User talk:Tks4Fish/Archive 1
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Welcome!
Hello, Tks4Fish, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are a few links to pages you might find helpful:
- Introduction and Getting started
- Contributing to Wikipedia
- The five pillars of Wikipedia
- How to edit a page and How to develop articles
- How to create your first article
- Simplified Manual of Style
You may also want to take the Wikipedia Adventure, an interactive tour that will help you learn the basics of editing Wikipedia. You can visit The Teahouse to ask questions or seek help.
Please remember to sign your messages on talk pages by typing four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically insert your username and the date. If you need help, check out Wikipedia:Questions, ask me on my talk page, or , and a volunteer should respond shortly. Again, welcome! Snuggums (talk / edits) 00:57, 10 January 2016 (UTC)
The reply-link newsletter, issue 1
Hi! Welcome to the new reply-link newsletter, which I made because the ol' list on the reply-link talk page was unwieldy. In case you haven't been following development recently, I've sent out some new updates that should let it reply basically anywhere, even in transcluded pages or under hatted discussions (two locations people have been wanting for a while). Reliability has also gone way up, as I've implemented a couple of sanity checks that help prevent the script from responding to the wrong message. Unfortunately, that means the script fails a bit more often. Anyway, try it out if you haven't done so in a while, and let me know what you think! I always appreciate feature requests or bug reports on the talk page. Happy replying! (Signup list/Unsubscribe) MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 02:23, 30 January 2019 (UTC)
Administrators' newsletter – June 2019
News and updates for administrators from the past month (May 2019).
Administrator changes
Andonic • Consumed Crustacean • Enigmaman • Euryalus • EWS23 • HereToHelp • Nv8200pa • Peripitus • StringTheory11 • Vejvančický
CheckUser changes
Guideline and policy news
- An RfC seeks to clarify whether WP:OUTING should include information on just the English Wikipedia or any Wikimedia project.
- An RfC on WT:RfA concluded that Requests for adminship and bureaucratship are discussions seeking to build consensus.
- An RfC proposal to make the templates for discussion (TfD) process more like the requested moves (RM) process, i.e. "as a clearinghouse of template discussions", was closed as successful.
Technical news
- The CSD feature of Twinkle now allows admins to notify page creators of deletion if the page had not been tagged. The default behavior matches that of tagging notifications, and replaces the ability to open the user talk page upon deletion. You can customize which criteria receive notifications in your Twinkle preferences: look for Notify page creator when deleting under these criteria.
- Twinkle's d-batch (batch delete) feature now supports deleting subpages (and related redirects and talk pages) of each page. The pages will be listed first but use with caution! The und-batch (batch undelete) option can now also restore talk pages.
Miscellaneous
- The previously discussed unblocking of IP addresses indefinitely-blocked before 2009 was approved and has taken place.
- The 2019 talk pages consultation produced a report for Phase 1 and has entered Phase 2.
Administrators' newsletter – July 2019
News and updates for administrators from the past month (June 2019).
Administrator changes
- 28bytes • Ad Orientem • Ansh666 • Beeblebrox • Boing! said Zebedee • BU Rob13 • Dennis Brown • Deor • DoRD • Floquenbeam1 • Flyguy649 • Fram2 • Gadfium • GB fan • Jonathunder • Kusma • Lectonar • Moink • MSGJ • Nick • Od Mishehu • Rama • Spartaz • Syrthiss • TheDJ • WJBscribe
- 1Floquenbeam's access was removed, then restored, then removed again.
- 2Fram's access was removed, then restored, then removed again.
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Guideline and policy news
- A request for comment seeking to alleviate pressures on the request an account (ACC) process proposes either raising the account creation limit for extended confirmed editors or granting the account creator permission on request to new ACC tool users.
- In a related matter, the account throttle has been restored to six creations per day as the mitigation activity completed.
- The scope of CSD criterion G8 has been tightened such that the only redirects that it now applies to are those which target non-existent pages.
- The scope of CSD criterion G14 has been expanded slightly to include orphan "Foo (disambiguation)" redirects that target pages that are not disambiguation pages or pages that perform a disambiguation-like function (such as set index articles or lists).
