This page is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.
Comment I concur with Utopes and second the awarding of the good humour barnstar. ;-) Doug MehusT·C 02:49, 18 February 2020 (UTC)
Thank you, I shall proudly display said barnstar on my user page :) --kingboyk (talk) 12:30, 18 February 2020 (UTC)
comment re items
Latest comment: 4 years ago3 comments2 people in discussion
Hi. I don't know if you knew this, but your help with deletions in my user space is highly appreciated. I was asked to remove some user pages, and was seeking to do so as expeditiously as possible. your actions were very helpful. I have also enjoyed hearing your insights on various talk pages recently. I really appreciate your help. thanks!! --Sm8900 (talk) 16:33, 19 February 2020 (UTC)
@Sm8900: You're welcome. As you probably saw, I had to decline deletion of User:Sm8900/Infobox SFU nation as I don't believe it is eligible for speedy deletion as you were not the main author and it was moved into your userspace from elsewhere.
User:Sm8900/item draft 2 you tagged but then blanked. I assume you want to keep that. If you don't want to keep it, retag it for speedy deletion. We are not allowed to assume that blanking is a deletion request when it is in userspace. --kingboyk (talk) 16:41, 19 February 2020 (UTC)
that sounds fine. thanks, that's very perceptive of you. I will keep item draft 2, since it has some comments from other users.
re the SFU info box, I found another reason for speedy deletion. this is an infobox for several articles on a fictitious universe from Star Trek., since the infobox no longer exists, I assume no one links to it. i appreciate your help. thanks. --Sm8900 (talk) 16:44, 19 February 2020 (UTC)
Redirect options
Latest comment: 4 years ago8 comments2 people in discussion
Hi Kingboyk - thanks, I do see my prod here was a misplaced RfD. The redirect was still misleading but the easier answer is to let the page exist and change the target, which I have now done. -- Ham105 (talk) 19:51, 19 February 2020 (UTC)
@Ham105: In retrospect, I could have ignored the PROD problem and speedy deleted it instead. I've now done that as you were right, it doesn't appear to be a useful redirect, and it has no incoming links. --kingboyk (talk) 19:56, 19 February 2020 (UTC)
Thanks, I'm still learning wiki procedures despite having edited for several years. Is there any chance of the World Rugby Sevens Challenger Series – Women's tour (and corresponding men's) article names being retained? These were modelled on the Olympic Sevens, e.g. Rugby sevens at the 2016 Summer Olympics – Women's tournament, which doesn't use a bracketed addendum as often used for women's sports articles (the women's tour for the Challenger Series is actually only one tournament at present, although may be expanded in future to a tour with a series of events like the ATP tour). -- Ham105 (talk) 20:31, 19 February 2020 (UTC)
Natural disambiguation: Using an alternative name e.g. 'World Rugby Sevens Challenger Series Women's Tour'
or if not possible by
Parenthetical disambiguation e.g. 'World Rugby Sevens Challenger Series (women)' or 'World Rugby Sevens Challenger Series (women's tour)'. Additionally, WP:CONCISE says "to balance brevity with sufficient information to identify the topic to a person familiar with the general subject area" which I felt that "(men)" and "(women)" did.
There's nothing (that I can see) in that policy which supports using dashes or hyphens (arguably, therefore, Rugby sevens at the 2016 Summer Olympics – Women's tournament is also misnamed). If there has to be a hyphen it should imho be a 'normal' hyphen (-) not the – which was used before.
I'm afraid I know next to nothing about rugby so I can't advise you on natural disambiguation. Are there any official alternative titles which disambiguate the mens' event from the womens' event?
Probably the best thing for you to do, if you don't have any "natural disambiguation" options, is ask for help at a relevant WikiProject or at the Help Desk, about what the naming convention should be and then make it consistent across all affected articles. If you need any help moving articles, once it's clear what the names should be, I'm happy to help. --kingboyk (talk) 20:48, 19 February 2020 (UTC)
The thing about rugby is that they have specifically rebranded all World Rugby tournaments to remove gender references from their event titles to try to aim for gender equality.
This is why only one main article was created for this new series to encompass both men and women.
While not endorsed under Disambiguation in article titles, the en dash (as used in hundreds if not thousands of those Olympic page names) is used for sentence punctuation in Wikipedia – see MOS:DASH.
