User talk:Samwalton9/Archive 23

April 2017 & May 2017

Administrators' newsletter – April 2017

News and updates for administrators from the past month (March 2017).

Administrator changes

TheDJ

Xnuala • CJ • Oldelpaso • Berean Hunter • Jimbo Wales • Andrew c • Karanacs • Modemac • Scott

Guideline and policy news

• Following a discussion on the backlog of unpatrolled files, consensus was found to create a new user right for autopatrolling file uploads. Implementation progress can be tracked on Phabricator.
• The BLPPROD grandfather clause, which stated that unreferenced biographies of living persons were only eligible for proposed deletion if they were created after March 18, 2010, has been removed following an RfC.
• An RfC has closed with consensus to allow proposed deletion of files. The implementation process is ongoing.
• After an unsuccessful proposal to automatically grant IP block exemption, consensus was found to relax the criteria for granting the user right from needing it to wanting it.

Technical news

• After a recent RfC, moved pages will soon be featured in a queue similar to Special:NewPagesFeed and require patrolling. Moves by administrators, page movers, and autopatrolled editors will be automatically marked as patrolled.
• Cookie blocks have been deployed. This extends the current autoblock system by setting a cookie for each block, which will then autoblock the user if they switch accounts, even under a new IP.

---

• Discuss this newsletter
• Subscribe
• Archive

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 10:55, 1 April 2017 (UTC)

April 2017

You have been blocked indefinitely from editing for blocking other administrators and because you are weird. If you think there are good reasons why you should be unblocked, you may request an unblock by first reading the guide to appealing blocks, then adding the following text to the bottom of your talk page: {{unblock|reason=Your reason here ~~~~}}.  --Cyberpower Chat|List of good deeds 11:51, 1 April 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-14

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

• The Save page button now says Publish page or Publish changes on most Wikipedias. The point is to make it more clear that the edit will change the page immediately. Publish page is when you save a new page and Publish changes when you edit an existing page. [1]
• The tracking category Category:Pages with template loops is now added when a template loop is found. A template loop is for example when a template tries to use a second template that uses the first template. [2]
• English Wikipedia now has cookie blocks. It will come to more wikis in the future. This is an extension to the autoblock system so when a user is blocked, the next time they visit the wiki a cookie will be set. This means that even if the user switches accounts and to a new IP address the cookie will block them again. [3]

Problems

• Wikidata descriptions, aliases and labels that used some characters could not be saved. This has now been fixed. [4]

Changes this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 4 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 5 April. It will be on all wikis from 6 April (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 4 April at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
• You can join the next office hour with the Wikidata team. The meeting will be on 5 April at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• New filters for Recent changes will come to Wikidata and Persian, Dutch, Russian, Turkish, Czech and Hebrew Wikipedia on 11 April. The new filters include filtering, highlighting and user intent prediction. User intent prediction means the filter tries to help editors determine if the edit was made in good faith or not. Other wikis will get it later. [5]

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

17:53, 3 April 2017 (UTC)

The WikiProject Video Games Newsletter, Q1 2017

The WikiProject Video Games Newsletter
Volume 10, No. 1 — 1st Quarter, 2017
Previous issue | Index | Next issue

Project At a Glance
As of Q1 2017, the project has:

• 211 Featured Articles
• 70 Featured Lists
• 11 Featured Topics
• 1 Featured Portals

• 28 Featured Pictures
• 1,172 Good Articles
• 23 Good Topics

---

Content

• Changes to Featured and Good content
• News items and announcements

• Interview with Coin945 and Deltasim about the edutainment video gaming genre

---

Project Navigation

• VG Project Main pages

  • Main project – talk
  • Project category – talk
  • Portal – talk

  VG Project Departments

  • Assessment
  • Reference library – talk
  • Newsletter – talk

To receive future editions of this newsletter, click here to sign up on the distribution list.

