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Tech News: 2021-19

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

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 11 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 12 May. It will be on all wikis from 13 May (calendar).

Future changes

• You can see what participants plan to work on at the online Wikimedia hackathon 22–23 May.

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

15:09, 10 May 2021 (UTC)

This week's article for improvement (week 20, 2021)

A computer lab equipped with desktop computers Hello, Susmuffin. The article for improvement of the week is: Desktop computer Please be bold and help improve it! Previous selections: Tattoo • Fashion accessory Get involved with the AFI project: Nominate an article • Review nominations Posted by: MusikBot talk 00:05, 17 May 2021 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject AFI •

Speedy deletion nomination of List of real-life superheroes

If this is the first article that you have created, you may want to read the guide to writing your first article.

You may want to consider using the Article Wizard to help you create articles.

A tag has been placed on List of real-life superheroes requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under section G12 of the criteria for speedy deletion, because the page appears to be an unambiguous copyright infringement. This page appears to be a direct copy from http://yourcostuminfo.blogspot.com/2018/02/real-life-superhero.html. For legal reasons, we cannot accept copyrighted text or images taken from other web sites or printed material, and as a consequence, your addition will most likely be deleted. You may use external websites or other printed material as a source of information, but not as a source of sentences. This part is crucial: say it in your own words. Wikipedia takes copyright violations very seriously and persistent violators will be blocked from editing.

If the external website or image belongs to you, and you want to allow Wikipedia to use the text or image — which means allowing other people to use it for any reason — then you must verify that externally by one of the processes explained at Wikipedia:Donating copyrighted materials. The same holds if you are not the owner but have their permission. If you are not the owner and do not have permission, see Wikipedia:Requesting copyright permission for how you may obtain it. You might want to look at Wikipedia's copyright policy for more details, or ask a question here.

If you think this page should not be deleted for this reason, you may contest the nomination by visiting the page and clicking the button labelled "Contest this speedy deletion". This will give you the opportunity to explain why you believe the page should not be deleted. However, be aware that once a page is tagged for speedy deletion, it may be deleted without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag from the page yourself, but do not hesitate to add information in line with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. Onel5969 ^{TT me} 03:32, 17 May 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-20

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

Recent changes

• There is a new toolbar in the Reply tool. It works in the wikitext source mode. You can enable it in your preferences. [1] [2] [3]
• Wikimedia mailing lists are being moved to Mailman 3. This is a newer version. For the character encoding to work it will change from UTF-8 to utf8mb3. [4][5]
• An earlier issue of Tech News said that the citoid API would handle dates with a month but no days in a new way. This has been reverted for now. There needs to be more discussion of how it affects different wikis first. [6]

Changes later this week

• MediaWiki:Pageimages-blacklist will be renamed MediaWiki:Pageimages-denylist. The list can be copied to the new name. It will happen on 19 May for some wikis and 20 May for some wikis. Most wikis don't use it. It lists images that should never be used as thumbnails for articles. [7]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 18 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 19 May. It will be on all wikis from 20 May (calendar).

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

13:48, 17 May 2021 (UTC)

This week's article for improvement (week 21, 2021)

Cooked pork chops on a plate Hello, Susmuffin. The article for improvement of the week is: Pork chop Please be bold and help improve it! Previous selections: Desktop computer • Tattoo Get involved with the AFI project: Nominate an article • Review nominations Posted by: MusikBot talk 00:05, 24 May 2021 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject AFI •

Tech News: 2021-21

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

Recent changes

• The Wikimedia movement has been using IRC on a network called Freenode. There have been changes around who is in control of the network. The Wikimedia IRC Group Contacts have decided to move to the new Libera Chat network instead. This is not a formal decision for the movement to move all channels but most Wikimedia IRC channels will probably leave Freenode. There is a migration guide and ongoing Wikimedia discussions about this.

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 25 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 26 May. It will be on all wikis from 27 May (calendar).

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17:05, 24 May 2021 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Editor's Barnstar
	For judicious removal of an appalling degree of overquoting at Janis Joplin. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 22:36, 30 May 2021 (UTC)

This week's article for improvement (week 22, 2021)

A trench digger being used in Baku, Azerbaijan Hello, Susmuffin. The article for improvement of the week is: Trench Please be bold and help improve it! Previous selections: Pork chop • Desktop computer Get involved with the AFI project: Nominate an article • Review nominations Posted by: MusikBot talk 00:05, 31 May 2021 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject AFI •

Tech News: 2021-22

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

Problems

• There was an issue on the Vector skin with the text size of categories and notices under the page title. It was fixed last Monday. [8]

Changes later this week

• There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

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

17:04, 31 May 2021 (UTC)

This week's article for improvement (week 23, 2021)

200th Anniversary of Berlin Academy, 1900 Hello, Susmuffin. The article for improvement of the week is: Learned society Please be bold and help improve it! Previous selections: Trench • Pork chop Get involved with the AFI project: Nominate an article • Review nominations Posted by: MusikBot talk 00:05, 7 June 2021 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject AFI •

Tech News: 2021-23

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

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 8 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 9 June. It will be on all wikis from 10 June (calendar).

Future changes

• The Wikimedia movement uses Phabricator for technical tasks. This is where we collect technical suggestions, bugs and what developers are working on. The company behind Phabricator will stop working on it. This will not change anything for the Wikimedia movement now. It could lead to changes in the future. [9][10][11]
• Searching on Wikipedia will find more results in some languages. This is mainly true for when those who search do not use the correct diacritics because they are not seen as necessary in that language. For example searching for Bedusz doesn't find Będusz on German Wikipedia. The character ę isn't used in German so many would write e instead. This will work better in the future in some languages. [12]
• The CSRF token parameters in the action API were changed in 2014. The old parameters from before 2014 will stop working soon. This can affect bots, gadgets and user scripts that still use the old parameters. [13][14]

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

20:01, 7 June 2021 (UTC)

"Vandalism"

Can you stop reverting my edits for no reason other than that you think they're personal attacks? What I commented on in "Wikipedia does not need you", for example, was a valuable contribution to the discussion but you're biased against me for using bad words and for my attitude towards admins, I guess. I'm wondering who the real vandal here is. Shumkichi (talk) 01:36, 8 June 2021 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – June 2021

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

Administrator changes

Ashleyyoursmile • Less Unless

Husond • MattWade • MJCdetroit • Carioca • Vague Rant • Kingboyk • Thunderboltz • Gwen Gale • AniMate • SlimVirgin (deceased)

Guideline and policy news

• Consensus was reached to deprecate Wikipedia:Editor assistance.
• Following a Request for Comment the Book namespace was deprecated.

Technical news

• Wikimedia previously used the IRC network Freenode. However, due to changes over who controlled the network with reports of a forceful takeover by several ex-staff members, the Wikimedia IRC Group Contacts decided to move to the new Libera Chat network. It has been reported that Wikimedia related channels on Freenode have been forcibly taken over if they pointed members to Libera. There is a migration guide and Wikimedia discussions about this.

