User talk:Jauerback/Archives/2024
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Administrators' newsletter – January 2024
News and updates for administrators from the past month (December 2023).
- Following the 2023 Arbitration Committee elections, the following editors have been appointed to the Arbitration Committee: Aoidh, Cabayi, Firefly, HJ Mitchell, Maxim, Sdrqaz, ToBeFree, Z1720.
- Following a motion, the Arbitration Committee rescinded the restrictions on the page name move discussions for the two Ireland pages that were enacted in June 2009.
- The arbitration case Industrial agriculture has been closed.
- The New Pages Patrol backlog drive is happening in January 2024 to reduce the backlog of articles in the new pages feed. Currently, there is a backlog of over 13,000 unreviewed articles awaiting review. Sign up here to participate!
Question RE username policy
Hi Jauerback. I was trying my hand at anti-vandalism work the other day, and per ORGNAME, I warned User:MPowered Mortgages so that they could have "the opportunity to create a new account or have their current username changed." I also didn't interpret the page they were working on in their sandbox as G11 material because I thought it was a draft that they might eventually submit via AfC, as editors with COIs are entitled to do.
Should I not have given them a chance to change their username and immediately reported the account to UAA? Should I have G11'd their sandbox page? Thanks, voorts (talk/contributions) 21:55, 5 January 2024 (UTC)
- Nope, you did nothing wrong. It's a judgement call, and in this instance, my call of it may have been incorrect. I can reblock them with a softblock which gives them the opportunity to either request a rename to their current account or create a new one. I didn't delete their sandbox, but I can certainly see why it was deleted. However, I can also see your point that could potentially turn into an article. Jauerbackdude?/dude. 22:17, 5 January 2024 (UTC)
- Thanks. Should I let the editor know they can request a refund of their draft? voorts (talk/contributions) 23:00, 5 January 2024 (UTC)
- Sure, that's fine. There's no guarantee, though. Jauerbackdude?/dude. 04:46, 6 January 2024 (UTC)
- Thanks. Should I let the editor know they can request a refund of their draft? voorts (talk/contributions) 23:00, 5 January 2024 (UTC)
The Signpost: 10 January 2024
- From the editor: NINETEEN MORE YEARS! NINETEEN MORE YEARS!
- Special report: Public Domain Day 2024
- Technology report: Wikipedia: A Multigenerational Pursuit
- News and notes: In other news ... see ya in court!
- WikiProject report: WikiProjects Israel and Palestine
- Obituary: Anthony Bradbury
- Traffic report: The most viewed articles of 2023
- Comix: Conflict resolution
You've got mail!
Message added 18:33, 12 January 2024 (UTC). It may take a few minutes from the time the email is sent for it to show up in your inbox. You can {{You've got mail}} or {{ygm}} template. at any time by removing the
Happy Adminship Anniversary!
Happy adminship anniversary! Hi Jauerback! On behalf of the Birthday Committee, I'd like to wish you a very happy anniversary of your successful request for adminship. Enjoy this special day! The Herald (Benison) (talk) 02:41, 25 January 2024 (UTC) |
The Signpost: 31 January 2024
- News and notes: Wikipedian Osama Khalid celebrated his 30th birthday in jail
- Opinion: Until it happens to you
- Disinformation report: How paid editors squeeze you dry
- Recent research: Croatian takeover was enabled by "lack of bureaucratic openness and rules constraining [admins]"
- Traffic report: DJ, gonna burn this goddamn house right down
Administrators' newsletter – February 2024
News and updates for administrators from the past month (January 2024).
- An RfC about increasing the inactivity requirement for Interface administrators is open for feedback.
- Pages that use the JSON contentmodel will now use tabs instead of spaces for auto-indentation. This will significantly reduce the page size. (T326065)
- Following a motion, the Arbitration Committee adopted a new enforcement restriction on January 4, 2024, wherein the Committee may apply the 'Reliable source consensus-required restriction' to specified topic areas.
- Community feedback is requested for a draft to replace the "Information for administrators processing requests" section at WP:AE.
- Voting in the 2024 Steward elections will begin on 06 February 2024, 14:00 (UTC) and end on 27 February 2024, 14:00 (UTC). The confirmation process of current stewards is being held in parallel. You can automatically check your eligibility to vote.
- A vote to ratify the charter for the Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee (U4C) is open till 2 February 2024, 23:59:59 (UTC) via Secure Poll. All eligible voters within the Wikimedia community have the opportunity to either support or oppose the adoption of the U4C Charter and share their reasons. The details of the voting process and voter eligibility can be found here.
- Community Tech has made some preliminary decisions about the future of the Community Wishlist Survey. In summary, they aim to develop a new, continuous intake system for community technical requests that improves prioritization, resource allocation, and communication regarding wishes. Read more
- The Unreferenced articles backlog drive is happening in February 2024 to reduce the backlog of articles tagged with {{Unreferenced}}. You can help reduce the backlog by adding citations to these articles. Sign up to participate!
The Signpost: 13 February 2024
- News and notes: Wikimedia Russia director declared "foreign agent" by Russian gov; EU prepares to pile on the papers
- Disinformation report: How low can the scammers go?
- Serendipity: Is this guy the same as the one who was a Nazi?
- Traffic report: Griselda, Nikki, Carl, Jannik and two types of football
- Crossword: Our crossword to bear
- Comix: Strongly
A barnstar for you!
The Admin's Barnstar | |
For your hard work. Ap2803002 (talk) 21:15, 14 February 2024 (UTC) |
Administrators' newsletter – March 2024
News and updates for administrators from the past month (February 2024).