It is the "least worst" way of writing the series name for these seasons (in my view) given the branding mentioned at the top of this post. That's because it allows a wide and clear separation between the name of the series (which has been made specifically non-gendered), and the gendered modifier.
The bracketed (women) thing was what women's rugby was trying to avoid. But it seems it will have to remain for now, unless revisited (by myself or others) at a later date to be taken through the enclylopedic bureaucracy.
I do regret my typo of omitting the four characters "2020" a week ago and then trying to fix it because it has only led to a can of worms. :) Anyway, thanks for the feedback. -- Ham105 (talk) 23:22, 19 February 2020 (UTC)
@Ham105: Can of worms indeed, not helped by an excess of policies and guidelines, many of them contradictory.
If you still want me to move the pages back to how you named them (assuming you are blocked from doing so yourself) just remind me of the current titles please and I'll do that. If the system lets you do it, just go ahead and revert me. --kingboyk (talk) 23:54, 19 February 2020 (UTC)
Many thanks, I have moved to the previous titles. I wasn't blocked but didn't want to revert your changes without some consensus at least being gained, given your good faith input plus edits and procedural knowledge in some areas I'm not expert in. Much appreciate your patience and help. -- Ham105 (talk) 00:35, 20 February 2020 (UTC)
@Ham105: My pleasure. Thanks for the cordial exchange. --kingboyk (talk) 00:49, 20 February 2020 (UTC)
If nothing else...
Latest comment: 4 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
...my rejected redirect speedy deletions are bringing you out from behind the mop into the RfD and MfD deletion discussions. It's nice to see! I used to only see your name show up in the deletion log as one of the processors of speedy deletion taggings. That, and it's exercising your pun muscles. ;-)
Cheers,
Doug MehusT·C 21:49, 19 February 2020 (UTC)
Latest comment: 4 years ago4 comments2 people in discussion
Would you like to do another WP:SNOWdelete closure? The RfD is at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2020 February 18#Adam Griffith (American football) (disambiguation), which I originally tagged as G14 even if, according to the letter of the policy, it may not, technically qualify. An editor had objected to my tagging, even though they ultimately !voted to "delete" the redirect, chiefly because of the rationale. Had I probably tagged it as G6, it probably wouldn't have been objected to. Nevertheless, based on the participation in the RfD thus far, it's clear that deletion is a foregone conclusion and, thus, can be deleted early per WP:SNOW, I believe.
Cheers,
Doug MehusT·C 01:01, 22 February 2020 (UTC)
@Dmehus: Sorry for the delay in replying. It's been an unusual 24 hours. Last night I had a power cut and had to stop editing. This morning as I was reading the BBC News, I came across a report on the death of a person whose name I recognised, Simon Warr. Turns out the reason I recognised the name was that I'd refunded a draft about him just the day before. It seemed only right and proper to complete the draft and get it into mainspace, which took up most of my day :(
I'm going to decline to intervene on the RfD above. It doesn't appear to be a matter of any urgency nor is the redirect harmful. --kingboyk (talk) 21:27, 22 February 2020 (UTC)
Kingboyk, Thanks for the reply! Interesting, I noticed you undeleted that draft actually and saw you WikiGnoming a bit on it. That's unfortunate to the broadcaster's passing. No worries on the deletion. It can slow walk to its predetermined outcome. ;-) Doug MehusT·C 21:30, 22 February 2020 (UTC)
@Dmehus: I have no personal affinity there, I just felt the draft ought to be completed before somebody else plonked an inferior version into mainspace. That said, cancer is of course a terrible thing.
On the subject of recent deaths, what are the odds that two people nicknamed "Mad Mike" would die in the same month?! (Mad Mike Hoare, Mad Mike Hughes) --kingboyk (talk) 16:38, 23 February 2020 (UTC)
Talk page templates
Latest comment: 4 years ago6 comments3 people in discussion
@Dmehus:Off topic for this section, but since you're 'here: There's a {{olddelrev}} template? I couldn't find such a template when I dealt with Draft talk:ShifCustom (and I did look). Thanks for adding it.
