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Tech News: 2020-03

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

Recent changes

• You can 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. [1]
• Special:LinkSearch has been moved from the "Redirecting special pages" section on Special:SpecialPages to the "Lists of pages" section. [2]

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. [3]
• 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. [4]
• 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. [5]

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

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:39, 13 January 2020 (UTC)

Userinfo.js

Hello. Is there an opt-out of identifying yourself having user rights? 1989 (talk) 01:35, 16 January 2020 (UTC)

Everyone's user groups are public at places like Special:UserRights, in the log, and so on, so no, you can't hide people from knowing that you have certain user group. Is there something you don't want to have anymore? ~ Amory (u • t • c) 11:47, 16 January 2020 (UTC)

Not hide it for everyone, I meant an opt-out of not having ones own info showing to themselves. 1989 (talk) 15:37, 16 January 2020 (UTC)

Ah okay, I understand now. I just added an option to allow you do do so: put window.userinfoHideSelf = true; in your common.js before the importScript('User:Amorymeltzer/userinfo.js'); and it should work on all pages except your own. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 16:47, 16 January 2020 (UTC)

After purging, it seems to work on other users as well. 1989 (talk) 17:04, 16 January 2020 (UTC)

Oh yeah that's because I'm an idiot. Should be fine now! ;) ~ Amory (u • t • c) 17:12, 16 January 2020 (UTC)

Today's Wikipedian 10 years ago

Awesome

Ten years!

--Gerda Arendt (talk) 09:31, 18 January 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-04

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

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 python2 tag 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. [6]
• 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. [7]
• 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.

19:41, 20 January 2020 (UTC)

ygm

ygm. — xaosflux ^Talk 03:06, 21 January 2020 (UTC)

​Replied but 👍 ~ Amory (u • t • c) 03:12, 21 January 2020 (UTC)

I think that user sub pages should always suppress redirects when renaming - perhaps only leaving redirects on the base user and usertalk page. That would eliminate this at the least. It would also break imported pages from other users if they rename themselves - but I think caveat emptor should apply there anyway... — xaosflux ^Talk 03:16, 21 January 2020 (UTC)

The Signpost: 27 January 2020

• 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

• In the media: Turkey's back up, but what's happening with Dot-org and a new visual identity?

• Arbitration report: Three cases at ArbCom

• Traffic report: The most viewed articles of 2019

• Gallery: Wiki Loves Monuments 2019, we're all winners

• News from the WMF: Capacity Building: Top 5 Themes from Community Conversations

• Community view: Our most important new article since November 1, 2015

• In focus: Cryptos and bitcoins and blockchains, oh no!

• Recent research: How useful is Wikipedia for novice programmers trying to learn computing concepts?

• 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

• Humour: Predicting the 6,000,000th article

• Obituary: Remembering Wikipedia contributor Brian Boulton

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 02:08, 27 January 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-05

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

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. [8][9]
• Administrators on wikis that use Structured Discussions can't move discussion pages. This is a bug. The developers are working on fixing it. [10]

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.

18:52, 27 January 2020 (UTC)

Unprotect 2030 Winter Olympics

Please unblock 2030 Winter Olympics. Blocked two years ago, today - there are reliable sources about the Olympics including the candidates to host. Subtropical-man (✉ | en-2) 00:27, 28 January 2020 (UTC)

​Yeah, that seems reasonable, I've gone and done that. I haven't looked to see what state Draft:2030 Winter Olympics is in, but I do note it exists. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 02:46, 28 January 2020 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – February 2020

News and updates for administrators from the past month (January 2020).

Administrator changes

Ergo Sum • Nick Moyes • QEDK • Wugapodes

Dennis Brown

Aude • BrownHairedGirl • CALR • Jengod • John Reaves • J.smith • Kim Dent-Brown • K1Bond007 • MECU • Refdoc • RHaworth

CheckUser changes

Opabinia regalis • Premeditated Chaos

Interface administrator changes

Ragesoss

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. [11]

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.

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!

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 15:05, 1 February 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-06

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

Changes later this week

• 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.

20:04, 3 February 2020 (UTC)

WikiProject Guild of Copy Editors 2019 Annual Report

Guild of Copy Editors 2019 Annual Report Our 2019 Annual Report is now ready for review. Highlights: Overview of Backlog-reduction progress (a record low backlog!); Summary of Drives, Blitzes, and the Requests page; Automated archiving of requests; Membership news and results of elections; Annual leaderboard; Plans for 2020. – Your Guild coordinators: Jonesey95, Baffle gab1978, Reidgreg, Tdslk and Twofingered Typist. To discontinue receiving GOCE newsletters, please remove your name from our mailing list. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 23:10, 7 February 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-07

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

Recent changes

• There is a new version of the Wikimedia Commons app for Android. It should fix the failed uploads problem. [12]

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. [13]

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. [14]
• 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.

19:10, 10 February 2020 (UTC)

New Page Reviewer newsletter February 2020

Hello Amorymeltzer,

Source Guide Discussion

The first NPP source guide discussion is now underway. It covers a wide range of sources in Ghana with the goal of providing more guidance to reviewers about sources they might see when reviewing pages. Hopefully, new page reviewers will join others interested in reliable sources and those with expertise in these sources to make the discussion a success.

Redirects

New to NPP? Looking to try something a little different? Consider patrolling some redirects. Redirects are relatively easy to review, can be found easily through the New Pages Feed. You can find more information about how to patrol redirects at WP:RPATROL.

Discussions and Resources

• There is an ongoing discussion around changing notifications for new editors who attempt to write articles.
• A recent discussion of whether Michelin starred restraunts are notable was archived without closure.
• A resource page with links pertinent for reviewers was created this month.
• A proposal to increase the scope of G5 was withdrawn.

Refresher

Geographic regions, areas and places generally do not need general notability guideline type sourcing. When evaluating whether an article meets this notability guideline please also consider whether it might actually be a form of WP:SPAM for a development project (e.g. PR for a large luxury residential development) and not actually covered by the guideline.

Six Month Queue Data: Today – 7095 Low – 4991 High – 7095

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16:08, 13 February 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-08

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

Recent changes

• Pages on Wikidata and Commons now load faster. You can read more about page load performance. [15][16]

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)

Dear Amorymeltzer

This user User:อัลเบิร์ is trying to make an edit war and I explain about the Wikipedia policy to him but I argue to block anyone who blames to edit in content that this user only thinks he is true. No one can edit on the page that the user was overseer. I need you to tell him to understand the rule and don't make another misunderstanding in Wikipedia rule, especially I need you to BLOCK him to resolve the problem that this user make.