Arbitration

• After a Clarification request, the Arbitration Committee modified Remedy 5 of the Antisemitism in Poland case. This means sourcing expectations are a discretionary sanction instead of being present on all articles. It also details using the talk page or the Reliable Sources Noticeboard to discuss disputed sources.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 14:46, 9 June 2021 (UTC)

This week's article for improvement (week 24, 2021)

Hello, Susmuffin. The article for improvement of the week is: Savoriness Please be bold and help improve it! Previous selections: Learned society • Trench Get involved with the AFI project: Nominate an article • Review nominations Posted by: MusikBot talk 00:05, 14 June 2021 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject AFI •

Tech News: 2021-24

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

Recent changes

• Logged-in users on the mobile web can choose to use the advanced mobile mode. They now see categories in a similar way as users on desktop do. This means that some gadgets that have just been for desktop users could work for users of the mobile site too. If your wiki has such gadgets you could decide to turn them on for the mobile site too. Some gadgets probably need to be fixed to look good on mobile. [15]
• Language links on Wikidata now works for multilingual Wikisource. [16]

Changes later this week

• There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

Future changes

• In the future we can't show the IP of unregistered editors to everyone. This is because privacy regulations and norms have changed. There is now a rough draft of how showing the IP to those who need to see it could work.
• German Wikipedia, English Wikivoyage and 29 smaller wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on 22 June. This is planned between 5:00 and 5:30 UTC. [17]
• All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes in the week of 28 June. More information will be published in Tech News later. It will also be posted on individual wikis in the coming weeks. [18][19]

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

20:25, 14 June 2021 (UTC)

This week's article for improvement (week 25, 2021)

Hello, Susmuffin. The article for improvement of the week is: Alida Morberg Please be bold and help improve it! Previous selections: Savoriness • Learned society Get involved with the AFI project: Nominate an article • Review nominations Posted by: MusikBot talk 00:05, 21 June 2021 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject AFI •

Tech News: 2021-25

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

Recent changes

• The otrs-member group name is now vrt-permissions. This could affect abuse filters. [20]

Problems

• You will be able to read but not edit German Wikipedia, English Wikivoyage and 29 smaller wikis for a few minutes on 22 June. This is planned between 5:00 and 5:30 UTC. [21]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 22 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 23 June. It will be on all wikis from 24 June (calendar).

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

15:48, 21 June 2021 (UTC)

The Signpost: 27 June 2021

• News and notes: Elections, Wikimania, masking and more

• In the media: Boris and Joe, reliability, love, and money

• Disinformation report: Croatian Wikipedia: capture and release

• Recent research: Feminist critique of Wikipedia's epistemology, Black Americans vastly underrepresented among editors, Wiki Workshop report

• Traffic report: So no one told you life was gonna be this way

• News from the WMF: Searching for Wikipedia

• Humour: Wikipedia's best articles on the world's strangest things

• WikiProject report: WikiProject on open proxies interview

• Forum: Is WMF fundraising abusive?

• Discussion report: Reliability of WikiLeaks discussed

• Obituary: SarahSV

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 20:16, 27 June 2021 (UTC)

This week's article for improvement (week 26, 2021)

A Finnish Christmas ham Hello, Susmuffin. The article for improvement of the week is: Christmas ham Please be bold and help improve it! Previous selections: Alida Morberg • Savoriness Get involved with the AFI project: Nominate an article • Review nominations Posted by: MusikBot talk 00:05, 28 June 2021 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject AFI •

Tech News: 2021-26

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

Recent changes

• Wikis with the Growth features now can configure Growth features directly on their wiki. This uses the new special page Special:EditGrowthConfig. [22]
• Wikisources have a new OCR tool. If you don't want to see the "extract text" button on Wikisource you can add .ext-wikisource-ExtractTextWidget { display: none; } to your common.css page. [23]

Problems

• You will be able to read but not edit the Wikimedia wikis for a few minutes on 29 June. This is planned at 14:00 UTC. [24][25]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 29 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 30 June. It will be on all wikis from 1 July (calendar).

Future changes

• Threshold for stub link formatting, thumbnail size and auto-number headings can be set in preferences. They are expensive to maintain and few editors use them. The developers are planning to remove them. Removing them will make pages load faster. You can read more and give feedback.
• A toolbar will be added to the Reply tool's wikitext source mode. This will make it easier to link to pages and to ping other users. [26][27]

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

16:31, 28 June 2021 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – July 2021

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

Administrator changes

Trialpears

AGK • Eliz81 • Mulad • ThaddeusB • Vianello • Who

Lacrimosus → Ikuzaf

Interface administrator changes

Ragesoss

CheckUser changes

AGK • DGG

Oversighter changes

AGK

Guideline and policy news

• Consensus has been reached to delete all books in the book namespace. There was rough consensus that the deleted books should still be available on request at WP:REFUND even after the namespace is removed.
• An RfC is open to discuss the next steps following a trial which automatically applied pending changes to TFAs.

Technical news

• IP addresses of unregistered users are to be hidden from everyone. There is a rough draft of how IP addresses may be shown to users who need to see them. This currently details allowing administrators, checkusers, stewards and those with a new usergroup to view the full IP address of unregistered users. Editors with at least 500 edits and an account over a year old will be able to see all but the end of the IP address in the proposal. The ability to see the IP addresses hidden behind the mask would be dependent on agreeing to not share the parts of the IP address they can see with those who do not have access to the same information. Accessing part of or the full IP address of a masked editor would also be logged. Comments on the draft are being welcomed at the talk page.

Arbitration

• The community authorised COVID-19 general sanctions have been superseded by the COVID-19 discretionary sanctions following a motion at a case request. Alerts given and sanctions placed under the community authorised general sanctions are now considered alerts for and sanctions under the new discretionary sanctions.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 11:27, 3 July 2021 (UTC)

This week's article for improvement (week 27, 2021)

Hello, Susmuffin. The article for improvement of the week is: Organized religion Please be bold and help improve it! Previous selections: Christmas ham • Alida Morberg Get involved with the AFI project: Nominate an article • Review nominations Posted by: MusikBot talk 00:05, 5 July 2021 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject AFI •

Tech News: 2021-27

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

Tech News

• The next issue of Tech News will be sent out on 19 July.

Recent changes

• AutoWikiBrowser is a tool to make repetitive tasks easier. It now uses JSON. Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/CheckPage has moved to Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/CheckPageJSON and Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/Config. Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/CheckPage/Version has moved to Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/CheckPage/VersionJSON. The tool will eventually be configured on the wiki so that you don't have to wait until the new version to add templates or regular expression fixes. [28]

Problems

• InternetArchiveBot helps saving online sources on some wikis. It adds them to Wayback Machine and links to them there. This is so they don't disappear if the page that was linked to is removed. It currently has a problem with linking to the wrong date when it moves pages from archive.is to web.archive.org. [29]

Changes later this week

• The tool to find, add and remove templates will be updated. This is to make it easier to find and use the right templates. It will come to the first wikis on 7 July. It will come to more wikis later this year. [30][31]
• There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

Future changes

• Some Wikimedia wikis use Flagged Revisions or pending changes. It hides edits from new and unregistered accounts for readers until they have been patrolled. The auto review action in Flagged Revisions will no longer be logged. All old logs of auto-review will be removed. This is because it creates a lot of logs that are not very useful. [32]

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

17:32, 5 July 2021 (UTC)

This week's article for improvement (week 28, 2021)

Participant countries of the 2019 International Army Games.   Participants   First time participants   Previous games participants, but not this time Hello, Susmuffin. The article for improvement of the week is: International Army Games Please be bold and help improve it! Previous selections: Organized religion • Christmas ham Get involved with the AFI project: Nominate an article • Review nominations Posted by: MusikBot talk 00:05, 12 July 2021 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject AFI •

ANI where I sort of mentioned you

There is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. The thread is User:NickCT edit-warring, re-inserting names of criminal suspects and disregarding consensus. Thank you. Nil Einne (talk) 07:32, 17 July 2021 (UTC)

Disambiguation link notification for July 18

An automated process has detected that when you recently edited H. P. Lovecraft, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Decline.

(Opt-out instructions.) --DPL bot (talk) 05:58, 18 July 2021 (UTC)

This week's article for improvement (week 29, 2021)

The Hittite version of the Treaty of Kadesh, among the earliest extant examples of an international agreement Hello, Susmuffin. The article for improvement of the week is: International law Please be bold and help improve it! Previous selections: International Army Games • Organized religion Get involved with the AFI project: Nominate an article • Review nominations Posted by: MusikBot talk 00:05, 19 July 2021 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject AFI •

Tech News: 2021-29

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

Recent changes

• The tool to find, add and remove templates was updated. This is to make it easier to find and use the right templates. It was supposed to come to the first wikis on 7 July. It was delayed to 12 July instead. It will come to more wikis later this year. [33][34]
• Special:UnconnectedPages lists pages that are not connected to Wikidata. This helps you find pages that can be connected to Wikidata items. Some pages should not be connected to Wikidata. You can use the magic word __EXPECTED_UNCONNECTED_PAGE__ on pages that should not be listed on the special page. [35]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 20 July. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 21 July. It will be on all wikis from 22 July (calendar).