- A request for comment seeks to determine whether Wikipedia:Office actions should be a policy page or an information page.
Technical news
- The Wikimedia Foundation's Community health initiative plans to design and build a new user reporting system to make it easier for people experiencing harassment and other forms of abuse to provide accurate information to the appropriate channel for action to be taken. Community feedback is invited.
Miscellaneous
- In February 2019, the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) changed its office actions policy to include temporary and project-specific bans. The WMF exercised this new ability for the first time on the English Wikipedia on 10 June 2019 to temporarily ban and desysop Fram. This action has resulted in significant community discussion, a request for arbitration (permalink), and, either directly or indirectly, the resignations of numerous administrators and functionaries. The WMF Board of Trustees is aware of the situation, and discussions continue on a statement and a way forward. The Arbitration Committee has sent an open letter to the WMF Board.
Administrators' newsletter – August 2019
News and updates for administrators from the past month (July 2019).
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Guideline and policy news
- Following a request for comment, the page Wikipedia:Office actions has been changed from a policy page to an information page.
- A request for comment (permalink) is in progress regarding the administrator inactivity policy.
Arbitration
- Editors may now use the template {{Ds/aware}} to indicate that they are aware that discretionary sanctions are in force for a topic area, so it is unnecessary to alert them.
Miscellaneous
- Following a research project on masking IP addresses, the Foundation is starting a new project to improve the privacy of IP editors. The result of this project may significantly change administrative and counter-vandalism workflows. The project is in the very early stages of discussions and there is no concrete plan yet. Admins and the broader community are encouraged to leave feedback on the talk page.
- The new page reviewer right is bundled with the admin tool set. Many admins regularly help out at Special:NewPagesFeed, but they may not be aware of improvements, changes, and new tools for the Curation system. Stay up to date by subscribing here to the NPP newsletter that appears every two months, and/or putting the reviewers' talk page on your watchlist.
Since the introduction of temporary user rights, it is becoming more usual to accord the New Page Reviewer right on a probationary period of 3 to 6 months in the first instance. This avoids rights removal for inactivity at a later stage and enables a review of their work before according the right on a permanent basis.
What do you call
...a fish with no eyes? Praxidicae (talk) 20:27, 21 August 2019 (UTC)
- Uh... Good question lol —Thanks for the fish! talk•contribs 20:30, 21 August 2019 (UTC)
Administrators' newsletter – September 2019
News and updates for administrators from the past month (August 2019).
Administrator changes
Bradv • Chetsford • Izno
Floquenbeam • Lectonar- DESiegel • Jake Wartenberg • Rjanag • Topbanana
CheckUser changes
Oversight changes
- Callanecc • Fox • HJ Mitchell • LFaraone • There'sNoTime
Technical news
- Editors using the mobile website on Wikipedia can opt-in to new advanced features via your settings page. This will give access to more interface links, special pages, and tools.
- The advanced version of the edit review pages (recent changes, watchlist, and related changes) now includes two new filters. These filters are for "All contents" and "All discussions". They will filter the view to just those namespaces.
Arbitration
- A request for comment is open to provide an opportunity to amend the structure, rules, and procedures of the 2019 English Wikipedia Arbitration Committee election and to resolve any issues not covered by existing rules.
Miscellaneous
- A global request for comment is in progress regarding whether a user group should be created that could modify edit filters across all public Wikimedia wikis.
Administrators' newsletter – October 2019
News and updates for administrators from the past month (September 2019).
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Guideline and policy news
- Following a discussion, a new criterion for speedy category renaming was added: C2F: One eponymous article, which
applies if the category contains only an eponymous article or media file, provided that the category has not otherwise been emptied shortly before the nomination. The default outcome is an upmerge to the parent categories
.
- Following a discussion, a new criterion for speedy category renaming was added: C2F: One eponymous article, which
Technical news
- As previously noted, tighter password requirements for Administrators were put in place last year. Wikipedia should now alert you if your password is less than 10 characters long and thus too short.
