers may use to check if one or more strings are all contained in another given string.
Bhadani (Gangadhar Bhadani) passed away on 8 February 2018. Bhadani joined Wikipedia in March 2005 and became an administrator in September 2005. While he was active, Bhadani was regarded as one of the most prolific Wikipedians from India.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
On Special:AbuseLog you can now choose to list only actions that actually made an edit. Other actions are when the filter warned the editor or blocked the edit from being made. There are also more search options. [62][63]
Wikis can enable Citoid to provide automatic reference look-up in the visual editor and the 2017 wikitext editor, but it is complex. The tool will now warn in the JavaScript console if the configuration isn't correct. Soon Citoid will disable itself if the configuration isn't correct. Check that your wiki is configured correctly. You can ask for help if you need it. [64]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 6 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 7 March. It will be on all wikis from 8 March (calendar).
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 6 March at 19:30 (UTC). See how to join.
You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 7 March at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
In the future you will be able to use global preferences. This means you could change a preference for all wikis instead of having to change it every time for each wiki. You can now test global preferences and give feedback.
Thank you for the notification, Amory but I think you misunderstood the intent of that article. I could be totally wrong, but the context is urban slang: Beb is an anagram for babe. Often used to describe your love towards a human being in a platonic relationship, and has nothing to do with Babi_(mythology), although I can see why such a thought would come to mind. See Urban Dictionary which explains the words "beb" & "bebs". Also, the SPA sourced the article to Discord which takes you to a site you have to join. I researched further and discovered that it's a gamer site for the Boosted Animals Community. Atsme📞📧 14:45, 5 March 2018 (UTC)
@Atsme: Yes indeed, but I was trying to point you to the page's full history. For 13 years, it was a redirect, until today when it was replaced with the content you describe. That content was clearly A11, but that's a hijacking of the page. That's why I declined the speedy, to not throw the baby out with the bathwater, and pointed it to where it can be useful. I'm open to an RfD, but that's neither here nor there. ~ Amory(u • t • c) 14:51, 5 March 2018 (UTC)
I read the history of the page and prior redirect, and read the article it was directed to, and there is nothing in that article that mentions "Beb" or anything even close. Geb (with a "G") was the father of Osiris. In the original article 13 yrs ago, it falsely claimed that Beb is the "first-born son of Osiris according to the Book of the Dead. Little else is known about him. Alternative: Bebti, Baba, Babu. The only son of Osiris was Horus, a god of the sky, so for 13+/- years, Beb has remained in our encyclopedia as a total hoax and deserves to be speedy deleted, please? Atsme📞📧 15:31, 5 March 2018 (UTC)
Yes, that's why I pointed it to Babi (mythology); interwiki links and some random searching suggest Beb was used to refer to this God. I just realized I didn't open an RfD as I had intended, so I'll go do that now! ~ Amory(u • t • c) 15:51, 5 March 2018 (UTC)
Just stopping by to say Thank You!! I hope my comments didn't come across as "stern" because that was not my intention. I was actually on a roll at NPP helping to do what I could to reduce the backlog within my window of opportunity, and still have time to do the reseach some of those articles require. Anyway, it was a pleasure to meet your acquaintence. Atsme📞📧 02:03, 6 March 2018 (UTC)
No worries — we're all just doin' our best! ~ Amory(u • t • c) 02:13, 6 March 2018 (UTC)
Thanks — it's not often RfD gets contentious or complicated discussions! ~ Amory(u • t • c) 02:13, 6 March 2018 (UTC)
Ar-15 copyright issues
Amorymeltzer, thank you for pulling the copyright material out of the AR-15 article. Would you please restore the associated discussions? We should be able to replace the offending text with a link and keep the discussion parts which aren't problematic. Thanks Springee (talk) 13:34, 6 March 2018 (UTC)
@Springee: I didn't remove any of the discussion, just the text. I did revdel the offending diffs, so you won't see any changes, but the discussion texts are all still there. Perhaps you are referring to the archiving removal that Thewolfchild made? For that text, you can see Talk:AR-15 style rifle/Archive 1. ~ Amory(u • t • c) 13:40, 6 March 2018 (UTC)
Ok, I was confused because I saw some of my edits were stricken from the history (the edit had a strikeout line through it and you can't click on the edit diff). I assumed that meant the material was removed. Sorry for the confusion.Springee (talk) 13:46, 6 March 2018 (UTC)
No worries. The way revdel works is you have to remove the text from every version of the page that held the content. So, while you didn't introduce any copyright violations, you did edit the page while the content was there. Once I removed the text, every diff between the introduction of the offending material and the removal has to be revision deleted. Hope that clears things up! ~ Amory(u • t • c) 15:08, 6 March 2018 (UTC)
Brock Pierce controversial information edit
The edit made on Brock Pierce's page regarding controversial info should have had this cited:
[1]
I am certain that I cited that article when editing. Did you not see the citation there? Was it insufficient?
