User talk:Enwebb/Archive 4

Tech News: 2020-07

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

• There is a new version of the Wikimedia Commons app for Android. It should fix the failed uploads problem. [1]

Problems

• There was a problem with the new MediaWiki version last week. It deleted some messages by accident. The new version was late because it was stopped to fix things. [2]

Changes later this week

• The MediaWiki action API is used by various tools like bots and gadgets. Some error codes will change. Some parameter values that do not follow the standard will no longer work. [3]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 11 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 12 February. It will be on all wikis from 13 February (calendar).

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

19:11, 10 February 2020 (UTC)

Your GA nomination of Poinsettia

The article Poinsettia you nominated as a good article has passed ; see Talk:Poinsettia for comments about the article. Well done! If the article has not already been on the main page as an "In the news" or "Did you know" item, you can nominate it to appear in Did you know. Message delivered by Legobot, on behalf of Starsandwhales -- Starsandwhales (talk) 23:42, 11 February 2020 (UTC)

New Page Reviewer newsletter February 2020

Hello Enwebb,

Source Guide Discussion

The first NPP source guide discussion is now underway. It covers a wide range of sources in Ghana with the goal of providing more guidance to reviewers about sources they might see when reviewing pages. Hopefully, new page reviewers will join others interested in reliable sources and those with expertise in these sources to make the discussion a success.

Redirects

New to NPP? Looking to try something a little different? Consider patrolling some redirects. Redirects are relatively easy to review, can be found easily through the New Pages Feed. You can find more information about how to patrol redirects at WP:RPATROL.

Discussions and Resources

• There is an ongoing discussion around changing notifications for new editors who attempt to write articles.
• A recent discussion of whether Michelin starred restraunts are notable was archived without closure.
• A resource page with links pertinent for reviewers was created this month.
• A proposal to increase the scope of G5 was withdrawn.

Refresher

Geographic regions, areas and places generally do not need general notability guideline type sourcing. When evaluating whether an article meets this notability guideline please also consider whether it might actually be a form of WP:SPAM for a development project (e.g. PR for a large luxury residential development) and not actually covered by the guideline.

Six Month Queue Data: Today – 7095 Low – 4991 High – 7095

To opt-out of future mailings, please remove yourself here

16:08, 13 February 2020 (UTC)

Nomination of Murder of Tessa Majors for deletion

A discussion is taking place as to whether the article Murder of Tessa Majors is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

The article will be discussed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Murder of Tessa Majors until a consensus is reached, and anyone, including you, is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.

Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion notice from the top of the article. Black Kite (talk) 00:11, 17 February 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-08

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

• Pages on Wikidata and Commons now load faster. You can read more about page load performance. [4][5]

Changes later this week

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

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

16:17, 17 February 2020 (UTC)

Woolly Rhino

hi — Preceding unsigned comment added by Georgeparpas (talk • contribs) 16:59, 20 February 2020 (UTC)

Greetings. Enwebb (talk) 19:00, 20 February 2020 (UTC)

Disambiguation link notification for February 22

An automated process has detected that when you recently edited Horseshoe bat, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Superfamily (check to confirm | fix with Dab solver).

(Opt-out instructions.) --DPL bot (talk) 14:38, 22 February 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-09

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

Changes later this week

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

Future changes

• There will be a reply button after each post on a talk page if you want one. This will soon be a beta feature on the Arabic, French, Dutch and Hungarian Wikipedias. You will have to turn it on if you want to use it. It will come to more wikis later. You can test the reply button. It was briefly shown earlier than planned by mistake on the four first wikis last week.

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

20:59, 24 February 2020 (UTC)

Your GA nomination of Horseshoe bat

Hi there, I'm pleased to inform you that I've begun reviewing the article Horseshoe bat you nominated for GA-status according to the criteria. This process may take up to 7 days. Feel free to contact me with any questions or comments you might have during this period. Message delivered by Legobot, on behalf of Chiswick Chap -- Chiswick Chap (talk) 11:41, 26 February 2020 (UTC)

Need a story for the newsletter

ICYMI: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Dinosaurs#A reflection on the Spinosaurus controversy, 5 and a half years later. Cheers --awkwafaba (📥) 02:47, 28 February 2020 (UTC)

Awkwafaba, I'm not sure I'm following, what exactly is the controversy? Enwebb (talk) 16:17, 28 February 2020 (UTC)

I think it's more of a lack of controversy. The palaontological community isn't really convinced of the quadrapedal, fully-aquatic version, but the public seems to accept it without much debate. just an idea. --awkwafaba (📥) 17:41, 28 February 2020 (UTC)

WikiCup 2020 March newsletter

And so ends the first round of the competition. Everyone with a positive score moves on to Round 2, with 57 contestants qualifying. We have abolished the groups this year, so to qualify for Round 3 you will need to finish Round 2 among the top thirty-two contestants.

Our top scorers in Round 1 were:

• Epicgenius, a WikiCup newcomer, led the field with a featured article, five good articles and an assortment of other submissions, specialising on buildings and locations in New York, for a total of 895 points.
• Gog the Mild came next with 464 points, from a featured article, two good articles and a number of reviews, the main theme being naval warfare.
• Raymie was in third place with 419 points, garnered from one good article and an impressive 34 DYKs on radio and TV stations in the United States.
• Harrias came next at 414, with a featured article and three good articles, an English civil war battle specialist.
• CaptainEek was in fifth place with 405 points, mostly garnered from bringing Cactus wren to featured article status.
• The top ten contestants at the end of Round 1 all scored over 200 points; they also included L293D, Kingsif, Enwebb, Lee Vilenski and CAPTAIN MEDUSA. Seven of the top ten contestants in Round 1 are new to the WikiCup.

These contestants, like all the others, now have to start scoring points again from scratch. In Round 1 there were four featured articles, one featured list and two featured pictures, as well as around two hundred DYKs and twenty-seven ITNs. Between them, contestants completed 127 good article reviews, nearly a hundred more than the 43 good articles they claimed for, thus making a substantial dent in the review backlog. Contestants also claimed for 40 featured article / featured list reviews, and most even remembered to mention their WikiCup participation in their reviews (a requirement).

Remember that any content promoted after the end of Round 1 but before the start of Round 2 can be claimed in Round 2. Some contestants made claims before the new submissions pages were set up, and they will need to resubmit them. Invitations for collaborative writing efforts or any other discussion of potentially interesting work is always welcome on the WikiCup talk page. Remember, if two or more WikiCup competitors have done significant work on an article, all can claim points. If you are concerned that your nomination—whether it is at good article candidates, a featured process, or anywhere else—will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews.

If you want to help out with the WikiCup, please do your bit to keep down the review backlogs! Questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup, and the judges are reachable on their talk pages or by email. Good luck! If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove yourself from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. Godot13 (talk), Sturmvogel 66 (talk), Vanamonde (talk) and Cwmhiraeth (talk). MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:46, 1 March 2020 (UTC)

WikiCup newsletter correction

There was an error in the WikiCup 2020 March newsletter; L293D should not have been included in the list of top ten scorers in Round 1 (they led the list last year), instead, Dunkleosteus77 should have been included, having garnered 334 points from five good articles on animals, living or extinct, and various reviews. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 09:30, 2 March 2020 (UTC)

February 2020 Tree of Life Newsletter

February 2020—Issue 011

Tree of Life

Welcome to the Tree of Life newsletter!

Newly recognized content

Segnosaurus by FunkMonk The Goldfinch (painting) by Jimfbleak Gharial by BhagyaMani, reviewed by Dunkleosteus77 Steller's sea ape by Dunkleosteus77, reviewed by Hog Farm Poinsettia by Enwebb, reviewed by Starsandwhales Honeynut squash by Ɱ, reviewed by Ealdgyth

Newly nominated content

Danuvius guggenmosi by Dunkleosteus77 Denisovan by Dunkleosteus77 Homo luzonensis by Dunkleosteus77 Homo naledi by Dunkleosteus77 Horseshoe bat by Enwebb Cimicidae by Cwmhiraeth and Chiswick Chap

News at a Glance

• The Great Britain and Ireland Destubathon began on 1 March and runs for the entire month. Expansion of any stubs related to Great Britain and Ireland is welcome, inclusive of taxa. There are also monetary prizes for winners of specific categories in the form of Amazon gift cards. PetScan could be useful here to find the intersection of Stub-class articles and other categories: Biota of Ireland; Biota of Great Britain; Biota of the Isle of Man
• The WP:WikiCup just completed its first round. Dunkleosteus77 had the most points of any Tree of Life editor, with 5 GAs and 6 GARs. Other Tree of Life editors moving on to round two include Enwebb, Sainsf, starsandwhales, Guettarda, and Casliber.
• Some winners of the 2019 Wiki Science Competition have been announced. For the finalists and winners, see here.

• 
  Daphnia giving birth (Poland)
• 
  Immunofluorescence staining of a mouse intestine, "Microscopy" (Australia)
• 
  Bat scientist Lauri Lutsar determining the age of a bat, "People In Science" (Estonia)
• 
  Close-up view of a bioluminescent beetle Elateroidea, "Wildlife and Nature" (France)
• 
  Coral fluorescence, "General Category" (Russia)
• 
  Paleoanthropologist at work, "People in Science" (Italy)
• 
  Ammonite fossil from Morocco, "General Category" (Spain)
• 
  Yellow orange-tip male (Ixias pyrene), "Wildlife and Nature" (India)

The spread of coronavirus across Wikipedia

With the outbreak of a novel coronavirus dominating news coverage, Wikipedia content related to the virus has seen much higher interest. Tree of Life content of particular interest to readers has included viruses, bats, pangolins, and masked palm civets. Viruses saw the most dramatic growth in readership: Coronavirus, which was the 105th most popular virus article in December 2019 with about 400 views per day, averaged over a quarter million views each day of January 2020. Total monthly viewership of the top-10 virus articles ballooned from about 1.5 million to nearly 20 million.

Top 10 WikiProject Virus articles in December 2019 vs. January 2020

	December 2019	January 2020	Rank change
1	Gastroenteritis	Coronavirus	+104
2	HIV/AIDS	2019–20 Wuhan coronavirus outbreak	NA
3	Norovirus	2019 novel coronavirus	NA
4	Smallpox	Severe acute respiratory syndrome	+47
5	Shingles	Novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV)	NA
6	Measles	Spanish flu	+3
7	HIV	Severe acute respiratory syndrome-related coronavirus	+124
8	Influenza	List of epidemics	+54
9	Spanish flu	Timeline of the 2019–20 Wuhan coronavirus outbreak	NA
10	Dengue fever	Coronaviridae	+490
Total views	1,466,143‬	19,845,246

Viewership of the articles Bat, Bat-borne virus, Horseshoe bat, and Bat as food from 15 Jan. 2020 to 10 Feb. 2020

From October 2019 – December 2019, the top ten most popular bat articles fluctuated among 16 different articles, with the December viewership of those 10 articles at 209,280. For January 2020, three articles broke into the top-10 that were not among the 16 articles of the prior three months: Bat as food, Horseshoe bat, and Bat-borne virus. Viewership of the top-10 bat articles spiked nearly 300% to 617,067 in January.

While bats have been implicated as a possible natural reservoir of SARS-CoV-2, an intermediate host may be the bridge between bats and humans. Pangolins have been hypothesized as the intermediate host for the virus, causing a large spike in typical page views of 2-3k each day up to more than 60k in a day. Masked palm civets, the intermediate host of SARS, saw a modest yet noticeable spike in page views as well, from 100 to 300 views per day to as many as 5k views per day.

With an increase in viewers came an increase in editors. In an interview, longtime virus editor Awkwafaba identified the influx of editors as the biggest challenge in editing content related to the coronavirus. They noted that these newcomers include "novices who make honest mistakes and get tossed about a bit in the mad activity" as well as "experienced editors who know nothing about viruses and are good researchers, yet aren't familiar with the policies of WP:ToL or WP:Viruses." Disruption also increased, with extended confirmed protection (also known as the 30/500 rule, which prevents editors with fewer than 30 days tenure and 500 edits from making edits and is typically used on a very small subset of Wikipedia articles) temporarily applied to Coronavirus and still active on Template:2019–20 coronavirus outbreak data. New editors apparently seeking to correct misinformation continuously edited the article Bat as food to remove content related to China: Videos of Chinese people eating bat soup were misrepresented to be current or filmed in China, when at least one such video was several years old and filmed in Palau. However, reliable sources confirm that bats are eaten in China, especially Southern China, so these well-meaning edits were mostly removed.

Another level of complexity was added by the fluctuating terminology of the virus. Over a dozen moves and merges were requested within WikiProject Viruses. To give you an idea of the musical chairs happening with article titles, here are the move histories of two articles:

Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2

• Began as Wuhan coronavirus on 9 January
• Moved to 2019 novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) on 16 January
• Moved to Novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) on 19 January
• Moved to 2019 novel coronavirus on 9 February
• Moved to Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 on 18 February (current name)

2019–20 coronavirus outbreak

• Began as 2019-2020 China pneumonia outbreak on 5 January
• Moved to 2019–20 China pneumonia outbreak on 5 January
• Moved to 2019-20 outbreak of novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) in Wuhan, China on 15 January
• Moved to 2019-20 outbreak of novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) on 15 January
• Moved to 2019–20 outbreak of novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) on 15 January
• Moved to 2019–20 outbreak of novel coronavirus 2019-nCoV on 23 January
• Moved to 2019–20 Wuhan coronavirus outbreak on 23 January
• Moved to 2019–20 coronavirus outbreak on 18 February (current name)

Awkwafaba noted that "the main authorities, WHO and ICTV, don't really have a process for speedily naming a virus or disease." Additionally, they have different criteria for naming. They said, "I remember in a move discussion from the article then called Wuhan coronavirus that a virus name cannot have a geographical location in it, but this is a WHO disease naming guideline, and not an ICTV virus naming rule. ICTV may have renamed Four Corners virus to Sin Nombre orthohantavirus but there are still plenty of official virus species names that don't abide by WHO guidelines."

