User talk:Mz7/March–May 2020
 | 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. |
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
- Discussion report: Do you prefer M or P?
- Arbitration report: Two prominent administrators removed
- Community view: The Incredible Invisible Woman
- In focus: History of The Signpost, 2015–2019
- From the archives: Is Wikipedia for sale?
- Traffic report: February articles, floating in the dark
- Gallery: Feel the love
- On the bright side: What's making you happy this month?
- Opinion: Wikipedia is another country
- Humour: The Wilhelm scream
Administrators' newsletter – March 2020
News and updates for administrators from the past month (February 2020).
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Guideline and policy news
- Following an RfC, the blocking policy was changed to state that sysops
must not
undo or alter CheckUser or Oversight blocks, rather thanshould not
. - A request for comment confirmed that sandboxes of established but inactive editors may not be blanked due solely to inactivity.
- Following an RfC, the blocking policy was changed to state that sysops
Technical news
- Following a discussion, Twinkle's default CSD behavior will soon change, most likely this week. After the change, Twinkle will default to "tagging mode" if there is no CSD tag present, and default to "deletion mode" if there is a CSD tag present. You will be able to always default to "deletion mode" (the current behavior) using your Twinkle preferences.
Miscellaneous
- Following the 2020 Steward Elections, the following editors have been appointed as stewards: BRPever, Krd, Martin Urbanec, MusikAnimal, Sakretsu, Sotiale, and Tks4Fish. There are a total of seven editors that have been appointed as stewards, the most since 2014.
- The 2020 appointees for the Ombudsman commission are Ajraddatz and Uzoma Ozurumba; they will serve for one year.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Problems
- Readers who were not logged in briefly saw the interface in a language decided by their browser. It should normally be in the language of the wiki. This happened for a short period of time last week. This was because of a bug. [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).
Future changes
- The developers are working on a new interface to solve edit conflicts on talk pages. You can give feedback. [5]
- There is a vote on the creation of a new user group called abuse filter manager. The vote runs from March 1 to March 31 on Meta.
wgMFSpecialCaseMainPagewas used for the mobile site. It was deprecated in 2017. It will stop working in April. Wikis should see if they use it. If they do they should fix it. You can read more and ask for help. This affects 183 wikis. There is a list. [6]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
00:36, 3 March 2020 (UTC)
Moe szylak block evasion
Hi there. Just to let you know that I've picked up on some block evasion from IPs today, relating to Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Moe szylak. IPs that I've blocked are 154.121.26.103, 154.121.26.39, 154.121.28.63 and 154.121.27.3. I thought I'd let you know in case there's anything else that can be done to identify other instances of block evasion in this case. Cordless Larry (talk) 18:10, 3 March 2020 (UTC)
- Thanks, Cordless Larry! I will take a look. Mz7 (talk) 19:56, 3 March 2020 (UTC)
Ignore the auto notice on this. I twas just a slow screen msiclick. Sorry Meters (talk) 09:11, 4 March 2020 (UTC)
You may wish to revoke TPA.--Cahk (talk) 09:25, 4 March 2020 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- There is a new search word called
articletopic. You can use it to search for articles on a specific topic. It is available on the Arabic, Czech, English and Vietnamese Wikipedias. It will come to more Wikipedias soon. [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).
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. [10]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
17:15, 9 March 2020 (UTC)
Happy First Edit Day!
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Happy First Edit Day, Mz7, from the Wikipedia Birthday Committee! Have a great day! CAPTAIN RAJU(T) 04:29, 14 March 2020 (UTC) |
Invitation to join the Ten Year Society
Dear Mz7/March–May 2020,
I'd like to extend a cordial invitation to you to join the Ten Year Society, an informal group for editors who've been participating in the Wikipedia project for ten years or more.
