User talk:Nick Moyes

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Question from JoIrMu (17:22, 30 December 2023)

Hi Nick

I just published a page for my nephew Joakim Oldorff, a professional badminton player. I am not very familiar with the system, so what happens next? Will the page be checked first by someone and I will get feedback? I have photographers "waiting in line" to add some pictures of Joakim, once the page has been approved.

All the best

Johanna --JoIrMu (talk) 17:22, 30 December 2023 (UTC)

Hi there, @JoIrMu. That's certainly a pretty good first effort -well done. But I should point out a few things that will need addressing.

First off, I know little about sports, but your nephew will need to meet our Notability Criteria for living people, or notability criteria for this particular sport (see WP:NBADMINTON). In other words, he either must evidently meet the sports notability criteria, OR he must have had a number of in depth and detailed articles in newspapers, magazines etc that have independently written about him and his life and achievements. I might have expected to see a page on Finnish Wikipedia, but I see there is not one as yet.

The lead paragraph should clearly state why he is notable. i.e. not just that he is a professional badminton player, but what his biggest achievement is. That way he can quickly be assessed for 'notability' against the sports notability criteria.

All your sources seem to be just short results pages. We would prefer to see factual statements about him and his life/achievements cited to longer newspaper articles, etc. I see you've linked to some as External Links", but these are best used as proper sources and citations. Every factual statement should be supported by a reference - it doesn't matter if you use the same source more than once, or if it is not in English. I see you've used Visual Editor, so please follow the guidance pages that you can find at Help:Introduction to referencing with VisualEditor/1.

Also on citations: don't use other Wikipedia pages as a source for facts. Simply LINK to another Wikipedia page, and add a citation at the end of the sentence that allows anyone to verify the statement you have added. If it can't be verified - don't add it!

As you are closely connected to him as a relative, you should add a Conflict of Interest notice to your userpage. See the instructions on that link on how to do it.

Finally - and most importantly - at the moment, your article is just a draft in your sandbox. There it will remain, unseen and unassessed unless you submit it for review for inclusion in the main body of our encyclopaedia.

I will shortly move the page into a 'Draft' and will add a big blue 'submit' button which you can hit when you've addressed the points I've raised above. Our review process at THIS PAGEoffers helpful feedback if a draft isn't yet suitable so that you can understand what further work or fixing might be needed. Unfortunately, there is a huge backlog (many thousands) so it may take up to a three months for a volunteer to review if. Should that not happen, it will then automatically be moved and indexed by Google. The latter doesn't happen until the review process has completed.

 Done See Draft:Joakim Oldorff

I hope this helps. Feel free to ask further questions, or ask at The Teahouse if you need a quicker response to any query. Nick Moyes (talk) 18:39, 30 December 2023 (UTC)

Thank you so much, Nick! All very good points and instructions. I will work on them the best I can in the coming days and submit the page for review. JoIrMu (talk) 19:27, 30 December 2023 (UTC)

Hi Nick, it took a bit longer but now I have tried to address all the points you raised, and in the meantime, the page on the Finnish Wikipedia has been published. However, I am having problems with submitting the draft. When I start to edit the drat that you kindly created for me, the submit button disappears. I tried clicking on "Publish the changes", but I am not sure if the draft is now waiting to to be reviewed or not. Can you please help me again? JoIrMu (talk) 19:28, 17 February 2024 (UTC)

@JoIrMu The Submit for Review button works, but is only visible and works only when you’re NOT editing the page!

Before submitting, please follow WP:COI to declare your conflict of interest. Good luck. Nick Moyes (talk) 19:59, 17 February 2024 (UTC)

Hi again, I am sorry for being so helpless with this, but I do not understand how I can not be editing...? I mean when I go to the draft you created, I need to click on edit, so that I can actually import the corrections and amendments you pointed out, right? When I have put the right code in the edit space, the submit button is not there. If I go back to the read space after adding the new code, it does not show the new version but the old version of the article. I apologise, but I still need more instructions on how to edit the draft you created and still get to click on the submit button. It was more straightforward on the Finnish Wikipedia, so I am really struggling with this technically. JoIrMu (talk) 09:40, 18 February 2024 (UTC)

@JoIrMu Yes, you will need to edit the draft article at Draft:Joakim Oldorff, and then you will need to save those edits into the draft (by hitting the blue Publish changes button. But that merely publishes those edits to the online Draft. It is not yet a published article (which would be found eventually at Joakim Oldorff.

Once you have completed all your edits, and saved them (i.e. publish changes), then you will still see the blue "Submit the draft for review" button again. Only when you click that will your submission be made.

As an aside: we were forced by legal requirements from the Wikimedia Foundation about 2 years ago to accept a name change from 'Save changes' to 'Publish changes' and it has not helped new users. But there is literally nothing we can do about the confusion this occasionally causes. The reality is that every single thing that anyone saves (even to their own user page) is literally 'published' online, and potentially viewable by anyone, anywhere. That applies whether it's edits to a draft, this talk page of mine, or edits to an already published article, such as The Moon. I hope this clears things up for you.

I'm away for a few days now, so if you still have problems, do ask at the Teahouse for a speedier reply. Regards, Nick Moyes (talk) 14:06, 18 February 2024 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Admin's Barnstar
	For being someone I've always looked up to and continue to hope to emulate. Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 00:30, 4 January 2024 (UTC)

@Clovermoss Thank you. Your news caught me unawares -I've been extremely busy IRL recently, and hadn't even seen your RFA (though I did have words about recommending you quite some while ago). I am so, so pleased to see you've 'got the mop'. You've been amazing to watch over the years, and I know you're going to put that mop to good use. I still feel I've an awful lot to learn about being an admin, and find it much harder now to ask simple questions (as I feel I should somehow already know the answers). I hope you feel really proud - you certainly should be! Happy New Year! Nick Moyes (talk) 01:04, 4 January 2024 (UTC)

Question from Shema12345 on Talk:Honda Stepwgn (18:35, 7 February 2024)

Hi are you a Honda manufacturer --Shema12345 (talk) 18:35, 7 February 2024 (UTC)

@Shema12345 That’s a weird question to ask. No! Nick Moyes (talk) 03:22, 8 February 2024 (UTC)

Question from Kohan-bot (17:06, 9 February 2024)

Hello mentor, I always been curious about the points I get from editing Wikipedia articles, I just want to know what these points mean to me! Does it a kind of appreciation? If so, than why don't show total points? --Kohan-bot (talk) 17:06, 9 February 2024 (UTC)

Hi, Kohan-bot. I'm not quite sure what "points" you're referring to. Do you mean the numbers in red and green that you see when looking at your list of past edits? If so, these are just the number of bytes your saved edit either added (green text) or removed (red text) from the article.

Errm, I need to point out a problem with your username. Unfortunately, we prohibit anyone using a name that could suggest it is an automated bot account (unless it is actually a functioning bot - orf which there are many doing useful service on Wikipedia). Please consider requesting a name change (see WP:RENAME) before an admin like me comes along and 'soft-blocks your account, which will simply force your hand. If that happens, please don't take it personally, but it is a policy that we need to avoid confusing usernames. see WP:MISLEADNAME for an explanation. Regards, Nick Moyes (talk) 17:26, 9 February 2024 (UTC)

Oops, too late! i see UtherSRG has just this second 'soft-blocked' you. Don't panic - just follow the instructions on your talk page. Nick Moyes (talk) 17:28, 9 February 2024 (UTC)

How do I start a page about someone

cant seem to find how to start a page about someone Nick pashley 1 (talk) 10:55, 11 February 2024 (UTC)

Hi Nick pashley 1. Creating a new page is an extremely hard task - especially for a brand new editor like yourself. It's always best to learn a biut more about Wikipedia by making small improvements to existing articles first. Maybe fix grammar and spelling, add the odd citation or wikilink.

Any new article must be about a topic that meets our Notability Criteria. For people, see WP:NBIO for how these criteria must be met and WP:BLP for the important way of handling factual statements about living or recently deceased people. If you can't find independent sources that talk about this person in some detail, then you are stuck, and there can't be an article about them.

What you would do is create a Draft article, work on it until it's of encyclopaedic quality, and you're confident you've demonstrated 'Notability'. Then you'd submit it for review and get useful feedback from a reviewer. There's a huge backlog at present, so it could take up anything up to a couple of months for a volunteer to do the review.

You can find a 'wizard' tool to help you create a draft article at our Articles for Creation page.

You should read and work through any links to other pages at Your First Article.

Should you know or are being paid by this person to create an article, then you would need to declare your Conflict of Interest - so please see that link for details how to do this. We don't mind anyone having a COI, but we do need openness so that we are aware of it. Undeclared paid editing is not allowed, so see WP:PAID if you are being remunerated to do this.

To learn how to edit, follow the link in the blue button in the welcome message I see has been left on your userpage. Regards, Nick Moyes (talk) 13:35, 11 February 2024 (UTC)

Question from Provident Estate Dubai (07:35, 12 February 2024)

i want to write an article --Provident Estate Dubai (talk) 07:35, 12 February 2024 (UTC)

Question from Tennesi14 on Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Images (18:22, 12 February 2024)

Hello, how do you create a citation? --Tennesi14 (talk) 18:22, 12 February 2024 (UTC)

Hi there, @Tennesi14. A citation is another word for a reference that supports a factual statement. So, I’m unclear why you linked to the images page of our Manual of Style.

Anyway, I will give you two links on how to do this, depending on which of our two editing tools you’ve opted to use. (But you can easily switch back and forth between them by clicking the dark, slanted pencil icon)

For adding citations with our powerful Source Editor, please see WP:REFBEGIN.

For our simpler, more ‘WISYWYG’ Visual Editor, please follow guidance via this shortcut: WP:REFBEGINVE.

I‘ll also leave a welcome message on your own talk page with some very useful links about learning to edit. Regards , Nick Moyes (talk) 21:57, 12 February 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-07

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

• The WDQS Graph Split experiment is working and loaded onto 3 test servers. The team in charge is testing the split's impact and requires feedback from WDQS users through the UI or programmatically in different channels. [1][2][3] Users' feedback will validate the impact of various use cases and workflows around the Wikidata Query service. [4][5]

Problems

• There was a bug that affected the appearance of visited links when using mobile device to access wiki sites. It made the links appear black; this issue is fixed.

Changes later this week

• 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). [6][7]
• As work continues on the grid engine deprecation,[8] tools on the grid engine will be stopped starting on February 14th, 2024. If you have tools actively migrating you can ask for an extension so they are not stopped. [9]

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MediaWiki message delivery 05:47, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

Minor but annoying mystery

I'd appreciate the help of a wise and crafty Wikipedian at Wikipedia:WikiProject_Articles_for_creation/Help_desk#19:09,_12_February_2024_review_of_submission_by_Gråbergs_Gråa_Sång. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 08:21, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

 Done

Question from Bosren (02:11, 15 February 2024)

Hi, May I ask what are the rules and regulation when posting an article? --Bosren (talk) 02:11, 15 February 2024 (UTC)

Hi again, Bosren.

If you're thinking of creating a brand new article (a very hard task - especially for a brand new editor), there's good advice at THIS PAGE.

Just always remember that this is an encyclopaedia, not an advertising site, and as such all articles should:

• about Notable subjects (as defined by Wikipedia). They MUST meet our notability criteria, or they will be liable for deletion. (see WP:GNG, and WP:NBIO for people and WP:NCORP for companies. There are other notability criteria for various other topics, of course, such as this and this)
• be based up reliable, published sources not connected to the subject (see WP:RS)
• be written in a neutral tone of voice, and written in your own words (see WP:NPOV)
• have factual statements with citations that can be verified by anyone, anywhere in the world with access to good library (see WP:V
• be edited by users not connected to the subject. If they are connected, this fact must be made clear (see WP:COI and WP:PAID and this policy on undeclared paid editing).

Finally, I'd say it is advisable to prepare a 'draft' article before putting it into the encyclopaedia. That way, you can work on it and improve it until it meets our notability criteria and other requirements for formatting, sourcing etc. It is best to use the article creation process, available HERE.

Please let me know if you find this reply helpful. Regards from the UK, Nick Moyes (talk) 10:16, 15 February 2024 (UTC)

Question from Madiraju kanakadurga (03:57, 16 February 2024)

hello, how do I create my Wikipedia page and write an article in Telugu? how can I know that the same article was uploaded on the Wikipedia page? --Madiraju kanakadurga (talk) 03:57, 16 February 2024 (UTC)

You can create a short userpage which explains your interests in editing Wikipedia, and a little bit about you, by clicking the "Create" tab, typing your text, then clicking 'publish'. But don't create a CV or Profile page about yourself as you might do on LinkedIn, or it will be disallowed. Every single edit we make here is viewable online, so that's why it's called 'Publish, but that's not the same as actually publishing an encyclopaedia article into the main part of Wikipedia. See THIS GUIDANCE for creating an article in English, here. But, be aware: it's a very difficult task for any newcomer to successfully create an article from scratch without first learning the basics of editing and improving existing articles. You wouldn't get into a car for the very first time and set off up a motorway at top speed. So please don't do the equivalent on Wikipedia without first learning the controls and the rules of the road!

Because this is English Wikipedia, you cannot create articles or communicate in any other language than English. But your account will also work when you go to Telugu Wikipedia. See HERE

I hope this helps. Regards from the UK, Nick Moyes (talk) 09:28, 16 February 2024 (UTC)

Question from MykoChan123 (14:50, 19 February 2024)

how do i start ? --MykoChan123 (talk) 14:50, 19 February 2024 (UTC)

@MykoChan123 Welcome to Wikipedia! I have left a welcome message for you on your talk page. It contains a link to getting started with editing. It’s a huge learning curve at the start - so take it slowly to begin with and practice making small edits to gain a better understanding of how things work here.

Was there something in particular that you wanted to work on? Regards from the UK. Nick Moyes (talk) 23:19, 19 February 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-08

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

• If you have the "Email me when a page or a file on my watchlist is changed" option enabled, edits by bot accounts no longer trigger notification emails. Previously, only minor edits would not trigger the notification emails. [10]
• There are changes to how user and site scripts load for Vector 2022 on specific wikis. The changes impacted the following Wikis: all projects with Vector legacy as the default skin, Wikivoyage, and Wikibooks. Other wikis will be affected over the course of the next three months. Gadgets are not impacted. If you have been affected or want to minimize the impact on your project, see this ticket. Please coordinate and take action proactively.
• Newly auto-created accounts (the accounts you get when you visit a new wiki) now have the same local notification preferences as users who freshly register on that wiki. It is effected in four notification types listed in the task's description.
• The maximum file size when using Upload Wizard is now 5 GiB. [11]

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). [12][13]

• Selected tools on the grid engine have been stopped as we prepare to shut down the grid on March 14th, 2024. The tool's code and data have not been deleted. If you are a maintainer and you want your tool re-enabled reach out to the team. Only tools that have asked for extension are still running on the grid.
• The CSS filter property can now be used in HTML style attributes in wikitext. [14]

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MediaWiki message delivery 15:35, 19 February 2024 (UTC)

Question from Allimardan (07:42, 21 February 2024)

Hi, I'd like to have a new article written up on the founding story of an E-commerce Platform in the Capital City of Zambia Lusaka called Nilandi.com --Allimardan (talk) 07:42, 21 February 2024 (UTC)

@Allimardan Does this business meet our Notability Criteria for companies? It would need to have been written about in detail and in depth by at least three independent sources, such as books, magazines our mainstream newspapers. See WP:NCORP for our criteria.

bear in mind that Wikipedia is not here to help you promote your business. If the world at large hasn’t taken notice of this business then, along with millions of others, it will not deserve its own article. Regards, Nick Moyes (talk) 21:46, 21 February 2024 (UTC)

Question from Bosren (02:10, 23 February 2024)

Hi, May I ask if publishing article for an agency or company is possible here? --Bosren (talk) 02:10, 23 February 2024 (UTC)

Hello Bosren. The answer is "it depends"! So please read on. . .

Firstly, If you are being paid to create an article (i.e. you're an employee or a freelancer) you are obliged to declare who is paying you, and what they're wanting you to write about. Instructions for making that declaration are found at WP:PAID. Paid editors are not permitted to take payment without making such a statement, or their editing rights will be withdrawn. Even if not paid, you may still have a CONFLICT OF INTEREST that you may need to declare if you know the owners, once worked for them, or are a client etc etc). See WP:COI for how to declare such a conflict.

Secondly, Wikipedia is an encyclopaedia of notable things, not a place to promote one's favourite local business (of which there are millions around the planet, very few of which are 'notable'). See WP:PROMOTION.

Wikipedia uses a very specific definition of NOTABILITY, and for businesses you can read what this is at WP:NCORP. If you cannot demonstrate that three or more independent sources have written about a business in detail and in depth, then there cannot be an article about that business, and you would be wasting your time trying. Press releases, company websites and insider business newsletters are not counted, whereas mainstream national media and properly published books are acceptable sources.

I hope this gives some clarity on what's allowed here, and what is not. Regards, Nick Moyes (talk) 14:06, 23 February 2024 (UTC)

Teahouse answer on alderflies

Greetings! I'd like to thank you for your reply to question on the Teahouse a week back.
I have considered re-writing the bulleted list using the clade template but since I lack the proper experience and the article isn't —in my view— consulted enough, I think it best to leave the Classification subsection as is for the time being. Bronzeman2342 (talk) 02:32, 25 February 2024 (UTC)

@Bronzeman2342 I can’t disagree with that! Nick Moyes (talk) 12:08, 25 February 2024 (UTC)

Question from James Boswell 2nd on Wikipedia:Teahouse (00:12, 26 February 2024)

Hello Nick Moyes. I want to try to improve the article "Dale C. Allison, Jr." I am completely new to Wiki and am having difficulty getting started. --James Boswell 2nd (talk) 00:12, 26 February 2024 (UTC)

@James Boswell 2nd I have left a Welcome message on your talk page, containing a valuable link to getting started with editing.

I noticed on the page you mentioned a whole section of unsourced biographical information about his early life. Finding published evidence to support these statements would be very helpful. Regards, Nick Moyes (talk) 07:03, 26 February 2024 (UTC)

Question from Pinkklemonade (05:26, 26 February 2024)

hi! i was wondering, do i have to make a wikipedia page off of someone whos well known? i think it would be fun to make an article of myself, especially because im an aspiring artist, but im not sure if im allowed to. --Pinkklemonade (talk) 05:26, 26 February 2024 (UTC)

@Pinkklemonade No, absolutely not - sorry. Wikipedia is an encyclopaedia of Notable things. It’s not like LinkedIn, which lets anyone create a profile page about themselves. In essence, we need evidence that the world at large has taken notice of you. Our Notability Criteria have to be met before a page about someone is accepted. See WP:NBIO and WP:NARTIST.

New users are far better off learning how Wikipedia operates by editing existing pages. Regards, Nick Moyes (talk) 06:44, 26 February 2024 (UTC)

kys you hurt my feelings Pinkklemonade (talk) 03:06, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

@Pinkklemonade Tough - that's simply how Wikipedia works.

. . . and if you ever use offensive words, slang or acronyms against other editors again, you could find yourself being blocked from editing! You have been warned! Nick Moyes (talk) 08:09, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – March 2024

News and updates for administrators from the past month (February 2024).

Administrator changes

• Sdkb
• The Night Watch

• East718
• Isabelle Belato
• Mzajac
• Staecker
• Stan Shebs
• Sugarfish
• Tamzin

Bureaucrat changes

SilkTork

Guideline and policy news

• Phase I of the 2024 RfA review is now open for participation. Editors are invited to review, comment on, and propose improvements to the requests for adminship process.
• Following an RfC, the inactivity requirement for the removal of the interface administrator right increased from 6 months to 12 months.

Technical news

• The mobile site history pages now use the same HTML as the desktop history pages. (T353388)

Miscellaneous

• The 2024 appointees for the Ombuds commission are だ＊ぜ, AGK, Ameisenigel, Bennylin, Daniuu, Doǵu, Emufarmers, Faendalimas, MdsShakil, Minorax, Nehaoua, Renvoy and RoySmith as members, with Vermont serving as steward-observer.
• Following the 2024 Steward Elections, the following editors have been appointed as stewards: Ajraddatz, Albertoleoncio, EPIC, JJMC89, Johannnes89, Melos and Yahya.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 12:22, 1 March 2024 (UTC)

Question from Ineffablericeman on User:Completelyineffablebengali (17:08, 3 March 2024)

I want to update my school on it's academisation but I don't really know how to edit it without getting banned --Ineffablericeman (talk) 17:08, 3 March 2024 (UTC)

@Ineffablericeman Before answering you, could you explain why you're linking in a second account (Completelyineffablebengali) to this question? You are not permitted to operate two accounts at once, except under special circumstances.

The term " academisation" suggest a process your school has gone through to convert it from one operating sytem to another. Is that right? Well, the answer is that you can add a statement to a Wikipedia article, providing you can support it with a citation (inline reference) to a published source. As this sounds like a relatively minor fact, we would normally accept a reference to the school's own website or other publications where it is clear that "academisation" has taken place, and when. If you can't find a source, then do not add stuff that you "happen to know", as we need all articles to be verifiable by other people with access to those publications or websites.

Nobody is going to 'block' you from editing for making an edit in all good faith, even if it ends up being reverted. We only block editors who are either acting as a vandal by intentionally disrupting articles, or who refuse to listen to the advice or follow policies they have had pointed out to them.

Does this help? Regards from the UK, Nick Moyes (talk) 17:26, 3 March 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-10

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

Recent changes

• The Special:Book page (as well as the associated "Create a book" functionality) provided by the old Collection extension has been removed from all Wikisource wikis, as it was broken. This does not affect the ability to download normal books, which is provided by the Wikisource extension. [15]
• Wikitech now uses the next-generation Parsoid wikitext parser by default to generate all pages in the Talk namespace. Report any problems on the Known Issues discussion page. You can use the ParserMigration extension to control the use of Parsoid; see the ParserMigration help documentation for more details.
• Maintenance on etherpad is completed. If you encounter any issues, please indicate in this ticket.
• Gadgets allow interface admins to create custom features with CSS and JavaScript. The Gadget and Gadget_definition namespaces and gadgets-definition-edit user right were reserved for an experiment in 2015, but were never used. These were visible on Special:Search and Special:ListGroupRights. The unused namespaces and user rights are now removed. No pages are moved, and no changes need to be made. [16]
• A usability improvement to the "Add a citation" in Wikipedia workflow has been made, the insert button was moved to the popup header. [17]

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). [18][19]

Future changes

• All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on March 20. This is planned at 14:00 UTC. More information will be published in Tech News and will also be posted on individual wikis in the coming weeks. [20]
• The HTML markup of headings and section edit links will be changed later this year to improve accessibility. See Heading HTML changes for details. The new markup will be the same as in the new Parsoid wikitext parser. You can test your gadget or stylesheet with the new markup if you add ?useparsoid=1 to your URL (more info) or turn on Parsoid read views in your user options (more info).

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MediaWiki message delivery 19:45, 4 March 2024 (UTC)

Question from Robiinsingh (14:14, 6 March 2024)

Hello Nick, I want to create a page for a Brand which is dominating in Offline market of Government Competitive Exams preparation in India and it is also growing in online market also. The name of the brand is Agrawal Examcart. Can you help me or mentor me to create the same. --Robiinsingh (talk) 14:14, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

Hi @Robiinsingh. Sorry for the delay in replying. Welcome to Wikipedia.

Firstly, because this is an encyclopaedia of NOTABLE THINGS, it’s only possible to create an article if you can base it on the content of independent, published sources. That means books, magazine articles, newspapers or quality news websites. Can you find these? Anything else would be purely WP:PROMOTION, which we do not permit. It absolutely must meet our Notability criteria for businesses.

Draft articles can be started at ARTICLES FOR CREATION, then submitted for review and feedback.

See further guidance at YOUR FIRST ARTICLE.

