User talk:PaleoNeonate/Archive 5

Archive 1

←

Archive 3

Archive 4

Archive 5

Archive 6

Archive 7

→

Archive 9

Tech News: 2020-38

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

Problems

• The Wikipedia apps briefly showed pages without CSS last week. This meant they looked wrong. It was quickly fixed but cached pages without CSS were shown for a few hours. [1][2]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 15 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 16 September. It will be on all wikis from 17 September (calendar).

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

16:18, 14 September 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-39

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

Recent changes

• There is a new tag for reverted edits. For example you can see it in the recent changes feed or in the article history. It is added to edits when they have been undone, rollbacked or manually reverted to an older version of the page. [3][4]

Changes later this week

• The number of times you can do something in a period of time on wiki is limited. This could be the number of edits per minute or the number of users you email in a day. Some users are not affected by all limits because of their user rights. They could soon see the limit even if it does not affect them. [5]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 22 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 23 September. It will be on all wikis from 24 September (calendar).

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

21:26, 21 September 2020 (UTC)

Another copyvio on Biblical criticism

I am beside myself. I went to nominate for FA and ran the copyvio detector and another one came up. [[6]]. On the front page they have typed in the date 2010, but the detector has been run on this article repeatedly since 2017 and never found this article before today. Is there any way to prove when it actually went online? It is almost a total copy of my article. Pleas help. This is completely beyond my ability to deal with. Jenhawk777 (talk) 19:01, 23 September 2020 (UTC)

Okay, nevermind, got it taken care of. I hope not hearing from you doesn't mean anything bad. Please be well! Jenhawk777 (talk) 03:44, 24 September 2020 (UTC)

@Jenhawk777: I've just been too busy to be on WP regularly because of work, which is fortunately not bad news, in a way. Glad that it was confirmed to be an obvious copy, —PaleoNeonate – 14:10, 24 September 2020 (UTC)

As long as you and yours are okay I am happy you are busy. Take care Jenhawk777 (talk) 14:22, 24 September 2020 (UTC)

Neil Ferguson

• Neil Ferguson (epidemiologist) (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
• Special:Diff/967706852
• Special:Permalink/972564138#Neil Ferguson (pseudoscientist)
• Special:Permalink/972568504

Your comments appear to support pseudoscience in violation of WP:FRINGE. On Wikipedia, reliable sources are required, not blatant quackery. Supporting such nonsense drags this encyclopedia into disrepute and you do not appear to be editing to build the encyclopedia constructively (WP:SPA, WP:HERE: you are not blocked yet but that is also a valid block reason). Thanks. Arthur Sparknottle (talk) 01:56, 27 September 2020 (UTC)

@Arthur Sparknottle: Copying back part of my old comment here and readdressing it seems strange... Have you found reliable sources supporting your claims? We can't improve the article without such. Its talk page is where those should be proposed. Thanks, —PaleoNeonate – 10:18, 27 September 2020 (UTC)

What? You want someone like The Times tell you Ferguson's a quack? I thought it was quite common knowledge? [7] Arthur Sparknottle (talk) 12:21, 27 September 2020 (UTC)

That's a good start to support that his model had flaws (but again, the article's talk page is the place to make that point). Unless multiple reliable sources call someone a pseudoscientist or a quack, it would be another matter to rename the article or state so in Wikipedia's voice. In case you would like to try using standard WP procedures, requested move exists.

Another consideration was that urgent measures were necessary to flatten the curve so that health systems can hopefully cope and serve people needing ICU. Where I live it barely did despite those measures in April (and it temporarily was out of control at many other places, in New York and still is now in some US states where many people cannot be admitted and just die at home, I'm less familiar with the EU data, but I remember of the Italy and Spain crises and that some more remote places like Finland have been less affected). Also consider facts like that essential services that continued to run, like meat plants, also faced concerning contagion rates and needed to reevaluate their procedures to help... —PaleoNeonate – 18:51, 27 September 2020 (UTC)

Adding, because it may be relevant: I'm not sure for the UK, but on the American continent there used to be well funded groups working on epidemiology and preparedness for future epidemics and pandemics. Unfortunately as their budget was cut the new pandemic surfaced. It's normal that they had to continue using the established science they had about previous virii incuding influenza and that like science does, models are adapted as new data becomes available. All that takes funding and time. —PaleoNeonate – 19:02, 27 September 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-40

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

Recent changes

• Admins can now see links to diffs of deleted revisions on Special:AbuseLog. This uses the interface of Special:Undelete. [8]
• Editors are automatically added to some user groups. For example editors are added to autoconfirmed users when they have edited enough times and long enough. Abuse filters can hinder users from automatically getting user rights for a period of time. They can also remove rights user have. Wikis can now ask to change how long this period of time is for their wiki in Phabricator. It is currently five days. [9]

Problems

• Last year some abuse filters stopped working because of a new change. If they tried to use variables that were unavailable for that action they would fail. This has now been fixed. [10]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 29 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 30 September. It will be on all wikis from 1 October (calendar).

Future changes

• You can't see the language links to other language versions from the talk page or history page. They are also not shown when you edit an article. This could change. It is not decided if for example the history page should link to another history page or to the article. You can take part in the discussion in Phabricator.
• The link colours could change. This is to make the difference between links and other text more clear. You can read more in Phabricator.
• In your preferences you can choose to get different notifications on the web or by email. You will see Apps as one of the alternatives later this week. This is because the Android and iOS Wikipedia apps will use push notifications for those who want them. You can see the preferences on the test wiki. The goal is to have push notifications on Android in October and on iOS in early 2021. [11]
• You can soon put pages on your watchlist for a limited time. This could be useful if you want to watch something for a shorter time but don't want it on your watchlist forever. It now works on mediawiki.org and will come to more wikis later. You can read more and see when it will come to other wikis.
• You can see what Wikimedians think are the best new technical tools this year. You can also nominate them.

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

21:23, 28 September 2020 (UTC)

Speedy deletion nomination of Category:Books by Martin J. S. Rudwick

A tag has been placed on Category:Books by Martin J. S. Rudwick requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under section C1 of the criteria for speedy deletion, because the category has been empty for seven days or more and is not a disambiguation category, a category redirect, a featured topics category, under discussion at Categories for discussion, or a project category that by its nature may become empty on occasion.

If you think this page should not be deleted for this reason, you may contest the nomination by visiting the page and clicking the button labelled "Contest this speedy deletion". This will give you the opportunity to explain why you believe the page should not be deleted. However, be aware that once a page is tagged for speedy deletion, it may be deleted without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag from the page yourself, but do not hesitate to add information in line with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 15:59, 2 October 2020 (UTC)

It's indeed currently empty so I won't contest it, it could be recreated if Draft:Earth's Deep History is eventually accepted at WP:AFC. Thanks, —PaleoNeonate – 07:00, 3 October 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-41

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

Recent changes

• There is a new tool where you can see which home wiki users have in discussions on Meta. This can help show which communities are not part of the discussion on wikis where we make decisions that affect many other wikis.
• You can now thank users for file uploads or for changing the language of a page. [12]

Problems

• There were many errors with the new MediaWiki version last week. The new version was rolled back. Updates that should have happened last week are late. [13]
• Everyone was logged out. This was because a user reported being logged in to someone else's account. The problem should be fixed now. [14]
• Many pages have JavaScript errors. You can read more and now see a list of user scripts with errors.

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 6 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 7 October. It will be on all wikis from 8 October (calendar).
• Letters immediately after a link are shown as part of the link. For example the entire word in [[Child]]ren is linked. On Arabic wikis this works at both the start and end of a word. Previously on Arabic wikis numbers and other non-letter Unicode characters were shown as part of the link at the start of a word but not at the end. Now only Latin and Arabic letters will extend links on Arabic wikis. [15]

Future changes

• You will be able to read but not to edit the wikis for up to an hour on 27 October around 14:00 (UTC). It will probably be shorter than an hour. [16]

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

16:24, 5 October 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-42

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

Problems

• Because of the problems with the MediaWiki version two weeks ago last week's updates are also late. [17][18][19]

Changes later this week

• Live previews didn't show the templates used in the preview if you just edited a section. This has now been fixed. You can also test CSS and JavaScript pages even if you have the live preview enabled. Previously this didn't work well. [20][21]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 13 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 14 October. It will be on all wikis from 15 October (calendar).

Future changes

• A new stable version of Pywikibot is coming soon. [22]

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

15:23, 12 October 2020 (UTC)

Human Genetic Variation: Lewontin's Fallacy

Hello, thought I'd share this: http://smallie.de/external/edwards_lewontin_fallacy.pdf

Just some food for thought. Msiehta (talk) 09:05, 13 October 2020 (UTC)

@Msiehta: Joe Roe already replied eloquently to this, it does not seem to be a usable source for Wikipedia (see WP:RS for more information). —PaleoNeonate – 09:37, 13 October 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-43

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

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 20 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 21 October. It will be on all wikis from 22 October (calendar).

Future changes

• You will be able to read but not to edit the wikis for up to an hour on 27 October around 14:00 (UTC). It will probably be shorter than an hour. [23]
• In the AbuseFilter extension, the rmspecials() function will be updated soon so that it does not remove the "space" character. Wikis are advised to wrap all the uses of rmspecials() with rmwhitespace() wherever necessary to keep filters' behavior unchanged. You can use the search function on Special:AbuseFilter to locate its usage. [24]
• Some gadgets and user-scripts use the HTML div with the ID #jump-to-nav. This div will be removed soon. Maintainers should replace these uses with either #siteSub or #mw-content-text. A list of affected scripts is at the top of phab:T265373.