Thank You Ministerboy (talk) 05:06, 22 February 2020 (UTC)

Excuse me but are you, Ministerboy, the IP that is constantly making reverts on those pages? If you are, I believe that you are the one that are violating the rules and try to put your faults into the other's hand. The other user is asking for a discussion with you but you don't do it. Your version of edits cannot be accepted because it came later and the other user is not consenting with you. So you have to discuss first but you choose not to do it and instead, committed warring edit violation. อัลเบิร์ (talk) 05:11, 22 February 2020 (UTC)

Dear User:อัลเบิร์ That another IP is my friend that sits behind me, I work for Wikipedia Thai football for 4 Year and I was work for Thai FA for 2 years until now. Why you delete the honor content of every Thai team and why you delete the history of every Thai team. All the information I find with my ability with my Wikipedia user friend for 4 year and you came here to delete and tell me to talk with you first. That was absurd and can't accept. STOP doing this action for the better way of finding the information from Wikipedia. Ministerboy (talk) 05:16, 22 February 2020 (UTC)

As info, I blocked all 3 users for 24 hours for edit warring. Didn't realize Ministerboy had left this same message to 6-7 others. -- ferret (talk) 14:00, 22 February 2020 (UTC)

Just seeing this now; absolutely endorse your actions. Clear edit warring and disruption across a number of articles. Not surprised there's been sockpuppetry (noted on your talkpage), thanks for handling this. Agree with Bbb as well. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 16:10, 22 February 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-09

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

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.

20:59, 24 February 2020 (UTC)

Nomination for merging of Template:Test-warn-deletion

Template:Test-warn-deletion has been nominated for merging with Template:Db-test-deleted. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. Thank you. Train of Knowledge (Talk) 21:32, 29 February 2020 (UTC)

The Signpost: 1 March 2020

• 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

• In the media: Mapping IP editors, Smithsonian open-access, and coronavirus disinformation

• Discussion report: Do you prefer M or P?

• Arbitration report: Two prominent administrators removed

• By the numbers: How many actions by administrators does it take to clean up spam?

• Community view: The Incredible Invisible Woman

• In focus: History of The Signpost, 2015–2019

• Recent research: Wikipedia generates $50 billion/year consumer surplus in the US alone

• 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?

• Op-Ed: What I learned as Wikimedia UK Communications Coordinator

• Opinion: Wikipedia is another country

• Humour: The Wilhelm scream

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:22, 1 March 2020 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – March 2020

News and updates for administrators from the past month (February 2020).

Administrator changes

Money emoji

Athaenara • DeltaQuad

Fishhead64 • Kudpung • Mikaey

Bureaucrat changes

DeltaQuad

CheckUser changes

DeltaQuad

Oversight changes

DeltaQuad

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 than should not.
• A request for comment confirmed that sandboxes of established but inactive editors may not be blanked due solely to inactivity.

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.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 11:20, 2 March 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-10

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

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. [17]

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. [18]
• 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. [19]
• 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. [20]
• 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. [21]
• 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.
• wgMFSpecialCaseMainPage was 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. [22]

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

00:35, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

A cupcake for you!

Thanks for the support and shepherding that got me through the last couple of weeks. It's HUGELY appreciated. Cabayi (talk) 12:48, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

Glad to be a part of it! ~ Amory (u • t • c) 01:41, 4 March 2020 (UTC)

crathighlighter

Would it be possible to turn off the default highlighting. I want the text to change, but not the background. If I over-ride the default background in my css by setting the background to none, it removes the background set on pages such as closed RFAs which set their own backgrounds.

Maybe setting a crathighlighter_defaults=none in my js before calling the crathighlighter would do it without impacting on existing users?

Thanks Cabayi (talk) 14:23, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

Cabayi, you don't actually want none, you want to use inherit. If I understand you correctly, changing that in your css should do the trick. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 01:42, 4 March 2020 (UTC)

That worked beautifully thanks. There are a couple of omissions which I need to dig into to understand before bugging you further. Cabayi (talk) 11:55, 4 March 2020 (UTC)

Arbitration case opened

You recently offered a statement in a request for arbitration. The Arbitration Committee has accepted that request for arbitration and an arbitration case has been opened at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Jytdog. Evidence that you wish the arbitrators to consider should be added to the evidence subpage, at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Jytdog/Evidence. Please add your evidence by March 23, 2020, which is when the evidence phase closes. You can also contribute to the case workshop subpage, Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Jytdog/Workshop. For a guide to the arbitration process, see Wikipedia:Arbitration/Guide to arbitration.

All content, links, and diffs from the original ARC and the latest ARC are being read into the evidence for this case.

The secondary mailing list is in use for this case: arbcom-en-b@wikimedia.org

For the Arbitration Committee, CThomas³ (talk) 05:55, 9 March 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-11

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

Recent changes

• 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. [23][24][25]

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. [26]

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

17:14, 9 March 2020 (UTC)

Deletion review for Parthesh Patel

User:હમઝા ઘાંચી has asked for a deletion review of Parthesh Patel. Because you closed the deletion discussion for this page, speedily deleted it, or otherwise were interested in the page, you might want to participate in the deletion review. —Cryptic 03:47, 12 March 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-12

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

Recent changes

• There is a new API module for changing the content model of existing pages. Use action=changecontentmodel to specify the new model. You can read the documentation on mediawiki.org. [27]

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. [28][29]
• 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.

21:17, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

GOCE March newsletter

Guild of Copy Editors March 2020 Newsletter Hello and welcome to the March newsletter, a brief update of Guild activities since December 2019. All being well, we're planning to issue these quarterly in 2020, balancing the need to communicate widely with the avoidance of filling up talk pages. Don't forget you can unsubscribe at any time; see below. Election results: There was little changeover in the roster of Guild Coordinators, with Miniapolis stepping down with distinction as a coordinator emeritus while Jonesey95 returned as lead coordinator. The next election is scheduled for June 2020 and all Wikipedians in good standing may participate. January Drive: Thanks to everyone for the splendid work, completing 215 copy edits including 56 articles from the Requests page and 116 backlog articles from the target months of June to August 2019. At the conclusion of the drive there was a record low of 323 articles in the copy editing backlog. Of the 27 editors who signed up for the drive, 21 copyedited at least one article. Final results, including barnstars awarded, are available here. February Blitz: Of the 15 editors who signed up for this one-week blitz, 13 completed at least one copy edit. A total of 32 articles were copy edited, evenly split between the twin goals of requests and the oldest articles from the copy-editing backlog. Full results are here. March Drive: Currently underway, this event is targeting requests and backlog articles from September to November 2019. As of 18 March, the backlog stands at a record low of 253 articles and is expected to drop further as the drive progresses. Awards will be given to everyone who copyedits at least one article from the backlog. Help set a new record and sign up now! Progress report: As of 18 March, GOCE copyeditors have completed 161 requests in 2020 and there was a net reduction of 385 articles from the copy-editing backlog – a 60% decrease from the beginning of the year. Well done and thank you everyone! Election reminder: It may only be March but don't forget our mid-year Election of Coordinators opens for nominations on 1 June. Coordinators normally serve a six-month term and are elected on an approval basis. Self-nominations are welcome. If you've thought of helping out at the Guild, or know of another editor who would make a good coordinator, please consider standing for election or nominating them here. Thank you all again for your participation; we wouldn't be able to achieve what we have without you! Cheers from your GOCE coordinators Jonesey95, Baffle gab1978, Reidgreg, Tdslk and Twofingered Typist To discontinue receiving GOCE newsletters, please remove your name from our mailing list.