Could I please suggest, though, that you don't be that guy who adds {{talkheader}} to deserted talk pages? [Heck, I'm just going to suggest it anyway; feel free to ignore :)]
That template drives me nuts. ~99.9% of the time the template is used it's just clutter as there are and never will be any problems on the talk page. I'd wager (a very small amount ;)) that most talk pages don't even have any actual talk on them, just WikiProject templates. If Wikipedia intended for the wording of that template to be on every talk page, they'd make it happen programatically! Down with this sort of thing! /soapbox. --kingboyk (talk) 21:42, 22 February 2020 (UTC)
Kingboyk, I agree. I'll remove it. You're right; I've actually stopped adding it to most pages, though I do like {{talk page of redirect}} and {{talk page of disambiguation page}}. I actually wouldn't mind if that template was made more concise, like stating, "This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the NAME OF PAGE page[,]" and maybe having links to where to ask for help and not to forget to sign one's posts, but the constant reminders (i.e., the four bullet points to the right) are overkill for sure. What do you think of the talk of redirect and talk page of disambiguation page headers, though? Doug MehusT·C 21:47, 22 February 2020 (UTC)
@Dmehus: I'm not overly familiar with those two. {{Talk page of redirect}} I wouldn't use; if there's a talk page I'd redirect that too, otherwise I'd leave it red. {{Talk page of disambiguation page}} looks like it might be useful (without knowing whether it's true that dab pages are not frequently watched; I suspect it probably is). --kingboyk (talk) 21:58, 22 February 2020 (UTC)
Regarding {{olddelrev}}, yeah, I had to look hard to find it; I think I just tried random search strings based on "old xfd" and "old xfd multi" and got lucky? I don't know why we don't have XFDCloser close deletion reviews and add that tag. I should ping Evad37 into this discussion. Evad37, would it be necessarily difficult to have XFDCloser be able to close deletion review discussions and, where the result is anything other than "endorse" the deleted page, to adding {{olddelrev}} to the talk page? Doug MehusT·C 21:54, 22 February 2020 (UTC)
@Dmehus: Possibly, but it wouldn't quite as easy as that... DRV can also be used when the original discussion was closed as keep, in which case an overturn result would mean the talk page gets deleted, not tagged. There's also the complication that the nominated pages and their talk pages may or may not have been temporarily undeleted. - Evad37[talk] 08:46, 23 February 2020 (UTC)
@Evad37: The first objection doesn't appear on the face of it to be a terrible complication - you'd just tag the talk page prior to deleting it, or (if one assumes that a page deleted at DRV is probably not going to be refunded), just take no further action in this case. Just my 2 cents, I have not formed any opinion on the proposal and was merely congratulating Doug for finding a template that had eluded me :). --kingboyk (talk) 16:43, 23 February 2020 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 25 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 26 February. It will be on all wikis from 27 February (calendar).
Future changes
There will be a reply button after each post on a talk page if you want one. This will soon be a beta feature on the Arabic, French, Dutch and Hungarian Wikipedias. You will have to turn it on if you want to use it. It will come to more wikis later. You can test the reply button. It was briefly shown earlier than planned by mistake on the four first wikis last week.
I requested, at WP:RMTR, to revert two undiscussed never discussed page moves of Gary David Cohn to Gary Cohn, over the redirect, as there is without question, Gary Cohn is the primary topic (it even redirects to Gary David Cohn), which was, until a day or two ago, at Gary D. Cohn. Anyway, at Talk:Gary David Cohn, I noted the talk page was created by Kingbotk, so I wondered if (a) you had an imposter, (b) a fan, (c) a person with an otherwise similar username, or (d) something else. I guess it was d as it didn't occur to me that was your bot account.
Anyhow, nothing important. Just a random note.
Cheers,
Doug MehusT·C 02:52, 25 February 2020 (UTC)
@Dmehus:Kingbotk was my bot account - with nearly half a million edits I'm surprised you haven't seen him before :) It did a lot of the early WikiProject tagging using a plugin I wrote for AWB. Got blocked (not banned!) when I all but disappeared from Wikipedia for some (many) years. So, if you hate WikiProject templates: my apologies. If you like them: you're welcome!