Future changes

• How media is structured in the parser's HTML output will soon change. This can affect bots, gadgets, user scripts and extensions. You can read more. You can test it on Testwiki or Testwiki 2.
• The parameters for how you obtain tokens in the MediaWiki API were changed in 2014. The old way will no longer work from 1 September. Scripts, bots and tools that use the parameters from before the 2014 change need to be updated. You can read more.

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

15:30, 19 July 2021 (UTC)

The Signpost: 25 July 2021

• News and notes: Wikimania and a million other news stories

• Special report: Hardball in Hong Kong

• In the media: Larry is at it again

• Board of Trustees candidates: See the candidates

• Recent research: Gender bias and statistical fallacies, disinformation and mutual intelligibility

• Traffic report: Football, tennis and marveling at Loki

• News from the WMF: Uncapping our growth potential – interview with James Baldwin, Finance and Administration Department

• Humour: A little verse

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 23:13, 25 July 2021 (UTC)

This week's article for improvement (week 30, 2021)

Hello, Susmuffin. The article for improvement of the week is: Episode Please be bold and help improve it! Previous selections: International law • International Army Games Get involved with the AFI project: Nominate an article • Review nominations Posted by: MusikBot talk 00:05, 26 July 2021 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject AFI •

Tech News: 2021-30

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

Recent changes

• A new version of MediaWiki came to the Wikimedia wikis the week before last week. This was not in Tech News because there was no newsletter that week.

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 27 July. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 28 July. It will be on all wikis from 29 July (calendar).

Future changes

• If you use the Monobook skin you can choose to switch off responsive design on mobile. This will now work for more skins. If ⧼monobook-responsive-label⧽ is unticked you need to also untick the new preference Enable responsive mode. Otherwise it will stop working. Interface admins can automate this process on your wiki. You can read more.

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

21:10, 26 July 2021 (UTC)

Types of Scimitar

Susmuffin, you've just removed citations for the Shamshir and Killij types of scimitar from this article, stating that the links are useless. Perhaps the citations would be useful in the remaining 'Types' section. Chiswick Chap (talk) 15:03, 29 July 2021 (UTC)

Books & Bytes – Issue 45

The Wikipedia Library

Books & Bytes
Issue 45, May – June 2021

• Library design improvements continue
• New partnerships
• 1Lib1Ref update

Read the full newsletter

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of The Wikipedia Library team --11:05, 30 July 2021 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – July 2021

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

Administrator changes

BusterD

Kees08 • Nickshanks • Protonk • Schissel • Ultraexactzz • Wknight94

CheckUser changes

TheresNoTime

Oversighter changes

TheresNoTime

ST47

Guideline and policy news

• An RfC is open to add a delay of one week from nomination to deletion for G13 speedy deletions.

Technical news

• Last week all wikis were very slow or not accessible for 30 minutes. This was due to server lag caused by regenerating dynamic lists on the Russian Wikinews after a large bulk import. (T287380)

Arbitration

• Following an amendment request, the committee has clarified that the Talk page exception to the 500/30 rule in remedy 5 of the Palestine-Israel articles 4 case does not apply to requested move discussions.

Miscellaneous

• You can vote for candidates in the 2021 Board of Trustees elections from 4 August to 17 August. Four community elected seats are up for election.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 14:19, 1 August 2021 (UTC)

This week's article for improvement (week 31, 2021)

Hello, Susmuffin. The article for improvement of the week is: Organ (anatomy) Please be bold and help improve it! Previous selections: Episode • International law Get involved with the AFI project: Nominate an article • Review nominations Posted by: MusikBot talk 00:05, 2 August 2021 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject AFI •

Tech News: 2021-31

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

Recent changes

• If your wiki uses markup like <div class="mw-content-ltr"> or <div class="mw-content-rtl"> without the required dir attribute, then these will no longer work in 2 weeks. There is a short-term fix that can be added to your local wiki's Common.css page, which is explained at T287701. From now on, all usages should include the full attributes, for example: <div class="mw-content-ltr" dir="ltr" lang="en"> or <div class="mw-content-rtl" dir="rtl" lang="he">. This also applies to some other HTML tags, such as span or code. You can find existing examples on your wiki that need to be updated, using the instructions at T287701.
• Reminder: Wikimedia has migrated to the Libera Chat IRC network, from the old Freenode network. Local documentation should be updated.

Problems

• Last week, all wikis had slow access or no access for 30 minutes. There was a problem with generating dynamic lists of articles on the Russian Wikinews, due to the bulk import of 200,000+ new articles over 3 days, which led to database problems. The problematic feature has been disabled on that wiki and developers are discussing if it can be fixed properly. [36][37]

Changes later this week

• When adding links to a page using VisualEditor or the 2017 wikitext editor, disambiguation pages will now only appear at the bottom of search results. This is because users do not often want to link to disambiguation pages. [38]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 3 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 4 August. It will be on all wikis from 5 August (calendar).

Future changes

• The team of the Wikipedia app for Android is working on communication in the app. The developers are working on how to talk to other editors and get notifications. You can read more. They are looking for users who want to test the plans. Any editor who has an Android phone and is willing to download the app can do this.
• The Beta Feature for Discussion tools will be updated in the coming weeks. You will be able to subscribe to individual sections on a talk page at more wikis. You can test this now by adding ?dtenable=1 to the end of the talk page's URL (example).

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

20:45, 2 August 2021 (UTC)

This week's article for improvement (week 32, 2021)

Hello, Susmuffin. The article for improvement of the week is: Act (drama) Please be bold and help improve it! Previous selections: Organ (anatomy) • Episode Get involved with the AFI project: Nominate an article • Review nominations Posted by: MusikBot talk 00:06, 9 August 2021 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject AFI •

Tech News: 2021-32

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

Problems

• You can read but not edit 17 wikis for a few minutes on 10 August. This is planned at 05:00 UTC. This is because of work on the database. [39]

Changes later this week

• The Wikimania Hackathon will take place remotely on 13 August, starting at 5:00 UTC, for 24 hours. You can participate in many ways. You can still propose projects and sessions.
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 10 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 11 August. It will be on all wikis from 12 August (calendar).
• The old CSS <div class="visualClear"></div> will not be supported after 12 August. Instead, templates and pages should use <div style="clear:both;"></div>. Please help to replace any existing uses on your wiki. There are global-search links available at T287962.

