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Re:QPQP For British committee of the Indian National Congress

Thankyou David, is there any article noms you would like to review?rueben_lys (talk · contribs) 18:03, 27 November 2015 (UTC)

I already reviewed {{Did you know nominations/British Committee of the Indian National Congress}}. As time allows, I will do my usual mix of content- and non-content work on Wikipedia, including reviewing additional Did You Know nominations. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 19:06, 27 November 2015 (UTC)

Followup: It just occurred to me that you may be asking of there are any article nominations I would like you to review. I prefer not to review contributions by people who are reviewing mine (and when I do so, it's because I did not check first), and likewise I prefer that editors of pages I review not review my nominations, especially if I reviewed them favorably. I can't speak for you individually, but if someone has "done me a favor" by reviewing a nomination I made favorably, I am less likely to be un-biased reviewing a submission I know they are involved with than if I review a submission that they are not involved with or which I am unaware of their involvement (the reality is that I am likely to over-compensate and judge "too harshly"). I assume the same is true for at least a significant percentage (hopefully less than a majority) of Did You Know participants. If it were up to me, I would add to the "rules" that editors should try to avoid giving final approval to paged nominated by or which had significant input from editors who favorably reviewed their own contributions, realizing that sometimes low DYN participation or the need to fulfill a "quid pro quo" obligation means either doing a review even if there may be a "DYN conflict of interest" in order to avoid introducing unnecessary delays. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 19:20, 27 November 2015 (UTC)

Whisperback

Hello. You have a new message at Kudpung's talk page. 00:58, 28 November 2015 (UTC)

Tech News: 2015-49

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

The symbol for advanced news items has been changed. This is because the symbols were too similar. If a news item is for more technical readers it now looks like this: . You can give feedback on this change.

Problems

• On September 29 users' skin preferences were removed by mistake on small and medium-sized wikis. This changed preferences back to Vector. Restoring all data would cause even more problems. Affected users who want to have their preference changed back globally can ask for it as a comment on Phabricator task T119206 until December 21 2015. [1]
• Some scheduled tasks were not working properly from September to recently. This meant some pages in the special pages namespace were not updated. It has now been fixed. [2]

Changes this week

• Wikinews, Wikispecies, MediaWiki.org and Meta will be able to use information from Wikidata. [3][4]
• There are no MediaWiki deployments this week (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 1 December at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
• You can join the next meeting with the Architecture committee. The topic this week is using the <figure> tag for media. The meeting will be on 2 December at 22:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• Category watchlists are now available on test wikis and MediaWiki.org. The plan is to enable it on most wikis in January. [5]
• Cross-wiki notifications are being developed. When this is done you will not have to go to the wiki where something happened to be notified. [6]

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

16:16, 30 November 2015 (UTC)

Wikipedia Guide to Deletion

David, I thought you would be interested to know that the Wikipedia:Guide to deletion explicitly recognizes "Delete then Redirect", stating "Redirect is a recommendation to keep the article's history but to blank the content and replace it with a redirect. Users who want to see the article's history destroyed should explicitly recommend Delete then Redirect." The Guide has incorporated such guidance regarding "Delete then Redirect" since September 2005; before that, it previously included the concept of "Delete and then re-create as Redirect". Anyone who is suggesting that "Delete and redirect" !votes and outcomes are either improper or unheard does not know our well-established AfD procedures. Moreover, anyone who suggests that there is a built-in policy preference for keeping and/or restoring article history after a consensus "delete" or "delete and redirect" AfD outcome needs to do some more reading; nowhere in either WP:Deletion policy or WP:Editing policy is such a preference for the preservation of article history (as opposed to article content -- not the same thing) actually stated. The Guide to Deletion recognizes the distinction between history and content, and the validity of an !vote to delete the history. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 06:43, 1 December 2015 (UTC)

I thought I had remembered it but when I looked for that wording the other day somehow I missed it. I'm glad it was my oversight and not an oversight in the documentation. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 17:05, 1 December 2015 (UTC)

