User talk:UncleBubba/Archive 1

Discuss whether Nxavar's edit to Introduction to general relativity was vandalism

I have been in Wikipedia for more than four years, although I did not immediately create an account. I have also devoted a lot of time on reading the articles about Wikipedia policies. While my edit to the Introduction to general relativity certainly had issues and I should have thought more before making it, it is an extreme to be called vandalism. For that reason I demand an apology on your behalf. Nxavar (talk) 19:09, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

The message template I posted said your edit "did not appear to be constructive". The sentence appeared to me to be gibberish, so I reverted it. Word etymology doesn't really belong in most WP articles, as WP is not a dictionary. I think you said it best when you said you "should have thought more before making it". Please do continue to contribute, though! This is a community effort that depends it's editors to flourish. UncleBubba (Talk) 19:29, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

My complain was about the descpription of your edit in the history page. Also, please note that it was not me the one who gave the etymology, I just tried to give the correct word (diairein instead of daiein which is a non-existent word) and a hint about how it is pronounced since it really is gibberish for English language speakers. Nxavar (talk) 15:52, 21 April 2010 (UTC)

I use an automated tool (Twinkle, or TW) to do much of my editing work and I have a choice of reverting a questionable edit or removing vandalism. I try to assume good faith but the text just didn't make sense to me when I read it (and "diairein" sounded really close to another word that we don't want there). In fairness, I reverted the entire topic in a different edit that didn't mention you. UncleBubba (Talk) 19:00, 21 April 2010 (UTC)

Well, do not forget that I wrote how the word is pronounced. I think you should have started a discussion in the talk page or just stick with "reverting a questionable edit". Labeling the edit as vandalism was too much. In general, that label should be used with great caution and maybe it should be used only for extreme cases that can only be described as such. In other cases the polite "questionable edit" label seems more appropriate. After all, since the practical end result is the same why not be a little polite? Nxavar (talk) 23:19, 21 April 2010 (UTC)

I suppose that your last comment (which should be in this section, not the "Case Insensitivity" section) means that you accidentally labeled the edit as vandalism because of your unfamiliarity with the software. If that is so, thank you for the apology. I would also suggest that you read the "What is not vandalism" section in the Wikipedia:VAND article. I think that you too have to read the Wikipedia policies. Nxavar (talk) 00:25, 22 April 2010 (UTC)

No, it was intended as a humorous reply to your comment about case-sensitivity and was in the correct section. You should not make the mistake of assuming I do not know the proper place to insert a comment. Neither should you assume I am unfamiliar with the software I use or with WP policies. I did not accidentally label your edit vandalism; I saw you had inserted a word that looked very much like a misspelling of "diarrhea" and I reverted it. If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and sounds like a duck, it probably is a duck. If you hit "Save" without previewing and carefully proofreading your edit, you are probably not going to get the results you want. If it makes you feel better to read this as an apology--which it is not--then so be it; I ain't gonna argue with you. Personally, I think you'd realize a better return on your time if you read the WP:MOS. UncleBubba (Talk) 01:40, 22 April 2010 (UTC)

You should notice that "diairein" is supposed to be a Greek word and then check if it really existed to see if the fact that it sounds like "diarrhea" is just a coincidence. But then again I wrote how it should be pronounced, from which it should be clear to you that my intentions were not to imply "diarrhea". I really cannot see why you rushed to come to the conclusion that I was vandalising. There certainly were reasons for you to think that even if it looked like a duck, walked like a duck, and sounded like a duck it might not be a duck. I also wonder why suddenly something that peviously just looked gibberish to you and was reverted because "word etymology doesn't really belong to most WP articles" now sounds very much like "diarrhea" and was reverted because it was considered vandalism. Nxavar (talk) 16:40, 23 April 2010 (UTC)

And just how--exactly--was I to know it "is supposed to be a Greek word"? Is this the Greek Wikipedia? No. Did you use the accepted APA pronunciation tools? No, you did not. If you want to write "how it should be pronounced", then great! Do so! But use the tools provided for this purpose; do not assume a reader will know the difference between your intent and your actions.

This is really getting tedious. Rather than wasting time trying to convince me that my actions (which I've already explained in excruciating detail) were in error, why not try to learn something from this? Follow the process and you'll do fine; don't and you won't. Just like life, it's as simple as that. UncleBubba (Talk) 16:51, 23 April 2010 (UTC)

The sentence in the parenthesis read: "from Greek "geo", Earth, and "diairein" pronounced "thihaereen", to divide". It is prety clear to me that "from Greek" means that the following words are Greek. Also, the point that I try to make is that my edit was wrongly considered vandalism not that it was perfect or that it shouldn't have been reverted. The fact that I didn't use the accepted APA pronounciation tools although it is an acceptable excuse for a revert it is not an acceptable excuse for labeling an edit as vandalism. You can look down on the way I choose to give the right pronounciation but you cannot deny that I tried to give a pronounciation, which means I didn't want people to read the word "diairein" like "diarrhea", neither can you say that not giving the pronounciation in APA form is equivalent to vandalism. Ergo, why vandalism? Nxavar (talk) 18:20, 23 April 2010 (UTC)

If you have nothing more to add then I think I will add another case in the list "What is not vandalism" in the Wikipedia:VAND article giving the example of "diairein", the object of this discussion, which, although an actuall Ancient Greek word, sounds like "diarrhea" and may be considered vandalism, like in your case. I still believe though that you could have understood by yourself that I wasn't vandalising, even though my case was not specifically mentioned in the list of "What is not vandalism" and that an apology is a proper response on your part. Also, I checked it out and it is not APA, it is IPA. Nxavar (talk) 10:28, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

The interesting thing about this thread is that, although early on you admitted your actions were careless, you seem loathe to accept the events were entirely the results of your actions. If I spray paint a word on a wall, it's likely to be seen as vandalism, regardless of whether or not my intentions at the time were good.

While your intentions may have been to give a pronunciation, you did it in such a way that it looked like vandalism. Did you use the Wikipedia tools for including pronunciation descriptions? No. You protested that it was a Greek word but did you insert your text in Greek? No.

More to the point, did you stop to consider why, in an article titled "An Introduction to General Relativity" (and clearly labeled as a simple-to-understand synopsis), there should even be such a detailed description as this.

Step back, man--look at the forest!

Nevertheless, submit your edits to the guideline pages if you wish; that's your job as an editor. Please remember, however, that there are people that will take a dim view if you try to carry this discussion/argument/debate into that venue without good reason.

Nxavar, I really do hope you eventually learn how to avoid this sort of trouble in the future. A couple of suggestions, if I may: If spelling is not your strong suit, get a browser with a spellchecker (e.g. Firefox). Misspelled words can truly diminish the weight of your argument. When you're editing Talk pages, please indent your responses as I've done so above--it makes the conversation so much easier to follow.

BTW, good catch on the IPA/APA thing. At the time, I had been editing APA citations; I guess got 'em confused. Oh, well... UncleBubba (Talk) 21:48, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

I think I said it enough times but apparently I have to say it again. This is not about whether or not it was a good idea for you to revert my edit. It is about characterizing the edit as vandalism for God's sake! If you insist on your opinion that you were right to describe my edit as vandalism you should use actual arguments and respond to my arguments on the subject. Using metaphors without explaining which is which is not responsible on your part. Also note that careless actions are not vandalism. You cannnot "carelessly" spay paint a word on a wall.

As I said in my previous comment, to which apparently you did not pay much attention, not giving the pronouciation in the right form was something that justified a revert but that cannot be considered vandalism. The same can be said about the form in which I gave the Greek word, although you have certainly run into etymologies that give the Greek word only in English letters. As a matter of fact, the previous form of the etymology was giving the words in English letters and nobody had a problem with that. It was there for one and a half years (since 2:43 17 September 2008) and made by Markus Poessel who, judging from his talk page and his contributions, is a respectable contributor and not a one hit vandalist. It should also be noted that noone had a problem for that one and a half year that an etymology for the word geodesic was present in the article and I really think that the correctness of adding an etymology to a non-technical and introductory article is a matter of opinion. One could argue that etymologies are a good way to explain something new to the uninitiated and as such can be justified as a part of an intoductory article.

Anyway, I thought that the really annoying thing about my edit that caused you to label it as vandalism was that "diairein" sounded like "diarrhea". I suppose you understood that you should not have been quick to make that judgement.

Please read carefully my answer before responding. This conversation will certainly move faster if you don't repeat arguments that I have already answered. I also hope that you understand what I have said since my first comment: "While my edit to the Introduction to general relativity certainly had issues and I should have thought more before making it, it is an extreme to be called vandalism". Which means that this discussion is supposed to be about why my edit was considered vandalism, not about why it was reverted. What you say from now on must show that my edit wasn't just bad but that it was definately vandalism. Otherwise you should apologize for labeling my edit as such. Which is what you will probably do because if there really was an argument that showed that my edit was definetely vandalism you would have used it from the beginning and in your case this was about the way "diairein" sounded, to which I have already answered.

As for the identation, there are people that don't think it is a good idea to add an ident after every comment. In many of the Wikipedia discussion pages you can find people that do not add an extra ident to their comment if the previous contributor has done so to his and among them are respectable users with many contributions to Wikipedia. But, since it is silly to start an edit war on the matter of identation and this is supposed to be your talk page, I will accept your suggestion.

As for my spelling, I am well aware that I don't make terrible mistakes and I don't think they can really distract you from understanding my arguments. Also, you shouldn't judge another person on his spelling strength but rather on his arguments. Is it a Wikipedia policy to speak and write perfect English in order to be an accepted contributor? After all, this is a talk page, not a Wikipedia article. Nxavar (talk) 08:13, 28 April 2010 (UTC)

I am becoming convinced that you really enjoy beating this dead horse. However, if you are trying to maintain a civil tone, using phrasing like, "to which apparently you did not pay much attention" is probably not the best way to obtain cooperation from someone else.

While it is unlikely one could carelessly spray-paint a word on a wall, carelessly spray-painting a wall is a simple thing that can--and does--happen, and it can make a real mess. In the small amount of time I have to donate to the project, I examine hundreds of edits, some of which are honest or innocent mistakes and some of which turn out to be vandalism, which I treat as such. In the last few days, I've removed "penises" and "waxing your pubes" from Evolution [1], gotten rid of "nipples" and "wanking rabbits" from Natural Selection [2], halted H. G. Wells' attempts to "fuck" a "sexy bitch" after "striping her bra", and "liking her puccy" [3], and changed a "butt face" back to a troll [4]. I always try to assume good faith but if I performed an exegetical analysis on each one, my productivity would be drastically reduced and my contribution of time to the encyclopedia project would be effectively nullified, which is unacceptable to me.

My suggestion about spelling was not intended to insult you; it was a suggestion I thought might help you present your argument(s) better in the future. Some people naturally spell well and some do not. (English may not even be your native tongue, in which case I'd say your English is a helluva lot better than my whatever_language_you_speak.) My point was simply that presented with two statements:

• "You have made a real mess of the area; I need you to clean it up."

and

• "yoo have made a reel messs if the aria; i nead yuu to clene is up."

serious people will tend to pay more attention to the former than the latter. The bottom line, though, is that it's free advice; take it or leave it. To me, though, poor spelling or grammar is distracting, although I was able to understand what you wrote.

Try to cut us "cleanup editors" a little slack, please; dealing with the daily flood of malicious edits is bad enough. My advice to you is to pay careful attention to your edits, use the "Preview" button, and decide before you type whether the change you're making is an improvement or not. The only way Wikipedia improves is be everyone working to make it so. If you ever want a really eye-opening experience, try patrolling the recent changes list or, better yet, the high-vandalism list [5] and reverting the bad edits. UncleBubba (Talk) 09:54, 28 April 2010 (UTC)

UncleBubba, this is definitely not a dead horse. It is more of a horse that refuses to die although it is constantly being hit. Just look at the status of your arguments (new ones not included).

UncleBubba

• "The sentence appeared to me to be gibberish" argument: down
• "diarrhea" argument: down
• "How was I supposed to know it was a Greek word" argument: down
• "not giving the Greek word in Greek" argument: down
• "giving the pronounciation in the wrong form" argument: down
• "This is not a place for etymologies" argument: down

What I understand from the above is that this discussion is very probable to end in my favor. The fact that you always come up with some arguments does not mean that you must be right or that the discussion is even. You need at least one good argument to end this discussion or say that there are arguments for both sides and the discussion is even. Countless bad ones mean nothing. I remind you the status of my argument:

Nxavar

• "There are reasons for a revert but not for labeling the edit as vandalism" argument: still holds

As for the criteria of judging whether an argument "still holds" or is "down", I consider that an argument that is still backed "still holds" whereas an argument that has been answered and not backed in subsequent comments is "down".

Concerning the non-civil tone of "to which apparently you did not pay much attention", I think I had the right to protest about the fact that you made me repeat an argument that I had just made in my previous comment, even though there was no need to make it clearer.

As for what you have added to support your opinion:

I really think that you cannot carelessly spray paint anything on a wall. After all, what would be the innocent reason for which one would use a spray outdoors? Also, your metaphor tries to portray me as doing something that is outright vandalism without explaining why. In your previous comments you used actual arguments, to which I have happily replied. I suggest that you continue to use arguments if you want this discussion to be serious. You can always use metaphors if you like but you must combine them with arguments.

I was surprised to notice that you compared my edit to edits that could not be anything else except vandalism. For my edit, on the contrary, there were plenty of reasons, which I have already explained in my previous comments, for one to think that it was not vandalism. Do you really think that the guys that made these edits could argue that their edits were not vandalism?

As for assuming good faith, you cannot try to assume good faith in the cases that you mentioned but you can try in other cases where the contributor (who is a contributor with a proper account and some history of contributions, not an unknown IP) who made the edit can present you arguments about what he did. If you really assumed good faith, the mere fact that I presented you some arguments should be enough for you to apologize.

As for my spelling I have not made a single spelling mistake that was as bad as the ones in your example, let alone fill a sentence with them. I have neither made as many spelling mistakes as there are in that sentence in all my comments. You have actually supported my argument with the example you gave since you had to make a sentence full of terrible spelling errors to support that spelling mistakes diminish the value of an argument and make it difficult to be understood. Which means that in my case, where spelling errors are relatively scarce and subtle, there is definitely no problem.

Last but not least, I should point out to you that labeling an edit as "vandalism" is quite harsh. You really have to explain yourself if you have erroneously labeled an edit that was not "vandalism" as "vandalism".

PS: I did not understand if you imply that the only reason I continue to argue is enjoyment. This is not true as can be clear from my last point in this comment and I really think we should leave the enjoyment factor out of the equation as comments concerning the enjoyment of either side are close to ad hominem attacks. Also, I must point out that even though you said that "This is getting tedious" and "I am becoming convinced that you really enjoy beating this dead horse." you are writing bigger and bigger comments. Nxavar (talk) 17:54, 29 April 2010 (UTC)

Case Insensitivity

Don't you think that the titles of the Wikipedia articles should be case-insensitive, at least for the first letter of each word? For example Introduction to General Relativity should be automatically redirected to Introduction to general relativity. Is there a special place to request and/or discuss the addition of a new software feature? Nxavar (talk) 16:04, 21 April 2010 (UTC)

Personally, I like so-called "title case", where the first and last words, along with significant middle words, are capitalized (And Looks a Bit Like This). However, WP:MOS doesn't agree. Ya gotta fight the fights ya can win... UncleBubba (Talk) 18:47, 21 April 2010 (UTC)

It is not about how the titles should be written, it is about redirection. I guess noone has a problem with that. Nxavar (talk) 23:00, 21 April 2010 (UTC)

Holy caps, Batman! I hadn't tried that and didn't know it wouldn't work. Sorry I misunderstood your point. The only explanation I can think of is that the underlying wiki software was developed in the Unix/Linux world, where things tend to be case-sensitive rather than in the case-insensitive Windows world. Unfortunately, I don't really know how to request/discuss new software features but the main wiki software development project is hosted here. I'd start at that site. UncleBubba (Talk) 23:23, 21 April 2010 (UTC)

Excessive tagging on Pedro Paulet

Whilst you have of course acted entirely within the letter of policy, your recent fact tagging of Pedro Paulet looks more like a POV-pushing attempt to discredit the article and remove its content, rather than an attempt to make a better encyclopedia. I will of course welcome your anticipated research and editing of this article to improve it by adding the references you've just called for. Andy Dingley (talk) 09:22, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

Andy, the simple fact of the matter is that the article--as I first saw it--made a number of unsupported claims about Mr. Paulet. Later, an IP-only editor came along and added a bunch of stuff that seems to claim Mr. Paulet designed reaction motors (without saying what kind) and propulsion systems (again without saying what type), along with an airplane invented before the Wright brothers' 1903 flight. The unsubstantiated edits also tell us he proposed nuclear-powered lunar flights (before nuclear power was harnessed), was a diplomat, the inventor of a torpedo plane, creator of research that allowed Peru to install a telegraph system, not to mention the founding of a technical school, extensive study in Europe, and the creation of a technical magazine--all in eleven years.

While I've never heard of him and don't know him from Adam, I do know that, if he truly did all this, everyone should know him. Before I go shouting from the rooftops, though, I would really like to see the person(s) that added these rather remarkable claims cite them.

You are wrong in accusing me of POV-pushing. In fact, if I'm pushing anything, I'm NPOV-pushing. To maintain a good encyclopedia, one must cull the unsubstantiated, the fringe, the nationalistic revisionism, etc. and stick to what's reliable and verifiable. Editors that don't follow the guidelines can damage Wikipedia's trusted reputation.

And no, I've no intention of doing that research, any more than I intend to research the claims of oxyhydrogen gas-mileage enhancers, cold-fusion reactors, Breatherian diets, the Flat-Earth Society, or some nut who believes the Earth is at the center of a 5000 year-old Universe.

I will, however, continue to edit or tag unsubstantiated assertions that are diametrically opposed to the body of mainstream knowledge. Do you want to change my mind? Knock off the ad hominem attacks and show me facts. UncleBubba (Talk) 17:44, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

Discussion of Series of Tubes

I was making the point that a tube is the perfect analogy to describe the issues of a long fat pipe. The date of the RFC is irrelevant because it defines the standards being used today, and the principles still apply. See Bandwidth-delay_product BruceBarnett (talk) 13:34, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

Bruce, in this case the date is very relevant; the RFC you cited is an April Fools joke about (if I recall correctly) the high percentage of beards on the faces of conference attendees.

Nevertheless, the point of the technical discussion in this article (on Ted Steven's statement) was to explain why his comparison of network response time to mail delivery delays was ridiculous. Anything more is superfluous and beyond the scope of the article. UncleBubba (Talk) 16:10, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

Re: Changes to Next Generation Page

Got your messages, I'm new to Wiki...I will make a note of the proper procedures to edit a page in the future.

Thanks! MitchFX1 (talk) 01:51, 29 April 2010 (UTC)

You are certainly welcome! Actually, I didn't revert your edit; I saw someone else had and thought it would be a good idea to tell you it had been done. Please keep contributing--that's the only way the encyclopedia gets better! Let me know if I can help. UncleBubba (Talk) 01:59, 29 April 2010 (UTC)

Talk:Global Warming

You're right about general guidelines on talk pages. I'm a bit old school about this and prefer to get rid of obvious trolling as quickly as possible. We had an immense amount of that at the global warming talk page from December until a month or so ago and I have sometimes been rather aggressive in removing or archiving. As things are now much calmer I'll adjust my approach. Tasty monster (=TS ) 01:39, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

My main concern--and I'm not sure I expressed it--is that "we" keep the high road. Oh, how I want to smack some folks upside the head from time to time! (And most of the folks to whom I'm referring are in my office, not here.) I've always tried to go with the "Do Not Feed The Trolls" advice but I don't think it'll work here. Any ideas? Have you been able to quash one of these without getting yourself all dirty? (Dirty, BTW, as in "Never wrestle with a pig. You both get all dirty, and the pig likes it!") — UncleBubba ^{( T @ C )} 02:21, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

Reply

Hello, UncleBubba. You have new messages at Hearfourmewesique's talk page.
You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

Hearfourmewesique (talk) 01:17, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

RE: Some silliness

If we're socks we must be rich socks with SSTs to transport us about 500 miles within a matter of minutes so we can edit from different locations! 71.77.20.119 (talk) 03:27, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

Help

I don’t understand how to use wiki image policy; can you upload the two picture One of Tommy Lucchese and the other Matthew Madonna

• Tommy Lucchese image

http://www.biography.com/notorious/images/crime_files/tommy_lucchese.jpg

It could be free its found on these other sites 

http://www.biography.com/images/database_images/lucchese_Tommy_130x171.jpg

http://www.biography.com/notorious/crimefiles.do?action=view&catName=Gangsters&profileId=328680

• Matthew Madonna

http://af11.files.wordpress.com/2009/09/matthew-madonna.jpg

It could be free its here http://af11.wordpress.com/2009/09/30/department-of-buildings-bribe-scheme-may-net-mafia-bigs/

Or is the image against the image copyright rules of Wiki

Thanks —Preceding unsigned comment added by JoeyBR (talk • contribs) 20:43, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

You are now a Reviewer

Hello. Your account has been granted the "reviewer" userright, allowing you to review other users' edits on certain flagged pages. Pending changes, also known as flagged protection, is currently undergoing a two-month trial scheduled to end 15 August 2010.

Reviewers can review edits made by users who are not autoconfirmed to articles placed under pending changes. Pending changes is applied to only a small number of articles, similarly to how semi-protection is applied but in a more controlled way for the trial. The list of articles with pending changes awaiting review is located at Special:OldReviewedPages.

For the guideline on reviewing, see Wikipedia:Reviewing. Being granted reviewer rights doesn't change how you can edit articles even with pending changes. The general help page on pending changes can be found here, and the general policy for the trial can be found here.

If you do not want this userright, you may ask any administrator to remove it for you at any time. —DoRD (talk) 13:33, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

The Day The Music Died

Hey UncleBubba, me and you seem to be the two residents keeping the article 'The Day The Music Died' in good shape. Seeing that you're better at this kind of thing than I am, will you please look at the edits that some unknown user made on the article, and bring it back to Wikipedia standards. Cause the way it reads now, its clearly messed up. Dickclarkfan1 (talk) 03:00, 26 August 2010 (UTC)

Done! Yeck, what a mess of edits! Not a single citation, either. And from an anonymous account, to boot. I wonder if someone was trying to get a quotable source for a term paper? Probably not, considering the time of year but stuff like this really frosts me, espectially the ignorance of aviation (and aviation regulations) exhibited by some members of our species. Sorry for the delay, too; we've been out of town. — UncleBubba ^{( T @ C )} 11:54, 8 September 2010 (UTC)

Chiropractic

Hi Bubbba, the sentence in the lead is correct to say "by far". It is sourced. See Numerous deaths have occurred after chiropractic manipulations. The risks of this treatment by far outweigh its benefit. QuackGuru (talk) 15:55, 18 September 2010 (UTC)

Wikilinking the word neck does not add much to the sentence and is a bit of a distraction IMO. Earlier in the lead there is a link to spinal manipulation. QuackGuru (talk) 16:24, 18 September 2010 (UTC)

OK, I'll concede you're correct about the "by far", which appeared to be a weasel-word. However, the inclusion of the detail link to the C-spine is useful because most folks don't realize the "neck" isn't the entire cervical spine, which--mainly due to its small size--is more easily damaged than are the thoracic or lumbar vertibrae (C1-C6 especially). If you can think of a better way to communicate the information, feel free; I was only trying to clean up what appeared to be a bit of a mess. Whatcha think? Thanks! — UncleBubba ^{( T @ C )} 18:13, 18 September 2010 (UTC)

I'm not sure why you believe most folks don't realize the "neck" isn't the entire cervical spine. Did you read about it somewhere?

I think you agree the "by far" part is appropriate since that is the way it is written in the source. The sentence is not a bit of a mess. It is a complete mess. There is OR, V, and LEAD violations related to the sentence. See Talk:Chiropractic#Failed verification. There is a proposal to fix the problems. See Talk:Chiropractic#Concise sentence. QuackGuru (talk) 18:35, 18 September 2010 (UTC)

As I said above, I do agree with the "by far" wording. I also agree the sentence is a complete mess. However, my objective wasn't to clean up the entire sentence, rather I wanted to remove the phrase "risks of risks of" (see change log) when I saw what looks like a weasel-word phrase. Since it sounds like you really feel strongly about it and monitor the page closely, I'm gonna step back and leave it with you. — UncleBubba ^{( T @ C )} 18:48, 18 September 2010 (UTC)

I still don't understand why you assume most folks don't realize the "neck" isn't the entire cervical spine. Did you read about it somewhere or is this an assumption?

There has been major changes to the article like rewriting the sentence in the lead but other editors wanna step back and allow the original research to continue. QuackGuru (talk) 19:00, 18 September 2010 (UTC)

False accusations of vandalism at Goddard

Excuse me UncleBubba, what's with the false accusations of vandalism? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Mmeijeri#September_2010 I reverted an unmotivated change by an anonymous user and said so in the bleeping commit message. If you had taken one look at the commit message or my contributions you would have known the accusation of vandalism is ludicrous. Martijn Meijering (talk) 18:14, 18 September 2010 (UTC)

When I post something on your Talk page, please reply there (as requested), as I will not chase a conversation in a circle. My response is on your Talk page. — UncleBubba ^{( T @ C )} 18:23, 18 September 2010 (UTC)

3RR

Understood, but I only made two reversions, and the issue was resolved on the talk page. Serendi^podous 19:45, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

Dammit, I wish I could get folks to read the directions before posting. I moved this entire thing back to where I posted the original comment. The reply DOES NOT belong here! As I said before, I will not chase a conversation in a circle. — UncleBubba ^{( T @ C )} 03:19, 30 September 2010 (UTC)

Solar System size to scale

Hi UncleBubba,

Thanks for your note. My bad for marking it minor; I thought minor is for when no text is changed. Re:

> In addition to not being a MINOR edit, I'm questioning the wisdom of changing formats from JPG to SVG, considering compatibility

I found the labels in the original JPEG too small to view in thumbnail mode though there is plenty of space available.

I've ensured that it renders well on the MediaWiki renderer and several modern browsers. Regardless, most Wikipedia readers will see the automatically rendered JPEG instead of the original unless they choose to view it.

Moreover, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Planets2008.jpg shows that it has been translated to several languages. My initiative lets editors easily translate it into their language without needing to fix the background.

Regards, Cmglee (talk) 18:42, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

Wow, I didn't know the page renderer would transcode images. Thanks for the info; I learned something new! — UncleBubba ^{( T @ C )} 18:49, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

Solar System size to scale

Hi UncleBubba,

Thanks for your note. My bad for marking it minor; I thought minor is for when no text is changed. Re:

> In addition to not being a MINOR edit, I'm questioning the wisdom of changing formats from JPG to SVG, considering compatibility

I found the labels in the original JPEG too small to view in thumbnail mode though there is plenty of space available.

I've ensured that it renders well on the MediaWiki renderer and several modern browsers. Regardless, most Wikipedia readers will see the automatically rendered JPEG instead of the original unless they choose to view it.

Moreover, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Planets2008.jpg shows that it has been translated to several languages. My initiative lets editors easily translate it into their language without needing to fix the background.

Regards, Cmglee (talk) 18:42, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

Wow, I didn't know the page renderer would transcode images. Thanks for the info; I learned something new! — UncleBubba ^{( T @ C )} 18:49, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

The Graduate

FYI, I acted on the problems I saw with this article. My notes are on the talk page. I would appreciate feedback, public or private, about the action I took. Thanks. Wanderer57 (talk) 17:09, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

I responded on the Talk page but will also note it here in case you're watching.

GOOD JOB! Spot-on work! Thank you! — UncleBubba ^{( T @ C )} 05:16, 19 March 2011 (UTC)

Yoko Tsuno

I am interested to know if you have a different version to Yoko Tsuno number 12. In the English version, the story takes place in Scotland and Yoko faints after her tea is drugged by a sinister doctor. The doctor also sedates Yoko later in the story leaving her bound and gagged and forces her to watch Cecelia fall. After this he applies enough chloroform to her to cause Yoko to faint again and throws her into the cravasse, where she is saved as she falls into a net. I am a great fan of Yoko Tsuno, she is always being knocked unconscious, usually by other girls who seem to make Yoko faint with endless neck chops! However, she always recovers to win through. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Yokofaints (talk • contribs) 15:01, 24 March 2011 (UTC)

I'm sorry; I have no idea what you're talking about. I've never heard of Yoko Tsuno, nor does it sound like something I would like. Sorry... — UncleBubba ^{( T @ C )} 15:14, 24 March 2011 (UTC)

Copyediting help

Since you declare an interest on video games at the LOCE... the GA reviewer for Metroid: Other M said all the article needs to pass is prose fixing. Can you take a look? Thanks. igordebraga ≠ 23:36, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

Yes, I will, although it won't happen until late tomorrow afternoon. If that's not soon enough, please let me know. — UncleBubba ^{( T @ C )} 04:04, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

Still waiting for your help. But thanks for responding that you would. igordebraga ≠ 00:56, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

ER

Could you participate in my editor review? ~~EBE123~~ ^talk_Contribs 18:17, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

Yes, I will, but, as it will likely take some time, I may not get to it until Thursday or Friday. If that's too late, please say so. Thanks! — UncleBubba ^{( T @ C )} 18:21, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

Why?

Why did you remove some things from my talk page? Well, thanks for putting it back. ~~EBE123~~ ^talk_Contribs 12:29, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

That was an accident and I immediately un-did it and apologized in a note on the page. You just posted something here while I was posting there (which is why, by the way, that I have the note I do at the top of this page). — UncleBubba ^{( T @ C )} 12:39, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

my way

I was being sarcastic

By "my way" I was referring just to what I wrote yesterday: that if everyone agreed to BCE/CE thee would be no conflict because everyone would have agreed to make me happy. The point is, every year or two someone comes to this article and demands that the date nomenclature be changed, and the implication is always that the result would be more stable. The problem is a refusal to compromise. The real point of my message was my aillingness to meet half-way as a compromise (half-way meaning in between the two extreems meaning what we have now, i.e. both of the nomenclatures, the nomenclature one side wants AND the nomenclature the other side wants). In practice, this compromise has been exceptionally stable.

Many people recularly contribute to the article and have worked this compromise out over the years and it works. No one thinks both nomenclatures is especially graceful, but it does signal that Jesu's life is in fact often narated using one of two different nomenclatures. More important, we (who regularly edit the page) agree that using both is better, far beter than an edit war.

In our experience, those people (who have never stuck around to do research and add content - I am not trying to criticize you personally, please do not take this that way, it is just an observation about priorities) who come and say that policy or aesthetics dictate that we use only one nomenclature in our interpretation really care less about the abstract principle of one nomenclature, as they do about their own prefernce for a specific nomenclature.

And that is the point of my sarcasem. I could have put it another way: to anyone who demands that we use only one nomenclature, if this is what is most important to you, would you be satisfied using the nomenclature you do not like. In other words, if we were to compromise with you by agreeing to use one nomenclature, will you compromise with us by making that one BCE/CE? (Or, if someone came arguing that MOS says one nomenclature and it should be BCE/CE ... "if we were to compromise with you by agreeing to use one nomenclature, will you compromise with us by making that one BC/AD." In seven years no one has been willing to accept either of these compromises. That is why the stable compromize has been to meet half-way, and use both.

This is what I meant and I think all the editors who regularly watch the page will have understood my point.

I infer that you are not a regular watcher. If I am wrong, my apologies. If I am right, welcome to the article! I hope that your interest extends beyond style and you are willing to stick around and help with content. The Jesus article is long but over the years many parts of it have spun off into satellite articles and frankly, this was not done systematically or rationally and it would be great to have a discussion about what belongs in the article and how it should be organized, and then how the linked articles could be improved so that our coverage of Jesis is truly encyclopedic. For example, not everyone agrees that Jesus was the Christ. That he was a christ is one POV, but even among people who have believed he was Christ, there are many different views as to what this means and we have a linkd article Christology. This article sure could be improved. Other editors are less interested in Christian theology and more interested in critical historical scholarship. We have some good articles on the historical context of the NT; on the history of the NT 9source criticism) and on the historical Jesus but these articles can always be improved. If you have access to the Anchor Bible, its volumes on the NT contain very highly respected introductions that cover the leading scholarly views (whenever that volume was written) and also comments on specific passages discuss the likelihood of their being based on the doings of a historical Jesus, their being borrowings from contemporary literature interpollated into the text for theological reasons, or their having been added at a later date for theological reasons. I do not have access to this well-regarded source and so far no one who edits the article has access and it would be great if someone could mine this source for what could imrpove the article. These are just some suggestions. I do hope you will consider taking the time to research areas not currently covered with an eye towards adding content. (It is certainly possible that you already added much to the article, but before I came along, in which case I apologize for sounding so presumptuous).

I am genuinely sorry that you soent all that time going through the archives. Insane (the other editor) thought I was referring to something that in my mind is a closed book and was closed many, many years ago. Quite some time ago - I do not remember but more than five years ago - I proposed a new policy that Wikipedia always use BCE/CE. This proposal was debated extensively; the final vote was something like 60%/40% or 65%/35% against. It is all archived somewhere. The point is, once some admin decided that the proposal would never achieve consensus, it was closed down and I have never mentioned it since (until now). I do not know why Insane brought it up. I began my edit yesterday proposing that we change all the dates in this one article to BCE/CE and this is the only proposal that I made and refered to yesterday. Slrubenstein | Talk 11:34, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

Good job

I'm not sure this will get through to him, but at least you're trying. I think that he's been editing for just a few weeks, and he's already pissed off a lot of experience editors and admins. Not that that is prima facie evidence of anything, but still. OrangeMarlin ^{Talk• Contributions} 01:10, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

Thanks! I really appreciate the good word! — UncleBubba ^{( T @ C )} 01:20, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

Came here to say the same. Good bit of supportive, yet firm prodding towards policy pages (significantly nicer than the one from me he summarily removed). --King Öomie 17:15, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

Thanks again! Y'know, though, what I'm really anxious to see is whether or not it will do any good. Hope springs eternal, though. — UncleBubba ^{( T @ C )} 21:04, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

Pending Changes

I recently rejected a pending change on the page Waterloo Road (tv series); however, I found out you had accepted the revision before I could reject it. Shouldn't it be rejected as an unexplained deletion of material. In addition, the source used for series seven came from twitter, so it was fairly unreliable. Ryan Vesey (talk) 03:27, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, I was trying to fix that--I reckon we were working at cross purposes. When I reject a P.C. edit, I supply a reason in the proper field. What messed it up this time (I think) is that I was processing them out of order. Please go ahead and finish it up; I'll keep my mitts out of it. (Sounds like you know more about it, anyway!) — UncleBubba ^{( T @ C )} 03:31, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

About edits

Don't try to revert my edits. I understand that most are marked as minor which is a mistake and I do admit it. But you are unnecessarily reverting edits which is utterly frustrating, even which are properly sourced. I acknowledge my mistake but rv my edits is not good.--Kkm010 | Talk with me 06:55, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

OK sorry for my remarks.--Kkm010 | Talk with me 07:08, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

Unfortunately, you're still adding unsourced data to a whole bunch of pages. You either need to source your information or remove it. I'll revisit this tomorrow. I hope I don't have to submit the ANI notice I've prepared. — UncleBubba ^{( T @ C )} 08:08, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

Now on most pages I had provided with source.--Kkm010 | Talk with me 13:57, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

Goddard

Hi Bubba, You are of course correct to revert my Goddard edits, and your actions are proper. I know how Wiki works and "reliable sources" are required, but it is just that it pains me to read tripe in Wiki. The idea that Goddard "tested Newton's law" is preposterous and an insult to the Goddard. School children may test Newton's Laws, and a reasonably intelligent student in high school understands why rocket propulsion can work in a vacuum (though indeed New York Times editorial page didn't). Goddard's ambitions and achievements went far beyond these basic ideas. While your edit in removing my additions is correct, it would be nice if some of the exiting tripe was deleted. Have a good day. JS (talk) 16:49, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

That's a good point. And you're right about the "tripe". Dr. Goddard is one of my heroes who, along with folks like Percy Spencer, Claude Shannon, and Leo Szilard, get way too little credit for their contributions to our world. What got me was your removal of the Citation Needed notice without adding a citation. I'll put the changed wording back in (leaving the template) or you can do it.

I'm sorry; that edit may have been a bit much. — UncleBubba ^{( T @ C )} 17:11, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

Be more careful

Conversation on Moved to the user's Talk page. Please DO NOT add to or edit this section!

With resepect, you should be more careful about reverting other users' edits. I am neither a new user nor a vandal, so the "test" template you used on my talk page is inappropriate. In addition, justification for removal of the reference is weak at best, since even though the article is about the current crisis, it still supports the statement that TMI was a 5 on the International Nuclear Event Scale. Athene cunicularia (talk) 04:45, 19 March 2011 (UTC) Not sure why you decided to strike through my comment above, as I'm trying to be helpful. I understand that your edit was made in good faith. However, removing a properly formatted reference without looking at its contents, and applying a "Welcome, your test worked" template to the talk page of longtime Wikipedia user indicates to me that you could be more careful when reverting edits that aren't obvious vandalism or spam. Since you mentioned that you are not a native English speaker, I will try to be clearer in my edit summaries going forward. Athene cunicularia (talk) 17:45, 19 March 2011 (UTC) I struck it because it ain't supposed to be here. Not trying to be rude but what part of "If I left you a message on your Talk page, please respond there." don't you understand? Yes, I am a native speaker of English, and--unlike some--I'm not too busy or hurried to use the Space bar and the Shift key to make myself understood. See your Talk page for my response — UncleBubba ( T @ C ) 19:49, 19 March 2011 (UTC) Your sarcasm is not helpful. I am sorry if I didn't see your instructions the first time, however, you obviously didn't look at my user page or my contribution before you rolled back my edit, either, so let's just call it even. Go to the extra effort and you'll be able to avoid future discussions like this. Thanks. Athene cunicularia (talk) 20:20, 19 March 2011 (UTC) I actually do think this is a separate conversation from the matter of my edit to the TMI page -- since my original edit was really pretty innocuous. This conversation is about being more careful with rolling back peoples' edits and using appropriate templates. I think that point has been made, however, and I am sure you will go on doing high quality work here. On a side note, if you believe a page is being edited contentiously (as it might be during an ongoing event), you can always request that it be semi-protected. While it doesn't seem like the TMI page is being edited as heavily -- or contentiously -- as those of Chernobyl and those related to Japan's nuclear disaster, most of the time, semi-protection is a pretty easy way to reduce frustration. All that said, I think you should un-strike the conversation above. Where you prefer a conversation to take place and what you're willing to do to follow it is a personal preference. It doesn't make my points any less valid. Athene cunicularia (talk) 20:59, 19 March 2011 (UTC)

MRSA changes

Moved to the MRSA Talk page. Please DO NOT add to or edit this section!

