User talk:Stwalkerster/Archive February 2021
Latest comment: 3 years ago by MediaWiki message delivery in topic The Signpost: 28 February 2021
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Administrators' newsletter – February 2021
News and updates for administrators from the past month (January 2021).
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Arbitration
- The standard discretionary sanctions authorized for American Politics were amended by motion to cover
post-1992 politics of United States and closely related people
, replacing the 1932 cutoff.
- The standard discretionary sanctions authorized for American Politics were amended by motion to cover
Miscellaneous
- Voting in the 2021 Steward elections will begin on 05 February 2021, 14:00 (UTC) and end on 26 February 2021, 13:59 (UTC). The confirmation process of current stewards is being held in parallel. You can automatically check your eligibility to vote.
- Wikipedia has now been around for 20 years, and recently saw its billionth edit!
Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 19:10, 1 February 2021 (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
- IPv6 addresses were written in lowercase letters in diffs. This caused dead links since Special:Contributions only accepted uppercase letters for the IPs. This has been fixed. [1]
Changes later this week
- You can soon use Wikidata to link to pages on the multilingual Wikisource. [2]
- Often editors use a "non-breaking space" to make a gap between two items when reading but still show them together. This can be used to avoid a line break. You will now be able to add new ones via the special character tool in the 2010, 2017, and visual editors. The character will be shown in the visual editor as a space with a grey background. [3][4]
Wikis use abuse filters to stop bad edits being made. Filter maintainers can now use syntax like 1.2.3.4 - 1.2.3.55as well as the1.2.3.4/27syntax for IP ranges. [5]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 2 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 3 February. It will be on all wikis from 4 February (calendar).
Future changes
- Minerva is the skin Wikimedia wikis use for mobile traffic. When a page is protected and you can't edit it you can normally read the source wikicode. This doesn't work on Minerva on mobile devices. This is being fixed. Some text might overlap. This is because your community needs to update MediaWiki:Protectedpagetext to work on mobile. You can read more. [6][7]
- Cloud VPS and Toolforge will change the IP address they use to contact the wikis. The new IP address will be
185.15.56.1. This will happen on February 8. You can read more.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
22:38, 1 February 2021 (UTC)
Scripts++ Newsletter – Issue 20
News and updates associated with user scripts from the past month (January 2021).
Hello everyone and welcome to the 20th issue of the Wikipedia Scripts++ Newsletter:
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Open tasks
- As a reminder, the legacy javascript globals (like accessing
wgPageNamewithout first assigning it a value or usingmw.config.get('wgPageName')instead) are deprecated. If your user scripts make use of the globals, please update them to usemw.configinstead. Some global interface editors or local interface administrators may edit your user script to make these changes if you don't. See phab:T72470 for more.
Miscellaneous
- For people interested in creating user scripts or gadgets using TypeScript, a types-mediawiki package (GitHub, NPM) is now available that provides type definitions for the MediaWiki JS interface and the API.
- A GitHub organization has been created for hosting codebases of gadgets. Users who maintain gadgets using GitHub may choose to move their repos to this organization, to ensure continued maintenance by others even if the original maintainer becomes inactive.
Pending requests
- A script to ease reviewing Good Article nominations
- A script to help manage Z number templates
- ...and many more, all available at Wikipedia:User scripts/Requests
As always, if anyone else would like to contribute, including nominating a featured script, help is appreciated. Stay safe, and happy new year! --DannyS712 (talk) 01:17, 3 February 2021 (UTC)
Scripts++ Newsletter – Issue 20
News and updates associated with user scripts from the past month (January 2021).
Hello everyone and welcome to the 20th issue of the Wikipedia Scripts++ Newsletter:
|
|
|
Open tasks
- As a reminder, the legacy javascript globals (like accessing
wgPageNamewithout first assigning it a value or usingmw.config.get('wgPageName')instead) are deprecated. If your user scripts make use of the globals, please update them to usemw.configinstead. Some global interface editors or local interface administrators may edit your user script to make these changes if you don't. See phab:T72470 for more.
Miscellaneous
- For people interested in creating user scripts or gadgets using TypeScript, a types-mediawiki package (GitHub, NPM) is now available that provides type definitions for the MediaWiki JS interface and the API.
- A GitHub organization has been created for hosting codebases of gadgets. Users who maintain gadgets using GitHub may choose to move their repos to this organization, to ensure continued maintenance by others even if the original maintainer becomes inactive.
Pending requests
- A script to ease reviewing Good Article nominations
- A script to help manage Z number templates
- ...and many more, all available at Wikipedia:User scripts/Requests
As always, if anyone else would like to contribute, including nominating a featured script, help is appreciated. Stay safe, and happy new year! --DannyS712 (talk) 01:17, 3 February 2021 (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
- The Wikipedia app for Android now has watchlists and talk pages in the app. [8]
Changes later this week
- You can see edits to chosen pages on Special:Watchlist. You can add pages to your watchlist on every wiki you like. The GlobalWatchlist extension will come to Meta on 11 February. There you can see entries on watched pages on different wikis on the same page. The new watchlist will be found on Special:GlobalWatchlist on Meta. You can choose which wikis to watch and other preferences on Special:GlobalWatchlistSettings on Meta. You can watch up to five wikis. [9]
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 9 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 10 February. It will be on all wikis from 11 February (calendar).
