User talk:Samwalton9/Archive 28
Administrators' newsletter – August 2019[edit]
News and updates for administrators from the past month (July 2019).
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Guideline and policy news
- Following a request for comment, the page Wikipedia:Office actions has been changed from a policy page to an information page.
- A request for comment (permalink) is in progress regarding the administrator inactivity policy.
Arbitration
- Editors may now use the template {{Ds/aware}} to indicate that they are aware that discretionary sanctions are in force for a topic area, so it is unnecessary to alert them.
Miscellaneous
- Following a research project on masking IP addresses, the Foundation is starting a new project to improve the privacy of IP editors. The result of this project may significantly change administrative and counter-vandalism workflows. The project is in the very early stages of discussions and there is no concrete plan yet. Admins and the broader community are encouraged to leave feedback on the talk page.
- The new page reviewer right is bundled with the admin tool set. Many admins regularly help out at Special:NewPagesFeed, but they may not be aware of improvements, changes, and new tools for the Curation system. Stay up to date by subscribing here to the NPP newsletter that appears every two months, and/or putting the reviewers' talk page on your watchlist.
Since the introduction of temporary user rights, it is becoming more usual to accord the New Page Reviewer right on a probationary period of 3 to 6 months in the first instance. This avoids rights removal for inactivity at a later stage and enables a review of their work before according the right on a permanent basis.
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 6 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 7 August. It will be on all wikis from 8 August (calendar).
Problems
- A change in RelatedArticles extension accidentally enabled it for everyone, not just for mobile users. This has been fixed. [1][2]
Meetings
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You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 7 August at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
- Today everyone can see IP addresses if someone edits without an account. In the future this could be more hidden. This is to protect unregistered editors so fewer can see their IP address. This would only happen after we make sure the tools for vandal fighting can still be effective. You can read more and comment.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
13:24, 5 August 2019 (UTC)
New message from DBigXray[edit]
Message added 05:35, 12 August 2019 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.
DBigXrayᗙ 05:35, 12 August 2019 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- Editors using the mobile website on Wikipedia can opt-in to new advanced features via your settings page. This will give access to more interface links, special pages, and tools. Feedback on the discussion page is appreciated. [3]
- Due to the absence of volunteer maintenance of Cologne Blue skin, the link to activate it will be hidden. The skin will still work, but editors using it are encouraged to switch to another skin. [4]
Changes later this week
- Due to Wikimania, there is no deployment this week. [5]
Meetings
- You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 13 August at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
- The "Wikidata item" link will be moved from "Tools" to "In other projects" section on all Wikimedia projects, starting on August 21. Full announcement, Phabricator task.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
18:19, 12 August 2019 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Tech News
- There will be no Tech News issue next week. The next issue of Tech News will be sent out on 2 September 2019.
Problems
- Some abuse filters stopped working because of a code change. Only variables for the current action will work. Variables defined inside a branch may not work outside of that branch. You can read more to see how to fix the filters.
- Only six accounts can be created from one IP address per day. Between 12 August and August 15 this was two accounts per day. This was because of a security issue. It is now six accounts per day again. [6]
Changes later this week
- Only a limited number of accounts can be created from one IP address. An IP address can be whitelisted so that it can create as many accounts as needed. This is useful at events where many new persons learn to edit. IP addresses that are whitelisted for this reason will also not show CAPTCHAs when you create accounts. This will happen on Wednesday. [7]
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 20 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 21 August. It will be on all wikis from 22 August (calendar).
Meetings
- You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 21 August at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
- There is an RFC about creating a new global user group with the right to edit abuse filters. This will be used to fix broken filters and make sure all filters will still work when software changes happen. You can read more and comment.
Special:Contributions/newbieswill no longer be working. This is because of performance reasons. It showed edits by new accounts. You can see this in the recent changes feed instead. [8]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
15:21, 19 August 2019 (UTC)
The Signpost: 30 August 2019[edit]
- News and notes: Documenting Wikimania and our beginnings
- In focus: Ryan Merkley joins WMF as Chief of Staff
- Discussion report: Meta proposals on partial bans and IP users
- Traffic report: Once upon a time in Greenland with Boris and cornflakes
- News from the WMF: Meet Emna Mizouni, the newly minted 2019 Wikimedian of the Year
- Recent research: Special issue on gender gap and gender bias research
- On the bright side: What's making you happy this month?
Hii, As per my grand parents, this tradition exists in Hinduism for some regions of India but since there was no source i think deletion is valid. -- CptViraj (📧) 13:47, 1 September 2019 (UTC)
Page Review[edit]
Hey Sam, I created a page 6 weeks ago. It was rejected a number of times, but was since updated a bunch of times, most recently by a senior editor and is now good to go. It's just awaiting someone to review it. I'm now trying to find someone who can review it and found you in the active admin list. I also love video games and science. There really needs to be more video games about science. Possibly Castle Wolfenstein meets Immune Attack. Anyhow, if you're interested it's Draft:Lightricks. Thank you. MaskedSinger (talk) 04:19, 3 September 2019 (UTC)
- @MaskedSinger: The article looks good overall - I've approved it. Sam Walton (talk) 08:13, 3 September 2019 (UTC)
- @Samwalton9: Wow! Thank you. I'm truly indebted to you. Thank you so much!! MaskedSinger (talk) 15:22, 3 September 2019 (UTC)
- @Samwalton9: If you're interested, I just created another one. MaskedSinger (talk) 18:20, 11 September 2019 (UTC)
- @MaskedSinger: Looking good, albeit on the shorter side! I gave it a quick copyedit to fix a couple of things I saw. Sam Walton (talk) 18:56, 11 September 2019 (UTC)
- @Samwalton9: As always, thank you! MaskedSinger (talk) 04:04, 12 September 2019 (UTC)
- @Samwalton9: You inspired me to go again :) MaskedSinger (talk) 16:58, 12 September 2019 (UTC)
- @Samwalton9: Could you please take a look at Zeev Farbman? thank you. MaskedSinger (talk) 05:19, 20 September 2019 (UTC)
- @Samwalton9: Hope all is well with you. Not sure if you saw this. MaskedSinger (talk) 18:06, 2 October 2019 (UTC)
- @Samwalton9: Could you please take a look at Zeev Farbman? thank you. MaskedSinger (talk) 05:19, 20 September 2019 (UTC)
- @Samwalton9: You inspired me to go again :) MaskedSinger (talk) 16:58, 12 September 2019 (UTC)
- @Samwalton9: As always, thank you! MaskedSinger (talk) 04:04, 12 September 2019 (UTC)
- @MaskedSinger: Looking good, albeit on the shorter side! I gave it a quick copyedit to fix a couple of things I saw. Sam Walton (talk) 18:56, 11 September 2019 (UTC)
- @Samwalton9: If you're interested, I just created another one. MaskedSinger (talk) 18:20, 11 September 2019 (UTC)
- @Samwalton9: Wow! Thank you. I'm truly indebted to you. Thank you so much!! MaskedSinger (talk) 15:22, 3 September 2019 (UTC)
Sam, I am informed you can help with a problem beyond me! Source is article on John Brew AM RFD. I insert Category:People educated at North Sydney Boys High School but entry comes up under J and not B. This is only one out of 92 where this happens. I have no idea how to fix this. Can you tell me please?
A barnstar for you![edit]
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The Special Barnstar |
| When I couldn't find anyone else to help. You did so - gracefully and generously. You are a paradigm of being a great person and a wonderful editor. MaskedSinger (talk) 15:24, 3 September 2019 (UTC) |
- @MaskedSinger: Thank you, for the barnstar and your kind comments. The article you wrote looks great - thanks for your contributions to Wikipedia! Sam Walton (talk) 20:24, 3 September 2019 (UTC)
ITN recognition for Alec Holowka[edit]
On 3 September 2019, In the news was updated with an item that involved the article Alec Holowka, which you nominated. If you know of another recently created or updated article suitable for inclusion in ITN, please suggest it on the candidates page.
— Amakuru (talk) 17:39, 3 September 2019 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- You can use the new termbox interface if you edit Wikidata on a mobile device. This is to edit labels, descriptions and aliases easier on the mobile pages. [9]
- The new version of MediaWiki has been deployed during the last week.
- The previously announced change of positions of the "Wikidata item" link on all wikis has been rollbacked due to unexpected cache issues. [10]
- The limit for rollbacks has been increased from 10 to 100 rollbacks per minute. [11]
- The advanced version of the edit review pages (Recent Changes, Watchlist, and Related Changes) now include two new filters. These filters are for "All contents" and "All discussions". They will filter the view to just those namespaces. However the "All discussions" filter does not include pseudo talk pages, like discussions that are in the Project: or Wikipedia: namespaces. But it will include changes happening on Project talk: or the Wikipedia talk:. [12]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 3 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 4 September. It will be on all wikis from 5 September (calendar).
- When you log in, the software checks your password to see if it follows the Password policy. From this week, it will also complain if your password is one of the most common passwords in the world. If your password is not strong enough, please consider to change your password for a stronger password. [13]
Meetings
- You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 4 September at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
- You will be able to read but not to edit Wikidata for up to 30 minutes on September 10 at 05:00 (UTC). [14]
- You will be able to read but not to edit some mid-sized wikis for up to 30 minutes September 17 at 05:00 (UTC). You can see which wikis. [15]
- You will be able to read but not to edit some mid-sized wikis for up to 30 minutes September 24 at 05:00 (UTC). You can see which wikis. [16]
- You will be able to read but not to edit Wikimedia Commons for up to 30 minutes on September 26 at 05:00 (UTC). [17]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
09:07, 4 September 2019 (UTC)
Administrators' newsletter – September 2019[edit]
News and updates for administrators from the past month (August 2019).
Administrator changes
Bradv • Chetsford • Izno
Floquenbeam • Lectonar
DESiegel • Jake Wartenberg • Rjanag • Topbanana
CheckUser changes
Oversight changes
- Callanecc • Fox • HJ Mitchell • LFaraone • There'sNoTime
Technical news
- Editors using the mobile website on Wikipedia can opt-in to new advanced features via your settings page. This will give access to more interface links, special pages, and tools.
- The advanced version of the edit review pages (recent changes, watchlist, and related changes) now includes two new filters. These filters are for "All contents" and "All discussions". They will filter the view to just those namespaces.
Arbitration
- A request for comment is open to provide an opportunity to amend the structure, rules, and procedures of the 2019 English Wikipedia Arbitration Committee election and to resolve any issues not covered by existing rules.
Miscellaneous
- A global request for comment is in progress regarding whether a user group should be created that could modify edit filters across all public Wikimedia wikis.
Orphaned non-free image File:Cube World Alpha Logo.jpg[edit]
Thanks for uploading File:Cube World Alpha Logo.jpg. The image description page currently specifies that the image is non-free and may only be used on Wikipedia under a claim of fair use. However, the image is currently not used in any articles on Wikipedia. If the image was previously in an article, please go to the article and see why it was removed. You may add it back if you think that that will be useful. However, please note that images for which a replacement could be created are not acceptable for use on Wikipedia (see our policy for non-free media).