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

16:29, 19 October 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-44

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

Problems

• You will be able to read but not to edit the wikis for up to an hour on October 27 around 14:00 (UTC). It will probably be shorter than an hour. [25]
• Last week, links to "diffs" from mobile watchlists and recentchanges were linking to page-revisions instead of diffs. This has now been fixed. [26]

Changes later this week

• There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

Future changes

• Since the introduction of the interface administrators user group in 2018, administrators couldn’t view the deleted history of CSS/JS pages. Now they can. [27]
• There was a problem with the Change Tags. The software would apply the "Reverted" tag to any page actions such as page-protection changes if they came directly after a reverted edit. This has now been fixed for new edits. [28]
• The Reply tool will be offered as an opt-in Beta Feature on most Wikipedias in November. Another announcement will be made once the date is finalized. [29]

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

17:37, 26 October 2020 (UTC)

Hi!

Just curious about what you think the reasons are for discarding the simulation hypothesis as impossible. Thanks! --ExperiencedArticleFixer (talk) 02:36, 25 October 2020 (UTC)

Implausible is not impossible, but here are a few directions for thought experiments: assuming it was voluntary to make the universe or physics difficult to understand, it could have been made way more cryptic and impossible to grasp whatsoever. Assuming it was designed to be understood, it could be much simpler and we would have "mastered it". Assuming the impression of deep time was a voluntary illusion, there would not be that many consistent clues corroborating it. Assuming it was designed for the gratification of a creator, its existence and requirements would be much more obvious. Assuming that the goal would be to achieve intelligent humans, this contradicts the discovery that biological evolution is not directed (i.e. a-la great-chain of being). In relation to those perspectives, it's important to look at our own motives for contemplating that we live in a simulation.

Assuming it is really a scientific experiment simulating a real universe that was not originally a simulation, immense challenges are the energy required, resulting pollution and times involved, where challenges in the original universe running the simulation would also bring an end to the simulation (even if the "clock speed" of time in the simulation is illusory). For the simulators, the simulation must theoretically be fast enough to be useful, the slower it runs for their purposes the least useful and least plausible, including the work needed to gain support for such a project and to put it in place. A purely scientific simulation may still be less implausible because we could also assume that for technical reasons, or to preserve the integrity of the experiment, the complexity is "realistic" and there is no intervention/interference, or the least possible (and as we so far learned, none may have been necessary). Then there also would still be ethical issues, like the lack of intervention when it is understood by the simulators that they could benefit their "creation"...

Which raises other questions like, if it's a realistic simulation, perhaps their ability to examine what happens inside is extremely limited, and the requirements to keep running it faithfully forbidding any potentially disastrous intervention (back to the question of utility and feasibility). We could imagine infinitely more intelligent and powerful beings, computers and energy sources than we'll ever know, but we're still stuck in fantasy and speculation, until we really meet it (like strong personal subjective "realization" experiences are interesting yet limited in their scope; people write books, movements form, that don't necessarily agree with eachother and have not explained the universe or even the mind satisfactorily, despite the temporary illusion of ultimate union and knowledge)... —PaleoNeonate – 05:07, 1 November 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-45

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

Recent changes

• You can no longer read Wikimedia wikis if your browser uses very old TLS. This is because it is a security problem for everyone. It could lead to downgrade attacks. Since October 29, 2020, users who use old TLS versions will not be able to connect to Wikimedia projects. A list of browser recommendations is available. All modern operating systems and browsers are always able to reach Wikimedia projects. [30]
• There is a new automatic tracking category available: Pages with non-numeric formatnum arguments. It collects pages which use the {{formatnum}} parser function with invalid (non-numeric) input, e.g. {{formatnum:TECHNEWS}}. Note that {{formatnum:123,456}} is also invalid input: as described in the documentation, the argument should be unformatted so that it can be reliably and correctly localised. The tracking category will help identify problematic usage and double-formatting. The new tracking category's name can be translated at translatewiki. [31]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from November 3. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from November 4. It will be on all wikis from November 5 (calendar).
• Administrators and stewards will be able to use a special page (Special:CreateLocalAccount) to force local account creation for a global account. This is useful when account creation is blocked for that user (by a block or a filter). [32]
• The Reply tool will be offered as an opt-in Beta Feature on most Wikipedias on November 4. This change excludes the English, Russian, and German-language Wikipedias, plus a few smaller Wikipedias with special circumstances. You can read the help page and the troubleshooting guide for more information. [33]

Future changes

• A discussion has been restarted about using a Unicode minus sign (− U+2212) in the output of {{formatnum}} when it is given a negative argument. [34]
• In the future IP addresses of unregistered users will not be shown for everyone. They will get an alias instead. There will be a new user right or an opt-in function for more vandal fighters to see the IPs of unregistered users. There would be some criteria for who gets the user right or opt-in. There will also be other new tools to help handle vandalism. This is early in the process and the developers are still collecting information from the communities before they suggest solutions.

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

16:08, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-46

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

Changes later this week

• There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

Future changes

• You can see reference previews. This shows a preview of the footnote when you hover over it. This has been a beta feature. It will move out of beta and be enabled by default. There will be an option not to use it. The developers are looking for small or medium-sized wikis to be the first ones. You can let them know if your wiki is interested. [35]
• From November 16 the categories will not be sorted in order for a short time. This is because the developers are upgrading to a new version of the internationalisation library. They will use a script to fix the existing categories. This can take a few hours or a few days depending on how big the wiki is. You can read more. [36][37]

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

15:49, 9 November 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-47

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

Recent changes

• Listings on category pages are sorted on each wiki for that language using a library. For a brief period on 16 November, changes to categories will not be sorted correctly for most languages. This is because the developers are upgrading to a new version of the library. They will then use a script to fix the existing categories. This will take a few hours or a few days depending on how big the wiki is. You can read more. [38][39]

Changes later this week

• If you merged two pages in a namespace where pages can't redirect this used to break the merge history. This will now be fixed. [40]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 17 November. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 18 November. It will be on all wikis from 19 November (calendar).

Future changes

• The Community Wishlist Survey is now open for proposals. The survey decides what the Community Tech team will work on. You can post proposals from 16 to 30 November. You can vote on proposals from 8 December to 21 December.

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

15:36, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

Your submission at Articles for creation: Earth's Deep History has been accepted

Earth's Deep History, which you submitted to Articles for creation, has been created.

Congratulations, and thank you for helping expand the scope of Wikipedia! We hope you will continue making quality contributions.

The article has been assessed as Start-Class, which is recorded on its talk page. Most new articles start out as Stub-Class or Start-Class and then attain higher grades as they develop over time. You may like to take a look at the grading scheme to see how you can improve the article.

Since you have made at least 10 edits over more than four days, you can now create articles yourself without posting a request. However, you may continue submitting work to Articles for creation if you prefer.

If you have any questions, you are welcome to ask at the help desk. Once you have made at least 10 edits and had an account for at least four days, you will have the option to create articles yourself without posting a request to Articles for creation.

If you would like to help us improve this process, please consider .

Thanks again, and happy editing!

SL93 (talk) 08:29, 21 November 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-48

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

Recent changes

• Timestamps in Special:Log are now links. They go to Special:Log for only that entry. This is how timestamps work on for example the history page. [41]

Changes later this week

• There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

Future changes

• The Wikimedia Cloud VPS hosts technical projects for the Wikimedia movement. Developers need to claim projects they use. This is because old and unused projects are removed once a year. Unclaimed projects can be shut down from 1 December. Unclaimed projects can be deleted from 1 January. [42]

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

17:17, 23 November 2020 (UTC)

ArbCom 2020 Elections voter message

Hello! Voting in the 2020 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23:59 (UTC) on Monday, 7 December 2020. All eligible users are allowed to vote. Users with alternate accounts may only vote once. The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail. If you wish to participate in the 2020 election, please review the candidates and submit your choices on the voting page. If you no longer wish to receive these messages, you may add {{NoACEMM}} to your user talk page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 02:53, 24 November 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-49

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

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 1 December. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 2 December. It will be on all wikis from 3 December (calendar).

Future changes

• The iOS Wikipedia app will show readers more of the article history. They can see new updates and easier see how the article has changed over time. This is an experiment. It will first be shown only to some iOS app users as a test. [43][44]
• The Wiki Replicas can be used for SQL queries. You can use Quarry, PAWS or other ways to do this. To make the Wiki Replicas stable there will be two changes. Cross-database JOINS will no longer work. You can also only query a database if you connect to it directly. This will happen in February 2021. If you think this affects you and you need help you can post on Phabricator or on Wikitech. [45]

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

17:44, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

Help if you can please

I hate to put you on the spot but I am in real need. I put Biblical criticism up for FA review a month ago. It is its second time being nominated. I failed to complete the process the first time because of leaving WP so suddenly, and now it is getting little response. I am putting out a call to everyone I know because the coordinator has said if it doesn't get more interest he will archive it. It needs a source review - someone willing to randomly check sources to be sure they actually say what the text says. There are too many for anyone to do alone, but doing any at all, even just one, would be deeply appreciated. Post it here. If it fails again I'm afraid that will be the end of it. Please help if you can.Jenhawk777 (talk) 19:31, 14 November 2020 (UTC)

It's unfortunately impossible at current time, sorry. Since I rarely log in these days I've changed the {{busy}} template for a {{break}} one as well... As I don't personally try to bring articles to GA/FA/DYN status, it may be difficult for me to relate, but I can understand that unrecognized work can be an annoyance. In the event where the process fails again, I hope that if won't prevent you from trying to improve articles (the most important, ultimately, is of course for the material to be there for its readers). See you around later, —PaleoNeonate – 00:46, 23 November 2020 (UTC)

No problem my friend, I understand. Jenhawk777 (talk) 21:09, 6 December 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-50

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

Recent changes

• You can now put pages on your watchlist for a limited period of time. Some wikis already had this function. [46][47]

Changes later this week

• Information from Wikidata that is used on a wiki page can be shown in recent changes and watchlists on a Wikimedia wiki. To see this you need to turn on showing Wikidata edits in your watchlist in the preferences. Changes to the Wikidata description in the language of a Wikimedia wiki will then be shown in recent changes and watchlists. This will not show edits to languages that are not relevant to your wiki. [48][49]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 8 December. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 9 December. It will be on all wikis from 10 December (calendar).