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- Phase I of the 2024 RfA review is now open for participation. Editors are invited to review, comment on, and propose improvements to the requests for adminship process.
- Following an RfC, the inactivity requirement for the removal of the interface administrator right increased from 6 months to 12 months.
- The mobile site history pages now use the same HTML as the desktop history pages. (T353388)
- The 2024 appointees for the Ombuds commission are だ*ぜ, AGK, Ameisenigel, Bennylin, Daniuu, Doǵu, Emufarmers, Faendalimas, MdsShakil, Minorax, Nehaoua, Renvoy and RoySmith as members, with Vermont serving as steward-observer.
- Following the 2024 Steward Elections, the following editors have been appointed as stewards: Ajraddatz, Albertoleoncio, EPIC, JJMC89, Johannnes89, Melos and Yahya.
The Signpost: 2 March 2024
- News and notes: Wikimedia enters US Supreme court hearings as "the dolphin inadvertently caught in the net"
- Recent research: Images on Wikipedia "amplify gender bias"
- In the media: The Scottish Parliament gets involved, a wikirace on live TV, and the Foundation's CTO goes on record
- Obituary: Vami_IV
- Traffic report: Supervalentinefilmbowlday
- WikiCup report: High-scoring WikiCup first round comes to a close
Why did you block a newbie without giving warning
A few months ago I introduced User:Kuningi to Wikipedia through the SWiP project. [1] The user is a native speaker of the Setswana language, and they were editing in Setswana language Wiki, I was suprised to see that you blocked the user without giving them a warning or notification as per the blocking policy.Can we work together to unblock this user? Bobbyshabangu talk 15:54, 14 March 2024 (UTC)
- Check out their filter log entries. They have seven edits that were disallowed by the edit filter, yet they persisted. That's a pretty sufficient warning and is the exact type of behavorior that will get reported by the bots to WP:AIV. And, there is absolutely no requirement for any kind of warning as it's up to administrator judgement. If the user wishes to be unblocked, they can certainly request an unblock. Jauerbackdude?/dude. 16:41, 14 March 2024 (UTC)
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
The IP that keeps POV-pushing on the article has refused to engage on talk, and as soon as the protection expired, the page was reverted. Two editors disagree with the IP editor, and the IP also made the same addition to the Hazelwood School District page as well. This is likely not going to stop without admin intervention. 146.115.58.160 (talk) 17:39, 18 March 2024 (UTC)
- That's a misrepresentation. First, I'm engaged in talk. @146.115.58.160 That's a blatant falsehood.
- User Vladimir Hunter has been editing wildly, he's wholesale removing sections, making demands that meet his personal perspective and worse, said this as his motivation;
- "It mainly results in discussions and talking points like this (https://counter-currents.com/2024/03/white-girl-twitch-a-lot/), overwhelming racial grift. White supremacy circlejerks, to a lesser extent you get another circlejerk on the darker side of the spectrum. I was there when it made rounds on social media and it's popular solely because of the reactionary aspect. It being characterized as "Assault" first thing despite no sources saying such is also a sign most editors that know enough about it to add to it may be biased in one way or another."
- Which;
- A) claims that it's a race matter -- all by himself, assigns this motivation to others.
- B) claims that it's a cirlcejerk? What? It's international news.
- C) RE: "Assault" -- it's described as assault in NUMEROUS provided citations. Including by the local authorities (Police.)
- That whole paragraph, added by Vladimir Hunter is ITSELF wildly reactionary, unhinged and undeserving of any response. Instead, Vladimir Hunter engaged in edit-warring -- removing whole paragraphs, making wild gatekeeping claims about too many sources (after he EARLIER falsely claimed there werent sources for the word "assault" then went to say there were TOO MANY citations (and as mentioned, the lied and said the citations DIDNT say assault. MANY do. International, local and national news sources said assault.
- Then, the warring actor Vladimir Hunter removed the framing/context given by the MISSORI STATE Attorney General.
- (and yes, I did add a smaller blurb to the Hazelwood page - why wouldnt it be? It's arguably the most notable event in the history (outside the SCOTUS case) of the district.)
- (and, what does Vladimir Hunter's link prove exactly? It wasnt cited, and it seems low quality. AND, the "talking points" arent from there at all - they're nearly IDENTICAL copy from the articles cited. Like, direct quotes. The link he provided there is just wholesale misdirection - why did he provide it and then misrepresent the edits to be associted with HIS link at all? It's an attempt to confuse, and it's a misrepresentation of anything in the article.
- Why does _anyone_ think the correct action is to REMOVE the enter mention from the page? What is going on here?
- Why is an editor Vladimir Hunter -- who clearly has a radical, POV motivation -- able to gatekeep and dominate the article to his personal worldview?