Note that any non-free images not used in any articles will be deleted after seven days, as described in section F5 of the criteria for speedy deletion. Thank you. --B-bot (talk) 02:25, 12 September 2019 (UTC)
Structured Data - blogs posted in Wikimedia Space[edit]
There are two separate blog entries for Structured Data on Commons posted to Wikimedia Space that are of interest:
- Working with Structured Data on Commons: A Status Report, by Lucas Werkmeister, discusses some ways that editors can work with structured data. Topics include tools that have been written or modified for structured data, in addition to future plans for tools and querying services.
- Structured Data on Commons - A Blog Series, written by me, is a five-part posting that covers the basics of the software and features that were built to make structured data happen. The series is meant to be friendly to those who may have some knowledge of Commons, but may not know much about the structured data project.
Books & Bytes – Issue 35, July – August 2019[edit]
The Wikipedia Library
Books & Bytes
Issue 35, July – August 2019
- Wikimania
- We're building something great, but..
- Wikimedia and Libraries User Group update
- A Wikibrarian's story
- Bytes in brief
On behalf of The Wikipedia Library team --MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 06:58, 27 September 2019 (UTC)
The Signpost: 30 September 2019[edit]
- From the editors: Where do we go from here?
- Special report: Post-Framgate wrapup
- Traffic report: Varied and intriguing entries, less Luck, and some retreads
- News from the WMF: How the Wikimedia Foundation is making efforts to go green
- Recent research: Wikipedia's role in assessing credibility of news sources; using wikis against procrastination; OpenSym 2019 report
- On the bright side: What's making you happy this month?
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Problems
- Last week's Tech News had delivery problems. Some did not get the newsletter. Some got it more than one time. The problem where some pages got it three times should now be fixed. [18]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 1 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 2 October. It will be on all wikis from 3 October (calendar).
Meetings
- You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 2 October at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
- The Wikimedia Foundation Community Tech team is working on a watchlist expiry feature. This means you can put things on your watchlist for a period of time instead of forever. They are looking for feedback on the questions they have.
- Special:Contributions will get the standard OOUI look. This makes it easier to use on mobile and makes it look like other
Special:pages. There is a script you can use to make the form smaller if you want to. [19]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
16:50, 30 September 2019 (UTC)
Would you kindly undelete this page? I am not sure if this qualifies as a G6 speedy. -- Dolotta (talk) 18:04, 30 September 2019 (UTC)
- @Dolotta: Could you clarify why you think this page should be undeleted? The page history only consists of someone adding a welcome template to a user talk page for a vanished user. It serves no purpose except to draw attention to this account, against the spirit of our vanishing process. Sam Walton (talk) 19:15, 30 September 2019 (UTC)
Women in Red[edit]
Hi there, Samwalton9, and welcome to Women in Red. It's good to have such an experienced editor as a member of our project, especially as over the years you have created quite a number of interesting biographies of women. Good too, to see you've signed up as a participant of our stub contest. We look forward to many new or enhanced articles. Happy editing!--Ipigott (talk) 10:22, 1 October 2019 (UTC)
- @Ipigott: Thanks for the welcome! I went to sign up for the stub contest and actually assumed I was already a member of WiR. Was surprised to find out I hadn't signed up yet! Sam Walton (talk) 10:24, 1 October 2019 (UTC)
Proteus[edit]
Are you still attempting to work on Proteus for FA?Blue Pumpkin Pie (talk) 00:43, 2 October 2019 (UTC)
- @Blue Pumpkin Pie: Yes - apologies for not responding to your latest comments yet. Planning to do so today. Sam Walton (talk) 12:01, 2 October 2019 (UTC)
- @Blue Pumpkin Pie: Hoping you'll have a chance to take a look at the FAC again. Let me know if you think further changes are necessary. Sam Walton (talk) 11:05, 11 October 2019 (UTC)
- I was reading into the article and verifying the sources. Sorry it took a bit of time. recently my internet went out and have been going to alternate places. Just out of curiosity, are any of the notes in the artifact edition made public?Blue Pumpkin Pie (talk) 14:53, 11 October 2019 (UTC)
- @Blue Pumpkin Pie: No problem! I noticed you weren't active for a little while. Not that I can see. There's a poorly filmed YouTube unboxing video I just clicked through that doesn't seem to imply there's much that would be useful inside. Sam Walton (talk) 14:58, 11 October 2019 (UTC)
- I was reading into the article and verifying the sources. Sorry it took a bit of time. recently my internet went out and have been going to alternate places. Just out of curiosity, are any of the notes in the artifact edition made public?Blue Pumpkin Pie (talk) 14:53, 11 October 2019 (UTC)
- @Blue Pumpkin Pie: Hoping you'll have a chance to take a look at the FAC again. Let me know if you think further changes are necessary. Sam Walton (talk) 11:05, 11 October 2019 (UTC)
Administrators' newsletter – October 2019[edit]
News and updates for administrators from the past month (September 2019).
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Guideline and policy news
- Following a discussion, a new criterion for speedy category renaming was added: C2F: One eponymous article, which
applies if the category contains only an eponymous article or media file, provided that the category has not otherwise been emptied shortly before the nomination. The default outcome is an upmerge to the parent categories
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- Following a discussion, a new criterion for speedy category renaming was added: C2F: One eponymous article, which
Technical news
- As previously noted, tighter password requirements for Administrators were put in place last year. Wikipedia should now alert you if your password is less than 10 characters long and thus too short.
Arbitration
- The 2019 CheckUser and Oversight appointment process has begun. The community consultation period will take place October 4th to 10th.
- The arbitration case regarding Fram was closed. While there will be a local RfC
focus[ing] on how harassment and private complaints should be handled in the future
, there is currently a global community consultation on partial and temporary office actions in response to the incident. It will be open until October 30th.
Miscellaneous
- The Community Tech team has been working on a system for temporarily watching pages, and welcomes feedback.
Growth team updates #10[edit]
Welcome to the tenth newsletter from the Growth team!
The Growth team's objective is to work on software changes that help retain new contributors in mid-size Wikimedia projects.
General news[edit]
- Growth team features are now fully deployed in Arabic Wikipedia and Basque Wikipedia (along with Czech, Korean, and Vietnamese Wikipedias). If your community is enthusiastic about welcoming newcomers, we encourage you to contact us so that we can verify together if your wiki is eligible. Then, go through the checklist to start the process of configuring the features.
- We have deployed features that help newcomers find their newcomer homepage. These features were successful, and more than doubled the number of newcomers who find their homepage. In Czech Wikipedia, 72% of newcomers visit their homepage and in Korean Wikipedia, 49% of newcomers visit their homepage.
- You can now join the Growth discussion space on the Wikimedia Space. This space has been created during Wikimania, to coordinate initiatives around welcoming newcomers. Please come and say hello!
Growth at Wikimania[edit]
- Several members of the Growth team attended Wikimania in Stockholm. We helped organize a conference track around Community Growth, presented about our team's work, and had many conversations with community members from around the world.
- Here are the most important links:
- These are some of our topline notes:
- Alignment on newcomer retention: It seems like Wikimania attendees generally believe that newcomer retention is an important problem.
- Connecting offline to online: Enthusiasm for ideas that connect our features better to offline events, such as making homepage mentors correspond to offline mentors.
- Mentor dashboard: Experienced users requested a dashboard with which they could monitor newcomers who may need help.
Newcomer tasks -- feedback needed![edit]
- The Growth team's main project right now is newcomer tasks, which will suggest easy edits for newcomers. It will be built as a new module for the newcomer homepage.
- We hope that this project will help newcomers build their skills before attempting more difficult edits, such as creating new articles or adding images.
- These are the three main challenges we've been working on:
- Where to find the tasks? After considering many different sources for tasks, we've decided to start by using maintenance templates, which are applied by editors on most wikis, and including tasks like copy editing, adding links, and adding references.
- How to match to interests? Research shows that users are more likely to work on articles that are related to their interests. We are currently prototyping methods to ask newcomers their interests and then find articles that match.
- How to guide the newcomer? Once a newcomer has selected a recommended article, they will need guidance on how to complete the edit. We have decided to use the help panel to provide that guidance while the newcomer edits.
- We are currently engineering on this feature, and we recently published notes from user tests that give mostly positive feedback.
- You can explore the design for newcomer tasks in these interactive mockups. We hope to hear from you about your thoughts on the project talk page. Do you think this could be helpful for newcomers? What are we missing?
Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
18:49, 2 October 2019 (UTC)
October 2019[edit]
I noticed that you tagged Sofie Cappelen with {{prod blp}} for proposed deletion. I have removed the tag from the article because it does not meet the criteria specified. The placement requirements are (a) that subject is living, and (b) that the article contains no sources in any form (as references, external links, etc., reliable or otherwise) supporting any statements made about the person in the biography. Please fully read Wikipedia:Proposed deletion of biographies of living people before tagging articles for proposed deletion. Thank you. Adam9007 (talk) 22:57, 6 October 2019 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- The abuse filter function now has a faster parser. This is to shorten the waiting time when you save an edit. [20]
Problems
- There is a problem in the visual editor when you copy or delete text with footnotes. It will be fixed soon. [21]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 8 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 9 October. It will be on all wikis from 10 October (calendar).
Meetings
- You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 9 October at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
- The Community Wishlist Survey has a new format. It will focus on wikis that typically get less support. It will probably go back to the normal format next year. It is not decided exactly how it will work this year. You can leave feedback.
- The URL of the Wikimedia wiki main pages could be changed. This is because the current URLs cause several problems. For example
https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:Main_Pagewould behttps://www.wikidata.org/instead. You can tell the developers if this would cause problems for your wiki. - There is a new technical community newsletter. You can read more about the work of Wikimedia's technical community. Subscribe to get the information in the future.
- Outreachy is an internship program for groups who are underrepresented in free and open-source software. There are seven Wikimedia projects about coding, documentation and quality assurance in the next round. Persons who fit the criteria can apply. The last day to apply is 5 November.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
15:36, 7 October 2019 (UTC)
Hello. The material added to the article is a hoax used for scamming people (see what I added to that section on ANI), regularly added to this article on WP since May 2009 (see Special:Contributions/Hartforth, which was the first account adding it), to make the fake claim more believable. Cheers, - Tom | Thomas.W talk 21:49, 7 October 2019 (UTC)
- That's uhh, persistent. Thanks for the info! Sam Walton (talk) 21:56, 7 October 2019 (UTC)
DYK for TASBot[edit]
On 8 October 2019, Did you know was updated with a fact from the article TASBot, which you recently created, substantially expanded, or brought to good article status. The fact was ... that speedrunning robot TASBot completed Super Mario Bros. 3 in less than one second? The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/TASBot. You are welcome to check how many page hits the article got while on the front page (here's how, TASBot), and it may be added to the statistics page if the total is over 5,000. Finally, if you know of an interesting fact from another recently created article, then please feel free to suggest it on the Did you know talk page.
Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 00:01, 8 October 2019 (UTC)
WikiProject Video games Newsletter Q3[edit]
The WikiProject Video Games Newsletter
Volume 11, No. 2 — 3nd Quarter, 2019
Previous issue | Index | Next issue 
Project At a Glance
As of Q3 2019, the project has:
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Content
(Delivered ~~~~~)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- You can now use more advanced editing tools on the mobile web. You can turn them on and off in your preferences in the mobile version. [22]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 15 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 16 October. It will be on all wikis from 17 October (calendar).
