User talk:Susmuffin/Archive 2
 | This is an archive of past discussions with User:Susmuffin. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
| Archive 1 | Archive 2 | Archive 3 | Archive 4 | Archive 5 |
A Barnstar for you!
|
The Working Man's Barnstar |
| Thank you for putting a dent in the Stale userspace drafts backlog. With your help, it's getting even closer to 35k. Then, it will be just another 10k to go! Keep up the good work! :) MrLinkinPark333 (talk) 02:10, 22 September 2020 (UTC) |
The Signpost: 27 September 2020
- Special report: Paid editing with political connections
- News and notes: More large-scale errors at a "small" wiki
- In the media: WIPO, Seigenthaler incident 15 years later
- Featured content: Life finds a Way
- Arbitration report: Clarifications and requests
- Traffic report: Is there no justice?
- Recent research: Wikipedia's flood biases
The Signpost: 27 September 2020
- Special report: Paid editing with political connections
- News and notes: More large-scale errors at a "small" wiki
- In the media: WIPO, Seigenthaler incident 15 years later
- Featured content: Life finds a Way
- Arbitration report: Clarifications and requests
- Traffic report: Is there no justice?
- Recent research: Wikipedia's flood biases
This week's article for improvement (week 40, 2020)
Hello, Susmuffin.
The following is WikiProject Today's articles for improvement's weekly selection: Please be bold and help to improve this article! Previous selections: Pig Latin • Asian art Get involved with the TAFI project. You can: Nominate an article • Review nominations Posted by: MusikBot talk 00:05, 28 September 2020 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject TAFI • |
|---|
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. [1]
- 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. [2]
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. [3]
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
Appsas 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. [4] - You can soon put pages on your watchlist for a limited time. This could be useful if you want to watch something for a shorter time but don't want it on your watchlist forever. It now works on mediawiki.org and will come to more wikis later. You can read more and see when it will come to other wikis.
- You can see what Wikimedians think are the best new technical tools this year. You can also nominate them.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
21:23, 28 September 2020 (UTC)
Administrators' newsletter – September 2020
News and updates for administrators from the past month (September 2020).
Administrator changes
Ajpolino • LuK3
Jackmcbarn
Ad Orientem • Harej • Lid • Lomn • Mentoz86 • Oliver Pereira • XJaM
There'sNoTime → TheresNoTime
Guideline and policy news
- A request for comment found consensus that incubation as an alternative to deletion should generally only be recommended when draftification is appropriate, namely
1) if the result of a deletion discussion is to draftify; or 2) if the article is newly created
.
- A request for comment found consensus that incubation as an alternative to deletion should generally only be recommended when draftification is appropriate, namely
Technical news
- The filter log now provides links to view diffs of deleted revisions (phab:T261630).
Arbitration
- The 2020 CheckUser and Oversight appointment process has begun. The community consultation period will take place from September 27th to October 7th.
- Following a request for comment, sitting Committee members may not serve on either the Ombuds Commission or the WMF Case Review Committee. The Arbitration Committee passed a motion implementing those results into their procedures.
Miscellaneous
- The Universal Code of Conduct draft is open for community review and comment until October 6th, 2020.
- Office actions may now be appealed to the Interim Trust & Safety Case Review Committee.
This week's article for improvement (week 41, 2020)
Hello, Susmuffin.
The following is WikiProject Today's articles for improvement's weekly selection: Please be bold and help to improve this article! Previous selections: August 2016 Aden bombing • Pig Latin Get involved with the TAFI project. You can: Nominate an article • Review nominations Posted by: MusikBot talk 00:05, 5 October 2020 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject TAFI • |
|---|
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. [5]
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. [6]
- Everyone was logged out. This was because a user reported being logged in to someone else's account. The problem should be fixed now. [7]
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]]renis 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. [8]
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. [9]
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)
Speedy deletion tagging
Hello, Susmuffin,
Please set up Twinkle so that you notify the page creator each time you tag a page for deletion. Every time. It's easy to set up in your Twinkle preferences, just make sure that each category of CSD is checked. Once you have changed your settings in preferences, these notifications will happen automatically.
Also, CSD R3 only applies to recently created redirects. And by "recently created", that is counted in days and weeks, not months and years. So a redirect from 2013 is not recently created and you'll need to propose it at WP:RFD. Thank you. Liz Read! Talk! 00:53, 9 October 2020 (UTC)
- Apologies, I was going after a bunch of redirects that were created by a single editor. Many of these redirects use fullwidth characters. Unfortunately, it appears that they had edited a few older ones. I also updated my Twinkle preferences. ―Susmuffin Talk 01:04, 9 October 2020 (UTC)
This week's article for improvement (week 42, 2020)
 Many species can live at high altitudes. For example, the Himalayan pika lives at altitudes up to 4,200 m (13,800 ft).
The following is WikiProject Today's articles for improvement's weekly selection: Please be bold and help to improve this article! Previous selections: Trout Mask Replica • August 2016 Aden bombing Get involved with the TAFI project. You can: Nominate an article • Review nominations Posted by: MusikBot talk 00:05, 12 October 2020 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject TAFI • |
|---|
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. [10][11][12]
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. [13][14]
- 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
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)
This week's article for improvement (week 43, 2020)
Hello, Susmuffin.
The following is WikiProject Today's articles for improvement's weekly selection: Please be bold and help to improve this article! Previous selections: Organisms at high altitude • Trout Mask Replica Get involved with the TAFI project. You can: Nominate an article • Review nominations Posted by: MusikBot talk 00:06, 19 October 2020 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject TAFI • |
|---|
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. [16]
- 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 ofrmspecials()withrmwhitespace()wherever necessary to keep filters' behavior unchanged. You can use the search function on Special:AbuseFilter to locate its usage. [17] - 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#siteSubor#mw-content-text. A list of affected scripts is at the top of phab:T265373.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
16:30, 19 October 2020 (UTC)
This week's article for improvement (week 44, 2020)
 Institutions and organizations of the United Nations, an intergovernmental organization
The following is WikiProject Today's articles for improvement's weekly selection: Please be bold and help to improve this article! Previous selections: Reader Rabbit • Organisms at high altitude Get involved with the TAFI project. You can: Nominate an article • Review nominations Posted by: MusikBot talk 00:06, 26 October 2020 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject TAFI • |
|---|
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. [18]
- Last week, links to "diffs" from mobile watchlists and recentchanges were linking to page-revisions instead of diffs. This has now been fixed. [19]
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. [20]
- 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. [21]
- 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. [22]
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)
Administrators' newsletter – November 2020
News and updates for administrators from the past month (October 2020).
|
|
|
Guideline and policy news
- Community sanctions now authorize administrators to place under indefinite semiprotection
any article on a beauty pageant, or biography of a person known as a beauty pageant contestant, which has been edited by a sockpuppet account or logged-out sockpuppet
, to be logged at WP:GS/PAGEANT.