It is extremely hard for a total newcomer to successfully create a new article, so please spend a few weeks learning how to edit, how to add citations, and how Wikipedia works in general before you dive into article creation. I will leave a link on your talk page to our pages teaching you the basics of editing.

Finally, if you are connected in any way with this topic, you must declare your Conflict of interest on your userpage. Regards, Nick Moyes (talk) 20:17, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

Thank You @Nick Moyes Robiinsingh (talk) 00:59, 7 March 2024 (UTC)

Question from Bosren (04:44, 7 March 2024)

How to be able to edit Medium Editing? --Bosren (talk) 04:44, 7 March 2024 (UTC)

@Bosren Sorry, but I do not understand your question. What is "Medium Editing". I am not familiar with that word as either a term or as an article page.

I do need to ask: are you being paid to create Wikipedia articles? Your deleted contributions suggests to me that you are, and yet you have not declared any connection to these companies you are trying to promote here. Our policy is that undeclared paid editing is not permitted, and editing rights may be withdrawn until clarity is provided. You MUST respond to the post on your user talk page asking you to declare one way or the other, please, before you make any further edits to draft articles. Nick Moyes (talk) 11:01, 7 March 2024 (UTC)

Nice!

Looks lovely! Well done. Cheers, DBaK (talk) 00:43, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

Question from Bosren (11:09, 11 March 2024)

May I ask? What if, I don't have resources in the article that I am planning to publish? --Bosren (talk) 11:09, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

Hi @Bosren. If by that you mean "what if I don't have any references to cite as sources for what I want to publish?", then the answer is your draft article will not be published. It's as simple as that. Everything you add to Wikipedia must be based upon what published sources say, albeit written in your own words. You cannot simply add content based upon either your personal knowledge or your imagination, nor what the topic says about itself. See THIS PAGE to understand what Reliable Sources mean. Those sources must be sufficient to demonstrate that the topic is NOTABLE.

As you seem to be writing a string of rapidly-deleted articles about businesses, I must ask you once again to state categorically whether or not you are being paid to create them? If so, please see WP:PAID to understand your obligations to declare that you are receiving money or have some other Conflict of Interest.

I am at the point of removing your editing rights if you fail to answer this question, either here on my talk page, or on your own.

We require clarity, one way or another, and you should stop editing until you have answered this question. Regards, Nick Moyes (talk) 17:56, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

Can’t get back into a TH thread you and I were in

Nick, you made a reply to a TH message of mine (" Quick question…") and I was responding to it on my phone when something happened — not sure what— and now I can't get back into it to finish the reply, or start again on it.

I see a downward-facing arrow on the message title (in the list of titles) that won't turn upward no matter what I do.

Interestingly, I can read other messages … but as I recall, I can't reply to them, either.

I seem to be running into some weird Wiki situations recently!

Augnablik (talk) 18:29, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

@Augnablik I've also lost phone edits when my phone has been inactive for a while and has shut down. It doesn't seem to cache content like a desktop does.

The downwards/upwards-pointing arrows are "expand this thread" or "collapse this thread" button. I'm not sure why you're unable to activate them. As suggested before, switch to "Desktop mode" and life on a mobile gets easier. (Tiny link at the very, very bottom of each page). Regards, Nick Moyes (talk) 21:02, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

I will switch from now on, but meanwhile what do I do to get out of this frozen situation? Augnablik (talk) 02:01, 12 March 2024 (UTC)

@Augnablik All I can suggest is turning your device off and starting from a fresh reboot. Sorry. Nick Moyes (talk) 10:43, 12 March 2024 (UTC)

Question from UV Rose (20:40, 11 March 2024)

Hello, can you help with editing this Wikipedia page by adding sources ? --UV Rose (talk) 20:40, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

@UV Rose Can you link to both the article and the source you'd like to add? I might then be able to guide you better.

We have guidance on adding citations at WP:REFBEGIN if you're using our 'Source Editor' and at WP:REFBEGINVE if you're using Visual Editor. Regards, Nick Moyes (talk) 20:57, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-11

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

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). [21][22]
• After consulting with various communities, the line height of the text on the Minerva skin will be increased to its previous value of 1.65. Different options for typography can also be set using the options in the menu, as needed. [23]
• The active link color in Minerva will be changed to provide more consistency with our other platforms and best practices. [24]
• Structured data on Commons will no longer ask whether you want to leave the page without saving. This will prevent the “information you’ve entered may not be saved” popups from appearing when no information have been entered. It will also make file pages on Commons load faster in certain cases. However, the popups will be hidden even if information has indeed been entered. If you accidentally close the page before saving the structured data you entered, that data will be lost. [25]

Future changes

• All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on March 20. This is planned at 14:00 UTC. More information will be published in Tech News and will also be posted on individual wikis in the coming weeks. [26][27]

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

MediaWiki message delivery 23:02, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

Question from Pottervilles (15:01, 12 March 2024)

Hi, how do I create an article on a biography including a template. --Pottervilles (talk) 15:01, 12 March 2024 (UTC)

Hi Pottervilles. Welcome to Wikipedia. Firstly, the person must be notable, as defined by Wikipedia. i.e. the world at large has taken notice of them. Our criteria for notable people can be read at WP:NBIO. Without independent published sources that talk about that person, there can be no article about them. Templates are not essential items, but {{Infobox person}} would provide a suitable summary template.

Everything must be written in your own words (not copy pasted), and must be neutral in tone. This is an encyclopedia, after all, not a promotional website for people's CVs.

If you know the person in some way, you must declare any CONFLICT OF INTEREST on your userpage. You are also advised to learn the basics of editing existing articles before rushing in with the incredibly difficult task of creating a brand new article as a complete newcomer.

Then, once you're ready, and know how to add citations to the sources you base your article on, you can read more at YOUR FIRST ARTICLE. It's best to start a draft at ARTICLES FOR CREATION and submit the draft for review and feedback. See WP:REFBEGIN or WP:REFBEGINVE for guidance on how to use either of out two editing tools to add references to support any article text.

Let me know how you get on. (I've left a welcome message with some useful links on your user talk page). Regards, Nick Moyes (talk) 16:03, 12 March 2024 (UTC)

Question from Bala Mohammed Idris (09:27, 18 March 2024)

Hello, how do I create a citation? --Bala Mohammed Idris (talk) 09:27, 18 March 2024 (UTC)

@Bala Mohammed Idris You can choose either of our two editing tools to add citations. Each works slightly differently. So here are two shortcut links to instructions for adding references:

Visual Editing: WP:REFBEGINVE

Source Editing: WP:REFBEGIN

Hope this helps. Regards Nick Moyes (talk) 16:45, 18 March 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-12

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

Recent changes

• The notice "Language links are at the top of the page" that appears in the Vector 2022 skin main menu has been removed now that users have learned the new location of the Language switcher. [28]
• IP info feature displays data from Spur, an IP addresses database. Previously, the only data source for this feature was MaxMind. Now, IP info is more useful for patrollers. [29]
• The Toolforge Grid Engine services have been shut down after the final migration process from Grid Engine to Kubernetes. [30][31][32]
• Communities can now customize the default reasons for undeleting a page by creating MediaWiki:Undelete-comment-dropdown. [33]

Problems

• RevisionSlider is an interface to interactively browse a page's history. Users in right-to-left languages reported RevisionSlider reacting wrong to mouse clicks. This should be fixed now. [34]

Changes later this week

• 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). [35][36]
• All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on March 20. This is planned at 14:00 UTC. [37][38]

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

MediaWiki message delivery 17:37, 18 March 2024 (UTC)

Hello

Greetings! So I was confused about there situation, and I edited the page a bit, but I removed my edits so as not to seem as causing an edit war or a disruptive edit. However, another user suggested that I could make a common names sections for the names that aren’t on the header. Would that be alright?

The only issue is significant backlash and hostility from one user. Anyway, please let me know what options I can take, I feel that I should have a voice in this case at the very least. Firekong1 (talk) 19:09, 18 March 2024 (UTC)

I just want to check with you because another wikipedian suggested that I could name a common name section in the article, if you get this please let me know. Firekong1 (talk) 15:35, 25 March 2024 (UTC)

@Firekong1 Sorry - I overlooked replying to this post from you. In general, and providing you can demonstrate that a 'common English name' is genuinely in common use by being able to show a number of high quality sources that haven't simply misinterpreted a name, then I don't have a problem with that. In the end, it's down to any consensus being determined on an article's talk page. I wouldn't want to see such a section added just to get around a consensus view that one extra, obscure name isn't needed. Such a section might look at etymology - and Grigson's 'Dictionary of English plant Names' - would be a brilliant source for a section on non-scientific names. Maybe there's something equivalent in the animal world, I don't know?

However, Wikipedia, because of its popularity, does have the ability to promulgate false information if what's added is taken from poor sources. So, it's a case of being sensible, and not trying to disrupt a page to make a point because one happens to have found an unusual name used in a single publication if it's not actually used anywhere else. (I think, from memory, the example of "Eurasian marten" might be one such) Equally, we don't want unnecessary sections listing non-English names, either. Hope this helps a bit. Nick Moyes (talk) 21:21, 25 March 2024 (UTC)

No worries, I just wanted to make sure you got the message.

I will keep that in mind. But I was told by Chidgk1 that I could make a binomial name section as an alternative. Firekong1 (talk) 22:18, 25 March 2024 (UTC)

@Firekong1 What do you mean a "binomial name section"? Are you referring to synonyms of scientific names? If so, these are best included in the species infobox. Any reason why they shouldn't be? Nick Moyes (talk) 22:30, 25 March 2024 (UTC)

My apologies, I meant to say vernacular name. I believe that both scientific names and common names should be mentioned in the articles since some names (Iranian leopard, Turkish leopard) are occasionally used by some sources (such sources are even listed in the article).

Also, I used the name "European marten", not "Eurasian marten". But I understand that the European pine marten page will not have its common name changed for now. Firekong1 (talk) 01:14, 26 March 2024 (UTC)

Question from Chrisdlink85 (18:10, 20 March 2024)

Hi Nick, I'm pretty new to Wikipedia. I want to create a page for our company, which has been in business for 8 years now. It gets over 6M visitors each year asking about plants and to purchase plants. Our site is called plantaddicts.com and we've been featured in Better Homes and Gardens, Martha Stewart, Parada, HGTV, & Bob Vila. We're one of the largest plant websites in the United States now. In the past I know Wikipedia didn't want to create pages just for any website out there. But I think our website has grown large enough to warrant it's own page on Wikipedia now.

I was wondering what your thoughts are on this? And if you could provide any guidance on what I should do?

Thanks so much!

Chris --Chrisdlink85 (talk) 18:10, 20 March 2024 (UTC)

@Chrisdlink85 I'm just about to head out to listen to a talk about using insects to determine the time of death of murder suspects (!). I'll probably have to answer you tomorrow, now. Cheers, Nick Moyes (talk) 18:38, 20 March 2024 (UTC)

@Chrisdlink85 As you are intimately connected with the company, you have what we call a [[WP{:COI|CONFLICT OF INTEREST]], so should not really be the person trying to create this article. If you were to try, you would need to make an obligatory declaration on your userpage. Instructions at WP:PAID.

But, most important, is the need for every topic to meet Wikipedia's NOTABILITY critieria. In this instance, it would be WP:NCORP that you should read. There would need to be detailed, in-depth, and independent coverage of the business/website - not advertising copy. Perhaps you could supply me with links to the best three sources that you would consider using. I can give you feedback on them if they're online.

Any attempt to make an article must be encyclopedic in nature, and not done for PROMOTION (we block editors who abuse Wikipedia for their own interests!), and should be prepared as a DRAFT, and submitted for review and feedback when it's ready. You can find details of how a draft is started at WP:AFC, but you should read THIS first. Regards, Nick Moyes (talk) 00:04, 22 March 2024 (UTC)

Precious anniversary

Precious

Five years!

--Gerda Arendt (talk) 08:18, 24 March 2024 (UTC)

Question from Cyambao (20:56, 28 March 2024)

hi how do i create a citetation --Cyambao (talk) 20:56, 28 March 2024 (UTC)

Hello, Cyambao. It's important to support any factual statement with a citation to a Reliable Source. You can choose either of our two editing tools to add citations. Each works slightly differently, and you can easily switch back and forth between them. So here are two shortcut links to instructions for adding references:

Visual Editor: WP:REFBEGINVE

Source Editor: WP:REFBEGIN

I hope this helps. Do let me know if you need any further support! I will also leave a welcome message on your talk page with a useful link to follow to getting started with editing. Regards from the UK, Nick Moyes (talk) 22:28, 28 March 2024 (UTC)

ok thank you Cyambao (talk) 17:50, 16 April 2024 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – April 2024

News and updates for administrators from the past month (March 2024).

Administrator changes

• Kbdank71
• Kosack
• NrDg
• TLSuda

Guideline and policy news

• An RfC is open to convert all current and future community discretionary sanctions to (community designated) contentious topics procedure.

Technical news

• The Toolforge Grid Engine services have been shut down after the final migration process from Grid Engine to Kubernetes. (T313405)

Arbitration

• An arbitration case has been opened to look into "the intersection of managing conflict of interest editing with the harassment (outing) policy".

Miscellaneous

• Editors are invited to sign up for The Core Contest, an initiative running from April 15 to May 31, which aims to improve vital and other core articles on Wikipedia.

---

• Discuss this newsletter
• Subscribe
• Archive

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:48, 1 April 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-14

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

• Users of the reading accessibility beta feature will notice that the default line height for the standard and large text options has changed. [39]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 2 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 3 April. It will be on all wikis from 4 April (calendar). [40][41]

Future changes

• The Wikimedia Foundation has an annual plan. The annual plan decides what the Wikimedia Foundation will work on. You can now read the draft key results for the Product and Technology department. They are suggestions for what results the Foundation wants from big technical changes from July 2024 to June 2025. You can comment on the talk page.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 03:34, 2 April 2024 (UTC)

New Pages Patrol newsletter April 2024

Hello Nick Moyes,

New Page Review queue January to March 2024

Backlog update: The October drive reduced the article backlog from 11,626 to 7,609 and the redirect backlog from 16,985 to 6,431! Congratulations to Schminnte, who led with over 2,300 points.

Following that, New Page Patrol organized another backlog drive for articles in January 2024. The January drive started with 13,650 articles and reduced the backlog to 7,430 articles. Congratulations to JTtheOG, who achieved first place with 1,340 points in this drive.

Looking at the graph, it seems like backlog drives are one of the only things keeping the backlog under control. Another backlog drive is being planned for May. Feel free to participate in the May backlog drive planning discussion.

It's worth noting that both queues are gradually increasing again and are nearing 14,034 articles and 22,540 redirects. We encourage you to keep contributing, even if it's just a single patrol per day. Your support is greatly appreciated!

2023 Awards

Onel5969 won the 2023 cup with 17,761 article reviews last year - that's an average of nearly 50/day. There was one Platinum Award (10,000+ reviews), 2 Gold Awards (5000+ reviews), 6 Silver (2000+), 8 Bronze (1000+), 30 Iron (360+) and 70 more for the 100+ barnstar. Hey man im josh led on redirect reviews by clearing 36,175 of them. For the full details, see the Awards page and the Hall of Fame. Congratulations everyone for their efforts in reviewing!

WMF work on PageTriage: The WMF Moderator Tools team and volunteer software developers deployed the rewritten NewPagesFeed in October, and then gave the NewPagesFeed a slight visual facelift in November. This concludes most major work to Special:NewPagesFeed, and most major work by the WMF Moderator Tools team, who wrapped up their major work on PageTriage in October. The WMF Moderator Tools team and volunteer software developers will continue small work on PageTriage as time permits.

Recruitment: A couple of the coordinators have been inviting editors to become reviewers, via mass-messages to their talk pages. If you know someone who you'd think would make a good reviewer, then a personal invitation to them would be great. Additionally, if there are Wikiprojects that you are active on, then you can add a post there asking participants to join NPP. Please be careful not to double invite folks that have already been invited.

Reviewing tip: Reviewers who prefer to patrol new pages within their most familiar subjects can use the regularly updated NPP Browser tool.

Reminders:

• You can access live chat with patrollers on the New Pages Patrol Discord.
• Consider adding the project discussion page to your watchlist.
• To opt out of future mailings, please remove yourself here.

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:26, 2 April 2024 (UTC)

Question from Trulyvedic (17:59, 3 April 2024)

Hello How to I edit the information box on wikipedia page which has summary of details. I am able to edit current categories but not able to add a new detail. --Trulyvedic (talk) 17:59, 3 April 2024 (UTC)

@Trulyvedic Providing you base added content on RELIABLE SOURCES and add them as a CITATION, you may find it easiest to use our Source Editor, rather than Visual Editor. You can switch between them using the sloping grey pencil icon - usually on the upper right of the editing screen. Hope this helps. Regards, Nick Moyes (talk) 09:28, 4 April 2024 (UTC)

Hello from Colman2000

Hi Nick. Just wanted to check up on one of my favorite editors on Wikipedia. How have things been going for you? I have been creating a lot of new articles on Wikipedia, expanding existing articles, and correcting grammar and spelling errors that I see on articles. Hope to hear from you soon! Kind regards from Aloha, Oregon, United States, Colman2000 (talk) 18:43, 4 April 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-15

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

• Web browsers can use tools called extensions. There is now a Chrome extension called Citation Needed which you can use to see if an online statement is supported by a Wikipedia article. This is a small experiment to see if Wikipedia can be used this way. Because it is a small experiment, it can only be used in Chrome in English.
• A new Edit Recovery feature has been added to all wikis, available as a user preference. Once you enable it, your in-progress edits will be stored in your web browser, and if you accidentally close an editing window or your browser or computer crashes, you will be prompted to recover the unpublished text. Please leave any feedback on the project talk page. This was the #8 wish in the 2023 Community Wishlist Survey.
• Initial results of Edit check experiments have been published. Edit Check is now deployed as a default feature at the wikis that tested it. Let us know if you want your wiki to be part of the next deployment of Edit check. [42][43]
• Readers using the Minerva skin on mobile will notice there has been an improvement in the line height across all typography settings. [44]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 9 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 10 April. It will be on all wikis from 11 April (calendar). [45][46]
• New accounts and logged-out users will get the visual editor as their default editor on mobile. This deployment is made at all wikis except for the English Wikipedia. [47]

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

MediaWiki message delivery 23:35, 8 April 2024 (UTC)

Question from Crosenow (15:50, 12 April 2024)

Hello, I wrote an article about a Neurologist Hans O. Lüders. Could you review the page so that it can be published? Thank you, Caroline --Crosenow (talk) 15:50, 12 April 2024 (UTC)

@Crosenow Thank you for your question. I see your draft is currently in the review process for a second time, so there is nothing I need to do in that regard other than let our volunteers do their work in reviewing articles. This can take 2 or 3 months.

The content appears to be factually correct, though written as if it were more of a CV or LinkedIn profile, than a biographical encyclopaedia article based on sources unrelated to the subject. I sense you may well have a connection to the subject. This is not an issue in itself, unless you fail to disclose it on your userpage. If you do know, or are related to this person, please read how to make clear your connection by reading guidance at WP:DISCLOSE.

Our notability criteria for academics can be found at WP:NPROF. Clearly, he is an eminent physician, but there may be some uncertainty about whether he meets Wikipedia's notability. I would advise (after declaring any WP:COI you may have) that you focus on showing, in simple terms, the contribution he has made to medical science. Maybe as author of key textbooks used in teaching; media coverage of his medical achievements; biographies written by other people in prestigious magazines etc; winner of notable awards (i.e. those which already have coverage here on Wikipedia.)

If you read WP:LEAD, you will see that it should simply summarise the reasons for notability without getting too technical. If you could simplify the lead, whilst emphasising reasons for notability, I think you may stand a chance of seeing this through into the main encyclopaedia. I hope this helps. Regards from the UK, Nick Moyes (talk) 19:59, 12 April 2024 (UTC)

Thank you for your advice! I will make the proper changes and disclosures.

Regards from Germany, Crosenow Crosenow (talk) 16:03, 20 May 2024 (UTC)

On Removing Block Notices

Hello! I saw on User Talk:Harishsk2022, you instructed them not to remove the block notice. I was under the impression that, per WP:NOTWALLOFSHAME, removing the block notice is allowed, just not declined unblock requests (for active blocks). In this particular case, the user removed both, and doesn't seem inclined to listen, so I doubt it makes a difference, but for my use in the future, is removing the notice also prohibited? I don't want to give out bad advice to other users, after all! Thanks in advance for your time. EducatedRedneck (talk) 16:16, 14 April 2024 (UTC)

@EducatedRedneck You are right. But the user appears to have a very rudimentary command of English. It should really only be the Review Decline notice that needs to be left in place for the duration of the block. But I wanted to keep it extremely simple for them to understand, as they ignored 331dot's more detailed - and correct - advice. The link you provided above is certainly correct, and a useful reminder for me, too. I appreciate you taking the time and trouble to question my notice. Cheers, Nick Moyes (talk) 16:29, 14 April 2024 (UTC)

Okay, whew, thank you! I was worried I'd gotten mixed up. Agreed that keeping it simple in that case is better, and thank you for helping me check my assumptions; I really appreciate it! EducatedRedneck (talk) 17:10, 14 April 2024 (UTC)

New page patrol May 2024 Backlog drive

New Page Patrol | May 2024 Articles Backlog Drive
On 1 May 2024, a one-month backlog drive for New Page Patrol will begin. Barnstars will be awarded based on the number of articles patrolled. Barnstars will also be granted for re-reviewing articles previously reviewed by other patrollers during the drive. Each review will earn 1 point. Interested in taking part? Sign up here.
You're receiving this message because you are a new page patroller. To opt-out of future mailings, please remove yourself here.

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:14, 17 April 2024 (UTC)

Editor Concern

Hello!

I've come across the editor Repertoire18, and am concerned their edits seem to me to consistently promote an anti-West, pro-China POV. I was wondering if you had any advice for determining when editors are acting in good faith or not with regards to POV— I hope to follow WP:AGF, and acknowledge that biased editors can improve the balance of articles. Would it be proper for me to politely ask them about it on their talk page, or to just not worry about it except on pages I follow? I also acknowledge that I first came across this editor on a subject that I feel strongly about, which may color my judgement. Thanks for your help! Placeholderer (talk) 16:27, 21 April 2024 (UTC)

@Placeholderer Interesting question! People always bring their own biases and interests when editing. That's why it's important that a balance of good, reliable sources is found on which to base content on.

I see the user has deleted previous warnings about adding commentary or non-neutral content. That makes no difference, so any future warning can be given at the next level up, even though they've curiously just left one low-level warning notice on their page. Crafty! I always look through a user's talk page for blanking, and take a look at any past warnings. Although that's permitted, it does indicate to me the level of problems they might be causing, and my response to them. I use WP:Twinkle to automate the templating of other users.

Asking a user politely on their talk page is a good, non-inflammatory way of engaging with concerns. Asking them to leave better edit summaries may also be worthwhile, as this helps others to understand the reasoning behind a content change.

It's your choice whether you concern yourself only with articles you're directly interested in, or whether you worry more about ensuring an editor follow Wikipedia's norms across all their editing. I tend to find poor editing comes to my attention in one place that I especially care about, but that I when I investigate their other edits I often then find a pattern of edits that are (shall we say...) not as good as they ought to be!

It's acceptable to have your attention drawn to an editor's activities by one problem and for you to then look into other edits. But be aware of not WP:HOUNDING them by checking and criticising every they then make for no good reason.

Always try to base any discussion over your concerns by including a link on their talk page to a WP:DIFF or two, as this helps you and them understand what you're concerned about, and why. Add their userpage to your Watchlist for a month or two and keep half an eye open for other warnings they may have been left. You can simply revert uncited additions if they're contentious (and say 'citations are needed'); revert and warn them about leaving commentaries in articles; warn and report for vandalism, or collate evidence of bad edits and eventually you could report them to WP:ANI for others to look into their editing. But engaging in a friendly way first is always a very mature approach. I hope this waffly answer is of some use. Regards, Nick Moyes (talk) 10:55, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-17

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

• Starting this week, newcomers editing Wikipedia will be encouraged to try structured tasks. Structured tasks have been shown to improve newcomer activation and retention. [48]
• You can nominate your favorite tools for the fifth edition of the Coolest Tool Award. Nominations will be open until May 10.