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 04:39, 5 April 2017 (UTC)

Books and Bytes - Issue 21

The Wikipedia Library

Books & Bytes
Issue 21, January-March 2017
by Nikkimaria (talk · contribs), Ocaasi (talk · contribs), UY Scuti (talk · contribs), Samwalton9 (talk · contribs), Sadads (talk · contribs)

• #1lib1ref 2017
• Wikipedia Library User Group
• Wikipedia + Libraries at Wikimedia Conference 2017
• Spotlight: Library Card Platform

Read the full newsletter

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 22:54, 6 April 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-15

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

• Tidy is going to be replaced with an HTML5 parsing algorithm. Bad HTML in wikitext would cause problems on a number of wikis. There is now a ParserMigration extension on all wikis that you can use to help clean this up. You can read more about how you can use it. [6]

Changes this week

• Some older web browsers will not be able to use JavaScript on Wikimedia wikis from this week. If you have an old web browser on your computer you can upgrade to a newer version. [7]
• New filters for Recent changes will come to Wikidata and Persian, Russian, Turkish and French Wikipedia on 11 April. The schedule has been changed to fix the user intent prediction filters for some wikis. User intent prediction means the filter tries to make it easier for editors to determine if the edit was made in good faith or not. Other wikis will get it later. [8]
• The list of special characters in the wikitext editor and the visual editor will now have a group of Canadian Aboriginal characters. [9]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 11 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 12 April. It will be on all wikis from 13 April (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 11 April at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• Because of a data centre test you will be able to read but not edit the wikis for 20 to 30 minutes on 19 April and 3 May. This will start at 14:00 (UTC). You might lose edits if you try to save during this time. You can read more about this.
• RevisionSlider will change how you move between revisions. This will be available on the test wiki from 11 April. It will come to other wikis later if users like the change. You can test it and give feedback.

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

18:35, 10 April 2017 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Administrators' newsletter/2017/1

Can we somehow move this page to something like 2016/12? It is ruining the order! Our archives are broken, too. Cheers, FriyMan ^talk 20:15, 11 April 2017 (UTC)

Oh... I get it. The title date is the date when the message was sent out... I am stupid. Sorry. Cheers, FriyMan ^talk 20:17, 11 April 2017 (UTC)

ANEWS logo

I was thinking of making some kind of a banner over the top of the letter , which will have the logo I made and a motto: "Keeping administrators well informed!"? I think that it would be a good idea. It would also draw more attention on talk pages. What do you think? Thank you. Cheers, FriyMan ^talk 21:00, 11 April 2017 (UTC)

@FriyMan: That could be a nice idea, yeah. I like the idea of ANEWS having its own logo! I like the current version, but not 100% sold on it, I'd prefer it to be a little simpler if possible? Sam Walton (talk) 21:05, 11 April 2017 (UTC)

Well, I think the logo is already as simple as possible. It only has 3 objects on it: Wikipedia logo (for obvious purposes), mop (to represent the news letter being "admin") and a post horn (cause it is a letter). Cheers, FriyMan ^talk 21:16, 11 April 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-16

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

• You can add ?safemode=1 to the end of the URL on Wikimedia wikis to disable your personal CSS and JavaScript. Example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literature?safemode=1. This means you can test if a problem is because of your user scripts or gadgets without uninstalling them. [10]
• You can now see a list of all autoblocks on Special:AutoblockList. [11]
• The Wikiversity and Wikinews logos are now shown directly from the configuration and not from [[File:Wiki.png]]. If you want to change logo or have an anniversary logo, see how to request a configuration change. This is how it already works for other projects. They can request logo changes the same way. [12]

Problems

• Because of a data centre test you will be able to read but not edit the wikis for 20 to 30 minutes on 19 April. This will start at 14:00 (UTC). You might lose edits if you try to save during this time. You can read more about this. This will also happen on 3 May.

Changes this week

• There is no new Mediawiki version this week. This is because of the data centre test.

