User talk:Samwalton9/Archive 30
May 2022 at Women in Red
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--Innisfree987 (talk) 04:57, 2 May 2022 (UTC) via MassMessaging
Tech News: 2022-18
editLatest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- On all remaining wikis (group 2), the software to play videos and audio files on pages has now changed. The old player has been removed. Some audio players will become wider after this change. The new player has been a beta feature for over four years. [1][2]
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 3 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 4 May. It will be on all wikis from 5 May (calendar).
Future changes
- The developers are working on talk pages in the Wikipedia app for iOS. You can give feedback. You can take the survey in English, German, Hebrew or Chinese.
- Most wikis will receive an improved template dialog in VisualEditor and New Wikitext mode. [3] [4]
- If you use syntax highlighting while editing wikitext, you can soon activate a colorblind-friendly color scheme. [5]
Several CSS IDs related to MediaWiki interface messages will be removed. Technical editors should please review the list of IDs and links to their existing uses. These include #mw-anon-edit-warning,#mw-undelete-revisionand 3 others.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
19:32, 2 May 2022 (UTC)
Tech News: 2022-19
editLatest 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 see categories in the Wikipedia app for Android. [6]
Problems
- Last week, there was a problem with Wikidata's search autocomplete. This has now been fixed. [7]
- Last week, all wikis had slow access or no access for 20 minutes, for logged-in users and non-cached pages. This was caused by a problem with a database change. [8]
Changes later this week
- There is no new MediaWiki version this week. [9]
- Incompatibility issues with Kartographer and the FlaggedRevs extension will be fixed: Deployment is planned for May 10 on all wikis. Kartographer will then be enabled on the five wikis which have not yet enabled the extension on May 24.
- The Vector (2022) skin will be set as the default on several more wikis, including Arabic and Catalan Wikipedias. Logged-in users will be able to switch back to the old Vector (2010). See the latest update about Vector (2022).
Future meetings
- The next open meeting with the Web team about Vector (2022) will take place on 17 May. The following meetings are currently planned for: 7 June, 21 June, 5 July, 19 July.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
15:21, 9 May 2022 (UTC)
Administrators' newsletter – May 2022
editNews and updates for administrators from the past month (April 2022).
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Guideline and policy news
- Following an RfC, a change has been made to the administrators inactivity policy. Under the new policy, if an administrator has not made at least 100 edits over a period of 5 years they may be desysopped for inactivity.
- Following a discussion on the bureaucrat's noticeboard, a change has been made to the bureaucrats inactivity policy.
Technical news
- The ability to undelete the associated talk page when undeleting a page has been added. This was the 11th wish of the 2021 Community Wishlist Survey.
- A public status system for WMF wikis has been created. It is located at https://www.wikimediastatus.net/ and is hosted separately to WMF wikis so in the case of an outage it will remain viewable.
Arbitration
- Remedy 2 of the St Christopher case has been rescinded following a motion. The remedy previously authorised administrators to place a ban on single-purpose accounts who were disruptively editing on the article St Christopher Iba Mar Diop College of Medicine or related pages from those pages.
Orphaned non-free image File:DayZ Standalone Logo.jpg
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Thanks for uploading File:DayZ Standalone Logo.jpg. The image description page currently specifies that the image is non-free and may only be used on Wikipedia under a claim of fair use. However, the image is currently not used in any articles on Wikipedia. If the image was previously in an article, please go to the article and see why it was removed. You may add it back if you think that that will be useful. However, please note that images for which a replacement could be created are not acceptable for use on Wikipedia (see our policy for non-free media).
Note that any non-free images not used in any articles will be deleted after seven days, as described in section F5 of the criteria for speedy deletion. Thank you. --B-bot (talk) 17:14, 12 May 2022 (UTC)
Tech News: 2022-20
editLatest 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
- Some wikis can soon use the add a link feature. This will start on Wednesday. The wikis are Catalan Wikipedia, Hebrew Wikipedia, Hindi Wikipedia, Korean Wikipedia, Norwegian Bokmål Wikipedia, Portuguese Wikipedia, Simple English Wikipedia, Swedish Wikipedia, Ukrainian Wikipedia. This is part of the progressive deployment of this tool to more Wikipedias. The communities can configure how this feature works locally. [10]
- The Wikimedia Hackathon 2022 will take place online on May 20–22. It will be in English. There are also local hackathon meetups in Germany, Ghana, Greece, India, Nigeria and the United States. Technically interested Wikimedians can work on software projects and learn new skills. You can also host a session or post a project you want to work on.
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 17 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 18 May. It will be on all wikis from 19 May (calendar).
Future changes
- You can soon edit translatable pages in the visual editor. Translatable pages exist on for examples Meta and Commons. [11]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
18:57, 16 May 2022 (UTC)
Tech News: 2022-21
editLatest 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
- Administrators using the mobile web interface can now access Special:Block directly from user pages. [12]
- The www.wiktionary.org portal page now uses an automated update system. Other project portals will be updated over the next few months. [13]
Problems
- The Growth team maintains a mentorship program for newcomers. Previously, newcomers weren't able to opt out from the program. Starting May 19, 2022, newcomers are able to fully opt out from Growth mentorship, in case they do not wish to have any mentor at all. [14]
- Some editors cannot access the content translation tool if they load it by clicking from the contributions menu. This problem is being worked on. It should still work properly if accessed directly via Special:ContentTranslation. [15]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 24 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 25 May. It will be on all wikis from 26 May (calendar).
Future changes
- Gadget and user scripts developers are invited to give feedback on a proposed technical policy aiming to improve support from MediaWiki developers. [16]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
00:19, 24 May 2022 (UTC)
You know Zotero or citoid?
editI have just had an interesting and inspiring discussion at the Teahouse, and I thought you might be able to help me further on. Do you know Zotero and citoid, or someone who knows Zotero and citoid who I could ask for help, suggest, inspire a work? Paradise Chronicle (talk) 22:11, 25 May 2022 (UTC)
- Hi @Paradise Chronicle: I only know as much as has been explained to you at the Teahouse already, unfortunately. Are you looking for someone to create a translator for you? Sam Walton (talk) 22:15, 25 May 2022 (UTC)
- Yes :) If this is possible. It would make something really very much more pleasant for me. But if there is no one, there is no problem as well. You mentioned the Phabricator once. Is it maybe something for the Phabricator? Paradise Chronicle (talk) 22:21, 25 May 2022 (UTC)
The Signpost: 29 May 2022
edit- From the team: A changing of the guard
- News and notes: 2022 Wikimedia Board elections
- Community view: Have your say in the 2022 Wikimedia Foundation Board elections
- In the media: Putin, Jimbo, Musk and more
- Special report: Three stories of Ukrainian Wikimedians during the war
- Discussion report: Portals, April Fools, admin activity requirements and more
- WikiProject report: WikiProject COVID-19 revisited
- Technology report: A new video player for Wikimedia wikis
- Featured content: Featured content of April
- Interview: Wikipedia's pride
- Serendipity: Those thieving image farms
- Recent research: 35 million Twitter links analysed
- Tips and tricks: The reference desks of Wikipedia
- Traffic report: Strange highs and strange lows
- News from Diff: Winners of the Human rights and Environment special nomination by Wiki Loves Earth announced
- News from the WMF: The EU Digital Services Act: What’s the Deal with the Deal?
- From the archives: The Onion and Wikipedia
- Humour: A new crossword
Tech News: 2022-22
editLatest 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
- In the AbuseFilter extension, an
ip_in_ranges()function has been introduced to check if an IP is in any of the ranges. Wikis are advised to combine multipleip_in_range()expressions joined by|into a single expression for better performance. You can use the search function on Special:AbuseFilter to locate its usage. [17] - The IP Info feature which helps abuse fighters access information about IPs, has been deployed to all wikis as a beta feature. This comes after weeks of beta testing on test.wikipedia.org.
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 31 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 1 June. It will be on all wikis from 2 June (calendar).
- Some wikis will be in read-only for a few minutes because of a switch of their main database. It will be performed on 31 May at 07:00 UTC (targeted wikis).
- The New Topic Tool will be deployed for all editors at most wikis soon. You will be able to opt out from within the tool and in Preferences. [18][19]
- The list=usercontribs API will support fetching contributions from an IP range soon. API users can set the
uciprangeparameter to get contributions from any IP range within the limit. [20] - A new parser function will be introduced:
{{=}}. It will replace existing templates named "=". It will insert an equal sign. This can be used to escape the equal sign in the parameter values of templates. [21]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
20:27, 30 May 2022 (UTC)
June events from Women in Red
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--Megalibrarygirl (talk) 09:22, 31 May 2022 (UTC) via MassMessaging
Books & Bytes – Issue 50
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The Wikipedia Library
Books & Bytes
Issue 50, March – April 2022
- New library partner - SPIE
- 1Lib1Ref May 2022 underway
Sent by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of The Wikipedia Library team --12:52, 1 June 2022 (UTC) (UTC)
Administrators' newsletter – June 2022
editNews and updates for administrators from the past month (May 2022).
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Guideline and policy news
- Several areas of improvement collated from community member votes have been identified in the Universal Code of Conduct Enforcement guidelines. The areas of improvement have been sent back for review and you are invited to provide input on these areas.
Technical news
- Administrators using the mobile web interface can now access Special:Block directly from user pages. (T307341)
- The IP Info feature has been deployed to all wikis as a Beta Feature. Any autoconfirmed user may enable the feature using the "IP info" checkbox under Preferences → Beta features. Autoconfirmed users will be able to access basic information about an IP address that includes the country and connection method. Those with advanced privileges (admin, bureaucrat, checkuser) will have access to extra information that includes the Internet Service Provider and more specific location.
Arbitration
- Remedy 2 of the Rachel Marsden case has been rescinded following a motion. The remedy previously authorised administrators to delete or reduce to a stub, together with their talk pages, articles related to Rachel Marsden when they violate Wikipedia's biographies of living persons policy.
- An arbitration case regarding WikiProject Tropical Cyclones has been closed.