Future changes

• You can vote on proposals in the Community Wishlist Survey between 8 December and 21 December. The survey decides what the Community Tech team will work on.

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

16:14, 7 December 2020 (UTC)

Hey!

Hey dude! Just checking in to see how you and your family are doing. Hope you are all well and staying safe. Jenhawk777 (talk) 21:08, 6 December 2020 (UTC)

Hello Jenhawk777, we're doing allright, thanks, although I don't see remote family often, we're currently in high/red alert with limited physical interaction (schools are still open as well as other essential services). It's even being debated if ~10 people Christmas meetings will be allowed, as the local health system is reaching its limit in this second wave. My immediate parents don't celebrate (for religious reasons) although some siblings do with their family, but the small rendez-vous we planned so far for the 24-25 will only be me, my gf and another couple, if we're all still healthy by then. How about you? —PaleoNeonate – 10:44, 8 December 2020 (UTC)

All our holiday celebrations are canceled. We are trying to get the vaccination but there is a very small number available here. I don't know how they are prioritizing people either. It's all so crazy. Sorry you won't be seeing people, but glad to hear they are well, and that you are okay too. I hope you have a happy holiday season, as much as is possible in the circumstances. It's not the first time I have had to choose to be happy in spite of circumstances and I'm sure it won't be the last, nor for you either. We can do this! Right?  :-) Stay safe. Jenhawk777 (talk) 21:23, 8 December 2020 (UTC)

New Page Patrol December Newsletter

Hello PaleoNeonate,

Year in review

It has been a productive year for New Page Patrol as we've roughly cut the size of the New Page Patrol queue in half this year. We have been fortunate to have a lot of great work done by Rosguill who was the reviewer of the most pages and redirects this past year. Thanks and credit go to JTtheOG and Onel5969 who join Rosguill in repeating in the top 10 from last year. Thanks to John B123, Hughesdarren, and Mccapra who all got the NPR permission this year and joined the top 10. Also new to the top ten is DannyS712 bot III, programmed by DannyS712 which has helped to dramatically reduce the number of redirects that have needed human patrolling by patrolling certain types of redirects (e.g. for differences in accents) and by also patrolling editors who are on on the redirect whitelist.

Rank	Username	Num reviews	Log
1	DannyS712 bot III (talk)	67,552	Patrol Page Curation
2	Rosguill (talk)	63,821	Patrol Page Curation
3	John B123 (talk)	21,697	Patrol Page Curation
4	Onel5969 (talk)	19,879	Patrol Page Curation
5	JTtheOG (talk)	12,901	Patrol Page Curation
6	Mcampany (talk)	9,103	Patrol Page Curation
7	DragonflySixtyseven (talk)	6,401	Patrol Page Curation
8	Mccapra (talk)	4,918	Patrol Page Curation
9	Hughesdarren (talk)	4,520	Patrol Page Curation
10	Utopes (talk)	3,958	Patrol Page Curation

Reviewer of the Year

John B123 has been named reviewer of the year for 2020. John has held the permission for just over 6 months and in that time has helped cut into the queue by reviewing more than 18,000 articles. His talk page shows his efforts to communicate with users, upholding NPP's goal of nurturing new users and quality over quantity.

NPP Technical Achievement Award

As a special recognition and thank you DannyS712 has been awarded the first NPP Technical Achievement Award. His work programming the bot has helped us patrol redirects tremendously - more than 60,000 redirects this past year. This has been a large contribution to New Page Patrol and definitely is worthy of recognition.

Six Month Queue Data: Today – 2262 Low – 2232 High – 10271

To opt-out of future mailings, please remove yourself here

18:16, 10 December 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-51

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

Recent changes

• There is a Wikipedia app for KaiOS phones. It was released in India in September. It can now be downloaded in other countries too. [50]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 15 December. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 16 December. It will be on all wikis from 17 December (calendar).

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

21:33, 14 December 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-52

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

Tech News

• Because of the holidays the next issue of Tech News will be sent out on 11 January 2021.

Recent changes

• The {{citation needed}} template shows when a statement in a Wikipedia article needs a source. If you click on it when you edit with the visual editor there is a popup that explains this. Now it can also show the reason and when it was added. [51]

Changes later this week

• There is no new MediaWiki version this week or next week.

Future changes

• You can propose and discuss what technical improvements should be done for geographic information. This could be coordinates, maps or other related things.
• Some wikis use LanguageConverter to switch between writing systems or variants of a language. This can only be done for the entire page. There will be a <langconvert> tag that can convert a piece of text on a page. [52]
• Oversighters and stewards can hide entries in Special:AbuseLog. They can soon hide multiple entries at once using checkboxes. This works like hiding normal edits. It will happen in early January. [53]

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

20:52, 21 December 2020 (UTC)

God Jul och Gott Nytt År!

Gråbergs Gråa Sång is wishing you the season's greetings.
Whether you celebrate your hemisphere's solstice or Christmas,
Diwali, Hogmanay, Hanukkah, Lenaia, Festivus,
or the Saturnalia,
this is a special time of year for (almost) everyone.

@Gråbergs Gråa Sång: Many thanks, same to you, —PaleoNeonate – 03:49, 23 December 2020 (UTC)

Merry Christmas

No images, fancy backgrounds or fancy code in those curly bracket things. Just a boring old plain text note wishing you a very peaceful Christmas season, and a Better New Year. Cheers GirthSummit _(blether) 11:23, 24 December 2020 (UTC)

@Girth Summit: thanks, it'll indeed be "more peaceful" than usual, even. And I also hope about the "Better" part. Merry holiday, —PaleoNeonate – 06:24, 25 December 2020 (UTC)

Crochety creations

An outbreak of crocheted creations locally has brought light relief and cheer in dark times. Here's a couple of them.
Thanks for all your work pushing against the de-enlightenment of creationism,

Wishing you and yours merry festivities, and a happy and healthy New Year!
dave souza, talk 21:25, 24 December 2020 (UTC)

@Dave souza: I'm not sure if it's back in fashion, but my gf actually also received as a gift a recent crocheting book, an interesting coincidence. And many thanks for the recognition in relation to creationism, it's especially encouraging from you, who I acknowledge also did impressive work in the area. Best wishes to you too, —PaleoNeonate – 06:28, 25 December 2020 (UTC)

Eshed

You're such a weasel and a bitch Go WP:TAGTEAM 3RR yourself to death with your buddies Don't write on my talk page again Bigbaby23 (talk) 15:27, 26 December 2020 (UTC)

@Bigbaby23: You may want to count the times you reverted and note that multiple editors objected to that material. You should seek consensus at the article's talk page or at the WP:FTN noticeboard. While I have no reason to pester you at your talk page (and blanking posts at your page is allowed), policy-based warning messages are exempt from no-post requests (WP:OWNTALK). As for namecalling editors, on Wikipedia these are considered personal attacks and are not allowed. I won't report you for a first offense, but you now know. —PaleoNeonate – 13:44, 27 December 2020 (UTC)

Happy New Year!

Empire AS ^Talk! — is wishing you a Happy New Year! It's the last day of 2020 and tomorrow will be 2025. Hope the coming year brings pleasures for you. Have a prosperous, enjoyable and a productive 2025. This greeting (and season) promotes WikiLove and hopefully this note has made your day a little better. Spread the WikiLove by wishing another user a Happy New Year, whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past, a good friend, or just some random person. Happy New Year!

Spread the New Year cheer by adding {{subst:New Year 2}} to their talk page with a friendly message.

Empire AS ^Talk! 19:08, 31 December 2020 (UTC)

@Empire AS: Many thanks, best wishes too, —PaleoNeonate – 10:21, 1 January 2021 (UTC)

Thanks :) Empire AS ^Talk! 10:28, 1 January 2021 (UTC)

C64 Lovecats xmas/hny demo (in case anyone seeing it likes it)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3fg0nRnZT5g —PaleoNeonate – 16:08, 4 January 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-02

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

Recent changes

• You can choose to be reminded when you have not added an edit summary. This can be done in your preferences. This could conflict with the CAPTCHA. This has now been fixed. [54]
• You can link to specific log entries. You can get these links for example by clicking the timestamps in the log. Until now, such links to private log entries showed no entry even if you had permission to view private log entries. The links now show the entry. [55]
• Admins can use the abuse filter tool to automatically prevent bad edits. Three changes happened last week:
  • The filter editing interface now shows syntax errors while you type. This is similar to JavaScript pages. It also shows a warning for regular expressions that match the empty string. New warnings will be added later. [56]
  • Oversighters can now hide multiple filter log entries at once using checkboxes on Special:AbuseLog. This is how the usual revision deletion works. [57]
  • When a filter matches too many actions after it has been changed it is "throttled". The most powerful actions are disabled. This is to avoid many editors getting blocked when an administrator made a mistake. The administrator will now get a notification about this "throttle".
• There is a new tool to build new skins. You can also see existing skins. You can give feedback. [58]
• Bots using the API no longer watch pages automatically based on account preferences. Setting the watchlist to watch will still work. This is to reduce the size of the watchlist data in the database. [59]
• Scribunto's file metadata now includes length. [60]
• CSS and JavaScript code pages now have link anchors to line numbers. You can use wikilinks like w:en:MediaWiki:Common.js#L-50. [61]
• There was a new version of MediaWiki last week. You can read a detailed log of all 763 changes. Most of them are very small and will not affect you.

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 12 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 13 January. It will be on all wikis from 14 January (calendar).

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

15:41, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

Discussion on MEDRS/RS debate regarding fringe lab leak theory

Your comment on whether MEDRS are mandatory before editing a claim implying the lab leak theory is not a conspiracy/fringe idea is requested by this Diff in this page, please take a look. Forich (talk) 02:52, 17 January 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-03

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

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 19 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 20 January. It will be on all wikis from 21 January (calendar).