Hi - Saw the changes you made to my additions on MRSA. Just wanted to clarify that I was not writing an 'ad' for hydrogen peroxide. I'm a doctor, and have recently been working with a patient with an ongoing MRSA infection that wasn't responding to antibiotic treatment - the additions I made were based on research I had done to help treat this patient. These were written in good faith in an effort to improve the content of wikipedia. I'm ok with the changes you made, but would like to provide more detail - I'd like to include the substances mentioned in citation 72, as well as the active compounds mentioned in citation 74. Is that OK with you? Kpaddock (talk) 19:46, 9 April 2011 (UTC) Moved to MRSA section - didn't see you had written there. Kpaddock (talk) 19:46, 9 April 2011 (UTC) Hi! I watch a bunch of pages to try to help keep entropy to a manageable level. What I saw looked like promo language I'd seen before. For examples (forgive me for paraphrasing; supper is in the oven and I don't want to look up the article texts right now): One study tested ~18 agents against several hundred MRSA cultures. IIRC, the authors were hoping one of them (I forget which) would be a useful substitute (or adjunct) to vancomycin for IV administration and netilmicin and hydrogen peroxide appeared efficacious for topical application, yet only hydrogen peroxide was mentioned in the addition to Wikipedia. Another PubMed article described tests of honey for it antimicrobial activity (esp., IIRC, against b-lactamase producing S. aureus and E. coli, plus a couple more bugs). As I read it, there were three substances found in the honey which, if neutralized, rendered the honey much less effective at killing the target bacteria. Only one of these substances, hydrogen peroxide, was mentioned in the Wikipedia addition. Another report described tests of two types of honey against S. aureus, E. coli and P. aeruginosa (I don't remember if they were resistant or not). The more effective honey was one with a higher concentration of hydrogen peroxide which, IIRC, the authors said "merits further study" (or something to that effect). Two cited studies discussed the action and effectiveness of H peroxide vapor in disinfecting medical treatment rooms. IIRC, the vapor was effective but took longer than traditional methods. Only high-traffic areas were mentioned, too. (Was this because of low residual bactericidal action? I can't say from the study I read.) IIRC, the Wikipedia additions talked only about the effectiveness of the peroxide, saying little to nothing about the caveats mentioned in the PubMed papers. Also (but it may not matter), I think one of the cited studies was over 20 years old. Regarding re-adding the material, we (I believe I can safely speak for the Wikipedia community on this subject) welcome the addition of neutrally worded, well-sourced, factually balanced and notable material to the encyclopedia. I'm just an editor; I don't own the article. If your additions meet the standards of WP:N, WP:V, WP:NPOV, WP:PROMO, etc., I'd love to see them back there. I hope I've answered your question. I've been told I tend to ramble a bit--if I've not done a good job of explaining my actions, please let me know so I can fix it. Thanks! — UncleBubba ( T @ C ) 00:02, 10 April 2011 (UTC) Thanks for your complete response. It's important to guard against product-based changes, as they don't contribute much if anything. Also, the hydrogen peroxide people can be a bit nuts, what with the claims that you can increase your blood's oxygen by drinking H2O2, etc etc. I admit that my addition was shaped by the fact that I was focusing on using hydrogen peroxide as a topical anti-septic and debriding agent (as that's what I was interested in when I did the research), so I'll broaden my language to include all of the results published. I emphasized H2O2 as re the honey article because I didn't want to encourage people to go out and smear themselves with store-bought honey, thinking they'd cure themselves of MRSA - better they at least use a USP-recognized antiseptic, right? Also, I'll make sure to mention that the one study is older - resistance is obviously a major issue with this bug, and MRSA strains may be resistant to some of these compounds now, but god help us if bacteria become resistant to H2O2, because then our neutrophils won't work... Anyway, it's Saturday evening, I'm headed out, so I'll put my alterations here tomorrow - they'll be minor. Also, the information about H2O2 vapor was moved and altered, and I'm satisfied with how it looks and reads. Thanks! Kpaddock (talk) 02:14, 10 April 2011 (UTC) Sounds good to me. I'll take a look at it later (it's on my Watch List). If I can help you with anything, please holler! (And, if you think the Hydrogen Peroxide people are nutty, you oughta' visit the Oxyhydrogen folks...) What concentration of H2O2 were you using for debriding? If over 20-30%, were you able to get around its oxidant/irritant properties? — UncleBubba ( T @ C ) 02:34, 10 April 2011 (UTC) Here are my proposed changes -- A 1990 study tested MRSA isolates obtained from veterans and found they could be killed by several substances, including bacitracin, nitrofurantoin, hydrogen peroxide, novobiocin, netilmicin and vancomycin. The study went on to conclude that netilmicin might be useful as an alternative to intravenous vancomycin, and suggested that topical applications of hydrogen peroxide may be useful to reduce MRSA on skin and some mucous membranes. A 2010 study noted significant antimicrobial action of Ulmo 90 and manuka UMF 25+ honey against several microorganisms, including MRSA. The investigators noted the superior antimicrobial action of Ulmo 90 honey, and suggested it be investigated further. A separate 2010 study examined the use of medical-grade honey against several antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria, including MRSA. The study concluded that the antimicrobial action of the honey studied was due to the activity of hydrogen peroxide, methylglyoxal, and a novel compound named bee defensin-1. Hope that looks good. As re your question, I was just using store-bought low-strength H2O2 - it was part of a plan to keep the area as clean as possible, as it's effective at cleaning out pus and gunk. I was having her clean it, debride it, re-dress it regularly, and use basic antibiotic cream to keep OTHER bugs out. Anyway I did the research to see if H2O2 had any effect against the bug itself, or if it was just helping by keeping dead tissue out of the infected area. High-strength H2O2 just doesn't seem safe in unskilled hands. Kpaddock (talk) 16:53, 10 April 2011 (UTC) Those additions sound great to me! (I assume the PubMed refs go with 'em.) Thanks for the answer. I was really wondering if you'd learned some way to keep high-concentration H2O2 from messing with everything in sight. (Heck, at 70% or more, it can be used as a component in hypergolic rocket fuel, IIRC. Not exactly user-friendly stuff.) I did get a really good chuckle from the mental image of patients being dipped in honey. People McNuggets? That made my day. Thanks! Holler if I can help. — UncleBubba ( T @ C ) 18:17, 10 April 2011 (UTC) Changes done and done. Glad that cooperation ruled the day! Kpaddock (talk) 18:51, 10 April 2011 (UTC) Hey, Doc! Looks good! Going back through my notes here, it occurred to me that I should have started this conversation on the article's Talk page, not my personal one. That was my mistake (and has nothing to do with you) but I would like to move this text to the article Talk page so other editors can see and comment or whatever. I'll do so unless you have an objection. Lemme know, please; thanks! — UncleBubba ( T @ C ) 19:39, 10 April 2011 (UTC) That's fine with me - I thought you preferred to discuss it here, but it probably belongs in the MRSA discussion section. I don't edit a lot, so I sometimes forget protocol, forget to sign in, etc.. BTW, here's a cartoon that's germane to the topic: http://funcorner.eu/misc/ill-have-some-h2o-too/ Kpaddock (talk) 20:35, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

edit war started

Moved to the Terrorism Talk page. Please DO NOT add to or edit this section!

You unfortunately managed to start a sort of edit war :) with TFD jumping right in. The only proper act at this point would be for you to revert pending a real consensus to delete - the claims of those seeking deletion are a tad :) weak. Cheers. Collect (talk) 11:34, 10 April 2011 (UTC) I'm really sorry you feel this is an edit war and that I started it. I respectfully disagree. I see this issue as a discussion (or debate) over a precept that is central to the soul of the encyclopedia, and one that was started, really, by the person who added the quote in the first place. Regardless, I believe it should be discussed on the article's Talk page, not here, where it feels too much like an ex parte conference. — UncleBubba ( T @ C ) 14:04, 10 April 2011 (UTC) I agree about using the talk page -- TFD et al however tend to get quite carried away! Collect (talk) 15:24, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

Oops

Sorry for the copper cladding promo ref. Should've looked at the link closer. No personal interest involved. :) Regards, Cinosaur (talk) 18:00, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

No problem at all. Thanks for the note! — UncleBubba ^{( T @ C )} 18:18, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

Starting Edit War

Moved to the Atlanta Talk page. Please DO NOT add to or edit this section!

You have started an edit war, which I see is not the first time this has happened. I have added the Michael C. Carlos museum back to the page. I have a feeling it has become political, for you have some animosity towards the museum or ancient art. If you undo it, I will report you to an administrator.--Mmann1988 (talk) 22:03, 10 April 2011 (UTC) No, I most certainly have not started an edit war and I object to your unfriendly accusation. This is a content dispute following my revert of information you inserted into the article without citing a reliable source. This conversation should be conducted on the Talk page for the Atlanta article, which is where I've copied your message and replied. Respond there, not here. I will not discuss this WP:BRD issue away from the light of public scrutiny. — UncleBubba ( T @ C ) 00:40, 11 April 2011 (UTC)

Measuring rod

Would you mind and take a look at this page (Measuring rod)? I would appreciate your feedback. Someone is turning this into "fringe-central" I have tried to stop it, but I cannot keep reverting. Unless you disagree with my point of view of course :). I have outlined on the talkpage what my arguments against some of the edits are. (I'm still working on the sections for the Akhenaten page for the name change btw, but it will take a bit of research to write it well.)--AnnekeBart (talk) 16:38, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

Answer

Hi, I replied to your comment on my talk page. --Misaerius (talk) 13:40, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

GOCE drive newsletter

The Guild of Copy Editors – May 2011 Backlog Elimination Drive The Guild of Copy Editors invite you to participate in the May 2011 Backlog Elimination Drive, a month-long effort to reduce the backlog of articles that require copy-editing. The drive began on May 1 at 00:00 (UTC) and will end on May 31 at 23:59 (UTC). The goals of this backlog elimination drive are to eliminate as many articles as possible from the 2009 backlog and to reduce the overall backlog by 15%. ! NEW ! In an effort to encourage the final elimination of all 2009 articles, we will be tracking them on the leaderboard for this drive. Awards and barnstars A range of barnstars will be awarded to active participants. Some are exclusive to GOCE drives. More information on awards can be found on the main drive page. We look forward to meeting you on the drive! Your GOCE coordinators: SMasters, Diannaa, Tea with toast, Chaosdruid, and Torchiest

You are receiving a copy of this newsletter as you are a member of the Guild of Copy Editors, or have participated in one of our drives. If you do not wish to receive future newsletters, please add you name here. Sent on behalf of the Guild of Copy Editors using AWB on 09:08, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

RfC: Stepanakert Airport Disputes

Dear UncleBubba,

I would like to kindly ask you for a comment at Stepanakert Airport:

RfC: Is Polukhov's statement worth being kept in the article?

Thanks in advance. -- Ashot  ^(talk) 08:48, 8 May 2011 (UTC)

Politicians arrested and charges with corruption

You are invited for discussion at Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2011 June 1 and also Category talk:Politicians arrested and charges with corruption--- . Shlok _{talk .} 17:40, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

Please comment on Talk:Multiple endocrine neoplasia type 1

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Please comment on Talk:NPR controversies

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Please comment on Talk:Euthanasia

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Please comment on Talk:Michael Kennedy (Dublin politician)

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Please comment on Talk:Coffee Party USA

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Please comment on Talk:Climatic Research Unit email controversy

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Please comment on Talk:Ginsberg's theorem

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Please comment on Talk:Suicide

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Please comment on Talk:OPERA neutrino anomaly

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Please comment on Talk:Quotation mark

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Please comment on Talk:Katrina Kaif

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Please comment on Talk:Ralph Nader presidential campaign, 2000

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Leet

Hey--I reverted your changes to the Leet article because the info you added--while possibly reasonable--really looks like original research, which is not allowed. Also, article material should not sound like a debate. If you can cite a reliable source for your information, it would help its chances of being accepted. — UncleBubba ^{( T @ C )} 04:27, 22 November 2011 (UTC)

I actually only moved the info from the Talk page (hoping that it could serve as another viewpoint), but yea, I agree it's original research and we don't know for certain whether that guy was being true or not. Next time I'll try to find citations to support the views. Thanks for updating me on this. - M0rphzone (talk) 07:32, 22 November 2011 (UTC)

Thank you for tidying up the Full Blood Count article

Thank you for the message on my talk page about the article on Complete Blood Count, or as we tend to call it here in the United Kingdom, the "Full Blood Count" - and thank you too for clearing up the article! I had not noticed the first time I made the edit that the term "Full Blood Count" was already in the paragraph, so you did the right thing tidying it up. I am not a medical doctor (my title of "Dr" comes from a Ph.D. in Psychology) so I do not like to make too many changes to medical articles! Again, thank you for your help, ACEOREVIVED (talk) 11:46, 22 November 2011 (UTC)

You're welcome! Thanks for telling me where the "Full Blood Count" phrase is used--I didn't know that. — UncleBubba ^{( T @ C )} 14:31, 22 November 2011 (UTC)

Please comment on Talk:Palestinian people

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Albert Einstein

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Excuse me, but as I recall, my edit was ONE WORD and it was a grammatical improvement. Please assume good faith. Djathinkimacowboy 01:20, 25 November 2011 (UTC) Moved reply to original user's Talk page where it belongs, per above notice, but forgot to note it here. Oops. — UncleBubba ( T @ C ) 01:14, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

Defender of the Wiki Barnstar

		The Defender of the Wiki Barnstar
		To UncleBubba Many thanks for your tireless efforts in keeping article clear of spam and other nonsense. Wikipedia is a better quality project because of hardworking and conscientious editors like you!--Hu12 (talk) 17:41, 25 November 2011 (UTC)

Wow—that is so nice to hear. Thank you so much! — UncleBubba ^{( T @ C )} 18:55, 25 November 2011 (UTC)

What

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You make a stupid edit, restoring a piece of vandalism, presumably not looking at what you are doing, and then lecture me, with a piece of condescending nonsense. What is that about? please allez-vous-en or something like that. Sayerslle (talk) 23:40, 27 November 2011 (UTC) Moved reply to original user's Talk page where it belongs, per above notice. — UncleBubba ( T @ C ) 00:14, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

Cars don't produce smog?

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You deleted a modification I made on the toyota prius page about smog. Your comment was that cars don't produce smog. Technically, they do produce smog forming particals that are activated by sunlight and transformed into smog. For all practical purposes, the produce smog. Would you prefer the wording 'smog forming particals?' — Preceding unsigned comment added by 132.178.2.64 (talk) 10:29, 30 November 2011 (UTC) Yes, I did revert your edit, for several reasons: You didn't explain what you were doing by including an Edit Summary (the default "section" summary is nice but doesn't help much). In my experience, a majority of vandalism is presented in the form of anonymous edits with no Edit Summary. While it is by no means required, I recommend you create an account and use it when you edit Wikipedia--it may make your life easier. You added information that went beyond the text in the cited reference, which is original research and not allowed in this encyclopedia. You introduced an error of fact: smog (from smoke and fog) is a meteorological phenomenon caused by the combination of emitted gases and liquid particles in the atmosphere. Smog may be made worse by photochemical reactions brought on by sunlight acting on various compounds (mainly hydrocarbons) in the emissions. Ergo, cars may emit smoke, NO, CO, CO2, particulates, etc., but they do not emit smog. Please don't take it personally; while researching this reply, I found another factual error that someone sneaked into the article (regarding "toxic emissions" in the lede). It, too, is gone. And it will stay gone unless someone can cite a reliable source that meets Wikipedia standards for notability and verifiability. (There is another error, regarding tax-deductability, that I will correct as soon as I save this page.) Our purpose here should be to improve the encyclopedia. Anything that does not further that goal does not--in my opinion--belong here. If I can help you in any way, please let me know. — UncleBubba ( T @ C ) 15:03, 30 November 2011 (UTC) Thank you. I don't believe I stated anything beyond the sited text. If you click on the link it will take you right to the EPA's green vehicle guide and on that page is my reference to the mention the EPA rating the 2003 model with a 3 out of ten air pollution score. This will be 'improving the encyclopedia.' If someone wants to buy a prius so be green they may want to know the 2003 model is not the year to go with. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 132.178.2.64 (talk) 00:46, 8 December 2011 (UTC) I'm sorry; I don't agree. If they want that information, there are literally hundreds of sites to which they can go. Wikipedia is not an automobile review site, nor is it Consumer Reports. If you can find justification for your assertion in the WP:MOS or other official guidelines, you might get me to change my mind, though. — UncleBubba ( T @ C ) 00:53, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

Akhenaten

Please look at my comments at Talk:Akhenaten. A. Parrot (talk) 01:29, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

This erroneous "China" assertion

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My point is that by introducing "China" in the first sentence without any context, the intro is actually perpetuating the antipodean misconception to people who are aware of it. Whereas to people who aren't aware of it (i.e. non-Americans), the mention of China is completely bizarre, and likely to lead the reader to ask "What's so special about China that it attracts nuclear reactors?" – Smyth\talk 11:29, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

IRC-Galleria

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Re: this edit: IRC-Galleria is a valid "see also" link. Please do your research before making such edits in the future. Mythpage88 (talk) 09:34, 6 December 2011 (UTC) No, I do not believe it is. The only thing even remotely IRC-related about the IRC-Galleria site is its name. It is a web site "created as a photo gallery for IRC users". Should we also list all other photo gallery web sites here? Should we list Facebook and G+, too? I think not. If you want to discuss it, please come to the article Talk page and do so. If you continue to use Wikipedia for promotion, I will be the least of your worries. Please don't put unrelated information into technical articles. — UncleBubba ( T @ C ) 02:39, 7 December 2011 (UTC) Are you accusing me of promotion? If so, I see we just threw good faith out the window! Mythpage88 (talk) 03:37, 7 December 2011 (UTC) I am accusing you of nothing. The link to the social networking site does not belong in the IRC article because they are unrelated. Only you know the true reason you want the link there, but I don't think it is for the purpose of improving the article. — UncleBubba ( T @ C ) 03:45, 7 December 2011 (UTC) How does "If you continue to use Wikipedia for promotion, I will be the least of your worries. Please don't put unrelated information into technical articles." assume any good faith? It's a thinly veiled threat, at best. Mythpage88 (talk) 03:48, 7 December 2011 (UTC) I feel—very strongly—that all editors here should be working to improve the encyclopedia. I will assume good faith in dealing with people, but I will not compromise that overarching goal. Since you've not done anything to defend your IRC-Galleria link (other than malign me), I find myself wondering if you have an ulterior motive, either to promote the Galleria page or to improve its link stats. — UncleBubba ( T @ C ) 04:08, 7 December 2011 (UTC) I have defended myself by responding to your blatant assumption of bad faith. I shouldn't have to defend myself against accusations of blatant promotion, when my edit history clearly shows that I have no such interest in anything of the sort. Please stop biting, it's unbecoming. Mythpage88 (talk) 04:40, 7 December 2011 (UTC) I did look at your history (all three months of it); I still don't see the justification for this link. What I have seen is you using various Wikipedia "magic buzzwords" to attack me: "Oh dear, he reverted my edit. I'll accuse him of not assuming good faith. That'll fix him." Followed by, "Oh, dear, that didn't work, so I'll try a 'biting' accusation, and I'll make it 'blatant', for good measure." I didn't see you arguing in favor of your link other than saying "it's valid". And discussion is what it's all about here. — UncleBubba ( T @ C ) 05:04, 7 December 2011 (UTC) Isn't "vandalism" a "magic buzzword"? Oh, and looking at your talk page archive, this isn't the first time you've bitten others. Whatever happened to WP:DICK? Mythpage88 (talk) 05:06, 7 December 2011 (UTC) I don't bite newcomers, but I do try to help support the quality of the encyclopedia. You're trying to use more ad hominem, which is a fallacious technique. I'm still waiting for you to present a convincing argument in favor of including the link, or have you given up on that in favor of continuing to attack me? — UncleBubba ( T @ C ) 05:24, 7 December 2011 (UTC) "I don't bite newcomers." Do you have a convincing argument behind this statement? Or have you given up on that in favor of continuing to bite me? Mythpage88 (talk) 05:26, 7 December 2011 (UTC) Similarly, you have yet to justify calling my edit "vandalism". Mythpage88 (talk) 05:27, 7 December 2011 (UTC) I didn't think you could defend your insertion of the link into the IRC article, and these attempts at deflection and distraction seem to prove my conjecture valid. Please grind your axe elsewhere; it's not going to work here. — UncleBubba ( T @ C ) 05:38, 7 December 2011 (UTC) Burden of proof lies on you. How was it vandalism? Mythpage88 (talk) 06:41, 7 December 2011 (UTC) There is no "burden of proof", as I did not call what you did "vandalism". I called it "apparently promotion", which it is. But you're still avoiding the argument you apparently feel you cannot win: How do you justify including the social-networking site in the IRC article? — UncleBubba ( T @ C ) 06:54, 7 December 2011 (UTC) Don't lie. You identified the edits as vandalism in multiple edit summaries. Mythpage88 (talk) 06:56, 7 December 2011 (UTC) It's easy to make baseless accusations, but proving them is another thing entirely. I have not called your edits vandalism, so who is the liar? — UncleBubba ( T @ C ) 07:04, 7 December 2011 (UTC) No response? I didn't think so. — UncleBubba ( T @ C ) 14:06, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

StarWind Software Page

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Dear Sir, I appreciate your feedback about you working in business and never hearing about StarWind. Well, it was a day when nobody heard about Microsoft and IBM. Also storage industry is quite isolated. In case you can do me a favor could you please tell me why DataCore Software page with TWO links and written entirely by their staff is NOT SPAM and what we currently have (please take a look @ our page as I've added TONS of external links) IS? I appreciate your feedback in any case. Staff had did a lot of mistakes in the past but they had be punished for doing this (content was removed). Do you think you can judge for past all the time? Thank you very much for cooperation! AK47 213.238.8.10 (talk) 01:01, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

Network Bridge page

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I don't think the edit you reverted was vandalism, I think it was lack of references. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Surge12 (talk • contribs) 21:08, 8 December 2011 (UTC) I'm sorry, but whenever anyone removes four sections/seven paragraphs of technically coherent text—including its source references—from an article without one word of discussion or explanation (or even a single Edit Summary), a rational person would feel justified labeling it "vandalism", and that's exactly what I did. Were you the editor from IP 111.68.103.26? If so, please go to the article's Talk page and discuss your proposed revisions. — UncleBubba ( T @ C ) 23:38, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

Christian Science

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I am hardly trying to promote Moody's book. As a start, the reference to it has been there for a very long time. Its importance to the topic is that it marks the time(1975) at which the public in general became aware of Near-Death Experiences. The point of the paragraph concerned is to show that Christian Scientists have been aware of them for much, much longer: a fact of encyclopedic interest. You suggest, incorrectly, that the other reference does not support this. The only purpose the other reference has, is to confirm that the publication of Moody's book was indeed the stage at which public interest in NDEs began: a widely accepted fact. I can certainly find any number more references to support that, if you like. It is highly likely that users who look up Christian Science have heard more about near-death experiences than they have about Christian Science. The sole aim of the entry is to establish the nexus between the two, and so to open up the topic more effectively to the enquirer. I believe that my response to you is both courteous and correct. I therefore have respectfully yet again reversed your edit. Michael J. Mullany (talk) 07:29, 9 December 2011 (UTC) The point here is pretty simple: To be included in Wikipedia, material must be notable (see WP:N), verifiable (see WP:V), and reliably sourced (see WP:RS). This doesn't mean you have to know it's true so much as you must reference reliable sources that say it's true. Your assertions that "it marks the time (1975) at which the public in general became aware" and that it is a "a widely accepted fact" must be supported. If you are only interested in mentioning Christian Scientists have known of NDEs for a long time, that's one thing. Claims that Moody coined the term and that NDEs were unknown to the general public prior to that are pretty sweeping and must be supported with hard, reliable sources. And it MUST be discussed if there is any doubt among the interested editors. Please stop reverted edits. The way Wikipedia works is: Someone changes something. Someone disagrees and reverts it. The original editor goes to the Talk page to discuss it. If consensus is reached, the new material is reinserted into the article; if no consensus is reached, it stays on the Talk page. I have no special interest in the article or the book, but I do have an interest in making the encyclopedia better. Unsourced material, no matter how "true" or "well known" is not allowed. — UncleBubba ( T @ C ) 08:12, 9 December 2011 (UTC) Okay, so in Wiki's own article on NDEs where it states: "Popular interest in near-death experiences was initially sparked by Raymond Moody's 1975 book Life After Life[8] and the founding of the International Association for Near-Death Studies (IANDS) in 1981.[9]". Do we say that the NDE article also committs the same fault, or are we satisfied that there the editors got it right? If so, then the same references would indicate the reinstatement of the assertion in question.Michael J. Mullany (talk) 08:57, 9 December 2011 (UTC) my question is why is this reference important to the article on Christian Science. It doesn't clarify a major point of Christian Science doctrine. Many other faiths acknowledge NDE's well before Christian Science supposedly does. Do we need to list all of them as well? To me an encyclopaedic article should be to the point with a minimum of ancillary information. Am I wrong? Digitalican (talk) 15:32, 9 December 2011 (UTC) No, you are absolutely right. Your opinion also follows WP policy closely, as I understand it. — UncleBubba ( T @ C ) 15:47, 9 December 2011 (UTC) I do not agree that the main stream of western religions other than CS did acknowledge NDEs prior to 1975. MB Eddy's reference to them was written the best part of a century earlier. I would have thought that the sentence under dispute relates the CS view to something that many readers will have heard of: NDEs, and so places the CS view in world context.Michael J. Mullany (talk) 19:25, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

Student Editing

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Dear UncleBubba, I want to bring to your attention your (merited, but not entirely) deletion of work by my Wikipedia student, Thegannon. One focus of our class is trying to augment female and ethnic diversity among contributors in Wikipedia. Some new contributors are easily discouraged, particularly if they have not grown up in circumstances that support a sense of entitlement and expertise. I'm going to encourage Thegannon to re-word work on women in wrestling and make it workable and useful for Wikipedia. Thank you kindly, and in advance for your patience with newcomers to the process, and any supportive effort you may be willing to lend to a beginner. KSRolph (talk) 19:39, 10 December 2011 (UTC) While patrolling recent changes, I ran across Thegannon's edit (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wrestling&diff=prev&oldid=461544414), which inserted apparently-coherent text into the article. I was about to move on when I noticed the edit was unexplained (i.e. had no edit summary), so I looked a little deeper and saw many statements of fact and syntheses of factual data. Usually, this indicates original research, which isn't allowed. That pretty much sealed the edit's fate and I reverted it. I believe my action in this matter was entirely justified. Having said that, I think what you're doing with the students is absolutely wonderful! I will, of course, help you any way I can. To prevent problems in the future, I recommend you review the Wikipedia "Help for New Editors" articles. At the very least, point out to them the Edit Summary box on the editing screen and teach them to use it for every edit. It doesn't take much time and it shows other Wikipedians the edit respects them, their time and the encyclopedia as a whole. Teach them also about Wikipedia's policies regarding notability, verifiability, and reliable sources, and that these—not truth—are the criteria for inclusion in articles here. If you teach your students to observe these practices, I believe you will encounter far fewer problems. If you could see the crap I pull out of these pages on a daily basis, you'd understand my firm approach to spam, vandalism and disruptive editing. (And I'm not even a prolific page patroller; there are folks here that do ten times my volume of cleanup per unit of time invested.) I am quite encouraged by your project, though, and I hope you carry on with it. Once again, if I can help, please let me know. — UncleBubba ( T @ C ) 01:37, 11 December 2011 (UTC) Dear Bubba, Thank you for your detailed response. I do, of course, all I can to help eighteen to 22 year-old students understand what we want, what we refer to, how multivariate Wikipedia culture is to be appreciated and navigated, and so forth. On the other hand, there are more than twenty people's work to monitor, and a couple of my students have suffered from the experience of less than perfect text, followed by deletions. For newcomers, a couple of these, and students can become discouraged. While I understand you are not trying to teach this course, it might be that a few encouraging words to Thegannon could go a long way. One wishes to see all newcomers succeed and move to the next level, independent works and edits. I must also concern myself with less assertive students, those who have not had initial success with their edits. I appreciate your thoughtful response, and please do tolerate our works. I can imagine your tasks to be difficult, and I too, would be/am on a short fuse with some of the contributions (and deletions) I encounter. In fact, in class, we wonder aloud at the admins in Wikipedia who oversee and modify hundreds of items per day. There is a place for women in wrestling in this page, especially with events being televised nationally and international events held. My view is Thegannon needs to include citations, and perhaps augment statements. I hope you'll agree. KSRolph (talk) 04:09, 11 December 2011 (UTC) Yes, I absolutely agree. The citations are the key to verifiability, and an Edit Summary is a mark of courtesy and professionalism. Together, I believe they will make a tremendous difference. After that, all they need to do is write well. ;-) Do you teach about the really strange way WP works, through things like consensus and cooperation? I imagine that would make a helluva lesson, not only for editing, but for life. — UncleBubba ( T @ C ) 09:05, 11 December 2011 (UTC)

I think you revised wrong...

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Do you use Apple? "Personal" is not the accepted term for us Macintosh users. PC refers to Windows machines, Linux refers to Linux, and Macintosh of course refers to Apple computers. MaganT2k13 (talk) 05:28, 15 December 2011 (UTC) I think you need to consult a dictionary. "Personal", as an adjective, is defined, "Of, affecting, or belonging to a particular person rather than to anyone else." My MacBook Pro is mine, as is my Linux desktop and my Windows laptop, and they are all Personal Computers. They certainly are not mainframes... I think we should try to avoid being pedantic. — UncleBubba ( T @ C ) 05:44, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

External Links in Articles

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I've noted your comments on the Starwind Software AfD page and as you seem to have an aversion to people exploiting Wikipedia for promotion and advertising I was wondering if you could take a look at Microsoft SQL Server Compare Tools. This article is nothing but a list of external links for people trying to promote their products. If these links were put on most articles they would be immediately reverted as spam. I have suggested changing the links to references and removing anything with no reference at all. I've put in a request for comment but the only response I've had is from an IP user who has a link for his product on it. There are a lot of these articles, I've started cleaning up Comparison of database tools which I think looks better. I would really appreciate any comments you may have on this - I'm so tempted to AfD it.Vrenator talk 11:02, 15 December 2011 (UTC) Wow--what a mess o' links! Thanks for the heads-up. I need to look at it some more, but I'm wondering if you're right in that an AfD is the best solution. I posted some opinion on the article's Talk page. — UncleBubba ( T @ C ) 12:54, 15 December 2011 (UTC) Thanks for comments on the article's talkpage. I was beginning to think I was on my own and had some kind of phobia against red links and spam links. This article, unfortunately is just one of a hole bunch of these but once this one has been tackled I may just target some others. Vrenator talk 13:00, 15 December 2011 (UTC) The article has now been redirected to Microsoft SQL Server. Vrenator talk 13:46, 15 December 2011 (UTC) And I say "Yaaaaa!" Thanks for letting me know about it. Are you familiar with the Spam Project board? Check it out sometime--you might find it useful. Regardless, if you run across any more, and want some help, please let me know. — UncleBubba ( T @ C ) 13:56, 15 December 2011 (UTC) Cheers! I will check it out. Vrenator talk 13:59, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Brahma Kumaris website

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Regarding the external link section in the Brahma Kumaris article, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brahma_Kumaris_World_Spiritual_University#External_links The contribution I made was reverted back. "The Brahma Kumaris Info" site has an "ad" right beside it: "An independent resource accurately documenting the beliefs and lifestyle of the Brahma Kumaris World Spiritual University, including many of its channeled messages." Is that ok to place such things after a link? Thanks Riveros11 (talk) 12:52, 15 December 2011 (UTC) I looked at the link on the WP page (and the abstract text beside it) and don't really see the problem. There are two External Links to official BK sites, followed by the one in question. While I'd bet BK leadership would rather not hear some of the things the http://www.brahmakumaris.info/ site has to say, it does not appear to be commercial (I saw no ads), and it doesn't seem overtly shrill. In fact, it seems to be a reasonable, well-sourced skeptic site (I didn't read much of it.) Am I missing something? — UncleBubba ( T @ C ) 13:29, 15 December 2011 (UTC) Thanks for your prompt reply. Well, I just want to play by the rules. It appears interesting to me that a link in the "external links" part of the article has an opinion such as to consider that link " accurately documenting the beliefs and life style of the BKs." Encyclopedias usually will add something like " According to that site..." to avoid bias. In that light, It appears to me that I could add the following link: http://brahmakumarisforum.net and also will add a little text right beside it and some text to the other links as well, if there are no objections. Riveros11 (talk) 15:04, 15 December 2011 (UTC) I recommend you do not do that. The link you mentioned is a forum, and has no business here. The former link is--as I mentioned--a link to a non-forum site, similar in structure to the official BK sites. I have, though, had a chance to look at some of your edits. Are you connected to the BKs in any way? I may be mistaken, but it really appears that some of your edits are written with the intent of promoting a particular point of view. Are you familiar with WP:NPOV, WP:COI, WP:N, WP:V, WP:NOR, WP:SPS, and WP:NOT? please remember this is an encyclopedia. — UncleBubba ( T @ C ) 15:23, 15 December 2011 (UTC) Are you sure that brahmakumaris.info is not a forum? Please check out: http://www.brahmakumaris.info/forum/index.php If in fact, this is an encyclopedia, then the brahmakumaris.info link should go away for it is a forum. The participants are not bona fide researchers, but ex-members of the BK movement. Please re-consider your thought. Yes, I am a member of the BK movement. I don't see why I cannot contribute as much as an Ex-Brahma Kumaris member can. But I will be happy to go by the rules as long as it works both ways. Have you checked on "January 18" user? His history talks lots about him. Riveros11 (talk) 15:40, 15 December 2011 (UTC) C'mon, just because a site has a forum doesn't make it one. I went to the link you provided and wound up on a forum index page. I went to the other site and found a home page. Please don't split hairs with me. Why can't an ex-BK be a bona fide researcher? Seems like they might have useful knowledge. You can contribute; I never said otherwise, but you should not remove or suppress others' views just because you do not agree with them. My wife's mother is an active BK and, while I don't subscribe to her worldview, it is interesting. Regardless, I don't have an agenda one way or the other regarding the BKs. They're just like Catholics or Buddhists in one important way: some folk love 'em and some folks hate 'em. As far as I'm concerned, either group is welcome here only as long as they don't allow their biases to leak onto the pages. The page should not read like a recruiting brochure. If you work to be informative, neutral, and balanced, we'll get along fine. By the way, did you read those WP articles I cited? I think they would help you better understand what should be here and what should not. I will be checking out the January 18 user. — UncleBubba ( T @ C ) 16:14, 15 December 2011 (UTC) What would you consider that site? A research on the Brahma Kumaris? Have you notice that the contributors are the same members of the forum? FYI. I have been in this article from the very beginning.I have not been banned even once. On the other hand, the main contributor of the Ex-BK side has been. He has been "blocked permanently" (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:195.82.106.244) but he has continued editing under different IDs, now one of them is "january 18." That user is the owner of the brahmakumaris.info site. I think I am being reasonable in asking why his website link is mentioned in the BK wiki article? That individual is not a researcher, neither the group in that website. So, when I see a link which is a forum (by dictionary definition) with articles containing "original research" without an article signed by a "bona fide" researcher but just biased opinions and the "ad" which mentions that they "accurately document" the BK beliefs and life style...then, you wonder, what gives them that authority? According to wiki policies the brahmakumaris.info link violates the "No original research" policy in wikipedia. If you look at the "Scientology" site, under external links, they have an "official site" heading with a "scholarly web pages on Scientology" sub-heading. The brahmakumaris.info link do not qualify as a scholarly site as you know. Please give me a good reason. Ps: A "bona fide researcher" for an encyclopedia; is someone with a terminal degree in that subject. Riveros11 (talk) 17:11, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Deletion review for StarWind Software

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An editor has asked for a deletion review of StarWind Software. Because you closed the deletion discussion for this page, speedily deleted it, or otherwise were interested in the page, you might want to participate in the deletion review. Hu12 (talk) 16:20, 17 December 2011 (UTC)

Season's tidings!

FWiW Bzuk (talk) 03:50, 25 December 2011 (UTC).

APL

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I have nothing against ISO dates, but they only apply to gregorian dates. Also, I am sure you have noticed that the absence of spelt-out month names often give gives rise to ambiguities – common "alternatives" seem to be "01-23-2008" or "23-01-2008". But the real crux is that there was a mixture of different formats in that article that I want to harmonise. I don't know where to take it from here; I won't be reverting you. --Ohconfucius ¡digame! 13:23, 18 May 2012 (UTC)

ATOMIC49ER

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Amelia Earhart from the FBI FOIF(freedom of imformation files) FBI FOIA FILES The files at the link below clearly show and state that many radio operators intercepted Earhart's radio transmissions. These files on pages 49 thru to 54 establish that Earhart landed in the Marshall Islands and was taken prisoner by the Japanese. After reading the files it is obvious that Earhart and Noonan were both alive and had landed safely, however into or near a secret Japanese base. Due to the planes altitude the radio transmissions misled those waiting to intercept Earhart as planned. Off course far north of Howland Island, Earhart is said to have actually landed on Knox Island nearer to the Marshall Islands. This is outlined by the FBI files. The files document often repeated and frantic requests by radio operators to get FBI assistance in finding Earhart, even many years after her disappearance. Here is the FBI link: http://vault.fbi.gov/amelia-mary-earhart/amelia-mary-earhart-part-01-of-01/view This material seems noteworthy (sorry your """don't be a dick""" is suggestive and pornographic as posted) (the image of the penis in addition to "dick" as referenced are obscene images and speech) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Atomic49er (talk • contribs) 18:58, 1 June 2012 (UTC) The material may well be noteworthy, but it doesn't seem to meet the criteria of the Wikipedia policies on verifiability and notability. You didn't discuss it on the article Talk page; not discussing what you're doing is not a good thing. You also don't seem to have bothered to read the Wikipedia documentation on editing--I had to re-format the text you inserted here because it was messing up my Talk page. In short: Please explain your edits with an Edit Summary; please sign your posts; and please take a look at the Help pages to learn more about editing the encyclopedia. Lastly, don't worry about my Don't Be a Dick picture--I like it and it's going to stay. Wikipedia is NOT censored so, if line drawings of human anatomical features bother you, perhaps you should read elsewhere. Frankly, I couldn't care less that you think the images on my User or Talk pages are "pornographic" or "obscene"; I don't think they are and, as long as I don't violate WP policy, my opinion is all that matters on this page. — UncleBubba ( T @ C ) 20:27, 1 June 2012 (UTC) do not talk down to me in stupid riddles? ok? uncle buddy... ato49er — Preceding unsigned comment added by Atomic49er (talk • contribs) 05:57, 2 June 2012 (UTC) Well, your general comportment, including the way you spell and write, make it pretty difficult to do anything but talk down to you, ya know? What I wrote is in no way a riddle; it's not my problem you can't comprehend simple English prose. And how hard can it be to indent your replies and sign your posts? — UncleBubba ( T @ C ) 06:20, 2 June 2012 (UTC)

Harassment and annoyance

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You posted multiple times on my talk page. I ask you to stop. One time is enough. You are warned. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 108.13.103.192 (talk) 02:12, 2 June 2012 (UTC) You are tenditiously attempting to restore spammy links and unsourced, potentially dangerous medical information to an article, which is not allowed. You are trying to use Wikipedia for promotion and advertising, which is not allowed. If you are editing as an IP (not signed-in) user to hide your identity, you are evading, which is not allowed. In short, you are abusing the encyclopedia to further your own ends, which is reprehensible. Now, YOU have been warned. — UncleBubba ( T @ C ) 02:42, 2 June 2012 (UTC) You are not better than any other wikipedia user. Quit harassing me. I asked you already. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 108.13.103.192 (talk) 03:17, 2 June 2012 (UTC) With all due respect, sit down and shut up, spammer. — UncleBubba ( T @ C ) 03:49, 2 June 2012 (UTC)

Amelia Earhart

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See contentious submission. FWiW Bzuk (talk) 13:04, 5 June 2012 (UTC). This person is, shall we say, "interesting". If you want to see something really crazy, take a look at the rev history of his Talk page. I'm not quite sure if he's attacking/threatening me or if he just needs to take his medication, nor am I sure if I should do anything (ANI?) about it. — UncleBubba ( T @ C ) 17:01, 5 June 2012 (UTC) DFT is often the best advice. FWiW Bzuk (talk) 02:24, 7 June 2012 (UTC). ...and especially so, I'd bet, in this situation. Thanks. — UncleBubba ( T @ C ) 16:45, 7 June 2012 (UTC)

Your comment on my talk page

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I don't know why you bothered posting your "rebuke". I am not a boy scout collecting badges and I don't count edits or display the count or collect awards, I just edit articles often in passing whilst I go on my merry way in what is a busy life. If I overlook checking the "minor edit" who gives a toss? Would you prefer that I didn't bother making the correction? Your pedantic ignorant attitude is what has driven away many editors who think they "own" articles or are the final arbiters of what is right or wrong.. my understanding is that the powers that be are very worried about this wastage of editors The problem is exemplified by your reversion of my edit to the HG Wells article. It came about because one of my kids was reading the article (after the death of Ray Bradbury) and asked me what "sums" meant. It is is not a term used widely outside the UK and Ireland and it is probably uncommon there in this century. I thought that it was worth explicating the term. In any event it wasn't silly, or a "joke" the edit made the point Wells was making clear and it wasn't exactly cluttering up the place. Please do not bother posting a response on my talk page. I will delete it and not read it. As George W Bush allegedly said one time, "Who cares what you think?" Silent Billy (talk) 12:24, 12 June 2012 (UTC) Obviously, you care enough to reply (in the wrong place, no less). The Wells article is written in British English, about a British author. In that language variant, "sums" is a pretty common word. Instead of inserting poorly constructed changes into the article text (and snarfing at me for cleaning it up), you might have availed yourself of the opportunity to teach your children something new. And, just so we're clear: you didn't fail to check the "Minor" box; you checked it when you knew--or should have known--not to do so. It's pretty funny you're calling me "ignorant" here; evidence indicates you have it backwards. Wikipedia is a community of people who work together to improve "the encyclopedia anyone can edit". As such, there are a lot of people editing it and there are rules and conventions and best practices, much like there is everywhere else. If you are unwilling to take the time to properly use the Minor check box--or to supply a proper Edit Summary--when you change something, so be it. You may save yourself a second or two but will cost others in the editing community much more time while they patrol recent changes. Your actions don't rise to level of a sanctionable offense but, just like rudeness and discourtesy, they tell others what you're made of. — UncleBubba ( T @ C ) 18:00, 12 June 2012 (UTC)

Need help with a user

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Fifelfoo is launching personal attacks and deleting my comments on the talk page. Can you go to the Talk page for the Vietnam War and help me out. I don't mind changing things if I need to, but I could do without the personal attacks. -- Korentop (talk) 12:27, 21 June 2012 (UTC)

Parkinson's science learning project in Wikiversity

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Hi. I'd like to bring your attention to a new learning project in Wikiversity. As you have been involved with the discussion on the wikipedia Parkinson's disease page I felt you might be interested in looking at the project and perhaps even contributing material to it. Please see my Talk page, http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/User_talk:Droflet#The_Science_Behind_Parkinson.27s_learning_project , the subpage, http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/User_talk:Droflet/ProjectDescription or the project itself , http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Portal:The_Science_Behind_Parkinson%27s . It would be great if you could bring the project to the attention of others who might be interested in helping us develop it. Thanks. Jtelford (talk) 15:54, 17 September 2012 (UTC)

Your current edit war

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Your recent editing history shows that you are currently engaged in an edit war. You may have thought that this was okay under the 3RR, however, my records show that you have still come close to violating this rule yourself. Undoing another editor's work—whether in whole or in part, whether involving the same or different material each time, counts as a revert. Also keep in mind that while violating the three-revert rule often leads to a block, you can still be blocked for edit warring—even if you don't violate the three-revert rule—should your behavior indicate that you intend to continue reverting repeatedly, which I have determined it has. This is your notice that if I see another revert by you on this page, I will report yourself to AIN and begin a discussion about your edit war, if the other involved editor doesn't do so first. Don't take this the wrong way. I'm being as nice as possible here. But this is a serious offense. Please consider another course of action before reverting again. I am also going to be requesting full protection of the page to prevent this from going any further. gwickwire | Leave a message 02:14, 17 October 2012 (UTC) Oh, really? On what page, may I ask? How was I edit-warring? My edit history shows, frankly, that I spend a lot a time cleaning up messes and contributing to the encyclopedia. If you feel I've violated WP policies, please do make a submission to the appropriate AN/I page. But be aware: Your behavior will be scrutinized, too, and baseless accusations are not well received around here. — UncleBubba ( T @ C ) 02:28, 17 October 2012 (UTC) I just looked at the one page you reported the other editor for. Your edit summaries looked like you were intent on reverting his material until he stopped. It was just a little friendly reminder. Like I said, don't take it the wrong way. And I'm well aware of the AN/I regulations. If you'd like me to remove this, as the other user was blocked, and there's no way for you to go over 3RR, feel free to remove this. Thanks for understanding. gwickwire | Leave a message 02:32, 17 October 2012 (UTC) Look, I'm very understanding and pride myself on maintaining civility, but one thing I will not abide is being falsely accused of wrongdoing. Did you actually bother to count the reverts I made? There was ONE. Hello71, Ianmacm, and Freshacconci made the others. If you're not sure of your target, you have no business pulling the trigger. If you are careless with your Rollback rights, you could lose them. If you truly want to become an administrator (as you say on your User page), you must train yourself to pay attention to details. What you left here is not a "friendly warning", it's a mistake. Making matters worse, you "templated" a long-time editor. Frankly, I think you owe me an apology. If you ever do this again, I will have to seriously consider reporting your behavior to AN/I. And yes, I'm gonna revert the change now that the guy's blocked. Perhaps this time, it will stick. — UncleBubba ( T @ C ) 02:51, 17 October 2012 (UTC) I've already admitted I was not fully informed. I purposefully did not use the standard template in this, to make it personalized. My rollback rights don't even come into effect here, I didnt use them at all in this. I admitted I was wrong. Sorry. gwickwire | Leave a message 02:56, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