24.57.55.50 (talk) 01:39, 19 March 2024 (UTC)
- Warned all three involved users/ips of Edit warring. AlphaBetaGamma (talk) 01:48, 19 March 2024 (UTC)
- They've blocked any mention at all in the article. This isnt edit warring; user Vladimir Hunter is gatekeeping the article with his preposterous POV motivation. This isnt 'equal actions' -- Vladimir Hunter is unhinged and is not fair dealing - did you read him on the talk page (also quoted above)? 24.57.55.50 (talk) 02:53, 19 March 2024 (UTC)
- As far as I can see all I see is constant reverts only made by a certain user or ip to push their views. From my view this needs a discussion before any more reverts are made. Further disruption will likely be a free AN report. User:AlphaBetaGamma (Talk/Report any mistakes here) 03:00, 19 March 2024 (UTC)
- What you see should be (because it is accurate), is one user adding content to wikipedia and a second user constantly reverting. Now the section is gone. He made unhinged claims as to what motivated his actions -- and his judgement seems to have prevailed. "As far as you can see"? Why is the section completely gone? 24.57.55.50 (talk) 11:59, 19 March 2024 (UTC)
- As far as I can see all I see is constant reverts only made by a certain user or ip to push their views. From my view this needs a discussion before any more reverts are made. Further disruption will likely be a free AN report. User:AlphaBetaGamma (Talk/Report any mistakes here) 03:00, 19 March 2024 (UTC)
- They've blocked any mention at all in the article. This isnt edit warring; user Vladimir Hunter is gatekeeping the article with his preposterous POV motivation. This isnt 'equal actions' -- Vladimir Hunter is unhinged and is not fair dealing - did you read him on the talk page (also quoted above)? 24.57.55.50 (talk) 02:53, 19 March 2024 (UTC)
Advice on focus
Hello,
Hope you are well. I have a few disparate areas of expertise, but by background I am a psychologist. Would you recommend I work on all pages I have knowledge on or stick to psyhology related pages? At least at the start as a beginner editor?
Thank you XZY5 (talk) 19:21, 27 March 2024 (UTC)
- It's always a good idea to work on what interests you. In my opinion, being an expert doesn't necessarily help, as you still need to provide reliable sources for any information that you add. Experts tend to add things, because they just "know" it's right. 03:23, 28 March 2024 (UTC) Jauerbackdude?/dude. 03:23, 28 March 2024 (UTC)
The Signpost: 29 March 2024
- Technology report: Millions of readers still seeing broken pages as "temporary" disabling of graph extension nears its second year
- Recent research: "Newcomer Homepage" feature mostly fails to boost new editors
- Traffic report: He rules over everything, on the land called planet Dune
- Humour: Letters from the editors
- Comix: Layout issue
Administrators' newsletter – April 2024
News and updates for administrators from the past month (March 2024).
- An RfC is open to convert all current and future community discretionary sanctions to (community designated) contentious topics procedure.
- The Toolforge Grid Engine services have been shut down after the final migration process from Grid Engine to Kubernetes. (T313405)
- An arbitration case has been opened to look into "the intersection of managing conflict of interest editing with the harassment (outing) policy".
- Editors are invited to sign up for The Core Contest, an initiative running from April 15 to May 31, which aims to improve vital and other core articles on Wikipedia.
Disambiguation link notification for April 3
An automated process has detected that when you recently edited The Serenity Now, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Anytown, USA.
(Opt-out instructions.) --DPL bot (talk) 06:06, 3 April 2024 (UTC)
Defunct Deaf Schools
I am curious why you keep on removing edits on Defunct deaf schools? Alumnus of those schools wants to see their schools listed there.
Thanks. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.230.141.225 (talk) 12:53, 3 April 2024 (UTC)
- Because they have to be notable to be included. Jauerbackdude?/dude. 12:57, 3 April 2024 (UTC)
- Notable need couple of sources which they do have. 72.230.141.225 (talk) 13:40, 3 April 2024 (UTC)
- If they turn into articles, then they can be added. Until then, they can wait since there is WP:NODEADLINE. Jauerbackdude?/dude. 13:46, 3 April 2024 (UTC)
- Looking at one of the drafts, it looks like it has a decent chance of making it into an article. So... when (and if) that happens, then feel free to add links to it. However, until then, you're putting the cart before the horse. No one is trying to supress you or erase deaf culture, but there is a standard of what makes it onto Wikipedia, so it's not filled with complete garbage or adverstisements. Jauerbackdude?/dude. 14:07, 3 April 2024 (UTC)
- Notable need couple of sources which they do have. 72.230.141.225 (talk) 13:40, 3 April 2024 (UTC)
Page protection
Hi, we may need page locks for the Hobbit articles against the sockpuppets. Thanks, 2601:19E:4180:6D50:65F5:930C:B0B2:CD63 (talk) 04:30, 6 April 2024 (UTC)
- Please go to WP:RPP, but you have to be more specific that that. Jauerbackdude?/dude. 11:42, 6 April 2024 (UTC)
Happy Seventeenth First Edit Day!
Happy First Edit Day!
Happy First Edit Day! Hi Jauerback! On behalf of the Birthday Committee, I'd like to wish you a very happy anniversary of the day you made your first edit and became a Wikipedian! The Herald (Benison) (talk) 20:00, 11 April 2024 (UTC) |
Changed protection of Jontay Porter
Hi, since the overwhelming amount of vandalism to Jontay Porter was coming from IP addresses, I've reduced the protection to semi-protection for now. I have no objection if it is changed to extended confirmed, but thought we should dial it back for now so that the article can grow. Thanks. - Fuzheado | Talk 19:53, 17 April 2024 (UTC)
- Totally fine with me. Jauerbackdude?/dude. 20:31, 17 April 2024 (UTC)
The Signpost: 25 April 2024
- In the media: Censorship and wikiwashing looming over RuWiki, edit wars over San Francisco politics and another wikirace on live TV
- News and notes: A sigh of relief for open access as Italy makes a slight U-turn on their cultural heritage reproduction law
- WikiConference report: WikiConference North America 2023 in Toronto recap
- WikiProject report: WikiProject Newspapers (Not WP:NOTNEWS)
- Recent research: New survey of over 100,000 Wikipedia users
- Traffic report: O.J., cricket and a three body problem
About editing the articles
I want to change the article named Rrahul Sudhir because it is missing out on some necessary information Pradnyamhatre.19 (talk) 14:22, 30 April 2024 (UTC)
- Make another request on the article's talk page stating exactly what you want changed with reliable sources to back up your proposed changes. If you do this, someone may then make the changes. Jauerbackdude?/dude. 14:39, 30 April 2024 (UTC)
Administrators' newsletter – May 2024
News and updates for administrators from the past month (April 2024).