February DYKs

Thistle broomrape

Painting of the Shelton Oak

Female A. diabolicum flowers with curled stigmas

• ... that juvenile ornate surgeonfish are quite different in colouring from the adult fish? (1 February)
• ... that Quarry Moor is one of the few locations in England where the rare parasitic plant thistle broomrape (example pictured) grows? (2 February)
• ... that the hollow Shelton Oak (pictured) near Shrewsbury was so big that a party of eight could dance a quadrille inside it? (3 February)
• ... that growth in the brown seaweed Zanardinia typus occurs at the base of the hairs that grow around the edge of the frond? (4 February)
• ... that entomologist Karim Vahed led the team that found a cricket species in which the testes accounted for 14 percent of the insect's body mass? (4 February)
• ... that the ant Acropyga exsanguis shares its nest with several species of mealybug, including Geococcus coffeae? (4 February)
• ... that no fungi or algae are listed as endangered or threatened by the Illinois Endangered Species Protection Board? (5 February)
• ... that the blue pitta is a shy, secretive bird, but will respond to a recording of its call? (5 February)
• ... that Acer diabolicum, the devil maple, gets its scientific and common names from the curly stigmas of its flowers (pictured)? (6 February)
• ... that the alga Acetabularia acetabulum (pictured) resembles a green parasol? (7 February)
• ... that Bishop Monkton Ings in North Yorkshire, England, provides a habitat to the semi-parasitic marsh lousewort? (9 February)
• ... that although the bird of paradise fly was first described from an Angophora tree, it is quite likely that this is not the insect's host plant? (11 February)
• ... that Hack Fall Wood in North Yorkshire, England, hosts the rare lemon slug (example pictured)? (13 February)
• ... that the hairy sea cucumber has long tube feet on its dorsal surface, giving it a furry appearance? (14 February)
• ... that Diego (pictured) "had so much sex he saved his species"? (15 February)
• ... that common lousewort owes its name to the belief that livestock that ate it would become lousy? (16 February)
• ... that groups of social feather dusters sway in unison in the water current and retract into their tubes at the slightest disturbance (16 February)
• ... that the copepod Mesocyclops longisetus can be used in the biological control of mosquitoes? (17 February)
• ... that the specific name of Pterophorus pentadactyla, commonly known as the white plume moth, comes from the Greek for 'five fingers'? (22 February)
• ... that the laciniate conch (shell pictured) is able to flip itself off the seabed using its muscular foot? (25 February)

• 
  A. acetabulum caps
• 
  Lemon slug
• 
  Diego in 2009
• 
  Five views of a laciniate conch shell

Discuss this issue

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Tech News: 2020-10

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

• Readers who were not logged in briefly saw the interface in a language decided by their browser. It should normally be in the language of the wiki. This happened for a short period of time last week. This was because of a bug. [6]

Changes later this week

• If you forget your password you can ask for a new one to be sent to your email address. You need to know your email address or your username. You will now be able to choose that you need to enter both your email address and your username. This will be a preference. This is to get fewer password reset emails someone else asked for. [7]
• When you asked for a new password you could see if the username didn't exist on Special:PasswordReset. Now the page will show the username you entered and tell you an email has been sent if the username exists. This is for better security. [8]
• On Special:WhatLinksHere you can see what other pages link to a page. You can see if the link is from a redirect. You can now see which section the redirect links to. [9]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 3 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 4 March. It will be on all wikis from 5 March (calendar).

Future changes

• The developers are working on a new interface to solve edit conflicts on talk pages. You can give feedback. [10]
• There is a vote on the creation of a new user group called abuse filter manager. The vote runs from March 1 to March 31 on Meta.
• wgMFSpecialCaseMainPage was used for the mobile site. It was deprecated in 2017. It will stop working in April. Wikis should see if they use it. If they do they should fix it. You can read more and ask for help. This affects 183 wikis. There is a list. [11]

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

00:35, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

Your GA nomination of Horseshoe bat

The article Horseshoe bat you nominated as a good article has passed ; see Talk:Horseshoe bat for comments about the article. Well done! If the article has not already been on the main page as an "In the news" or "Did you know" item, you can nominate it to appear in Did you know. Message delivered by Legobot, on behalf of Chiswick Chap -- Chiswick Chap (talk) 15:21, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

Shohei Otomo's usage of Pilot/Namiki pens 'in an advertisement'

I'm beginning revisions to the Ballpoint pen artwork wikipedia page and among my first edits I added a link to the wiki page about Shohei Otomo which I happened to come across by accident. Heads up: I'll also be making edits to link Otomo's wiki to related pages.

And... sorry BUT: I happen to know that the 'Pilot advertisement' you noted in his article is mistaken or at least misleading; the 'ad' was nothing more than a promotional video produced by Otomo or a collaborator (perhaps to gain Pilot's interest?), but the way it is written in the wiki makes it seem as if Pilot commissioned the video and it was used for advertising purposes. The video in question shows Otomo cracking open a beer before drawing, something I highly doubt such a respected Japanese institution as Namiki pens would allow to be depicted, even in the 21st century. That beer also happens to be identifiably a Kirin brand beer, something for which I doubt Pilot/Namiki & Kirin would be in cooperation. On top of that, the video shows no identifying credit at all, nothing to identify the video as an 'ad' and I can't think of any company who doesn't include a logo in an ad. If I remember correctly, only some kind of narration by Otomo himself, unrelated to the pens, runs through the so-called 'ad'. On top of that, Otomo's artwork basically subverts classic Japanese imagery and the artist himself openly criticizes Japan's consumerist culture, a trait which I highly doubt such a corporation would align itself with.

Unless it can be clearly proven otherwise, any text referring to Otomo's video as a Pilot/Namiki-commissioned ad is misleading and must therefore be reworded for accuracy and clarity. This is no slight to Otomo or his artwork; surely worthy of a wiki page but anything less than the facts should be relegated to the artist's own websites or social media. Penwatchdog (talk) 08:35, 7 March 2020 (UTC)

If you think the source or wording I used was wrong then feel free to remove per WP:BRD. Enwebb (talk) 15:10, 7 March 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-11

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

• There is a new search word called articletopic. You can use it to search for articles on a specific topic. It is available on the Arabic, Czech, English and Vietnamese Wikipedias. It will come to more Wikipedias soon. [12][13][14]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 10 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 11 March. It will be on all wikis from 12 March (calendar).

Future changes

• There is a plan for new requirements for user signatures. You can give feedback.
• The Wikipedia Android app will do push notifications if users want them. This could help you see for example when someone wrote on your talk page or your edit was reverted. This will come later this year. [15]

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

17:14, 9 March 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-12

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 new API module for changing the content model of existing pages. Use action=changecontentmodel to specify the new model. You can read the documentation on mediawiki.org. [16]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 17 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 18 March. It will be on all wikis from 19 March (calendar).

Future changes

• If you edit a page at the same time as someone else you can get an edit conflict. There is a new two-column interface to make it easier to solve this. It will soon be active by default on the German, Arabic, and Farsi Wikipedias. It will be on by default on more wikis within the next months. You will be able to opt out of the new interface. [17][18]
• You can see a proposed design for replying to comments in an easier way.

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

21:17, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

Peer review for FL proposition of List of horseshoe bats

• Hello Enwebb, thanks for creating the List of horseshoe bats. I think that list has a potential to be a FL but it needs some review. I have some questions but could be more to correct before proposint the list to be a FL. Is it possible to make a peer review with the help of Bats TF? I will write some of my questions here:

1. As I'm not a native speaker, I have some difficulty about the use of "in/on", especially for the islands. In the text, when I put the range for subspecies I used Csorba et al. as the reference, and there for all islands only "in" was used. I have corrected for some small islands by using "on" but for bigger islands "in" is used, e.g. for Borneo, it should be in or on?
2. In the opening it is said there are 106 species, but I counted 103 species. There are still many different classifications. I don't know which one is valid. Handbook of the Mammals of the World - Volume 9 (2019) could be used as the reference for the species, but I don't have access. Is it possible to find somebody to help with it?
3. Formosan lesser horseshoe bat (R. monoceros) redirects to Little Japanese horseshoe bat (R. cornutus) but it should have its own article.
4. For synonyms, I have used again Csorba et al. But I have another question. When a taxon is considered a subspecies after its description as a species, we could consider it as a junior synonym or not?
5. Also I think we need more header text before proposal.

Thanks in advance for your help. --Mskyrider (talk) 07:11, 19 March 2020 (UTC)

Mskyrider, I'm not enwebb, but your question about in vs on for islands is intriguing. I'd say "on Corsica" but "in Sicily." I want to say "on Borneo." I am going to have to think about why. --valereee (talk) 19:24, 19 March 2020 (UTC)

@Mskyrider: I'll be a WikiJaguar too, and say that 'in' is for political areas, and 'on' if for physical islands. One is 'in' (the country of} Australia, and 'on' {the island of) Australia. So either really works. English can take it however you want to do it. --awkwafaba (📥) 00:19, 20 March 2020 (UTC)

Mskyrider, agreed with awkwafaba about the use of on and in.

• As for your 2nd point, I don't have access to that work either. My typical less than legal approach to obtaining books doesn't happen to have this title--probably because it's pretty new. All my local libraries are closed right now, but you can try posting on the resource request page. Conversely, I saw 4444hhhh adding a reference to Mammals of the World Vol. 9 on Bat, so maybe they can help you out
• The bats task force has been mostly following mammaldiversity.org. They follow this 2008 publication (which is in Chinese) in listing R. monoceros as a subspecies of R. cornutus.
• If I understand your question correctly for point 4, yes, a taxon that has been demoted from species to a subspecies is almost certainly going to have its name considered as a junior synonym, as long as that is consistent with the Principle of Priority
• I've never reviewed a Featured List or helped make one, but I can contribute more here if that would be helpful to you! Enwebb (talk) 16:10, 20 March 2020 (UTC)

map

Hey, Enwebb! Did you make the map? There'd been one there a few days ago, but it became outdated so I pulled it, it's good to have it again. Do you know how to do one of those sliding-scale thingies so you can see the development over time? --valereee (talk) 15:52, 19 March 2020 (UTC)

Valereee, yes, I made the map! I can commit to updating it every day after 2pm when the new numbers come out. Can you think of an example of an article that has what you're talking about with the sliding scale? I'm not sure I've seen that before. Enwebb (talk) 15:54, 19 March 2020 (UTC)

Hm...I feel like I've seen one on a wp page, but maybe it's been in some source. Things blur together in my memory. :D Let me see if I can find an example of what I mean. --valereee (talk) 16:25, 19 March 2020 (UTC)

Okay, like this idea, although obviously this is way more sophisticated than I'm talking about: https://vac-lshtm.shinyapps.io/ncov_tracker/ --valereee (talk) 16:33, 19 March 2020 (UTC)

Valereee, I'm not sure how to make that for Wikipedia, but I could make a GIF if that would be helpful. That's not too hard. Enwebb (talk) 01:59, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

condolences on the loss of your pet

Wikipedians also recommend biscuits with tea.

--valereee (talk) has given you a cup of tea. Tea promotes WikiLove and hopefully this has made your day ever so slightly better.

Spread the WikiLove by giving someone else a tea, especially if it is someone you have had disagreements with in the past or someone putting up with some stick at this time. Enjoy!

Spread the lovely, warm, refreshing goodness of tea by adding {{subst:wikitea}} to their talk page with a friendly message.

Tech News: 2020-13

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

Problems

• Some development will be slower than planned. This is because of the current pandemic. You can see the new deployment guidelines. This is to avoid risks when some persons could be unavailable.
• There was a problem when adding interwiki links. The tool you use to add interwiki links could suggest the wrong project to link to. This has now been fixed. [19][20]

Changes later this week

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

Future changes

• There is a project to make editing easier for newcomers. The developers are trying to understand what initiatives different Wikipedias have to welcome newcomers. They also want to know which templates are often used for maintenance activities. You can help this project by checking if your wiki's pages are listed on Wikidata.

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

17:07, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-14

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 beta version of the Wikipedia app for Android can now help users add tags on Commons. These tags are called depicts. [21]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 31 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 1 April. It will be on all wikis from 2 April (calendar).

Future changes

• The video player will change to be simpler and more modern. The current beta feature will become the video player for everyone. The old player will be removed. [22]
• There is a project to make templates easier to use. The next few weeks the developers will present ideas on the project page. You can watch that page if you are interested in giving feedback. [23]

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

17:25, 30 March 2020 (UTC)

March 2020 Tree of Life Newsletter

March 2020—Issue 012

Tree of Life

Welcome to the Tree of Life newsletter!

Newly recognized content

Argentinosaurus by Slate Weasel and Jens Lallensack Wolf by LittleJerry Horseshoe bat by Enwebb, reviewed by Chiswick Chap Cimicidae by Cwmhiraeth and Chiswick Chap, reviewed by Enwebb Coronariae by Michael Goodyear, reviewed by Dank Ardipithecus ramidus by Dunkleosteus77, reviewed by starsandwhales Ooedigera by Dunkleosteus77, reviewed by Hog Farm Bathyphysa conifera by Awkwafaba, reviewed by Chiswick Chap Calliphora vomitoria by Y.shiuan, reviewed by Jens Lallensack

Newly nominated content

Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations by Britishfinance Bathyphysa conifera by Awkwafaba Moniliformidae by Mattximus Disease X by Britishfinance Mandarin Patinkin by Rhododendrites

News at a glance

• A year of the Tree of Life Newsletter: Thank you to all the subscribers who have been with us from the beginning or have joined along the way, and to those who have contributed their time to producing this newsletter. I've really valued your ideas, copyediting, and willingness to be interviewed. Onwards and upwards!
• April marks the start of the GAN Backlog Drive, which continues through the end of May. The goal of this backlog elimination drive is to cut the number of outstanding GANs, in particular those which have been in the queue 90 days or more. All hands welcome, new and old.
• The finalists of the US Wiki Science Competition have been announced. Illustrating Wikipedia articles can be challenging, so these new images represent a chance to find suitable media for our articles. For all images uploaded in the Wiki Science Competition, see here and click "all images" in the upper right corner.

• 
  Fly's mouth and tongue (Microscopy)
• 
  Killer whales hunting a crabeater seal (Wildlife)
• 
  Fossilized tooth of a Squalicorax shark (Microscopy)
• 
  Flourescent coral (Non-photographic media)

A new WikiProject responding to the pandemic

The newest Tree of Life WikiProject is about a taxon that is dominating the headlines, Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2, and its many effects. We interviewed Another Believer, the founder of WikiProject COVID-19.

This interview has been edited for length. Find the full interview here.

1. Please describe how you went about creating WikiProject COVID-19. What made you think a project was needed?

   I've been following the outbreak and editing related Wikipedia articles since January. I'm not particularly interested in infectious diseases or viruses, but I've been to China a few times and wanted to monitor the outbreak's impact on society as well as the government's response. For a while, I was casually tracking updates to the first couple pages about the outbreak. Then a pattern began to emerge as February saw the creation of separate articles about outbreaks in Iran, Italy, and South Korea. New Wikipedia articles continued being created in early March, and the outbreak was recognized as a pandemic by the World Health Organization on March 11. Knowing there would many more articles, lists, templates, illustrations, and other pages on Wikipedia, I created WikiProject COVID-19 on March 15. My goal was simply to create a temporary or permanent space for editors to collaborate, communicate, and focus specifically on content related to this ongoing pandemic. I'm a member of many WikiProjects and have created several before, but this one definitely felt more necessary and urgent. Most WikiProjects unite editors with similar interests, which is fine and serves a purpose, but I felt this project could have a much bigger real life impact. I don't think I was alone in my thinking; the project had 80 members by March 20 and 100 members by March 26.

2. Who or what was invaluable to getting off the ground?

   If I'm being honest, getting this project off the ground required little work on my part. All I did was create the space and post invitations to existing talk pages related to the outbreak. Editors joined the project very quickly; 30 members joined on the same day I started the project, and there were more than 50 participants one day later. I've been a daily Wikipedia editor for more than 12 years, and I've never seen so much interest in a project or content added to Wikipedia about a specific topic in such a short period of time. WikiProject members worked expeditiously to build a framework and hang a barnstar, tagging related pages, assessing content, and starting talk page discussions about the project's goals and scope. I'm thankful to the many editors who pitched in to get the project established, and I look forward to seeing how editors collaborate in this space as we move forward.

3. What are the short-term goals of the project?

   No specific goals have been posted to the project page yet, but I'd like to think members share a collective desire to ensure Wikipedia has accurate and reliable information about the disease and pandemic. Disinformation and misinformation seem rampant these days, so we're working to give readers around the globe access to accurate, objective, and possibly even life-saving information. Unlike some WikiProjects which may take a more historical approach to documenting certain topics, WikiProject COVID-19 members have the ability to mitigate the disease's spread in real time by arming communities with facts about outbreaks in their region as well as information about prevention, testing, vaccine research, societal impact, etc.