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 15:52, 18 March 2020 (UTC)

I need emergency help to deal with user JIJJRG on Pat Day - he is trying to assassinate his character and blocks attempts to fix

The user JIJJRG has desecrated the Wikipedia page of Hall of Fame jockey Pat Day and is using it as his thiefdom to control everything that is said on the page, and has constantly deleted numerous attempts by myself, a historian and journalist, to accurately portray Day's accomplishments and balance the page against the malicious, hostile, misleading, false and denegrating words that JIJJRG has used to slander Day.

This must be stopped.

I have tried going through dispute resolution and was told this would be resolved but it has not.

This user has a serious act to grind against one of the sport's greatest jockeys in its histories and has no interest in accurately portraying his career or anything positive from it.

Please help. — Preceding unsigned comment added by NatroneDay (talk • contribs) 18:17, 28 March 2020 (UTC)

Noting for the record: User indef'd, other user CU blocked. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 00:51, 29 March 2020 (UTC)

G13 Eligibility Notice

The following pages will become eligible for CSD:G13 shortly.

• Draft:Nabiyah Be

Thanks, HasteurBot (talk) 04:00, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

Wrong editor but okay! ~ Amory (u • t • c) 10:14, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-13

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. [30][31]

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.

17:07, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

WP:Redirects_for_discussion/Log/2018 January 28#Sinuosus

Hi Amory. You closed that redirect deletion discussion as delete. I don't have a question about that, but I know you know what you're doing so I'd like to ask a related question. C. sinuosa is a disambig page. Have you ever heard someone make the argument that pages like C. sinuosa should be deleted, rather than being a redirect or disambiguation page (in this case, pointing to Colpomenia sinuosa)? I'm asking because an awful lot of pages in the format [initial of the genus] [species name] don't exist ... and I'm wondering if someone thinks they're not supposed to. (I suspect people just haven't gotten around to creating the redir or disambig page yet.) - Dank (push to talk) 23:56, 22 March 2020 (UTC)

​I think it's more about the latter, but really limitations in human interest. There are plenty of redirects and dabs, but folks have to think they'd be useful. RfD discussions can be hard to search, but there are definitely instances where G. species pages were kept when appropriate. Probably the hardest part is when there's ambiguity and someone argues for a redirect rather than a 2dab. The community has pretty heartily spoken out against mass creation of such things a few times IIRC, so it's really only done slowly and methodically as folks desire. Still, there are plenty of gaps: R. norvegicus exists, but I'm surprised M. musculus doesn't.

Does that help? ~ Amory (u • t • c) 10:30, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

Thanks, that's helpful. - Dank (push to talk) 14:17, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

Just noting that I see the discussion at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Plants#Sources_useful_for_putting_together_disambig_pages, I'd absolutely recommend a larger discussion, RfC or whatever. A creation of 3,000 pages, even if 100% correct and just redirects, will almost certainly end up at AN or ANI or something. It may also run afoul of WP:BOTP, in particular see WP:MEATBOT and WP:MASSCREATION. ~ Amory (u • t • c)

Thanks again. - Dank (push to talk) 19:35, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

Twinkle delete prefs change

Thanks for that, I have noticed the change and it is a definite improvement. Guy (help!) 21:24, 25 March 2020 (UTC)

👍 Thanks! ~ Amory (u • t • c) 01:11, 26 March 2020 (UTC)

The Signpost: 29 March 2020

• 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

• Recent research: Disease outbreak uncertainties, AfD forecasting, auto-updating Wikipedia

• 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?

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:41, 29 March 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-14

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

• The beta version of the Wikipedia app for Android can now help users add tags on Commons. These tags are called depicts. [32]

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. [33]
• 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. [34]

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

17:25, 30 March 2020 (UTC)

Scripts++ Newsletter – Issue 14

News and updates associated with user scripts from the past month (March 2020).

Hello everyone and welcome to the 14th issue of the Wikipedia Scripts++ Newsletter:

Scripts Submit your new/improved script here

Danski454's code-link is this month's featured script

RealFakeKim's pageInfo • Guywan: InsertShortcuts • ConfirmLogout

Headbomb's Unreliable/Predatory Source Detector has been updated to include more sources

• Evad37's rater script is now on version 2.5. New features include:

1. No longer showing dropdowns for projects without ratings
2. Making use of Category:WikiProject banner templates not based on WPBannerMeta to detect templates
3. Automatically detecting Good Article, Featured Article, and Featured List status, and limiting ORES predictions to B-class

• An updated version of Twinkle was released. Features relating to the recently-enabled
  partial blocks include automatic lookup of pages and expanded options for block templates.
  See a full list of changes here
• For users of Enterprisey's easy-brfa script, the bug with transcluding new BRFAs has been resolved
• Guywan's RefCruncher has had minor updates

Miscellaneous

• For any scripts that previously made use of the edit API to change a page's content model,
  a new API module is available: use action=changecontentmodel to specify the new
  content model of an existing page. Documentation is available: mw:API:ChangeContentModel.
• The dispute resolution noticeboard wizard is no longer a gadget, but rather is loaded using
  withJS and withCSS. See the discussion at MediaWiki talk:Gadget-DRN-wizard.js

Pending requests

• A script to help file movers process requests, including
  1. renaming the file
  2. updating file links
  3. removing the {{Rename media}} template (when relevant)
• ...and many more, all available at Wikipedia:User scripts/Requests

Stay safe, --DannyS712 (talk) 05:48, 1 April 2020 (UTC)

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Administrators' newsletter – April 2020

News and updates for administrators from the past month (March 2020).

Administrator changes

Cabayi • Lee Vilenski

Boing! said Zebedee

Jonny-mt • MarkGallagher • PeaceNT

Money emoji → Moneytrees

Bureaucrat changes

SilkTork • WereSpielChequers

CheckUser changes

NativeForeigner

Oversight changes

Someguy1221

Daniel Case

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.