- Phase I of the 2024 requests for adminship review has concluded. Several proposals have passed outright and will proceed to implementation, including creating a discussion-only period (3b) and administrator elections (13) on a trial basis. Other successful proposals, such as creating a reminder of civility norms (2), will undergo further refinement in Phase II. Proposals passed on a trial basis will be discussed in Phase II, after their trials conclude. Further details on specific proposals can be found in the full report.
- Partial action blocks are now in effect on the English Wikipedia. This means that administrators have the ability to restrict users from certain actions, including uploading files, moving pages and files, creating new pages, and sending thanks. T280531
- The arbitration case Conflict of interest management has been closed.
- This may be a good time to reach out to potential nominees to ask if they would consider an RfA.
- A New Pages Patrol backlog drive is happening in May 2024 to reduce the number of unreviewed articles in the new pages feed. Currently, there is a backlog of over 15,000 articles awaiting review. Sign up here to participate!
- Voting for the Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee (U4C) election is open until 9 May 2024. Read the voting page on Meta-Wiki and cast your vote here!
Thanks for blocking the user!
I have given you this barnstar for good faith. BryceM2001 (talk) 16:41, 3 May 2024 (UTC)
The Signpost: 16 May 2024
- News and notes: Democracy in action: multiple elections
- Special report: Will the new RfA reform come to the rescue of administrators?
- Arbitration report: Ruined temples for posterity to ponder over – arbitration from '22 to '24
- Comix: Generations
- Traffic report: Crawl out through the fallout, baby
The Boys (franchise)
Why are you continuously reverting my edits in The Boys (franchise)? I told you why my edits are necessary. Doctor Strange19 (talk) 14:15, 15 May 2024 (UTC)
- First of all, new talk page discussions start at the bottom of the page; not in the middle. Secondly, no edits are "necessary". You keep citing WP:IMDB and you're ignoring WP:BRD. Start a talk page discussion and get a consensus for your edits making sure they are supported by reliable sources. Jauerbackdude?/dude. 14:26, 15 May 2024 (UTC)
- Sorry for not starting it at the bottom of the page. This edit was necessary because The Boys Season 4 is in post- production, not in development. Sorry, I did not add a reliable source but now I did. Doctor Strange19 (talk) 11:43, 17 May 2024 (UTC)
- No, your edit was not necessary. There is no deadline. And, no, you did not add a source, reliable or otherwise. You may be correct, but with your current track record of dubious edits and lack of communication, I've reverted you. Feel free to discuss your proposed changes on the talk page. Make sure to include an actual source that's reliable. Jauerbackdude?/dude. 14:11, 17 May 2024 (UTC)
- Sorry for not starting it at the bottom of the page. This edit was necessary because The Boys Season 4 is in post- production, not in development. Sorry, I did not add a reliable source but now I did. Doctor Strange19 (talk) 11:43, 17 May 2024 (UTC)
Administrators' newsletter – June 2024
News and updates for administrators from the past month (May 2024).
- Phase II of the 2024 RfA review has commenced to improve and refine the proposals passed in Phase I.
- The Nuke feature, which enables administrators to mass delete pages, will now correctly delete pages which were moved to another title. T43351
- The arbitration case Venezuelan politics has been closed.
- The Committee is seeking volunteers for various roles, including access to the conflict of interest VRT queue.
- WikiProject Reliability's unsourced statements drive is happening in June 2024 to replace {{citation needed}} tags with references! Sign up here to participate!
The Signpost: 8 June 2024
- Technology report: New Page Patrol receives a much-needed software upgrade
- Deletion report: The lore of Kalloor
- In the media: National cable networks get in on the action arguing about what the first sentence of a Wikipedia article ought to say
- News from the WMF: Progress on the plan — how the Wikimedia Foundation advanced on its Annual Plan goals during the first half of fiscal year 2023-2024
- Recent research: ChatGPT did not kill Wikipedia, but might have reduced its growth
- Featured content: We didn't start the wiki
- Essay: No queerphobia
- Special report: RetractionBot is back to life!