   

   Viewership of WikiProject Medicine, WikiProject Viruses, and WikiProject COVID-19 in the month of March 2020

4. What are the long-term goals? English Wikipedia has many of 'lumpers' who think there are too many projects already. The project has also inspired the creation of two portals, which I imagine caused some raised eyebrows in this trend of portal deletionism. What will come of the WP after the current outbreak subsides?

   After creating WikiProject COVID-19, a couple editors said I should have created a task force instead of a standalone WikiProject. I wasn't bothered. The number of 'thank you' notifications I received for creating the page vastly outweighed these critical comments. I knew the page I created was much needed, and I would be fine if editors decide to call the page by another name. I understand some editors think there are too many WikiProjects. No one's required to join WikiProject COVID-19, but the 100+ of us who have already joined invite you to help with our efforts, if you're interested. As for the project's future, I would be fine if editors decided to convert the WikiProject into a task force, or even put the project into retirement if the time comes. Given the level of interest and impact the pandemic has already had on a global scale, I have a feeling the WikiProject will be active for a long time.

5. Another criticism of the project is its narrow focus. It is focused on only one strain of virus, and the disease it causes. Even WikiProject AIDS is about two species of virus. Is the scope of the project too small? What would an expanded scope look like? Why would including another virus strain in the same species, Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus which causes SARS, not be wanted? or is it wanted?

   Narrow focus? I disagree. The project may focus on a single virus and disease, but the pandemic has resulted in the creation of hundreds of Wikipedia articles documenting outbreaks in most countries and territories. There are pages covering the pandemic's impact on aviation, cinema, education, politics, religion, sports, and television, not to mention others related to the resulting economic turmoil. Additionally, there are hundreds of templates, charts, and other graphics. Who knows how many thousands of images and other media will be uploaded at Wikimedia Commons by the time this pandemic subsides? There's also COVID-19 WikiProject COVID-19 at Wikidata, and I wouldn't be surprised if similar spaces are created for other Wikimedia projects soon. Even if the focus is narrow, there's plenty of content for Wikimedians to improve and protect.

6. In your opinion, what should be the guidelines for creating a new project, as opposed to creating a task force or working under an existing WikiProject?

   I don't feel strongly about new project creation guidelines, or the differences between WikiProjects and task forces. Project members should decide what structure works for them and call themselves whatever name they prefer. I understand project construction requires maintenance and can come at an administrative cost, but we should be careful about discouraging editors from proposing new projects.

   Ideally, editors would only create a new WikiProject if at least a few others were committed to joining. I created WikiProject COVID-19 without conferring with others because I assumed the interest would be there. I encourage people to be bold and create project pages, but maybe ask a few other editors for feedback first. I'll let other editors worry about the guidelines.

7. What tools (templates, bots, etc.) are essential, or even just really helpful, for organizing and maintaining a successful project? What is something every WP should do, that maybe isn't doing now?

   I appreciate the standard WikiProject assessment framework. AlexNewArtBot and Article alerts have also been very helpful.

8. What have you learned about Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 or COVID-19 during this process that surprised you?

   I don't have any sort of medical background, and I'm more interested in the pandemic's impact than details about the disease or virus. Most surprising to me has been the lack of preparedness for combating outbreaks by governments around the world, including here in the United States. I don't know how COVID-19's spread compares to other infectious diseases, but as I've watched the outbreak develop I've continually wondered why governments did not start preparing earlier. What was happening in China, Iran, Italy, and South Korea should have prompted action sooner.

9. What important things about 2019–20 coronavirus pandemic do you think folks should know and maybe have missed in the deluge of information coming at people?

   1. Know the most common symptoms: cough, fever, and difficulty breathing.

   2. Learn what behavioral adjustments you should make to protect yourself and reduce transmission, and remember to wash your hands.

   3. Get your information from reputable sources. I'd like to think Wikipedia editors are pretty good at this last bit of advice.

Thank you to Another Believer for your time, both in this interview and in this project. Interested readers can join WikiProject COVID-19. And please stay safe and healthy out there. --Awkwafaba

March DYKs

• ... that Calamagrostis intermedia is the dominant plant of the grassy páramo in Ecuador's El Cajas National Park? (March 1)
• ... that the blood-sucking bug Primicimex cavernis survives in a cave in Texas while the bats on which it feeds overwinter elsewhere? (March 2)
• ... that the worm Phyllodoce lineata is a predator and scavenger, feeding mostly on other polychaetes? (March 4)
• ... that the crested oyster has been eaten by humans for at least 6,000 years? (March 5)
• ... that larvae of the tube worm Hydroides ezoensis prefer to settle on a substrate already inhabited by other worms of their own species? (March 14)
• ... that the sea slug Berthella ocellata hides during the day and feeds on sponges such as Corticium candelabrum at night? (March 18)
• ... that the sea cucumber Actinopyga agassizii has five teeth surrounding its anus? (March 19)
• ... that unlike most soft scale insects, the adult female pyriform scale is able to move around? (March 20)
• ... that in Florida, winged termites are sometimes found stuck to wet foliage, buildings, or vehicles after rain? (March 23)
• ... that despite being known as the Kerry lily, the perennial plant has a much wider distribution outside Ireland? (March 24)
• ... that in 1725 Hans Sloane described a plant he called Prickly-Pole as the Jamaican tree species that was "the most fit to make Rods and Scowrers for Guns"? (March 25)
• ... that a deep-sea fish known as a black ruff was caught in a salmon net in the Firth of Forth and donated to the Edinburgh Museum of Science and Art in 1901? (March 29)
• ... that the flowering plant Gentianella anglica is found only in Great Britain? (March 30)

Discuss this issue

You are receiving this because you added your name to the subscribers list of the WikiProject Tree of Life. If you no longer wish to receive the newsletter, please remove your name.

Tree of Life newsletter distribution

Hello! Just in case you did not see my note here, I'm hoping you can share the newsletter with the relevant WikiProjects as well. Much appreciated! ---Another Believer _(Talk) 20:51, 2 April 2020 (UTC)

Another Believer, Done! Thanks for the reminder. Enwebb (talk) 20:57, 2 April 2020 (UTC)

Enwebb, Thanks! ---Another Believer _(Talk) 20:57, 2 April 2020 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Barnstar of Diligence
	Congratulations for one year on the news(letter) beat! Great job! Guettarda (talk) 22:53, 2 April 2020 (UTC)

Thank you :) Enwebb (talk) 13:27, 3 April 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-15

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

Problems

• There was a problem with user pages not being shown properly on desktop. This was because of a bug. It will soon be fixed. [24]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 7 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 8 April. It will be on all wikis from 9 April (calendar).

Future changes

• MediaWiki will use a newer version of Unicode. Some characters that did not have an upper case equivalent before do now. Titles beginning with one of these characters will be moved. A list of these titles can be seen on Phabricator. The titles will be renamed by the user Maintenance script. This will start on 13 April 2020. You can rename them before this if you wish and the new title can be different from the one the script would rename it to. [25]

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

19:02, 6 April 2020 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

The Original Barnstar

Hey Enwebb, thanks for your comments they were really nice. I'm trying to fully create this wikipedia page as a class assignment. I don't want to be rude but since this is going to be graded I'd really appreciate it if I could fill out this article in it's entirety, just trying to get that undergrad degree but I really do wanna stress how much I appreciate your comments. Mutchroom (talk) 21:08, 9 April 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-16

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 use the articletopic search word on all Wikipedias. It searches articles by topic. [26]
• You can see wiki tools in the new Tools Gallery. [27]
• You can see edits from the Wikimedia Cloud Services in a new dashboard.
• When you use filters on a history page you sometimes don't see any edits. There is a text explaining this now. Before it was just empty. [28]
• There is a new Wikimedia Technical Blog. [29]

Problems

• There was a problem with the Wikidata database last week. Some wikis went down for twenty minutes. Wikidata and other projects showed error messages. Interwiki links were not shown, some tools did not work and other problems. Some of this was fixed quickly. The developers are working on fixing the rest. [30][31][32]

Changes later this week

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

Future changes

• Some graphs have not worked on mobile. This will soon be fixed. [33]
• The article tab on talk pages of redirects links to the target of the redirect. It could link to the redirect page itself instead. You can leave feedback on this.
• For pages using syntax highlighting, the use of the deprecated <source> tag, as well as the use of the deprecated enclose parameter, will add tracking categories.

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

15:30, 13 April 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-17

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

Tech News

• The next issue of Tech News will be sent out on 4 May 2020.

Recent changes

• The small wiki toolkits is to help smaller wikis that need technical skills. They can learn and share technical skills. [34]
• Over-qualified CSS selectors in Wikimedia skins have been removed. div#content is now .mw-body. div.portal is now .portal. div#footer is now #footer. This is so the skins can use HTML5 elements. If your gadgets or user styles used them you will have to update them. [35]

Changes later this week

• There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

Future changes

• Some things on the wikis might look weird or not work in Internet Explorer 8 in the future. Internet Explorer 8 was replaced in 2011. [36]
• The font in the diffs will change. [37]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 28 April next week. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 29 April next week. It will be on all wikis from 30 April next week (calendar).

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

18:44, 20 April 2020 (UTC)

Precious anniversary

A year ago ...

bats
... you were recipient no. 2193 of Precious, a prize of QAI!

--Gerda Arendt (talk) 07:28, 27 April 2020 (UTC)

WikiCup 2020 May newsletter

The second round of the 2020 WikiCup has now finished. It was a high-scoring round and contestants needed 75 points to advance to round 3. There were some very impressive efforts in round 2, with the top ten contestants all scoring more than 500 points. A large number of the points came from the 12 featured articles and the 186 good articles achieved in total by contestants, and the 355 good article reviews they performed; the GAN backlog drive and the stay-at-home imperative during the COVID-19 pandemic may have been partially responsible for these impressive figures.

Our top scorers in round 2 were:

• Epicgenius, with 2333 points from one featured article, forty-five good articles, fourteen DYKs and plenty of bonus points
• Gog the Mild, with 1784 points from three featured articles, eight good articles, a substantial number of featured article and good article reviews and lots of bonus points
• The Rambling Man, with 1262 points from two featured articles, eight good articles and a hundred good article reviews
• Harrias, with 1141 points from two featured articles, three featured lists, ten good articles, nine DYKs and a substantial number of featured article and good article reviews
• Lee Vilenski with 869 points, Hog Farm with 801, Kingsif with 719, SounderBruce with 710, Dunkleosteus77 with 608 and MX with 515.

The rules for featured article reviews have been adjusted; reviews may cover three aspects of the article, content, images and sources, and contestants may receive points for each of these three types of review. Please also remember the requirement to mention the WikiCup when undertaking an FAR for which you intend to claim points. Remember also that DYKs cannot be claimed until they have appeared on the main page. As we enter the third round, any content promoted after the end of round 2 but before the start of round 3 can be claimed now, and anything you forgot to claim in round 2 cannot! Remember too, that you must claim your points within 14 days of "earning" them. When doing GARs, please make sure that you check that all the GA criteria are fully met.

If you are concerned that your nomination—whether it is at good article nominations, a featured process, or anything else—will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews Needed (remember to remove your listing when no longer required). Questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup, and the judges are reachable on their talk pages or by email. Good luck! If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove your name from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. Godot13 (talk), Sturmvogel 66 (talk), Vanamonde (talk) and Cwmhiraeth. - MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:44, 1 May 2020 (UTC)

Your GA nomination of Cinnamon red bat

Hi there, I'm pleased to inform you that I've begun reviewing the article Cinnamon red bat you nominated for GA-status according to the criteria. This process may take up to 7 days. Feel free to contact me with any questions or comments you might have during this period. Message delivered by Legobot, on behalf of Dunkleosteus77 -- Dunkleosteus77 (talk) 17:41, 3 May 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-19

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

Problems

• Some wikis will be on read-only for a few minutes on 5 May. This will happen around 05:00 UTC. This is for database maintenance. [38]
• Some wikis will be on read-only for a few minutes on 7 May. This will also affect CentralAuth. This can for example affect global renames, password changes, changing or confirming your email address and logging in to new wikis. This will happen around 05:00 UTC. This is for database maintenance. [39]

Changes later this week

• You can get a notification when someone links to a page you created. You can soon turn these notifications off for individual pages. [40]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 5 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 6 May. It will be on all wikis from 7 May (calendar).

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

16:59, 4 May 2020 (UTC)

April 2020 Tree of Life Newsletter

April 2020—Issue 013

Tree of Life

Welcome to the Tree of Life newsletter!

Newly recognized content

Danuvius guggenmosi by Dunkleosteus77, reviewed by J Milburn Neanderthal by Dunkleosteus77, reviewed by Jens Lallensack Homo luzonensis by Dunkleosteus77, reviewed by Jens Lallensack Lythronax by FunkMonk, reviewed by Jens Lallensack Ichthyovenator by PaleoGeekSquared, reviewed by FunkMonk Secretarybird by LittleJerry, Aa77zz and Casliber, reviewed by The Rambling Man James John Joicey by RLO1729, reviewed by The Rambling Man Homo naledi by Dunkleosteus77, reviewed by Jens Lallensack Vermilion flycatcher by CaptainEek, reviewed by HickoryOughtShirt?4 Canada lynx by Sainsf, reviewed by Dunkleosteus77 Alice Gray by Rhododendrites, reviewed by The Rambling Man Caryodendron orinocense by CPC273, reviewed by Chiswick Chap Jaguarundi by Sainsf, reviewed by Usernameunique Gigantopithecus by Dunkleosteus77, reviewed by Starsandwhales Denisovan by Dunkleosteus77, reviewed by Starsandwhales Disease X by Britishfinance, reviewed by DannyS712

Newly nominated content

Lythronax by FunkMonk, Lythronaxargestes and IJReid Ichthyovenator by PaleoGeekSquared Neanderthal by Dunkleosteus77 Alpine newt by Tylototriton Secretarybird by LittleJerry, Aa77zz and Casliber List of ursids by PresN Borchgrevinkium by Super Dromaeosaurus Caryodendron orinocense by CPC273 Siamosaurus by PaleoGeekSquared Canada lynx by Sainsf Vietnam mouse-deer by Sainsf Jaguarundi by Sainsf Vermilion flycatcher by CaptainEek Alice Gray by Rhododendrites Gigantopithecus by Dunkleosteus77 Paleobiota of the Posidonia Shale by Yewtharaptor Meerkat by Sainsf

News at a glance

• WikiProject Birds gained a new task force. A discussion determined that WikiProject Poultry might be more successful as a task force, with the move completed 15 April.
• Round 2 of the WikiCup wrapped up this month. Several editors moved on to Round 3 by scoring points in biodiversity-related areas, including Sainsf, Casliber, Dunkleosteus77, CaptainEek, Guettarda, and Enwebb. Dunkleosteus77 finished at the top of the Tree of Life pack with 608 points, finishing 9th overall in the round.
• After a relatively quiet February and March, with only 11 total articles nominated for GA and none for FAC, April brought a shower of nominations. In total, 5 articles were nominated for FAC, 1 for FLC, and 11 for GA.