- Community sanctions now authorize administrators to place under indefinite semiprotection
Technical news
- Sysops will once again be able to view the deleted history of JS/CSS pages; this was restricted to interface administrators when that group was introduced.
- Twinkle's block module now includes the ability to note the specific case when applying a discretionary sanctions block and/or template.
- Sysops will be able to use Special:CreateLocalAccount to create a local account for a global user that is prevented from auto-creation locally (such as by a filter or range block). Administrators that are not sure if such a creation is appropriate should contact a checkuser.
Arbitration
- The 2020 Arbitration Committee Elections process has begun. Eligible editors will be able to nominate themselves as candidates from November 8 through November 17. The voting period will run from November 23 through December 6.
- The Anti-harassment RfC has concluded with a summary of the feedback provided.
Miscellaneous
- A reminder that
standard discretionary sanctions are authorized for all edits about, and all pages related to post-1932 politics of the United States and closely related people.
(American Politics 2 Arbitration case).
- A reminder that
The Signpost: 1 November 2020
- News and notes: Ban on IPs on ptwiki, paid editing for Tatarstan, IP masking
- In the media: Murder, politics, religion, health and books
- Book review: Review of Wikipedia @ 20
- Discussion report: Proposal to change board composition, In The News dumps Trump story
- Featured content: The "Green Terror" is neither green nor sufficiently terrifying. Worst Hallowe'en ever.
- Traffic report: Jump back, what's that sound?
- Interview: Joseph Reagle and Jackie Koerner
- News from the WMF: Meet the 2020 Wikimedian of the Year
- Recent research: OpenSym 2020: Deletions and gender, masses vs. elites, edit filters
- In focus: The many (reported) deaths of Wikipedia
This week's article for improvement (week 45, 2020)
Hello, Susmuffin.
The following is WikiProject Today's articles for improvement's weekly selection: Please be bold and help to improve this article! Previous selections: Organization • Reader Rabbit Get involved with the TAFI project. You can: Nominate an article • Review nominations Posted by: MusikBot talk 00:06, 2 November 2020 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject TAFI • |
|---|
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. [23]
- 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. [24]
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). [25]
- 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. [26]
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. [27] - In the future IP addresses of unregistered users will not be shown for everyone. They will get an alias instead. There will be a new user right or an opt-in function for more vandal fighters to see the IPs of unregistered users. There would be some criteria for who gets the user right or opt-in. There will also be other new tools to help handle vandalism. This is early in the process and the developers are still collecting information from the communities before they suggest solutions.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
16:08, 2 November 2020 (UTC)
This week's article for improvement (week 46, 2020)
.JPG) An example of Chinese folklore is The Cowherd and the Weaver Girl, a Chinese folk tale. Pictured is a depiction in the tale of the reunion of the couple of The Weaver Girl and the Cowherd on the bridge of magpies. The artwork displayed is in the Long Corridor of the Summer Palace in Beijing.
The following is WikiProject Today's articles for improvement's weekly selection: Please be bold and help to improve this article! Previous selections: Cultural exchange • Organization Get involved with the TAFI project. You can: Nominate an article • Review nominations Posted by: MusikBot talk 00:06, 9 November 2020 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject TAFI • |
|---|
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. [28]
- 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. [29][30]
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)
This week's article for improvement (week 47, 2020)
 An illustration of the Pre-Columbian abacus, the Nepohualtzintzin, one of the many pre-Columbian inventions and innovations of indigenous Americans.
The following is WikiProject Today's articles for improvement's weekly selection: List of pre-Columbian inventions and innovations of indigenous Americans Please be bold and help to improve this article! Previous selections: Chinese folklore • Cultural exchange Get involved with the TAFI project. You can: Nominate an article • Review nominations Posted by: MusikBot talk 00:05, 16 November 2020 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject TAFI • |
|---|
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. [31][32]
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. [33]
- 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.
15:35, 16 November 2020 (UTC)
Books & Bytes – Issue 41
The Wikipedia Library
Books & Bytes
Issue 41, September – October 2020
- New partnership: Taxmann
- WikiCite
- 1Lib1Ref 2021
Sent by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of The Wikipedia Library team --10:48, 18 November 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
- 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. [34]
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. [35]
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)
This week's article for improvement (week 48, 2020)
 In macroeconomics, an industry is a branch of an economy that produces a closely related set of raw materials, goods, or services. Pictured is a cement factory in Malmö, Sweden, which is a part of the manufacturing industry.
The following is WikiProject Articles for improvement's weekly selection: Please be bold and help to improve this article! Previous selections: List of pre-Columbian inventions and innovations of indigenous Americans • Chinese folklore Get involved with the AFI project. You can: Nominate an article • Review nominations Posted by: MusikBot talk 20:33, 23 November 2020 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject TAFI • |
|---|
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 |
Atyh
Plz create a page for Tommy craze Entrentre (talk) 20:30, 27 November 2020 (UTC)
The Signpost: 29 November 2020
- News and notes: Jimmy Wales "shouldn't be kicked out before he's ready"
- Op-Ed: Re-righting Wikipedia
- Opinion: How billionaires re-write Wikipedia
- Featured content: Frontonia sp. is thankful for delicious cyanobacteria
- Traffic report: 007 with Borat, the Queen, and an election
- News from Wiki Education: An assignment that changed a life: Kasey Baker
- GLAM plus: West Coast New Zealand's Wikipedian at Large
- Wikicup report: Lee Vilenski wins the 2020 WikiCup
- Recent research: Wikipedia's Shoah coverage succeeds where libraries fail
- Essay: Writing about women
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. [36][37]
- 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
JOINSwill 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. [38]
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)
This week's article for improvement (week 49, 2020)
,_Bestanddeelnr_923-3697.jpg) in 2013 Spanish singer Julio Iglesias was celebrated for being the artist in Latin music with the most records sold in history.