Tech News: 2022-23
editLatest 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 7 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 8 June. It will be on all wikis from 9 June (calendar).
- A new
str_replace_regexp()function can be used in abuse filters to replace parts of text using a regular expression. [22]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
02:45, 7 June 2022 (UTC)
Tech News: 2022-24
editLatest 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
- All wikis can now use Kartographer maps. Kartographer maps now also work on pages with pending changes. [23][24]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 14 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 15 June. It will be on all wikis from 16 June (calendar).
- Some wikis will be in read-only for a few minutes because of a switch of their main database. It will be performed on 14 June at 06:00 UTC (targeted wikis). [25]
- Starting on Wednesday, a new set of Wikipedias will get "Add a link" (Abkhazian Wikipedia, Achinese Wikipedia, Adyghe Wikipedia, Afrikaans Wikipedia, Akan Wikipedia, Alemannisch Wikipedia, Amharic Wikipedia, Aragonese Wikipedia, Old English Wikipedia, Syriac Wikipedia, Egyptian Arabic Wikipedia, Asturian Wikipedia, Atikamekw Wikipedia, Avaric Wikipedia, Aymara Wikipedia, Azerbaijani Wikipedia, South Azerbaijani Wikipedia). This is part of the progressive deployment of this tool to more Wikipedias. The communities can configure how this feature works locally. [26]
- The New Topic Tool will be deployed for all editors at Commons, Wikidata, and some other wikis soon. You will be able to opt out from within the tool and in Preferences. [27][28]
Future meetings
- The next open meeting with the Web team about Vector (2022) will take place today (13 June). The following meetings will take place on: 28 June, 12 July, 26 July.
Future changes
- By the end of July, the Vector 2022 skin should be ready to become the default across all wikis. Discussions on how to adjust it to the communities' needs will begin in the next weeks. It will always be possible to revert to the previous version on an individual basis. Learn more.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
16:57, 13 June 2022 (UTC)
Tech News: 2022-25
editLatest 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 Wikipedia App for Android now has an option for editing the whole page at once, located in the overflow menu (three-dots menu
). [29] - Some recent database changes may affect queries using the Quarry tool. Queries for
site_statsat English Wikipedia, Commons, and Wikidata will need to be updated. Read more. - A new
user_global_editcountvariable can be used in abuse filters to avoid affecting globally active users. [30]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 21 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 22 June. It will be on all wikis from 23 June (calendar).
- Users of non-responsive skins (e.g. MonoBook or Vector) on mobile devices may notice a slight change in the default zoom level. This is intended to optimize zooming and ensure all interface elements are present on the page (for example the table of contents on Vector 2022). In the unlikely event this causes any problems with how you use the site, we'd love to understand better, please ping Jon (WMF) to any on-wiki conversations. [31]
Future changes
- The Beta Feature for DiscussionTools will be updated throughout July. Discussions will look different. You can see some of the proposed changes.
- Parsoid's HTML output will soon stop annotating file links with different
typeofattribute values, and instead usemw:Filefor all types. Tool authors should adjust any code that expects:mw:Image,mw:Audio, ormw:Video. [32]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
20:17, 20 June 2022 (UTC)
The Signpost: 26 June 2022
edit- News and notes: WMF inks new rules on government-ordered takedowns, blasts Russian feds' censor demands, spends big bucks
- In the media: Editor given three-year sentence, big RfA makes news, Guy Standing takes it sitting down
- Special report: "Wikipedia's independence" or "Wikimedia's pile of dosh"?
- Featured content: Articles on Scots' clash, Yank's tux, Austrian's action flick deemed brilliant prose
- Recent research: Wikipedia versus academia (again), tables' "immortality" probed
- Serendipity: Was she really a Swiss lesbian automobile racer?
- News from the WMF: Wikimedia Enterprise signs first deals
- Gallery: Celebration of summer, winter
LTA Knowledgebase
editHi, I'm not sure if you remember me but I've returned. I was looking at LTA related things because I was planning on getting back into it and noticed your proposal for an LTA knowledgebase back in 2017. From what I could find, it looks like there was consensus to implement a knowledgebase but it was left at "who gets access?" I was wondering if you could let me know if there are any updates to this that I missed or if you'd like to discuss it with me at all. If there's any sensitive information involved in anything you'd like to discuss, you can email me through Wikipedia or I am PhantomTech on Libera.Chat's IRC servers with the cloak user/PhantomTech until my wikipedia/PhantomTech cloak request is finished. PHANTOMTECH (talk) 01:15, 27 June 2022 (UTC)
- Hi @PhantomTech: This didn't go anywhere that involved me but TheresNoTime might know more :) Sam Walton (talk) 07:06, 27 June 2022 (UTC)
- Thanks :) PHANTOMTECH (talk) 07:10, 27 June 2022 (UTC)
Women in Red in July 2022
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--Lajmmoore (talk) 15:49, 27 June 2022 (UTC) via MassMessaging
Tech News: 2022-26
editLatest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- Wikimedia Enterprise API service now has self-service accounts with free on-demand requests and monthly snapshots (API documentation). Community access via database dumps & Wikimedia Cloud Services continues.
- All Wikimedia wikis can now use Wikidata Lexemes in Lua after creating local modules and templates. Discussions are welcome on the project talk page.
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 28 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 29 June. It will be on all wikis from 30 June (calendar).
- Some wikis will be in read-only for a few minutes because of a switch of their main database. It will be performed on 28 June at 06:00 UTC (targeted wikis). [33]
- Some global and cross-wiki services will be in read-only for a few minutes because of a switch of their main database. It will be performed on 30 June at 06:00 UTC. This will impact ContentTranslation, Echo, StructuredDiscussions, Growth experiments and a few more services. [34]
- Users will be able to sort columns within sortable tables in the mobile skin. [35]
Future meetings
- The next open meeting with the Web team about Vector (2022) will take place tomorrow (28 June). The following meetings will take place on 12 July and 26 July.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
20:01, 27 June 2022 (UTC)
Tech News: 2022-27
editLatest 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 5 July. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 6 July. It will be on all wikis from 7 July (calendar).
- Some wikis will be in read-only for a few minutes because of a switch of their main database. It will be performed on 5 July at 07:00 UTC (targeted wikis) and on 7 July at 7:00 UTC (targeted wikis).
- The Beta Feature for DiscussionTools will be updated throughout July. Discussions will look different. You can see some of the proposed changes.
- This change only affects pages in the main namespace in Wikisource. The Javascript config variable
proofreadpage_source_hrefwill be removed frommw.configand be replaced with the variableprpSourceIndexPage. [36]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
19:31, 4 July 2022 (UTC)
Growth team newsletter #21
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Welcome to the twenty-first newsletter from the Growth team!
New project: Positive reinforcement
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- The Growth team started a new project: Positive reinforcement. We want newcomers to understand there is an interest in regularly editing Wikipedia, and we want to improve new editor retention.
- We asked users from Arabic, Bangla, Czech and French Wikipedia about their feedback. Some people participated at mediawiki.org as well.
- We summarized the initial feedback gathered from these community discussions, along with how we plan to iterate based on that feedback.
- The first Positive Reinforcement idea is a redesign of the impact module: incorporating stats, graphs, and other contribution information. This idea received the widest support, and we plan to start our work based on the design illustrated on the side.
- Please let us know what you think of this project, in any language.
For mentors
edit- We have worked on two new features, to inform them about the mentorship:
Scaling
edit- "Add a link" available at more wikis ― Add a link feature has been deployed to more wikis: Catalan Wikipedia, Hebrew Wikipedia, Hindi Wikipedia, Korean Wikipedia, Norwegian Bokmål Wikipedia, Portuguese Wikipedia, Simple English Wikipedia, Swedish Wikipedia, Ukrainian Wikipedia, Abkhazian Wikipedia, Achinese Wikipedia, Adyghe Wikipedia, Afrikaans Wikipedia, Akan Wikipedia, Alemannisch Wikipedia, Amharic Wikipedia, Aragonese Wikipedia, Old English Wikipedia, Syriac Wikipedia, Egyptian Arabic Wikipedia, Asturian Wikipedia, Atikamekw Wikipedia, Avaric Wikipedia, Aymara Wikipedia, Azerbaijani Wikipedia, South Azerbaijani Wikipedia. This is part of the progressive deployment of this tool to more Wikipedias. The communities can configure locally how this feature works.
- "Add an image" available at more wikis ― Add an image feature will be deployed to more wikis: Greek Wikipedia, Indonesian Wikipedia, Polish Wikipedia, Chinese Wikipedia. These communities will be able to configure locally how this feature works. [37]
Suggested edits
edit- Selecting topics ― We have created an "AND" filter to the list of topics at Special:Homepage. This way, newcomers can decide to select very specific topics ("Transportation" AND "Asia") or to have a broader selection ("Transportation" OR "Asia"). At the moment this feature is tested at pilot wikis.
- Changes for Add a link ― We have built several improvements that came from community discussion and from data analysis. They will be available soon at the wikis.
- Algorithm improvements ― The algorithm now avoids recommending links in sections that usually don't have links and for first names. Also, it now limits each article to only having three link suggestions by default (limited to the highest accuracy suggestions of all the available ones in the article).
- User experience improvements ― We added a confirmation dialog when a user exits out of suggestion mode prior to making changes. We also improved post-edit dialog experience and allow newcomers to browse through task suggestions from the post-edit dialog.
- Community configuration ― We allow communities to set a maximum number of links per article via Special:EditGrowthConfig.
- Future change for Add a link feature ― We will suggest underlinked articles in priority. [38]
- Patrolling suggested edits ― Some users at Arabic Wikipedia, Spanish Wikipedia, and Russian Wikipedia told us that "Add a link" and "Add an image" edits can be challenging to patrol. We are now brainstorming improvements to help address this challenge. We have already some ideas and we started some work to address this challenge. If you have any thoughts to add about the challenges of reviewing these tasks or how we should improve these tasks further, please let us know, in any language.
Community configuration
editCommunities can configure how the features work, using Special:EditGrowthConfig.