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 18 April at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• stats.wikimedia.org will be replaced. You can see the new prototype. You can leave feedback on this change.
• Page Previews will be turned on for logged-out users on a large number of wikis in May. It could be postponed and happen later. Page Previews shows readers a short part of a linked article when they rest their mouse pointer on the link. This is to help them understand what it is about without leaving the article they are reading. Page Previews used to be called Hovercards. Users who have tested the feature can give feedback. [13]
• From next week, user scripts using very old deprecated wikibits functions will show errors. These functions have not worked since 2013. You should fix or disable broken scripts. You can see examples of how to upgrade scripts. [14][15]

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

19:32, 17 April 2017 (UTC)

News

Hey, Sam! How do you find news tech news? I would like to contribute to ANEWS more. Also, we should probably expand a little, since the Signpost is kind of dead. Thank you. (Did you like the new layout I made for the letter?) Cheers, FriyMan ^talk 06:35, 18 April 2017 (UTC)

As well as that, would you like us to add Wiki Ads to the bottom of the newsletter? It would be a nice idea, because ads can help editors to find their destination in the project. Cheers, FriyMan ^talk 07:01, 18 April 2017 (UTC)

@FriyMan: I get it primarily from the Tech News newsletter. I don't think we should expand right now; one of the primary pieces of feedback we received was that people were happy that we weren't writing like the signpost. The idea of this newsletter is to be as straightforward and factual as possible, covering just what administrators should be updated on. I'm of course open to suggestions for new sections, but probably nothing that would replace what the Signpost was/is doing. This is also relevant regarding Wiki Ads - I doubt very much that administrators (which this newsletter is aimed at, even if non-admins subscribe) would find them useful and they would add to clutter. There's some discussion regarding the layout here. Sam Walton (talk) 08:39, 18 April 2017 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Original Barnstar
	Hi Great job! . I need to find a reviewer for page I did for "Roomslanka". I am waiting for month. Can you please help me this? Thanks Roomslanka (talk) 22:05, 20 April 2017 (UTC)

@Roomslanka: Hi. Your draft article (Draft:Roomslanka.com) hasn't been submitted for review by another user. The subject is very unlikely to meet Wikipedia's notability threshold because it is so new - Wikipedia can only have articles on subjects which have already been written about in other reliable sources such as the news, books, or scientific papers, and it doesn't look like Roomslanka has yet. We cannot, therefore, have an article on Wikipedia about the website right now. Sam Walton (talk) 22:14, 20 April 2017 (UTC)

Accidental non-mention

Hi, Samwalton9! Just wanted to mention that I replied to you at Wikipedia talk:Protection policy#Icon for cascade protection. I mention this because I accidentally pinged Samwalton instead. Although I have fixed this to ping the right user, I thought that you might not get the ping, which is why I'm letting you know here. I apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.

If you have any questions about this, please let me know.

Thanks!

Noah Kastin (talk) 13:41, 21 April 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for the heads up Noah Kastin. Pings indeed only work when you add the ping and a signature in the same edit, so I didn't receive a new ping :) Sam Walton (talk) 13:42, 21 April 2017 (UTC)

@Samwalton9: Thanks for letting me know! This fact will be of great use to me in the future. Thanks again! Noah Kastin (talk) 13:45, 21 April 2017 (UTC)

@Samwalton9: I just realized that I accidentally mentioned Samwalton instead of mentioning you in two places, and that I had only fixed one of the accidental mentions when I first posted this discussion. I think that I have fixed all of the accidental mentions now. I apologize again for the inconvenience. Noah Kastin (talk) 14:07, 21 April 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-17

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

• New filters for recent changes are now available as a beta feature on most wikis. You can turn it on in your preferences. Remaining wikis will have the new filters on 9 May. [16]
• When administrators, bureaucrats and stewards make a user a member of a user group they can now set an expiry date. A user group is for example "administrators" or "bots". This means that they can give someone user rights for a limited time. This is similar to how blocks and page protections can be limited in time. Special:UserRights will have new options for this. You can read more about user groups. [17]