Tree of Life's growing featured content

Inspired by a March 2020 post at WikiProject Medicine detailing the growth of Featured Articles over time, we decided to reproduce that table here, adding a second table showing the growth of Good Articles. Tree of Life articles are placed in the "Biology" category for FAs, which has seen a growth of 381% since 2008. Only two other subjects had a greater growth than Biology: Business, economics, and finance; and Warfare.

Percentage Growth in FA Categories, 2008–2019, Legend:

Considerably above average, Above average, Average

Below average , Considerably below average, Poor

Featured Article Category as of	Feb 23, 2008	Sep 16, 2008	Sep 16, 2010	Dec 1, 2011	Jan 1, 2015	Jan 1, 2020	Pct chg Feb 2008 to 2011	Pct chg Feb 2008 to 2020
Art, architecture and archaeology	65	72	117	128	175	271	97%	317%
Awards, decorations and vexillology	24	26	28	27	26	24	1.3%	0%
Biology	130	155	261	326	456	625	151%	381%
Business, economics and finance	16	19	22	44	73	116	175%	625%
Chemistry and mineralogy	29	31	34	37	40	46	28%	59%
Computing	17	17	17	18	16	14	5.9%	−18%
Culture and society	40	48	61	65	77	104B	63%	160%
Education	30	34	36	38	40	40	27%	33%
Engineering and technology	35	37	38	40	43	49	14%	40%
Food and drink	11	11	9	13	17	21B	18%	91%
Geography and places	148	158	181	185	213	232	25%	57%
Geology and geophysics	9	12	18	20	23	29	122%	222%
Health and medicine	31	36	42	43	51	52	39%	68%
History	146	154	189	201	239	308	38%	111%
Language and linguistics	17	15	13	13	12	15	−24%	−12%
Law	29	34	41	49	65	72	69%	148%
Literature and theatre	108	134	161	191	258	316B	77%	193%
Mathematics	13	14	19	17	18	18	31%	38%
Media	159	171	221	231	324	424	45%	167%
Meteorology	61	78	111	126	147	168	107%	175%
Music	153	182	232	254	331	398	66%	160%
Philosophy and psychology	12	13	12	12	12	14	0%	17%
Physics and astronomy	67	82	98	101	127	153	51%	128%
Politics and government	62	67	98	117	166	217	89%	250%
Religion, mysticism and mythology	36	44	73	84	105	121	133%	236%
Royalty, nobility and heraldry	75	90	94	108	124	173	44%	131%
Sport and recreation	119	162	268	298	365	449	150%	277%
Transport	47	74	107	128	171	213	172%	353%
Video gaming	72	96	127	137	180	222	90%	208%
Warfare	145	173	318	366	537	729	152%	403%
Total	1,906	2,239	3,046	3,417	4,431	5,695 A	79.3%	198.8%

• Note A: Total is off by one; not worth looking for the error.
• Note B Three food biographies moved [41] per discussion at WT:FAC
• Note: The very odd dates used in earlier years result from pulling old data from the talk page at WP:FAS.

Good Article Category as of	Feb 23, 2008	Sep 16, 2008	Sep 16, 2010	Dec 1, 2011	Jan 1, 2015	Jan 1, 2020	Pct chg Feb 2008 to 2011	Pct chg Feb 2008 to 2020
Agriculture, food and drink	27	34	37	55	113	226	104%	737%
Art and architecture	134	188	321	450	683	1022	236%	663%
Engineering and technology	256	396	882	1198	1828	2407	368%	840%
Geography and places	191	248	424	523	716	1052	174%	451%
History	261	312	651	825	1219	1894	216%	626%
Language and literature	173	215	377	462	686	982	167%	468%
Mathematics	19	22	27	30	36	67	58%	253%
Media and drama	403	658	1352	1300	3070	3961	223%	883%
Music	357	527	997	1437	2532	3892	303%	990%
Natural sciences	544	686	1275	1717	2404	3426	216%	530%
Philosophy and religion	134	174	244	294	365	557	119%	316%
Social sciences and society	468	549	790	998	1430	1854	113%	296%
Sports and recreation	384	546	1074	1402	2350	3802	265%	890%
Video games	168	220	373	443	684	1349	164%	703%
Warfare	155	241	989	1654	2544	3996	967%	2478%
Total	3674	5016	9813	12788	20660	30487	248%	730%
Organisms*	119	130	402	528	685	1017	344%	755%

*subset of natural sciences

Unsurprisingly, the number of GAs has increased more rapidly than the number of FAs. Organisms, which is a subcategory of Natural sciences, has seen a GA growth of 755% since 2008, besting the Natural sciences overall growth of 530%. While Warfare had far and away the most significant growth of GAs, it's a clear outlier relative to other categories.

April DYKs

Jenny

White-throated round-eared bat

Formica fusca ants tending mealybugs

• ... that the human-like behaviour of Jenny (depicted), a resident of London Zoo, reinforced Charles Darwin's view that humans were "created from animals"? (3 April)
• ... that white-throated round-eared bats (example pictured) roost in cavities in active termite mounds excavated by the males? (4 April)
• ... that flatter mires in montane regions of Europe are often dominated by deergrass and cottongrass? (5 April)
• ... that the white-browed tit-warbler has been found to practice cooperative breeding? (6 April)
• ... that most species in the palm genus Desmoncus climb using grappling hook–like structures called acanthopylls? (7 April)
• ... that some ants herd scale insects (example pictured)? (10 April)
• ... that birds, bats and humans are the main hosts of members of the bed bug family? (12 April)
• ... that the sponge Aplysina cavernicola (pictured) has been used as a model organism to monitor the presence of isotopes such as americium-241 in seawater? (16 April)
• ... that although the alpine bartsia has a wide range in Europe and North America, it is known in the British Isles only from a few locations in northern England and the central Scottish Highlands? (19 April)
• ... that the orange-band surgeonfish (pictured) can change colour from dark to light almost instantaneously? (21 April)
• ... that the parasitic greater broomrape usually grows on the roots of the common broom or the European gorse? (24 April)
• ... that the tree Macaranga triloba encourages the ants that defend it by providing them with food bodies? (25 April)
• ... that amateur entomologist James John Joicey had a collection of 1.5 million butterflies? (28 April)
• ... that the globe chamomile (pictured), a member of the daisy family native to South Africa, infests parts of Arizona and California? (28 April)
• ... that the bicoloured sedge (pictured) was part of an attempted botanical fraud? (30 April)

• 
  A. cavernicola
• 
  Orange-band surgeonfish
• 
  Bicoloured sedge
• 
  Globe chamomile blooms

Discuss this issue

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Tech News: 2020-20

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

• Everyone can now import photos from Flickr to Commons with the UploadWizard. Before this only autopatrollers on Commons could import photos from Flickr. [42]

Problems

• Commons will be on read-only for a few minutes on 12 May. This will happen around 05:00 UTC. This is for database maintenance. [43]
• Several wikis including Wikidata will be on read-only for a few minutes on 19 May. This will happen around 05:00 UTC. English Wikipedia will be on read-only for a few minutes on 21 May 05:00 UTC. This is for database maintenance. [44][45]

Changes later this week

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

Future changes

• JavaScript scripts and gadgets can no longer check multiple keys at once via mw.config.exists() or mw.user.tokens.exists(). You can use exists() or get() to check one at a time instead. [46]

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

20:41, 11 May 2020 (UTC)

Your GA nomination of Cinnamon red bat

The article Cinnamon red bat you nominated as a good article has passed ; see Talk:Cinnamon red bat for comments about the article. Well done! If the article has not already been on the main page as an "In the news" or "Did you know" item, you can nominate it to appear in Did you know. Message delivered by Legobot, on behalf of Dunkleosteus77 -- Dunkleosteus77 (talk) 16:41, 15 May 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-21

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

• If you forget your password you can ask for a new one to be sent to your email address. You need to know your email address or your username. You can choose that you need to enter both your email address and your username. This is a preference. This is to get fewer password reset emails someone else asked for. This is now available on all Wikimedia wikis. [47][48]

Problems

• There is a bug that creates problems for iPhone users with iOS 13 and Safari. If you use an iPhone to read or edit Wikipedia and see bugs on the mobile site you can report them. [49]
• Several wikis including Wikidata will be on read-only for a few minutes on 19 May. This will happen around 05:00 UTC. English Wikipedia will be on read-only for a few minutes on 21 May 05:00 UTC. This is for database maintenance. [50][51]

Changes later this week

• The Wikipedia app for Android can let users add depicts on Commons. The beta version used computer-aided tagging. This was removed to get more specific depicts. [52]
• There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

Future changes

• Graphs will be rendered in the reader's browser. This will use Javascript. Graphs will hopefully work better for everyone who uses Javascript. It will not work for users who don't use Javascript. This will not affect diagrams in image files. [53]
• Some CSS for the skins has been simplified. This affects div#p-personal, div#p-navigation, div#p-interaction, div#p-tb, div#p-lang, div#p-namespaces, div#p-variants and div#footer. They will have to remove div. You will have to update your gadgets, scripts or user styles. This is so we can use HTML5. [54]
• Some CSS for the Vector skin has been changed. This affects #p-variants, #p-namespaces, #p-personal, #p-views and #p-cactions. They can no longer use > ul. You might need to update your gadgets, scripts or user styles. See how.

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

17:18, 18 May 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-22

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

Changes later this week

• The visual editor will now work in the Modern skin. The changes that needed to happen for this to work could cause problems for some scripts or gadgets. [55]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from May 26. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from May 27. It will be on all wikis from May 28 (calendar).

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

14:17, 25 May 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-23

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

• There is a new beta version of the Wikimedia Commons app for Android. It has a new zoom function when you look at images. It can also suggest places when you upload geotagged photos. [56]

Problems

• There was a problem with the Commons database on 27 May. Commons could not be edited for eight minutes. Because of this problem the database was moved. This caused another short read-only time on 29 May. [57][58][59]
• The Vector skin had a problem where you couldn't add links to the article in other languages. You couldn't see the section if there were no links to other languages already. It also removed content translation links and links to language settings. This has now been fixed. [60]

Changes later this week

• You can get a notification when someone links to a page you created. You can turn these notifications off for individual pages. You can soon turn them off also in the notifications you get. [61]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 2 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 3 June. It will be on all wikis from 4 June (calendar).

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

22:31, 1 June 2020 (UTC)

May 2020 Tree of Life Newsletter

May 2020—Issue 014

Tree of Life

Welcome to the Tree of Life newsletter!

Newly recognized content

Lythronax by FunkMonk, Lythronaxargestes and IJReid Meerkat by Sainsf, reviewed by Chiswick Chap Borchgrevinkium by Super Dromaeosaurus, reviewed by Amitchell125 Nakalipithecus by Dunkleosteus77, reviewed by Gog the Mild Scanisaurus by Ichthyovenator, reviewed by Gog the Mild Sand cat by BhagyaMani, reviewed by Aven13 Pigs in culture by Chiswick Chap, reviewed by Sainsf Sun bear by Sainsf, reviewed by Chiswick Chap Megacephalosaurus by Macrophyseter, reviewed by Aven13 Cinnamon red bat by Enwebb, reviewed by Dunkleosteus77 Banteng by Sainsf, reviewed by Chiswick Chap Cartorhynchus by Lythronaxargestes, reviewed by Dunkleosteus77 Black-footed cat by BhagyaMani, reviewed by Amitchell125 Homo ergaster by Ichthyovenator, reviewed by Dunkleosteus77 Black coral by Aven13, reviewed by Sainsf Heuglin's gazelle by Sainsf, reviewed by The Rambling Man Australopithecus garhi by Dunkleosteus77, reviewed by Hog Farm Chororapithecus by Dunkleosteus77, reviewed by IJReid Ornithocheiromorpha by JurassicClassic767, reviewed by IJReid

Newly nominated content

Gigantorhynchus by Mattximus Leech by LittleJerry, Chiswick Chap and Cwmhiraeth List of mephitids by PesN Sand cat by BhagyaMani Cinnamon red bat by Enwebb Kristianstad Basin by Ichthyovenator Nakalipithecus by Dunkleosteus77 Scanisaurus by Ichthyovenator Sun bear by Sainsf Heuglin's gazelle by Sainsf Black coral by Aven13 Australopithecus garhi by Dunkleosteus77 Chororapithecus by Dunkleosteus77 Northern crested newt by Tylototriton Megacephalosaurus by Macrophyseter Banteng by Sainsf Cartorhynchus by Lythronaxargestes Ornithocheiromorpha by JurassicClassic767 Black-footed cat by BhagyaMani Bat virome by Enwebb Echinodon by IJReid Homo ergaster by Ichthyovenator Dwarf dog-faced bat by Enwebb Doedicurus by Dunkleosteus77 Zebra by LittleJerry

News at a glance

• This month saw two Tree of Life editors gain the mop: CaptainEek (WikiProjects Birds and Plants) and Cwmhiraeth (familiar name at DYK, WikiProjects Plants, Animals, and Insects)
• The April – May GAN backlog drive finished up, clearing the queue from nearly 700 outstanding nominations to about 350.

Interview with Jts1882

This month we're joined by Jts1882, who is active in depicting evolutionary relationship of taxa via cladograms. Part of this includes responding to cladogram requests, where interested editors can have cladograms made without using the templates themselves.

How did you come to be interested in systematics? Are you interested in systematics broadly, or is there a particular group you're most fond of?

As long as I can remember I’ve been interested in nature, starting with the animals and plants in the garden, school grounds, and local wood, and then more general wildlife worldwide. An interest in how things are classified grew from this. I like things to be organised and understanding the relationships between things and systems (not just living things) is a big part of that. Biology was always my favourite subject in school and took up a disproportionate part of my time. My interest in systematics is broad as I’d like to comprehend the whole tree of life, but the cat family is my favourite group.

What's the background behind cladogram requests? I see that it isn't a very old part of the Tree of Life

Well I can’t take any credit for the cladogram requests page, although I help out there sometimes. It was created by IJReid and there are several people who have helped there more than me. I think the motivation is that creating cladograms requires a knowledge of the templates that is daunting for many editors. It was one way of helping people who want to focus on content creation.

My main contribution to the cladograms is converting the {{clade}} template to use a Lua module. The template code was extremely difficult to follow and had to be repetitive (I can only admire the efforts of those who got the thing to work in the first place). The conversion to Lua made it more efficient, allowed larger and deeper cladograms, plus facilitating the introduction of new features. The cladogram request page was recently the venue for discussion on making time calibrated cladograms, which is now possible, if not particularly user friendly.

What advice do you have for an editor who wants to learn how to make cladograms?

The same advice I would give to someone facing any computer problem, just try it out. Start by taking existing code for a cladogram and make changes yourself. The main advice would be to format it properly so indents match the brackets vertically. Of course, not everyone wants to learn and if someone prefers to focus on article content there is the cladogram request page.