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.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 07:00, 1 April 2020 (UTC)

Extended confirmed protection required for Template:2019–20 coronavirus pandemic data

Indefinite extended confirmed protection required for Template:2019–20 coronavirus pandemic data. It seems that protection is expired. Lot of vandalism has started. No response at Wikipedia:Requests for page protection. Thank you. Amkgp (talk) 15:53, 2 April 2020 (UTC)

Just seeing this now, but taking a quick look I generally agree that the semi protection added earlier today is doing the trick. El C seems to be on top of it! ~ Amory (u • t • c) 02:08, 3 April 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-15

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

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. [35]

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. [36]

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

19:02, 6 April 2020 (UTC)

Invitation to collaborate: new NodeJS bot framework

Hi,

While I know that you are engaged with your kid(s?) (lucky you!) and that you're maybe not a bots guy, I thought you'd interested in knowing that I created a new bot framework for NodeJS called mwn. Mainly to beat the lockdown boredom, but also because existing NodeJS bot libraries suck - they have limited feature sets and use outdated methods and technologies. Your contributions would be very much appreciated! See issues for a list of open tasks. Lemme know if you want the colab bit too. SD0001 (talk) 19:53, 8 April 2020 (UTC)

Thanks, looks neat! I'm definitely interest and will try to keep an eye on it, but, yeah, I'm certainly playing catch-up one or maybe two days a week. Might not contribute for a while, but hope to when things get a bit less hectic. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 15:21, 12 April 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-16

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

Recent changes

• You can now use the articletopic search word on all Wikipedias. It searches articles by topic. [37]
• You can see wiki tools in the new Tools Gallery. [38]
• 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. [39]
• There is a new Wikimedia Technical Blog. [40]

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. [41][42][43]

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. [44]
• 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 deprecated enclose parameter, will add tracking categories.

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

15:30, 13 April 2020 (UTC)

Precious anniversary

Precious

Two years!

--Gerda Arendt (talk) 07:48, 17 April 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-17

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

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. [45]
• Over-qualified CSS selectors in Wikimedia skins have been removed. div#content is now .mw-body. div.portal is now .portal. div#footer is 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. [46]

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. [47]
• The font in the diffs will change. [48]
• 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.

18:44, 20 April 2020 (UTC)

The Signpost: 26 April 2020

• 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

• Gallery: Roy is doing fine and sending more photos

• Recent research: Trending topics across languages; auto-detecting bias

• Essay: Wikipedia:An article about yourself isn't necessarily a good thing

• By the numbers: Open data and COVID-19: Wikipedia as an informational resource during the pandemic

• Opinion: Trusting Everybody to Work Together

• On the bright side: What's making you happy this month?

• Interview: Health and RfA's: An interview with Guy Macon

• In focus: Multilingual Wikipedia

• WikiProject report: The Guild of Copy Editors

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:17, 26 April 2020 (UTC)

Scripts++ Newsletter – Issue 15

News and updates associated with user scripts from the past month (April 2020).

Hello everyone and welcome to the 15th issue of the Wikipedia Scripts++ Newsletter:

Scripts Submit your new/improved script here

SD0001's find-archived-section, now a gadget, is this month's featured script

Enterprisey:

1. link-deleted-revs (On error pages for deleted revisions, show a link to the Special:Undelete page)
2. undelete-backlink (On Special:Undelete pages for diffs and revisions, link back to the main Undelete page with the list of revisions)

Epicgenius's sortcategories (sorts categories in an article alphabetically)

Awesome Aasim:

1. addmylinks (adds a customizable area for links and/or text to the sidebar)
2. editrequest (tool that allows for processing and answering edit requests)

DemonDays64's Dumb quotes (replaces smart curly single and double quotes with "dumb" quotes)

Guywan's FileMoverHelper (move files and replace their uses in one action)

Enterprisey's reply-link has been updated to fail less, especially around template transclusions.

Twinkle released new features, including a new option to disable individual modules, support for stub template nomination at CfD, and integration with the PageTriage extension used to patrol new pages. (See full list of changes)

Open tasks

• The mediawiki.notify resource loader module was deprecated and is no longer needed; its functionality is now available by default. See mw:ResourceLoader/Migration guide (users) for more. Any dependency on it should be removed.

Pending requests

• A script to reload feeds automatically
• A script to mark templates in the TFD holding cell as ready for deletion
• ...and many more, all available at Wikipedia:User scripts/Requests

Miscellaneous

• Wikipedia:User scripts/Most imported scripts now also shows the number of active users for each script. It will now be updated by a bot periodically.
• Twinkle's Morebits library added a new Morebits.date class to replace the moment library. It can handle custom formatting and natural language for dates, as well as section header regexes. If you were using getUTCMonthName or getUTCMonthNameAbbrev with Date objects, those have been deprecated and should be updated.
• User:SD0001/find-archived-section was made a gadget. You can enable it from your gadget preferences, in the Browsing section.

Hope everyone stays safe. --DannyS712 (talk) 20:27, 1 May 2020 (UTC)

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Administrators' newsletter – May 2020

News and updates for administrators from the past month (April 2020).

Administrator changes

Gnangarra • Kaisershatner • Malcolmxl5

CheckUser changes

Callanecc

Oversight changes

HJ Mitchell

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.

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• Archive

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 01:19, 2 May 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-19

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

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. [49]
• 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. [50]

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. [51]
• 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)

Geological range

Hi, {{Geological range}} has a lot of sub templates to work with. So I have took the time to merge those into an only module. Also, reduced the size of the twice-processed data. The module is Module:Geological range, and the test cases can be seen here: User:HastaLaVi2/sandbox2. If we update the template with this module, we won't have to need any of the templates listed above the module page. We could also now merge {{Long fossil range}} template and its documentation into this one, since I merged all of them together and no parameter changed, nothing is affected. ~ Z (m) 09:47, 5 May 2020 (UTC)

Is there a reason you're telling me? I don't know anything about those templates, so you should probably discuss something like that on the template talk page or Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Palaeontology. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 10:32, 5 May 2020 (UTC)

Well, I did actually. But the template is under protection. So I do not know how to make the change now. ~ Z (m) 13:52, 5 May 2020 (UTC)

You can always wait for more input — it seems you just recently posted it — but what you want to do is put Template:Edit template-protected on that talkpage. That will draw editors with the appropriate usergroup permissions to check it out and take care of it for you. Might take a day or two but should take care of it! ~ Amory (u • t • c) 19:25, 5 May 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-20

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

• Everyone can now import photos from Flickr to Commons with the UploadWizard. Before this only autopatrollers on Commons could import photos from Flickr. [52]

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. [53]
• 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. [54][55]

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() or mw.user.tokens.exists(). You can use exists() or get() to check one at a time instead. [56]

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

20:40, 11 May 2020 (UTC)

One hour

Something tells me that this:

cache_hours *= 60*60*10000; // milliseconds

isn't one hour :) Galobtter (pingó mió) 04:32, 14 May 2020 (UTC)

Hah! Thanks. Orders of magnitude, how do they even! ~ Amory (u • t • c) 09:43, 14 May 2020 (UTC)