Problems

• Since the data centre test last week the content translation tool has been disabled. This is because of a database problem. It will be back as soon as the problem has been solved. [18]

Changes this week

• The GuidedTour extension will be enabled on all wikis. This is a tool to explain to new users how to edit. [19]
• Wiktionary will handle interlanguage links in a new way. The Cognate extension will automatically link pages with the same title between Wiktionaries. For this to work all old interlanguage links have to be removed. You can read more about this. [20]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 25 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 26 April. It will be on all wikis from 27 April (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 25 April at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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

16:40, 24 April 2017 (UTC)

ANI followup

As you were involved in the discussion on ANI, I am bringing this to your attention: Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case#Request_to_de-sysop_Jondel. Toddst1 (talk) 00:04, 1 May 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-18

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

• The content translation tool works again. It was turned off because of a database problem. [21]
• Scripts using very old deprecated wikibits functions show errors. These functions have not worked since 2013. You should fix or disable broken scripts. You can see examples of how to upgrade scripts. This is the same thing as Tech News wrote about in issue 2017/16. You need to add mw.loader.using( 'mediawiki.util' ) block for your scripts also, or add mediawiki.util dependency in gadget ResourceLoader section in MediaWiki:Gadgets-definition. [22][23]

Problems

• Because of a data centre test you will be able to read but not edit the wikis for 20 to 30 minutes on 3 May. This will start at 14:00 (UTC). You might lose edits if you try to save during this time. You can read more about this.

Changes this week

• There is no new MediaWiki version this week. This is because of the data centre test.

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 2 May at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• All Wikimedia wikis will have cookie blocks from May 8. This is an extension to the autoblock system so when a user is blocked, the next time they visit the wiki a cookie will be set. This means that even if the user switches accounts and to a new IP address the cookie will block them again. [24]
• The Publish changes, Show preview and Show changes buttons will look slightly different. This is to fit with the OOUI look. Users can test scripts, gadgets and so on to see if they work with the new interface by adding &ooui=1 to the URL. [25]

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

19:50, 1 May 2017 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – May 2017

News and updates for administrators from the past month (April 2017).

Administrator changes

Karanacs • Berean Hunter • GoldenRing • Dlohcierekim

Gdr • Tyrenius • JYolkowski • Longhair • Master Thief Garrett • Aaron Brenneman • Laser brain • JzG • Dragons flight

Guideline and policy news

• An RfC has clarified that user categories should be emptied upon deletion, but redlinked user categories should not be removed if re-added by the user.
• Discussions are ongoing regarding proposed changes to the COI policy. Changes so far have included clarification that adding a link on a Wikipedia forum to a job posting is not a violation of the harassment policy.

Technical news

• You can now see a list of all autoblocks at Special:AutoblockList.
• There is a new tool for adding archives to dead links. Administrators are able to restrict other user's ability to use the tool, and have additional permissions when changing URL and domain data.
• Administrators, bureaucrats and stewards can now set an expiry date when granting user rights. (discuss, permalink)

Miscellaneous

• Following an RfC, the editing restrictions page is now split into a list of active restrictions and an archive of those that are old or on inactive accounts. Make sure to check both pages if searching for a restriction.

---

• Discuss this newsletter
• Subscribe
• Archive

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 20:20, 2 May 2017 (UTC)

169.244.107.2

169.244.107.2 (talk · contribs · WHOIS)

Hi,

Not sure if you saw this when you blocked this IP, but their last block was for 1 year (and the blocks previous to it escalated ip to that length overtime), and they continued to vandalize shortly after this block. Would you consider extending the block length? Regards. 172.58.41.31 (talk) 14:27, 3 May 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for the note - I did notice this after my block, but couldn't change it due to the server maintenance (and forgot about it). I've upped to 1 year. Sam Walton (talk) 14:31, 3 May 2017 (UTC)