Arbitration
- The 2019 CheckUser and Oversight appointment process has begun. The community consultation period will take place October 4th to 10th.
- The arbitration case regarding Fram was closed. While there will be a local RfC
focus[ing] on how harassment and private complaints should be handled in the future
, there is currently a global community consultation on partial and temporary office actions in response to the incident. It will be open until October 30th.
Miscellaneous
- The Community Tech team has been working on a system for temporarily watching pages, and welcomes feedback.
Global watchlist - Update 1
Updates associated with DannyS712's Global watchlist script:
- General announcements
- Management has migrated to phabricator; to report a bug or request a feature, please create a new task with the script's tag
- Message translation has been reduced; for common messages that are already translated in mediawiki core, the system translations are used, in order to reduce duplication of efforts
- Recent additions
- New pages are shown at the start of a site's feed
- Log entries are shown at the end of a site's feed
- Basic validation has been added to user settings, applied before saving
- Site validation has also been added; a site (excluding unique projects like wikidata, meta, commons, etc.) is considered to be valid if it is the form of "language.project", where both the language code and project name are valid. It does not, however, check that the actual site is valid; only that it could be. In other words, even though
sco.wiktionaryrefers to a site that doesn't exist, it is considered valid, becausescois a valid language code (sco.wikipediais a working site) andwiktionaryis a valid project.
- Announcements
- BREAKING CHANGE: Backwards compatibility supporting the use of sites as
*.*.org(like 'en.wikipedia.org' or 'meta.wikimedia.org'), deprecated in version 1.7.5, will be removed soon; all sites should now be saved as*.*(like 'de.wikinews' or 'fr.wikisource') - BREAKING CHANGE: Storing user sites as
window.GlobalWatchlistSites, deprecated in version version 1.11.11, will be removed soon; all settings should be stored in thewindow.GlobalWatchlistConfigobject - Both of these breaking changes will be implemented alongside version 4.0; until then, any use of the config page (m:Special:BlankPage/GlobalWatchlistConfig) will result in saving settings in the newest format
- Next release
Version 4.0 should be released in around a week. It will include the new features mentioned above, as well as removal of backwards compatibility for settings and sites.
I've sent this first message to users that participated in the discussion at m:Community Wishlist Survey 2019/Watchlists/Revive Crosswatch tool or otherwise shown interest in the script. To subscribe or unsubscribe from future updates, see the distribution list.
Thanks, --DannyS712 (talk) 16:03, 5 October 2019 (UTC)
Administrators' newsletter – November 2019
News and updates for administrators from the past month (October 2019).
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Guideline and policy news
- An RfC was closed with the consensus that the resysop criteria should be made stricter.
- The follow-up RfC to develop that change is now open at Wikipedia:Requests for comment/2019 Resysop Criteria (2).
- A related RfC is seeking the community's sentiment for a binding desysop procedure.
Arbitration
- Eligible editors may now nominate themselves as candidates for the 2019 Arbitration Committee Elections. The self-nomination period will close November 12, with voting running from November 19 through December 2.
Global watchlist - Update 2
Updates associated with DannyS712's Global watchlist script:
- General notes
- To report a bug or request a feature, please create a new task on Phabricator with the script's tag
- Recent additions
- Site validation has been tightened. Previously, only the language code and project name had to be valid - now, they must be a valid combination (i.e.
en.wikiversityexists, and so is valid, butsco.wikiversityis not valid, because no such wiki exists). - When the global watchlist feed is loading, an OOUI widget will be shown, rather than an animated gif.
- An option has been added to no longer group edits to the same page. For now, this isn't very useful, since metadata for the edits (editor, summary, tags, etc.) are not yet shown, but they will be soon. Until then, ungrouped edits are treated the same as pages with only 1 edit - the minor and bot flags are displayed if applicable. If edits are grouped, the minor and bot flags are only shown if they apply to all of the edits.
- Upcoming changes
- Starting with version 5.0, there will be an option at the settings page to switch to and from a "stable" version of the script. When activated, the script import in your global.js should be replaced, and then the page refreshed with the new script loaded. The stable script will live at m:User:DannyS712/Global watchlist/stable.js, and will be updated with each full release. Otherwise, it shouldn't be edited, providing a version that is less prone to bugs as the script is developed.