- Communities can set the maximum number of "add an image" suggested tasks a newcomer can complete daily. [39]
- Future change: allow communities to customize the "add a link" quality gate threshold easily, using Special:EditGrowthConfig. [40]
Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
13:03, 5 July 2022 (UTC)
Administrators' newsletter – July 2022
editNews and updates for administrators from the past month (June 2022).
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Technical news
user_global_editcountis a new variable that can be used in abuse filters to avoid affecting globally active users. (T130439)
Arbitration
- An arbitration case regarding conduct in deletion-related editing has been opened.
Miscellaneous
- The New Pages Patrol queue has around 10,000 articles to be reviewed. As all administrators have the patrol right, please consider helping out. The queue is here. For further information on the state of the project, see the latest NPP newsletter.
Tech News: 2022-28
editLatest 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
- In the Vector 2022 skin, the page title is now displayed above the tabs such as Discussion, Read, Edit, View history, or More. Learn more. [41]
- It is now possible to easily view most of the configuration settings that apply to just one wiki, and to compare settings between two wikis if those settings are different. For example: Japanese Wiktionary settings, or settings that are different between the Spanish and Esperanto Wikipedias. Local communities may want to discuss and propose changes to their local settings. Details about each of the named settings can be found by searching MediaWiki.org. [42]
- The Anti-Harassment Tools team recently deployed the IP Info Feature as a Beta Feature at all wikis. This feature allows abuse fighters to access information about IP addresses. Please check our update on how to find and use the tool. Please share your feedback using a link you will be given within the tool itself.
Changes later this week
- There is no new MediaWiki version this week.
- Some wikis will be in read-only for a few minutes because of a switch of their main database. It will be performed on 12 July at 07:00 UTC (targeted wikis).
Future changes
- The Beta Feature for DiscussionTools will be updated throughout July. Discussions will look different. You can see some of the proposed changes.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
19:23, 11 July 2022 (UTC)
Tech News: 2022-29
editLatest 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 feature on mobile web for Nearby Pages was missing last week. It will be fixed this week. [43]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 19 July. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 20 July. It will be on all wikis from 21 July (calendar).
Future changes
- The Technical Decision Forum is seeking community representatives. You can apply on wiki or by emailing TDFSupport@wikimedia.org before 12 August.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
22:58, 18 July 2022 (UTC)
Tech News: 2022-30
editLatest 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 www.wikibooks.org and www.wikiquote.org portal pages now use an automated update system. Other project portals will be updated over the next few months. [44]
Problems
- Last week, some wikis were in read-only mode for a few minutes because of an emergency switch of their main database (targeted wikis). [45]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 26 July. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 27 July. It will be on all wikis from 28 July (calendar).
- The external link icon will change slightly in the skins Vector legacy and Vector 2022. The new icon uses simpler shapes to be more recognizable on low-fidelity screens. [46]
- Administrators will now see buttons on user pages for "Change block" and "Unblock user" instead of just "Block user" if the user is already blocked. [47]
Future meetings
- The next open meeting with the Web team about Vector (2022) will take place tomorrow (26 July).
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
19:26, 25 July 2022 (UTC)
Women in Red August 2022
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--Lajmmoore (talk) 10:59, 29 July 2022 (UTC) via MassMessaging
Help needed
editHello! Can you please help me out with this matter?
There was an error in the deletion of information on a page. Jungkook (the Main Vocalist of BTS) has been confirmed to have absolute pitch and this information was deleted from “the list of people with absolute pitch” page. I can provide multiple articles and sources that confirm this information. There is even a video of Jungkook proving this ability on camera. Can you please help to restore the correct information? I would greatly appreciate your help! Thank you! Diakoo (talk) 11:19, 29 July 2022 (UTC)
- @Diakoo: Hi - you should head over to Talk:List of people with absolute pitch and link to reliable sources of information which demonstrate this fact. Sam Walton (talk) 11:23, 29 July 2022 (UTC)
The Signpost: 1 August 2022
edit- From the editors: Rise of the machines, or something
- News and notes: Information considered harmful
- In the media: Censorship, medieval hoaxes, "pathetic supervillains", FB-WMF AI TL bid, dirty duchess deeds done dirt cheap
- Op-Ed: The "recession" affair
- Eyewitness Wikimedian, Vinnytsia, Ukraine: War diary (part 3)
- Community view: Youth culture and notability
- Opinion: Criminals among us
- Arbitration report: Winds of change blow for cyclone editors, deletion dustup draws toward denouement
- Deletion report: This is Gonzo Country
- Discussion report: Notability for train stations, notices for mobile editors, noticeboards for the rest of us
- Featured content: A little list with surprisingly few lists
- Tips and tricks: Cleaning up awful citations with Citation bot
- On the bright side: Ukrainian Wikimedians during the war — three (more) stories
- Essay: How to research an image
- Recent research: A century of rulemaking on Wikipedia analyzed
- Serendipity: Don't cite Wikipedia
- Gallery: A backstage pass
- From the archives: 2012 Russian Wikipedia shutdown as it happened
Books & Bytes – Issue 51
edit The Wikipedia Library
Books & Bytes
Issue 51, May – June 2022
- New library partners
- SAGE Journals
- Elsevier ScienceDirect
- University of Chicago Press
- Information Processing Society of Japan
- Feedback requested on this newsletter
- 1Lib1Ref May 2022
Sent by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of The Wikipedia Library team --16:45, 1 August 2022 (UTC)
Tech News: 2022-31
editLatest 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
- Improved LaTeX capabilities for math rendering are now available in the wikis thanks to supporting
Phantomtags. This completes part of the #59 wish of the 2022 Community Wishlist Survey.
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 2 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 3 August. It will be on all wikis from 4 August (calendar).
- The Realtime Preview will be available as a Beta Feature on wikis in Group 0. This feature was built in order to fulfill one of the Community Wishlist Survey proposals.
Future changes
- The Beta Feature for DiscussionTools will be updated throughout August. Discussions will look different. You can see some of the proposed changes.
Future meetings
- This week, three meetings about Vector (2022) with live interpretation will take place. On Tuesday, interpretation in Russian will be provided. On Thursday, meetings for Arabic and Spanish speakers will take place. See how to join.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
21:20, 1 August 2022 (UTC)
Administrators' newsletter – August 2022
editNews and updates for administrators from the past month (July 2022).
Administrator changes
Guideline and policy news
- An RfC has been closed with consensus to add javascript that will show edit notices for editors editing via a mobile device. This only works for users using a mobile browser, so iOS app editors will still not be able to see edit notices.
- An RfC has been closed with the consensus that train stations are not inherently notable.
Technical news
- The Wikimania 2022 Hackathon will take place virtually from 11 August to 14 August.
- Administrators will now see links on user pages for "Change block" and "Unblock user" instead of just "Block user" if the user is already blocked. (T308570)
Arbitration
- The arbitration case request Geschichte has been automatically closed after a 3 month suspension of the case.
Miscellaneous
- You can vote for candidates in the 2022 Board of Trustees elections from 16 August to 30 August. Two community elected seats are up for election.
- Wikimania 2022 is taking place virtually from 11 August to 14 August. The schedule for wikimania is listed here. There are also a number of in-person events associated with Wikimania around the world.
- Tech tip: When revision-deleting on desktop, hold ⇧ Shift between clicking two checkboxes to select every box in that range.
Deletion review for Pro-abortion violence
editAn editor has asked for a deletion review of Pro-abortion violence. Because you closed the deletion discussion for this page, speedily deleted it, or otherwise were interested in the page, you might want to participate in the deletion review. Elizium23 (talk) 15:43, 7 August 2022 (UTC)
Tech News: 2022-32
editLatest 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
- GUS2Wiki copies the information from Special:GadgetUsage to an on-wiki page so you can review its history. If your project isn't already listed on the Wikidata entry for Project:GUS2Wiki you can either run GUS2Wiki yourself or make a request to receive updates. [48]
Changes later this week
- There is no new MediaWiki version this week.
- Some wikis will be in read-only for a few minutes because of a switch of their main database. It will be performed on 9 August at 07:00 UTC (targeted wikis) and on 11 August at 7:00 UTC (targeted wikis).
Future meetings
- The Wikimania Hackathon will take place online from August 12–14. Don't miss the pre-hacking showcase to learn about projects and find collaborators. Anyone can propose a project or host a session. Newcomers are welcome!
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
19:48, 8 August 2022 (UTC)
Tech News: 2022-33
editLatest 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 Persian (Farsi) Wikipedia community decided to block IP editing from October 2021 to April 2022. The Wikimedia Foundation's Product Analytics team tracked the impact of this change. An impact report is now available.
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 16 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 17 August. It will be on all wikis from 18 August (calendar).
- Some wikis will be in read-only for a few minutes because of a switch of their main database. It will be performed on 16 August at 07:00 UTC (targeted wikis) and on 18 August at 7:00 UTC (targeted wikis).
- The Realtime Preview will be available as a Beta Feature on wikis in Group 1. This feature was built in order to fulfill one of the Community Wishlist Survey proposals.
Future changes
- The Beta Feature for DiscussionTools will be updated throughout August. Discussions will look different. You can see some of the proposed changes. [49][50][51]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
21:07, 15 August 2022 (UTC)
Tech News: 2022-34
editLatest 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
- Two problems with Kartographer maps have been fixed. Maps are no longer shown as empty when a geoline was created via VisualEditor. Geolines consisting of points with QIDs (e.g., subway lines) are no longer shown with pushpins. [52][53]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 23 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 24 August. It will be on all wikis from 25 August (calendar).
- Some wikis will be in read-only for a few minutes because of a switch of their main database. It will be performed on 25 August at 7:00 UTC (targeted wikis).
