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Latest comment: 4 months ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
On Wikisource there is a special page listing pages of works without corresponding scan images. Now you can use the new magic word __EXPECTWITHOUTSCANS__ to exclude certain pages (list of editions or translations of works) from that list. [1]
If you use the user-preference "Show preview without reloading the page", then the template-page feature "Preview page with this template (what's this?)" will now also work without reloading the page. [2]
Kartographer maps can now specify an alternative text via the alt= attribute. This is identical in usage to the alt= attribute in the image and gallery syntax. An exception for this feature is wikis like Wikivoyage where the miniature maps are interactive. [3]
The old Guided Tour for the "New Filters for Edit Review" feature has been removed. It was created in 2017 to show people with older accounts how the interface had changed, and has now been seen by most of the intended people. [4]
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 14 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 15 May. It will be on all wikis from 16 May (calendar). [5][6]
The Special:Search results page will now use CSS flex attributes, for better accessibility, instead of a table. If you have a gadget or script that adjusts search results, you should update your script to the new HTML structure. [7]
Future changes
In the Vector 2022 skin, main pages will be displayed at full width (like special pages). The goal is to keep the number of characters per line large enough. This is related to the coming changes to typography in Vector 2022. Learn more. [8]
Two columns of the pagelinks database table (pl_namespace and pl_title) are being dropped soon. Users must use two columns of the new linktarget table instead (lt_namespace and lt_title). In your existing SQL queries:
Replace JOIN pagelinks with JOIN linktarget and pl_ with lt_ in the ON statement
Below that add JOIN pagelinks ON lt_id = pl_target_id
Latest comment: 3 months ago1 comment1 person in discussion
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 Nuke feature, which enables administrators to mass delete pages, will now correctly delete pages which were moved to another title. [11]
New changes have been made to the UploadWizard in Wikimedia Commons: the overall layout has been improved, by following new styling and spacing for the form and its fields; the headers and helper text for each of the fields was changed; the Caption field is now a required field, and there is an option for users to copy their caption into the media description. [12][13]
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 21 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 22 May. It will be on all wikis from 23 May (calendar). [14][15]
The HTML used to render all headings is being changed to improve accessibility. It will change on 22 May in some skins (Timeless, Modern, CologneBlue, Nostalgia, and Monobook). Please test gadgets on your wiki on these skins and report any related problems so that they can be resolved before this change is made in all other skins. The developers are also considering the introduction of a Gadget API for adding buttons to section titles if that would be helpful to tool creators, and would appreciate any input you have on that.
Looking these over, most seem to fall under Category:Fighting games, though honestly, this could apply to any game that has at least 1 AI opponent. The feature in question also being known as autoplay, or more commonly "demo mode". The latter is what I found most when doing a quick search.
I think you're probably right that this might be shaky ground for a stand-alone list. But I think it's info that could probably be merged to List of fighting games, or other such lists. (Maybe by use of a universal footnote for those that have the feature?)
As an aside, thinking about this further, I see that I had mentioned Category:Video game lists by technology or feature. Looking at that category now, I think it probably needs to be re-thought. It seems a catch-all, and not a very good one. I think the word "feature" is looking like it's a bad word to use for categorization, because in computer software, that can mean a very broad grouping of things. I think there probably should be a split/merge in that category's future.
@Jc37: thank you for your reply! I am currently leaning towards letting the CFD bot delete the category, and adding the contents of the category at Talk:List of fighting games for future incorporation into the list as a universal footnote. Does that work for you?HouseBlaster (he/him) 19:31, 27 May 2024 (UTC)
Latest comment: 3 months ago1 comment1 person in discussion
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
Several bugs related to the latest updates to the UploadWizard on Wikimedia Commons have been fixed. For more information, see T365107 and T365119.
In March 2024 a new addPortlet API was added to allow gadgets to create new portlets (menus) in the skin. In certain skins this can be used to create dropdowns. Gadget developers are invited to try it and give feedback.
Some CSS in the Minerva skin has been removed to enable easier community configuration. Interface editors should check the rendering on mobile devices for aspects related to the classes: .collapsible, .multicol, .reflist, .coordinates, .topicon. Further details are available on replacement CSS if it is needed.
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 28 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 29 May. It will be on all wikis from 30 May (calendar). [16][17]
When you visit a wiki where you don't yet have a local account, local rules such as edit filters can sometimes prevent your account from being created. Starting this week, MediaWiki takes your global rights into account when evaluating whether you can override such local rules. [18]
Latest comment: 3 months ago4 comments2 people in discussion
Hi HouseBlaster,
Did you get your Wiki name because, you work in demolition or something?
I tried submitting an article, but it got refused. Not sure if you can see what I tried to contribute
Anyway, I am trying to contribute another, If you get a chance, please take a look and I would appreciate any tips you can offer.
Thanks. --ACP Writer (talk) 04:59, 29 May 2024 (UTC)
@ACP Writer: The story of how I got my username is not that deep: it is the pseudonym I came up with when I was around 8 years old. (I registered for Wikipedia many years later, but I have kept using the name.) The first thing I have to ask is if you have a conflict of interest? (A very incomplete list of why you might have a COI includes having a spouse which works at the company.) If you do, you are strongly encouraged to disclose the COI. A particularly important type of COI is paid editing, which is when you are being compensated for your edits. If you are a paid editor, you are required by the Terms of Use to disclose the paid editing. You can do so by following the instructions at Wikipedia:Paid-contribution disclosure#How to disclose. The second thing I have to ask you is to change your username. Usernames must identify you as a person, not just your role or company (you can file a request to do so at Wikipedia:Changing username/Simple). Something like "ACP John" or "Jane at ACP" is okay, but "ACP Writer" or "ACP rail" is probably not. Once you have done those two things, I would be happy to help you with the article you are trying to write! Best,HouseBlaster (he/him) 11:49, 29 May 2024 (UTC)
Thank you for the quick reply. It looks like changing the username would not be an easy thing to do because I do not have any edits under my username yet. Basically, they suggest to just open another account.
Have you ever submitted an article in which you have a COI or was paid for it? In Wikipedia, are articles written by paid writers treated fairly or the bias automatically becomes a hindrance for the article being accepted? ACP Writer (talk) 00:05, 30 May 2024 (UTC)
@ACP Writer: you would be changing your username because it violates the username policy, so they will let you rename the account. If you don't change your username, there is a chance you will be blocked from editing.
Like the vast majority of editors, I have never submitted a COI/paid article. Most of us are volunteers, just like people who volunteer at their local animal shelter or to pick up litter off the sidewalk. It is certainly harder to get an article accepted if you are paid, though I wouldn't say it is due to higher standards. Rather, people with COIs tend to write about topics which do not qualify for articles, so we are very careful to make sure that they are writing about topics which satisfy our inclusion guideline.
However, with all due respect, you are not answering my questions: do you have a conflict of interest? Are you a paid editor? HouseBlaster (he/him) 00:48, 30 May 2024 (UTC)
Feedback request: Politics, government, and law request for comment
Latest comment: 3 months ago1 comment1 person in discussion
@Marcocapelle: Reopened. I will let you explain why; if you could ping the other participants so they can respond to your comment (in all likelihood, agreeing that the nomination should be withdrawn) that would be great. Thanks,HouseBlaster (he/him) 23:02, 30 May 2024 (UTC)
Appointment as trainee clerk
Latest comment: 3 months ago3 comments3 people in discussion
Hi HouseBlaster. We have added you to the list of clerks and subscribed you to the mailing list (info: WP:AC/C#clerks-l). Welcome, and I look forward to working with you! To adjust your subscription options for the mailing list, see the link at mail:clerks-l. The mailing list works in the usual way, and the address to which new mailing list threads can be sent is clerks-llists.wikimedia.org. Useful reading for new clerks is the procedures page, WP:AC/C/P, but you will learn all the basic components of clerking on-the-job.
New clerks begin as a trainee, are listed as such at WP:AC/C#Personnel, and will remain so until they have learned all the aspects of the job. When you've finished training, which usually takes a few months (and a maximum of one year), then we'll propose to the Committee that you be made a full clerk. As a clerk, you'll need to check your e-mail regularly, as the mailing list is where the clerks co-ordinate (on-wiki co-ordination page also exists but is not used nearly as much). If you've any questions at any point of your traineeship, simply post to the mailing list.
Lastly, it might be useful if you enter your timezone into WP:AC/C#Personnel (in the same format as the other members have), so that we can estimate when we will have clerks available each day; this is, of course, at your discretion. Again, welcome! Regards, Dreamy Jazztalk to me | my contributions19:38, 30 May 2024 (UTC)
Hello, HouseBlaster,
I was an Arbitration Clerk for two years and learned a lot. I hope you find it a satisfying assignment, it's very different from other work on the Project. It all depends on how busy the Arbitration Committee is and for the past few years, it seeem like the workload has been manageable. The most important element of being an artibration clerk, I found, is finding out where all of the relevant templates are becuase much of your work involves posting templates, setting up cases and notifying editors of the status of cases. All involve templates! Good luck! LizRead!Talk!03:46, 1 June 2024 (UTC)
You can use this user right to perform maintenance, answer edit requests, and make any other simple and generally uncontroversial edits to templates, modules, and edinotices. You can also use it to enact more complex or controversial edits, after those edits are first made to a test sandbox, and their technical reliability as well as their consensus among other informed editors has been established. If you are willing to process edit requests on templates and modules, keep in mind that you are taking responsibility to ensure the edits have consensus and are technically sound.
This user right gives you access to some of Wikipedia's most important templates and modules; it is critical that you edit them wisely and that you only make edits that are backed up by consensus. It is also very important that no one else be allowed to access your account, so you should consider taking a few moments to secure your password.
If you do not want this user right, you may ask any administrator to remove it for you at any time.
If you were granted the permission on a temporary basis you will need to re-apply for the permission a few days before it expires including in your request a permalink to the discussion where it was granted and a {{ping}} for the administrator who granted the permission. You can find the permalink in your rights log.
Latest comment: 3 months ago10 comments5 people in discussion
Re Template:Bridges completed in the YYY0s category header etc, rather than use "if exists", isn't it better to set a threshold year after which parent categories should exist, as in the case of Template:Synagogues completed in decade category header? That way, when e.g. a year category is created using the relevant template, it will prompt for the parent (decade category) to be created. Conversely, if a too-early decade category is (re)created against prior consensus, it would rightly not be auto-populated by year categories.