Examples of cladograms Jts1882 has created, showing different proposed clades for Neoaves

Jarvis et al (2014)	Prum et al (2015)	Suh (2016) — a hard polytomy
Columbea Mirandornithes (flamingos, grebes) Columbimorphae (pigeons, mesites, sandgrouse) Passerea Otidae Otidimorphae (cuckoos, bustards, turacos) Strisores (hummingbirds, swifts, nightbirds) Gruae Opisthocomiformes (hoatzin) Gruimorphae Gruiformes (cranes, rails) Charadriiformes (shorebirds) Ardeae Aequornithes (core waterbirds) Eurypgimorphae (sunbittern, kagu, tropicbirds) Telluraves Afroaves Australaves (core landbirds)	Strisores (hummingbirds, swifts, nightbirds) Columbaves Columbimorphae (pigeons, mesites, sandgrouse) Otidimorphae (cuckoos, bustards, turacos) Gruiformes (cranes, rails) Aequorlitornithes Charadriiformes (shorebirds) Mirandornithes(flamingoes, grebes) Ardeae Aequornithes (core waterbirds) Eurypgimorphae (sunbittern, kagu, tropicbirds) (waterbirds) Inopinaves Opisthocomiformes (hoatzin) Telluraves Afroaves Australaves (core landbirds)	Columbimorphae (pigeons, mesites, sandgrouse) Otidimorphae (cuckoos, bustards, turacos) Strisores (hummingbirds, swifts, nightbirds) Opisthocomiformes (hoatzin) Gruiformes (cranes, rails) Charadriiformes (shorebirds) Mirandornithes (flamingoes, grebes) Ardeae Aequornithes (core waterbirds) Eurypgimorphae (sunbittern, kagu, tropicbirds) Telluraves Afroaves Australaves (core landbirds)

Do you have any personal projects or goals you're working towards on Wikipedia?

As I said I like organisation and systems. So I find efforts like the automated taxobox system and {{taxonbar}} appealing. I would like to see more reuse of the major phylogenetic trees on Wikipedia with more use of consensus trees on the higher taxa. Too often they get edited based on one recent report and/or without proper citation. Animals and bilateria are examples where this is a problem.

Towards this I have been working on a system of phylogeny templates that can be reused flexibly. The {{Clade transclude}} template allows selective transclusion, so the phylogenetic trees on one page can be reused with modifications, i.e. can be pruned and grafted, used with or without images, with or without collapsible elements, etc. I have an example for the Angiosperm Phylogeny Group classification (see {{Phylogeny/APG IV}}) and one for squamates that also includes collapsible elements (see {{Phylogeny/Squamata}}).

A second project is to have a modular reference system for taxonomic resources. I have made some progress along this lines with the {{BioRef}} template. This started off simply as a way of hardlinking to Catalog of Fishes pages and I’ve gradually expanded it to cover other groups (e..g. FishBase, AmphibiaWeb and Amphibian Species of the World, Reptile Database, the Mammalian Diversity Database). The modular nature is still rudimentary and needs a rewrite before it is ready for wider use.

What would surprise your fellow editors to learn about your life off-Wikipedia?

I don’t think there is anything particularly surprising or interesting about my life. I’ve had an academic career as a research scientist but I don't think anyone could guess the area from my Wikipedia edits. I prefer to work on areas where I am learning at the same time. This why I spend more time with neglected topics (e.g. mosses at the moment). I start reading and then find that I’m not getting the information I want.

Anything else you'd like us to know?

My interest in the classification of things goes beyond biology. I am fascinated by mediaeval attempts to classify knowledge, such as Bacon in his The Advancement of Learning and Diderot and d’Alembert in their Encyclopédie. They were trying to come up with a universal scheme of knowledge just as the printing press was allowing greater dissemination of knowledge.

With the internet we are seeing a new revolution in knowledge dissemination. Just look at how we could read research papers on the COVID virus within weeks of its discovery. With an open internet, everyone has access, not just those with the luxury of books at home or good libraries. Sites like the Biodiversity Heritage Library allow you to read old scientific works without having to visit dusty university library stack rooms, while the taxonomic and checklist databases provide instant information on millions of living species. In principle, the whole world can now find out about anything, even if Douglas Adams warned we might be disinclined to do so.

This is why I like Wikipedia, with all its warts, it’s a means of organising the knowledge on the internet. In just two decades it’s become a first stop for knowledge and hopefully a gateway to more specialised sources. Perhaps developing this latter aspect, beyond providing good sources for what we say, is the next challenge for Wikipedia.

May DYKs

Slender Scotch burnet moth on a flower

Northern plains gray langur

Male vermilion flycatcher

Canada lynx

Meerkats

Hilarimorphites burmanica

Sun bear

• ... that coconut mites can be dispersed by wind, or perhaps by hitching a lift? (1 May)
• ... that Neanderthals went fishing? (1 May)
• ... that the Rowridge Valley in the Isle of Wight is the only known location for the wood calamint in Britain? (1 May)
• ... that Tetraponera penzigi is one of several species of ant that protect whistling thorn trees in East Africa from grazing giraffes and rhinoceroses? (3 May)
• ... that the Vietnam mouse-deer, which had been feared to have gone extinct nearly 30 years ago, was sighted again in 2019? (4 May)
• ... that most branchiobdellids use crayfish as hosts, living on their heads, carapaces, or claws, but in some instances inside their gill cavities? (5 May)
• ... that the song of the Madagascan hoopoe differs markedly from that of the African hoopoe? (5 May)
• ... that populations of the slender Scotch burnet (pictured), a European moth that lives in dry, lime-rich areas, have been declining? (6 May)
• ... that the spinosaurid dinosaur Ichthyovenator had two sails on its back? (9 May)
• ... that the scale insect Saissetia coffeae attacks many other plants besides coffee? (9 May)
• ... that entomologist Frederick Vincent Theobald wrote a five-volume monograph and sixty scientific papers on mosquitoes? (12 May)
• ... that the northern plains gray langur monkey (example pictured) is killed in India for food and to prevent crop raiding, despite being considered sacred by Hindus? (12 May)
• ... that the leech Limnatis nilotica can affect humans and livestock, entering hosts through the mouth, nose, or other orifices? (12 May)
• ... that while the termite Pterotermes occidentis inhabits dead blue palo verde in the Sonoran Desert, Marginitermes hubbardi prefers dead saguaro? (14 May)
• ... that the tree Barteria fistulosa is associated with Tetraponera aethiops, an aggressive species of ant that lives in its hollow branches and twigs? (15 May)
• ... that Miller's langur, one of the rarest primates in Borneo, was feared to be extinct until a 2012 study rediscovered it in an area where it was previously unknown? (16 May)
• ... that most of the known Gigantopithecus fossils are of teeth because the other bones are likely to have been eaten by porcupines? (17 May)
• ... that Tetraponera tessmanni, a very aggressive ant, is able to establish dominance over the whole of the liana in which it lives, which may be 50 m (164 ft) long? (17 May)
• ... that mesophyletid weevils have only been found in Burmese amber? (18 May)
• ... that Pyrocephalus, the genus name of the vermilion flycatcher (example pictured), literally means 'fire head'? (19 May)
• ... that the male bigtooth cardinalfish broods a ball of eggs in his mouth? (20 May)
• ... that in the Australian Journal of Herpetology, a first-year student and a high school teacher reassessed the taxonomy of Australia's entire reptile class, naming 33 novel genera and 214 new species? (20 May)
• ... that the Arizona dampwood termite exclusively colonizes dead parts of standing trees? (22 May)
• ... that Megaceroides algericus is one of only two deer species known to have been native to Africa, alongside the Barbary stag? (23 May)
• ... that besides eating ants and termites, the waved woodpecker feeds on fruits, berries, and seeds? (24 May)
• ... that populations of the Canada lynx (pictured) undergo cyclic rises and falls in line with those of the snowshoe hare? (25 May)
• ... that despite being known as the Mexican hydrangea, Clerodendrum bungei is neither from Mexico nor a species of hydrangea? (25 May)
• ... that meerkats (examples pictured) use alarm calls that can identify the type of predator posing the risk, the level of danger, and the caller itself? (27 May)
• ... that the frog Boophis fayi can be identified by its unusual green-and-turquoise eyes? (30 May)
• ... that members of the fly family Apystomyiidae (example depicted) have been found in Late Jurassic sediments in Kazakhstan? (30 May)
• ... that the sun bear (pictured) is the smallest of all bear species? (31 May)

Discuss this issue

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Enwebb (talk) 19:40, 3 June 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-24

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

• Some articles have tables that can be sorted in different ways. For example a list of countries can be sorted alphabetically but you can click on the size column to sort them by size. If you clicked on the column a second time it would sort the countries from the bottom to the top instead. A third click will now take you back to the original sorting. [62]
• Self-closed tags now work as in the HTML5 specifications. This means you should stop using some of them. <b/> is an example of a self-closed tag that won't work. area, base, br, col, embed, hr, img, input, keygen, link, meta, param, source, track, wbr can be self-closed. Pages with tags that should not be self-closed have been listed in a tracking category since 2016. They will be listed in Special:LintErrors/self-closed-tag. This doesn't affect <references /> or <ref />. [63]
• There is a banner called WikidataPageBanner. It is for example used by the Wikivoyages, Wikimedia Russia and the Catalan, Basque, Galician and Turkish Wikipedias. It will now been seen by mobile visitors too. Before this it was only seen on desktop. The wikis should update instructions on MediaWiki:Sitenotice so that editors know to test and style for mobile too. [64][65]

Changes later this week

• You can now edit MassMessage descriptions through the API. This is useful for tools and gadgets. [66]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 9 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 10 June. It will be on all wikis from 11 June (calendar).

Future changes

• A temporary fix helped wikis make their main pages more mobile friendly. This was in 2012. It has not been recommended since 2017. It will not work after 13 July. Wikis should use TemplateStyles instead. 118 wikis need to fix this. You can read more and see if your wiki is affected. [67]

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

21:11, 8 June 2020 (UTC)

New Page Reviewer newsletter June 2020

Hello Enwebb,

Your help can make a difference

NPP Sorting can be a great way to find pages needing new page patrolling that match your strengths and interests. Using ORES, it divides articles into topics such as Literature or Chemistry and on Geography. Take a look and see if you can find time to patrol a couple pages a day. With over 10,000 pages in the queue, the highest it's been since ACPERM, your help could really make a difference.

Google Adds New Languages to Google Translate

In late February, Google added 5 new languages to Google Translate: Kinyarwanda, Odia (Oriya), Tatar, Turkmen and Uyghur. This expands our ability to find and evaluate sources in those languages.

Discussions and Resources

• A discussion on handling new article creation by paid editors is ongoing at the Village Pump.
• Also at the Village Pump is a discussion about limiting participation at Articles for Deletion discussion.
• A proposed new speedy deletion criteria for certain kinds of redirects ended with no consensus.
• Also ending with no change was a proposal to change how we handle certain kinds of vector images.

Six Month Queue Data: Today – 10271 Low – 4991 High – 10271

To opt-out of future mailings, please remove yourself here

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 02:52, 18 June 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-26

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

Problems

• There are some new tools to make it easier for newcomers to start editing. They are available on some wikis. These wikis had a problem with the visual editor for a short period of time last week. This was because of a bug in the new tools. It was soon fixed. [68]
• Some user scripts and gadgets stopped working because of a change to CSS selectors. .vectorTabs should be replaced with .vector-menu-tabs to fix this. [69]

Changes later this week

• The developers are working on a new interface to solve edit conflicts on talk pages. This will be released on 24 June. You can give feedback. [70]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 23 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 24 June. It will be on all wikis from 25 June (calendar).

Future changes

• A temporary fix helped wikis make their main pages more mobile friendly. This was in 2012. It has not been recommended since 2017. It will not work after 13 July. Wikis should use TemplateStyles instead. 91 wikis still need to fix this. You can read more and see if your wiki is affected. [71]

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

18:48, 22 June 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-27

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

Problems

• Everyone was logged out. This was because a few users saw the wikis as if they were logged in to someone else's account. The problem should be fixed now. [72]
• Some readers didn't see new edits to pages. If the page had been recently changed they saw an older version of the page instead. This only affected readers who were logged out. It lasted for ten days. It has been fixed. [73]

Changes later this week

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

Future changes

• The Modern and Monobook skins use the ID searchGoButton for the go button. This is searchButton for Vector. To have the same ID for all skins it will change to searchButton in Monobook and Modern too. This will affect gadgets and user scripts. It will happen on 23 July. They should be updated to use searchButton. You can read more and see a list of affected scripts.

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

16:30, 29 June 2020 (UTC)

WikiLoop Battlefield new name vote

Dear Enwebb,

Thank you for your interest and contributions to WikiLoop Battlefield. We are holding a voting for proposed new name. We would like to invite you to this voting. The voting is held at m:WikiProject_WikiLoop/New_name_vote and ends on July 13th 00:00 UTC.

xinbenlv ^{Talk, Remember to "ping" me} 05:16, 30 June 2020 (UTC)

Your GA nomination of Dwarf dog-faced bat

Hi there, I'm pleased to inform you that I've begun reviewing the article Dwarf dog-faced bat you nominated for GA-status according to the criteria. This process may take up to 7 days. Feel free to contact me with any questions or comments you might have during this period. Message delivered by Legobot, on behalf of Dunkleosteus77 -- Dunkleosteus77 (talk) 20:41, 30 June 2020 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Special Barnstar
	Thank you! Guettarda (talk) 20:08, 1 July 2020 (UTC)

WikiCup 2020 July newsletter

The third round of the 2020 WikiCup has now come to an end. The 16 users who made it into the fourth round each had at least 353 points (compared to 68 in 2019). It was a highly competitive round, and a number of contestants were eliminated who would have moved on in earlier years. Our top scorers in round 3 were:

• Epicgenius, with one featured article, 28 good articles and 17 DYKs, amassing 1836 points
• The Rambling Man , with 1672 points gained from four featured articles and seventeen good articles, plus reviews of a large number of FACs and GAs
• Gog the Mild, a first time contestant, with 1540 points, a tally built largely on 4 featured articles and related bonus points.

Between them, contestants managed 14 featured articles, 9 featured lists, 3 featured pictures, 152 good articles, 136 DYK entries, 55 ITN entries, 65 featured article candidate reviews and 221 good article reviews. Additionally, MPJ-DK added 3 items to featured topics and 44 to good topics. Over the course of the competition, contestants have completed 710 good article reviews, in comparison to 387 good articles submitted for review and promoted. These large numbers are probably linked to a GAN backlog drive in April and May, and the changed patterns of editing during the COVID-19 pandemic. As we enter the fourth round, remember that any content promoted after the end of round 3 but before the start of round 4 can be claimed in round 4. Please also remember that you must claim your points within 14 days of "earning" them. When doing GARs, please make sure that you check that all the GA criteria are fully met. Please also remember that all submissions must meet core Wikipedia policies, regardless of the review process.

If you are concerned that your nomination—whether it is at good article nominations, a featured process, or anywhere else—will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews Needed (remember to remove your listing when no longer required). Questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup, and the judges are reachable on their talk pages or by email. Good luck! If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove your name from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. Godot13 (talk), Sturmvogel 66 (talk), Vanamonde (talk), Cwmhiraeth (talk) MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 12:33, 2 July 2020 (UTC)

Your GA nomination of Dwarf dog-faced bat

The article Dwarf dog-faced bat you nominated as a good article has passed ; see Talk:Dwarf dog-faced bat for comments about the article. Well done! If the article has not already appeared on the main page as a "Did you know" item, or as a bold link under "In the News" or in the "On This Day" prose section, you can nominate it within the next seven days to appear in DYK. Bolded names with dates listed at the bottom of the "On This Day" column do not affect DYK eligibility. Message delivered by Legobot, on behalf of Dunkleosteus77 -- Dunkleosteus77 (talk) 20:02, 3 July 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-28

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

Problems

• The Score extension has been disabled for now. This is because of a security issue. It will work again as soon as the security issue has been fixed. [74]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 7 July. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 8 July. It will be on all wikis from 9 July (calendar).