Please be bold and help improve it! Previous selections: Industry • List of pre-Columbian inventions and innovations of indigenous Americans Get involved with the AFI project: Nominate an article • Review nominations Posted by: MusikBot talk 23:16, 30 November 2020 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject TAFI • |
|---|
Administrators' newsletter – December 2020
News and updates for administrators from the past month (November 2020).
Administrator changes
- Andrwsc • Anetode • GoldenRing • JzG • LinguistAtLarge • Nehrams2020
Interface administrator changes
Guideline and policy news
- There is a request for comment in progress to either remove T3 (duplicated and hardcoded instances) as a speedy deletion criterion or eliminate its seven-day waiting period.
Technical news
- Voting for proposals in the 2021 Community Wishlist Survey, which determines what software the Wikimedia Foundation's Community Tech team will work on next year, will take place from 8 December through 21 December. In particular, there are sections regarding administrators and anti-harassment.
Arbitration
- Voting in the 2020 Arbitration Committee Elections is open to eligible editors until Monday 23:59, 7 December 2020 UTC. Please review the candidates and, if you wish to do so, submit your choices on the voting page.
This week's article for improvement (week 50, 2020)
 Some traditional foods in Bengali cuisine
Please be bold and help improve it! Previous selections: Latin music (genre) • Industry Get involved with the AFI project: Nominate an article • Review nominations Posted by: MusikBot talk 00:05, 7 December 2020 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject TAFI • |
|---|
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. [39][40]
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. [41][42]
- 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)
This week's article for improvement (week 51, 2020)
Hello, Susmuffin. The article for improvement of the week is:
Please be bold and help improve it! Previous selections: Bengali cuisine • Latin music (genre) Get involved with the AFI project: Nominate an article • Review nominations Posted by: MusikBot talk 00:05, 14 December 2020 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject TAFI • |
|---|
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- There is a Wikipedia app for KaiOS phones. It was released in India in September. It can now be downloaded in other countries too. [43]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 15 December. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 16 December. It will be on all wikis from 17 December (calendar).
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
21:33, 14 December 2020 (UTC)
This week's article for improvement (week 52, 2020)
 Some (hopefully) edible things
Please be bold and help improve it! Previous selections: Christmas ham • Bengali cuisine Get involved with the AFI project: Nominate an article • Review nominations Posted by: MusikBot talk 00:05, 21 December 2020 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject TAFI • |
|---|
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Tech News
- Because of the holidays the next issue of Tech News will be sent out on 11 January 2021.
Recent changes
- The
{{citation needed}}template shows when a statement in a Wikipedia article needs a source. If you click on it when you edit with the visual editor there is a popup that explains this. Now it can also show the reason and when it was added. [44]
Changes later this week
- There is no new MediaWiki version this week or next week.
Future changes
- You can propose and discuss what technical improvements should be done for geographic information. This could be coordinates, maps or other related things.
- Some wikis use LanguageConverter to switch between writing systems or variants of a language. This can only be done for the entire page. There will be a
<langconvert>tag that can convert a piece of text on a page. [45] - Oversighters and stewards can hide entries in Special:AbuseLog. They can soon hide multiple entries at once using checkboxes. This works like hiding normal edits. It will happen in early January. [46]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
20:52, 21 December 2020 (UTC)
Merry Christmas!
|
Merry Christmas and a Prosperous 2021! |
|
Hello Susmuffin, 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. Spread the love by adding {{subst:Seasonal Greetings}} to other user talk pages. |
Merry Christmas
|
|
Merry Christmas and a Prosperous 2021! |
|
Hello Susmuffin, 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. Spread the love by adding {{subst:Seasonal Greetings}} to other user talk pages. |
This week's article for improvement (week 53, 2020)
 Fish processing is a significant part of the fishing industry. Pictured is frozen Tuna being cut using a band saw in the Tsukiji fish market in Tokyo.
Please be bold and help improve it! Previous selections: Edible • Christmas ham Get involved with the AFI project: Nominate an article • Review nominations Posted by: MusikBot talk 00:07, 28 December 2020 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject AFI • |
|---|
The Signpost: 28 December 2020
- Arbitration report: 2020 election results
- Featured content: Very nearly ringing in the New Year with "Blank Space" – but we got there in time.
- Traffic report: 2020 wraps up
- Recent research: Predicting the next move in Wikipedia discussions
- Essay: Subjective importance
- Gallery: Angels in the architecture
- Humour: 'Twas the Night Before Wikimas
Neo Roaring 20s should be added to the 2020 page due to it being the new 2020's just a google will prove it — Preceding unsigned comment added by 31.124.108.45 (talk) 05:33, 1 January 2021 (UTC)
Barassi Line
Please stop your disruptive editing. If you continue to vandalize Wikipedia, as you did at Barassi Line, you may be blocked from editing. ― --120.22.218.229 (talk) 06:21, 1 January 2021 (UTC)
This week's article for improvement (week 1, 2021)
 Cooked pork chops
Please be bold and help improve it! Previous selections: Fishing industry • Edible Get involved with the AFI project: Nominate an article • Review nominations Posted by: MusikBot talk 00:05, 4 January 2021 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject AFI • |
|---|
Susmuffin
Boooo Froggybot19856 (talk) 22:42, 4 January 2021 (UTC)
Administrators' newsletter – January 2021
News and updates for administrators from the past month (December 2020).
|
|
|
Guideline and policy news
- Speedy deletion criterion T3 (duplication and hardcoded instances) has been repealed following a request for comment.
Technical news
- You can now put pages on your watchlist for a limited period of time.
Arbitration
- By motion, standard discretionary sanctions have been temporarily authorized
for all pages relating to the Horn of Africa (defined as including Ethiopia, Somalia, Eritrea, Djibouti, and adjoining areas if involved in related disputes)
. The effectiveness of the discretionary sanctions can be evaluated on the request by any editor after March 1, 2021 (or sooner if for a good reason). - Following the 2020 Arbitration Committee elections, the following editors have been appointed to the Arbitration Committee: Barkeep49, BDD, Bradv, CaptainEek, L235, Maxim, Primefac.