- The colours of links and visited links will change. This is to make the difference between links and other text more clear. [54]
Future changes
- The new [subscribe] button helps newcomers get answers. The Editing team is enabling this tool everywhere. You can turn it off in your preferences. [55]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
00:10, 23 August 2022 (UTC)
JSTOR
editHi Samwhalton9, I have had issues with accessing JSTOR over the Wikipedia library now for quite some while. Until I guess about 3 weeks, I had no issues at all and it was one of my preferred collections on the Wikipedia library. But now I normally and consistently get asked wether I agree to the terms and I can click on the button I want, the article won't show as it did before. Once it appeared, but usually there is no article appearing after the question on the terms. JSTOR appears with a new layout now and maybe there is a bug in regards of the Wikipedia library? I am not sure if your talk page ist the correct venue, but you have been able to help me before, so I ask you first.Paradise Chronicle (talk) 07:21, 23 August 2022 (UTC)
- @Paradise Chronicle: This is strange - I'm testing JSTOR and it seems to work correctly (albeit a little slowly) for me at the moment. I also see the terms popup, but clicking Accept takes me through to the item I'm searching for as intended. It opens in a 2nd tab, so I wonder if perhaps you have some kind of extension or security setting which is preventing the tab from opening? Samwalton9 (WMF) (talk) 09:31, 23 August 2022 (UTC)
- Thank you, it really helps to ask you. Following your reply, I again tried and at first JSTOR in general also well for me. But the specific paper I wanted to read, (this one and which triggered my question to you), was still not accessible to me. Then I tried again before I answered you, and now I can read that one as well. Thank you very much for that.Paradise Chronicle (talk) 11:32, 23 August 2022 (UTC)
Tech News: 2022-35
editLatest 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 Realtime Preview is available as a Beta Feature on wikis in Group 2. This feature was built in order to fulfill one of the Community Wishlist Survey proposals. Please note that when this Beta feature is enabled, it may cause conflicts with some wiki-specific Gadgets.
Problems
- In recent months, there have been inaccurate numbers shown for various Special:Statistics at Commons, Wikidata, and English Wikipedia. This has now been fixed. [56]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 30 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 31 August. It will be on all wikis from 1 September (calendar).
- Some wikis will be in read-only for a few minutes because of a switch of their main database. It will be performed on 30 August at 07:00 UTC (targeted wikis) and on 1 September at 7:00 UTC (targeted wikis).
Future changes
- The Wikimedia Foundation wants to improve how Wikimedia communities report harmful incidents by building the Private Incident Reporting System (PIRS) to make it easy and safe for users to make reports. You can leave comments on the talk page, by answering the questions provided. If you have ever faced a harmful situation that you wanted to report/reported, join a PIRS interview to share your experience. To sign up please email Madalina Ana.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
23:03, 29 August 2022 (UTC)
Women in Red in September 2022
edit
|
--Lajmmoore (talk) 15:38, 31 August 2022 (UTC) via MassMessaging
The Signpost: 31 August 2022
edit- News and notes: Admins wanted on English Wikipedia, IP editors not wanted on Farsi Wiki, donations wanted everywhere
- Special report: Wikimania 2022: no show, no show up?
- In the media: Truth or consequences? A tough month for truth
- Discussion report: Boarding the Trustees
- News from Wiki Education: 18 years a Wikipedian: what it means to me
- In focus: Thinking inside the box
- Tips and tricks: The unexpected rabbit hole of typo fixing in citations...
- Technology report: Vector (2022) deployment discussions happening now
- Serendipity: Two photos of every library on earth
- Featured content: Our man drills are safe for work, but our Labia is Fausta.
- Recent research: The dollar value of "official" external links
- Traffic report: What dreams (and heavily trafficked articles) may come
- Essay: Delete the junk!
- Humour: CommonsComix No. 1
- From the archives: 5, 10, and 15 years ago
Administrators' newsletter – September 2022
editNews and updates for administrators from the past month (August 2022).
|
|
|
Guideline and policy news
- A discussion is open to define a process by which Vector 2022 can be made the default for all users.
- An RfC is open to gain consensus on whether Fox News is reliable for science and politics.
Technical news
- The impact report on the effects of disabling IP editing on the Persian (Farsi) Wikipedia has been released.
- The WMF is looking into making a Private Incident Reporting System (PIRS) system to improve the reporting of harmful incidents through easier and safer reporting. You can leave comments on the talk page by answering the questions provided. Users who have faced harmful situations are also invited to join a PIRS interview to share the experience. To sign up please email Madalina Ana.
Arbitration
- An arbitration case regarding Conduct in deletion-related editing has been closed. The Arbitration Committee passed a remedy as part of the final decision to create a request for comment (RfC) on how to handle mass nominations at Articles for Deletion (AfD).
- The arbitration case request Jonathunder has been automatically closed after a 6 month suspension of the case.
Miscellaneous
- The new pages patrol (NPP) team has prepared an appeal to the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) for assistance with addressing Page Curation bugs and requested features. You are encouraged to read the open letter before it is sent, and if you support it, consider signing it. It is not a discussion, just a signature will suffice.
- Voting for candidates for the Wikimedia Board of Trustees is open until 6 September.
Tech News: 2022-36
editLatest 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 6 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 7 September. It will be on all wikis from 8 September (calendar).
- Some wikis will be in read-only for a few minutes because of a switch of their main database. It will be performed on 6 September at 07:00 UTC (targeted wikis) and on 8 September at 7:00 UTC (targeted wikis).
- On Special pages that only have one tab, the tab-bar's row will be hidden in the Vector-2022 skin to save space. The row will still show if Gadgets use it. Gadgets that currently append directly to the CSS id of
#p-namespacesshould be updated to use themw.util.addPortletLinkfunction instead. Gadgets that style this id should consider also targeting#p-associated-pages, the new id for this row. Examples are available. [57][58]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
23:20, 5 September 2022 (UTC)
Tech News: 2022-37
editLatest 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 search servers have been upgraded to a new major version. If you notice any issues with searching, please report them on Phabricator. [59]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 13 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 14 September. It will be on all wikis from 15 September (calendar).
- Syntax highlighting is now tracked as an expensive parser function. Only 500 expensive function calls can be used on a single page. Pages that exceed the limit are added to a tracking category. [60]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
01:48, 13 September 2022 (UTC)
Tech News: 2022-38
editLatest 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
- Two database fields in the
templatelinkstable are now being dropped:tl_namespaceandtl_title. Any queries that rely on these fields need to be changed to use the new normalization field calledtl_target_id. See T299417 for more information. This is part of normalization of links tables. [61][62]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 20 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 21 September. It will be on all wikis from 22 September (calendar).
- In Kartographer maps, you can use icons on markers for common points of interest. On Tuesday, the previous icon set will be updated to version maki 7.2. That means, around 100 new icons will be available. Additionally, all existing icons were updated for clarity and to make them work better in international contexts. [63][64]
Future changes
- In a group discussion at Wikimania, more than 30 people talked about how to make content partnership software in the Wikimedia movement more sustainable. What kind of support is acceptable for volunteer developers? Read the summary and leave your feedback.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
Growth team newsletter #22
edit Welcome to the twenty-second newsletter from the Growth team!
Newcomers tasks reach the 500,000 edits milestone — more data publicly available
editAs of the last week of June 2022, the newcomers of the world have completed over 500,000 newcomer tasks. In other words, newcomers have made over half a million Wikipedia edits via Growth’s “Suggested Edits” module.
- About 30% of those edits were completed on mobile devices.
- Usage continues to increase; in June 2022 almost 50,000 newcomer tasks were completed.
We have added some new data to Grafana. You can now check the number of edits and reverts by task types, or the number of questions asked to mentors. You can filter the data by wiki.
If you have any questions, or there is more data you want access to, please let us know.
Ongoing projects and explorations
edit
We are continuing our work on our new project, Positive Reinforcement. User testing of initial Positive Reinforcement designs was just completed. Interviews were conducted in Arabic, English, and Spanish. The outcome has been published on the Positive Reinforcement page. We are now utilizing user testing feedback along with prior community feedback to iterate and improve designs.
We are exploring the idea of a Copy Edit structured task. We have tested copy edits in Wikipedia articles for arwiki, bnwiki, cswiki, eswiki (Growth pilot-wikis) and enwiki with two different methods: LanguageTool and Hunspell. We will share more details here and on the associated Copy Edit page once the evaluation is complete.
Add an image was utilized at GLAM events in Argentina, Mexico, and Chile. For an overview of what was learned from these events, read: #1Pic1Article I: how Latin American heritage experts added images to Wikipedia (in English).
Experiments analysis
editAdd a Link Experiment Analysis has been published. The most important points are:
- Newcomers who get the Add a Link structured task are more likely to be activated (i.e. make a constructive first article edit).
- They are also more likely to be retained (i.e. come back and make another constructive article edit on a different day).
- The feature also increases edit volume (i.e. the number of constructive edits made across the first couple weeks), while at the same time improving edit quality (i.e. the likelihood that the newcomer's edits aren't reverted).
Newcomer task edit type analysis has been published.
- Communities had expressed concern that newcomers whose initial edits were structured tasks wouldn’t go on to learn how to complete more difficult tasks. The Growth team data scientist conducted a Newcomer task edit type analysis to see if this was indeed the case.
- Results from analysis indicate that this likely isn’t a significant concern. More than 70% of users who start with the easy task "Add a link" also make another task type. Read the full analysis and methodology here.
News for mentors
editA new system for the mentors list
The configuration of the mentors list will change over the next weeks. In the future, mentors will sign up, edit their mentor description and quit using Special:MentorDashboard. This new system will make the development of new features for mentors much easier.
At the moment, the mentor list is a simple page anyone can edit, unless it’s protected. With the new page, mentors will be able to edit only their own description, while administrators will be able to edit the entire mentors' list if needed.
The deployment will happen first at the pilot wikis, then at all wikis. Existing lists of mentors will be automatically converted, no action will be needed from the mentors. [65][66]
Mentors will be informed about the next steps soon, by a message posted on the talk page of existing Mentor lists.
Learn more about this new structured page on mediawiki.org.
A tip for mentors
Did you know that mentors can filter their mentees' changes at Special:MentorDashboard (and star the ones that require attention)? This feature helps to keep an eye on newcomers' edits, helping mentors to fix minor details, and encourage them if necessary.