Best regards, Chris Troutman (talk) 18:55, 14 March 2020 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- There is a new API module for changing the content model of existing pages. Use
action=changecontentmodelto specify the new model. You can read the documentation on mediawiki.org. [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.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
21:16, 16 March 2020 (UTC)
Request for roll backer rights
Hello Mz7, I appreciate your administrative work you are doing. I have been editing Wikipedia for some time and have knowledge of Wikipedia policies and guidelines. I request for roll backer rights to enable me fight vandalism. I kindly request you to grant my request. King Onyx (talk) 05:46, 23 March 2020 (UTC)
- Hi King Onyx, thanks for contacting me. I took a look through your contributions, and I am not seeing sufficient experience with identifying and reverting vandalism, which is the primary use of the rollback right. I noticed that in the past, you have used Twinkle to welcome new editors to Wikipedia. Twinkle also provides a lot of useful tools against vandalism, such as a "rollback" button that works similar to the rollback button provided by the rollback right. If you are interested in learning more about counter-vandalism, we also have a mentorship program that may interest you at WP:CVUA. If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to ask me.
- On a related note, I noticed that you have unsuccessfully requested multiple permissions today, one quickly after the other. Some of these requests demonstrate to me that you may not be carefully reading all of the policies and guidelines associated with the rights you are applying for, which makes me concerned that you have not carefully read the guidelines on the rollback permission before applying. For these reasons, I'm afraid your request is
Not done. Respectfully, Mz7 (talk) 18:24, 23 March 2020 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
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.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
17:08, 23 March 2020 (UTC)
Locked account is still disrupting through an IP
As you can see by these edits. Best, GPL93 (talk) 19:52, 23 March 2020 (UTC)
A beer for you!
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Thank you. Drmies (talk) 12:57, 24 March 2020 (UTC) |
- @Drmies: For what you've been through, I'd say I should be the one to buy you the beer today! Mz7 (talk) 20:32, 24 March 2020 (UTC)
- Ha, one gets used to it. While you were typing this, I was looking at this, whose edit summary was borrowed from one of those edits from that range. Maybe you can learn more--it's odd but it doesn't have to mean they're the same. Certainly geolocation and machinery are quite different. Drmies (talk) 20:38, 24 March 2020 (UTC)
Can you add User:Seden777, with a CU block? Thanks! Drmies (talk) 13:29, 29 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
- From the archives: Text from Wikipedia good enough for Oxford University Press to claim as own
- Traffic report: The only thing that matters in the world
- Gallery: Visible Women on Wikipedia
- News from the WMF: Amid COVID-19, Wikimedia Foundation offers full pay for reduced hours, mobilizes all staff to work remote, and waives sick time
- On the bright side: What's making you happy this month?
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- The beta version of the Wikipedia app for Android can now help users add tags on Commons. These tags are called depicts. [17]
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. [18]
- 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. [19]
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)
Administrators' newsletter – April 2020
News and updates for administrators from the past month (March 2020).
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Guideline and policy news
- There is an ongoing request for comment to streamline the source deprecation and blacklisting process.
Technical news
- There is a plan for new requirements for user signatures. You can give feedback.
Arbitration
- Following the banning of an editor by the WMF last year, the Arbitration Committee resolved to hold a
Arbcom RfC regarding on-wiki harassment
. A draft RfC has been posted at Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Anti-harassment RfC (Draft) and not open to comments from the community yet. Interested editors can comment on the RfC itself on its talk page.
- Following the banning of an editor by the WMF last year, the Arbitration Committee resolved to hold a
Miscellaneous
- The WMF has begun a pilot report of the pages most visited through various social media platforms to help with anti-vandalism and anti-disinformation efforts. The report is updated daily and will be available through the end of May.
Wilma Archer amendments
Hello.
The wikipedia account represents the artist in question.
From this account there have been several attempts made to update (the currently invalid and outdated) segments of the page in question - which have been repeatedly overturned - despite the amendments being supplied with legitimate citations and references from widely credible and verified publications.
This unbiased, accurate, verifiable and new information is coming direct from the artist's representation - and the constant edit refusals / reversals from the watchers on this page are harming the credibility of wikipedia as a source of factual information and the artist's accessible public information.