- By motion, standard discretionary sanctions have been temporarily authorized
Reverts improperly tagged as Vandalism on Glina, Croatia
Hi there, I'm Roxy! You recently reverted an edit by 78.2.150.28 (talk · contribs) on Glina, Croatia, labelling it as vandalism. These edits—while containing POV and failing to adhere to BRD—appeared to be made in good faith. Obviously I don't need to cite the entirety of WP:NOTVANDALISM to you, and I'd feel very rude posting a template here. I just wanted to remind that overly zealous use of "vandalism" can confuse and discourage new editors. Thanks for your hard work in keeping articles clean! RoxySaunders (talk) 00:23, 5 January 2021 (UTC)
Timezone of Wolgograd Oblast Russia
Timezone UTC 4 is wrong, Wolgograd Oblast changed Timezone to UTC 3 source https://www.timeanddate.com/time/zone/russia/volgograd
93.198.192.184 (talk) 14:32, 6 January 2021 (UTC)
This week's article for improvement (week 2, 2021)
Hello, Susmuffin. The article for improvement of the week is:
Please be bold and help improve it! Previous selections: Pork chop • Fishing industry Get involved with the AFI project: Nominate an article • Review nominations Posted by: MusikBot talk 00:05, 11 January 2021 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject AFI • |
|---|
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- You can choose to be reminded when you have not added an edit summary. This can be done in your preferences. This could conflict with the CAPTCHA. This has now been fixed. [47]
- You can link to specific log entries. You can get these links for example by clicking the timestamps in the log. Until now, such links to private log entries showed no entry even if you had permission to view private log entries. The links now show the entry. [48]
- Admins can use the abuse filter tool to automatically prevent bad edits. Three changes happened last week:
- The filter editing interface now shows syntax errors while you type. This is similar to JavaScript pages. It also shows a warning for regular expressions that match the empty string. New warnings will be added later. [49]
- Oversighters can now hide multiple filter log entries at once using checkboxes on Special:AbuseLog. This is how the usual revision deletion works. [50]
- When a filter matches too many actions after it has been changed it is "throttled". The most powerful actions are disabled. This is to avoid many editors getting blocked when an administrator made a mistake. The administrator will now get a notification about this "throttle".
- There is a new tool to build new skins. You can also see existing skins. You can give feedback. [51]
- Bots using the API no longer watch pages automatically based on account preferences. Setting the
watchlisttowatchwill still work. This is to reduce the size of the watchlist data in the database. [52] - Scribunto's file metadata now includes length. [53]
- CSS and JavaScript code pages now have link anchors to line numbers. You can use wikilinks like w:en:MediaWiki:Common.js#L-50. [54]
- There was a new version of MediaWiki last week. You can read a detailed log of all 763 changes. Most of them are very small and will not affect you.
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 12 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 13 January. It will be on all wikis from 14 January (calendar).
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
15:41, 11 January 2021 (UTC)
Happy 20th anniversary!
|
Celebration~! |
Wikipedia will only ever turn 20 once! Hope you are doing well and have a prosperous onwiki experience in the future. –MJL ‐Talk‐☖ 02:09, 15 January 2021 (UTC)
|
"Wkipedia:Merge" listed at Redirects for discussion
A discussion is taking place to address the redirect Wkipedia:Merge. The discussion will occur at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2021 January 15#Wkipedia:Merge until a consensus is reached, and anyone, including you, is welcome to contribute to the discussion. Seventyfiveyears (talk) 18:40, 15 January 2021 (UTC)
This week's article for improvement (week 3, 2021)
Please be bold and help improve it! Previous selections: Lumbersexual • Pork chop Get involved with the AFI project: Nominate an article • Review nominations Posted by: MusikBot talk 00:05, 18 January 2021 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject AFI • |
|---|
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 19 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 20 January. It will be on all wikis from 21 January (calendar).
Future changes
- The Growth team plans to add features to get more visitors to edit to more Wikipedias. You can help translating the interface.
- You will be able to read but not to edit Wikimedia Commons for a short time on 26 January at 07:00 (UTC). [55]
- MassMessage posts could be automatically timestamped in the future. This is because MassMessage senders can now send pages using MassMessage. Pages are more difficult to sign. If there are times when a MassMessage post should not be timestamped you can let the developers know.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
16:09, 18 January 2021 (UTC)
Proposed deletion
Hello Susmuffin. I came across Lovecraft's Providence and Adjacent Parts and saw you had prodded it in January 2020 (so almost exactly a year ago). Regardless, I've opened a deletion discussion for the book here if you are interested in contributing to the discussion. Thank you. --Kbabej (talk) 04:39, 23 January 2021 (UTC)
This week's article for improvement (week 4, 2021)
Hello, Susmuffin. The article for improvement of the week is:
Please be bold and help improve it! Previous selections: Mountain pass • Lumbersexual Get involved with the AFI project: Nominate an article • Review nominations Posted by: MusikBot talk 00:05, 25 January 2021 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject AFI • |
|---|
Books & Bytes - Issue 42
The Wikipedia Library
Books & Bytes
Issue 42, November – December 2020
- New EBSCO collections now available
- 1Lib1Ref 2021 underway
- Library Card input requested
- Libraries love Wikimedia, too!
Sent by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of The Wikipedia Library team --14:00, 25 January 2021 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Problems
- You will be able to read but not to edit Wikimedia Commons for a short time on 26 January at 07:00 (UTC). You will not be able to read or edit Wikitech for a short time on 28 January at 09:00 (UTC). [56][57]
Changes later this week
- Bracket matching will be added to the CodeMirror syntax highlighter on the first wikis. The first wikis are German and Catalan Wikipedia and maybe other Wikimedia wikis. This will happen on 27 January. [58]
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 26 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 27 January. It will be on all wikis from 28 January (calendar).
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
18:30, 25 January 2021 (UTC)
The Signpost: 31 January 2021
- News and notes: 1,000,000,000 edits, board elections, virtual Wikimania 2021
- Special report: Wiki reporting on the United States insurrection
- In focus: From Anarchy to Wikiality, Glaring Bias to Good Cop: Press Coverage of Wikipedia's First Two Decades
- Technology report: The people who built Wikipedia, technically
- Videos and podcasts: Celebrating 20 years
- News from the WMF: Wikipedia celebrates 20 years of free, trusted information for the world
- Recent research: Students still have a better opinion of Wikipedia than teachers
- Humour: Dr. Seuss's Guide to Wikipedia
- Featured content: New Year, same Featured Content report!