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 23 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 24 April. It will be on all wikis from 25 April (calendar). [49][50]

Future changes

• This is the last warning that by the end of May 2024 the Vector 2022 skin will no longer share site and user scripts/styles with old Vector. For user-scripts that you want to keep using on Vector 2022, copy the contents of Special:MyPage/vector.js to Special:MyPage/vector-2022.js. There are more technical details available. Interface administrators who foresee this leading to lots of technical support questions may wish to send a mass message to your community, as was done on French Wikipedia. [51]

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

MediaWiki message delivery 20:25, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

Question from Timparty12 on User:Timparty12/sandbox (04:11, 23 April 2024)

Hello there, On my sandbox article page, I've made this YouTube "girly" series about "The Great Eight Girls" and I know it's only on YouTube, but I was just wondering to leave this article here to make this go popular as possible? --Timparty12 (talk) 04:11, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

@Timparty12 Hi Tim, and thanks for your question. Unfortunately, that's not how Wikipedia operates. It isn't here to help things get well-known; it's only interested in covering subjects that are already well-known. This is called NOTABILITY, and means that we can only have articles on Wikiepdia about topics already described and written about in detail and in depth by RELIABLE SOURCES. Simply 'existing' isn't sufficient. Everything written here must be based upon properly published sources that are not user-generated. i.e. we don't accept IMDB, blogs, personal websites etc. Unless you can find this series has been covered in mainstream media, then I'm afraid you would be wasting your time trying to promote it here. Do please read this guidance about creating your first article. It is always best to spend time learning how Wikipedia works by making many smaller edits to existing articles than rushing in trying to create a new page straight away. I hope this helps. Regards, Nick Moyes (talk) 08:50, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

I find everything to be struggling at this point, and if you wanna know this source, It's ONLY on YouTube. I know It may be some kind of un-scorce, but this little, big franchise could work someday. :) Timparty12 (talk) 09:00, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

@Timparty12 With a paltry 300 views per episode in a year, you're simply wasting your time here. Maybe it's TOOSOON.

Put simply: Wikipedia is not here for advertising or PROMOTION. There are plenty of places where that can happen, but not here. (Please read the links). Nick Moyes (talk) 09:07, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

It's okay at least I've tried having fun with the page I've used. :) but Thanks for telling me for some information. Timparty12 (talk) 09:10, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

I also took pictures and video just in case it's removed, but please DON'T Remove the articles. Timparty12 (talk) 09:11, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

@Timparty12 As far as I'm concerned, you can keep what's in your sandbox as I would simply regard it as a place where you can learn and experiment with editing techniques. It's not an article, and is not indexed by Google. However, abandoned drafts are deleted after 6 months, and my firm advice is not to attempt to develop it as it would be liable for deletion per WP:NOTWEBHOST.

I assume you created these little videos yourself as a bit of fun? Be aware that whenever an editor tries to write about something they are connected with, they need to declare a 'conflict of interest' before proceeding. See WP:COI for more details. But, in this instance, simply do not attempt to develop this any further, as it will then be liable for deletion as we're not a free hosting service, and editors who try to use Wikipedia for their own purposes (rather than helping to build an encyclopaedia of notable things) tend to have their editing privileges revoked, per WP:NOTHERE. Regards, Nick Moyes (talk) 11:02, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

Question from LeonaLeeSykes (16:47, 23 April 2024)

Hello. How do I create a citation? Thank you. --LeonaLeeSykes (talk) 16:47, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

Hello, @LeonaLeeSykes. It's important to support any factual statement with a citation to a Reliable Source. You can choose either of our two editing tools to add citations. Each works slightly differently, and you can easily switch back and forth between them. So here are two shortcut links to instructions for adding references:

Visual Editor: WP:REFBEGINVE

Source Editor: WP:REFBEGIN

Whichever way you do it, the important thing to appreciate is that you add each citation within the article text (immediately after the statement you want to support), but a special template in the 'References' section then displays all the citations together within that section, and with just a number appearing inline within the article text. Both of our editing tools also let you reuse the same citation more than once within an article, yet the entry for that citation is only shown once in the Reference section. Clever stuff! See WP:REFNAME for naming and reusing a citation with Source Editor.

I hope this helps. Do let me know if you need any further support! Regards from the UK.

Nick Moyes (talk) 18:29, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

Thank you Nick. I would like to use the official Coroner's Report and one of the online newspapers which has a picture of most of the first page of the report so I should be able to use the citation on both.

Regards from Cape Town, South Africa. LeonaLeeSykes (talk) 01:47, 24 April 2024 (UTC)

The Burj Khalifa page is semi-protected. Would I be able to make these additions? LeonaLeeSykes (talk) 01:57, 24 April 2024 (UTC)

@LeonaLeeSykes You're nearly able to. Your account is old enough, but needs to have made 10 or more edits. You've made nine so far! (See HERE).

Do remember to preview any edits you make before you publish them, or maybe even try adding a citation on a less well-monitored page, or perhaps even in your sandbox. But it sounds like you may have a good source for whatever you want to add. Good luck. Nick Moyes (talk) 08:14, 24 April 2024 (UTC)

Thank you for all your assistance Nick. It is much appreciated. LeonaLeeSykes (talk) 13:05, 24 April 2024 (UTC)

...and that's your tenth edit. You are now 'autoconfirmed'! Nick Moyes (talk) 13:49, 24 April 2024 (UTC)

Thank you Nick. You're a great mentor. LeonaLeeSykes (talk) 10:59, 25 April 2024 (UTC)

Hi Nick. I'm battling to add the Coroner's Report and news article to the Burj Khalifa page but hopefully by the end of the day it will be done.

On another matter, on the WikiAlpha page there is something on my daughter's death, but the title is Laura Vanessa Sykes. How can I change it to her correct name which is Laura Vanessa Nunes? LeonaLeeSykes (talk) 14:01, 25 April 2024 (UTC)

Growth News, April 2024

The Growth team will now send quarterly reports to keep you in the loop. Growth team weekly updates are available on wiki (in English) if you want to know more about our day-to-day work.

If you want to receive more general updates about technical activity happening across the Wikimedia movement (including Growth work), we encourage you to subscribe to Tech News.

Community Configuration

Growth features are currently configurable at Special:EditGrowthConfig. This quarter we are working on making Community Configuration accessible for other MediaWiki developers while also moving Growth feature configuration to the new CommunityConfiguration extension.

An early version of Community Configuration can be tested at Spanish Beta Wikipedia. We plan to release the new Community Configuration extension to pilot wikis (Arabic and Spanish Wikipedia) in early May, 2024. The first non-Growth team feature to utilize Community Configuration will be Automoderator.

In parallel with the development, the Growth team will propose Community Configuration usage guidelines, Community Configuration design guidelines, and provide technical documentation.

Experiment Results

Add a Image experiment analysis results

The Growth team conducted an experiment to assess the impact of the “Add an Image” structured task on the Newcomer Homepage's "Suggested Edits" module. This analysis finds that the Add an Image structured task leads to an increase in newcomer participation on the mobile web platform, particularly by making constructive (non-reverted) article edits:

• The likelihood that mobile web newcomers make their first article edit (+17.0% over baseline)
• The likelihood that they are retained as newcomers (+24.3% over baseline)
• The number of edits they make during their first two weeks on the wiki (+21.8% over baseline)
• A lower probability of the newcomers' edits will be reverted (-3.3% over baseline).

Personalized praise experiment results

This feature was developed for Mentors as part of the Growth team's Positive Reinforcement project. When A/B testing on Spanish Wikipedia, we found no significant impact on retention, but we found a significant positive impact on newcomer productivity. However, we concluded that the results weren’t positive enough to justify the time investment from Mentors. We plan to discuss this feature with our pilot wikis, and consider further improvements before scaling this feature further. Meanwhile, communities willing to test the feature can ask to have it deployed. (T361763)

English donors encouraged to try editing

As in previous years, donors were directed to a Thank you page after donation (example). However, this year we tested a new “Try editing Wikipedia,” call to action on the Thank You page. This call to action linked to a unique account creation page. From this account creation page we were able to track Registrations and Activation (editing for the first time). During the English banner campaign, the Donor Thank you page led to 4,398 new accounts, and 441 of those accounts went on to constructively edit within 24 hours. (T352900)

Future work

Annual Plan

The Growth team and the Editing team will work on the WE1.2 Key Result in the coming fiscal year. We will start initial discussions with communities soon to help finalize our plans. (T361657)

Newcomer Homepage Community Updates module

We plan to A/B test adding a new Community Configurable module to the Newcomer Homepage that will allow communities to highlight specific events, projects, campaigns, and initiatives. We are early in the planning phase of this project that will take place first at our pilot wikis and wikis volunteering. We welcome community feedback on initial designs and plans, in any language at our project talk page.

Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

18:55, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

Question from LizC1 (14:13, 26 April 2024)

I have collected a number of sources. Usually, Wikipedia puts these below the article and numbers them in the article with hyperlinks. How do you do that? Or does an editor look at it later and 'sort it out'? --LizC1 (talk) 14:13, 26 April 2024 (UTC)

@LizC1 As you know, it's important to support any factual statement with a citation to a Reliable Source. Now that you’ve found some, you can choose to use either of our two editing tools to add citations. Each works slightly differently, butvyou can easily switch back and forth between them. So here are two shortcut links to instructions for adding references:

Visual Editor: WP:REFBEGINVE

Source Editor: WP:REFBEGIN

Whichever way you do it, the important thing to appreciate is that you add each citation ‘’within’’ the article text (immediately after the statement you want to support), but a special template in the 'References' section then displays all the citations together within that section, and with just a number appearing inline within the article text.

Both of our editing tools also let you reuse the same citation more than once within an article, yet the entry for that citation is only shown once in the Reference section. Clever stuff! See WP:REFNAME for naming and reusing a citation with Source Editor.

I hope this helps. Do let me know if you need any further support! Regards from the UK.

Nick Moyes (talk) 17:30, 26 April 2024 (UTC)

Question from Hukam Gora on User:Hukam Gora (02:37, 28 April 2024)

How i can add photo on new page/ information about hukam gora --Hukam Gora (talk) 02:37, 28 April 2024 (UTC)

Hello, @Hukam Gora. Welcome to Wikipedia. It's not appropriate to add a photo of yourself to Wikipedia. As a new user, please focus instead on improving this encyclopaedia of notable subjects, rather than trying to create a 'profile page' about yourself. It would probably be deleted if you were to try, as your userpage is there just for you to say a little about yourself, your experience and interests in editing Wikipedia. Anything else is not appropriate. You may use LinkedIn to promote yourself, but not Wikipedia. More information can be found at WP:USERPAGE.

I have left you a welcome message on your talk page with useful links to help you learn the basics of editing. Regards from the UK, Nick Moyes (talk) 09:44, 28 April 2024 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – May 2024

News and updates for administrators from the past month (April 2024).

Administrator changes

Nyttend

• JohnOwens
• Killiondude
• MelanieN
• Nihonjoe

Bureaucrat changes

Nihonjoe

CheckUser changes

Joe Roe

Oversight changes

GeneralNotability

Guideline and policy news

• Phase I of the 2024 requests for adminship review has concluded. Several proposals have passed outright and will proceed to implementation, including creating a discussion-only period (3b) and administrator elections (13) on a trial basis. Other successful proposals, such as creating a reminder of civility norms (2), will undergo further refinement in Phase II. Proposals passed on a trial basis will be discussed in Phase II, after their trials conclude. Further details on specific proposals can be found in the full report.

Technical news

• Partial action blocks are now in effect on the English Wikipedia. This means that administrators have the ability to restrict users from certain actions, including uploading files, moving pages and files, creating new pages, and sending thanks. T280531

Arbitration

• The arbitration case Conflict of interest management has been closed.

Miscellaneous

• This may be a good time to reach out to potential nominees to ask if they would consider an RfA.
• A New Pages Patrol backlog drive is happening in May 2024 to reduce the number of unreviewed articles in the new pages feed. Currently, there is a backlog of over 15,000 articles awaiting review. Sign up here to participate!
• Voting for the Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee (U4C) election is open until 9 May 2024. Read the voting page on Meta-Wiki and cast your vote here!

---

• Discuss this newsletter
• Subscribe
• Archive

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:24, 2 May 2024 (UTC)

How Far to Assume Good Faith

Hello! I've been trying to engage an editor about problems with an article they mostly wrote themselves that seems explicitly POV and reliant on sources affiliated with the subject. The user has shown a complete lack of interest in responding to concerns from myself and another editor, in particular having nominated and accepted their own article for a GA review. Despite the communicated concerns about the article, they took it upon themself to remove a CN flag. I can't help but suspect the user has a COI— their user page reads like a promotion of their services. Is this an appropriate situation to report someone to WP:ANI? Thanks! Placeholderer (talk) 14:04, 3 May 2024 (UTC)

I recognize that the last several questions I've asked you are variants of the same thing— I just don't feel experienced enough to escalate an issue without checking with someone else first Placeholderer (talk) 15:07, 4 May 2024 (UTC)

@Placeholderer I’m really sorry, I’m away on holiday all week and am unable to look at this in enough detail to be helpful. You could either seek input at the Teahouse, or ask at WP:COIN. Regards, Nick Moyes (talk) 21:31, 5 May 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-19

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

Example of a talk page with the new design, in French.

• The appearance of talk pages changed for all wikis, except for Commons, Wikidata and most Wikipedias (a few have already received this design change). You can read the detail of the changes on Diff. It is possible to opt-out these changes in user preferences ("Show discussion activity"). The deployment will happen at remaining wikis in the coming weeks. [52][53]
• Interface admins now have greater control over the styling of article components on mobile with the introduction of the SiteAdminHelper. More information on how styles can be disabled can be found at the extension's page. [54]
• Wikimedia Enterprise has added article body sections in JSON format and a curated short description field to the existing parsed Infobox. This expansion to the API is also available via Wikimedia Cloud Services. [55]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 7 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 8 May. It will be on all wikis from 9 May (calendar). [56][57]
• When you look at the Special:Log page, the first view is labelled "All public logs", but it only shows some logs. This label will now say "Main public logs". [58]

Future changes

• A new service will be built to replace Extension:Graph. Details can be found in the latest update regarding this extension.
• Starting May 21, English Wikipedia and German Wikipedia will get the possibility to activate "Add a link". This is part of the progressive deployment of this tool to all Wikipedias. These communities can activate and configure the feature locally. [59]

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

MediaWiki message delivery 16:42, 6 May 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-20

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

• On Wikisource there is a special page listing pages of works without corresponding scan images. Now you can use the new magic word __EXPECTWITHOUTSCANS__ to exclude certain pages (list of editions or translations of works) from that list. [60]
• If you use the user-preference "Show preview without reloading the page", then the template-page feature "Preview page with this template (what's this?)" will now also work without reloading the page. [61]
• Kartographer maps can now specify an alternative text via the alt= attribute. This is identical in usage to the alt= attribute in the image and gallery syntax. An exception for this feature is wikis like Wikivoyage where the miniature maps are interactive. [62]
• The old Guided Tour for the "New Filters for Edit Review" feature has been removed. It was created in 2017 to show people with older accounts how the interface had changed, and has now been seen by most of the intended people. [63]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 14 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 15 May. It will be on all wikis from 16 May (calendar). [64][65]
• The Special:Search results page will now use CSS flex attributes, for better accessibility, instead of a table. If you have a gadget or script that adjusts search results, you should update your script to the new HTML structure. [66]

Future changes

• In the Vector 2022 skin, main pages will be displayed at full width (like special pages). The goal is to keep the number of characters per line large enough. This is related to the coming changes to typography in Vector 2022. Learn more. [67]
• Two columns of the pagelinks database table (pl_namespace and pl_title) are being dropped soon. Users must use two columns of the new linktarget table instead (lt_namespace and lt_title). In your existing SQL queries:
  1. Replace JOIN pagelinks with JOIN linktarget and pl_ with lt_ in the ON statement
  2. Below that add JOIN pagelinks ON lt_id = pl_target_id
  • See phab:T222224 for technical reasoning. [68][69]

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

MediaWiki message delivery 23:56, 13 May 2024 (UTC)

Question from ElizbethAftonFnafEdits (17:05, 14 May 2024)

Hello Mentor my names elizabeth but u can call me eli need help how do i create a artical --ElizbethAftonFnafEdits (talk) 17:05, 14 May 2024 (UTC)

Hello Eli. Wikipedia is an encyclopaedia of 'Notable Topics'. Not everything in this world is regarded by Wikipedia as WP:NOTABLE (that's why there isn't a page here about me. LOL!)

If people unconnected with the topic have not written about it in detail and in depth, then there can never be an article about it here. So, your creation of Draft:Elizabeth Afton (Fnaf) falls way outside what's acceptable for an encyclopaedia, so please don't try that again as that's not what Wikipedia is for. I think someone has already explained that article talk pages are about discussing ways of improving an article, not just random observations or unrelated posts.

Everything added here must be based on published books, magazines, newspapers, scientific journals or reliably published online websites or mainstream news outlets. There is no place for content based on personal blogs, private websites, self-published vanity books or social media, nor are we interested in what any subject says about themselves. People should look to other social media platforms if they simply want to write about themselves.

So, having said that, could I ask you what sort of article you might hope to publish in this Encyclopaedia? And can you link to any RELIABLE SOURCES that talk about it? You might wish to read this page for guidance on creating your first article. Come back if you need further help. Regards, Nick Moyes (talk) 10:23, 15 May 2024 (UTC)

Question from DocLara (20:22, 14 May 2024)

Hi Nick, I made a change on the french wikipedia page about “mathématicien” (removed a paragraph that is factually false and whose grammar is wrong too) but the paragraph was put back (and I got kind of accused of degrading wikipedia). What should I do (apart from sticking to the English side which seems much better)? --DocLara (talk) 20:22, 14 May 2024 (UTC)

@DocLara Whilst I don't frequent fr.wiki, nor understand its processes, I would tend to agree with you that your edit did attempt to resolve poor grammar and possibly an incorrect statement. But my French (and use of Google Translate) may not give me the best view of the subject, and I did think the message left for you sounded rather harsh. (We get similar complaints about our templated messages here too, of course!)

It is, however, very common for new editors to have the 'good faith' edits reverted if they didn't go about things as well as they might - especially when made to very popular pages with high visitor numbers. But don't be dismayed. What I would advise here on en.wiki (and also for you on fr.wiki) is to raise your concerns on the article's Talk Page. Here you can expand your concerns about the statement, suggest better wording, and suggest alternative or additional citations especially if they provide a counter view of the statement.

We see a lot of removal of cited paragrpahs when someone believes it is incorreect. That can esaily be interpreted as WP:VANDALISM even when it's not. A far better way is to attempt to reword and improve upon the cited statement, plus offering a counter interpretation if there is one. Bear in mind that, whilst we really welcome experts in their field, Wikipedias of all language don't want edits based on what individuals know, but instead want to see edits based on reliably published sources. See WP:RS here on en.wiki for what that means to us.

My concerns over the original statement you removed would have been that there was statement taken as a direct quote from the source, and little understanding imparted by the numbers at the end of the sentence. There were how many qualified mathematicians when exactly? Without knowing that, the sentence is quite meaningless. So it's ripe for improvement.

Now, when I see any sentence that begins "According to person X...", I would expect to see an exact quote from person X and a citation to let me verify that statement. It needs to be letter perfect, including any typos in the original source. Of course, it might not be a mainstream view (which is why it's OK to say "according to". But that would enable you to then add, "However, other academics believe that xxxx is the case", and to offer appropriate citations (one citation if one person published their disagreement, or multiple citations if you can show the original quoted source may well be viewed as incorrect by multiple experts. That then gives two different interpretations of which mathematicians were the last to have a full grasp of the entire branch of mathematics (which I assume was the intended meaning of the statement.

Now, you can go about addressing this on fr.wiki in one or more ways. Firstly, it's quite possible that the editor {{User:Ariel Provost]] leaving you the warning did not see your response as you did not directly 'ping' them. I assume French wiki has the equivalent of WP:PING which would send them an alert notification. However, they were not the reverting editor User:Kikuyu3 was. So you could, if you wished, go first to their talk page and apologise for causing apparent harm to the page, but then explain your intentions were well-meaning and expand upon your concerns and recommendations for improved wording and additions. Support everything with recommended wording and citations to support it, and ask them what they feel is best. If you feel the cited author is actually an unreliable and discredited source in that particular field, we would need to see links to good sources which demonstrate they've publish nonsense in a discredited work. You personal opinions of that author are not relevant of of interest to Wikipedia (good published sources are) even if you are the world's expert in that field. There is no rush on Wikipedia, so wait some while for a reply (days not hours!).

If you still believe this important article contains an error, I would advise posting your concerns on the article talk page and letting a discussion ensue. We work by reasoned arguments and consensus here, so I am confident you will be able to win over editors if you explain your concerns and offer well-written alternative text. Gaining consensus can take a few weeks. On en.wiki it might be OK if your concerns gained no response to then make the edit your proposed after about 10 days per WP:BEBOLD, ensuring your edit summary clearly referred to the talk page discussion you had earlier posted. Something like "Rewording paragraph per tlak page discussion which elicited no response (or per consensus)"

Please bear in mind that the approach outlined above is based on my experience as an administrator here on English Wikipedia. And the policies and pages I have linked to relate to en.wiki. Ways of doing things could be different on French Wikipedia - but somehow I doubt it. We all care about making improvements to articles - so go for it, and don't be down-heartened. Regards from the UK, Nick Moyes (talk) 09:46, 15 May 2024 (UTC)

Bonjour bonjour Nick Moyes, user:DocLara and user:Ariel Provost. First, many thanks to you, Nick, for your ping, and very clear and wise comments. @DocLara, I assume you are complaining about my revert of your removal on the page fr:Mathématicien. So now, DocLara, you know which are the many appropriate places where to discuss this matter. In fact, this complain placed here seems to me very unusual. So I'd rather not comment any more. See you on french pages, with appropriate pings. Cordialement, et Hop ! Kikuyu3 (talk) 17:21, 15 May 2024 (UTC)

@Kikuyu3 Merci beaucoup! Nick Moyes (talk) 17:54, 15 May 2024 (UTC)

Oh, @Kikuyu3, I should add that the question came about as a result of our Mentorship program, in which every editor on en.wiki is assigned an experienced editor to whom they can directly ask questions and seek advice. That was the reason.

Oh, and @DocLara, please could I ask you to convert the text on your Userpage from French into English? Because this is English Wikipedia we do really expect all content to be in English. I assume it would be fine to have what your wrote about your first experience of an Editathon on your user page on French Wikipedia, too, though. Regards, Nick Moyes (talk) 18:07, 15 May 2024 (UTC)

Mail

Hello, Nick Moyes. Please check your email; you've got mail!
It may take a few minutes from the time the email is sent for it to show up in your inbox. You can at any time by removing the {{You've got mail}} or {{ygm}} template.

Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 13:09, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

Hi Clovermoss. I'm very happy to hear from you, but it will be a while before I can reply. I have easily a week's worth of messages and commitments I need to catch up on right now. Please bear with me. Best wishes, Nick Moyes (talk) 08:46, 20 May 2024 (UTC)

I can easily bear with the wait. :) Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 12:59, 20 May 2024 (UTC)

Question from Nkambule3 (15:03, 19 May 2024)

How do I create a page --Nkambule3 (talk) 15:03, 19 May 2024 (UTC)

@Nkambule3 Thank you for your question. Could you tell me what sort of page you want to create? This is an encyclopaedia of notable topics (see HERE). It is not a place for you to promote your views or campaign on issues dear to your heart (see WP:NOTSOAPBOX). For that reason, your second post to may talk page called "Why men abuse women" is way outside the realms of what we do here.