Future changes

• The Growth team plans to add features to get more visitors to edit to more Wikipedias. You can help translating the interface.
• You will be able to read but not to edit Wikimedia Commons for a short time on 26 January at 07:00 (UTC). [62]
• MassMessage posts could be automatically timestamped in the future. This is because MassMessage senders can now send pages using MassMessage. Pages are more difficult to sign. If there are times when a MassMessage post should not be timestamped you can let the developers know.

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

16:09, 18 January 2021 (UTC)

List of Jewish Communists

It was literally just a list of names, wikilinked to their articles. But when I listed it, Georgy Arbatov had nothing about his religion (added during the MfD, Gyula Hevesi which was red-linked as he listed the names in a different order, still doesn't. That one alone (red link) suggests he got them from some other site. But also see the issue raised on my talk page about him and his edits, in particular this one. Doug Weller talk 12:28, 18 January 2021 (UTC)

Thanks, yes, not too promising so far... —PaleoNeonate – 21:14, 18 January 2021 (UTC)

COVID-19

This is a standard message to notify contributors about an administrative ruling in effect. It does not imply that there are any issues with your contributions to date. You have shown interest in coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). Due to past disruption in this topic area, the community has enacted a more stringent set of rules. Any administrator may impose sanctions—such as editing restrictions, bans, or blocks—on editors who do not strictly follow Wikipedia's policies, or the page-specific restrictions, when making edits related to the topic. For additional information, please see the guidance on these sanctions. If you have any questions, or any doubts regarding what edits are appropriate, you are welcome to discuss them with me or any other editor.

—PaleoNeonate – 08:36, 21 January 2021 (UTC)

Flowcode

Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#Flowcode again --Guy Macon (talk) 04:55, 24 January 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for the notice, if a LTA, I'm not familiar with it and would not be able to investigate it before sometime monday. —PaleoNeonate – 05:09, 24 January 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-04

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

Problems

• You will be able to read but not to edit Wikimedia Commons for a short time on 26 January at 07:00 (UTC). You will not be able to read or edit Wikitech for a short time on 28 January at 09:00 (UTC). [63][64]

Changes later this week

• Bracket matching will be added to the CodeMirror syntax highlighter on the first wikis. The first wikis are German and Catalan Wikipedia and maybe other Wikimedia wikis. This will happen on 27 January. [65]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 26 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 27 January. It will be on all wikis from 28 January (calendar).

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

18:29, 25 January 2021 (UTC)

Lukan27

You might want to read this [66].Slatersteven (talk) 19:13, 27 January 2021 (UTC)

Thanks Slatersteven, I think that I'll let others handle it, —PaleoNeonate – 19:53, 27 January 2021 (UTC)

Seventh-day Adventist theology - suspicious activity

Hi PaleoNeonate, a new user caught my attention because of their second edit so I looked at the article's history and noted all the socking a few months back. From the SPI archive, it appears you were quite involved in snuffing them out so I thought I would give you a heads up given your familiarity. There may be at least one other account that raises some suspicion. S0091 (talk) 20:02, 31 January 2021 (UTC)

@S0091: Thanks for looking at this. The work at SPI seemed endless (new socks were always created including for temporary use and some sleeping ones), as I had less time to patrol many articles I stopped noticing this WP:LTA. At times when I thought I did, I sometimes wrote the nickname down to only forget about it. In case you'd like to put some time into it I'll provide a few clues: You're probably right that it's the same, in general when looking at the article history where the new suspect account edits, more will be seen to have edited the same recently. Nicknames are usually spaceless first/last names without a space. They usually promote apologetics using primary sources and restore work done by previous socks. Other tendencies are to convert citations to {{sfn}} with summary "to sfn", or to edit military equipment articles to get autoconfirmed and edit elsewhere. Sometimes new material is added to articles or redirects within HTML comments to not be immediately visible. So another suspect there would be JevonVo. New socks are created often enough, hoping to avoid scrutiny or to simulate a consensus and are abandoned or reused later. They used to also insert "theistic science" and idealism philosophy, criticism of science and materialism and to debate at creationism and evolution related talk pages but recently seem to have maintained a lower profile hoping to instead keep the same material in fewer articles, mostly Adventism-related. At SPI, when the checkuser is experienced enough, they may discover various other sleeping and/or abandoned socks when handling a report (unfortunately, Bbb23, who was very helpful there, semi-retired). When confirmed, all edits are usually reverted as possible per WP:BE. I hope this was useful, —PaleoNeonate – 03:05, 1 February 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-05

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

Problems

• IPv6 addresses were written in lowercase letters in diffs. This caused dead links since Special:Contributions only accepted uppercase letters for the IPs. This has been fixed. [67]

Changes later this week

• You can soon use Wikidata to link to pages on the multilingual Wikisource. [68]
• Often editors use a "non-breaking space" to make a gap between two items when reading but still show them together. This can be used to avoid a line break. You will now be able to add new ones via the special character tool in the 2010, 2017, and visual editors. The character will be shown in the visual editor as a space with a grey background. [69][70]
• Wikis use abuse filters to stop bad edits being made. Filter maintainers can now use syntax like 1.2.3.4 - 1.2.3.55 as well as the 1.2.3.4/27 syntax for IP ranges. [71]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 2 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 3 February. It will be on all wikis from 4 February (calendar).

Future changes

• Minerva is the skin Wikimedia wikis use for mobile traffic. When a page is protected and you can't edit it you can normally read the source wikicode. This doesn't work on Minerva on mobile devices. This is being fixed. Some text might overlap. This is because your community needs to update MediaWiki:Protectedpagetext to work on mobile. You can read more. [72][73]
• Cloud VPS and Toolforge will change the IP address they use to contact the wikis. The new IP address will be 185.15.56.1. This will happen on February 8. You can read more.

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

22:38, 1 February 2021 (UTC)

I had Pastachio nuts

... and combined them with some dry roasted peanuts in my food processor, to make cool nut butter. Like the topic above, I am transfixed by the question in the above post, that it may not be a good idea? -Roxy the happy dog . wooF 01:31, 3 February 2021 (UTC)

I don't know about dogs, but I remember seeing a squirrel eat some peanut butter and struggling with its stickiness. —PaleoNeonate – 06:01, 3 February 2021 (UTC)

previous user name

Hello, you left me a message in my talk page. I responded but I don't know if you receive notifications for it so I am writing to you here. My previous username was Schmuels. I created it some years ago in order to create a wiki page in English [ I wasn't sure if I could or should do it with my Hebrew Wiki username which is this one- Schmuel]. So now I see that Schmuels is deleted, but it is written as a source of some edits that I made. Is it possible to change that to my current singular username Schmuel ? Thank you--Schmuel (talk) 00:30, 3 February 2021 (UTC)

Another thing I wanted to ask: I created a page about a year ago in Hebrew, with a new scientific principal that I created, which is related to Occam's razor. It is called "Fresnel's razor" https://he.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D7%AA%D7%A2%D7%A8%D7%95_%D7%A9%D7%9C_%D7%A4%D7%A8%D7%A0%D7%9C. Do you think it is a good idea to translate the page and create an English wiki page for it? Thank you--Schmuel (talk) 00:35, 3 February 2021 (UTC)

@Schmuel: Since I did not add your talk page to my watchlist and that you didn't use the {{u}} or {{ping}} template I indeed received no notification.

In relation to your username question, at some point global common accounts were created that can be used with all Wikimedia projects (Wikipedia in all languages, Commons, Wikidata, Wikisource, etc). Your current account can be used this way. The old account that was specific to English Wikipedia was automatically renamed with an ~enwiki suffix added. Your current account is attached to several projects and indeed has he-wiki edits (Special:CentralAuth/Schmuel) when the old one only has some edits on en-wiki (Special:CentralAuth/Schmuel~enwiki). Since the new account has more publicly visible contributions I suggest to just keep it and abandon the old ~enwiki one. Some information was posted at User talk:Schmuel~enwiki including the possibility to Special:MergeAccount, since both are your accounts. Other special account-specific procedures are WP:RENAME and WP:USURP.

For the new article, en-wiki has the notability policy (WP:NOTABILITY), so the page is likely to get deleted unless the topic can be demonstrated to be notable (has sufficient coverage in independent reliable sources and can be described according to cited sources, WP:RS, WP:PRIMARY and WP:CITE may be useful). A trick is to start finding/listing independent sources. To avoid WP:SYNTHesis, those sources should also directly be about the topic, not only subtopics that the editor ties together into a new concept. When patrollers discover new pages, even if it's an incomplete article, they're less likely to request deletion if the citations to verify its notability are already listed. Also see: WP:USERSPACE (notably WP:ABOUTSAND), WP:DRAFT space and WP:AFC that can be used to submit new articles for review. —PaleoNeonate – 05:58, 3 February 2021 (UTC)

Thank you very much.--Schmuel (talk) 10:49, 3 February 2021 (UTC)

DRASTIC

The paper in Frontiers in Public Health "Lethal Pneumonia Cases in Mojiang Miners (2012) and the Mineshaft Could Provide Important Clues to the Origin of SARS-CoV-2" that is currently being discussed on the RSN cites "DRASTIC" which apparently stands for "Decentralized Radical Autonomous Search Team Investigating COVID-19" which appears to be a loose collective of twitter users, including some researchers who push the "lab leak" conspiracy theory. this tweet by the lead author of the paper Monali C. Rahalkar indicates that she is also associated with DRASTIC. DRASTIC is also cited in the acknowledgements of The genetic structure of SARS‐CoV‐2 does not rule out a laboratory origin in Bioessays and A Washington Post editorial from the 5th of February (different from the one discussed last time). This is probably something worth bearing in mind for the future. Hemiauchenia (talk) 01:01, 13 February 2021 (UTC)

Wow I come back with 6 notifications... Thanks, I checked RSN just before as well as some linked archives, interesting. —PaleoNeonate – 04:00, 13 February 2021 (UTC)

Link expired

Hello PaleoNeonate, I read your message about my contribution and I am not sure why is considered inappropriate for an encyclopedia, as long as it contains a topic related. More than that, the link posted before is outdated and is not even working. Have a nice day! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Smiguu (talk • contribs) 13:52, 16 February 2021 (UTC)

Hello Smiguu, my concern was because your previous edits also inserted low quality references in various articles before without adapting the text to fit the new citation. On the other hand, I see that they're not always the same so I admit that it's not necessarily classic spam. If the intention is to rescue sources, perhaps that they can be recovered via archive.org, the various {{citation}} templates support parameters like |archive-url=, |archive-date=, |url-status=... It's also possible to sign talk page posts using four tildes at the end of messages: (~~~~). —PaleoNeonate – 14:14, 16 February 2021 (UTC)

You added a DS message, not a GS one

at User talk:Azahariev#Important message.