User highlighter script question

Hey Amory, hope you're well. This script of yours does wonders, but I've been trying to customize it to do something logical with respect to all our users who wear many many hats, and I've been struggling a bit. Could you give me some pointers as to the order in which your script processes user-rights (or lines of script? this is where I've been mucking around) and also what the "important" field in your customization suggestions does? Vanamonde (Talk) 19:37, 17 May 2020 (UTC)

To expand a little; I see that I can alter the order of priority; but it still seems like the script can only handle one designation per user; am I correct about this? If not, I'm wondering what I'm doing wrong. Vanamonde (Talk) 19:47, 17 May 2020 (UTC)

Okay I get ya. Yes, that's true, only one per link. It should be easy to add all classes: it would slow things down, though, which I'd like to avoid, but I'm not sure how much or how noticeable it would be. I can do some testing and see? ~ Amory (u • t • c) 19:54, 17 May 2020 (UTC)

That'd be great...the ARBCOM-crat-OS-CU Venn diagram has gotten quite complicated, especially since the last election. It's not a big deal if you're busy, but it would be quite useful otherwise. Vanamonde (Talk) 20:01, 17 May 2020 (UTC)

I feel ya! I threw something together quickly that should do it. I did some minimal testing, but (for me on my decade+ laptop), the difference in the script loading on WP:AN was 150ms to 250ms. That's probably the worst case scenario (well, maybe ANI) but still seemed like a big increase. So what I did was added a preference option if you like: add window.all_groups = true; to your common.js, and it should be enabled! Holla if there are issues, it was a good idea. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 20:14, 17 May 2020 (UTC)

Much appreciated...this seems to handle multiple symbols, now, but it's ability to do different colors seems to have disappeared? For instance, in my scheme, ARBCOM/OS are different from CU-only are different from sysop-only; but they've all been collapsed to the sysop color at the moment. Or maybe I've misunderstood the directions...Vanamonde (Talk) 20:49, 17 May 2020 (UTC)

Vanamonde93, sorry, was writing up the details with the new changes. CSS will favor whichever rule was added last, so in your custom css page, the fact that you have the sysop rule last means it will take precedence over all the others. Basically, if you're using this, your customized CSS should try to be the reverse of the order you'd like. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 21:01, 17 May 2020 (UTC)

Ah, I had them almost precisely reversed. Perfect, thank you; works great now. Vanamonde (Talk) 21:06, 17 May 2020 (UTC)

Some more info at User:Amorymeltzer/crathighlighter#Show all groups, but great! ~ Amory (u • t • c) 21:14, 17 May 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-21

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

Recent changes

• 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. [57][58]

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. [59]
• 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. [60][61]

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. [62]
• 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. [63]
• 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-variants and div#footer. They will have to remove div. You will have to update your gadgets, scripts or user styles. This is so we can use HTML5. [64]
• Some CSS for the Vector skin has been changed. This affects #p-variants, #p-namespaces, #p-personal, #p-views and #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.

17:18, 18 May 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for the clarification!

Hi,

A comment of yours in "Village Pump#WMF" helped me clear the slight doubt (thus making me happy :]) that I had about whether VPT was the appropriate place to post maintenance announcements. I'm new to this. The fact that the description of VPT doesn't mention anything about announcements, didn't help me either.

Also, if there are other places where maintenance notices such as "Planned maintenance operation (read-only time) …" should be posted, do let me know :)

Thanks again, Kaartic ^{correct me, if i'm wrong} 18:36, 19 May 2020 (UTC)

Glad to be of service! ~ Amory (u • t • c) 00:50, 20 May 2020 (UTC)

Kind of a dumb question

So I'm building up an AWB module for infobox genfixes, and among some of the more useful tidbits of code I came across RemoveExcessTemplatePipes(string templatecall). The only issue is that, unlike RemoveTemplateParameter(string articletext, string templatename, string parameter), which includes the articletext, the pipes function doesn't have that in there. Would I still set up the line of code along the lines of

 ArticleText = WikiFunctions.Tools.RemoveExcessTemplatePipes(<insert template name here>);

based on the return for that tool I feel like that would only return the new template code, so I wanted to check with you before I broke things and couldn't figure out how to fix them. Primefac (talk) 13:52, 20 May 2020 (UTC)

​Well, with the caveat that I've never worked with C# or done any work with AWB modules, I do believe based on the source that you're right: it only takes and only returns the new template call, so it'd be something like TemplateText = WikiFunctions.Tools.RemoveExcessTemplatePipes(<insert template name here>); or however your module ends up wanting to use it. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 00:14, 21 May 2020 (UTC)

Weird, for some odd reason I thought you were pretty well involved in that. Thank you, at least, for verifying my concerns! Primefac (talk) 00:35, 21 May 2020 (UTC)

Ah, you were probably thinking of Twinkle. I'm all up in there. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 09:32, 21 May 2020 (UTC)

WikiBreak Enforcer

Please be aware that I am using the WikiBreak Enforcer in accordance with a previous Self-Requested block approved and enforced by this user/admin. If you would like to consider an additional block alongside my Javascript command, you are welcome to do so. Please visit my user page for more details. -- Sleyece (talk) 18:24, 21 May 2020 (UTC)

That wouldn't be self-requested; regardless, I would decline to do so given the behavior and discussions leading up to this. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 09:58, 22 May 2020 (UTC)

Asking for the rollback permission

I have fully understood policy of Wikipedia.like this is an encyclopedia and neutrality should be maintained while writing on it as well as unsourced edit and copyright violation is not permitted here. I have however seen that there are a number of pages on Wikipedia specially related to South Asian politics and important personality as well as historical figures which are vandalised by new users and remain vandalised as administrator attention is not drawn on some minor edits as well as less important pages.But as a history teacher I think that such minor edit can cost a lot to people who are dependent upon Wikipedia to enhance their knowledge base as after all they end up learning falsified stuffs. In such a scenario I request rollback right to help uphold the quality of Wikipedia article. Editor wikip6 (talk) 11:11, 24 May 2020 (UTC)

​Hi there! I see you also posted this request at WP:PERM/R, so I think that's the best place for now. It will get reviewed in due time. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 13:07, 24 May 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-22

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

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. [65]
• 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.

14:17, 25 May 2020 (UTC)

Articles for Creation: List of reviewers by subject notice

Hi Amorymeltzer, you are receiving this notice because you are listed as an active Articles for Creation reviewer.

Recently a list of reviewers by area of expertise was created. This notice is being sent out to alert you to the existence of that list, and to encourage you to add your name to it. If you or other reviewers come across articles in the queue where an acceptance/decline hinges on specialist knowledge, this list should serve to facilitate contact with a fellow reviewer.

To end on a positive note, the backlog has dropped below 1,500, so thanks for all of the hard work some of you have been putting into the AfC process!