There will be many pages here already about abuse of women, such as Violence against women, and you are free to contribute to these. But you must NOT add your personal opinions to any article. That is not how we work. All factual statements liable to be challenged must be supported with citations to reliably published sources such as books, research journals and mainstream news websites. Blogs and privately published websites are not accepted here as sources.

Please read THIS GUIDANCE for creating your first article. Be aware that making a new page is extremely challenging - especially for a new editor with no experience. So my advice is to gain a fair bit of editing experience by working to improve existing articles first. I will leave you a welcome message with some useful links on your talk page to help you. Good luck! Nick Moyes (talk) 08:55, 20 May 2024 (UTC)

== Why men abuse woman ==

This thing is really painful seeing other men abusing other women.women are people who make the world a better place, as a woman writing this l say enough is enough we can't sit and do nothing while men's abuse woman, every woman who is in a abusive relationship l say you don't need a men to be happy what you need to do is to walk away and go to police station and report that men who is abusing you, No men has a right to lay hands on a woman

Enough is enough The struggle must end Women needs to live a happy life We can't stand and watch men killing our mothers and sisters. Police officers must do their work We're tired seeing woman die like fleas.

Enough is enough Made by Nkambule3. Nkambule3 (talk) 15:22, 19 May 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-21

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 Nuke feature, which enables administrators to mass delete pages, will now correctly delete pages which were moved to another title. [70]
• New changes have been made to the UploadWizard in Wikimedia Commons: the overall layout has been improved, by following new styling and spacing for the form and its fields; the headers and helper text for each of the fields was changed; the Caption field is now a required field, and there is an option for users to copy their caption into the media description. [71][72]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 21 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 22 May. It will be on all wikis from 23 May (calendar). [73][74]
• The HTML used to render all headings is being changed to improve accessibility. It will change on 22 May in some skins (Timeless, Modern, CologneBlue, Nostalgia, and Monobook). Please test gadgets on your wiki on these skins and report any related problems so that they can be resolved before this change is made in all other skins. The developers are also considering the introduction of a Gadget API for adding buttons to section titles if that would be helpful to tool creators, and would appreciate any input you have on that.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 23:02, 20 May 2024 (UTC)

Question from Editor2150 (21:00, 22 May 2024)

do you think it would be ok to put the overly technical template on this article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cable_modem --Editor2150 (talk) 21:00, 22 May 2024 (UTC)

@Editor2150 Good question. A quick skim made me feel you could be justified in doing that. I feel the lead is too short and could be written in plain English before getting technical later on. I suggest you also leave a note on the talk page explaining your reasons and making suitable suggestions for improvement that you, or other editors, can act upon. Regards, Nick Moyes (talk) 23:20, 22 May 2024 (UTC)

Women in Red June 2024

Women in Red | June 2024, Volume 10, Issue 6, Numbers 293, 294, 308, 309, 310 Online events: New: LGBTQ+ women | Wiki Loves Pride | Women in Music | Alphabet run X, Y & Z Continuing: #1day1woman | Education (year-long initiative) Announcements from other communities Women in Green Good Article Edit-a-thon June 2024 - Going Back in Time The Wikipedia Library: #1Lib1Ref - May 15th to June 5th Tip of the month: Find a Grave is NOT a reliable source (as it is user-generated content). It can be used to look for biographical clues. Other ways to participate: Become a member. You can always opt-out of notifications. Join the conversations on our talkpage. Help us plan future events and add any general ideas on developing the project. Follow us on social media: Instagram | Pinterest | Twitter/X

--Lajmmoore (talk 07:05, 23 May 2024 (UTC) via MassMessaging

Tech News: 2024-22

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

• Several bugs related to the latest updates to the UploadWizard on Wikimedia Commons have been fixed. For more information, see T365107 and T365119.
• In March 2024 a new addPortlet API was added to allow gadgets to create new portlets (menus) in the skin. In certain skins this can be used to create dropdowns. Gadget developers are invited to try it and give feedback.
• Some CSS in the Minerva skin has been removed to enable easier community configuration. Interface editors should check the rendering on mobile devices for aspects related to the classes: .collapsible, .multicol, .reflist, .coordinates, .topicon. Further details are available on replacement CSS if it is needed.

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 28 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 29 May. It will be on all wikis from 30 May (calendar). [75][76]
• When you visit a wiki where you don't yet have a local account, local rules such as edit filters can sometimes prevent your account from being created. Starting this week, MediaWiki takes your global rights into account when evaluating whether you can override such local rules. [77]

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

MediaWiki message delivery 00:13, 28 May 2024 (UTC)

Hello

About the common names, do I have permission to add them later?

I do require some assistance though, as one user (Bhagya Mani) constantly undoes my edits, and the user was even called out by another user in a talk page. Firekong1 (talk) 19:51, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

@Firekong1 Any answer must depend entirely upon the quality of your source(s). I’m away on holiday at the moment; did I not answer your question earlier at User talk:Nick Moyes#Hello?

Try and engage with other editors if they revert you and see if you can justify your proposed edit to them. Regards, Nick Moyes (talk) 20:16, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

Of course, thank you. Firekong1 (talk) 20:59, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-23

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

• It is now possible for local administrators to add new links to the bottom of the site Tools menu without JavaScript. Documentation is available. [78]
• The message name for the definition of the tracking category of WikiHiero has changed from "MediaWiki:Wikhiero-usage-tracking-category" to "MediaWiki:Wikihiero-usage-tracking-category". [79]
• One new wiki has been created: a Wikipedia in Kadazandusun (w:dtp:) [80]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 4 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 5 June. It will be on all wikis from 6 June (calendar). [81][82]

Future changes

• Next week, on wikis with the Vector 2022 skin as the default, logged-out desktop users will be able to choose between different font sizes. The default font size will also be increased for them. This is to make Wikimedia projects easier to read. Learn more.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 22:32, 3 June 2024 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – June 2024

News and updates for administrators from the past month (May 2024).

Administrator changes

Graham Beards

• Deskana
• Mets501
• Staxringold

Bureaucrat changes

• Deskana
• Warofdreams

Oversight changes

Dreamy Jazz

Guideline and policy news

• Phase II of the 2024 RfA review has commenced to improve and refine the proposals passed in Phase I.

Technical news

• The Nuke feature, which enables administrators to mass delete pages, will now correctly delete pages which were moved to another title. T43351

Arbitration

• The arbitration case Venezuelan politics has been closed.
• The Committee is seeking volunteers for various roles, including access to the conflict of interest VRT queue.

Miscellaneous

• WikiProject Reliability's unsourced statements drive is happening in June 2024 to replace {{citation needed}} tags with references! Sign up here to participate!

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:44, 5 June 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-24

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

Recent changes

• The software used to render SVG files has been updated to a new version, fixing many longstanding bugs in SVG rendering. [83]
• The HTML used to render all headings is being changed to improve accessibility. It was changed last week in some skins (Vector legacy and Minerva). Please test gadgets on your wiki on these skins and report any related problems so that they can be resolved before this change is made in Vector-2022. The developers are still considering the introduction of a Gadget API for adding buttons to section titles if that would be helpful to tool creators, and would appreciate any input you have on that.
• The HTML markup used for citations by Parsoid changed last week. In places where Parsoid previously added the mw-reference-text class, Parsoid now also adds the reference-text class for better compatibility with the legacy parser. More details are available. [84]

Problems

• There was a bug with the Content Translation interface that caused the tools menus to appear in the wrong location. This has now been fixed. [85]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 11 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 12 June. It will be on all wikis from 13 June (calendar). [86][87]
• The new version of MediaWiki includes another change to the HTML markup used for citations: Parsoid will now generate a <span class="mw-cite-backlink"> wrapper for both named and unnamed references for better compatibility with the legacy parser. Interface administrators should verify that gadgets that interact with citations are compatible with the new markup. More details are available. [88]
• On multilingual wikis that use the <translate> system, there is a feature that shows potentially-outdated translations with a pink background until they are updated or confirmed. From this week, confirming translations will be logged, and there is a new user-right that can be required for confirming translations if the community requests it. [89]

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

MediaWiki message delivery 20:18, 10 June 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-25

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

Recent changes

• People who attempt to add an external link in the visual editor will now receive immediate feedback if they attempt to link to a domain that a project has decided to block. Please see Edit check for more details. [90]
• The new Community Configuration extension is available on Test Wikipedia. This extension allows communities to customize specific features to meet their local needs. Currently only Growth features are configurable, but the extension will support other Community Configuration use cases in the future. [91][92]
• The dark mode beta feature is now available on category and help pages, as well as more special pages. There may be contrast issues. Please report bugs on the project talk page. [93]

Problems

• Cloud Services tools were not available for 25 minutes last week. This was caused by a faulty hardware cable in the data center. [94]
• Last week, styling updates were made to the Vector 2022 skin. This caused unforeseen issues with templates, hatnotes, and images. Changes to templates and hatnotes were reverted. Most issues with images were fixed. If you still see any, report them here. [95]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 18 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 19 June. It will be on all wikis from 20 June (calendar). [96][97]
• Starting June 18, the Reference Edit Check will be deployed to a new set of Wikipedias. This feature is intended to help newcomers and to assist edit-patrollers by inviting people who are adding new content to a Wikipedia article to add a citation when they do not do so themselves. During a test at 11 wikis, the number of citations added more than doubled when Reference Check was shown to people. Reference Check is community configurable. [98]
• Mailing lists will be unavailable for roughly two hours on Tuesday 10:00–12:00 UTC. This is to enable migration to a new server and upgrade its software. [99]

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MediaWiki message delivery 23:46, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

Question from OKOHS-1 (17:50, 24 June 2024)

Hi Nick, I was making edits to our office page today, and someone reverted everything back to extremely outdated and old information. How do I undo this? I was just about to start adding the sources to my edits when all this happened. --OKOHS-1 (talk) 17:50, 24 June 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-26

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

Recent changes

• Editors will notice that there have been some changes to the background color of text in the diff view, and the color of the byte-change numbers, last week. These changes are intended to make text more readable in both light mode and dark mode, and are part of a larger effort to increase accessibility. You can share your comments or questions on the project talkpage. [100]
• The text colors that are used for visited-links, hovered-links, and active-links, were also slightly changed last week to improve their accessibility in both light mode and dark mode. [101]

Problems

• You can copy permanent links to talk page comments by clicking on a comment's timestamp. This feature did not always work when the topic title was very long and the link was used as a wikitext link. This has been fixed. Thanks to Lofhi for submitting the bug. [102]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 25 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 26 June. It will be on all wikis from 27 June (calendar). [103][104]
• Starting 26 June, all talk pages messages' timestamps will become a link at English Wikipedia, making this feature available for you to use at all wikis. This link is a permanent link to the comment. It allows users to find the comment they were linked to, even if this comment has since been moved elsewhere. You can read more about this feature on Diff or on Mediawiki.org. [105]

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

MediaWiki message delivery 22:30, 24 June 2024 (UTC)

Women in Red August 2024

Women in Red | July 2024, Volume 10, Issue 7, Numbers 293, 294, 311, 312, 313 Online events: New: Translation contest 2024 | Science Fiction and Fantasy | Women in Sports Continuing: #1day1woman | Education (year-long initiative) Announcements from other communities Wiki Loves Sport 2024 22 July - 22 September Tip of the month: A foreign language biography does not guarantee notability for English Wikipedia. Check the guidelines before you start. Other ways to participate: Become a member. You can always opt-out of notifications. Join the conversations on our talkpage. Help us plan future events and add any general ideas on developing the project. Follow us on social media: Instagram | Pinterest | Twitter/X

--Lajmmoore (talk 14:28, 30 June 2024 (UTC) via MassMessaging

Tech News: 2024-27

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

• Over the next three weeks, dark mode will become available for all users, both logged-in and logged-out, starting with the mobile web version. This fulfils one of the top-requested community wishes, and improves low-contrast reading and usage in low-light settings. As part of these changes, dark mode will also work on User-pages and Portals. There is more information in the latest Web team update. [106]
• Logged-in users can now set global preferences for the text-size and dark-mode, thanks to a combined effort across Foundation teams. This allows Wikimedians using multiple wikis to set up a consistent reading experience easily, for example by switching between light and dark mode only once for all wikis. [107]
• If you use a very old web browser some features might not work on the Wikimedia wikis. This affects Internet Explorer 11 and versions of Chrome, Firefox and Safari older than 2016. This change makes it possible to use new CSS features and to send less code to all readers. [108][109]
• Wikipedia Admins can customize local wiki configuration options easily using Community Configuration. Community Configuration was created to allow communities to customize how some features work, because each language wiki has unique needs. At the moment, admins can configure Growth features on their home wikis, in order to better recruit and retain new editors. More options will be provided in the coming months. [110]
• Editors interested in language issues that are related to Unicode standards, can now discuss those topics at a new conversation space in MediaWiki.org. The Wikimedia Foundation is now a member of the Unicode Consortium, and the coordination group can collaboratively review the issues discussed and, where appropriate, bring them to the attention of the Unicode Consortium.
• One new wiki has been created: a Wikipedia in Mandailing (w:btm:) [111]

Problems

• Editors can once again click on links within the visual editor's citation-preview, thanks to a bug fix by the Editing Team. [112]

Future changes

• Please help us to improve Tech News by taking this short survey. The goal is to better meet the needs of the various types of people who read Tech News. The survey will be open for 2 weeks. The survey is covered by this privacy statement. Some translations are available.

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MediaWiki message delivery 23:57, 1 July 2024 (UTC)

Hello from Colman2000

Hi Nick. Just wanted to check up on one of my favorite editors on Wikipedia. How have things been going for you? I have been creating a lot of new articles on Wikipedia, expanding existing articles, and correcting grammar and spelling errors that I see on articles. Hope to hear from you soon! Kind regards from Aloha, Oregon, United States, Colman2000 (talk) 06:09, 4 July 2024 (UTC)

@Colman2000 Hello, my old friend. Good to hear from you. I've just checked your contributions and, boy, you have been busy! Likewise, I'm keeping good and active. Lots of mountain hiking and building work in the garden. One kid is about to head off to Japan for a year doing TEFL work; another is teaching in a junior school. Went on national TV news the other week, being interviewed about a peregrine falcon conservation and webcam project I've been involved with for the last 15 years. And recently ran an online Wikipedia training session of international astronomers involved in education, but haven't had much time for any other Wikipedia activities or admin work. So, keeping busy and trying to keep fit! There's never enough time in the day! Cheers, Nick Moyes (talk) 09:01, 4 July 2024 (UTC)

Question from Obi K Chijioke (23:39, 4 July 2024)

Hi, I was assigned to you if I'm not mistaken and I wish to know more about Wikipedia writing --Obi K Chijioke (talk) 23:39, 4 July 2024 (UTC)

Hello, Obi K Chijioke, and welcome to Wikipedia! The most important thing to un=derstand is that this is an encyclopaedia. The topics must meet our Notability Critieria, and everything said here must be based on already published, high quality sources. So no personal opinions, personal blogs or social media acocunts, or stuff that you simply happen to know. Everything here that could be challenged must be Verifiable, and you will learn how to add citations to support new content. Writing new articles is very very hard, especially for a new editor. So start slowly and learn the basics of editing and improving articles. You have a 'Homepage' tab which offers you an opportunity to make small improvements in one of several different areas to get you off to a good start.

We may point users to various guidance, help or policy pages, and we expect they will take the time to read and understand these. So, I'll leave leave you a welcome message on your talk page with a number of important links. But you may also like to visit this help page: Help:Getting started. Good luck! Nick Moyes (talk) 10:23, 5 July 2024 (UTC)

Question from JLKazdan (21:16, 5 July 2024)

I found the Pythagorean Theorem "Proof using similar triangles" on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pythagorean_theorem needlessly complicated and suggest it be replaced by something like the version I have taught for years. It is accessible on my web page: https://www2.math.upenn.edu/~kazdan/Pythagoras/pyth-similar.pdf Before I submit this, it seems prudent to get your feedback. --JLKazdan (talk) 21:16, 5 July 2024 (UTC)

Hello, JLKazdan. Thanks for your question, and welcome to Wikipedia. Oh dear: I fear I'm the very worst mentor to ask on this topic, as I've not done that sort of maths for 50 years! I simply can't comment on what makes most sense.

Now, the article Pythagorean theorem is rated a GOOD ARTICLE, meaning it has been reviewed, refined and regarded as pretty high quality for our encyclopaedia. That doesn't mean we don't welcome ways to improve it further. But making suggestions for changes are best discussed first on the talk page of the article (i.e. at Talk:Pythagorean theorem). It looks like you're a maths lecturer, so I suggest you introduce yourself as that. (Indeed, I've just spotted that we even have an article about you at Jerry Kazdan.)

We would prefer not to use what appears as an online university course note as a source, preferring instead a WP:CITATION to a properly published book, if at all possible. But you might like to look at the 'Simple English' language version of this article (see https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pythagorean_theorem) and see how they compare.

The best approach to make any suggestion for change is to clearly identify the text and equally clearly offer an alternative wording. I appreciate that it's much harder to do that when equations are involved, as it takes some understanding of our wikimarkup for maths symbols (something I'm not familiar with myself, despite 13 years of editing experience here!).

So, I must apologise for not being able to give you a better answer, but do welcome your desire to see an improvement to an article. Let me know if I can be of further help. Oh, and I've left a welcome message on your user talk page with some helpful links about editing and getting started here. Regards from the UK, Nick Moyes (talk) 21:48, 5 July 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for your speedy reply.

This procedure is now way too cumbersome for me. If others want to follow-up with this suggestion however they wish, that's fine with me. They certainly do not need to mention my name.

I am bowing out.

-- Jerry JLKazdan (talk) 22:18, 5 July 2024 (UTC)

@JLKazdan I'm sorry - I hope I haven't put you off. But, yes, I do appreciate that Wikipedia can take some getting used to. I mentored an Emeritus Professor in marine geophysics a couple of years ago, helping him understand the difference in approach between academic publishing and Wikipedia editing so that he could contribute effectively to a suite of article on oceanic and Antarctic topics. But it does take commitment, and I'm not the person ever to guide anyone on mathematics topics. Best wishes, Nick Moyes (talk) 22:26, 5 July 2024 (UTC)

Thanks Obi K Chijioke (talk) 10:30, 14 July 2024 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – July 2024

News and updates for administrators from the past month (June 2024).

Administrator changes

• Elli
• HouseBlaster
• Pickersgill-Cunliffe

• Brianga
• De728631
• Georgewilliamherbert
• Hyacinth (deceased)
• ProveIt
• The Night Watch

Technical news

• Local administrators can now add new links to the bottom of the site Tools menu without using JavaScript. Documentation is available on MediaWiki. (T6086)

Miscellaneous

• The Community Wishlist is re-opening on 15 July 2024. Read more

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 07:59, 6 July 2024 (UTC)

Question from Exuperantia (01:58, 8 July 2024)

When editing (a person) how do I compose the introduction or the beginning of the wiki? --Exuperantia (talk) 01:58, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

Hi there, Exuperantia. Thanks for your question. I think you should find all the answers to your question in these three links:

1) WP:Lead section TT first sentence content

2) WP:Manual of Style/Lead section

3) Wikipedia:Lead dos and don'ts

I hope these help. Let mw know if you need anything further. Regards, Nick Moyes (talk) 09:48, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-28

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

Recent changes

• At the Wikimedia Foundation a new task force was formed to replace the disabled Graph with more secure, easy to use, and extensible Chart. You can subscribe to the newsletter to get notified about new project updates and other news about Chart.
• The CampaignEvents extension is now available on Meta-wiki, Igbo Wikipedia, and Swahili Wikipedia, and can be requested on your wiki. This extension helps in managing and making events more visible, giving Event organizers the ability to use tools like the Event registration tool. To learn more about the deployment status and how to request this extension for your wiki, visit the CampaignEvents page on Meta-wiki.
• Editors using the iOS Wikipedia app who have more than 50 edits can now use the Add an Image feature. This feature presents opportunities for small but useful contributions to Wikipedia.
• Thank you to all of the authors who have contributed to MediaWiki Core. As a result of these contributions, the percentage of authors contributing more than 5 patches has increased by 25% since last year, which helps ensure the sustainability of the platform for the Wikimedia projects.

Problems

• A problem with the color of the talkpage tabs always showing as blue, even for non-existent pages which should have been red, affecting the Vector 2022 skin, has been fixed.

Future changes

• The Trust and Safety Product team wants to introduce temporary accounts with as little disruption to tools and workflows as possible. Volunteer developers, including gadget and user-script maintainers, are kindly asked to update the code of their tools and features to handle temporary accounts. The team has created documentation explaining how to do the update. Learn more.

Tech News survey

• Please help us to improve Tech News by taking this short survey. The goal is to better meet the needs of the various types of people who read Tech News. The survey will be open for 1 more week. The survey is covered by this privacy statement. Some translations are available.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 21:29, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-29

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 survey

• Please help us to improve Tech News by taking this short survey. The goal is to better meet the needs of the various types of people who read Tech News. The survey will be open for 3 more days. The survey is covered by this privacy statement. Some translations are available.

Recent changes

• Wikimedia developers can now officially continue to use both Gerrit and GitLab, due to a June 24 decision by the Wikimedia Foundation to support software development on both platforms. Gerrit and GitLab are both code repositories used by developers to write, review, and deploy the software code that supports the MediaWiki software that the wiki projects are built on, as well as the tools used by editors to create and improve content. This decision will safeguard the productivity of our developers and prevent problems in code review from affecting our users. More details are available in the Migration status page.
• The Wikimedia Foundation seeks applicants for the Product and Technology Advisory Council (PTAC). This group will bring technical contributors and Wikimedia Foundation together to co-define a more resilient, future-proof technological platform. Council members will evaluate and consult on the movement's product and technical activities, so that we develop multi-generational projects. We are looking for a range of technical contributors across the globe, from a variety of Wikimedia projects. Please apply here by August 10.
• Editors with rollback user-rights who use the Wikipedia App for Android can use the new Edit Patrol features. These features include a new feed of Recent Changes, related links such as Undo and Rollback, and the ability to create and save a personal library of user talk messages to use while patrolling. If your wiki wants to make these features available to users who do not have rollback rights but have reached a certain edit threshold, you can contact the team. You can read more about this project on Diff blog.
• Editors who have access to The Wikipedia Library can once again use non-open access content in SpringerLinks, after the Foundation contacted them to restore access. You can read more about this and 21 other community-submitted tasks that were completed last week.

Changes later this week

• This week, dark mode will be available on a number of Wikipedias, both desktop and mobile, for logged-in and logged-out users. Interface admins and user script maintainers are encouraged to check gadgets and user scripts in the dark mode, to find any hard-coded colors and fix them. There are some recommendations for dark mode compatibility to help.

Future changes

• Next week, functionaries, volunteers maintaining tools, and software development teams are invited to test the temporary accounts feature on testwiki. Temporary accounts is a feature that will help improve privacy on the wikis. No further temporary account deployments are scheduled yet. Please share your opinions and questions on the project talk page. [113]
• Editors who upload files cross-wiki, or teach other people how to do so, may wish to join a Wikimedia Commons discussion. The Commons community is discussing limiting who can upload files through the cross-wiki upload/Upload dialog feature to users auto-confirmed on Wikimedia Commons. This is due to the large amount of copyright violations uploaded this way. There is a short summary at Commons:Cross-wiki upload and discussion at Commons:Village Pump.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. You can also get other news from the Wikimedia Foundation Bulletin.