You did not, no. You can make an edit request on the talk page if you'd like; that's the proper place to discuss inclusion of controversial material. ~ Amory(u • t • c) 01:52, 8 March 2018 (UTC)
I see, maybe I did the citation wrong then. Which talk page? For the one I intended to edit? I read the guidelines for editing articles of living people, and tried to be careful not to include anything that wasn't verifiable, is such an edit something that requires discussion or permission at that point? 71.125.27.181 (talk) 02:03, 8 March 2018 (UTC)
No, but since you didn't include any references your addition was unsourced, so an editor reverted it. If you post at Talk:Brock Pierce and get consensus for the edits, there should be no problem conforming to WP:BLP. ~ Amory(u • t • c) 02:37, 8 March 2018 (UTC)
Re
User:Dingdongblop has been blocked because of the use of multiple accounts. Are you sure to keep this sandbox? --O1lI0 (talk) 13:22, 8 March 2018 (UTC)
I don't "want" to keep the sandbox, but WP:CSD#G1explicitly states Nor does it apply to user sandboxes or other pages in the user namespace; you can even see that the template creates a message stating that fact. One could make a G5 argument, but it's tenuous at best. The page isn't causing any harm, it will help identify future socks, and we've already caused more server load talking about it than deleting it would have saved. ~ Amory(u • t • c) 13:43, 8 March 2018 (UTC)
Well, I got it. Thanks.--O1lI0 (talk) 13:48, 8 March 2018 (UTC)
Unlinking GameZone
@Amorymeltzer: The article GameZone was recently deleted and so has left >500 redlinks throughout the enwiki. Since my recent mistake with Ultimate Frisbee I would like to check before doing this massive unlink (About my contribs - I started then realised that they weren't false-positives and cancelled) [UsernameNeeded] 11:35, 9 March 2018 (UTC)
Well, the deletion is certainly rational and "permanent" this time, so it's a reasonable unlinking; plus, the wikiproject is aware of the article's deletion. I'm not sure how... necessary it is, but it seems fine (if you're into that sort of thing) and the ones you've done so far look good. One thing I would do, though, is start a convo on WT:VG about whether they want to keep it in their reviews, given its deleted status; I imagine so, given the comment in the AfD, but still. ~ Amory(u • t • c) 11:51, 9 March 2018 (UTC)
Im sorry for bothering you but I have some trivia on Masahiro Sakuri and you seem to have the ability to edit his page. So could you please add "As for the future of the Super Smash Bros series, Nintendo and HAL laboratory's president Satoru Iwata, during Nintendo's E3 2005 press conference, promised an online iteration of the game would come to Nintendo's video game console wii. However Sakuri did not know the game was being made prior to E3 and was told by Iwata that if he did not work on the project they would simply remake Super Smash Bros. Melee but with online capabilitys." Padacuw (talk) 20:25, 11 March 2018 (UTC)
Hey there Padacuw, thanks for reaching out. If you'd like to request an edit, why don't you post on Talk:Masahiro Sakurai? That way other editors can comment on the talkpage and can help make the edit. It'd be good to cite a reliable source for it, too. ~ Amory(u • t • c) 00:17, 12 March 2018 (UTC)
Thank you
Thank you for granting me the page patroller rights on WP. I love the note at the top of this talk page about the kids being cute-I had the same problem for 20-ears and 6 kids myself. You are doing the right thing! BTW, I work on articles related to children's health and if you ever want to help, let me know. Best Regards, Barbara✐ ✉ 11:40, 12 March 2018 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Page Previews has been updated to use HTML for previews. This has fixed many issues. An A/B test was done on English and German Wikipedia to measure how it is used. Other changes were also made. [66]
Some edits have to be checked against too many conditions before they can trigger an abuse filter. If that is the reason no filter is triggered the edit will be tagged for review. [67]
Auto-saving has been added to the visual editor and the 2017 wikitext editor. Right now it is meant to help if your browser crashes or if you accidentally close a tab. [68]
Problems
The abuse filter did not tag all edits that should have been tagged after last week's MediaWiki version had come to the wikis. It was fixed on 9 March (UTC). [69]
Changes later this week
You can notify users in edit summaries. They will get a ping just as if they had been mentioned on a wiki page. This was originally planned to happen last week. [70]
It is now possible to specify the block parameters for each filter in Special:AbuseFilter. The parameters include block duration and if the user should be blocked from editing their own talk page. The block duration is separate for anonymous and registered users. [71][72]
A hundred Wikimedia wikis will switch to use the Remex parsing library. This is to replace Tidy. It will happen on 13 and 14 March. Other wikis will be recommended to switch soon when they have fixed the errors that must be fixed. Tidy will be removed in the middle of 2018. [73][74][75]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 13 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 14 March. It will be on all wikis from 15 March (calendar).