- Traffic report: Chimps, Eurovision, and the return of the Baby Reindeer
- Comix: The Wikipediholic Family
- Concept: Palimpsestuous
Understanding "Status"
Hello Jauerback, thank you very much for introducing yourself and welcoming me to the Wiki family. I'm excited to make small contributions that over time add up to a somewhat meaningful impact to this great platform. I have a simple question. I've made a couple dozen simple edits for now and had an account for a week but no change in my user "status". It's not really a big deal to me other than I feel that perhaps haven't done something correctly in account setup and therefore status is unchanged. Perhaps I need to create a new one? or does it now take longer than 4 days and 10 edits to start seeing user status promotion? Thanks in advance for your time and answer! Tlw030772 (talk) 17:43, 12 June 2024 (UTC)
- What "status" are you referring to? The only status change that will happen is after you've had an account for 30 days and made 500 edits. That's called extendedconfirmed and that just gives you the ability to edit pages that are protected under extended confirmed protection. The vast majority of pages aren't protected, so this isn't really that big of a deal as you can edit most articles now. Jauerbackdude?/dude. 18:09, 12 June 2024 (UTC)
- Ok, are you referring to "autoconfirmed" status? That should happen automatically once you've reached 4 days and 10 edits. It's been awhile since I've dealt with that, but it might take a few more edits to take effect. Jauerbackdude?/dude. 18:17, 12 June 2024 (UTC)
- Thank you very much for your response! Yes, I was interested in confirming both user status' that you mentioned and now better understand the requirements. Have a great day! Tlw030772 (talk) 12:48, 13 June 2024 (UTC)
- Ok, are you referring to "autoconfirmed" status? That should happen automatically once you've reached 4 days and 10 edits. It's been awhile since I've dealt with that, but it might take a few more edits to take effect. Jauerbackdude?/dude. 18:17, 12 June 2024 (UTC)
Disruptive user
Hi, I know what I did was not right. But the user FMSky did exactly the same thing, and reverted all my edits. Obviously each edit he makes on Wikipedia is done with biases as can be seen here[1] or here[2](Where he lies blatantly), here[3] (Where with the excuse that I had added it to the article, false, he removed crucial content for the article). He is definitely a disruptive user (even though he has been editing Wikipedia for several years). And recently I realized that there is a similar user (Odideum), possibly a socket puppet of FMSky, that only is interested on revert my edits and comment in my talk page. I am a human being, I can have fails, but they are explicitly vandals. Hidolo (talk) 18:16, 23 June 2024 (UTC)
- As I said on your talk page, I'm not an administrator so I don't deal with vandalism, but when your edit warring includes my edits, it concerns me. I've made lots of other edits, not related to you. You can't accuse someone of being a sockpuppet just because they have similar opinions with someone else. Your edits were disruptive and everyone seems to agree with that statement. Before you judge everyone else, take a look at yourself. Odideum (talk) 18:48, 23 June 2024 (UTC)
- As you can see here[4], this user does the same type of vandalism. Hidolo (talk) 19:04, 23 June 2024 (UTC)
- Sure, I've done it one time. What's your point? That I should be blocked? I've not received a single warning and I've engaged in only one edit war. Odideum (talk) 20:15, 23 June 2024 (UTC)
- As you can see here[4], this user does the same type of vandalism. Hidolo (talk) 19:04, 23 June 2024 (UTC)
- @Hidolo: You need to read No personal attacks with your accusations of lying and vandalism. What you've linked to does not show anything to back up what you're saying. Continuing to do so will lead to a block. Jauerbackdude?/dude. 20:46, 23 June 2024 (UTC)
- Ok I'll take it into account. Where can I report my suspicion of puppet users? Can you help me please? Hidolo (talk) 20:51, 23 June 2024 (UTC)
- WP:SPI is where you want to go if you want to actually pursue that. Jauerbackdude?/dude. 20:56, 23 June 2024 (UTC)
- Ok I'll take it into account. Where can I report my suspicion of puppet users? Can you help me please? Hidolo (talk) 20:51, 23 June 2024 (UTC)
Hung Cao
I'm not sure what iteration of the Hung Cao article you deleted on 30 June 2024, but I wanted to ask you if you would summarily delete Draft:Hung Cao if it was/were moved to mainspace. The last deletion discussion was a year ago and the facts lending notability to the subject have changed since then. I supported deletion then, but as I noted in Draft talk:Hung Cao, a perusal of WP:POLITICIAN and WP:GNG guidelines does not support automatic deletion of a candidate who has not won office if the significant coverage criterion is met. If you think I'm mistaken, I won't bother with recreating it, but I'd be interested in a new AfD discussion either way. Thanks. — AjaxSmack 19:08, 30 June 2024 (UTC)
- If you're not aware, there's also another draft of the article at Draft:Hung Cao (2). The first draft that you linked to is a much better version than the one I deleted. In fact, it was an arguably worse version than the one that went through AFD. Jauerbackdude?/dude. 19:21, 30 June 2024 (UTC)
- Thanks. There's no way I can tell from the delete log (that I know of) exactly what was deleted, which is why I asked you here first. Anyway, someone else moved the draft to mainspace since my comment above, so the issue is moot. — AjaxSmack 01:39, 1 July 2024 (UTC)
Tech News: 2024-27
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
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. [5]
- 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. [6]
- 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. [7][8]
- 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. [9]
- 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.
- One new wiki has been created: a Wikipedia in Mandailing (
w:btm:
) [10]
Problems
- Editors can once again click on links within the visual editor's citation-preview, thanks to a bug fix by the Editing Team. [11]
Future changes
- Please help us to improve Tech News by taking this short survey. The goal is to better meet the needs of the various types of people who read Tech News. The survey will be open for 2 weeks. The survey is covered by this privacy statement. Some translations are available.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
The Signpost: 4 July 2024
- News and notes: WMF board elections and fundraising updates
- Special report: Wikimedia Movement Charter ratification vote underway, new Council may surpass power of Board
- In focus: How the Russian Wikipedia keeps it clean despite having just a couple dozen administrators
- Discussion report: Wikipedians are hung up on the meaning of Madonna
- In the media: War and information in war and politics
- Sister projects: On editing Wikisource
- Opinion: Etika: a Pop Culture Champion
- Gallery: Spokane Willy's photos
- Humour: A joke
- Recent research: Is Wikipedia Politically Biased? Perhaps
- Traffic report: Talking about you and me, and the games people play
Ducky Behavior
See Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/New York Show Tickets; Nytix (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · nuke contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) is trying muddy the discussion by performing a bizarre one-person black box show with 24.46.132.52 (talk · contribs · WHOIS) to argue for retaining the article, along with Nytix's talk page (already reverted). Nate • (chatter) 20:40, 3 July 2024 (UTC)
- Sorry, I wasn't around. Probably a bit stale at this point. Jauerbackdude?/dude. 14:12, 4 July 2024 (UTC)
Administrators' newsletter – July 2024
News and updates for administrators from the past month (June 2024).
