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Tech News: 2018-51

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

Tech News

• Because of the holidays the next issue of Tech News will be sent out on 7 January 2019.

Recent changes

• Some templates that show notices about the content of the page will now be shown on the mobile website. In many cases they were hidden before. [1][2]
• Admins can no longer unblock themselves, except for self-blocks. A blocked admin can block the user who blocked them but no one else. This is so no one can block all admins on a wiki without being stopped. [3]
• The ParserMigration extension has been removed. It compared the result of two versions of the MediaWiki wikitext parsing pipeline. It was used when we moved to the Remex parsing library instead of Tidy.

Problems

• <ref> tags can use parameters such as "name" or "group". For example <ref name="adams" group="books">. If a <ref> tag has more than two parameters all parameters are ignored. You don't get a warning that they don't work. This will soon be fixed. [4]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 18 December. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 19 December. It will be on all wikis from 20 December (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 19 December at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• The Wikimedia Foundation Android app team are working on making it easier to edit on mobile phones. You can read more about these plans. If you have an Android phone and speak at least two languages you can help testing in English. Tell Dchen (WMF) you want to be part of the testing by writing on her talk page or email her.
• tiles.wmflabs.org and wma.wmflabs.org will stop working. They have no maintainers and run an old operating system. Tools which use it could stop working. This includes the mapnik gadget, hill shading, and hike and bike layers. New maintainers could help out and keep it going. [5]

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

20:34, 17 December 2018 (UTC)

Diene

Hello,

The description under the image explicitly says "Some dienes:", hence I think my edit was correct. The article mentions fatty acids in one of the sentences, but that doesn't mean fatty acids should be in the image which meant to represent _dienes_. The section where the image is located mentions "Cumulated dienes, Conjugated dienes, and Unconjugated dienes". So one would expect that the image contains only dienes. For the sake of unambiguity, I suggest we use the image without linoleic acid. I know that you're a professional in this field, but condradictions like that could be confusing to non-professionals. — Assaiki (talk) 07:08, 21 December 2018 (UTC)

Makes sense in the context of defining the term "diene" itself. With the content I added to the intro, I am comfortable that readers can understand that a "diene" itself can be embedded in a more complex structure. DMacks (talk) 07:17, 21 December 2018 (UTC)

Thank you. — Assaiki (talk) 07:30, 21 December 2018 (UTC)

Disambiguation link notification for December 21

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Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas and a Prosperous 2019!

Hello DMacks, may you be surrounded by peace, success and happiness on this seasonal occasion. Spread the WikiLove by wishing another user a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past, a good friend, or just some random person. Sending you heartfelt and warm greetings for Christmas and New Year 2019. Happy editing, Pkbwcgs (talk) 14:14, 25 December 2018 (UTC) Spread the love by adding {{subst:Seasonal Greetings}} to other user talk pages.

Editing concern

Jeez man all I did was edit Manix crapix (talk) 01:15, 31 December 2018 (UTC)

@Manix crapix: yes. Without citing a source. That's bad, because it's one of wikipedia's rules to do so. As others have repeatedly told you. That means you refuse to accept wikipedia rules. Either follow the rules or stop playing the game. DMacks (talk) 04:32, 31 December 2018 (UTC)

Changing Czech Republic to Czechia.

Per this edit, what should the reaction be? I reverted it first, then undid my edit due to my unsure thinking. The links don't need to be changed, they were fine as is, and this is a controversial edit, I feel, per the current consensus on changing Czech Republic to Czechia, being that it should be automatically reverted. This user is aware of this, and has been involved in discussuons on this, yet did not use an edit summary, and marked the edit as minor. I'm confused on what the thinking is on edits like these and how to proceed. - R9tgokunks ⭕ 04:44, 29 December 2018 (UTC)

These two use-cases seem to be in titles of external resource, so we should use what they use. No matter what we think of a reference (fact vs fiction, compliance or breaking of house style, etc), we always just cite its title as-is. DMacks (talk) 04:35, 31 December 2018 (UTC)

Naming firm page reversion

Hey DMacks! Today I added a citation to the "Naming firm" page on Wikipedia, inserting a reference to one of the naming industry's most important guides to name development published by Catchword (at which I'm a partner). There's considerable information in the Guide related to trademark screening and, for that reason, I thought it would make sense to add a link to the Guide, at a point in the page content specific to trademark screening. I see that the citation has been removed and I'm just wondering if you could provide me with some guidance on how to modify the reference, if it's violating a Wikipedia rule or otherwise not meeting a Wikipedia requirement. I see that at least one other industry naming guide (published by Igor) is included in the citations, so I assumed that another citation to a relevant piece of information would be acceptable.