Sent to all Articles for Creation reviewers as a one-time notice. To opt-out of all massmessage mailings, you may add Category:Wikipedians who opt out of message delivery to your user talk page. Regards, Sam-2727 (talk)

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:35, 27 May 2020 (UTC)

The Signpost: 31 May 2020

• From the editor: Meltdown May?

• News and notes: 2019 Picture of the Year, 200 French paid editing accounts blocked, 10 years of Guild Copyediting

• In the media: CBS on COVID-19, Sanger on bias, false noses, and five prolific editors

• Discussion report: WMF's Universal Code of Conduct

• Special report: The sum of human knowledge? Not in one Wikipedia language edition

• 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

• Op-Ed: Where Is Political Bias Taking Us?

• 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

• On video: COVID-19 spurs innovations in Wikimedia video and virtual programming

• WikiProject report: Revitalizing good articles

• On the bright side: 500,000 articles in the Egyptian Arabic Wikipedia

• Obituaries: Dmitrismirnov, Kattenkruid, Muidlatif, Ronhjones, Tsirel

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 19:05, 31 May 2020 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – June 2020

News and updates for administrators from the past month (May 2020).

Administrator changes

CaptainEek • Creffett • Cwmhiraeth

Anna Frodesiak • Buckshot06 • Ronhjones • SQL

CheckUser changes

SQL

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

• A motion was passed to enact a 500/30 restriction on articles related to the history of Jews and antisemitism in Poland during World War II (1933–45), including the Holocaust in Poland. Article talk pages where disruption occurs may also be managed with the stated restriction.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 13:27, 1 June 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-23

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

Recent changes

• 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. [66]

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. [67][68][69]
• 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. [70]

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. [71]
• 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)

Question

In your edit summaries for this page, you mention that you use a script to add/remove users from the list. What script do you use to do this task? - ZLEA _T\^C 01:58, 2 June 2020 (UTC)

There's a link in the edit summary, but the page changed since that particular page was edited so it could be confusing! I added an anchor. It's linked at the bottom of User:Amorymeltzer/crathighlighter; it's a fairly-straightforward perl script, although with some git crap to make my life easier. I've got a version running on toolforge but there haven't been many changes lately! ~ Amory (u • t • c) 02:26, 2 June 2020 (UTC)

Thanks. Could it be used to maintain similar lists of other user groups? - ZLEA _T\^C 13:08, 2 June 2020 (UTC)

​It could, yes. What did you have in mind? I'll note that Bellezzasolo has a bot that maintains lists of other groups. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 01:27, 3 June 2020 (UTC)

I was thinking of making an Admin Highlighter script that worked for all user groups with emojis. I found a script that checked the user's user groups directly and forked it, but I stopped work on it when I realized there are user groups that cannot be represented with existing emojis. At the moment I no longer have a need for your script, but I know who to talk to if I do in the future. Thanks anyway. - ZLEA _T\^C 02:07, 3 June 2020 (UTC)

Also, Bellezzasolo's bot hasn't been active for almost a year. I looked into it early on but ultimately chose to find an alternative way of checking user groups that wasn't outdated. - ZLEA _T\^C 02:16, 3 June 2020 (UTC)

@ZLEA: Check out User:MDanielsBot/markAdmins-Data.js/User:MDanielsBot/markAdmins-Data.json :) (also, Amory, thanks for maintaining the Arbcom list, I've been stealing it...) --Mdaniels5757 (talk) 02:40, 3 June 2020 (UTC)

GOCE June newsletter

Guild of Copy Editors June 2020 Newsletter Hello and welcome to the June newsletter, a brief update of Guild activities since March 2020. You can unsubscribe from our mailings at any time; see below. All times and dates stated are in UTC. Current events Election time: Nomination of candidates in our mid-year Election of Coordinators opened on 1 June, and voting will take place from 00:01 on 16 June. GOCE coordinators normally serve a six-month term and are elected on an approval basis. Self-nominations are welcome. If you've thought about helping out at the Guild, or you know of another editor who would make a good coordinator, please consider standing for election or nominating them here. June Blitz: This blitz begins at 00:01 on 14 June and ends at 23:59 on 20 June, with themes of articles tagged for copyedit in May 2020 and requests. Drive and blitz reports March Drive: Self-isolation from coronavirus may have played a hand in making this one of our most successful backlog elimination drives. The copy-editing backlog was reduced from 477 to a record low of 118 articles, a 75% reduction. The last four months of 2019 were cleared, reducing the backlog to three months. Fifty requests were also completed, and the total word count of copy-edited articles was 759,945. Of the 29 editors who signed up, 22 completed at least one copy edit. Final results, including barnstars awarded, are available here. April Blitz: This blitz ran from 12 to 18 April with a theme of Indian military history. Of the 18 people who signed up, 14 copyedited at least one article. Participants claimed a total of 60 copyedits. Final results, including barnstars awarded, are available here. May Drive: This event marked the 10th anniversary of the GOCE's copy-editing drives, and set a goal of diminishing the backlog to just one month of articles, as close to zero articles as possible. We achieved the goal of eliminating all articles that had been tagged prior to the start of the drive, for the first time in our history! Of the 51 editors who signed up, 43 copyedited at least one article. Final results, including barnstars awarded, are available here. Other news Progress report: as of 2 June, GOCE participants had processed 328 requests since 1 January, which puts us on pace to exceed any previous year's number of requests. As of the end of the May drive, the backlog stood at just 156 articles, all tagged in May 2020. Outreach: To mark the 10th anniversary of our first Backlog Elimination Drive, The Signpost contributor and GOCE participant Puddleglum2.0 interviewed project coordinators and copy-editors for the journal's April WikiProject Report. The Drive and the current Election of Coordinators have also been covered in The Signpost's May News and Notes page. Thank you all again for your participation; we wouldn't be able to achieve what we have without you! Cheers from your GOCE coordinators Jonesey95, Baffle gab1978, Reidgreg, Tdslk and Twofingered Typist. To discontinue receiving GOCE newsletters, please remove your name from our mailing list.

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) at 15:46, 5 June 2020 (UTC).