Future changes

• Abstract Wikipedia is a new Wikimedia project. It will collect language-independent information that can be easily read in different languages. It builds on Wikidata. The name is preliminary. You can read more. [75]
• The iOS Wikipedia app developers are thinking about new experimental tools. If you use an iPhone you can help them by answering the survey.
• Some rules for user signatures will soon be enforced. Lint errors and invalid HTML will no longer be allowed in user signatures. Nested substitution will not be allowed. A link to your user page, user talk page or user contributions will be required. You can check if your signature works with the new rules. This is because the signatures can cause problems for tools or other text on the page.

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

20:18, 6 July 2020 (UTC)

Your GA nomination of Bat virome

Hi there, I'm pleased to inform you that I've begun reviewing the article Bat virome you nominated for GA-status according to the criteria. This process may take up to 7 days. Feel free to contact me with any questions or comments you might have during this period. Message delivered by Legobot, on behalf of Chidgk1 -- Chidgk1 (talk) 12:01, 7 July 2020 (UTC)

Your GA nomination of Bat virome

The article Bat virome you nominated as a good article has been placed on hold . The article is close to meeting the good article criteria, but there are some minor changes or clarifications needing to be addressed. If these are fixed within 7 days, the article will pass; otherwise it may fail. See Talk:Bat virome for issues which need to be addressed. Message delivered by Legobot, on behalf of Chidgk1 -- Chidgk1 (talk) 06:41, 12 July 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-29

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

• Users can thank others for their edits. Checkusers can now see user data related to that action. This can help identify sock puppets who harass others using thanks. [76]

Problems

• Everyone was logged out a couple of weeks ago to fix a security problem. The problem was not entirely fixed. Because of this everyone was logged out once again last week. [77][78]

Changes later this week

• Wikis that are not for one specific language can translate pages. Sometimes parts of translations are outdated or missing. Outdated translations are marked with a pink background. Missing translations will also be marked in the future. This markup can sometimes break things. It can soon be disabled by using <translate nowrap></translate> on the source page. [79]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 14 July. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 15 July. It will be on all wikis from 16 July (calendar).

Future changes

• Wikimedia code review plans to use GitLab. It would be hosted on Wikimedia servers. [80][81][82][83]

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

16:29, 13 July 2020 (UTC)

Your GA nomination of Hammer-headed bat

Hi there, I'm pleased to inform you that I've begun reviewing the article Hammer-headed bat you nominated for GA-status according to the criteria. This process may take up to 7 days. Feel free to contact me with any questions or comments you might have during this period. Message delivered by Legobot, on behalf of Jens Lallensack -- Jens Lallensack (talk) 00:21, 14 July 2020 (UTC)

Your GA nomination of Bat virome

The article Bat virome you nominated as a good article has passed ; see Talk:Bat virome for comments about the article. Well done! If the article has not already appeared on the main page as a "Did you know" item, or as a bold link under "In the News" or in the "On This Day" prose section, you can nominate it within the next seven days to appear in DYK. Bolded names with dates listed at the bottom of the "On This Day" column do not affect DYK eligibility. Message delivered by Legobot, on behalf of Chidgk1 -- Chidgk1 (talk) 07:02, 18 July 2020 (UTC)

Merlin Tuttle

Hello! Thank you for informing me of my violation of Wikipedia's COI policy as I was previously unaware when making edits to Merlin Tuttle. I have publicly disclosed on my talk page my COI with the subject and I would like to move forward with properly contributing to Merlin's page if that is a possibility. I am new to Wikipedia and am a bit overwhelmed by the rules and complexities so my apologies for my ignorance! Please let me know if you would be interested in reviewing Merlin's page or what the appropriate procedure is for contributing to his page. Thank you! Dmil3422 (talk) 22:43, 18 July 2020 (UTC)

Thank you for the clarification and glad to learn that you are a bat fan! About the photo, would it be possible to use it if I uploaded a signed consent form from Merlin and MTBC granting permission to use it?

Dmil3422 (talk) 13:47, 7 August 2020 (UTC)

Your GA nomination of Hammer-headed bat

The article Hammer-headed bat you nominated as a good article has passed ; see Talk:Hammer-headed bat for comments about the article. Well done! If the article has not already appeared on the main page as a "Did you know" item, or as a bold link under "In the News" or in the "On This Day" prose section, you can nominate it within the next seven days to appear in DYK. Bolded names with dates listed at the bottom of the "On This Day" column do not affect DYK eligibility. Message delivered by Legobot, on behalf of Jens Lallensack -- Jens Lallensack (talk) 22:02, 19 July 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-30

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 temporary fix helped wikis make their main pages more mobile friendly. This was in 2012. It has not been recommended since 2017. The mobile main page special casing stopped working 14 July. 60 wikis now have main pages that don't work well on mobile. You can see which ones, how to fix it and how to get help in Phabricator. This is the same problem that was reported in Tech News 2020/24 and 2020/26.

Problems

• There is a problem with the interlanguage links. The interlanguage links are the links that help you find a specific page in a different language. The sorting is broken. The developers are working on a solution. [84]
• Some users keep getting the notifications for the same event. Some of these are old events. [85]
• Some users have trouble logging in. This is probably a browser cookie problem. The developers are working on understanding the problem. If you have trouble logging in you can see the details on Phabricator. [86]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 21 July. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 22 July. It will be on all wikis from 23 July (calendar).

Future changes

• There is a Printable version link. This will disappear. That is because web browsers today can create a printable version or show how it will look in print anyway. [87]

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

19:13, 20 July 2020 (UTC)

Announcing WikiLoop DoubleCheck

Dear Wikipedians and contributors, the open source Wikipedia review tool, previously "WikiLoop Battlefield" has completed its name vote and is announcing its new name: WikiLoop DoubleCheck. Read the full story on the program page on Meta-wiki, learn about ways to support this tool, and find out what future developments are coming for this tool.

Thank you to everyone who took part in the vote!

xinbenlv ^{Talk, Remember to "ping" me} 18:25, 23 July 2020 (UTC)

Disambiguation link notification for July 26

An automated process has detected that when you recently edited Great flying fox, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Fig.

(Opt-out instructions.) --DPL bot (talk) 06:10, 26 July 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-31

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 Starter kit is now available for wiki communities. This page lists technical resources, tools, and recommendations. These are essential to operate a wiki project. This is mostly useful for smaller wikis where the community has limited experience with this. [88]
• The first features of the Desktop Improvements project are available for logged-in users on all wikis. In order to use them, uncheck Use Legacy Vector in your local or global preferences in section Skin preferences. More improvements are planned. Feedback is welcome.
• On multiple wikis, a UTCLiveClock gadget is available. For wikis that import the gadget directly from mediawiki.org, end users can now choose a different timezone to show instead of UTC.

Problems

• The deployment train for MediaWiki has been blocked this week. [89][90]
• Translation Notification Bot was sending the same message multiple times to every translator. This has been fixed. [91]
• Some users were receiving the same notification multiple times. This has been fixed. [92]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from July 28. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from July 29. It will be on all wikis from JUly 30 (calendar).

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

13:52, 27 July 2020 (UTC)

June/July 2020 Tree of Life Newsletter

June and July 2020—Issue 015

Tree of Life

Welcome to the Tree of Life newsletter!

Newly recognized content

Canada lynx by Sainsf Gigantorhynchus by Mattximus Leech by LittleJerry, Chiswick Chap and Cwmhiraeth Orangutan by LittleJerry Secretarybird by LittleJerry, Aa77zz and Casliber Vermilion flycatcher by CaptainEek Bat virome by Enwebb, reviewed by Chidgk1 Doedicurus by Dunkleosteus77, reviewed by Hog Farm Dwarf dog-faced bat by Enwebb, reviewed by Dunkleosteus77 Echinodon by IJReid, reviewed by JurassicClassic767 Edvard August Vainio by Esculenta, reviewed by ChiswickCahp Hammer-headed bat by Enwebb, reviewed by Jens Lallensack Homo rudolfensis by Dunkleosteus77, reviewed by JurassicClassic767 Nina Demme by SusunW, reviewed by Enwebb Northern crested newt by Tylototriton, reviewed by Enwebb Pterodactylus by JurassicClassic767, reviewed by ChiswickCahp Zebra by LittleJerry, reviewed by Dunkleosteus77

Newly nominated content

Horseshoe bat by Enwebb Siamosaurus by PaleoGeekSquared Zebra by LittleJerry Australopithecus afarensis by Dunkleosteus77 Australopithecus africanus by Dunkleosteus77 Australopithecus bahrelghazali by Dunkleosteus77 Australopithecus deyiremeda by Dunkleosteus77 Australopithecus sediba by Dunkleosteus77 Bonelli's eagle by Sandhillcrane Great flying fox by Enwebb Homo habilis by Dunkleosteus77 Markham's storm petrel by Therapyisgood Ornithocheiridae by JurassicClassic767 Paranthropus aethiopicus by Dunkleosteus77 Paranthropus boisei by Dunkleosteus77 Paranthropus robustus by Dunkleosteus77 Tatenectes by Slate Weasel

News at a glance

• This issue is a double issue, but the plan is to return to monthly henceforth.
• A discussion at WikiProject Palaeontology about internal peer review processes led to the creation of a peer review space. In contrast to the more formal Peer Review, PalaeoPR focuses on short "fact checks", emphasizing content over style. Reviews are meant to be low commitment, with "drive-by reviews" encouraged. Since its inception on 8 July, seven articles have been submitted to PalaeoPR.
• After a highly competitive third round, two Tree of Life editors advanced to the fourth round of the WikiCup: Dunkleosteus77 and Sainsf
• A February 2020 paper published in PLOS noted that Mammalian Species is one of the most over-cited journals on Wikipedia relative to how frequently it is cited in other academic works.

Categorizing life with DexDor

DexDor is a WikiGnome with a particular interest in article categorization, including how organisms are categorized.

How did you become interested in editing biodiversity topics on Wikipedia?

I'm a wikignome who tries to remove unnecessary complexity and confusion in Wikipedia.  I specialise in categorization. I've worked on categorization of several topic areas (e.g. military equipment) - anywhere where I see things like category tags on articles that the category text doesn't support.  Categorization of organisms is one area I'm currently looking at (my essay on this).

You seem to be particularly interested in geographic categorization of organisms. What are some issues in this area?

One issue is that there are several possible relationships between an organism and a region (i.e. what the "of" in a "Xs of Y" means) - the organism may be found throughout the region, somewhere in the region, only in the region (i.e. endemic to that region) - there are categories for each of these (and others) and some categories have been unclear about their exact meaning. Then there's introductions by man, locally extinct species, occasional visitors...

Another issue is that some editors have thought it's appropriate to create categories for very small areas ("Spiders of Vatican City" is only a slight exaggeration) and put a few articles in them, thus creating a category that is both massively incomplete and non-defining for the articles in it.

There have been several (now blocked) editors who have been disruptive in this area, but a confusing and sprawling categorization scheme is also partly due to editors from a particular background categorizing a particular article in a way that appears to make sense, but doesn't really make sense in the wider categorization scheme - for example, if an article mentions the countries at the extremes of an animal's distribution, the animal is categorized just for those countries.

What potential solutions do you see for categorizing organisms by geography? How can other editors help address this issue, or at least, not make it worse?

We should have some guidelines that tell editors how to categorize any article about an organism (including any geographical categorization). I've started drafting guidelines at User:DexDor/BioCat. The guidelines are also a good way to ensure that the categorization of articles about organisms is aligned with categorization of other articles and may help us to identify where there are problems, inconsistencies etc in the categorization. I welcome suggestions for improvement of the guidelines (which should at some point be moved into WP:TOL).

Regarding geographical categorization of animals the main advice for editors would be to not create categories for any new areas and to only create a new category if you intend to populate it.

What have you learned from being a Wikipedia editor?

That lots of people (from varied backgrounds) each making (mostly) small improvements (like ants in an ants nest?) and only understanding some parts of Wikipedia can produce such a wonderful resource. But also, how that tends to result in ever-increasing complexity which negatively affects editors and readers.

Is there anything about your life outside Wikipedia that would surprise us?

Not sure - I'm a member of a band.

June DYKs

Blue calamintha bee

Culture of S. aureus

Ambay pumpwood

Heuglin's gazelle

Gold-striped frog

• ... that despite being a member of the cat family, the jaguarundi has several features in common with mustelids such as otters and weasels? (2 June)
• ... that scientists were unsure whether the blue calamintha bee (pictured) still existed until it was observed again in March 2020? (2 June)
• ... that many of the animals regarded as pests have co-evolved with humans, adapting to the warm, sheltered conditions that a building provides? (3 June)
• ... that the banteng is the second endangered species to be successfully cloned, and the first clone to survive beyond infancy? (5 June)
• ... that the colonial morphology of Staphylococcus species (culture pictured) is described as "creamy"? (5 June)
• ... that ant gardens are cultivated by several species of ant, including Crematogaster carinata? (6 June)
• ... that the presence of the beetle Coelomera ruficornis on its host tree (pictured) is tolerated by the ant Azteca alfari, but not by the ant Azteca muelleri? (8 June)
• ... that cattle and deer sometimes stand under trees where southern plains gray langurs are feeding in order to consume the edible pieces that the monkeys drop? (10 June)
• ... that Singaporean authorities hope that the Mandai Wildlife Bridge will reduce the risk of animals such as Sunda pangolins and leopard cats becoming roadkill? (13 June)
• ... that the gold-striped frog (pictured) sometimes breeds inside an active nest of leafcutter ants? (13 June)
• ... that Heuglin's gazelle (illustrated), reportedly last seen in Eritrea over a century earlier during Italian colonial rule, was sighted again in the country last year? (12 June)
• ... that Siamosaurus, a large bipedal carnivore from the Early Cretaceous of Thailand, is the first crocodilian-like dinosaur named from Asia? (14 June)
• ... that Homo ergaster may have been the first species of archaic humans to control fire? (14 June)
• ... that the small frog Cochranella nola has yellow intestines, a green tongue, and dark green bones? (16 June)
• ... that Nigel, nicknamed "the world's loneliest gannet" (species pictured), attempted to mate with a concrete decoy bird on Mana Island, New Zealand? (17 June)
• ... that the male giant glass frog has a hooked spur on his upper arm which is used when fighting rivals? (19 June)
• ... that vestigial organs in the Brazilian Callichirus major population (example species pictured) suggest Callichirus may be the only crustacean genus with basal, yet not universal, hermaphroditism? (20 June)
• ... that Megacephalosaurus was one of the last known pliosaurs and coexisted with some of the earliest mosasaurs? (21 June)
• ... that when boiled in milk, black coral (example pictured) emits a faint scent of myrrh? (21 June)
• ... that one of the factors affecting the future of the Huanchaca mouse is the increased cultivation of biofuels? (22 June)
• ... that the Strawberries and Cream Tree (pictured) is noted for producing pink blossoms on one side of the tree and white on the other, when it blooms every spring? (23 June)
• ... that the Chilean seaside cinclodes bobs its tail while it walks and flares its wings while it sings? (24 June)
• ... that Boie's frog (pictured) and the Banhado frog both resemble dead leaves on the floor of the forest? (25 June)
• ... that the extinct sumac species Rhus republicensis is named for Republic, Washington? (30 June)

• 
  Australasian gannet
• 
  C. brasiliensis, a species
  in the C. major complex
• 
  Deep-sea Antipathes dendrochristos
• 
  Strawberries and Cream Tree
  in full bloom in April 2020
• 
  Boie's frog

July DYKs

Amazon parrot

Life reconstruction of Pterodactylus antiquus

• ... that the Newland Oak in Gloucestershire took "200 years to grow, 200 years to exist, and 200 to die"? (2 July)
• ... that the hollow trunk of Queen Elizabeth's Oak was used as a prison? (4 July)
• ... that Markham's storm petrel, which nests in Peru and northern Chile, has been described as "one of the least known seabirds in the world"? (7 July)
• ... that the Asian freshwater leech Barbronia weberi has invaded North Carolina? (11 July)
• ... that a large, elderly, "decently behaved" Russian brown bear once lived in the Leeds suburb of Headingley? (12 July)
• ... that the female Andes marsupial frog carries her developing young in a pouch on her back? (14 July)
• ... that the Amazon parrot (depicted) was implicated as a source of the great parrot fever pandemic of 1929–30, in which more than 100 people died? (17 July)
• ... that the frog Corythomantis greeningi retreats into a hole, blocks the entrance with its spiny head, and injects venom into anything that tries to dislodge it? (18 July)
• ... that the reef box crab uses its powerful pincers to break open the shells of snails? (21 July)
• ... that carnivorous wildlife of North Macedonia as small as the Balkan lynx have been reported to attack not just livestock, but humans too? (22 July)
• ... that the sea slug Discodoris boholiensis exhibits photokinesis? (22 July)
• ... that the genus Pterodactylus (species depicted), the scientific name for a pterodactyl, had been considered a "wastebasket taxon" as many species were assigned to it and later reassigned? (23 July)
• ... that the sea urchin Abatus cordatus broods its young for nine months in pockets on its upper surface? (24 July)
• ... that Harold Clyde Bingham trailed a troop of gorillas for 100 hours in 1929? (25 July)
• ... that the sea urchin Goniocidaris umbraculum moves its eggs with its tube feet, assisted by cilia, to an area near its mouth where they can be brooded? (27 July)

Discuss this issue

You are receiving this because you added your name to the subscribers list of the WikiProject Tree of Life. If you no longer wish to receive the newsletter, please remove your name.