Star Trek

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I recently was sent a message by you regarding my correction to Star Trek: The Next Generation, changing the episode listing from 176 to 178 episodes. In fact this is my second time doing so, and the previous time I did cite my source. I will cite it again here for you: http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Star_Trek:_The_Next_Generation As this webpage--and many others who document the episodes of this show--will attest, TNG consisted of 176 episodes in its 7-year run. Two of the episodes were feature-length and in reruns have sometimes been split into separate episodes but that does not change the episode total. I hope this clears up any confusion that may have been caused. Please feel free to message me if you have any questions or comments for me. Jason — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jasonite75 (talk • contribs) 02:23, 18 October 2012 (UTC) Thanks for the reply. This is a classic example of why it's a good idea to always include an Edit Summary when you change something. You would probably be surprised by the number of vandals that edit an article, change something like "26" to "29", save it, and run off to make other messes. If you have a fact to present, cite it (in the article, not here). If you do that, you won't have any trouble from me--or the majority of recent-change patrollers in the community. Please be careful with your sources, though—MemoryAlpha, while a great site, is a wiki; wikis (and other user-contributed sites) are not usually considered to be reliable sources (see WP:RS). — UncleBubba ( T @ C ) 02:39, 18 October 2012 (UTC)

Werewolf-response

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The Loup-garou addition was due to the fact that the loup-garou name (different from the other pages named that) redirects to Werewolf where it was mentioned that loup-garou is a French Werewolf. The redirect heads-up had to be mentioned somewhere. Rtkat3 (talk) 6:45, October 21 2012 (UTC) (This reply moved to your Talk page, where it should have been placed, and I've responded there. Can't you read the notice on this page?) — UncleBubba ( T @ C ) 23:03, 21 October 2012 (UTC)

RFC Feedback

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Looking for more feedback from uninvolved parties for an RFC I posted at the page ALCAT test. The discussion is here: Talk:ALCAT test#RFC:Neutrality and reliable sources. Many thanks. Plot Spoiler (talk) 03:35, 1 November 2012 (UTC)

Conquest of Lombardy

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(Heading added during Talk page cleanup because the original author didn't do so, which makes their comments much harder to notice.) Hello The amendment I made was to simply correct an error i.e. The Conquest of Lombardy (the current sub-heading) is not/was not the same as the Conquest of the Lombard kingdom. The Lombard kingdom in 774 extended to a number of other regions (Tusica, Piemonte etc etc.) Sources are not necessary simply because this is evident from any casual glance at a map! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.185.83.84 (talk) 19:37, 27 March 2013 (UTC)

Simple Mail Tranport Protocol page edits

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Hi --- I noticed that you removed the link to CheckTLS. I'd like a chance to convince you it should stay. The site does tens of thousands of free tests a month. There is no limit to how many free tests one person can do. We receive a lot of positive feedback, and we've never received a negative feedback. Our privacy policy is very strict and very good. Yes, the site has advertising -- it's unobtrusive. Yes, the site promotes fee services. We both know there is no such thing as a free lunch -- we pay hosting fees for the two sites that host CheckTLS and make the free tests available. I proposed the addition of the site three years ago for discussion. At that time I received a little feedback that it was OK; I guess most people who watched the page didn't care one way or another. I received no negative feedback there either. CheckTLS has been on the SMTP page for three years without a complaint. Bottom line, the site is free, many people find it very useful, and no one has ever complained about anything about the site. I can't see how there is a better site the SMTP page could point to to help people test and understand the protocol. --- Steve (sshoe at checktls.com) Sshoe (talk) 13:22, 17 April 2013 (UTC) ps: I hope I can figure out how to see your answer. Steve, the site to which you linked may do free tests, and it may do a zillion of them. The problem is that it really doesn't matter, as CheckTLS.com appears to meet all the criteria of a commercial web site. In fact, on the linked page, there are many solicitations for services from your company. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a search engine, nor is it a place to promote goods and services. There are some good essays that cover the subject far better than can I. Take a look at WP:EL (especially the sections at WP:ELNO and WP:ADV). Also, because of your apparent association with the linked site, the guidelines in WP:COI seem applicable. Finally, I recommend you look at WP:ADVERT, which pretty much sums up Wikipedia's stance on the subject. Afterwards, if you have any questions, please let me know—I'll be happy to answer them. Thanks! — UncleBubba ( T @ C ) 09:43, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

Hi there UncleBubba

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This is going to sound awfully random... but, if you would like your topicons on your userpage aligned a bit better, as opposed to on top of one another, I tweaked them and saved them to my userpage fixing subpage, User:Dainomite/userpage fixing1. If you do like it you can just edit the page and copy the entire bit and paste it into your userpage. Feel free to cut and paste and save my subpage "blank" if you will. If you want to make sure I only changed the topicons you can hit "show changes" to verify I didn't touch anything else. Anywho, I hope you don't mind and find this helpful. Cheers, — -dainomite   08:01, 9 June 2013 (UTC) I don't mind a bit, but I don't have time to chase it right this second. I'll take a look at it as soon as I can, though. Thanks! — UncleBubba ( T @ C ) 20:44, 9 June 2013 (UTC) Scratch that. I was premature in saying it. I do have time, so I just replaced the page with the version you edited. Nice job! You did exactly what you said you did, and the new version looks better. Thanks again! I'll clear your edit-sandbox page as requested. — UncleBubba ( T @ C ) 20:54, 9 June 2013 (UTC) Not a problem good sir, if you need/want anything else tweaked just give me a shout. — -dainomite   21:17, 9 June 2013 (UTC)

Your access to AWB may be temporarily removed

This discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
Hello UncleBubba! This message is to inform you that due to editing inactivity, your access to AutoWikiBrowser may be temporarily removed. If you do not resume editing within the next week, your username will be removed from the CheckPage. This is purely for routine maintenance and is not indicative of wrongdoing on your part. You may regain access at any time by simply requesting it at WP:PERM/AWB. Thank you! — MusikBot II talk 20:22, 5 September 2017 (UTC)

Ronald McDonald

I just took the issue to the talk page, I apologize for the whole editing back and fourth issue I've been doing to it. I wasn't trying to cause harm, I was only trying to fix it back to normal. Because I'm the one that originally added in 1975 by mistake in the past edits. 2600:1000:B039:E407:D14A:4E62:E42D:9EB9 (talk) 20:27, 9 July 2020 (UTC)

I just restored the text you deleted off my Talk page. Don't do that! You should never remove text from someone else's Talk page without their knowledge. — UncleBubba ^{( T @ C )} 01:07, 10 July 2020 (UTC)

Apology

Hey Bubba, I owe you an apology. I'm really sorry about my edits in the Ronald McDonald article, I know it's against the Wiki policey to edit war against users and I know I shouldn't have done that in the first place. I'm just letting you know I'm sorry and I will not do it again. I really hope you forgive me. 2600:1000:B07C:3A4F:E564:7D48:54B:FD08 (talk) 15:42, 10 July 2020 (UTC)

It's not a problem. Really. The subject is pretty confusing, and complicated by the fact that McDonalds Corp apparently isn't very open to discussing the actors they've employed to play the part. Thanks for reaching out! — UncleBubba ^{( T @ C )} 16:29, 10 July 2020 (UTC)

Ted Kaczynski

I have raised a dispute on the talk page as you suggested. I also asked the last person who added the disputed link to comment. 73.71.251.64 (talk) 17:36, 25 July 2020 (UTC)

Naya Rivera

Hi. You mentioned not changing an article unless discussing it. Last I checked, anyone can edit a wiki page. And yes, it does matter. No one can actually prove she died on July 8th. Anything before her body was found is merely presumed. Even the coroners are speculating that she died within minutes. Her death certificate lists the date of death as July 13th.

@Parksandrecfan2013: You obviously didn't read the edit notice above (or don't care enough to follow its simple instructions)—you should have replied on your own Talk page. Nevertheless, I strongly suggest you spend a little time familiarizing yourself with the way the encyclopedia works. There are plenty of reference articles you can read to get you started on a path to constructively contribute to Wikipedia. However, winning arguments isn't one of them. Consider this: the article you're edit-warring on is protected against spurious changes, and the edits you keep re-adding are not visible to the general population of Wikipedia users until someone with a little seniority accepts them. Sorry. — UncleBubba ^{( T @ C )} 03:44, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

@UncleBubba: chill. I sent this before I saw yours. I thought I deleted it. You win, though. I refuse to be belittled by someone who’s hobby is “patrolling recent changes to high-volume Wikipedia pages.” I have a life. Have me banned if you want, I don’t care.

Template:Marriage

I have a question about your comment regarding an edit in Dallas McKennon. You wrote, "As marriage ended by death of McKennon, not by death of his spouse, the year 2009 is omitted here. See instructions on Template:Marriage for more info." I am missing something as I read the documentation for that template. Under "Description" for "<end date>", I see "Year or full date when the marriage ended..." with no mention of an exception for the death of the article's subject.

Where is the statement about omitting the end year? Eddie Blick (talk) 00:45, 9 August 2020 (UTC)

Hi! All I did on that page was revert a Pending Changes edit that removed the comment about the date of the end of his marriage. The IP editor had removed the comment without any explanation of why, and that's not really good cooperative behavior. I was not the original author of that comment, so I don't have any more information to give you. Sorry... — UncleBubba ^{( T @ C )} 02:55, 9 August 2020 (UTC)

My apologies! I misinterpreted what I saw in the differences. I have seen similar changes made on other biographies but have yet to find documentation to support them. Eddie Blick (talk) 01:22, 13 August 2020 (UTC)

FYI

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Sockpuppet_investigations/Art_of_Odessa ThatMontrealIP (talk) 16:54, 12 August 2020 (UTC)

That was a great catch! I am glad you made the connection, they have both been blocked as socks.ThatMontrealIP (talk) 18:09, 13 August 2020 (UTC)

@ThatMontrealIP: I'm glad I noticed it, too; I almost missed it. I'm far more grateful, though, that you took the time to ferret out his misbehavior on Commons and document it. Thanks! I've been hanging around Wikipedia for a while (with some long activity gaps for real-life stuff), and one thing I really feel passionate about is keeping various miscreants from hijacking the free encyclopedia for personal gain. It's nice to see other people feel strongly about it, too. I'm glad I had a chance to work with you (albeit indirectly), because I learned something new (that "interaction timeline" tool). Maybe we'll run into each other again sometime. — UncleBubba ^{( T @ C )} 20:11, 13 August 2020 (UTC)

Calvin and Hobbes

I think you may have misread the section you removed here. It did not say that Watterson "portrayed himself", as you state in your edit summary, but that "Watterson himself portrayed a grown-up Calvin...", which in this context (i.e. the adult Calvin) means that Watterson drew ("portrayed") Calvin as an adult during a few strips. This is true, although I agree that it is poorly written and needs a source (at the least the strip dates). Vyselink (talk) 21:17, 19 August 2020 (UTC)

@Vyselink: Ha! You're absolutely right (about both the meaning and the shoddy composition). Re-reading it, the sentence's murky meaning is fairly clear: "portrayed" tends to connote acting. Thanks for letting me know! — UncleBubba ^{( T @ C )} 09:20, 20 August 2020 (UTC)

Law Degree

"Assertion, in a BLP page, of type of law degree unsupported by the cited ref. (Was it really a J.D., or did he earn an LL.D., a D.L., or an S.J.D.?)"

No United States university, college, or law school awards the LL.D. or D.L. as an earned degree.

As the Wikipedia Juris Doctor article states, beginning with 1971, every United States law school has awarded the Juris Doctor (J.D.) as the first degree in law. As the article also states, the University of Chicago Law School is an exception: It has always awarded the Juris Doctor (J.D.) as its first degree in law.

And so, anyone whose first earned degree from a United States law school was awarded in 1971 or later (or from the University of Chicago Law School) has earned a Juris Doctor (J.D.)2601:205:3:DEE2:F4CF:6882:4884:29B2 (talk) 22:19, 22 August 2020 (UTC)

I don't think you understood what I wrote and, since you don't have an account (other than various IPv6 addresses or 73.192.242.220) it's really hard to talk to you. Why don't you create an account? The point is not that the sky is blue. Wikipedia doesn't contain original research, so we may include the statement "the sky is blue" only when we can cite a reliable source (preferably a secondary one) that says so. That's the way it works.

The other issue is understandability. I can report that "so-and-so ingested acetylsalicylic acid to relieve acute cranial neuralgia", or I can say that "so-and-so took some aspirin for a headache". Unless the increased level of accuracy imbued in the technical text is necessary for the article, you should use common terms. If you really want to include "J.D." in every article that mentions a "law degree", you must A) cite a reliable source that says the article's subject received a J.D., and B) explain what "J.D." means (parenthetically if necessary). Anything less than that works contrary to the purpose of the encyclopedia, and isn't allowed. — UncleBubba ^{( T @ C )} 05:13, 23 August 2020 (UTC)

You are raising two different issues. I am only addressing one of them at present: If a biography already cites a source which makes clear that an American graduated from an American law school during or after 1971 (or from the University of Chicago Law School at any time), then the subject must have been awarded a Juris Doctor/J.D. and there is no need for any additional source beyond the Juris Doctor Wikipedia article itself. Furthermore, many of the accompanying short descriptions on the right side of the page themselves reference the J.D., establishing that that is the degree that was received2601:205:3:DEE2:403B:D1A3:5632:1770 (talk) 06:45, 23 August 2020 (UTC)

Of course I'm discussing two issues; your changes raised them, and they are inextricably linked:

• You are asserting that the people who are subjects of the articles received JDs when the cited sources say "law degree". Your reasoning seems to be valid (I've not researched it, but I have no reason to believe you're not telling the truth), but it constitutes ORIGINAL RESEARCH, and that's not allowed here. Do note that, in the few places where the cited source says "JD" (e.g. Fritz Knaak), I left your edit intact (although I may have parenthetically explained "JD", per below).
• You seem to be running through articles en masse, changing a commonly understood term ("law degree") to a less common one, and you're doing it seemingly without regard to the majority of Wikipedia readers, who may not know what a J.D. is. Granted, they can click on the link when they hit an arcane term in an article, but that's disruptive to the reading process, and inconsiderate to the readers of biography pages who may not, themselves, be academics. We should not make readers do that without a really good reason.

You bring up some excellent points about the degrees. I, too, want the encyclopedia to be as accurate as possible, but there are rules for including information here, and they have been developed over time to encourage accuracy and deter abuse. They are especially important in biographies of living persons (BLP) articles, and are enforced much more rigidly there because Wikipedia is considered a trusted source by search engines, with material added here being quickly slurped up by Google, Yahoo, DuckDuckGo, etc. and shown to the world.

I don't want to fight with you, but I am going to do my best to convince you not to sacrifice clarity on the altar of accuracy.

By the way, are you trying to increase your anonymity by editing my Talk page using an IPv6 address (and editing the articles using an IPv4 address)? If so, I recommend you get an account here. When you edit WP without logging on, your IP address(es) is(are) recorded and visible to everyone to see; if you sign on using an account, all that info is hidden. It's your choice, but I recommend you consider it. — UncleBubba ^{( T @ C )} 16:38, 23 August 2020 (UTC)

Thank you for your thoughtful and comprehensive responses.

You are asserting that the ... subjects of the articles received JDs when the cited sources say "law degree". Your reasoning seems to be valid ..., but it constitutes ORIGINAL RESEARCH, and that's not allowed here.

It is not original research. It is akin to encountering a biography which states that its subject was born in the City of New York and changing it to state that its subject was born in New York, New York. (All those born in the City of New York were also born in the State of New York.) This constitutes applying an inevitable conclusion, not engaging in original research.

You seem to be ... changing a commonly understood term ("law degree") to a less common one, and you're doing it seemingly without regard to the majority of Wikipedia readers, who may not know what a J.D. is. Granted, they can click on the link when they hit an arcane term in an article, but that's disruptive to the reading process, and inconsiderate to the readers of biography pages who may not, themselves, be academics.

But the vast majority of Wikipedia articles already use the term Juris Doctor or J.D. for those who graduated from law school during or after 1971. For these individuals, Juris Doctor or J.D. is by far the more commonly used term. The horse has already left the barn.

By the way, are you trying to increase your anonymity by editing my Talk page using an IPv6 address (and editing the articles using an IPv4 address)?

No, I am unaware of that distinction. 2601:205:3:DEE2:6051:47E6:9B06:C824 (talk) 18:37, 23 August 2020 (UTC)

Original research is drawing a conclusion from a source and writing about it here. Please read this article: WP:OR. You should also understand that Wikipedia does not allow contributions made from synthesis, or the combination of material from multiple places (see WP:SYNTH). You seem to think it's OK to run through WP articles and change every occurrence of "law degree" (or "JD") to "J.D.". In some cases (i.e. where supported by the cited source), that's fine, but, as I've told you before, where the source material says "law degree", you must leave it alone.

Thinking "the source says law degree, but all Law Degrees issued in the US during that time are really J.D. degrees, so I'll change it" is original research because you're inferring something from the source that is not written there. Do not do this.

Secondly, if you went out on the street and asked passersby "What is a law degree?" and "What is a J.D.?", you would find more people are familiar with the former term than with the latter. WP is meant to be understandable by average readers, and there is a real art to explaining complex topics in simple terms. You are not improving the encyclopedia by inserting a less-common term in place of one that is more widely understood; absolute accuracy and arcane precision are not always the best choices. Should I tell you "I have circumscribed dermal edema consistent with urticaria", or should I say "I have an itchy rash"? The former is far more accurate, but many more people will understand the latter statement. The same rationale applies to abbreviations. I would never tell someone I'd just met "I hold an ASEL/AMEL/IA, and LTA/B-AH certificate." Rather, I'll just say "I'm a pilot". If they wanted more detail, I might say "I'm a private pilot with an instrument rating, and fly hot-air balloons." I would never hit anyone (other than another pilot or an FAA guy) with the alphabet soup, because they probably wouldn't understand (and they'd probably think I was an arrogant ass for talking that way).

That said, you should not run a massive search/replace in these articles. If you want to say J.D., fine. Find a reliable source and cite it. (NOTE: Wikipedia articles are not considered reliable sources for other Wikipedia articles.) THEN, make sure the resulting sentence is as clear to the majority of readers as was the former one. If the article said "Joe Blow received a law degree from Catatonic State University", your new sentence should probably read "Joe Blow received a [[Juris Doctor|J.D.]] (law) degree from Catatonic State University". — UncleBubba ^{( T @ C )} 15:45, 24 August 2020 (UTC)

"L.I"

The cited ref isn't retrievable, but the text was pretty specific, so we need to assume it was quoted accurately ("LI.B./J.D." and "LI.M."). If you want to make this change, you need to cite a reliable source and explain it.

There are no such degrees as the LI.B. or LI.M. They do not exist. They cannot be found anywere else on Wikipedia. Because the J.D. replaced the LL.B., "we need to assume" that LI.B. reprsents confusion between a capital i (I) and a small l, and a capital l (l). Similar logic applies to the LL.M., which is the degree that follows the LL.B./J.D.2601:205:3:DEE2:BC1C:15F:C86B:19A8 (talk) 02:03, 24 August 2020 (UTC)

His CV proves what I have been saying. It is LL.B. and LL.M: https://specialedu.ku.edu/sites/specialedu.ku.edu/files/docs/people/vita/R_Turnbull-02-22-17.pdf 73.192.242.220 (talk) 06:04, 24 August 2020 (UTC)

(The following is almost exactly what I posted on the Talk:H._Rutherford_Turnbull page. It's really a waste of time to say the same thing in multiple places, and it scatters the discussion. Please don't do that.)

Great! That's good information! Now, here's what you need to do: correct the uppercase/lowercase error in the article (i.e. change "LI.B" and "LI.M" to "LL.B" and "LL.M", respectively), and at the same time cite this information (the CV, along with the page number) as the authoritative source for your edit, PROOFREAD IT, and post it to the article. If you want to be considerate of other Wikipedia editors, you should also state, clearly and concisely in your Edit Summary, what you've done, and why. — UncleBubba ^{( T @ C )} 14:30, 24 August 2020 (UTC)

Please do not "fix" redirects

Please do not "fix" redirects as you did here. Please read WP:NOTBROKEN. I would add that the IP in question is a long-term abuse editor, whio has been blocked many times under many IP addresses. DuncanHill (talk) 16:21, 3 September 2020 (UTC)

@DuncanHill: Point taken. Thanks for letting me know. — UncleBubba ^{( T @ C )} 16:39, 3 September 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-37

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

Changes later this week

• Normally pages can be moved to a title that has no existing page yet or to a page that has only one revision, which is a redirect to the page to be moved. A new user right allows editors to move pages over one-revision pages that redirect to anywhere. [6]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 8 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 9 September. It will be on all wikis from 10 September (calendar).
• All MediaWiki API modules will now use watchlist instead of watch. This was inconsistent before. [7]

Future changes

• The Wikipedia Android app team might work on patrolling tools in the future. You can let them know what tools would be useful for you or for less experienced patrollers. See the page on mediawiki.org.
• OTRS will be updated to a new version. This will probably take around two days. OTRS agents will not have access to the system during these days. Emails that come in during the update will be delivered when the update is done. The plan is to start around 08:00 UTC on 14 September. This could change. [8]
• The Wikipedia Android app will send push notifications if users want them. This could help you see for example when someone wrote on your talk page or your edit was reverted. This will need Google Play Services to work. It will also be possible to get the app without Google Play Services but push notifications will not work. Google Play Services is also used to make the app work for Android 4.4 users. [9][10]
• Wikimedia code review could move to GitLab. It would be hosted on Wikimedia servers. You can take part in the consultation.
• Dropdown menus in the Vector skin use a .menu class. This will not work in the future. Scripts can use nav ul instead. .vectorTabs and .vectorMenu will also not work. Some scripts need to be updated. You can read more in Phabricator.

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

15:59, 7 September 2020 (UTC)

Internetting

Hey, you're probably right. In my mind I wasn't being uncivil when I challenged people on their arguments, and I don't think I've used uncivil language. However, an RfC is probably not the place for the actual debate, and my responses are probably disruptive and clutter up the chat. Based on that, I'd outright remove my response to Wwwhatsup, but things would look even weirder with your response to my response still hanging there. I'll keep quiet in the RfC from now on.

Regarding my suggestion for you read the guidelines again - forgive me, but I feel the need to just clarify this point, as you seem to have been a bit put out by it. I didn't mean it like "you need to get your head checked out, you're talking nuts", if that's how it came across. I meant it literally, in that your statement suggested you'd maybe misread the guideline. Specifically, there is no requirement for "a majority" of reliable sources in the guideline, and no one has suggested that. That's what I was trying to straighten out. But perhaps I've misunderstood something myself. Popcornfud (talk) 23:31, 8 September 2020 (UTC)

I have continued editing

If you have problems with my editing kindly report it to the admins, but do not undo the good faith edits that I made, starting today. I won't take a 1-week break as per your advise. Thank you! Angus¹⁹⁸⁶ TALK 09:34, 11 September 2020 (UTC)

I never advised you to "take a 1-week break" (and the noun, "advice", is spelled with a "c", by the way). I will treat any edits you make exactly as I would any others. If they are beneficial, I won't touch them. If you edit carelessly, I'll remove or correct the problems I see. Edit competently (see WP:CIR) and you won't hear a word from me, except for an occasional "thank you". — UncleBubba ^{( T @ C )} 14:52, 11 September 2020 (UTC)

I looked it up on Google and Merriam-Webster and "advise" appears to be the British spelling.(I was curious if you had said anything about me on your talk page and found you didn't, but...) 99.137.85.166 (talk) 21:22, 26 October 2020 (UTC)

@WinnerWolf99: Actually, that's incorrect. Please see [11], which defines the "-ise" spelling as a verb and the "-ice" spelling as a noun (on both sides of the pond). It even includes the admonishment: Note: Do not confuse with the noun, advice.

While we're at it, please DO NOT EVER edit historical information on other users' Talk pages, especially without their permission/knowledge. It's great that you created an account, but the message posted above came from an IP address. — UncleBubba ^{( T @ C )} 21:35, 20 November 2020 (UTC)

Oh lol

Ok, I will let them know before doing so — WinnerWolf99 ^talk_{What did I break now?} 21:37, 20 November 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-38

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

Problems

• The Wikipedia apps briefly showed pages without CSS last week. This meant they looked wrong. It was quickly fixed but cached pages without CSS were shown for a few hours. [12][13]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 15 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 16 September. It will be on all wikis from 17 September (calendar).

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

16:18, 14 September 2020 (UTC)

Feedback request: Maths, science, and technology request for comment

Your feedback is requested at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Rocketry on a "Maths, science, and technology" request for comment. Thank you for helping out!
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A barnstar for you!

	The No Spam Barnstar
	For fighting spam on User Datagram Protocol ^_^ AngusMEOW (chatter • paw trail) 16:34, 16 September 2020 (UTC)

Guild of Copy Editors September 2020 Newsletter

Guild of Copy Editors September 2020 Newsletter Hello and welcome to the September GOCE newsletter, a brief update of Guild activities since June 2020.                  Current and upcoming events September Drive: Our current backlog-elimination drive is open until 23:59 on 30 September (UTC) and is open to all copy editors. Sign up today! Election reminder: our end-of-year Election of Coordinators opens for nominations on 1 December. Coordinators normally serve a six-month term and are elected on an approval basis. Self-nominations are welcome. If you've thought of helping out at the Guild, or know of another editor who would make a good coordinator, please consider standing for election or nominating them here. Drive and Blitz reports June Blitz: An uncorrected typo (even copy editors make copy editing mistakes!) led to an eight-day "leap blitz" from 14 to 21 June, focusing on requests and articles tagged in May. 19 participating editors claimed 54 copy edits. Final results, including barnstars awarded, are available here. July Drive: Over 750,000 words of articles were copy edited for this event, keeping pace with the previous three self-isolated drives. Of the 38 people who signed up, 30 copyedited at least one article. Final results and awards are listed here. August Blitz: From 16 to 22 August, we copy edited articles tagged in June and July 2020 and requests. 12 participating editors completed 37 copy edits on the blitz. Final results, including barnstars awarded, are available here. Other news June election: Jonesey95 was chosen to continue as lead coordinator, assisted by Baffle gab1978, Tdslk, Twofingered Typist, and first-time coordinator Puddleglum2.0. Reidgreg took a break after serving for a couple years. Thanks to everyone who participated! Progress report: As of 01:33, 18 September 2020 (UTC), GOCE copyeditors had processed 532 requests since 1 January and there were 38 requests awaiting completion on the Requests page. The backlog of articles tagged for copy-editing stood at 433 (see monthly progress graph above). Thank you all again for your participation; we wouldn't be able to achieve what we have without you! Cheers from your GOCE coordinators Jonesey95, Baffle gab1978, Puddleglum2.0, Tdslk and Twofingered Typist. To discontinue receiving GOCE newsletters, please remove your name from our mailing list.

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:03, 19 September 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-39

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

• There is a new tag for reverted edits. For example you can see it in the recent changes feed or in the article history. It is added to edits when they have been undone, rollbacked or manually reverted to an older version of the page. [14][15]

Changes later this week

• The number of times you can do something in a period of time on wiki is limited. This could be the number of edits per minute or the number of users you email in a day. Some users are not affected by all limits because of their user rights. They could soon see the limit even if it does not affect them. [16]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 22 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 23 September. It will be on all wikis from 24 September (calendar).

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

21:26, 21 September 2020 (UTC)

Feedback request: Politics, government, and law request for comment

Your feedback is requested at Talk:Kamala Harris on a "Politics, government, and law" request for comment. Thank you for helping out!
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New talk page template for misuse of grammar tools?

Hi, I'm still seeing issues with the use of tools like Grammarly, so I've left a note at Wikipedia talk:Template index/User talk namespace asking if there could be a new single-level or multi-level talk page notice to address this. Cheers, Esowteric + Talk + Breadcrumbs 14:22, 24 September 2020 (UTC)

@Esowteric: I like it!! And, yeah, I'm still seeing Grammarly-looking edits, too, so I'd definitely use it, if one were available. Thanks! — UncleBubba ^{( T @ C )} 20:01, 24 September 2020 (UTC)

I don't think they're going to go for this one. Perhaps an essay with a convenient "WP:xxx" shortcut might be another way forward? Esowteric + Talk + Breadcrumbs 08:26, 25 September 2020 (UTC)

Feedback request: Wikipedia policies and guidelines request for comment

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Feedback request: Politics, government, and law request for comment

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Tech News: 2020-40

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

• Admins can now see links to diffs of deleted revisions on Special:AbuseLog. This uses the interface of Special:Undelete. [17]
• Editors are automatically added to some user groups. For example editors are added to autoconfirmed users when they have edited enough times and long enough. Abuse filters can hinder users from automatically getting user rights for a period of time. They can also remove rights user have. Wikis can now ask to change how long this period of time is for their wiki in Phabricator. It is currently five days. [18]

Problems

• Last year some abuse filters stopped working because of a new change. If they tried to use variables that were unavailable for that action they would fail. This has now been fixed. [19]

Changes later this week

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

Future changes

• You can't see the language links to other language versions from the talk page or history page. They are also not shown when you edit an article. This could change. It is not decided if for example the history page should link to another history page or to the article. You can take part in the discussion in Phabricator.
• The link colours could change. This is to make the difference between links and other text more clear. You can read more in Phabricator.
• In your preferences you can choose to get different notifications on the web or by email. You will see Apps as one of the alternatives later this week. This is because the Android and iOS Wikipedia apps will use push notifications for those who want them. You can see the preferences on the test wiki. The goal is to have push notifications on Android in October and on iOS in early 2021. [20]
• You can soon put pages on your watchlist for a limited time. This could be useful if you want to watch something for a shorter time but don't want it on your watchlist forever. It now works on mediawiki.org and will come to more wikis later. You can read more and see when it will come to other wikis.
• You can see what Wikimedians think are the best new technical tools this year. You can also nominate them.

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

21:23, 28 September 2020 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – September 2020

News and updates for administrators from the past month (September 2020).

Administrator changes

Ajpolino • LuK3

Jackmcbarn

Ad Orientem • Harej • Lid • Lomn • Mentoz86 • Oliver Pereira • XJaM

There'sNoTime → TheresNoTime

Guideline and policy news

• A request for comment found consensus that incubation as an alternative to deletion should generally only be recommended when draftification is appropriate, namely 1) if the result of a deletion discussion is to draftify; or 2) if the article is newly created.

Technical news

• The filter log now provides links to view diffs of deleted revisions (phab:T261630).

Arbitration

• The 2020 CheckUser and Oversight appointment process has begun. The community consultation period will take place from September 27th to October 7th.
• Following a request for comment, sitting Committee members may not serve on either the Ombuds Commission or the WMF Case Review Committee. The Arbitration Committee passed a motion implementing those results into their procedures.

Miscellaneous

• The Universal Code of Conduct draft is open for community review and comment until October 6th, 2020.
• Office actions may now be appealed to the Interim Trust & Safety Case Review Committee.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 10:44, 1 October 2020 (UTC)

"vandalism"

"need confirmation", provide confirmation from other sources (assuming original text isn't enough), "KNOCK IT OFF"

👍 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.70.173.20 (talk) 20:09, 1 October 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-41

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

Recent changes

• There is a new tool where you can see which home wiki users have in discussions on Meta. This can help show which communities are not part of the discussion on wikis where we make decisions that affect many other wikis.
• You can now thank users for file uploads or for changing the language of a page. [21]

Problems

• There were many errors with the new MediaWiki version last week. The new version was rolled back. Updates that should have happened last week are late. [22]
• Everyone was logged out. This was because a user reported being logged in to someone else's account. The problem should be fixed now. [23]
• Many pages have JavaScript errors. You can read more and now see a list of user scripts with errors.

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 6 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 7 October. It will be on all wikis from 8 October (calendar).
• Letters immediately after a link are shown as part of the link. For example the entire word in [[Child]]ren is linked. On Arabic wikis this works at both the start and end of a word. Previously on Arabic wikis numbers and other non-letter Unicode characters were shown as part of the link at the start of a word but not at the end. Now only Latin and Arabic letters will extend links on Arabic wikis. [24]

Future changes

• You will be able to read but not to edit the wikis for up to an hour on 27 October around 14:00 (UTC). It will probably be shorter than an hour. [25]

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

16:24, 5 October 2020 (UTC)

Feedback request: Wikipedia policies and guidelines request for comment

Your feedback is requested at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Television on a "Wikipedia policies and guidelines" request for comment. Thank you for helping out!
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Feedback request: Wikipedia style and naming request for comment

Your feedback is requested at Talk:List of vegetarians on a "Wikipedia style and naming" request for comment. Thank you for helping out!
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Tech News: 2020-42

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

Problems

• Because of the problems with the MediaWiki version two weeks ago last week's updates are also late. [26][27][28]

Changes later this week

• Live previews didn't show the templates used in the preview if you just edited a section. This has now been fixed. You can also test CSS and JavaScript pages even if you have the live preview enabled. Previously this didn't work well. [29][30]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 13 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 14 October. It will be on all wikis from 15 October (calendar).

Future changes

• A new stable version of Pywikibot is coming soon. [31]

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

15:23, 12 October 2020 (UTC)

Feedback request: Wikipedia policies and guidelines request for comment

Your feedback is requested at Wikipedia talk:Merging on a "Wikipedia policies and guidelines" request for comment. Thank you for helping out!
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Feedback request: Politics, government, and law request for comment

Your feedback is requested at Talk:Andy Ngo on a "Politics, government, and law" request for comment. Thank you for helping out!
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Tech News: 2020-43

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

Changes later this week

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

Future changes

• You will be able to read but not to edit the wikis for up to an hour on 27 October around 14:00 (UTC). It will probably be shorter than an hour. [32]
• In the AbuseFilter extension, the rmspecials() function will be updated soon so that it does not remove the "space" character. Wikis are advised to wrap all the uses of rmspecials() with rmwhitespace() wherever necessary to keep filters' behavior unchanged. You can use the search function on Special:AbuseFilter to locate its usage. [33]
• Some gadgets and user-scripts use the HTML div with the ID #jump-to-nav. This div will be removed soon. Maintainers should replace these uses with either #siteSub or #mw-content-text. A list of affected scripts is at the top of phab:T265373.

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

16:30, 19 October 2020 (UTC)

Feedback request: Wikipedia technical issues and templates request for comment

Your feedback is requested at Template talk:Expert needed on a "Wikipedia technical issues and templates" request for comment. Thank you for helping out!
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Tech News: 2020-44

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

Problems

• You will be able to read but not to edit the wikis for up to an hour on October 27 around 14:00 (UTC). It will probably be shorter than an hour. [34]
• Last week, links to "diffs" from mobile watchlists and recentchanges were linking to page-revisions instead of diffs. This has now been fixed. [35]

Changes later this week

• There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

Future changes

• Since the introduction of the interface administrators user group in 2018, administrators couldn’t view the deleted history of CSS/JS pages. Now they can. [36]
• There was a problem with the Change Tags. The software would apply the "Reverted" tag to any page actions such as page-protection changes if they came directly after a reverted edit. This has now been fixed for new edits. [37]
• The Reply tool will be offered as an opt-in Beta Feature on most Wikipedias in November. Another announcement will be made once the date is finalized. [38]

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

17:37, 26 October 2020 (UTC)

Feedback request: Wikipedia proposals request for comment

Your feedback is requested at Talk:Women on the Verge on a "Wikipedia proposals" request for comment. Thank you for helping out!
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Feedback request: Wikipedia style and naming request for comment

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Feedback request: Wikipedia policies and guidelines request for comment

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Administrators' newsletter – November 2020

News and updates for administrators from the past month (October 2020).

Administrator changes

John M Wolfson

Bduke • Nilfanion • Philosopher • Rspeer • Yunshui

Interface administrator changes

Ragesoss

TonyBallioni

CheckUser changes

EdJohnston • Oshwah • Yamla

Yunshui

Oversight changes

Anarchyte

Yunshui

Guideline and policy news

• Community sanctions now authorize administrators to place under indefinite semiprotection any article on a beauty pageant, or biography of a person known as a beauty pageant contestant, which has been edited by a sockpuppet account or logged-out sockpuppet, to be logged at WP:GS/PAGEANT.

Technical news

• Sysops will once again be able to view the deleted history of JS/CSS pages; this was restricted to interface administrators when that group was introduced.
• Twinkle's block module now includes the ability to note the specific case when applying a discretionary sanctions block and/or template.
• Sysops will be able to use Special:CreateLocalAccount to create a local account for a global user that is prevented from auto-creation locally (such as by a filter or range block). Administrators that are not sure if such a creation is appropriate should contact a checkuser.

Arbitration

• The 2020 Arbitration Committee Elections process has begun. Eligible editors will be able to nominate themselves as candidates from November 8 through November 17. The voting period will run from November 23 through December 6.
• The Anti-harassment RfC has concluded with a summary of the feedback provided.

Miscellaneous

• A reminder that standard discretionary sanctions are authorized for all edits about, and all pages related to post-1932 politics of the United States and closely related people. (American Politics 2 Arbitration case).

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 11:53, 1 November 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-45

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

• You can no longer read Wikimedia wikis if your browser uses very old TLS. This is because it is a security problem for everyone. It could lead to downgrade attacks. Since October 29, 2020, users who use old TLS versions will not be able to connect to Wikimedia projects. A list of browser recommendations is available. All modern operating systems and browsers are always able to reach Wikimedia projects. [39]
• There is a new automatic tracking category available: Pages with non-numeric formatnum arguments. It collects pages which use the {{formatnum}} parser function with invalid (non-numeric) input, e.g. {{formatnum:TECHNEWS}}. Note that {{formatnum:123,456}} is also invalid input: as described in the documentation, the argument should be unformatted so that it can be reliably and correctly localised. The tracking category will help identify problematic usage and double-formatting. The new tracking category's name can be translated at translatewiki. [40]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from November 3. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from November 4. It will be on all wikis from November 5 (calendar).
• Administrators and stewards will be able to use a special page (Special:CreateLocalAccount) to force local account creation for a global account. This is useful when account creation is blocked for that user (by a block or a filter). [41]
• The Reply tool will be offered as an opt-in Beta Feature on most Wikipedias on November 4. This change excludes the English, Russian, and German-language Wikipedias, plus a few smaller Wikipedias with special circumstances. You can read the help page and the troubleshooting guide for more information. [42]

Future changes

• A discussion has been restarted about using a Unicode minus sign (− U+2212) in the output of {{formatnum}} when it is given a negative argument. [43]
• In the future IP addresses of unregistered users will not be shown for everyone. They will get an alias instead. There will be a new user right or an opt-in function for more vandal fighters to see the IPs of unregistered users. There would be some criteria for who gets the user right or opt-in. There will also be other new tools to help handle vandalism. This is early in the process and the developers are still collecting information from the communities before they suggest solutions.

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

16:08, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-46

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

Changes later this week

• There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

Future changes

• You can see reference previews. This shows a preview of the footnote when you hover over it. This has been a beta feature. It will move out of beta and be enabled by default. There will be an option not to use it. The developers are looking for small or medium-sized wikis to be the first ones. You can let them know if your wiki is interested. [44]
• From November 16 the categories will not be sorted in order for a short time. This is because the developers are upgrading to a new version of the internationalisation library. They will use a script to fix the existing categories. This can take a few hours or a few days depending on how big the wiki is. You can read more. [45][46]

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

15:49, 9 November 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-47

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

Recent changes

• Listings on category pages are sorted on each wiki for that language using a library. For a brief period on 16 November, changes to categories will not be sorted correctly for most languages. This is because the developers are upgrading to a new version of the library. They will then use a script to fix the existing categories. This will take a few hours or a few days depending on how big the wiki is. You can read more. [47][48]

Changes later this week

• If you merged two pages in a namespace where pages can't redirect this used to break the merge history. This will now be fixed. [49]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 17 November. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 18 November. It will be on all wikis from 19 November (calendar).

Future changes

• The Community Wishlist Survey is now open for proposals. The survey decides what the Community Tech team will work on. You can post proposals from 16 to 30 November. You can vote on proposals from 8 December to 21 December.

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

15:36, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-48

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

Recent changes

• Timestamps in Special:Log are now links. They go to Special:Log for only that entry. This is how timestamps work on for example the history page. [50]

Changes later this week

• There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

Future changes

• The Wikimedia Cloud VPS hosts technical projects for the Wikimedia movement. Developers need to claim projects they use. This is because old and unused projects are removed once a year. Unclaimed projects can be shut down from 1 December. Unclaimed projects can be deleted from 1 January. [51]

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

17:17, 23 November 2020 (UTC)

ArbCom 2020 Elections voter message

Hello! Voting in the 2020 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23:59 (UTC) on Monday, 7 December 2020. 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 2020 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) 01:32, 24 November 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-49

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

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 1 December. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 2 December. It will be on all wikis from 3 December (calendar).

Future changes

• The iOS Wikipedia app will show readers more of the article history. They can see new updates and easier see how the article has changed over time. This is an experiment. It will first be shown only to some iOS app users as a test. [52][53]
• The Wiki Replicas can be used for SQL queries. You can use Quarry, PAWS or other ways to do this. To make the Wiki Replicas stable there will be two changes. Cross-database JOINS will no longer work. You can also only query a database if you connect to it directly. This will happen in February 2021. If you think this affects you and you need help you can post on Phabricator or on Wikitech. [54]

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

17:43, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – December 2020

News and updates for administrators from the past month (November 2020).