I was reading the draft-covid lab thing AfD and I warned an editor there about an edit about you. Looking at their edits, they seem to know an awful lot for a new editor. Doug Weller talk 19:51, 18 February 2021 (UTC)

Oh, right, thanks for reissuing it, —PaleoNeonate – 01:48, 19 February 2021 (UTC)

At the MfD

Messed up a ping. See this. I won't object if you re-instate the comment (this was a bit of IAR on my part anyway), but asking nearly every person who !votes keep whether they've been canvassed or not is mildly counter-productive, and simply because they've possibly been canvassed does not make their opinion invalid (better: rebut the opinion concisely). RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 02:28, 19 February 2021 (UTC)

This shouldn't be removed normally (see WP:TPG), and I don't think there's any non-repeated argument that'd I'd post instead. But I won't edit war, —PaleoNeonate – 02:43, 19 February 2021 (UTC)

As I said it's just that the discussion has run it's 7-days and it's unlikely to change the results. Of course, as I said, if you think I was wrong to ignore TPG you're free to restore your own comment, though really I think we've all gone beyond the call of duty to rebut the attempted canvassing, so best we just let it die its natural end, which is at the business end of the delete tool of an admin... RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 02:46, 19 February 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-11

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

Recent changes

• Wikis that are part of the desktop improvements project can now use a new search function. The desktop improvements and the new search will come to more wikis later. You can also test it early.
• Editors who put up banners or change site-wide JavaScript code should use the client error graph to see that their changes has not caused problems. You can read more. [74]

Problems

• Due to database issues the Wikimedia Beta Cluster was read-only for over a day.

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 16 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 17 March. It will be on all wikis from 18 March (calendar).

Future changes

• You can add a newline or carriage return character to a custom signature if you use a template. There is a proposal to not allow them in the future. This is because they can cause formatting problems. [75][76]
• You will be able to read but not edit 12 wikis for a short period of time on 23 March at 06:00 (UTC). This could take 30 minutes but will probably be much faster.
• You can use Quarry for SQL queries to the Wiki Replicas. Cross-database JOINS will no longer work from 23 March. There will be a new field to specify the database to connect to. If you think this affects you and you need help you can post on Phabricator or on Wikitech. PAWS and other ways to do SQL queries to the Wiki Replicas will be affected later. [77]

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

23:21, 15 March 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-12

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

Recent changes

• There is a Wikipedia app for KaiOS phones. They don't have a touch screen so readers navigate with the phone keys. There is now a simulator so you can see what it looks like.
• The reply tool and new discussion tool are now available as the "Discussion tools" beta feature in almost all wikis except German Wikipedia.

Problems

• You will be able to read but not edit twelve wikis for a short period of time on 23 March at 06:00 (UTC). This can also affect password changes, logging in to new wikis, global renames and changing or confirming emails. This could take 30 minutes but will probably be much faster.

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 23 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 24 March. It will be on all wikis from 25 March (calendar).
• Syntax highlighting colours will change to be easier to read. This will soon come to the first wikis. [78]

Future changes

• Flagged revisions will no longer have multiple tags like "tone" or "depth". It will also only have one tier. This was changed because very few wikis used these features and they make the tool difficult to maintain. [79][80]
• Gadgets and user scripts can access variables about the current page in JavaScript. In 2015 this was moved from wg* to mw.config. wg* will soon no longer work. [81]

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

16:51, 22 March 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-13

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

Recent changes

• Some very old web browsers don’t work well with the Wikimedia wikis. Some old code for browsers that used to be supported is being removed. This could cause issues in those browsers. [82]
• IRC recent changes feeds have been moved to a new server. Make sure all tools automatically reconnect to irc.wikimedia.org and not to the name of any specific server. Users should also consider switching to the more modern EventStreams. [83]

Problems

• When you move a page that many editors have on their watchlist the history can be split. It might also not be possible to move it again for a while. This is because of a job queue problem. [84]
• Some translatable pages on Meta could not be edited. This was because of a bug in the translation tool. The new MediaWiki version was delayed because of problems like this. [85][86]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 30 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 31 March. It will be on all wikis from 1 April (calendar).

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

17:29, 29 March 2021 (UTC)

Modest flowers

Thank you for what you said for RexxS --Gerda Arendt (talk) 21:09, 31 March 2021 (UTC)

And thanks for the thanks, it'd be sad if he doesn't come back, —PaleoNeonate – 22:17, 31 March 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-14

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

Recent changes

• Editors can collapse part of an article so you have to click on it to see it. When you click a link to a section inside collapsed content it will now expand to show the section. The browser will scroll down to the section. Previously such links didn't work unless you manually expanded the content first. [87]

Changes later this week

• The citoid API will use for example 2010-12-XX instead of 2010-12 for dates with a month but no days. This is because 2010-12 could be confused with 2010-2012 instead of December 2010. This is called level 1 instead of level 0 in the Extended Date/Time Format. [88]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 6 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 7 April. It will be on all wikis from 8 April (calendar).

Future changes

• PAWS can now connect to the new Wiki Replicas. Cross-database JOINS will no longer work from 28 April. There is a new way to connect to the databases. Until 28 April both ways to connect to the databases will work. If you think this affects you and you need help you can post on Phabricator or on Wikitech.

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

19:38, 5 April 2021 (UTC)

Invitation to participate in DS Consultation

Hi PaleoNeonate. I'm not sure if you're aware of the current community consultation around Discretionary Sanctions but as someone who has participated in DS related activities recently I'd like to invite you to participate. You have the opportunity to participate at whatever level you wish; there are questions that are higher level (theoreticaly) in scope as well as opportunities to give feedback about specific areas of DS. The consultation will run through April 25th and I hope you'll participate. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 15:34, 14 April 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-16

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

Recent changes

• Email to the Wikimedia wikis are handled by groups of Wikimedia editors. These volunteer response teams now use Znuny instead of OTRS. The functions and interface remain the same. The volunteer administrators will give more details about the next steps soon. [89][90]
• If you use syntax highlighting, you can see line numbers in the 2010 and 2017 wikitext editors when editing templates. This is to make it easier to see line breaks or talk about specific lines. Line numbers will soon come to all namespaces. [91][92][93]
• Because of a technical change there could be problems with gadgets and scripts that have an edit summary area that looks similar to this one. If they look strange they should use mw.loader.using('mediawiki.action.edit.styles') to go back to how they looked before. [94]
• The latest version of MediaWiki came to the Wikimedia wikis last week. There was no Tech News issue last week.

Changes later this week

• There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

Future changes

• The user group oversight will be renamed suppress. This is for technical reasons. This is the technical name. It doesn't affect what you call the editors with this user right on your wiki. This is planned to happen in two weeks. You can comment in Phabricator if you have objections.

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

16:47, 19 April 2021 (UTC)

SENS procedure

Hi, thank you so much for chipping in with the SENS threads: I was starting to doubt my sanity. With this morning's update, I've become convinced that ThunderheadX is Not Here, but I've never filed at ANI and am dreading doing so—I feel like I've already been in a knock-down, drag-out fight. Do you have any recommendations about how I could proceed, or if I should just let it go? —Wingedserif (talk) 13:49, 21 April 2021 (UTC)

@Wingedserif: You're welcome, I sent them a clear warning today since without a recent enough warning an ANI report might not be taken seriously. We'll see, but if they persist and noone does, I can file the ANI report. I agree with your assessment IRT NOTHERE and I'm sure it's obvious to other editors as well. —PaleoNeonate – 03:39, 22 April 2021 (UTC)

Re. closed AE thread

There is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. Thank you. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 18:57, 25 April 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-17

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

Recent changes

• Templates have parameters that can have specific values. It is possible to suggest values for editors with TemplateData. You can soon see them as a drop-down list in the visual editor. This is to help template users find the right values faster. [95][96][97]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 27 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 28 April. It will be on all wikis from 29 April (calendar).

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

21:23, 26 April 2021 (UTC)

AN thread

Hi, Paleo. Re your comment at AN: please note that your first two links are to whole archives. Readers can find what you're referring to by a search for the relevant username in those archives, but will most people bother? Maybe you want to complement the links, like this: [98][99]. Bishonen | tålk 08:42, 28 April 2021 (UTC).