Future changes

• The Wikipedia Library is a place for Wikipedia editors to get access to sources. There is an extension which has a new function to tell users when they can take part in it. It will use notifications. It will start pinging the first users in September. It will ping more users later. [40]
• Vue.js will be the JavaScript framework for MediaWiki in the future. [41]

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

16:19, 9 August 2021 (UTC)

about the list of major works

Hi, Susmuffin. You removed the list of major works in Yukio Mishima, but the list of major works should be in the author's articles, for those who are not familiar with the author. And, I will add a sources of "Works about Mishima" at a later date. I would appreciate your understanding.--みしまるもも (talk) 07:27, 11 August 2021 (UTC)

This week's article for improvement (week 33, 2021)

Crème brûlée a dessert consisting of a rich custard base topped with a layer of hardened caramelized sugar. Hello, Susmuffin. The article for improvement of the week is: Crème brûlée Please be bold and help improve it! Previous selections: Act (drama) • Organ (anatomy) Get involved with the AFI project: Nominate an article • Review nominations Posted by: MusikBot talk 00:05, 16 August 2021 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject AFI •

This week's article for improvement (week 33, 2021)

Crème brûlée a dessert consisting of a rich custard base topped with a layer of hardened caramelized sugar. Hello, Susmuffin. The article for improvement of the week is: Crème brûlée Please be bold and help improve it! Previous selections: Act (drama) • Organ (anatomy) Get involved with the AFI project: Nominate an article • Review nominations Posted by: MusikBot talk 02:15, 16 August 2021 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject AFI •

Tech News: 2021-33

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

Recent changes

• You can add language links in the sidebar in the new Vector skin again. You do this by connecting the page to a Wikidata item. The new Vector skin has moved the language links but the new language selector cannot add language links yet. [42]

Problems

• There was a problem on wikis which use the Translate extension. Translations were not updated or were replaced with the English text. The problems have been fixed. [43][44][45]

Changes later this week

• A revision tag will soon be added to edits that add links to disambiguation pages. This is because these links are usually added by accident. The tag will allow editors to easily find the broken links and fix them. If your wiki does not like this feature, it can be hidden. [46]
• Would you like to help improve the information about tools? Would you like to attend or help organize a small virtual meetup for your community to discuss the list of tools? Please get in touch on the Toolhub Quality Signal Sessions talk page. We are also looking for feedback from tool maintainers on some specific questions.
• In the past, edits to any page in your user talk space ignored your mute list, e.g. sub-pages. Starting this week, this is only true for edits to your talk page. [47]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 17 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 18 August. It will be on all wikis from 19 August (calendar).

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

19:26, 16 August 2021 (UTC)

This week's article for improvement (week 34, 2021)

An employee and customer at a grocery store in The Netherlands, April 1, 1955 Hello, Susmuffin. The article for improvement of the week is: Grocery store Please be bold and help improve it! Previous selections: Crème brûlée • Act (drama) Get involved with the AFI project: Nominate an article • Review nominations Posted by: MusikBot talk 00:05, 23 August 2021 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject AFI •

Tech News: 2021-34

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

Recent changes

• The Score extension (<score> notation) has been re-enabled on public wikis and upgraded to a newer version. Some musical score functionality may no longer work because the extension is only enabled in "safe mode". The security issue has been fixed and an advisory published.

Problems

• You will be able to read but not edit some wikis for a few minutes on 25 August. This will happen around 06:00 UTC. This is for database maintenance. During this time, operations on the CentralAuth will also not be possible.

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 24 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 25 August. It will be on all wikis from 26 August (calendar).

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

21:57, 23 August 2021 (UTC)

Read-only reminder

A maintenance operation will be performed on Wednesday August 25 06:00 UTC. It should only last for a few minutes.

Also during this time, operations on the CentralAuth will not be possible (GlobalRenames, changing/confirming e-mail addresses, logging into new wikis, password changes).

For more details about the operation and on all impacted services, please check on Phabricator.

A banner will be displayed 30 minutes before the operation.

Please help your community to be aware of this maintenance operation. Thank you!

20:33, 24 August 2021 (UTC)

Can I get your rationale...

On deleting much of an article here while the relevant AfD is running? Jclemens (talk) 23:59, 27 August 2021 (UTC)

Some of the removed content—including the massive blockquotes—only cited primary sources. The remainder of it was completely unsourced, aside from one secondary source that does not actually mention Yuggoth. Meanwhile, the external links were purely promotional links to stories—including a fictional family tree—that contain Yuggoth. ―Susmuffin ^Talk 01:24, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

The Signpost: 29 August 2021

• News and notes: Enough time left to vote! IP ban

• In the media: Vive la différence!

• Wikimedians of the year: Seven Wikimedians of the year

• Gallery: Our community in 20 graphs

• News from Wiki Education: Changing the face of Wikipedia

• Recent research: IP editors, inclusiveness and empathy, cyclones, and world heritage

• WikiProject report: WikiProject Days of the Year Interview

• Traffic report: Olympics, movies, and Afghanistan

• Community view: Making Olympic history on Wikipedia

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 19:45, 29 August 2021 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Original Barnstar
	For creating Category:Former Ku Klux Klan members, something that is long overdue! Trainsandotherthings (talk) 20:51, 29 August 2021 (UTC)

This week's article for improvement (week 35, 2021)

Mona Sahlin is a Swedish politician who was leader of the opposition and leader of the Swedish Social Democratic Party from 2007 to 2011. Pictured is Sahlin in 2010. Hello, Susmuffin. The article for improvement of the week is: Mona Sahlin Please be bold and help improve it! Previous selections: Grocery store • Crème brûlée Get involved with the AFI project: Nominate an article • Review nominations Posted by: MusikBot talk 00:06, 30 August 2021 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject AFI •

Tech News: 2021-35

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

Recent changes

• Some musical score syntax no longer works and may needed to be updated, you can check Category:Pages with score rendering errors on your wiki for a list of pages with errors.

Problems

• Musical scores were unable to render lyrics in some languages because of missing fonts. This has been fixed now. If your language would prefer a different font, please file a request in Phabricator. [48]

Changes later this week

• The parameters for how you obtain tokens in the MediaWiki API were changed in 2014. The old way will no longer work from 1 September. Scripts, bots and tools that use the parameters from before the 2014 change need to be updated. You can read more about this.
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 31 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 1 September. It will be on all wikis from 2 September (calendar).

Future changes

• You will be able to read but not edit Commons for a few minutes on 6 September. This will happen around 05:00 UTC. This is for database maintenance.
• All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes in the week of 13 September. More information will be published in Tech News later. It will also be posted on individual wikis in the coming weeks. [49]

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

16:00, 30 August 2021 (UTC)

Fixed your talk page archiving

Hi! I took the liberty of moving the auto-archiving settings from your /Hello subpage to the top of this page. This should fix the auto-archiving, and prevent your talkpage from showing up in Category:Pages where archive parameter is not a subpage --rchard2scout (talk) 14:40, 3 September 2021 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – September 2021

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

Administrator changes

Jake Wartenberg

Emperor • Viridian Bovary

Ashleyyoursmile → Viridian Bovary

Guideline and policy news

• Feedback is requested on the Universal Code of Conduct enforcement draft by the Universal Code of Conduct Phase 2 drafting committee.
• A RfC is open on whether to allow administrators to use extended confirmed protection on high-risk templates.
• A discussion is open to decide when, if ever, should discord logs be eligible for removal when posted onwiki (including whether to oversight them)
• A RfC on the next steps after the trial of pending changes on TFAs has resulted in a 30 day trial of automatic semi protection for TFAs.

Technical news

• The Score extension has been re-enabled on public wikis. It has been updated, but has been placed in safe mode to address unresolved security issues. Further information on the security issues can be found on the mediawiki page.

Arbitration

• A request for comment is in progress to provide an opportunity to amend the structure, rules, and procedures of the Arbitration Committee election and resolve any issues not covered by existing rules. Comments and new proposals are welcome.

Miscellaneous

• The 2021 RfA review is now open for comments.

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• Subscribe
• Archive

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 20:46, 3 September 2021 (UTC)

This week's article for improvement (week 36, 2021)

The past is the set of all events that occurred before a given point in time. Pictured is the oil on canvas painting Everything is in the past, painted by Vassily Maximov in 1889. Hello, Susmuffin. The article for improvement of the week is: Past Please be bold and help improve it! Previous selections: Mona Sahlin • Grocery store Get involved with the AFI project: Nominate an article • Review nominations Posted by: MusikBot talk 00:06, 6 September 2021 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject AFI •

Tech News: 2021-36

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 wikis that have Growth features deployed have been part of A/B testing since deployment, in which some newcomers did not receive the new features. Now, all of the newcomers on 21 of the smallest of those wikis will be receiving the features. [50]

Changes later this week

• There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

Future changes

• In 2017, the provided jQuery library was upgraded from version 1 to 3, with a compatibility layer. The migration will soon finish, to make the site load faster for everyone. If you maintain a gadget or user script, check if you have any JQMIGRATE errors and fix them, or they will break. [51][52]
• Last year, the Portuguese Wikipedia community embarked on an experiment to make log-in compulsory for editing.  The impact report of this trial is ready. Moving forward, the Anti-Harassment Tools team is looking for projects that are willing to experiment with restricting IP editing on their wiki for a short-term experiment. Learn more.