Administrator changes

Andrwsc • Anetode • GoldenRing • JzG • LinguistAtLarge • Nehrams2020

Interface administrator changes

Izno

Guideline and policy news

• There is a request for comment in progress to either remove T3 (duplicated and hardcoded instances) as a speedy deletion criterion or eliminate its seven-day waiting period.

Technical news

• Voting for proposals in the 2021 Community Wishlist Survey, which determines what software the Wikimedia Foundation's Community Tech team will work on next year, will take place from 8 December through 21 December. In particular, there are sections regarding administrators and anti-harassment.

Arbitration

• Voting in the 2020 Arbitration Committee Elections is open to eligible editors until Monday 23:59, 7 December 2020 UTC. Please review the candidates and, if you wish to do so, submit your choices on the voting page.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 02:37, 1 December 2020 (UTC)

Scripts++ Newsletter – Issue 18

News and updates associated with user scripts from the past three months (September, October, and November 2020).

Hello everyone and welcome to the 18th issue of the Wikipedia Scripts++ Newsletter:

Scripts Submit your new/improved script here

SD0001's W-Ping is this month's featured script

Sportzpikachu's bookmarks adds a bookmarks section to the navigation toolbar

SD0001's deleted-metadata-link.js adds links to the deletedrevisions API output for deleted pages

SD0001's GAN-helper makes it easier to create a GAN nomination.

1234qwer1234qwer4's XfDstarted scripts add links to today's XfD log pages to the personal toolbar

Awesome Aasim's rcpatrol is a tool that can be used to patrol recent changes, including reverting edits and warning users

A new JavaScript snippet, MediaWiki:AFC-add-project-tags.js, can be used to add WikiProject tags to drafts at Wikipedia:WikiProject Articles for creation/Add WikiProject tags without actually needing to install a user script.

Nardog's PlayAudioNow makes {{audio}} links playable while staying on the page, regardless of the format

GeneralNotability's ip-ext-info.js adds extended info on IPs in a popup with their range, ASN, and ISP

TheTVExpert's submitRMTR adds a button to Special:MovePage to submit a technical request at Wikipedia:Requested moves/Technical requests

TheTVExpert's rmCloser helps with closing and relisting requested moves.

Enterprisey's parsoid-round-trip uses Parsoid to convert wikitext to HTML and back, and then shows the result and the difference between the original wikitext and the post-conversion wikitext.

Frietjes's infoboxgap assists in renumbering infobox labels/data/classes, so that a new line can be inserted in the middle of the infobox.

Pending requests

• A request for a script to help with maintaining the lists of vital articles
• A request for a script to make it easier to archive specific list entries, rather than whole discussion sections
• ...and many more, all available at Wikipedia:User scripts/Requests

Twinkle has made a number of improvements, including using a change tag to identify actions made with it and automatically filing edit requests for protected XfD nominations.

SD0001's shortdescs-in-category is now compatible with scripts modifying category listings, such as Equazcion's CatListMainTalkLinks

GhostInTheMachine's TalkHelper2 is a newer version of their prior script, TalkHelper

GeneralNotability's spihelper updated to 2.2.10, fixing a number of small bugs, automatically tagging globally locked socks as such in the sockpuppet template, and restoring open cases following an SPI history merge.

Enterprisey's script-installer gadget has been updated with more internationalization of messages, as well as addition of a user preference, window.scriptInstallerInstallTarget to allow controlling where new scripts are to be installed.

Open tasks

• Enterprisey is looking for beta testers for their new section-watchlist user script. See the announcement.

Miscellaneous

• The second edition of the m:Coolest Tool Award will be taking place in December.
• Enterprisey's links-in-logs script has now been implemented as part of MediaWiki core, see gerrit:640761 and phab:T207562.

My apologies for the delayed issue. As always, if anyone else would like to contribute, help is appreciated. Stay safe, --DannyS712 (talk) 18:20, 1 December 2020 (UTC)

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Tech News: 2020-50

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

Recent changes

• You can now put pages on your watchlist for a limited period of time. Some wikis already had this function. [55][56]

Changes later this week

• Information from Wikidata that is used on a wiki page can be shown in recent changes and watchlists on a Wikimedia wiki. To see this you need to turn on showing Wikidata edits in your watchlist in the preferences. Changes to the Wikidata description in the language of a Wikimedia wiki will then be shown in recent changes and watchlists. This will not show edits to languages that are not relevant to your wiki. [57][58]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 8 December. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 9 December. It will be on all wikis from 10 December (calendar).

Future changes

• You can vote on proposals in the Community Wishlist Survey between 8 December and 21 December. The survey decides what the Community Tech team will work on.

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

16:14, 7 December 2020 (UTC)

December 2020 Guild of Copy Editors Newsletter

Guild of Copy Editors December 2020 Newsletter Hello and welcome to the December GOCE newsletter, a brief update of Guild activities since September 2020.                  Current and upcoming events Election time: our end-of-year Election of Coordinators opened for nominations on 1 December and will close on 15 December at 23:59 (UTC). Voting opens at 00:01 the following day and will continue until 31 December at 23:59, just before Auld Lang Syne. Coordinators normally serve a six-month term and are elected on an approval basis. Self-nominations are welcome. If you've thought of helping out at the Guild, or know of another editor who would make a good coordinator, please consider standing for election or nominating them here. December Blitz: This will run from 13 to 19 December, and will target all Requests. Sign up now. Drive and Blitz reports September Drive: 67 fewer articles had copy-edit templates by this month's close. Of the 27 editors who signed up, 15 copy-edited at least one article, and 124 articles were claimed for the drive. October Blitz: this ran from 18 to 24 October, and focused on articles tagged for copy-edit in July and August 2020, and all Requests. Of the 13 who signed up, 11 editors copy-edited at least one article. 21 articles were claimed for the blitz. November Drive: Of the 18 editors who signed up, 15 copy-edited at least one article, and together claimed 134 articles. At the close of the drive, 67 fewer articles were in the backlog and we had dealt with 39 requests. Other news Progress report: As of 09:05, 3 December 2020 (UTC), GOCE copyeditors had processed 663 requests (18 from 2019) since 1 January and there were 52 requests awaiting completion on the Requests page. The backlog of articles tagged for copy-editing stood at 494 (see monthly progress graph above). Annual Report for 2020: this roundup of the year's activity at the Guild is planned for publication in late January or early February. Thank you all again for your participation; we wouldn't be able to achieve what we have without you! Seasonal tidings and cheers from your GOCE coordinators: Jonesey95, Baffle gab1978, Puddleglum2.0, Tdslk and Twofingered Typist. To discontinue receiving GOCE newsletters, please remove your name from our mailing list.

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 03:47, 8 December 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-51

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 Wikipedia app for KaiOS phones. It was released in India in September. It can now be downloaded in other countries too. [59]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 15 December. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 16 December. It will be on all wikis from 17 December (calendar).

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

21:33, 14 December 2020 (UTC)

Scripts++ Newsletter – Issue 19

News and updates associated with user scripts from the past month (December 2020).

Hello everyone and welcome to the 19th issue of the Wikipedia Scripts++ Newsletter:

Scripts Submit your new/improved script here

Enterprisey's script-installer, a gadget that makes it easier to install scripts, is this month's featured script

Enterprisey's copy-section-link adds popups to section headers which has an appropriate wikilink and external link to the section.

DannyS712's FindBlacklistEntry can be used to figure out which line(s) in either the local or global spamblacklist prevent a particular url from being added.

Nardog's CodeEditorAssist allows customizing the code editor, including changing the color theme and enabling live autocompletion.

Cobaltcigs's IllWill allows searches wikidata.org for foreign-language sitelinks, to populate {{ill}} and replace plain red links.

Twinkle has made a number of improvements, most notably full support for expiring watchlist items.

Evad37's Signpost Publishing Script is now at version 2.4.2, with changes including a fix for calculating the size of pages with files.

Evad37's MoveToDraft is now at version 2.5.1, with changes including:

• checks for move conflicts and better options if move fails
• the addition of {{Drafts moved from mainspace}} after moves
• updating the default move log and notification texts to be more in line with WP:DRAFTIFY

Enterprisey's cv-revdel now handles failures more cleanly, including reporting failures caused by the spam blacklist.

Bradv's Notepad.js script has been updated with new styles and a new launch button.

A beta version of XFDcloser is available for testing, and brings a new user interface for dialogs and some preferences for customization.

Open tasks

• Voting in the m:Community Wishlist Survey 2021 is ongoing until December 21, 2020. There are 15 proposals in the "bots and gadgets" category that may be of interest.

Pending requests

• A script to help list discussions at WP:ANRFC (request)
• A script to allow undoing edits despite conflicting intermediary edits (request)
• ...and many more, all available at Wikipedia:User scripts/Requests

Miscellaneous

• The Watchlist Expiry feature worked on by the Community Tech team has been enabled on Wikipedia. For scripts that include watching or unwatching pages, developers may want to update their code to take advantage of the new functionality. See the documentation on mediawiki.org.
• As noted in the prior issue, Enterprisey's links-in-logs script has now been implemented as part of MediaWiki core. By my count, this is his third script that was replaced by implementing the code in MediaWiki core or an extension, along with link-section-edits and abusefilter-hide-search. Additionally, his reply-link script is being converted in part to mw:Extension:DiscussionTools. Are there any other scripts that might be worth integrating directly in MediaWiki? Thoughts would be welcome at Wikipedia talk:Scripts++.

As always, if anyone else would like to contribute, help is appreciated. Stay safe, and happy holidays! --DannyS712 (talk) 00:19, 18 December 2020 (UTC)

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Tech News: 2020-52

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

• Because of the holidays the next issue of Tech News will be sent out on 11 January 2021.

Recent changes

• The {{citation needed}} template shows when a statement in a Wikipedia article needs a source. If you click on it when you edit with the visual editor there is a popup that explains this. Now it can also show the reason and when it was added. [60]

Changes later this week

• There is no new MediaWiki version this week or next week.

Future changes

• You can propose and discuss what technical improvements should be done for geographic information. This could be coordinates, maps or other related things.
• Some wikis use LanguageConverter to switch between writing systems or variants of a language. This can only be done for the entire page. There will be a <langconvert> tag that can convert a piece of text on a page. [61]
• Oversighters and stewards can hide entries in Special:AbuseLog. They can soon hide multiple entries at once using checkboxes. This works like hiding normal edits. It will happen in early January. [62]

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

20:52, 21 December 2020 (UTC)

/* History */ Corrected the origination of IMAP at Stanford University

Hello, This is WilliamJYeager. Sorry I didn't understand exactly how to add a little more reality to my changes. Since this happened 35 or so years ago, there are not too many sources. But, RFC1064 for IMAP2 validates part of what I wrote. Strangely, it leaves out the developers. It also does not note that IMAP was supported by an NIH grant as part of the Stanford Knowledge System Labs SUMEX-AIM portion. This portion was for my proposal to develop what became IMAP. Mark was not the unique inventor by a long shot. I don't see where it is documented that he was. He did write the IMAP2 RFC which I edited. The director of SUMEX-AIM at this time was Thomas Rindfleish. Happy, he's still alive an well. Will an email message from him verifying those claims I made be a sufficient addition. If not, I can most likely can create a webpage on the Knowledge Systems Lab website. It will be validated by Tom. It's really sad that such an inaccurate representation of the true history of IMAP is on wikipedia. Oh, I can hopefully find the Stanford Computer Science documentation for V/VGTS. Prof. David Cheriton is still there, and is a close friend. V's quite old and what I seek may be archived. No matter. I'll give it a shot. Thanks so much for cluing me in on how to properly substantiate what I write on a wikipedia webpage. William (Bill) Yeager — Preceding unsigned comment added by Williamjyeager (talk • contribs) 01:07, 22 December 2020 (UTC)

@Williamjyeager: I recommend you proceed very carefully, and only after you have reviewed the applicable policy pages on contributing material about yourself or your accomplishments. In short, you can't just "create a Web page" and cite it, because that's not a reliable source (see WP:RS and WP:COI). Ideally, Wikipedia cites secondary sources published by reliable organizations; blogs, self-published works, etc. are generally unacceptable.

While there is nothing wrong with editing articles you have no interest in or connection to, the smartest way deal with a COI situation (after disclosing it) is to use the {{request edit}} template to ask someone else to make the desired changes to the article.

I'm sorry that these rules have to be enforced, but you would probably not believe the BS that some people want to put into Wikipedia pages. One of my favorite examples is Pedro Paulet, a Peruvian (and, in my opinion, demonstrated fraudster) who claimed to have invented liquid-fueled rockets before Goddard. That article is sort of a pet project of mine, and I regularly have to remove misleading information posted by some apparently well-meaning people who, usually for reasons of national pride, want Paulet's claims to be true. Alas, wishing doesn't make it so.

Also, please read the templated text I posted to your Talk page—it outlines the steps you must take in the event of a conflict of interest. Cheers! — UncleBubba ^{( T @ C )} 03:04, 22 December 2020 (UTC)

internet as an proper adjective

when "internet" is capitalized, is there some consensus in wikip style world that it then functions as a proper adjective? or maybe it doesn't need to be? (diff) skakEL 17:23, 28 December 2020 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – January 2021

News and updates for administrators from the past month (December 2020).

Administrator changes

Hammersoft

Andres • Brion VIBBER • Rkitko • Thatcher

CheckUser changes

Barkeep49 • BDD • CaptainEek • Primefac

Oversight changes

Barkeep49 • BDD • CaptainEek

Joe Roe

Guideline and policy news

• Speedy deletion criterion T3 (duplication and hardcoded instances) has been repealed following a request for comment.

Technical news

• You can now put pages on your watchlist for a limited period of time.

Arbitration

• By motion, standard discretionary sanctions have been temporarily authorized for all pages relating to the Horn of Africa (defined as including Ethiopia, Somalia, Eritrea, Djibouti, and adjoining areas if involved in related disputes). The effectiveness of the discretionary sanctions can be evaluated on the request by any editor after March 1, 2021 (or sooner if for a good reason).
• Following the 2020 Arbitration Committee elections, the following editors have been appointed to the Arbitration Committee: Barkeep49, BDD, Bradv, CaptainEek, L235, Maxim, Primefac.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:08, 5 January 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-02

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 choose to be reminded when you have not added an edit summary. This can be done in your preferences. This could conflict with the CAPTCHA. This has now been fixed. [63]
• You can link to specific log entries. You can get these links for example by clicking the timestamps in the log. Until now, such links to private log entries showed no entry even if you had permission to view private log entries. The links now show the entry. [64]
• Admins can use the abuse filter tool to automatically prevent bad edits. Three changes happened last week:
  • The filter editing interface now shows syntax errors while you type. This is similar to JavaScript pages. It also shows a warning for regular expressions that match the empty string. New warnings will be added later. [65]
  • Oversighters can now hide multiple filter log entries at once using checkboxes on Special:AbuseLog. This is how the usual revision deletion works. [66]
  • When a filter matches too many actions after it has been changed it is "throttled". The most powerful actions are disabled. This is to avoid many editors getting blocked when an administrator made a mistake. The administrator will now get a notification about this "throttle".
• There is a new tool to build new skins. You can also see existing skins. You can give feedback. [67]
• Bots using the API no longer watch pages automatically based on account preferences. Setting the watchlist to watch will still work. This is to reduce the size of the watchlist data in the database. [68]
• Scribunto's file metadata now includes length. [69]
• CSS and JavaScript code pages now have link anchors to line numbers. You can use wikilinks like w:en:MediaWiki:Common.js#L-50. [70]
• There was a new version of MediaWiki last week. You can read a detailed log of all 763 changes. Most of them are very small and will not affect you.

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 12 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 13 January. It will be on all wikis from 14 January (calendar).

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

15:41, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

Feedback requests from the Feedback Request Service

Your feedback is requested at Talk:New York City Police Department on a "Politics, government, and law" request for comment, and at Talk:Schlage doch, gewünschte Stunde, BWV 53 on a "Wikipedia style and naming" request for comment, and at Talk:Brexit Party and Talk:Luke Letlow on "Politics, government, and law" request for comments. Thank you for helping out!
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Tech News: 2021-03

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 19 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 20 January. It will be on all wikis from 21 January (calendar).

Future changes

• The Growth team plans to add features to get more visitors to edit to more Wikipedias. You can help translating the interface.
• You will be able to read but not to edit Wikimedia Commons for a short time on 26 January at 07:00 (UTC). [71]
• MassMessage posts could be automatically timestamped in the future. This is because MassMessage senders can now send pages using MassMessage. Pages are more difficult to sign. If there are times when a MassMessage post should not be timestamped you can let the developers know.

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

16:09, 18 January 2021 (UTC)

Feedback request: Wikipedia policies and guidelines request for comment

Your feedback is requested at Talk:Coronavirus disease 2019 on a "Wikipedia policies and guidelines" request for comment. Thank you for helping out!
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Feedback request: Wikipedia policies and guidelines request for comment

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Feedback request: WikiProjects and collaborations request for comment

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Feedback request: Politics, government, and law request for comment

Your feedback is requested at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Politics on a "Politics, government, and law" request for comment. Thank you for helping out!
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Tech News: 2021-04

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 will be able to read but not to edit Wikimedia Commons for a short time on 26 January at 07:00 (UTC). You will not be able to read or edit Wikitech for a short time on 28 January at 09:00 (UTC). [72][73]

Changes later this week

• Bracket matching will be added to the CodeMirror syntax highlighter on the first wikis. The first wikis are German and Catalan Wikipedia and maybe other Wikimedia wikis. This will happen on 27 January. [74]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 26 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 27 January. It will be on all wikis from 28 January (calendar).

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

18:30, 25 January 2021 (UTC)

Reverted changes to ENEA AB page 2021-01-26

While I left what I thought was an adequate and easily verifiable summary:

"Removed factually incorrect statement that read as if OSE was released in 2009"

Maybe it was not enough for people not acquainted with the product or company.

The restored statement makes it appear that the OSE realtime operating system was released initially in 2009, this is patently false as I have first hand knowledge of its existence since the '90s.

Hence my decision to move reference [3] to its right place, as it only announces the release of OSE for multicore systems and to remove the misleading statement.

Unfortunately, I'm no longer in contact with Bengt Eliasson (I had the honour of sitting beside him at work for some time) so I cannot provide a firm date for the relase of OSE.

I have second-hand knowledge that OSE for 68k systems was already released in 1992, but no linkable source; as evidence that 2009 is far off from the birth of OSE, this comparison between OSE and RUFUS (please go to page 8 for English abstract) dates to 2000.

BTW: The instructions you left in the message (answer in your talk page) contradict the banner (answer on my talk page). I hope I'm not being rude, just following one of the alternatives.

Feedback request: Politics, government, and law request for comment

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hello

Please don't reply on my Talk page to messages left on your Talk page
The following discussion has been closed by UncleBubba. Please do not modify it.
I am sorry I didnt know about the iloveyou virus thing, I just joined 2 months ago and not used to editing, Ilikememes128 (talk) 22:35, 31 January 2021 (UTC)

hello

As I asked before, please don't reply on my Talk page to messages left on your Talk page
The following discussion has been closed by UncleBubba. Please do not modify it.
I am sorry I didn't know about the talk page thing --Ilikememes128 (talk) 14:54, 1 February 2021 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – February 2021

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

Administrator changes

Hog Farm

Mattflaschen • Nandesuka • Savidan • Wangi

CheckUser changes

Berean Hunter • Xeno

Oversight changes

Someguy1221 • Xeno

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.

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!

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 19:10, 1 February 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-05

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. [75]

Changes later this week

• You can soon use Wikidata to link to pages on the multilingual Wikisource. [76]
• 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. [77][78]
• Wikis use abuse filters to stop bad edits being made. Filter maintainers can now use syntax like 1.2.3.4 - 1.2.3.55 as well as the 1.2.3.4/27 syntax for IP ranges. [79]
• 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. [80][81]
• 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:

Scripts Submit your new/improved script here

Ajbura's anrfc-lister assists with listing discussions at WP:ANRFC to request that they receive a formal close

Bradv's endlesscontribs provides for endless scrolling of contributions pages

Evad37's livenotifications displays notification alerts and messages in a little popup box, (almost) live as they happen

Terasail's Edit Request Tool allows users to reply to, close or remove protected edit requests

ToBeFree's clear-watchlist allows emptying your watchlist even if the watchlist is too full to be edited or cleared by conventional methods

Dentonius's GlobalRecentChanges allows you to monitor recent changes across various wikis.

Yahya's SNA (Start New Article) allows you to start a new article or draft from the navigation bar.

Nardog:

• CatChangeLinker bluelinks the "(diff | hist)" part of category additions/removals on your watchlist.
• CatChangesViewer lists recent category additions/removals on a category page.
• Consecudiff adds links to diffs of consecutive edits by the same user on watchlist, history, etc.
• DiffFontSwitcher allows you to toggle between fonts for diff by clicking a line number.
• MoveHistory lists the past moves a page has gone through.

Novem Linguae:

• UserHighlighterSimple is a fork of Chlod's UserHighlighter with a simplified color scheme.
• VisualEditorEverywhere displays the Visual Editor edit tab and section links on pages that don't normally have them.

User:Evad37/TimestampDiffs – fixed compatibility issues with various scripts/gadgets, including Wikipedia:Comments in Local Time. For discussion archives, now looks for revisions on the base page.

User:Enterprisey/undo-last-edit.js - no longer tries to load on special pages.

User:Ahecht/Scripts/pageswap - version 1.4 fixes reading destination from form field if destination is not in article namespace, and fixes self redirects.

Wikipedia:XFDcloser - version 4 brings a new user interface for dialogs, some preferences for customising XFDcloser, major behind-the-scenes coding changes, and resolves various issues raised on the talkpage. Also, since version 3.16.6 non-admin soft delete closure have been allowed at TfD.

Open tasks

• As a reminder, the legacy javascript globals (like accessing wgPageName without first assigning it a value or using mw.config.get('wgPageName') instead) are deprecated. If your user scripts make use of the globals, please update them to use mw.config instead. 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)

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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:

Scripts Submit your new/improved script here

Ajbura's anrfc-lister assists with listing discussions at WP:ANRFC to request that they receive a formal close

Bradv's endlesscontribs provides for endless scrolling of contributions pages

Evad37's livenotifications displays notification alerts and messages in a little popup box, (almost) live as they happen

Terasail's Edit Request Tool allows users to reply to, close or remove protected edit requests

ToBeFree's clear-watchlist allows emptying your watchlist even if the watchlist is too full to be edited or cleared by conventional methods

Dentonius's GlobalRecentChanges allows you to monitor recent changes across various wikis.

Yahya's SNA (Start New Article) allows you to start a new article or draft from the navigation bar.

Nardog:

• CatChangeLinker bluelinks the "(diff | hist)" part of category additions/removals on your watchlist.
• CatChangesViewer lists recent category additions/removals on a category page.
• Consecudiff adds links to diffs of consecutive edits by the same user on watchlist, history, etc.
• DiffFontSwitcher allows you to toggle between fonts for diff by clicking a line number.
• MoveHistory lists the past moves a page has gone through.

Novem Linguae:

• UserHighlighterSimple is a fork of Chlod's UserHighlighter with a simplified color scheme.
• VisualEditorEverywhere displays the Visual Editor edit tab and section links on pages that don't normally have them.

User:Evad37/TimestampDiffs – fixed compatibility issues with various scripts/gadgets, including Wikipedia:Comments in Local Time. For discussion archives, now looks for revisions on the base page.

User:Enterprisey/undo-last-edit.js - no longer tries to load on special pages.

User:Ahecht/Scripts/pageswap - version 1.4 fixes reading destination from form field if destination is not in article namespace, and fixes self redirects.

Wikipedia:XFDcloser - version 4 brings a new user interface for dialogs, some preferences for customising XFDcloser, major behind-the-scenes coding changes, and resolves various issues raised on the talkpage. Also, since version 3.16.6 non-admin soft delete closure have been allowed at TfD.

Open tasks

• As a reminder, the legacy javascript globals (like accessing wgPageName without first assigning it a value or using mw.config.get('wgPageName') instead) are deprecated. If your user scripts make use of the globals, please update them to use mw.config instead. 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)

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Feedback request: Wikipedia policies and guidelines request for comment

Your feedback is requested at Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard on a "Wikipedia policies and guidelines" request for comment. Thank you for helping out!
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Feedback request: Wikipedia style and naming request for comment

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Tech News: 2021-06

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. [82]

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. [83]
• 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. [84][85]
• 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. [86]
• 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. [87]

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)

Re: Beetlejuice

I was the anonymous user who edited the page; what was wrong with them? DrakeyC (talk) 22:24, 10 February 2021 (UTC)

@DrakeyC: I thought I made my reasoning pretty clear in my Edit Summary (which you should include with every edit, BTW). It's been a while, but what comes to mind is a change you made to a sentence in the first Plot paragraph, "At their home the two return but find they have no recollection of what happened after the crash or how they got back home ...", which I noticed because the word "home" appears twice in it. More important, though, the phrase "at their home the two return but find" just doesn't make a lot of sense; the original ("When the two return home they find") was much better.

You're right, though: the copy in that section does need some work—perhaps quite a bit. Thanks for the reminder; I'm going to take a look at it as soon as I get my "real" work finished. — UncleBubba ^{( T @ C )} 23:00, 10 February 2021 (UTC)

Okay. No complaints on the new revision, just going to make one formatting edit for consistency in referring to the Handbook. DrakeyC (talk) 16:55, 11 February 2021 (UTC)

I did make a couple grammar corrections and wording changes. The biggest major change; mentioning the name of Maxie's wife in the middle of the sentence and specifying how they were dispatched, then saying "and Otho" at the end made it a bit awkward to read, and giving these two details is not really necessary to the overall summary. DrakeyC (talk) 17:00, 11 February 2021 (UTC)

Hi

Greetings, I have noticed that you have left a message on my talk page yesterday. My response to you is: bite me. — Preceding unsigned comment added by NoobServer625 (talk • contribs) 03:17, 14 February 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-07

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. [88][89]
• 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. [90]

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).

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17:55, 15 February 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-08

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. [91]
• The syntax highlighter now works with more languages: Futhark, Graphviz/DOT, CDDL and AMDGPU. [92]

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. [93]

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.

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00:16, 23 February 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-09

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 using the Growth team tools can now show the name of a newcomer's mentor anywhere through a magic word. This can be used for welcome messages or userboxes.
• A new version of the VideoCutTool is now available. It enables cropping, trimming, audio disabling, and rotating video content. It is being created as part of the developer outreach programs.

Problems

• There was a problem with the job queue. This meant some functions did not save changes and mass messages were delayed. This did not affect wiki edits. [94]
• Some editors may not be logged in to their accounts automatically in the latest versions of Firefox and Safari. [95]

Changes later this week

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

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19:07, 1 March 2021 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – March 2021

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

Administrator changes

TJMSmith

Boing! said Zebedee • Hiberniantears • Lear's Fool • Only • WGFinley

Interface administrator changes

AmandaNP

Guideline and policy news

• A request for comment is open that proposes a process for the community to revoke administrative permissions. This follows a 2019 RfC in favor of creating one such a policy.
• A request for comment is in progress to remove F7 (invalid fair-use claim) subcriterion a, which covers immediate deletion of non-free media with invalid fair-use tags.
• A request for comment seeks to grant page movers the delete-redirect userright, which allows moving a page over a single-revision redirect, regardless of that redirect's target. The full proposal is at Wikipedia:Page mover/delete-redirect.
• A request for comment asks if sysops may place the General sanctions/Coronavirus disease 2019 editnotice template on pages in scope that do not have page-specific sanctions?
• There is a discussion in progress concerning automatic protection of each day's featured article with Pending Changes protection.

Technical news

• When blocking an IPv6 address with Twinkle, there is now a checkbox with the option to just block the /64 range. When doing so, you can still leave a block template on the initial, single IP address' talkpage.
• When protecting a page with Twinkle, you can now add a note if doing so was in response to a request at WP:RfPP, and even link to the specific revision.
• There have been a number of reported issues with Pending Changes. Most problems setting protection appear to have been resolved (phab:T273317) but other issues with autoaccepting edits persist (phab:T275322).

Arbitration

• By motion, the discretionary sanctions originally authorized under the GamerGate case are now authorized under a new Gender and sexuality case, with sanctions authorized for all edits about, and all pages related to, any gender-related dispute or controversy and associated people. Sanctions issued under GamerGate are now considered Gender and sexuality sanctions.
• The Kurds and Kurdistan case was closed, authorizing standard discretionary sanctions for the topics of Kurds and Kurdistan, broadly construed.

Miscellaneous

• Following the 2021 Steward Elections, the following editors have been appointed as stewards: AmandaNP, Operator873, Stanglavine, Teles, and Wiki13.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 19:15, 1 March 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-10

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

Recent changes

• Section translation now works on Bengali Wikipedia. It helps mobile editors translate sections of articles. It will come to more wikis later. The first focus is active wikis with a smaller number of articles. You can test it and leave feedback.
• Flagged revisions now give admins the review right. [96]
• When someone links to a Wikipedia article on Twitter this will now show a preview of the article. [97]

Problems

• Many graphs have JavaScript errors. Graph editors can check their graphs in their browser's developer console after editing. [98]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 9 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 10 March. It will be on all wikis from 11 March (calendar).
• The New Discussion tool will soon be a new discussion tools beta feature for on most Wikipedias. The goal is to make it easier to start new discussions. [99]

Future changes

• There will be a number of changes to make it easier to work with templates. Some will come to the first wikis in March. Other changes will come to the first wikis in June. This is both for those who use templates and those who create or maintain them. You can read more.
• Reference Previews will become a default feature on some wikis on 17 March. They will share a setting with Page Previews. If you prefer the Reference Tooltips or Navigation-Popups gadget you can keep using them. If so Reference Previews won't be shown. [100][101]
• New JavaScript-based functions will not work in Internet Explorer 11. This is because Internet Explorer is an old browser that doesn't work with how JavaScript is written today. Everything that works in Internet Explorer 11 today will continue working in Internet Explorer for now. You can read more.

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17:50, 8 March 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-11

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 that are part of the desktop improvements project can now use a new search function. The desktop improvements and the new search will come to more wikis later. You can also test it early.
• Editors who put up banners or change site-wide JavaScript code should use the client error graph to see that their changes has not caused problems. You can read more. [102]

Problems

• Due to database issues the Wikimedia Beta Cluster was read-only for over a day.

Changes later this week

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

Future changes

• You can add a newline or carriage return character to a custom signature if you use a template. There is a proposal to not allow them in the future. This is because they can cause formatting problems. [103][104]
• You will be able to read but not edit 12 wikis for a short period of time on 23 March at 06:00 (UTC). This could take 30 minutes but will probably be much faster.
• You can use Quarry for SQL queries to the Wiki Replicas. Cross-database JOINS will no longer work from 23 March. There will be a new field to specify the database to connect to. If you think this affects you and you need help you can post on Phabricator or on Wikitech. PAWS and other ways to do SQL queries to the Wiki Replicas will be affected later. [105]

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23:20, 15 March 2021 (UTC)

Feedback request: Wikipedia policies and guidelines request for comment

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Tech News: 2021-12

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 Wikipedia app for KaiOS phones. They don't have a touch screen so readers navigate with the phone keys. There is now a simulator so you can see what it looks like.
• The reply tool and new discussion tool are now available as the "Discussion tools" beta feature in almost all wikis except German Wikipedia.

Problems

• You will be able to read but not edit twelve wikis for a short period of time on 23 March at 06:00 (UTC). This can also affect password changes, logging in to new wikis, global renames and changing or confirming emails. This could take 30 minutes but will probably be much faster.

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 23 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 24 March. It will be on all wikis from 25 March (calendar).
• Syntax highlighting colours will change to be easier to read. This will soon come to the first wikis. [106]

Future changes

• Flagged revisions will no longer have multiple tags like "tone" or "depth". It will also only have one tier. This was changed because very few wikis used these features and they make the tool difficult to maintain. [107][108]
• Gadgets and user scripts can access variables about the current page in JavaScript. In 2015 this was moved from wg* to mw.config. wg* will soon no longer work. [109]

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

16:51, 22 March 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-13

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 very old web browsers don’t work well with the Wikimedia wikis. Some old code for browsers that used to be supported is being removed. This could cause issues in those browsers. [110]
• IRC recent changes feeds have been moved to a new server. Make sure all tools automatically reconnect to irc.wikimedia.org and not to the name of any specific server. Users should also consider switching to the more modern EventStreams. [111]

Problems

• When you move a page that many editors have on their watchlist the history can be split. It might also not be possible to move it again for a while. This is because of a job queue problem. [112]
• Some translatable pages on Meta could not be edited. This was because of a bug in the translation tool. The new MediaWiki version was delayed because of problems like this. [113][114]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 30 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 31 March. It will be on all wikis from 1 April (calendar).

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17:29, 29 March 2021 (UTC)

Feedback request: Politics, government, and law request for comment

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Administrators' newsletter – April 2021

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

Administrator changes

Alexandria • Happyme22 • RexxS

Guideline and policy news

• Following a request for comment, F7 (invalid fair-use claim) subcriterion a has been deprecated; it covered immediate deletion of non-free media with invalid fair-use tags.
• Following a request for comment, page movers were granted the delete-redirect userright, which allows moving a page over a single-revision redirect, regardless of that redirect's target.

Technical news

• When you move a page that many editors have on their watchlist the history can be split and it might also not be possible to move it again for a while. This is because of a job queue problem. (T278350)
• Code to support some very old web browsers is being removed. This could cause issues in those browsers. (T277803)

Arbitration

• A community consultation on the Arbitration Committee discretionary sanctions procedure is open until April 25.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 22:20, 1 April 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-14

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

• Editors can collapse part of an article so you have to click on it to see it. When you click a link to a section inside collapsed content it will now expand to show the section. The browser will scroll down to the section. Previously such links didn't work unless you manually expanded the content first. [115]

Changes later this week

• The citoid API will use for example 2010-12-XX instead of 2010-12 for dates with a month but no days. This is because 2010-12 could be confused with 2010-2012 instead of December 2010. This is called level 1 instead of level 0 in the Extended Date/Time Format. [116]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 6 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 7 April. It will be on all wikis from 8 April (calendar).

Future changes

• PAWS can now connect to the new Wiki Replicas. Cross-database JOINS will no longer work from 28 April. There is a new way to connect to the databases. Until 28 April both ways to connect to the databases will work. If you think this affects you and you need help you can post on Phabricator or on Wikitech.

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

19:39, 5 April 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-16

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

• Email to the Wikimedia wikis are handled by groups of Wikimedia editors. These volunteer response teams now use Znuny instead of OTRS. The functions and interface remain the same. The volunteer administrators will give more details about the next steps soon. [117][118]
• If you use syntax highlighting, you can see line numbers in the 2010 and 2017 wikitext editors when editing templates. This is to make it easier to see line breaks or talk about specific lines. Line numbers will soon come to all namespaces. [119][120][121]
• Because of a technical change there could be problems with gadgets and scripts that have an edit summary area that looks similar to this one. If they look strange they should use mw.loader.using('mediawiki.action.edit.styles') to go back to how they looked before. [122]
• The latest version of MediaWiki came to the Wikimedia wikis last week. There was no Tech News issue last week.

Changes later this week

• There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

Future changes

• The user group oversight will be renamed suppress. This is for technical reasons. This is the technical name. It doesn't affect what you call the editors with this user right on your wiki. This is planned to happen in two weeks. You can comment in Phabricator if you have objections.

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16:48, 19 April 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-17

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

• Templates have parameters that can have specific values. It is possible to suggest values for editors with TemplateData. You can soon see them as a drop-down list in the visual editor. This is to help template users find the right values faster. [123][124][125]

Changes later this week

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

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21:23, 26 April 2021 (UTC)

Feedback request: Wikipedia policies and guidelines request for comment

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Tech News: 2021-18

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

• Twinkle is a gadget on English Wikipedia. It can help with maintenance and patrolling. It can now be used on other wikis. You can get Twinkle on your wiki using the twinkle-starter GitHub repository.

Problems

• The content translation tool did not work for many articles for a little while. This was because of a bug. [126]
• Some things will not work for about a minute on 5 May. This will happen around 06:00 UTC. This will affect the content translation tool and notifications among other things. This is because of an upgrade to avoid crashes. [127]

Changes later this week

• Reference Previews will become a default feature on a number of wikis on 5 May. This is later than planned because of some changes. You can use it without using Page Previews if you want to. The earlier plan was to have the preference to use both or none. [128][129]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 4 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 5 May. It will be on all wikis from 6 May (calendar).

Future changes

• The CSS classes .error, .warning and .success do not work for mobile readers if they have not been specifically defined on your wiki. From June they will not work for desktop readers. This can affect gadgets and templates. The classes can be defined in MediaWiki:Common.css or template styles instead. [130]

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15:42, 3 May 2021 (UTC)

Feedback request: Wikipedia technical issues and templates request for comment

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Administrators' newsletter – May 2021

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

Administrator changes

Enchanter • Carlossuarez46

Interface administrator changes

Ragesoss

Guideline and policy news

• Following an RfC, consensus was found that third party appeals are allowed but discouraged.
• The 2021 Desysop Policy RfC was closed with no consensus. Consensus was found in a previous RfC for a community based desysop procedure, though the procedure proposed in the 2021 RfC did not gain consensus.

Technical news

• The user group oversight will be renamed to suppress. This is for technical reasons. You can comment at T112147 if you have objections.

Arbitration

• The community consultation on the Arbitration Committee discretionary sanctions procedure was closed, and an initial draft based on feedback from the now closed consultation is expected to be released in early June to early July for community review.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 15:52, 7 May 2021 (UTC)

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.

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15:09, 10 May 2021 (UTC)

Feedback request: Wikipedia policies and guidelines request for comment

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Feedback request: Maths, science, and technology request for comment

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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. [131] [132] [133]
• 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. [134][135]
• 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. [136]

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. [137]
• 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).

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13:48, 17 May 2021 (UTC)

Feedback request: Politics, government, and law request for comment

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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)

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. [138]

Changes later this week

• There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

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17:05, 31 May 2021 (UTC)

Scripts++ Newsletter – Issue 21

News and updates associated with user scripts from the past four months (February through May 2021).

Hello everyone and welcome to the 21st issue of the Wikipedia Scripts++ Newsletter:

Scripts Submit your new/improved script here

New scripts

• Alexander Davronov's HistoryHelper helps to copy diff links from the history display of a page
• Aseleste's Purger makes it easier to purge or null edit a page
• Awesome Aasim:
  • CatMan adds a category manager to simplify interactions for adding and removing the categories of a page
  • redirectcreator allows for easy creation of multiple redirects
• Bop34's EasyDesc adds a link to the top navigation bar which allows you to add a short description without opening the edit menu
• BrandonXLF's NullEdit adds a portlet link to perform a null edit on a page
• Chlod:
  • FoldArchives collapses archived talk page threads in order to reduce screen space
  • GoToTitle converts the page title into an input field for navigating to other pages
  • UserHighlighter adds highlighting to links to the userpages, talk pages, and contributions of administrators and other user groups as well as tooltips to indicate which groups a user is in
• GhostInTheMachine:
  • NoEditSummary adds a warning if an edit will be saved without an edit summary
  • SortWhatLinksHere sorts the links shows on Special:WhatLinksHere
  • WatchlistTidy moves the "new updates found" timestamp block from the bottom of the filter block to the top of the filter area on the watchlist
• GorillaWarfare's curlies simplifies converting curly quotes to straight quotes while in the source editing mode
• Nardog:
  • AutoSectionLink corrects the /* section link */ every time you hit "Show changes"
  • AutoTestcases autofills "Preview page with this template/module" with the most relevant /testcases page that exists
  • SortCentralAuthByEditCount sorts the list of local accounts on CentralAuth by edit count
• Novem Linguae:
  • CiteHighlighter highlights 1800 sources green, yellow, or red depending on reliability.
  • NPPLinks adds WP:BEFORE Google search links, copyvio check, duplicate article check, and other links to the left menu.
• Ritenerek's goce_nav adds a link to Wikipedia:WikiProject Guild of Copy Editors to the navigation menu
• Suffusion of Yellow:
  • filterDiff: Adds a "Show changes" button to the filter editor.
  • filterNotes: Parses filter notes as wikitext (so links are clickable), and signs and dates new comments for you.
  • filterTest: Adds a "Test changes" button. Opens Special:AbuseFilter/test with what's currently in the edit form, not with what's saved in the database, so you don't have to copy-paste your changes.
• Terasail's COI Request Tool allows users to reply to, close or remove conflict of interest edit requests

Updated scripts

• Twinkle has a number of improvements, including that most watchlist defaults now make use of the new temporary watchlist feature. Other changes include rollbacks treating consecutive IPv6 editors in the same /64 range as the same user, adding a preview for shared IP tagging, a preference for watching users after CSD notification, and for sysops, the ability to block the /64 and link to a WP:RfPP request, and new copyright blocks default to indefinite.
• Wikipedia:Shortdesc helper now v3.4.17, changes include minor fixes and preventing edits that don't change the description.
• BrandonXLF's CitationStyleMarker now recognizes WP:CSLSA and WP:CSVAN styles, in addition to WP:CS1 and WP:CS2
• Joeytje50's JWB now version 4.1.0, includes the ability to generate page lists from the search tool, major updates to the handling of regular expressions, the storing of user settings, the addition of upload protection, and an option to skip pages that belong to a specific category, among other changes. See User:Joeytje50/JWB/Changelog for a full list of recent changes.
• User:SD0001/deleted-metadata-link.js – updated to include a link to snippet of deleted content, instead of just metadata.

Miscellaneous

• Wikipedia:User scripts/List has been revamped to make it easier to find scripts suited for your needs. If you know of a cool script that is missing on the list, or a script on the list that is no longer working, please edit the list or let us know on the talk page.