They indeed lack anchors. I had the impression that there might be more than one thread so posted the page directly but will recheck, thanks. —PaleoNeonate – 13:45, 28 April 2021 (UTC)

Does the topic ban mean Gtofolletto can't discuss the topic in an AN thread about the topic ban? That doesn't seem correct to me, but if it is, I'll withdraw my question regarding what kind of edits he wants to make to the UFO articles. - LuckyLouie (talk) 12:49, 29 April 2021 (UTC)

@LuckyLouie: Good question, the policy is WP:TBAN and WP:UNBAN, TBAN makes clear it belongs everywhere but doesn't tell about the appeal, UNBAN doesn't give much details but I suspect that it's allowed for the appeal. The clarity could probably be improved so it's less left to common sense... It's not rare for siteban unblock requests for an editing plan to be requested, I'm not too sure about topic bans, honestly. Since many appeals occur at AN its archives would also help IRT common practice. I'll ping Bishonen in case she knows better, —PaleoNeonate – 13:33, 29 April 2021 (UTC)

I admit I'm merely applying common sense here, but of course he can discuss the topic in an appeal of the topic ban. Discuss it in a way relevant to the ban, that is; for instance, answer questions such as yours, LuckyLouie. His discussion must not segue into interminable arguing about the topic. But even if it does tend to do that, he shouldn't be blocked for topic ban violation, but warned about it (unless and until he's intransigent about it). This is because it's obviously hard for him to know where the limits are. We do need to make it reasonably easy and "safe" to appeal a ban; it mustn't give the user a feeling of walking dangerously on a floating mat, with a risk of drowning at every step. Bishonen | tålk 15:29, 29 April 2021 (UTC).

Tech News: 2021-18

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

Recent changes

• Twinkle is a gadget on English Wikipedia. It can help with maintenance and patrolling. It can now be used on other wikis. You can get Twinkle on your wiki using the twinkle-starter GitHub repository.

Problems

• The content translation tool did not work for many articles for a little while. This was because of a bug. [100]
• Some things will not work for about a minute on 5 May. This will happen around 06:00 UTC. This will affect the content translation tool and notifications among other things. This is because of an upgrade to avoid crashes. [101]

Changes later this week

• Reference Previews will become a default feature on a number of wikis on 5 May. This is later than planned because of some changes. You can use it without using Page Previews if you want to. The earlier plan was to have the preference to use both or none. [102][103]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 4 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 5 May. It will be on all wikis from 6 May (calendar).

Future changes

• The CSS classes .error, .warning and .success do not work for mobile readers if they have not been specifically defined on your wiki. From June they will not work for desktop readers. This can affect gadgets and templates. The classes can be defined in MediaWiki:Common.css or template styles instead. [104]

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

15:42, 3 May 2021 (UTC)

RfC on racial hereditarianism at the R&I talk-page

An RfC at Talk:Race and intelligence revisits the question, considered last year at WP:FTN, of whether or not the theory that a genetic link exists between race and intelligence is a fringe theory. This RfC supercedes the recent RfC on this topic at WP:RSN that was closed as improperly formulated.

Your participation is welcome. Thank you. NightHeron (talk) 22:06, 3 May 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-19

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

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 11 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 12 May. It will be on all wikis from 13 May (calendar).

Future changes

• You can see what participants plan to work on at the online Wikimedia hackathon 22–23 May.

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

15:09, 10 May 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-20

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

Recent changes

• There is a new toolbar in the Reply tool. It works in the wikitext source mode. You can enable it in your preferences. [105] [106] [107]
• Wikimedia mailing lists are being moved to Mailman 3. This is a newer version. For the character encoding to work it will change from UTF-8 to utf8mb3. [108][109]
• An earlier issue of Tech News said that the citoid API would handle dates with a month but no days in a new way. This has been reverted for now. There needs to be more discussion of how it affects different wikis first. [110]

Changes later this week

• MediaWiki:Pageimages-blacklist will be renamed MediaWiki:Pageimages-denylist. The list can be copied to the new name. It will happen on 19 May for some wikis and 20 May for some wikis. Most wikis don't use it. It lists images that should never be used as thumbnails for articles. [111]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 18 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 19 May. It will be on all wikis from 20 May (calendar).

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

13:48, 17 May 2021 (UTC)

DS 2021 Review Update

Dear PaleoNeonate,

Thank you for participating in the recent discretionary sanctions community consultation. We are truly appreciative of the range of feedback we received and the high quality discussion which occurred during the process. We have now posted a summary of the feedback we've received and also a preview of some of what we expect to happen next. We hope that the second phase, a presentation of draft recommendations, will proceed on time in June or early July. You will be notified when this phase begins, unless you choose to to opt-out of future mailings by removing your name here.
--Barkeep49 & KevinL (aka L235) 21:05, 19 May 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-21

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 Wikimedia movement has been using IRC on a network called Freenode. There have been changes around who is in control of the network. The Wikimedia IRC Group Contacts have decided to move to the new Libera Chat network instead. This is not a formal decision for the movement to move all channels but most Wikimedia IRC channels will probably leave Freenode. There is a migration guide and ongoing Wikimedia discussions about this.

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 25 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 26 May. It will be on all wikis from 27 May (calendar).

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

17:05, 24 May 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-22

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

Problems

• There was an issue on the Vector skin with the text size of categories and notices under the page title. It was fixed last Monday. [112]

Changes later this week

• There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

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

17:04, 31 May 2021 (UTC)

Collaboration

To: PaleoNeonate

From: Sychonic

I appreciate the comment you posted on my talk page, and thought I would respond here as well as there to have it reflected in both places. You wrote:

"Maybe this custom message would help to explain some of the previous difficulties instead of the common templates. I've seen the claim that collaboration on WP means that it should present an equal balance of opinions from the diversity of its editors. WP must however present the view of reliable sources instead. It's also part of collaboration to follow common procedures like bold-revert-discuss (consensus, for more information). Wikipedia is not a platform for promotion or free speech and its talk pages are also not discussion forums. Valid criticism as presented by sources is also acceptable in articles per WP:NPOV. "

The concern that engendered my recent comment on the administrator page ("The Blocking of Sychonic") related to my being blocked for a short time as a penalty for "edit warring". This resulted from my edit being reverted, and my subsequent restorations of that edit. I felt those restorations did not constitute any form of bad faith editing, and that quite the reverse, the person so infuriated by my edit was motivated by bias and was attempting to spin the article rather than provide helpful information. My attempt at a fact-based description of the audit going on in Arizona related to the 2020 election results made user:JzG quite angry, since he has a quite negative and decided opinion against the actions taken by the Arizona State Senate Republicans. He has an obvious left wing bias, seems very concerned with American politics even though British (so says his user page), and may have some administrator status, I don't know about such minutiae of WikiWorld. He also has the resources and knowledge base to bring other editors in to skirt the letter of the rules, while I am quite the primitive in such things.

With that as background, your caution as to some folks believing that there should be a "balance of opinions from the diversity of its editors" is inapplicable. My entire point is that there should be a neutrality in point of view that is based in fact. It should not have a viewpoint of any kind. My point is that objectivity does exist and can be reached by the well-written article. Writing, words, can be used to reveal or conceal, to communicate or to obfuscate, and this is the issue that needs to be addressed.

It is broached with the use of the term "reliable sources", which raises the question -- what happens when the reliable source is no longer reliable? Major new outlets are now generally tendentious, and in places have become outright advocacy organizations. The New York Times for example, has extended its editorial position into its news articles and no distinction can be seen between them. I would suggest that a "reliable sources" does not come from having an established name any more, but rather the content of the article in question. Is it fair? Does it skew the information in an irresponsible way? Does it omit basic facts? Is it even true?

The most recent display of an outright falsehood posted by the NY Times is the case of Officer Brian Sicknick, the U.S. Capitol Police Officer who died shortly after the Capitol Hill Breach on January 6, 2021. The NY Times reported that he had been "murdered" (a word I saw repeatedly after their new story) by someone after being hit in the head with a fire extinguisher. It turns out the officer died from a stroke and had not been hit in the head and showed no signs of any blunt force trauma, and in fact talked with his family after the incident was over and said he felt generally fine. The NY Times grudgingly printed a retraction, but the story had been picked up widely and is still cited. Basic journalistic standards were not followed in that example because of what the NY Times has become, utterly political. Now this is not true across the board, and I expect the NY Times is still reliable in places, on some things, but it is a case-by-case test.

The same can be said of other news outlets, and this is not just my opinion, but has been discussed in detail, though not in the places where the problem exists, that being the Media outlets themselves.

Here is another example, just the first sentence on a report related to the events that were triggered by death of Winston Boogie Smith:

A "reliable source", as I assume the Washington Post might be called, started off its article this way:

"The family of a 32-year-old Black Minneapolis man is calling for transparency in the investigation of the man’s death after he was shot Thursday by members of a U.S. Marshals Service task force who were trying to arrest him."

An "unreliable source", as I will assume the Breitbart website would be called, stated it this way:

"Burning, rioting, and looting broke out in Minneapolis on Friday night after deputies shot and killed a wanted felon who fired on them."

It seems clear the unreliable source has more relevant information included in its first sentence than does the "reliable" source, which doesn't even mention the violence associated with the death, nor that he fired on the deputies, nor that he was a felon, nor that he was wanted by police. It is clear that the "reliable" source has decided to emphasize a certain view point rather than explain facts. One may argue that Breitbart in its lead emphasizes what it wants -- the rioting, looting, and burning, but all of those things are factually true, and pretty important in the basic story of what happened. Does the family calling for "transparency" really override rioting in terms of relevance?

This is my criticism of the Wikipedia policies. The collective administrator group seems unwilling to consider that the protocols, or at least their enforcement, have become outmoded, outdated, and badly in need of repair if any of Wikipedia's reputation is to be salvaged. I consider these to be "Valid criticism as presented by sources" as was mentioned in your comment.

Thanks again for your interest in the topic that I raised.

Regards,

Sychonic

Sych (talk) 15:08, 7 June 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-23

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

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 8 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 9 June. It will be on all wikis from 10 June (calendar).