Meetings
- You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 16 October at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
- Internet Explorer 6 and 7 are no longer supported. This means the browsers might start looking a bit weird. They will not get security support. You can't read Wikimedia wikis in Internet Explorer on Windows XP or Windows versions that are older than Windows XP. This is because almost no one uses the browsers anymore. Supporting them made the wikis less secure for everyone else. [23]
- In the future section headings might have a share link. This is to make it easier to link to the section. You can read more and discuss.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
23:55, 14 October 2019 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- The API sandbox and help pages now show more clearly when API modules are marked as
internal. API modules marked as internal were probably internal before. It was easier to miss. You should look for non-internal alternatives. [24]
Problems
- There is a translation tool we use on wikis with more than one language. For a few days it did not create pages for new languages when someone translated a page. The languages did not show in the language bar. This has been fixed. [25]
- The history and diffs can show wrong content. This is because of a cache problem. It will soon be fixed. [26]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 22 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 23 October. It will be on all wikis from 24 October (calendar).
- Reference Previews will be a beta feature on all Wikipedias and some Wikivoyages. It shows you a preview of the footnote when you hover over or click on the number. It has been a beta feature on German and Arabic Wikipedia since April.
Meetings
- You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 23 October. See how to join.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
14:39, 21 October 2019 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- You can post proposals for the Community Wishlist Survey. The survey decides what the Community Tech team will work on. You can post proposals until 11 November. You can vote on proposals from 20 November to 2 December. This year the wishlist will focus on Wikibooks, Wiktionary, Wikiquote, Wikisource, Wikiversity, Wikispecies, Wikivoyage and Wikinews. You can read more about the format for this year.
- Mobile users now have a specific design for their Watchlist. [27][28]
- You can share feedback and ideas on the Desktop Improvements project. The goal is to make the interface easier to use for readers and editors without removing any functionality. The Foundation's Readers Web team will work on this over the next two years.
- OOUI now allows using
px(pixels) instead ofem(em) for some specific cases. [29][30]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 29 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 30 October. It will be on all wikis from 31 October (calendar).
Meetings
- You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 30 October at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
- There will be no software changes from 19 December to 2 January. The first MediaWiki version next year will come the week of 6 January. [31]
- Gadgets and user scripts can access variables about the current page in JavaScript. In 2015, this information was moved from global variables named
wg*tomw.config. The old global variables will be removed later this year. You can know more about it and tell the developers if you want to try this out on your wiki first.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
16:17, 28 October 2019 (UTC)
November 2019 at Women in Red[edit]
|
--Rosiestep (talk) 22:59, 29 October 2019 (UTC) via MassMessaging
The Signpost: 31 October 2019[edit]
- In the media: How to use or abuse Wikipedia for fun or profit
- Special report: “Catch and Kill” on Wikipedia: Paid editing and the suppression of material on alleged sexual abuse
- Interview: Carl Miller on Wikipedia Wars
- Community view: Observations from the mainland
- Arbitration report: October actions
- Gallery: Wiki Loves Broadcast
- Recent research: Research at Wikimania 2019: More communication doesn't make editors more productive; Tor users doing good work; harmful content rare on English Wikipedia
- News from the WMF: Welcome to Wikipedia! Here's what we're doing to help you stick around
- On the bright side: What's making you happy this month?
Administrators' newsletter – November 2019[edit]
News and updates for administrators from the past month (October 2019).
|
|
|
Guideline and policy news
- An RfC was closed with the consensus that the resysop criteria should be made stricter.
- The follow-up RfC to develop that change is now open at Wikipedia:Requests for comment/2019 Resysop Criteria (2).
- A related RfC is seeking the community's sentiment for a binding desysop procedure.
Arbitration
- Eligible editors may now nominate themselves as candidates for the 2019 Arbitration Committee Elections. The self-nomination period will close November 12, with voting running from November 19 through December 2.
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 Special:Contributions you could see up to 5000 edits at the same time if you edited the URL. This has been lowered to 500. This is to stop requests which break the sites. [32]
Changes later this week
MediaWiki:ipb-default-expirycan set the default length to block a user for your wiki. You will be able to useMediaWiki:ipb-default-expiry-ipto set a different default block length for IP editors. [33]- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 5 November. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 6 November. It will be on all wikis from 7 November (calendar).
Meetings
- You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 6 November at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
16:48, 4 November 2019 (UTC)
Video Game Barnstar[edit]
...for getting a shiny star on Proteus (video game) Cheers, Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 23:21, 6 November 2019 (UTC)
- @Casliber: Thanks! Glad to have finally got it there. Sam Walton (talk) 23:25, 6 November 2019 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- MediaWiki2LaTeX can put different pages from a Wikimedia wiki into a PDF. It can now make a PDF with around 5000 pages. Previously this was 800 pages.
Changes later this week
- There is no new MediaWiki version this week.
Meetings
- You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 13 November at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
- Wikimedia will take part in Google Code-in. This is for young students who want to help with open source software. You can read more. Experienced technical Wikimedians can mentor students.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
22:03, 11 November 2019 (UTC)
Four Award[edit]
|
Four Award | |
| Congratulations! You have been awarded the Four Award for your work from beginning to end on Proteus (video game). « Gonzo fan2007 (talk) @ 15:06, 12 November 2019 (UTC) |
- @Gonzo fan2007: Thanks! I'd forgotten the Four Award existed until I saw the nomination. Pleased to have carried it all the way through - it's one of the first articles I created :) Sam Walton (talk) 15:45, 12 November 2019 (UTC)
- You're welcome! Awesome job on an article 6 years in the making! « Gonzo fan2007 (talk) @ 16:17, 12 November 2019 (UTC)
Question - please answer on my page and then delete from here[edit]
Hi Sam, Do you understand how Google stores Wikipedia's data? At the moment on Google if you search Deborah Frances-White there is a section under the Search Result link for the wiki page that looks like the Wiki infobox but it contains different information to the page. It should have Podcast there in the list of Mediums and also she would like her birthday to remain private, so it's not on the Wiki page anymore but still in the result. It's not just the cache because when the leading paragraph has changed it has updated properly, and it's also been a number of days. I've tried the Remove Outdated Content tool but been denied. Can you help? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Friendofcomedians (talk • contribs) 16:13, 17 November 2019 (UTC)
Growth team updates #11[edit]
Welcome to the eleventh newsletter from the Growth team!
The Growth team's objective is to work on software changes that help retain new contributors in mid-size Wikimedia projects.
General news[edit]
- Expanding to more wikis: the team is preparing to deploy Growth features to Ukrainian and Hungarian Wikipedias. Wikis that already have the features are Czech, Korean, Arabic, Vietnamese, and Basque Wikipedias. If your community is enthusiastic about welcoming newcomers, we encourage you to contact us so that we can verify together if your wiki is eligible. Then you can go through the checklist to start the process of configuring the features.
- Mentor training: we tried out our first training for mentors with the Czech community, so that experienced users can build skills that help them retain newcomers.
- The guide for mentors has been updated. Translations are welcomed!
Help panel results[edit]
The help panel was first deployed to newcomers in January 2019, and we have now finished analyzing data to determine its impact. A brief summary is below, and more in-depth information can be found here (in English).
- In summary, although we have seen a good amount of usage of the help panel, the help panel has not shown an increase in activation (whether a user makes their first edit) or retention (whether a user returns to edit again).
- This is a disappointing result, and our team has discussed potential reasons for the result and ideas for the future. Although we have many ideas for how to improve the help panel, we have decided to keep our attention on the newcomer homepage and newcomer tasks projects for the coming months.
- We'll be using the help panel as part of the newcomer tasks project: using it to guide newcomers while they complete suggested edits.
- We welcome questions and thoughts about this on the project's talk page.
Newcomer tasks deployment[edit]
- The first version of the newcomer tasks workflow (V1.0) will be deployed in the next weeks on our 4 priority wikis. This version will suggest articles to edit based on maintenance templates. In this first version, we expect many newcomers to initiate the workflow, but not many to select articles to edit or complete edits. We expect future versions of the feature to increase those behaviors.
- We're excited about this project because the majority of newcomers visit their newcomer homepage, and this will be the first element of the homepage that clearly asks the newcomer to start editing.
- These are the next two versions of the feature, which are already being planned:
- V1.1 (topic matching): will allow newcomers to choose topics of interest (such as Art, Music, Sports, or Technology) to personalize their suggestions. After evaluating several approaches, we have decided to use a new ORES model built by the WMF Scoring team. The model will automatically identify the topic area of each article. We expect this to increase how often newcomers select articles to edit.
- V1.2 (guidance): once newcomers arrive on an article to edit, we will use the help panel to provide guidance about how to complete the editing task. We expect this to increase how many newcomers actually complete productive edits.
- The project page includes links to the designs of the workflow, and we welcome questions and thoughts on the talk page.
Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
15:02, 18 November 2019 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Problems
- You will be able to read but not to edit some wikis for up to 30 minutes on 26 November at 06:00 (UTC). You can see which wikis. It will probably last much shorter than 30 minutes. This will also affect the
centralauthdatabase. This could for example affect changing passwords, logging in to new wikis, changing emails or global renames. [34]
Changes later this week
- You can soon vote on proposals for the Community Wishlist Survey. The survey decides what the Community Tech team will work on. You can vote on proposals from 20 November to 2 December. This year the wishlist will focus on Wikibooks, Wiktionary, Wikiquote, Wikisource, Wikiversity, Wikispecies, Wikivoyage and Wikinews. You can read more about the format for this year.
- There is no new MediaWiki version this week.
Meetings
- You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 20 November at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
20:17, 18 November 2019 (UTC)
ArbCom 2019 election voter message[edit]
| Hello! Voting in the 2019 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23:59 on Monday, 2 December 2019. 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 2019 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 |
Books & Bytes – Issue 36[edit]
The Wikipedia Library
Books & Bytes
Issue 36, September – October 2019
- #1Lib1Ref January 2020
- #1Lib1Ref 2019 stories and learnings
Sent by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of The Wikipedia Library team --MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 05:21, 21 November 2019 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Changes later this week
- The mobile beta mode will be disabled to have less maintenance. The developers will focus on the desktop improvements project. You can turn on advanced mobile contributions mode if you want to see the categories. You could also jump back to the top. This can instead be done with a gadget or user script. [35]
- Parsoid is software we use for the visual editor, content translation, Flow and the Android app. This has been rewritten. It will come to the wikis gradually over the next two weeks. It has been tested, but there could be some diffs or previews that don't look right. If you see any you can report them. [36]
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 26 November. It will be on the other wikis next week (calendar). This is because of holidays.
Meetings
- You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 27 November at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
- You will switch between the article and the talk page in a new way in the mobile view in the future. It will use tabs. This is more like in the desktop view. [37]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
16:52, 25 November 2019 (UTC)
December events with WIR[edit]
|
--Megalibrarygirl (talk) 18:44, 25 November 2019 (UTC) via MassMessaging
Happy Adminship Anniversary![edit]
Have a very happy adminship anniversary on your special day!