Pending requests

• A request for a script to help admins posting "recent death" items to Template:In the news
• A request for a script to warn users about syntax and template errors
• ...and many more, all available at Wikipedia:User scripts/Requests

My apologies for this long-overdue issue, and if I missed any scripts.
Hopefully going forward we can go back to monthly releases - any help would be appreciated. Thanks, --DannyS712 (talk) 13:04, 2 June 2021 (UTC)

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Feedback request: Wikipedia policies and guidelines request for comment

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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. [139][140][141]
• 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. [142]
• 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. [143][144]

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)

Feedback request: Politics, government, and law request for comment

Your feedback is requested at Talk:Eugene Gu on a "Politics, government, and law" request for comment. Thank you for helping out!
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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)

Feedback request: Wikipedia technical issues and templates request for comment

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Feedback request: Wikipedia proposals request for comment

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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. [145]
• Language links on Wikidata now works for multilingual Wikisource. [146]

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. [147]
• 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. [148][149]

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)

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. [150]

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. [151]

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)

GOCE June 2021 newsletter

Guild of Copy Editors June 2021 Newsletter Hello and welcome to the June newsletter, our first newsletter of 2021, which is a brief update of Guild activities since December 2020. To unsubscribe, follow the link at the bottom of this box. Current events Election time: Voting in our mid-year Election of Coordinators opened on 16 June and will conclude at the end of the month. GOCE coordinators normally serve a six-month term and are elected on an approval basis. Have your say and show support here. June Blitz: Our June copy-editing blitz is underway and will conclude on 26 June. Drive and blitz reports January Drive: 28 editors completed 324 copy edits totalling 714,902 words. At the end of the drive, the backlog had reached a record low of 52 articles. (full results) February Blitz: 15 editors completed 48 copy edits totalling 142,788 words. (full results) March Drive: 29 editors completed 215 copy edits totalling 407,736 words. (full results) April Blitz: 12 editors completed 23 copy edits totalling 56,574 words. (full results) May Drive: 29 editors completed 356 copy edits totalling 479,013 words. (full results) Other news Progress report: as of 26 June, GOCE participants had completed 343 Requests since 1 January. The backlog has fluctuated but remained in control, with a low of 52 tagged articles at the end of January and a high of 620 articles in mid-June. Thank you all again for your participation; we wouldn't be able to achieve what we have without you! Cheers from your GOCE coordinators Jonesey95, Dhtwiki, Miniapolis, Tenryuu and Twofingered Typist, and from member Reidgreg. To discontinue receiving GOCE newsletters, please remove your name from our mailing list.

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of Wikipedia:WikiProject Guild of Copy Editors at 12:38, 26 June 2021 (UTC).

Feedback request: Maths, science, and technology request for comment

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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. [152]
• 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. [153]

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. [154][155]

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. [156][157]

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)

Feedback request: Politics, government, and law request for comment

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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)

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. [158]

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. [159]

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. [160][161]
• 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. [162]

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)

Feedback request: Politics, government, and law request for comment

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Feedback request: Maths, science, and technology request for comment

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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. [163][164]
• 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. [165]

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)

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)

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)

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. [166][167]

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. [168]
• 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)

Feedback request: WikiProjects and collaborations request for comment

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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. [169]

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. [170]
• Vue.js will be the JavaScript framework for MediaWiki in the future. [171]

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)

Feedback request: Politics, government, and law request for comment

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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. [172]

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. [173][174][175]

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. [176]
• 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. [177]
• 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)

Feedback request: Maths, science, and technology request for comment

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Feedback request: Maths, science, and technology request for comment

Your feedback is requested at Talk:Psychology on a "Maths, science, and technology" request for comment. Thank you for helping out!
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Feedback request: Wikipedia policies and guidelines request for comment

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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)

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. [178]

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. [179]

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)

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

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. [180]

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. [181][182]
• 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.

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15:19, 6 September 2021 (UTC)

Feedback request: Wikipedia style and naming request for comment

Your feedback is requested at Wikipedia talk:Username policy on a "Wikipedia style and naming" request for comment. Thank you for helping out!
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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. [183]
• 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. [184]

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. [185]
• 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. [186]
• 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. [187][188]

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15:32, 13 September 2021 (UTC)

Feedback request: Politics, government, and law request for comment

Your feedback is requested at Talk:Julian Assange on a "Politics, government, and law" request for comment. Thank you for helping out!
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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. [189]
• 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. [190]

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. [191]

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. [192]
• 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)

Feedback request: Wikipedia technical issues and templates request for comment

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Feedback request: Politics, government, and law request for comment

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Feedback request: Wikipedia proposals request for comment

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Feedback request: Wikipedia policies and guidelines request for comment

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Feedback request: Politics, government, and law request for comment

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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. [193]

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. [194]
• 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. [195]

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

22:21, 27 September 2021 (UTC)

September 2021 Guild of Copy Editors newsletter

Guild of Copy Editors September 2021 Newsletter Hello and welcome to the September GOCE newsletter, a brief update of Guild activities since June 2021.                  Current and upcoming events September Drive: Our current backlog-elimination drive is open until 23:59 on 30 September (UTC) and is open to all copy editors. Sign up today! Drive and Blitz reports June Blitz: From 20 to 26 June, 6 participating editors claimed 16 copy edits, focusing on requests and articles tagged in March and April. Final results, including barnstars awarded, are available here. July Drive: Almost 575,000 words of articles were copy edited for this event. Of the 24 people who signed up, 18 copyedited at least one article. Final results and awards are listed here. August Blitz: From 15 to 21 August, we copy edited articles tagged in April and May 2021 and requests. 9 participating editors completed 17 copy edits on the blitz. Final results, including barnstars awarded, are available here. Other news June election: Jonesey95 was chosen to continue as lead coordinator, assisted by Dhtwiki, Tenryuu, and Miniapolis. New maintenance template added to our project scope: After a short discussion in June, we added {{cleanup tense}} to the list of maintenance templates that adds articles to the Guild's copy editing backlog categories. This change added 198 articles, spread over 97 months of backlog, to our queue. We processed all of those articles except for those from the three or four most recent months during the July backlog elimination drive (Here's a link to a "tense" discussion during the drive). Progress report: As of 18:26, 24 September 2021 (UTC), GOCE copyeditors have processed 468 requests since 1 January and there were 60 requests awaiting completion on the Requests page. The backlog of articles tagged for copy-editing stood at 433 (see monthly progress graph above). Thank you all again for your participation; we wouldn't be able to achieve what we have without you! Cheers from your GOCE coordinators Jonesey95, Dhtwiki, Tenryuu, and Miniapolis. To discontinue receiving GOCE newsletters, please remove your name from our mailing list.

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:46, 30 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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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:05, 1 October 2021 (UTC)

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. [196]
• 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. [197]
• 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. [198]
• 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. [199]

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)

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)

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)

Feedback request: Wikipedia policies and guidelines request for comment

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Feedback request: Wikipedia technical issues and templates request for comment

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Feedback request: Politics, government, and law request for comment

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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. [200]
• 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. [201]

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)

Feedback request: Politics, government, and law request for comment

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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. [202]

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)

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. [203][204]

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. [205]
• 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.

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20:35, 8 November 2021 (UTC)

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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. [206]
• There was a problem with search last week. Many search requests did not work for 2 hours because of a configuration error. [207]

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).

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22:05, 15 November 2021 (UTC)

Feedback request: Wikipedia style and naming request for comment

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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.

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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) 00:13, 23 November 2021 (UTC)

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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).

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21:14, 29 November 2021 (UTC)

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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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December 2021 GOCE Newsletter

Guild of Copy Editors December 2021 Newsletter Hello and welcome to the December GOCE newsletter, a brief update of Guild activities since September 2021.                  Current and upcoming events Election time: Our end-of-year election of coordinators opened for nominations on 1 December and will close on 15 December at 23:59 (UTC). Voting opens at 00:01 the following day and will continue until 31 December at 23:59, just before "Auld Lang Syne". Coordinators normally serve a six-month term and are elected on an approval basis. Self-nominations are welcome. If you've thought of helping out at the Guild, or know of another editor who would make a good coordinator, please consider standing for election or nominating them here. December Blitz: We have scheduled a week-long copy-editing blitz for 12 to 18 December. Sign up now! Drive and Blitz reports September Drive: Almost 400,000 words of articles were copy edited for this event. Of the 27 people who signed up, 21 copyedited at least one article. Final results and awards are listed here. October Blitz: From 17 to 23 October, we copy edited articles tagged in May and June 2021 and requests. 8 participating editors completed 26 copy edits on the blitz. Final results, including barnstars awarded, are available here. November Drive: Over 350,000 words of articles were copy edited for this event. Of the 21 people who signed up, 14 copyedited at least one article. Final results and awards are listed here. Other news It is with great sadness that we report the death on 19 November of Twofingered Typist, who was active with the Guild almost daily for the past several years. His contributions long exceeded the thresholds for the Guild's highest awards, and he had a hand in innumerable good and featured article promotions as a willing collaborator. Twofingered Typist also served as a Guild coordinator from July 2019 to June 2021. He is sorely missed by the Wikipedia community. Progress report: As of 30 November, GOCE copyeditors have completed 619 requests in 2021 and there were 51 requests awaiting completion on the Requests page. The backlog stood at 946 articles tagged for copy-editing (see monthly progress graph above). Thank you all again for your participation; we wouldn't be able to achieve what we have without you! Cheers from your GOCE coordinators Jonesey95, Dhtwiki, Tenryuu, and Miniapolis. To discontinue receiving GOCE newsletters, please remove your name from our mailing list.

Distributed via MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 15:03, 6 December 2021 (UTC)

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. [208]
• 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. [209]

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)

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Tech News: 2021-50

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 are now default short aliases for the "Project:" namespace on most wikis. E.g. On Wikibooks wikis, [[WB:]] will go to the local language default for the [[Project:]] namespace. This change is intended to help the smaller communities have easy access to this feature. Additional local aliases can still be requested via the usual process. [210]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 14 December. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 15 December. It will be on all wikis from 16 December (calendar).

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

22:26, 13 December 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-51

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

• Because of the holidays the next issue of Tech News will be sent out on 10 January 2022.

Recent changes

• Queries made by the DynamicPageList extension (<DynamicPageList>) are now only allowed to run for 10 seconds and error if they take longer. This is in response to multiple outages where long-running queries caused an outage on all wikis. [211]

Changes later this week

• There is no new MediaWiki version this week or next week.

Future changes

• The developers of the Wikipedia iOS app are looking for testers who edit in multiple languages. You can read more and let them know if you are interested.
• The Wikimedia Cloud VPS hosts technical projects for the Wikimedia movement. Developers need to claim projects they use. This is because old and unused projects are removed once a year. Unclaimed projects can be shut down from February. [212]

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22:04, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

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Scripts++ Newsletter – Issue 22

Hello everyone, and welcome to the 22nd issue of the Wikipedia Scripts++ Newsletter. This issue will be covering new and updated user scripts from the past seven months (June through December 2021).

Got anything good? Tell us about your new, improved, old, or messed-up script here!

Featured script

LuckyRename, by Alexis Jazz, is this month's featured script. LuckyRename makes requesting file moves easier, and automates the many steps in file moving (including automatic replacement of existing usage). Give it a shot!

Updated scripts

• SD0001: hide-reverted-edits has been updated to take into account changes in reversion tools like Twinkle and RedWarn.
• Writ Keeper: massRollback.js has added a rollback-some option (missed in last issue).
• ClaudineChionh: SkinSwitcher (a fork and update of Eizen's script) provides an options menu/toolbox/toolbar allowing users to view a given page in MediaWiki's default skins.

Scripts++ Newsletter

Pending requests

• Mass-patrolling at Special:NewPages
• Taking up the mantle of an almost completed peer review javascript bot
• Restore the Wikipedia Citation Tool for Google Books
• Autohighlighting specific characters (Greek)
• ...and many more, all available at Wikipedia:User scripts/Requests

Miscellaneous

• Wikipedia:User scripts/Ranking is a sortable table of Wikipedia's thousand-or-so most commonly used scripts; it includes their author, last modification date, installation count, and sometimes a short description.
• Toolhub is a community managed catalog of software tools used in the Wikimedia movement. Technical volunteers can use Toolhub to document the tools that they create or maintain. All Wikimedians can use Toolhub to search for tools to help with their workflows and to create lists of useful tools to share with others.

New scripts

• Ahecht:
  • draft-sorter sorts AfC drafts by adding WikiProject banners to their talk pages. It supersedes User:Enterprisey/draft-sorter, adding a few features and fixing some bugs.
  • massmove, a modified User:Plastikspork/massmove.js that adds a link to the left column, allows adding and removing both prefixes and suffixes.
  • watchlistcleaner removes missing pages (redlinks), redirects, pages you haven't edited recently, and/or pages you've never edited from your watchlist.
• Awesome Aasim:
  • Infiniscroll adds infinite scrolling to user contributions, page histories, and log pages.
  • Quick create allows for the fast creation of red-linked pages with two clicks.
• Caburum:
  • UTCclock adds a clock displaying the current UTC time.
• Chlod:
  • CopiedTemplateEditor, mainly for CCI case handlers, allows graphically editing a talk page's {{copied}} templates.
• DaxServer:
  • BooksToSfn adds a portlet link in Visual Editor's source mode editing, in main namespace articles or in the user's Sandbox. When clicked, it converts one {{cite book}} inside a <ref>...</ref> tag block into an {{Sfn}}.
• FlightTime:
  • OneClickArchiver is a custom version of User:Technical_13/Scripts/OneClickArchiver which doesn't prepend {{Clear}} to the top of each section on the archive page.
• Jon Harald Søby:
  • diffedit enables editing directly from viewing a diff "when, for instance, you notice a tiny mistake deep into an article, and don't want to edit the entire article and re-find that one line to fix that tiny mistake".
  • warnOnLargeFile warns you if you're about to open a very large file (width/height >10,000px or file size >100 MB) from a file page.
• JPxG:
  • PressPass adds a collection of tools for Newspapers.com including configurable automatic citation generation in five different formats.
  • CurrentSwitcher gives you links on the contribs page to hide duplicate entries, current revisions, rollbacks, huggles, twinkles, and redwarns.
  • TrackSum lets you automatically sum the lengths of tracks in templates like {{track listing}} and get total runtimes.
• Nardog:
  • CopySectLink adds a button to copy the unencoded page title or section path next to each heading.
  • IPAInput allows you to type in IPA symbols by directly looking at an IPA key like Help:IPA/English and clicking on the symbols.
  • TemplatePreviewGuard warns when you try to use "Preview page with this template" with a page that doesn't transclude the template.
• NguoiDungKhongDinhDanh:
  • ContribsTabVector adds "Contributions" and "Statistics" tabs to user and user talk pages on the Vector skin.
  • CopyvioChecker adds a "CopyvioCheck" tab to all pages, except Special (Vector skin only).
  • LiveDiffLink is a version of Equazcion's LiveDiffLink which shows a wikilink instead of a URL.
  • QuickDiff (by OneTwoThreeFall at Fandom) lets you quickly view any diff link on a wiki, whether on Recent Changes, contribs pages, history pages, the diff view itself, or elsewhere. For more information, view its page on Fandom.
• Novem Linguae:
  • DetectSNG scans a list of 1,600 SNG keywords and displays them at the top of the article.
  • NotSoFast highlights recently created articles in the new pages feed, to discourage patrolling them too quickly.
  • UserRightsDiff concisely displays what perm was added or removed when viewing Special:UserRights.
  • VoteCounter displays a rough count of keeps and deletes at XFDs, RFCs, etc.
  • WatchlistAFD automatically watchlists the AFDs of any pages you AFC accept or NPP patrol, to help you calibrate your reviewing.
• P.T.Đ:
  • TwinkleMobile enables Twinkle on mobile view (Minerva skin).
• Qwerfjkl:
  • editRedirect adds a → link after redirects to edit them.
  • RegExTypoFix, a script for fixing typos, is a wrapper for User:Joeytje50/RETF.js.
  • talkback creates links after user talk page links like this: |C|TB (with the first linking to the user's contributions, and the latter giving the option of sending a {{talkback}} notice). It also adds a [copy] link next to section headers.
• Rublov:
  • diff-link shows "copy" links on history and contributions pages that copy an internal link to the diff (e.g., Special:Diff/1026402230) to your clipboard when clicked.
• Rummskartoffel:
  • auto-watchlist-expiry automatically watchlists every page you edit for a user-definable duration (you can still pick a different time using the dropdown, though).
  • generate pings generates the wikitext needed to ping all members of a category, up to 50 editors (the limit defined by MediaWiki).
  • share ExpandTemplates url allows for easy sharing of your inputs to Special:ExpandTemplates. It adds a button that, when clicked, copies a shareable URL to your exact invocation of the page, like this. Other editors do not need to have this script installed in order to access the URL generated.
  • show tag names shows the real names of tags next to their display names in places such as page revision histories or the watchlist.
• Tol:
  • VisualEditor Citation Needed adds a button (under "Insert") in VisualEditor to add a {{citation needed}} tag.
• Venkat TL:
  • ColourContrib color-codes the user contributions page so that pages you've edited last are sharply distinguished from pages where another editor was the last to edit the page.
• Vukky:
  • StatusChanger is a fork of Enterprisey's Status Changer, which adds a UI to the script. (using Morebits, so you'll need to have Twinkle enabled to use it).

All in all, some very neat scripts were written in these last few months. Hoping to see many more in the next issue -- drop us a line on the talk page if you've been writing (or seeing) anything cool and good. Filling in for DannyS712, this has been jp×g. Take care, and merry Christmas! jp×g 07:30, 24 December 2021 (UTC)

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The WikiEagle - January 2022

The WikiEagle

The WikiProject Aviation Newsletter

Volume I — Issue 1
Aviation Project • Project discussion • Members • Assessment • Outreach • The WikiEagle
Announcements After over a decade of silence, the WikiProject Aviation newsletter is making a comeback under the name The WikiEagle. This first issue was sent to all active members of the project and its sub-projects. If you wish to continue receiving The WikiEagle, you can add your username to the mailing list. For now the newsletter only covers general project news and is run by only one editor. If you wish to help or to become a columnist, please let us know. If you have an idea which you believe would improve the newsletter, please share it; suggestions are welcome and encouraged. On 16 December, an RfC was closed which determined theaerodrome.com to be an unreliable source. The website, which is cited over 1,500 articles, mainly on WWI aviation, as of the publishing of this issue. Luft46.com has been added to the list of problematic sources after this discussion. The Jim Lovell article was promoted to Featured Article status on 26 December after being nominated by Hawkeye7. The Raymond Hesselyn article was promoted to Good Article status on 4 December after being nominated by Zawed. The Supermarine Sea King article was promoted to Good Article status on 22 December after being nominated by Amitchell125. The William Hodgson (RAF officer) article was promoted to Good Article status on 26 December after being nominated by Zawed.
Members New Members KingAviationKid (Joined on 17 December) PatrickChiao (Joined on 22 December) Wp9097 (Joined on 16 December) Number of active members: 386. Total number of members: 921. Closed Discussions Featured Article assessment Jim Lovell (discussion) – Closed as promoted on 26 December 2021 Good Article assessment HAL Tejas (discussion) – Closed as not promoted on 30 December 2021 William Hodgson (RAF officer) (discussion) – Closed as promoted on 26 December 2021 Supermarine Sea King (discussion) – Closed as promoted on 22 December 2021 Raymond Hesselyn (discussion) – Closed as promoted on 4 December 2021 Deletion Timeline of Berlin Brandenburg Airport's construction (discussion) – Closed as delete and redirect on 30 December 2021 Evergreen International Airlines Flight 17 (discussion) – Closed as keep on 25 December 2021 Requested moves Akbarpur (Ambedkar Nagar) Airstrip → Akbarpur Airstrip (discussion) – Closed as moved on 30 December 2021 1983 Avensa Douglas DC-9 crash → Avensa Flight 007 (discussion) – Closed as moved on 30 December 2021 Garuda Indonesia Flight 035 → Garuda Indonesian Airways Flight 035 (discussion) – Withdrawn on 28 December 2021	Article Statistics This data reflects values from DMY. Aviation pages by quality Quality Total FA 142 FL 15 A 56 GA 505 B 4,573 C 11,878 Start 15,082 Stub 18,754 List 2,539 Category 11,638 Disambig 653 File 2,713 Portal 629 Project 89 Redirect 1,518 Template 2,489 NA 66 Assessed 73,339 Unassessed 1 Total 73,340 WikiWork factors (?) ω = 250,771 Ω = 4.93
New/Ongoing Discussions Featured Article review D. B. Cooper (discussion) – Since 14 December 2021 A-class Article assessment Granville Gee Bee Model A (discussion) – Since 21 April 2020 List of aviation shootdowns and accidents during the Iraq War (discussion) – Since 22 February 2010 Good Article assessment Romanian Air Corps (discussion) – Since 25 December 2021 Jean Batten (discussion) – Since 2 October 2021 Merger proposals List of astronauts by name → List of astronauts by year of selection (discussion) – Since 10 August 2021 List of cosmonauts → List of space travelers by nationality (discussion) – Since 10 August 2021 List of space travelers by name → List of space travelers by nationality (discussion) – Since 10 August 2021 Holidays Czech Airlines → Czech Airlines (discussion) – Since 23 June 2021 Bendix Aviation → Bendix Corporation (discussion) – Since 30 May 2021 Airport Movement Area Safety System → Airport Surface Surveillance Capability (discussion) – Since 29 May 2021 ASDE-X → Airport Surface Surveillance Capability (discussion) – Since 28 May 2021 Splitting proposals Family Airlines (discussion) – Since 23 November 2021 2021 Kabul airport attack (discussion) – Since 24 September 2021 List of military aircraft of the United States (discussion) – Since 16 August 2021 Braniff International Airways (discussion) – Since 8 September 2019 Deletion List of maiden voyages (discussion) – Since 29 December 2021 Requested moves Hot-air balloon → Hot air balloon (discussion) – Since 30 December 2021 Aeropostal Alas de Venezuela Flight 108 → Aeropostal Alas de Venezuela Flight 109 (discussion) – Since 28 December 2021 Garuda Indonesia Flight 150 → Garuda Indonesian Airways Flight 150 (discussion) – Since 28 December 2021 Garuda Indonesia Flight 206 → Garuda Indonesian Airways Flight 206 (discussion) – Since 28 December 2021 Garuda Indonesia Flight 708 → Garuda Indonesian Airways Flight 708 (discussion) – Since 28 December 2021 Garuda Indonesia Flight 892 → Garuda Indonesian Airways Flight 892 (discussion) – Since 28 December 2021 TWA Flight 800 → TWA Flight 800 (1996) (discussion) – Since 27 December 2021 Dynamic Airways Flight 405 → Dynamic International Airways Flight 405 (discussion) – Since 26 December 2021 CommutAir Flight 4281 → CommutAir Flight 4821 (discussion) – Since 25 December 2021 Thai Airways → Thai Airways International (discussion) – Since 13 December 2021 Thai Airways fleet → Thai Airways International fleet (discussion) – Since 13 December 2021 List of Thai Airways destinations → List of Thai Airways International destinations (discussion) – Since 13 December 2021 Did you know Ravish Malhotra (discussion) – Since 30 December 2021 Alexander Tahy (discussion) – Since 26 December 2021 Veronica Volkersz (discussion) – Since 6 December 2021 Rudolf Szepessy-Sokoll (discussion) – Since 3 December 2021 On The Main Page Did you know... ... that the aerobatic demonstration aircraft used by SoloTürk is also used in military operations of the Turkish Air Force? (24 December)
Discuss & propose changes to The WikiEagle at The WikiEagle talk page. To opt in/out of receiving this news letter, add or remove your username from the mailing list. Newsletter contributor: ZLEA

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Administrators' newsletter – January 2022

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

Administrator changes

Amalthea • Ihcoyc (deceased) • Kateshortforbob • Kirill Lokshin • Rifleman 82 • Ryan Norton • Wrp103

Interface administrator changes

Mr. Stradivarius

CheckUser changes

Cabayi • Donald Albury • Enterprisey • Izno • Wugapodes

Opabinia regalis

Casliber • David Fuchs • Newyorkbrad • SoWhy

Oversighter changes

Cabayi • Donald Albury • Enterprisey • Izno • Wugapodes

Opabinia regalis

Casliber • David Fuchs • Newyorkbrad • SoWhy

Guideline and policy news

• Following consensus at the 2021 RfA review, the autopatrolled user right has been removed from the administrators user group; admins can grant themselves the autopatrolled permission if they wish to remain autopatrolled.

• Additionally, consensus for proposal 6C of the 2021 RfA review has led to the creation of an administrative action review process. The purpose of this process will be to review individual administrator actions and individual actions taken by users holding advanced permissions.

Arbitration

• Following the 2021 Arbitration Committee elections, the following editors have been appointed to the Arbitration Committee: Beeblebrox, Cabayi, Donald Albury, Enterprisey, Izno, Opabinia regalis, Worm That Turned, Wugapodes.

Miscellaneous

• The functionaries email list (functionaries-enlists.wikimedia.org) will no longer accept incoming emails apart from those sent by list members and WMF staff. Private concerns, apart from those requiring oversight, should be directly sent to the Arbitration Committee.

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Tech News: 2022-02

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 oauth_consumer variable has been added to the AbuseFilter to enable identifying changes made by specific tools. [213]
• Gadgets are now able to directly include JSON pages. This means some gadgets can now be configured by administrators without needing the interface administrator permission, such as with the Geonotice gadget. [214]
• Gadgets can now specify page actions on which they are available. For example, |actions=edit,history will load a gadget only while editing and on history pages. [215]
• Gadgets can now be loaded on demand with the withgadget URL parameter. This can be used to replace an earlier snippet that typically looks like withJS or withCSS. [216]
• At wikis where the Mentorship system is configured, you can now use the Action API to get a list of a mentor's mentees. [217]
• The heading on the main page can now be configured using MediaWiki:Mainpage-title-loggedin for logged-in users and MediaWiki:Mainpage-title for logged-out users. Any CSS that was previously used to hide the heading should be removed. [218] [219]
• Four special pages (and their API counterparts) now have a maximum database query execution time of 30 seconds. These special pages are: RecentChanges, Watchlist, Contributions, and Log. This change will help with site performance and stability. You can read more details about this change including some possible solutions if this affects your workflows. [220]
• The sticky header has been deployed for 50% of logged-in users on more than 10 wikis. This is part of the Desktop Improvements. See how to take part in the project.

Changes later this week

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

Events

• Community Wishlist Survey 2022 begins. All contributors to the Wikimedia projects can propose for tools and platform improvements. The proposal phase takes place from 10 January 18:00 UTC to 23 January 18:00 UTC. Learn more.

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01:22, 11 January 2022 (UTC)

Feedback request: Wikipedia technical issues and templates request for comment

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Feedback request: Politics, government, and law request for comment

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Tech News: 2022-03

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

• When using WikiEditor (also known as the 2010 wikitext editor), people will now see a warning if they link to disambiguation pages. If you click "Review link" in the warning, it will ask you to correct the link to a more specific term. You can read more information about this completed 2021 Community Wishlist item.
• You can automatically subscribe to all of the talk page discussions that you start or comment in using DiscussionTools. You will receive notifications when another editor replies. This is available at most wikis. Go to your Preferences and turn on "Automatically subscribe to topics". [221]
• When asked to create a new page or talk page section, input fields can be "preloaded" with some text. This feature is now limited to wikitext pages. This is so users can't be tricked into making malicious edits. There is a discussion about if this feature should be re-enabled for some content types.

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 18 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 19 January. It will be on all wikis from 20 January (calendar).

Events

• Community Wishlist Survey 2022 continues. All contributors to the Wikimedia projects can propose for tools and platform improvements. The proposal phase takes place from 10 January 18:00 UTC to 23 January 18:00 UTC. Learn more.

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19:54, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Feedback request: Wikipedia style and naming request for comment

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Tech News: 2022-04

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

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 25 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 26 January. It will be on all wikis from 27 January (calendar).
• The following languages can now be used with syntax highlighting: BDD, Elpi, LilyPond, Maxima, Rita, Savi, Sed, Sophia, Spice, .SRCINFO.
• You can now access your watchlist from outside of the user menu in the new Vector skin. The watchlist link appears next to the notification icons if you are at the top of the page. [222]

Events

• You can see the results of the Coolest Tool Award 2021 and learn more about 14 tools which were selected this year.
• You can translate, promote, or comment on the proposals in the Community Wishlist Survey. Voting will begin on 28 January.

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21:37, 24 January 2022 (UTC)

Feedback request: Wikipedia proposals request for comment

Your feedback is requested at Template talk:Yes on a "Wikipedia proposals" request for comment. Thank you for helping out!
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Tech News: 2022-05

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 a gadget should support the new ?withgadget URL parameter that was announced 3 weeks ago, then it must now also specify supportsUrlLoad in the gadget definition (documentation). [223]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 1 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 2 February. It will be on all wikis from 3 February (calendar).

Future changes

• A change that was announced last year was delayed. It is now ready to move ahead:
  • The user group oversight will be renamed suppress. This is for technical reasons. This is the technical name. It doesn't affect what you call the editors with this user right on your wiki. This is planned to happen in three weeks. You can comment in Phabricator if you have objections. As usual, these labels can be translated on translatewiki (direct links are available) or by administrators on your wiki.

Events

• You can vote on proposals in the Community Wishlist Survey between 28 January and 11 February. The survey decides what the Community Tech team will work on.

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17:41, 31 January 2022 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – February 2022

News and updates for administrators from the past month (January 2022).

Administrator changes

AustralianRupert • Cimon Avaro • Euryalus • Jehochman • Nunh-huh

28bytes

Bureaucrat changes

28bytes

Interface administrator changes

Evad37 • Galobtter

Ragesoss

Guideline and policy news

• The Universal Code of Conduct enforcement guidelines have been published for consideration. Voting to ratify this guideline is planned to take place 7 March to 21 March. Comments can be made on the talk page.

Technical news

• The user group oversight will be renamed suppress in around 3 weeks. This will not affect the name shown to users and is simply a change in the technical name of the user group. The change is being made for technical reasons. You can comment in Phabricator if you have objections.
• The Reply Tool feature, which is a part of Discussion Tools, will be opt-out for everyone logged in or logged out starting 7 February 2022. Editors wishing to comment on this can do so in the relevant Village Pump discussion.

Arbitration

• Community input is requested on several motions aimed at addressing discretionary sanctions that are no longer needed or overly broad.
• The Arbitration Committee has published a generalised comment regarding successful appeals of sanctions that it can review (such as checkuser blocks).
• A motion related to the Antisemitism in Poland case was passed following a declined case request.

Miscellaneous

• Voting in the 2022 Steward elections will begin on 07 February 2022, 14:00 (UTC) and end on 26 February 2022, 13:59 (UTC). The confirmation process of current stewards is being held in parallel. You can automatically check your eligibility to vote.
• Voting in the 2022 Community Wishlist Survey is open until 11 February 2022.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 03:02, 3 February 2022 (UTC)

Tech News: 2022-06

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

• English Wikipedia recently set up a gadget for dark mode. You can enable it there, or request help from an interface administrator to set it up on your wiki (instructions and screenshot).
• Category counts are sometimes wrong. They will now be completely recounted at the beginning of every month. [224]

Problems

• A code-change last week to fix a bug with Live Preview may have caused problems with some local gadgets and user-scripts. Any code with skin-specific behaviour for vector should be updated to also check for vector-2022. A code-snippet, global search, and example are available.

Changes later this week

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

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

21:15, 7 February 2022 (UTC)

Feedback request: Wikipedia policies and guidelines request for comment

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Tech News: 2022-07

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

• Purging a category page with fewer than 5,000 members will now recount it completely. This will allow editors to fix incorrect counts when it is wrong. [225]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 15 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 16 February. It will be on all wikis from 17 February (calendar).
• In the AbuseFilter extension, the rmspecials() function has been updated so that it does not remove the "space" character. Wikis are advised to wrap all the uses of rmspecials() with rmwhitespace() wherever necessary to keep filters' behavior unchanged. You can use the search function on Special:AbuseFilter to locate its usage. [226]

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

19:17, 14 February 2022 (UTC)

Tech News: 2022-08

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

• Special:Nuke will now provide the standard deletion reasons (editable at MediaWiki:Deletereason-dropdown) to use when mass-deleting pages. This was a request in the 2022 Community Wishlist Survey. [227]
• At Wikipedias, all new accounts now get the Growth features by default when creating an account. Communities are encouraged to update their help resources. Previously, only 80% of new accounts would get the Growth features. A few Wikipedias remain unaffected by this change. [228]
• You can now prevent specific images that are used in a page from appearing in other locations, such as within PagePreviews or Search results. This is done with the markup class=notpageimage. For example, [[File:Example.png|class=notpageimage]]. [229]
• There has been a change to the HTML of Special:Contributions, Special:MergeHistory, and History pages, to support the grouping of changes by date in the mobile skin. While unlikely, this may affect gadgets and user scripts. A list of all the HTML changes is on Phabricator.

Events

• Community Wishlist Survey results have been published. The ranking of prioritized proposals is also available.

Changes later this week

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

Future changes

• The software to play videos and audio files on pages will change soon on all wikis. The old player will be removed. Some audio players will become wider after this change. The new player has been a beta feature for over four years. [230][231]
• Toolforge's underlying operating system is being updated. If you maintain any tools there, there are two options for migrating your tools into the new system. There are details, deadlines, and instructions on Wikitech. [232]
• Administrators will soon have the option to delete/undelete the associated "talk" page when they are deleting a given page. An API endpoint with this option will also be available. This was a request from the 2021 Wishlist Survey.

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19:11, 21 February 2022 (UTC)

Feedback request: Wikipedia proposals request for comment

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Tech News: 2022-09

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

• When searching for edits by change tags, e.g. in page history or user contributions, there is now a dropdown list of possible tags. This was a request in the 2022 Community Wishlist Survey. [233]
• Mentors using the Growth Mentor dashboard will now see newcomers assigned to them who have made at least one edit, up to 200 edits. Previously, all newcomers assigned to the mentor were visible on the dashboard, even ones without any edit or ones who made hundred of edits. Mentors can still change these values using the filters on their dashboard. Also, the last choice of filters will now be saved. [234][235]
• The user group oversight was renamed suppress. This is for technical reasons. You may need to update any local references to the old name, e.g. gadgets, links to Special:Listusers, or uses of NUMBERINGROUP.

Problems

• The recent change to the HTML of tracking changes pages caused some problems for screenreaders. This is being fixed. [236]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 1 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 2 March. It will be on all wikis from 3 March (calendar).

Future changes

• Working with templates will become easier. Several improvements are planned for March 9 on most wikis and on March 16 on English Wikipedia. The improvements include: Bracket matching, syntax highlighting colors, finding and inserting templates, and related visual editor features.
• If you are a template developer or an interface administrator, and you are intentionally overriding or using the default CSS styles of user feedback boxes (the classes: successbox, messagebox, errorbox, warningbox), please note that these classes and associated CSS will soon be removed from MediaWiki core. This is to prevent problems when the same class-names are also used on a wiki. Please let us know by commenting at phab:T300314 if you think you might be affected.

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

22:58, 28 February 2022 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – March 2022

News and updates for administrators from the past month (February 2022).

Administrator changes

Modussiccandi

BOZ • Brookie (deceased) • Jackmcbarn • Jamesday • Jonathunder • Master of Puppets • Saravask

CheckUser changes

Callanecc

Oversighter changes

Callanecc

Guideline and policy news

• A RfC is open to change the wording of revision deletion criterion 1 to remove the sentence relating to non-infringing contributions.
• A RfC is open to discuss prohibiting draftification of articles over 90 days old.

Technical news

• The deployment of the reply tool as an opt-out feature, as announced in last month's newsletter, has been delayed to 7 March. Feedback and comments are being welcomed at Wikipedia talk:Talk pages project. (T296645)
• Special:Nuke will now allow the selection of standard deletion reasons to be used when mass-deleting pages. This was a Community Wishlist Survey request from 2022. (T25020)
• The ability to undelete the talk page when undeleting a page using Special:Undelete or the API will be added soon. This change was requested in the 2021 Community Wishlist Survey. (T295389)

Arbitration

• Several unused discretionary sanctions and article probation remedies have been rescinded. This follows the community feedback from the 2021 Discretionary Sanctions review.

Miscellaneous

• The 2022 appointees for the Ombuds commission are Érico, Faendalimas, Galahad, Infinite0694, Mykola7, Olugold, Udehb and Zabe as regular members and Ameisenigel and JJMC89 as advisory members.
• Following the 2022 Steward Elections, the following editors have been appointed as stewards: AntiCompositeNumber, BRPever, Hasley, TheresNoTime, and Vermont.
• The 2022 Community Wishlist Survey results have been published alongside the ranking of prioritized proposals.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 01:47, 2 March 2022 (UTC)

Tech News: 2022-10

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

Problems

• There was a problem with some interface labels last week. It will be fixed this week. This change was part of ongoing work to simplify the support for skins which do not have active maintainers. [237]

Changes later this week

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

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

21:15, 7 March 2022 (UTC)

Feedback request: Wikipedia policies and guidelines request for comment

Your feedback is requested at Wikipedia talk:Article titles on a "Wikipedia policies and guidelines" request for comment. Thank you for helping out!
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Tech News: 2022-11

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

• In the Wikipedia Android app it is now possible to change the toolbar at the bottom so the tools you use more often are easier to click on. The app now also has a focused reading mode. [238][239]

Problems

• There was a problem with the collection of some page-view data from June 2021 to January 2022 on all wikis. This means the statistics are incomplete. To help calculate which projects and regions were most affected, relevant datasets are being retained for 30 extra days. You can read more on Meta-wiki.
• There was a problem with the databases on March 10. All wikis were unreachable for logged-in users for 12 minutes. Logged-out users could read pages but could not edit or access uncached content then. [240]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 15 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 16 March. It will be on all wikis from 17 March (calendar).
• When using uselang=qqx to find localisation messages, it will now show all possible message keys for navigation tabs such as "View history". [241]
• Access to Special:RevisionDelete has been expanded to include users who have deletelogentry and deletedhistory rights through their group memberships. Before, only those with the deleterevision right could access this special page. [242]
• On the Special:Undelete pages for diffs and revisions, there will be a link back to the main Undelete page with the list of revisions. [243]

Future changes

• The Wikimedia Foundation has announced the IP Masking implementation strategy and next steps. The announcement can be read here.
• The Wikipedia Android app developers are working on new functions for user talk pages and article talk pages. [244]

Events

• The Wikimedia Hackathon 2022 will take place as a hybrid event on 20-22 May 2022. The Hackathon will be held online and there are grants available to support local in-person meetups around the world. Grants can be requested until 20 March.

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22:06, 14 March 2022 (UTC)

Tech News: 2022-12

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

New code release schedule for this week

• There will be four MediaWiki releases this week, instead of just one. This is an experiment which should lead to fewer problems and to faster feature updates. The releases will be on all wikis, at different times, on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. You can read more about this project.

Recent changes

• You can now set how many search results to show by default in your Preferences. This was the 12th most popular wish in the Community Wishlist Survey 2022. [245]
• The Jupyter notebooks tool PAWS has been updated to a new interface. [246]

Future changes

• Interactive maps via Kartographer will soon work on wikis using the FlaggedRevisions extension. Please tell us which improvements you want to see in Kartographer. You can take this survey in simple English. [247]

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

16:00, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

Feedback request: Wikipedia technical issues and templates request for comment

Your feedback is requested at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Weather on a "Wikipedia technical issues and templates" request for comment. Thank you for helping out!
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Feedback request: Maths, science, and technology request for comment

Your feedback is requested at Talk:VeraCrypt on a "Maths, science, and technology" request for comment. Thank you for helping out!
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Tech News: 2022-13

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 simple new Wikimedia Commons upload tool available for macOS users, Sunflower.

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 29 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 30 March. It will be on all wikis from 31 March (calendar).
• Some wikis will be in read-only for a few minutes because of regular database maintenance. It will be performed on 29 March at 7:00 UTC (targeted wikis) and on 31 March at 7:00 UTC (targeted wikis). [248][249]

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

19:53, 28 March 2022 (UTC)

Feedback request: Maths, science, and technology request for comment

Your feedback is requested at Talk:IP over Avian Carriers on a "Maths, science, and technology" request for comment. Thank you for helping out!
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Tech News: 2022-14

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

• For a few days last week, edits that were suggested to newcomers were not tagged in the Special:RecentChanges feed. This bug has been fixed. [250]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 5 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 6 April. It will be on all wikis from 7 April (calendar).
• Some wikis will be in read-only for a few minutes because of a switch of their main database. It will be performed on 7 April at 7:00 UTC (targeted wikis).

Future changes

• Starting next week, Tech News' title will be translatable. When the newsletter is distributed, its title may not be Tech News: 2022-14 anymore. It may affect some filters that have been set up by some communities. [251]
• Over the next few months, the "Add a link" Growth feature will become available to more Wikipedias. Each week, a few wikis will get the feature. You can test this tool at a few wikis where "Link recommendation" is already available.

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

21:00, 4 April 2022 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – April 2022

News and updates for administrators from the past month (March 2022).

Administrator changes

Firefly • Sdrqaz

Ad Orientem

Geschichte • Ryan Postlethwaite • Sabine's Sunbird • Wassupwestcoast

Interface administrator changes

Evad37

Guideline and policy news

• An RfC is open proposing a change to the minimum activity requirements for administrators.

Technical news

• Access to Special:RevisionDelete has been expanded to include users who have the deletelogentry and deletedhistory rights. This means that those in the Researcher user group and Checkusers who are not administrators can now access Special:RevisionDelete. The users able to view the special page after this change are the 3 users in the Researcher group, as there are currently no checkusers who are not already administrators. (T301928)
• When viewing deleted revisions or diffs on Special:Undelete a back link to the undelete page for the associated page is now present. (T284114)

Arbitration

• Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Procedures § Opening of proceedings has been updated to reflect current practice following a motion.
• A arbitration case regarding Skepticism and coordinated editing has been closed.
• A arbitration case regarding WikiProject Tropical Cyclones has been opened.

Miscellaneous

• Voting for the Universal Code of Conduct Enforcement guidelines has closed, and the results were that 56.98% of voters supported the guidelines. The results of this vote mean the Wikimedia Foundation Board will now review the guidelines.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:14, 7 April 2022 (UTC)

Tech News: 2022-15

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 public status page at www.wikimediastatus.net. This site shows five automated high-level metrics where you can see the overall health and performance of our wikis' technical environment. It also contains manually-written updates for widespread incidents, which are written as quickly as the engineers are able to do so while also fixing the actual problem. The site is separated from our production infrastructure and hosted by an external service, so that it can be accessed even if the wikis are briefly unavailable. You can read more about this project.
• On Wiktionary wikis, the software to play videos and audio files on pages has now changed. The old player has been removed. Some audio players will become wider after this change. The new player has been a beta feature for over four years. [252][253]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 12 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 13 April. It will be on all wikis from 14 April (calendar).