- Local administrators can now add new links to the bottom of the site Tools menu without using JavaScript. Documentation is available on MediaWiki. (T6086)
- The Community Wishlist is re-opening on 15 July 2024. Read more
Disambiguation link notification for July 7
An automated process has detected that when you recently edited Louie Meadows, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Sun Devils.
(Opt-out instructions.) --DPL bot (talk) 06:07, 7 July 2024 (UTC)
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 {{You've got mail}} or {{ygm}} template. at any time by removing the
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Tech News: 2024-28
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- At the Wikimedia Foundation a new task force was formed to replace the disabled Graph with more secure, easy to use, and extensible Chart. You can subscribe to the newsletter to get notified about new project updates and other news about Chart.
- 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.
- Thank you to all of the authors who have contributed to MediaWiki Core. As a result of these contributions, the percentage of authors contributing more than 5 patches has increased by 25% since last year, which helps ensure the sustainability of the platform for the Wikimedia projects.
Problems
- 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.
Tech News survey
- Please help us to improve Tech News by taking this short survey. The goal is to better meet the needs of the various types of people who read Tech News. The survey will be open for 1 more week. The survey is covered by this privacy statement. Some translations are available.
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Hello Jauerback! Madurai Famous Jigarthanda is back as Sreelekha sanu and is promoting the same company at User:Sreelekha sanu/sandbox. – DreamRimmer (talk) 11:21, 12 July 2024 (UTC)
- Blocked. Next time use one of the boards to get a faster response. Jauerbackdude?/dude. 12:42, 12 July 2024 (UTC)
- Sure, thanks! – DreamRimmer (talk) 12:43, 12 July 2024 (UTC)
Tech News: 2024-29
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Tech News survey
- Please help us to improve Tech News by taking this short survey. The goal is to better meet the needs of the various types of people who read Tech News. The survey will be open for 3 more days. The survey is covered by this privacy statement. Some translations are available.
Recent changes
- 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.
- Editors who have access to The Wikipedia Library can once again use non-open access content in SpringerLinks, after the Foundation contacted them to restore access. You can read more about this and 21 other community-submitted tasks that were completed last week.
Changes later this week
- This week, dark mode will be available on a number of Wikipedias, both desktop and mobile, for logged-in and logged-out users. Interface admins and user script maintainers are encouraged to check gadgets and user scripts in the dark mode, to find any hard-coded colors and fix them. There are some recommendations for dark mode compatibility to help.
Future changes
- 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. [12]
- 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.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. You can also get other news from the Wikimedia Foundation Bulletin.
The Signpost: 22 July 2024
- Discussion report: Internet users flock to Wikipedia to debate its image policy over Trump raised-fist photo
- News and notes: Wikimedia community votes to ratify Movement Charter; Wikimedia Foundation opposes ratification
- Obituary: JamesR
- Crossword: Vaguely bird-shaped crossword
Tech News: 2024-30
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
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. [13]
- 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. [14]
- 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. [15]
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.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. You can also get other news from the Wikimedia Foundation Bulletin.
Tech News: 2024-31
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
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:
) [16]
Learn more
- There is a new Wikimedia Foundation data center in São Paulo, Brazil which helps to reduce load times.
- There is new user research on problems with the process of uploading images.
- Commons Impact Metrics are now available via data dumps and API.
- The latest quarterly Technical Community Newsletter is now available.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
Tech News: 2024-32
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Feature news
- Two new parser functions will be available this week:
{{#dir}}
and{{#bcp47}}
. These will reduce the need forTemplate:Dir
andTemplate: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. [17][18] - 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.
Learn more
- There will be more than 200 sessions at Wikimania this week. Here is a summary of some of the key sessions related to the product and technology area.
- The latest Wikimedia Foundation Bulletin is available.
- 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.
- The latest quarterly Growth newsletter is available.
- The latest monthly MediaWiki Product Insights newsletter is available.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
Administrators' newsletter – August 2024
News and updates for administrators from the past month (July 2024).
- Global blocks may now target accounts as well as IP's. Administrators may locally unblock when appropriate.
- 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.
- The Arbitration Committee appointed the following administrators to the conflict of interest volunteer response team: Bilby, Extraordinary Writ
You may wish to revoke TPA. Cahk (talk) 08:30, 7 August 2024 (UTC)
- I'm not really worried about one spammy comment. If it happens again, then sure. Jauerbackdude?/dude. 22:15, 8 August 2024 (UTC)
Tech News: 2024-33
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Feature news
- AbuseFilter editors and maintainers can now make a CAPTCHA show if a filter matches an edit. This allows communities to quickly respond to spamming by automated bots. [19]
- 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.
Project updates
- Nominations are open on Wikitech for new members to refresh the Toolforge standards committee. The committee oversees the Toolforge Right to fork policy and Abandoned tool policy among other duties. Nominations will remain open until at least 2024-08-26.