Best wishes, CAPTAIN RAJU(T) 05:59, 28 November 2019 (UTC)
The Signpost: 29 November 2019[edit]
- From the editor: Put on your birthday best
- News and notes: How soon for the next million articles?
- In the media: You say you want a revolution
- On the bright side: What's making you happy this month?
- Arbitration report: Two requests for arbitration cases
- Traffic report: The queen and the princess meet the king and the joker
- Technology report: Reference things, sister things, stranger things
- Gallery: Winter and holidays
- Recent research: Bot census; discussions differ on Spanish and English Wikipedia; how nature's seasons affect pageviews
- Essay: Adminitis
- From the archives: WikiProject Spam, revisited
Administrators' newsletter – December 2019[edit]
News and updates for administrators from the past month (November 2019).
Administrator changes
- EvergreenFir • ToBeFree
- Akhilleus • Athaenara • John Vandenberg • Melchoir • MichaelQSchmidt • NeilN • Youngamerican • 😂
CheckUser changes
Interface administrator changes
Guideline and policy news
- An RfC on the administrator resysop criteria was closed. 18 proposals have been summarised with a variety of supported and opposed statements. The inactivity grace period within which a new request for adminship is not required has been reduced from three years to two. Additionally, Bureaucrats are permitted to use their discretion when returning administrator rights.
- Following a proposal, the edit filter mailing list has been opened up to users with the Edit Filter Helper right.
Technical news
- Wikimedia projects can set a default block length for users via MediaWiki:ipb-default-expiry. A new page, MediaWiki:ipb-default-expiry-ip, allows the setting of a different default block length for IP editors. Neither is currently used. (T219126)
Arbitration
- Voting in the 2019 Arbitration Committee Elections is open to eligible editors until Monday 23:59, 2 December 2018 UTC. Please review the candidates and, if you wish to do so, submit your choices on the voting page.
Miscellaneous
- The global consultation on partial and temporary office actions that ended in October received a closing statement from staff concluding, among other things, that the WMF
will no longer use partial or temporary Office Action bans... until and unless community consensus that they are of value or Board directive
.
- The global consultation on partial and temporary office actions that ended in October received a closing statement from staff concluding, among other things, that the WMF
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
- Mix'n'match is a tool to connect Wikidata items to information in other databases. It can be used to find subjects that are missing in a Wikipedia. It now has more than 3000 datasets. Before it was closer to 2000.
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 3 December. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 4 December. It will be on all wikis from 5 December (calendar).
Meetings
- You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 4 December at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
- There will be a new schema for XML dumps. Scripts and apps that use them will need to be updated. If they are not updated they will no longer work. [38]
- The
{{REVISIONID}}magic word will no longer work in the content namespaces. This is for performance reasons. When you preview a page it returns""(empty string). When you read a page it returns"-"(dash). In the future this will also affect other namespaces. The next ones are file and category namespaces. [39]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
16:59, 2 December 2019 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- Wikimedia projects use Translatewiki to translate the wiki interface. You can now use WatchTranslations to watch projects there. You would get an email if there are missing translations to your language. [40]
- There is a new dataset you can use. It shows the number of editors per country per month for a number of countries. You can read the documentation and download the dataset.
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 10 December. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 11 December. It will be on all wikis from 12 December (calendar).
Meetings
- You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 11 December at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
- You can test a new reference tool. It makes it possible to reference different parts of a source without repeating all information. You can test it on the beta cluster. You can see an example article. [41]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
16:38, 9 December 2019 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Problems
- The Linter extension helps you find technical errors in articles. It did not show new changes last week. This was because of an API problem. It is now working again. [42]
- Special:Watchlist can show the wrong information again. It does not always show which edits are read and which are unread. This is because of a database problem. The developers are working on solving the problem. [43]
Changes later this week
- You can get email notifications. You can get them immediately, a summary every day or a summary once every week. If you choose a summary you can soon choose not to get notifications you have already marked as read on the wiki. [44]
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 17 December. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 18 December. It will be on all wikis from 19 December (calendar).
Meetings
- You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 18 December at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
- The partial blocks feature is now stable. It will come to most wikis on 6 January. Your wiki can ask to wait. Contact NKohli (WMF) if you don't want it now. [45]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
00:18, 17 December 2019 (UTC)
Merry Christmas[edit]
|
Merry Christmas Samwalton9 |
|
Hi Samwalton9, I wish you and your family a very Merry Christmas |
Cheers[edit]
|
Merry Christmas, Samwalton9! Or Season's Greetings or Happy Winter Solstice! As the year winds to a close, I would like to take a moment to recognize your hard work and offer heartfelt gratitude for all you do for Wikipedia. And for all the help you've thrown my way over the years. May this Holiday Season bring you nothing but joy, health and prosperity. Onel5969 TT me 11:12, 20 December 2019 (UTC) |
|
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Tech News
- Because of the holidays the next issue of Tech News will be sent out on 6 January 2020.
Recent changes
- All mobile site users now have new features. Features include: tabs for page/discussion; an expanded user-menu; direct access to history pages. These features were initially part of the "advanced mode".
Changes later this week
- There is no new MediaWiki version this week or next week.
Future changes
- You can use
setlangin the URL to change the user interface language. This will no longer happen automatically. When you open the link you will be asked to confirm the language change. This will not happen if Javascript is not working in your browser. [46]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
20:07, 23 December 2019 (UTC)
January 2020 at Women in Red[edit]
|
The Signpost: 27 December 2019[edit]
- From the editors: Caught with their hands in the cookie jar, again
- News and notes: What's up (and down) with administrators, articles and languages
- In the media: "The fulfillment of the dream of humanity" or a nightmare of PR whitewashing on behalf of one-percenters?
- Discussion report: December discussions around the wiki
- Arbitration report: Announcement of 2020 Arbitration Committee
- Traffic report: Queens and aliens, exactly alike, once upon a December
- Technology report: User scripts and more
- Gallery: Holiday wishes
- Recent research: Acoustics and Wikipedia; Wiki Workshop 2019 summary
- From the archives: The 2002 Spanish fork and ads revisited (re-revisited?)
- On the bright side: What's making you happy this month?
- WikiProject report: Wikiproject Tree of Life: A Wikiproject report
Your GA nomination of Mikey Neumann[edit]
Hi there, I'm pleased to inform you that I've begun reviewing the article Mikey Neumann you nominated for GA-status according to the criteria. 
This process may take up to 7 days. Feel free to contact me with any questions or comments you might have during this period. Message delivered by Legobot, on behalf of David Fuchs -- David Fuchs (talk) 16:41, 27 December 2019 (UTC)
Happy First Edit Day![edit]
Have a very happy first edit anniversary!
From the Birthday Committee, CAPTAIN RAJU(T) 07:00, 29 December 2019 (UTC)
- Hey Sam, belated Happy First Edit Day! It was my First Edit Day as well :) I was just going through this page of the Birthday Committee and realised that you made your first edit on Dec 29 as well. KCVelaga (talk) 14:28, 30 December 2019 (UTC)
|
|
Did you know ... that back in 1885, Wikipedia editors wrote Good Articles with axes, hammers and chisels? Thank you for your contributions to this encyclopedia using 21st century technology. I hope you don't get any unnecessary blisters. |
- Spread the WikiLove; use {{subst:Happy New Year elves}} to send this message
Your GA nomination of Mikey Neumann[edit]
The article Mikey Neumann you nominated as a good article has passed 
; see Talk:Mikey Neumann for comments about the article. Well done! If the article has not already been on the main page as an "In the news" or "Did you know" item, you can nominate it to appear in Did you know. Message delivered by Legobot, on behalf of David Fuchs -- David Fuchs (talk) 13:02, 3 January 2020 (UTC)
- Thanks David Fuchs! Sam Walton (talk) 15:44, 3 January 2020 (UTC)
Administrators' newsletter – January 2020[edit]
News and updates for administrators from the past month (December 2019).
|
|
|
Guideline and policy news
- A request for comment asks whether partial blocks should be enabled on the English Wikipedia. If enabled, this functionality would allow administrators to block users from editing specific pages or namespaces, rather than the entire site.
- A proposal asks whether admins who don't use their tools for a significant period of time (e.g. five years) should have the toolset procedurally removed.
- Following a successful RfC, a whitelist is now available for users whose redirects will be autopatrolled by a bot, removing them from the new pages patrol queue. Admins can add such users to Wikipedia:New pages patrol/Redirect whitelist after a discussion following the guidelines at Wikipedia talk:New pages patrol/Redirect whitelist.
Arbitration
- The fourth case on Palestine-Israel articles was closed. The case consolidated all previous remedies under one heading, which should make them easier to understand, apply, and enforce. In particular, the distinction between "primary articles" and "related content" has been clarified, with the former being
the entire set of articles whose topic relates to the Arab-Israeli conflict, broadly interpreted
rather thanreasonably construed
. - Following the 2019 Arbitration Committee elections, the following editors have been appointed to the Arbitration Committee: Beeblebrox, Bradv, Casliber, David Fuchs, DGG, KrakatoaKatie, Maxim, Newyorkbrad, SoWhy, Worm That Turned, Xeno.
- The fourth case on Palestine-Israel articles was closed. The case consolidated all previous remedies under one heading, which should make them easier to understand, apply, and enforce. In particular, the distinction between "primary articles" and "related content" has been clarified, with the former being
Miscellaneous
- This issue marks three full years of the Admin newsletter. Thanks for reading!
WikiProject Video games Newsletter Q4 2019[edit]
The WikiProject Video Games Newsletter
Volume 11, No. 3 — 4th Quarter, 2019
Previous issue | Index | Next issue
Project At a Glance
As of Q4 2019, the project has:
|
Content
|
|
(Delivered ~~~~~)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Changes later this week
- When trying to move a page, if the target title already exists then a warning message is shown. The warning message will now include a link to the target title. [47]
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 7 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 8 January. It will be on all wikis from 9 January (calendar).
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
21:22, 6 January 2020 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- You can no longer read Wikimedia wikis if your browser use very old TLS. This is because it is a security problem for everyone. It can lead to downgrade attacks. Since 9 December you just see a warning. Soon the browser will not connect to the wikis at all. Most are users on Android systems older than 4.4. You can read the browser recommendations. [48]
- Special:LinkSearch has been moved from the "Redirecting special pages" section on Special:SpecialPages to the "Lists of pages" section. [49]
Changes later this week
- Wikis can protect pages so that only some users can edit them. The standard protection levels are Require autoconfirmed or confirmed access and Require administrator access. If your wiki use more protection levels the technical name might be renamed for standardisation. This doesn't affect what users see. [50]
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 14 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 15 January. It will be on all wikis from 16 January (calendar).
Future changes
- Deepcat and Catgraph will stop working. This will happen at the end of January. This is because you can now use the normal search function instead. [51]
- You can use
<ref follow="…">to merge footnotes that follow each other. It is meant to be used for digitised books on Wikisource. If the order of the footnotes is wrong no error was shown but the bad <ref> was shown outside the <references /> list. This will change and you will see an error message instead. [52]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:40, 13 January 2020 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 21 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 22 January. It will be on all wikis from 23 January (calendar).
Future changes
- There is a new suggestion for what to show when someone edits without registering an account. This is to give unregistered editors better privacy and make some anti-vandalism work go faster. You can give feedback.