RfA job lots

I wonder if we should run Anarchtye's now, and prove the theory that RfAs go better when they're in a bunch? Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 19:01, 3 May 2017 (UTC)

@Ritchie333: Is that a request for a co-nom? ;) But yeah, I think that theory holds water. Sam Walton (talk) 22:41, 3 May 2017 (UTC)

From my point of view, I wanted to run it next month, which would be a year from the first RfA. However, he's had a lot of feedback in the last month to the extent that I think he's now ready. Anarchyte, what say you? Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 06:59, 4 May 2017 (UTC)

@Ritchie333 and Samwalton9: I'm fine with running sometime soon, I've learned (and changed) a lot from the feedback in both the previous ORCPs and the RfA. I'd like to get SoWhy's opinion before I plunge into RfA because some of the errors I made recently (that he pointed out) might be an issue and could bring some opposition, specifically the couple of poorly researched AfDs (an area that I wish to work in). Anarchyte (work | talk) 07:08, 4 May 2017 (UTC)

The last problematic AfDs (Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Anti-imperialism solidarity day, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Action Man: Operation Extreme and Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Adventure Game Toolkit) were from March 2017, correct, but Anarchyte has indicated he understood his mistakes and so far I see no reason to doubt him. That said, running for RfA a mere two months after those noms might garner opposes, especially combined with the fact that the last RfA was less than a year ago. I still think it will pass at this time but it might go smoother if one waits another one or two months. Regards SoWhy 07:42, 4 May 2017 (UTC)

Well I can't argue with any of that. I do notice Anarchyte has done quite a lot of AfDs since, and they've all uncontentious. The driver for nominating right now is testing my pet theory that RfAs go better for everyone when you have lots of them running at once, as the attention doesn't focus on one person. I was planning to run this one some time in late June along with a bunch of others. Anyway, if he wants to wait a bit longer, that's not an issue.

While I'm in the mood for "explosive RfA nominations", consider: Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Armbrust 4 and Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Montanabw 2 Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 08:03, 4 May 2017 (UTC)

@Ritchie333: Both of those links are red. The way I'm interpreting SoWhy's advice is that if I were to run soon I would possibly pass, but if I waited I'd have a higher chance. Before anything happens, I'd like to prepare the default three questions and make sure I won't incorrectly answer any of the possible editor questions. I know for certain that some people are going to ask for how I interpret WP:CONSENSUS, which was one of the questions I got wrong in my previous RfA. Anarchyte (work | talk) 08:29, 4 May 2017 (UTC)

I think you will probably pass at this time, not just possibly but taking more time has never hurt any candidate afaik. Regards SoWhy 08:42, 4 May 2017 (UTC)

The links are red because the RfAs don't exist yet! See Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Armbrust 3 and Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Montanabw for earlier iterations. In short these two both started an ORCP poll last year with reasonable results, and have distanced themselves from previous RfAs, but anyone considering nominating them may want to treat with caution. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 09:02, 4 May 2017 (UTC)

Ahh. Didn't quite get what you were referencing . Anarchyte (work | talk) 09:04, 4 May 2017 (UTC)

I think if you give it another month or two you'll pass no problems. Sam Walton (talk) 09:55, 4 May 2017 (UTC)

Yeah, I think I'll wait a bit. Thanks for the offer, though Ritchie333. Anarchyte (work | talk) 22:52, 4 May 2017 (UTC)

Commons images on the main page

Hello. As stated in ITN's edit notice (within the yellow box with the red "ATTENTION" heading and blinking "stop" icon), and in the comment directly to the right of the filename, images should not be transcluded on the main page until they've been protected – either by uploading them locally or through protection at the Wikimedia Commons. (Please see Wikipedia:Main Page/Commons media protection for a simple method of triggering Commons protection.) Otherwise, they can be overwritten at the Wikimeda Commons by a vandal seeking to deface WIkipedia's main page with inappropriate material, such as this (a very NSFW photograph recently used for that exact purpose).
In this instance, the image remained unprotected until about 13 minutes after your transclusion, when I happened to notice the issue and protected the image at the Wikimedia Commons. (Otherwise, the protection would have taken effect about two minutes later, when KrinkleBot added it to Commons:Auto-protected files/wikipedia/en – an automated fallback mechanism whose timing is unpredictable and that periodically fails to function).
Also, please remember to size an image in accordance with its orientation; 133px is far too large for a portrait-oriented image (especially one of this aspect ratio, for which even the standard 100px width results in a greater height than usual). Thank you. —David Levy 20:28, 7 May 2017 (UTC)