And did you know that mentors have special filters to highlight their mentees' edits at Special:RecentChanges? Look for the following filters in RecentChanges: Your starred mentees, Your unstarred mentees.
Other improvements
Some improvements will be made to the mentor dashboard in the coming weeks:
- While we now offer some options for mentors to take a break, the option to quit mentoring was not easy to find. This will be improved. [67]
- Mentors at wikis using FlaggedRevisions will have a way to discover their mentees' pending edits. [68]
- Dashboard discovery for new mentors will be improved. [69]
Recent changes and fixed bugs
edit- We moved to a new Image Suggestions API. This new API will allow us to deploy Add an Image to more wikis. [70]
- Starting September 19, a few more wikis now offer Add an image to newcomers. These wikis are Greek Wikipedia, Polish Wikipedia, Chinese Wikipedia, Indonesian Wikipedia, Romanian Wikipedia. [71]
- Add an image has been disabled for a few days due to technical issue. "Add an image" added a blank line instead of an image. This has been fixed. [72]
- In order to know if Special:EditGrowthConfig is used by communities, we now instrument page loads and saves of configuration. [73]
Have a question? A suggestion?
editPlease let us know! You can also read our FAQ page.
Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
17:18, 21 September 2022 (UTC)
Tech News: 2022-39
editLatest 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
- Parsoid clients should be updated to allow for space-separated multi-values in the
relattribute of links. Further details are in T315209.
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 27 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 28 September. It will be on all wikis from 29 September (calendar).
- Visual diffs will become available to all users, except at the Wiktionaries and Wikipedias. [74]
- Talk pages on the mobile site will change at the Arabic, Bangla, Chinese, French, Haitian Creole, Hebrew, Korean, and Vietnamese Wikipedias. They should be easier to use and provide more information. [75] [76]
- In the Module namespace, pages ending with
.jsonwill be treated as JSON, just like they already are in the User and MediaWiki namespaces. [77]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
Women in Red October 2022
edit
|
--Lajmmoore (talk) 15:01, 29 September 2022 (UTC) via MassMessaging
Books & Bytes – Issue 52
edit The Wikipedia Library
Books & Bytes
Issue 52, July – August 2022
- New instant-access collections:
- SpringerLink and Springer Nature
- Project MUSE
- Taylor & Francis
- ASHA
- Loeb
- Feedback requested on this newsletter
Sent by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of The Wikipedia Library team --12:21, 30 September 2022 (UTC)
The Signpost: 30 September 2022
edit- News and notes: Board vote results, bot's big GET, crat chat gives new mop, WMF seeks "sound logo" and "organizer lab"
- In the media: A few complaints and mild disagreements
- Special report: Decentralized Fundraising, Centralized Distribution
- Discussion report: Much ado about Fox News
- Traffic report: Kings and queens and VIPs
- Featured content: Farm-fresh content
- CommonsComix: CommonsComix 2: Paulus Moreelse
- From the archives: 5, 10, and 15 Years ago: September 2022
Administrators' newsletter – October 2022
editNews and updates for administrators from the past month (September 2022).
|
|
|
Guideline and policy news
- Following an RfC, consensus was found that if the rationale for a block depends on information that is not available to all administrators, that information should be sent to the Arbitration Committee, a checkuser or an oversighter for action (as applicable, per ArbCom's recent updated guidance) instead of the administrator making the block.
- Following an RfC, consensus has been found that, in the context of politics and science, the reliability of FoxNews.com is unclear and that additional considerations apply to its use.
- Community comment on the revised Universal Code of Conduct enforcement guidelines is requested until 8 October.
Technical news
- The Articles for creation helper script now automatically recognises administrator accounts which means your name does not need to be listed at WP:AFCP to help out. If you wish to help out at AFC, enable AFCH by navigating to Preferences → Gadgets and checking the "Yet Another AfC Helper Script" box.
Arbitration
- Remedy 8.1 of the Muhammad images case will be rescinded 1 November following a motion.
- A modification to the deletion RfC remedy in the Conduct in deletion-related editing case has been made to reaffirm the independence of the RfC and allow the moderators to split the RfC in two.
- The second phase of the 2021-22 Discretionary Sanctions Review closes 3 October.
Miscellaneous
- An administrator's account was recently compromised. Administrators are encouraged to check that their passwords are secure, and reminded that ArbCom reserves the right to not restore adminship in cases of poor account security. You can also use two-factor authentication (2FA) to provide an extra level of security.
- Self-nominations for the electoral commission for the 2022 Arbitration Committee elections open 2 October and close 8 October.
- You are invited to comment on candidates in the 2022 CUOS appointments process.
- An RfC is open to discuss whether to make Vector 2022 the default skin on desktop.
- Tech tip: You can do a fuzzy search of all deleted page titles at Special:Undelete.
Tech News: 2022-40
editLatest 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
- Kartographer maps can now show geopoints from Wikidata, via QID or SPARQL query. Previously, this was only possible for geoshapes and geolines. [78] [79]
- The Coolest Tool Award 2022 is looking for nominations. You can recommend tools until 12 October.
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 4 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 5 October. It will be on all wikis from 6 October (calendar).
- Talk pages on the mobile site will change at the Arabic, Bangla, Chinese, French, Haitian Creole, Hebrew, Korean, and Vietnamese Wikipedias. They should be easier to use and provide more information. (Last week's release was delayed) [80] [81]
- The
scribunto-consoleAPI module will require a CSRF token. This module is documented as internal and use of it is not supported. [5] - The Vector 2022 skin will become the default across the smallest Wikimedia projects. Learn more.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
Oxford Bibliographies
editThere's some problem with my access to Oxford Bibliographies from the Wikipedia Library. It doesn't display the full article and instead says Your subscription doesn't include the subject of this book.
below after displaying the first section. Can this be remedied? regards, TryKid [dubious – discuss] 14:21, 6 October 2022 (UTC)
- @TryKid We're working on resolving this but unfortunately it's an issue with our access having expired on Oxford's end. We're hoping to get this resolved soon but are having some difficulty getting a response from them. Samwalton9 (WMF) (talk) 14:40, 6 October 2022 (UTC)
Tech News: 2022-41
editLatest 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 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 12 October. It will be on all wikis from 13 October (calendar).
- On some wikis, Kartographer maps in full size view will be able to display nearby articles. After a feedback period, more wikis will follow. [82][83]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
14:07, 10 October 2022 (UTC)
Hello, Samwalton9, and welcome to Wikipedia. I edit here too, under the username IndyNotes, and I thank you for your contributions.
I wanted to let you know, however, that I've started a discussion about whether an article that you created, SteamVR, should be deleted, as I am not sure that it is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia in its current form. Your comments are welcome at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/SteamVR.
You might like to note that such discussions usually run for seven days and are not votes. And, our guide about effectively contributing to such discussions is worth a read. Last but not least, you are highly encouraged to continue improving the article; just be sure not to remove the tag about the deletion nomination from the top.
If you have any questions, please leave a comment here and prepend it with {{Re|IndyNotes}}. And, don't forget to sign your reply with ~~~~ . Thanks!
(Message delivered via the Page Curation tool, on behalf of the reviewer.)
Tech News: 2022-42
editLatest 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 recently implemented feature of article thumbnails in Special:Search will be limited to Wikipedia projects only. Further details are in T320510. [84]
- A bug that caused problems in loading article thumbnails in Special:Search has been fixed. Further details are in T320406.
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 18 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 19 October. It will be on all wikis from 20 October (calendar).
- Lua module authors can use
mw.loadJsonData()to load data from JSON pages. [85] - Lua module authors can enable
require( "strict" )to add errors for some possible code problems. This replaces "Module:No globals" on most wikis. [86]
Future changes
- The Beta Feature for DiscussionTools will be updated at most wikis. The "reply" button will look different after this change. [87]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
Tech News: 2022-43
editLatest 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 have been some minor visual fixes in Special:Search, regarding audio player alignment and image placeholder height. Further details are in T319230.
- On Wikipedias, a new preference has been added to hide article thumbnails in Special:Search. Full details are in T320337.
Problems
- Last week, three wikis (French Wikipedia, Japanese Wikipedia, Russian Wikipedia) had read-only access for 25 minutes. This was caused by a hardware problem. [88]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 25 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 26 October. It will be on all wikis from 27 October (calendar).
- Some wikis will be in read-only for a few minutes because of a switch of their main database. It will be performed on 25 October at 07:00 UTC (targeted wikis) and on 27 October at 7:00 UTC (targeted wikis).
- Starting on Wednesday, a new set of Wikipedias will get "Add a link" (Assamese Wikipedia, Bashkir Wikipedia, Balinese Wikipedia, Bavarian Wikipedia, Samogitian Wikipedia, Bikol Central Wikipedia, Belarusian Wikipedia, Belarusian (Taraškievica) Wikipedia, Bulgarian Wikipedia, Bhojpuri Wikipedia, Bislama Wikipedia, Banjar Wikipedia, Bambara Wikipedia, Bishnupriya Wikipedia, Breton Wikipedia, Bosnian Wikipedia, Buginese Wikipedia, Buryat Wikipedia, Indonesian Wikipedia). This is part of the progressive deployment of this tool to more Wikipedias. The communities can configure how this feature works locally. [89]
- Starting on Wednesday October 26, 2022, the list of mentors will be upgraded at wikis where Growth mentorship is available. The mentorship system will continue to work as it does now. The signup process will be replaced, and a new management option will be provided. Also, this change simplifies the creation of mentorship systems at Wikipedias. [90][91][92]
- Pages with titles that start with a lower-case letter according to Unicode 11 will be renamed or deleted. There is a list of affected pages at m:Unicode 11 case map migration. More information can be found at T292552.
- The Vector 2022 skin will become the default across the smallest Wikipedias. Learn more.