Some folks in these discussions are trying to de-legitimize "delete and redirect" AfD !votes and consensus outcomes, when in fact "delete and redirect" outcomes have been a part of our standard AfD procedures almost since the beginning. I am more than a little disturbed by the assertion of several DRV participants that they may overturn "delete" and "delete and redirect" consensus outcomes on the flimsiest of pretexts and the assertion of a non-existent policy preference for preserving article history whenever possible. WP:Editing policy and WP:Deletion policy both support the preservation of article content by fixing articles for notable subjects, or by merging content to other articles. Neither policy actually mentions article history, despite the assertions made by several discussion participants to the contrary. That's the real dispute behind these two DRVs and the RfC. Of course the RfC is so poorly organized and written that anyone who is new to the debate probably can't make heads or tails of it. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 17:18, 1 December 2015 (UTC)

The problem is visibility/education/ignorance: I've participated in many AFDs over the years and when I needed to find that document, I couldn't. You've probably already seen (or will see when you check your watchlist) that I've created a second, independent, proposal to change what is on XfD pages which should solve the visibility problem. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 17:30, 1 December 2015 (UTC)

Template:Did you know nominations/British Committee of the Indian National Congress

Please see note on your DYK review. Yoninah (talk) 21:44, 1 December 2015 (UTC)

DYK for Coexist (image)

Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 12:02, 2 December 2015 (UTC)

Hey

Hi, David. I'm curious: why did you make this statement in the DRV?

"Delete outright: 2 (including AFD nom.). Delete and redirect: 1. Redirect: 3 (including Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) who opened this DRV). Keep: 1"

As far as I can tell, RAN did not participate in the underlying AfD. Did you confuse RAN with AusLondonder or Sam Sailor? Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 16:22, 2 December 2015 (UTC)

If memory serves, I deliberately counted the editor who opened the DRV in that statistic. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 03:44, 3 December 2015 (UTC)

Well, that would explain that. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 05:59, 3 December 2015 (UTC)

Is this up your alley?

Hi,

I think you are into weird things happening at Wikipedia? If so I would appreciate your opinion on User:JohnEAllenDDS. BTW I don't watchlist. Ottawahitech (talk) 15:17, 3 December 2015 (UTC)

@Ottawahitech: I will replace the page with Template:Inactive userpage blanked. That template is used specifically to blank inactive user's user pages where there is a reason to blank them. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 16:05, 5 December 2015 (UTC)

Tech News: 2015-50

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

Recent changes

• Revision scoring will help to automatically identify bad-faith and good-faith edits. The point is to make it easier to block vandals and welcome newcomers. It currently supports Wikidata and 14 Wikipedias. [7]

Problems

• Meta was not given access to information from Wikidata last week. This will happen later. [8]

Changes this week

• You will be able to use wikilinks in Flow topic titles. [9]
• IP users will have a toolbar with links to the user talk page and user contributions. Some Wikipedias already have this feature. [10]
• You will be able to edit the graph size in the visual editor. You can either specify the size in the graph dialog or drag it to be the size you want it to be. [11]
• It will be easier to write math in the visual editor if you don't know LaTeX. You can use symbol buttons instead. [12]
• You will be able to use syntax highlighting when you write math with LaTeX in the visual editor. [13]
• UploadWizard will look a bit different. [14]
• 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 Wikipedias from 10 December. (calendar).
• New MediaWiki versions will now be on Catalan and Hebrew Wikipedia on Wednesdays. Other Wikipedias get the new MediaWiki version on Thursdays. [15]

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 8 December at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
• You can join the next meeting with the Architecture committee. The topics this week are "Graph/Graphoid/Kartographer – data storage architecture" and "Parametric JSON builder". The meeting will be on 9 December at 22:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• A new beta feature will show users links to related articles at the bottom of an article. It will not be enabled by default. [16]

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

17:53, 7 December 2015 (UTC)

Template:Boys' schools in Philadelphia

Is there a way where it can do this:

• Philadelphia mode: Shows schools in Philadelphia region in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware - does not show Pittsburgh schools
• Pennsylvania mode: Shows schools in Pennsylvania, including Philadelphia and Pittsburgh regions - does not show Delaware and NJ schools