I do have a strangely named "fan" from 2006: Kingboyk is a GFDLvio Admin. I have absolutely no idea what my violation was! :/ :D
If you're asking me to look into the issue above, sorry no can do at the moment. I have an article tagged as {{inuse}} and really should have been off to bed at least an hour ago! --kingboyk (talk) 03:09, 25 February 2020 (UTC)
Kingboyk, I think I'd probably seen your former bot account, but oddly, never really figured it might be a bot (despite having bot in the name). Looks like a very useful plugin! Personally, I Like WikiProject talk page tagging, so I probably should thank you for those edits! Since blocks are not permanent, what is the likelihood of Kingbotk being unblocked and restored to active duty, subject to refined terms defined by the community? As for your "fan," that is an oddly specific name with which they chose to impersonate you! I would guess, from the name, that the editor lives by WP:ATT/WP:CWW but, like you, I'm confused as to why they think of you as a GFDL violating administrator? Perhaps you processed a deletion of a page they created that was subsequently recreated by someone else? In such a case, though, wouldn't it make more sense for them to ask at The Teahouse how to correct that, which would be a histmerge? Doug MehusT·C 12:58, 25 February 2020 (UTC)
Who knows. Maybe I deleted a page they wrote and they thought that's a violation of the licence? Just trolling to try to put a black cloud above my name? Insanity? Anyway, doesn't matter as it was well over a decade ago. It's just a bit irritating (but mildly amusing) to see the name come up when I am entering my username into boxes which do an Ajax lookup/autocomplete.
Wrt to my bot, it depends what you're asking.
Could it be reactivated? I don't see why not, if I went through bot approval the same as everyone else. So far as I know neither myself nor that account are in bad standing, so I assume the application would be based on the code and the merits of the proposed task.
If you're asking it, will I reactive it, I'd say that's extremely unlikely in the near future.
My username is a tribute to King Boy D. It seemed a natural progression and punny to change "boy" to "bot" for my bot account :) --kingboyk (talk) 17:10, 25 February 2020 (UTC)
@Dmehus: I did some digging and my "tribute" account was apparently a mystery at the time too. I'm not sure now if I should be ashamed that I only have one, or pleased because I haven't upset too many people. Let's go with the latter :) --kingboyk (talk) 17:59, 25 February 2020 (UTC)
Disambiguation link notification for February 25
Latest comment: 4 years ago3 comments3 people in discussion
Resolved
– Noting DPL bot's botslapping of reminder for and to kingboyk, I have disambiguated the two links with this edit, though some double-checking to make sure I selected, in particular, the correct Red Army Choir would be helpful (it seemed like the choir underwent a name change in the mid 1900s, so I chose the newer name), in order to resolve the issue. Doug MehusT·C 11:12, 25 February 2020 (UTC)
@Dmehus: I restored some older wikitext. Targets must have become dab pages in the meantime! Thanks for resolving. --kingboyk (talk) 16:43, 25 February 2020 (UTC)
Note to Dmehus
Latest comment: 4 years ago9 comments2 people in discussion
@Dmehus: In general terms, without reference to or alerting any particular user: When a supposedly brand new account appears on a user talk page handing out a barnstar and saying "I can edit semi-protected pages, the first time in literally months" it doesn't take an extraordinary leap of logic to infer that this is no new user and you are being trolled. I would suggest a quiet investigation of where they are editing and see if the same pages have been edited by accounts blocked for sockpuppetry (User:Writ_Keeper/Scripts/markBlocked.js helps). If there is reasonable suspicion, WP:SPI is this way ->
If there is no reasonable suspicion, revert back to the default assumption of good faith and move on. --kingboyk (talk) 16:57, 25 February 2020 (UTC)
Kingboyk, The documentation for that script is, erm, appallingly non-existent. Forgive me, but how do I use that? Doug MehusT·C 17:40, 25 February 2020 (UTC)
In common.js I added importScript('User:Writ Keeper/Scripts/markBlocked.js'); Now in page histories and on talk pages etc, the names of blocked users are striked out. Makes it much easier to see at a glance if a page has attracted socks, SPAs, vandals, etc... --kingboyk (talk) 17:45, 25 February 2020 (UTC)
Kingboyk, Oh, that's all it does? I may have had that one installed, or a similar script, as I definitely view blocked editors account names with strikes through them. I'll e-mail you with a further question. Doug MehusT·C 17:54, 25 February 2020 (UTC)
@Dmehus: I'm a bit busy for email atm, and if I open email I might then get distracted by other emails. Can you ask another admin or ask on IRC/Discord? --kingboyk (talk) 18:00, 25 February 2020 (UTC)--kingboyk (talk) 18:00, 25 February 2020 (UTC)
No worries. It's probably not urgent since it only apparently involves a few U.S. roadways. Doug MehusT·C 18:03, 25 February 2020 (UTC)
Right. And if it becomes urgent, somebody else will notice. I might, btw, have a vague recollection of US roadways being a controversial topic at some point or another... Hmm. Anyway, back to content creation! --kingboyk (talk) 18:09, 25 February 2020 (UTC)
Yeah, I've got other things to do so, as much as I'd like to look into it, I'm just going to assume good-faith. Nevertheless, I seem to have attracted a follower here on English Wikipedia, if you know what I mean. ;-) Doug MehusT·C 03:16, 27 February 2020 (UTC)
Update: Gale5050 was the user in question and they were indeed a sock. --kingboyk (talk) 19:22, 6 March 2020 (UTC)
Could you...