MediaWiki message delivery 01:28, 16 July 2024 (UTC)

Question from Premyadavresearch assistant on Uttar Pradesh Legislative Assembly (16:44, 19 July 2024)

milkipur --Premyadavresearch assistant (talk) 16:44, 19 July 2024 (UTC)

Teahouse

What a warm welcome, much appreciated, even if it's a template! I'm much more active on the Polish Wikipedia, but I edit here too sometimes ;) Hope it's not too much trouble posting on such an active talk page. R2D2Poland (talk) 20:21, 20 July 2024 (UTC)

@R2D2Poland No, not a problem. We aim to make the Teahouse a warm and welcoming place for everyone. Nick Moyes (talk) 22:21, 20 July 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-30

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

Feature News

• Stewards can now globally block accounts. Before the change only IP addresses and IP ranges could be blocked globally. Global account blocks are useful when the blocked user should not be logged out. Global locks (a similar tool logging the user out of their account) are unaffected by this change. The new global account block feature is related to the Temporary Accounts project, which is a new type of user account that replaces IP addresses of unregistered editors that are no longer made public.
• Later this week, Wikimedia site users will notice that the Interface of FlaggedRevs (also known as "Pending Changes") is improved and consistent with the rest of the MediaWiki interface and Wikimedia's design system. The FlaggedRevs interface experience on mobile and Minerva skin was inconsistent before it was fixed and ported to Codex by the WMF Growth team and some volunteers. [114]
• Wikimedia site users can now submit account vanishing requests via GlobalVanishRequest. This feature is used when a contributor wishes to stop editing forever. It helps you hide your past association and edit to protect your privacy. Once processed, the account will be locked and renamed. [115]
• Have you tried monitoring and addressing vandalism in Wikipedia using your phone? A Diff blog post on Patrolling features in the Mobile App highlights some of the new capabilities of the feature, including swiping through a feed of recent changes and a personal library of user talk messages for use when patrolling from your phone.
• Wikimedia contributors and GLAM (galleries, libraries, archives, and museums) organisations can now learn and measure the impact Wikimedia Commons is having towards creating quality encyclopedic content using the Commons Impact Metrics analytics dashboard. The dashboard offers organizations analytics on things like monthly edits in a category, the most viewed files, and which Wikimedia articles are using Commons images. As a result of these new data dumps, GLAM organisation can more reliably measure their return on investment for programs bringing content into the digital Commons. [116]

Project Updates

• Come share your ideas for improving the wikis on the newly reopened Community Wishlist. The Community Wishlist is Wikimedia’s forum for volunteers to share ideas (called wishes) to improve how the wikis work. The new version of the wishlist is always open, works with both wikitext and Visual Editor, and allows wishes in any language.

Learn more

• Have you ever wondered how Wikimedia software works across over 300 languages? This is 253 languages more than the Google Chrome interface, and it's no accident. The Language and Product Localization Team at the Wikimedia Foundation supports your work by adapting all the tools and interfaces in the MediaWiki software so that contributors in our movement who translate pages and strings can translate them and have the sites in all languages. Read more about the team and their upcoming work on Diff.
• How can Wikimedia build innovative and experimental products while maintaining such heavily used websites? A recent blog post by WMF staff Johan Jönsson highlights the work of the WMF Future Audience initiative, where the goal is not to build polished products but test out new ideas, such as a ChatGPT plugin and Add a Fact, to help take Wikimedia into the future.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. You can also get other news from the Wikimedia Foundation Bulletin.

MediaWiki message delivery 00:02, 23 July 2024 (UTC)

Question from Mohammad Sajjad Ahmed (02:43, 24 July 2024)

How to change my user name? --Mohammad Sajjad Ahmed (talk) 02:43, 24 July 2024 (UTC)

@Mohammad Sajjad Ahmed Because you have not yet edited from this account, there is no point asking an administrator to change your account name. So, simply abandon this account, don’t use it again, and just create a new one with the name you want. Regards, Nick Moyes (talk) 12:41, 24 July 2024 (UTC)

Women in Red August 2024

Women in Red | August 2024, Volume 10, Issue 8, Numbers 293, 294, 311, 313, 314, 315 Online events: New: | Women in film and stage | Indigenous women Continuing: #1day1woman | Education (year-long initiative) | Translation contest 2024 (July, August, September) | Women in Sports (July, August) Announcements from other communities TBD Tip of the month: Check your athlete's notability before researching and creating her bio. Other ways to participate: Become a member. You can always opt-out of notifications. Join the conversations on our talkpage. Help us plan future events and add any general ideas on developing the project. Follow us on social media: Instagram | Pinterest | Twitter/X

--Lajmmoore (talk 19:58, 25 July 2024 (UTC) via MassMessaging

Question from KellyMilly (08:05, 27 July 2024)

Yo ngl I'm about to publish my first book. I kinda want to create an article about myself. --KellyMilly (talk) 08:06, 27 July 2024 (UTC)

@KellyMilly Hi there. I published my first book ten years ago! That doesn't make me WP:Notable in the eyes of Wikipedia. Only when two or three major, independent and reliable sources write about you or me in detail and in depth, are either of us are ever going qualify for having an article about us here on Wikipedia. See these criteria for notability of individuals

Nor are either of our books ever going to have Wikipedia articles written about them until the same criteria are met. i.e. when the world at large, via mainstream sources, takes notice of them (and not just a short entry on GoodReads, like this one). See these criteria about book notability.

So, simply doing something (such as writing a book, producing a music album, staging an art exhibition, building an office block, or becoming filthy rich) is never going to justify that person trying to create a Wikipedia article about themselves - sorry. Wikipedia is not to be used for self-promotion. Nor is it ever a good idea to try to crate one about yourself. See WP:AUTOBIOGRAPHY to learn more.

Sorry to sound negative. But only when the world at large has taken notice of something - by publishing major mainstream media articles about them (and I don't mean via personal blogs or social media posts) - does Wikipedia generally have any interest in seeing an article about them. If and when you do get mainstream cover in the media, do pop back and ask again as we might then be able to guide you further. In the meantime, you might want to think about building your own website about yourself on another platform. Kind regards, Nick Moyes (talk) 18:26, 27 July 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-31

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

Feature news

• Editors using the Visual Editor in languages that use non-Latin characters for numbers, such as Hindi, Manipuri and Eastern Arabic, may notice some changes in the formatting of reference numbers. This is a side effect of preparing a new sub-referencing feature, and will also allow fixing some general numbering issues in Visual Editor. If you notice any related problems on your wiki, please share details at the project talkpage.

Bugs status

• Some logged-in editors were briefly unable to edit or load pages last week. These errors were mainly due to the addition of new linter rules which led to caching problems. Fixes have been applied and investigations are continuing.
• Editors can use the IP Information tool to get information about IP addresses. This tool is available as a Beta Feature in your preferences. The tool was not available for a few days last week, but is now working again. Thank you to Shizhao for filing the bug report. You can read about that, and 28 other community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week.

Project updates

• There are new features and improvements to Phabricator from the Release Engineering and Collaboration Services teams, and some volunteers, including: the search systems, the new task creation system, the login systems, the translation setup which has resulted in support for more languages (thanks to Pppery), and fixes for many edge-case errors. You can read details about these and other improvements in this summary.
• There is an update on the Charts project. The team has decided which visualization library to use, which chart types to start focusing on, and where to store chart definitions.
• One new wiki has been created: a Wikivoyage in Czech (voy:cs:) [117]

Learn more

• There is a new Wikimedia Foundation data center in São Paulo, Brazil which helps to reduce load times.
• There is new user research on problems with the process of uploading images.
• Commons Impact Metrics are now available via data dumps and API.
• The latest quarterly Technical Community Newsletter is now available.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 23:08, 29 July 2024 (UTC)

Growth News, July 2024

Community Configuration

The Growth team released Community Configuration at all Wikipedias. You can access it at Special:CommunityConfiguration.

This new special page replaces Special:EditGrowthConfig. For now, all Growth features can be configured using Community Configuration. Configuration for AutoModerator (T365046) and other features will be available in the future.

You can help with translations. The interface translation is done at Translatewiki.net. You can also help translate the documentation.

If you attend Wikimania 2024, please join us for the session about Community configuration's future!

Current work

Newcomer Homepage Community Updates module

We will add a new Community Configurable module to the Newcomer Homepage that will allow communities to highlight specific events, projects, campaigns, and initiatives. We have released a simple version available to beta wikis. We will conduct an A/B test at our pilot wikis using the new Metrics Platform. We still welcome community feedback on initial designs and plans, in any language at our project talk page.

Future work

Increase constructive activation on mobile

As part of the Growth team 2024/2025 Annual Plan, the Growth team will explore various ways to increase the percentage of newcomers who successfully start editing.

Editing a Wikipedia page requires too much context and patience. It means many trial and error for newcomers to contribute, meaning a steeper learning curve and potential discouraging reverts. To support a new generation of volunteers, we will increase the number and availability of smaller, structured, and more task-specific editing workflows (E.g. Edit Check and Structured Tasks). The Growth team will primarily focus on Structured Tasks, while working closely with the Editing team to ensure our work integrates well with Edit Check.

Stay informed

Growth team weekly updates are available on wiki (in English) if you want to know more about our day-to-day work. If you want to receive more general updates about technical activity happening across the Wikimedia movement (including Growth work), we encourage you to subscribe to Tech News.

Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

15:08, 30 July 2024 (UTC)

Question from Jerrystch (00:34, 2 August 2024)

How to a post about my artist here on wiki? --Jerrystch (talk) 00:34, 2 August 2024 (UTC)

@Jerrystch Only people who meet Wikipedia’s definition of ‘Notable’ can have an article about them here. Please read these carefully at either WP:NBIO or WP:NMUSIC. If you meet these criteria then please leave it to someone else to write about you. See WP:AUTOBIOGRAPHY.

You draft about yourself was deleted because it was not based on any independent, published sources, and was pure WP:PROMOTION.

You may also wish to read THIS GUIDANCE. Regards, Nick Moyes (talk) 06:42, 2 August 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-32

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

Feature news

• Two new parser functions will be available this week: {{#dir}} and {{#bcp47}}. These will reduce the need for Template:Dir and Template:BCP47 on Commons and allow us to drop 100 million rows from the "what links here" database. Editors at any wiki that use these templates, can help by replacing the templates with these new functions. The templates at Commons will be updated during the Hackathon at Wikimania. [118][119]
• Communities can request the activation of the visual editor on entire namespaces where discussions sometimes happen (for instance Wikipedia: or Wikisource: namespaces) if they understand the known limitations. For discussions, users can already use DiscussionTools in these namespaces.
• The tracking category "Pages using Timeline" has been renamed to "Pages using the EasyTimeline extension" in TranslateWiki. Wikis that have created the category locally should rename their local creation to match.

Project updates

• Editors who help to organize WikiProjects and similar on-wiki collaborations, are invited to share ideas and examples of successful collaborations with the Campaigns and Programs teams. You can fill out a brief survey or share your thoughts on the talkpage. The teams are particularly looking for details about successful collaborations on non-English wikis.
• The new parser is being rolled out on Wikivoyage wikis over the next few months. The English Wikivoyage and Hebrew Wikivoyage were switched to Parsoid last week. For more information, see Parsoid/Parser Unification.

Learn more

• There will be more than 200 sessions at Wikimania this week. Here is a summary of some of the key sessions related to the product and technology area.
• The latest Wikimedia Foundation Bulletin is available.
• The latest quarterly Language and Internationalization newsletter is available. It includes: New design previews for Translatable pages; Updates about MinT for Wiki Readers; the release of Translation dumps; and more.
• The latest quarterly Growth newsletter is available.
• The latest monthly MediaWiki Product Insights newsletter is available.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 20:41, 5 August 2024 (UTC)

Question from Anaisseldon (14:34, 6 August 2024)

I want to publish an article about me now. --Anaisseldon (talk) 14:34, 6 August 2024 (UTC)

@Anaisseldon This platform if not intended for you to create an article about yourself!

Unless you clearly meet our Notability Criteria, you stand no chance here. In that case, please go and use a social media platform to promote yourself. See WP:AUTOBIOGRAPHY to understand why we discourage even notable people from writing articles about themselves - they are rarely ever likely to be neutral in what they choose to present, even if there are independent mainstream sources available (books, news media, journals etc) which do talk about them in detail and in depth.

In future, please avoid asking the same question in two venues in the space of a couple of hours. This wastes volunteer time. I have deleted your userpage as it is not intended to be a place for you to promote your CV, and your sandbox has also been removed for the same reason. Should you ever prove to be truly notable by Wikipedia's standards, someone will inevitably wish to write about you. Please leave that task to them, and not try to do it yourself. Kind regards, Nick Moyes (talk) 14:57, 6 August 2024 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – August 2024

News and updates for administrators from the past month (July 2024).

Administrator changes

Isabelle Belato

• Ian.thomson
• Modussiccandi

Interface administrator changes

Izno

CheckUser changes

Barkeep49

Technical news

• Global blocks may now target accounts as well as IP's. Administrators may locally unblock when appropriate.
• Users wishing to permanently leave may now request "vanishing" via Special:GlobalVanishRequest. Processed requests will result in the user being renamed, their recovery email being removed, and their account being globally locked.

Arbitration

• The Arbitration Committee appointed the following administrators to the conflict of interest volunteer response team: Bilby, Extraordinary Writ

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:00, 6 August 2024 (UTC)

Pop-in

Hi, How are you? BloxyColaSweet (talk) 21:20, 7 August 2024 (UTC)

Hi there BloxyColaSweet. I'm fine, thank you very much. Just spent a glorious day with my family down at Kew Gardens in London, and am enjoying my retirement. However, I do seem to have less and less time for Wikipedia at the moment. But I see you've been very busy working on the Fescues. Keep up the good work! Cheers, Nick Moyes (talk) 13:42, 8 August 2024 (UTC)

Completely understandable, I didn't expect you to reply right away. I too haven't been on Wikipedia in months. I just came back, and I just recollected all the nostalgic (and rather humourous for me in present day) times I contributed here. I encourage users to reply only at their most leisure. Cheers! BloxyColaSweet (talk) 22:58, 8 August 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-33

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

Feature news

• AbuseFilter editors and maintainers can now make a CAPTCHA show if a filter matches an edit. This allows communities to quickly respond to spamming by automated bots. [120]
• Stewards can now specify if global blocks should prevent account creation. Before this change by the Trust and Safety Product Team, all global blocks would prevent account creation. This will allow stewards to reduce the unintended side-effects of global blocks on IP addresses.

Project updates

• Nominations are open on Wikitech for new members to refresh the Toolforge standards committee. The committee oversees the Toolforge Right to fork policy and Abandoned tool policy among other duties. Nominations will remain open until at least 2024-08-26.
• One new wiki has been created: a Wikipedia in West Coast Bajau (w:bdr:) [121]

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

MediaWiki message delivery 23:19, 12 August 2024 (UTC)

Question from Ecwcorrections (03:44, 15 August 2024)

Thank you Nick you will defiantly be hearing from me. I’m new to this. Just gathering my sources still waiting on a SLAM wrestling article to be published so I can reference the info --Ecwcorrections (talk) 03:44, 15 August 2024 (UTC)

Unblock Block my Domain wikipedia

Hello sir,

I am utpol, My website url Global wikipedia Block. I dont Understand. Please Help me UnBlock My website URL: https://betterauds.com/ Please Unblock this URL

Best Reagard Utpol.

Thank you. 59.152.97.195 (talk) 05:26, 16 August 2024 (UTC)

No, sorry. That domain is a website with no value as a RELIABLE SOURCE. All attempts to link to it from within Wikipedia would be regarded as spam. It should remain Blacklisted in my opinion. Nick Moyes (talk) 17:40, 16 August 2024 (UTC)

Wikimedian of the Year

I thought you might like to know that I was awarded Wikimedian of the Year. Thank you for being an awesome mentor back when I was a newbie. :) Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 20:09, 16 August 2024 (UTC)

@Girth Summit: I should thank you too. I appreciate you taking me through CVUA even if I haven't actually done that much countervandalism since then. Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 21:05, 16 August 2024 (UTC)

@Clovermoss Hey - that's absolutely brilliant news. Congratulations. You've come such a long way. (Oh, and btw I never acknowledged the link you sent me about your employment. I won't mention it here, but that sounds awesome, too. Nick Moyes (talk) 13:51, 17 August 2024 (UTC)

Well there's still a few classes I need to take first but hopefully I'll have a seafaring job within the next few months. Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 17:56, 17 August 2024 (UTC)

@Clovermoss Well, good luck with that. It sounds like the start of a great adventure.

my own daughter starts her year of teaching English in Tokyo today. All very exciting times for you youngsters! Looking forward to hearing how things are going once you hit the high seas. Best wishes, Nick Moyes (talk) 05:38, 21 August 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-34

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

Feature news

• Editors who want to re-use references but with different details such as page numbers, will be able to do so by the end of 2024, using a new sub-referencing feature. You can read more about the project and how to test the prototype.
• Editors using tracking categories to identify which pages use specific extensions may notice that six of the categories have been renamed to make them more easily understood and consistent. These categories are automatically added to pages that use specialized MediaWiki extensions. The affected names are for: DynamicPageList, Kartographer, Phonos, RSS, Score, WikiHiero. Wikis that have created the category locally should rename their local creation to match. Thanks to Pppery for these improvements. [122]
• Technical volunteers who edit modules and want to get a list of the categories used on a page, can now do so using the categories property of mw.title objects. This enables wikis to configure workflows such as category-specific edit notices. Thanks to SD001 for these improvements. [123][124]

Bugs status

• Your help is needed to check if any pages need to be moved or deleted. A maintenance script was run to clean up unreachable pages (due to Unicode issues or introduction of new namespaces/namespace aliases). The script tried to find appropriate names for the pages (e.g. by following the Unicode changes or by moving pages whose titles on Wikipedia start with Talk:WP: so that their titles start with Wikipedia talk:), but it may have failed for some pages, and moved them to Special:PrefixIndex/T195546/ instead. Your community should check if any pages are listed there, and move them to the correct titles, or delete them if they are no longer needed. A full log (including pages for which appropriate names could be found) is available in phab:P67388.
• Editors who volunteer as mentors to newcomers on their wiki are once again able to access lists of potential mentees who they can connect with to offer help and guidance. This functionality was restored thanks to a bug fix. Thank you to Mbch331 for filing the bug report. You can read about that, and 18 other community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week.

Project updates

• The application deadline for the Product & Technology Advisory Council (PTAC) has been extended to September 16. Members will help by providing advice to Foundation Product and Technology leadership on short and long term plans, on complex strategic problems, and help to get feedback from more contributors and technical communities. Selected members should expect to spend roughly 5 hours per month for the Council, during the one year pilot. Please consider applying, and spread the word to volunteers you think would make a positive contribution to the committee.

Learn more

• The 2024 Coolest Tool Awards were awarded at Wikimania, in seven categories. For example, one award went to the ISA Tool, used for adding structured data to files on Commons, which was recently improved during the Wiki Mentor Africa Hackathon. You can see video demonstrations of each tool at the awards page. Congratulations to this year's recipients, and thank you to all tool creators and maintainers.
• The latest Wikimedia Foundation Bulletin is available, and includes some highlights from Wikimania, an upcoming Language community meeting, and other news from the movement.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 00:50, 20 August 2024 (UTC)

Question from Godfredasibufranklyn (18:01, 20 August 2024)

Hello. I would like to get guidelines on how to add articles for the first time --Godfredasibufranklyn (talk) 18:01, 20 August 2024 (UTC)

Hello @Godfredasibufranklyn. Sorry for the delay in replying to you-I’ve been away for a couple of days.

Can I ask what topic you would like to write about? It will need to meet our NOTABILITY CRITERIA if it is to be accepted. Wikipedia can take a while to master, with lots of policies and guidelines to follow. So, we always suggest users gain general editing experience for a few weeks or months before embarking on the hardest of all tasks here - creating a new article from the beginning.

That said,the best overall advice I can give you for creating your first article can be found HERE. Good luck! Nick Moyes (talk) 05:34, 21 August 2024 (UTC)

New pages patrol September 2024 Backlog drive

New pages patrol | September 2024 Backlog Drive
On 1 September 2024, a one-month backlog drive for new pages patrol will begin. Barnstars will be awarded based on the number of articles and redirects patrolled. Barnstars will also be granted for re-reviewing articles previously reviewed by other patrollers during the drive. Each article review will earn 1 point, and each redirect review will earn 0.2 points. Interested in taking part? Sign up here.
You're receiving this message because you are a new page patroller. To opt-out of future mailings, please remove yourself here.

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:10, 26 August 2024 (UTC)

September 2024 at Women in Red

Women in Red | September 2024, Volume 10, Issue 9, Numbers 293, 294, 311, 316, 317 Online events: New: Women writers & their works | Geofocus: Islands A - H Continuing: #1day1woman | Education (year-long initiative) | Translation contest 2024 (Jul, Aug, Sep) Announcements from other communities August 30 is the tenth anniversary of WikiProject Women writers! Tip of the month: Try her pen name when searching for sources, and remember to add her to any of these that apply: List of pen names, List of literary initials, and Category:Pseudonymous women writers. Other ways to participate: Become a member. You can always opt-out of notifications. Join the conversations on our talkpage. Help us plan future events and add any general ideas on developing the project. Follow us on social media: Instagram | Pinterest | Twitter/X

--Rosiestep (talk) 19:00, 26 August 2024 (UTC) via MassMessaging

Tech News: 2024-35

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

Feature news

• Administrators can now test the temporary accounts feature on test2wiki. This was done to allow cross-wiki testing of temporary accounts, for when temporary accounts switch between projects. The feature was enabled on testwiki a few weeks ago. No further temporary account deployments are scheduled yet. Temporary Accounts is a project to create a new type of user account that replaces IP addresses of unregistered editors which are no longer made public. Please share your opinions and questions on the project talk page.
• Later this week, editors at wikis that use FlaggedRevs (also known as "Pending Changes") may notice that the indicators at the top of articles have changed. This change makes the system more consistent with the rest of the MediaWiki interface. [125]

Bugs status

• Editors who use the 2010 wikitext editor, and use the Character Insert buttons, will no longer experience problems with the buttons adding content into the edit-summary instead of the edit-window. You can read more about that, and 26 other community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week.

Project updates

• Please review and vote on Focus Areas, which are groups of wishes that share a problem. Focus Areas were created for the newly reopened Community Wishlist, which is now open year-round for submissions. The first batch of focus areas are specific to moderator workflows, around welcoming newcomers, minimizing repetitive tasks, and prioritizing tasks. Once volunteers have reviewed and voted on focus areas, the Foundation will then review and select focus areas for prioritization.
• Do you have a project and are willing to provide a three (3) month mentorship for an intern? Outreachy is a twice a year program for people to participate in a paid internship that will start in December 2024 and end in early March 2025, and they need mentors and projects to work on. Projects can be focused on coding or non-coding (design, documentation, translation, research). See the Outreachy page for more details, and a list of past projects since 2013.

Learn more

• If you're curious about the product and technology improvements made by the Wikimedia Foundation last year, read this recent highlights summary on Diff.
• To learn more about the technology behind the Wikimedia projects, you can now watch sessions from the technology track at Wikimania 2024 on Commons. This week, check out:
  • Community Configuration - Shaping On-Wiki Functionality Together (55 mins) - about the Community Configuration project.
  • Future of MediaWiki. A sustainable platform to support a collaborative user base and billions of page views (30 mins) - an overview for both technical and non technical audiences, covering some of the challenges and open questions, related to the platform evolution, stewardship and developer experiences research.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 20:29, 26 August 2024 (UTC)

Question from Kari Skogberg (08:53, 29 August 2024)

Hi!

I started to edit a wiki page for the darts game KILLER. I added the inventors name and refered to my website www.routing.se But now I can not find these pages(Swedish and English). So now I have created an account - but cant find the page or the previous version of that page. The page should have my name as inventor/author of the darts type game called KILLER. There should be a reference to my site www.routing.se... Can You find the page for me so I can edit again please? Regards, Kari Skogberg --Kari Skogberg (talk) 08:53, 29 August 2024 (UTC)

Hello Kari Skogberg. I can find no Wikipedia article that has been deleted after a deletion discussion that contains the word 'Killer' and that is linked to darts. (Only Killer the card game which was deleted as non-notable back in 2011)

Do you remember the article title; whether you submitted it as a draft for Articles for Creation, or do you know the IP address that you were using at the time? If you're prepared to let me know that, I can check for all contributions made by it, whether or not they've subsequently been deleted, and why.