- Traffic report: The most viewed articles of 2020
- Obituary: Flyer22 Frozen
This week's article for improvement (week 5, 2021)
Hello, Susmuffin. The article for improvement of the week is:
Please be bold and help improve it! Previous selections: Viral phenomenon • Mountain pass Get involved with the AFI project: Nominate an article • Review nominations Posted by: MusikBot talk 00:05, 1 February 2021 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject AFI • |
|---|
Administrators' newsletter – February 2021
News and updates for administrators from the past month (January 2021).
|
|
|
Arbitration
- The standard discretionary sanctions authorized for American Politics were amended by motion to cover
post-1992 politics of United States and closely related people
, replacing the 1932 cutoff.
- The standard discretionary sanctions authorized for American Politics were amended by motion to cover
Miscellaneous
- Voting in the 2021 Steward elections will begin on 05 February 2021, 14:00 (UTC) and end on 26 February 2021, 13:59 (UTC). The confirmation process of current stewards is being held in parallel. You can automatically check your eligibility to vote.
- Wikipedia has now been around for 20 years, and recently saw its billionth edit!
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Problems
- IPv6 addresses were written in lowercase letters in diffs. This caused dead links since Special:Contributions only accepted uppercase letters for the IPs. This has been fixed. [59]
Changes later this week
- You can soon use Wikidata to link to pages on the multilingual Wikisource. [60]
- Often editors use a "non-breaking space" to make a gap between two items when reading but still show them together. This can be used to avoid a line break. You will now be able to add new ones via the special character tool in the 2010, 2017, and visual editors. The character will be shown in the visual editor as a space with a grey background. [61][62]
- Wikis use abuse filters to stop bad edits being made. Filter maintainers can now use syntax like
1.2.3.4 - 1.2.3.55as well as the1.2.3.4/27syntax for IP ranges. [63] - The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 2 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 3 February. It will be on all wikis from 4 February (calendar).
Future changes
- Minerva is the skin Wikimedia wikis use for mobile traffic. When a page is protected and you can't edit it you can normally read the source wikicode. This doesn't work on Minerva on mobile devices. This is being fixed. Some text might overlap. This is because your community needs to update MediaWiki:Protectedpagetext to work on mobile. You can read more. [64][65]
- Cloud VPS and Toolforge will change the IP address they use to contact the wikis. The new IP address will be
185.15.56.1. This will happen on February 8. You can read more.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
22:38, 1 February 2021 (UTC)
This week's article for improvement (week 6, 2021)
 A Television Market Area is an example of a media market. This map depicts Television Market Areas in the United States as of 2013.
Please be bold and help improve it! Previous selections: Lumbersexual • Viral phenomenon Get involved with the AFI project: Nominate an article • Review nominations Posted by: MusikBot talk 00:06, 8 February 2021 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject AFI • |
|---|
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- The Wikipedia app for Android now has watchlists and talk pages in the app. [66]
Changes later this week
- You can see edits to chosen pages on Special:Watchlist. You can add pages to your watchlist on every wiki you like. The GlobalWatchlist extension will come to Meta on 11 February. There you can see entries on watched pages on different wikis on the same page. The new watchlist will be found on Special:GlobalWatchlist on Meta. You can choose which wikis to watch and other preferences on Special:GlobalWatchlistSettings on Meta. You can watch up to five wikis. [67]
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 9 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 10 February. It will be on all wikis from 11 February (calendar).
Future changes
- When admins protect pages the form will use the OOUI look. Special:Import will also get the new look. This will make them easier to use on mobile phones. [68][69]
- Some services will not work for a short period of time from 07:00 UTC on 17 February. There might be problems with new short links, new translations, new notifications, adding new items to your reading lists or recording email bounces. This is because of database maintenance. [70]
- Last week Tech News reported that the IP address Cloud VPS and Toolforge use to contact the wikis will change on 8 February. This is delayed. It will happen later instead. [71]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
17:40, 8 February 2021 (UTC)
This week's article for improvement (week 7, 2021)
Hello, Susmuffin. The article for improvement of the week is:
Please be bold and help improve it! Previous selections: Media market • Lumbersexual Get involved with the AFI project: Nominate an article • Review nominations Posted by: MusikBot talk 00:06, 15 February 2021 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject AFI • |
|---|
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Problems
- There were problems with recent versions of MediaWiki. Because the updates caused problems the developers rolled back to an earlier version. Some updates and new functions will come later than planned. [72][73]
- Some services will not work for a short period of time from 07:00 UTC on 17 February. There might be problems with new short links, new translations, new notifications, adding new items to your reading lists or recording email bounces. This is because of database maintenance. [74]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 16 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 17 February. It will be on all wikis from 18 February (calendar).
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
17:54, 15 February 2021 (UTC)
This week's article for improvement (week 8, 2021)
Hello, Susmuffin. The article for improvement of the week is:
Please be bold and help improve it! Previous selections: Blibber-Blubber • Media market Get involved with the AFI project: Nominate an article • Review nominations Posted by: MusikBot talk 00:06, 22 February 2021 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject AFI • |
|---|
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- The visual editor will now use MediaSearch to find images. You can search for images on Commons in the visual editor when you are looking for illustrations. This is to help editors find better images. [75]
- The syntax highlighter now works with more languages: Futhark, Graphviz/DOT, CDDL and AMDGPU. [76]
Problems
- Editing a timeline might have removed all text from it. This was because of a bug and has been fixed. You might need to edit the timeline again for it to show properly. [77]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 23 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 24 February. It will be on all wikis from 25 February (calendar).
Future changes
- There is a user group for developers and users interested in working on Wikimedia wikis with the Rust programming language. You can join or tell others who want to make your wiki better in the future.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
00:16, 23 February 2021 (UTC)
A barnstar for you!
|
The Barnstar of Good Humor |
| For leaving great edit summaries while removing hundreds (?) of pointless trivia sections. Elliot321 (talk | contribs) 04:29, 27 February 2021 (UTC) |
The Signpost: 28 February 2021
- News and notes: Maher stepping down
- Disinformation report: A "billionaire battle" on Wikipedia: Sex, lies, and video
- In the media: Corporate influence at OSM, Fox watching the hen house
- News from the WMF: Who tells your story on Wikipedia
- Featured content: A Love of Knowledge, for Valentine's Day
- Traffic report: Does it almost feel like you've been here before?
- Gallery: What is Black history and culture?
This week's article for improvement (week 9, 2021)
.jpg) Emergency management is the organization and management of the resources and responsibilities for dealing with all humanitarian aspects of emergencies (preparedness, response, mitigation, and recovery). Pictured is a mobile emergency operations center operated by the North Carolina Air National Guard.