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 13 March at 19:30 (UTC). See how to join.
You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 14 March at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.
You are right, it's John Vick. I've added that but as I'm not familiar with the templates I'm also letting you know here in case the template needs to be changed now. Alexis Jazz (talk) 00:28, 13 March 2018 (UTC)
Thanks — took a little digging but it was pretty clear. Seems innocent enough, at least as far as intent goes. Left him a message regarding COI/PAID policy, we'll see how it shakes out. ~ Amory(u • t • c) 01:07, 13 March 2018 (UTC)
Conflict of interest
Hi Amory, thank you so much for replying to my request, even if it was a decline. I've only used wiki for info, and just started to learn about editing. It was more complicated than I had expected. First I did send a change request that was declined. Then I tried asking editors to help me edit incorrect information and provide new updates as the current article is seriously outdated. Someone was kind enough to send me links which I learned that I can be an editor (though haven't gotten to the part about conflict of interest). I am being asked by the agency to ensure the information online (be it wiki or other sites) are correct, and can support the info by 3rd party links, but I'm not sure why the 3rd party is trusted more than the official site. I'll need to read up on the links you've provided. I just want to make sure the article has the most updated and correct info, and am really feeling lost. Thank you. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Kievew (talk • contribs) 13:16, 13 March 2018 (UTC)
That's okay! I know how complicated it can seem, especially when you start by wading into policy-heavy issues. Again, don't ever hesitate to ask me for help. You can also put {{Help me}} on your talk page and someone will be by eventually to help out. You should definitely read the links I shared on your page — Wikipedia:Conflict of interest and Wikipedia:Paid-contribution disclosure — and follow those procedures before editing further.
I think a good place to look at is Help:Contents — it's got a lot of links to helpful information for getting started. Regarding the sources, try reading Wikipedia:Identifying reliable sources, it should break it down for you. Basically, third-party sources are verifiablyneutral. Some sources from the subject themself are often okay for some basic biographical information, but third-party sources are always better for an encyclopedia. ~ Amory(u • t • c) 14:16, 13 March 2018 (UTC)
your recent deletion
Copied from User talk:Amorymeltzer/your recent deletion
Hello Amorymeltzer,
sorry to "hijack" your talk page like this but I wanted a place that is a bit separated from the rest.
You recently delete the page User:Gammastorm, and rightfully so (your reasons were quite solid). The person that this page belonged to is a friend of ours, who, sadly, suffers from a certain mental illness. He usually spammed us almost daily with mails that contained similar nonsense than his Wikipedia page, but because of that, we knew that he was okay... If you check his github page, github.com/gammastorm, you will see similar nonsense, sprinkled with some simple JavaScript applets and some simple fractal code, similar to what was on his user page... He was a quite smart guy some time ago until his illness took over...
The thing is, he recently stopped sending these emails, at around the same time his page here was deleted (3 weeks ago), and we are all a bit worried. I wonder if it would be possible for you to somehow send us the latest version of his user page (either on wikipedia, or on a pastebin service or something, with a short timeout so that it gets deleted automatically), we just want to see if we find anything in it about how/where he currently is. No need to restore the page, or unblock him, we just like to know about his most recent thoughts.
for pointing out my glitch with a user permission. I meant well but I was (unusual for me) not aware of the current discussion. Cheers, Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 23:56, 17 March 2018 (UTC)
No worries — there are a lot of conversations ~ Amory(u • t • c) 00:39, 18 March 2018 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Problems
On March 12 early morning UTC, the number of 503 error messages increased due to an issue on esams datacenter. It has been fixed. [76]
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 20 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 21 March. It will be on all wikis from 22 March (calendar).
Meetings
There is no Editing team meeting this week.
You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 21 March at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
From April 4, the autopatrol status of edits will only be accessible in the Recent Changes database table, so only for 30 days. [77][78]
In-Context Help and Onboarding is a new project, aiming to improve retention of new wiki editors. The goal is to give them short tutorials and other training experiences based on their activity. Collaboration team is expecting feedback and comments on the project talk page, especially from people working with newcomers.