I had not realised that {{Category if exists}} is brand new – well done! – it is surprising that nobody thought of this before. I've added links to it from some similar templates.
How about extending it, or adding a version 2, with a fallback category? This could simplify e.g. Template:Fooian sportswomen.
But let's not overuse "if exists" functionality. I already reverted the first two usages in "Bridges" templates back to required parents. For such Buildings & structures templates, I recommend coding a start year instead, for the reasons stated. The start date can be determined by current usage after the CFD implementations, and explained in the documentation. – FayenaticLondon10:26, 31 May 2024 (UTC)
@Fayenatic london: I was surprised, too! Probably there is something with an opaque name, but I couldn't find it. I will look into adding a fallback option. Still not convinced that using a cutoff date is the best idea when there is no explicit consensus for a cutoff date, but also still open to being convinced. Would you object to pinging some people and asking for their opinions?HouseBlaster (he/him) 22:08, 31 May 2024 (UTC)
Even if a discussion doesn't explicitly codify it, it is determining that there isn't enough content to warrant chronology categories before a certain point - there is some reason people always end these nominations at round-number years, for example. Thus I think having a cutoff point is preferable to ifexist checking. * Pppery *it has begun...21:10, 1 June 2024 (UTC)
I don't see that as a problem, as the cutoff is chosen according to category sizes, which vary by topic. The cutoff that is coded should also be stated in the template documentation, ideally with a link to CFD where applicable. – FayenaticLondon07:45, 2 June 2024 (UTC)
I'm a big fan of category automation (e.g. Module:Category described in year as most relevant to this discussion). However, I haven't done any work related to cat maintenance/creation/deletion surrounding cutoffs.
Generally, it's better to prompt the user to confirm/create the parent cat(s), which would be obfuscated by "if exists". If "if exists" must to be used, and if it fails to display a particular parent, then it would be good to place the active category into a tracking category for followup, to decide whether or not the parent should be created and the threshold changed.
Thresholds & "if exists" could also be used together, where a category is forced above the threshold, and "if exists" used below the threshold and the active cat placed into a tracking cat for followup.
Latest comment: 3 months ago1 comment1 person in discussion
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
It is now possible for local administrators to add new links to the bottom of the site Tools menu without JavaScript. Documentation is available. [19]
The message name for the definition of the tracking category of WikiHiero has changed from "MediaWiki:Wikhiero-usage-tracking-category" to "MediaWiki:Wikihiero-usage-tracking-category". [20]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 4 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 5 June. It will be on all wikis from 6 June (calendar). [22][23]
Future changes
Next week, on wikis with the Vector 2022 skin as the default, logged-out desktop users will be able to choose between different font sizes. The default font size will also be increased for them. This is to make Wikimedia projects easier to read. Learn more.
Latest comment: 3 months ago1 comment1 person in discussion
The Invisible Barnstar
This award is given in recognition to HouseBlaster for accumulating at least 5 points during the May 2024 NPP backlog drive. Your contributions helped play a part in the 14,452 reviews completed during the drive. Thank you so much for taking part and contributing to help reduce the backlog! Hey man im josh (talk) 18:43, 6 June 2024 (UTC)
The Signpost: 8 June 2024
Latest comment: 3 months ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Latest comment: 3 months ago3 comments2 people in discussion
Per WP:BADNAC, non admins are not supposed to close discussions when the result requires admin action. Can you revert the close so an admin actually moves the page? Nickps (talk) 16:43, 9 June 2024 (UTC)
Latest comment: 3 months ago3 comments2 people in discussion
Hello, HouseBlaster,
After there is a CFD closure, please do not remove the CFD tag from the category to be deleted. If there is the CFD tag, then when an admin like me deletes the category, the deletion notice will list the relevant CFD discussion so that any interested editor can go and see the discussion. When you remove the CFD tag and just put a normal CSD tag on the page or some anonymous tag, then the CFD discussion won't be automatically listed as the reason for deletion. I regularly run a query for empty categories so if a category has been emptied after a CFD closure, there is a good chance I'll see it. But if you see me reverting an edit of yours on a CFD category, that's why I'm doing this. Thanks. LizRead!Talk!01:53, 10 June 2024 (UTC)
@Liz: hi Liz! Is there a particular category where I did that? I don't normally remove the CFD tag before adding a CSD tag (Twinkle adds the CSD tag without removing the CFD tag).HouseBlaster (he/they) 01:57, 10 June 2024 (UTC)
Latest comment: 3 months ago1 comment1 person in discussion
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 software used to render SVG files has been updated to a new version, fixing many longstanding bugs in SVG rendering. [24]
The HTML used to render all headings is being changed to improve accessibility. It was changed last week in some skins (Vector legacy and Minerva). Please test gadgets on your wiki on these skins and report any related problems so that they can be resolved before this change is made in Vector-2022. The developers are still considering the introduction of a Gadget API for adding buttons to section titles if that would be helpful to tool creators, and would appreciate any input you have on that.
The HTML markup used for citations by Parsoid changed last week. In places where Parsoid previously added the mw-reference-text class, Parsoid now also adds the reference-text class for better compatibility with the legacy parser. More details are available. [25]
Problems
There was a bug with the Content Translation interface that caused the tools menus to appear in the wrong location. This has now been fixed. [26]
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 11 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 12 June. It will be on all wikis from 13 June (calendar). [27][28]
The new version of MediaWiki includes another change to the HTML markup used for citations: Parsoid will now generate a <span class="mw-cite-backlink"> wrapper for both named and unnamed references for better compatibility with the legacy parser. Interface administrators should verify that gadgets that interact with citations are compatible with the new markup. More details are available. [29]
On multilingual wikis that use the <translate> system, there is a feature that shows potentially-outdated translations with a pink background until they are updated or confirmed. From this week, confirming translations will be logged, and there is a new user-right that can be required for confirming translations if the community requests it. [30]
Latest comment: 3 months ago4 comments2 people in discussion
Can you explain why you suggested the Category Ninety-Nines for deletion? As a new wikipedia editor, who is trying to improve the content for women's categories, I do not see why my contribution to building this new category was deleted on your suggestion? If there is some Wikipedia rule this new category violates, please let me know, I spent a lot of time to organize this information into something that was useful and applicable. Nayyn (talk) 18:29, 11 June 2024 (UTC)
Hello Nayyn! I did not suggest the category be deleted—I just "closed" the discussion as delete. The job of a "closer" is to assess the consensus in the discussion, not to choose a particular outcome. @Marcocapelle, LaundryPizza03, and Lenticel would be better equipped to tell you why they thought the category should be deleted (perhaps they would be willing to chime in?). Let me know if you have any more questions,HouseBlaster (he/they) 21:16, 11 June 2024 (UTC)
Hi, thank you for the clarification. How many people are required to determine consensus? It just seems like a limited discussion took place in a short time frame and I'm not sure the rationale that closed the category. I am still learning here, but wish to contribute meaningfully and I'm not sure why anyone would have an objection to this. Nayyn (talk) 11:04, 12 June 2024 (UTC)
@Nayyn: first, a bit of terminology: I closed the discussion, which resulted in the category being deleted. Deletion discussions on Wikipedia generally last a week, and there is no fixed number required for consensus. This section of the consensus policy which explains how consensus is determined. Four people is slightly above average participation at a deletion discussion. Now for specifics: categories are for navigation by grouping articles by their defining characteristics. In general, membership in an organization is not considered defining. Best, HouseBlaster (he/they) 16:32, 12 June 2024 (UTC)
Questions at RfA
Latest comment: 2 months ago1 comment1 person in discussion
I wouldn't race through this first burst of questions. I would take my time and use the opportunity to let !voters into my head. That's what I might do. Opinions vary. The very best wishes in your run. Good noms. Trust them if you have questions. BusterD (talk) 14:11, 16 June 2024 (UTC)
Back in late March....
Latest comment: 2 months ago2 comments2 people in discussion
Latest comment: 2 months ago1 comment1 person in discussion
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
People who attempt to add an external link in the visual editor will now receive immediate feedback if they attempt to link to a domain that a project has decided to block. Please see Edit check for more details. [31]
The dark mode beta feature is now available on category and help pages, as well as more special pages. There may be contrast issues. Please report bugs on the project talk page. [34]
Problems
Cloud Services tools were not available for 25 minutes last week. This was caused by a faulty hardware cable in the data center. [35]
Last week, styling updates were made to the Vector 2022 skin. This caused unforeseen issues with templates, hatnotes, and images. Changes to templates and hatnotes were reverted. Most issues with images were fixed. If you still see any, report them here. [36]
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 18 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 19 June. It will be on all wikis from 20 June (calendar). [37][38]
Starting June 18, the Reference Edit Check will be deployed to a new set of Wikipedias. This feature is intended to help newcomers and to assist edit-patrollers by inviting people who are adding new content to a Wikipedia article to add a citation when they do not do so themselves. During a test at 11 wikis, the number of citations added more than doubled when Reference Check was shown to people. Reference Check is community configurable. [39]
Mailing lists will be unavailable for roughly two hours on Tuesday 10:00–12:00 UTC. This is to enable migration to a new server and upgrade its software. [40]
Latest comment: 2 months ago2 comments2 people in discussion
Hi, can you please explain what the result of this discussion is based on? The result you wrote is "keep and populate", but I believe that "populate" is not what follows from the discussion, and leads to the creation of undersized categories. FromCzech (talk) 17:51, 17 June 2024 (UTC)
@FromCzech: stub templates do not always go together with stub categories. For instance, {{Mělník-geo-stub}} does not need to populate Category:Mělník geography stubs: it can be set up to feed directly into Category:Central Bohemian Region geography stubs. For that reason, we don't normally delete stub templates. (That way, we can always recreate the stub category and it will be automatically populated by simply updating the templates.) You nominated the templates for deletion, and the result was keep and populate the templates. If you wish to upmerge the categories, you can nominate them directly.HouseBlaster (he/they) 01:54, 18 June 2024 (UTC)
You've got mail!