- Announcements
- WARNING: Starting with version 5.1, the option to mark the pages of a site as seen be implemented using the
entirewatchlistAPI option, rather than manually listing the titles. This is being done to simplify the implementation code. This will result in the same functionality as marking all pages as seen via Special:Watchlist (i.e. even if the page isn't visible due to your filter choices, it will still be marked as seen). If you would like to keep using the current method for a while, please switch to the stable branch.
- Next release
Version 5.0 has just gone live. It includes the new features mentioned above.
To subscribe or unsubscribe from future updates, see the distribution list.
Thanks, --DannyS712 (talk) 22:43, 8 November 2019 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Problems
- You will be able to read but not to edit some wikis for up to 30 minutes on 26 November at 06:00 (UTC). You can see which wikis. It will probably last much shorter than 30 minutes. This will also affect the
centralauthdatabase. This could for example affect changing passwords, logging in to new wikis, changing emails or global renames. [1]
Changes later this week
- You can soon vote on proposals for the Community Wishlist Survey. The survey decides what the Community Tech team will work on. You can vote on proposals from 20 November to 2 December. This year the wishlist will focus on Wikibooks, Wiktionary, Wikiquote, Wikisource, Wikiversity, Wikispecies, Wikivoyage and Wikinews. You can read more about the format for this year.
- There is no new MediaWiki version this week.
Meetings
You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 20 November at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
20:17, 18 November 2019 (UTC)
Global watchlist - Update 3
Updates associated with DannyS712's Global watchlist script:
- Survey
- I am investigating adding more context to each entry that is shown (such as the edit summaries, tags, patrol marks, the user who made the edit, etc.). Is there any desire for such additions? If so, what should be added first, and what is a low priority? Please leave feedback on the relevant phabricator task, phab:T238300.
- Recent additions
- Site validation has been overhauled. Rather than hard-coding a list of valid sites, users will be able to watch any site where they have an attached local user account. If a site is rejected as invalid, please ensure that there is indeed a local account attached to your global account.
- Users will now be alerted regarding the results of attempting to update their settings.
- Live updates have been added - when activated, the script will refresh in the background, and then load the new feed, every 7.5 seconds. In the future, this frequency may be configurable.
- OOUI icons have been added to most buttons.
- There is now an option to eliminate the confirmation dialog when marking all sites as seen.
- Announcements
- WARNING: Starting with version 6.1, site aliases currently used when saving settings will be removed, and only sites in the form of `lang.project` will be accepted.
- As noted in the last update, marking a site as seen now uses
entirewatchlist, which means that any changes to watched pages between when the watchlist was loaded and when the site was "marked as seen" may be ignored.
- Next release
Version 6.0 was just finalized for the development and stable branches of the script.
To subscribe or unsubscribe from future updates, see the distribution list.
Thanks, --DannyS712 (talk) 21:03, 22 November 2019 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Changes later this week
- The mobile beta mode will be disabled to have less maintenance. The developers will focus on the desktop improvements project. You can turn on advanced mobile contributions mode if you want to see the categories. You could also jump back to the top. This can instead be done with a gadget or user script. [2]
- Parsoid is software we use for the visual editor, content translation, Flow and the Android app. This has been rewritten. It will come to the wikis gradually over the next two weeks. It has been tested, but there could be some diffs or previews that don't look right. If you see any you can report them. [3]
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 26 November. It will be on the other wikis next week (calendar). This is because of holidays.
Meetings
- You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 27 November at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
- You will switch between the article and the talk page in a new way in the mobile view in the future. It will use tabs. This is more like in the desktop view. [4]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
16:52, 25 November 2019 (UTC)
Administrators' newsletter – December 2019
News and updates for administrators from the past month (November 2019).