Future changes
- The Reply tool and New Topic tool will soon get a special characters menu. [93]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
Women in Red November 2022
edit
|
--Lajmmoore (talk) 17:36, 26 October 2022 (UTC) via MassMessaging
The Signpost: 31 October 2022
edit- From the team: A new goose on the roost
- News from the WMF: Governance updates from, and for, the Wikimedia Endowment
- Disinformation report: From Russia with WikiLove
- Featured content: Topics, lists, submarines and Gurl.com
- Serendipity: We all make mistakes – don’t we?
- Traffic report: Mama, they're in love with a criminal
Tech News: 2022-44
editLatest 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
- When using keyboard navigation on a Kartographer map, the focus will become more visible. [94]
- In Special:RecentChanges, you can now hide the log entries for new user creations with the filter for "⧼rcfilters-filter-newuserlogactions-label⧽". [95]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 1 November. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 2 November. It will be on all wikis from 3 November (calendar).
- The maps dialog in VisualEditor now has some help texts. [96]
- It is now possible to select the language of a Kartographer map in VisualEditor via a dropdown menu. [97]
- It is now possible to add a caption to a Kartographer map in VisualEditor. [98]
- It is now possible to hide the frame of a Kartographer map in VisualEditor. [99]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
Administrators' newsletter – November 2022
editNews and updates for administrators from the past month (October 2022).
Administrator changes
Interface administrator changes
Guideline and policy news
- The article creation at scale RfC opened on 3 October and will be open until at least 2 November.
- An RfC is open to discuss having open requests for adminship automatically placed on hold after the seven-day period has elapsed, pending closure or other action by a bureaucrat.
Arbitration
- Eligible editors are invited to self-nominate themselves from 13 November 2022 until 22 November 2022 to stand in the 2022 Arbitration Committee elections.
- The arbitration case request titled Athaenara has been resolved by motion.
- The arbitration case Reversal and reinstatement of Athaenara's block has entered the proposed decision stage.
- AmandaNP, Mz7 and Cyberpower678 have been appointed to the Electoral Commission for the 2022 Arbitration Committee Elections. Xaosflux and Dr vulpes are reserve commissioners.
Miscellaneous
- The 2022 CheckUser and Oversight appointments process has concluded with the appointment of two new CheckUsers.
- You can add yourself to the centralised page listing time zones of administrators.
- Tech tip: Wikimarkup in a block summary is parsed in the notice that the blockee sees. You can use templates with custom options to specify situations like
{{rangeblock|create=yes}}or{{uw-ublock|contains profanity}}.
Tech News: 2022-45
editLatest 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
- An updated version of the Event Registration tool is now available for testing at testwiki and test2wiki. The tool provides features for event organizers and participants. Your feedback is welcome at our project talkpage. More information about the project is available. [100]
Problems
- Twice last week, for about 45 minutes, some files and thumbnails failed to load and uploads failed, mostly for logged-in users. The cause is being investigated and an incident report will be available soon.
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.
Tech News: 2022-46
editLatest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- At Wikidata, an interwiki link can now point to a redirect page if certain conditions are met. This new feature is called sitelinks to redirects. It is needed when one wiki uses one page to cover multiple concepts but another wiki uses more pages to cover the same concepts. Your feedback on the talkpage of the new proposed guideline is welcome. [101]
- The www.wikinews.org, www.wikiversity.org, and www.wikivoyage.org portal pages now use an automated update system. [102]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 15 November. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 16 November. It will be on all wikis from 17 November (calendar).
- There will be a new link to directly "Edit template data" on Template pages. [103]
Future changes
- Wikis where mobile DiscussionTools are enabled (these ones) will soon use full CSS styling to display any templates that are placed at the top of talk pages. To adapt these “talk page boxes” for narrow mobile devices you can use media queries, such as in this example. [104]
- Starting in January 2023, Community Tech will be running the Community Wishlist Survey (CWS) every two years. This means that in 2024, there will be no new proposals or voting.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
Books & Bytes – Issue 53
edit The Wikipedia Library: Books & Bytes
Issue 53, September – October 2022
- New collections:
- Edward Elgar
- E-Yearbook
- Corriere della Serra
- Wikilala
- Collections moved to Library Bundle:
- Ancestry
- New feature: Outage notification
- Spotlight: Collections indexed in EDS
Sent by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of The Wikipedia Library team --11:19, 17 November 2022 (UTC)
Tech News: 2022-47
editLatest 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 display of non-free media in the search bar and for article thumbnails in Special:Search has been deactivated. Further details are in T320661.
Changes later this week
- There is no new MediaWiki version this week.
- Some wikis will be in read-only for a few minutes because of a switch of their main database. It will be performed on 22 November at 07:00 UTC (targeted wikis) and on 24 November at 07:00 UTC (targeted wikis).
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
Women in Red in December 2022
edit
See also:
Tip of the month:
Other ways to participate:
|
--Lajmmoore (talk) 20:57, 26 November 2022 (UTC) via MassMessaging
The Signpost: 28 November 2022
edit- News and notes: English Wikipedia editors: "We don't need no stinking banners"
- In the media: "The most beautiful story on the Internet"
- Disinformation report: Missed and Dissed
- Book review: Writing the Revolution
- Technology report: Galactic dreams, encyclopedic reality
- Essay: The Six Million FP Man
- Tips and tricks: (Wiki)break stuff
- Recent research: Study deems COVID-19 editors smart and cool, questions of clarity and utility for WMF's proposed "Knowledge Integrity Risk Observatory"
- Featured content: A great month for featured articles
- Obituary: A tribute to Michael Gäbler
- From the archives: Five, ten, and fifteen years ago
- CommonsComix: Joker's trick
Happy Eighth Adminship Anniversary!
edit
Tech News: 2022-48
editLatest 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 preference, “Enable limited width mode”, has been added to the Vector 2022 skin. The preference is also available as a toggle on every page if your monitor is 1600 pixels or wider. It allows for increasing the width of the page for logged-out and logged-in users. [105]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 29 November. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 30 November. It will be on all wikis from 1 December (calendar).
- Some wikis will be in read-only for a few minutes because of a switch of their main database. It will be performed on 29 November at 07:00 UTC (targeted wikis) and on 1 December at 07:00 UTC (targeted wikis).
- Mathematical formulas shown in SVG image format will no longer have PNG fall-backs for browsers that don't support them. This is part of work to modernise the generation system. Showing only PNG versions was the default option until in February 2018. [106][107][108]
- On some wikis that use flagged revisions, a new checkbox will be added to Special:Contributions that enables you to see only the pending changes by a user. [109]
Future changes
- How media is structured in the parser's HTML output will change early next week at group1 wikis (but not Wikimedia Commons or Meta-Wiki). This change improves the accessibility of content, and makes it easier to write related CSS. You may need to update your site-CSS, or userscripts and gadgets. There are details on what code to check, how to update the code, and where to report any related problems. [110]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
Happy Adminship Anniversary!
edit| | Happy adminship anniversary! Hi Samwalton9! On behalf of the Birthday Committee, I'd like to wish you a very happy anniversary of your successful request for adminship. Enjoy this special day! CAPTAIN RAJU(T) 20:20, 28 November 2022 (UTC) |  |
ArbCom 2022 Elections voter message
edit Hello! Voting in the 2022 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23:59 (UTC) on Monday, 12 December 2022. 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 2022 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) 01:08, 29 November 2022 (UTC)
Growth team newsletter #23
edit Welcome to the twenty-third newsletter from the Growth team!
Highlights
edit- Mentorship: We released the new structured mentor list to all wikis. This change makes mentorship easier to setup, manage and use.
- Positive reinforcement: An improved impact module is available for testing.
Positive reinforcement: an improved impact module to test
editThe goal of the Growth team is to encourage newcomers to try editing for the first time, and encourage them to keep editing. We want to increase newcomers' motivation by showing them how impactful their edits are.
Newcomers have access to an impact module; you can find yours at Special:Impact. The revised impact module provides new editors with more context about their impact. It will display the number of edits, the number of thanks received, the last time they edited, the number of consecutive days they edited, and the number of views for the articles they edited.
This module will soon be available at our pilot wikis starting December 1. You can already test this new module at Beta Wikipedia. For safety reasons, do not use your regular account and password at Beta wiki. Create a new, specific account for this wiki, with a different password.
Structured tasks: improvements based on patroller feedback
editAfter the deployment of Structured tasks, we received feedback from various communities regarding how patrollers of recent changes were feeling overwhelmed by an increase in edits to check, and how some edits were poor quality or of poor relevance.
We made several improvements based on the feedback we received. Several points of improvement have already been addressed:
- Patroller fatigue:
- By default, newcomers can complete up to 25 "add a link" tasks and 25 "add an image" tasks per day. If patrollers are overburdened, each community can use Special:EditGrowthConfig to lower that limit.
- Quality of edits: what constitutes a "quality edit" is not a well defined concept. We initiated a discussion and summarized our findings. We also worked on the following improvements:
- Add a Link
- Underlinked articles are now prioritized, so it's less likely that newcomers are adding links to articles that are already have a lot of links.
- The confidence score was increased, so suggestions are more likely to be accurate.
- The default number of suggested links per article has been lowered to 3. This can be changed at Special:EditGrowthConfig. Communities can also exclude articles containing certain templates or categories from being suggested.
- Add an Image
- Lists will no longer receive "add an image" suggestions.
- Disambiguation pages will no longer receive "add an image" suggestions.
- We have many further improvements we plan to make to "add an image" in early 2023. [111]
- Add a Link
The Positive Reinforcement project will also address some of the concerns around encouraging newcomers to progress to higher value edits. The Growth team will soon work on strategies geared at "Leveling up" newcomers so they progress from easy to more difficult tasks.
Recent changes
edit- All Wikipedias now have the same onboarding experience. Previously, at a few wikis, 20% of new accounts didn't get the Growth features when they created their account. These 20% of new accounts were used as a control group, in order to know if the Growth features were changing newcomers' behavior. Experiments have shown that Growth features improve activation and retention, and as we want to provide the same onboarding experience at all Wikipedias, we have decided to remove the control groups. We will utilize control groups when testing new features, and German Wikipedia keeps a control group at their request. [112]
- The quality score for "add a link" suggestions will change. We will suggest less links for each article, but they will be more accurate. We will first deploy it at our pilot wikis, and then to all other wikis where this feature is available. [113][114]
- Growth's features FAQ has been updated and expanded. This page centralizes all the information about Growth features. We invite you to read it, and, if you can, to translate it.
