User talk:Isochrone/Archives/2021/October

Administrators' newsletter – October 2021

News and updates for administrators from the past month (September 2021).

Administrator changes

Blablubbs

Alvestrand • Black Falcon • Deathphoenix • Dppowell • Mark Arsten • JGHowes (deceased)

Oversighter changes

Callanecc

Mkdw

Interface administrator changes

Galobtter

Guideline and policy news

• Following an RfC, extended confirmed protection may be used preemptively on certain high-risk templates.
• Following a discussion at the Village Pump, there is consensus to treat discord logs the same as IRC logs. This means that discord logs will be oversighted if posted onwiki.

Technical news

• DiscussionTools has superseded Enterprisey's reply-link script. Editors may switch using the "Discussion tools" checkbox under Preferences → Beta features.

Arbitration

• A motion has standardised the 500/30 (extended confirmed) restrictions placed by the Arbitration Committee. The standardised restriction is now listed in the Arbitration Committee's procedures.
• Following the closure of the Iranian politics case, standard discretionary sanctions are authorized for all edits about, and all pages related to, post-1978 Iranian politics, broadly construed.
• The Arbitration Committee encourages uninvolved administrators to use the discretionary sanctions procedure in topic areas where it is authorised to facilitate consensus in RfCs. This includes, but is not limited to, enforcing sectioned comments, word/diff limits and moratoriums on a particular topic from being brought in an RfC for up to a year.

Miscellaneous

• Editors have approved expanding the trial of Growth Features from 2% of new accounts to 25%, and the share of newcomers getting mentorship from 2% to 5%. Experienced editors are invited to add themselves to the mentor list.
• The community consultation phase of the 2021 CheckUser and Oversight appointments process is open for editors to provide comments and ask questions to candidates.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:03, 1 October 2021 (UTC)

Your GA nomination of 1993 Finchley Road bombings

The article 1993 Finchley Road bombings you nominated as a good article has passed ; see Talk:1993 Finchley Road bombings for comments about the article. Well done! If the article has not already appeared on the main page as a "Did you know" item, or as a bold link under "In the News" or in the "On This Day" prose section, you can nominate it within the next seven days to appear in DYK. Bolded names with dates listed at the bottom of the "On This Day" column do not affect DYK eligibility. Message delivered by Legobot, on behalf of The Rambling Man -- The Rambling Man (talk) 09:02, 4 September 2021 (UTC)

Question from Vitaium (02:12, 10 October 2021)

Hello Berrely! Why only interface administrators can edit, create, and move pages in MediaWiki namespace, user scripts, and userspace CSS? --Vitaium (talk) 02:12, 10 October 2021 (UTC)

Vitaium, these pages are extremely dangerous if anyone could edit them. If a malsicious person could edit pages in the MediaWiki namespace, or a commonly used userscript, they could install a bitcoin miner, IP grabber or worse. For this reason we prevent even administrators from editing these pages and only allow highly trusted users called Interface Administrators (IAs) to edit the pages. — Berrely • ^Talk∕_Contribs 07:39, 10 October 2021 (UTC)

Question from Vitaium (14:44, 13 October 2021)

Hello Berrely! What are the features in RedWarn? --Vitaium (talk) 14:44, 13 October 2021 (UTC)

Vitaium, RedWarn is a counter-vandalism script (it also does other things, but mainly focussed on counter-vandalism) that is like Twinkle but with a nice GUI. The page you linked has plenty of information on it, but I find the useful to be the rollback buttons and warning dialogues. (As someone who helps with RedWarn's development I have a COI on this subject so I'd recommend trying it out to see :D) — Berrely • ^Talk∕_Contribs 06:04, 14 October 2021 (UTC)

Question from Vitaium on Wikipedia:User scripts (05:39, 17 October 2021)

Hello Berrely! How to create a user script? --Vitaium (talk) 05:39, 17 October 2021 (UTC)

Hi Vitaium! Do you have knowledge of JavaScript? — Berrely • ^Talk∕_Contribs 07:52, 17 October 2021 (UTC)

No. Vitaium (talk) 09:43, 17 October 2021 (UTC)

Vitaium, sadly userscripts are coded in JavaScript, and your require knowledge of it to create one. You can request user scripts at WP:US/R, if you want. — Berrely • ^Talk∕_Contribs 09:44, 17 October 2021 (UTC)

Question from Vitaium (03:44, 20 October 2021)

Hello Berrely! Can a globally lock user makes an edits? --Vitaium (talk) 03:44, 20 October 2021 (UTC)

@Vitaium, not they can't. The page you linked has information explaining this further. — Berrely • ^Talk∕_Contribs 09:29, 21 October 2021 (UTC)

ready

HI! The draft is ready to be proofread here. thank you! --つがる Talk to つがる:) 🍁 01:45, 25 October 2021 (UTC)

 Done — Berrely • ^Talk∕_Contribs 10:14, 25 October 2021 (UTC)

Asking a question

Hello! I wanted to ask if the template message on Orbit Culture page can be removed now? Would appreciate if you could check it out. BlackSiren77 (talk) 07:39, 25 October 2021 (UTC)

@BlackSiren77, the cleanup tag still appears to be valid. Sections 1.2, 1.3, 1.5, 1.7 and the members section still lack citations. — Berrely • ^Talk∕_Contribs 12:01, 25 October 2021 (UTC)

TheWikiWizard- October 2021

Hi, Berrely! Here is the October 2021 issue of TheWikiWizard!