I've left a comment on your Articles for Creation submission, which can be viewed at Draft:Elliott Review. Thanks! Jbh Talk 14:53, 20 March 2018 (UTC)
Thanks but, uh, not mine ;) ~ Amory(u • t • c) 14:55, 20 March 2018 (UTC)
Hmmm... It looks like your name was in {{AFC submission}} as the creator. I had that happen once when I submitted a draft for a new user. I changed u=Amorymeltzeru=Joelionheart so AFCH will notify the right person. I will drop a notice on the author's page. Jbh Talk 19:39, 20 March 2018 (UTC)
Yeah — product of me hittin' the button to be helpful but not doing the work to make sure it gets followed up on. ~ Amory(u • t • c) 19:41, 20 March 2018 (UTC)
Congratulations, Amorymeltzer! You're receiving this barnstar because you recently crossed the 1,000 classification threshold using STiki. We thank you both for your contributions to Wikipedia at-large and your use of the tool. We hope you continue your ascent up the leaderboard and stay in touch at the talk page. Thank you and keep up the good work! West.andrew.g (talk) 13:58, 24 March 2018 (UTC)
With all due respect, Wikipedia may not permanently ban IP address vandals but they do permanently ban open proxies, if you had read my report full through you would see that I stated that I was able to determine that it is an open proxy and that's why it should be permanently banned. YborCityJohn (talk) 22:29, 25 March 2018 (UTC)
Completely missed this last night, sorry! ANI link for the archives. ~ Amory(u • t • c) 19:03, 26 March 2018 (UTC)
I can't see Davey2010 objecting to you moving the thread on Oppose #4 back to the main page, it's two seasoned RfA nominators having a civilised discussion, not the usual badgering. (Even if I do say so myself) Ritchie333(talk)(cont) 18:39, 26 March 2018 (UTC)
Thought about it, but, eh, I gave my opinion, and would sooner leave it to a 'crat to unclerk the clerkin'. At least until someone else agrees with me. ~ Amory(u • t • c) 19:01, 26 March 2018 (UTC)
Hi Amorymeltzer & Ritchie333 - I obviously have no objections to it being removed back, I know Opposes at times tend to go from civil discussions to derailments so in this case erred on the side of caution but as I said I have no objections if anyone wants to move it back, Thanks, –Davey2010Talk 19:04, 26 March 2018 (UTC)
Actually, yeah, I just meandered over there and saw Drmies' post on #3; seems there's some agreement so I'll move 'em both back. ~ Amory(u • t • c) 19:05, 26 March 2018 (UTC)
Done Despite two edit conflicts... ~ Amory(u • t • c) 19:13, 26 March 2018 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Changes later this week
Some of the interface icons and text sizes will change slightly, as part of the updates for improved accessibility and consistency. These icons are used in many features, including Notifications, Recent Changes, Beta Features, Visual Editor, 2017 Wikitext Editor, Code Editor, and others. While editor toolbars, dialogs, and menus will appear slightly bigger; elements on special pages will be slightly smaller. Functionality will not change. [79][80]
The deprecated #toc and #toctitle CSS ids have been removed. If your wiki was still using these for fake Tables of Content (ToC) then these might lose their styling. They can be replaced with .toc and .toctitle classes where appropriate. [81]
TemplateStyles will be deployed to the Wikivoyages on 28 March 2018. [82]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 27 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 28 March. It will be on all wikis from 29 March (calendar).
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 27 March at 18:30 (UTC). See how to join.
You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be one hour earlier than usual on 28 March at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
From 9 April, the sort order of categories will be distorted for a short time. We are upgrading versions of an internationalisation library (ICU) and using a maintenance script to update existing database entries. This will last anywhere from a few hours to a few days, depending on wiki size. Read more details. [83]
Changes are coming to search for Serbian projects. Cyrillic and Latin variants of a word and different grammatical forms of a word will be able to find each other. Read more on MediaWiki in Serbian or English.
Re Question about AdminStats: You were right! It wasn't showing former admins. This is now fixed (phab:T190496). Incidentally, we are no longer showing admins who made zero actions in the time period, but I think that's okay. Just wanted to let you know :) Cheers — MusikAnimaltalk 16:16, 28 March 2018 (UTC)
Oh man oh man this makes me happy! Seriously, thanks, really appreciate that whole commit. ~ Amory(u • t • c) 16:34, 28 March 2018 (UTC)
The recent message you placed on a talk page is a shared IP address for an educational institution. It's highly unlikely the intended recipient of you message will ever see it. I put a header template on the talk page to let others know of the shared IP status.. We got blocked for a whole year once due to vandalism by summer camp students who rented our facilities, but our ISP has changed a number of times since then. I'm former "caretaker" to the wikipedia page for our institution, but am semi-retired from wikipedia and no longer regularly edit under my username. --199.191.107.18 (talk) 15:09, 29 March 2018 (UTC)
Yes indeed. One way in which the warnings are useful is it helps make clear a pattern of repeated vandalism from an IP, shared or otherwise. As you note, many schools are indeed blocked for long periods of time, and a cavalcade of warnings is a good sign of a block to come. At the very least, warnings may deter students who are actively vandalizing in a repeated fashion. Regardless, thanks for the note and for the template tag. If you'd like, I can block the IP to prevent further malfeasance, although the history from this address is not so bad. ~ Amory(u • t • c) 15:16, 29 March 2018 (UTC)
Thought about it, but it just didn't seem to fit. Didn't really discuss it, and is a little WP:SURPRISEing; the kind of redirect I could see ending up at RfD as "Vague, not mentioned in the target" in six months. ~ Amory(u • t • c) 01:23, 31 March 2018 (UTC)
Hi Amory, Greetings to you. I was the one who reported for RPP and would like to restore the owner info; however, I think I made wrong diff lines in hist and the page protection tag was removed when I clicked restore button. My apologies. Thank you for restoring it. CASSIOPEIA(talk) 01:20, 2 April 2018 (UTC)
Administrators who have been desysopped due to inactivity are now required to have performed at least one (logged) administrative action in the past 5 years in order to qualify for a resysop without going through a new RfA.