To be honest, this doesn't sound like a Notable topic, so it could well have been deleted under one of our processes (either a WP:AFD|Deletion Discussion]] or a Speedy Deletion process.

If it doesn't exist on two language wikipedia, it does suggest to me that it was not regarded as notable as a stand alone article by Wikipedia's definition of the word. Do you have any independent sources that talk about it in detail and in depth - not just a set of rules on a website? There is of course a brief section about the game at Darts#Killer.

What more would you be hoping to add, and what sources would you expect to be using? Your own website would NOT be acceptable as a source for your claim of having invented it - or for anything else. It would need to be sourced to a book or professional website or magazine which has independent editorial control of its content. We never accept personal websites as sources, because people are free to make whatever unsubstantiated claims they like and present them as fact. It's not personal - just a way of ensuring accuracy in everything we present here. Best wishes, Nick Moyes (talk) 18:37, 30 August 2024 (UTC)

PS: Sorry for the delay in replying - I've been away from my computer rather a lot recently. in this fine weather. Nick Moyes (talk) 18:38, 30 August 2024 (UTC)

hi! Thanks for feed back. What I did was to add my website URL as reference. So no surprise its gone. BUt why is the prev. version page gone?

My IP address was 78.68.39.103 (only a few days ago I edited the apge- not a new article

Can You find it?

Regards, Kari 2001:2042:5E2F:7A00:9803:4A1D:5A1D:463B (talk) 21:58, 30 August 2024 (UTC)

Hi again, @Kari. I've looked at the contributions for that IPv4 address, and it has never edited Wikipedia (see here). But IP addresses are dynamic, and can change over time, so maybe that wasn't it.

I am unclear on which existing article you now say you were editing. Was it Darts? If so, you can view all past edits (even deleted or reverted ones) by clicking the View History tab (see here). I've searched the edit history of the Darts article for any sign of the addition of your personal website, and could find nothing. So, I'm at a loss to identify the particular edit.

I did find this edit you made from your current IPv6 address. Not only was it reverted because it linked to a private website (which is unacceptable, as explained above), but it was also wholly unencyclopaedic in its tone. We don't ever ask chatty questions and answer them in articles: we present facts in a neutral tone of voice suitable for an encyclopaedia, and all based upon {{WP:RS|Reliable Sources]].

So, I think by now you appreciate your edits weren't acceptable to this encyclopaedia. But, if you were the inventor of these games, simply take pleasure in knowing that others enjoy them, too. But I'm afraid without independent sources to verify your claim, it simply can't go in - no matter how true it may be. Kind regards from the UK, Nick Moyes (talk) 22:38, 31 August 2024 (UTC)

Thank You for your time. I guess You are right- my comment on ref list did not have the form or tone it supposed to have : " Who invented Killer? Read more: www.routing.se I seems I need some other source to quote me...

Regards,

Kari 2001:2042:5E2F:7A00:8559:9D40:350B:AE40 (talk) 12:10, 1 September 2024 (UTC)

Yes. I'm afraid that's absolutely correct. Nick Moyes (talk) 12:31, 1 September 2024 (UTC)

Question from Dily Osama (10:07, 1 September 2024)

Hi --Dily Osama (talk) 10:07, 1 September 2024 (UTC)

Hi @Dily Osama. Welcome to Wikipedia. Do you need help with editing something? Let me know if you need support. Regards from the Uk, Nick Moyes (talk) 10:41, 1 September 2024 (UTC)

Question from Hastamev (14:42, 1 September 2024)

Hi, I would like to create a page about a company, is it allowed? --Hastamev (talk) 14:42, 1 September 2024 (UTC)

Hi, @Hastamev. What is the company, and are you connected with it in any way? All businesses must be ‘Notable’ by Wikipedia’s definition. You can read the notability criteria for companies HERE. In essence, you will need to be able to base any new article on at least THREE, detailed, independent sources.

We are not here to help people promote their business, so meeting notability criteria is absolutely essential, or you will be wasting your time and ours if you try.

If you are connected to the business or its owner in any way, you should declare your ‘conflict of interest’ by following instructions at WP:COI. And if you are accepting payment to do so, you are obliged to declare who is paying you, per our rules at WP:PAID.

Finally, it is not easy to create an encyclopaedia article here with no previous editing experience. So we advise new editors spend time learning how to edit and improve existing articles first.

Further advice on creating your first article can be found HERE. Regards, Nick Moyes (talk) 17:55, 1 September 2024 (UTC)

Question from Newsflashbharat (17:46, 2 September 2024)

hi, is there anything related to bollywood, which required edit? --Newsflashbharat (talk) 17:46, 2 September 2024 (UTC)

@Newsflashbharat See Wikipedia:WikiProject Film/Indian cinema task force for ideas on improving articles related to this topic.

I have given you a 'soft block' and a chance to create a new account which does not advertise your website or organisation. Note that if you are here purely to promote your website, you will be permanently blocked from editing. Regards, Nick Moyes (talk) 23:40, 2 September 2024 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – September 2024

News and updates for administrators from the past month (August 2024).

Administrator changes

Pppery

Interface administrator changes

Pppery

Oversighter changes

Wugapodes

CheckUser changes

• Courcelles
• GeneralNotability

Guideline and policy news

• Following an RfC, there is a new criterion for speedy deletion: C4, which applies to unused maintenance categories, such as empty dated maintenance categories for dates in the past.
• A request for comment is open to discuss whether Notability (species) should be adopted as a subject-specific notability guideline.

Arbitration

• Following a motion, remedies 5.1 and 5.2 of World War II and the history of Jews in Poland (the topic and interaction bans on My very best wishes, respectively) were repealed.
• Remedy 3C of the German war effort case ("Cinderella157 German history topic ban") was suspended for a period of six months.
• The arbitration case Historical Elections is currently open. Proposed decision is expected by 3 September 2024 for this case.

Miscellaneous

• Editors can now enter into good article review circles, an alternative for informal quid pro quo arrangements, to have a GAN reviewed in return for reviewing a different editor's nomination.
• A New Pages Patrol backlog drive is happening in September 2024 to reduce the number of unreviewed articles and redirects in the new pages feed. Currently, there is a backlog of over 13,900 articles and 26,200 redirects awaiting review. Sign up here to participate!

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:43, 2 September 2024 (UTC)

Question from Televisionbuff831G (04:01, 3 September 2024)

Hi, I'm Gary Collins II, I am a TV fan, can I add the characters in a TV show, like Dixie in "Emergency!," or Tess in "Touched By An Angel," please?! Thank you! --Televisionbuff831G (talk) 04:01, 3 September 2024 (UTC)

Hello Televisionbuff831G. I don't know either series. But looking at Tess in the article Touched by an Angel, I can see she was a main character. But I think you're asking whether you could create a whole new article about that fictional character? If so, it would only really be OK to do that if that character had been written about in detail and in depth by numerous independent sources analysing the character, its cultural impact and so on. Somehow I doubt this applies to your examples, but you could ask on the talk page of each article and suggest the content and sources you would wish to use. What we don't accept here (ever) is people's person opinions of observations of what a character did in a programme. The only exception is when summarising Plot elements of a programme.

I think [en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_Emergency%21_episodes&diff=1243741581&oldid=1241607743 these edits] you made were acceptable, but beware not falling into the trap of extending or expanding plot summaries into long-winded, rambling accounts full of trivial detail. I hope this helps. Regards, Nick Moyes (talk) 11:43, 3 September 2024 (UTC)

Adoption

Hello! I'd like to be adopted! Our main interests are history & geography! कङञ (talk) 12:09, 4 September 2024 (UTC)

Hi there, @कङञ. Thanks you for asking for support. Unfortunately, I don't really take on very new users like yourself, as I prefer to see evidence of a long-term commitment to editing before I invest the time to support people on a one to one basis, and you've only made 34 edits to articles so far. But don't let that put you off - we all have to start somewhere!

For instant help with a particular problem, you will find it a lot more helpful to ask single questions at The Teahouse. But, as you've made the effort to approach me, I'd be happy to answer a batch of questions that you might have if you care to post them below. Or give me some idea of the areas of interest or concern that you might have in which you'd seek support. It may take me a few days to reply as I'm about to go on a trip for a week. Other editors do take on very new users, but I prefer to see and support editors who seek a better understanding of policies and procedures, having already invested the effort in gaining the basics for themselves. Sorry if this isn't quite what you wanted, but do feel free to ask away! Regards from the UK, Nick Moyes (talk) 15:30, 5 September 2024 (UTC)

Okay! Thanks for the conformation! कङञ 09:10, 6 September 2024 (UTC)

Question from Dronozjad (08:24, 6 September 2024)

Hi, I have a simple question regarding creating new pages being translations of existing WikiPedia pages - in such a case, wherever I'd like to approach creating such a page, especially in cases where information in the specific language into which I'm translating about the subject is scarce, is it acceptable to use sources in English, considering its position as a lingua franca?

Thanks for any help! --Dronozjad (talk) 08:24, 6 September 2024 (UTC)

@Dronozjad Yes. You can use sources such as books, journals, newspapers, etc in ‘‘any’’ language. In all cases they must be regarded as RELIABLE SOURCES. More help may be found at WP:TRANSLATION. Hope this is of help. Regards, Nick Moyes (talk) 01:04, 7 September 2024 (UTC)

This was of great help. Thanks! Dronozjad (talk) 15:33, 7 September 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-37

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

Feature news

• Starting this week, the standard syntax highlighter will receive new colors that make them compatible in dark mode. This is the first of many changes to come as part of a major upgrade to syntax highlighting. You can learn more about what's to come on the help page. [126][127]
• Editors of wikis using Wikidata will now be notified of only relevant Wikidata changes in their watchlist. This is because the Lua functions entity:getSitelink() and mw.wikibase.getSitelink(qid) will have their logic unified for tracking different aspects of sitelinks to reduce junk notifications from inconsistent sitelinks tracking. [128]

Project updates

• Users of all Wikis will have access to Wikimedia sites as read-only for a few minutes on September 25, starting at 15:00 UTC. This is a planned datacenter switchover for maintenance purposes. More information will be published in Tech News and will also be posted on individual wikis in the coming weeks. [129]
• Contributors of 11 Wikipedias, including English will have a new MOS namespace added to their Wikipedias. This improvement ensures that links beginning with MOS: (usually shortcuts to the Manual of Style) are not broken by Mooré Wikipedia (language code mos). [130]

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

MediaWiki message delivery 18:49, 9 September 2024 (UTC)

A greeting

Hello, I guess your now my mentor.

My name on wikipedia was Wolfquack, if you want to know why I am using this account instead of my Main you can read my talk page.

Just thought I’d give you a greeting to your late unannounced student 😉. Wolfquack2 (talk) 22:02, 13 September 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-38

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

Improvements and Maintenance

• Editors interested in templates can help by reading the latest Wishlist focus area, Template recall and discovery, and share your feedback on the talkpage. This input helps the Community Tech team to decide the right technical approach to build. Everyone is also encouraged to continue adding new wishes.
• The new automated Special:NamespaceInfo page helps editors understand which namespaces exist on each wiki, and some details about how they are configured. Thanks to DannyS712 for these improvements. [131]
• References Check is a feature that encourages editors to add a citation when they add a new paragraph to a Wikipedia article. For a short time, the corresponding tag "Edit Check (references) activated" was erroneously being applied to some edits outside of the main namespace. This has been fixed. [132]
• It is now possible for a wiki community to change the order in which a page’s categories are displayed on their wiki. By default, categories are displayed in the order they appear in the wikitext. Now, wikis with a consensus to do so can request a configuration change to display them in alphabetical order. [133]
• Tool authors can now access ToolsDB's public databases from both Quarry and Superset. Those databases have always been accessible to every Toolforge user, but they are now more broadly accessible, as Quarry can be accessed by anyone with a Wikimedia account. In addition, Quarry's internal database can now be queried from Quarry itself. This database contains information about all queries that are being run and starred by users in Quarry. This information was already public through the web interface, but you can now query it using SQL. You can read more about that, and 20 other community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week.
• Any pages or tools that still use the very old CSS classes mw-message-box need to be updated. These old classes will be removed next week or soon afterwards. Editors can use a global-search to determine what needs to be changed. It is possible to use the newer cdx-message group of classes as a replacement (see the relevant Codex documentation, and an example update), but using locally defined onwiki classes would be best. [134]

Technical project updates

• Next week, all Wikimedia wikis will be read-only for a few minutes. This will start on September 25 at 15:00 UTC. This is a planned datacenter switchover for maintenance purposes. This maintenance process also targets other services. The previous switchover took 3 minutes, and the Site Reliability Engineering teams use many tools to make sure that this essential maintenance work happens as quickly as possible. [135]

Tech in depth

• The latest monthly MediaWiki Product Insights newsletter is available. This edition includes details about: research about hook handlers to help simplify development, research about performance improvements, work to improve the REST API for end-users, and more.
• To learn more about the technology behind the Wikimedia projects, you can now watch sessions from the technology track at Wikimania 2024 on Commons. This week, check out:
  • Hackathon Showcase (45 mins) - 19 short presentations by some of the Hackathon participants, describing some of the projects they worked on, such as automated testing of maintenance scripts, a video-cutting command line tool, and interface improvements for various tools. There are more details and links available in the Phabricator task.
  • Co-Creating a Sustainable Future for the Toolforge Ecosystem (40 mins) - a roundtable discussion for tool-maintainers, users, and supporters of Toolforge about how to make the platform sustainable and how to evaluate the tools available there.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 23:59, 16 September 2024 (UTC)

Question from ElizbethAftonFnafEdits (20:05, 18 September 2024)

Hey can i plz be a ediotor of alexander hamiltion ty -me --ElizbethAftonFnafEdits (talk) 20:05, 18 September 2024 (UTC)

@ElizbethAftonFnafEdits The article about Alexander Hamilton is regarded as a Good Article. That means it's up there amongst the very top quality articles in this encyclopaedia. The page is popular and prone to vandalism and bad edits, so is SemiProtected. This means that, providing a user has already made 10 edits and their account is over 4 days old, they may edit it, providing what is added genuinely improves the article, and is based on Reliable Sources which you must include as a reference (=citation).

TBH: Your nine edits here so far don't lead me to feel totally confident in your ability to write in good English and spelling, or that you don't yet fully understand how Wikipedia works. But, providing you can meet these requirements, you are permitted to edit it once you have 10 edits under your belt. Be prepared to have any nonsense or poor quality edit reverted, as we take this encyclopaedia and its content very seriously.

You might therefore prefer first to use the article's 'Talk Page' to first suggest the edit you propose to make and to wait for a few days to get feedback from other editors. Or you could let me know exactly what text you want to add or remove and I can advise you whether it looks ok, or not (that's what I'm here for!). Or, of course, you can simply BE BOLD and be prepared to justify your edit if challenged or reverted. Good luck! Nick Moyes (talk) 23:51, 18 September 2024 (UTC)

Question from ANDROID KNOX (00:46, 20 September 2024)

How does 12% of our population get to show 95% bodies and faces on our tv screens? --ANDROID KNOX (talk) 00:46, 20 September 2024 (UTC)

@ANDROID KNOX Hello. Sorry, but your question is not appropriate to Wikipedia or related to the support mentors can give new editors. If you need to know about the practicalities of editing Wikipedia articles, ask away! Nick Moyes (talk) 08:55, 20 September 2024 (UTC)

A or simple question, sir. Would your answer be the came if the 95% referred to Chinese or Aleutions in Alaska or a pygmy tribe in South America or a couple of hundred Albinos from all over the world? I see it as an anomaly of one distinct race monopolizing the advertising world. My question is really who is behind this agenda. It must be super powerful to stand up to such a strange occurance. If there is no identifiable source, how about your personable opinion. Do you as an individual not find this entire scene questionable? Are you allowed to have a personal opinion? Inquiring minds want to know. Is there an inimitable danger of life or death for asking. 2600:8800:31F:4600:C075:7FA8:4EF:9ED3 (talk) 03:19, 21 September 2024 (UTC)

I really don’t have a clue what you’re getting at, nor do I have the time or inclination to seek clarification. Talk pages are for matters relating to improving Wikipedia. End of. See WP:NOTFORUM. Sorry. Nick Moyes (talk) 07:27, 21 September 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-39

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

Weekly highlight

• All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on Wednesday September 25 at 15:00 UTC. Reading the wikis will not be interrupted, but editing will be paused. These twice-yearly processes allow WMF's site reliability engineering teams to remain prepared to keep the wikis functioning even in the event of a major interruption to one of our data centers.

Updates for editors

A screenshot of the interface for the Alt Text suggested-edit feature

• Editors who use the iOS Wikipedia app in Spanish, Portuguese, French, or Chinese, may see the Alt Text suggested-edit experiment after editing an article, or completing a suggested edit using "Add an image". Alt-text helps people with visual impairments to read Wikipedia articles. The team aims to learn if adding alt-text to images is a task that editors can be successful with. Please share any feedback on the discussion page.
• The Codex color palette has been updated with new and revised colors for the MediaWiki user interfaces. The most noticeable changes for editors include updates for: dark mode colors for Links and for quiet Buttons (progressive and destructive), visited Link colors for both light and dark modes, and background colors for system-messages in both light and dark modes.
• It is now possible to include clickable wikilinks and external links inside code blocks. This includes links that are used within <syntaxhighlight> tags and on code pages (JavaScript, CSS, Scribunto and Sanitized CSS). Uses of template syntax {{…}} are also linked to the template page. Thanks to SD0001 for these improvements. [136]
• Two bugs were fixed in the GlobalVanishRequest system by improving the logging and by removing an incorrect placeholder message. [137][138]
• View all 25 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week.

Updates for technical contributors

• From Wikimedia Enterprise:
  • The API now enables 5,000 on-demand API requests per month and twice-monthly HTML snapshots freely (gratis and libre). More information on the updates and also improvements to the software development kits (SDK) are explained on the project's blog post. While Wikimedia Enterprise APIs are designed for high-volume commercial reusers, this change enables many more community use-cases to be built on the service too.
  • The Snapshot API (html dumps) have added beta Structured Contents endpoints (blog post on that) as well as released two beta datasets (English and French Wikipedia) from that endpoint to Hugging Face for public use and feedback (blog post on that). These pre-parsed data sets enable new options for researchers, developers, and data scientists to use and study the content.

In depth

• The Wikidata Query Service (WDQS) is used to get answers to questions using the Wikidata data set. As Wikidata grows, we had to make a major architectural change so that WDQS could remain performant. As part of the WDQS Graph Split project, we have new SPARQL endpoints available for serving the "scholarly" and "main" subgraphs of Wikidata. The query.wikidata.org endpoint will continue to serve the full Wikidata graph until March 2025. After this date, it will only serve the main graph. For more information, please see the announcement on Wikidata.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 23:33, 23 September 2024 (UTC)

Question from Televisionbuff831G (02:18, 25 September 2024)

I was trying to edit Sharon Gless, where the source was under (ex. https://jeffisfunny.com/2022/08/154-sharon-gless-is-making-house-calls-with-cagney-and-lacey/). I was supposed to write that, however, I couldn't do that, because if I would, then, it indicated I didn't provide enough evidence for that, to the point, where I'd be given a warning about this, before I get blocked? What do I do? Please write back. --Televisionbuff831G (talk) 02:18, 25 September 2024 (UTC)

@Televisionbuff831G I don't see any warning on your talk page. Were you using a different account to make your edit? If so, which one?

I'm also unclear what it was that you wished to add to the Sharon Gless article. Your source appears to be an interview with Sharon Gless herself. We don't accept interviews with the subject as sources because they may be 'blowing their own trumpet' and making untrue claims about themselves. Sources that have supposedly had some editorial scrutiny such as media magazines and books are fine on that score - but not autobiographical books, of course.

Your solution is probably to go to the article's Talk Page and post a new thread, stating precisely what you would like to add, plus the source it comes from. (If it's a podcast, specify the time within the broadcast). Just ask for comments on how appropriate it is to make. If, within a week, you don't get any reply, you could go ahead and WP:BEBOLD and make that edit, noting in your edit summary that you had previously raised this on the talk page. Even if a really poor edit, it would clearly not have been done in 'bad faith', so you'll have done nothing wrong. I hope this helps. Nick Moyes (talk) 09:05, 25 September 2024 (UTC)

Question from SB Locca (14:43, 25 September 2024)

how do I make a article about myself? --SB Locca (talk) 14:43, 25 September 2024 (UTC)

@SB Locca Put bluntly - you don't! Your userpage as it stands is quite inappropriate and, unless you change it, will inevitably be deleted as you've written far too much about yourself, in a style of an article. See THIS GUIDANCE So, please some other form of social media to write about yourself, and don't try to use Wikipedia.

Now, the only circumstance where you could have an article about you is if you very clearly meet Wikipedia's NOTABILITY criteria, which requires at least three, independent sources to have written about you in detail and in depth. The specific notability criteria for musicians to have an article about them can be found at WP:NMUSIC. If you know you don't meet either of these sets of criteria, then simply forget it. The fact that you make music is irrelevant to whether or not you are seen as 'notable' by our criteria.

Finally, even if you are likely to be seen as 'ntable' we very heavily discourage anyone from tring to write about themselves. Leave it for someone unconnected with you to undertake that task. See WP:AUTOBIOGRAPHY and WP:TOOSOON to appreciate the issues here. Kind regards, Nick Moyes (talk) 16:09, 25 September 2024 (UTC)

Women in Red October 2024

Women in Red | October 2024, Volume 10, Issue 10, Numbers 293, 294, 318, 319, 320 Online events: New: Women in STEM | Geofocus: Islands I-P | Women in archaeology Continuing: #1day1woman | Education (year-long initiative) Announcements from other communities October is Women in Green's "Around the World in 31 Days" Good Article Edit-a-thon Tip of the month: Unsure how to expand a stub article? Take a look at this guidance Other ways to participate: Become a member. You can always opt-out of notifications. Join the conversations on our talkpage. Help us plan future events and add any general ideas on developing the project. Follow us on social media: Instagram | Pinterest | Twitter/X

--Lajmmoore (talk 08:07, 29 September 2024 (UTC) via MassMessaging

RevDel question

Hi there! A user posted their WhatsApp number on my talk page. I replied to their comment and then redacted their number so no one looking at my page can find it. However, it's still in the history, of course. Is this a candidate for RevDel? I don't use WhatsApp so I'm not sure how personal the information is. Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 05:00, 30 September 2024 (UTC)

@GoingBatty Done. To avoid the Streissand Effect, you can always email an admin privately, if you wish. Nick Moyes (talk) 08:06, 30 September 2024 (UTC)

Some baklava for you!

Baklava is a staple of Assyrian cuisine, and I wanted to send my thanks for helping WikiProject Assyria's article assessments! Baseema raba gabareh! Surayeproject3 (talk) 15:08, 30 September 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-40

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

Updates for editors

• Readers of 42 more wikis can now use Dark Mode. If the option is not yet available for logged-out users of your wiki, this is likely because many templates do not yet display well in Dark Mode. Please use the night-mode-checker tool if you are interested in helping to reduce the number of issues. The recommendations page provides guidance on this. Dark Mode is enabled on additional wikis once per month.
• Editors using the 2010 wikitext editor as their default can access features from the 2017 wikitext editor by adding ?veaction=editsource to the URL. If you would like to enable the 2017 wikitext editor as your default, it can be set in your preferences. [139]
• For logged-out readers using the Vector 2022 skin, the "donate" link has been moved from a collapsible menu next to the content area into a more prominent top menu, next to "Create an account". This restores the link to the level of prominence it had in the Vector 2010 skin. Learn more about the changes related to donor experiences. [140]
• The CampaignEvents extension provides tools for organizers to more easily manage events, communicate with participants, and promote their events on the wikis. The extension has been enabled on Arabic Wikipedia, Igbo Wikipedia, Swahili Wikipedia, and Meta-Wiki. Chinese Wikipedia has decided to enable the extension, and discussions on the extension are in progress on Spanish Wikipedia and on Wikidata. To learn how to enable the extension on your wiki, you can visit the CampaignEvents page on Meta-Wiki.
• View all 22 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week.