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19:43, 11 April 2022 (UTC)

GOCE April 2022 newsletter

Guild of Copy Editors April 2022 Newsletter Hello and welcome to the April newsletter, a brief update of Guild activities since December 2021. Election results: Jonesey95 retired as lead coordinator. Reidgreg was approved to fill this role after an 18-month absence from the coordinator team, and Baffle gab1978 was chosen as an assistant coordinator following a one-year break. Dhtwiki, Miniapolis and Tenryuu continued on as long-standing assistant coordinators. January Drive: Of the 22 editors who signed up, 16 editors claimed 146 copy edits including 45 requests. (details) February Blitz: This one-week effort focused on requests and a theme of Africa and African diaspora history. Of the 12 editors who signed up, 6 editors recorded 21 copy edits, including 4 requests. (details) March Drive: Of the 28 editors who signed up, 18 claimed 116 copy edits including 25 requests. (details) April Blitz: This one-week copy editing event has been scheduled for 17–23 April, sign up now! Progress report: As of 11 April, copy editors have removed approximately 500 articles from the backlog and completed 127 copy-editing requests during 2022. The backlog has been hovering at about 1,100 tagged articles for the past six months. Thank you all again for your participation; we wouldn't be able to achieve what we have without you! Cheers from your GOCE coordinators Reidgreg, Baffle gab1978, Dhtwiki, Miniapolis and Tenryuu To discontinue receiving GOCE newsletters, please remove your name from our mailing list.

Sent via MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:43, 13 April 2022 (UTC)

Tech News: 2022-16

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 19 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 20 April. It will be on all wikis from 21 April (calendar).
• Some wikis will be in read-only for a few minutes because of a switch of their main database. It will be performed on 19 April at 07:00 UTC (targeted wikis) and on 21 April at 7:00 UTC (targeted wikis).
• Administrators will now have the option to delete/undelete the associated "Talk" page when they are deleting a given page. An API endpoint with this option is also available. This concludes the 11th wish of the 2021 Community Wishlist Survey.
• On selected wikis, 50% of logged-in users will see the new table of contents. When scrolling up and down the page, the table of contents will stay in the same place on the screen. This is part of the Desktop Improvements project. [254]
• Message boxes produced by MediaWiki code will no longer have these CSS classes: successbox, errorbox, warningbox. The styles for those classes and messagebox will be removed from MediaWiki core. This only affects wikis that use these classes in wikitext, or change their appearance within site-wide CSS. Please review any local usage and definitions for these classes you may have. This was previously announced in the 28 February issue of Tech News.

Future changes

• Kartographer will become compatible with FlaggedRevisions page stabilization. Kartographer maps will also work on pages with pending changes. [255] The Kartographer documentation has been thoroughly updated. [256] [257] [258]

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23:10, 18 April 2022 (UTC)

Feedback request: Maths, science, and technology request for comment

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Tech News: 2022-17

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

• On many wikis (group 1), the software to play videos and audio files on pages has now changed. The old player has been removed. Some audio players will become wider after this change. The new player has been a beta feature for over four years. [259][260]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 26 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 27 April. It will be on all wikis from 28 April (calendar).
• Some wikis will be in read-only for a few minutes because of a switch of their main database. It will be performed on 26 April at 07:00 UTC (targeted wikis).
• Some very old browsers and operating systems are no longer supported. Some things on the wikis might look weird or not work in very old browsers like Internet Explorer 9 or 10, Android 4, or Firefox 38 or older. [261]

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22:54, 25 April 2022 (UTC)

Tech News: 2022-18

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

• On all remaining wikis (group 2), the software to play videos and audio files on pages has now changed. The old player has been removed. Some audio players will become wider after this change. The new player has been a beta feature for over four years. [262][263]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 3 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 4 May. It will be on all wikis from 5 May (calendar).

Future changes

• The developers are working on talk pages in the Wikipedia app for iOS. You can give feedback. You can take the survey in English, German, Hebrew or Chinese.
• Most wikis will receive an improved template dialog in VisualEditor and New Wikitext mode. [264] [265]
• If you use syntax highlighting while editing wikitext, you can soon activate a colorblind-friendly color scheme. [266]
• Several CSS IDs related to MediaWiki interface messages will be removed. Technical editors should please review the list of IDs and links to their existing uses. These include #mw-anon-edit-warning, #mw-undelete-revision and 3 others.

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19:32, 2 May 2022 (UTC)

Tech News: 2022-19

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

Recent changes

• You can now see categories in the Wikipedia app for Android. [267]

Problems

• Last week, there was a problem with Wikidata's search autocomplete. This has now been fixed. [268]
• Last week, all wikis had slow access or no access for 20 minutes, for logged-in users and non-cached pages. This was caused by a problem with a database change. [269]

Changes later this week

• There is no new MediaWiki version this week. [270]
• Incompatibility issues with Kartographer and the FlaggedRevs extension will be fixed: Deployment is planned for May 10 on all wikis. Kartographer will then be enabled on the five wikis which have not yet enabled the extension on May 24.
• The Vector (2022) skin will be set as the default on several more wikis, including Arabic and Catalan Wikipedias. Logged-in users will be able to switch back to the old Vector (2010). See the latest update about Vector (2022).

Future meetings

• The next open meeting with the Web team about Vector (2022) will take place on 17 May. The following meetings are currently planned for: 7 June, 21 June, 5 July, 19 July.

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15:21, 9 May 2022 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – May 2022

News and updates for administrators from the past month (April 2022).

Administrator changes

Colin M

David.Monniaux • Fribbler • Grue • Kpjas • West.andrew.g

CheckUser changes

Ks0stm

Oversighter changes

Ks0stm

Guideline and policy news

• Following an RfC, a change has been made to the administrators inactivity policy. Under the new policy, if an administrator has not made at least 100 edits over a period of 5 years they may be desysopped for inactivity.
• Following a discussion on the bureaucrat's noticeboard, a change has been made to the bureaucrats inactivity policy.

Technical news

• The ability to undelete the associated talk page when undeleting a page has been added. This was the 11th wish of the 2021 Community Wishlist Survey.
• A public status system for WMF wikis has been created. It is located at https://www.wikimediastatus.net/ and is hosted separately to WMF wikis so in the case of an outage it will remain viewable.

Arbitration

• Remedy 2 of the St Christopher case has been rescinded following a motion. The remedy previously authorised administrators to place a ban on single-purpose accounts who were disruptively editing on the article St Christopher Iba Mar Diop College of Medicine or related pages from those pages.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 23:35, 9 May 2022 (UTC)

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Tech News: 2022-20

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

Changes later this week

• Some wikis can soon use the add a link feature. This will start on Wednesday. The wikis are Catalan Wikipedia, Hebrew Wikipedia, Hindi Wikipedia, Korean Wikipedia, Norwegian Bokmål Wikipedia, Portuguese Wikipedia, Simple English Wikipedia, Swedish Wikipedia, Ukrainian Wikipedia. This is part of the progressive deployment of this tool to more Wikipedias. The communities can configure how this feature works locally. [271]
• The Wikimedia Hackathon 2022 will take place online on May 20–22. It will be in English. There are also local hackathon meetups in Germany, Ghana, Greece, India, Nigeria and the United States. Technically interested Wikimedians can work on software projects and learn new skills. You can also host a session or post a project you want to work on.
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 17 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 18 May. It will be on all wikis from 19 May (calendar).

Future changes

• You can soon edit translatable pages in the visual editor. Translatable pages exist on for examples Meta and Commons. [272]

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18:57, 16 May 2022 (UTC)

Tech News: 2022-21

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

• Administrators using the mobile web interface can now access Special:Block directly from user pages. [273]
• The www.wiktionary.org portal page now uses an automated update system. Other project portals will be updated over the next few months. [274]

Problems

• The Growth team maintains a mentorship program for newcomers. Previously, newcomers weren't able to opt out from the program. Starting May 19, 2022, newcomers are able to fully opt out from Growth mentorship, in case they do not wish to have any mentor at all. [275]
• Some editors cannot access the content translation tool if they load it by clicking from the contributions menu. This problem is being worked on. It should still work properly if accessed directly via Special:ContentTranslation. [276]

Changes later this week

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

Future changes

• Gadget and user scripts developers are invited to give feedback on a proposed technical policy aiming to improve support from MediaWiki developers. [277]

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00:19, 24 May 2022 (UTC)

Feedback request: Politics, government, and law request for comment

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Feedback request: Wikipedia technical issues and templates request for comment

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Feedback request: Maths, science, and technology request for comment

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Tech News: 2022-22

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

Recent changes

• In the AbuseFilter extension, an ip_in_ranges() function has been introduced to check if an IP is in any of the ranges. Wikis are advised to combine multiple ip_in_range() expressions joined by | into a single expression for better performance. You can use the search function on Special:AbuseFilter to locate its usage. [278]
• The IP Info feature which helps abuse fighters access information about IPs, has been deployed to all wikis as a beta feature. This comes after weeks of beta testing on test.wikipedia.org.

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 31 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 1 June. It will be on all wikis from 2 June (calendar).
• Some wikis will be in read-only for a few minutes because of a switch of their main database. It will be performed on 31 May at 07:00 UTC (targeted wikis).
• The New Topic Tool will be deployed for all editors at most wikis soon. You will be able to opt out from within the tool and in Preferences. [279][280]
• The list=usercontribs API will support fetching contributions from an IP range soon. API users can set the uciprange parameter to get contributions from any IP range within the limit. [281]
• A new parser function will be introduced: {{=}}. It will replace existing templates named "=". It will insert an equal sign. This can be used to escape the equal sign in the parameter values of templates. [282]

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20:27, 30 May 2022 (UTC)

Feedback request: Politics, government, and law request for comment

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Administrators' newsletter – June 2022

News and updates for administrators from the past month (May 2022).

Administrator changes

Tamzin

Barek • Darkwind • Geometry guy • ProcseeBot • RoyBoy • Sean Whitton • Valereee • Visorstuff • WAvegetarian

Sn0wflake → VersedFenrir

CheckUser changes

Ivanvector

Guideline and policy news

• Several areas of improvement collated from community member votes have been identified in the Universal Code of Conduct Enforcement guidelines. The areas of improvement have been sent back for review and you are invited to provide input on these areas.

Technical news

• Administrators using the mobile web interface can now access Special:Block directly from user pages. (T307341)
• The IP Info feature has been deployed to all wikis as a Beta Feature. Any autoconfirmed user may enable the feature using the "IP info" checkbox under Preferences → Beta features. Autoconfirmed users will be able to access basic information about an IP address that includes the country and connection method. Those with advanced privileges (admin, bureaucrat, checkuser) will have access to extra information that includes the Internet Service Provider and more specific location.

Arbitration

• Remedy 2 of the Rachel Marsden case has been rescinded following a motion. The remedy previously authorised administrators to delete or reduce to a stub, together with their talk pages, articles related to Rachel Marsden when they violate Wikipedia's biographies of living persons policy.
• An arbitration case regarding WikiProject Tropical Cyclones has been closed.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:56, 2 June 2022 (UTC)

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Feedback request: Wikipedia technical issues and templates request for comment

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Tech News: 2022-23

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 7 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 8 June. It will be on all wikis from 9 June (calendar).
• A new str_replace_regexp() function can be used in abuse filters to replace parts of text using a regular expression. [283]

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02:45, 7 June 2022 (UTC)

Feedback request: WikiProjects and collaborations request for comment

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Feedback request: Politics, government, and law request for comment

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Tech News: 2022-24

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

• All wikis can now use Kartographer maps. Kartographer maps now also work on pages with pending changes. [284][285]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 14 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 15 June. It will be on all wikis from 16 June (calendar).
• Some wikis will be in read-only for a few minutes because of a switch of their main database. It will be performed on 14 June at 06:00 UTC (targeted wikis). [286]
• Starting on Wednesday, a new set of Wikipedias will get "Add a link" (Abkhazian Wikipedia, Achinese Wikipedia, Adyghe Wikipedia, Afrikaans Wikipedia, Akan Wikipedia, Alemannisch Wikipedia, Amharic Wikipedia, Aragonese Wikipedia, Old English Wikipedia, Syriac Wikipedia, Egyptian Arabic Wikipedia, Asturian Wikipedia, Atikamekw Wikipedia, Avaric Wikipedia, Aymara Wikipedia, Azerbaijani Wikipedia, South Azerbaijani Wikipedia). This is part of the progressive deployment of this tool to more Wikipedias. The communities can configure how this feature works locally. [287]
• The New Topic Tool will be deployed for all editors at Commons, Wikidata, and some other wikis soon. You will be able to opt out from within the tool and in Preferences. [288][289]

Future meetings

• The next open meeting with the Web team about Vector (2022) will take place today (13 June). The following meetings will take place on: 28 June, 12 July, 26 July.

Future changes

• By the end of July, the Vector 2022 skin should be ready to become the default across all wikis. Discussions on how to adjust it to the communities' needs will begin in the next weeks. It will always be possible to revert to the previous version on an individual basis. Learn more.

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16:57, 13 June 2022 (UTC)

June GOCE newsletter

Guild of Copy Editors June 2022 Newsletter Hello and welcome to the June 2022 newsletter, a quarterly digest of Guild activities since April 2022. Don't forget you can unsubscribe at any time; see below. Blitz: of the 16 editors who signed up for our April Copy Editing Blitz, 12 completed at least one copy-edit, and between them removed 21 articles from the copy-editing backlog. Barnstars awarded are here. Drive: 27 editors signed up for our May Backlog Elimination Drive; of these, 20 copy-edited at least one article. 144 articles were copy-edited, and 88 articles from our target months August and September 2021 were removed from the backlog. Barnstars awarded are here. Blitz: our June Copy Editing Blitz, starting at 00:01, 19 June and closing at 00:59, 25 June (UTC), will focus on articles tagged for copy edit in September and October 2021, and requests from March, April and May 2022. Barnstars awarded will be posted here. Progress report: As of 07:12, 14 June 2022 (UTC), GOCE copyeditors have completed 209 requests since 1 January and the backlog stands at 1,404 articles. Election news: Nominations for our half-yearly Election of Coordinators continues until 23:50 on 15 June (UTC), after which, voting will commence until 23:59, 30 June (UTC). All Wikipedians in good standing (active and not blocked, banned, or under ArbCom or community sanctions) are eligible and self-nominations are welcomed. Thank you all again for your participation; we wouldn't be able to achieve what we have without you! Cheers from your GOCE coordinators Reidgreg, Baffle gab1978, Dhtwiki, Miniapolis and Tenryuu To discontinue receiving GOCE newsletters, please remove your name from our mailing list.

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 13:39, 14 June 2022 (UTC)

Feedback request: Wikipedia style and naming request for comment

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Tech News: 2022-25

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 Wikipedia App for Android now has an option for editing the whole page at once, located in the overflow menu (three-dots menu ). [290]
• Some recent database changes may affect queries using the Quarry tool. Queries for site_stats at English Wikipedia, Commons, and Wikidata will need to be updated. Read more.
• A new user_global_editcount variable can be used in abuse filters to avoid affecting globally active users. [291]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 21 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 22 June. It will be on all wikis from 23 June (calendar).
• Users of non-responsive skins (e.g. MonoBook or Vector) on mobile devices may notice a slight change in the default zoom level. This is intended to optimize zooming and ensure all interface elements are present on the page (for example the table of contents on Vector 2022). In the unlikely event this causes any problems with how you use the site, we'd love to understand better, please ping Jon (WMF) to any on-wiki conversations. [292]

Future changes

• The Beta Feature for DiscussionTools will be updated throughout July. Discussions will look different. You can see some of the proposed changes.
• Parsoid's HTML output will soon stop annotating file links with different typeof attribute values, and instead use mw:File for all types. Tool authors should adjust any code that expects: mw:Image, mw:Audio, or mw:Video. [293]

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20:17, 20 June 2022 (UTC)

Feedback request: Maths, science, and technology request for comment

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Feedback request: Wikipedia style and naming request for comment

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Tech News: 2022-26

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

• Wikimedia Enterprise API service now has self-service accounts with free on-demand requests and monthly snapshots (API documentation). Community access via database dumps & Wikimedia Cloud Services continues.
• All Wikimedia wikis can now use Wikidata Lexemes in Lua after creating local modules and templates. Discussions are welcome on the project talk page.

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 28 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 29 June. It will be on all wikis from 30 June (calendar).
• Some wikis will be in read-only for a few minutes because of a switch of their main database. It will be performed on 28 June at 06:00 UTC (targeted wikis). [294]
• Some global and cross-wiki services will be in read-only for a few minutes because of a switch of their main database. It will be performed on 30 June at 06:00 UTC. This will impact ContentTranslation, Echo, StructuredDiscussions, Growth experiments and a few more services. [295]
• Users will be able to sort columns within sortable tables in the mobile skin. [296]

Future meetings

• The next open meeting with the Web team about Vector (2022) will take place tomorrow (28 June). The following meetings will take place on 12 July and 26 July.

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20:01, 27 June 2022 (UTC)

Feedback request: Wikipedia policies and guidelines request for comment

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Feedback request: Maths, science, and technology request for comment

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Feedback request: Maths, science, and technology request for comment

Your feedback is requested at Wikipedia talk:Notability (events) on a "Maths, science, and technology" request for comment. Thank you for helping out!
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Feedback request: Wikipedia proposals request for comment

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Tech News: 2022-27

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

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 5 July. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 6 July. It will be on all wikis from 7 July (calendar).
• Some wikis will be in read-only for a few minutes because of a switch of their main database. It will be performed on 5 July at 07:00 UTC (targeted wikis) and on 7 July at 7:00 UTC (targeted wikis).
• The Beta Feature for DiscussionTools will be updated throughout July. Discussions will look different. You can see some of the proposed changes.
• This change only affects pages in the main namespace in Wikisource. The Javascript config variable proofreadpage_source_href will be removed from mw.config and be replaced with the variable prpSourceIndexPage. [297]

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

19:31, 4 July 2022 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – July 2022

News and updates for administrators from the past month (June 2022).

Administrator changes

AA • Gwalla • Ioeth • Laurascudder • Moriori (deceased) • Nat • Rfl

Drilnoth → AFigureOfBlue

Bureaucrat changes

Lee Vilenski

Interface administrator changes

Nihiltres

Technical news

• user_global_editcount is a new variable that can be used in abuse filters to avoid affecting globally active users. (T130439)

Arbitration

• An arbitration case regarding conduct in deletion-related editing has been opened.

Miscellaneous

• The New Pages Patrol queue has around 10,000 articles to be reviewed. As all administrators have the patrol right, please consider helping out. The queue is here. For further information on the state of the project, see the latest NPP newsletter.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 13:29, 10 July 2022 (UTC)

Feedback request: Wikipedia style and naming request for comment

Your feedback is requested at Template talk:GBP on a "Wikipedia style and naming" request for comment. Thank you for helping out!
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Tech News: 2022-28

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

• In the Vector 2022 skin, the page title is now displayed above the tabs such as Discussion, Read, Edit, View history, or More. Learn more. [298]
• It is now possible to easily view most of the configuration settings that apply to just one wiki, and to compare settings between two wikis if those settings are different. For example: Japanese Wiktionary settings, or settings that are different between the Spanish and Esperanto Wikipedias. Local communities may want to discuss and propose changes to their local settings. Details about each of the named settings can be found by searching MediaWiki.org. [299]
• The Anti-Harassment Tools team recently deployed the IP Info Feature as a Beta Feature at all wikis. This feature allows abuse fighters to access information about IP addresses. Please check our update on how to find and use the tool. Please share your feedback using a link you will be given within the tool itself.

Changes later this week

• There is no new MediaWiki version this week.
• Some wikis will be in read-only for a few minutes because of a switch of their main database. It will be performed on 12 July at 07:00 UTC (targeted wikis).

Future changes

• The Beta Feature for DiscussionTools will be updated throughout July. Discussions will look different. You can see some of the proposed changes.

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

19:23, 11 July 2022 (UTC)

Feedback request: Wikipedia policies and guidelines request for comment

Your feedback is requested at Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard on a "Wikipedia policies and guidelines" request for comment. Thank you for helping out!
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Tech News: 2022-29

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

Problems

• The feature on mobile web for Nearby Pages was missing last week. It will be fixed this week. [300]

Changes later this week

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

Future changes

• The Technical Decision Forum is seeking community representatives. You can apply on wiki or by emailing TDFSupport@wikimedia.org before 12 August.

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22:58, 18 July 2022 (UTC)

Tech News: 2022-30

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

• The www.wikibooks.org and www.wikiquote.org portal pages now use an automated update system. Other project portals will be updated over the next few months. [301]

Problems

• Last week, some wikis were in read-only mode for a few minutes because of an emergency switch of their main database (targeted wikis). [302]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 26 July. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 27 July. It will be on all wikis from 28 July (calendar).
• The external link icon will change slightly in the skins Vector legacy and Vector 2022. The new icon uses simpler shapes to be more recognizable on low-fidelity screens. [303]
• Administrators will now see buttons on user pages for "Change block" and "Unblock user" instead of just "Block user" if the user is already blocked. [304]

Future meetings

• The next open meeting with the Web team about Vector (2022) will take place tomorrow (26 July).

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19:26, 25 July 2022 (UTC)

Feedback request: Wikipedia policies and guidelines request for comment

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Feedback request: Maths, science, and technology request for comment

Your feedback is requested at Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard on a "Maths, science, and technology" request for comment. Thank you for helping out!
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Feedback request: Politics, government, and law request for comment

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Tech News: 2022-31

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

• Improved LaTeX capabilities for math rendering are now available in the wikis thanks to supporting Phantom tags. This completes part of the #59 wish of the 2022 Community Wishlist Survey.

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 2 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 3 August. It will be on all wikis from 4 August (calendar).
• The Realtime Preview will be available as a Beta Feature on wikis in Group 0. This feature was built in order to fulfill one of the Community Wishlist Survey proposals.

Future changes

• The Beta Feature for DiscussionTools will be updated throughout August. Discussions will look different. You can see some of the proposed changes.

Future meetings

• This week, three meetings about Vector (2022) with live interpretation will take place. On Tuesday, interpretation in Russian will be provided. On Thursday, meetings for Arabic and Spanish speakers will take place. See how to join.

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

21:20, 1 August 2022 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – August 2022

News and updates for administrators from the past month (July 2022).

Administrator changes

Valereee

Anthony Appleyard (deceased) • Capitalistroadster • Samsara

Guideline and policy news

• An RfC has been closed with consensus to add javascript that will show edit notices for editors editing via a mobile device. This only works for users using a mobile browser, so iOS app editors will still not be able to see edit notices.
• An RfC has been closed with the consensus that train stations are not inherently notable.

Technical news

• The Wikimania 2022 Hackathon will take place virtually from 11 August to 14 August.
• Administrators will now see links on user pages for "Change block" and "Unblock user" instead of just "Block user" if the user is already blocked. (T308570)

Arbitration

• The arbitration case request Geschichte has been automatically closed after a 3 month suspension of the case.

Miscellaneous

• You can vote for candidates in the 2022 Board of Trustees elections from 16 August to 30 August. Two community elected seats are up for election.
• Wikimania 2022 is taking place virtually from 11 August to 14 August. The schedule for wikimania is listed here. There are also a number of in-person events associated with Wikimania around the world.
• Tech tip: When revision-deleting on desktop, hold ⇧ Shift between clicking two checkboxes to select every box in that range.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 08:45, 5 August 2022 (UTC)

Feedback request: Wikipedia policies and guidelines request for comment

Your feedback is requested at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Disambiguation pages on a "Wikipedia policies and guidelines" request for comment. Thank you for helping out!
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Tech News: 2022-32

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

Recent changes

• GUS2Wiki copies the information from Special:GadgetUsage to an on-wiki page so you can review its history. If your project isn't already listed on the Wikidata entry for Project:GUS2Wiki you can either run GUS2Wiki yourself or make a request to receive updates. [305]

Changes later this week

• There is no new MediaWiki version this week.
• Some wikis will be in read-only for a few minutes because of a switch of their main database. It will be performed on 9 August at 07:00 UTC (targeted wikis) and on 11 August at 7:00 UTC (targeted wikis).

Future meetings

• The Wikimania Hackathon will take place online from August 12–14. Don't miss the pre-hacking showcase to learn about projects and find collaborators. Anyone can propose a project or host a session. Newcomers are welcome!

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

19:48, 8 August 2022 (UTC)

Tech News: 2022-33

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

• The Persian (Farsi) Wikipedia community decided to block IP editing from October 2021 to April 2022. The Wikimedia Foundation's Product Analytics team tracked the impact of this change. An impact report is now available.

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 16 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 17 August. It will be on all wikis from 18 August (calendar).
• Some wikis will be in read-only for a few minutes because of a switch of their main database. It will be performed on 16 August at 07:00 UTC (targeted wikis) and on 18 August at 7:00 UTC (targeted wikis).
• The Realtime Preview will be available as a Beta Feature on wikis in Group 1. This feature was built in order to fulfill one of the Community Wishlist Survey proposals.

Future changes

• The Beta Feature for DiscussionTools will be updated throughout August. Discussions will look different. You can see some of the proposed changes. [306][307][308]

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

21:07, 15 August 2022 (UTC)

Feedback request: Wikipedia technical issues and templates request for comment

Your feedback is requested at Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous) on a "Wikipedia technical issues and templates" request for comment. Thank you for helping out!
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Tech News: 2022-34

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

• Two problems with Kartographer maps have been fixed. Maps are no longer shown as empty when a geoline was created via VisualEditor. Geolines consisting of points with QIDs (e.g., subway lines) are no longer shown with pushpins. [309][310]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 23 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 24 August. It will be on all wikis from 25 August (calendar).
• Some wikis will be in read-only for a few minutes because of a switch of their main database. It will be performed on 25 August at 7:00 UTC (targeted wikis).
• The colours of links and visited links will change. This is to make the difference between links and other text more clear. [311]

Future changes

• The new [subscribe] button helps newcomers get answers. The Editing team is enabling this tool everywhere. You can turn it off in your preferences. [312]

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00:10, 23 August 2022 (UTC)

Feedback request: Wikipedia policies and guidelines request for comment

Your feedback is requested at Template talk:Leadcite comment on a "Wikipedia policies and guidelines" request for comment. Thank you for helping out!
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Feedback request: Politics, government, and law request for comment

Your feedback is requested at Talk:Hunter Biden laptop controversy on a "Politics, government, and law" request for comment. Thank you for helping out!
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Tech News: 2022-35

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

• The Realtime Preview is available as a Beta Feature on wikis in Group 2. This feature was built in order to fulfill one of the Community Wishlist Survey proposals. Please note that when this Beta feature is enabled, it may cause conflicts with some wiki-specific Gadgets.

Problems

• In recent months, there have been inaccurate numbers shown for various Special:Statistics at Commons, Wikidata, and English Wikipedia. This has now been fixed. [313]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 30 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 31 August. It will be on all wikis from 1 September (calendar).
• Some wikis will be in read-only for a few minutes because of a switch of their main database. It will be performed on 30 August at 07:00 UTC (targeted wikis) and on 1 September at 7:00 UTC (targeted wikis).

Future changes

• The Wikimedia Foundation wants to improve how Wikimedia communities report harmful incidents by building the Private Incident Reporting System (PIRS) to make it easy and safe for users to make reports. You can leave comments on the talk page, by answering the questions provided. If you have ever faced a harmful situation that you wanted to report/reported, join a PIRS interview to share your experience. To sign up please email Madalina Ana.

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

23:03, 29 August 2022 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – September 2022

News and updates for administrators from the past month (August 2022).

Administrator changes

DanCherek • DatGuy • Femke • Z1720

Aldux • Graham Beards • Nyttend

Interface administrator changes

Mr. Stradivarius

Guideline and policy news

• A discussion is open to define a process by which Vector 2022 can be made the default for all users.
• An RfC is open to gain consensus on whether Fox News is reliable for science and politics.

Technical news

• The impact report on the effects of disabling IP editing on the Persian (Farsi) Wikipedia has been released.
• The WMF is looking into making a Private Incident Reporting System (PIRS) system to improve the reporting of harmful incidents through easier and safer reporting. You can leave comments on the talk page by answering the questions provided. Users who have faced harmful situations are also invited to join a PIRS interview to share the experience. To sign up please email Madalina Ana.

Arbitration

• An arbitration case regarding Conduct in deletion-related editing has been closed. The Arbitration Committee passed a remedy as part of the final decision to create a request for comment (RfC) on how to handle mass nominations at Articles for Deletion (AfD).
• The arbitration case request Jonathunder has been automatically closed after a 6 month suspension of the case.

Miscellaneous

• The new pages patrol (NPP) team has prepared an appeal to the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) for assistance with addressing Page Curation bugs and requested features. You are encouraged to read the open letter before it is sent, and if you support it, consider signing it. It is not a discussion, just a signature will suffice.
• Voting for candidates for the Wikimedia Board of Trustees is open until 6 September.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 11:13, 1 September 2022 (UTC)

Tech News: 2022-36

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

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 6 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 7 September. It will be on all wikis from 8 September (calendar).
• Some wikis will be in read-only for a few minutes because of a switch of their main database. It will be performed on 6 September at 07:00 UTC (targeted wikis) and on 8 September at 7:00 UTC (targeted wikis).
• On Special pages that only have one tab, the tab-bar's row will be hidden in the Vector-2022 skin to save space. The row will still show if Gadgets use it. Gadgets that currently append directly to the CSS id of #p-namespaces should be updated to use the mw.util.addPortletLink function instead. Gadgets that style this id should consider also targeting #p-associated-pages, the new id for this row. Examples are available. [314][315]

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

23:20, 5 September 2022 (UTC)

Feedback request: Wikipedia proposals request for comment

Your feedback is requested at Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard on a "Wikipedia proposals" request for comment. Thank you for helping out!
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Feedback request: Wikipedia proposals request for comment

Your feedback is requested at Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Arbitration Committee Elections December 2022 on a "Wikipedia proposals" request for comment. Thank you for helping out!
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Tech News: 2022-37

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

• The search servers have been upgraded to a new major version. If you notice any issues with searching, please report them on Phabricator. [316]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 13 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 14 September. It will be on all wikis from 15 September (calendar).
• Syntax highlighting is now tracked as an expensive parser function. Only 500 expensive function calls can be used on a single page. Pages that exceed the limit are added to a tracking category. [317]

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01:48, 13 September 2022 (UTC)

Feedback request: Maths, science, and technology request for comment

Your feedback is requested at Template talk:Edit taxonomy on a "Maths, science, and technology" request for comment. Thank you for helping out!
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Tech News: 2022-38

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

• Two database fields in the templatelinks table are now being dropped: tl_namespace and tl_title. Any queries that rely on these fields need to be changed to use the new normalization field called tl_target_id. See T299417 for more information. This is part of normalization of links tables. [318][319]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 20 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 21 September. It will be on all wikis from 22 September (calendar).
• In Kartographer maps, you can use icons on markers for common points of interest. On Tuesday, the previous icon set will be updated to version maki 7.2. That means, around 100 new icons will be available. Additionally, all existing icons were updated for clarity and to make them work better in international contexts. [320][321]

Future changes

• In a group discussion at Wikimania, more than 30 people talked about how to make content partnership software in the Wikimedia movement more sustainable. What kind of support is acceptable for volunteer developers? Read the summary and leave your feedback.

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MediaWiki message delivery 22:14, 19 September 2022 (UTC)

Tech News: 2022-39

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

• Parsoid clients should be updated to allow for space-separated multi-values in the rel attribute of links. Further details are in T315209.

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 27 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 28 September. It will be on all wikis from 29 September (calendar).
• Visual diffs will become available to all users, except at the Wiktionaries and Wikipedias. [322]
• Talk pages on the mobile site will change at the Arabic, Bangla, Chinese, French, Haitian Creole, Hebrew, Korean, and Vietnamese Wikipedias. They should be easier to use and provide more information. [323] [324]
• In the Module namespace, pages ending with .json will be treated as JSON, just like they already are in the User and MediaWiki namespaces. [325]

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

MediaWiki message delivery 00:28, 27 September 2022 (UTC)

Feedback request: Maths, science, and technology request for comment

Your feedback is requested at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Weather on a "Maths, science, and technology" request for comment. Thank you for helping out!
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Administrators' newsletter – October 2022

News and updates for administrators from the past month (September 2022).

Administrator changes

ScottishFinnishRadish

Staxringold

Ahoerstemeier (deceased) • Ched

Interface administrator changes

Cyberpower678

CheckUser changes

GorillaWarfare

Guideline and policy news

• Following an RfC, consensus was found that if the rationale for a block depends on information that is not available to all administrators, that information should be sent to the Arbitration Committee, a checkuser or an oversighter for action (as applicable, per ArbCom's recent updated guidance) instead of the administrator making the block.
• Following an RfC, consensus has been found that, in the context of politics and science, the reliability of FoxNews.com is unclear and that additional considerations apply to its use.
• Community comment on the revised Universal Code of Conduct enforcement guidelines is requested until 8 October.

Technical news

• The Articles for creation helper script now automatically recognises administrator accounts which means your name does not need to be listed at WP:AFCP to help out. If you wish to help out at AFC, enable AFCH by navigating to Preferences → Gadgets and checking the "Yet Another AfC Helper Script" box.

Arbitration

• Remedy 8.1 of the Muhammad images case will be rescinded 1 November following a motion.
• A modification to the deletion RfC remedy in the Conduct in deletion-related editing case has been made to reaffirm the independence of the RfC and allow the moderators to split the RfC in two.
• The second phase of the 2021-22 Discretionary Sanctions Review closes 3 October.

Miscellaneous

• An administrator's account was recently compromised. Administrators are encouraged to check that their passwords are secure, and reminded that ArbCom reserves the right to not restore adminship in cases of poor account security. You can also use two-factor authentication (2FA) to provide an extra level of security.
• Self-nominations for the electoral commission for the 2022 Arbitration Committee elections open 2 October and close 8 October.
• You are invited to comment on candidates in the 2022 CUOS appointments process.
• An RfC is open to discuss whether to make Vector 2022 the default skin on desktop.
• Tech tip: You can do a fuzzy search of all deleted page titles at Special:Undelete.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 11:43, 1 October 2022 (UTC)

Tech News: 2022-40

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

• Kartographer maps can now show geopoints from Wikidata, via QID or SPARQL query. Previously, this was only possible for geoshapes and geolines. [326] [327]
• The Coolest Tool Award 2022 is looking for nominations. You can recommend tools until 12 October.

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 4 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 5 October. It will be on all wikis from 6 October (calendar).
• Talk pages on the mobile site will change at the Arabic, Bangla, Chinese, French, Haitian Creole, Hebrew, Korean, and Vietnamese Wikipedias. They should be easier to use and provide more information. (Last week's release was delayed) [328] [329]
• The scribunto-console API module will require a CSRF token. This module is documented as internal and use of it is not supported. [5]
• The Vector 2022 skin will become the default across the smallest Wikimedia projects. Learn more.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 00:22, 4 October 2022 (UTC)

Feedback requests from the Feedback Request Service

Your feedback is requested at Talk:Circumcision on a "Maths, science, and technology" request for comment, and at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Linking on a "Wikipedia style and naming" request for comment. Thank you for helping out!
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Tech News: 2022-41

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 11 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 12 October. It will be on all wikis from 13 October (calendar).
• On some wikis, Kartographer maps in full size view will be able to display nearby articles. After a feedback period, more wikis will follow. [330][331]

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14:07, 10 October 2022 (UTC)

Guild of Copy Editors' October 2022 newsletter

Guild of Copy Editors October 2022 Newsletter Hello and welcome to our latest newsletter, a quarterly digest of Guild activities since June. Don't forget you can unsubscribe at any time; see below. Drive: Of the 22 editors who signed up for our July Backlog Elimination Drive, 18 copy-edited, between them, 116 articles. Barnstars awarded are noted here. Blitz: Participants in our August Copy Editing Blitz copy-edited 51,074 words in 17 articles. Of the 15 editors who signed up, 11 claimed at least one copy-edit. Barnstars awarded are noted here. Drive: Forty-one editors took part in our September Backlog Elimination Drive; between them they copy-edited 199 articles. Barnstars awards are noted here. Blitz: Our October Copy Editing Blitz begins on 16 October at 00:01 (UTC) and will end on 22 October at 23:59 (UTC). Barnstars awarded will be posted here. Progress report: As of 19:57, 12 October 2022 (UTC), GOCE copyeditors have processed 303 requests for copy edit – including withdrawn and declined ones – since 1 January. At the time of writing, there are 77 requests awaiting attention and the backlog of tagged articles stands at 1,759. We always need more active, skilled copyeditors – particularly for requests – so please get involved if you can. Election news: In our mid-year election, serving coordinators Baffle gab1978, Dhtwiki, Miniapolis, Reidgreg and Tenryuu were returned for another term, and were joined by new coordinator Zippybonzo. No lead coordinator was elected for this half-year. Jonesey95, a long-serving coordinator and lead, was elected as coordinator emeritus; we thank them for their service. Thank you to everyone who took part. Our next election of coordinators takes place throughout December. If you'd like to help out at the GOCE, please consider nominating yourself or other suitable editors (with their permission, of course!). It's your Guild, after all! Thank you all again for your participation; we wouldn't be able to achieve what we have without you! Cheers from your GOCE coordinators Baffle gab1978, Dhtwiki, Miniapolis, Reidgreg, Tenryuu and Zippybonzo. To discontinue receiving GOCE newsletters, please remove your name from our mailing list.

Baffle☿gab 03:08, 14 October 2022 (UTC)

Feedback request: Politics, government, and law request for comment

Your feedback is requested at Talk:List of dignitaries at the state funeral of Elizabeth II on a "Politics, government, and law" request for comment. Thank you for helping out!
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Tech News: 2022-42

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

• The recently implemented feature of article thumbnails in Special:Search will be limited to Wikipedia projects only. Further details are in T320510. [332]
• A bug that caused problems in loading article thumbnails in Special:Search has been fixed. Further details are in T320406.

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 18 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 19 October. It will be on all wikis from 20 October (calendar).
• Lua module authors can use mw.loadJsonData() to load data from JSON pages. [333]
• Lua module authors can enable require( "strict" ) to add errors for some possible code problems. This replaces "Module:No globals" on most wikis. [334]

Future changes

• The Beta Feature for DiscussionTools will be updated at most wikis. The "reply" button will look different after this change. [335]

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

MediaWiki message delivery 21:44, 17 October 2022 (UTC)

Tech News: 2022-43

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

• There have been some minor visual fixes in Special:Search, regarding audio player alignment and image placeholder height. Further details are in T319230.
• On Wikipedias, a new preference has been added to hide article thumbnails in Special:Search. Full details are in T320337.

Problems

• Last week, three wikis (French Wikipedia, Japanese Wikipedia, Russian Wikipedia) had read-only access for 25 minutes. This was caused by a hardware problem. [336]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 25 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 26 October. It will be on all wikis from 27 October (calendar).
• Some wikis will be in read-only for a few minutes because of a switch of their main database. It will be performed on 25 October at 07:00 UTC (targeted wikis) and on 27 October at 7:00 UTC (targeted wikis).
• Starting on Wednesday, a new set of Wikipedias will get "Add a link" (Assamese Wikipedia, Bashkir Wikipedia, Balinese Wikipedia, Bavarian Wikipedia, Samogitian Wikipedia, Bikol Central Wikipedia, Belarusian Wikipedia, Belarusian (Taraškievica) Wikipedia, Bulgarian Wikipedia, Bhojpuri Wikipedia, Bislama Wikipedia, Banjar Wikipedia, Bambara Wikipedia, Bishnupriya Wikipedia, Breton Wikipedia, Bosnian Wikipedia, Buginese Wikipedia, Buryat Wikipedia, Indonesian Wikipedia). This is part of the progressive deployment of this tool to more Wikipedias. The communities can configure how this feature works locally. [337]
• Starting on Wednesday October 26, 2022, the list of mentors will be upgraded at wikis where Growth mentorship is available. The mentorship system will continue to work as it does now. The signup process will be replaced, and a new management option will be provided. Also, this change simplifies the creation of mentorship systems at Wikipedias. [338][339][340]
• Pages with titles that start with a lower-case letter according to Unicode 11 will be renamed or deleted. There is a list of affected pages at m:Unicode 11 case map migration. More information can be found at T292552.
• The Vector 2022 skin will become the default across the smallest Wikipedias. Learn more.

Future changes

• The Reply tool and New Topic tool will soon get a special characters menu. [341]

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

MediaWiki message delivery 21:21, 24 October 2022 (UTC)

Feedback request: Maths, science, and technology request for comment

Your feedback is requested at Talk:Miss Shilling's orifice on a "Maths, science, and technology" request for comment. Thank you for helping out!
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Tech News: 2022-44

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

• When using keyboard navigation on a Kartographer map, the focus will become more visible. [342]
• In Special:RecentChanges, you can now hide the log entries for new user creations with the filter for "⧼rcfilters-filter-newuserlogactions-label⧽". [343]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 1 November. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 2 November. It will be on all wikis from 3 November (calendar).
• The maps dialog in VisualEditor now has some help texts. [344]
• It is now possible to select the language of a Kartographer map in VisualEditor via a dropdown menu. [345]
• It is now possible to add a caption to a Kartographer map in VisualEditor. [346]
• It is now possible to hide the frame of a Kartographer map in VisualEditor. [347]

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

MediaWiki message delivery 21:14, 31 October 2022 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – November 2022

News and updates for administrators from the past month (October 2022).