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

15:19, 6 September 2021 (UTC)

This week's article for improvement (week 37, 2021)

The history of art focuses on objects made by humans in visual form for aesthetic purposes. Pictured ia a dun horse from the Lascaux cave paintings. Hello, Susmuffin. The article for improvement of the week is: History of art Please be bold and help improve it! Previous selections: Past • Mona Sahlin Get involved with the AFI project: Nominate an article • Review nominations Posted by: MusikBot talk 00:05, 13 September 2021 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject AFI •

Tech News: 2021-37

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

• 45 new Wikipedias now have access to the Growth features. [53]
• A majority of Wikipedias now have access to the Growth features. The Growth team has published an FAQ page about the features. This translatable FAQ covers the description of the features, how to use them, how to change the configuration, and more.

Problems

• All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on 14 September. This is planned at 14:00 UTC. [54]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 14 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 15 September. It will be on all wikis from 16 September (calendar).
• Starting this week, Wikipedia in Italian will receive weekly software updates on Wednesdays. It used to receive the updates on Thursdays. Due to this change, bugs will be noticed and fixed sooner. [55]
• You can add language links in the sidebar in the new Vector skin again. You do this by connecting the page to a Wikidata item. The new Vector skin has moved the language links but the new language selector cannot add language links yet. [56]
• The syntax highlight tool marks up code with different colours. It now can highlight 23 new code languages. Additionally, golang can now be used as an alias for the Go programming language, and a special output mode has been added to show a program's output. [57][58]

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

15:32, 13 September 2021 (UTC)

Your GA nomination of H. P. Lovecraft

Hi there, I'm pleased to inform you that I've begun reviewing the article H. P. Lovecraft 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 Realmaxxver -- Realmaxxver (talk) 20:40, 18 September 2021 (UTC)

Your GA nomination of H. P. Lovecraft

The article H. P. Lovecraft you nominated as a good article has passed ; see Talk:H. P. Lovecraft for comments about the article. Well done! If the article has not already appeared on the main page as a "Did you know" item, or as a bold link under "In the News" or in the "On This Day" prose section, you can nominate it within the next seven days to appear in DYK. Bolded names with dates listed at the bottom of the "On This Day" column do not affect DYK eligibility. Message delivered by Legobot, on behalf of Realmaxxver -- Realmaxxver (talk) 21:01, 19 September 2021 (UTC)

This week's article for improvement (week 38, 2021)

Hello, Susmuffin. The article for improvement of the week is: Student exchange program Please be bold and help improve it! Previous selections: History of art • Past Get involved with the AFI project: Nominate an article • Review nominations Posted by: MusikBot talk 00:06, 20 September 2021 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject AFI •

Tech News: 2021-38

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

• Growth features are now deployed to almost all Wikipedias. For the majority of small Wikipedias, the features are only available for experienced users, to test the features and configure them. Features will be available for newcomers starting on 20 September 2021.
• MediaWiki had a feature that would highlight local links to short articles in a different style. Each user could pick the size at which "stubs" would be highlighted. This feature was very bad for performance, and following a consultation, has been removed. [59]
• A technical change was made to the MonoBook skin to allow for easier maintenance and upkeep. This has resulted in some minor changes to HTML that make MonoBook's HTML consistent with other skins. Efforts have been made to minimize the impact on editors, but please ping Jon (WMF) on wiki or in phabricator if any problems are reported.

Problems

• There was a problem with search last week. Many search requests did not work for 2 hours because of an accidental restart of the search servers. [60]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 21 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 22 September. It will be on all wikis from 23 September (calendar).
• The meta=proofreadpage API has changed. The piprop parameter has been renamed to prpiprop. API users should update their code to avoid unrecognized parameter warnings. Pywikibot users should upgrade to 6.6.0. [61]

Future changes

• The Reply tool will be deployed to the remaining wikis in the coming weeks. It is currently part of "Discussion tools" in Beta features at most wikis. You will be able to turn it off in Editing Preferences. [62]
• The previously announced change to how you obtain tokens from the API has been delayed to September 21 because of an incompatibility with Pywikibot. Bot operators using Pywikibot can follow T291202 for progress on a fix, and should plan to upgrade to 6.6.1 when it is released.

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

18:30, 20 September 2021 (UTC)

Books & Bytes – Issue 46

The Wikipedia Library

Books & Bytes
Issue 46, July – August 2021

• Library design improvements deployed
• New collections available in English and German
• Wikimania presentation

Read the full newsletter

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of The Wikipedia Library team --11:15, 22 September 2021 (UTC)

The Signpost: 26 September 2021

• News and notes: New CEO, new board members, China bans

• In the media: The future of Wikipedia

• Opinion: Wikimedians of Mainland China were warned

• Op-Ed: I've been desysopped

• Disinformation report: Paid promotional paragraphs in German parliamentary pages

• Discussion report: Editors discuss Wikipedia's vetting process for administrators

• Recent research: Wikipedia images for machine learning; Experiment justifies Wikipedia's high search rankings

• Community view: Is writing Wikipedia like making a quilt?

• Traffic report: Kanye, Emma Raducanu and 9/11

• News from Diff: Welcome to the first grantees of the Knowledge Equity Fund

• WikiProject report: The Random and the Beautiful

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 20:59, 26 September 2021 (UTC)

This week's article for improvement (week 39, 2021)

Hello, Susmuffin. The article for improvement of the week is: No such thing as a stupid question Please be bold and help improve it! Previous selections: Student exchange program • History of art Get involved with the AFI project: Nominate an article • Review nominations Posted by: MusikBot talk 00:06, 27 September 2021 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject AFI •

Tech News: 2021-39

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

• iOS 15 has a new function called Private Relay (Apple website). This can hide the user's IP when they use Safari browser. This is like using a VPN in that we see another IP address instead. It is opt-in and only for those who pay extra for iCloud. It will come to Safari users on OSX later. There is a technical discussion about what this means for the Wikimedia wikis.

Problems

• Some gadgets and user-scripts add items to the portlets (article tools) part of the skin. A recent change to the HTML may have made those links a different font-size. This can be fixed by adding the CSS class .vector-menu-dropdown-noicon. [63]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 28 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 29 September. It will be on all wikis from 30 September (calendar).
• The GettingStarted extension was built in 2013, and provides an onboarding process for new account holders in a few versions of Wikipedia. However, the recently developed Growth features provide a better onboarding experience. Since the vast majority of Wikipedias now have access to the Growth features, GettingStarted will be deactivated starting on 4 October. [64]
• A small number of users will not be able to connect to the Wikimedia wikis after 30 September. This is because an old root certificate will no longer work. They will also have problems with many other websites. Users who have updated their software in the last five years are unlikely to have problems. Users in Europe, Africa and Asia are less likely to have immediate problems even if their software is too old. You can read more.
• You can receive notifications when someone leaves a comment on user talk page or mentions you in a talk page comment. Clicking the notification link will now bring you to the comment and highlight it. Previously, doing so brought you to the top of the section that contained the comment. You can find more information in T282029.