- Pywikibot is a Python library to automate work on wikis. It will no longer support Python 2. Use the
python2tag if you need to continue running Python 2 scripts. The Pywikibot team strongly recommends to migrate to Python 3. You can get help to do so. [53] - The weekly MediaWiki branch cut will soon become automated. The timing for this cut may change. You can discuss in Phabricator if this affects you. [54]
- You can read about coming technical events and mentoring interns.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
19:42, 20 January 2020 (UTC)
The Signpost: 27 January 2020[edit]
- From the editor: Reaching six million articles is great, but we need a moratorium
- News and notes: Six million articles on the English language Wikipedia
- Special report: The limits of volunteerism and the gatekeepers of Team Encarta
- Arbitration report: Three cases at ArbCom
- Traffic report: The most viewed articles of 2019
- News from the WMF: Capacity Building: Top 5 Themes from Community Conversations
- Community view: Our most important new article since November 1, 2015
- From the archives: A decade of The Signpost, 2005-2015
- On the bright side: What's making you happy this month?
- WikiProject report: WikiProject Japan: a wikiProject Report
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Problems
- Some mobile diffs have problems. A couple of buttons are not shown. Structured data diffs on Commons are confusing. The developers are working on fixing it. [55][56]
- Administrators on wikis that use Structured Discussions can't move discussion pages. This is a bug. The developers are working on fixing it. [57]
Changes later this week
- There is no new MediaWiki version this week.
Future changes
- There is JavaScript code on Special:Undelete for administrators that makes it possible to automatically select multiple checkboxes by holding the "Shift" key and clicking. This code is also loaded by accident on other special pages and on articles. This makes pages slower to load. This will be fixed. If you know of other special pages where this is useful please tell the developers at phab:T232688.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
18:53, 27 January 2020 (UTC)
February with Women in Red[edit]
.jpg)
|
--Megalibrarygirl (talk) 19:31, 28 January 2020 (UTC) via MassMessaging
Books & Bytes – Issue 37[edit]
The Wikipedia Library
Books & Bytes
Issue 37, November – December 2019
- #1Lib1Ref
- Wikimedia and Libraries User Group
On behalf of The Wikipedia Library team --MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 07:10, 1 February 2020 (UTC)
Administrators' newsletter – February 2020[edit]
News and updates for administrators from the past month (January 2020).
|
|
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Guideline and policy news
- Following a request for comment, partial blocks are now enabled on the English Wikipedia. This functionality allows administrators to block users from editing specific pages or namespaces rather than the entire site. A draft policy is being workshopped at Wikipedia:Partial blocks.
- The request for comment seeking the community's sentiment for a binding desysop procedure closed with
wide-spread support for an alternative desysoping procedure based on community input
. No proposed process received consensus.
Technical news
- Twinkle now supports partial blocking. There is a small checkbox that toggles the "partial" status for both blocks and templating. There is currently one template: {{uw-pblock}}.
- When trying to move a page, if the target title already exists then a warning message is shown. The warning message will now include a link to the target title. [58]
Arbitration
- Following a recent arbitration case, the Arbitration Committee reminded administrators
that checkuser and oversight blocks must not be reversed or modified without prior consultation with the checkuser or oversighter who placed the block, the respective functionary team, or the Arbitration Committee.
- Following a recent arbitration case, the Arbitration Committee reminded administrators
Miscellaneous
- Voting in the 2020 Steward elections will begin on 08 February 2020, 14:00 (UTC) and end on 28 February 2020, 13:59 (UTC). The confirmation process of current stewards is being held in parallel. You can automatically check your eligibility to vote.
- The English Wikipedia has reached six million articles. Thank you everyone for your contributions!
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 4 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 5 February. It will be on all wikis from 6 February (calendar).
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
20:05, 3 February 2020 (UTC)
Growth team updates #12[edit]
Welcome to the twelfth newsletter from the Growth team!
The Growth team's objective is to work on software changes that help retain new contributors in mid-size Wikimedia projects.
General news[edit]
- A training for mentors has been published. The training was first tried with the Czech community, and went well.
- Growth team features have been deployed to Hungarian, Ukrainian, and Armenian Wikipedias. If your community is enthusiastic about welcoming newcomers, we encourage you to contact us so that we can verify together whether your wiki is eligible. Then you can go through the checklist to start the process of configuring the features.
Productive edits from newcomer tasks[edit]
We deployed the basic workflow for newcomer tasks to our target wikis on November 20, and the early results are exciting.
Graph captions (top to bottom):
■ Copyedits
■ Add links
■ Expand article
■ Add reference
■ Advanced edits
- About 1.5% of newcomers who visit their homepage complete the workflow and save a suggested edit. So far, this has amounted to over 450 edits, on all wikis, coming from both desktop and mobile users.
- When we look at the edits that newcomers make, we see that they are largely positive! We are pleased to see that this feature does not appear to encourage vandals.
- 75% of the edits are productive and unreverted.
- 95% of the edits appear to be in good faith.
- Most of the edits include copyedits and adding links, with some newcomers also adding content and references. Copyedits are suggested most strongly.
- Click here to learn more specifics about the results so far.
Topic matching deployed[edit]
The results from our user tests showed us that newcomers are likely to do more suggested edits if they can choose articles related to a topic that they're interested in, such as "science", "music", or "sports".
- On January 21, we deployed topic matching on our pilot wikis. Newcomers are now using it. We expect it to cause more newcomers to try suggested edits, and to keep making more of them.
- In the coming weeks, we will be making improvements to the accuracy of the algorithm used to topic matching, which is part of the ORES project.
Next steps for newcomer tasks[edit]
Because we are seeing positive results from newcomer tasks, the Growth team plans to concentrate our efforts on improving the workflow and encouraging more newcomers to use it.
- Guidance: next, we will be using the help panel to provide guidance to newcomers as they do suggested edits, and to prompt them to do another edit after completing their first one. In user tests for this feature, demo videos were one of the favorite features, and we will think about how these might be added.
- Starting the workflow: only about 20% of newcomer who visit their homepage begin the newcomer tasks workflow. We are going to be trying out different layouts of the homepage to encourage more newcomers to try newcomer tasks.
- Additional task types: we are researching methods to recommend more specific tasks to newcomers, such as specific links to add, or images that could be added to articles from Commons.
Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
17:39, 4 February 2020 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- There is a new version of the Wikimedia Commons app for Android. It should fix the failed uploads problem. [59]
Problems
- There was a problem with the new MediaWiki version last week. It deleted some messages by accident. The new version was late because it was stopped to fix things. [60]
Changes later this week
- The MediaWiki action API is used by various tools like bots and gadgets. Some error codes will change. Some parameter values that do not follow the standard will no longer work. [61]
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 11 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 12 February. It will be on all wikis from 13 February (calendar).
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
19:12, 10 February 2020 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- Pages on Wikidata and Commons now load faster. You can read more about page load performance. [62][63]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 18 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 19 February. It will be on all wikis from 20 February (calendar).
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
16:17, 17 February 2020 (UTC)
March 2020 at Women in Red[edit]
   Online events:
|
--Rosiestep (talk) 19:33, 23 February 2020 (UTC) via MassMessaging
ITN recognition for Katherine Johnson[edit]
On 24 February 2020, In the news was updated with an item that involved the article Katherine Johnson, which you nominated. If you know of another recently created or updated article suitable for inclusion in ITN, please suggest it on the candidates page. Kees08 (Talk) 16:10, 24 February 2020 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 25 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 26 February. It will be on all wikis from 27 February (calendar).
Future changes
- There will be a reply button after each post on a talk page if you want one. This will soon be a beta feature on the Arabic, French, Dutch and Hungarian Wikipedias. You will have to turn it on if you want to use it. It will come to more wikis later. You can test the reply button. It was briefly shown earlier than planned by mistake on the four first wikis last week.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
21:00, 24 February 2020 (UTC)
The Signpost: 1 March 2020[edit]
- From the editor: The ball is in your court
- News and notes: Alexa ranking down to 13th worldwide
- Special report: More participation, more conversation, more pageviews
- Discussion report: Do you prefer M or P?
- Arbitration report: Two prominent administrators removed
- Community view: The Incredible Invisible Woman
- In focus: History of The Signpost, 2015–2019
- From the archives: Is Wikipedia for sale?
- Traffic report: February articles, floating in the dark
- Gallery: Feel the love
- On the bright side: What's making you happy this month?
- Opinion: Wikipedia is another country
- Humour: The Wilhelm scream
Administrators' newsletter – March 2020[edit]
News and updates for administrators from the past month (February 2020).
|
|
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Guideline and policy news
- Following an RfC, the blocking policy was changed to state that sysops
must not
undo or alter CheckUser or Oversight blocks, rather thanshould not
. - A request for comment confirmed that sandboxes of established but inactive editors may not be blanked due solely to inactivity.
- Following an RfC, the blocking policy was changed to state that sysops
Technical news
- Following a discussion, Twinkle's default CSD behavior will soon change, most likely this week. After the change, Twinkle will default to "tagging mode" if there is no CSD tag present, and default to "deletion mode" if there is a CSD tag present. You will be able to always default to "deletion mode" (the current behavior) using your Twinkle preferences.
Miscellaneous
- Following the 2020 Steward Elections, the following editors have been appointed as stewards: BRPever, Krd, Martin Urbanec, MusikAnimal, Sakretsu, Sotiale, and Tks4Fish. There are a total of seven editors that have been appointed as stewards, the most since 2014.
- The 2020 appointees for the Ombudsman commission are Ajraddatz and Uzoma Ozurumba; they will serve for one year.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Problems
- Readers who were not logged in briefly saw the interface in a language decided by their browser. It should normally be in the language of the wiki. This happened for a short period of time last week. This was because of a bug. [64]
Changes later this week
- If you forget your password you can ask for a new one to be sent to your email address. You need to know your email address or your username. You will now be able to choose that you need to enter both your email address and your username. This will be a preference. This is to get fewer password reset emails someone else asked for. [65]
- When you asked for a new password you could see if the username didn't exist on Special:PasswordReset. Now the page will show the username you entered and tell you an email has been sent if the username exists. This is for better security. [66]
- On Special:WhatLinksHere you can see what other pages link to a page. You can see if the link is from a redirect. You can now see which section the redirect links to. [67]
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 3 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 4 March. It will be on all wikis from 5 March (calendar).
Future changes
- The developers are working on a new interface to solve edit conflicts on talk pages. You can give feedback. [68]
- There is a vote on the creation of a new user group called abuse filter manager. The vote runs from March 1 to March 31 on Meta.
-
wgMFSpecialCaseMainPagewas used for the mobile site. It was deprecated in 2017. It will stop working in April. Wikis should see if they use it. If they do they should fix it. You can read more and ask for help. This affects 183 wikis. There is a list. [69]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
00:36, 3 March 2020 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- There is a new search word called
articletopic. You can use it to search for articles on a specific topic. It is available on the Arabic, Czech, English and Vietnamese Wikipedias. It will come to more Wikipedias soon. [70][71][72]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 10 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 11 March. It will be on all wikis from 12 March (calendar).
Future changes
- There is a plan for new requirements for user signatures. You can give feedback.