Editors who have been found to have engaged in sockpuppetry on at least two occasions after an initial indefinite block, for whatever reason, are now automatically considered banned by the community without the need to start a ban discussion.
There will soon be a calendar widget at Special:Block, making it easier to set expiries for a specific date and time.
Arbitration
The Arbitration Committee is considering a change to the discretionary sanctions procedures which would require an editor to appeal a sanction to the community at WP:AE or WP:AN prior to appealing directly to the Arbitration Committee at WP:ARCA.
Miscellaneous
A discussion has closed which concluded that administrators are not required to enable email, though many editors suggested doing so as a matter of best practice.
The Foundations' Anti-Harassment Tools team has released the Interaction Timeline. This shows a chronologic history for two users on pages where they have both made edits, which may be helpful in identifying sockpuppetry and investigating editing disputes.
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
Template Wizard script available for testing. It will show up as a puzzle-piece icon in the 2010 WikiEditor. You can click on the icon to insert a template.
The Wikimedia Communities and Contributors survey is to be sent to participants around the world this week. If you are volunteer developer, and have contributed code to any pieces of MediaWiki, gadgets, or tools, please take 20 to 40 minutes to complete the survey.
Problems
MediaWiki deployment train has been rolled back to version 1.31.0-wmf.26 on week 13, due to a multiplication of lost connections during MySQL queries. Some of the recent changes may have not been applied. They will be deployed next week. [84][85][86]
The Notifications badge icons were overlapping other links. This has been fixed. [87]
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 3 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 4 April. It will be on all wikis from 5 April (calendar).
User subpages ending in .json will now be protected from other people editing them, like .js and .css pages already are. If you have a tool that stores static configuration, you can now use a subpage like User:Example/mygadget.json to do this without concerns. [88]
Tidy will be replaced by RemexHtml on the next set of wikis. On April 4, we plan to turn off Tidy on all Wikiquotes (except frwikiquote) and Wikimedia chapters and user groups wikis. 23 wikis will have Tidy replaced this time. [89][90][91]
AbuseFilter will transition to use OOUI starting April 4, and the rule editor will also be changed to a CodeEditor (ACE) similar to what is found on user JavaScript pages. The move to OOUI will continue over the next few weeks. [92][93]
In Special:Preferences, the preference "Reload the watchlist automatically whenever a filter is changed (JavaScript required)" is now only visible for users who have opt-out the New Filters for the Watchlist. [94]
You can see names of individual abuse filters in Special:AbuseLog. Now if the name of an abuse filter contains some wikisyntax like links, it will not change to a link when displayed. [95]
You can now search through filter patterns at Special:AbuseFilter. You may specify either a plain string or a regular expression and the matching filters will show a snippet of their pattern with the match highlighted. [96]
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 3 April at 18:30 (UTC). See how to join.
You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 4 April at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
If you're using, creating or improving Lua modules, you can give your feedback to help harmonizing the modules across wikis and add more useful functions.
On April 11th, we plan to turn off Tidy on all wikis with less than 50 entries in all high priority linter categories. About 60 wikis will have Tidy replaced. Currently about 600 wikis have had Tidy replaced and we have another 300 wikis to go. We plan to finish this transition from Tidy to RemexHtml by end of June 2018. Please follow T175706 to monitor progress of Tidy replacement. [97][98]
I was wondering if you could check out my request for NPR rights. I know I don't have all the edits, but I have the time, know everything, and have shown some of the knowledge on some past edits. thanks! StarlightStratosphere (talk) 01:38, 5 April 2018 (UTC)
@StarlightStratosphere: I like and appreciate the enthusiasm, but it is really difficult to judge with only a few edits. As a rule of thumb, we generally like to see >500 mainspace edits to ensure there is enough material to review; you currently have less than a tenth of that. Mz7 said to get more experience; he meant hundreds of edits, not a dozen. More to the point, you've misused a couple of speedy deletion criteria. Don't worry about NPR, just take some and make good edits and you'll be fine. ~ Amory(u • t • c) 01:51, 5 April 2018 (UTC)
Amory, I get what you mean about NPR but I did not misuse the speedy deletion. No Pun Intended had no content, so it was a worthless page... StarlightStratosphere (talk) 13:12, 5 April 2018 (UTC)
Incorrect. That was a Wikipedia:Soft redirect, and was perfectly valid. WP:CSD#A1 and WP:CSD#A3 are inappropriate for a number of reasons — it was a redirect, not an article, and it was not without context or empty. ~ Amory(u • t • c) 13:34, 5 April 2018 (UTC)
User:Vandãlism Beetle
Please remove their talk page access. Thanks. 73.38.252.181 (talk) 20:36, 5 April 2018 (UTC)
Already done by Widr! ~ Amory(u • t • c) 20:38, 5 April 2018 (UTC)
Hello There
Did you ever hear the tragedy of Darth Plagueis The Wise? I thought not. It’s not a story the Jedi would tell you. It’s a Sith legend. Darth Plagueis was a Dark Lord of the Sith, so powerful and so wise, he could use the Force to influence the midichlorians to create life. He had such a knowledge of the dark side that he could even keep the ones he cared about from dying. The dark side of the Force is a pathway to many abilities some consider to be unnatural. He became so powerful, the only thing he was afraid of was losing his power, which eventually, of course, he did. Unfortunately, he taught his apprentice everything he knew, then his apprentice killed him in his sleep. Ironic. He could save others from death, but not himself.