Future changes

• The Reply tool will be deployed to the remaining wikis in the coming weeks. It is currently part of "Discussion tools" in Beta features at most wikis. You will be able to turn it off in Editing Preferences. See the list of wikis. [65]

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

22:20, 27 September 2021 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – October 2021

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

Administrator changes

Blablubbs

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

Oversighter changes

Callanecc

Mkdw

Interface administrator changes

Galobtter

Guideline and policy news

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

Technical news

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

Arbitration

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

Miscellaneous

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

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• Subscribe
• Archive

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:05, 1 October 2021 (UTC)

This week's article for improvement (week 40, 2021)

A geographer is a physical scientist, social scientist or humanist whose area of study is geography, the study of Earth's natural environment and human society, including how society and nature interacts. Pictured is The Geographer (1668-69), by Johannes Vermeer. Hello, Susmuffin. The article for improvement of the week is: Geographer Please be bold and help improve it! Previous selections: No such thing as a stupid question • Student exchange program Get involved with the AFI project: Nominate an article • Review nominations Posted by: MusikBot talk 00:06, 4 October 2021 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject AFI •

Tech News: 2021-40

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

Recent changes

• A more efficient way of sending changes from Wikidata to Wikimedia wikis that show them has been enabled for the following 10 wikis: mediawiki.org, the Italian, Catalan, Hebrew and Vietnamese Wikipedias, French Wikisource, and English Wikivoygage, Wikibooks, Wiktionary and Wikinews. If you notice anything strange about how changes from Wikidata appear in recent changes or your watchlist on those wikis you can let the developers know.

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 5 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 6 October. It will be on all wikis from 7 October (calendar).
• Some gadgets and bots that use the API to read the AbuseFilter log might break. The hidden property will no longer say an entry is implicit for unsuppressed log entries about suppressed edits. If your bot needs to know this, do a separate revision query. Additionally, the property will have the value false for visible entries; previously, it wasn't included in the response. [66]
• A more efficient way of sending changes from Wikidata to Wikimedia wikis that show them will be enabled for all production wikis. If you notice anything strange about how changes from Wikidata appear in recent changes or your watchlist you can let the developers know.

Future changes

• You can soon get cross-wiki notifications in the iOS Wikipedia app. You can also get notifications as push notifications. More notification updates will follow in later versions. [67]
• The JavaScript variables wgExtraSignatureNamespaces, wgLegalTitleChars, and wgIllegalFileChars will soon be removed from mw.config. These are not part of the "stable" variables available for use in wiki JavaScript. [68]
• The JavaScript variables wgCookiePrefix, wgCookieDomain, wgCookiePath, and wgCookieExpiration will soon be removed from mw.config. Scripts should instead use mw.cookie from the "mediawiki.cookie" module. [69]

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

16:29, 4 October 2021 (UTC)

DYK for H. P. Lovecraft

On 5 October 2021, Did you know was updated with a fact from the article H. P. Lovecraft, which you recently created, substantially expanded, or brought to good article status. The fact was ... that when H. P. Lovecraft was five years old, he was told Santa Claus did not exist and responded by asking why "God is not equally a myth"? The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/H. P. Lovecraft. You are welcome to check how many pageviews the nominated article or articles got while on the front page (here's how, H. P. Lovecraft), and if they received a combined total of at least 416.7 views per hour (i.e., 5,000 views in 12 hours or 10,000 in 24), the hook may be added to the statistics page. 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.

Cwmhiraeth (talk) 00:02, 5 October 2021 (UTC)

GA for H. P. Lovecraft

		The Elder Barnstar
		I hereby award this barnstar for bringing H. P. Lovecraft to Wikipedia:Good article status. The stars were right. Great job. --GRuban (talk) 12:17, 5 October 2021 (UTC)

This week's article for improvement (week 41, 2021)

Fish sauce is a liquid condiment made from fish or krill that have been coated in salt and fermented for up to two years. Pictured is Cambodian sweet fish sauce mixed with chopped chili peppers and slices of garlic. Hello, Susmuffin. The article for improvement of the week is: Fish sauce Please be bold and help improve it! Previous selections: Geographer • No such thing as a stupid question Get involved with the AFI project: Nominate an article • Review nominations Posted by: MusikBot talk 00:05, 11 October 2021 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject AFI •

Tech News: 2021-41

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 12 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 13 October. It will be on all wikis from 14 October (calendar).

• The "auto-number headings" preference is being removed. You can read phab:T284921 for the reasons and discussion. This change was previously announced. A JavaScript snippet is available which can be used to create a Gadget on wikis that still want to support auto-numbering.

Meetings

• You can join a meeting about the Desktop Improvements. A demonstration version of the newest feature will be shown. The event will take place on Tuesday, 12 October at 16:00 UTC. See how to join.

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

15:29, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

This week's article for improvement (week 42, 2021)

The Big Five personality traits is a suggested taxonomy, or grouping, for personality traits. Hello, Susmuffin. The article for improvement of the week is: Personality Please be bold and help improve it! Previous selections: Fish sauce • Geographer Get involved with the AFI project: Nominate an article • Review nominations Posted by: MusikBot talk 00:05, 18 October 2021 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject AFI •

Tech News: 2021-42

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

• Toolhub is a catalogue to make it easier to find software tools that can be used for working on the Wikimedia projects. You can read more.

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 19 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 20 October. It will be on all wikis from 21 October (calendar).

Future changes

• The developers of the Wikipedia Android app are working on communication in the app. You can now answer questions in survey to help the development.
• 3–5% of editors may be blocked in the next few months. This is because of a new service in Safari, which is similar to a proxy or a VPN. It is called iCloud Private Relay. There is a discussion about this on Meta. The goal is to learn what iCloud Private Relay could mean for the communities.
• Wikimedia Enterprise is a new API for those who use a lot of information from the Wikimedia projects on other sites. It is a way to get big commercial users to pay for the data. There will soon be a copy of the Wikimedia Enterprise dataset. You can read more. You can also ask the team questions on Zoom on 22 October 15:00 UTC.

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

20:52, 18 October 2021 (UTC)

This week's article for improvement (week 43, 2021)

The Portland Building (1982) in Portland, Oregon by architect Michael Graves is an example of Postmodern architecture. Hello, Susmuffin. The article for improvement of the week is: Postmodernism Please be bold and help improve it! Previous selections: Personality • Fish sauce Get involved with the AFI project: Nominate an article • Review nominations Posted by: MusikBot talk 00:05, 25 October 2021 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject AFI •

Tech News: 2021-43

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 Coolest Tool Award 2021 is looking for nominations. You can recommend tools until 27 October.

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 26 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 27 October. It will be on all wikis from 28 October (calendar).

Future changes

• Diff pages will have an improved copy and pasting experience. The changes will allow the text in the diff for before and after to be treated as separate columns and will remove any unwanted syntax. [70]
• The version of the Liberation fonts used in SVG files will be upgraded. Only new thumbnails will be affected. Liberation Sans Narrow will not change. [71]

Meetings

• You can join a meeting about the Community Wishlist Survey. News about the disambiguation and the real-time preview wishes will be shown. The event will take place on Wednesday, 27 October at 14:30 UTC. See how to join.

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

20:07, 25 October 2021 (UTC)

The Signpost: 31 October 2021

• From the editor: Different stories, same place

• News and notes: The sockpuppet who ran for adminship and almost succeeded

• In the media: China bans, and is there intelligent life on this planet?