Thanks!

Mark — Preceding unsigned comment added by Markskoultchi (talk • contribs) 16:45, 1 January 2019 (UTC)

From an outsider's perspective, here is someone posting a link to their own site claiming that their own site is a most-important reference. On its face, that looks fairly presumtuous and merely an attempt to "me too" promote your site via link-farming. Those bluelinked terms go to a few wikipedia guidelines/policies of relevance.

If there are other problematic links, the solution to that problem is to reduce not add even more. Igor appears to be a notable organization (WP:CORP), suggesting its publications might be reliable as a reference. It wasn't clear from your edit that Catchword (company) was the underlying publisher. At appears it is a notable organization also (though its article is very weak in that regard), so its publications might be reliable also. DMacks (talk) 17:24, 1 January 2019 (UTC)

Thanks DMacks. It appears the citation has been added back, and thanks for that. Apologies if the original edit wasn't clear enough. Catchword is indeed a reliable naming source. The agency has a #1 ranking worldwide on Clutch.co, a leading, client-driven agency review platform. If interested, please see here: https://clutch.co/agencies/naming/research I suppose any link to a commercial website could be considered promotional on some level, since the link drives people to the site, but this publication, Creating the Perfect Name, is truly of relevance and value to anyone viewing this Naming Firm page on Wikipedia, and it's been downloaded countless times by marketers and business professionals looking for gratis advice on brand name development.

I'm curious though: what do you mean when you say the organization's article is very weak? Is there something we can do to strengthen it??

Thanks again! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Markskoultchi (talk • contribs) 21:30, 1 January 2019 (UTC)

User talk:81.155.207.141

this page is ok to have nothing on it so don't restore again.

--86.186.60.175 (talk) 09:54, 6 January 2019 (UTC)

users are not welcome to change others' talk page comments (only the original author or the user whose talk page it is). DMacks (talk) 16:16, 6 January 2019 (UTC)

But DMacks, when the original IP user removed content from its talk page, you reverted it and subsequently pulled TP access. I've been observing this LTA for some time now and have come to the realization that these silly talk page edit wars generally aren't worth the trouble. Sro23 (talk) 06:50, 7 January 2019 (UTC)

I was treating it as a seeminly fertile honeypot. But this LTA isn't one of my pets, so I'll defer to how you think they should be handled/ignored. DMacks (talk) 06:53, 7 January 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-02

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

Tech News writers, editors and translators wish you a pleasant 2019 year.

Recent changes

• RelatedSites extension has been undeployed. It was used to create interwiki links on Wikivoyage, now handled by Wikidata. [6]
• MediaWiki logstash logging is moving to a new infrastructure. This is an ongoing deployment. [7]
• codesearch.wmflabs.org has been updated, with new and updated repositories and a new search options for code. [8]
• On several wikis, an account named "Edit filter" has been created on December 17 to perform some technical maintenance on AbuseFilter. This account has sysop rights but it's a system user and no human can use it. The account already existed on wikis where AbuseFilter can perform blocks, which are issued using this account. See T212268 for more information and future plans.

Problems

• In AbuseFilter, the "Throttle" action takes three parameters: count, period and groups. They must now strictly respect the requirements listed on mediawiki.org. A list of broken filters is on Phabricator. If you're familiar with AbuseFilter, please take a look and fix them. [9]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from January 8. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from January 9. It will be on all wikis from January 10 (calendar).

Meetings

• Search Platform Office Hours is rescheduled to January 9. Check the details for time and date.

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

18:29, 7 January 2019 (UTC)

Template:Did you know nominations/Hilda Ranscombe

Please see note on your DYK review. Yoninah (talk) 23:38, 9 January 2019 (UTC)

Disambiguation link notification for January 10

An automated process has detected that you recently added links to disambiguation pages.