Now that you have heard this great legend, you of course know that it MUST be included among the many other great tragedies of the ages, for it's simplicity and effectiveness are to be marveled at. Your decision to remove it was most treasonous indeed. Thank you dually for your time.
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
Some pages have templates that describe problems with that article. There is now more information for mobile readers and what is wrong with the article and how they could help fix it. [99]
The sort order of categories will have errors for a short time starting Monday 9 April (UTC). We are upgrading versions of an internationalisation library (ICU) and using a script to update the database. This will take between a few hours and a few days depending on wiki size. You can read more details. [101]
Tag filter titles will now work better on wikis where the tag filter title is in a language that is written in another direction than the language of that wiki. This could for example be an English title (written from left to right) on a Hebrew or an Arabic wiki (written from right to left). [102]
Problems
The bookmark icon for saved filters on the recent changes page disappeared because of new icon changes. This has now been fixed. [103]
For a week in March rollbacks got both the rollback and the undo tag on the recent changes page and other pages where you see tags. This has now been fixed. [104]
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 10 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 11 April. It will be on all wikis from 12 April (calendar).
Patrolled edits now have three states instead of two. Recent changes filters are updated to show unpatrolled, autopatrolled and manually patrolled edits. [105]
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 10 April at 18:30 (UTC). See how to join.
You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 11 April at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Great! I've added the permission, and the template I just spammed your talk page with has some quick tips, so happy patrolling! ~ Amory(u • t • c) 00:30, 11 April 2018 (UTC)
Thanks...
...for the correction on CSD R2. Beyond My Ken (talk) 01:02, 11 April 2018 (UTC)
Hello,
I was one of the primary contributors to an article that was deleted by you, I missed the opportunity to contribute to the AfD as I do not log on frequently. I suppose there is nothing that can really be done to appeal the delete? This is the first article I have written, perhaps some changes to the article can be made. Jargon777Leave a message 07:00, 12 April 2018 (UTC)
Yes, WP:DRV suggests discussing it with the administrator who deleted it first before bringing it there. I don't have time now to update the article as I am overseas, so an alternative is to wait until I have time and then re-submit I suppose, but I imagine that as a live article users may be more willing to contribute. Jargon777Leave a message 07:39, 12 April 2018 (UTC)
@Jargon777: Since it was deleted via discussion, the article would have to be substantially different to not be deleted under WP:CSD#G4. If you think it can pass muster, I'd suggest drafting it in your userspace/draftspace first. ~ Amory(u • t • c) 11:55, 12 April 2018 (UTC)
But it seems like the gripe in the discussion was around sources mostly (WP:GNG seems to be the most legitimate criticism brought by users there). I'm not attached too much to the article, but if I come across some better sources to make it meet the criteria should I re-create or go to WP:DRV? Jargon777Leave a message 01:50, 13 April 2018 (UTC)
DRV should be fine in that case, see WP:DRVPURPOSE item 3. ~ Amory(u • t • c) 10:16, 13 April 2018 (UTC)
I'm not very experienced here, but those all seem like factual details and clarifications and links to related Wikipedia documents -- maybe it was an "automated" reversion because the topics? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.243.135.9 (talk) 19:31, 15 April 2018 (UTC)
Hey thanks for the heads up, and thanks to Primefac for reverting me — as Gandalf would say, I have no memory of this place! Slip of the finger on a loose keyboard, absolutely my fault. Thanks for the contributions, and really, I'm quite sorry. ~ Amory(u • t • c) 19:42, 15 April 2018 (UTC)
No worries, seems like it happens a lot with HG. Primefac (talk) 19:53, 15 April 2018 (UTC)
Yeah, I finally decided yesterday that after all these years I'd give it a whirl and see what the fuss was. My work setup has a nasty habit of repeating key and mouse clicks, not a good combo. ~ Amory(u • t • c) 20:04, 15 April 2018 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Changes later this week
Profiling statistics for an abuse filter tell how often edits match the filter. The statistics for the abuse filters were reset after 10000 actions. Wikis can now decide to reset it more or less often. They can file a phabricator task to do so. [106]
Abuse filters will now treat integers and floats more precisely. For example, 5/2 was rounded down to 2 but will now be 2.5 and 2*4 will be the integer 8 and not the floating-point number 8.0. Division values are the only ones changed. For the rest only strict comparisons (=== and !==) will be affected leaving the values unchanged. [107][108]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 17 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 18 April. It will be on all wikis from 19 April (calendar).