Please be bold and help improve it! Previous selections: Huizhou • Blibber-Blubber Get involved with the AFI project: Nominate an article • Review nominations Posted by: MusikBot talk 00:05, 1 March 2021 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject AFI • |
|---|
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- Wikis using the Growth team tools can now show the name of a newcomer's mentor anywhere through a magic word. This can be used for welcome messages or userboxes.
- A new version of the VideoCutTool is now available. It enables cropping, trimming, audio disabling, and rotating video content. It is being created as part of the developer outreach programs.
Problems
- There was a problem with the job queue. This meant some functions did not save changes and mass messages were delayed. This did not affect wiki edits. [78]
- Some editors may not be logged in to their accounts automatically in the latest versions of Firefox and Safari. [79]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 2 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 3 March. It will be on all wikis from 4 March (calendar).
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
19:06, 1 March 2021 (UTC)
Administrators' newsletter – March 2021
News and updates for administrators from the past month (February 2021).
Administrator changes
Interface administrator changes
Guideline and policy news
- A request for comment is open that proposes a process for the community to revoke administrative permissions. This follows a 2019 RfC in favor of creating one such a policy.
- A request for comment is in progress to remove F7 (invalid fair-use claim) subcriterion a, which covers immediate deletion of non-free media with invalid fair-use tags.
- A request for comment seeks to grant page movers the
delete-redirectuserright, which allows moving a page over a single-revision redirect, regardless of that redirect's target. The full proposal is at Wikipedia:Page mover/delete-redirect. - A request for comment asks if sysops may
place the General sanctions/Coronavirus disease 2019 editnotice template on pages in scope that do not have page-specific sanctions
? - There is a discussion in progress concerning automatic protection of each day's featured article with Pending Changes protection.
Technical news
- When blocking an IPv6 address with Twinkle, there is now a checkbox with the option to just block the /64 range. When doing so, you can still leave a block template on the initial, single IP address' talkpage.
- When protecting a page with Twinkle, you can now add a note if doing so was in response to a request at WP:RfPP, and even link to the specific revision.
- There have been a number of reported issues with Pending Changes. Most problems setting protection appear to have been resolved (phab:T273317) but other issues with autoaccepting edits persist (phab:T275322).
Arbitration
- By motion, the discretionary sanctions originally authorized under the GamerGate case are now authorized under a new Gender and sexuality case, with sanctions
authorized for all edits about, and all pages related to, any gender-related dispute or controversy and associated people.
Sanctions issued under GamerGate are now considered Gender and sexuality sanctions. - The Kurds and Kurdistan case was closed, authorizing standard discretionary sanctions for
the topics of Kurds and Kurdistan, broadly construed
.
- By motion, the discretionary sanctions originally authorized under the GamerGate case are now authorized under a new Gender and sexuality case, with sanctions
Miscellaneous
- Following the 2021 Steward Elections, the following editors have been appointed as stewards: AmandaNP, Operator873, Stanglavine, Teles, and Wiki13.
This week's article for improvement (week 10, 2021)
 Frozen chicken nuggets
Please be bold and help improve it! Previous selections: Emergency management • Huizhou Get involved with the AFI project: Nominate an article • Review nominations Posted by: MusikBot talk 00:06, 8 March 2021 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject AFI • |
|---|
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- Section translation now works on Bengali Wikipedia. It helps mobile editors translate sections of articles. It will come to more wikis later. The first focus is active wikis with a smaller number of articles. You can test it and leave feedback.
- Flagged revisions now give admins the review right. [80]
- When someone links to a Wikipedia article on Twitter this will now show a preview of the article. [81]
Problems
- Many graphs have JavaScript errors. Graph editors can check their graphs in their browser's developer console after editing. [82]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 9 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 10 March. It will be on all wikis from 11 March (calendar).
- The New Discussion tool will soon be a new discussion tools beta feature for on most Wikipedias. The goal is to make it easier to start new discussions. [83]
Future changes
- There will be a number of changes to make it easier to work with templates. Some will come to the first wikis in March. Other changes will come to the first wikis in June. This is both for those who use templates and those who create or maintain them. You can read more.
- Reference Previews will become a default feature on some wikis on 17 March. They will share a setting with Page Previews. If you prefer the Reference Tooltips or Navigation-Popups gadget you can keep using them. If so Reference Previews won't be shown. [84][85]
- New JavaScript-based functions will not work in Internet Explorer 11. This is because Internet Explorer is an old browser that doesn't work with how JavaScript is written today. Everything that works in Internet Explorer 11 today will continue working in Internet Explorer for now. You can read more.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
17:50, 8 March 2021 (UTC)
This week's article for improvement (week 11, 2021)
 A hobby is considered to be a regular activity that is done for enjoyment, typically during one's leisure time, not professionally and not for pay. An example of a hobby is rail transport modelling (pictured).
Please be bold and help improve it! Previous selections: Chicken nugget • Emergency management Get involved with the AFI project: Nominate an article • Review nominations Posted by: MusikBot talk 00:06, 15 March 2021 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject AFI • |
|---|
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- Wikis that are part of the desktop improvements project can now use a new search function. The desktop improvements and the new search will come to more wikis later. You can also test it early.
- Editors who put up banners or change site-wide JavaScript code should use the client error graph to see that their changes has not caused problems. You can read more. [86]
Problems
- Due to database issues the Wikimedia Beta Cluster was read-only for over a day.
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 16 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 17 March. It will be on all wikis from 18 March (calendar).
Future changes
- You can add a newline or carriage return character to a custom signature if you use a template. There is a proposal to not allow them in the future. This is because they can cause formatting problems. [87][88]
- You will be able to read but not edit 12 wikis for a short period of time on 23 March at 06:00 (UTC). This could take 30 minutes but will probably be much faster.
- You can use Quarry for SQL queries to the Wiki Replicas. Cross-database
JOINSwill no longer work from 23 March. There will be a new field to specify the database to connect to. If you think this affects you and you need help you can post on Phabricator or on Wikitech. PAWS and other ways to do SQL queries to the Wiki Replicas will be affected later. [89]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
23:21, 15 March 2021 (UTC)
This week's article for improvement (week 12, 2021)
 Two charts from an Arabic copy of the Secretum Secretorum for determining whether a person will live or die based on the numerical value of the patient's name.