- One new wiki has been created: a Wikipedia in West Coast Bajau (
w:bdr:
) [20]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
Unblock rq
Hello, please unblock User talk:"jplazek" per ticket:2024080910008916. —Matrix(!) {user - talk? - uselesscontributions} 06:57, 13 August 2024 (UTC)
Apologizing for the earlier incident
As I am new to Wikipedia, by mistake I didn't understand well what I was editing. In assurance after I have review and go through tutorials, I promise I'll never repeat such thing again. I'm sorry sir Whoxein Hassan (talk) 04:42, 14 August 2024 (UTC)
Please Unblock
I'm really sorry, I humbly requesting for my account unblock. I'm feeling terribly sorry Whoxein Hassan (talk) 04:44, 14 August 2024 (UTC)
- You need to request an unblock on your original account and not create new ones to get around your block. Jauerbackdude?/dude. 12:51, 14 August 2024 (UTC)
The Signpost: 14 August 2024
- In the media: Portland pol profile paid for from public purse
- In focus: Twitter marks the spot
- News and notes: Another Wikimania has concluded.
- Special report: Nano or just nothing: Will nano go nuclear?
- Opinion: HouseBlaster's RfA debriefing
- Traffic report: Ball games, movies, elections, but nothing really weird
- Humour: I'm proud to be a template
Tech News: 2024-34
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
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. [21]
- 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 ofmw.title objects
. This enables wikis to configure workflows such as category-specific edit notices. Thanks to SD001 for these improvements. [22][23]
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 withWikipedia 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.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
Tech News: 2024-35
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
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. [24]
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:
- Community Configuration - Shaping On-Wiki Functionality Together (55 mins) - about the Community Configuration project.
- Future of MediaWiki. A sustainable platform to support a collaborative user base and billions of page views (30 mins) - an overview for both technical and non technical audiences, covering some of the challenges and open questions, related to the platform evolution, stewardship and developer experiences research.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
Administrators' newsletter – September 2024
News and updates for administrators from the past month (August 2024).
- Following an RfC, there is a new criterion for speedy deletion: C4, which
applies to unused maintenance categories, such as empty dated maintenance categories for dates in the past
. - A request for comment is open to discuss whether Notability (species) should be adopted as a subject-specific notability guideline.
- Following a motion, remedies 5.1 and 5.2 of World War II and the history of Jews in Poland (the topic and interaction bans on My very best wishes, respectively) were repealed.
- Remedy 3C of the German war effort case ("Cinderella157 German history topic ban") was suspended for a period of six months.
- The arbitration case Historical Elections is currently open. Proposed decision is expected by 3 September 2024 for this case.
- Editors can now enter into good article review circles, an alternative for informal quid pro quo arrangements, to have a GAN reviewed in return for reviewing a different editor's nomination.
- A New Pages Patrol backlog drive is happening in September 2024 to reduce the number of unreviewed articles and redirects in the new pages feed. Currently, there is a backlog of over 13,900 articles and 26,200 redirects awaiting review. Sign up here to participate!
Tech News: 2024-36
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Weekly highlight
- Editors and volunteer developers interested in data visualisation can now test the new software for charts. Its early version is available on beta Commons and beta Wikipedia. This is an important milestone before making charts available on regular wikis. You can read more about this project update and help to test the charts.
Feature news
- Editors who use the Special:UnusedTemplates page can now filter out pages which are expected to be there permanently, such as sandboxes, test-cases, and templates that are always substituted. Editors can add the new magic word
__EXPECTUNUSEDTEMPLATE__
to a template page to hide it from the listing. Thanks to Sophivorus and DannyS712 for these improvements. [25] - Editors who use the New Topic tool on discussion pages, will now be reminded to add a section header, which should help reduce the quantity of newcomers who add sections without a header. You can read more about that, and 28 other community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week.
- Last week, some Toolforge tools had occasional connection problems. The cause is still being investigated, but the problems have been resolved for now. [26]
- Translation administrators at multilingual wikis, when editing multiple translation units, can now easily mark which changes require updates to the translation. This is possible with the new dropdown menu.
Project updates
- A new draft text of a policy discussing the use of Wikimedia's APIs has been published on Meta-Wiki. The draft text does not reflect a change in policy around the APIs; instead, it is an attempt to codify existing API rules. Comments, questions, and suggestions are welcome on the proposed update’s talk page until September 13 or until those discussions have concluded.
Learn more
- 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:
- Charts, the successor of Graphs - A secure and extensible tool for data visualization (25 mins) – about the above-mentioned Charts project.
- State of Language Technology and Onboarding at Wikimedia (90 mins) – about some of the language tools that support Wikimedia sites, such as Content/Section Translation, MinT, and LanguageConverter; also the current state and future of languages onboarding. [27]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
The Signpost: 4 September 2024
- News and notes: WikiCup enters final round, MCDC wraps up activities, 17-year-old hoax article unmasked
- In the media: AI is not playing games anymore. Is Wikipedia ready?
- News from the WMF: Meet the 12 candidates running in the WMF Board of Trustees election
- Wikimania: A month after Wikimania 2024
- Serendipity: What it's like to be Wikimedian of the Year
- Traffic report: After the gold rush
Tech News: 2024-37
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Feature news
- Starting this week, the standard syntax highlighter will receive new colors that make them compatible in dark mode. This is the first of many changes to come as part of a major upgrade to syntax highlighting. You can learn more about what's to come on the help page. [28][29]
- Editors of wikis using Wikidata will now be notified of only relevant Wikidata changes in their watchlist. This is because the Lua functions
entity:getSitelink()
andmw.wikibase.getSitelink(qid)
will have their logic unified for tracking different aspects of sitelinks to reduce junk notifications from inconsistent sitelinks tracking. [30]
Project updates
- Users of all Wikis will have access to Wikimedia sites as read-only for a few minutes on September 25, starting at 15:00 UTC. This is a planned datacenter switchover for maintenance purposes. More information will be published in Tech News and will also be posted on individual wikis in the coming weeks. [31]
- Contributors of 11 Wikipedias, including English will have a new
MOS
namespace added to their Wikipedias. This improvement ensures that links beginning withMOS:
(usually shortcuts to the Manual of Style) are not broken by Mooré Wikipedia (language codemos
). [32]
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Tech News: 2024-38
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Improvements and Maintenance
- Editors interested in templates can help by reading the latest Wishlist focus area, Template recall and discovery, and share your feedback on the talkpage. This input helps the Community Tech team to decide the right technical approach to build. Everyone is also encouraged to continue adding new wishes.