- The Wikipedia Android app will do push notifications if users want them. This could help you see for example when someone wrote on your talk page or your edit was reverted. This will come later this year. [73]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
17:15, 9 March 2020 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- There is a new API module for changing the content model of existing pages. Use
action=changecontentmodelto specify the new model. You can read the documentation on mediawiki.org. [74]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 17 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 18 March. It will be on all wikis from 19 March (calendar).
Future changes
- If you edit a page at the same time as someone else you can get an edit conflict. There is a new two-column interface to make it easier to solve this. It will soon be active by default on the German, Arabic, and Farsi Wikipedias. It will be on by default on more wikis within the next months. You will be able to opt out of the new interface. [75][76]
- You can see a proposed design for replying to comments in an easier way.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
21:15, 16 March 2020 (UTC)
April 2020 at Women in Red[edit]
Online events:
|
--Rosiestep (talk) 15:00, 23 March 2020 (UTC) via MassMessaging
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Problems
- Some development will be slower than planned. This is because of the current pandemic. You can see the new deployment guidelines. This is to avoid risks when some persons could be unavailable.
- There was a problem when adding interwiki links. The tool you use to add interwiki links could suggest the wrong project to link to. This has now been fixed. [77][78]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 24 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 25 March. It will be on all wikis from 26 March (calendar).
Future changes
- There is a project to make editing easier for newcomers. The developers are trying to understand what initiatives different Wikipedias have to welcome newcomers. They also want to know which templates are often used for maintenance activities. You can help this project by checking if your wiki's pages are listed on Wikidata.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
17:08, 23 March 2020 (UTC)
The Signpost: 29 March 2020[edit]
- From the editors: The bad and the good
- News and notes: 2018 Wikipedian of the year blocked
- WikiProject report: WikiProject COVID-19: A WikiProject Report
- Special report: Wikipedia on COVID-19: what we publish and why it matters
- In the media: Blocked in Iran but still covering the big story
- Discussion report: Rethinking draft space
- Arbitration report: Unfinished business
- In focus: "I have been asked by Jeffrey Epstein …"
- Community view: Wikimedia community responds to COVID-19
- From the archives: Text from Wikipedia good enough for Oxford University Press to claim as own
- Traffic report: The only thing that matters in the world
- Gallery: Visible Women on Wikipedia
- News from the WMF: Amid COVID-19, Wikimedia Foundation offers full pay for reduced hours, mobilizes all staff to work remote, and waives sick time
- On the bright side: What's making you happy this month?
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 beta version of the Wikipedia app for Android can now help users add tags on Commons. These tags are called depicts. [79]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 31 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 1 April. It will be on all wikis from 2 April (calendar).
Future changes
- The video player will change to be simpler and more modern. The current beta feature will become the video player for everyone. The old player will be removed. [80]
- There is a project to make templates easier to use. The next few weeks the developers will present ideas on the project page. You can watch that page if you are interested in giving feedback. [81]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
17:26, 30 March 2020 (UTC)
Administrators' newsletter – April 2020[edit]
News and updates for administrators from the past month (March 2020).
|
|
|
Guideline and policy news
- There is an ongoing request for comment to streamline the source deprecation and blacklisting process.
Technical news
- There is a plan for new requirements for user signatures. You can give feedback.
Arbitration
- Following the banning of an editor by the WMF last year, the Arbitration Committee resolved to hold a
Arbcom RfC regarding on-wiki harassment
. A draft RfC has been posted at Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Anti-harassment RfC (Draft) and not open to comments from the community yet. Interested editors can comment on the RfC itself on its talk page.
- Following the banning of an editor by the WMF last year, the Arbitration Committee resolved to hold a
Miscellaneous
- The WMF has begun a pilot report of the pages most visited through various social media platforms to help with anti-vandalism and anti-disinformation efforts. The report is updated daily and will be available through the end of May.
WikiProject Video games Newsletter Q1 2020[edit]
The WikiProject Video Games Newsletter
Volume 12, No. 1 — 1st Quarter, 2020
Previous issue | Index | Next issue
Project At a Glance
As of Q1 2020, the project has:
|
|
Content
|
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(Delivered ~~~~~)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Problems
- There was a problem with user pages not being shown properly on desktop. This was because of a bug. It will soon be fixed. [82]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 7 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 8 April. It will be on all wikis from 9 April (calendar).
Future changes
- MediaWiki will use a newer version of Unicode. Some characters that did not have an upper case equivalent before do now. Titles beginning with one of these characters will be moved. A list of these titles can be seen on Phabricator. The titles will be renamed by the user
Maintenance script. This will start on 13 April 2020. You can rename them before this if you wish and the new title can be different from the one the script would rename it to. [83]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
19:03, 6 April 2020 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- You can now use the
articletopicsearch word on all Wikipedias. It searches articles by topic. [84] - You can see wiki tools in the new Tools Gallery. [85]
- You can see edits from the Wikimedia Cloud Services in a new dashboard.
- When you use filters on a history page you sometimes don't see any edits. There is a text explaining this now. Before it was just empty. [86]
- There is a new Wikimedia Technical Blog. [87]
Problems
- There was a problem with the Wikidata database last week. Some wikis went down for twenty minutes. Wikidata and other projects showed error messages. Interwiki links were not shown, some tools did not work and other problems. Some of this was fixed quickly. The developers are working on fixing the rest. [88][89][90]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from April 14. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from April 15. It will be on all wikis from April 16 (calendar).
Future changes
- Some graphs have not worked on mobile. This will soon be fixed. [91]
- The article tab on talk pages of redirects links to the target of the redirect. It could link to the redirect page itself instead. You can leave feedback on this.
- For pages using syntax highlighting, the use of the deprecated
<source>tag, as well as the use of the deprecatedencloseparameter, will add tracking categories.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
15:31, 13 April 2020 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Tech News
- The next issue of Tech News will be sent out on 4 May 2020.
Recent changes
- The small wiki toolkits is to help smaller wikis that need technical skills. They can learn and share technical skills. [92]
- Over-qualified CSS selectors in Wikimedia skins have been removed.
div#contentis now.mw-body.div.portalis now.portal.div#footeris now#footer. This is so the skins can use HTML5 elements. If your gadgets or user styles used them you will have to update them. [93]
Changes later this week
- There is no new MediaWiki version this week.
Future changes
- Some things on the wikis might look weird or not work in Internet Explorer 8 in the future. Internet Explorer 8 was replaced in 2011. [94]
- The font in the diffs will change. [95]
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 28 April next week. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 29 April next week. It will be on all wikis from 30 April next week (calendar).
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
18:45, 20 April 2020 (UTC)
The Signpost: 26 April 2020[edit]
- News and notes: Unbiased information from Ukraine's government?
- In the media: Coronavirus, again and again
- Discussion report: Redesigning Wikipedia, bit by bit
- Featured content: Featured content returns
- Arbitration report: Two difficult cases
- Traffic report: Disease the Rhythm of the Night
- Recent research: Trending topics across languages; auto-detecting bias
- Opinion: Trusting Everybody to Work Together
- On the bright side: What's making you happy this month?
- In focus: Multilingual Wikipedia
- WikiProject report: The Guild of Copy Editors
Campaign #1lib1Ref[edit]
Hi Samwalton9 , A lot of thanks for planning the previous campaign 1lib1ref on January. Are you intented to reiterate this experience for the next campaign planned on May - June 2020? Thanks in advance for you answer, Madehub (talk) 17:52, 27 April 2020 (UTC)
- @Madehub: The May campaign is going ahead, yes! I'm not closely involved in running the campaign now, however. You can check out the Meta page for more info :) Samwalton9 (WMF) (talk) 09:59, 28 April 2020 (UTC)
- Samwalton9 Great news. Don't you mind if I add you as an organisator with me ? It will encourage me in my first step.Madehub (talk) 10:34, 28 April 2020 (UTC)
- @Madehub: I'm not involved in running the campaign at the moment. You'd be better off contacting Felix Nartey :) Samwalton9 (WMF) (talk) 10:38, 28 April 2020 (UTC)
- Samwalton9 Great news. Don't you mind if I add you as an organisator with me ? It will encourage me in my first step.Madehub (talk) 10:34, 28 April 2020 (UTC)
Issue 38, January – April 2020[edit]
The Wikipedia Library
Books & Bytes
Issue 38, January – April 2020
- New partnership
- Global roundup
On behalf of The Wikipedia Library team --15:58, 29 April 2020 (UTC)
May 2020 at Women in Red[edit]
Online events:
|
--Rosiestep (talk) 20:59, 29 April 2020 (UTC) via MassMessaging
Administrators' newsletter – May 2020[edit]
News and updates for administrators from the past month (April 2020).
Administrator changes
CheckUser changes
Oversight changes
Guideline and policy news
- Discretionary sanctions have been authorized for all pages and edits related to COVID-19, to be logged at WP:GS/COVID19.
- Following a recent discussion on Meta-Wiki, the edit filter maintainer global group has been created.
- A request for comment has been proposed to create a new main page editor usergroup.
- A request for comment has been proposed to make the bureaucrat activity requirements more strict.
Technical news
- The Editing team has been working on the talk pages project. You can review the proposed design and share your thoughts on the talk page.
- Enterprisey created a script that will show a link to the proper Special:Undelete page when viewing a since-deleted revision, see User:Enterprisey/link-deleted-revs.
Miscellaneous
- A request for comment closed with consensus to create a Village Pump-style page for communication with the Wikimedia Foundation.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Problems
- Some wikis will be on read-only for a few minutes on 5 May. This will happen around 05:00 UTC. This is for database maintenance. [96]
- Some wikis will be on read-only for a few minutes on 7 May. This will also affect CentralAuth. This can for example affect global renames, password changes, changing or confirming your email address and logging in to new wikis. This will happen around 05:00 UTC. This is for database maintenance. [97]
Changes later this week
- You can get a notification when someone links to a page you created. You can soon turn these notifications off for individual pages. [98]
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 5 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 6 May. It will be on all wikis from 7 May (calendar).
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
16:59, 4 May 2020 (UTC)
Nomination of List of Honest Trailers episodes for deletion[edit]
A discussion is taking place as to whether the article List of Honest Trailers episodes is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.
The article will be discussed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of Honest Trailers episodes (2nd nomination) until a consensus is reached, and anyone, including you, is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.
Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion notice from the top of the article. Reywas92Talk 02:29, 6 May 2020 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- Everyone can now import photos from Flickr to Commons with the UploadWizard. Before this only autopatrollers on Commons could import photos from Flickr. [99]
Problems
- Commons will be on read-only for a few minutes on 12 May. This will happen around 05:00 UTC. This is for database maintenance. [100]
- Several wikis including Wikidata will be on read-only for a few minutes on 19 May. This will happen around 05:00 UTC. English Wikipedia will be on read-only for a few minutes on 21 May 05:00 UTC. This is for database maintenance. [101][102]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 12 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 13 May. It will be on all wikis from 14 May (calendar).
Future changes
- JavaScript scripts and gadgets can no longer check multiple keys at once via
mw.config.exists()ormw.user.tokens.exists(). You can useexists()orget()to check one at a time instead. [103]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
20:41, 11 May 2020 (UTC)
Growth team newsletter #13[edit]
Welcome to the thirteenth newsletter from the Growth team!