Please be bold and help improve it! Previous selections: Hobby • Chicken nugget Get involved with the AFI project: Nominate an article • Review nominations Posted by: MusikBot talk 00:05, 22 March 2021 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject AFI • |
|---|
Books & Bytes – Issue 42
The Wikipedia Library
Books & Bytes
Issue 42, January – February 2021
- New partnerships: PNAS, De Gruyter, Nomos
- 1Lib1Ref
- Library Card
Sent by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of The Wikipedia Library team --11:28, 22 March 2021 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- There is a Wikipedia app for KaiOS phones. They don't have a touch screen so readers navigate with the phone keys. There is now a simulator so you can see what it looks like.
- The reply tool and new discussion tool are now available as the "Discussion tools" beta feature in almost all wikis except German Wikipedia.
Problems
- You will be able to read but not edit twelve wikis for a short period of time on 23 March at 06:00 (UTC). This can also affect password changes, logging in to new wikis, global renames and changing or confirming emails. This could take 30 minutes but will probably be much faster.
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 23 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 24 March. It will be on all wikis from 25 March (calendar).
- Syntax highlighting colours will change to be easier to read. This will soon come to the first wikis. [90]
Future changes
- Flagged revisions will no longer have multiple tags like "tone" or "depth". It will also only have one tier. This was changed because very few wikis used these features and they make the tool difficult to maintain. [91][92]
- Gadgets and user scripts can access variables about the current page in JavaScript. In 2015 this was moved from
wg*tomw.config.wg*will soon no longer work. [93]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
16:51, 22 March 2021 (UTC)
The Signpost: 28 March 2021
- News and notes: A future with a for-profit subsidiary?
- Gallery: Wiki Loves Monuments
- In the media: Wikimedia LLC and disinformation in Japan
- News from the WMF: Project Rewrite: Tell the missing stories of women on Wikipedia and beyond
- Recent research: 10%-30% of Wikipedia’s contributors have subject-matter expertise
- From the archives: Google isn't responsible for Wikipedia's mistakes
- Obituary: Yoninah
- From the editor: What else can we say?
- Arbitration report: Open letter to the Board of Trustees
- Traffic report: Wanda, Meghan, Liz, Phil and Zack
This week's article for improvement (week 13, 2021)
 Rich Purnell mixed climbing a route rated M9
Please be bold and help improve it! Previous selections: Name • Hobby Get involved with the AFI project: Nominate an article • Review nominations Posted by: MusikBot talk 00:05, 29 March 2021 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject AFI • |
|---|
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- Some very old web browsers don’t work well with the Wikimedia wikis. Some old code for browsers that used to be supported is being removed. This could cause issues in those browsers. [94]
- IRC recent changes feeds have been moved to a new server. Make sure all tools automatically reconnect to
irc.wikimedia.organd not to the name of any specific server. Users should also consider switching to the more modern EventStreams. [95]
Problems
- When you move a page that many editors have on their watchlist the history can be split. It might also not be possible to move it again for a while. This is because of a job queue problem. [96]
- Some translatable pages on Meta could not be edited. This was because of a bug in the translation tool. The new MediaWiki version was delayed because of problems like this. [97][98]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 30 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 31 March. It will be on all wikis from 1 April (calendar).
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
17:29, 29 March 2021 (UTC)
April 2021
{{unblock|reason=Your reason here ~~~~}}. GeneralNotability (talk) 00:20, 1 April 2021 (UTC)- Good block, 10/10, totally not an approval-sock. —moonythesock (Sock P.) 00:23, 1 April 2021 (UTC)
Administrators' newsletter – April 2021
News and updates for administrators from the past month (March 2021).
Administrator changes
- Alexandria • Happyme22 • RexxS
Guideline and policy news
- Following a request for comment, F7 (invalid fair-use claim) subcriterion a has been deprecated; it covered immediate deletion of non-free media with invalid fair-use tags.
- Following a request for comment, page movers were granted the
delete-redirectuserright, which allows moving a page over a single-revision redirect, regardless of that redirect's target.
Technical news
- When you move a page that many editors have on their watchlist the history can be split and it might also not be possible to move it again for a while. This is because of a job queue problem. (T278350)
- Code to support some very old web browsers is being removed. This could cause issues in those browsers. (T277803)
Arbitration
- A community consultation on the Arbitration Committee discretionary sanctions procedure is open until April 25.
This week's article for improvement (week 14, 2021)
 A recreation room arranged as a children's play area in a Chicago home
Please be bold and help improve it! Previous selections: Mixed climbing • Name Get involved with the AFI project: Nominate an article • Review nominations Posted by: MusikBot talk 00:05, 5 April 2021 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject AFI • |
|---|
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- Editors can collapse part of an article so you have to click on it to see it. When you click a link to a section inside collapsed content it will now expand to show the section. The browser will scroll down to the section. Previously such links didn't work unless you manually expanded the content first. [99]
Changes later this week
- The citoid API will use for example
2010-12-XXinstead of2010-12for dates with a month but no days. This is because2010-12could be confused with2010-2012instead ofDecember 2010. This is called level 1 instead of level 0 in the Extended Date/Time Format. [100] - The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 6 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 7 April. It will be on all wikis from 8 April (calendar).
Future changes
- PAWS can now connect to the new Wiki Replicas. Cross-database
JOINSwill no longer work from 28 April. There is a new way to connect to the databases. Until 28 April both ways to connect to the databases will work. If you think this affects you and you need help you can post on Phabricator or on Wikitech.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
19:39, 5 April 2021 (UTC)
Concern regarding Draft:Algernon Blackwood bibliography
Hello, Susmuffin. This is a bot-delivered message letting you know that Draft:Algernon Blackwood bibliography, a page you created, has not been edited in at least 5 months. Draft space is not an indefinite storage location for content that is not appropriate for article space.
If your submission is not edited soon, it could be nominated for deletion under CSD G13. If you would like to attempt to save it, you will need to improve it. You may request userfication of the content if it meets requirements.
If the deletion has already occured, instructions on how you may be able to retrieve it are available here.
Thank you for your submission to Wikipedia. FireflyBot (talk) 01:02, 7 April 2021 (UTC)
This week's article for improvement (week 15, 2021)
 Thai comics are comics written and produced in Thailand.