Metallophilic interaction (check to confirm | fix with Dab solver)

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added a link pointing to Element

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Tech News: 2019-03

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

• You can now use Google Translate in the content translation tool. [10][11]
• You can now add captions to files on Commons. Captions are short descriptions of the file. They can be translated to all languages we use. They can't use wikitext markup.
• Earlier a quoted HTML attribute had to be followed by a space. Now it doesn't. This means that some pages could look different when you save them even if you didn't edit that part of the text. [12][13]
• Templates with could not show the difference between the live template and the sandbox version when they were tested. This has now been fixed. has a new wrapper parameter now. You can use it for selectors like .mw-parser-output <wrapper parameter value> <selector from CSS page>. [14]

Problems

• When you see an edit in the recent changes feed or in the history of a page some of them have tags. Some tags are added automatically. You can also add tags manually. Tags for edits that have been added manually can be edited. This didn't work for a little while. This has now been fixed. [15]

Changes later this week

• You can move files from your wiki to Wikimedia Commons and keep the file history with the new FileExporter. It will be a beta feature on all wikis from 16 January. If you want to test it you activate it and check your wiki's configuration file.
• Users who could cause more damage to the wikis if someone took over their account have to have more secure passwords. This includes administrators and other user groups. They can't use passwords that are in a list of common passwords. Accounts with common passwords are easy to take over. The list of common passwords was made longer a few weeks ago and has a different error message. Some user groups have been added to those who can't use common passwords. This is to protect all accounts with user rights that could cause damage. [16]
• The AbuseFilter variable minor_edit has been removed. It was deprecated in 2016. Now you can't use it. You can fix the filters using it. You can find them if you use the search bar on Special:AbuseFilter.
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from January 15

17:54, 14 January 2019 (UTC)

I just was adding more info.

I just was adding more info. Why did you do that? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Khoin wiki (talk • contribs) 20:58, 14 January 2019 (UTC)

I hae no idea what specific edit you are talking about. But in general, verifiability and ability to write on-topic and in clear English are baseline skills. DMacks (talk) 21:44, 14 January 2019 (UTC)

First Edit!

Hey, DMacks. I'd like to wish you a wonderful First Edit Day on behalf of the Wikipedia Birthday Committee! Have a great day! A 10 fireplane Imform me 16:18, 16 January 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-04

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

Tech News

• Some people did not get last week's issue of Tech News. This was because of a problem with MassMessage. If you did not get last week's issue, you can read it on Meta. [17]

Recent changes

• The content translation tool can now use version 2 as the default version for users who turned on the beta feature. For example it adds the tracking category Pages with unreviewed translations to translations that might have used machine translations without fixing the problems. This is so others can find them. You can find this category in Special:TrackingCategories on Wikipedias.
• https://mediawiki2latex-large.wmflabs.org can now convert collects of up to 800 pages to PDF, EPUB or ODT. Previously this was 200 pages.

Problems

• When a template was edited with the visual editor, it would sometimes put all information on one line. This makes it difficult to read for editors who use the wikitext editor. It also makes it more difficult to see what happened in a diff. This problem affected edits made between 8 and 17 January and is now fixed. [18]
• MassMessage is used to post a message to many pages. It has not been working reliably. Some messages have not been posted to everyone. [19][20]
• Because of a database problem that had to be fixed immediately you could not edit most wikis for a couple of minutes on 17 January (UTC). This has now been fixed. [21]

Changes later this week

• You will be able to use template styles in the Module namespace. [22]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 22 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 23 January. It will be on all wikis from 24 January (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 23 January at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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

20:35, 21 January 2019 (UTC)

DYK Hilda Ranscombe

The review at Template:Did you know nominations/Hilda Ranscombe was considered for promotion, but the promoter raised some questions. I am willing to follow-up if you're still interested. Thanks. Flibirigit (talk) 18:45, 18 January 2019 (UTC)

Hi, it's been 2 weeks since I pinged you at Template:Did you know nominations/Hilda Ranscombe. Are you coming back to the review, or should we call for a new reviewer? Yoninah (talk) 22:32, 21 January 2019 (UTC)

DYK for Allyl glycidyl ether

On 22 January 2019, Did you know was updated with a fact from the article Allyl glycidyl ether, which you recently created, substantially expanded, or brought to good article status. The fact was ... that allyl glycidyl ether can be converted to three different types of polymers by changing the polymerization conditions? The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Allyl glycidyl ether. You are welcome to check how many page hits the article got while on the front page (here's how, Allyl glycidyl ether), and it may be added to the statistics page if the total is over 5,000. Finally, if you know of an interesting fact from another recently created article, then please feel free to suggest it on the Did you know talk page.