Latest comment: 2 months ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Hello, HouseBlaster. Please check your email; you've got mail! It may take a few minutes from the time the email is sent for it to show up in your inbox. You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{You've got mail}} or {{ygm}} template.
Latest comment: 2 months ago2 comments2 people in discussion
Hi HouseBlaster, I have closed your request for adminship as successful. While your candidacy is a success, there was a non-trivial amount of opposition to your request; heeding any advice and concerns expressed would be well advised. That being said...Congratulations! As always, the administrators' reading list is worth reading and the new admin help pages are most certainly available if you feel that you might require some practice with the tools in a safe environment prior to applying them elsewhere on the project. Good luck! Acalamari02:04, 23 June 2024 (UTC)
WP:RFU Nuclear Medicine Oncology & Radiotherapy Institute Nawabshah
Latest comment: 2 months ago2 comments2 people in discussion
While you did nothing wrong here, there are a number of us who prefer to draftify restorations of soft deletes and PRODs, so that the article doesn't immediately get re-nom'd. Do a search for "draftify" on the RFU page to see how I reply to these such requests. And welcome to the RFUn! :D - UtherSRG(talk)12:00, 24 June 2024 (UTC)
Latest comment: 2 months ago1 comment1 person in discussion
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 will notice that there have been some changes to the background color of text in the diff view, and the color of the byte-change numbers, last week. These changes are intended to make text more readable in both light mode and dark mode, and are part of a larger effort to increase accessibility. You can share your comments or questions on the project talkpage. [41]
The text colors that are used for visited-links, hovered-links, and active-links, were also slightly changed last week to improve their accessibility in both light mode and dark mode. [42]
Problems
You can copy permanent links to talk page comments by clicking on a comment's timestamp. This feature did not always work when the topic title was very long and the link was used as a wikitext link. This has been fixed. Thanks to Lofhi for submitting the bug. [43]
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 25 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 26 June. It will be on all wikis from 27 June (calendar). [44][45]
Starting 26 June, all talk pages messages' timestamps will become a link at English Wikipedia, making this feature available for you to use at all wikis. This link is a permanent link to the comment. It allows users to find the comment they were linked to, even if this comment has since been moved elsewhere. You can read more about this feature on Diff or on Mediawiki.org. [46]
Latest comment: 2 months ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Good morning,
I've submitted a new renaming proposal for the above template and a number of linked ones. As you were involved in the previous discussion, I would welcome your views on the new proposal. Mdann52 (talk) 06:18, 26 June 2024 (UTC)
Latest comment: 2 months ago2 comments2 people in discussion
Hello, HouseBlaster,
I see that a bot has started emptying these categories and deleting others but the discussion hasn't been closed yet. What's up here? LizRead!Talk!02:15, 28 June 2024 (UTC)
Latest comment: 2 months ago2 comments2 people in discussion
Hello HouseBlaster.
GHeavenRubberBandMan here.
You know that little information box at the top right of every article? How do I adjust the image to take up the width of that box? Do I use the full-sized image or the thumbnail? What px value do I use?
Why doesn't the Image Size field affect anything?
I have lots of questions, but that's a good starting point.
Latest comment: 2 months ago1 comment1 person in discussion
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
Over the next three weeks, dark mode will become available for all users, both logged-in and logged-out, starting with the mobile web version. This fulfils one of the top-requested community wishes, and improves low-contrast reading and usage in low-light settings. As part of these changes, dark mode will also work on User-pages and Portals. There is more information in the latest Web team update. [47]
Logged-in users can now set global preferences for the text-size and dark-mode, thanks to a combined effort across Foundation teams. This allows Wikimedians using multiple wikis to set up a consistent reading experience easily, for example by switching between light and dark mode only once for all wikis. [48]
If you use a very old web browser some features might not work on the Wikimedia wikis. This affects Internet Explorer 11 and versions of Chrome, Firefox and Safari older than 2016. This change makes it possible to use new CSS features and to send less code to all readers. [49][50]
Wikipedia Admins can customize local wiki configuration options easily using Community Configuration. Community Configuration was created to allow communities to customize how some features work, because each language wiki has unique needs. At the moment, admins can configure Growth features on their home wikis, in order to better recruit and retain new editors. More options will be provided in the coming months. [51]
Editors interested in language issues that are related to Unicode standards, can now discuss those topics at a new conversation space in MediaWiki.org. The Wikimedia Foundation is now a member of the Unicode Consortium, and the coordination group can collaboratively review the issues discussed and, where appropriate, bring them to the attention of the Unicode Consortium.
Latest comment: 2 months ago3 comments2 people in discussion
For your recent edits re the GH to HG categories,
Hello, HouseBlaster. Please check your email; you've got mail! It may take a few minutes from the time the email is sent for it to show up in your inbox. You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{You've got mail}} or {{ygm}} template.
Local administrators can now add new links to the bottom of the site Tools menu without using JavaScript. Documentation is available on MediaWiki. (T6086)
Latest comment: 2 months ago9 comments9 people in discussion
Congrats for a successful RfA. Take it easy and use the tools wisely. Ask plenty of questions; all of the existing admins will only be too happy to give advice. Welcome to the team. Schwede6601:10, 23 June 2024 (UTC)
I'm about to leave for my vacation, but I wanted to stop by here first to say congratulations! I hope your adminship goes well. QuicoleJR (talk) 09:55, 23 June 2024 (UTC)
Can't believe I missed the RfA of another person I actually work with! Congratulations, and FWIW I would have supported you if I had been looking! – FayenaticLondon13:57, 6 July 2024 (UTC)
Tech News: 2024-28
Latest comment: 2 months ago1 comment1 person in discussion
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 CampaignEvents extension is now available on Meta-wiki, Igbo Wikipedia, and Swahili Wikipedia, and can be requested on your wiki. This extension helps in managing and making events more visible, giving Event organizers the ability to use tools like the Event registration tool. To learn more about the deployment status and how to request this extension for your wiki, visit the CampaignEvents page on Meta-wiki.
Editors using the iOS Wikipedia app who have more than 50 edits can now use the Add an Image feature. This feature presents opportunities for small but useful contributions to Wikipedia.
A problem with the color of the talkpage tabs always showing as blue, even for non-existent pages which should have been red, affecting the Vector 2022 skin, has been fixed.
Future changes
The Trust and Safety Product team wants to introduce temporary accounts with as little disruption to tools and workflows as possible. Volunteer developers, including gadget and user-script maintainers, are kindly asked to update the code of their tools and features to handle temporary accounts. The team has created documentation explaining how to do the update. Learn more.
Latest comment: 2 months ago2 comments2 people in discussion
Hello my question is why do vogue not make menthol infusion cards like Rizla and Swan I currently use Rizla to try to make my vogue cigs menthol but they’re just not as smooth as the original vogue menthe I used to be able to buy until they banned them everywhere. --Crissi708 (talk) 14:51, 9 July 2024 (UTC)
Latest comment: 2 months ago4 comments2 people in discussion
I was looking at the merge discussion for {{Cat}} and saw your note about about {{Category link/core}} saving expensive processing. Is this due to width-first evaluation of the top template resulting in fewer/no calls to the expensive function in the sub-template? Or did I misunderstand? — GhostInTheMachinetalk to me16:57, 11 July 2024 (UTC)
@GhostInTheMachine it is even more simple than that. Certain parser functions are considered WP:EXPENSIVE (i.e., computationally intensive) and therefore there is a limit of 500 "expensive" calls on any given page. {{PAGESINCAT:FOO}} is one such expensive parser function, and calling it multiple times counts as multiple expensive function calls. We can't declare a variable on a page, so to get around this we call a new "helper template" (think of calling a helper function/method in coding) with the desired "variable" as an input. It helps for the same reason you use variable to avoid calling the same function on the same inputs more than once. Cheers, HouseBlaster (he/they) 22:21, 11 July 2024 (UTC)
OK, so other way around. Evaluate the expensive function once in the parent template and pass it to the child as a template parameter so that the child can use the value multiple times — GhostInTheMachinetalk to me22:29, 11 July 2024 (UTC)
Latest comment: 2 months ago4 comments3 people in discussion
Hi HouseBlaster,
I would like to request restoration of the three professional wrestler categories that were deleted at this discussion. I didn't notice that they were lumped in there too, but pro wrestlers aren't actually sportspeople, they're actors. This has caused a problem at Category:Professional wrestlers, where there are 19th and 21st century categories but no 20th century. This has also caused Category:Male professional wrestlers and Category:Female professional wrestlers to only have a 21st century category, meaning that all of the 20th-century pro wrestlers are no longer listed as male or female due to the bot removing the deleted gender-specific century categories. Thanks, ~WikiOriginal-9~ (talk) 08:07, 13 July 2024 (UTC)
@WikiOriginal-9, technically, there is an element of sport to it. Someone from another sport can train to be a wrestler, but not all of them will be good at it. To say their not actual sportspeople is short sided and ignorant. A lot of wrestlers have transitioned from American/Canadian football (that being most of where wrestlers can from during the territory days and into the 1990s), MMA, gymnastics, etc.. Mr. C.C.Hey yo!I didn't do it!01:33, 14 July 2024 (UTC)
Tech News: 2024-29
Latest comment: 1 month ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Wikimedia developers can now officially continue to use both Gerrit and GitLab, due to a June 24 decision by the Wikimedia Foundation to support software development on both platforms. Gerrit and GitLab are both code repositories used by developers to write, review, and deploy the software code that supports the MediaWiki software that the wiki projects are built on, as well as the tools used by editors to create and improve content. This decision will safeguard the productivity of our developers and prevent problems in code review from affecting our users. More details are available in the Migration status page.
The Wikimedia Foundation seeks applicants for the Product and Technology Advisory Council (PTAC). This group will bring technical contributors and Wikimedia Foundation together to co-define a more resilient, future-proof technological platform. Council members will evaluate and consult on the movement's product and technical activities, so that we develop multi-generational projects. We are looking for a range of technical contributors across the globe, from a variety of Wikimedia projects. Please apply here by August 10.
Editors with rollback user-rights who use the Wikipedia App for Android can use the new Edit Patrol features. These features include a new feed of Recent Changes, related links such as Undo and Rollback, and the ability to create and save a personal library of user talk messages to use while patrolling. If your wiki wants to make these features available to users who do not have rollback rights but have reached a certain edit threshold, you can contact the team. You can read more about this project on Diff blog.