@David Levy: *Trouts self* Apologies! Entirely missed/forgot the various extra steps with main page images. Thanks for the fix and reminder. Sam Walton (talk) 20:31, 7 May 2017 (UTC)

No worries! Thanks very much for accepting the advice in the spirit in which it was intended. (Surprisingly often, admins respond with expressions of annoyance and obstinance, as though I'm complaining about a nonexistent issue.) —David Levy 20:46, 7 May 2017 (UTC)

Adah Almutairi

Hi Sam, How are you? the first letter for her name in Arabic is "غـ" and we pronounce it like "Gh" not "a". You can check here. If it was Adah we will pronounce it in Arabic like this "آده" and this is not her name. Thank you and sorry for my bad English --Mishary Al-Dhufeeri (talk) 22:44, 7 May 2017 (UTC)

@Mishary Al-Dhufeeri: Ah, thanks for explaining. We received an OTRS email from the article subject, explaining that her name is spelt Adah, not Ghadah. Additionally, her own listing at the university where she works spells it this way, so it is the spelling we should use. Best, Sam Walton (talk) 13:09, 8 May 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-19

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

Problems

• Some users have a problem with the watchlist. Some changes in categories make the watchlist a blank page. The developers are working on this. Until this is fixed you can try some things that have helped other editors if you have this problem. You can turn on Hide categorization of pages in your watchlist preferences. You can turn off Expand watchlist to show all changes, not just the most recent in your watchlist preferences. You can remove problematic categories from Special:EditWatchlist/raw. [26]
• There was a problem with the visual editor for several days. You could not save edits that triggered a CAPTCHA. This would for example be when a new user added external links in references. This was fixed on 2 May. [27]

Changes this week

• When you edit you can switch between the visual editor and the wikitext editor. This works if the wiki you edit has the visual editor. The menu will now say Visual editing and Source editing instead of Switch to visual editing and Switch to code editing. This is because it was confusing when the menu said you could switch to the editor you were already using. [28]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 9 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 10 May. It will be on all wikis from 11 May (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 9 May at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• You will be able to get a notification when a page you created is connected to a Wikidata item. This will come to Wikivoyage on 9 May. If there are no problems it will come to most Wikipedias on 30 May. It will come to other projects and English, French and German Wikipedia later in the summer. It will be opt-in for existing users and opt-out for new users. [29][30]
• Markup that looks like code for language variants might need to be fixed. If -{ is used in transclusions or web addresses it has to be escaped appropriately. You can use -<nowiki/>{ for transclusions and %2D{ in web addresses. A transclusion could for example be when you use -{ in a template: {{1x| sad :-{ face }}. This is because of some code fixes to the preprocessor and affects all wikis. [31][32]

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

02:25, 9 May 2017 (UTC)

DYK nomination of Mary M. Crawford

Hello! Your submission of Mary M. Crawford at the Did You Know nominations page has been reviewed, and some issues with it may need to be clarified. Please review the comment(s) underneath your nomination's entry and respond there as soon as possible. Thank you for contributing to Did You Know! Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 16:30, 9 May 2017 (UTC)

Notice on your talk page (User talk: Samwalton9#April 2017)

This notice (User talk:Samwalton9#April 2017) on your talk page caught me off guard and actually had me checking your block log and account status until I realized it was posted April 1st. Good 'joke' but would definitely scare most users half to death . --TheSandDoctor (talk) 17:08, 9 May 2017 (UTC)

Speedy deletion nomination of User:Samwalton9/sandbox

A tag has been placed on User:Samwalton9/sandbox requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under section U5 of the criteria for speedy deletion, because the page appears to consist of writings, information, discussions, and/or activities not closely related to Wikipedia's goals. Please note that Wikipedia is not a free web hosting service. Under the criteria for speedy deletion, such pages may be deleted at any time.