Sockpuppet investigation help
I don't know exactly where to turn for this since discussion was closed, but I have concerns about a comment at Wikipedia:Sockpuppet_investigations/Ineedtostopforgetting/Archive#03_April_2020. First, I had only identified the similarity, having not actually spotted that the exact same edit had been made. Second, without that edit, would the investigation not have gone through? This seems to be a dedicated sockpuppet, and one who seems intent on continuing to sock, having done so for at least 6 months over several accounts. Isn't there a risk that if we demand such exact similarities in editing style, that the person learns to avoid investigation? @Cryptic Canadian: as well. Also regarding the comment about devices, with the risk that this will be spotted, that is quite easy to spoof. (Feel free to hide this last comment in the edit history if needed) Carl Fredrik talk 07:19, 4 April 2020 (UTC)
- Hi CFCF, you bring up great points. Yes, there absolutely is such a risk, and I tried to be as vague as possible about the underlying technical details, but ultimately it remains. We have an essay about the phenomenon as well: WP:BEANS. In hindsight, I don't disagree with your thoughts, so I removed the comment from the archive. In every sockpuppet investigation, we have to balance the amount of information we disclose for the purpose of future identification of the sockmaster with the risk of tipping to sockmaster off to what we are looking for. In this case, I felt that the information you provided us ("similar articles edited, similar editing practices to socks") was too vague for me to justify checking the account—I had to go through the user's contributions myself and identify more concrete examples of the similarity. The two diffs I mentioned were just one such similarity I found. In the future, I would perhaps give slightly more detail. Diffs would be ideal (and are technically required by SPI procedures), but at least try to mention the specific articles the accounts are targeting or the specific "editing practices" that you find similar. As for how much detail to mention, ultimately this is a matter of judgment. It would save time for SPI volunteers, as they wouldn't have to look for this information themselves, and it would also help prevent your SPI from being delayed. I hope this helps clarify my thinking process, and I would be happy to answer any other questions you might have. Mz7 (talk) 16:09, 4 April 2020 (UTC)
- @CFCF: It's true that someone could fly under the radar if they tried harder, but I would think that someone who keeps getting blocked for socking/edit warring over the exact same topics does not care about their image very much. For my SPI contributions regarding this user, the biggest giveaways were when they were changing the exact same wording in the exact same passage in the exact same article, and then getting into edit wars with the exact same user. This person created new socks and revived old accounts just to try and remove nine specific words from the lead for POV reasons. Hiding from scrutiny would require them to sock somewhere else, but they've now sacrificed several accounts just to change this one sentence. It's going to be hard for them to cover up that kind of dedication going forward.
- On top of that, their previous behavior surprises me that they weren't already caught for doing obviously sock-ish things, like when they made significant changes to an article, and then used a brand new sock to promote it to GA. Or when they basically admitted on an admin's talk page that they were using alternative accounts while their main had a rap sheet of recent blocks. Had I seen either of those, I would have started digging right away. These seem like things that would attract suspicion from relatively experienced editors. Cryptic Canadian 22:48, 4 April 2020 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
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. [20]
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. [21]
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)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- You can now use the
articletopicsearch word on all Wikipedias. It searches articles by topic. [22] - You can see wiki tools in the new Tools Gallery. [23]
- 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. [24]
- There is a new Wikimedia Technical Blog. [25]
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. [26][27][28]
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. [29]
- The article tab on talk pages of redirects links to the target of the redirect. It could link to the redirect page itself instead. You can leave feedback on this.
- For pages using syntax highlighting, the use of the deprecated
<source>tag, as well as the use of the deprecatedencloseparameter, will add tracking categories.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
15:30, 13 April 2020 (UTC)
Joe Biden
Hi Mz7, thanks for volunteering to help close the RfC at Talk:Joe Biden. Given Thryduulf's reply at AN and the comments on that talk page, I'd rather not wait to unprotect the page. My current plan is to place the archive templates with the statement: "Given rough consensus for inclusion, the article is no longer under full protection. A more detailed close will be provided by Mz7 and Thryduulf shortly." Would this be stepping on toes or do you anticipate any problems with that? — Wug·a·po·des 00:18, 14 April 2020 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Tech News
- The next issue of Tech News will be sent out on 4 May 2020.