Latest comment: 4 years ago4 comments2 people in discussion
Would you be so kind as to redo the rationale for ECP on Ntinda Vocational Training Institute? The reason given is a link that doesn't go to where it was intended. Likewise, a quick summary would be appropriate in this regard, especially for an action featured prominently on WP:AN. Thanks! Buffs (talk) 17:12, 25 February 2020 (UTC)
@Buffs: I see what you mean (it's in the log at the top of ANI, rather than a discussion, hence no notification). I've redone the protection. Please leave me another message if there is still a problem; if there is silence or a thanks I will assume all is now OK. --kingboyk (talk) 17:52, 25 February 2020 (UTC)
WP:AN, not WP:ANI. I get that it was initially due to the RFPP request, but for something that is so long-enduring, a link to something that will not exist in a week is inadequate justification, IMHO. A simple summary (as you've provided: "Repeatedly recreated. Protection requested at WP:RFPP.") is significantly better; thank you. Buffs (talk) 19:53, 25 February 2020 (UTC)
You're welcome! Sorry, but I'm too busy to accept your request at the moment. I'm afraid you'll have to wait for a random AFC reviewer to get to it. --kingboyk (talk) 19:06, 27 February 2020 (UTC)
Congratulations again! You got super lucky to have it reviewed so quickly, but maybe it's karma for coming back to me with a list of references, and for getting a deleted-at-AFD article up to scratch such that it could pass a legit AFC review :) Really well done. --kingboyk (talk) 14:45, 28 February 2020 (UTC)
Review of two of my PRODs
Latest comment: 4 years ago11 comments3 people in discussion
If you have a minute, can you review two of my PRODs, Westbank Centre Exchange and Mark Bunting, with the view to possibly endorsing them, as you did with execution pattern? In the latter case, I used WP:BLPPROD instead of the WP:PROD template and I see from the PRODs on the creator's talk page, other editors have been using a regular PROD tag, so if the PROD tag would be more appropriate, can you update it to that and endorse?
Cheers,
Doug MehusT·C 03:05, 28 February 2020 (UTC)
Hi Doug Mehus, Endorsement doesn't really achieve anything other than possibly making the reviewing admin's decision a tiny bit easier; so effectively, you're asking me to make the job easier of an admin who has chosen to work the deletion queues at a time when I am focusing on work and content creation :) The programming PROD was a special case because as a programmer I felt compelled to look it up, and a detailed comment on a Stack Overflow question about it suggested it's probably "made up" (the Stack Overflow post is now pending deletion too, as a result).
There are important differences between PROD and BLPPROD. I was going to attempt to summarise the differences, but scanning through the policies it's quite complicated so I recommend you read them again yourself as a refresher. A couple of interesting points to tide you over: Editors are allowed to PROD again if a BLP PROD is removed (see note 1). 2) You're allowed to put a WP:BLPPROD tag back (with the original timestamp!) if it is removed without a source being added (Wikipedia:Proposed_deletion_of_biographies_of_living_people#Objecting).
I'm not fully caffeinated yet so I suggest you double check the veracity of the following (and the foregoing!) before acting:
Now the bad news. I don't believe Mark Bunting was eligible for BLPPROD when you tagged it. There is an External Links section with a link to a page which says that he has worked at BNN and CTV. This supports 2 or more assertions in the article. The quality of the source does not appear to matter: "To place a BLPPROD tag, the process requires that the article contains no sources in any form (as references, external links, etc.) which support any statements made about the person in the biography." My thinking here is that you should retract the BLPPROD yourself, and PROD it, to correct the mistake. If I de-BLPPROD it then you re-PROD it the same day, it's technically allowed from what I can tell (unless I'm missing something in the policy about having to wait X days before renomination; as I said I need coffee :)) but way messier.