Administrator changes
- EvergreenFir • ToBeFree
- Akhilleus • Athaenara • John Vandenberg • Melchoir • MichaelQSchmidt • NeilN • Youngamerican • 😂
CheckUser changes
Interface administrator changes
Guideline and policy news
- An RfC on the administrator resysop criteria was closed. 18 proposals have been summarised with a variety of supported and opposed statements. The inactivity grace period within which a new request for adminship is not required has been reduced from three years to two. Additionally, Bureaucrats are permitted to use their discretion when returning administrator rights.
- Following a proposal, the edit filter mailing list has been opened up to users with the Edit Filter Helper right.
Technical news
- Wikimedia projects can set a default block length for users via MediaWiki:ipb-default-expiry. A new page, MediaWiki:ipb-default-expiry-ip, allows the setting of a different default block length for IP editors. Neither is currently used. (T219126)
Arbitration
- Voting in the 2019 Arbitration Committee Elections is open to eligible editors until Monday 23:59, 2 December 2018 UTC. Please review the candidates and, if you wish to do so, submit your choices on the voting page.
Miscellaneous
- The global consultation on partial and temporary office actions that ended in October received a closing statement from staff concluding, among other things, that the WMF
will no longer use partial or temporary Office Action bans... until and unless community consensus that they are of value or Board directive
.
- The global consultation on partial and temporary office actions that ended in October received a closing statement from staff concluding, among other things, that the WMF
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
- Mix'n'match is a tool to connect Wikidata items to information in other databases. It can be used to find subjects that are missing in a Wikipedia. It now has more than 3000 datasets. Before it was closer to 2000.
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 3 December. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 4 December. It will be on all wikis from 5 December (calendar).
Meetings
- You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 4 December at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
- There will be a new schema for XML dumps. Scripts and apps that use them will need to be updated. If they are not updated they will no longer work. [5]
- The
{{REVISIONID}}magic word will no longer work in the content namespaces. This is for performance reasons. When you preview a page it returns""(empty string). When you read a page it returns"-"(dash). In the future this will also affect other namespaces. The next ones are file and category namespaces. [6]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
16:59, 2 December 2019 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- Wikimedia projects use Translatewiki to translate the wiki interface. You can now use WatchTranslations to watch projects there. You would get an email if there are missing translations to your language. [7]
- There is a new dataset you can use. It shows the number of editors per country per month for a number of countries. You can read the documentation and download the dataset.
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 10 December. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 11 December. It will be on all wikis from 12 December (calendar).
Meetings
- You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 11 December at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
- You can test a new reference tool. It makes it possible to reference different parts of a source without repeating all information. You can test it on the beta cluster. You can see an example article. [8]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
16:38, 9 December 2019 (UTC)
Global watchlist - Update 4
Updates associated with DannyS712's Global watchlist script:
- Recent additions
- A new "fast" mode has been introduced. When used, the watchlist serves as just a list of pages that have been modified, and no longer includes context about the edits themselves.
- More information has been added to entries. When edits are not grouped by page, or when there is only 1 edit to a page, minor and bot flags are shown, as well as the user who made the edit, the summary used, and any tags that were applied. When multiple entries are grouped, bot and minor flags are only shown if all of the grouped edits were made by bots or where marked as minor. If only 1 user edited the page, that user's name is still shown, but no summaries or tags are included.
- All watchlists are now fetched in parallel, rather than in series, greatly reducing load time.
- Technical notes
- Most of the source code is now annotated with jsdoc notes, allowing others to more clearly understand and review the code.
- I will be looking into creating guidelines to let others contribute to the script; see phab:T238298.
- Translations
- There is now proper qqq documentation for translations. Translation takes place at m:User:DannyS712/Global watchlist/Translate, and help is appreciated.
- Newly translated messages are added to the script when I notice them; if you have translated messages that aren't showing up, please let me know at m:User talk:DannyS712.
- Next release
Version 7.0 was just finalized for the development and stable branches of the script.
To subscribe or unsubscribe from future updates, see the distribution list.