I would also want "Pennsylvania mode" excluded if the template is used in New Jersey or Delaware schools, and likewise "Philadelphia mode" excluded when the template is used in Pittsburgh schools WhisperToMe (talk) 20:28, 7 December 2015 (UTC)

Tech News: 2015-51

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

Changes this week

• Meta will be able to use information from Wikidata. [17]
• 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 Wikipedias from 17 December. (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 15 December at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
• You can join the next meeting with the Architecture committee. The topic this week is talking about the agenda for the Wikimedia Developer Summit. The meeting will be on 16 December at 22:00 (UTC). See how to join. [18]

Future changes

• A new gadget manager will come next year. The new gadget system is called Gadgets 2.0. [19]

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

17:42, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

RfC

Please undo your closure of my RfC immediately. It was not to do with that specific editor's situation. It was a general enquiry of principle, which I was inspired to make after seeing that editor's post. Your closure, without asking me first if that was in fact my intention, was breathtakingly thoughtless and rude.  — Scott • talk 23:58, 19 December 2015 (UTC)

@Scott: Yes, it was, and I'm sorry. I've already self-reverted and apologized on the page in question. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 00:33, 20 December 2015 (UTC)

Re: Page protection

If you want to reduce it you're welcome to do so. I'm not comfortable undoing it myself due to the seriousness of the copyright and socking issues in combination (which is why I made it PC2 even though we don't technically use it; the copyright issues were being auto-accepted under the other protection levels). Wizardman 23:23, 20 December 2015 (UTC)

@Wizardman: I am not an administrator. If I took this to WP:RPP which level of protection would you recommend, semi, pc-1, full, or continuing with pc-2 with an explicit WP:IAR justification.

Note: If you are going to stick by the pc-2 recommendation, the justification would need to be so clear and compelling that you wouldn't be called on the carpet for it except by people who put the page-protection policy as categorically above the ignore-all-rules policy as it pertains to pc-2. What you said above might meet that threshold, or it might not. I don't have my "finger on the pulse" of the Wikipedia community enough to say for sure one way or the other.

If past copyright violations were easy to spot, it might be worth considering asking a few dozen copyright-fighting vandals to watchlist it then put it under semi- or pc-1 for awhile and see what happens. If they were subtle, I'm not sure if full protection would be any better, as someone could easily sneak a subtle copyvio past an admin via an edit-protected request. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 23:40, 20 December 2015 (UTC)

Heh, thought you were an admin, nvm on that part then. I'll take a closer look at it then and see what protection is better. Seeing as how a sockpuppet's edit still got through on the pc2 now that I look at it since it was subtle, sadly it looks like there's no way to actually prevent vandals from vandalizing that area. Wizardman 01:09, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

Chris Harris (Texas politician)

Hi-I notice the tag you added to the article about Chris Harris (Texas politician) being outdated. The electoral history needs to be updated up to 2011 when Harris retired. I had to removed uncited materials that were also puffed up his political career while he was in office. Many thanks-RFD (talk) 14:49, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

@RFD: it will be a day or two before I can do much, and I doubt I will be able to address the electoral history until next year. Please put a note on the talk page listing everything you see that needs to be updated. Hopefully you or someone else will beat me to the punch so the "outdated" tag can be removed. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 15:01, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

Information about the 2008 election results should be added to the article; that was the last election Harris took part in before he retired. The article will updated, Thanks-RFD (talk) 15:16, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

Tech News: 2015-52

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

Tech News

• Because of the holidays, the next issue of Tech News will be sent out on 11 January 2016.
• The writers of the technical newsletter are asking for your opinion. Did you get the information you wanted this year? Did we miss important technical news in 2015? What kind of information was too late? Please tell us! You can write in your language. Thank you!

Recent changes

• CompletionSuggester is a new suggestions algorithm for Search. It is available as a Beta feature since 17 December. (more information)
• The Multimedia team is running an A/B test for the cross-wiki upload tool. They are testing four different interfaces. The test is running from 16-23 December. (more information)

Changes this week

• There is no deployment of MediaWiki scheduled until 12 January 2016 (calendar).

Meetings

• Should administrators and other users with advanced tools need stronger passwords? You can discuss about it in a Request for Comments.
• No meeting with the VisualEditor team on 22 and 29 December, and 5 January.

