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Administrators' newsletter – April 2024

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

Administrator changes

• Kbdank71
• Kosack
• NrDg
• TLSuda

Guideline and policy news

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

Technical news

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

Arbitration

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

Miscellaneous

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

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

Tech News: 2024-14

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

Recent changes

• Users of the reading accessibility beta feature will notice that the default line height for the standard and large text options has changed. [1]

Changes later this week

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

Future changes

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

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

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

On 8 February 1993, Iran Air Tours Flight 962, a Tupolev Tu-154, collided in mid-air with an Islamic Republic of Iran Air Force (IRIAF) Sukhoi Su-24 attack aircraft near the Iranian capital of Tehran

On 8 February 1993, Iran Air Tours Flight 962, a Tupolev Tu-154, collided in mid-air with an Islamic Republic of Iran Air Force (IRIAF) Sukhoi Su-24 attack aircraft near the Iranian capital of Tehran 2.191.133.103 (talk) 11:11, 8 April 2024 (UTC)

خبر مرگت اول برو خوب مطالعه کن تو خود ویکیپدیا سوانح هوایی ایران بعد بیا ادعای دونستن از شیر مرغ تا جون آدمیزاد بکن ۱۹۹۳ یک فروند سوخو-۲۴ نیروی هوایی ایران با توپولف-۱۵۴ هواپیمایی ایران ایرتور برخورد کرد و ۱۳۴ کشته برجا گذاشت. سوخو با برخورد به دم هواپیمای مسافربری با چرخش زیاد حول محور عمودی به حالت سقوط مطلق در می‌آید. دم هواپیمای توپولف کنده شده و عده‌ای با صندلیهایشان به آسمان پرتاب می‌شوند. در این حادثه اشتباه خلبان سوخو دلیل بروز سانحه اعلام شد. در ۳ فروردین ۱۳۹۰ خورشیدی یک جنگنده سوخو-۲۴ در استان فارس سقوط کرد که ۲ خلبانش از هواپیما بیرون پریدن که چتر یکی از آنان باز نشد که منجر به مرگ آن خلبان شد. در در ۲۴ تیر ۱۳۹۳ خورشیدی، ساعت ۹:۲۰ دقیقه صبح در حوالی روستای قشقاوی در کنار دریاچه بختگان در دهستان خیر از توابع شهرستان استهبان، یک فروند سوخو -۲۴ متعلق به نیروی هوایی ایران سقوط کرد. خلبانان این جنگنده پیش از وقوع این سانحه، با موفقیت ایجکت کردند و هر دو نفر در سلامت کامل با چتر نجات فرود آمدند 2.191.133.103 (talk) 11:42, 8 April 2024 (UTC)

And what would you like me to do with this information? - ZLEA _T\^C 14:29, 8 April 2024 (UTC)

The Bugle: Issue 216, April 2024

Your Military History Newsletter Project news: From the editors; awards and honours; contest results Articles: Last month's new featured and A-class content Book review: Hawkeye7, Nick-D and Pickersgill-Cunliffe discuss six (count 'em, six!) works comprising eight volumes Op-ed: Hawkeye7 on a lecture by the Australian official historian

The Bugle is published by the Military history WikiProject. To receive it on your talk page, please join the project or sign up here.
If you are a project member who does not want delivery, please remove your name from this page. Your editors, Ian Rose (talk) and Nick-D (talk) 23:08, 8 April 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-15

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

Recent changes

• Web browsers can use tools called extensions. There is now a Chrome extension called Citation Needed which you can use to see if an online statement is supported by a Wikipedia article. This is a small experiment to see if Wikipedia can be used this way. Because it is a small experiment, it can only be used in Chrome in English.
• A new Edit Recovery feature has been added to all wikis, available as a user preference. Once you enable it, your in-progress edits will be stored in your web browser, and if you accidentally close an editing window or your browser or computer crashes, you will be prompted to recover the unpublished text. Please leave any feedback on the project talk page. This was the #8 wish in the 2023 Community Wishlist Survey.
• Initial results of Edit check experiments have been published. Edit Check is now deployed as a default feature at the wikis that tested it. Let us know if you want your wiki to be part of the next deployment of Edit check. [4][5]
• Readers using the Minerva skin on mobile will notice there has been an improvement in the line height across all typography settings. [6]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 9 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 10 April. It will be on all wikis from 11 April (calendar). [7][8]
• New accounts and logged-out users will get the visual editor as their default editor on mobile. This deployment is made at all wikis except for the English Wikipedia. [9]