Recent changes
- The small wiki toolkits is to help smaller wikis that need technical skills. They can learn and share technical skills. [31]
- Over-qualified CSS selectors in Wikimedia skins have been removed.
div#contentis now.mw-body.div.portalis now.portal.div#footeris now#footer. This is so the skins can use HTML5 elements. If your gadgets or user styles used them you will have to update them. [32]
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. [33]
- The font in the diffs will change. [34]
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 28 April next week. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 29 April next week. It will be on all wikis from 30 April next week (calendar).
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
18:45, 20 April 2020 (UTC)
You've got mail!
Message added 04:17, 22 April 2020 (UTC). It may take a few minutes from the time the email is sent for it to show up in your inbox. You can at any time by removing the {{You've got mail}} or {{ygm}} template.
Hell in a Bucket (talk) 04:17, 22 April 2020 (UTC)
I think maybe this needs to be salted to stop repeated re-creation of a biography of a minor, thanks Theroadislong (talk) 08:03, 23 April 2020 (UTC)
Request
Hi, Mz7 - Awilley made a suggestion at GAR/Joe Biden/1 for me to basically conduct an in-depth review as follows: pointing out specific actionable problems and tagging the relevant sections, paragraphs, or sentences where appropriate. It made me think about CaptainEek's suggestion at the original GAR3 wherein he said: But unless a group of contributors is willing to come together to save it, I would opt to delist (And no, I don't have time to join a GA team I'm afraid). Granted, few understand the GAR process, and I truly didn't believe it would have been a controversial delist considering the blindingly obvious circumstances, but I'm a team player, problem-solver, and always willing to collaborate productively. My suggestion to you - what do you think about forming a team with 3 collaborators to address Awilley's suggestion? I would appreciate the opportunity to collaborate with you and one other editor, BD2412, who has excellent writing skills. A team of 3 will give us a 2 to 1 decision-making advantage to avoid loggerheads. I have collaborated with BD2412 in the past (at his invitation) to help stabilize Matthew Whitaker, (I just did a splash of ce) and now I am reciprocating with this invite. 😇 But having said the aforementioned, I'm not sure it is the right path to take. Maintenance tags get removed and actually tend to create more issues. I am open to suggestions as to how best to proceed. Thank you for your consideration. Atsme Talk 📧 23:40, 23 April 2020 (UTC)
- I appreciate you thinking of me, but Joe Biden is a whole other kettle of fish, and frankly is likely to be a locus of chaos for the next six-and-a-half months. I'd just as soon let others fight the battles that are going to be fought there. BD2412 T 23:57, 23 April 2020 (UTC)
- Hi Atsme, I appreciate the invite, but I will have to decline as well for similar reasons to BD2412. I will say that I think I get where Aircorn and the others are coming from, and especially against the "historical perspective" that Wasted Time R mentioned, it would appear that delisting an article on the basis of instability during an election cycle is not supported by precedent in the good article process. In other words, the decision to delist was not as uncontroversial as you and I thought it would be. With that being said, I do think your proposed method of going through the article to find actionable issues for discussion is probably the next best approach to getting the article delisted, but I will be the first to admit that I have not reviewed the article for any of these kind of substantive issues—my argument focused mainly on the instability of the article and the expected instability going into the future. Mz7 (talk) 00:03, 24 April 2020 (UTC)
Over-s
Sorry, just picked you out and you look active, please look at [35] for OS. Alanscottwalker (talk) 22:46, 13 May 2020 (UTC)