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

18:29, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

Template:Bannedmeansbanned

Hello David
You took part in the TfD on this a while ago; I have opened a discussion here (and pinched a line from you; hope you don't mind) if you wish to comment. Regards, Xyl 54 (talk) 00:08, 30 December 2015 (UTC)

Vote: Alexa Brown

I made a vote on Talk:Clyde cancer cluster. I encourage you highly to vote on whether Alexa should or shouldn't have a separate article. Thanks. Philmonte101 (talk) 03:15, 30 December 2015 (UTC)

My bad

Sorry about leaving the VT token in there :) -- samtar ^whisper 16:43, 2 January 2016 (UTC)

Disambiguation link notification for January 3

Hi. Thank you for your recent edits. Wikipedia appreciates your help. We noticed though that when you edited Chirand, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Kartik. Such links are almost always unintended, since a disambiguation page is merely a list of "Did you mean..." article titles. Read the FAQ • Join us at the DPL WikiProject.

It's OK to remove this message. Also, to stop receiving these messages, follow these opt-out instructions. Thanks, DPL bot (talk) 09:00, 3 January 2016 (UTC)

Draft:American University of Malta

Could this draft be moved to the mainspace or is more work needed? Xwejnusgozo (talk) 10:19, 10 January 2016 (UTC)

I moved it to article space. It's a very good article. In fact, I'd say it belongs in GAN. Philmonte101 😊😄😞 (talk) 16:46, 10 January 2016 (UTC)

Tech News: 2016-02

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

Recent changes

• Wikimedia no longer uses visitor statistics from comScore. [20]
• You can make interactive graphs with the Graph extension. There is now a tutorial for how to do this. [21]

Problems

• Some pages do not turn in up in categories where they should be. This is because link tables are sometimes not populated. [22]

Changes this week

• The Nuke extension will work with Flow. This will make it easier to handle spam in Flow. [23]
• New file uploads will now be patrollable. [24]
• Internet Explorer 8 will no longer have JavaScript support. You will still be able to browse and edit Wikipedia if you use Internet Explorer 8, but will not be able to use some features. This can be solved by upgrading to a newer version or switching to a different browser. [25][26]

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 12 January at 20:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• URLs in the recent changes IRC feed will no longer be rewritten to unencrypted HTTP. This could be a breaking change for bots dependent on the IRC feed. [27]
• The edit tabs for the wikitext editor and the visual editor will be combined to one single edit tab. You will be able to choose which one you prefer. If you are not logged in, your choice will be saved as a cookie in your browser. You can test the single edit tab. [28][29]
• There is a beta feature that adds links to the subject on other Wikimedia projects. This works much like the links to for example Wikipedia articles in other languages. It will go out of beta testing and be enabled for everyone in January. Wikis that don't want this can decide to have it disabled. [30][31]
• The difference between "alerts" and "messages" notifications is unclear to some. The developers want feedback at the Phabricator task or on MediaWiki.org so they can make this better. You can give feedback in your language if you can't write in English.

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16:59, 11 January 2016 (UTC)

Updating Texas school district articles on those that are to be closed

Thanks for adding the update request tag. I didn't even know about that feature!

One thing I am adding in the case of the Texas districts is to make sure that the Spanish articles, in addition to the English ones, are updated as a courtesy to the Spanish speaking immigrants in the state. If someone has trouble doing this they can contact me. I can also mention some Wikipedians on ESwiki who may help:

• es:Usuaria:Rosymonterrey
• es:Usuaria:Ganímedes

Of the five districts closing, so far only LMISD has a Spanish article (I have not found sufficient Spanish documents in the other four yet that would warrant starting articles on them) WhisperToMe (talk) 17:01, 11 January 2016 (UTC)

• • Down to four because Premont ISD isn't closing after all WhisperToMe (talk) 18:27, 11 January 2016 (UTC)

Tech News: 2016-03

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

Recent changes

• You will be able to find or mark bugs and suggestions in Phabricator that are specific for your language or wiki. [32]
• Notifications have been upgraded with more detailed and easier-to-access information. See the documentation. Cross-wiki notifications will be available soon on the two test wikis. [33]