Panyd^{The muffin is not subtle} 00:02, 22 January 2019 (UTC)

Disambiguation link notification for January 28

An automated process has detected that when you recently edited Zirconocene, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Dimer (check to confirm | fix with Dab solver).

(Opt-out instructions.) --DPL bot (talk) 09:54, 28 January 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-05

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 Wikimedia servers use HHVM to run the PHP code. They are going to use PHP7 and stop using HHVM. You can test PHP7 with a new beta feature. That way you can help find and report problems.

Problems

• When someone moves a page to a name that already exists that page that had the name the article is moved to is deleted. For a couple of months this didn't always work. Some users saw an error message instead. This has now been 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 30 January at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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

18:15, 28 January 2019 (UTC)

This Month in Education: January 2019

This Month in Education Volume 8 • Issue 1 • January 2019 Contents • Headlines • Subscribe In This Issue Registration for Wikimedia+Education Conference is open Collaboration with Yerevan State University of Languages and Social Sciences after V. Brusov Meet the first Programs & Events Dashboard sysops More than a hundred students gathered in Ecuador to edit Wikipedia Selet WikiSchool continues to teach young Tatar language Wikipedians The WikiClub contributes to the development of our human qualities Third prize for Wikipedia in schools project We've updated the design of Education space! The WikiChallenge Ecoles d'Afrique is back Wiki Advanced Training at VVIT Creating our first WikiClub WikiClubs participate in edit-a-thon of cartoons Wikimedia and Education in Portugal: Where are we now Wikimedia Israel: “Wikipedia Ambassadors” program for Arabic-speaking schools is launched

About This Month in Education · Subscribe/Unsubscribe · Global message delivery · For the team: Romaine 04:41, 29 January 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-06

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

• It was easy to untick a box by accident in Special:Preferences. This will now be fixed. [24]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 5 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 6 February. It will be on all wikis from 7 February (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 6 February at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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

17:12, 4 February 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-07

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

• You can use the ambox CSS class to show page issues to mobile readers. When you use ambox there are classes you can use.

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 12 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 13 February. It will be on all wikis from 14 February (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 13 February at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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

18:45, 11 February 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-08

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

• When you thank someone on the mobile web you will now have two seconds to cancel the thank. This is in case you clicked on the thank button by accident. [25]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 19 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 20 February. It will be on all wikis from 21 February (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 20 February at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• There is a proposal to add a red link to mobile search results if there is no page with that name. This is how it works on desktop. You can leave feedback. [26]

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

23:13, 18 February 2019 (UTC)

Camille Rowe

Hi DMacks,

I would appreciate if you did not delete my DOB changes for Camille Rowe unnecessarily. The source I provide is the offical register of businesses in the United Kingdom, which clearly shows her birthday as being in January 1986. This cannot be argued. Any date showing 1990 on the internet is incorrect. Companies House (I'll provide the link below) cannot be lied to and her company is Finger Monkey Ltd (after her Instagram account) with all the relevant addresses and names provided to Companies House - please see source here https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/09607534/persons-with-significant-control

As for the specific day in January, it is well publicised that her birthday is January 7. This is not something that can be easily cited as social media links are not enough to support it. You can see for yourself on her own social medias and other peoples that her birthday is on January 7. Please do not delete sources which provide clear evidence.

Thank you. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Brownely2222 (talk • contribs) 21:05, 18 February 2019 (UTC)

WP:BLP is very explicit about sourcing requirements for biographical details. It may well be that we need to leave out details, even ones that everyone knows and posts about, if noone can actually find a reliable cite for it. People lie on legal documents all the time. In fact, actual court transcripts are explicitly forbidden to be used as sources for any factual claim other than "someone claims something. That's the way wikipedia is I guess...it's an encyclopedia not a hive-mind or social/rumor collection. You'll just get blocked soon if you keep adding uncited material and wikipedia will keep on without you. DMacks (talk) 04:14, 19 February 2019 (UTC)

J.J. Sedelmaier Productions, Inc.