The Growth team's objective is to work on software changes that help retain new contributors in mid-size Wikimedia projects.
Join the conversation: structured tasks[edit]
We are looking for community input on a new project to make it easy for newcomers to make real article edits.
In our previous newsletter, we talked about the productive edits coming from the newcomer tasks feature. Those good results have continued: about 900 newcomers made over 5,000 suggested edits so far. We've learned that newcomers are interested in receiving suggested edits.
Now, we are thinking about how to supply them a feed of easy edits that will help more of them be successful quickly. We have a new idea called "structured tasks". This would aim to break down edits into steps that are easy for newcomers and easy on mobile devices.
In the past, certain kinds of editing tasks have been structured. For instance, adding categories through HotCat. Now, we are thinking about how to structure the editing of articles. The goal is to allow newcomers can make large content additions, especially from their mobile devices.
Please visit the project page and respond to the discussion questions listed on the talk page. You are welcome to show this project to others in your community. You can help by translating the materials to your language so that more voices can join in. We will be having this conversation until June 18.
Expanding to more wikis[edit]
We have expanded to six new wikis, and are looking for more interested communities.
In the last two months, we deployed Growth features to six new wikis: Ukrainian, Serbian, Hungarian, Armenian, and Basque Wikipedias, and French Wiktionary. Newcomers from these wikis have already contributed over 600 edits through Growth features.
We want to expand to more wikis in the coming months, and we are looking for interested communities. French Wikipedia already agreed and will be the next one to join the experiment. We will contact several other wikis in the coming weeks to offer them to participate.
Do you think the Growth Team features would be a good addition to your wiki? Please see this translatable summary of Growth features. You can share with your communities and start a discussion. Then, please contact us to begin the process!
Other updates[edit]
Work continues on improving newcomer tasks and the homepage.
- In March, we deployed an upgrade to the topic matching in newcomer tasks. The current version offers 39 different topics using new ORES models.
- In April, we completed an A/B test of two homepage configurations. We learned that more newcomers will attempt suggested edits if the module is made more prominent. We are implementing those learnings in our next test. See the full results here.
- We are currently working on guidance for newcomer tasks. It will use the help panel to guide newcomers through completing easy edits.
- Our next step is to create new configurations of the homepage. The goal is to encourage more newcomers to begin doing suggested edits.
As usual, we are still welcoming your feedback and questions about our features. Please contact us on the project talk page!
Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
14:29, 18 May 2020 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- If you forget your password you can ask for a new one to be sent to your email address. You need to know your email address or your username. You can choose that you need to enter both your email address and your username. This is a preference. This is to get fewer password reset emails someone else asked for. This is now available on all Wikimedia wikis. [104][105]
Problems
- There is a bug that creates problems for iPhone users with iOS 13 and Safari. If you use an iPhone to read or edit Wikipedia and see bugs on the mobile site you can report them. [106]
- Several wikis including Wikidata will be on read-only for a few minutes on 19 May. This will happen around 05:00 UTC. English Wikipedia will be on read-only for a few minutes on 21 May 05:00 UTC. This is for database maintenance. [107][108]
Changes later this week
- The Wikipedia app for Android can let users add depicts on Commons. The beta version used computer-aided tagging. This was removed to get more specific depicts. [109]
- There is no new MediaWiki version this week.
Future changes
- Graphs will be rendered in the reader's browser. This will use Javascript. Graphs will hopefully work better for everyone who uses Javascript. It will not work for users who don't use Javascript. This will not affect diagrams in image files. [110]
- Some CSS for the skins has been simplified. This affects
div#p-personal,div#p-navigation,div#p-interaction,div#p-tb,div#p-lang,div#p-namespaces,div#p-variantsanddiv#footer. They will have to removediv. You will have to update your gadgets, scripts or user styles. This is so we can use HTML5. [111] - Some CSS for the Vector skin has been changed. This affects
#p-variants,#p-namespaces,#p-personal,#p-viewsand#p-cactions. They can no longer use> ul. You might need to update your gadgets, scripts or user styles. See how.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
17:19, 18 May 2020 (UTC)
You've got mail[edit]
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.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 17:45, 19 May 2020 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Changes later this week
- The visual editor will now work in the Modern skin. The changes that needed to happen for this to work could cause problems for some scripts or gadgets. [112]
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from May 26. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from May 27. It will be on all wikis from May 28 (calendar).
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
14:18, 25 May 2020 (UTC)
June 2020 at Women in Red[edit]
June 2020, Volume 6, Issue 6, Numbers 150, 151, 167, 168, 169
Online events:
|
--Rosiestep (talk) 17:11, 25 May 2020 (UTC) via MassMessaging
The Signpost: 31 May 2020[edit]
- From the editor: Meltdown May?
- News and notes: 2019 Picture of the Year, 200 French paid editing accounts blocked, 10 years of Guild Copyediting
- Discussion report: WMF's Universal Code of Conduct
- Featured content: Weathering the storm
- Arbitration report: Board member likely to receive editing restriction
- Traffic report: Come on and slam, and welcome to the jam
- Gallery: Wildlife photos by the book
- News from the WMF: WMF Board announces Community Culture Statement
- Recent research: Automatic detection of covert paid editing; Wiki Workshop 2020
- Community view: Transit routes and mapping during stay-at-home order downtime
- WikiProject report: Revitalizing good articles
- On the bright side: 500,000 articles in the Egyptian Arabic Wikipedia
Administrators' newsletter – June 2020[edit]
News and updates for administrators from the past month (May 2020).
Administrator changes
- CaptainEek • Creffett • Cwmhiraeth
- Anna Frodesiak • Buckshot06 • Ronhjones • SQL
CheckUser changes
Guideline and policy news
- A request for comment asks whether the Unblock Ticket Request System (UTRS) should allowed any unblock request or just private appeals.
- The Wikimedia Foundation announced that they will develop a universal code of conduct for all WMF projects. There is an open local discussion regarding the same.
Arbitration
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- There is a new beta version of the Wikimedia Commons app for Android. It has a new zoom function when you look at images. It can also suggest places when you upload geotagged photos. [113]
Problems
- There was a problem with the Commons database on 27 May. Commons could not be edited for eight minutes. Because of this problem the database was moved. This caused another short read-only time on 29 May. [114][115][116]
- The Vector skin had a problem where you couldn't add links to the article in other languages. You couldn't see the section if there were no links to other languages already. It also removed content translation links and links to language settings. This has now been fixed. [117]
Changes later this week
- You can get a notification when someone links to a page you created. You can turn these notifications off for individual pages. You can soon turn them off also in the notifications you get. [118]
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 2 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 3 June. It will be on all wikis from 4 June (calendar).
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
22:31, 1 June 2020 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- Some articles have tables that can be sorted in different ways. For example a list of countries can be sorted alphabetically but you can click on the size column to sort them by size. If you clicked on the column a second time it would sort the countries from the bottom to the top instead. A third click will now take you back to the original sorting. [119]
- Self-closed tags now work as in the HTML5 specifications. This means you should stop using some of them.
<b/>is an example of a self-closed tag that won't work.area, base, br, col, embed, hr, img, input, keygen, link, meta, param, source, track, wbrcan be self-closed. Pages with tags that should not be self-closed have been listed in a tracking category since 2016. They will be listed in Special:LintErrors/self-closed-tag. This doesn't affect<references />or<ref />. [120] - There is a banner called
WikidataPageBanner. It is for example used by the Wikivoyages, Wikimedia Russia and the Catalan, Basque, Galician and Turkish Wikipedias. It will now been seen by mobile visitors too. Before this it was only seen on desktop. The wikis should update instructions onMediaWiki:Sitenoticeso that editors know to test and style for mobile too. [121][122]
Changes later this week
- You can now edit MassMessage descriptions through the API. This is useful for tools and gadgets. [123]
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 9 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 10 June. It will be on all wikis from 11 June (calendar).
Future changes
- A temporary fix helped wikis make their main pages more mobile friendly. This was in 2012. It has not been recommended since 2017. It will not work after 13 July. Wikis should use TemplateStyles instead. 118 wikis need to fix this. You can read more and see if your wiki is affected. [124]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
21:12, 8 June 2020 (UTC)
Books & Bytes – Issue 39, May – June 2020[edit]
The Wikipedia Library
Books & Bytes
Issue 39, May – June 2020
- Library Card Platform
- New partnerships
- ProQuest
- Springer Nature
- BioOne
- CEEOL
- IWA Publishing
- ICE Publishing
- Bytes in brief
On behalf of The Wikipedia Library team --MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 06:13, 11 June 2020 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- Toolforge hosts several tools created by the Wikimedia community like edit counters or enhanced editors. It is changing the domain from tools.wmflabs.org to toolforge.org. The routing scheme is moving from tools.wmflabs.org/toolname to toolname.toolforge.org. You can read the details. Tools that use OAuth will have to be updated to keep working. You can ask for help.
Problems
- There is a Wikidata item link in the sidebar on many pages. This disappeared for a couple of days for users who have the Monobook skin. This was because of a bug. It has now been fixed. [125]
- Editing, logging in and logging out didn't work properly for a short period of time last week. It was soon fixed. [126]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 16 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 17 June. It will be on all wikis from 18 June (calendar).
Future changes
- Pywikibot is a Python library to automate work on wikis. It will not support Python 2 after the new version in July. Support for Python 3.4 and MediaWiki below 1.19 will also be dropped. You should migrate to Python 3. You can ask for help. [127]
- The selectors
.menuand.vectorMenuwill no longer work in the Vector skin. This can affect gadgets and user scripts..menushould be replaced byul..vectorMenushould be replaced by.vector-menu. [128]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
21:38, 15 June 2020 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Problems
- There are some new tools to make it easier for newcomers to start editing. They are available on some wikis. These wikis had a problem with the visual editor for a short period of time last week. This was because of a bug in the new tools. It was soon fixed. [129]
- Some user scripts and gadgets stopped working because of a change to CSS selectors.
.vectorTabsshould be replaced with.vector-menu-tabsto fix this. [130]
Changes later this week
- The developers are working on a new interface to solve edit conflicts on talk pages. This will be released on 24 June. You can give feedback. [131]
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 23 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 24 June. It will be on all wikis from 25 June (calendar).
Future changes
- A temporary fix helped wikis make their main pages more mobile friendly. This was in 2012. It has not been recommended since 2017. It will not work after 13 July. Wikis should use TemplateStyles instead. 91 wikis still need to fix this. You can read more and see if your wiki is affected. [132]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
18:49, 22 June 2020 (UTC)
July 2020 at Women in Red[edit]
|
--Rosiestep (talk) 16:12, 28 June 2020 (UTC) via MassMessaging
The Signpost: 28 June 2020[edit]
- News and notes: Progress at Wikipedia Library and Wikijournal of Medicine
- Community view: Community open letter on renaming
- Gallery: After the killing of George Floyd
- In the media: Part collaboration and part combat
- Discussion report: Community reacts to WMF rebranding proposals
- Featured content: Sports are returning, with a rainbow
- Arbitration report: Anti-harassment RfC and a checkuser revocation
- Traffic report: The pandemic, alleged murder, a massacre, and other deaths
- News from the WMF: We stand for racial justice
- Recent research: Wikipedia and COVID-19; automated Wikipedia-based fact-checking
- Humour: Cherchez une femme
- On the bright side: For what are you grateful this month?