Changes this week

• The visual editor uses the TemplateData extension to make editing templates easier. You will now get a warning when you edit a TemplateData form and leave it without saving. [34]
• MediaWiki will get a new authentication and authorization system called AuthManager. This is planned to happen in a month or two. Some bots will need to change how they log in. Two new and more stable authentication methods will be available now: Owner-only OAuth credentials and bot passwords. You can read more about the change. [35]
• 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 Wikipedias from 21 January (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 19 January at 20:00 (UTC). See how to join.
• You can join the next meeting with the Architecture committee. The topic this week is governance model. The meeting will be on 20 January at 22:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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

17:56, 18 January 2016 (UTC)

Tech News: 2016-04

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

Recent changes

• You can now follow when pages are added or removed from a category on German Wikipedia. The plan is to add it to Wikimedia Commons and other Wikipedias this week. [36][37]
• Administrators can hide individual entries of a page with RevisionDelete. There is now a button to choose "all", "none" or "inverse" in Special:Log. The article history will get the same buttons soon. Wikis that have done this locally with JavaScript will be able to remove that code. [38]

Changes this week

• You will be able to see the references when you preview a section you are editing. This will happen even if there is no <references /> tag in that section. [39]
• 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).

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 26 January at 20:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• There is now an extension called ArticlePlaceholder. It can automatically generate content on Wikipedia with data from Wikidata if there is no Wikipedia article. It will have a tag to remind the reader it is not an article and ask the reader to create one. The developer is now looking for smaller Wikipedias that want to try the extension. [40]
• The OTRS system will be upgraded. The plan is to do this on 3 February at 08:00 (UTC). It will probably take 6 to 8 hours. OTRS will be down during the upgrade. [41]
• Users will soon be automatically congratulated when they reach some edit count milestones. [42]

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

16:39, 25 January 2016 (UTC)

Disruptive edits on the Electoral Systems Template

Hello Davidwr,

User:BalCoder is vandalizing the Electoral Systems Template again. Sometimes this user edits while logged out in order to avoid getting blocked due to edit-warring. Please help me police this article. Ontario Teacher BFA BEd (talk) 18:11, 31 January 2016 (UTC)

I am too busy with real life to do much editing right now. Please use the normal dispute-resolution processes. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 01:05, 2 February 2016 (UTC)

Tech News: 2016-05

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

Problems

• Sites with a wikimedia.org address were by mistake redirected to the Wikimedia Foundation wiki on 26 January. This included Meta and Wikimedia Commons. The mistake was fixed after an hour. [43]
• Some users had problems logging in and out around 22 January. Bots also had problems and edit previews did not work properly. This was because of problems related to the new component SessionManager. It was undone on 23 January. [44][45]
• Because of new problems with SessionManager the latest version of MediaWiki was removed from the Wikimedia wikis again on 31 January. The new version this week will be without SessionManager. [46]

Changes this week

• The page history will get a help link. This will go to Help:Page history on Meta. Wikis can exchange it for a link to their local pages. [47]
• Notifications will only show part of a page name if it is very long. You will also have another way to mark notifications as read. [48][49]
• The Universal Language Selector input methods are now available with the visual editor. This means many who write in non-Latin scripts can now use the visual editor. [50]
• The visual editor will now give you more tools to edit tables. You can move rows and columns in a table and copy parts of tables to make new ones. You can also copy and paste more than one cell at the same time. [51][52][53]
• The visual editor has a new warning message when you leave a page you are editing without saving. Non-English wikis might need to translate it. [54][55]
• 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).

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 2 February at 20:00 (UTC). See how to join.
• You can join the next meeting with the Architecture committee. The topic this week is expiring watch list entries. The meeting will be on 3 February at 22:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• The rest.wikimedia.org domain will be shut down. This is planned to happen in March. You should use /api/rest_v1/ at each individual project domain instead. [56]

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

21:02, 1 February 2016 (UTC)

Tech News: 2016-06

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

Recent changes

• Syntax highlighting support is now available for 53 more computer languages. [57]
• When you get a notification that an edit has been reverted, the notification now quotes part of the edit summary. [58]
• RESTBase is now using scrub_wikitext instead of scrubWikitext. [59]

Changes this week

• Wikidata will have a new data type called "math". It will be used for formulas. [60][61]
• 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).