Next week, functionaries, volunteers maintaining tools, and software development teams are invited to test the temporary accounts feature on testwiki. Temporary accounts is a feature that will help improve privacy on the wikis. No further temporary account deployments are scheduled yet. Please share your opinions and questions on the project talk page. [56]
Editors who upload files cross-wiki, or teach other people how to do so, may wish to join a Wikimedia Commons discussion. The Commons community is discussing limiting who can upload files through the cross-wiki upload/Upload dialog feature to users auto-confirmed on Wikimedia Commons. This is due to the large amount of copyright violations uploaded this way. There is a short summary at Commons:Cross-wiki upload and discussion at Commons:Village Pump.
Latest comment: 1 month ago3 comments2 people in discussion
Hey, nice to meet you! I read a lot of literature how to write article for Wikipedia right, and what I need for it. So will do it asap, and will keep fingers crossed :) --Pitomadome (talk) 16:15, 17 July 2024 (UTC)
Latest comment: 1 month ago14 comments4 people in discussion
"However, with all due respect, you are not answering my questions: do you have a conflict of interest? Are you a paid editor? HouseBlaster (he/him) 00:48, 30 May 2024 (UTC)"
To answer your questions:
Do I have conflict of interest?
No, I believe I do not have any conflict of interest as I have no close affiliation with the company. I am not related, employed or invested in that company.
Am I a paid editor?
Yes, I work for a company which they hired to create a wiki article about them. Despite this, I told them specifically that wikipedia articles (based on my readings) are not something they can control as anyone may edit it.
As for changing the username I do not see any options offered to accomplish. Please see below a snip of myPreferences Page.
@ACP Writer: Thank you Cremastra explaining how to rename your account; their advice is correct. I will let you follow those directions before proceeding further, though I will note that being paid to edit is inherently a conflict of interest. HouseBlaster (he/they) 02:05, 21 June 2024 (UTC)
Purpose of Wikipedia:
"Wikipedia's purpose is to benefit readers by presenting information on all branches of knowledge. Hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation, it consists of freely editable content, whose articles also have numerous links to guide readers towards more information."
If the purpose can be achieved with an article that was written, why should it matter if the person was paid or not to write it? Having such an article deleted even if it did conform with Wikipedia's purpose seems... wrong. So with you or anyone's help, I am hoping it is still possible to get it up there.
@ACP Writer: paid editors have a really hard time maintaining a neutral point of view. For instance, the draft article you created contained lines like Using the same booking platform, travelers receive the convenience of booking rail and bus tickets in conjunction with flights, making it easy for travelers to connect from one mode of transportation to another. This is too promotional: we don't describe things as convenient or easy.
Anyhow, while we are waiting for a rename, we need to make sure AccessRail qualifies for an article on Wikipedia. We call this "notability", which is a bit of a misnomer: it has absolutely nothing to do with "fame" or "importance", and everything to do with coverage it has received in reliable sources. You can read the guideline at Wikipedia:Notability (organizations and companies), and you should read the entirety of the "primary criteria" section. Once you have done so, please provide a list of three or four sources which demonstrate notability. HouseBlaster (he/they) 00:12, 28 June 2024 (UTC)
Hi HouseBlaster. I've modified the article taking out the adjectives you mentioned and eliminated the last paragraph mentioning benefits to other companies. What remains is what you see below, would you please see if it is better and may be acceptable for Wikipedia. Thanks.
AccesRail, a division of ACP Rail International, markets and distributes international travel through flights, trains and buses through major airline global distribution systems (GDS(), travel agents, airlines and online platforms.
This company created a platform that provides the travelers the option of booking rail, bus and flight tickets together in one place. [1]
AccesRail Historical events:
2014-01-21: AccesRail signs agreement with Trenitalia to makes its train tickets available on the sales platforms to major airlines of the world. [1]
2020-08-18: Railway tickets becomes available through Etihad Airways [9], [10]
I have read the guideline regarding Notability (organizations and companies). It states that "A company, corporation, organization, group, product, or service is presumed notable if it has been the subject of significant coverage in multiple reliable secondary sources that are independent of the subject."
The sources I provided can be considered newspaper articles and no direct affiliation with AccesRail, so I qualify them as independent. According to the guide newspaper articles can be considered as both primary and secondary source. It seems that in order for an article to be considered as a secondary source they need to comment or provide some kind of analysis about the company. So, being neutral is out of the question. Some of them comments on AccesRail as a good thing for both clients and human transportation companies, That seems to be a comment or voiced opinion qualifying the article as a secondary source. LFTSOS (talk) 23:06, 16 July 2024 (UTC)
@LFTSOS: "Secondary source" is a non-Wikipedia term. Read our page about secondary sources for more information. Please summarize the difference between a primary source and a secondary source (you can learn either by reading Wikipedia's articles about the terms or by doing your own research) so I know you understand it. HouseBlaster (he/they) 23:16, 16 July 2024 (UTC)
I do not understand why you say that "Secondary source" is non-Wikipedia term, it is used so often in Wikipedia's guidelines. Please explain.
"Primary source" is when an information is originally introduced by a someone knowledgeable about the subject. Secondary source gives information about the Primary source which involves providing generalization, analysis, interpretation or evaluation of the original information.
The article needs to show "Notability" (based on Wikipedias's definition) to provide multiple reliable Secondary sources that are independent. Below, three sources which demonstrate notability.
Likely primary source: News release by Aeroporti de Roma or AccesRail
Contains evaluation and generalization how the Intermodal product enriches Fiumicino airport by adding rail connections to italian cities. LFTSOS (talk) 07:19, 18 July 2024 (UTC)
@LFTSOS: I said it was a non-Wikipedia term because it was not defined by Wikipedia, even though we use the term in our policies.
Your definitions are correct, nicely done!
None of those sources contribute to notability. You are correct that they are secondary, but they do not contain significant coverage independent of AccesRail. "Significant" means two or three paragraphs of information about AccesRail. Source 1 has two paragraphs which mention AccesRail, but one of those sources is only quoting someone from AccesRail, does not meet the criteria because it is not significant coverage independent of the subject. Source 2 has one sentence about AccesRail as a company, and source 3 only has one sentence about AccesRail. If there are no such sources, in this case the answer is no and there is nothing you can do to resolve this. No amount of writing, editing, carefully arranging sources, etc. can overcome a lack of notability. HouseBlaster (he/they) 02:49, 19 July 2024 (UTC)
The praise is appreciated Sifu :)
Just writing some more for clarification. Source 1 has 4 paragraphs and AccesRail is actually mentioned in all of them. I understand that the 4th paragraph can be disqualified as independent of the subject because it is mostly a quote from VP of AccesRail. The 2nd paragraph is also a quote, but from the CEO of Ethiopian Airlines. Do you consider what the CEO is saying as a primary source? Why doesn't the 1st paragraph count? Does the paragraph only count if it talking only about AccesRail?
The definition of "Significant coverage", based on Wikipedia's Notability Guideline: "addresses the topic directly and in detail, so that no original research is needed to extract the content. Significant coverage is more than a trivial mention, but it does not need to be the main topic of the source material." It does not mention anything about having a minimum number of paragraphs.LFTSOS (talk) 04:30, 19 July 2024 (UTC)
@LFTSOS: I'll start with the easy part: by two or three paragraphs, I mean two or three paragraphs worth of information about AccesRail. That amount of coverage is considered "significant". There are a bunch of asterisks, though. If there are no paragraph breaks in a source, that is fine as long as there is still significant coverage. If a source puts paragraph breaks after every sentence, we need more than two or three of those paragraphs. If there are five paragraphs but they are just rephrasing the same information, that is still not significant coverage. But most sources have paragraph breaks, and it takes two or three standard-length paragraphs to be considered significant coverage. The paragraph count is more of a lie to children which makes grasping the concept of significant coverage easier. (In this case, all three sources you presented had paragraph breaks so I opted to omit that detail.)
Thank you for pointing out that I misread source 1. Paragraph two is not independent because Ethiopian Airlines was working with AccesRail, and is thus not a third party. Paragraph 3 is not really about AccesRail, but about the benefits of the partnership provided to Ethiopian Airlines, and while it is implied that those benefits come from AccesRail's technology, the source does not make it clear what comes from AccesRail's technology and what comes from Ethiopian Airlines's technology. While we can make an educated guess, we are not allowed to use educated guesses on Wikipedia due to our strict policy against original research (that policy encompasses many things, not only going to a science lab and doing experiments yourself but also drawing conclusions from sources). Put differently: it contains coverage about the partnership, but not about AccesRail itself. Paragraph four is not independent, which leaves the single sentence in paragraph 1. Therefore, source 1 does not qualify as a source for notability purposes. And even if it did, we would need multiple sources to establish notability. Best, HouseBlaster (he/they) 04:56, 19 July 2024 (UTC)
CfD closure
Latest comment: 1 month ago4 comments2 people in discussion
@Koavf: Apologies, I thought I pinged you earlier. There was an objection on my talk page above (see § Question), noting that wrestlers are actors rather than sportspeople and that it caused a problem in Category:Professional wrestlers. I restored the categories because the discussion was already a bit of a WP:TRAINWRECK and the concerns were valid enough to merit a full discussion. Best, HouseBlaster (he/they) 02:56, 19 July 2024 (UTC)
Latest comment: 1 month ago2 comments2 people in discussion
HouseBlaster, I apologize for the previous edit. I came to your talk page to ask your thoughts on modifying my proposed policy. Instead of limiting only the nominator, what if we make the central focus the rate of article creation/nominations? This approach could help prevent issues caused by mass article creations that overload our backlog for page reviewers. It would spare editors from unnecessary headaches when they have to sift through extensive material from a single contributor. I believe editors who create thousands of articles rapidly overlook the workload they create for reviewers. Therefore, I think there should be restrictions in place.