Greetings "DMacks",

Please feel free to Google J.J. Sedelmaier Productions, Inc. I feel you will consider this company worthy of recognition in Wikipedia as animation studio of note.

Thanks for your diligence ! Cheers — Preceding unsigned comment added by J.J. Sedelmaiert (talk • contribs) 02:25, 20 February 2019 (UTC)

Sorry, WP:CORP is the standard, not my google-skills. DMacks (talk) 20:15, 20 February 2019 (UTC)

I've also gone ahead and blocked this account of yours, as you appear to be using User:Jjsedelmaier as well, against our WP:SOCK account policy. Please restrict yourself to a single account (I left available the one that was older and had more edits performed). DMacks (talk) 20:19, 20 February 2019 (UTC)

Talk to us about talking

The Wikimedia Foundation is planning a global consultation about communication. The goal is to bring Wikimedians and wiki-minded people together to improve tools for communication.

We want all contributors to be able to talk to each other on the wikis, whatever their experience, their skills or their devices.

We are looking for input from as many different parts of the Wikimedia community as possible. It will come from multiple projects, in multiple languages, and with multiple perspectives.

We are currently planning the consultation. We need your help.

We need volunteers to help talk to their communities or user groups.

You can help by hosting a discussion at your wiki. Here's what to do:

1. First, sign up your group here.
2. Next, create a page (or a section on a Village pump, or an e-mail thread – whatever is natural for your group) to collect information from other people in your group. This is not a vote or decision-making discussion: we are just collecting feedback.
3. Then ask people what they think about communication processes. We want to hear stories and other information about how people communicate with each other on and off wiki. Please consider asking these five questions:
   1. When you want to discuss a topic with your community, what tools work for you, and what problems block you?
   2. What about talk pages works for newcomers, and what blocks them?
   3. What do others struggle with in your community about talk pages?
   4. What do you wish you could do on talk pages, but can't due to the technical limitations?
   5. What are the important aspects of a "wiki discussion"?
4. Finally, please go to Talk pages consultation 2019 on Mediawiki.org and report what you learned from your group. Please include links if the discussion is available to the public.

You can also help build the list of the many different ways people talk to each other.

Not all groups active on wikis or around wikis use the same way to discuss things: it can happen on wiki, on social networks, through external tools... Tell us how your group communicates.

You can read more about the overall process on mediawiki.org. If you have questions or ideas, you can leave feedback about the consultation process in the language you prefer.

Thank you! We're looking forward to talking with you.

Trizek (WMF) 15:08, 21 February 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-09

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 version of the iOS Wikipedia app. It has for example syntax highlighting and new toolbars to make it easier to write wikitext. It also has night mode, a find-on-page function and other things. You can give feedback and suggestions. [27]

Changes later this week

• When you look at your watchlist or the recent changes page you can use the new filters for edit review. There you can choose tags to filter different edits. Empty tags will no longer be shown. [28]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 26 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 27 February. It will be on all wikis from 28 February (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 27 February at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• The Wikipedia app for Android will invite users to add Wikidata descriptions to Wikidata objects that have Wikipedia articles but no Wikidata descriptions. It will only invite users who have added a number of Wikidata descriptions in the app without being reverted. This is to avoid spam and bad edits. You can read more and leave feedback.

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

21:16, 25 February 2019 (UTC)

talk page access 109.151.14.152

Please remove talk page access from User talk:109.151.14.152. Nothing good is coming from that IP. (I am not watching this page, so please ping me if you want my attention.) Chris Troutman (talk) 15:42, 26 February 2019 (UTC)

@Chris troutman: I instead semi'ed it. One of the hallmarks of this LTA is that lots of their IPs edit each others' talkpages, not just each editing their own one. DMacks (talk) 15:46, 26 February 2019 (UTC)

This Month in Education: February 2019

This Month in Education Volume 8 • Issue 2 • February 2019 Contents • Headlines • Subscribe In This Issue Wikimedia User Group Nigeria in Collaboration with AfroCrowd Celebrate Black Month History with a 2Day Editathon Wikimedia+Education Programme announced Wikipedia in Education, Uruguay Oslo Metropolitan University hires “Wikipedia-assistants” Basque Education Program: 2018 in review Wikimedia Israel introduces Wikidata to Education Wikimedia Serbia made tutorials in Serbian language on editing Wikipedia Seminar on wikis in education Wikimedia, Tourism and Education: Launching project ISAL The Swiss Lab: Wikipedia as a game Meet Hungary