Updates for technical contributors

• Developers with an account on Wikitech-wiki should check if any action is required for their accounts. The wiki is being changed to use the single-user-login (SUL) system, and other configuration changes. This change will help reduce the overall complexity for the weekly software updates across all our wikis.

In depth

• The server switch was completed successfully last week with a read-only time of only 2 minutes 46 seconds. This periodic process makes sure that engineers can switch data centers and keep all of the wikis available for readers, even if there are major technical issues. It also gives engineers a chance to do maintenance and upgrades on systems that normally run 24 hours a day, and often helps to reveal weaknesses in the infrastructure. The process involves dozens of software services and hundreds of hardware servers, and requires multiple teams working together. Work over the past few years has reduced the time from 17 minutes down to 2–3 minutes. [141]

Meetings and events

• October 4–6: WikiIndaba Conference's Hackathon in Johannesburg, South Africa
• November 4–6: MediaWiki Users and Developers Conference Fall 2024 in Vienna, Austria

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

MediaWiki message delivery 22:16, 30 September 2024 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – October 2024

News and updates for administrators from the past month (September 2024).

Administrator changes

• Asilvering
• Significa liberdade

• Good Olfactory
• Hesperian
• I JethroBT
• TommyBoy
• Woody

CheckUser changes

• Barkeep49
• Izno

• Doug Weller
• Spicy

Guideline and policy news

• Administrator elections are a proposed new process for selecting administrators, offering an alternative to requests for adminship (RfA). The first trial election will take place in October 2024, with candidate sign-up from October 8 to 14, a discussion phase from October 22 to 24, and SecurePoll voting from October 25 to 31. For questions or to help out, please visit the talk page at Wikipedia talk:Administrator elections.
• Following a discussion, the speedy deletion reason "File pages without a corresponding file" has been moved from criterion G8 to F2. This does not change what can be speedily deleted.
• A request for comment is open to discuss whether there is a consensus to have an administrator recall process.

Arbitration

• The arbitration case Historical elections has been closed.
• An arbitration case regarding Backlash to diversity and inclusion has been opened.
• Editors are invited to nominate themselves to serve on the 2024 Arbitration Committee Electoral Commission until 23:59 October 8, 2024 (UTC).

Miscellaneous

• If you are interested in stopping spammers, please put MediaWiki talk:Spam-whitelist and MediaWiki talk:Spam-blacklist on your watchlist, and help out when you can.

---

• Discuss this newsletter
• Subscribe
• Archive

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:00, 2 October 2024 (UTC)

Greetings to you

Hi Nick, I don't remember the last time that we talked on Wikipedia, it's been so long since I caught up with you. I hope you are doing well online and offline. I'm 23 years old now and have a full-time job and edit Wikipedia whenever I can and see if anything can be improved. Everything is going well in my life. As a Wikipedia user, I've watched Wikipedia grow into the encyclopedia it is today. Like everything, it obviously has some setbacks, but overall, it's gotten better overtime, especially with its high standards for reliability. I started with my journey on Wikipedia fighting vandalism. I've come to a point where most of the vandalism that ends up on Wikipedia gets reverted quickly that I don't have to revert it since it will eventually get reverted. It will always be a problem, but Wikipedia has things in place to prevent these from happening. In my experience, almost all vandalism I found nowadays is reverted within an hour with human and automated tools. In the past, with the public able to edit Wikipedia, it was a lot easier to say whatever you wanted in an article and create hoaxes. Nowadays, the hoaxes that are deleted are from the early days of Wikipedia. During my time on Wikipedia, I have learned a lot about how Wikipedia got its start and the importance of working with others to make sure discussions are held in a peaceful manner. I feel like I have reached a point where if I hold advanced permissions, the workload seems to be endless, but I have learned that taking a step back from Wikipedia and doing things that are enjoyable for me is more important. I went through a brutal RFA earlier this year. At first, I thought I had the confidence that I could succeed, but unfortunately, the time wasn't right for me. I don't know about you, but I have heard that becoming an administrator is not as fun as it sounds, so I felt like I should enjoy the things that are good in life like friends, family, enjoying the outdoors, as well as learning something new on Wikipedia. I now know that going through an RFA can be stressful, and I just had to back down because I knew how it was going to end up. I love reading Wikipedia because there is so much to learn on there. Since Wikipedia is just about facts, I enjoy using Reddit to get opinions on certain topics I like reading about. I don't know if you know much about the website, but it is definitely worth checking out. You've been around on Wikipedia longer than I have, so I'd be curious to know what you think about Wikipedia improvement or decline over time. Has it gotten better or worse? What has your life been up to lately? Hope to talk to you soon. Interstellarity (talk) 00:15, 7 October 2024 (UTC)

Hello, I'm surprised you overlooked my message. I am hoping to reach out to me to see how you are doing and catch up with you on life. Interstellarity (talk) 00:41, 24 November 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-41

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

Weekly highlight

• Communities can now request installation of Automoderator on their wiki. Automoderator is an automated anti-vandalism tool that reverts bad edits based on scores from the new "Revert Risk" machine learning model. You can read details about the necessary steps for installation and configuration. [142]

Updates for editors

• Translators in wikis where the mobile experience of Content Translation is available, can now customize their articles suggestion list from 41 filtering options when using the tool. This topic-based article suggestion feature makes it easy for translators to self-discover relevant articles based on their area of interest and translate them. You can try it with your mobile device. [143]
• View all 12 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week.

Updates for technical contributors

• It is now possible for <syntaxhighlight> code blocks to offer readers a "Copy" button if the copy=1 attribute is set on the tag. Thanks to SD0001 for these improvements. [144]
• Customized copyright footer messages on all wikis will be updated. The new versions will use wikitext markup instead of requiring editing raw HTML. [145]
• Later this month, temporary accounts will be rolled out on several pilot wikis. The final list of the wikis will be published in the second half of the month. If you maintain any tools, bots, or gadgets on these 11 wikis, and your software is using data about IP addresses or is available for logged-out users, please check if it needs to be updated to work with temporary accounts. Guidance on how to update the code is available.
• Rate limiting has been enabled for the code review tools Gerrit and GitLab to address ongoing issues caused by malicious traffic and scraping. Clients that open too many concurrent connections will be restricted for a few minutes. This rate limiting is managed through nftables firewall rules. For more details, see Wikitech's pages on Firewall, GitLab limits and Gerrit operations.
• Five new wikis have been created:
  • a Wikipedia in Komering (w:kge:) [146]
  • a Wikipedia in Mooré (m:mos:) [147]
  • a Wiktionary in Madurese (wikt:mad:) [148]
  • a Wikiquote in Gorontalo (q:gor:) [149]
  • a Wikinews in Shan (n:shn:) [150]

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

MediaWiki message delivery 23:39, 7 October 2024 (UTC)

Question from AstuteFlicker (04:38, 13 October 2024)

Hello, I Just created a Draft:Shehzad Poonawalla, and will be working more on it but the short summary is coming below the info box which I want to be at the top. --AstuteFlicker (talk) 04:38, 13 October 2024 (UTC)

@AstuteFlicker I’m not able to reproduce your issue. Having enabled the Short Description Helper in Preferences>Gadgets, I see it in the right place in desktop view. To be honest I’m sure where the default position should be for Mobile view users. In fact, in Mobile view, I’m not seeing one at all. Further information at WP:Short description. If you’re still stuck, please seek further help HERE. Regards, Nick Moyes (talk) 07:58, 13 October 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-42

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

Updates for editors

• The Structured Discussion extension (also known as Flow) is starting to be removed. This extension is unmaintained and causes issues. It will be replaced by DiscussionTools, which is used on any regular talk page. A first set of wikis are being contacted. These wikis are invited to stop using Flow, and to move all Flow boards to sub-pages, as archives. At these wikis, a script will move all Flow pages that aren't a sub-page to a sub-page automatically, starting on 22 October 2024. On 28 October 2024, all Flow boards at these wikis will be set in read-only mode. [151][152]
• WMF's Search Platform team is working on making it easier for readers to perform text searches in their language. A change last week on over 30 languages makes it easier to find words with accents and other diacritics. This applies to both full-text search and to types of advanced search such as the hastemplate and incategory keywords. More technical details (including a few other minor search upgrades) are available. [153]
• View all 20 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, EditCheck was installed at Russian Wikipedia, and fixes were made for some missing user interface styles.

Updates for technical contributors

• Editors who use the Toolforge tool Earwig's Copyright Violation Detector will now be required to log in with their Wikimedia account before running checks using the "search engine" option. This change is needed to help prevent external bots from misusing the system. Thanks to Chlod for these improvements. [154]
• Phabricator users can create tickets and add comments on existing tickets via Email again. Sending email to Phabricator has been fixed. [155]
• Some HTML elements in the interface are now wrapped with a <bdi> element, to make our HTML output more aligned with Web standards. More changes like this will be coming in future weeks. This change might break some tools that rely on the previous HTML structure of the interface. Note that relying on the HTML structure of the interface is not recommended and might break at any time. [156]

In depth

• The latest monthly MediaWiki Product Insights newsletter is available. This edition includes: updates on Wikimedia's authentication system, research to simplify feature development in the MediaWiki platform, updates on Parser Unification and MathML rollout, and more.
• The latest quarterly Technical Community Newsletter is now available. This edition include: research about improving topic suggestions related to countries, improvements to PHPUnit tests, and more.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 21:18, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

Question from Witchcraft Four One on Royal Holloway, University of London (20:10, 15 October 2024)

Hi

Just trying to add an addition to notable members of the college. The additional member would be Bobby Seagull. He has his own wiki profile page. Easy enough to find as there aren’t many blokes with said name in question.

Regards

Iain (W41) --Witchcraft Four One (talk) 20:10, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

@Witchcraft Four One  Done Nick Moyes (talk) 23:26, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

Question from Light090 (23:19, 16 October 2024)

how do you make your own Wikipedia page --Light090 (talk) 23:19, 16 October 2024 (UTC)

Hi there, Light090. Welcome to Wikipedia. What topic would you want to add to this encyclopaedia, may I ask? If by "your own Wikipedia page" you mean how to create a Wikipedia article all about yourself, then the simple answer is that you cannot do that. Article have to be about subjects that are deemed Notable, and meet certain criteria.

That said, you do have a Userpage and a User Talk page. I have just left you a 'Welcome' message on your talk page. It contains a very useful link to learning about how to start editing. This Talk page is where we interact with one another over issues around editing articles (though it's not a general chit-chat page for off-topic matters).

You are permitted to use your Userpage to say a few words about yourself and your interests in joining Wikipedia. Don't give out any personal information there, and don't try to use it to create a profile that sums up your life or promotes your music business, or whatever it might be. The 'do's and dont's' of what's permitted there can be read at WP:USERPAGE.

Finally, if you are asking about how to create a new Wikipedia article about something, I should point out that article creation is best left until you've learned the basics of editing existing pages and making improvements there first. When you feel ready to write about a Notable topic, do then read THIS. Best wishes from the UK, Nick Moyes (talk) 08:43, 17 October 2024 (UTC)

Question from Adalberto Castro (17:07, 17 October 2024)

how do I write about me? I am a writer, who goes by the pen name AJ CASTRO, but so does someone else. I'm just trying to make it so that when the name is googled, it at least links to me and my photo also --Adalberto Castro (talk) 17:08, 17 October 2024 (UTC)

Hello, Adalberto Castro. Firstly, I'm afraid Wikipedia has no control whatsoever on how Google indexes any internet content, or how it serves up that information on its results page.

I can see that Wikipedia has an article about the deceased soldier, Andrew Castro, and that is probably where you find search results about you getting mixed with your own.

Now, we are allowed to add a WP:HATNOTE to an article page where Wikipedia has two or more pages that are liable to cause confusion in its own search results so as to distinguish between them. However, unless there is already a Wikipedia article about you and your life, we cannot simply add a note to an article to distinguish it from every other person in the world of the same name. We even have special pages to help users find the right article. (See Martin Moran or Ulysses for examples of these 'disambiguation pages'.

So, I can see fully appreciate why you might hope that you might merit a Wikipedia page of your own. If you do, and it were created by someone, then a hatnote to distinguish the two A J Castros would be perfectly acceptable. However, Wikipedia is an encyclopaedia of notable topics (meaning that the world at large must have already taken note of it and written about it in independently-published sources, whether that be a species of plant, a geographical feature, a musician, writer or mountaineer.

You may which to read our general notability requirements for any type of individual, as well as check out our notability criteria for Creative Professionals, using the shortcut link, WP:AUTHOR. So, if there are a number of independent sources that have written about you (ignoring blogs, social media, YouTube and self-published works) then you may well merit an article here, just as you would if you instead meet the notability criteria at WP:AUTHOR. But if neither can be met, I'm afraid you cannot have a Wikipedia article about you, sorry.

But, even if you can demonstrate that you do meet one of our 'notability criteria', as described above, we very strongly discourage anyone ever to try to write about themselves. They would have a serious Conflict of Interest, and be unlikely to ever be able to write about themselves, based on published sources alone, in a neutral and encyclopaedic manner. Just leave it to an unconnected editor to rise to the challenge of creating an article about you. If, having read the above, you earnestly believe you can provide a number of independent sources that have written about you, then you might wish to create an entry that lists them at WP:REQUESTED ARTICLES or, more specifically, here.

I hope this helps you understand the situation a little better. Regards from the UK, Nick Moyes (talk) 21:38, 17 October 2024 (UTC)

Question from HiDefRePlay (23:04, 17 October 2024)

Can i change my user name ? --HiDefRePlay (talk) 23:04, 17 October 2024 (UTC)

@HiDefRePlay You have only made three edits with this account, so it is really not worth going through the complicated process of requesting a name change. Please simply abandon this account (i.e. forget the password and never use it again) Just create a new account with your preferred name and only use that one from now on. Regards, Nick Moyes (talk) 23:30, 17 October 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-43

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

Weekly highlight

• The Mobile Apps team has released an update to the iOS app's navigation, and it is now available in the latest App store version. The team added a new Profile menu that allows for easy access to editor features like Notifications and Watchlist from the Article view, and brings the "Donate" button into a more accessible place for users who are reading an article. This is the first phase of a larger planned navigation refresh to help the iOS app transition from a primarily reader-focused app, to an app that fully supports reading and editing. The Wikimedia Foundation has added more editing features and support for on-wiki communication based on volunteer requests in recent years.

iOS Wikipedia App's profile menu and contents

Updates for editors

• Wikipedia readers can now download a browser extension to experiment with some early ideas on potential features that recommend articles for further reading, automatically summarize articles, and improve search functionality. For more details and to stay updated, check out the Web team's Content Discovery Experiments page and subscribe to their newsletter.
• Later this month, logged-out editors of these 12 wikis will start to have temporary accounts created. The list may slightly change - some wikis may be removed but none will be added. Temporary account is a new type of user account. It enhances the logged-out editors' privacy and makes it easier for community members to communicate with them. If you maintain any tools, bots, or gadgets on these 12 wikis, and your software is using data about IP addresses or is available for logged-out users, please check if it needs to be updated to work with temporary accounts. Guidance on how to update the code is available. Read more about the deployment plan across all wikis.
• View all 33 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, the South Ndebele, Pannonian Rusyn, Obolo, Iban and Tai Nüa Wikipedia languages were created last week. [157][158][159][160][161]
• It is now possible to create functions on Wikifunctions using Wikidata lexemes, through the new Wikidata lexeme type launched last week. When you go to one of these functions, the user interface provides a lexeme selector that helps you pick a lexeme from Wikidata that matches the word you type. After hitting run, your selected lexeme is retrieved from Wikidata, transformed into a Wikidata lexeme type, and passed into the selected function. Read more about this in the latest Wikifunctions newsletter.

Updates for technical contributors

• Users of the Wikimedia sites can now format dates more easily in different languages with the new {{#timef:…}} parser function. For example, {{#timef:now|date|en}} will show as "25 November 2024". Previously, {{#time:…}} could be used to format dates, but this required knowledge of the order of the time and date components and their intervening punctuation. #timef (or #timefl for local time) provides access to the standard date formats that MediaWiki uses in its user interface. This may help to simplify some templates on multi-lingual wikis like Commons and Meta. [162][163]
• Commons and Meta users can now efficiently retrieve the user's language using {{USERLANGUAGE}} instead of using {{int:lang}}. [164]
• The Product and Tech Advisory Council (PTAC) now has its pilot members with representation across Africa, Asia, Europe, North America and South America. They will work to address the Movement Strategy's Technology Council initiative of having a co-defined and more resilient technological platform. [165]

In depth

• The latest quarterly Growth newsletter is available. It includes: an upcoming Newcomer Homepage Community Updates module, new Community Configuration options, and details on new projects.
• The Wikimedia Foundation is now an official partner of the CVE program, which is an international effort to catalog publicly disclosed cybersecurity vulnerabilities. This partnership will allow the Security Team to instantly publish common vulnerabilities and exposures (CVE) records that are affecting MediaWiki core, extensions, and skins, along with any other code the Foundation is a steward of.
• The Community Wishlist is now testing machine translations for Wishlist content. Volunteers can now read machine-translated versions of wishes and dive into discussions even before translators arrive to translate content.

Meetings and events

• 24 October - Wiki Education Speaker Series Webinar - Open Source Tech: Building the Wiki Education Dashboard, featuring Wikimedia interns and a Web developer in the panel.
• 20–22 December 2024 - Indic Wikimedia Hackathon Bhubaneswar 2024 in Odisha, India. A hackathon for community members, including developers, designers and content editors, to build technical solutions that improve contributors' experiences.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 20:49, 21 October 2024 (UTC)

Growth News, October 2024

Current work

Newcomer Homepage Community Updates module

We will add a new module to the Newcomer Homepage that will allow communities to highlight specific events, projects, campaigns, and initiatives. We have released a simple version on beta wikis and we will soon start an A/B test on our pilot wikis. This module will only display on the Newcomer Homepage if communities decide to utilize it, so learn how to configure the Community Updates module, or share your thoughts on the project's talk page.

One design concept aimed to increase constructive activation

Constructive activation experimentation

After showcasing early design ideas at Wikimania, we conducted user testing of design prototypes. We now aim to engage communities in further discussions and plan to run a targeted experiment, presenting a structured task within the reading view to logged-in new account holders with zero edits.

Community Configuration

This Community Configuration extension was developed to help communities customize wiki features to meet their unique needs. The Growth team is now helping other Wikimedia Foundation teams make their products configurable:

• The Moderation Tools team now provides Community Configuration for Automoderator. (T365046)
• Certain Babel extension settings will be configurable soon. (T328171)

Future work

As part of the Growth team annual plan, we will continue to investigate ways to increase constructive activation on mobile, while also working with Data Products to move forward A/B testing functionality via the Metrics Platform.

Community events

• Growth team members presented Community Configuration: Shaping On-Wiki Functionality Together at Wikimania (slides). The session recording is available to watch on YouTube. This session provided an update on the Community Configuration project and introduced details about the upcoming features that communities will soon be able to configure. Representatives from the Moderator Tools, Editing, Web, and Campaigns teams shared their plans for utilizing Community Configuration in the future. Following these presentations, the WMF Growth team's Benoît Evellin and Martin Urbanec answered audience questions.
• Habib Mhenni gave a presentation of how mentorship works at WikiIndaba 2024. The recording is available.

Stay informed

Growth team weekly updates are available on wiki (in English) if you want to know more about our day-to-day work. If you want to receive more general updates about technical activity happening across the Wikimedia movement (including Growth work), we encourage you to subscribe to Tech News.

Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

Trizek_(WMF), 15:43, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

Earning money

In which way i can earn money — Preceding unsigned comment added by TYLLER GOLD (talk • contribs) 09:04, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

@TYLLER GOLD Look for a real job! There's absolutely no money to be made through Wikipedia. We are all volunteers here; we're simply keen to see a world-class encyclopaedia made freely available to all. Sorry. Nick Moyes (talk) 09:09, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

Invitation to participate in a research

Hello,

The Wikimedia Foundation is conducting a survey of Wikipedians to better understand what draws administrators to contribute to Wikipedia, and what affects administrator retention. We will use this research to improve experiences for Wikipedians, and address common problems and needs. We have identified you as a good candidate for this research, and would greatly appreciate your participation in this anonymous survey.

You do not have to be an Administrator to participate.

The survey should take around 10-15 minutes to complete. You may read more about the study on its Meta page and view its privacy statement .

Please find our contact on the project Meta page if you have any questions or concerns.

Kind Regards,

WMF Research Team

BGerdemann (WMF) (talk) 19:23, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

Where should I begin?

I created this account yesterday because I was interested in editing, but I'm not sure where to begin. Should I start with adding minor details to articles about topics I'm interested in, or should I start with copyediting articles that have notices on them? Kirguy (talk) 21:14, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

@Kirguy Hi there. I love your question - it shows common sense and maturity. Most people rush in to wanting to create a new article, or make major changes, but then mess up. Rather like learning to drive a car, it is best to start off slowly and gently so that you don't crash.

I would suggest that one approach is to look at articles/topics you are interested in, reading them, then identifying the faults or gaps. (If you're worried about others identifying who you are, or where you live, avoid editing articles about your own school or your immediate community.) Most importantly, rather than adding things that you happen to know in your own mind, please look to find good sources that talk about these facts in properly published sources. You should add a 'citation' to allow other users of Wikipedia to Verify what you have added.

However, if you enjoy the English language, you may well get huge satisfaction from simple copyediting and improving the readability of an article. Not everyone can do this, and many articles are quite poorly written, despite being well sourced.

I will leave you a 'welcome' message on your talk page with links for you to work through, and to learn how to edit and add good content.

We do also have two other things that might interest you. One is our ideas centre of things we've identified that need improving. See Wikipedia:Task Center.

Then we have 'WikiProjects' which focus on specific topic areas and offer information about all the articles falling under that description. I would be happy to advise you further on this, should you wish. If you want to let me know how you get on, drop me a reply and I'd be happy to comment on your first few sets of edits. But don't panic - we all make honest mistakes in life, so if someone says "oy, that's not right", don't panic if they revert any edit you've made. I'm here to help, and can also be found at The Teahouse alongside other Hosts, 24 hours a day/7 days a week. It's our help desk for new editors, and we welcome your interest. For some like me, contributing to Wikipedia is a hugely rewarding hobby. If you can find the areas to contribute to that make you feel valued, you'll be a great Wikipedian in no time! Kind regards from the UK, Nick Moyes (talk) 22:54, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

Question from Studywithnazish (11:56, 27 October 2024)

My mentor is my father --Studywithnazish (talk) 11:56, 27 October 2024 (UTC)

@Studywithnazish If you need assistance with learning how to edit Wikipedia, just ask. But otherwise please refrain from making pointless comments like this one. Regards, Nick Moyes (talk) 17:16, 27 October 2024 (UTC)

Question from Asifimransiddiqui (16:22, 28 October 2024)

how do i add a image --Asifimransiddiqui (talk) 16:22, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

@Asifimransiddiqui I'm not sure why you are asking this question as you have already successfully uploaded and added an image of yourself at Draft:Asif Imran Siddiqui. What further help do you need on adding images? See HELP:PICTURES for further links and guidance.

Please note that, in its present state, your draft is not acceptable to Wikipedia. Please read THIS and WP:NACADEMIC to appreciate our notability standards for people and academics, respectively.