Additionally, I'm interested to hear your opinion on the idea of allowing up to five concurrent nominations per contributor. This adjustment might be more practical and beneficial on a broader scale. I look forward to hearing your thoughts. Cheers! 🂡🂡9t521:05, 21 July 2024 (UTC)
@9t5: The premise of WP:SCOPING is that people are misus[ing] Wikipedia's guideline on assuming good faith (WP:GOODFAITH) to justify the covert harassment of another editor, but that is simply not the case. If one cannot "prove" that they are being harassed by targeted nominations, AGF says we should assume that the nominations are not targeted. That is the very premise of AGF: you need to find evidence that someone is being malicious (in this case, that they are specifically targeting you). If you can't find such evidence, AGF is not being misused as justification – it is doing exactly what it is intended to do, cautioning against assuming malicious intent. Any cap on nominations also means that editors would be forced to check who created a page, which necessarily brings the focus onto contributors rather than content.
Lugnuts (the person who created 93,000 articles) was autopatrolled for most of the time he was creating articles, so his creations did not wind up in the queue. The autopatrolled permission is the way we deal with contributors who create massive amounts of good-quality articles. If people create lots of problematic articles, we can ban them from further creation. (In Lugnuts's case, before they were site banned, they were prohibited from creating articles below a certain size to force them to spend time on each creation.) We don't need to create "asshole John rules" to respond to problematic actions by editors; we need to block/ban editors who are problematic. Best, HouseBlaster (he/they) 00:22, 22 July 2024 (UTC)
The Signpost: 22 July 2024
Latest comment: 1 month ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Latest comment: 1 month ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Feature News
Stewards can now globally block accounts. Before the change only IP addresses and IP ranges could be blocked globally. Global account blocks are useful when the blocked user should not be logged out. Global locks (a similar tool logging the user out of their account) are unaffected by this change. The new global account block feature is related to the Temporary Accounts project, which is a new type of user account that replaces IP addresses of unregistered editors that are no longer made public.
Later this week, Wikimedia site users will notice that the Interface of FlaggedRevs (also known as "Pending Changes") is improved and consistent with the rest of the MediaWiki interface and Wikimedia's design system. The FlaggedRevs interface experience on mobile and Minerva skin was inconsistent before it was fixed and ported to Codex by the WMF Growth team and some volunteers. [57]
Wikimedia site users can now submit account vanishing requests via GlobalVanishRequest. This feature is used when a contributor wishes to stop editing forever. It helps you hide your past association and edit to protect your privacy. Once processed, the account will be locked and renamed. [58]
Have you tried monitoring and addressing vandalism in Wikipedia using your phone? A Diff blog post on Patrolling features in the Mobile App highlights some of the new capabilities of the feature, including swiping through a feed of recent changes and a personal library of user talk messages for use when patrolling from your phone.
Wikimedia contributors and GLAM (galleries, libraries, archives, and museums) organisations can now learn and measure the impact Wikimedia Commons is having towards creating quality encyclopedic content using the Commons Impact Metrics analytics dashboard. The dashboard offers organizations analytics on things like monthly edits in a category, the most viewed files, and which Wikimedia articles are using Commons images. As a result of these new data dumps, GLAM organisation can more reliably measure their return on investment for programs bringing content into the digital Commons. [59]
Project Updates
Come share your ideas for improving the wikis on the newly reopened Community Wishlist. The Community Wishlist is Wikimedia’s forum for volunteers to share ideas (called wishes) to improve how the wikis work. The new version of the wishlist is always open, works with both wikitext and Visual Editor, and allows wishes in any language.
Learn more
Have you ever wondered how Wikimedia software works across over 300 languages? This is 253 languages more than the Google Chrome interface, and it's no accident. The Language and Product Localization Team at the Wikimedia Foundation supports your work by adapting all the tools and interfaces in the MediaWiki software so that contributors in our movement who translate pages and strings can translate them and have the sites in all languages. Read more about the team and their upcoming work on Diff.
How can Wikimedia build innovative and experimental products while maintaining such heavily used websites? A recent blog post by WMF staff Johan Jönsson highlights the work of the WMF Future Audience initiative, where the goal is not to build polished products but test out new ideas, such as a ChatGPT plugin and Add a Fact, to help take Wikimedia into the future.
@SupportBee: It was deleted because it was a copyright violation. To be eligible to use a photo on Wikipedia, it must be released under a license allowing for adaptation and further distribution, including for non-Wikipedia or commercial uses. I also have to ask: are you being paid to edit the biography? Do you have some other form of a conflict of interest? Best, HouseBlaster (he/they) 16:30, 22 July 2024 (UTC)
I work for Duke University where Dr. Maiken Mikkelsen is a professor and I used a photo that is already used by Duke on their website for Dr.Mikkelsen. I am not being paid to edit the biography, my intention was to provide more recent information pulled from Duke directory and Mikkelsen Lab website. SupportBee (talk) 17:26, 22 July 2024 (UTC)
Because you have a conflict of interest, you should follow these instructions. I highly recommend option 3 (disclosing on your user page. For a photo to be eligible for use on Wikipedia, it needs to be licensed appropriately by the copyright holder. Because you are not the copyright holder, the image was deleted as a copyright violation. HouseBlaster (he/they) 17:33, 22 July 2024 (UTC)
Thank you for the explanation. I've added the COI on my user page. And I will edit the article so it shows only facts, probably it's best to review other physicists wiki articles and follow those as examples. SupportBee (talk) 12:24, 23 July 2024 (UTC)
Latest comment: 1 month ago4 comments2 people in discussion
I copied Module:Automatic archive navigator to Module:Archive.[60] I needed to test something before moving the module over. Now I'd like to delete it, so that the edit history of the original module can be preserved through a normal merge. I nominated it a few hours ago, but maybe admins have passed over it because it's technical. I remember seeing your comments at TfD and hope you would be a good person to reach out to. Rjjiii (talk) 00:38, 27 July 2024 (UTC)
I have tagged it as WP:G7, which usually gets a faster response (and is the correct CSD tag in this instance, because you are the only contributor). I cannot delete it per WP:INVOLVED, but I have poked some admins to do it. Shouldn't be long now :) HouseBlaster (he/they) 00:48, 27 July 2024 (UTC)
Latest comment: 1 month ago2 comments2 people in discussion
Hi, HouseBlaster. You appear to have a doppelganger account (contribs) which you have used here. I believe you are not supposed to contribute with that account, and maybe you are supposed to mention it on your user page. If so, you can use this user box if you want, or a plain text mention. Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 00:20, 29 July 2024 (UTC)
It is mentioned on my user page (see the "about WikiMe" section of my userboxes). In that case there was no way around using that account for those edits, because for security reasons you can only move pages to .css subpages in userspace with the account which owns the userspace. (Though any account can edit them once they are in place if they use the sanitized css content model.) It is my WP:TECHALT / WP:TESTALT, both of which permit editing, in addition to being a WP:DOPPEL account. You can also see the connection if you click on User:Houseblaster, which displays an edit notice. Best, HouseBlaster (he/they) 00:30, 29 July 2024 (UTC)
Help with Italian Wiki?
Latest comment: 1 month ago4 comments3 people in discussion
Hi! I'm currently working on a Wikipedia page on the Ballet Like Water for Chocolate, and I got linked to a page for the same ballet in Italian Wikipedia. If I could read the page, I would use some of the information there, since it's already written and looks pretty good, but I can't verify anything since I can't speak the language. Any chance you can help me out with finding someone to work with? I tried looking around Italian Wikipedia, but since I can't read it I'm a little lost. ChappellRoanFan (talk) 15:50, 26 July 2024 (UTC)
Try asking individual editors at WP:EMB, which lists people who speak various languages and are willing to help translate. Best, HouseBlaster (he/they) 16:32, 26 July 2024 (UTC)
(talk page watcher) @ChappellRoanFan:, are you talking about it:Like Water for Chocolate (balletto) at it-wiki? If so, you should know that for the purposes of understanding the gist of an article in a foreign language, automatic translation tecnology offers a usually good-enough translation to get the main points, although they sometimes make awful, silly, or humorous mistakes. Nevertheless, if what you want is to see what's there and might be worth adding to our article about it, tools like Google Translate, DeepL, or ChatGPT are adequate to find out. Imho, DeepL is best if you just want to paste a paragraph or two to translate them to see what they are about. If you need to read a whole article, Google Translate can do that, if you pass the url; for example, this Google translate url will translate the Italian article for you.
That said, it depends a great deal on what you want to use the translation for: if it is for background, so you can discover what subtopics mentioned in the Italian article might be worth investigating and writing up for English Wikipedia, and then going to the Italian secondary sources and translating them so you can read and summarizing their content in your own words, that is fine, you can do that. Be sure to cite the Italian sources, the same way you would cite an English cource, if you go that route.
On the other hand, if what you want to do is translate parts of the Italian Wikipedia article into English and add it to the English Wikipedia, you can do that, too (it's specifically allowed by our Terms of use) but the rules are very different. First of all, massive parts of that article, including the entire § Plot section, are entirely unsourced, and are likely original research by some editor there, so you cannot use any of that. If you want to copy over translated portions of it that are reliably sourced according to *our* rules—not their rules—then you are allowed to do that, as long as you provide a specific edit summary every time you include translated content from that article; you can find the wording to use for translation attribution at WP:TFOLWP.
Finally, if automatic translation appears to be screwing up, I speak basic Italian, and you can try asking me on my Talk page; I should at least be able to figure out if there is a screwup or not, and believe me, they do srew up, so do not believe everything you read from automatic translation; read everything with a skeptical eye. Hope this helps! Mathglot (talk) 01:03, 29 July 2024 (UTC)
Al Blake
Latest comment: 1 month ago2 comments2 people in discussion
you edited the article for Al Blake aka Vladimir Petrov. I knew Al, he was a local here, and he passed on July 27th of this year. I'd like you to please update his article as I don't know how. Thanks! 2600:1014:B030:71DF:704A:62A8:8FBD:FBF2 (talk) 17:08, 29 July 2024 (UTC)
Latest comment: 1 month ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Feature news
Editors using the Visual Editor in languages that use non-Latin characters for numbers, such as Hindi, Manipuri and Eastern Arabic, may notice some changes in the formatting of reference numbers. This is a side effect of preparing a new sub-referencing feature, and will also allow fixing some general numbering issues in Visual Editor. If you notice any related problems on your wiki, please share details at the project talkpage.