• Opinion: A photo on Wikipedia can ruin your life

• Discussion report: Editors brainstorm and propose changes to the Requests for adminship process

• Recent research: Welcome messages fail to improve newbie retention

• Community view: Reflections on the Chinese Wikipedia

• Traffic report: James Bond and the Giant Squid Game

• Technology report: Wikimedia Toolhub, winners of the Coolest Tool Award, and more

• Serendipity: How Wikipedia helped create a Serbian stamp

• Book review: Wikipedia and the Representation of Reality

• WikiProject report: Redirection

• Humour: A very Wiki crossword

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 20:16, 31 October 2021 (UTC)

This week's article for improvement (week 44, 2021)

Isabel Adrian is a Swedish television personality, producer, author and model. Pictured is Adrian in 2013. Hello, Susmuffin. The article for improvement of the week is: Isabel Adrian Please be bold and help improve it! Previous selections: Postmodernism • Personality Get involved with the AFI project: Nominate an article • Review nominations Posted by: MusikBot talk 00:05, 1 November 2021 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject AFI •

Administrators' newsletter – November 2021

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

Administrator changes

Clpo13

Brian0918 • JDoorjam • Karanacs • MrDarcy • Mindspillage

Interface administrator changes

Evad37

CheckUser changes

Dreamy Jazz • Ferret • GeneralNotability • Girth Summit • RoySmith

Oversight changes

Dreamy Jazz • LuK3

Guideline and policy news

• Phase 2 of the 2021 RfA review has commenced which will discuss potential solutions to address the 8 issues found in Phase 1. Proposed solutions that achieve consensus will be implemented and you may propose solutions till 07 November 2021.

Technical news

• Toolhub is a catalogue of tools which can be used on Wikimedia wikis. It is at https://toolhub.wikimedia.org/.

Arbitration

• GeneralNotability, Mz7 and Cyberpower678 have been appointed to the Electoral Commission for the 2021 Arbitration Committee Elections. Ivanvector and John M Wolfson are reserve commissioners.
• Eligible editors are invited to self-nominate themselves to stand in the 2021 Arbitration Committee elections from 07 November 2021 until 16 November 2021.

Miscellaneous

• The 2021 CheckUser and Oversight appointments process has concluded with the appointment of five new CheckUsers and two new Oversighters.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:44, 1 November 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-44

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 limit on the amount of emails a user can send each day. This limit is now global instead of per-wiki. This change is to prevent abuse. [72]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 2 November. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 3 November. It will be on all wikis from 4 November (calendar).

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

20:27, 1 November 2021 (UTC)

Your draft article, Draft:Algernon Blackwood bibliography

Hello, Susmuffin. It has been over six months since you last edited the Articles for Creation submission or Draft page you started, "Algernon Blackwood bibliography".

In accordance with our policy that Wikipedia is not for the indefinite hosting of material deemed unsuitable for the encyclopedia mainspace, the draft has been deleted. If you plan on working on it further and you wish to retrieve it, you can request its undeletion. An administrator will, in most cases, restore the submission so you can continue to work on it.

Thanks for your submission to Wikipedia, and happy editing. ✗plicit 08:33, 3 November 2021 (UTC)

This week's article for improvement (week 45, 2021)

Hang gliding is an example of an air sport. Hello, Susmuffin. The article for improvement of the week is: Air sports Please be bold and help improve it! Previous selections: Isabel Adrian • Postmodernism Get involved with the AFI project: Nominate an article • Review nominations Posted by: MusikBot talk 00:05, 8 November 2021 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject AFI •

Tech News: 2021-45

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

• Mobile IP editors are now able to receive warning notices indicating they have a talk page message on the mobile website (similar to the orange banners available on desktop). These notices will be displayed on every page outside of the main namespace and every time the user attempts to edit. The notice on desktop now has a slightly different colour. [73][74]

Changes later this week

• Wikidata will be read-only for a few minutes on 11 November. This will happen around 06:00 UTC. This is for database maintenance. [75]
• There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

Future changes

• In the future, unregistered editors will be given an identity that is not their IP address. This is for legal reasons. A new user right will let editors who need to know the IPs of unregistered accounts to fight vandalism, spam, and harassment, see the IP. You can read the suggestions for how that identity could work and discuss on the talk page.

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

20:35, 8 November 2021 (UTC)

Books & Bytes – Issue 47

The Wikipedia Library

Books & Bytes
Issue 47, September – October 2021

• On-wiki Wikipedia Library notification rolling out
• Search tool deployed
• New My Library design improvements

Read the full newsletter

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of The Wikipedia Library team --16:59, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

This week's article for improvement (week 46, 2021)

Dettifoss, located in northeast Iceland, is the largest waterfall in Europe in terms of volume discharge, with an average water flow of 200 m3/s. Hello, Susmuffin. The article for improvement of the week is: Geography of Iceland Please be bold and help improve it! Previous selections: Air sports • Isabel Adrian Get involved with the AFI project: Nominate an article • Review nominations Posted by: MusikBot talk 00:05, 15 November 2021 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject AFI •

Tech News: 2021-46

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

• Most large file uploads errors that had messages like "stashfailed" or "DBQueryError" have now been fixed. An incident report is available.

Problems

• Sometimes, edits made on iOS using the visual editor save groups of numbers as telephone number links, because of a feature in the operating system. This problem is under investigation. [76]
• There was a problem with search last week. Many search requests did not work for 2 hours because of a configuration error. [77]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 16 November. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 17 November. It will be on all wikis from 18 November (calendar).

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

22:05, 15 November 2021 (UTC)

You a mate of Blacks then? I'll get the police to look into you too. Thanks for your details.

You a mate of Blacks then? I'll get the police to look into you too. Thanks for your details. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 193.38.2.81 (talk) 09:53, 17 November 2021 (UTC)

i am pretty sure my edit was constructive mate

yeaah — Preceding unsigned comment added by 159.196.169.172 (talk) 11:15, 17 November 2021 (UTC)

This week's article for improvement (week 47, 2021)

Wholesaling or distributing is the sale of goods or merchandise to retailers; to industrial, commercial, institutional or other professional business users; or to other wholesalers (wholesale businesses) and related subordinated services. Pictured is the Birmingham Wholesale Markets at 4:00 AM. Hello, Susmuffin. The article for improvement of the week is: Wholesaling Please be bold and help improve it! Previous selections: Geography of Iceland • Air sports Get involved with the AFI project: Nominate an article • Review nominations Posted by: MusikBot talk 00:05, 22 November 2021 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject AFI •

Tech News: 2021-47

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

• There is no new MediaWiki version this week.
• The template dialog in VisualEditor and in the new wikitext mode Beta feature will be heavily improved on a few wikis. Your feedback is welcome.

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

20:01, 22 November 2021 (UTC)

ArbCom 2021 Elections voter message

Hello! Voting in the 2021 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23:59 (UTC) on Monday, 6 December 2021. All eligible users are allowed to vote. Users with alternate accounts may only vote once. The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail. If you wish to participate in the 2021 election, please review the candidates and submit your choices on the voting page. If you no longer wish to receive these messages, you may add {{NoACEMM}} to your user talk page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:50, 23 November 2021 (UTC)

This week's article for improvement (week 48, 2021)

Proposed Lazarev Sea name (at top-middle of image) as part of the Southern Ocean Hello, Susmuffin. The article for improvement of the week is: Lazarev Sea Please be bold and help improve it! Previous selections: Wholesaling • Geography of Iceland Get involved with the AFI project: Nominate an article • Review nominations Posted by: MusikBot talk 00:05, 29 November 2021 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject AFI •

The Signpost: 29 November 2021

• In the media: Denial: climate change, mass killings and pornography

• WikiCup report: The WikiCup 2021

• Deletion report: What we lost, what we gained

• From a Wikipedia reader: What's Matt Amodio?

• Arbitration report: ArbCom in 2021

• Discussion report: On the brink of change – RFA reforms appear imminent

• Technology report: What does it take to upload a file?

• WikiProject report: Interview with contributors to WikiProject Actors and Filmmakers

• Serendipity: "Did You Know ..." featured a photo of the wrong female WWII pilot

• News from Diff: Content translation tool helps create one million Wikipedia articles

• Traffic report: Reporting ticket sales on the edge of the Wiki, if Eternals should fail

• Recent research: Vandalizing Wikipedia as rational behavior

• Humour: A very new very Wiki crossword

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:48, 29 November 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-48

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 30 November. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 1 December. It will be on all wikis from 2 December (calendar).