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 removed 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. If the page is deleted, and you wish to retrieve the deleted material for future reference or improvement, then please contact the deleting administrator, or if you have already done so, you can place a request here. WNYY98 (talk) 10:26, 12 May 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-20

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

• You can now use ISBNs to automatically generate citations in the visual editor. This works on wikis that have enabled Citoid. [33]
• The Two Column Edit Conflict View is available as a beta feature on all wikis. It is a new interface for the edit conflict resolution page. [34]

Problems

• The mediawiki.util library does not load automatically any more. Your Special:MyPage/common.js may use it. If you have technical problems that started a couple of weeks ago you can try adding mw.loader.using( 'mediawiki.util' ).done(function(){ as the first line in the file and }); as a last one. Tech News wrote about this in the 2017/18 issue. [35]

Changes this week

• The RevisionSlider extension will be a default feature on all wikis. RevisionSlider is an easier way to move between changes in the page history. It has been a default feature on German, Arabic and Hebrew Wikipedia and a beta feature on all wikis. You will be able to turn it off in your preferences. [36]
• There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

Future changes

• Administrators will soon be able to search through deleted pages. [37][38]
• Markup that looks like code for language variants might need to be fixed. Tech News wrote about this last week. If -{ is used in transclusions or web addresses it has to be escaped appropriately. You can use -<nowiki/>{ for transclusions and %2D{ in web addresses. This is because of some code fixes to the preprocessor and affects all wikis. You can now see the full list of wikis with this problem and help fix them to avoid that things break later this month. You might find false positives. You can read more about what to fix. [39][40]

Older unreported changes

• Your Meta user page is shown on all wikis where you don't have a local user page. You can now add the magic word __NOGLOBAL__ to your Meta user page to stop this. [41][42]

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

21:48, 15 May 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-21

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

Changes this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 23 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 24 May. It will be on all wikis from 25 May (calendar).
• There will be a <div> tag around HTML from the MediaWiki wikitext parser. Gadgets with code that does not follow recommendations could have problems with this. You can report new problems you think are related to this. [43]

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

22:15, 22 May 2017 (UTC)

DYK for Mary M. Crawford

On 30 May 2017, Did you know was updated with a fact from the article Mary M. Crawford, which you recently created, substantially expanded, or brought to good article status. The fact was ... that Mary M. Crawford became Brooklyn's first female ambulance surgeon after the hospital forgot to exclude women from applying? The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Mary M. Crawford. You are welcome to check how many page hits the article got while on the front page (here's how, Mary M. Crawford), and it may be added to the statistics page if the total is over 5,000. Finally, if you know of an interesting fact from another recently created article, then please feel free to suggest it on the Did you know talk page.

Mifter (talk) 00:02, 30 May 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-22

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

• Last week’s MediaWiki version was rolled back from some wikis because of a problem. This means planned changes did not happen. [44]

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 30 May at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• You will be able to control who can notify you on the Wikimedia wikis. You will have a user blacklist. When you add a user to the blacklist you will not get a notification when they mention you. You can test this on Beta Wikipedia. You can read more and give feedback on Meta. [45]

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

12:18, 30 May 2017 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Writer's Barnstar
	Nice job writing Mary M. Crawford! Very interesting article. What an impressive and exemplary woman. Glad it made it to the Main Page! ComputerJA (☎ • ✎) 16:32, 30 May 2017 (UTC)

@ComputerJA: Thank you! Another one of those people I was surprised to find didn't already have an article :) Sam Walton (talk) 16:40, 30 May 2017 (UTC)