Thanks, --DannyS712 (talk) 04:37, 15 December 2019 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Problems
- The Linter extension helps you find technical errors in articles. It did not show new changes last week. This was because of an API problem. It is now working again. [9]
- Special:Watchlist can show the wrong information again. It does not always show which edits are read and which are unread. This is because of a database problem. The developers are working on solving the problem. [10]
Changes later this week
- You can get email notifications. You can get them immediately, a summary every day or a summary once every week. If you choose a summary you can soon choose not to get notifications you have already marked as read on the wiki. [11]
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 17 December. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 18 December. It will be on all wikis from 19 December (calendar).
Meetings
- You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 18 December at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
- The partial blocks feature is now stable. It will come to most wikis on 6 January. Your wiki can ask to wait. Contact NKohli (WMF) if you don't want it now. [12]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
00:18, 17 December 2019 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Tech News
- Because of the holidays the next issue of Tech News will be sent out on 6 January 2020.
Recent changes
- All mobile site users now have new features. Features include: tabs for page/discussion; an expanded user-menu; direct access to history pages. These features were initially part of the "advanced mode".
Changes later this week
- There is no new MediaWiki version this week or next week.
Future changes
- You can use
setlangin the URL to change the user interface language. This will no longer happen automatically. When you open the link you will be asked to confirm the language change. This will not happen if Javascript is not working in your browser. [13]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
20:08, 23 December 2019 (UTC)
Administrators' newsletter – January 2020
News and updates for administrators from the past month (December 2019).
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Guideline and policy news
- A request for comment asks whether partial blocks should be enabled on the English Wikipedia. If enabled, this functionality would allow administrators to block users from editing specific pages or namespaces, rather than the entire site.
- A proposal asks whether admins who don't use their tools for a significant period of time (e.g. five years) should have the toolset procedurally removed.
- Following a successful RfC, a whitelist is now available for users whose redirects will be autopatrolled by a bot, removing them from the new pages patrol queue. Admins can add such users to Wikipedia:New pages patrol/Redirect whitelist after a discussion following the guidelines at Wikipedia talk:New pages patrol/Redirect whitelist.
Arbitration
- The fourth case on Palestine-Israel articles was closed. The case consolidated all previous remedies under one heading, which should make them easier to understand, apply, and enforce. In particular, the distinction between "primary articles" and "related content" has been clarified, with the former being
the entire set of articles whose topic relates to the Arab-Israeli conflict, broadly interpreted
rather thanreasonably construed
. - Following the 2019 Arbitration Committee elections, the following editors have been appointed to the Arbitration Committee: Beeblebrox, Bradv, Casliber, David Fuchs, DGG, KrakatoaKatie, Maxim, Newyorkbrad, SoWhy, Worm That Turned, Xeno.
- The fourth case on Palestine-Israel articles was closed. The case consolidated all previous remedies under one heading, which should make them easier to understand, apply, and enforce. In particular, the distinction between "primary articles" and "related content" has been clarified, with the former being
Miscellaneous
- This issue marks three full years of the Admin newsletter. Thanks for reading!
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
- When trying to move a page, if the target title already exists then a warning message is shown. The warning message will now include a link to the target title. [14]
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 7 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 8 January. It will be on all wikis from 9 January (calendar).
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
21:23, 6 January 2020 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- You can no longer read Wikimedia wikis if your browser use very old TLS. This is because it is a security problem for everyone. It can lead to downgrade attacks. Since 9 December you just see a warning. Soon the browser will not connect to the wikis at all. Most are users on Android systems older than 4.4. You can read the browser recommendations. [15]
- Special:LinkSearch has been moved from the "Redirecting special pages" section on Special:SpecialPages to the "Lists of pages" section. [16]
Changes later this week
- Wikis can protect pages so that only some users can edit them. The standard protection levels are Require autoconfirmed or confirmed access and Require administrator access. If your wiki use more protection levels the technical name might be renamed for standardisation. This doesn't affect what users see. [17]
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 14 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 15 January. It will be on all wikis from 16 January (calendar).
Future changes
- Deepcat and Catgraph will stop working. This will happen at the end of January. This is because you can now use the normal search function instead. [18]
- You can use
<ref follow="…">to merge footnotes that follow each other. It is meant to be used for digitised books on Wikisource. If the order of the footnotes is wrong no error was shown but the bad <ref> was shown outside the <references /> list. This will change and you will see an error message instead. [19]
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MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:40, 13 January 2020 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 21 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 22 January. It will be on all wikis from 23 January (calendar).