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 9 February at 20:00 (UTC). See how to join.
• You can join the next meeting with the Architecture committee. The topic this week is per-language URLs for pages of multilingual wikis. The meeting will be on 10 February at 22:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• Other sites will be able to tell when visitors come from links on Wikipedia and other Wikimedia sites. They used to be able to do this until we started using forced HTTPS in June 2015. This is planned to happen on 15 February. [62][63]
• Wikidata will have a new data type called "external-id". It will be used for references to external resources. It will be enabled on February 16. Some properties will be changed to the new data type. [64][65][66]

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

18:58, 8 February 2016 (UTC)

Category:Closed down Wikipedia projects, activities or processes has been nominated for discussion

Category:Closed down Wikipedia projects, activities or processes, which you created, has been nominated for possible deletion, merging, or renaming. A discussion is taking place to see if it abides with the categorization guidelines. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the categories for discussion page. Thank you. DexDor ^(talk) 20:48, 10 February 2016 (UTC)

Tech News: 2016-07

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

Recent changes

• You can now edit pages on the mobile site version without JavaScript. [67]
• You can now use the Math extension to write chemistry formulas. [68]

Problems

• A few editors might have been logged in as someone else because of a bug. For security reasons everyone was logged out on 9 February. If you have seen this bug, you can report it. [69][70]

Changes this week

• There is a beta feature that adds links to the subject on other Wikimedia projects. The plan was to have it leave beta testing and be enabled for everyone in January. It will happen on 16 February instead. Wikis that don't want this can decide to have it disabled. [71][72]
• Cross-wiki notifications will be available as a beta feature on Wikidata, MediaWiki, Commons, and all Hebrew and French wikis on 19 February. [73]
• 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).

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 16 February at 20:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• The search function on Wikimedia wikis will get a completion suggester that tries to find the right pages as the user is typing. It will also recognize some typos. This will probably happen in March. It is currently in beta. [74]

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

16:16, 15 February 2016 (UTC)

Category:Current monarchies

Given your interest in Category talk:Current monarchies, please note that following Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2015_December_13#Monarchies, Category:Current monarchies is empty and tagged for deletion. Also, the new Category:Former constitutional monarchies has been tagged for conversion to a list. – Fayenatic London 20:39, 19 February 2016 (UTC)

Tech News: 2016-08

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

Recent changes

• Phabricator has been upgraded. [75][76]

Problems

• There was no new MediaWiki version last week. Changes that were planned to happen last week will happen this week instead. This is because of a bug that made saving pages take longer time. [77][78]

Changes this week

• After February 23, you can use Wikidata for inter-language links on Wikiversity. [79]

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 23 February at 20:00 (UTC). See how to join.
• You can join the next meeting with the Architecture committee. The topic this week is Assign RFCs to ArchCom shepherds. The meeting will be on 24 February at 22:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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

18:22, 22 February 2016 (UTC)

Tech News: 2016-09

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

Recent changes

• Thanks to the Graph extension and Pageview API, we now have {{Graph:PageViews}} templates that can show pageviews for any wiki page for any of the wikis. See the examples.
• The Capiunto extension is installed on test wiki. Capiunto provides flexible infobox functionality for Scribunto and generates HTML for infobox features such as headers and rows. It is designed for clean and modern infoboxes that are driven by data from Wikidata, easily usable across different language versions, and easily extensible.
• The visual editor now follows the TemplateData format setting announced in November. When you edit or add a use of a template, the wikitext will be laid out in one of the two ways. [80][81]
• The order of parameters and format defined in a template's TemplateData will be now respected. [82][83]

Changes this week

• On wikis where the visual editor is available in single edit tab mode, red links may open the visual editor instead of the wikitext editor, depending on user preferences. [84]
• Anonymous editor warning is now displayed as a warningbox for consistency in both the visual editor and the wikitext editor. [85]
• Parsoid has been updated to fit some HTML 5 specifications. [86]