Bugs status
Some logged-in editors were briefly unable to edit or load pages last week. These errors were mainly due to the addition of new linter rules which led to caching problems. Fixes have been applied and investigations are continuing.
Editors can use the IP Information tool to get information about IP addresses. This tool is available as a Beta Feature in your preferences. The tool was not available for a few days last week, but is now working again. Thank you to Shizhao for filing the bug report. You can read about that, and 28 other community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week.
Project updates
There are new features and improvements to Phabricator from the Release Engineering and Collaboration Services teams, and some volunteers, including: the search systems, the new task creation system, the login systems, the translation setup which has resulted in support for more languages (thanks to Pppery), and fixes for many edge-case errors. You can read details about these and other improvements in this summary.
There is an update on the Charts project. The team has decided which visualization library to use, which chart types to start focusing on, and where to store chart definitions.
One new wiki has been created: a Wikivoyage in Czech (voy:cs:) [61]
The Growth team released Community Configuration at all Wikipedias. You can access it at Special:CommunityConfiguration.
This new special page replaces Special:EditGrowthConfig. For now, all Growth features can be configured using Community Configuration. Configuration for AutoModerator (T365046) and other features will be available in the future.
We will add a new Community Configurable module to the Newcomer Homepage that will allow communities to highlight specific events, projects, campaigns, and initiatives. We have released a simple version available to beta wikis. We will conduct an A/B test at our pilot wikis using the new Metrics Platform. We still welcome community feedback on initial designs and plans, in any language at our project talk page.
As part of the Growth team 2024/2025 Annual Plan, the Growth team will explore various ways to increase the percentage of newcomers who successfully start editing.
Editing a Wikipedia page requires too much context and patience. It means many trial and error for newcomers to contribute, meaning a steeper learning curve and potential discouraging reverts. To support a new generation of volunteers, we will increase the number and availability of smaller, structured, and more task-specific editing workflows (E.g. Edit Check and Structured Tasks). The Growth team will primarily focus on Structured Tasks, while working closely with the Editing team to ensure our work integrates well with Edit Check.
Stay informed
Growth team weekly updates are available on wiki (in English) if you want to know more about our day-to-day work. If you want to receive more general updates about technical activity happening across the Wikimedia movement (including Growth work), we encourage you to subscribe to Tech News.
I am familiar with that essay, and my opinion on the essay changes like the wind. (Including while writing my response here!) The two perspectives I switch between are:
The idea is good, but it requires a lot of tact to implement without seeming sarcastic. And if it is meant to be sincere, it needs to be sincere. I don't know if I could sincerely say I was thankful for the oppose that triggered a lot of discussion, but someone else might. In other words: Good essay, just not one that would have been applicable to my situation.
It is not fair for the candidate to be responsible to police the oppose section. The candidate is going through a very stressful week; they should not have to worry about the stress of those opposing their RfA in addition. And if the response is perceived as insincere—no matter how sincere it might be—that will trigger opposes. A candidate should not feel the need to take on that burden, at best making someone else's week easier while potentially making their week that much harder. And candidate stress is a much larger problem than opposer stress. We don't have a shortage of opposers, but we do have a shortage of admins. That is not to say opposer stress is not a problem. It very much is. But it is not as large a problem as our inability to hand out more mops, and we shouldn't try to solve one problem by making a worse problem even worse. In other words: Candidates should not say "thank you" because badgering of opposes is not the candidate's problem to fix. It is up to the community to fix it.
As I click publish, I lean towards opinion 2. But as I was writing, I leaned towards opinion 1. Who knows how I will feel in five minutes. Best, HouseBlaster (he/they) 17:51, 30 July 2024 (UTC)
And if the response is perceived as insincere—no matter how sincere it might be—that will trigger opposes. Ah, the inability for vital signs / body language to come across in text. I know it well in my work.
but we do have a shortage of admins.
The community’s got tighter and tighter on what they’ll let slip, as time’s gone on. There’s also that you either die a hero (well, vanish), or live long enough to see yourself become the villain, on here. Your flaws as a human being get called to ArbCom, and that’s the end of your road, because, as an admin, you’re supposed to not make mistakes. Betacommand, Fram and BrownHairedGirl immediately spring to mind on that (although Fram’s a bit of a red herring, getting off lighter, given what triggered his ARB case) Guess you pretty much already said what I just said, it is not as large a problem as our inability to hand out more mops,
I don’t see myself ever going for the mop. I’m not smart enough. Only place I can really stand is with the gnomes.
I’ve forgotten where I was going with this, so I’ll shut up, and say that your answer made me nod my head in approval, so thank you for taking the time, and for a good answer.
Thank you for both your response and the cookie! (I made one major-in-meaning/small-in-byte-change edit: "with" became "without", which of course drastically changes the meaning of the sentence but I think you got the point I was trying to get across.) HouseBlaster (he/they) 21:10, 30 July 2024 (UTC)
Scripts++ Newsletter – Issue 25
Latest comment: 1 month ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Hey there, welcome to the 25th issue of the Wikipedia Scripts++ Newsletter, covering all our favorite new and updated user scripts since 1 March 2024. We've got a ton of wonderful editors taking back their pitchforks today. Don't worry, for they come in peace, to forcibly fix and extend existing scripts you use with sheer passion. There's so many, them forks have got what's basically their own column now! gift us with some rows before it's too late Aaron Liu (talk) 04:01, 1 August 2024 (UTC)
Got anything good? Tell us about your new, improved, old, or messed-up script here!
To a lesser extent, the same goes for PrimeHunter/Search sort. I wish someone would integrate the sorts into the sort menu instead of adding 11 portlet links.
An easily configurable script to add a link to the #p-vector-user-menu-overflow portlet with a name, target, and icon. This one should be a relatively easier one. I would do it myself, but I'm too busy rotting away on Celeste (video game).
After the ＲＩＩＪ update, Aaron Liu: Watchlyst Greybar Unsin has a dismiss button that allows you to mark an item as read in one click and cycle to the next Watchlist item.
Lordseriouspig/StatusChangerImproved is just like Enterprisey's script, except you select your status from a dropdown instead of cycling through them with a button. The WMF operates out of car-centric infrastructure anyway. Shame!
Newly maintained scripts
Aaron Liu has created Duplinks from Evad37/duplinks-alt; his fork adds a config variable to automatically highlight duplicate links on the loading of any page where the portlet link would've appeared.
Tired of staring at a bunch of filtering text and waiting for darn filter logs to load? Msz2001/AbuseFilter analyzer can parse abuse filters into a visual syntax tree and evaluate locally on-demand!
Polygnotus/DuplicateReferences finds references with the same link and displays the number of them along with a button to add the {{duplicated citations}} tag under the references section. Being lazy has never been easier!
fastest gun on the net Ponor/really-quick-block really quick add to contribution lists three buttons awesome
You need to be autoconfirmed to create an article (in your case, you meet the time requirement, so you just need to make 10 edits). In the meantime, you can check out this guide which explains how you can create a draft in "draftspace" and then request an experienced editor publish it for you. However, I will warn you that creating an article is one of the hardest tasks there is on Wikipedia. I would strongly encourage you to wait until you have made around 100 edits before trying. (And if that sounds like a lot, I can assure you that making 100 edits is much easier than creating an article!) HouseBlaster (he/they) 12:40, 1 August 2024 (UTC)
Thanks
Latest comment: 1 month ago2 comments2 people in discussion
Feature updates from the Tech News: Stewards can now globally block accounts; Wikimedia site users can now submit account vanishing requests via GlobalVanishRequest; and interface of FlaggedRevs (also known as “Pending Changes”) is improved.
This month’s Wikimedia Research Showcase highlighted the impact machine translation has on both content and readers of Wikipedia and provided interesting insights on how to overcome related challenges. Watch the recording.
The Charts project officially kicked off. The goal of this new initiative is to restore basic data visualization capabilities to the wikis. Check out the project page and follow our progress on Phabricator.
The CampaignEvents extension is now available on Meta-wiki, Arabic Wikipedia, Igbo Wikipedia, and Swahili Wikipedia, and can be requested on other wikis. This extension helps manage and make events more visible. Learn about how to request this extension.
The Campaigns Product & Programs teams have launched a consultation on WikiProjects and other forms of collaboration on the wikis. They want to understand why they work (or don’t work) for some Wikimedia communities, and they want to learn what can be done to improve the experience. Everyone is encouraged to share their feedback.
The Board of Trustees selection pre-onboarding and campaign period is open from July 25 to August 26.
Foundation Trustee Dariusz Jemelniak was appointed to the Governing Board of the European Institute of Innovation and Technology, established as part of the EU’s key funding program for research and innovation.
Latest comment: 1 month ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Feature news
Two new parser functions will be available this week: {{#dir}} and {{#bcp47}}. These will reduce the need for Template:Dir and Template:BCP47 on Commons and allow us to drop 100 million rows from the "what links here" database. Editors at any wiki that use these templates, can help by replacing the templates with these new functions. The templates at Commons will be updated during the Hackathon at Wikimania. [62][63]
Communities can request the activation of the visual editor on entire namespaces where discussions sometimes happen (for instance Wikipedia: or Wikisource: namespaces) if they understand the known limitations. For discussions, users can already use DiscussionTools in these namespaces.
The tracking category "Pages using Timeline" has been renamed to "Pages using the EasyTimeline extension" in TranslateWiki. Wikis that have created the category locally should rename their local creation to match.
Project updates
Editors who help to organize WikiProjects and similar on-wiki collaborations, are invited to share ideas and examples of successful collaborations with the Campaigns and Programs teams. You can fill out a brief survey or share your thoughts on the talkpage. The teams are particularly looking for details about successful collaborations on non-English wikis.
The new parser is being rolled out on Wikivoyage wikis over the next few months. The English Wikivoyage and Hebrew Wikivoyage were switched to Parsoid last week. For more information, see Parsoid/Parser Unification.
The latest quarterly Language and Internationalization newsletter is available. It includes: New design previews for Translatable pages; Updates about MinT for Wiki Readers; the release of Translation dumps; and more.