Future changes
- There is a new suggestion for what to show when someone edits without registering an account. This is to give unregistered editors better privacy and make some anti-vandalism work go faster. You can give feedback.
- Pywikibot is a Python library to automate work on wikis. It will no longer support Python 2. Use the
python2tag if you need to continue running Python 2 scripts. The Pywikibot team strongly recommends to migrate to Python 3. You can get help to do so. [20] - The weekly MediaWiki branch cut will soon become automated. The timing for this cut may change. You can discuss in Phabricator if this affects you. [21]
- You can read about coming technical events and mentoring interns.
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19:42, 20 January 2020 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Problems
- Some mobile diffs have problems. A couple of buttons are not shown. Structured data diffs on Commons are confusing. The developers are working on fixing it. [22][23]
- Administrators on wikis that use Structured Discussions can't move discussion pages. This is a bug. The developers are working on fixing it. [24]
Changes later this week
- There is no new MediaWiki version this week.
Future changes
- There is JavaScript code on Special:Undelete for administrators that makes it possible to automatically select multiple checkboxes by holding the "Shift" key and clicking. This code is also loaded by accident on other special pages and on articles. This makes pages slower to load. This will be fixed. If you know of other special pages where this is useful please tell the developers at phab:T232688.
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18:53, 27 January 2020 (UTC)
Global watchlist - Update 5
Updates associated with DannyS712's Global watchlist script:
- Future development
- I have requested a grant to fund conversion of this script into an extension, as well as further development. Please see m:Grants:Project/Create a global watchlist extension.
- If anyone is interested in reviewing the code and making suggestions regarding coding style, techniques, or something else, please let me know. See phab:T234507 for more.
- Recent additions
- I have added basic tests for the script, so bugs should be less likely to make their way to the deployed versions of the script (both the unstable development version, and the stable release version).
- If there is an error with the script, the user will be notified and and the console will include a stack trace of the issue.
- Translations
- Many thanks to those that have contributed translations for the script's messages. Translation takes place at m:User:DannyS712/Global watchlist/Translate, and help is appreciated.
- Newly translated messages are added to the script when I notice them; if you have translated messages that aren't showing up, please let me know at m:User talk:DannyS712.
- Next release
- Version 8.0 was just finalized for the development and stable branches of the script.
To subscribe or unsubscribe from future updates, see the distribution list.
Thanks, --DannyS712 (talk) 18:25, 29 January 2020 (UTC)
Administrators' newsletter – February 2020
News and updates for administrators from the past month (January 2020).
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Guideline and policy news
- Following a request for comment, partial blocks are now enabled on the English Wikipedia. This functionality allows administrators to block users from editing specific pages or namespaces rather than the entire site. A draft policy is being workshopped at Wikipedia:Partial blocks.
- The request for comment seeking the community's sentiment for a binding desysop procedure closed with
wide-spread support for an alternative desysoping procedure based on community input
. No proposed process received consensus.
Technical news
- Twinkle now supports partial blocking. There is a small checkbox that toggles the "partial" status for both blocks and templating. There is currently one template: {{uw-pblock}}.
- When trying to move a page, if the target title already exists then a warning message is shown. The warning message will now include a link to the target title. [25]
Arbitration
- Following a recent arbitration case, the Arbitration Committee reminded administrators
that checkuser and oversight blocks must not be reversed or modified without prior consultation with the checkuser or oversighter who placed the block, the respective functionary team, or the Arbitration Committee.
- Following a recent arbitration case, the Arbitration Committee reminded administrators
Miscellaneous
- Voting in the 2020 Steward elections will begin on 08 February 2020, 14:00 (UTC) and end on 28 February 2020, 13:59 (UTC). The confirmation process of current stewards is being held in parallel. You can automatically check your eligibility to vote.
- The English Wikipedia has reached six million articles. Thank you everyone for your contributions!
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 4 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 5 February. It will be on all wikis from 6 February (calendar).