Delivered on behalf of Enwebb (talk) 16:33, 1 August 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-32

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

• All queries to the Wikidata Query Service failed between 17:50 and 17:59 UTC on Thursday 23 July. Some queries failed during a longer period. [93]
• Interlanguage links were ordered incorrectly for the past few weeks. This problem was also mentioned in Tech News two weeks ago. The problem is now fixed. [94]
• There is a problem with the global preferences for the "Use Legacy Vector" option. Developers are working on fixing it. [95]
• A bug in the Wikibase extension had disabled the "move" and "create" types of protection in the main (Gallery) namespace on Wikimedia Commons. New protections could not be added, and existing protections were not enforced, allowing some page moves and page creations that should not have been possible. This has now been fixed. [96]

Changes later this week

• The video player will change to be simpler and more modern. This week, the current beta feature will become the video player for everyone on most non-Wikipedia wikis. The old player will be removed. [97]
• Users' global.js and global.css pages will now also be loaded on the mobile site. You can read documentation for how to avoid applying styles to the mobile skin. [98]
• In the MonoBook skin, the searchGoButton identifier is now searchButton. This may affect CSS and JS gadgets. Migration instructions can be found in T255953. This was previously mentioned in issue 27.
• Bot operators can use Pywikibot to regularly archive discussions. The behavior when the bot uses counter to prevent large archives was changed. [99]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from August 4. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from August 5. It will be on all wikis from August 6 (calendar).

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

15:43, 3 August 2020 (UTC)

Mustelodon hoax warning

Hi, I'm one of the Catalan Wikipedia users who regularly write about mammals. Thanks for the heads-up on the Mustelodon hoax. It does look like this could be the longest-lived hoax we've ever had, at least on the English-language Wikipedia. Have a great day!--Leptictidium (mt) 06:44, 8 August 2020 (UTC)

Leptictidium, and thank you for correcting my machine translation so that it was more understandable :) Enwebb (talk) 16:25, 10 August 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-33

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

• FileImporter and FileExporter became standard features on all Wikis during the first week of August. They help you transfer files from local wikis to Wikimedia Commons with the original file information and history intact. [100]

Problems

• The mobile skin displays a message at the bottom of the page about who edited last. This message showed raw wikitext. This has now been fixed. Some messages in Structured Discussions and content translation may still appear as raw wikitext. Developers are working on it. [101]

Changes later this week

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

Future changes

• All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on September 1. This is planned between 13:30 and 15:30 UTC. More information will be published in Tech News and will also be posted on individual wikis in the coming weeks. [102][103]

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

16:06, 10 August 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for the heads-up

Hello! Thank you for simply pointing out WP:ENGVAR and not biting my head off. My impression about how this was being handled was incorrect. Cheers! Nightsmaiden (talk) 16:42, 16 August 2020 (UTC)

Nightsmaiden, I imagine most people find learning easiest when they are not being belittled :) Happy to help, please drop me a line if you have questions while editing. Enwebb (talk) 20:05, 16 August 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-34

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

• If you revert an edit using the undo link your edit is marked with an undo tag. This will now only happen if you don't change anything in the edit window before publishing the undo. This is to keep users from marking edits as undos when they actually do something else. [104]
• The new OOUI version will not work with Internet Explorer 8. This means the wikis will look strange and not work well in Internet Explorer 8. This was reported in Tech/News/2020/17. This is because keeping the wikis working with very old browsers creates other problems. [105]

Changes later this week

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

Future changes

• All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on September 1. This is planned between 13:30 and 15:30 UTC. More information will be published in Tech News and will also be posted on individual wikis next week. This is a reminder. You can help by translating the announcement message. [106][107]

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

20:40, 17 August 2020 (UTC)

Egyptian Rousette bat: A natural reservoir for MARV

On the Egyptian Rousette bat being a reservoir for Marbug, there is a CDC dispatch in regards to this. The discovery gives credence to specific populations of the Egyptian Rousette as being a natural reservoir for MARV. Here is a link to the dispatch: https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/24/6/17-2165_article

Join the RfC to define trust levels for WikiLoop DoubleCheck

Hi Enwebb/Archive 4,
you are receiving this message because you are an active user of WikiLoop DoubleCheck. We are currently holding a Request for Comments to define trust levels for users of this tool. If you can spare a few minutes, please consider leaving your feedback on the RfC page.
Thank you in advance for sharing your thoughts. Your opinion matters greatly!
María Cruz

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 02:59, 22 August 2020 (UTC)
If you would like to modify your subscription to these messages you can do so here.

Tech News: 2020-35

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

Changes later this week

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

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

17:59, 24 August 2020 (UTC)

Your GA nomination of Great flying fox

Hi there, I'm pleased to inform you that I've begun reviewing the article Great flying fox you nominated for GA-status according to the criteria. This process may take up to 7 days. Feel free to contact me with any questions or comments you might have during this period. Message delivered by Legobot, on behalf of FunkMonk -- FunkMonk (talk) 15:40, 25 August 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-36

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

Problems

• This is a reminder. All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on September 1. This is planned between 14:00 and 15:00 UTC. Please check on the details on the announcement message. [108][109]

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.

20:08, 31 August 2020 (UTC)

WikiCup 2020 September newsletter

The fourth round of the competition has finished, with 865 points being required to qualify for the final round, nearly twice as many points as last year. It was a hotly competitive round with two contestants with 598 and 605 points being eliminated, and all but two of the contestants who reached the final round having achieved an FA during the round. The highest scorers were

• Bloom6132, with 1478 points gained mainly from 5 featured lists, 12 DYKs and 63 in the news items;
• HaEr48 with 1318 points gained mainly from 2 featured articles, 5 good articles and 8 DYKs;
• Lee Vilenski with 1201 points mainly gained from 2 featured articles and 10 good articles.

Between them, contestants achieved 14 featured articles, 14 featured lists, 2 featured pictures, 87 good articles, 90 DYK entries, 75 ITN entries, 95 featured article candidate reviews and 81 good article reviews. Congratulations to all who participated! It was a generally high-scoring and productive round and I think we can expect a highly competitive finish to the competition.

Remember that any content promoted after the end of round 4 but before the start of round 5 can be claimed in round 5. Remember too that you must claim your points within 10 days of "earning" them. If you are concerned that your nomination will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews. It would be helpful if this list could be cleared of any items no longer relevant. If you want to help out with the WikiCup, please do your bit to keep down the review backlogs! Questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup, and the judges are reachable on their talk pages or by email. If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove yourself from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. Godot13 (talk), Sturmvogel 66 (talk), Vanamonde (talk), Cwmhiraeth (talk) MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 19:52, 1 September 2020 (UTC)

August 2020 Tree of Life Newsletter

September 2021—Issue 016

Tree of Life

Welcome to the Tree of Life newsletter!

Newly recognized content

Horseshoe bat by Enwebb Siamosaurus by PaleoGeekSquared Australopithecus sediba by Dunkleosteus77, reviewed by Jens Lallensack Homo habilis by Dunkleosteus77, reviewed by Enwebb Tatenectes by Slate Weasel, reviewed by FunkMonk

Newly nominated content

Black-and-red broadbill by AryKun Turtle by LittleJerry Symphyotrichum lateriflorum by Eewilson Dracophyllum fiordense by Dracophyllum Scarlet-and-white tanager by AryKun Viatkogorgon by FunkMonk Punctelia borreri by Esculenta Chivi vireo by AryKun Mountain kingfisher by AryKun Kererū by Ambrosia10

Hoax taxon sniffed out after nearly fifteen years

Cross posted from the Signpost

The jackalope, a close relative of Mustelodon

On August 7, WikiProject Palaeontology member Rextron discovered a suspicious taxon article, Mustelodon, which was created in November 2005. The article lacked references and the subsequent discussion on WikiProject Palaeontology found that the alleged type locality (where the fossil was first discovered) of Lago Nandarajo "near the northern border of Panama" was nonexistent. In fact, Panama does not even really have a northern border, as it is bounded along the north by the Caribbean Sea. No other publications or databases mentioned Mustelodon, save a fleeting mention in a 2019 book that presumably followed Wikipedia, Felines of the World.

The article also appeared in four other languages, Catalan, Spanish, Dutch, and Serbian. In Serbian Wikipedia, a note at the bottom of the page warned: "It is important to note here that there is no data on this genus in the official scientific literature, and all attached data on the genus Mustelodon on this page are taken from the English Wikipedia and are the only known data on this genus of mammals, so the validity of this genus is questionable."

Editors took action to alert our counterparts on other projects, and these versions were removed also. As the editor who reached out to Spanish and Catalan Wikipedia, it was somewhat challenging to navigate these mostly foreign languages (I have a limited grasp of Spanish). I doubted that the article had very many watchers, so I knew I had to find some WikiProjects where I could post a machine translation advising of the hoax, and asking that users follow local protocols to remove the article. I was surprised to find, however, that Catalan Wikipedia does not tag articles for WikiProjects on talk pages, meaning I had to fumble around to find what I needed (turns out that WikiProjects are Viquiprojectes in Catalan!) Mustelodon remains on Wikidata, where its "instance of" property was swapped from "taxon" to "fictional taxon".

How did this article have such a long lifespan? Early intervention is critical for removing hoaxes. A 2016 report found that a hoax article that survives its first day has an 18% chance of lasting a year. Additionally, hoax articles tend to have longer lifespans if they are in inconspicuous parts of Wikipedia, where they do not receive many views. Mustelodon was only viewed a couple times a day, on average.

Mustelodon survived a brush with death three years into its lifespan. The article was proposed for deletion in September 2008, with a deletion rationale of "No references given; cannot find any evidence in peer-reviewed journals that this alleged genus actually exists". Unfortunately, the proposed deletion was contested and the template removed, though the declining editor did not give a rationale. Upon its rediscovery in August 2020, Mustelodon was tagged for speedy deletion under CSD G3 as a "blatant hoax". This was challenged, and an Articles for Deletion discussion followed. On 12 August, the AfD was closed as a SNOW delete. WikiProject Palaeontology members ensured that any trace of it was scrubbed from legitimate articles. The fictional mammal was finally, truly extinct.

At the ripe old age of 14 years, 9 months, this is the longest-lived documented hoax on Wikipedia, topping the previous documented record of 14 years, 5 months, set by The Gates of Saturn, a fictitious television show, which was incidentally also discovered in August 2020. How do we discover other hoax taxa? Could we use Wikidata to discover taxa are not linked to databases like ITIS, Fossilworks, and others?

Spotlight with Mattximus

Apororhynchus hemignathi, a spiny-headed worm with the distinction of being one of the first named animal taxa when organized alphabetically

This month's spotlight is with Mattximus, author of two Featured Articles and 29 Featured Lists at current count.

How did you become involved with editing biodiversity articles?

I think I have a compulsion to make lists, it doesn't show up in my real life, but online I secretly get a lot of satisfaction making orderly lists and tables. It's a bit of a secret of mine, because it doesn't manifest in any other part of my life. My background is in biology, so this was a natural (haha) fit.

You have an impressive number of FAs under your belt. Two of your more recent ones, Apororhynchus and Gigantorhynchus, are part of what you referred to as an "experiment". How did you choose these articles, and what's next for you in this experiment?

This experiment was just to see if I could get any random article to FA status, so I picked the very first alphabetical animal species according to the taxonomy and made that attempt. Technically, there isn't enough information for a species page so I just merged the species into a genus and went from there. It was a fun exercise, but doing it alone is not the most fun so it's probably on pause for the foreseeable future.

Note: Aporhynchus is the first alphabetical taxon as follows: Animalia, Acanthocephala, Archiacanthocephala, Apororhynchida, Apororhynchidae, Apororhynchus

What advice would you give to someone who wants to nominate their first FAC?

I would recommend getting a good article nominated, then a featured list up before tackling the FA. Lists are a bit more forgiving but give you a taste of what standards to expect from FA. The most time consuming thing is proper citations so make sure that is in order before starting either.

Is there anything that would surprise us to learn about your life off-Wikipedia?

My personality in real life does not match my wikipedia persona. I'm not a very organized, or orderly in real life, but the wikipedia pages I brought to FL or FA are all very organized. Maybe it's my outlet for a more free-flowing life as a scientist/teacher.

Anything else you'd like us to know?

The fact that wikipedia exists free of profit motive and free for everyone really is something special and I encourage everyone to donate a few dollars to the cause.