News for mentors
edit- All Wikipedias can now setup and manage a mentorship program in an easier way.
- We changed the process to make it more reliable, easier to improve and easier to use.
- Wikipedias where mentorship hasn't been enabled yet can turn mentorship on following a new process. When done, mentors can sign-up by visiting
Special:MentorDashboard. - Wikipedias where the list of mentors already existed have been converted to the new system.
- A new special page —
Special:ManageMentors— now displays the list of mentors. This page can be transcluded on any other page. There are also new processes to signup as a mentor or to quit mentorship, and we improved community mentorship management.
- The Mentor dashboard's "Your mentees" module will have a new footer, called "Recent changes by your mentees". This footer will include a link to Recent changes, where mentors can see only edits made by their own mentees. [115]
Deployments
edit- Add a link has been deployed to a 5th round of wikis. [116]
Improving this newsletter
editWe plan to have a more regular newsletter, every two months. We also want to know if the current format suits you! Let us know what you like, what you like less and your suggestions of improvements: leave us a comment, in your preferred language.
Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
20:57, 29 November 2022 (UTC)
Administrators' newsletter – December 2022
editNews and updates for administrators from the past month (November 2022).
Administrator changes
Interface administrator changes
Guideline and policy news
- Consensus has been found in an RfC to automatically place RfAs on hold after one week.
- The article creation at scale RfC has been closed.
- An RfC on the banners for the December 2022 fundraising campaign has been closed.
Technical news
- A new preference named "Enable limited width mode" has been added to the Vector 2022 skin. The preference is also shown as a toggle on every page if your monitor is 1600 pixels or wider. When disabled it removes the whitespace added by Vector 2022 on the left and right of the page content. Disabling this preference has the same effect as enabling the wide-vector-2022 gadget. (T319449)
Arbitration
- Eligible users are invited to vote on candidates for the Arbitration Committee until 23:59 December 12, 2022 (UTC). Candidate statements can be seen here.
- The proposed decision for the 2021-22 review of the discretionary sanctions system is open.
- The arbitration case Reversal and reinstatement of Athaenara's block has been closed.
- The arbitration case Stephen has been opened and the proposed decision is expected 1 December 2022.
- A motion has modified the procedures for contacting an admin facing Level 2 desysop.
Miscellaneous
- Tech tip: A single IPv6 connection usually has access to a "subnet" of 18 quintillion IPs. Add
/64to the end of an IP in Special:Contributions to see all of a subnet's edits, and consider blocking the whole subnet rather than an IP that may change within a minute.
Tech News: 2022-49
editLatest 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 Wikisources use a tool called ProofreadPage. ProofreadPage uses OpenSeadragon which is an open source tool. The OpenSeadragon JavaScript API has been significantly re-written to support dynamically loading images. The functionality provided by the older version of the API should still work but it is no longer supported. User scripts and gadgets should migrate over to the newer version of the API. The functionality provided by the newer version of the API is documented on MediaWiki. [117][118]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 6 December. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 7 December. It will be on all wikis from 8 December (calendar).
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
Requesting TPA revoke
editHi there! Please revoke this user's Talk Page Access: User talk:Sick Building in Strasbourg. Thanks! ❯❯❯ Raydann(Talk) 12:32, 6 December 2022 (UTC)
- @Raydann *sigh* done. Thanks for the heads up. Sam Walton (talk) 12:35, 6 December 2022 (UTC)
thank you ...
edit | |
| happy new year |
|---|
... for bringing Christiane Hörbiger to the Main page! - I wouldn't mind credit, for my records ;) (You go to the noms page and click on credit, that's all.) -- Gerda Arendt (talk) 16:56, 7 December 2022 (UTC)
- @Gerda Arendt No problem! I completely forgot giving credit for ITNC nominations was a thing, thanks for the reminder :) Sam Walton (talk) 21:18, 7 December 2022 (UTC)
- We sang Charpentier's delightful Messe de minuit pour Noël today, which was on DYK yesterday - a first for me, pictured, - Enjoy the season! --Gerda Arendt (talk) 17:28, 25 December 2022 (UTC)
Tech News: 2022-50
editLatest 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
- An A/B test has begun at 15 Wikipedias for DiscussionTools on mobile. Half of the editors on the mobile web site will have access to the Reply tool and other features. [119]
- The character
=cannot be used in new usernames, to make usernames work better with templates. Existing usernames are not affected. [120]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 13 December. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 14 December. It will be on all wikis from 15 December (calendar).
- The HTML markup used by DiscussionTools to show discussion metadata below section headings will be inserted after these headings, not inside of them. This change improves the accessibility of discussion pages for screen reader software. [121]
Events
- The fourth edition of the Coolest Tool Award will happen online on Friday 16 December 2022 at 17:00 UTC! The event will be live-streamed on YouTube in the MediaWiki channel and added to Commons afterwards.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
Tech News: 2022-51
editLatest 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 9 January 2023.
Recent changes
- On a user's contributions page, you can filter it for edits with a tag like 'reverted'. Now, you can also filter for all edits that are not tagged like that. This was part of a Community Wishlist 2022 request. [122]
- A new function has been used for gadget developers to add content underneath the title on article pages. This is considered a stable API that should work across all skins. Documentation is available. [123]
- One of our test wikis is now being served from a new infrastructure powered by Kubernetes (read more). More Wikis will switch to this new infrastructure in early 2023. Please test and let us know of any issues. [124]
Problems
- Last week, all wikis had no edit access for 9 minutes. This was caused by a database problem. [125]
Changes later this week
- There is no new MediaWiki version this week or next week.
- The word "Reply" is very short in some languages, such as Arabic ("ردّ"). This makes the Discussion tools button on talk pages difficult to use. An arrow icon will be added to those languages. This will only be visible to editors who have the Beta Feature turned on. [126] [127]
Future changes
- Edits can be automatically "tagged" by the system software or the Edit filter configuration system. Those tags link to a help page about the tags. Soon they will also link to Recent Changes to let you see other edits tagged this way. This was a Community Wishlist 2022 request. [128]
- The Trust & Safety tools team have shared new plans for building the Private Incident Reporting System. The system will make it easier for editors to ask for help if they are harassed or abused.
- Realtime Preview for Wikitext is coming out of beta as an enabled feature for every user of the 2010 Wikitext editor in the week of January 9, 2023. It will be available to use via the toolbar in the 2010 Wikitext editor. The feature was the 4th most popular wish of the Community Wishlist Survey 2021.
Events
- You can now register for the Wikimedia Hackathon 2023, taking place on May 19–21 in Athens, Greece. You can also apply for a scholarship until January 14th.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
Happy holidays!
edit
Happy Holidays and Happy New Year, Sam!
The other day, I was having a conversation with someone about holiday cards and social media. It occurred to me that, in the years since I left Facebook, the site I use most to communicate with people I like isn't actually a social media site at all. If you're receiving this, it's pretty likely I've talked with you more recently than I have my distant relatives and college friends on FB, at very least, and we may have even collaborated on something useful. So here's a holiday "card", Wikipedia friend. :) Hope the next couple weeks bring some fun and/or rest. — Rhododendrites talk \\ 18:35, 22 December 2022 (UTC)
- Thanks @Rhododendrites :) Happy holidays! Sam Walton (talk) 12:18, 27 December 2022 (UTC)
Women in Red January 2023
edit 
See also:
Tip of the month:
Other ways to participate:
|
--Lajmmoore (talk) 18:04, 27 December 2022 (UTC) via MassMessaging
Eleventh anniversary on Wikipedia!
edit | Happy First Edit Day! Hi Samwalton9! On behalf of the Birthday Committee, I'd like to wish you a very happy 11th anniversary of the day you made your first edit and became a Wikipedian! Please accept the belated invitation below which we should have offered you last year. Chris Troutman (talk) 17:20, 29 December 2022 (UTC) | |
Invitation to join the Ten Year Society
edit
Dear Samwalton9/Archive 30,
I'd like to extend a cordial invitation to you to join the Ten Year Society, an informal group for editors who've been participating in the Wikipedia project for ten years or more.
Best regards, Chris Troutman (talk) 17:20, 29 December 2022 (UTC)
The Signpost: 1 January 2023
edit- Interview: ComplexRational's RfA debrief
- Technology report: Wikimedia Foundation's Abstract Wikipedia project "at substantial risk of failure"
- Essay: Mobile editing
- Arbitration report: Arbitration Committee Election 2022
- Recent research: Graham's Hierarchy of Disagreement in talk page disputes
- Featured content: Would you like to swing on a star?
- Traffic report: Football, football, football! Wikipedia Football Club!
- CommonsComix: #4: The Course of WikiEmpire
- From the archives: Five, ten, and fifteen years ago
Administrators' newsletter – January 2023
editNews and updates for administrators from the past month (December 2022).
Administrator changes
Interface administrator changes
CheckUser changes
Oversighter changes
Guideline and policy news
- Speedy deletion criterion A5 (transwikied articles) has been repealed following an unopposed proposal.
Arbitration
- Following the 2022 Arbitration Committee elections, the following editors have been appointed to the Arbitration Committee: Barkeep49, CaptainEek, GeneralNotability, Guerillero, L235, Moneytrees, Primefac, SilkTork.
- The 2021-22 Discretionary Sanctions Review has concluded with many changes to the discretionary sanctions procedure including a change of the name to "contentious topics". The changes are being implemented over the coming month.
- The arbitration case Stephen has been closed.
Miscellaneous
- Voting for the Sound Logo has closed and the winner is expected to be announced February to April 2023.
- Tech tip: You can view information about IP addresses in a centralised location using bullseye which won the Newcomer award in the recent Coolest Tool Awards.