Tech News: 2020-24

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

Recent changes

• 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. [72]
• 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, wbr can 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 />. [73]
• 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 on MediaWiki:Sitenotice so that editors know to test and style for mobile too. [74][75]

Changes later this week

• You can now edit MassMessage descriptions through the API. This is useful for tools and gadgets. [76]
• 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. [77]

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

21:11, 8 June 2020 (UTC)

Your edit on MacBeth

Please check it Macbeth, looks strange to be honest... "Blank"?! CommanderWaterford (talk) 20:11, 14 June 2020 (UTC)

Haha yes, thank you. Was testing something on a different wiki and got my tabs mixed up. Immediately realized but you beat me to the punch — thanks! ~ Amory (u • t • c) 20:12, 14 June 2020 (UTC)

Trainwrecks

So, Jewish Legion (WWII) and Jewish Legion (WWI) are one thing, but Jewish Legion ((WWII) is a clear typo (has an extra parenthesis), can we delete it? --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here}

We're talking about Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2020 June 7#Common Sense( Scottish Magazine), I think the close is pretty clear these can all be nominated again, just that the mass/indiscriminate nature of that nomination was unmanageable. That being said, in the specific case of Jewish Legion ((WWII), since it was just made May first and was started (and moved) by you, I'll delete it. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 11:08, 15 June 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-25

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

Recent changes

• 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. [78]
• Editing, logging in and logging out didn't work properly for a short period of time last week. It was soon fixed. [79]

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. [80]
• The selectors .menu and .vectorMenu will no longer work in the Vector skin. This can affect gadgets and user scripts. .menu should be replaced by ul. .vectorMenu should be replaced by .vector-menu. [81]

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

21:37, 15 June 2020 (UTC)

Feedback request: Wikipedia policies and guidelines request for comment

Message delivered to you with love by Yapperbot :) Is this wrong? Contact my bot operator. Sent at 08:08, 16 June 2020 (UTC)

Feedback request: Wikipedia technical issues and templates request for comment

Message delivered to you with love by Yapperbot :) Is this wrong? Contact my bot operator. Sent at 08:14, 16 June 2020 (UTC)

Feedback request: Politics, government, and law request for comment

Message delivered to you with love by Yapperbot :) Is this wrong? Contact my bot operator. Sent at 08:15, 16 June 2020 (UTC)

New Page Reviewer newsletter June 2020

Hello Amorymeltzer,

Your help can make a difference

NPP Sorting can be a great way to find pages needing new page patrolling that match your strengths and interests. Using ORES, it divides articles into topics such as Literature or Chemistry and on Geography. Take a look and see if you can find time to patrol a couple pages a day. With over 10,000 pages in the queue, the highest it's been since ACPERM, your help could really make a difference.

Google Adds New Languages to Google Translate

In late February, Google added 5 new languages to Google Translate: Kinyarwanda, Odia (Oriya), Tatar, Turkmen and Uyghur. This expands our ability to find and evaluate sources in those languages.

Discussions and Resources

• A discussion on handling new article creation by paid editors is ongoing at the Village Pump.
• Also at the Village Pump is a discussion about limiting participation at Articles for Deletion discussion.
• A proposed new speedy deletion criteria for certain kinds of redirects ended with no consensus.
• Also ending with no change was a proposal to change how we handle certain kinds of vector images.

Six Month Queue Data: Today – 10271 Low – 4991 High – 10271

To opt-out of future mailings, please remove yourself here

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 02:52, 18 June 2020 (UTC)

Replacing vectorTabs with .vector-menu-tabs

As mentioned in the title of this section, please make the change in MediaWiki:Gadget-Blackskin.css file. Adithyak1997 (talk) 17:44, 18 June 2020 (UTC)

Adithyak1997, thanks for the reminder! I think I took care of it — it's not something I used, so I'm not 100% on how the tabs were supposed to look, but AFAICT it's all set? ~ Amory (u • t • c) 18:05, 18 June 2020 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

The Technical Barnstar

Because, honestly, after reading this regular expression in Twinkle for putting maintenance templates in the right place, you absolutely deserve one. I hope you don't mind me building off it for a similar regex I'm writing in a bot task - it took me a good fifteen minutes to get my head around what you've written there (it is you, I checked git blame!) and my god that must have taken some thinking on your part when you first wrote it. Thank you so much for your amazing contributions Naypta ☺ | ✉ talk page | 20:23, 20 June 2020 (UTC)

Thanks, but there was a lot of prior work on that regex, I really only tweaked it. It's a beast for sure! I'll take the "amazing contributions" compliment, though! ~ Amory (u • t • c) 15:15, 21 June 2020 (UTC)

Feedback request: Maths, science, and technology request for comment

Your feedback is requested at Talk:Julian day on a request for comment. Thank you for helping out!
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Tech News: 2020-26

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

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. [82]
• Some user scripts and gadgets stopped working because of a change to CSS selectors. .vectorTabs should be replaced with .vector-menu-tabs to fix this. [83]

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. [84]
• 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. [85]

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

18:48, 22 June 2020 (UTC)

Feedback request: Wikipedia proposals request for comment

Your feedback is requested at Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Mapframe maps in infoboxes on a request for comment. Thank you for helping out!
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The Signpost: 28 June 2020

• 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

• Interview: What is wrong with rebranding to "Wikipedia Foundation"?

• Humour: Cherchez une femme

• Opinion: Trying to find COI or paid editors? Just read the news

• On the bright side: For what are you grateful this month?

• In focus: Edit Loud, Edit Proud: LGBTIQ+ Wikimedians and Global Information Activism

• WikiProject report: WikiProject Black Lives Matter

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:52, 28 June 2020 (UTC)

Wrap "username or IP address removed" comment in a span and appropriate class

Hi. For phab:T255903, would you be interested in trying to tackle it yourself? I can review your code and merge it (if it works, etc.) --DannyS712 (talk) 00:22, 29 June 2020 (UTC)

In a different world absolutely but it's taking a lot of effort just to stay current here. I appreciate the offer of help, though — I'd love to get set up to contribute (and pick up some php!) down the line. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 14:56, 29 June 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-27

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

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. [86]
• 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. [87]

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 searchGoButton for the go button. This is searchButton for Vector. To have the same ID for all skins it will change to searchButton in Monobook and Modern too. This will affect gadgets and user scripts. It will happen on 23 July. They should be updated to use searchButton. 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.

16:30, 29 June 2020 (UTC)

Scripts++ Newsletter – Issue 16

News and updates associated with user scripts from the past two months (May and June 2020).

Hello everyone and welcome to the 16th issue of the Wikipedia Scripts++ Newsletter:

Scripts Submit your new/improved script here

Ed6767's redwarn is this month's featured script

Enterprisey: abusefilter-diff-check • abusefilter-hide-search • live-reload • quick-vand-block •

abusefilter-mass-test • simple-notifs • User:Enterprisey/rc-thanks

• DannyS712's RemindMe • Majavah's Aligner
• BrandonXLF: ShowUserGender • ReferenceExpander
• Awesome Aasim: oneclickdelete • noeditredlinks.js • editrequest
• TheTVExpert: searchForSection • scriptDocumentationTabs
• Alex 21: script-categoriessort.js • script-imageres.js
• Ed6767's redwarn

Twinkle released new features, including a rollback links on history pages and Special:Recentchanges,

the ability to rollback-in-place on Recent changes and Contributions, a new option autoselect warning

level, and an XfD log. (Enable in your prefences; See full list of changes)

• Headbomb's unreliable source detector script now allows users to add their own custom rules. See the documentation at User:Headbomb/unreliable#Custom rules.