Future changes
- When admins protect pages the form will use the OOUI look. Special:Import will also get the new look. This will make them easier to use on mobile phones. [10][11]
- Some services will not work for a short period of time from 07:00 UTC on 17 February. There might be problems with new short links, new translations, new notifications, adding new items to your reading lists or recording email bounces. This is because of database maintenance. [12]
- Last week Tech News reported that the IP address Cloud VPS and Toolforge use to contact the wikis will change on 8 February. This is delayed. It will happen later instead. [13]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
17:40, 8 February 2021 (UTC)
Protected Nathan Rich
Hi, I noticed you protected Nathan Rich which is good and well, but it's preserved the latest edit by the anonymous user which is clearly vandalism. Would you mind reverting it to a clean version? The clean version [14] has references, while the vandalized version [15] has no references -- even more important since this is BLP. DrIdiot (talk) 11:06, 8 February 2021 (UTC)
- I agree. You not blocking the IP is bizarre. pandakekok9 (talk) 11:09, 8 February 2021 (UTC)
- @DrIdiot and Pandakekok9: apologies, my intention was to firstly stop the edit warring, and then sort everything out later. The edits being made were not what I would classify as obvious vandalism, so in my opinion reliance on the exemptions to WP:3RR here is somewhat tenuous, and I feel that it's definitely in the 3RR grey area. The fastest way to solve rapid-fire edit warring like that is either to block the participants or to protect the page - I chose the latter.As I said, my intention was to first stop the warring, and then sort things out later, but real life appears to have got the better of me this time, as I was called away urgently in the middle of trying to sort it out and I've only just managed to get back online. I see things appear to have been mostly sorted out in my absence. stwalkerster (talk) 18:59, 8 February 2021 (UTC)
- Thanks -- no harm done. But I have to disagree that it was any kind of toss-up content dispute. The now banned user replaced a well-sourced paragraph with his own personal opinion, totally unsourced -- the fact that it was unsourced alone means it's justified to remove without discussion per WP:BLP. DrIdiot (talk) 19:24, 8 February 2021 (UTC)
- Yes, I'd agree with that for the first or maybe even second revert, but I wouldn't rely on that as a bullet-proof exemption from 3RR, and the edit warring policy even states
What counts as exempt under BLP can be controversial. Consider reporting to the BLP noticeboard instead of relying on this exemption.
In this case, I don't feel any harm would have been done to just wait for a ANEW/AIV/BLPN report to be actioned. stwalkerster (talk) 20:09, 8 February 2021 (UTC)
- Yes, I'd agree with that for the first or maybe even second revert, but I wouldn't rely on that as a bullet-proof exemption from 3RR, and the edit warring policy even states
- Thanks -- no harm done. But I have to disagree that it was any kind of toss-up content dispute. The now banned user replaced a well-sourced paragraph with his own personal opinion, totally unsourced -- the fact that it was unsourced alone means it's justified to remove without discussion per WP:BLP. DrIdiot (talk) 19:24, 8 February 2021 (UTC)
- @DrIdiot and Pandakekok9: apologies, my intention was to firstly stop the edit warring, and then sort everything out later. The edits being made were not what I would classify as obvious vandalism, so in my opinion reliance on the exemptions to WP:3RR here is somewhat tenuous, and I feel that it's definitely in the 3RR grey area. The fastest way to solve rapid-fire edit warring like that is either to block the participants or to protect the page - I chose the latter.As I said, my intention was to first stop the warring, and then sort things out later, but real life appears to have got the better of me this time, as I was called away urgently in the middle of trying to sort it out and I've only just managed to get back online. I see things appear to have been mostly sorted out in my absence. stwalkerster (talk) 18:59, 8 February 2021 (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 were problems with recent versions of MediaWiki. Because the updates caused problems the developers rolled back to an earlier version. Some updates and new functions will come later than planned. [16][17]
- Some services will not work for a short period of time from 07:00 UTC on 17 February. There might be problems with new short links, new translations, new notifications, adding new items to your reading lists or recording email bounces. This is because of database maintenance. [18]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 16 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 17 February. It will be on all wikis from 18 February (calendar).
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
17:54, 15 February 2021 (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
- The visual editor will now use MediaSearch to find images. You can search for images on Commons in the visual editor when you are looking for illustrations. This is to help editors find better images. [19]
- The syntax highlighter now works with more languages: Futhark, Graphviz/DOT, CDDL and AMDGPU. [20]
Problems
- Editing a timeline might have removed all text from it. This was because of a bug and has been fixed. You might need to edit the timeline again for it to show properly. [21]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 23 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 24 February. It will be on all wikis from 25 February (calendar).
Future changes
- There is a user group for developers and users interested in working on Wikimedia wikis with the Rust programming language. You can join or tell others who want to make your wiki better in the future.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
00:16, 23 February 2021 (UTC)
The Signpost: 28 February 2021
- News and notes: Maher stepping down
- Disinformation report: A "billionaire battle" on Wikipedia: Sex, lies, and video
- In the media: Corporate influence at OSM, Fox watching the hen house
- News from the WMF: Who tells your story on Wikipedia
- Featured content: A Love of Knowledge, for Valentine's Day
- Traffic report: Does it almost feel like you've been here before?
- Gallery: What is Black history and culture?
* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 21:30, 28 February 2021 (UTC)