Please be bold and help improve it! Previous selections: Recreation room • Mixed climbing Get involved with the AFI project: Nominate an article • Review nominations Posted by: MusikBot talk 00:05, 12 April 2021 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject AFI • |
|---|
This week's article for improvement (week 16, 2021)
.jpg) A street performer in New York wearing a do-rag
Please be bold and help improve it! Previous selections: Thai comics • Recreation room Get involved with the AFI project: Nominate an article • Review nominations Posted by: MusikBot talk 00:05, 19 April 2021 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject AFI • |
|---|
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- Email to the Wikimedia wikis are handled by groups of Wikimedia editors. These volunteer response teams now use Znuny instead of OTRS. The functions and interface remain the same. The volunteer administrators will give more details about the next steps soon. [101][102]
- If you use syntax highlighting, you can see line numbers in the 2010 and 2017 wikitext editors when editing templates. This is to make it easier to see line breaks or talk about specific lines. Line numbers will soon come to all namespaces. [103][104][105]
- Because of a technical change there could be problems with gadgets and scripts that have an edit summary area that looks similar to this one. If they look strange they should use
mw.loader.using('mediawiki.action.edit.styles')to go back to how they looked before. [106] - The latest version of MediaWiki came to the Wikimedia wikis last week. There was no Tech News issue last week.
Changes later this week
- There is no new MediaWiki version this week.
Future changes
- The user group
oversightwill be renamedsuppress. This is for technical reasons. This is the technical name. It doesn't affect what you call the editors with this user right on your wiki. This is planned to happen in two weeks. You can comment in Phabricator if you have objections.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
16:48, 19 April 2021 (UTC)
Please see...
///this. Beyond My Ken (talk) 06:58, 22 April 2021 (UTC)
The Signpost: 25 April 2021
- From the editor: A change is gonna come
- Disinformation report: Paid editing by a former head of state's business enterprise
- In the media: Fernando, governance, and rugby
- Opinion: The (Universal) Code of Conduct
- Op-Ed: A Little Fun Goes A Long Way
- Changing the world: The reach of protest images on Wikipedia
- Recent research: Quality of aquatic and anatomical articles
- Traffic report: The verdict is guilty, guilty, guilty
- News from Wiki Education: Encouraging professional physicists to engage in outreach on Wikipedia
This week's article for improvement (week 17, 2021)
Hello, Susmuffin. The article for improvement of the week is:
Please be bold and help improve it! Previous selections: Do-rag • Thai comics Get involved with the AFI project: Nominate an article • Review nominations Posted by: MusikBot talk 03:05, 26 April 2021 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject AFI • |
|---|
The Signpost: 25 April 2021
- From the editor: A change is gonna come
- Disinformation report: Paid editing by a former head of state's business enterprise
- In the media: Fernando, governance, and rugby
- Opinion: The (Universal) Code of Conduct
- Op-Ed: A Little Fun Goes A Long Way
- Changing the world: The reach of protest images on Wikipedia
- Recent research: Quality of aquatic and anatomical articles
- Traffic report: The verdict is guilty, guilty, guilty
- News from Wiki Education: Encouraging professional physicists to engage in outreach on Wikipedia
The Signpost: 25 April 2021
- From the editor: A change is gonna come
- Disinformation report: Paid editing by a former head of state's business enterprise
- In the media: Fernando, governance, and rugby
- Opinion: The (Universal) Code of Conduct
- Op-Ed: A Little Fun Goes A Long Way
- Changing the world: The reach of protest images on Wikipedia
- Recent research: Quality of aquatic and anatomical articles
- Traffic report: The verdict is guilty, guilty, guilty
- News from Wiki Education: Encouraging professional physicists to engage in outreach on Wikipedia
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- Templates have parameters that can have specific values. It is possible to suggest values for editors with TemplateData. You can soon see them as a drop-down list in the visual editor. This is to help template users find the right values faster. [107][108][109]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 27 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 28 April. It will be on all wikis from 29 April (calendar).
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
21:23, 26 April 2021 (UTC)
This week's article for improvement (week 18, 2021)
 Watches are one type of fashion accessory.
Please be bold and help improve it! Previous selections: Huizhou • Do-rag Get involved with the AFI project: Nominate an article • Review nominations Posted by: MusikBot talk 00:05, 3 May 2021 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject AFI • |
|---|
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- Twinkle is a gadget on English Wikipedia. It can help with maintenance and patrolling. It can now be used on other wikis. You can get Twinkle on your wiki using the twinkle-starter GitHub repository.
Problems
- The content translation tool did not work for many articles for a little while. This was because of a bug. [110]
- Some things will not work for about a minute on 5 May. This will happen around 06:00 UTC. This will affect the content translation tool and notifications among other things. This is because of an upgrade to avoid crashes. [111]
Changes later this week
- Reference Previews will become a default feature on a number of wikis on 5 May. This is later than planned because of some changes. You can use it without using Page Previews if you want to. The earlier plan was to have the preference to use both or none. [112][113]
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 4 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 5 May. It will be on all wikis from 6 May (calendar).
Future changes
- The CSS classes
.error,.warningand.successdo not work for mobile readers if they have not been specifically defined on your wiki. From June they will not work for desktop readers. This can affect gadgets and templates. The classes can be defined in MediaWiki:Common.css or template styles instead. [114]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
15:42, 3 May 2021 (UTC)
Administrators' newsletter – May 2021
News and updates for administrators from the past month (April 2021).
Administrator changes
Interface administrator changes
Guideline and policy news
- Following an RfC, consensus was found that third party appeals are allowed but discouraged.
- The 2021 Desysop Policy RfC was closed with no consensus. Consensus was found in a previous RfC for a community based desysop procedure, though the procedure proposed in the 2021 RfC did not gain consensus.
Technical news
- The user group
oversightwill be renamed tosuppress. This is for technical reasons. You can comment at T112147 if you have objections.
- The user group
Arbitration
- The community consultation on the Arbitration Committee discretionary sanctions procedure was closed, and an initial draft based on feedback from the now closed consultation is expected to be released in early June to early July for community review.
This week's article for improvement (week 19, 2021)
 Tattooing among women of the Koita people of Papua New Guinea traditionally began at age five and was added to each year. The V-shaped marks on the chest, with certain others, indicate that the woman is marriageable. Photo taken in 1912.
Please be bold and help improve it! Previous selections: Fashion accessory • Huizhou Get involved with the AFI project: Nominate an article • Review nominations Posted by: MusikBot talk 00:05, 10 May 2021 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject AFI • |
|---|
Books & Bytes – Issue 43
The Wikipedia Library
Books & Bytes
Issue 43, March – April 2021
- New Library Card designs
- 1Lib1Ref May
Sent by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of The Wikipedia Library team --11:12, 10 May 2021 (UTC)