- WikiProject report: WikiProject Black Lives Matter
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Problems
- Everyone was logged out. This was because a few users saw the wikis as if they were logged in to someone else's account. The problem should be fixed now. [133]
- Some readers didn't see new edits to pages. If the page had been recently changed they saw an older version of the page instead. This only affected readers who were logged out. It lasted for ten days. It has been fixed. [134]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 30 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 1 July. It will be on all wikis from 1 July (calendar).
Future changes
- The Modern and Monobook skins use the ID
searchGoButtonfor the go button. This issearchButtonfor Vector. To have the same ID for all skins it will change tosearchButtonin Monobook and Modern too. This will affect gadgets and user scripts. It will happen on 23 July. They should be updated to usesearchButton. You can read more and see a list of affected scripts.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
16:31, 29 June 2020 (UTC)
Administrators' newsletter – July 2020[edit]
News and updates for administrators from the past month (June 2020).
|
|
|
Guideline and policy news
- A request for comment is in progress to remove the T2 (template that misrepresents established policy) speedy deletion criterion.
Technical news
- Protection templates on mainspace pages are now automatically added by User:MusikBot II (BRFA).
Arbitration
- Following the banning of an editor by the WMF last year, the Arbitration Committee resolved to hold an
RfC regarding on-wiki harassment
. The RfC has been posted at Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Anti-harassment RfC and is open to comments from the community. - The Medicine case was closed, with a remedy authorizing standard discretionary sanctions for
all discussions about pharmaceutical drug prices and pricing and for edits adding, changing, or removing pharmaceutical drug prices or pricing from articles
.
- Following the banning of an editor by the WMF last year, the Arbitration Committee resolved to hold an
WikiProject Video games Newsletter Q2 2020[edit]
The WikiProject Video Games Newsletter
Volume 12, No. 2 — 2nd Quarter, 2020
Previous issue | Index | Next issue
Project At a Glance
As of Q2 2020, the project has:
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|
Content
|
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(Delivered ~~~~~)
03:23, 5 July 2020 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Problems
- The Score extension has been disabled for now. This is because of a security issue. It will work again as soon as the security issue has been fixed. [135]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 7 July. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 8 July. It will be on all wikis from 9 July (calendar).
Future changes
- Abstract Wikipedia is a new Wikimedia project. It will collect language-independent information that can be easily read in different languages. It builds on Wikidata. The name is preliminary. You can read more. [136]
- The iOS Wikipedia app developers are thinking about new experimental tools. If you use an iPhone you can help them by answering the survey.
- Some rules for user signatures will soon be enforced. Lint errors and invalid HTML will no longer be allowed in user signatures. Nested substitution will not be allowed. A link to your user page, user talk page or user contributions will be required. You can check if your signature works with the new rules. This is because the signatures can cause problems for tools or other text on the page.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
20:18, 6 July 2020 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- Users can thank others for their edits. Checkusers can now see user data related to that action. This can help identify sock puppets who harass others using thanks. [137]
Problems
- Everyone was logged out a couple of weeks ago to fix a security problem. The problem was not entirely fixed. Because of this everyone was logged out once again last week. [138][139]
Changes later this week
- Wikis that are not for one specific language can translate pages. Sometimes parts of translations are outdated or missing. Outdated translations are marked with a pink background. Missing translations will also be marked in the future. This markup can sometimes break things. It can soon be disabled by using
<translate nowrap></translate>on the source page. [140] - The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 14 July. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 15 July. It will be on all wikis from 16 July (calendar).
Future changes
- Wikimedia code review plans to use GitLab. It would be hosted on Wikimedia servers. [141][142][143][144]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
16:30, 13 July 2020 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- A temporary fix helped wikis make their main pages more mobile friendly. This was in 2012. It has not been recommended since 2017. The mobile main page special casing stopped working 14 July. 60 wikis now have main pages that don't work well on mobile. You can see which ones, how to fix it and how to get help in Phabricator. This is the same problem that was reported in Tech News 2020/24 and 2020/26.
Problems
- There is a problem with the interlanguage links. The interlanguage links are the links that help you find a specific page in a different language. The sorting is broken. The developers are working on a solution. [145]
- Some users keep getting the notifications for the same event. Some of these are old events. [146]
- Some users have trouble logging in. This is probably a browser cookie problem. The developers are working on understanding the problem. If you have trouble logging in you can see the details on Phabricator. [147]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 21 July. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 22 July. It will be on all wikis from 23 July (calendar).
Future changes
- There is a
Printable versionlink. This will disappear. That is because web browsers today can create a printable version or show how it will look in print anyway. [148]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
19:11, 20 July 2020 (UTC)
August 2020 at Women in Red[edit]
|
--Rosiestep (talk) 18:51, 26 July 2020 (UTC) via MassMessaging
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 Starter kit is now available for wiki communities. This page lists technical resources, tools, and recommendations. These are essential to operate a wiki project. This is mostly useful for smaller wikis where the community has limited experience with this. [149]
- The first features of the Desktop Improvements project are available for logged-in users on all wikis. In order to use them, uncheck Use Legacy Vector in your local or global preferences in section Skin preferences. More improvements are planned. Feedback is welcome.
- On multiple wikis, a UTCLiveClock gadget is available. For wikis that import the gadget directly from mediawiki.org, end users can now choose a different timezone to show instead of UTC.
Problems
- The deployment train for MediaWiki has been blocked this week. [150][151]
- Translation Notification Bot was sending the same message multiple times to every translator. This has been fixed. [152]
- Some users were receiving the same notification multiple times. This has been fixed. [153]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from July 28. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from July 29. It will be on all wikis from JUly 30 (calendar).
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
13:53, 27 July 2020 (UTC)
Administrators' newsletter – August 2020[edit]
News and updates for administrators from the past month (July 2020).
Administrator changes
Oversight changes
Guideline and policy news
- There is an open request for comment to decide whether to increase the minimum duration a sanction discussion has to remain open (currently 24 hours).
- Speedy deletion criterion T2 (template that misrepresents established policy) has been repealed following a request for comment.
- Speedy deletion criterion X2 (pages created by the content translation tool) has been repealed following a discussion.
- There is a proposal to restrict proposed deletion to confirmed users.
The Signpost: 2 August 2020[edit]
- Special report: Wikipedia and the End of Open Collaboration?
- COI and paid editing: Some strange people edit Wikipedia for money
- News and notes: Abstract Wikipedia, a hoax, sex symbols, and a new admin
- In the media: Dog days gone bad
- Discussion report: Fox News, a flight of RfAs, and banning policy
- Featured content: Remembering Art, Valor, and Freedom
- Traffic report: Now for something completely different
- News from the WMF: New Chinese national security law in Hong Kong could limit the privacy of Wikipedia users
- Obituaries: Hasteur and Brian McNeil
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Problems
- All queries to the Wikidata Query Service failed between 17:50 and 17:59 UTC on Thursday 23 July. Some queries failed during a longer period. [154]
- Interlanguage links were ordered incorrectly for the past few weeks. This problem was also mentioned in Tech News two weeks ago. The problem is now fixed. [155]
- There is a problem with the global preferences for the "Use Legacy Vector" option. Developers are working on fixing it. [156]
- A bug in the Wikibase extension had disabled the "move" and "create" types of protection in the main (Gallery) namespace on Wikimedia Commons. New protections could not be added, and existing protections were not enforced, allowing some page moves and page creations that should not have been possible. This has now been fixed. [157]
Changes later this week
- The video player will change to be simpler and more modern. This week, the current beta feature will become the video player for everyone on most non-Wikipedia wikis. The old player will be removed. [158]
- Users'
global.jsandglobal.csspages will now also be loaded on the mobile site. You can read documentation for how to avoid applying styles to the mobile skin. [159] - In the MonoBook skin, the
searchGoButtonidentifier is nowsearchButton. This may affect CSS and JS gadgets. Migration instructions can be found in T255953. This was previously mentioned in issue 27. - Bot operators can use Pywikibot to regularly archive discussions. The behavior when the bot uses
counterto prevent large archives was changed. [160] - The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from August 4. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from August 5. It will be on all wikis from August 6 (calendar).
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
15:43, 3 August 2020 (UTC)
Orphaned non-free image File:Realm of the Mad God Gameplay Screenshot.jpg[edit]
Thanks for uploading File:Realm of the Mad God Gameplay Screenshot.jpg. The image description page currently specifies that the image is non-free and may only be used on Wikipedia under a claim of fair use. However, the image is currently not used in any articles on Wikipedia. If the image was previously in an article, please go to the article and see why it was removed. You may add it back if you think that that will be useful. However, please note that images for which a replacement could be created are not acceptable for use on Wikipedia (see our policy for non-free media).
Note that any non-free images not used in any articles will be deleted after seven days, as described in section F5 of the criteria for speedy deletion. Thank you. --B-bot (talk) 03:37, 8 August 2020 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- FileImporter and FileExporter became standard features on all Wikis during the first week of August. They help you transfer files from local wikis to Wikimedia Commons with the original file information and history intact. [161]
Problems
- The mobile skin displays a message at the bottom of the page about who edited last. This message showed raw wikitext. This has now been fixed. Some messages in Structured Discussions and content translation may still appear as raw wikitext. Developers are working on it. [162]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from August 11. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from August 12. It will be on all wikis from August 13 (calendar).
Future changes
- All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on September 1. This is planned between 13:30 and 15:30 UTC. More information will be published in Tech News and will also be posted on individual wikis in the coming weeks. [163][164]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
16:06, 10 August 2020 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- If you revert an edit using the undo link your edit is marked with an
undotag. This will now only happen if you don't change anything in the edit window before publishing the undo. This is to keep users from marking edits as undos when they actually do something else. [165] - The new OOUI version will not work with Internet Explorer 8. This means the wikis will look strange and not work well in Internet Explorer 8. This was reported in Tech/News/2020/17. This is because keeping the wikis working with very old browsers creates other problems. [166]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 18 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 19 August. It will be on all wikis from 20 August (calendar).
Future changes
- All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on September 1. This is planned between 13:30 and 15:30 UTC. More information will be published in Tech News and will also be posted on individual wikis next week. This is a reminder. You can help by translating the announcement message. [167][168]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
20:41, 17 August 2020 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 25 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 26 August. It will be on all wikis from 27 August (calendar).
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
17:59, 24 August 2020 (UTC)
September Women in Red edithons[edit]
|
--Megalibrarygirl (talk) 17:53, 29 August 2020 (UTC) via MassMessaging
The Signpost: 30 August 2020[edit]
- News and notes: The high road and the low road
- In the media: Storytelling large and small
- Featured content: Going for the goal
- Special report: Wikipedia's not so little sister is finding its own way
- Op-Ed: The longest-running hoax
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Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Problems
- This is a reminder. All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on September 1. This is planned between 14:00 and 15:00 UTC. Please check on the details on the announcement message. [169][170]
Changes later this week
- There is no new MediaWiki version this week.
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20:08, 31 August 2020 (UTC)