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 17 April at 18:30 (UTC). See how to join.
You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 18 April at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
The new PDF renderer could not create PDFs from books. Books are in this case collections of pages on a Wikimedia wiki. PediaPress will take over development of the books-to-PDF function. [109]
Pywikibot will no longer support Python 2.7.2 and 2.7.3. [110]
Thank you for thousands of warnings of vandalism including misplaced humor, with a precise "Message re.", for welcoming new users and dealing with articles for creation and deletion, for gnomish cleanup and disambiguation, for "Disagree with something I did? Then undo it!", for missing, - repeating (18 January 2010): you are an awesome Wikipedian!
Haha thanks! I had completely forgotten about my day, thanks for the reminiscence. The sapphire is gorgeous. ~ Amory(u • t • c) 11:14, 17 April 2018 (UTC)
How to accept?
You have given me PC Reviewer rights which all seems OK to me in principle. I do my watchlist fairly diligently each day so I should be able incorporate these pending change reviews as part of that workflow. But what I can't work out from Wikipedia:Pending changes is HOW to accept them. What action do I do?
For example, I can see looking at my watchlist a number of things marked with the "r" and the orange highlight and I have reviewed some of those edits, but they are still appearing as unreviewed in my watchlist. For example, this edit on Thursday Island. Now I've checked that edit, it's OK, I've welcomed the new user with a Project Australia welcome, but it is still showing with the "r" and the highlight in my watchlist. When I look at the diff and the article, I cannot see any button to click to "Accept" it. I look on my Twinkle menu for some accept button but there's nothing there either. Clearly I am missing something. Kerry (talk) 23:26, 17 April 2018 (UTC)
Well your problem there is that Thursday Island isn't under pending changes protection; only edits by non-autoconfirmed users to pages under pending changes protection need reviewing. A full list of edits needing review is at Special:PendingChanges; from there, you can click on the "review" link to get the diff page and a little summary box to accept or revert the changes. Also, if you view the history of a page under PCP, you should see different highlighting under edits still needing review, with a little link that says "pending review." ~ Amory(u • t • c) 00:40, 18 April 2018 (UTC)
Then I am very confused. It says on Wikipedia:Reviewing pending changes that "Articles with pending changes are marked as such in Help:watchlists" which says that it flags edits needing review with red "r". Thursday Island on my watchlist has such a red "r". If it is not the "red r", what am I looking for in my watchlist? Kerry (talk) 05:53, 18 April 2018 (UTC)
You're getting mixed up between pending changes and mw:ORES. The watchlist (and recent changes) use the r to mark an edit with ORES, it has nothing to do with pending changes. A page on your watchlist with a pending edit will be highlighted in red and will be painfully obvious. Try watching one of the pages at Special:PendingChanges, you'll see. ~ Amory(u • t • c) 10:36, 18 April 2018 (UTC)
Then I think the documentation on watchlists needs to be updated then, because I don't see that. And, as I receive my watchlist via email notifications, how does it appear? Kerry (talk) 12:28, 18 April 2018 (UTC)
Hmm, yes, Help:Watchlist does use the word "review" to match mw:ORES, which I've now changed. I can't comment on the email, but here's an image (in Italian) of what it looks like on your watchlist. ~ Amory(u • t • c) 13:28, 18 April 2018 (UTC)
Italian? No, too many double consonants: it's Finnish. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 14:24, 18 April 2018 (UTC)
No, it can't be Finnish, I don't see the most common Finnish word "sauna" :-) More seriously, can I suggest a bit more work on the engineering, particularly the UI aspects of this pending-changes system (including Twinkle/email integration), and better documentation before trying to sign more people up to this? From the perspective of someone who uses email notifications, if the notifications messages contained a distinctive "pending changes" phrase, I could create message rules to filter those messages into a separate folder and process them first before the rest of my watchlist, which would improve response time. I don't know if on-wiki watchlists could also be sorted in that way (but it would be beneficial to your system if they could). I can see obvious benefits to better integration and makes the adoption curve a whole lot easier. Kerry (talk) 14:32, 18 April 2018 (UTC)