About This Month in Education · Subscribe/Unsubscribe · Global message delivery · For the team: Romaine 17:52, 27 February 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-10

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

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 5 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 6 March. It will be on all wikis from 7 March (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 6 March at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• You can give feedback on the future of talk pages.
• The mobile website will use the standard fonts on your computer or phone instead of a generic font. This will make it easier to read text in many scripts. [29][30]

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

16:38, 4 March 2019 (UTC)

Cite templates

Hi. About the "{{cite...}}" templates in refs. I don't remove them for no reason, but when I have to fix their contents, e.g. by providing full author, journal, and page information (as in the case of those refs in ethylene dione) I definitely have the "right" and "duty" to do so.
The "cite" templates were a TERRIBLY BAD idea. They have many disadvantages and no advantages at all.

• They are MUCH harder to create and edit than the plain refs.
• The format that they generate, "27 (15) 31" instead of "volume 27, issue 15, page 31" is not meaningful to readers who are not academics or professional researchers. Like the practice of abbreviating journal names beyond recognition, it was invented by publishers of paper journals to save space, a very expensive resource for them. That is not a concern for Wikipedia; clarity for general readers is.
• In the code, they are roughly twice as long as the plain version. That makes it hard also to edit the text around them.
• Using the wrong keyword for a parameter may produce very wrong results, without warning. (Try <ref>{{cite book|title=Foo|issue=21}}</ref>
• They cannot easily handle non-standard situations, such as journals that refer to articles by number instead of page numbers. Even when they do have options for such situations, editors must read the template documentation to find them.
• And, like most complicated templates, they add another ton of complexity to the "language" that new editors must learn in order to edit Wikipedia -- which is the only reason I can think of for why the number of editors has been shrinking for a decade.

Novice editors, who do not know the usual visible format for Wikipedia refs, can be excused to use the cite template generator to generate refs. Those who know what the refs should look like have no excuse for using them.
It is understandable that, to reduce conflicts, editors should not remove "cite" templates just for the sake of it. But please let's work to make Wikipedia better, for reader and editors alike, by NOT using those templates for new refs, and NOT changing refs that are already in good plain format to use them.
All the best, --Jorge Stolfi (talk) 16:59, 10 March 2019 (UTC)

There are definite disadvantages to the template, as you note. But there are also advtanges in that they automatically provide consistent formatting and avoid mis-understanding what different fields mean. WP:CITEVAR is pretty unambiguous that neither form is "the right one" (and indeed there are third and maybe even fourth options for formatting too). And for that reason, your preference is not generally accepted as a compelling reason to change. I find zero personal benefit to hand-coded ref formatting as a reader (manually written refs often omit useful fields and do not use consistent formatting so it's harder for me to look up and harder for me to parse visually) or as an editor (I have to remember how to format and what order to write things). Besides just "any standard format is ok" as a wikipedia site-wide standard, the Chemistry wikiproject has expressed a preference for using the cite templates in its MOS for chemistry articles.

Regarding reading the terse formatting, if one uses templates, the fields are tagged internally and exported as COinS, so readers can import directly into ref databases. I don't personally do that, but it means someone could write a tool or gadget to display refs formatted any other way at all (APA, ACS, MLA, arbitrary visible tokens like "volume", "issue", etc.). I haven't heard of anyone working on that sort of project, so there would be one way you could help readers who you feel are unable to understand the {{cite}} formats rather than fighting what is probably a losing battle for discarding them altogether.

Given how poorly (amount, not style) many new editors cite things, I don't think "I can't figure out the cite template, heck with this altogether" is a major thought process. Instead, we have visual editor and a bunch of other tools that hide lots of the wiki syntax even more deeply than just this template. You should take these sorts of concerns to centralize WP discussion area, since you are pushing against multiple deeply ingrained consensus standards.

And finally you obviously know about edit-summaries and their importance for communicating among editors. At least some of my annoyance at seeing the change could have been reduced if you actually noted you were making this change and why. DMacks (talk) 17:51, 10 March 2019 (UTC)

A kitten for you!

You are Most Welcome Sir.