- @Alanscottwalker: I blocked the IP, but in my view this doesn't rise to the level of either oversight or revision deletion. In the future, if you want to request oversight, please do so privately—e.g. by email. Thanks, Mz7 (talk) 22:52, 13 May 2020 (UTC)
- Thanks for looking but I don't intend on using e-mail ever. -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 22:54, 13 May 2020 (UTC)
- @Alanscottwalker: Hmm, any chance I could convince you to do so? If you are concerned about your privacy, I recommend creating a new email account just for Wikipedia-related business, and as long as you use Special:EmailUser, your IP address shouldn't ever be leaked. The main reason we ask users to use email for OS requests is because many users watch the talk pages of oversighters—right now, I have 147 watchers for my talk page, and many oversighers have even more than that. By posting a request for oversight in a highly visible location, we risk drawing even more attention to the content than if we had just left it alone, see Streisand effect. Mz7 (talk) 23:36, 13 May 2020 (UTC)
- Thanks, but no. I understand why you asked but it's a trade-off and a hurdle that I am not interested in, and the potentially defamatory edit is already public. So, either I bring it to your-all attention, as discretely as I am willing to, and you-all cut it off or it just continues to be public, until maybe someone else notices. -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 02:11, 14 May 2020 (UTC)
- @Alanscottwalker: Hmm, any chance I could convince you to do so? If you are concerned about your privacy, I recommend creating a new email account just for Wikipedia-related business, and as long as you use Special:EmailUser, your IP address shouldn't ever be leaked. The main reason we ask users to use email for OS requests is because many users watch the talk pages of oversighters—right now, I have 147 watchers for my talk page, and many oversighers have even more than that. By posting a request for oversight in a highly visible location, we risk drawing even more attention to the content than if we had just left it alone, see Streisand effect. Mz7 (talk) 23:36, 13 May 2020 (UTC)
- Thanks for looking but I don't intend on using e-mail ever. -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 22:54, 13 May 2020 (UTC)
Your GA nomination of Plumhoff v. Rickard
Hi there, I'm pleased to inform you that I've begun reviewing the article Plumhoff v. Rickard you nominated for GA-status according to the criteria. 
This process may take up to 7 days. Feel free to contact me with any questions or comments you might have during this period. Message delivered by Legobot, on behalf of Usernameunique -- Usernameunique (talk) 04:41, 26 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
- Recent research: Trending topics across languages; auto-detecting bias
- Opinion: Trusting Everybody to Work Together
- On the bright side: What's making you happy this month?
- In focus: Multilingual Wikipedia
- WikiProject report: The Guild of Copy Editors
Administrators' newsletter – May 2020
News and updates for administrators from the past month (April 2020).
Administrator changes
CheckUser changes
Oversight changes
Guideline and policy news
- Discretionary sanctions have been authorized for all pages and edits related to COVID-19, to be logged at WP:GS/COVID19.
- Following a recent discussion on Meta-Wiki, the edit filter maintainer global group has been created.
- A request for comment has been proposed to create a new main page editor usergroup.
- A request for comment has been proposed to make the bureaucrat activity requirements more strict.
Technical news
- The Editing team has been working on the talk pages project. You can review the proposed design and share your thoughts on the talk page.
- Enterprisey created a script that will show a link to the proper Special:Undelete page when viewing a since-deleted revision, see User:Enterprisey/link-deleted-revs.
Miscellaneous
- A request for comment closed with consensus to create a Village Pump-style page for communication with the Wikimedia Foundation.