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

21:14, 29 November 2021 (UTC)

H.P. Lovecraft racism

Hi Susmuffin, curious as to why you're reverting any mention of Lovecraft's racism in the article on him? There is a lot of contemporary research as well as contemporaneous evidence of his racism and of its centrality to his literary corpus. It would be great to collaborate on improving the article. Cheers, Atiru (talk) 22:29, 5 December 2021 (UTC)

The article already has a section on the subject, which is sourced to several scholarly works. Indeed, there is currently a direct mention of his views on race in the lead. I do not see how adding one-word quotations and blog citations is an improvement over the article's previous state. Furthermore, how does the article "rely on only one source"? The sources section is one of the longest in the article. ―Susmuffin ^Talk 23:15, 5 December 2021 (UTC)

This week's article for improvement (week 49, 2021)

Bushtits eating suet, which is usable as a bird food, from a bird feeder Hello, Susmuffin. The article for improvement of the week is: Bird food Please be bold and help improve it! Previous selections: Lazarev Sea • Wholesaling Get involved with the AFI project: Nominate an article • Review nominations Posted by: MusikBot talk 00:05, 6 December 2021 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject AFI •

Tech News: 2021-49

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

• MediaWiki 1.38-wmf.11 was scheduled to be deployed on some wikis last week. The deployment was delayed because of unexpected problems.

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 7 December. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 8 December. It will be on all wikis from 9 December (calendar).
• At all Wikipedias, a Mentor Dashboard is now available at Special:MentorDashboard. It allows registered mentors, who take care of newcomers' first steps, to monitor their assigned newcomers' activity. It is part of the Growth features. You can learn more about activating the mentor list on your wiki and about the mentor dashboard project.
• The predecessor to the current MediaWiki Action API (which was created in 2008), action=ajax, will be removed this week. Any scripts or bots using it will need to switch to the corresponding API module. [78]
• An old ResourceLoader module, jquery.jStorage, which was deprecated in 2016, will be removed this week. Any scripts or bots using it will need to switch to mediawiki.storage instead. [79]

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

21:58, 6 December 2021 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – December 2021

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

Administrator changes

A Train • Berean Hunter • Epbr123 • GermanJoe • Sanchom • Mysid

Technical news

• Unregistered editors using the mobile website are now able to receive notices to indicate they have talk page messages. The notice looks similar to what is already present on desktop, and will be displayed on when viewing any page except mainspace and when editing any page. (T284642)
• The limit on the number of emails a user can send per day has been made global instead of per-wiki to help prevent abuse. (T293866)

Arbitration

• Voting in the 2021 Arbitration Committee Elections is open until 23:59, 06 December 2021 (UTC).
• The already authorized standard discretionary sanctions for all pages relating to the Horn of Africa (defined as including Ethiopia, Somalia, Eritrea, Djibouti, and adjoining areas if involved in related disputes), broadly construed, have been made permanent.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:25, 3 December 2021 (UTC)

Bots Newsletter, December 2021

Bots Newsletter, December 2021

BRFA activity by month

Welcome to the eighth issue of the English Wikipedia's Bots Newsletter, your source for all things bot. Maintainers disappeared to parts unknown... bots awakening from the slumber of æons... hundreds of thousands of short descriptions... these stories, and more, are brought to you by Wikipedia's most distinguished newsletter about bots.

Our last issue was in August 2019, so there's quite a bit of catching up to do. Due to the vast quantity of things that have happened, the next few issues will only cover a few months at a time. This month, we'll go from September 2019 through the end of the year. I won't bore you with further introductions — instead, I'll bore you with a newsletter about bots.

Overall

• Between September and December 2019, there were 33 BRFAs. Of these, Y 25 were approved, and 8 were unsuccessful (N2 3 denied, ? 3 withdrawn, and 2 expired).

September 2019

Look! It's moving. It's alive. It's alive... It's alive, it's moving, it's alive, it's alive, it's alive, it's alive, IT'S ALIVE!

• Y Monkbot 16, DannyS712 bot 60, Ahechtbot 6, PearBOT 3, Qbugbot 3 · N2 DannyS712 bot 5, PkbwcgsBot 24 · ? DannyS712 bot 61, TheSandBot 4
• TParis goes away, UTRSBot goes kaput: Beeblebrox noted that the bot for maintaining on-wiki records of UTRS appeals stopped working a while ago. TParis, the semi-retired user who had previously run it, said they were "unlikely to return to actively editing Wikipedia", and the bot had been vanquished by trolls submitting bogus UTRS requests on behalf of real blocked users. While OAuth was a potential fix, neither maintainer had time to implement it. TParis offered to access to the UTRS WMFLabs account to any admin identified with the WMF: "I miss you guys a whole lot [...] but I've also moved on with my life. Good luck, let me know how I can help". Ultimately, SQL ended up in charge. Some progress was made, and the bot continued to work another couple months — but as of press time, UTRSBot has not edited since November 2019.
• Article-measuring contest resumed: The list of Wikipedians by article count, which had lain dead for several years, was triumphantly resurrected by GreenC following a bot request.

October 2019

• Y OAbot 3, DannyS712 bot 47, Pathbot 2, PearBOT 2, DannyS712 bot 59, DannyS712 bot 62, HasteurBot 14, PearBOT 4, WOSlinkerBot 4, MilHistBot 5
• Curb Safe Charmer adopts reFill: TAnthony pointed out that reFill 2's bug reports were going unanswered; creator Zhaofeng Li had retired from Wikipedia, and a maintainer was needed. As of June 2021, Curb Safe Charmer had taken up the mantle, saying: "Not that I have all the skills needed but better me than nobody! 'Maintainer' might be too strong a term though. Volunteers welcome!"
  

November 2019

Now you're thinking with portals.

• Y BHGbot 4, YiFeiBot 2, DannyS712 bot III 64 · ? PearBOT
• Old bots do new tricks: DannyS712 bot III 64 prowled redirects, YiFeiBot 2 archived GoCE requests, and BHGbot 4 removed links to portals deleted at MfD (until its authorization was revoked in January at operator BrownHairedGirl's request).

December 2019

• Y DemonDays64 Bot, DannyS712 bot III 66, Bot1058 6, Monkbot 15, MilHistBot 6, PearBOT 5, DannyS712 bot IV 65 · N2 SportsStatsBot · Xinbenlv bot, SteveBot 8
• Redirects to be autopatrolled: A RfC took place at WP:NPP, closing with unanimous consensus that new redirects should be automatically marked as patrolled by bot. DannyS712 wasted no time, and submitted DannyS712 bot III 66 the next day; it passed two days after that.
• 200,000 bios get short descs: Along a similar vein, Bot1058 6 was approved to remove disambiguation pages from Category:Monitored short pages and a new bot (DemonDays64 Bot) changed lots of http links to https using JavaScript Wiki Browser. One particularly neat task, PearBOT 5, automatically generated short descriptions for more than 200,000 biographies.

In the next issue of Bots Newsletter:
What's next for our intrepid band of coders, maintainers and approvers?

• What happens when two bots want to clerk the same page?
• What happens when an adminbot goes hog wild?
• Will reFill ever get fixed?
• What's up with ListeriaBot, anyway?
• Python 3.4 deprecation? In my PyWikiBot? (It's more likely than you think!)

These questions will be answered — and new questions raised — by the January 2022 Bots Newsletter. Tune in, or miss out!

Signing off... jp×g 04:29, 10 December 2021 (UTC)

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This week's article for improvement (week 50, 2021)

People experiencing an adventure (close-up view) Hello, Susmuffin. The article for improvement of the week is: Adventure Please be bold and help improve it! Previous selections: Bird food • Lazarev Sea Get involved with the AFI project: Nominate an article • Review nominations Posted by: MusikBot talk 00:05, 13 December 2021 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject AFI •