- The new automated Special:NamespaceInfo page helps editors understand which namespaces exist on each wiki, and some details about how they are configured. Thanks to DannyS712 for these improvements. [33]
- References Check is a feature that encourages editors to add a citation when they add a new paragraph to a Wikipedia article. For a short time, the corresponding tag "Edit Check (references) activated" was erroneously being applied to some edits outside of the main namespace. This has been fixed. [34]
- It is now possible for a wiki community to change the order in which a page’s categories are displayed on their wiki. By default, categories are displayed in the order they appear in the wikitext. Now, wikis with a consensus to do so can request a configuration change to display them in alphabetical order. [35]
- Tool authors can now access ToolsDB's public databases from both Quarry and Superset. Those databases have always been accessible to every Toolforge user, but they are now more broadly accessible, as Quarry can be accessed by anyone with a Wikimedia account. In addition, Quarry's internal database can now be queried from Quarry itself. This database contains information about all queries that are being run and starred by users in Quarry. This information was already public through the web interface, but you can now query it using SQL. You can read more about that, and 20 other community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week.
- Any pages or tools that still use the very old CSS classes
mw-message-box
need to be updated. These old classes will be removed next week or soon afterwards. Editors can use a global-search to determine what needs to be changed. It is possible to use the newercdx-message
group of classes as a replacement (see the relevant Codex documentation, and an example update), but using locally defined onwiki classes would be best. [36]
Technical project updates
- Next week, all Wikimedia wikis will be read-only for a few minutes. This will start on September 25 at 15:00 UTC. This is a planned datacenter switchover for maintenance purposes. This maintenance process also targets other services. The previous switchover took 3 minutes, and the Site Reliability Engineering teams use many tools to make sure that this essential maintenance work happens as quickly as possible. [37]
Tech in depth
- The latest monthly MediaWiki Product Insights newsletter is available. This edition includes details about: research about hook handlers to help simplify development, research about performance improvements, work to improve the REST API for end-users, and more.
- 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:
- Hackathon Showcase (45 mins) - 19 short presentations by some of the Hackathon participants, describing some of the projects they worked on, such as automated testing of maintenance scripts, a video-cutting command line tool, and interface improvements for various tools. There are more details and links available in the Phabricator task.
- Co-Creating a Sustainable Future for the Toolforge Ecosystem (40 mins) - a roundtable discussion for tool-maintainers, users, and supporters of Toolforge about how to make the platform sustainable and how to evaluate the tools available there.
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Tech News: 2024-39
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Weekly highlight
- All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on Wednesday September 25 at 15:00 UTC. Reading the wikis will not be interrupted, but editing will be paused. These twice-yearly processes allow WMF's site reliability engineering teams to remain prepared to keep the wikis functioning even in the event of a major interruption to one of our data centers.
Updates for editors
- Editors who use the iOS Wikipedia app in Spanish, Portuguese, French, or Chinese, may see the Alt Text suggested-edit experiment after editing an article, or completing a suggested edit using "Add an image". Alt-text helps people with visual impairments to read Wikipedia articles. The team aims to learn if adding alt-text to images is a task that editors can be successful with. Please share any feedback on the discussion page.
- The Codex color palette has been updated with new and revised colors for the MediaWiki user interfaces. The most noticeable changes for editors include updates for: dark mode colors for Links and for quiet Buttons (progressive and destructive), visited Link colors for both light and dark modes, and background colors for system-messages in both light and dark modes.
- It is now possible to include clickable wikilinks and external links inside code blocks. This includes links that are used within
<syntaxhighlight>
tags and on code pages (JavaScript, CSS, Scribunto and Sanitized CSS). Uses of template syntax{{…}}
are also linked to the template page. Thanks to SD0001 for these improvements. [38] - Two bugs were fixed in the GlobalVanishRequest system by improving the logging and by removing an incorrect placeholder message. [39][40]
- View all 25 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week.
Updates for technical contributors
- From Wikimedia Enterprise:
- The API now enables 5,000 on-demand API requests per month and twice-monthly HTML snapshots freely (gratis and libre). More information on the updates and also improvements to the software development kits (SDK) are explained on the project's blog post. While Wikimedia Enterprise APIs are designed for high-volume commercial reusers, this change enables many more community use-cases to be built on the service too.
- The Snapshot API (html dumps) have added beta Structured Contents endpoints (blog post on that) as well as released two beta datasets (English and French Wikipedia) from that endpoint to Hugging Face for public use and feedback (blog post on that). These pre-parsed data sets enable new options for researchers, developers, and data scientists to use and study the content.
In depth
- The Wikidata Query Service (WDQS) is used to get answers to questions using the Wikidata data set. As Wikidata grows, we had to make a major architectural change so that WDQS could remain performant. As part of the WDQS Graph Split project, we have new SPARQL endpoints available for serving the "scholarly" and "main" subgraphs of Wikidata. The query.wikidata.org endpoint will continue to serve the full Wikidata graph until March 2025. After this date, it will only serve the main graph. For more information, please see the announcement on Wikidata.
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