Precious anniversary
 | |
| Six years! |
|---|
--Gerda Arendt (talk) 08:58, 4 May 2020 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
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. [36]
- 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. [37]
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. [38]
- 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)
Our old F1 editing friend
Hello, sorry to bother you; I think you might just remember the multi-IP editor of F1 articles who eventually created an account (Rowde) and was subsequently blocked. He has created at least six other accounts, all of which have been blocked (being: GTCars, Jesschool, Mriffin, Nico Yu 14, GThomas00, GarethCollege and GarethThomas2000). All have been blocked except the last one where 'he' is up to several of his old tricks. Most were blocked by Favonian who blocked the 'master' back in the day, but he seems to be taking a break just now. Really, my question is, what is the way to report this sort of thing. I did look at SPI but it didn't seem to quite fit right... what could one put in 'diffs' say..? this editor must be up to 10s of 1000s of edits by now. Hope you can give me some 'pointers'. Many thanks. I feel I should know how to approach this but apparently I don't! Eagleash (talk) 18:49, 7 May 2020 (UTC)
- Hi Eagleash. Ah yes, this guy. I vaguely remember them—it's been years now, no? Anyway, based on the clear username similarity, plus overlapping editing interests, I ran a check and GarethThomas2000 is
Confirmed to GarethCollege, so I blocked that account indefinitely. Good eye! - To answer your question, I think WP:SPI is probably the most appropriate general venue for these kinds of reports. As far as evidence goes, you could point out peculiar or suspicious edits that led you to think this might be the sockmaster. You could also point out things like the username similarities and overlapping interests. The requirement of diffs is for the benefit of administrators and checkusers who may not be familiar with the case. Alternatively, you may continue to report suspected sockpuppets directly to me—in private by email if necessary: Special:EmailUser/Mz7. Cheers, Mz7 (talk) 19:31, 7 May 2020 (UTC)
- Thanks that's excellent; I was kind of thinking along the same lines re SPI but I'm still easily confused by that sort of thing... Yes it must be four years since you first became involved with them when they were persistently requesting redirects via AfC; which they then used to create articles for NN topics. It's three years since the first account was blocked. Thanks again! Best regards. Eagleash (talk) 19:55, 7 May 2020 (UTC)
SPI investigation for Dan Smythe
Hey I noticed you had said I filed the report in the wrong place, was the issue that I put the "user:" before the puppeteer's name? Just wanted to know for next time. Cheers. Sulfurboy (talk) 07:06, 9 May 2020 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- Everyone can now import photos from Flickr to Commons with the UploadWizard. Before this only autopatrollers on Commons could import photos from Flickr. [39]
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. [40]
- 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. [41][42]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 12 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 13 May. It will be on all wikis from 14 May (calendar).
Future changes
- JavaScript scripts and gadgets can no longer check multiple keys at once via
mw.config.exists()ormw.user.tokens.exists(). You can useexists()orget()to check one at a time instead. [43]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
20:41, 11 May 2020 (UTC)
Creating New Page
Hello Mz7,
I thought I would ask a quick question. I am creating a wiki page for some. However, I just realized there were two previous attempts in 2007 and 2008 but on both occasions, the pages were deleted. Please, could you advise on how to go about it that the page won't be deleted again? Thank you — Preceding unsigned comment added by PymeFA (talk • contribs) 02:04, 12 May 2020 (UTC)
- (Talk Page Stalker) @PymeFA: I would check to see why it was deleted (Like the reason why, it should be in a red box.) and try not to make the same mistake. (So it it was for copyvio don’t put copy righted material in it, or not notable enough, try to find more reliable references.) Hope this helps! Signed,The4lines |||| (You Asked?) (What I have Done.) 02:23, 12 May 2020 (UTC)
- @PymeFA: Apologies for my delay in responding. As The4lines explained above, it would be helpful to see why the articles were deleted in the past. If you could provide the name of the topic you want to write about, I could take a closer look for you. Speaking generally, the most common reason for why articles are deleted is lack of notability. The best tip I can give for writing new articles is pay close attention to sources. Make sure your sources are high-quality reliable sources that discuss the topic in detail. These include articles in mainstream news sources, books, scholarly journals, etc. One strategy is the "amnesia test": forget everything you know about the subject, research the subject, and write the article based only on the research. If you find that there's no much information out there about a subject, then it might not be notable enough for Wikipedia. See Wikipedia:Your first article for additional advice. Best of luck, Mz7 (talk) 04:38, 14 May 2020 (UTC)