Future changes

• The Wikimedia movement uses Phabricator for technical tasks. This is where we collect technical suggestions, bugs and what developers are working on. The company behind Phabricator will stop working on it. This will not change anything for the Wikimedia movement now. It could lead to changes in the future. [113][114][115]
• Searching on Wikipedia will find more results in some languages. This is mainly true for when those who search do not use the correct diacritics because they are not seen as necessary in that language. For example searching for Bedusz doesn't find Będusz on German Wikipedia. The character ę isn't used in German so many would write e instead. This will work better in the future in some languages. [116]
• The CSRF token parameters in the action API were changed in 2014. The old parameters from before 2014 will stop working soon. This can affect bots, gadgets and user scripts that still use the old parameters. [117][118]

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

20:01, 7 June 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-24

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

• Logged-in users on the mobile web can choose to use the advanced mobile mode. They now see categories in a similar way as users on desktop do. This means that some gadgets that have just been for desktop users could work for users of the mobile site too. If your wiki has such gadgets you could decide to turn them on for the mobile site too. Some gadgets probably need to be fixed to look good on mobile. [119]
• Language links on Wikidata now works for multilingual Wikisource. [120]

Changes later this week

• There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

Future changes

• In the future we can't show the IP of unregistered editors to everyone. This is because privacy regulations and norms have changed. There is now a rough draft of how showing the IP to those who need to see it could work.
• German Wikipedia, English Wikivoyage and 29 smaller wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on 22 June. This is planned between 5:00 and 5:30 UTC. [121]
• All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes in the week of 28 June. More information will be published in Tech News later. It will also be posted on individual wikis in the coming weeks. [122][123]

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

20:25, 14 June 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-25

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 otrs-member group name is now vrt-permissions. This could affect abuse filters. [124]

Problems

• You will be able to read but not edit German Wikipedia, English Wikivoyage and 29 smaller wikis for a few minutes on 22 June. This is planned between 5:00 and 5:30 UTC. [125]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 22 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 23 June. It will be on all wikis from 24 June (calendar).

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

15:48, 21 June 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-26

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

Recent changes

• Wikis with the Growth features now can configure Growth features directly on their wiki. This uses the new special page Special:EditGrowthConfig. [126]
• Wikisources have a new OCR tool. If you don't want to see the "extract text" button on Wikisource you can add .ext-wikisource-ExtractTextWidget { display: none; } to your common.css page. [127]

Problems

• You will be able to read but not edit the Wikimedia wikis for a few minutes on 29 June. This is planned at 14:00 UTC. [128][129]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 29 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 30 June. It will be on all wikis from 1 July (calendar).

Future changes

• Threshold for stub link formatting, thumbnail size and auto-number headings can be set in preferences. They are expensive to maintain and few editors use them. The developers are planning to remove them. Removing them will make pages load faster. You can read more and give feedback.
• A toolbar will be added to the Reply tool's wikitext source mode. This will make it easier to link to pages and to ping other users. [130][131]

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

16:31, 28 June 2021 (UTC)

Thank you

... for what you said on User talk:SlimVirgin - missing pictured on my talk, with music full of hope and reformation --Gerda Arendt (talk) 20:05, 29 June 2021 (UTC)

Thanks Gerda Arendt, this reminds me that I should probaby rewatch the Baraka movie, a vivid scenery/music film displaying various manifestations of the natural human tendency to seek meaning in life and death. It also includes various time-lapse photography scenes, some of old, some of the accelerated modern world. Also a Hindu ritual funeral cremation scene at the deep music of L. Subramaniam. —PaleoNeonate – 02:19, 30 June 2021 (UTC)

Go ahead, do it! - One such story: "What would you do if you knew that today was the last day of your life?" ... and after the answer, the next question: "And why don't you do it?" - He who asked didn't ask me, but it's with me. - Did you know the image of a Bali funeral cremation that I use when missing makes me furious? (... did you know that I nominated it for featured picture, and the answer was "not by this photographer", and he who said so also left a meaningful to Sarah, but I haven't yet thanked him ...) --Gerda Arendt (talk) 05:20, 30 June 2021 (UTC)

I assume it was because of the ambiguous copyright status... Nice picture, —PaleoNeonate – 05:36, 30 June 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-27

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

Tech News

• The next issue of Tech News will be sent out on 19 July.

Recent changes

• AutoWikiBrowser is a tool to make repetitive tasks easier. It now uses JSON. Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/CheckPage has moved to Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/CheckPageJSON and Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/Config. Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/CheckPage/Version has moved to Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/CheckPage/VersionJSON. The tool will eventually be configured on the wiki so that you don't have to wait until the new version to add templates or regular expression fixes. [132]

Problems

• InternetArchiveBot helps saving online sources on some wikis. It adds them to Wayback Machine and links to them there. This is so they don't disappear if the page that was linked to is removed. It currently has a problem with linking to the wrong date when it moves pages from archive.is to web.archive.org. [133]

Changes later this week

• The tool to find, add and remove templates will be updated. This is to make it easier to find and use the right templates. It will come to the first wikis on 7 July. It will come to more wikis later this year. [134][135]
• There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

Future changes

• Some Wikimedia wikis use Flagged Revisions or pending changes. It hides edits from new and unregistered accounts for readers until they have been patrolled. The auto review action in Flagged Revisions will no longer be logged. All old logs of auto-review will be removed. This is because it creates a lot of logs that are not very useful. [136]

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

17:31, 5 July 2021 (UTC)

Don’t accuse people for having agendas

Look accusing people of POV pusher is not a good idea. Look please understand the views I present are not something I made up.CycoMa (talk) 16:31, 12 July 2021 (UTC)

Well, the comment was at your own talk page in accordance with WP:ASPERSION, with the evidence the long talk page threads and repetitive attempts to portray science as supporting binary sexuality and calling various reliable sources propaganda, an indication of WP:TE. The goal is that you hopefully realize that others notice this and that perhaps you could acknowledge it too and move-on, before the patience of the community wanes... —PaleoNeonate – 17:02, 12 July 2021 (UTC)

Note that I'm offering this editor much the same advice at article talk. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 17:11, 12 July 2021 (UTC)

Look I go to reliable source notice boards on this a lot because I want information presented here to be reliable. If a bunch of editors tell me that a source I’m using isn’t reliable I don’t cite it and just move on. So it’s not like I’m using lousy sources for the claims I present.

Also some changes I made to certain articles caused no controversy. Like I removed certain sources from articles that I knew were problematic and conflict came from it.

Look all I want is for the information here on Wikipedia to be reliable.CycoMa (talk) 17:35, 12 July 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-29

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

Recent changes

• The tool to find, add and remove templates was updated. This is to make it easier to find and use the right templates. It was supposed to come to the first wikis on 7 July. It was delayed to 12 July instead. It will come to more wikis later this year. [137][138]
• Special:UnconnectedPages lists pages that are not connected to Wikidata. This helps you find pages that can be connected to Wikidata items. Some pages should not be connected to Wikidata. You can use the magic word __EXPECTED_UNCONNECTED_PAGE__ on pages that should not be listed on the special page. [139]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 20 July. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 21 July. It will be on all wikis from 22 July (calendar).

Future changes

• How media is structured in the parser's HTML output will soon change. This can affect bots, gadgets, user scripts and extensions. You can read more. You can test it on Testwiki or Testwiki 2.
• The parameters for how you obtain tokens in the MediaWiki API were changed in 2014. The old way will no longer work from 1 September. Scripts, bots and tools that use the parameters from before the 2014 change need to be updated. You can read more.

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

15:30, 19 July 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-30

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

Recent changes

• A new version of MediaWiki came to the Wikimedia wikis the week before last week. This was not in Tech News because there was no newsletter that week.

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 27 July. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 28 July. It will be on all wikis from 29 July (calendar).

Future changes

• If you use the Monobook skin you can choose to switch off responsive design on mobile. This will now work for more skins. If ⧼monobook-responsive-label⧽ is unticked you need to also untick the new preference Enable responsive mode. Otherwise it will stop working. Interface admins can automate this process on your wiki. You can read more.

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

21:10, 26 July 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-31

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

Recent changes

• If your wiki uses markup like <div class="mw-content-ltr"> or <div class="mw-content-rtl"> without the required dir attribute, then these will no longer work in 2 weeks. There is a short-term fix that can be added to your local wiki's Common.css page, which is explained at T287701. From now on, all usages should include the full attributes, for example: <div class="mw-content-ltr" dir="ltr" lang="en"> or <div class="mw-content-rtl" dir="rtl" lang="he">. This also applies to some other HTML tags, such as span or code. You can find existing examples on your wiki that need to be updated, using the instructions at T287701.
• Reminder: Wikimedia has migrated to the Libera Chat IRC network, from the old Freenode network. Local documentation should be updated.

Problems

• Last week, all wikis had slow access or no access for 30 minutes. There was a problem with generating dynamic lists of articles on the Russian Wikinews, due to the bulk import of 200,000+ new articles over 3 days, which led to database problems. The problematic feature has been disabled on that wiki and developers are discussing if it can be fixed properly. [140][141]

Changes later this week

• When adding links to a page using VisualEditor or the 2017 wikitext editor, disambiguation pages will now only appear at the bottom of search results. This is because users do not often want to link to disambiguation pages. [142]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 3 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 4 August. It will be on all wikis from 5 August (calendar).

Future changes

• The team of the Wikipedia app for Android is working on communication in the app. The developers are working on how to talk to other editors and get notifications. You can read more. They are looking for users who want to test the plans. Any editor who has an Android phone and is willing to download the app can do this.
• The Beta Feature for Discussion tools will be updated in the coming weeks. You will be able to subscribe to individual sections on a talk page at more wikis. You can test this now by adding ?dtenable=1 to the end of the talk page's URL (example).

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

20:45, 2 August 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-32

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

Problems

• You can read but not edit 17 wikis for a few minutes on 10 August. This is planned at 05:00 UTC. This is because of work on the database. [143]

Changes later this week

• The Wikimania Hackathon will take place remotely on 13 August, starting at 5:00 UTC, for 24 hours. You can participate in many ways. You can still propose projects and sessions.
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 10 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 11 August. It will be on all wikis from 12 August (calendar).
• The old CSS <div class="visualClear"></div> will not be supported after 12 August. Instead, templates and pages should use <div style="clear:both;"></div>. Please help to replace any existing uses on your wiki. There are global-search links available at T287962.