And please read WP:AUTOBIOGRAPHY to understand why we very strongly discourage anyone trying to write an encyclopaedia article about themselves. (Everything stated here must be based upon independent, reliably published sources - not just what the person happens to know or want to say about themselves!). Kind regards, Nick Moyes (talk) 17:41, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-44

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

Updates for editors

• Later in November, the Charts extension will be deployed to the test wikis in order to help identify and fix any issue. A security review is underway to then enable deployment to pilot wikis for broader testing. You can read the October project update and see the latest documentation and examples on Beta Wikipedia.
• View all 32 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, Pediapress.com, an external service that creates books from Wikipedia, can now use Wikimedia Maps to include existing pre-rendered infobox map images in their printed books on Wikipedia. [166]

Updates for technical contributors

• Wikis can use the Guided Tour extension to help newcomers understand how to edit. The Guided Tours extension now works with dark mode. Guided Tour maintainers can check their tours to see that nothing looks odd. They can also set emitTransitionOnStep to true to fix an old bug. They can use the new flag allowAutomaticBack to avoid back-buttons they don't want. [167]
• Administrators in the Wikimedia projects who use the Nuke Extension will notice that mass deletions done with this tool have the "Nuke" tag. This change will make reviewing and analyzing deletions performed with the tool easier. [168]

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

MediaWiki message delivery 20:53, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

Draft talk:John James (businessman and philanthropist)

Hi Nick

You very kindly gave me advice via the Teahouse on 21 October 2024, and as far as I can tell I've done what you suggested. I then re-submitted the article and it was rejected almost immediately by Theroadislong who declared there was no evidence of notability and that there was not significant coverage (not just passing mentions) of the subject. Given that all the newspaper citations I have used are articles actually about the subject, I fail to see how that qualifies as 'passing mentions'.

I removed a link to Who's Who as he said that conferred zero notablity. I don't know what else to do.

Any help would be gratefully appreciated. Jjarchivist (talk) 11:10, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

@Jjarchivist I will take another look. It may take me a few days as I've been away, and need to catch up on things. Cheers, Nick Moyes (talk) 14:21, 31 October 2024 (UTC)

Thanks. Much appreciated 92.23.74.61 (talk) 14:24, 31 October 2024 (UTC)

Just wondered if you'd had a chance to look at this for me.... appreciate you have a life to lead as well! Jjarchivist (talk) 09:52, 12 November 2024 (UTC)

Hi Nick

Don't want to hassle you, but have you had a chance to take another look at my article? Many thanks Jjarchivist (talk) 11:32, 19 November 2024 (UTC)

Question from TechBossBabe (16:04, 30 October 2024)

Hello Nick, I'm a new Editor and a bit of a perfectionnist. Could you please let me know if my recent edit on the Oracle BI page was acceptable? --TechBossBabe (talk) 16:04, 30 October 2024 (UTC)

@TechBossBabe I will take another look. It may take me a few days as I've been away, and need to catch up on things. Cheers, Nick Moyes (talk) 14:22, 31 October 2024 (UTC)

@TechBossBabe Firstly, my apologies for the delay in replying to you. Your edit was perfectly acceptable, but could have been a little better. You can see what we call 'the diff' HERE. I like perfectionists like you, so here are my perfectionist observations for you:

• Having acted on a 'template' to expand the acronym, the right thing to do would have been to remove it, as it is no longer relevant.
• Because DHTML is written in capitals, I think the expanded acronym should also have been written in Title Case (=capital first letter for each word)
• Because acronyms like HTML and DHTML are in more common usage than their expanded forms, I would probably have put the acronym first, followed by the expanded term in brackets.

Having said all this, there was nothing - absolutely nothing - wrong with your edit. Subsequent to it, another editor did fix things a bit further with THIS EDIT], which I think gives us the final, best version we all wanted.

In the same sprit of perfectionism, may I comment on your later edit to Hyram Yarbro, which I think was a Newcomer Task? I see you added a citation to a previously unsupported statement. Again, that was helpful, but could have been a bit better because it only added a WP:BAREURL. See YOUR DIFF. What we really like to see is a citation which clearly shows the source's title, author, publisher and date. You can learn more about adding fuller and better citations via the Visual Editor tool HERE, In essence, you find the 'Cite' button and type in the source url and he rest is done for us. I did it for you, and you can see the edit HERE I hope this all makes some sense! Regards, Nick Moyes (talk) 23:49, 6 November 2024 (UTC)

Nick, this was extremely helpful. THANK YOU!!! TechBossBabe (talk) 15:14, 11 November 2024 (UTC)

Question from Sharon.Vanderheiden (13:00, 1 November 2024)

Hi Nick.

I am looking to provide information about my company on Wikipedia. Is that something you can help me with? --Sharon.Vanderheiden (talk) 13:01, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

@Sharon.Vanderheiden (talk page watcher) please do not provide information about your company without first complying with WP:PAID in all respects. 🇺🇦 Fiddle^Timtrent Faddle^Talk to me 🇺🇦 13:11, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

@Sharon.Vanderheiden Wikipedia only has encyclopaedia articles about 'notable topics' - be advised that we are not here to help with WP:PROMOTION of people's businesses. That said, you can determine if your business meets our Notability Criteria for Companies and Businesses by reading THIS. If it doesn't meet these criteria, I'm afraid you would be wasting your time trying. Many do, and all fail if the world at large has not taken notice of that company or business, and independent sources have not written in detail and in depth about it. By 'independent sources', we exclude business and trade magazines, their own website, social media and press releases. We do accept mainstream news media, books, journals, etc. Mere passing mentions are not sufficient.

Three good articles written by independent journalists, and not based on press releases or other PR materials/newswire content might get a business over the line. Feel free to let me know its name (but, if it's Action Appliance, it will not meet WP:NCORP as far as I can ascertain.) Regards from the UK, Nick Moyes (talk) 17:41, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

Question from Misinfofighter123 (09:00, 3 November 2024)

Is Al-mayadeen considered a reliable source? --Misinfofighter123 (talk) 09:00, 3 November 2024 (UTC)

@Misinfofighter123 Thanks for your question. The issue of unreliability of this source was discussed last year, and it is NOT deemed to be reliable, so should not be used as a source. See WP:ALMAYADEEN for more info. Regards, Nick Moyes (talk) 21:47, 3 November 2024 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – November 2024

News and updates for administrators from the past month (October 2024).

Administrator changes

• Crisco 1492

• Babajobu
• Daniel
• Elf
• Jayron32
• Thue
• Wugapodes

CheckUser changes

Maxim

Oversighter changes

Maxim

Guideline and policy news

• Following a discussion, the discussion-only period proposal that went for a trial to refine the requests for adminship (RfA) process has been discontinued.
• Following a request for comment, Administrator recall is adopted as a policy.

Technical news

• Mass deletions done with the Nuke tool now have the 'Nuke' tag. This change will make reviewing and analyzing deletions performed with the tool easier. T366068

Arbitration

• RoySmith, Barkeep49 and Cyberpower678 have been appointed to the Electoral Commission for the 2024 Arbitration Committee Elections. ThadeusOfNazereth and Dr vulpes are reserve commissioners.
• Eligible editors are invited to self-nominate from 3 November 2024 until 12 November 2024 to stand in the 2024 Arbitration Committee elections.
• The Arbitration Committee is seeking volunteers for roles such as clerks, access to the COI queue, checkuser, and oversight.

Miscellaneous

• An unreferenced articles backlog drive is happening in November 2024 to reduce the backlog of articles tagged with {{Unreferenced}}. You can help reduce the backlog by adding citations to these articles. Sign up to participate!

---

• Discuss this newsletter
• Subscribe
• Archive

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 10:21, 3 November 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-45

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

Updates for editors

• Stewards can now make global account blocks cause global autoblocks. This will assist stewards in preventing abuse from users who have been globally blocked. This includes preventing globally blocked temporary accounts from exiting their session or switching browsers to make subsequent edits for 24 hours. Previously, temporary accounts could exit their current session or switch browsers to continue editing. This is an anti-abuse tool improvement for the Temporary Accounts project. You can read more about the progress on key features for temporary accounts. [169]
• Wikis that have the CampaignEvents extension enabled can now use the Collaboration List feature. This list provides a new, easy way for contributors to learn about WikiProjects on their wikis. Thanks to the Campaign team for this work that is part of the 2024/25 annual plan. If you are interested in bringing the CampaignEvents extension to your wiki, you can follow these steps or you can reach out to User:Udehb-WMF for help.
• The text color for red links will be slightly changed later this week to improve their contrast in light mode. [170]
• View all 32 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, on multilingual wikis, users can now hide translations from the WhatLinksHere special page.

Updates for technical contributors

• XML data dumps have been temporarily paused whilst a bug is investigated. [171]

In depth

• Temporary Accounts have been deployed to six wikis; thanks to the Trust and Safety Product team for this work, you can read about the deployment plans. Beginning next week, Temporary Accounts will also be enabled on seven other projects. If you are active on these wikis and need help migrating your tools, please reach out to User:Udehb-WMF for assistance.
• The latest quarterly Language and Internationalization newsletter is available. It includes: New languages supported in translatewiki or in MediaWiki; New keyboard input methods for some languages; details about recent and upcoming meetings, and more.

Meetings and events

• MediaWiki Users and Developers Conference Fall 2024 is happening in Vienna, Austria and online from 4 to 6 November 2024. The conference will feature discussions around the usage of MediaWiki software by and within companies in different industries and will inspire and onboard new users.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 20:47, 4 November 2024 (UTC)

Question from ملیارفخری سید on 83 (number) (02:46, 5 November 2024)

My Facebook account no working --ملیارفخری سید (talk) 02:46, 5 November 2024 (UTC)

@ملیارفخری سید Oh dear. Sorry to hear that. But this is Wikipedia and has NOTHING to do with Facebook, so we cannot help you here! Nick Moyes (talk) 10:43, 5 November 2024 (UTC)

Unresolved ANI

Hello! I started an ANI thread about an editor I had concerns about, and it went unresolved and mostly uncommented— I think the thread just before it took up a lot of attention. My thread has since been archived. Should I let the issue go, ping the one person who replied, wait and see if the issue persists before starting a new thread, or something else? Thanks! Placeholderer (talk) 15:33, 7 November 2024 (UTC)

Hi there, Placeholderer. Sorry for the long wait for a reply; I've been extremely busy IRL.

I think WP:SPA accounts tend to have a vested interest in editing in specific, narrow areas. I sense this editor is aiming for accuracy and clarity in how the area of 'Eritrea' is used. This edit, for example, seems quite valid. And this one at first looked to be updating data without updating the citation. Yet, the source link itself appears to have been updated, and is correct.

Assuming you're still concerned about over-zealous editing, my advice would be to continue monitoring their edits, and to attempt to communicate and question whey they made certain edits, and to try to come across as supportive as you can. They do seem willing to engage at times, so it would be their failure to address concerns and to continue editing in a way that requires continual reversion that would lead you to return to ANI. If you do so, feel free to link to your earlier post there. Be there to help them improve as an editor, and explain how they can do that more effectively. Only when that fails should you go back to ANI or some other COI noticeboard. Hoping this helps, Nick Moyes (talk) 21:17, 13 November 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-46

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

Updates for editors

• On wikis with the Translate extension enabled, users will notice that the FuzzyBot will now automatically create translated versions of categories used on translated pages. [172]
• View all 29 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, the submitted task to use the SecurePoll extension for English Wikipedia's special administrator election was resolved on time. [173]

Updates for technical contributors

• In 1.44.0-wmf-2, the logic of Wikibase function getAllStatements changed to behave like getBestStatements. Invoking the function now returns a copy of values which are immutable. [174]
• Wikimedia REST API users, such as bot operators and tool maintainers, may be affected by ongoing upgrades. The API will be rerouting some page content endpoints from RESTbase to the newer MediaWiki REST API endpoints. The impacted endpoints include getting page/revision metadata and rendered HTML content. These changes will be available on testwiki later this week, with other projects to follow. This change should not affect existing functionality, but active users of the impacted endpoints should verify behavior on testwiki, and raise any concerns on the related Phabricator ticket.

In depth

• Admins and users of the Wikimedia projects where Automoderator is enabled can now monitor and evaluate important metrics related to Automoderator's actions. This Superset dashboard calculates and aggregates metrics about Automoderator's behaviour on the projects in which it is deployed. Thanks to the Moderator Tools team for this Dashboard; you can visit the documentation page for more information about this work. [175]

Meetings and events

• 21 November 2024 (8:00 UTC & 16:00 UTC) - Community call with Wikimedia Commons volunteers and stakeholders to help prioritize support efforts for 2025-2026 Fiscal Year. The theme of this call is how content should be organised on Wikimedia Commons.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 00:04, 12 November 2024 (UTC)

Reminder to participate in Wikipedia research

Hello,

I recently invited you to take a survey about administration on Wikipedia. If you haven’t yet had a chance, there is still time to participate– we’d truly appreciate your feedback. The survey is anonymous and should take about 10-15 minutes to complete. You may read more about the study on its Meta page and view its privacy statement.

Take the survey here.

Kind Regards,

WMF Research Team

BGerdemann (WMF) (talk) 00:18, 13 November 2024 (UTC)

Question from Learn More177777 (20:44, 17 November 2024)

how do I edit --Learn More177777 (talk) 20:44, 17 November 2024 (UTC)

@Learn More177777 Welcome to Wikipedia! I've left you a 'welcome message' on your own talk page with a useful link to learn more about editing. We have two different editing tools for you to choose to use, though you can easily switch between them. For a set of links to different types of help and guidance, please see THIS PAGE.

One key thing to appreciate is that nothing should be added to Wikipedia from your own personal knowledge or understanding - everything, yes, everything, should be sourced from reliable, independent sources. This excludes blogs, personal websites and most social media. Regards, Nick Moyes (talk) 21:03, 17 November 2024 (UTC)

Looking for input

Hello again! This is a low-urgency enquiry— I don't mean to bother you when you're busy, and am in no rush to hear back. However, I'd like to know if you have any particular guidance for dealing with situations like I discuss here. My problem is essentially that I feel like I've been treated unfairly. I don't mean to canvas— I'm just looking for your input since, to be frank, I trust what you have to say. Also it's possible that I'll hear more from that thread in the next few days, but I personally don't expect to. Thanks again! Placeholderer (talk) 21:26, 18 November 2024 (UTC)

Update: I think things are probably fine. My plan in summary is to try in good faith to follow the rules, and to not necessarily follow instructions that I think clearly go against the rules. If I end up getting in trouble regardless I'll proceed from there! Placeholderer (talk) 02:46, 25 November 2024 (UTC)

@Placeholderer Sorry I didn’t reply. I’m currently away on holiday. The advice from Cullen was very valid, but you were right to politely raise the question and to follow the advice given. There’s nothing wrong in seeking clarification, though it’s never wise to fight against rules relating to editing contentious topics, as they’re designed to minimise back and forward fighting over the right kind of edits different users want to make. Nick Moyes (talk) 19:39, 25 November 2024 (UTC)

ArbCom 2024 Elections voter message

Hello! Voting in the 2024 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23:59 (UTC) on Monday, 2 December 2024. All eligible users are allowed to vote. Users with alternate accounts may only vote once.

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

If you wish to participate in the 2024 election, please review the candidates and submit your choices on the voting page. If you no longer wish to receive these messages, you may add {{NoACEMM}} to your user talk page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:20, 19 November 2024 (UTC)

Question from Dayiem Gatwich Gai Dayiem (01:19, 19 November 2024)

How can I get to publish my biography. --Dayiem Gatwich Gai Dayiem (talk) 01:19, 19 November 2024 (UTC)

@Dayiem Gatwich Gai Dayiem Hello, and welcome to Wikipedia.

Unless you clearly meet our Wikipedia’s Notability Criteria for People, you cannot publish anything about yourself here. If you’d care to supply me with three independent, properly published, detailed sources which talk about you and your life in some depth, I’d be happy to advise whether or not a page here is justified.

Of course, if you’ve been awarded recognised national/international awards, had a chart-topping hit record or been in an Olympic sports team, you could be found notable under some of our more specialised notability criteria. We need to see books, newspaper articles or mainstream media reporting about you. Personal blogs, social media posts and self-published content are not relevant to demonstrating notability. In essence, Wikipedia is about Notable things, and is not here for WP:PROMOTION.

Should you meet our notability criteria, we very strongly discourage people from trying to write about thelmjhselves. Leave it to others without a conflict of interest, please. See WP:AUTOBIOGRAPHY Nick Moyes (talk) 13:52, 19 November 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-47

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

Updates for editors

• Users of Wikimedia sites will now be warned when they create a redirect to a page that doesn't exist. This will reduce the number of broken redirects to red links in our projects. [176]
• View all 42 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, Pywikibot, which automates work on MediaWiki sites, was upgraded to 9.5.0 on Toolforge. [177]

Updates for technical contributors

• On wikis that use the FlaggedRevs extension, pages created or moved by users with the appropriate permissions are marked as flagged automatically. This feature has not been working recently, and changes fixing it should be deployed this week. Thanks to Daniel and Wargo for working on this. [178][179]

In depth

• There is a new Diff post about Temporary Accounts, available in more than 15 languages. Read it to learn about what Temporary Accounts are, their impact on different groups of users, and the plan to introduce the change on all wikis.

Meetings and events

• Technical volunteers can now register for the 2025 Wikimedia Hackathon, which will take place in Istanbul, Turkey. Application for travel and accommodation scholarships is open from November 12 to December 10 2024. The registration for the event will close in mid-April 2025. The Wikimedia Hackathon is an annual gathering that unites the global technical community to collaborate on existing projects and explore new ideas.
• Join the Wikimedia Commons community calls this week to help prioritize support for Commons which will be planned for 2025–2026. The theme will be how content should be organised on Wikimedia Commons. This is an opportunity for volunteers who work on different things to come together and talk about what matters for the future of the project. The calls will take place November 21, 2024, 8:00 UTC and 16:00 UTC.
• A Language community meeting will take place November 29, 16:00 UTC to discuss updates and technical problem-solving.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 01:58, 19 November 2024 (UTC)

Request for assistance in merging articles

Hello! I hope you're doing well, before I begin my message I wanted to say thanks again for helping to bring back the WikiProject Assyria assessments, it's been extremely helpful and I've been able to add several articles to the WikiProject that'll help enhance the scope of editing in the future!

As you're an administrator, I could use your input if possible. On the article Chaldean Catholics, there's been a discussion to merge the article with Chaldean Catholic Church that has supposedly been in discussion since May, but most discussion has taken place for it this month. Most of the input suggests doing a merge, and since no editors have actively contributed to the discussion in a few days, I would love to know if you believe a final consensus has been reached and if you would be able to perform the merge if so. If you think there's someone else who's better suited to merge the articles, please let me know and I can request their assistance! Surayeproject3 (talk) 02:24, 24 November 2024 (UTC)

@Surayeproject3 Hi there. Nice to hear things are going ok. I’m away on holiday this week, so probably can’t do much to help.

Slightly worried that the discussion began on 2018 and was revived recently. So it’s possible that some visitors to the talk page might miss it entirely. I’d suggest you wait a bit longer, then make a new post, summarising that you feel there’s been a consensus reached, and giving people a final chance to comment. Even if it were a properly-formulatted RfC, it would not require an administrator to do the work of actually merging the articles- just summarising any consensus that was reached, and then leaving interested editors to make the changes. Hope this helps. Nick Moyes (talk) 19:33, 25 November 2024 (UTC)

Moderator Tools newsletter - Issue #2

Welcome to issue #2 of the Moderator Tools newsletter! It's been about a year since the first one (sorry for the delay), but we're excited to tell you what our team has been working on since then, and where you can guide our ongoing and upcoming work.

Automoderator

Automoderator's configuration page as of September 2024.

Automoderator is now feature-complete for its initial release! Automoderator is a highly configurable automated anti-vandalism tool which reverts edits that a machine learning model determines to be vandalism. It can be enabled, disabled, and configured at any time by administrators via a Community Configuration form. Automoderator is now in use on Indonesian, Turkish, Ukrainian, and Vietnamese Wikipedias, with other projects at various stages of discussion and setup. You can track data about Automoderator's activity so far via a Superset dashboard. To request Automoderator on your Wikimedia project, please refer to the deployment steps.

We are wrapping up our focused time developing Automoderator while we review data and feedback about its impact. We also still plan to provide support for small Wikimedia projects with few/no administrators (T372280), and integrate the multilingual revert risk model, which is an improved version of the model currently in use, with support for 47 language Wikipedias. We're looking for support testing the multilingual model to better understand its behaviour - please check out the testing process and review some edits!

Nuke extension ('Mass delete')

During the 2024-2025 Wikimedia Foundation fiscal year, our team wants to make improvements to the software that moderators (patrollers, administrators, stewards, etc.) are using today, rather than focusing on building new tools. Although it's valuable to build new features, it's also important that we continue maintaining the important tools that are already being used to maintain and improve Wikipedia's quality.

Nuke search interface.

One such project is to make usability and feature improvements to the Nuke extension (known as 'mass delete' on some projects). We have contracted a community developer, Chlod, who has worked on the extension in the past, to help us with this! With the Nuke project, we hope to make a number of improvements, including additional filters, increasing the deletion time range, automated deletion of related pages, and bug fixes. Read more about this project, and provide feedback, at Extension:Nuke/2024 Moderator Tools project.

Recent Changes

As part of our efforts to improve existing impactful moderator tooling, we are working on a project for a few months to make improvements to Special:RecentChanges and related workflows. We will be prioritizing work for this project on an ongoing basis, but have some larger projects that we will solicit input for via our project page. We have a brief survey at Moderator Tools/Survey:Recent Changes to gather input for this project - please answer the questions if you're interested.

Task prioritization

Finally, looking to the future, we plan to research and work on tasks identified as part of the Community Wishlist focus area titled 'task prioritization'. We'll be looking for opportunities to speak with editors about how they decide what needs their attention, and in particular will be investigating the Watchlist to see where we might be able to make usability and feature improvements. If you have thoughts about opportunities in this focus area please share them on the task prioritization talk page, or file a new wish!

Although we have active engineering projects ongoing, we're always happy to chat about your community's content moderation tool needs - feel free to get in contact at Talk:Moderator Tools to let us know where you think we should focus our efforts. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 12:11, 25 November 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-48

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

Updates for editors

• A new version of the standard wikitext editor-mode syntax highlighter will be available as a beta feature later this week. This brings many new features and bug fixes, including right-to-left support, template folding, autocompletion, and an improved search panel. You can learn more on the help page.
• The 2010 wikitext editor now supports common keyboard shortcuts such Ctrl+B for bold and Ctrl+I for italics. A full list of all six shortcuts is available. Thanks to SD0001 for this improvement. [180]
• Starting November 28, Flow/Structured Discussions pages will be automatically archived and set to read-only at the following wikis: bswiki, elwiki, euwiki, fawiki, fiwiki, frwikiquote, frwikisource, frwikiversity, frwikivoyage, idwiki, lvwiki, plwiki, ptwiki, urwiki, viwikisource, zhwikisource. This is done as part of StructuredDiscussions deprecation work. If you need any assistance to archive your page in advance, please contact Trizek (WMF).
• View all 25 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, a user creating a new AbuseFilter can now only set the filter to "protected" if it includes a protected variable.

Updates for technical contributors

• The CodeEditor, which can be used in JavaScript, CSS, JSON, and Lua pages, now offers live autocompletion. Thanks to SD0001 for this improvement. The feature can be temporarily disabled on a page by pressing Ctrl+, and un-selecting "Live Autocompletion".
• Tool-maintainers who use the Graphite system for tracking metrics, need to migrate to the newer Prometheus system. They can check this dashboard and the list in the Description of the task T350592 to see if their tools are listed, and they should claim metrics and dashboards connected to their tools. They can then disable or migrate all existing metrics by following the instructions in the task. The Graphite service will become read-only in April. [181]
• The New PreProcessor parser performance report has been fixed to give an accurate count for the number of Wikibase entities accessed. It had previously been resetting after 400 entities. [182]

Meetings and events

• A Language community meeting will take place November 29 at 16:00 UTC. There will be presentations on topics like developing language keyboards, the creation of the Mooré Wikipedia, the language support track at Wiki Indaba, and a report from the Wayuunaiki community on their experiences with the Incubator and as a new community over the last 3 years. This meeting will be in English and will also have Spanish interpretation.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 22:39, 25 November 2024 (UTC)