Wikipedia News

• Wikimedia Asian Month is beginning once again!
• Check out the 2021 Community Wishlist's results!
• For those interested, check out the "Wikimedia CEE Online Meeting 2021" (Click on link for more details and to find out if you can register!)
• Check out this new feature for The Wikipedia Library!

Humour

• It's Halloween coming up again, and that means you can have an excuse to eat candy and binge edit Wikipedia again
• Frankenstein told me this does not exist... (Does not make sense, but okay...)
• Is Humour funny? I guess we'll have to find out!

Editor's Notes

• Thank you for your patience, I was busy, and still am, so issues of TWW may be delayed.

Like this Issue? Got Feedback? Spot a mistake? Discuss this issue here

To change your subscription, or to subscribe click Here. Enjoy this Issue and have a safe and happy Halloween/October! --つがる Talk to つがる:) 🍁 00:22, 26 October 2021 (UTC)

• This Issue was sent to you by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) at 00:27, 26 October 2021 (UTC)

Question from User 9828728123 (11:31, 26 October 2021)

Hi Berrely,

Could you help me publish a article without getting block? It fits all the policy requirments (mainly being noteworthy) but everytime I try it's seen as purely promotional. --User 9828728123 (talk) 11:31, 26 October 2021 (UTC)

Hi @User 9828728123 and welcome to Wikipedia:

• What's the relevant article?
• Have you used any previous accounts, and if so what were their usernames?

— Berrely • ^Talk∕_Contribs 11:33, 26 October 2021 (UTC)

@Berrely: It's for a company called Zest Car Rental who are a leading UK car Rental company. Previous name was: Portugal traveler 52574 which apparently violated username policies..

Anyhelp would be great! I've got some copy that I'm currently working on with references from news organsitations. --User 9828728123 (talk) 14:02, 26 October 2021 (UTC)

— Preceding unsigned comment added by User 9828728123 (talk • contribs) 13:23, 26 October 2021 (UTC)

Growth Newsletter #19

Welcome to the nineteenth newsletter from the Growth team!

The Growth team's objective is to work on software changes that help retain new contributors in Wikimedia projects.

Structured tasks

"Add an image" prototype, showing suggested image for the article

• "Add a link" is the team's first structured task. It uses machine-learning to suggest wikilinks as easy edits for newcomers. It was deployed in May 2021 on four Wikipedias and then in July on eight more Wikipedias after we evaluated the initial results. So far, we've seen a high level of engagement from newcomers. Communities that have the feature suggested valuable ideas for improvement. We'll work on improvements and then contact more communities to deploy it.
• "Add an image" is the team's second structured task, currently in development. It is an editing task that suggests Commons images for unillustrated Wikipedia articles. We have conducted many community discussions and tests. Then, we've decided to build a first prototype. We'll first deploy it only to our pilot Wikipedias, to learn whether newcomers can be successful with the task. The project page contains links to interactive prototypes. We are very interested to hear your thoughts on this idea as we build and test the early versions. These prototypes have already been tested by newcomers, in English and Spanish.

News for mentors

• The Mentor dashboard is available at our pilot wikis: Arabic, Czech, and Bengali Wikipedias. It will soon be available at a few more volunteering wikis, as a test. [1]
• At wikis where the mentor dashboard is deployed, a new filter is available for mentors. Mentors can monitor their mentees' activity in Watchlist and RecentChanges, so they can help support their mentees' work. For privacy reasons, this filter can't be accessed by someone else than the mentor itself. This filter only filters mentees assigned to the mentor. This filter is not visible for people who are not listed as mentors [2]

Community configuration

• Communities now have the ability to configure how Growth features behave on their own wikis. At Special:EditGrowthConfig, community members can add a list of volunteer mentors, alter the templates used for suggested edits, update help links, and more. This special page is editable by administrators and interface admins.

Scaling

• We are proud to announce that all Wikipedias now have the Growth features! Thank you to all the community members who helped the team build the features and bring them to their wikis. The only exception is Chinese Wikipedia (zh), for technical reasons. [3]
• The wikis that have Growth features deployed have been part of A/B testing since deployment, in which some newcomers did not receive the new features. Now, all of the newcomers on 280 of the smallest of those Wikipedias have the features. [4][5]
• A test is undergoing at English Wikipedia: 25% of newcomers receive the Growth features. The results from this test will be part of a discussion of how to proceed on that wiki.
• Now that Growth features are available at Wikipedia, the Growth team considers to extend them to other projects. Some Wikisource users have expressed some interest in getting Growth features. There is currently a discussion about implementing them on Wikisource.

News for communities

• Do you have questions about the Growth features? This translatable FAQ contains answers to the most common questions about the Growth team work.
• The Growth features were recently used in a test amongst Latin American donors to give donors the opportunity to learn to edit. You can see the results here.
• Interface translations are important for newcomers. Please help for your language, by translating or copyediting interface translations for the Growth features.
• Help:GettingStarted was a feature developed in 2013, which directed newcomers to articles that needed editing. We recently removed this feature from all wikis, because it has been replaced by the Growth features.

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

18:36, 26 October 2021 (UTC)

Question from Vitaium (03:04, 30 October 2021)

Hello Berrely! What does {{Shared IP advice}} template do? --Vitaium (talk) 03:04, 30 October 2021 (UTC)

@Vitaium as the name suggests, that template gives advice to IP editors about the advantages of registering an account. — Berrely • ^Talk∕_Contribs 09:35, 30 October 2021 (UTC)