I can revisit the above after coffee if necessary - just let me know if you feel any of my reply is incorrect or if you need more help. --kingboyk (talk) 15:35, 28 February 2020 (UTC)
Kingboyk, Let me amend the Mark Bunting one to a PROD then, since this isn't a bureaucracy. Your endorsement would be helpful, though, particularly in that case since it's a change of PROD. Doug MehusT·C 15:44, 28 February 2020 (UTC)
Sorry, darn reply-link always defaults to including previous usernames, so I sometimes forget about that. Yes, I also find the "orange bar of doom" to be far too intrusive. Why was this added anyway? Is a notification not enough? Doug MehusT·C 15:59, 28 February 2020 (UTC)
@Dmehus: The contemporary orange bar of doom is but a mere annoyance if an annoyance at all. The original one ran the entire width of the page and was about the size of a maintenance template. It was a hateful thing; thank goodness it is no longer with us! The link I gave explains why we have the current one.
The latest Tech News says we're getting a built-in reply feature soon which should be cool. --kingboyk (talk) 16:29, 28 February 2020 (UTC)
Oh, that's excellent news about the built-in reply feature! I had suggested converting reply-link to a Gadget at a village pump, but was told that due to its bugs, it likely wasn't ready for being a gadget. Someone else further replied that there was an outstanding Phabricator ticket about converting it to an extension (I believe that was the terminology used), but added that it had been pending for a long time. It seems that it's finally ready for production release! Awesome news! I suspect Enterprisey will be pleased, at least in the sense that he won't need to spend time fixing sanity check signature errors with reply-link anymore. ;-) Doug MehusT·C 16:37, 28 February 2020 (UTC)
@Dmehus:Heh. I just realised your account is older than mine! You must already know about the bad old orange bar of doom then! --kingboyk (talk) 01:34, 29 February 2020 (UTC) (noob)
@Kingboyk: Yeah, I have a five-digit userID...I was inactive for many years, though—2004-2017 or so, so you've lapped me both in content creation and edits. I am a long-time editor in the sense that I had an account. So, while I'd qualify for the highest service award in terms of tenure, I'm still the newbie (or newbie-ish when it comes to the awards) when it comes to edits. One thing that surprised me, though, is that in the Cabayi RfA right now...the editor only has about 7,500 manual, non-semi-automated and non-automated edits despite having a couple hundred thousand edits. (It's reason for some of the "opposes.") I don't necessarily subscribe to the idea that editors need to have a lot of content creation, but they do need to have some. My content creation is so minimal—CKOO-FM, Progressive Senate Group, Brent Cotter, and Judith Keating being the only articles I've created (though I've substantially contributed to other Okanagan radio station articles, West Kelowna Warriors, Independent Soldiers (got my first WP:HEY at AfD for saving it, after I dePRODded it), and Canadian Senators Group). In the spring, when I'm done this diploma program I'm doing, I'm going to focus on writing articles on Canadian provincial prisons, as we have so few and I'm sure there are many more that are notable. Doug MehusT·C 01:48, 29 February 2020 (UTC)
Yup! I'm following the progress of the WMF group working on the "new reply-link" (they call it DiscussionTools), and have even talked with them once or twice. Here's to a brighter future where we all don't have to care about getting indentation right :) Enterprisey (talk!) 18:59, 6 March 2020 (UTC)
@Enterprisey: Doug isn't going to have to worry about this for a while, as he's got himself blocked. As for the future, let's hope it's not orange :) --kingboyk (talk) 20:13, 6 March 2020 (UTC)
Scripts++ Newsletter – Issue 13
Latest comment: 4 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
News and updates associated with user scripts from the past month (February 2019).
Hello everyone and welcome to the 13th issue of the Wikipedia Scripts++ Newsletter:
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.
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. [1]
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. [2]
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. [3]
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. [4]
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).
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. [6]
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. [7][8][9]
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).
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. [10]
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
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. [11]
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. [12][13]
You can see a proposed design for replying to comments in an easier way.
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. [14][15]
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.
Resolved