Administrator changes

• 
  • Isabelle Belato
  • Whpq
• 
• 
  • Atama
  • Astronautics~enwiki
  • Athaenara
  • Eddie891
  • GraemeL
  • Marianocecowski
  • Natalya
  • Pratyeka
  • SB Johnny

Interface administrator changes

• TheresNoTime
• Ragesoss

CheckUser changes

• 
  • Blablubbs
  • Firefly
• Joe Roe

Oversight changes

• DGG

Guideline and policy news

• The article creation at scale RfC opened on 3 October and will be open until at least 2 November.
• An RfC is open to discuss having open requests for adminship automatically placed on hold after the seven-day period has elapsed, pending closure or other action by a bureaucrat.

Arbitration

• Eligible editors are invited to self-nominate themselves from 13 November 2022 until 22 November 2022 to stand in the 2022 Arbitration Committee elections.
• The arbitration case request titled Athaenara has been resolved by motion.
• The arbitration case Reversal and reinstatement of Athaenara's block has entered the proposed decision stage.
• AmandaNP, Mz7 and Cyberpower678 have been appointed to the Electoral Commission for the 2022 Arbitration Committee Elections. Xaosflux and Dr vulpes are reserve commissioners.

Miscellaneous

• The 2022 CheckUser and Oversight appointments process has concluded with the appointment of two new CheckUsers.
• You can add yourself to the centralised page listing time zones of administrators.
• Tech tip: Wikimarkup in a block summary is parsed in the notice that the blockee sees. You can use templates with custom options to specify situations like {{rangeblock|create=yes}} or {{uw-ublock|contains profanity}}.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:24, 1 November 2022 (UTC)

Feedback request: Wikipedia proposals request for comment

Your feedback is requested at Wikipedia talk:Inline citation on a "Wikipedia proposals" request for comment. Thank you for helping out!
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Tech News: 2022-45

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

• An updated version of the Event Registration tool is now available for testing at testwiki and test2wiki. The tool provides features for event organizers and participants. Your feedback is welcome at our project talkpage. More information about the project is available. [348]

Problems

• Twice last week, for about 45 minutes, some files and thumbnails failed to load and uploads failed, mostly for logged-in users. The cause is being investigated and an incident report will be available soon.

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.

MediaWiki message delivery 00:30, 8 November 2022 (UTC)

Feedback request: Wikipedia proposals request for comment

Your feedback is requested at Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard on a "Wikipedia proposals" request for comment. Thank you for helping out!
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Tech News: 2022-46

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

• At Wikidata, an interwiki link can now point to a redirect page if certain conditions are met. This new feature is called sitelinks to redirects. It is needed when one wiki uses one page to cover multiple concepts but another wiki uses more pages to cover the same concepts. Your feedback on the talkpage of the new proposed guideline is welcome. [349]
• The www.wikinews.org, www.wikiversity.org, and www.wikivoyage.org portal pages now use an automated update system. [350]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 15 November. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 16 November. It will be on all wikis from 17 November (calendar).
• There will be a new link to directly "Edit template data" on Template pages. [351]

Future changes

• Wikis where mobile DiscussionTools are enabled (these ones) will soon use full CSS styling to display any templates that are placed at the top of talk pages. To adapt these “talk page boxes” for narrow mobile devices you can use media queries, such as in this example. [352]
• Starting in January 2023, Community Tech will be running the Community Wishlist Survey (CWS) every two years. This means that in 2024, there will be no new proposals or voting.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 21:53, 14 November 2022 (UTC)

Tech News: 2022-47

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

Recent changes

• The display of non-free media in the search bar and for article thumbnails in Special:Search has been deactivated. Further details are in T320661.

Changes later this week

• There is no new MediaWiki version this week.
• Some wikis will be in read-only for a few minutes because of a switch of their main database. It will be performed on 22 November at 07:00 UTC (targeted wikis) and on 24 November at 07:00 UTC (targeted wikis).

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

MediaWiki message delivery 23:20, 21 November 2022 (UTC)

Tech News: 2022-48

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

Recent changes

• A new preference, “Enable limited width mode”, has been added to the Vector 2022 skin. The preference is also available as a toggle on every page if your monitor is 1600 pixels or wider. It allows for increasing the width of the page for logged-out and logged-in users. [353]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 29 November. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 30 November. It will be on all wikis from 1 December (calendar).
• Some wikis will be in read-only for a few minutes because of a switch of their main database. It will be performed on 29 November at 07:00 UTC (targeted wikis) and on 1 December at 07:00 UTC (targeted wikis).
• Mathematical formulas shown in SVG image format will no longer have PNG fall-backs for browsers that don't support them. This is part of work to modernise the generation system. Showing only PNG versions was the default option until in February 2018. [354][355][356]
• On some wikis that use flagged revisions, a new checkbox will be added to Special:Contributions that enables you to see only the pending changes by a user. [357]

Future changes

• How media is structured in the parser's HTML output will change early next week at group1 wikis (but not Wikimedia Commons or Meta-Wiki). This change improves the accessibility of content, and makes it easier to write related CSS. You may need to update your site-CSS, or userscripts and gadgets. There are details on what code to check, how to update the code, and where to report any related problems. [358]

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

MediaWiki message delivery 20:01, 28 November 2022 (UTC)

ArbCom 2022 Elections voter message

Hello! Voting in the 2022 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23:59 (UTC) on Monday, 12 December 2022. 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 2022 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) 00:34, 29 November 2022 (UTC)

Feedback request: Maths, science, and technology request for comment

Your feedback is requested at Talk:Male expendability on a "Maths, science, and technology" request for comment. Thank you for helping out!
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Message delivered to you with love by Yapperbot :) | Is this wrong? Contact my bot operator. | Sent at 03:30, 29 November 2022 (UTC)

Feedback request: Wikipedia proposals request for comment

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Administrators' newsletter – December 2022

News and updates for administrators from the past month (November 2022).

Administrator changes

• Eddie891
• Euryalus
• TheresNoTime

• Alex.muller
• Excirial
• RedWordSmith
• Ron Ritzman
• TheresNoTime
• Stephen

Interface administrator changes

TheresNoTime

TheresNoTime

CheckUser changes

TheresNoTime

Oversight changes

TheresNoTime

Guideline and policy news

• Consensus has been found in an RfC to automatically place RfAs on hold after one week.
• The article creation at scale RfC has been closed.
• An RfC on the banners for the December 2022 fundraising campaign has been closed.

Technical news

• A new preference named "Enable limited width mode" has been added to the Vector 2022 skin. The preference is also shown as a toggle on every page if your monitor is 1600 pixels or wider. When disabled it removes the whitespace added by Vector 2022 on the left and right of the page content. Disabling this preference has the same effect as enabling the wide-vector-2022 gadget. (T319449)

Arbitration

• Eligible users are invited to vote on candidates for the Arbitration Committee until 23:59 December 12, 2022 (UTC). Candidate statements can be seen here.
• The proposed decision for the 2021-22 review of the discretionary sanctions system is open.
• The arbitration case Reversal and reinstatement of Athaenara's block has been closed.
• The arbitration case Stephen has been opened and the proposed decision is expected 1 December 2022.
• A motion has modified the procedures for contacting an admin facing Level 2 desysop.

Miscellaneous

• Tech tip: A single IPv6 connection usually has access to a "subnet" of 18 quintillion IPs. Add /64 to the end of an IP in Special:Contributions to see all of a subnet's edits, and consider blocking the whole subnet rather than an IP that may change within a minute.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 12:45, 1 December 2022 (UTC)

Feedback request: Politics, government, and law request for comment

Your feedback is requested at Talk:Donald Trump on a "Politics, government, and law" request for comment. Thank you for helping out!
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Message delivered to you with love by Yapperbot :) | Is this wrong? Contact my bot operator. | Sent at 17:31, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

Tech News: 2022-49

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

Recent changes

• The Wikisources use a tool called ProofreadPage. ProofreadPage uses OpenSeadragon which is an open source tool. The OpenSeadragon JavaScript API has been significantly re-written to support dynamically loading images. The functionality provided by the older version of the API should still work but it is no longer supported. User scripts and gadgets should migrate over to the newer version of the API. The functionality provided by the newer version of the API is documented on MediaWiki. [359][360]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 6 December. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 7 December. It will be on all wikis from 8 December (calendar).

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

MediaWiki message delivery 00:39, 6 December 2022 (UTC)

Guild of Copy Editors December 2022 Newsletter

Guild of Copy Editors December 2022 Newsletter Hello and welcome to our latest newsletter, a quarterly digest of Guild activities since October. Don't forget you can unsubscribe at any time; see below. Blitz: Our October Copy Editing Blitz focused on July and August 2022 request months; and articles tagged for c/e in December 2021 and January 2022. Seventeen of those who signed up claimed at least one copy-edit, and between them copy-edited forty-six articles. Barnstars awarded are here. Drive: In the November Backlog Elimination Drive, thirty editors signed up, twenty-two of whom claimed at least one copy-edit. Both target months—December 2021 and January 2022—were cleared, and February was added to the target months. Sixteen requests were copy-edited and 239 articles were removed from the backlog. Barnstars awarded are here. Blitz: Our seven-day-long December 2022 Copy Editing Blitz begins on 17 December at 00:01 (UTC)*. It will focus on articles tagged for copy-edit in February 2022, and pending requests from September and October. Barnstars awarded will be available here. Progress report: As of 22:40, 8 December 2022, GOCE copyeditors have processed 357 requests since 1 January, there were seventy-four requests outstanding and the backlog stands at 1,791 articles. We always need skilled copy-editors; please help out if you can. Election news: Nomination of candidates for the GOCE's Election of Coordinators for the first half of 2023 is open and continues until 23:59 on 15 December. Voting begins at 00:01 on 16 December and closes at 23:59 on 31 December. All editors in good standing (not under ArbCom or community sanctions) are eligible and self-nominations are welcomed. Coordinators serve a six-month term that ends at 23:59 on June 30. If you've thought about helping out at the Guild, please nominate yourself or any editor you consider suitable—with their permission, of course!. It's your Guild and it doesn't coordinate itself. Thank you all again for your participation; we wouldn't be able to achieve what we have without you! Cheers and best seasonal wishes from your GOCE coordinators, Baffle gab1978, Dhtwiki, Miniapolis, Tenryuu, and Zippybonzo. *All times and dates on this newsletter are UTC. To discontinue receiving GOCE newsletters, please remove your name from our mailing list.

Sent by Baffle gab1978 via MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:26, 9 December 2022 (UTC)

Guild of Copy Editors December 2022 Newsletter error

The GOCE December 2022 newsletter, as sent on 9 December, contains an erroneous start date for our December Blitz. The Blitz will start on 11 December rather than on 17 December, as stated in the newsletter. I'm sorry for the mistake and for disrupting your talk page; thanks for your understanding. Sent by Baffle gab1978 via MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 21:31, 9 December 2022 (UTC)

Tech News: 2022-50

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

• An A/B test has begun at 15 Wikipedias for DiscussionTools on mobile. Half of the editors on the mobile web site will have access to the Reply tool and other features. [361]
• The character = cannot be used in new usernames, to make usernames work better with templates. Existing usernames are not affected. [362]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 13 December. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 14 December. It will be on all wikis from 15 December (calendar).
• The HTML markup used by DiscussionTools to show discussion metadata below section headings will be inserted after these headings, not inside of them. This change improves the accessibility of discussion pages for screen reader software. [363]

Events

• The fourth edition of the Coolest Tool Award will happen online on Friday 16 December 2022 at 17:00 UTC! The event will be live-streamed on YouTube in the MediaWiki channel and added to Commons afterwards.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 23:33, 12 December 2022 (UTC)

Tech News: 2022-51

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

• Because of the holidays the next issue of Tech News will be sent out on 9 January 2023.

Recent changes

• On a user's contributions page, you can filter it for edits with a tag like 'reverted'. Now, you can also filter for all edits that are not tagged like that. This was part of a Community Wishlist 2022 request. [364]
• A new function has been used for gadget developers to add content underneath the title on article pages. This is considered a stable API that should work across all skins. Documentation is available. [365]
• One of our test wikis is now being served from a new infrastructure powered by Kubernetes (read more). More Wikis will switch to this new infrastructure in early 2023. Please test and let us know of any issues. [366]

Problems

• Last week, all wikis had no edit access for 9 minutes. This was caused by a database problem. [367]

Changes later this week

• There is no new MediaWiki version this week or next week.
• The word "Reply" is very short in some languages, such as Arabic ("ردّ"). This makes the Discussion tools button on talk pages difficult to use. An arrow icon will be added to those languages. This will only be visible to editors who have the Beta Feature turned on. [368] [369]

Future changes

• Edits can be automatically "tagged" by the system software or the Edit filter configuration system. Those tags link to a help page about the tags. Soon they will also link to Recent Changes to let you see other edits tagged this way. This was a Community Wishlist 2022 request. [370]
• The Trust & Safety tools team have shared new plans for building the Private Incident Reporting System. The system will make it easier for editors to ask for help if they are harassed or abused.
• Realtime Preview for Wikitext is coming out of beta as an enabled feature for every user of the 2010 Wikitext editor in the week of January 9, 2023. It will be available to use via the toolbar in the 2010 Wikitext editor. The feature was the 4th most popular wish of the Community Wishlist Survey 2021.

Events

• You can now register for the Wikimedia Hackathon 2023, taking place on May 19–21 in Athens, Greece. You can also apply for a scholarship until January 14th.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 23:58, 19 December 2022 (UTC)

Feedback request: Politics, government, and law request for comment

Your feedback is requested at Talk:Beira's Place on a "Politics, government, and law" request for comment. Thank you for helping out!
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Feedback request: Maths, science, and technology request for comment

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Feedback request: Politics, government, and law request for comment

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Administrators' newsletter – January 2023

News and updates for administrators from the past month (December 2022).

Administrator changes

• ComplexRational
• Extraordinary Writ

Stephen

• Andrew Yong
• Dbenbenn
• DESiegel
• GlassCobra
• Joe Decker
• Nancy
• Pathoschild
• StuffOfInterest
• William Pietri
• Wwwwolf
• Xdamr

Interface administrator changes

Nihiltres

CheckUser changes

Moneytrees

• Ivanvector
• SilkTork

Oversighter changes

• GeneralNotability
• Moneytrees

• Guerillero
• SilkTork

Guideline and policy news

• Speedy deletion criterion A5 (transwikied articles) has been repealed following an unopposed proposal.

Arbitration

• Following the 2022 Arbitration Committee elections, the following editors have been appointed to the Arbitration Committee: Barkeep49, CaptainEek, GeneralNotability, Guerillero, L235, Moneytrees, Primefac, SilkTork.
• The 2021-22 Discretionary Sanctions Review has concluded with many changes to the discretionary sanctions procedure including a change of the name to "contentious topics". The changes are being implemented over the coming month.
• The arbitration case Stephen has been closed.

Miscellaneous

• Voting for the Sound Logo has closed and the winner is expected to be announced February to April 2023.
• Tech tip: You can view information about IP addresses in a centralised location using bullseye which won the Newcomer award in the recent Coolest Tool Awards.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 01:09, 6 January 2023 (UTC)

Feedback request: Wikipedia policies and guidelines request for comment

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Tech News: 2023-02

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 use tags to filter edits in the recent changes feed or on your watchlist. You can now use tags to filter out edits you don't want to see. Previously you could only use tags to focus on the edits with those tags. [371]
• Special:WhatLinksHere shows all pages that link to a specific page. There is now a prototype for how to sort those pages alphabetically. You can see the discussion in the Phabricator ticket.
• You can now use the thanks function on your watchlist and the user contribution page. [372]
• A wiki page can be moved to give it a new name. You can now get a dropdown menu with common reasons when you move a page. This is so you don't have to write the explanation every time. [373]
• Matrix is a chat tool. You can now use matrix: to create Matrix links on wiki pages. [374]
• You can filter out translations when you look at the recent changes on multilingual wikis. This didn't hide translation pages. You can now also hide subpages which are translation pages. [375]

Changes later this week

• Realtime preview for wikitext is a tool which lets editors preview the page when they edit wikitext. It will be enabled for all users of the 2010 wikitext editor. You will find it in the editor toolbar.
• Some wikis will be in read-only for a few minutes because of a switch of their main database. It will be performed on 10 January at 07:00 UTC (targeted wikis) and on 12 January at 07:00 UTC (targeted wikis).
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 10 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 11 January. It will be on all wikis from 12 January (calendar).

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MediaWiki message delivery 01:06, 10 January 2023 (UTC)

Feedback request: Wikipedia policies and guidelines request for comment

Your feedback is requested at Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion on a "Wikipedia policies and guidelines" request for comment. Thank you for helping out!
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Feedback request: Wikipedia style and naming request for comment

Your feedback is requested at Talk:Andrew Tate on a "Wikipedia style and naming" request for comment. Thank you for helping out!
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Tech News: 2023-03

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

• The URLs in "prev" links on page history now contain diff=prev&oldid=[revision ID] in place of diff=[revision ID]&oldid=[revision ID]. This is to fix a problem with links pointing to incorrect diffs when history was filtered by a tag. Some user scripts may break as a result of this change. [376]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 17 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 18 January. It will be on all wikis from 19 January (calendar).
• Some changes to the appearance of talk pages have only been available on Talk: and User talk: namespaces. These will be extended to other talk namespaces, such as Wikipedia talk:. They will continue to be unavailable in non-talk namespaces, including Wikipedia: pages (e.g., at the Village Pump). You can change your preferences (beta feature). [377]
• On Wikisources, when an image is zoomed or panned in the Page: namespace, the same zoom and pan settings will be remembered for all Page: namespace pages that are linked to a particular Index: namespace page. [378]
• The Vector 2022 skin will become the default for the English Wikipedia desktop users. The change will take place on January 18 at 15:00 UTC. Learn more.

Future changes

• The 2023 edition of the Community Wishlist Survey, which invites contributors to make technical proposals and vote for tools and improvements, starts next week on 23 January 2023 at 18:00 UTC. You can start drafting your proposals in the CWS sandbox.

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MediaWiki message delivery 01:08, 17 January 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-04

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

• Last week, for ~15 minutes, all wikis were unreachable for logged-in users and non-cached pages. This was caused by a timing issue. [379]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 24 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 25 January. It will be on all wikis from 26 January (calendar).
• If you have the Beta Feature for DiscussionTools enabled, the appearance of talk pages will add more information about discussion activity. [380][381]
• The 2023 edition of the Community Wishlist Survey (CWS), which invites contributors to make technical proposals and vote for tools and improvements, starts on Monday 23 January 2023 at 18:00 UTC.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 23:44, 23 January 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-05

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

• Last week, for ~15 minutes, some users were unable to log in or edit pages. This was caused by a problem with session storage. [382]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 31 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 1 February. It will be on all wikis from 2 February (calendar).

Future changes

• Wikis that use localized numbering schemes for references need to add new CSS. This will help to show citation numbers the same way in all reading and editing modes. If your wiki would prefer to do it yourselves, please see the details and example CSS to copy from, and also add your wiki to the list. Otherwise, the developers will directly help out starting the week of February 5.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 00:04, 31 January 2023 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – February 2023

News and updates for administrators from the past month (January 2023).

Administrator changes

Gimmetrow

• Bjelleklang
• Bob the Wikipedian
• Leithp
• WhisperToMe
• 100 inactive admins

CheckUser changes

• BDD
• Bradv
• Donald Albury
• Maxim
• MusikAnimal

Oversighter changes

• BDD
• Bradv
• Donald Albury
• Maxim

Guideline and policy news

• Following an RfC, the administrator policy now requires that prior written consent be gained from the Arbitration Committee to mark a block as only appealable to the committee.
• Following a community discussion, consensus has been found to impose the extended-confirmed restriction over the topic areas of Armenia and Azerbaijan and Kurds and Kurdistan.

Technical news

• The Vector 2022 skin has become the default for desktop users of the English Wikipedia.

Arbitration

• The arbitration case Armenia-Azerbaijan 3 has been opened and the proposed decision is expected 24 February 2023.
• In December, the contentious topics procedure was adopted which replaces the former discretionary sanctions system. The contentious topics procedure is now in effect following an initial implementation period. There is a detailed summary of the changes and administrator instructions for the new procedure. The arbitration clerk team are taking suggestions, concerns, and unresolved questions about this new system at their noticeboard.

Miscellaneous

• Voting in the 2023 Steward elections will begin on 05 February 2023, 21:00 (UTC) and end on 26 February 2023, 21:00 (UTC). The confirmation process of current stewards is being held in parallel. You can automatically check your eligibility to vote.
• Voting in the 2023 Community Wishlist Survey will begin on 10 February 2023 and end on 24 February 2023. You can submit, discuss and revise proposals until 6 February 2023.
• Tech tip: Syntax highlighting is available in both the 2011 and 2017 Wikitext editors. It can help make editing paragraphs with many references or complicated templates easier.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 01:38, 2 February 2023 (UTC)

Feedback request: Wikipedia style and naming request for comment

Your feedback is requested at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals) on a "Wikipedia style and naming" request for comment. Thank you for helping out!
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Guild of Copy Editors 2022 Annual Report

Guild of Copy Editors 2022 Annual Report Our 2022 Annual Report is now ready for review. Highlights: Overview of Backlog-reduction progress Summary of Drives, Blitzes, and the Requests page Membership news and results of elections Closing words – Your Guild coordinators: Baffle gab1978, Dhtwiki, Miniapolis and Zippybonzo To discontinue receiving GOCE newsletters, please remove your name from our mailing list.

Sent by Baffle gab1978 using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:30, 6 February 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-06

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

• In the Vector 2022 skin, logged-out users using the full-width toggle will be able to see the setting of their choice even after refreshing pages or opening new ones. This only applies to wikis where Vector 2022 is the default. [383]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 7 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 8 February. It will be on all wikis from 9 February (calendar).
• Previously, we announced when some wikis would be in read-only for a few minutes because of a switch of their main database. These switches will not be announced any more, as the read-only time has become non-significant. Switches will continue to happen at 7AM UTC on Tuesdays and Thursdays. [384]
• Across all the wikis, in the Vector 2022 skin, logged-in users will see the page-related links such as "What links here" in a new side menu. It will be displayed on the other side of the screen. This change had previously been made on Czech, English, and Vietnamese Wikipedias. [385]
• Community Wishlist Survey 2023 will stop receiving new proposals on Monday, 6 February 2023, at 18:00 UTC. Proposers should complete any edits by then, to give time for translations and review. Voting will begin on Friday, 10 February.

Future changes

• Gadgets and user scripts will be changing to load on desktop and mobile sites. Previously they would only load on the desktop site. It is recommended that wiki administrators audit the gadget definitions prior to this change, and add skins=… for any gadgets which should not load on mobile. More details are available.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 10:19, 6 February 2023 (UTC)

Feedback request: Maths, science, and technology request for comment

Your feedback is requested at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Elements on a "Maths, science, and technology" request for comment. Thank you for helping out!
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Feedback request: Maths, science, and technology request for comment

Your feedback is requested at Talk:Honeywell 6000 series on a "Maths, science, and technology" request for comment. Thank you for helping out!
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Tech News: 2023-07

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

• On wikis where patrolled edits are enabled, changes made to the mentor list by autopatrolled mentors are not correctly marked as patrolled. It will be fixed later this week. [386]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 14 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 15 February. It will be on all wikis from 16 February (calendar).
• The Reply tool and other parts of DiscussionTools will be deployed for all editors using the mobile site. You can read more about this decision. [387]

Future changes

• All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on March 1. This is planned for 14:00 UTC. More information will be published in Tech News and will also be posted on individual wikis in the coming weeks. [388][389][390]

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

MediaWiki message delivery 01:47, 14 February 2023 (UTC)

Feedback request: Politics, government, and law request for comment

Your feedback is requested at Talk:Helms Amendment to the Foreign Assistance Act on a "Politics, government, and law" request for comment. Thank you for helping out!
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Tech News: 2023-08

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

• Last week, during planned maintenance of Cloud Services, unforeseen complications forced the team to turn off all tools for 2–3 hours to prevent data corruption. Work is ongoing to prevent similar problems in the future. [391]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 21 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 22 February. It will be on all wikis from 23 February (calendar).
• The voting phase for the Community Wishlist Survey 2023 ends on 24 February at 18:00 UTC. The results of the survey will be announced on 28 February.

Future changes

• All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on March 1. This is planned for 14:00 UTC. More information will be published in Tech News and will also be posted on individual wikis in the coming weeks. [392][393][394]

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

MediaWiki message delivery 01:56, 21 February 2023 (UTC)

Feedback request: Maths, science, and technology request for comment

Your feedback is requested at Talk:Eyferth study on a "Maths, science, and technology" request for comment. Thank you for helping out!
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Tech News: 2023-09

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

• Last week, in some areas of the world, there were problems with loading pages for 20 minutes and saving edits for 55 minutes. These issues were caused by a problem with our caching servers due to unforseen events during a routine maintenance task. [395][396]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 28 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 1 March. It will be on all wikis from 2 March (calendar).
• All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on March 1. This is planned for 14:00 UTC. [397]

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MediaWiki message delivery 23:45, 27 February 2023 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – March 2023

News and updates for administrators from the past month (February 2023).

Administrator changes

The Wordsmith

• Fuhghettaboutit
• Spinningspark (deceased)

CheckUser changes

Callanecc

Oversighter changes

Callanecc

Guideline and policy news

• Following a request for comment, F10 (useless non-media files) has been deprecated.
• Following a request for comment, the Portal CSD criteria (P1 (portal subject to CSD as an article) and P2 (underpopulated portal)) have been deprecated.
• A request for comment is open to discuss making the closing instructions for the requested moves process a guideline.

Technical news

• The results of the 2023 Community Wishlist Survey have been posted.

Arbitration

• Remedy 11 ("Request for Comment") of the Conduct in deletion-related editing case has been rescinded.
• The proposed decision for the Armenia-Azerbaijan 3 case is expected 7 March 2023.
• A case related to the Holocaust in Poland is expected to be opened soon.

Miscellaneous

• The 2023 appointees for the Ombuds commission are AGK, Ameisenigel, Bennylin, Daniuu, Emufarmers, Faendalimas, JJMC89, MdsShakil, Minorax and Renvoy as regular members and Zabe as advisory members.
• Following the 2023 Steward Elections, the following editors have been appointed as stewards: Mykola7, Superpes15, and Xaosflux.
• The Terms of Use update cycle has started, which includes a [p]roposal for better addressing undisclosed paid editing. Feedback is being accepted until 24 April 2023.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 13:20, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-10

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

Recent changes

• The Community Wishlist Survey 2023 edition has been concluded. Community Tech has published the results of the survey and will provide an update on what is next in April 2023.
• On wikis which use LanguageConverter to handle multiple writing systems, articles which used custom conversion rules in the wikitext (primarily on Chinese Wikipedia) would have these rules applied inconsistently in the table of contents, especially in the Vector 2022 skin. This has now been fixed. [398]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 7 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 8 March. It will be on all wikis from 9 March (calendar).
• A search system has been added to the Preferences screen. This will let you find different options more easily. Making it work on mobile devices will happen soon. [399]

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

MediaWiki message delivery 23:48, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-11

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 14 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 15 March. It will be on all wikis from 16 March (calendar).
• Starting on Wednesday, a new set of Wikipedias will get "Add a link" (Chavacano de Zamboanga Wikipedia, Min Dong Chinese Wikipedia, Chechen Wikipedia, Cebuano Wikipedia, Chamorro Wikipedia, Cherokee Wikipedia, Cheyenne Wikipedia, Central Kurdish Wikipedia, Corsican Wikipedia, Kashubian Wikipedia, Church Slavic Wikipedia, Chuvash Wikipedia, Welsh Wikipedia, Italian Wikipedia). This is part of the progressive deployment of this tool to more Wikipedias. The communities can configure how this feature works locally. [400][401]

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

MediaWiki message delivery 23:18, 13 March 2023 (UTC)

Guild of Copy Editors March 2023 Newsletter

Guild of Copy Editors March 2023 Newsletter Hello and welcome to the March 2023 newsletter, a quarterly digest of Guild activities since December and our Annual Report for 2022. Don't forget you can unsubscribe at any time; see below. We extend a warm welcome to all of our new members, including those who have signed up for our current March Backlog Elimination Drive. We wish you all happy copy-editing. Election results: In our December 2022 coordinator election, Reidgreg and Tenryuu stepped down as coordinators; we thank them for their service. Incumbents Baffle gab1978, Dhtwiki, Miniapolis and Zippybonzo were returned as coordinators until 1 July. For the second time, no lead coordinator was chosen. Nominations for our mid-year Election of Coordinators open on 1 June (UTC). Drive: 21 editors signed up for our January Backlog Elimination Drive, 14 of whom claimed at least one copy-edit. Between them, they copy-edited 170 articles totaling 389,737 words. Barnstars awarded are here. Blitz: Our February Copy Editing Blitz focused on October and November 2022 requests, and the March and April 2022 backlogs. Of the 14 editors who signed up, nine claimed at least one copy-edit; and between them, they copy-edited 39,150 words in 22 articles. Barnstars awarded are here. Drive: Sign up now for our month-long March Backlog Elimination Drive. Barnstars awarded will be posted here after the drive closes. Progress report: As of 12:08, 19 March 2023 (UTC), GOCE copyeditors have processed 73 requests since 1 January 2023, all but five of them from 2022, and the backlog stands at 1,872 articles. Thank you all again for your participation; we wouldn't be able to achieve what we have without you! Cheers from your GOCE coordinators Baffle gab1978, Dhtwiki, Miniapolis and Zippybonzo. To discontinue receiving GOCE newsletters, please remove your name from our mailing list.

Tech News: 2023-12

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

• Last week, some users experienced issues loading image thumbnails. This was due to incorrectly cached images. [402]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 21 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 22 March. It will be on all wikis from 23 March (calendar).
• A link to the user's Special:CentralAuth page will appear on Special:Contributions — some user scripts which previously added this link may cause conflicts. This feature request was voted #17 in the 2023 Community Wishlist Survey.
• The Special:AbuseFilter edit window will be resizable and larger by default. This feature request was voted #80 in the 2023 Community Wishlist Survey.
• There will be a new option for Administrators when they are unblocking a user, to add the unblocked user’s user page to their watchlist. This will work both via Special:Unblock and via the API. [403]

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the Wikipedia mobile apps teams. During the meeting, we will discuss the current features and future roadmap. The meeting will be on 24 March at 17:00 (UTC). See details and how to join.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 01:24, 21 March 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-13

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 AbuseFilter condition limit was increased from 1000 to 2000. [404]
• Some Global AbuseFilter actions will no longer apply to local projects. [405]
• Desktop users are now able to subscribe to talk pages by clicking on the Subscribe link in the Tools menu. If you subscribe to a talk page, you receive notifications when new topics are started on that talk page. This is separate from putting the page on your watchlist or subscribing to a single discussion. [406]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 28 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 29 March. It will be on all wikis from 30 March (calendar).

Future changes

• You will be able to choose visual diffs on all history pages at the Wiktionaries and Wikipedias. [407]
• The legacy Mobile Content Service is going away in July 2023. Developers are encouraged to switch to Parsoid or another API before then to ensure service continuity. [408]

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

MediaWiki message delivery 01:12, 28 March 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-14

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 system for automatically creating categories for the Babel extension has had several important changes and fixes. One of them allows you to insert templates for automatic category descriptions on creation, allowing you to categorize the new categories. [409][410][411][412][413]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 4 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 5 April. It will be on all wikis from 6 April (calendar).
• Some older Web browsers will stop being able to use JavaScript on Wikimedia wikis from this week. This mainly affects users of Internet Explorer 11. If you have an old web browser on your computer you can try to upgrade to a newer version. [414]
• The deprecated jquery.hoverIntent module has been removed. This module could be used by gadgets and user scripts, to create an artificial delay in how JavaScript responds to a hover event. Gadgets and user scripts should now use jQuery hover() or on() instead. Examples can be found in the migration guide. [415]
• Some of the links in Special:SpecialPages will be re-arranged. There will be a clearer separation between links that relate to all users, and links related to your own user account. [416]
• You will be able to hide the Reply button in archived discussion pages with a new __ARCHIVEDTALK__ magic word. There will also be a new .mw-archivedtalk CSS class for hiding the Reply button in individual sections on a page. [417][418][419]

Future changes

• The Vega software that creates data visualizations in pages, such as graphs, will be upgraded to the newest version in the future. Graphs that still use the very old version 1.5 syntax may stop working properly. Most existing uses have been found and updated, but you can help to check, and to update any local documentation. Examples of how to find and fix these graphs are available.

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MediaWiki message delivery 23:38, 3 April 2023 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – April 2023

News and updates for administrators from the past month (March 2023).

Administrator changes

Aoidh

KillerChihuahua

CheckUser changes

Ferret

Guideline and policy news

• A community RfC is open to discuss whether reports primarily involving gender-related disputes or controversies should be referred to the Arbitration enforcement noticeboard.

Technical news

• Some older web browsers will not be able to use JavaScript on Wikimedia wikis starting this week. This mainly affects users of Internet Explorer 11. (T178356)
• The rollback of Vector 2022 RfC has found no consensus to rollback to Vector legacy, but has found rough consensus to disable "limited width" mode by default.
• A link to the user's Special:CentralAuth page will now appear in the subtitle links shown on Special:Contributions. This was voted #17 in the Community Wishlist Survey 2023.

Arbitration

• The Armenia-Azerbaijan 3 case has been closed.
• A case about World War II and the history of Jews in Poland has been opened, with the first evidence phase closing 6 April 2023.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:12, 4 April 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-15

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

• In the visual editor, it is now possible to edit captions of images in galleries without opening the gallery dialog. This feature request was voted #61 in the 2023 Community Wishlist Survey. [420]
• You can now receive notifications when another user edits your user page. See the "Edits to my user page" option in your Preferences. This feature request was voted #3 in the 2023 Community Wishlist Survey. [421]

Problems

• There was a problem with all types of CentralNotice banners still being shown to logged-in users even if they had turned off specific banner types. This has now been fixed. [422]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 11 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 12 April. It will be on all wikis from 13 April (calendar).
• Starting on Wednesday, a new set of Wikipedias will get "Add a link" (Moroccan Arabic Wikipedia, Danish Wikipedia, Dinka Wikipedia, Lower Sorbian Wikipedia, Ewe Wikipedia, Greek Wikipedia, Emiliano-Romagnolo Wikipedia, Esperanto Wikipedia, Estonian Wikipedia, Basque Wikipedia, Extremaduran Wikipedia, Tumbuka Wikipedia, Fulah Wikipedia, Finnish Wikipedia, Võro Wikipedia, Fijian Wikipedia, Faroese Wikipedia, Arpitan Wikipedia, Northern Frisian Wikipedia, Friulian Wikipedia, Irish Wikipedia, Guianan Creole Wikipedia, Scottish Gaelic Wikipedia, Galician Wikipedia, Gilaki Wikipedia, Guarani Wikipedia, Goan Konkani Wikipedia, Gothic Wikipedia, Gujarati Wikipedia, Manx Wikipedia). This is part of the progressive deployment of this tool to more Wikipedias. The communities can configure how this feature works locally. [423][424]

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MediaWiki message delivery 20:04, 10 April 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-16

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

Recent changes

• You can now see nearby articles on a Kartographer map with the button for the new feature "Show nearby articles". Six wikis have been testing this feature since October. [425][426]
• The Special:GlobalWatchlist page now has links for "mark page as read" for each entry. This feature request was voted #161 in the 2023 Community Wishlist Survey. [427]

Problems

• At Wikimedia Commons, some thumbnails have not been getting replaced correctly after a new version of the image is uploaded. This should be fixed later this week. [428][429]
• For the last few weeks, some external tools had inconsistent problems with logging-in with OAuth. This has now been fixed. [430]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 18 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 19 April. It will be on all wikis from 20 April (calendar).

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MediaWiki message delivery 01:53, 18 April 2023 (UTC)

Feedback request: Wikipedia policies and guidelines request for comment

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Feedback request: Politics, government, and law request for comment

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Tech News: 2023-17

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 date-selection menu on pages such as Special:Contributions will now show year-ranges that are in the current and past decade, instead of the current and future decade. This feature request was voted #145 in the 2023 Community Wishlist Survey. [431]

Problems

• Due to security issues with the Graph extension, graphs have been disabled in all Wikimedia projects. Wikimedia Foundation teams are working to respond to these vulnerabilities. [432]
• For a few days, it was not possible to save some kinds of edits on the mobile version of a wiki. This has been fixed. [433][434][435]

Changes later this week

• All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on April 26. This is planned for 14:00 UTC. [436]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 25 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 26 April. It will be on all wikis from 27 April (calendar).

Future changes

• The Editing team plans an A/B test for a usability analysis of the Talk page project. The planned measurements are available. Your wiki may be invited to participate. Please suggest improvements to the measurement plan at the discussion page.
• The Wikimedia Foundation annual plan 2023-2024 draft is open for comment and input until May 19. The final plan will be published in July 2023 on Meta-wiki.

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MediaWiki message delivery 22:02, 24 April 2023 (UTC)

Feedback request: Wikipedia policies and guidelines request for comment

Your feedback is requested at Wikipedia talk:What Wikipedia is not on a "Wikipedia policies and guidelines" request for comment. Thank you for helping out!
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Tech News: 2023-18

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 content attribution tools Who Wrote That?, XTools Authorship, and XTools Blame now support the French and Italian Wikipedias. More languages will be added in the near future. This is part of the #7 wish in the 2023 Community Wishlist Survey. [437][438][439]
• The Video2commons tool has been updated. This fixed several bugs related to YouTube uploads. [440]
• The Special:Preferences page has been redesigned on mobile web. The new design makes it easier to browse the different categories and settings at low screen widths. You can also now access the page via a link in the Settings menu in the mobile web sidebar. [441]

Changes later this week

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

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MediaWiki message delivery 01:43, 2 May 2023 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – May 2023

News and updates for administrators from the past month (April 2023).

Administrator changes

Spicy

• Ale jrb
• Dbachmann
• DGG (deceased)
• Jimbo Wales

CheckUser changes

Jimbo Wales

Oversighter changes

Jimbo Wales

Guideline and policy news

• A request for comment about removing administrative privileges in specified situations is open for feedback.

Technical news

• Progress has started on the Page Triage improvement project. This is to address the concerns raised by the community in their 2022 WMF letter that requested improvements be made to the tool.

Arbitration

• The proposed decision in the World War II and the history of Jews in Poland case is expected 11 May 2023.

Miscellaneous

• The Wikimedia Foundation annual plan 2023-2024 draft is open for comment and input through May 19. The final plan will be published in July 2023.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 09:23, 3 May 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-19

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

Recent changes

• Last week, Community Tech released the first update for providing better diffs, the #1 request in the 2022 Community Wishlist Survey. This update adds legends and tooltips to inline diffs so that users unfamiliar with the blue and yellow highlights can better understand the type of edits made.
• When you close an image that is displayed via MediaViewer, it will now return to the wiki page instead of going back in your browser history. This feature request was voted #65 in the 2023 Community Wishlist Survey. [442]
• The SyntaxHighlight extension now supports wikitext as a selected language. Old alternatives that were used to highlight wikitext, such as html5, moin, and html+handlebars, can now be replaced. [443]
• Preloading text to new pages/sections now supports preloading from localized MediaWiki interface messages. Here is an example at the Czech Wikipedia that uses preload=MediaWiki:July. [444]

Problems

• Graph Extension update: Foundation developers have completed upgrading the visualization software to Vega5. Existing community graphs based on Vega2 are no longer compatible. Communities need to update local graphs and templates, and shared lua modules like de:Modul:Graph. The Vega Porting guide provides the most comprehensive detail on migration from Vega2 and here is an example migration. Vega5 has currently just been enabled on mediawiki.org to provide a test environment for communities. [445]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 9 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 10 May. It will be on all wikis from 11 May (calendar).
• Until now, all new OAuth apps went through manual review. Starting this week, apps using identification-only or basic authorizations will not require review. [446]

Future changes

• During the next year, MediaWiki will stop using IP addresses to identify logged-out users, and will start automatically assigning unique temporary usernames. Read more at IP Editing: Privacy Enhancement and Abuse Mitigation/Updates. You can join the discussion about the format of the temporary usernames. [447]
• There will be an A/B test on 10 Wikipedias where the Vector 2022 skin is the default skin. Half of logged-in desktop users will see an interface where the different parts of the page are more clearly separated. You can read more. [448][449]
• jquery.tipsy will be removed from the MediaWiki core. This will affect some user scripts. Many lines with .tipsy( can be commented out. OO.ui.PopupWidget can be used to keep things working like they are now. You can read more and read about how to find broken scripts. [450]

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MediaWiki message delivery 00:34, 9 May 2023 (UTC)

Feedback request: Wikipedia style and naming request for comment

Your feedback is requested at Talk:Chicago CRED on a "Wikipedia style and naming" request for comment. Thank you for helping out!
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Feedback request: Wikipedia policies and guidelines request for comment

Your feedback is requested at Wikipedia talk:What Wikipedia is not on a "Wikipedia policies and guidelines" request for comment. Thank you for helping out!
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Tech News: 2023-20

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

Problems

• Citations that are automatically generated based on ISBN are currently broken. This affects citations made with the VisualEditor Automatic tab, and the use of the citoid API in gadgets and user scripts. Work is ongoing to restore this feature. [451]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 16 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 17 May. It will be on all wikis from 18 May (calendar).
• Starting on Wednesday, a new set of Wikipedias will get "Add a link" (Gorontalo Wikipedia, Hausa Wikipedia, Hakka Chinese Wikipedia, Hawaiian Wikipedia, Fiji Hindi Wikipedia, Croatian Wikipedia, Upper Sorbian Wikipedia, Haitian Creole Wikipedia, Interlingua Wikipedia, Interlingue Wikipedia, Igbo Wikipedia, Iloko Wikipedia, Ingush Wikipedia, Ido Wikipedia, Icelandic Wikipedia, Inuktitut Wikipedia, Jamaican Patois Wikipedia, Javanese Wikipedia). This is part of the progressive deployment of this tool to more Wikipedias. The communities can configure how this feature works locally. [452]

Future changes

• There is a recently formed team at the Wikimedia Foundation which will be focusing on experimenting with new tools. Currently they are building a prototype ChatGPT plugin that allows information generated by ChatGPT to be properly attributed to the Wikimedia projects.
• Gadget and userscript developers should replace jquery.cookie with mediawiki.cookie. The jquery.cookie library will be removed in ~1 month, and staff developers will run a script to replace any remaining uses at that time. [453]

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MediaWiki message delivery 21:43, 15 May 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-21

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 "recent edits" time period for page watchers is now 30 days. It used to be 180 days. This was a Community Wishlist Survey proposal. [454]

Changes later this week

• An improved impact module will be available at Wikipedias. The impact module is a feature available to newcomers at their personal homepage. It will show their number of edits, how many readers their edited pages have, how many thanks they have received and similar things. It is also accessible by accessing Special:Impact. [455]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 23 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 24 May. It will be on all wikis from 25 May (calendar).