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

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

Tech News: 2024-16

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

• Between 2 April and 8 April, on wikis using Flagged Revisions, the "Reverted" tag was not applied to undone edits. In addition, page moves, protections and imports were not autoreviewed. This problem is now fixed. [10][11]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 16 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 17 April. It will be on all wikis from 18 April (calendar). [12][13]
• Default category sort keys will now affect categories added by templates placed in footnotes. Previously footnotes used the page title as the default sort key even if a different default sort key was specified (category-specific sort keys already worked). [14]
• A new variable page_last_edit_age will be added to abuse filters. It tells how many seconds ago the last edit to a page was made. [15]

Future changes

• Volunteer developers are kindly asked to update the code of their tools and features to handle temporary accounts. Learn more.
• Four database fields will be removed from database replicas (including Quarry). This affects only the abuse_filter and abuse_filter_history tables. Some queries might need to be updated. [16]

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

MediaWiki message delivery 23:27, 15 April 2024 (UTC)

Will you help in an infobox

@ZLEA, I've added all units that I were to add in Template:Israel–Hamas war infobox, but it seems kinda squished, tried multiple times to fix it, couldn't, will ya please help, anyways thanks for your kind behaviour that you showed by fixing my USERBOX M Waleed (talk) 15:28, 16 April 2024 (UTC)

all these units were taken from other articles of the battles, I wrote in edit summary, of you ask for the source of these units M Waleed (talk) 15:29, 16 April 2024 (UTC)

M Waleed Is there a discussion that led to the addition of these units to the infobox? Personally, I think the conflict has grown to the point where it might not be feasible to include a complete list of units in the infobox, and it might be better to move the list to the Israel–Hamas war article itself. That said, you might also consider creating a content fork, perhaps titled List of units involved in the Israel–Hamas war. Whatever you decide, you should probably discuss it first at Talk:Israel–Hamas war. - ZLEA _T\^C 17:45, 16 April 2024 (UTC)

I put the units in a collapsible format and I think it should be placed as all of the idf is not involved, M Waleed (talk) 00:31, 17 April 2024 (UTC)

To answer your question, the infobox otherwise looks fine on my device. May I ask what your screen resolution is? I'll see if I can replicate the problems you are having. - ZLEA _T\^C 17:48, 16 April 2024 (UTC)

the problem is that the titles, Israel Hezbollah conflict and red sea crisis, instead of being in the back start from middle M Waleed (talk) 00:33, 17 April 2024 (UTC)

I see it now. It was caused by a misplaced "}}" which ended the "Inavsion of Gaza Strip:" bullet list after the "Red sea crisis:" section. It is fixed now. Let me know if you find any other issues. - ZLEA _T\^C 01:01, 17 April 2024 (UTC)

Thanks a lot M Waleed (talk) 02:55, 17 April 2024 (UTC)

@ZLEA, I might sound a bit annoying but can you also fix the units on the side of Hamas, the collapsed list has its title hidden, I Mean it doesn't show up , only [Show] comes but not the title, moreover what I may add is that while you're at it also use the small template for Hamas units as well as units on other fronts. M Waleed (talk) 14:51, 17 April 2024 (UTC)

M Waleed No problem. It's fixed now, but I did notice a link to the Lone Wolf disambiguation page among the list of armed groups. Is this referring to a group called the "Lone Wolves"? If so, then the link should be changed to reflect that, even if no article currently exists (for example, Lone Wolves (Palestinian group) or similar). However, if it's referring to lone individuals not affiliated with any group, then it probably should not be grouped with actual armed groups. - ZLEA _T\^C 15:06, 17 April 2024 (UTC)

It's referring to Non affiliates and there are many articles of such lone wolf attacks I can provide in a second. M Waleed (talk) 15:31, 17 April 2024 (UTC)