Latest comment: 1 month ago4 comments4 people in discussion
I just wanted to say to all of you, in a quiet place away from the main action, what a pleasure it has been collaborating with all of you on the Help page. I learned a lot, had a lot of fun, and was impressed with the quality of cooperation and the crowd-sourced improvements we managed to come up with; the whole was truly greater than the sum of the parts. I also got to know some of you better, or for the first time. Count me in next time there's an interesting project like this one. (But not right away; I need a breather to think about other things for a little while! ) Happy editing! Adding @Folly Mox, S0091, and Joe Roe:. Mathglot (talk) 05:21, 5 August 2024 (UTC)
Agreed. And thank you Mathglot in particular: you had the most authorship of the new draft, and while I have learned that statistic can be misleading, I think it is meaningful in this case. But to everyone: Thank you, thank you, thank you. HouseBlaster (he/they) 14:09, 5 August 2024 (UTC)
Back atcha Mathglot and everyone else. I did so little compared to you and the others that I am not sure I should be included but appreciate it. S0091 (talk) 19:14, 5 August 2024 (UTC)
Yes, thanks Mathglot for the kind words and all the help, and thanks everyone else pinged for a really smooth and productive collaboration! I think we did a really good job on a very important piece of guidance. It was delightful working with a smol group of editors with a shared vision, little attachment to personal preferences, and willingness not to get bogged down in process. One might almost come away with the impression we've been doing this Wikipedia thing for awhile now 😉 Folly Mox (talk) 09:05, 6 August 2024 (UTC)
Hello Maxludi, and welcome to Wikipedia! The first thing to do is gather reliable sources on the subject. Next, you summarize what they say. (A very common mistake people make is writing an article "backwards", where they write what they remember about the topic and then find reliable sources to support what they wrote. This is significantly harder than starting with the sources and then writing.) Using the VisualEditor is recommended for newer contributors, because its interface is more familiar (it works like Google Docs). We have an introductory tutorial to editing with the VisualEditor. Let me know if you have any other questions, HouseBlaster (he/they) 15:28, 3 August 2024 (UTC)
Thank you HouseBlaster. I'll work on this. If I get together responsible sources Which suggest the existing entry is insccurate or insufficient, do I send you what I've got & you take it from there? (I haven't looked at the tutorial material yet, so forgive me if my answer lies there.) 121.79.251.221 (talk) 10:10, 6 August 2024 (UTC)
First, make sure you are logged in to your account :)
Once you have the sources, you get to do the corrections. The tutorial won't tell you that, but it will tell you how to make those changes. Best, HouseBlaster (he/they) 12:19, 6 August 2024 (UTC)
Closing of Category:Female-fronted musical groups
Latest comment: 1 month ago3 comments2 people in discussion
Ok so this closed and the only reason I knew about it was because it closed and groups I was following came up on my watchlist. I understand the rational of the perfectly good close but there were only two deletes and one of the said to delete it "until if and when Wikipedia has an article with any real analysis specifically around female-fronted musical groups." Well one of the bands I follow judiciously is The Motels. That band is the definition of the term "Female-fronted musical groups" and perhaps that delete would change their mind? It has always been a band with a lead female singer surrounded by four guys playing keyboard, bass, lead guitar, and drums. many incarnations of the band but always the same lead singer, Martha Davis. She is the only lead singer on every song they ever played. She writes all the songs herself. They have had #1 hits. They have been playing since 1976 and still play today with Martha still writing and singing. I understand that Fleetwood Mac should not be in this category (I agree), but there are bands who deserve it and I never saw this listed. Could it be reopened so I can state this case? Fyunck(click) (talk) 06:23, 6 August 2024 (UTC)
And another I just thought of... The Pretenders. Chrissie Hynde was the only lead singer, formed the band, managed the band, wrote most of the songs for the band, and is the only continual member. They also still play. I feel certain that had I been able to mention these things those deletes would change their minds. Fyunck(click) (talk) 06:40, 6 August 2024 (UTC)
I am on mobile now, so I am not going to attempt to reopen it, but I am happy to reopen it to let you state your case. I will do that when I get to my computer in ~8.5 hours. HouseBlaster (he/they) 12:21, 6 August 2024 (UTC)
Administrators' newsletter – August 2024
Latest comment: 1 month ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Users wishing to permanently leave may now request "vanishing" via Special:GlobalVanishRequest. Processed requests will result in the user being renamed, their recovery email being removed, and their account being globally locked.
Latest comment: 1 month ago16 comments2 people in discussion
How do I include pictures on the right side of the article? Also, is the article on my sandbox unbiased, clear, and informative? --Luizancoelho (talk) 20:56, 18 July 2024 (UTC)
Yes, I do work for the company, but I am not receiving any additional pay for creating this article. My intention is to provide accurate and factual information about the company.
I strive to write the article impartially and without bias, focusing solely on verifiable information. Additionally, I am an intern and will be leaving the company in a month, which reduces any potential long-term conflict of interest. Luizancoelho (talk) 19:23, 19 July 2024 (UTC)
Alright, please make a disclosure on your user page by following these instructions (I highly recommend option 3, disclosing the COI on your user page). Once you have completed those steps, I will be happy to help you determine if the company qualifies for a Wikipedia article under our notability guidelines. If the company qualifies for an article, then I will be glad to help you make sure it is well-written. But because no amount of writing can fix the fact that something is not notable by Wikipedia's standards, we would both be wasting our time polishing the draft before we determine its notability. HouseBlaster (he/they) 19:36, 19 July 2024 (UTC)
Thank you for all the help so far. I am going to most likely need to edit most of the article, as I need to find better souces. Do you have any advice on searching for reliable sources for information about small companies? I had an idea from taking information from review websites, but even those seem to be written by the company themselves (except for the actual reviews) Luizancoelho (talk) 19:44, 19 July 2024 (UTC)
@Luizancoelho: Thank you for disclosing the COI! Unfortunately, most small companies do not meet our notability guidelines, which require secondary, reliable, third-party sources which contain significant coverage of the company. When and where was the company founded? I can see it there are newspaper records via The Wikipedia Library, but that is the extent to which I can help. You are right that review websites are written by the companies themselves, and the reviews left by others are not reliable sources because anyone can write anything in a review. HouseBlaster (he/they) 19:59, 19 July 2024 (UTC)
Hi HouseBlaster, how are you?
Sorry for not replying sooner. I have another question regarding credibility. Can case studies be considered credible enough for my article proposal? And is there a list of websites that are redible for wikipedia? I found quite a large number of news articles regarding the company on websites such as cyber defense magazine and business wire, and cyer defense magazine.
I am doing well; thank you for asking. How are you?
We do have a list of websites that Wikipedia reliable. (Well, the list contains websites and notes if they are generally considered reliable or not.) As for case studies, it really depends. I would have to see the studies themselves to make that determination. Would you be able to link to them? HouseBlaster (he/they) 21:25, 1 August 2024 (UTC)
These case studies were published by Ridge Security itself, meaning they are not independent of Ridge Security, meaning that they are not able to establish notability of Ridge Security. (Recall that notability is the standard of inclusion on Wikipedia, and no amount of writing can fix a lack of notability.) However, if Ridge Security is notable, these sources can be used per this policy section, with 5 caveats. Best, HouseBlaster (he/they) 21:59, 1 August 2024 (UTC)
I see. I went in depth on our case studies, and I believe two of them fall under the exception for the policy, as they were written by another company. I also wanted to ask you if crunchbase is considered a reliable source for the history behind the company. Luizancoelho (talk) 19:24, 2 August 2024 (UTC)
If they are published by your company, they are unable to be used for establishing whether your company is notable. There are no exceptions to that rule. The exceptions are for determining if we can use them in an otherwise notable article. Crunchbase is in the list I sent you; as an exercise you can look it up there ;) HouseBlaster (he/they) 19:47, 2 August 2024 (UTC)
One last question: I noticed Forbes articles are a reliable source of information (except for contributors. Does that include, or exclude council members? I have an article by Forbes that talks about our company Luizancoelho (talk) 20:58, 5 August 2024 (UTC)
@Luizancoelho: Because all of those articles were written by the co-founder of Ridge Security, they are not independent of Ridge Security, and therefore they cannot be used to support notability. The same analysis applies to the profile; it was almost certainly written by or at least in consultation with Lydia. But even if we assume that the profile is independent, it is not a significant amount of coverage of Ridge Security itself, containing only two sentences. However, they would be reliable if you can demonstrate Ridge Security is notable. HouseBlaster (he/they) 21:02, 6 August 2024 (UTC)
I want to keep working on it. I've asked the folks at Wikiproject:Beer to evaluate it; and am thinking about modeling an expansion based on today's FA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackrocks_Brewery. But I was wondering if you would have suggestions or ideas for me.
@MentholFlavoredOreo: The only thing I can see is a little bit of promotional language that could be removed (for instance, we probably shouldn't say that it is a "leading" bear company; that sounds like some corporate marketing speak). So cleaning that up would be helpful :) Let me know if you have any other questions, HouseBlaster (he/they) 18:16, 7 August 2024 (UTC)
@HouseBlaster: I'll repeat what I said on the submissions page, as you'll probably see your user talk page first: this is your debrief. It currently sits in my sandbox, so I'll add it to the report if you're okay with it. I also think it would be best if it was added by a copyeditor and not by yourself. So I'll add it to the report if you approveSvampesky (talk) 15:46, 9 August 2024 (UTC)
Latest comment: 1 month ago11 comments2 people in discussion
Thanks for the reply. Do I need permission to make edits in your userspace? I'd like to add all the templates and adjust it to fit The Signpost style. Svampesky (talk) 21:58, 8 August 2024 (UTC)
Sorted. I'll leave the rest to JPxG for approval. The submission discussion is here. I've committed to copyediting another piece for the next issue, but some of the feedback might be relevant, like avoiding the use of green quotes in favour of "standard quotation marks". Svampesky (talk) 22:38, 8 August 2024 (UTC)
@HouseBlaster: I can see on your user page that you're going away. If that means you're not going to be logging in to Wikipedia, email me with any edit requests about the piece and I'll action them. (If I'm even allowed to do that.) I'll disclose it in the edit summaries. Svampesky (talk) 18:43, 9 August 2024 (UTC)
@Svampesky: I will log on to Wikipedia from my phone from time to time, but I am normally a desktop editor and my skill at editing from my phone is limited (and who knows what the Wi-Fi will be like). So I will try, but I will fall back on email if need be. Thank you for your help :) HouseBlaster (he/they) 23:33, 9 August 2024 (UTC)
Sorted. I just need a short summary of your RfA for the 'blurb'. I think with these type of Signposts, every single aspect of content should come from the author. Svampesky (talk) 00:12, 10 August 2024 (UTC)
I hope this isn't too much trouble, but just a heads-up, a blurb usually has a bit more information about the content (and not just rewriting the title). I can give you some options if you're struggling: Content criticism was expected, bureaucratic opposes were surprising, but was supported by great nominators. And that comment.. But not always, for example it can be: It was stressful.. But it is your debrief, so you should have full editorial control over it. Svampesky (talk) 02:12, 10 August 2024 (UTC)
You can tell I have never done this before... I have chosen to emphasize a call to action (or, in this case, call to avoid taking action) against superlative questions. HouseBlaster (he/they) 02:29, 10 August 2024 (UTC)
Tech News: 2024-33
Latest comment: 1 month ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Stewards can now specify if global blocks should prevent account creation. Before this change by the Trust and Safety Product Team, all global blocks would prevent account creation. This will allow stewards to reduce the unintended side-effects of global blocks on IP addresses.