Another possible F1 disruptive editor
Hello, sorry to bother you ... again! Is there any quick way that you can check that this account and this one are connected (or not) to the Rowde / GT accounts as noted above. The accounts are showing some similarities in editing style / habits and topics and there is the same propensity to ignore advice and failure to engage. I'm more interested in finding out that they are not connected than the alternative. (If that makes sense.) I think these two accounts are connected to each other if not actually to Rowde. Thanks. Eagleash (talk) 18:50, 12 May 2020 (UTC)
- @Eagleash: The following accounts are Confirmed to be Rowde:
- CaveMean (talk+ · tag · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log · CA · CheckUser(log) · investigate · cuwiki)
- Foxydagmar (talk+ · tag · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log · CA · CheckUser(log) · investigate · cuwiki)
- Foxydanger (talk+ · tag · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log · CA · CheckUser(log) · investigate · cuwiki)
Blocked and tagged. Mz7 (talk) 19:07, 12 May 2020 (UTC)
- Gosh, it's a bit worse than I thought. Thanks hugely! There should be a special massive 'barnstar' for Rowde fighting! Eagleash (talk) 19:57, 12 May 2020 (UTC)
- Um, I'm a little embarrased to bother you yet again but this account I think is them – even with just a couple of edits or so. Re-doing a revert of one of their regular IP ranges and some of their regular editing traits. Cheers. Eagleash (talk) 10:26, 15 May 2020 (UTC)
- Gosh, it's a bit worse than I thought. Thanks hugely! There should be a special massive 'barnstar' for Rowde fighting! Eagleash (talk) 19:57, 12 May 2020 (UTC)
Will he? username similarity and topics edited (sorry!) Eagleash (talk) 19:47, 20 May 2020 (UTC)
DYK for Plumhoff v. Rickard
On 14 May 2020, Did you know was updated with a fact from the article Plumhoff v. Rickard, which you recently created, substantially expanded, or brought to good article status. The fact was ... that in a 2014 case, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously held that a group of police officers acted reasonably when they fired fifteen shots to end a high-speed car chase? The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Plumhoff v. Rickard. You are welcome to check how many page hits the article got while on the front page (here's how, Plumhoff v. Rickard), and it may be added to the statistics page if the total is over 5,000. Finally, if you know of an interesting fact from another recently created article, then please feel free to suggest it on the Did you know talk page.
M.A.M.A.T.I. B.E.A.U.T.Y2020
So this was sock. I remember the last socks when I remodeling the Def Leppard page last year. I’ll keep my eyes on these MANATIBEAUTY socks. I’m shocked this was a sock. Also I know this was a obvious sock due to the name but how you guys catch socks? You seem to understand something about them that I don’t get? A.R.M. 03:41, 15 May 2020 (UTC)
- @ARMcgrath: In this case, I was responding to a report submitted by another user at Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/M.A.M.A.T.I.2020.55. My guess is the user who reported these accounts was patrolling new pages and stumbled across the similar drafts submitted by this group of accounts. As far as catching socks goes, there is almost always something strange about a user's behavior that leads us to suspect sockpuppetry, and a closer look may uncover more evidence. Wikipedia:Signs of sock puppetry is an essay that someone wrote about this. Mz7 (talk) 04:55, 15 May 2020 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- If you forget your password you can ask for a new one to be sent to your email address. You need to know your email address or your username. You can choose that you need to enter both your email address and your username. This is a preference. This is to get fewer password reset emails someone else asked for. This is now available on all Wikimedia wikis. [44][45]
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. [46]
- 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. [47][48]
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. [49]
- 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. [50]
- Some CSS for the skins has been simplified. This affects
div#p-personal,div#p-navigation,div#p-interaction,div#p-tb,div#p-lang,div#p-namespaces,div#p-variantsanddiv#footer. They will have to removediv. You will have to update your gadgets, scripts or user styles. This is so we can use HTML5. [51] - Some CSS for the Vector skin has been changed. This affects
#p-variants,#p-namespaces,#p-personal,#p-viewsand#p-cactions. They can no longer use> ul. You might need to update your gadgets, scripts or user styles. See how.