Open tasks

• Recent changes to the vector skin may have broken some scripts and gadgets. Uses of the .vectorTabs selector

should be replaced with .vector-menu-tabs. Additionally, .menu should be replaced with <ul>, and .vectorMenu

should be replaced with .vector-menu. See phabricator:T255718 and phabricator:T254797 for more.

Pending requests

• A script to simplify the process of nominating articles for good article reassessment (request)
• A script to help create navboxes (request)
• ...and many more, all available at Wikipedia:User scripts/Requests

If anyone else would like to contribute to future issues, please comment at Wikipedia talk:Scripts++. --DannyS712 (talk) 20:13, 30 June 2020 (UTC)

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Administrators' newsletter – July 2020

News and updates for administrators from the past month (June 2020).

Administrator changes

Malcolmxl5

John • TheCoffee • Tim!

Creffett → GeneralNotability

DeltaQuad → AmandaNP

CheckUser changes

Bbb23

Interface administrator changes

TonyBallioni

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.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 10:25, 1 July 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-28

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

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. [88]

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. [89]
• 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)

Feedback request: Maths, science, and technology request for comment

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Feedback request: Politics, government, and law request for comment

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Tech News: 2020-29

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

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. [90]

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. [91][92]

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. [93]
• 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. [94][95][96][97]

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16:29, 13 July 2020 (UTC)

Template:Uw-unattribcc

Do you know how to add Template:Uw-unattribcc to the twinkle user warning menu as a single issue notice? Having the template on twinkle would make copyright work much easier. Thanks, Moneytrees🌴^{Talk🌲Help out at CCI!} 17:51, 17 July 2020 (UTC)

(talk page stalker) @Moneytrees: I gotchu! Done in PR #1053. --Mdaniels5757 (talk) 18:17, 17 July 2020 (UTC)

Moneytrees, have you tried putting it in your custom warnings list? I've nothing against it, but Twinkle tries not to put brand-new templates in unless there's some broad support it. There are a lot of "Hey I just made this template it should be in Twinkle" and the list can get pretty unwieldy. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 10:48, 19 July 2020 (UTC)

Right, I should have added it to my list, sorry for being a little stupid. I've opened a discussion at Wikipedia talk:Template index/User talk namespace. Moneytrees🌴^{Talk🌲Help out at CCI!} 14:59, 19 July 2020 (UTC)

I think it could be useful. I can think of two times I would have used it if I knew about even though I don't actively work with copyright. --Trialpears (talk) 15:10, 19 July 2020 (UTC)

Not stupid! There are lots of options, I forget about half of them myself! ~ Amory (u • t • c) 15:37, 19 July 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-30

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

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. [98]
• Some users keep getting the notifications for the same event. Some of these are old events. [99]
• 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. [100]

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 version link. This will disappear. That is because web browsers today can create a printable version or show how it will look in print anyway. [101]

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19:13, 20 July 2020 (UTC)

Feedback request: Wikipedia proposals request for comment

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Tech News: 2020-31

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

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. [102]
• 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. [103][104]
• Translation Notification Bot was sending the same message multiple times to every translator. This has been fixed. [105]
• Some users were receiving the same notification multiple times. This has been fixed. [106]

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).

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13:51, 27 July 2020 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – August 2020

News and updates for administrators from the past month (July 2020).

Administrator changes

Red Phoenix

Euryalus • SQL

Jujutacular • Monty845 • Rettetast • Madchester

Oversight changes

GB fan

Keegan • Opabinia regalis • Premeditated Chaos

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.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 08:20, 1 August 2020 (UTC)

G13 Eligibility Notice

The following pages will become eligible for CSD:G13 shortly.

• Draft:Socially Intelligent Personal Agent

Thanks, MDanielsBot (talk) 04:00, 7 August 2020 (UTC)

Feedback request: Wikipedia technical issues and templates request for comment

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G13 Eligibility Notice

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• Draft:Chris Macdonald (author)

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Feedback request: Wikipedia proposals request for comment

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G13 Eligibility Notice

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• Draft:Socially Intelligent Personal Agent

Thanks, MDanielsBot (talk) 04:00, 10 August 2020 (UTC)

The Signpost: 2 August 2020

• 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

• Gallery: Photos of threatened species from iNaturalist

• News from the WMF: New Chinese national security law in Hong Kong could limit the privacy of Wikipedia users

• Recent research: Receiving thanks increases retention, but not the time contributed to Wikipedia

• Essay: Not compatible with a collaborative project

• Obituaries: Hasteur and Brian McNeil

• In focus: WikiLoop DoubleCheck, reviewing edits made easy

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:24, 2 August 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-32

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

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. [107]
• 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. [108]
• There is a problem with the global preferences for the "Use Legacy Vector" option. Developers are working on fixing it. [109]
• 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. [110]

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. [111]
• Users' global.js and global.css pages will now also be loaded on the mobile site. You can read documentation for how to avoid applying styles to the mobile skin. [112]
• In the MonoBook skin, the searchGoButton identifier is now searchButton. 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 counter to prevent large archives was changed. [113]
• 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)

Tech News: 2020-33

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

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. [114]

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. [115]

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. [116][117]

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)

Tech News: 2020-34

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

Recent changes

• If you revert an edit using the undo link your edit is marked with an undo tag. 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. [118]
• 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. [119]

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. [120][121]

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20:41, 17 August 2020 (UTC)

Feedback request: Politics, government, and law request for comment

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Tech News: 2020-35

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

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).

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17:58, 24 August 2020 (UTC)

Feedback request: Wikipedia policies and guidelines request for comment

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Arameans article

Hello there, could you please take a look at Arameans article from time to time due to countless edit warrings with a group of national vandalists, such as user Mugsalot, who have successfully established themselves here on English Wikipedia by spreading POV editing. This has been going for the last couple of years. Permanently violating Wikipedia's policy instead of being a neutral encyclopedia, welcoming high-quality academic sources even if it doesn't fit these people's views, which shouldn't matter here. Many thanks in advance.

--Optra2021 (talk) 08:57, 28 August 2020 (UTC)

[122] ——Serial 10:16, 28 August 2020 (UTC)

Note for the archive: see also Special:Permalink/975769814#Arameans and Special:Permalink/975411432#August 2020 ~ Amory (u • t • c) 10:44, 30 August 2020 (UTC)

The Signpost: 30 August 2020

• 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

• Traffic report: Heart, soul, umbrellas, and politics

• News from the WMF: Fourteen things we’ve learned by moving Polish Wikimedia conference online

• Recent research: Detecting spam, and pages to protect; non-anonymous editors signal their intelligence with high-quality articles

• Arbitration report: A slow couple of months

• From the archives: Wikipedia for promotional purposes?

• Obituaries: Marcus Sherman, Jerome West, and Pauline van Till

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:32, 30 August 2020 (UTC)