Fylindfotberserk (talk) 14:25, 11 March 2019 (UTC)

LitRPG edges towards an edit war (again!)

Hi Dmack, could I trouble you to look at LitRPG and perhaps protect it for a month or two? Someone is hacking big chunks out of the entry without attempting to discuss why in the talk page. Thanks. JimHolden (talk) 10:19, 26 February 2019 (UTC)

Sorry I overlooked this talkpage message. I semi'ed the article 1 year. So...I guess we'll have this conversation again in Spring'20? Sigh. DMacks (talk) 15:14, 11 March 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-11

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

• Pages can use geocoordinates from Wikidata with the mw.wikibase.entity:formatStatements Lua function or the #statements parser function. If they do, they will now be shown using a Kartographer <maplink> if the wiki can use Kartographer. You can report bugs or ask questions on Phabricator.
• There is now an EventStream to see when links are added or removed on Wikimedia wikis. You can read the discussions and plans.

Problems

• Some wikis will not be able to edit for a short period of time on 19 March (UTC). This will start at 15:00 UTC. It will last up to 15 minutes but probably shorter. You can see the list of affected wikis. This is because of network maintenance. You can still read the wikis.
• Editors who use Firefox to edit with the visual editor had a problem with copying text. When they tried to select text that included footnotes, templates or block images in the middle they would often only get part of the text. This has now been fixed. [31]
• Some maps didn't work for a while on 8 March. This has been fixed. [32][33]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 12 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 13 March. It will be on all wikis from 14 March (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 13 March at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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

19:29, 11 March 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-12

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

• When you use rollback you will be able to get a confirmation prompt on most wikis. It asks you if you wanted to do the rollback. This is to avoid misclicks. You will have to opt in to get it. On German Wikipedia it will be an opt-out feature from 28 March. [34][35]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 19 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 20 March. It will be on all wikis from 21 March (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 20 March at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• Admins will be able to block someone from editing a page or a namespace. This already works on a few Wikimedia wikis. You can read more. If your wiki wants to be an early tester of this, you can tell the developers. [36]
• Toolforge will shut down the Ubuntu Trusty job grid. This will happen the week of 25 March. Tools that use this grid needs to be moved to the new Debian Stretch job grid. If they haven't, they will be taken offline. Maintainers can restart the tools later. Users may not be able to use them in the meanwhile. You can see a list of affected tools.

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

19:43, 18 March 2019 (UTC)

March 2019

Please stop your disruptive editing.

• If you are engaged in an article content dispute with another editor, discuss the matter with the editor at their talk page, or the article's talk page, and seek consensus with them. Alternatively you can read Wikipedia's dispute resolution page, and ask for independent help at one of the relevant notice boards.
• If you are engaged in any other form of dispute that is not covered on the dispute resolution page, seek assistance at Wikipedia's Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents.

If you continue to disrupt Wikipedia, you may be blocked from editing. Not only do you not remotely have the Wikipedia standing for me to take you seriously, it would seem from your talk page that you have a history of making incompetent rollbacks and harebrained accusations. I have indeed taken Wikipedia's standards into account, but in the cases of many quotations, people have put punctuation outside even when it logically belongs inside, or when it was part of the original quote. Notice how this fits the Wikipedia standard, which is aptly called "logical" quotations. I have not gone back and forth with other editors re-editing the same pages, but rather have settled things on talk pages when fitting. Further, for minor copy edits like moving punctuation, comments are often unnecessary. Perhaps research a topic more before speaking on it. You describe yourself as pedantic on your user page, but I believe that that's too generous.Jondr21 (talk) 15:00, 19 March 2019 (UTC)

I actually did leave untouched the ones to direct quotations. Good luck with your working agaonst MOS consensus for other cases. Feel free to file at WP:ANI if you are so inclined. DMacks (talk)

NOT an author's thought...It's a TRANSLATION

You need to read the text as it's translated Islamic Persian writings. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam#The_Chosen_One

Before removing the source, you might want to read it FIRST!!!! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.181.168.42 (talk) 04:03, 23 March 2019 (UTC)