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17:19, 18 May 2020 (UTC)
SPI
Hi, you closed the case before I could comment on your comments. I am referencing Wikipedia:Username_policy#Using_multiple_accounts which is what I based it on. It is not biting, it was a preemptive effort to stop anything before it starts. Thanks, --Galendalia (talk) 18:57, 23 May 2020 (UTC)
- @Galendalia: As I stated in my comment on the SPI, just "using multiple accounts" is not prohibited on Wikipedia; using multiple accounts for illegitimate purposes is prohibited. In neither of the cases you reported was there any prohibited activity by any of the accounts. For all we know, the user didn't like the username they picked at first and wanted to change it to a new one—but instead of being welcomed to the community, before they even join they are given a notice that they are "under investigation" for a serious breach of community trust. I feel that if you patrol Special:Log/newusers you could probably find a number of cases where multiple accounts are being created, but as far as the rules go the users have not violated Wikipedia policy until they actually use the multiple accounts for disruptive purposes. If you have reason to believe that, despite the accounts having no edits, there is a high likelihood they will disrupt Wikipedia in the future, I would be happy to block the accounts; however, the only reasons for this I can think of are if the usernames are disruptive in nature or if the usernames indicate that the user might be someone evading a block or ban. Mz7 (talk) 19:09, 23 May 2020 (UTC)
- Understood - I will remove the notices and apply a welcome template on all 4 accounts. Thank you for the clarification! --Galendalia (talk) 19:13, 23 May 2020 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Changes later this week
- The visual editor will now work in the Modern skin. The changes that needed to happen for this to work could cause problems for some scripts or gadgets. [52]
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from May 26. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from May 27. It will be on all wikis from May 28 (calendar).
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
14:18, 25 May 2020 (UTC)
Editor of the Week : nominations needed!
The Editor of the Week initiative has been recognizing editors since 2013 for their hard work and dedication. Editing Wikipedia can be disheartening and tedious at times; the weekly Editor of the Week award lets its recipients know that their positive behaviour and collaborative spirit is appreciated. The response from the honorees has been enthusiastic and thankful.
The list of nominees is running short, and so new nominations are needed for consideration. Have you come across someone in your editing circle who deserves a pat on the back for improving article prose regularly, making it easier to understand? Or perhaps someone has stepped in to mediate a contentious dispute, and did an excellent job. Do you know someone who hasn't received many accolades and is deserving of greater renown? Is there an editor who does lots of little tasks well, such as cleaning up a citation.
Please help us thank editors who display sustained patterns of excellence, working tirelessly in the background out of the spotlight, by submitting your nomination for Editor of the Week today! MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 23:50, 26 May 2020 (UTC)
Articles for Creation: List of reviewers by subject notice
Hi Mz7, 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)
Your GA nomination of Plumhoff v. Rickard
The article Plumhoff v. Rickard you nominated as a good article has passed 
; see Talk:Plumhoff v. Rickard for comments about the article. Well done! If the article has not already been on the main page as an "In the news" or "Did you know" item, you can nominate it to appear in Did you know. Message delivered by Legobot, on behalf of Usernameunique -- Usernameunique (talk) 15:21, 30 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
- Discussion report: WMF's Universal Code of Conduct
- Featured content: Weathering the storm
- Arbitration report: Board member likely to receive editing restriction
- Traffic report: Come on and slam, and welcome to the jam
- Gallery: Wildlife photos by the book
- News from the WMF: WMF Board announces Community Culture Statement
- Recent research: Automatic detection of covert paid editing; Wiki Workshop 2020
- Community view: Transit routes and mapping during stay-at-home order downtime
- WikiProject report: Revitalizing good articles
- On the bright side: 500,000 articles in the Egyptian Arabic Wikipedia