It's definitely designed around folks who use the on-wiki watchlist, but personally I don't muck about with it for pending changes — so few of the pages on-wiki are PCPd, it's rare they show up on my watchlist. I just peruse Special:PendingChanges and Special:ProblemChanges from time to time, and check out the edits to be helpful. Still, if it's not useful to you, I can just as easily remove it! ~ Amory(u • t • c) 14:38, 18 April 2018 (UTC)
(edit conflict)Oof, thanks. I guess I went bleary browsing commons filenames? Need more tea. ~ Amory(u • t • c) 14:38, 18 April 2018 (UTC)
Hello Amorymeltzer, how are you? hope you have an grateful day, could you pls review my contributions as a rollbacker and grant rollback rights permanently with your suggestiona.Thanks, ZI Jony (talk) 20:38, 20 April 2018 (UTC)
Hey ZI Jony, thanks for dropping in. Could you please explain thesethreereverts from the past week? ~ Amory(u • t • c) 01:20, 21 April 2018 (UTC)
Thanks Amorymeltzer these three reverts is my mistake, I'll make sure not to happen again. Thanks, ZI Jony (talk) 16:19, 21 April 2018 (UTC)
Yes indeed! Are you able to describe why your reversion of each one was wrong? ~ Amory(u • t • c)
I suppose to check properly what was there in the revision before revent. Thanks, ZI Jony (talk) 17:53, 21 April 2018 (UTC)
I was hoping for some specifics. The first seems valid, or at least is not clearly vandalism; the second was a correct typo fix; and the third was removal of unsourced personal biography information. That's quite a few in just a week, please take a little more caution when reviewing diffs. I've extended rollback for another month; let's check in again then and see how it's going, okay? ~ Amory(u • t • c) 18:41, 21 April 2018 (UTC)
Thanks a lot for your understand about me, I'll more caution in my actions.Thanks, ZI Jony (talk) 19:05, 21 April 2018 (UTC)
AFD
Um, I'm a bit confused, why was this closed as keep? CHRISSYMAD❯❯❯¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 00:27, 23 April 2018 (UTC)
I agree with User:Chrissymad. All 8 !votes are delete and you indicate the result is keep?--Rpclod (talk) 00:29, 23 April 2018 (UTC)
(edit conflict)@Chrissymad: Yech, I hit the wrong button. Thank you for the speedy correction, really appreciate it. ~ Amory(u • t • c) 00:31, 23 April 2018 (UTC)
Also, Chrissy, as long as I've got you here, I won't pretend to make my way over to meta very often so I can't claim to have missed it, but glad to see the global-rollbacker perm. Should make good use of it. ~ Amory(u • t • c) 00:47, 23 April 2018 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
The iOS and Android apps now have synced reading lists. This means you can save articles to a private list that can be seen on your other devices if you use the apps.
The visual editor and the 2017 wikitext ask you to write an edit summary after you press Publish. This button now also shows an ellipsis. This is to show that pressing Publish is not the last step. [112]
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 24 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 25 April. It will be on all wikis from 26 April (calendar).
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 24 April at 18:30 (UTC). See how to join.
You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 25 April at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
<mapframe> will come to most Wikipedias in May. This means that you can put interactive maps in the articles. Nine Wikipedias that use a strict version of flagged revisions will not get this feature in May. [113]
The rollback function could change. This was a German community request. All editors with rollback rights can leave feedback on the proposed solution. The last day to leave feedback is 4 May (UTC).
Musikbot removed a pp-vandalism tag, is tyat normal?
I am not an admin that knows everything about the page protection steps. I have noticed on a page called Box that you protected due to vandalism, Musikbot removed the pp-vandalism tag. Is that normal? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Aceing Winter Snows Harsh Cold (talk • contribs) 04:46, 24 April 2018 (UTC)
@Aceing Winter Snows Harsh Cold: Yes — although in this case it's a little weird. I pending changes protected that page, but the {{pp-vandalism}} tag I added is technically only applicable for regular protection (semi, full), so MusikBot removed it as incorrect. I've added {{pp-pc1}} so all is right with the world! ~ Amory(u • t • c) 09:49, 24 April 2018 (UTC)
Hi, you somehow managed to leave this page completely blank, instead of restoring the redirect. I've fixed it now. — Smjg (talk) 11:28, 24 April 2018 (UTC)
Thanks — didn't realize they blanked before nominating. Appreciate it. ~ Amory(u • t • c) 12:29, 24 April 2018 (UTC)
Some POST requests to the API took longer than usual in parts of December. This affected the Wikidata UI and some gadgets the most. It has now been fixed. [10]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 9 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 10 January. It will be on all wikis from 11 January (calendar).
Administrator changes
None
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