Meetings

• Resigning executive director Lila Tretikov is taking questions at Knowledge Engine FAQ regarding the much talked about project. [87]
• You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 1 March at 20:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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

20:12, 29 February 2016 (UTC)

Tech News: 2016-10

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

Recent changes

• Files on Wikimedia Commons can now be 2 GB big. The old limit was 1 GB. [88]
• Welcome notifications now have a different symbol. English Wikipedia already had this one. [89]
• The Wikimedia memory cache servers in the Eqiad cluster have now been upgraded to Debian 8 (Jessie). Some users might have had to log in again because of this. [90]
• It is now easier to categorize images uploaded to Wikimedia Commons in the Commons Android app. [91]
• Bare attributes in tags now parse according to the HTML5 specifications. <pages from= to= section=1> will parse as <pages from="to=" section="1"> instead of <pages from="" to="" section="1"> as it used to. Please use <pages from="" to="" section=1> or <pages section=1> instead. This is mostly likely to affect pages on Wikisource projects. [92]

Problems

• Phabricator has been a bit unstable lately. This should be fixed now. [93]
• The PageView API shows wrong data between 23 February and 29 February for pages with special characters in their title. [94]
• The parsing change mentioned above caused a large number of pages to break, especially on Wikisource. [95]
• You may see falsely formatted edit links on both mobile and desktop devices. Mobile devices can also show incorrect formatted table of contents. This should be fixed soon. [96]
• Templates using TemplateData that were edited with the visual editor might have some problems in wikitext mode. This can be fixed by editing and saving the page by using the visual editor without making any changes. [97]

Changes this week

• Cross-wiki notifications will be enabled as a beta feature on all wikis on 10 March. You will be able to get notifications when something happens on another Wikimedia wiki. [98]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 8 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 9 March. It will be on all wikis from 10 March (calendar).
• Wikivoyages will get the Kartographer extension. Kartographer will allow <mapframe> and <maplink> tags in an article to insert an interactive map and overlay it with different markers. You can add ideas and suggestions to the Maps talk page. If you find any bugs, you can report them in Phabricator. [99]

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 8 March at 20:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• The buttons in interfaces will be simplified. Instead of white, red, green and blue buttons, in future there will only be white, red and blue ones. [100]
• The Wikimedia technical operations team plans to do some server work on 22 March. This could cause some problems, for example make it possible to read but not edit the Wikimedia wikis for a short period of time. The date for this might change. [101]

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

20:24, 7 March 2016 (UTC)

Village pump proposal that you might be interested in

We have talked in the past about why middle and elementary schools tend to be denied as separate articles. Well, you may be interested to know that I've created a proposal at the village pump for this guideline to be changed, and gave many valid reasons. You may want to join the discussion. Just wanted to let you know. Philmonte101 😊😄😞 (talk) 04:29, 10 March 2016 (UTC)

Tech News: 2016-11

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

Recent changes

• The mobile web interface no longer suggests HiDPI thumbnails. This is to take up less bandwidth on slow or expensive connections. [102]
• The search engine on wikipedia.org has been updated. [103]

Changes this week

• Wikimedia has a new backup data center in Dallas. Because of planned work on this, you will be able to read but not edit the wikis for a short period of time on both 22 March and 24 March. This could be postponed to April 18. You might lose edits if you try to save during this time. Because of a test, there will also be a couple of minutes where you can't edit the wikis on 15 March starting 07:00 UTC. You can read more about the server work. There will be more notifications and updates about this.
• Administrators and other users with advanced permissions will need to have an 8-byte long passwords. This change takes place on 15 March. Users with too short passwords will be asked to change password the next time they log in. This was decided in a discussion on Meta and is because they can use tools that can hurt the wikis. [104]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 15 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 16 March. It will be on all wikis from 17 March (calendar).
• The buttons in interfaces will be simplified. Instead of white, red, green and blue buttons, in future there will only be white, red and blue ones. [105]

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 15 March at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
• You can join the next meeting with the Architecture committee. The topics this week are backlog and thumb API. The meeting will be on 16 March at 21:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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

18:37, 14 March 2016 (UTC)