Future changes

• The Wikipedia Library is a place for Wikipedia editors to get access to sources. There is an extension which has a new function to tell users when they can take part in it. It will use notifications. It will start pinging the first users in September. It will ping more users later. [144]
• Vue.js will be the JavaScript framework for MediaWiki in the future. [145]

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

16:19, 9 August 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-33

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

Recent changes

• You can add language links in the sidebar in the new Vector skin again. You do this by connecting the page to a Wikidata item. The new Vector skin has moved the language links but the new language selector cannot add language links yet. [146]

Problems

• There was a problem on wikis which use the Translate extension. Translations were not updated or were replaced with the English text. The problems have been fixed. [147][148][149]

Changes later this week

• A revision tag will soon be added to edits that add links to disambiguation pages. This is because these links are usually added by accident. The tag will allow editors to easily find the broken links and fix them. If your wiki does not like this feature, it can be hidden. [150]
• Would you like to help improve the information about tools? Would you like to attend or help organize a small virtual meetup for your community to discuss the list of tools? Please get in touch on the Toolhub Quality Signal Sessions talk page. We are also looking for feedback from tool maintainers on some specific questions.
• In the past, edits to any page in your user talk space ignored your mute list, e.g. sub-pages. Starting this week, this is only true for edits to your talk page. [151]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 17 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 18 August. It will be on all wikis from 19 August (calendar).

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

19:25, 16 August 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-34

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

Recent changes

• The Score extension (<score> notation) has been re-enabled on public wikis and upgraded to a newer version. Some musical score functionality may no longer work because the extension is only enabled in "safe mode". The security issue has been fixed and an advisory published.

Problems

• You will be able to read but not edit some wikis for a few minutes on 25 August. This will happen around 06:00 UTC. This is for database maintenance. During this time, operations on the CentralAuth will also not be possible.

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 24 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 25 August. It will be on all wikis from 26 August (calendar).

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

21:57, 23 August 2021 (UTC)

Read-only reminder

A maintenance operation will be performed on Wednesday August 25 06:00 UTC. It should only last for a few minutes.

Also during this time, operations on the CentralAuth will not be possible (GlobalRenames, changing/confirming e-mail addresses, logging into new wikis, password changes).

For more details about the operation and on all impacted services, please check on Phabricator.

A banner will be displayed 30 minutes before the operation.

Please help your community to be aware of this maintenance operation. Thank you!

20:33, 24 August 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-35

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

Recent changes

• Some musical score syntax no longer works and may needed to be updated, you can check Category:Pages with score rendering errors on your wiki for a list of pages with errors.

Problems

• Musical scores were unable to render lyrics in some languages because of missing fonts. This has been fixed now. If your language would prefer a different font, please file a request in Phabricator. [152]

Changes later this week

• The parameters for how you obtain tokens in the MediaWiki API were changed in 2014. The old way will no longer work from 1 September. Scripts, bots and tools that use the parameters from before the 2014 change need to be updated. You can read more about this.
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 31 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 1 September. It will be on all wikis from 2 September (calendar).

Future changes

• You will be able to read but not edit Commons for a few minutes on 6 September. This will happen around 05:00 UTC. This is for database maintenance.
• All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes in the week of 13 September. More information will be published in Tech News later. It will also be posted on individual wikis in the coming weeks. [153]

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

15:59, 30 August 2021 (UTC)

Precious anniversary

Precious

Three years!

--Gerda Arendt (talk) 07:35, 6 September 2021 (UTC)

Thanks, always better than "7 days"! ^[Humor] —PaleoNeonate – 08:41, 6 September 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-36

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

Recent changes

• The wikis that have Growth features deployed have been part of A/B testing since deployment, in which some newcomers did not receive the new features. Now, all of the newcomers on 21 of the smallest of those wikis will be receiving the features. [154]

Changes later this week

• There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

Future changes

• In 2017, the provided jQuery library was upgraded from version 1 to 3, with a compatibility layer. The migration will soon finish, to make the site load faster for everyone. If you maintain a gadget or user script, check if you have any JQMIGRATE errors and fix them, or they will break. [155][156]
• Last year, the Portuguese Wikipedia community embarked on an experiment to make log-in compulsory for editing.  The impact report of this trial is ready. Moving forward, the Anti-Harassment Tools team is looking for projects that are willing to experiment with restricting IP editing on their wiki for a short-term experiment. Learn more.

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

15:19, 6 September 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-37

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

Recent changes

• 45 new Wikipedias now have access to the Growth features. [157]
• A majority of Wikipedias now have access to the Growth features. The Growth team has published an FAQ page about the features. This translatable FAQ covers the description of the features, how to use them, how to change the configuration, and more.

Problems

• All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on 14 September. This is planned at 14:00 UTC. [158]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 14 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 15 September. It will be on all wikis from 16 September (calendar).
• Starting this week, Wikipedia in Italian will receive weekly software updates on Wednesdays. It used to receive the updates on Thursdays. Due to this change, bugs will be noticed and fixed sooner. [159]
• You can add language links in the sidebar in the new Vector skin again. You do this by connecting the page to a Wikidata item. The new Vector skin has moved the language links but the new language selector cannot add language links yet. [160]
• The syntax highlight tool marks up code with different colours. It now can highlight 23 new code languages. Additionally, golang can now be used as an alias for the Go programming language, and a special output mode has been added to show a program's output. [161][162]

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

15:32, 13 September 2021 (UTC)

New Page Patrol newsletter September 2021

New Page Review queue September 2021

Hello PaleoNeonate,

Please join this discussion - there is increase in the abuse of Wikipedia and its processes by POV pushers, Paid Editors, and by holders of various user rights including Autopatrolled. Even our review systems themselves at AfC and NPR have been infiltrated. The good news is that detection is improving, but the downside is that it creates the need for a huge clean up - which of course adds to backlogs.

Copyright violations are also a serious issue. Most non-regular contributors do not understand why, and most of our Reviewers are not experts on copyright law - and can't be expected to be, but there is excellent, easy-to-follow advice on COPYVIO detection here.

At the time of the last newsletter (#25, December 2020) the backlog was only just over 2,000 articles. New Page Review is an official system. It's the only firewall against the inclusion of new, improper pages.

There are currently 706 New Page Reviewers plus a further 1,080 admins, but as much as nearly 90% of the patrolling is still being done by around only the 20 or so most regular patrollers.

If you are no longer very active on Wikipedia or you no longer wish to be part of the New Page Reviewer user group, please consider asking any admin to remove you from the list. This will enable NPP to have a better overview of its performance and what improvements need to be made to the process or its software.

Various awards are due to be allocated by the end of the year and barnstars are overdue. If you would like to manage this, please let us know. Indeed, if you are interested in coordinating NPR, it does not involve much time and the tasks are described here.

---

To opt-out of future mailings, please remove yourself here. Sent to 827 users. 04:32, 16 September 2021 (UTC)

Requesting some article expansion help

Greetings,

Requesting you to visit Draft:Irrational beliefs and Draft:Superstitions in Christian societies and inputs and expansion help for the same.

Thanks and warm regards

Bookku, 'Encyclopedias = expanding information & knowledge' (talk) 05:57, 16 September 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-38

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

Recent changes

• Growth features are now deployed to almost all Wikipedias. For the majority of small Wikipedias, the features are only available for experienced users, to test the features and configure them. Features will be available for newcomers starting on 20 September 2021.
• MediaWiki had a feature that would highlight local links to short articles in a different style. Each user could pick the size at which "stubs" would be highlighted. This feature was very bad for performance, and following a consultation, has been removed. [163]
• A technical change was made to the MonoBook skin to allow for easier maintenance and upkeep. This has resulted in some minor changes to HTML that make MonoBook's HTML consistent with other skins. Efforts have been made to minimize the impact on editors, but please ping Jon (WMF) on wiki or in phabricator if any problems are reported.

Problems

• There was a problem with search last week. Many search requests did not work for 2 hours because of an accidental restart of the search servers. [164]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 21 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 22 September. It will be on all wikis from 23 September (calendar).
• The meta=proofreadpage API has changed. The piprop parameter has been renamed to prpiprop. API users should update their code to avoid unrecognized parameter warnings. Pywikibot users should upgrade to 6.6.0. [165]

Future changes

• The Reply tool will be deployed to the remaining wikis in the coming weeks. It is currently part of "Discussion tools" in Beta features at most wikis. You will be able to turn it off in Editing Preferences. [166]
• The previously announced change to how you obtain tokens from the API has been delayed to September 21 because of an incompatibility with Pywikibot. Bot operators using Pywikibot can follow T291202 for progress on a fix, and should plan to upgrade to 6.6.1 when it is released.

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

18:30, 20 September 2021 (UTC)

User:Fomfeider/sandbox

Thank you for reviewing my user sandbox. It's cool when someone explained it on my talk page. What do you think about my sandbox? Is it accurate or wrong? Please leave a message on my talk page about how you think my sandbox is turning out! Fomfeider (talk) 13:13, 24 September 2021 (UTC)

@Fomfeider: that IP user's post was indeed nice. Your sandbox summary also is, the only point I would stress (that was also mentioned in the other editor's post) is that nothing is black and white, selecting proper sources can often be challenging especially on some topics. It's also something we always keep learning about, the WP:RSN noticeboard and its archives (and WP:RSP) help. Some other source-related links that come to mind and may eventually be useful: WP:RS, WP:PRIMARY, WP:ABOUTSELF, WP:SPS, WP:FRIND, WP:PARITY, WP:MEDRS, WP:CRAPWATCH (the latter is an archive of questionable sources including "predatory" journals). —PaleoNeonate – 00:11, 25 September 2021 (UTC)