I see you posting this same concept on multiple pages and it's being rejected by many editors for many reasons. You should stop and get WP:CONSENSUS that it belongs...somewhere...before continuing. He is not "the chosen one" (statement of fact), but instead is considered according to some text to be that. Why is this text of any authentic value? What is it a translation of that is considered a major or sacred text? See WP:SECONDARY for one way of possibly getting support that this is a usable idea. DMacks (talk) 04:39, 23 March 2019 (UTC)

Not what I was told by: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Pastychomper She told me to place EXACTLY what I did in Adam. With sources. I did just that only to have it removed by you. You people continue to play God on Wikipedia. You're PATHETIC. I'm done trying. You people are delusional. AND Why did you not read that the translation is from SCHOLARS of the Islamic sect. They (3) of them translated this together. It's not my problem to explain anything other than that as you should have read whom the author was as well as why ADAM is THE CHOSEN ONE, The Son of Man, He is Michael the Archangel. But what would you know... SEE ya. I'm done trying. #More Absurdities from wiki editors who play god and are clueless to TRUTH as you're blinded by the craftiness of man. HE IS Whom Christ is speaking to in Isaiah 42 YOU MORON. HIS ELECT ONE (Elect ONE also means CHOSEN ONE genius) Also found in Book of Enoch Chapter 61 whom is the PRINCE of his own kingdom. The only prince of a future kingdom? A D A M from the old testament you retard. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.181.168.42 (talk) 04:54, 23 March 2019 (UTC)

User:Pastychomper is welcome to jump in here and support you if they choose, but I do not see where that editor has written what you say. Regardless, according to the translation and others I have read of this passage, it could just as easily be a description, not a strict appelation. By playing capitalization games, you are choosing what to emphasize. So as I said, I think you need a secondary source that this is a formal appelation. Your dwelling on your own knowlege of what is TRUTH and your continued personal attacks on those who disagree with that are not compatible with how things work here on Wikipedia. Many editors have noted this as well as other problematic aspects of your behavior as well. I think you should probably stop posting here, as you'll soon be blocked for this continued violation of WP:NPA. DMacks (talk) 05:16, 23 March 2019 (UTC)

Ah, did you instead mean User:PamD, who specifically advised you "with good sources"? As everyone is saying, we dispute that you have a good source..."to place EXACTLY what I did" (your own emphasis that several feel is the exact problem). DMacks (talk) 05:25, 23 March 2019 (UTC)

The source is from 3 ISLAMIC PROFESSORS at a UNIVERSITY whom translated the Persian text. I would say that was a GOOD SOURCE. Book is also at CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY. That about sums it up for GOOD SOURCE. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.181.168.42 (talk) 05:31, 23 March 2019 (UTC)

Obviously you fully believe this to be a good source, but others are not convinced no matter how many times you say it. WP:CONSENSUS means you can't go ahead "knowing you are right" on your own. DMacks (talk) 05:34, 23 March 2019 (UTC)

The really funny thing is I have many pages that I have edited under another user name. LOL Who cares if I ever get to "edit" another page with this IP address. LMAO! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.181.168.42 (talk) 05:36, 23 March 2019 (UTC)

You guys jump on the bandwagon with each other. #brown nose. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.181.168.42 (talk) 05:39, 23 March 2019 (UTC)

I'm Man enough to apologize if you will add...

I have made the point and found the point to show that Adam in the islamic language for what Adam did while on earth that HE is the Chosen One. 2nd source: https://www.academia.edu/7170404/Shaggy_or_Shaved (Scroll down to page 12) Adam was given the honorary name of "Adam-I-Safi" meaning: THE CHOSEN ONE.

3rd source: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Religion_of_God/The_word_Allah

4th source: https://books.google.com/books?id=khgaCgAAQBAJ&pg=PA12&lpg=PA12&dq=adam-i,safi&source=bl&ots=FGLRnuSpVL&sig=ACfU3U2JFwduG30_wvXwIi2AOcYjrO0mvA&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiCoZjgzZjhAhUtHDQIHSGMA_EQ6AEwAnoECAgQAQ#v=onepage&q=adam-i%2Csafi&f=false

5th source: https://biblicalstudies.org.uk/pdf/ijt/07-2_056.pdf Bottom of page 57: "Adam was God's Chosen one "Adam-Safi"

I apologize for being rude. Can you please add this because I will be removed from someone if I try. Thank you

— Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.181.168.42 (talk) 17:11, 23 March 2019 (UTC)