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20:05, 3 February 2020 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- There is a new version of the Wikimedia Commons app for Android. It should fix the failed uploads problem. [26]
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. [27]
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. [28]
- 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.
19:12, 10 February 2020 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- Pages on Wikidata and Commons now load faster. You can read more about page load performance. [29][30]
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)
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.
21:00, 24 February 2020 (UTC)
Administrators' newsletter – March 2020
News and updates for administrators from the past month (February 2020).
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Guideline and policy news
- Following an RfC, the blocking policy was changed to state that sysops
must not
undo or alter CheckUser or Oversight blocks, rather thanshould not
. - A request for comment confirmed that sandboxes of established but inactive editors may not be blanked due solely to inactivity.
- Following an RfC, the blocking policy was changed to state that sysops
Technical news
- Following a discussion, Twinkle's default CSD behavior will soon change, most likely this week. After the change, Twinkle will default to "tagging mode" if there is no CSD tag present, and default to "deletion mode" if there is a CSD tag present. You will be able to always default to "deletion mode" (the current behavior) using your Twinkle preferences.
Miscellaneous
- Following the 2020 Steward Elections, the following editors have been appointed as stewards: BRPever, Krd, Martin Urbanec, MusikAnimal, Sakretsu, Sotiale, and Tks4Fish. There are a total of seven editors that have been appointed as stewards, the most since 2014.
- The 2020 appointees for the Ombudsman commission are Ajraddatz and Uzoma Ozurumba; they will serve for one year.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Problems
- Readers who were not logged in briefly saw the interface in a language decided by their browser. It should normally be in the language of the wiki. This happened for a short period of time last week. This was because of a bug. [31]
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. [32]
- 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. [33]
- 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. [34]
- 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. [35]
- There is a vote on the creation of a new user group called abuse filter manager. The vote runs from March 1 to March 31 on Meta.
-
wgMFSpecialCaseMainPagewas used for the mobile site. It was deprecated in 2017. It will stop working in April. Wikis should see if they use it. If they do they should fix it. You can read more and ask for help. This affects 183 wikis. There is a list. [36]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
00:36, 3 March 2020 (UTC)
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. [37][38][39]
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. [40]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
17:15, 9 March 2020 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- There is a new API module for changing the content model of existing pages. Use
action=changecontentmodelto specify the new model. You can read the documentation on mediawiki.org. [41]
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. [42][43]
- 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.
21:14, 16 March 2020 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Problems
- Some development will be slower than planned. This is because of the current pandemic. You can see the new deployment guidelines. This is to avoid risks when some persons could be unavailable.
- There was a problem when adding interwiki links. The tool you use to add interwiki links could suggest the wrong project to link to. This has now been fixed. [44][45]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 24 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 25 March. It will be on all wikis from 26 March (calendar).
Future changes
- There is a project to make editing easier for newcomers. The developers are trying to understand what initiatives different Wikipedias have to welcome newcomers. They also want to know which templates are often used for maintenance activities. You can help this project by checking if your wiki's pages are listed on Wikidata.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
17:08, 23 March 2020 (UTC)
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. [46]
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. [47]
- 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. [48]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
17:26, 30 March 2020 (UTC)
Administrators' newsletter – April 2020
News and updates for administrators from the past month (March 2020).
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Guideline and policy news
- There is an ongoing request for comment to streamline the source deprecation and blacklisting process.
Technical news
- There is a plan for new requirements for user signatures. You can give feedback.
Arbitration
- Following the banning of an editor by the WMF last year, the Arbitration Committee resolved to hold a
Arbcom RfC regarding on-wiki harassment
. A draft RfC has been posted at Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Anti-harassment RfC (Draft) and not open to comments from the community yet. Interested editors can comment on the RfC itself on its talk page.
- Following the banning of an editor by the WMF last year, the Arbitration Committee resolved to hold a
Miscellaneous
- The WMF has begun a pilot report of the pages most visited through various social media platforms to help with anti-vandalism and anti-disinformation efforts. The report is updated daily and will be available through the end of May.
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. [49]
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. [50]
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19:03, 6 April 2020 (UTC)