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16:53, 22 May 2023 (UTC)

Feedback request: Wikipedia style and naming request for comment

Your feedback is requested at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Biography on a "Wikipedia style and naming" request for comment. Thank you for helping out!
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Tech News: 2023-22

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

Recent changes

• Citations can once again be added automatically from ISBNs, thanks to Zotero's ISBN searches. The current data sources are the Library of Congress (United States), the Bibliothèque nationale de France (French National Library), and K10plus ISBN (German repository). Additional data source searches can be proposed to Zotero. The ISBN labels in the VisualEditor Automatic tab will reappear later this week. [456]
• The page Special:EditWatchlist now has "Check all" options to select all the pages within a namespace. This feature request was voted #161 in the 2023 Community Wishlist Survey. [457]

Problems

• For a few days earlier this month, the "Add interlanguage link" item in the Tools menu did not work properly. This has now been fixed. [458]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 30 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 31 May. It will be on all wikis from 1 June (calendar).
• VisualEditor will be switched to a new backend on small and medium wikis this week. Large wikis will follow in the coming weeks. This is part of the effort to move Parsoid into MediaWiki core. The change should have no noticeable effect on users, but if you experience any slow loading or other strangeness when using VisualEditor, please report it on the phabricator ticket linked here. [459]

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MediaWiki message delivery 22:00, 29 May 2023 (UTC)

Feedback request: Wikipedia style and naming request for comment

Your feedback is requested at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Aircraft on a "Wikipedia style and naming" request for comment. Thank you for helping out!
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Feedback request: Wikipedia policies and guidelines request for comment

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Feedback request: Wikipedia policies and guidelines request for comment

Your feedback is requested at Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard on a "Wikipedia policies and guidelines" request for comment. Thank you for helping out!
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Administrators' newsletter – June 2023

News and updates for administrators from the past month (May 2023).

Administrator changes

Ingenuity

• Ddstretch
• Prodego
• Resolute

CheckUser changes

Courcelles

Guideline and policy news

• Following an RfC, editors indefinitely site-banned by community consensus will now have all rights, including sysop, removed.
• As a part of the Wikimedia Foundation's IP Masking project, a new policy has been created that governs the access to temporary account IP addresses. An associated FAQ has been created and individual communities can increase the requirements to view temporary account IP addresses.

Technical news

• Bot operators and tool maintainers should schedule time in the coming months to test and update their tools for the effects of IP masking. IP masking will not be deployed to any content wiki until at least October 2023 and is unlikely to be deployed to the English Wikipedia until some time in 2024.

Arbitration

• The arbitration case World War II and the history of Jews in Poland has been closed. The topic area of Polish history during World War II (1933-1945) and the history of Jews in Poland is subject to a "reliable source consensus-required" contentious topic restriction.

Miscellaneous

• Following a community referendum, the arbitration policy has been modified to remove the ability for users to appeal remedies to Jimbo Wales.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 15:34, 5 June 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-23

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

Recent changes

• The RealMe extension allows you to mark URLs on your user page as verified for Mastodon and similar software.
• Citation and footnote editing can now be started from the reference list when using the visual editor. This feature request was voted #2 in the 2023 Community Wishlist Survey. [460]
• Previously, clicking on someone else's link to Recent Changes with filters applied within the URL could unintentionally change your preference for "Group results by page". This has now been fixed. [461]

Problems

• For a few days last week, some tools and bots returned outdated information due to database replication problems, and may have been down entirely while it was being fixed. These issues have now been fixed. [462]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 6 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 7 June. It will be on all wikis from 8 June (calendar).
• Bots will no longer be prevented from making edits because of URLs that match the spam blacklist. [463]

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MediaWiki message delivery 22:50, 5 June 2023 (UTC)

Guild of Copy Editors June 2023 Newsletter

Guild of Copy Editors June 2023 Newsletter Hello and welcome to the June 2023 newsletter, a quarterly digest of Guild activities since March. Don't forget you can unsubscribe at any time; see below. Election news: Fancy helping out at the Guild? Nominations for our half-yearly Election of Coordinators are open until 23:59 on 15 June (UTC)*. Starting immediately after, the voting phase will run until 23:59 on 30 June. All Wikipedians in good standing are eligible and self-nominations are welcomed; it's your Guild and it doesn't organize itself! Blitz: Of the 17 editors who signed up for our April Copy Editing Blitz, nine editors completed at least one copy-edit. Between them, they copy-edited 24 articles totaling 53,393 words. Barnstars awarded are here. Drive: 51 editors signed up for the month-long May Backlog Elimination Drive, and 31 copy-edited at least one article. 180 articles were copy-edited. Barnstars awarded are posted here. Blitz: Sign up here for our week-long June Copy Editing Blitz, which runs from 11 to 17 June. Barnstars awarded will be posted here. Progress report: As of 03:09 on 6 June 2023, GOCE copyeditors have processed 91 requests since 1 January and the backlog stands at 1,887 articles. Thank you all again for your participation; we wouldn't be able to achieve what we have without you! Cheers from your GOCE coordinators Baffle gab1978, Dhtwiki, Miniapolis and Zippybongo. *All times and dates in this newsletter are in UTC, and may significantly vary from your local time. To discontinue receiving GOCE newsletters, please remove your name from our mailing list.

Sent by Baffle gab1978 using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 03:39, 6 June 2023 (UTC)

Feedback request: Wikipedia style and naming request for comment

Your feedback is requested at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Gender identity on a "Wikipedia style and naming" request for comment. Thank you for helping out!
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Tech News: 2023-24

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

• The content attribution tools Who Wrote That?, XTools Authorship, and XTools Blame now support the Dutch, German, Hungarian, Indonesian, Japanese, Polish and Portuguese Wikipedias. This was the #7 wish in the 2023 Community Wishlist Survey. [464]
• The Search Preview panel has been deployed on four Wikipedias (Catalan, Dutch, Hungarian and Norwegian). The panel will show an image related to the article (if existing), the top sections of the article, related images (coming from MediaSearch on Commons), and eventually the sister projects associated with the article. [465]
• The RealMe extension now allows administrators to verify URLs for any page, for Mastodon and similar software. [466]
• The default project license has been officially upgraded to CC BY-SA 4.0. The software interface messages have been updated. Communities should feel free to start updating any mentions of the old CC BY-SA 3.0 licensing within policies and related documentation pages. [467]

Problems

• For three days last month, some Wikipedia pages edited with VisualEditor or DiscussionTools had an unintended __TOC__ (or its localized form) added during an edit. There is a listing of affected pages sorted by wiki, that may still need to be fixed. [468]
• Currently, the "Sort this page by default as" feature in VisualEditor is broken. Existing {{DEFAULTSORT:...}} keywords incorrectly appear as missing templates in VisualEditor. Developers are exploring how to fix this. In the meantime, those wishing to edit the default sortkey of a page are advised to switch to source editing. [469]
• Last week, an update to the delete form may have broken some gadgets or user scripts. If you need to manipulate (empty) the reason field, replace #wpReason with #wpReason > input. See an example fix. [470]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 13 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 14 June. It will be on all wikis from 15 June (calendar).
• VisualEditor will be switched to a new backend on English Wikipedia on Monday, and all other large wikis on Thursday. The change should have no noticeable effect on users, but if you experience any slow loading or other strangeness when using VisualEditor, please report it on the phabricator ticket linked here. [471]

Future changes

• From 5 June to 17 July, the Foundation's Security team is holding a consultation with contributors regarding a draft policy to govern the use of third-party resources in volunteer-developed gadgets and scripts. Feedback and suggestions are warmly welcome at Third-party resources policy on meta-wiki.

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MediaWiki message delivery 14:49, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

Feedback request: Maths, science, and technology request for comment

Your feedback is requested at Wikipedia:WikiProject Telecommunications/Area codes RfC on a "Maths, science, and technology" request for comment. Thank you for helping out!
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Tech News: 2023-25

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

• Flame graphs are now available in WikimediaDebug. [472][473]

Changes later this week

• There is no new MediaWiki version this week.
• There is now a toolbar search popup in the visual editor. You can trigger it by typing \ or pressing ctrl + shift + p. It can help you quickly access most tools in the editor. [474][475]

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MediaWiki message delivery 20:07, 19 June 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-26

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

• The Action API modules and Special:LinkSearch will now add a trailing / to all prop=extlinks responses for bare domains. This is part of the work to remove duplication in the externallinks database table. [476]

Problems

• Last week, search was broken on Commons and Wikidata for 23 hours. [477][478]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 27 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 28 June. It will be on all wikis from 29 June (calendar).
• The Minerva skin now applies more predefined styles to the .mbox-text CSS class. This enables support for mbox templates that use divs instead of tables. Please make sure that the new styles won't affect other templates in your wiki. [479][480]
• Gadgets will now load on both desktop and mobile by default. Previously, gadgets loaded only on desktop by default. Changing this default using the |targets= parameter is also deprecated and should not be used. You should make gadgets work on mobile or disable them based on the skin (with the |skins= parameter in MediaWiki:Gadgets-definition) rather than whether the user uses the mobile or the desktop website. Popular gadgets that create errors on mobile will be disabled by developers on the Minerva skin as a temporary solution. [481]
• All namespace tabs now have the same browser access key by default. Previously, custom and extension-defined namespaces would have to have their access keys set manually on-wiki, but that is no longer necessary. [482]
• The review form of the Flagged Revisions extension now uses the standardized user interface components. [483]

Future changes

• How media is structured in the parser's HTML output will change in the coming weeks at group2 wikis. This change improves the accessibility of content. You may need to update your site-CSS, or userscripts and gadgets. There are details on what code to check, how to update the code, and where to report any related problems. [484]

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MediaWiki message delivery 16:17, 26 June 2023 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – July 2023

News and updates for administrators from the past month (June 2023).

Administrator changes

Novem Linguae

• Deckiller
• Electionworld
• MBisanz
• Penwhale
• Raul654
• Roadrunner
• Viridae
• Yannismarou

Bureaucrat changes

MBisanz

Guideline and policy news

• Contributions to the English Wikipedia are now released under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC BY-SA 4.0) license instead of CC BY-SA 3.0. Contributions are still also released under the GFDL license.

Technical news

• Discussion is open regarding a proposed global policy regarding third-party resources. Third-party resources are computer resources that reside outside of Wikimedia production websites.

Arbitration

• Two arbitration cases are currently open. Proposed decisions are expected 5 July 2023 for the Scottywong case and 9 July 2023 for the AlisonW case.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 12:59, 1 July 2023 (UTC)

Feedback request: Politics, government, and law request for comment

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Tech News: 2023-27

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

Recent changes

• As part of the rolling out of the audio links that play on click wishlist proposal, small wikis will now be able to use the inline audio player that is implemented by the Phonos extension. [485]
• From this week all gadgets automatically load on mobile and desktop sites. If you see any problems with gadgets on your wikis, please adjust the gadget options in your gadget definitions file. [486]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 4 July. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 5 July. It will be on all wikis from 6 July (calendar).

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MediaWiki message delivery 22:49, 3 July 2023 (UTC)

Feedback request: Maths, science, and technology request for comment

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Feedback request: Politics, government, and law request for comment

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Feedback request: Maths, science, and technology request for comment

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Feedback request: Politics, government, and law request for comment

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Tech News: 2023-28

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 Section-level Image Suggestions feature has been deployed on seven Wikipedias (Portuguese, Russian, Indonesian, Catalan, Hungarian, Finnish and Norwegian Bokmål). The feature recommends images for articles on contributors' watchlists that are a good match for individual sections of those articles.
• Global abuse filters have been enabled on all Wikimedia projects, except English and Japanese Wikipedias (who opted out). This change was made following a global request for comments. [487]
• Special:BlockedExternalDomains is a new tool for administrators to help fight spam. It provides a clearer interface for blocking plain domains (and their subdomains), is more easily searchable, and is faster for the software to process for each edit on the wiki. It does not support regex (for complex cases), nor URL path-matching, nor the MediaWiki:Spam-whitelist, but otherwise it replaces most of the functionalities of the existing MediaWiki:Spam-blacklist. There is a Python script to help migrate all simple domains into this tool, and more feature details, within the tool's documentation. It is available at all wikis except for Meta-wiki, Commons, and Wikidata. [488]
• The WikiEditor extension was updated. It includes some of the most frequently used features of wikitext editing. In the past, many of its messages could only be translated by administrators, but now all regular translators on translatewiki can translate them. Please check the state of WikiEditor localization into your language, and if the "Completion" for your language shows anything less than 100%, please complete the translation. See a more detailed explanation.

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 11 July. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 12 July. It will be on all wikis from 13 July (calendar).
• The default protocol of Special:LinkSearch and API counterparts has changed from http to both http and https. [489]
• Special:LinkSearch and its API counterparts will now search for all of the URL provided in the query. It used to be only the first 60 characters. This feature was requested fifteen years ago. [490]

Future changes

• There is an experiment with a ChatGPT plugin. This is to show users where the information is coming from when they read information from Wikipedia. It has been tested by Wikimedia Foundation staff and other Wikimedians. Soon all ChatGPT plugin users can use the Wikipedia plugin. This is the same plugin which was mentioned in Tech News 2023/20. [491]
• There is an ongoing discussion on a proposed Third-party resources policy. The proposal will impact the use of third-party resources in gadgets and userscripts. Based on the ideas received so far, policy includes some of the risks related to user scripts and gadgets loading third-party resources, some best practices and exemption requirements such as code transparency and inspectability. Your feedback and suggestions are warmly welcome until July 17, 2023 on on the policy talk page.

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MediaWiki message delivery 19:52, 10 July 2023 (UTC)

Feedback request: Politics, government, and law request for comment

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Tech News: 2023-29

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

• We are now serving 1% of all global user traffic from Kubernetes (you can read more technical details). We are planning to increment this percentage regularly. You can follow the progress of this work.

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 18 July. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 19 July. It will be on all wikis from 20 July (calendar).
• MediaWiki system messages will now look for available local fallbacks, instead of always using the default fallback defined by software. This means wikis no longer need to override each language on the fallback chain separately. For example, English Wikipedia doesn't have to create en-ca and en-gb subpages with a transclusion of the base pages anymore. This makes it easier to maintain local overrides. [492]
• The action=growthsetmentorstatus API will be deprecated with the new MediaWiki version. Bots or scripts calling that API should use the action=growthmanagementorlist API now. [493]

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

MediaWiki message delivery 23:06, 17 July 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-30

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

• On July 18, the Wikimedia Foundation launched a survey about the technical decision making process for people who do technical work that relies on software that is maintained by the Foundation or affiliates. If this applies to you, please take part in the survey. The survey will be open for three weeks, until August 7. You can find more information in the announcement e-mail on wikitech-l.

Changes later this week

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

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

MediaWiki message delivery 02:19, 25 July 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-31

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

• The Synchronizer tool is now available to keep Lua modules synced across Wikimedia wikis, along with updated documentation to develop global Lua modules and templates.
• The tag filter on Special:NewPages and revision history pages can now be inverted. For example, you can hide edits that were made using an automated tool. [494][495]
• The Wikipedia ChatGPT plugin experiment can now be used by ChatGPT users who can use plugins. You can participate in a video call if you want to talk about this experiment or similar work. [496]

Problems

• It was not possible to generate a PDF for pages with non-Latin characters in the title, for the last two weeks. This has now been fixed. [497]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 1 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 2 August. It will be on all wikis from 3 August (calendar).
• Starting on Tuesday, a new set of Wikipedias will get "Add a link" (Georgian Wikipedia, Kara-Kalpak Wikipedia, Kabyle Wikipedia, Kabardian Wikipedia, Kabiyè Wikipedia, Kikuyu Wikipedia, Kazakh Wikipedia, Khmer Wikipedia, Kannada Wikipedia, Kashmiri Wikipedia, Colognian Wikipedia, Kurdish Wikipedia, Cornish Wikipedia). This is part of the progressive deployment of this tool to more Wikipedias. The communities can configure how this feature works locally. [498]

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MediaWiki message delivery 23:53, 31 July 2023 (UTC)

Feedback request: Maths, science, and technology request for comment

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Feedback request: Wikipedia policies and guidelines request for comment

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You've been unsubscribed from the Feedback Request Service

Hi UncleBubba! You're receiving this notification because you were previously subscribed to the Feedback Request Service, but you haven't made any edits to the English Wikipedia in over six months.

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Tech News: 2023-32

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

Recent changes

• Mobile Web editors can now edit a whole page at once. To use this feature, turn on "⧼Mobile-frontend-mobile-option-amc⧽" in your settings and use the "Edit full page" button in the "More" menu. [499]

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.

MediaWiki message delivery 21:19, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – August 2023

News and updates for administrators from the past month (July 2023).

Administrator changes

Firefangledfeathers

• AlisonW
• Amberrock
• Closedmouth
• Scottywong

Interface administrator changes

Novem Linguae

Technical news

• The tag filter on Special:NewPages and revision history pages can now be inverted. This allows hiding edits made by automated tools. (T334338)
• Special:BlockedExternalDomains is a new tool that allows easier blocking of plain domains (and their subdomains). This is more easily searchable and is faster for the software to use than the existing MediaWiki:Spam-blacklist. It does not support regex (for complex cases), URL path-matching, or the MediaWiki:Spam-whitelist. (T337431)

Arbitration

• The arbitration cases named Scottywong and AlisonW closed 10 July and 16 July respectively.
• The SmallCat dispute arbitration case is in the workshop phase.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 08:54, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-33

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

• The Content translation system is no longer using Youdao's machine translation service. The service was in place for several years, but due to no usage, and availability of alternatives, it was deprecated to reduce maintenance overheads. Other services which cover the same languages are still available. [500]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 15 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 16 August. It will be on all wikis from 17 August (calendar).
• Starting on Wednesday, a new set of Wikipedias will get "Add a link" (Latin Wikipedia, Ladino Wikipedia, Luxembourgish Wikipedia, Lak Wikipedia, Lezghian Wikipedia, Lingua Franca Nova Wikipedia, Ganda Wikipedia, Limburgish Wikipedia, Ligurian Wikipedia, Lombard Wikipedia, Lingala Wikipedia, Latgalian Wikipedia, Latvian Wikipedia, Maithili Wikipedia, Basa Banyumasan Wikipedia, Moksha Wikipedia, Malagasy Wikipedia, Armenian Wikipedia, Kyrgyz Wikipedia). This is part of the progressive deployment of this tool to more Wikipedias. The communities can configure how this feature works locally. [501]

Future changes

• A few gadgets/user scripts which add icons to the Minerva skin need to have their CSS updated. There are more details available including a search for all existing instances and how to update them.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 05:58, 15 August 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-34

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 GDrive to Commons Uploader tool is now available. It enables securely selecting and uploading files from your Google Drive directly to Wikimedia Commons. [502]
• From now on, we will announce new Wikimedia wikis in Tech News, so you can update any tools or pages.
  • Since the last edition, two new wikis have been created:
    • a Wiktionary in Pa'O (wikt:blk:) [503]
    • a Wikisource in Sundanese (s:su:) [504]
  • To catch up, the next most recent six wikis are:
    • Wikifunctions (f:) [505]
    • a Wiktionary in Mandailing (wikt:btm:) [506]
    • a Wikipedia in Ghanaian Pidgin (w:gpe:) [507]
    • a Wikinews in Gungbe (n:guw:) [508]
    • a Wiktionary in Kabardian (wikt:kbd:) [509]
    • a Wikipedia in Fante (w:fat:) [510]

Changes later this week

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

Future changes

• There is an existing stable interface policy for MediaWiki backend code. There is a proposed stable interface policy for frontend code. This is relevant for anyone who works on gadgets or Wikimedia frontend code. You can read it, discuss it, and let the proposer know if there are any problems. [511]

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

15:23, 21 August 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-35

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

• As part of the changes for the better diff handling of paragraph splits, improved detection of splits is being rolled out. Over the last two weeks, we deployed this support to group0 and group1 wikis. This week it will be deployed to group2 wikis. [512]
• All Special:Contributions pages now show the user's local edit count and the account's creation date. [513]
• Wikisource users can now use the prpbengalicurrency label to denote Bengali currency characters as page numbers inside the <pagelist> tag. [514]
• Two preferences have been relocated. The preference "Enable the visual editor" is now shown on the "Editing" tab at all wikis. Previously it was shown on the "Beta features" tab at some wikis. The preference "Use the wikitext mode inside the visual editor, instead of a different wikitext editor" is now also shown on the "Editing" tab at all wikis, instead of the "Beta features" tab. [515][516]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 29 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 30 August. It will be on all wikis from 31 August (calendar).
• New signups for a Wikimedia developer account will start being pushed towards idm.wikimedia.org, rather than going via Wikitech. Further information about the new system is available.
• All right-to-left language wikis, plus Korean, Armenian, Ukrainian, Russian, and Bulgarian Wikipedias, will have a link in the sidebar that provides a short URL of that page, using the Wikimedia URL Shortener. This feature will come to more wikis in future weeks. [517]

Future changes

• The removal of the DoubleWiki extension is being discussed. This extension currently allows Wikisource users to view articles from multiple language versions side by side when the <=> symbol next to a specific language edition is selected. Comments on this are welcomed at the phabricator task.
• A proposal has been made to merge the second hidden-categories list (which appears below the wikitext editing form) with the main list of categories (which is further down the page). More information is available on Phabricator; feedback is welcome!

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

MediaWiki message delivery 13:59, 28 August 2023 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – September 2023

News and updates for administrators from the past month (August 2023).

Administrator changes

• Pppery
• Theleekycauldron

• Dwheeler
• G.A.S
• Royalbroil
• Ssd

CheckUser changes

Bradv

Oversighter changes

Bradv

Guideline and policy news

• Following an RfC, TFAs will be automatically semi-protected the day before it is on the main page and through the day after.
• A discussion at WP:VPP about revision deletion and oversight for dead names found that [s]ysops can choose to use revdel if, in their view, it's the right tool for this situation, and they need not default to oversight. But oversight could well be right where there's a particularly high risk to the person. Use your judgment.

Technical news

• Special:Contributions now shows the user's local edit count and the account's creation date. (T324166)

Arbitration

• The SmallCat dispute case has closed. As part of the final decision, editors participating in XfD have been reminded to be careful about forming local consensus which may or may not reflect the broader community consensus. Regular closers of XfD forums were also encouraged to note when broader community discussion, or changes to policies and guidelines, would be helpful.

Miscellaneous

• Tech tip: The "Browse history interactively" banner shown at the top of Special:Diff can be used to easily look through a history, assemble composite diffs, or find out what archive something wound up in.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 09:22, 1 September 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-36

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

• EditInSequence, a feature that allows users to edit pages faster on Wikisource has been moved to a Beta Feature based on community feedback. To enable it, you can navigate to the beta features tab in Preferences. [518]
• As part of the changes for the Generate Audio for IPA and Audio links that play on click wishlist proposals, the inline audio player mode of Phonos has been deployed to all projects. [519]
• There is a new option for Administrators when they are changing the usergroups for a user, to add the user’s user page to their watchlist. This works both via Special:UserRights and via the API. [520]
• One new wiki has been created:
  • a Wikipedia in Talysh (w:tly:) [521]

Problems

• The LoginNotify extension was not sending notifications since January. It has now been fixed, so going forward, you may see notifications for failed login attempts, and successful login attempts from a new device. [522]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 5 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 6 September. It will be on all wikis from 7 September (calendar).
• Starting on Wednesday, a new set of Wikipedias will get "Add a link" (Eastern Mari Wikipedia, Maori Wikipedia, Minangkabau Wikipedia, Macedonian Wikipedia, Malayalam Wikipedia, Mongolian Wikipedia, Marathi Wikipedia, Western Mari Wikipedia, Malay Wikipedia, Maltese Wikipedia, Mirandese Wikipedia, Erzya Wikipedia, Mazanderani Wikipedia, Nāhuatl Wikipedia, Neapolitan Wikipedia, Low German Wikipedia, Low Saxon Wikipedia, Nepali Wikipedia, Newari Wikipedia, Norwegian Nynorsk Wikipedia, Novial Wikipedia, N'Ko Wikipedia, Nouormand Wikipedia, Northern Sotho Wikipedia, Navajo Wikipedia, Nyanja Wikipedia, Occitan Wikipedia, Livvi-Karelian Wikipedia, Oromo Wikipedia, Oriya Wikipedia, Ossetic Wikipedia, Punjabi Wikipedia, Pangasinan Wikipedia, Pampanga Wikipedia, Papiamento Wikipedia, Picard Wikipedia, Pennsylvania German Wikipedia, Palatine German Wikipedia, Norfuk / Pitkern Wikipedia, Piedmontese Wikipedia, Western Punjabi Wikipedia, Pontic Wikipedia, Pashto Wikipedia). This is part of the progressive deployment of this tool to more Wikipedias. The communities can configure how this feature works locally. [523][524]

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

MediaWiki message delivery 23:32, 4 September 2023 (UTC)

Septermber GOCE newsletter

Guild of Copy Editors September 2023 Newsletter Hello and welcome to the September 2023 newsletter, a quarterly digest of Guild activities since June. Don't forget you can unsubscribe at any time; see below. David Thomsen: Prolific Wikipedian and Guild member David Thomsen (Dthomsen8) died in November 2022. He was a regular copy editor who took part in many of our Drives and Blitzes. An obituary was published in the mid-July issue of The Signpost. Tributes can be left on David's talk page. Election news: In our mid-year Election of Coordinators, Dhtwiki was chosen as lead coordinator, Miniapolis and Zippybonzo continue as assistant coordinators, and Baffle gab1978 stepped down from the role. If you're interested in helping out at the GOCE, please consider nominating yourself for our next election in December; it's your WikiProject and it doesn't organize itself! June Blitz: Of the 17 editors who signed up for our June Copy Editing Blitz, 12 copy-edited at least one article. 70,035 words comprising 26 articles were copy-edited. Barnstars awarded are here. July Drive: 34 of the 51 editors who took part in our July Backlog Elimination Drive copy-edited at least one article. They edited 276 articles and 683,633 words between them. Barnstars awarded are here. August Blitz: In our August Copy Editing Blitz, 13 of the 16 editors who signed up worked on at least one article. Between them, they copy-edited 79,608 words comprising 57 articles. Barnstars awarded are available here. September Drive: Sign up here for our month-long September Backlog Elimination Drive, which is now underway. Barnstars awarded will be posted here. Progress report: As of 14:29, 9 September 2023 (UTC), GOCE copy editors have processed 245 requests since 1 January. The backlog of tagged articles stands at 2,066. Thank you all again for your participation; we wouldn't be able to achieve what we have without you! Cheers from your GOCE coordinators, Dhtwiki, Miniapolis and Zippybonzo. To discontinue receiving GOCE newsletters, please remove your name from our mailing list.

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 13:55, 10 September 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-37

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

• ORES, the revision evaluation service, is now using a new open-source infrastructure on all wikis except for English Wikipedia and Wikidata. These two will follow this week. If you notice any unusual results from the Recent Changes filters that are related to ORES (for example, "Contribution quality predictions" and "User intent predictions"), please report them. [525]
• When you are logged in on one Wikimedia wiki and visit a different Wikimedia wiki, the system tries to log you in there automatically. This has been unreliable for a long time. You can now visit the login page to make the system try extra hard. If you feel that made logging in better or worse than it used to be, your feedback is appreciated. [526]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 12 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 13 September. It will be on all wikis from 14 September (calendar).
• The Technical Decision-Making Forum Retrospective team invites anyone involved in the technical field of Wikimedia projects to signup to and join one of their listening sessions on 13 September. Another date will be scheduled later. The goal is to improve the technical decision-making processes.
• As part of the changes for the Better diff handling of paragraph splits wishlist proposal, the inline switch widget in diff pages is being rolled out this week to all wikis. The inline switch will allow viewers to toggle between a unified inline or two-column diff wikitext format. [527]

Future changes

• All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on 20 September. This is planned at 14:00 UTC. More information will be published in Tech News and will also be posted on individual wikis in the coming weeks. [528]
• The Enterprise API is launching a new feature called "breaking news". Currently in BETA, this attempts to identify likely "newsworthy" topics as they are currently being written about in any Wikipedia. Your help is requested to improve the accuracy of its detection model, especially on smaller language editions, by recommending templates or identifiable editing patterns. See more information at the documentation page on MediaWiki or the FAQ on Meta.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 21:06, 11 September 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-38

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

• MediaWiki now has a stable interface policy for frontend code that more clearly defines how we deprecate MediaWiki code and wiki-based code (e.g. gadgets and user scripts). Thank you to everyone who contributed to the content and discussions. [529][530]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 19 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 20 September. It will be on all wikis from 21 September (calendar).
• All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on September 20. This is planned at 14:00 UTC. [531]
• All wikis will have a link in the sidebar that provides a short URL of that page, using the Wikimedia URL Shortener. [532]

Future changes

• The team investigating the Graph Extension posted a proposal for reenabling it and they need your input.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 19:18, 18 September 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-39

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

• The Vector 2022 skin will now remember the pinned/unpinned status for the Table of Contents for all logged-out users. [533]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 26 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 27 September. It will be on all wikis from 28 September (calendar).
• The ResourceLoader mediawiki.ui modules are now deprecated as part of the move to Vue.js and Codex. There is a guide for migrating from MediaWiki UI to Codex for any tools that use it. More details are available in the task and your questions are welcome there.
• Gadget definitions will have a new "namespaces" option. The option takes a list of namespace IDs. Gadgets that use this option will only load on pages in the given namespaces.

Future changes

• New variables will be added to AbuseFilter: global_account_groups and global_account_editcount. They are available only when an account is being created. You can use them to prevent blocking automatic creation of accounts when users with many edits elsewhere visit your wiki for the first time. [534][535]

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the Wikipedia mobile apps teams. During the meeting, we will discuss the current features and future roadmap. The meeting will be on 27 October at 17:00 (UTC). See details and how to join.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 16:49, 26 September 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-40

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

• There is a new user preference for "Always enable safe mode". This setting will make pages load without including any on-wiki JavaScript or on-wiki stylesheet pages. It can be useful for debugging broken JavaScript gadgets. [536]
• Gadget definitions now have a new "contentModels" option. The option takes a list of page content models, like wikitext or css. Gadgets that use this option will only load on pages with the given content models.

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 3 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 4 October. It will be on all wikis from 5 October (calendar).

Future changes

• The Vector 2022 skin will no longer use the custom styles and scripts of Vector legacy (2010). The change will be made later this year or in early 2024. See how to adjust the CSS and JS pages on your wiki. [537]

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

MediaWiki message delivery 01:25, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – September 2023

News and updates for administrators from the past month (September 2023).

Administrator changes

Hey man im josh

• Alex Bakharev
• CorbieVreccan
• Cyphoidbomb
• Davodd
• Hog Farm
• JamesR
• KnightLago
• Mark Ironie
• Nosebagbear (deceased)
• Rschen7754
• Tamzin
• TonyBallioni

CheckUser changes

DatGuy

• Ferret
• RickinBaltimore

• TonyBallioni
• Worm That Turned

Oversighter changes

RickinBaltimore

• TonyBallioni
• Worm That Turned

Guideline and policy news

• An RfC is open regarding amending the paid-contribution disclosure policy to add the following text: Any administrator soliciting clients for paid Wikipedia-related consulting or advising services not covered by other paid-contribution rules must disclose all clients on their userpage.

Technical news

• Administrators can now choose to add the user's user page to their watchlist when changing the usergroups for a user. This works both via Special:UserRights and via the API. (T272294)

Arbitration

• Remedy 9 ("MarioProtIV topic ban") of the WikiProject Tropical Cyclones case has been rescinded.

Miscellaneous

• The 2023 CheckUser and Oversight appointments process has concluded with the appointment of one new CheckUser.
• Self-nominations for the electoral commission for the 2023 Arbitration Committee elections opens on 2 October and closes on 8 October.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 14:41, 4 October 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-41

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

Recent changes

• One new wiki has been created: a Wikipedia in Fon (w:fon:) [538]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 10 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 11 October. It will be on all wikis from 12 October (calendar).
• Starting on Wednesday, a new set of Wikipedias will get "Add a link" (Swahili Wikipedia, Walloon Wikipedia, Waray Wikipedia, Wolof Wikipedia, Kalmyk Wikipedia, Xhosa Wikipedia, Mingrelian Wikipedia, Yiddish Wikipedia, Yoruba Wikipedia, Zhuang Wikipedia, Zeelandic Wikipedia, Min Nan Wikipedia, Zulu Wikipedia). This is part of the progressive deployment of this tool to more Wikipedias. The communities can configure how this feature works locally. [539]
• At some wikis, newcomers are suggested images from Commons to add to articles without any images. Starting on Tuesday, newcomers at these wikis will be able to add images to unillustrated article sections. The specific wikis are listed under "Images recommendations" at the Growth team deployment table. You can learn more about this feature. [540]
• In the mobile web skin (Minerva) the CSS ID #page-actions will be replaced with #p-views. This change is to make it consistent with other skins and to improve support for gadgets and extensions in the mobile skin. A few gadgets may need to be updated; there are details and search-links in the task.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 14:37, 9 October 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-42

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

• The Unified login system's edge login should now be fixed for some browsers (Chrome, Edge, Opera). This means that if you visit a new sister project wiki, you should be logged in automatically without the need to click "Log in" or reload the page. Feedback on whether it's working for you is welcome. [541]
• Edit notices are now available within the MobileFrontend/Minerva skin. This feature was inspired by the gadget on English Wikipedia. See more details in T316178.

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 17 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 18 October. It will be on all wikis from 19 October (calendar).

Future changes

• In 3 weeks, in the Vector 2022 skin, code related to addPortletLink and #p-namespaces that was deprecated one year ago will be removed. If you notice tools that should appear next to the "Discussion" tab are then missing, please tell the gadget's maintainers to see instructions in the Phabricator task.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 23:45, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-43

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

• There is a new Language and internationalization newsletter, written quarterly. It contains updates on new feature development, improvements in various language-related technical projects, and related support work.
• Source map support has been enabled on all wikis. When you open the debugger in your browser's developer tools, you should be able to see the unminified JavaScript source code. [542]

Changes later this week

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

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

MediaWiki message delivery 23:15, 23 October 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-44

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

• The Structured Content team, as part of its project of improving UploadWizard on Commons, made some UX improvements to the upload step of choosing own vs not own work (T347590), as well as to the licensing step for own work (T347756).
• The Design Systems team has released version 1.0.0 of Codex, the new design system for Wikimedia. See the full announcement about the release of Codex 1.0.0.

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 31 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 1 November. It will be on all wikis from 2 November (calendar).
• Listings on category pages are sorted on each wiki for that language using a library. For a brief period on 2 November, changes to categories will not be sorted correctly for many languages. This is because the developers are upgrading to a new version of the library. They will then use a script to fix the existing categories. This will take a few hours or a few days depending on how big the wiki is. You can read more. [543][544]
• Starting November 1, the impact module (Special:Impact) will be upgraded by the Growth team. The new impact module shows newcomers more data regarding their impact on the wiki. It was tested by a few wikis during the last few months. [545]

Future changes

• There is a proposed plan for re-enabling the Graph Extension. You can help by reviewing this proposal and sharing what you think about it.
• The WMF is working on making it possible for administrators to edit MediaWiki configuration directly. This is similar to previous work on Special:EditGrowthConfig. A technical RfC is running until November 08, where you can provide feedback.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 23:20, 30 October 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-45

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

• In the Vector 2022 skin, the default font-size of a number of navigational elements (tagline, tools menu, navigational links, and more) has been increased slightly to match the font size used in page content. [546]

Problems

• Last week, there was a problem displaying some recent edits on a few wikis, for 1-6 hours. The edits were saved but not immediately shown. This was due to a database problem. [547]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 7 November. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 8 November. It will be on all wikis from 9 November (calendar).
• The Growth team will reassign newcomers from former mentors to the currently active mentors. They have also changed the notification language to be more user-friendly. [548][549]

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

MediaWiki message delivery 21:04, 6 November 2023 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – November 2023

News and updates for administrators from the past month (October 2023).

Administrator changes

0xDeadbeef

Tamzin

Dennis Brown

Interface administrator changes

Pppery

• Ragesoss
• TheresNoTime

Guideline and policy news

Technical news

• The WMF is working on making it possible for administrators to edit MediaWiki configuration directly. This is similar to previous work on Special:EditGrowthConfig. A technical RfC is running until November 08, where you can provide feedback.
• There is a proposed plan for re-enabling the Graph Extension. Feedback on this proposal is requested.

Arbitration

• Eligible editors are invited to self-nominate themselves from 12 November 2023 until 21 November 2023 to stand in the 2023 Arbitration Committee elections.
• Xaosflux, RoySmith and Cyberpower678 have been appointed to the Electoral Commission for the 2023 Arbitration Committee Elections. BusterD is the reserve commissioner.
• Following a motion, the contentious topic designation of Prem Rawat has been struck. Actions previously taken using this contentious topic designation are still in force.
• Following several motions, multiple topic areas are no longer designated as a contentious topic. These contentious topic designations were from the Editor conduct in e-cigs articles, Liancourt Rocks, Longevity, Medicine, September 11 conspiracy theories, and Shakespeare authorship question cases.
• Following a motion, remedies 3.1 (All related articles under 1RR whenever the dispute over naming is concerned), 6 (Stalemate resolution) and 30 (Administrative supervision) of the Macedonia 2 case have been rescinded.
• Following a motion, remedy 6 (One-revert rule) of the The Troubles case has been amended.
• An arbitration case named Industrial agriculture has been opened. Evidence submissions in this case close 8 November.

Miscellaneous

• The Articles for Creation backlog drive is happening in November 2023, with 700+ drafts pending reviews for in the last 4 months or so. In addition to the AfC participants, all administrators and New Page Patrollers can conduct reviews using the helper script, Yet Another AFC Helper Script, which can be enabled in the Gadgets settings. Sign up here to participate!

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:23, 7 November 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-46

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

• Four new wikis have been created:
  • a Wikipedia in Moroccan Amazigh (w:zgh:) [550]
  • a Wikipedia in Dagaare (w:dga:) [551]
  • a Wikipedia in Toba Batak (w:bbc:) [552]
  • a Wikiquote in Banjar (q:bjn:) [553]

Problems

• Last week, users who previously visited Meta-Wiki or Wikimedia Commons and then became logged out on those wikis could not log in again. The problem is now resolved. [554]
• Last week, some pop-up dialogs and menus were shown with the wrong font size. The problem is now resolved. [555]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 14 November. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 15 November. It will be on all wikis from 16 November (calendar).

Future changes

• Reference Previews are coming to many wikis as a default feature. They are popups for references, similar to the PagePreviews feature. You can opt out of seeing them. If you are using the gadgets Reference Tooltips or Navigation Popups, you won’t see Reference Previews. Deployment is planned for November 22, 2023.
• Canary (also known as heartbeat) events will be produced into Wikimedia event streams from December 11. Streams users are advised to filter out these events, by discarding all events where meta.domain == "canary". Updates to Pywikibot or wikimedia-streams will discard these events by default. [556]

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

MediaWiki message delivery 23:50, 13 November 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-47

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. [557][558]
• Starting on Wednesday, a new set of Wikipedias will get "Add a link" (Quechua Wikipedia, Romansh Wikipedia, Romani Wikipedia, Rundi Wikipedia, Aromanian Wikipedia, Tarandíne Wikipedia, Rusyn Wikipedia, Kinyarwanda Wikipedia, Sanskrit Wikipedia, Sakha Wikipedia, Santali Wikipedia, Sardinian Wikipedia, Sicilian Wikipedia, Scots Wikipedia, Sindhi Wikipedia, Northern Sami Wikipedia, Sango Wikipedia, Serbo-Croatian Wikipedia, Sinhala Wikipedia, Slovak Wikipedia, Slovenian Wikipedia, Samoan Wikipedia, Somali Wikipedia, Albanian Wikipedia, Serbian Wikipedia, Sranan Tongo Wikipedia, Swati Wikipedia, Southern Sotho Wikipedia, Saterland Frisian Wikipedia, Sundanese Wikipedia, Silesian Wikipedia, Tamil Wikipedia, Tulu Wikipedia, Telugu Wikipedia, Tetum Wikipedia, Tajik Wikipedia, Thai Wikipedia, Turkmen Wikipedia, Tagalog Wikipedia, Tswana Wikipedia, Tongan Wikipedia, Tok Pisin Wikipedia, Turkish Wikipedia, Tsonga Wikipedia, Tatar Wikipedia, Twi Wikipedia, Tahitian Wikipedia, Tuvinian Wikipedia, Udmurt Wikipedia, Uyghur Wikipedia, Uzbek Wikipedia, Venda Wikipedia, Venetian Wikipedia, Veps Wikipedia, West Flemish Wikipedia, Volapük Wikipedia). This is part of the progressive deployment of this tool to more Wikipedias. The communities can configure how this feature works locally. [559][560][561]
• The Vector 2022 skin will have some minor visual changes to drop-down menus, column widths, and more. These changes were added to four Wikipedias last week. If no issues are found, these changes will proceed to all wikis this week. These changes will make it possible to add new menus for readability and dark mode. Learn more. [562]

Future changes

• There is an update on re-enabling the Graph Extension. To speed up the process, Vega 2 will not be supported and only some protocols will be available at launch. You can help by sharing what you think about the plan.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 00:53, 21 November 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-48

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 28 November. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 29 November. It will be on all wikis from 30 November (calendar). There is no new MediaWiki version next week. [563][564]
• MediaWiki's JavaScript system will now allow async/await syntax in gadgets and user scripts. Gadget authors should remember that users' browsers may not support it, so it should be used appropriately. [565]
• The deployment of "Add a link" announced last week was postponed. It will resume this week.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 23:07, 27 November 2023 (UTC)