The Open Conversation with the Trustees at Wikimania hosted breakout discussions about the Movement Charter, affiliate strategy and hubs, the proposal for a Global Resource Distribution Committee (hybrid table--had streaming and is available to watch back online), the Product/Tech Advisory Council & Product/Tech priorities, building a sustainable revenue strategy for the movement: online fundraising, Wikimedia Enterprise and the Wikimedia Endowment, and responding to emerging threats to free knowledge: litigation, censorship, disinformation, and trust in an election year.
Latest comment: 25 days ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Feature news
Editors who want to re-use references but with different details such as page numbers, will be able to do so by the end of 2024, using a new sub-referencing feature. You can read more about the project and how to test the prototype.
Editors using tracking categories to identify which pages use specific extensions may notice that six of the categories have been renamed to make them more easily understood and consistent. These categories are automatically added to pages that use specialized MediaWiki extensions. The affected names are for: DynamicPageList, Kartographer, Phonos, RSS, Score, WikiHiero. Wikis that have created the category locally should rename their local creation to match. Thanks to Pppery for these improvements. [66]
Technical volunteers who edit modules and want to get a list of the categories used on a page, can now do so using the categories property of mw.title objects. This enables wikis to configure workflows such as category-specific edit notices. Thanks to SD001 for these improvements. [67][68]
Bugs status
Your help is needed to check if any pages need to be moved or deleted. A maintenance script was run to clean up unreachable pages (due to Unicode issues or introduction of new namespaces/namespace aliases). The script tried to find appropriate names for the pages (e.g. by following the Unicode changes or by moving pages whose titles on Wikipedia start with Talk:WP: so that their titles start with Wikipedia talk:), but it may have failed for some pages, and moved them to Special:PrefixIndex/T195546/ instead. Your community should check if any pages are listed there, and move them to the correct titles, or delete them if they are no longer needed. A full log (including pages for which appropriate names could be found) is available in phab:P67388.
Editors who volunteer as mentors to newcomers on their wiki are once again able to access lists of potential mentees who they can connect with to offer help and guidance. This functionality was restored thanks to a bug fix. Thank you to Mbch331 for filing the bug report. You can read about that, and 18 other community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week.
Project updates
The application deadline for the Product & Technology Advisory Council (PTAC) has been extended to September 16. Members will help by providing advice to Foundation Product and Technology leadership on short and long term plans, on complex strategic problems, and help to get feedback from more contributors and technical communities. Selected members should expect to spend roughly 5 hours per month for the Council, during the one year pilot. Please consider applying, and spread the word to volunteers you think would make a positive contribution to the committee.
Learn more
The 2024 Coolest Tool Awards were awarded at Wikimania, in seven categories. For example, one award went to the ISA Tool, used for adding structured data to files on Commons, which was recently improved during the Wiki Mentor Africa Hackathon. You can see video demonstrations of each tool at the awards page. Congratulations to this year's recipients, and thank you to all tool creators and maintainers.
The latest Wikimedia Foundation Bulletin is available, and includes some highlights from Wikimania, an upcoming Language community meeting, and other news from the movement.
Latest comment: 24 days ago3 comments2 people in discussion
Hi HouseBlaster. I thought it would be the end of it when I told them that you rejected the articles I gave for references. They gave me more articles to read hoping it would fit the criteria you gave for an article that would be considered Notable. These 3 articles are basically saying the same thing, but they are from 3 different secondary sources. Each has 2 paragraphs which provide information about AccesRail. Links are below, please let me know if they are acceptable. Thank you. LFTSOS (talk) 08:32, 21 August 2024 (UTC)
@LFTSOS: Source 1 does not contain significant coverage that is independent of the subject. It has a single sentence which talks about AccesRail, other than quotes from the VP and someone affiliated with Air India (recall that quotes from companies doing business with AccesRail are not third parties, and therefore are not considered independent). Source 2 does not contain significant coverage. There are only three sentences which talk about AccessRail as a company (except for the part which is quoting the VP, which would not be considered independent). And those sentence are not particularly full of detail: one of them just mentions AccesRail is an IATA travel partner. Source 3 has the same problems as the first two sources: two sentences about AccesRail is not significant coverage, and the quotes are not independent.
At this point, I am not going to continue helping you determine whether sources pass muster. You can do it yourself at this point, keeping in mind what I have told you about the sources you have already presented. I am a volunteer, and I am not here to help representatives of big corporations advertise the their existence. You can show your boss Wikipedia:When your boss tells you to edit Wikipedia and/or Wikipedia:Public relations and marketing, if it helps. They both explain that this is far from our first rodeo dealing with PR people, and contain our advise for editors regarding paid editing. Best, HouseBlaster (he/they) 14:42, 21 August 2024 (UTC)
New pages patrol September 2024 Backlog drive
Latest comment: 19 days ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Latest comment: 19 days ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Feature news
Administrators can now test the temporary accounts feature on test2wiki. This was done to allow cross-wiki testing of temporary accounts, for when temporary accounts switch between projects. The feature was enabled on testwiki a few weeks ago. No further temporary account deployments are scheduled yet. Temporary Accounts is a project to create a new type of user account that replaces IP addresses of unregistered editors which are no longer made public. Please share your opinions and questions on the project talk page.
Later this week, editors at wikis that use FlaggedRevs (also known as "Pending Changes") may notice that the indicators at the top of articles have changed. This change makes the system more consistent with the rest of the MediaWiki interface. [69]
Bugs status
Editors who use the 2010 wikitext editor, and use the Character Insert buttons, will no longer experience problems with the buttons adding content into the edit-summary instead of the edit-window. You can read more about that, and 26 other community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week.
Project updates
Please review and vote on Focus Areas, which are groups of wishes that share a problem. Focus Areas were created for the newly reopened Community Wishlist, which is now open year-round for submissions. The first batch of focus areas are specific to moderator workflows, around welcoming newcomers, minimizing repetitive tasks, and prioritizing tasks. Once volunteers have reviewed and voted on focus areas, the Foundation will then review and select focus areas for prioritization.
Do you have a project and are willing to provide a three (3) month mentorship for an intern? Outreachy is a twice a year program for people to participate in a paid internship that will start in December 2024 and end in early March 2025, and they need mentors and projects to work on. Projects can be focused on coding or non-coding (design, documentation, translation, research). See the Outreachy page for more details, and a list of past projects since 2013.
Learn more
If you're curious about the product and technology improvements made by the Wikimedia Foundation last year, read this recent highlights summary on Diff.
To learn more about the technology behind the Wikimedia projects, you can now watch sessions from the technology track at Wikimania 2024 on Commons. This week, check out:
Latest comment: 18 days ago4 comments3 people in discussion
Hello, HouseBlaster,
I see you closed this CFD yesterday. Today User:JJMC89 bot III created the new categories and deleted the old categories but didn't recategorized the articles and categories they contained. If you look at Category:Empty categories awaiting deletion, you can see that I've tagged some as empty categories but I don't think they should be empty, they just haven't been filled yet.
In the past, I've contacted JJMC89 about his bot when I had questions but he doesn't really get involved in its work. So, instead I thought I'd check in with you since you closed the discussion and I assumed set up the work for the bot to do. Does it sometimes do half of a job one day and finish it off another day? I used to work a lot with categories but I don't know the inner workings of closing CFDs. Thanks for any clue you can provide. LizRead!Talk!06:27, 27 August 2024 (UTC)
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 14 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 15 May. It will be on all wikis from 16 May (calendar). [5][6]
The Special:Search results page will now use CSS flex attributes, for better accessibility, instead of a table. If you have a gadget or script that adjusts search results, you should update your script to the new HTML structure. [7]
Reopened. HouseBlaster (he/him) 11:33, 15 May 2024 (UTC)
There is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. The thread is The Telegraph and trans issues. Thank you. I am informing you because you have commented on a prior RfC on a similar issue. Chess (talk) (please mention me on reply) 02:48, 27 May 2024 (UTC)
lists.wikimedia.org. Useful reading for new clerks is the procedures page, WP:AC/C/P, but you will learn all the basic components of clerking on-the-job.
.svg){kind=icon}
Self-trout. Apologies for the confusion! HouseBlaster (he/they) 02:08, 10 June 2024 (UTC)
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Newly maintained scripts
New scripts
) Happy editing! Adding @Folly Mox, S0091, and Joe Roe:. Mathglot (talk) 05:21, 5 August 2024 (UTC)
Arbitration
The redirect Wikipedia:SCIENTOLOGY has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Anyone, including you, is welcome to comment on this redirect at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2024 August 15 § Wikipedia:SCIENTOLOGY until a consensus is reached. Xeroctic (talk) 16:37, 15 August 2024 (UTC)
Please review and vote on Focus Areas, which are groups of wishes that share a problem. Focus Areas were created for the newly reopened Community Wishlist, which is now open year-round for submissions. The first batch of focus areas are specific to moderator workflows, around welcoming newcomers, minimizing repetitive tasks, and prioritizing tasks. Once volunteers have reviewed and voted on focus areas, the Foundation will then review and select focus areas for prioritization.