August DYKs

Woolly thistle

Life reconstruction of Ankylorhiza tiedemani

Female cicada laying eggs

Acampe rigida

• ... that in the Brazilian state of Bahia, cerrado mice are often caught by barn owls, but seldom by researchers? (1 August)
• ... that ornithologist Corina Newsome and herpetologist Earyn McGee held events as part of the inaugural Black Birders Week, an effort to highlight the challenges faced by Black nature enthusiasts? (5 August)
• ... that the flower buds of the woolly thistle (pictured) can be eaten in a similar way to artichokes? (8 August)
• ... that the French peanut is native to Brazil? (10 August)
• ... that the 800-year-old Minchenden Oak is one of the oldest trees in London? (14 August)
• ... that the forward-facing incisors of the extinct dolphin Ankylorhiza (restoration pictured) may have been used for ramming their prey, similar to a hunting method used by modern orcas? (16 August)
• ... that scientists accidentally created a hybrid of two endangered fish species, called the sturddlefish? (17 August)
• ... that despite having the widest distribution in the United States, the arid-land subterranean termite causes less structural damage than other members of its genus? (19 August)
• ... that the Eocene leaf species Tetracentron hopkinsii was not confirmed from Washington state until 2018? (19 August)
• ... that Helen Ballard was a hellebore horticulturist? (22 August)
• ... that in 2021, the dwarf periodical cicada (pictured) is due to emerge in parts of eastern North America, not having been seen for 17 years? (24 August)
• ... that the fossil sumac Rhus boothillensis is named for a public fossil digging site in Republic, Washington? (25 August)
• ... that the orchid Acampe rigida (pictured) is pollinated by raindrops? (28 August)
• ... that fossils identified as Pentacentron sternhartae may actually be the fruits of another fossil species? (29 August)
• ... that American naturalist William Harvey Brown, who went to Africa to collect specimens, ended up fighting in two wars there? (30 August)
• ... that the rosy spindle cowry, a species of sea snail, lives exclusively on gorgonians? (30 August)

Discuss this issue

You are receiving this because you added your name to the subscribers list of the WikiProject Tree of Life. If you no longer wish to receive the newsletter, please remove your name.

Delivered on behalf of Enwebb (talk) 17:10, 2 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. [110]
• 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. [111]

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. [112]
• 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. [113][114]
• 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)

Mail

Hello, Enwebb. Please check your email; you've got mail!
It may take a few minutes from the time the email is sent for it to show up in your inbox. You can at any time by removing the {{You've got mail}} or {{ygm}} template.

Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 11:01, 9 September 2020 (UTC)

Big Brown Bat picture

I had a quick question for you: IMHO, the image that is featured first on the big brown bat page doesn't do a super great job 'showing off' the species. What are your thoughts about using one of these [115][116][117][118] (I especially like the last one)?--Gen. Quon (Talk) 00:48, 11 September 2020 (UTC)

Gen. Quon, yeah absolutely, the last one is great and I also like the second one. The article could stand to have more pictures in general, especially considering what a common and well-photographed species it is. When's our next GA collab? A big "pie in the sky" I've thought about is a WP:GT of Bats of the United States. So any US species would work if you have interest. Enwebb (talk) 01:35, 11 September 2020 (UTC)

I'll go ahead and add those two in; feel free to adjust if you'd like. And another GA collaboration would be fun. I’m partial to goofy little insect-eaters like the eastern red or the hoary bat. While it’s not US-based, I also like the Northern ghost bat.--Gen. Quon (Talk) 01:58, 11 September 2020 (UTC)

Gen. Quon, eastern red would be good! It is mostly already in the structure used in other bat GAs like little brown bat, big brown bat, and tricolored bat:

1. Taxonomy
2. Description
3. Biology / Biology and ecology
4. Range and habitat
5. Conservation

Definitely would want more about the effect of wind turbines--I think that's a pretty serious source of mortality for these guys. Enwebb (talk) 02:28, 11 September 2020 (UTC)

Good point. I've heard about that and cars being pretty lethal, too. I'll try to gather up some research!--Gen. Quon (Talk) 02:54, 11 September 2020 (UTC)

Also, I put out a call for eastern red bat pics on a bat-centered Facebook group. Some folks have responded. I can send you the link you'd like.--Gen. Quon (Talk) 15:53, 11 September 2020 (UTC)

Yes definitely. I've tried doing stuff like this before on Facebook with the North American Society of Bat Research. People always express interest and then just...don't follow through and upload the pics. Maybe it would work out with more follow-up, though. Enwebb (talk) 16:00, 11 September 2020 (UTC)

Cool, I sent the link via Wiki-Email. Let me know if it doesn't get to you.--Gen. Quon (Talk) 20:14, 11 September 2020 (UTC)

Side question: While doing some preliminary work for the eastern red bat, I decided to really quickly make an article for Lasiurus frantzii. However, some sources, such as this show it as a subspecies, whereas others, like this contend it is its own species. Is there a good way to handle this?--Gen. Quon (Talk) 18:35, 12 September 2020 (UTC)

Gen. Quon, yeah, that's a hard one. Lasiurus is tricky. I went ahead and followed the ASM mammal diversity database in recognizing three genera in Lasiurini (Lasiurus + Dasypterus and Aeorestes), so that could be precedent for following ASM again and recognizing L. frantzii as distinct. Whenever MSW4 eventually comes out we can clean up inconsistencies. I think it's justifiable either way. Enwebb (talk) 18:44, 12 September 2020 (UTC)

Cool. For a start, do you think the article is OK as it is right now?--Gen. Quon (Talk) 18:52, 12 September 2020 (UTC)

Yes, it's a solidly decent stub. I added a couple of categories, did the stub sorting, and added needs-photo and needs-map parameters to the talk page template. Enwebb (talk) 20:23, 12 September 2020 (UTC)

Another quick question: Is this a photo of Lasiurus frantzii? It's labelled Lasiurus borealis frantzii. Is this just an outdated synonym (a la L. b. teliotis)?--Gen. Quon (Talk) 19:02, 16 September 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. [119][120]

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)

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. [121][122]

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. [123]
• 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.

21:25, 21 September 2020 (UTC)

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. [124]
• 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. [125]

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. [126]

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. [127]
• 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)

Your GA nomination of Great flying fox

The article Great flying fox you nominated as a good article has passed ; see Talk:Great flying fox for comments about the article. Well done! If the article has not already appeared on the main page as a "Did you know" item, or as a bold link under "In the News" or in the "On This Day" prose section, you can nominate it within the next seven days to appear in DYK. Bolded names with dates listed at the bottom of the "On This Day" column do not affect DYK eligibility. Message delivered by Legobot, on behalf of FunkMonk -- FunkMonk (talk) 16:03, 5 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. [128]

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. [129]
• Everyone was logged out. This was because a user reported being logged in to someone else's account. The problem should be fixed now. [130]
• 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. [131]

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. [132]

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)

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. [133][134][135]

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. [136][137]
• 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. [138]

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)

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. [139]
• 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. [140]
• 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.

16:29, 19 October 2020 (UTC)

DYK

Seeing as United States Elections Project and Michael P. McDonald were created within the last seven days, any thoughts about proposing a DYK (esp with the election coming up). HickoryOughtShirt?4 (talk) 18:24, 22 October 2020 (UTC)

HickoryOughtShirt?4, I think the election project page would need to be roughly doubled, but that sounds good. I just wanted to get something started, I'm sure there's more to be added. I'm having a hard time locating when the project was founded, though. Enwebb (talk) 20:05, 22 October 2020 (UTC)

I think it was 2014 per this. HickoryOughtShirt?4 (talk) 20:58, 22 October 2020 (UTC)

HickoryOughtShirt?4, now-defunct elections.gmu.edu website. that makes it sound like it was somewhere else before 2014, George Mason University, not that it was founded in 2014. Which makes sense because McDonald worked there. Wayback Machine might be able to help, but I gotta run for now. Enwebb (talk) 21:05, 22 October 2020 (UTC)

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. [141]
• Last week, links to "diffs" from mobile watchlists and recentchanges were linking to page-revisions instead of diffs. This has now been fixed. [142]

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. [143]
• 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. [144]
• 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. [145]

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)

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. [146]
• 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. [147]

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). [148]
• 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. [149]

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. [150]
• 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.

16:07, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

WikiCup 2020 November newsletter

The 2020 WikiCup has come to an end, with the final round going down to the wire. Our new Champion is Lee Vilenski (submissions), the runner-up last year, who was closely followed by Gog the Mild (submissions). In the final round, Lee achieved 4 FAs and 30 GAs, mostly on cue sport topics, while Gog achieved 3 FAs and 15 GAs, mostly on important battles and wars, which earned him a high number of bonus points. The Rambling Man (submissions) was in third place with 4 FAs and 8 GAs on football topics, with Epicgenius (submissions) close behind with 19 GAs and 16 DYK's, his interest being the buildings of New York.

The other finalists were Hog Farm (submissions), HaEr48 (submissions), Harrias (submissions) and Bloom6132 (submissions). The final round was very productive, and besides 15 FAs, contestants achieved 75 FAC reviews, 88 GAs and 108 GAN reviews. Altogether, Wikipedia has benefited greatly from the activities of WikiCup competitors all through the contest. Well done everyone!

All those who reached the final will receive awards and the following special awards will be made, based on high performance in particular areas of content creation. So that the finalists do not have an undue advantage, these prizes are awarded to the competitor who scored the highest in any particular field in a single round, or in the event of a tie, to the overall leader in this field.

• Gog the Mild (submissions) wins the featured article prize, for a total of 14 FAs during the course of the competition.
• Bloom6132 (submissions) win the featured list prize, for 5 FLs in round 4.
• Rhododendrites (submissions) wins the featured picture prize, for 3 FPs in round 3 and 5 overall.
• Lee Vilenski (submissions) wins the featured article reviewer prize, for 23 FAC reviews in round 5.
• Epicgenius (submissions) wins the good article prize, for 45 GAs in round 2 and 113 overall.
• MPJ-DK (submissions) wins the topic prize, for 33 articles in good topics in round 2.
• The Rambling Man (submissions) wins the good article reviewer prize, for 100 good article reviews in round 2.
• Epicgenius (submissions) wins the DYK prize, for 22 Did you know articles in round 4 and 94 overall.
• Bloom6132 (submissions) wins the ITN prize, for 63 In the news articles in round 4 and 136 overall.

Next year's competition will begin on 1 January. You are invited to sign up to participate; the WikiCup is open to all Wikipedians, both novices and experienced editors, and we hope to see you all in the 2021 competition. Until then, it only remains to once again congratulate our worthy winners, and thank all participants for their involvement! If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove yourself from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. Godot13, Sturmvogel 66, Vanamonde and Cwmhiraeth MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 11:37, 3 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. [151]
• 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. [152][153]

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. [154][155]

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. [156]
• 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)

New, simpler RfC to define trust levels for WikiLoop DoubleCheck

HI Enwebb/Archive 4,
I'm writing to let you know we have simplified the RfC on trust levels for the tool WikiLoop DoubleCheck. Please join and share your thoughts about this feature! We made this change after hearing users' comments on the first RfC being too complicated. I hope that you can participate this time around, giving your feedback on this new feature for WikiLoop DoubleCheck users.
Thanks and see you around online,
María Cruz
MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 20:05, 19 November 2020 (UTC)
If you would like to update your settings to change the wiki where you receive these messages, please do so here.

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. [157]

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. [158]

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) 02:52, 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. [159][160]
• 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. [161]

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)

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. [162][163]

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. [164][165]
• 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)

Horseshoe bat scheduled for TFA

This is to let you know that the Horseshoe bat article has been scheduled as today's featured article for January 7, 2021. Please check the article needs no amendments. If you're interested in editing the main page text, you're welcome to do so at Wikipedia:Today's featured article/January 7, 2021, but note that a coordinator will trim the lead to around 1000 characters anyway, so you aren't obliged to do so.

For Featured Articles promoted recently, there will be an existing blurb linked from the FAC talk page, which is likely to be transferred to the TFA page by a coordinator at some point.

We suggest that you watchlist Wikipedia:Main Page/Errors from the day before this appears on Main Page. Thanks! Jimfbleak - talk to me? 16:50, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

Thank you today for the article "about a family of bats that have been quite relevant in the news lately as the possible origin of SARS-CoV. They have a lot of diversity and some strange features, even for bats (pubic nipples!)"! --Gerda Arendt (talk) 11:20, 7 January 2021 (UTC)

New Page Patrol December Newsletter

Hello Enwebb,

Year in review

It has been a productive year for New Page Patrol as we've roughly cut the size of the New Page Patrol queue in half this year. We have been fortunate to have a lot of great work done by Rosguill who was the reviewer of the most pages and redirects this past year. Thanks and credit go to JTtheOG and Onel5969 who join Rosguill in repeating in the top 10 from last year. Thanks to John B123, Hughesdarren, and Mccapra who all got the NPR permission this year and joined the top 10. Also new to the top ten is DannyS712 bot III, programmed by DannyS712 which has helped to dramatically reduce the number of redirects that have needed human patrolling by patrolling certain types of redirects (e.g. for differences in accents) and by also patrolling editors who are on on the redirect whitelist.

Rank	Username	Num reviews	Log
1	DannyS712 bot III (talk)	67,552	Patrol Page Curation
2	Rosguill (talk)	63,821	Patrol Page Curation
3	John B123 (talk)	21,697	Patrol Page Curation
4	Onel5969 (talk)	19,879	Patrol Page Curation
5	JTtheOG (talk)	12,901	Patrol Page Curation
6	Mcampany (talk)	9,103	Patrol Page Curation
7	DragonflySixtyseven (talk)	6,401	Patrol Page Curation
8	Mccapra (talk)	4,918	Patrol Page Curation
9	Hughesdarren (talk)	4,520	Patrol Page Curation
10	Utopes (talk)	3,958	Patrol Page Curation

Reviewer of the Year

John B123 has been named reviewer of the year for 2020. John has held the permission for just over 6 months and in that time has helped cut into the queue by reviewing more than 18,000 articles. His talk page shows his efforts to communicate with users, upholding NPP's goal of nurturing new users and quality over quantity.

NPP Technical Achievement Award

As a special recognition and thank you DannyS712 has been awarded the first NPP Technical Achievement Award. His work programming the bot has helped us patrol redirects tremendously - more than 60,000 redirects this past year. This has been a large contribution to New Page Patrol and definitely is worthy of recognition.

Six Month Queue Data: Today – 2262 Low – 2232 High – 10271

To opt-out of future mailings, please remove yourself here

18:17, 10 December 2020 (UTC)

Merry Christmas and a Prosperous 2021!

Hello Enwebb, may you be surrounded by peace, success and happiness on this seasonal occasion. Spread the WikiLove by wishing another user a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past, a good friend, or just some random person. Sending you heartfelt and warm greetings for Christmas and New Year 2021. Happy editing, ReaderofthePack(formerly Tokyogirl79) (｡◕‿◕｡) 03:32, 11 December 2020 (UTC) Spread the love by adding {{subst:Seasonal Greetings}} to other user talk pages.

Merry Christmas and a Prosperous 2021!

Hello Enwebb, may you be surrounded by peace, success and happiness on this seasonal occasion. Spread the WikiLove by wishing another user a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past, a good friend, or just some random person. Sending you heartfelt and warm greetings for Christmas and New Year 2021. Happy editing, ReaderofthePack(formerly Tokyogirl79) (｡◕‿◕｡) 04:08, 24 December 2020 (UTC) Spread the love by adding {{subst:Seasonal Greetings}} to other user talk pages.

Welcome to the 2021 WikiCup!

Happy New Year and Happy New WikiCup! The competition begins today and all article creators, expanders, improvers and reviewers are welcome to take part. If you have already signed up, your submissions page can be found here. If you have not yet signed up, you can add your name here and the judges will set up your submissions page. Any questions on the rules or on anything else should be directed to one of the judges, or posted to the WikiCup talk page. Signups will close at the end of January, and the first round will end on 26 February; the 64 highest scorers at that time will move on to round 2. We thank Vanamonde93 and Godot13, who have retired as judges, and we thank them for their past dedication. The judges for the WikiCup this year are Sturmvogel 66 (talk · contribs · email) and Cwmhiraeth (talk · contribs · email). Good luck! MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 11:10, 1 January 2021 (UTC)