2024 Ra'anana attack 2024 Kiryat Malakhi attack etc are examples of lone wolf attacks in this war M Waleed (talk) 15:40, 17 April 2024 (UTC)

M Waleed Unaffiliated individuals should probably be listed separately from armed groups. Perhaps they could be listed in their own section like the Palestine Police currently is. - ZLEA _T\^C 15:42, 17 April 2024 (UTC)

Okay I'll do so M Waleed (talk) 15:44, 17 April 2024 (UTC)

Moreover also convert the size of individual units of Hamas and those of Other theatres to small size M Waleed (talk) 15:36, 17 April 2024 (UTC)

 Done - ZLEA _T\^C 15:52, 17 April 2024 (UTC)

Thanks M Waleed (talk) 15:56, 17 April 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-17

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

Recent changes

• Starting this week, newcomers editing Wikipedia will be encouraged to try structured tasks. Structured tasks have been shown to improve newcomer activation and retention. [17]
• You can nominate your favorite tools for the fifth edition of the Coolest Tool Award. Nominations will be open until May 10.

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 23 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 24 April. It will be on all wikis from 25 April (calendar). [18][19]

Future changes

• This is the last warning that by the end of May 2024 the Vector 2022 skin will no longer share site and user scripts/styles with old Vector. For user-scripts that you want to keep using on Vector 2022, copy the contents of Special:MyPage/vector.js to Special:MyPage/vector-2022.js. There are more technical details available. Interface administrators who foresee this leading to lots of technical support questions may wish to send a mass message to your community, as was done on French Wikipedia. [20]

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

MediaWiki message delivery 20:26, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

The Signpost: 25 April 2024

• In the media: Censorship and wikiwashing looming over RuWiki, edit wars over San Francisco politics and another wikirace on live TV

• News and notes: A sigh of relief for open access as Italy makes a slight U-turn on their cultural heritage reproduction law

• WikiConference report: WikiConference North America 2023 in Toronto recap

• WikiProject report: WikiProject Newspapers (Not WP:NOTNEWS)

• Recent research: New survey of over 100,000 Wikipedia users

• Traffic report: O.J., cricket and a three body problem

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 11:50, 25 April 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-18

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

Recent changes

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

• The appearance of talk pages changed for the following wikis: Azerbaijani Wikipedia, Bengali Wikipedia, German Wikipedia, Persian Wikipedia, Hebrew Wikipedia, Hindi Wikipedia, Indonesian Wikipedia, Korean Wikipedia, Dutch Wikipedia, Portuguese Wikipedia, Romanian Wikipedia, Thai Wikipedia, Turkish Wikipedia, Ukrainian Wikipedia, Vietnamese Wikipedia. These wikis participated to a test, where 50% of users got the new design, for one year. As this test gave positive results, the new design is deployed on these wikis as the default design. It is possible to opt-out these changes in user preferences ("Show discussion activity"). The deployment will happen at all wikis in the coming weeks. [21]
• Seven new wikis have been created:
  • a Wikipedia in Betawi (w:bew:) [22]
  • a Wikipedia in Kusaal (w:kus:) [23]
  • a Wikipedia in Igala (w:igl:) [24]
  • a Wiktionary in Karakalpak (wikt:kaa:) [25]
  • a Wikisource in Burmese (s:my:) [26]
  • a Wikisource in Malay (s:ms:) [27]
  • a Wikisource in Georgian (s:ka:) [28]
• You can now watch message groups/projects on Translatewiki.net. Initially, this feature will notify you of added or deleted messages in these groups. [29]
• Dark mode is now available on all wikis, on mobile web for logged-in users who opt into the advanced mode. This is the early release of the feature. Technical editors are invited to check for accessibility issues on wikis. See more detailed guidelines.

Problems

• Kartographer maps can use an alternative visual style without labels, by using mapstyle="osm". This wasn't working in previews, creating the wrong impression that it wasn't supported. This has now been fixed. [30]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 30 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 1 May. It will be on all wikis from 2 May (calendar). [31][32]

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

MediaWiki message delivery 03:31, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – May 2024

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

Administrator changes

Nyttend

• JohnOwens
• Killiondude
• MelanieN
• Nihonjoe

Bureaucrat changes

Nihonjoe

CheckUser changes

Joe Roe

Oversight changes

GeneralNotability

Guideline and policy news

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

Technical news

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

Arbitration

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

Miscellaneous

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

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:25, 2 May 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-19

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

Recent changes

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

• The appearance of talk pages changed for all wikis, except for Commons, Wikidata and most Wikipedias (a few have already received this design change). You can read the detail of the changes on Diff. It is possible to opt-out these changes in user preferences ("Show discussion activity"). The deployment will happen at remaining wikis in the coming weeks. [33][34]
• Interface admins now have greater control over the styling of article components on mobile with the introduction of the SiteAdminHelper. More information on how styles can be disabled can be found at the extension's page. [35]
• Wikimedia Enterprise has added article body sections in JSON format and a curated short description field to the existing parsed Infobox. This expansion to the API is also available via Wikimedia Cloud Services. [36]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 7 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 8 May. It will be on all wikis from 9 May (calendar). [37][38]
• When you look at the Special:Log page, the first view is labelled "All public logs", but it only shows some logs. This label will now say "Main public logs". [39]

Future changes

• A new service will be built to replace Extension:Graph. Details can be found in the latest update regarding this extension.
• Starting May 21, English Wikipedia and German Wikipedia will get the possibility to activate "Add a link". This is part of the progressive deployment of this tool to all Wikipedias. These communities can activate and configure the feature locally. [40]

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

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

The Bugle: Issue 217, May 2024

Your Military History Newsletter Project news: From the editors; awards and honours; contest results Articles: Last month's new featured and A-class content Book review: Hawkeye7 and Nick-D look at a diverse range of works Op-ed: Hawkeye7 on the "center of gravity"

The Bugle is published by the Military history WikiProject. To receive it on your talk page, please join the project or sign up here.
If you are a project member who does not want delivery, please remove your name from this page. Your editors, Ian Rose (talk) and Nick-D (talk) 20:19, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-20

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

Recent changes

• On Wikisource there is a special page listing pages of works without corresponding scan images. Now you can use the new magic word __EXPECTWITHOUTSCANS__ to exclude certain pages (list of editions or translations of works) from that list. [41]
• If you use the user-preference "Show preview without reloading the page", then the template-page feature "Preview page with this template (what's this?)" will now also work without reloading the page. [42]
• Kartographer maps can now specify an alternative text via the alt= attribute. This is identical in usage to the alt= attribute in the image and gallery syntax. An exception for this feature is wikis like Wikivoyage where the miniature maps are interactive. [43]
• The old Guided Tour for the "New Filters for Edit Review" feature has been removed. It was created in 2017 to show people with older accounts how the interface had changed, and has now been seen by most of the intended people. [44]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 14 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 15 May. It will be on all wikis from 16 May (calendar). [45][46]
• The Special:Search results page will now use CSS flex attributes, for better accessibility, instead of a table. If you have a gadget or script that adjusts search results, you should update your script to the new HTML structure. [47]

Future changes

• In the Vector 2022 skin, main pages will be displayed at full width (like special pages). The goal is to keep the number of characters per line large enough. This is related to the coming changes to typography in Vector 2022. Learn more. [48]
• Two columns of the pagelinks database table (pl_namespace and pl_title) are being dropped soon. Users must use two columns of the new linktarget table instead (lt_namespace and lt_title). In your existing SQL queries:
  1. Replace JOIN pagelinks with JOIN linktarget and pl_ with lt_ in the ON statement
  2. Below that add JOIN pagelinks ON lt_id = pl_target_id
  • See phab:T222224 for technical reasoning. [49][50]

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

The Signpost: 16 May 2024

• News and notes: Democracy in action: multiple elections

• Special report: Will the new RfA reform come to the rescue of administrators?

• Arbitration report: Ruined temples for posterity to ponder over – arbitration from '22 to '24

• In the media: Deadnames on the French Wikipedia, and a duel between Russian wikis

• Op-Ed: Wikidata to split as sheer volume of information overloads infrastructure

• Comix: Generations

• Traffic report: Crawl out through the fallout, baby

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 10:59, 16 May 2024 (UTC)