Tech News: 2023-02
editLatest 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 use tags to filter edits in the recent changes feed or on your watchlist. You can now use tags to filter out edits you don't want to see. Previously you could only use tags to focus on the edits with those tags. [129]
- Special:WhatLinksHere shows all pages that link to a specific page. There is now a prototype for how to sort those pages alphabetically. You can see the discussion in the Phabricator ticket.
- You can now use the thanks function on your watchlist and the user contribution page. [130]
- A wiki page can be moved to give it a new name. You can now get a dropdown menu with common reasons when you move a page. This is so you don't have to write the explanation every time. [131]
- Matrix is a chat tool. You can now use
matrix:to create Matrix links on wiki pages. [132] - You can filter out translations when you look at the recent changes on multilingual wikis. This didn't hide translation pages. You can now also hide subpages which are translation pages. [133]
Changes later this week
- Realtime preview for wikitext is a tool which lets editors preview the page when they edit wikitext. It will be enabled for all users of the 2010 wikitext editor. You will find it in the editor toolbar.
- Some wikis will be in read-only for a few minutes because of a switch of their main database. It will be performed on 10 January at 07:00 UTC (targeted wikis) and on 12 January at 07:00 UTC (targeted wikis).
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 10 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 11 January. It will be on all wikis from 12 January (calendar).
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
The Signpost: 16 January 2023
edit- Special report: Coverage of 2022 bans reveals editors serving long sentences in Saudi Arabia since 2020
- News and notes: Revised Code of Conduct Enforcement Guidelines up for vote, WMF counsel departs, generative models under discussion
- In the media: Court orders user data in libel case, Saudi Wikipedia in the crosshairs, Larry Sanger at it again
- Technology report: View it! A new tool for image discovery
- In focus: Busting into Grand Central
- Serendipity: How I bought part of Wikipedia – for less than $100
- Featured content: Flip your lid
- Traffic report: The most viewed articles of 2022
- From the archives: Five, ten, and fifteen years ago
Tech News: 2023-03
editLatest 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 URLs in "prev" links on page history now contain
diff=prev&oldid=[revision ID]in place ofdiff=[revision ID]&oldid=[revision ID]. This is to fix a problem with links pointing to incorrect diffs when history was filtered by a tag. Some user scripts may break as a result of this change. [134]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 17 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 18 January. It will be on all wikis from 19 January (calendar).
- Some changes to the appearance of talk pages have only been available on
Talk:andUser talk:namespaces. These will be extended to other talk namespaces, such asWikipedia talk:. They will continue to be unavailable in non-talk namespaces, includingWikipedia:pages (e.g., at the Village Pump). You can change your preferences (beta feature). [135] - On Wikisources, when an image is zoomed or panned in the Page: namespace, the same zoom and pan settings will be remembered for all Page: namespace pages that are linked to a particular Index: namespace page. [136]
- The Vector 2022 skin will become the default for the English Wikipedia desktop users. The change will take place on January 18 at 15:00 UTC. Learn more.
Future changes
- The 2023 edition of the Community Wishlist Survey, which invites contributors to make technical proposals and vote for tools and improvements, starts next week on 23 January 2023 at 18:00 UTC. You can start drafting your proposals in the CWS sandbox.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
Dear Sam,
I just tried to improve this article you worked on. What do you think, could you remove the infamous tag, and Hakuna matata? Thank you, Hansmuller (talk) 11:04, 21 January 2023 (UTC)
- @Hansmuller Thanks for your work to improve this article! The tags relate to the article having too many citations which are primary sources (e.g. they're written or published by the university she works at), and a couple are simple directories of works published by her. To remove these tags you would need to find some secondary sources about her and her work. I found this review of one of her books. It looks like there might also be some coverage in news media that you could add. Sam Walton (talk) 09:36, 24 January 2023 (UTC)
Books & Bytes – Issue 54
edit The Wikipedia Library: Books & Bytes
Issue 54, November – December 2022
- New collections:
- British Newspaper Archive
- Findmypast
- University of Michigan Press
- ACLS
- Duke University Press
- 1Lib1Ref 2023
- Spotlight: EDS Refine Results
Sent by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of The Wikipedia Library team --14:14, 23 January 2023 (UTC)
Tech News: 2023-04
editLatest 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, for ~15 minutes, all wikis were unreachable for logged-in users and non-cached pages. This was caused by a timing issue. [137]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 24 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 25 January. It will be on all wikis from 26 January (calendar).
- If you have the Beta Feature for DiscussionTools enabled, the appearance of talk pages will add more information about discussion activity. [138][139]
- The 2023 edition of the Community Wishlist Survey (CWS), which invites contributors to make technical proposals and vote for tools and improvements, starts on Monday 23 January 2023 at 18:00 UTC.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
Women in Red in February 2023
edit
Tip of the month:
Other ways to participate:
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--Lajmmoore (talk) 07:29, 30 January 2023 (UTC) via MassMessaging
Tech News: 2023-05
editLatest 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, for ~15 minutes, some users were unable to log in or edit pages. This was caused by a problem with session storage. [140]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 31 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 1 February. It will be on all wikis from 2 February (calendar).
Future changes
- Wikis that use localized numbering schemes for references need to add new CSS. This will help to show citation numbers the same way in all reading and editing modes. If your wiki would prefer to do it yourselves, please see the details and example CSS to copy from, and also add your wiki to the list. Otherwise, the developers will directly help out starting the week of February 5.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
Growth team newsletter #24
edit Welcome to the twenty-fourth newsletter from the Growth team!
Newcomer experience projects
editThe Growth team partnered with other WMF teams to conduct several experiments around increasing account creation and new editor retention. Results from four of these experiments are now available:
- Thank you pages & banners - Encourage donors to create accounts through thank you pages and banners.
- Marketing experiment - Run ads on-wiki and off-wiki to see how this impacts account activation.
- "Add an image" GLAM events - Host GLAM events that focus on using the "Add an image" tool.
- Welcome emails - Experiment sending welcome emails to newly created accounts.
Newcomer tasks
edit- Several communities suggested improving "add a link", by suggesting underlinked articles first. We released this change to Growth pilot wikis. We will review the data and collect feedback before considering releasing it to more wikis. [141]
- The deployment of the "add a link" to all Wikipedias is still in progress. Suggested links use a prediction model, which has to be trained. The deployments will resume after we finish training all models. [142]
Mentorship
edit- When someone wants to signup as a mentor, they are now informed if they don't meet the defined criteria. [143]
- Workshop hosts asked us to have workshop attendees assigned to them. They can soon use a custom URL parameter. This way, workshop hosts will continue mentoring the event's attendees after the workshop. It will be available in February. [144]
- Have you considered to help new editors on your wiki, by signing up to be a Mentor?
- Please visit Special:MentorDashboard to check on the conditions to be a mentor, and sign up.
- If your wiki does not have Mentorship enabled, consider setting it up. The Growth team can provide advice and assist as needed. Please ping Trizek (WMF) for assistance.
Other news
edit- In Special:SpecialPages, Growth experiments now have their own section. [145]
- This newsletter will have a new publication period, 6 times a year: January, March, May, July, September, November.
Translations
edit- Newsletter translation: We are looking for translators for this newsletter. If you are interested and have the needed English language proficiency to assist, then please add your name to this list. You will receive an invite on your talk page to translate the newsletter when it is ready.
- Interface translation: You can also help by translating the interface, or reviewing translations to make them more inclusive. Interface translations are hosted at translatewiki.net.
Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.• Help with translations
14:44, 31 January 2023 (UTC)
Administrators' newsletter – February 2023
editNews and updates for administrators from the past month (January 2023).
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Guideline and policy news
- Following an RfC, the administrator policy now requires that prior written consent be gained from the Arbitration Committee to mark a block as only appealable to the committee.
- Following a community discussion, consensus has been found to impose the extended-confirmed restriction over the topic areas of Armenia and Azerbaijan and Kurds and Kurdistan.
Technical news
- The Vector 2022 skin has become the default for desktop users of the English Wikipedia.
Arbitration
- The arbitration case Armenia-Azerbaijan 3 has been opened and the proposed decision is expected 24 February 2023.
- In December, the contentious topics procedure was adopted which replaces the former discretionary sanctions system. The contentious topics procedure is now in effect following an initial implementation period. There is a detailed summary of the changes and administrator instructions for the new procedure. The arbitration clerk team are taking suggestions, concerns, and unresolved questions about this new system at their noticeboard.
Miscellaneous
- Voting in the 2023 Steward elections will begin on 05 February 2023, 21:00 (UTC) and end on 26 February 2023, 21:00 (UTC). The confirmation process of current stewards is being held in parallel. You can automatically check your eligibility to vote.
- Voting in the 2023 Community Wishlist Survey will begin on 10 February 2023 and end on 24 February 2023. You can submit, discuss and revise proposals until 6 February 2023.
- Tech tip: Syntax highlighting is available in both the 2011 and 2017 Wikitext editors. It can help make editing paragraphs with many references or complicated templates easier.
The Signpost: 4 February 2023
edit- From the editor: New for the Signpost: Author pages, tag pages, and a decent article search function
- News and notes: Foundation update on fundraising, new page patrol, Tides, and Wikipedia blocked in Pakistan
- Disinformation report: Wikipedia on Santos
- Op-Ed: Estonian businessman and political donor brings lawsuit against head of national Wikimedia chapter
- Recent research: Wikipedia's "moderate yet systematic" liberal citation bias
- WikiProject report: WikiProject Organized Labour
- Tips and tricks: XTools: Data analytics for your list of created articles
- Featured content: 20,000 Featureds under the Sea
- Traffic report: Films, deaths and ChatGPT
The Signpost: 20 February 2023
edit- In the media: Arbitrators open case after article alleges Wikipedia "intentionally distorts" Holocaust coverage
- Disinformation report: The "largest con in corporate history"?
- Tips and tricks: All about writing at DYK
- Featured content: Eden, lost.
- Gallery: Love is in the air
- From the archives: 5, 10, and 15 years ago: Let's (not) delete the Main Page!
- Humour: The RfA Candidate's Song
Women in Red March 2023
edit
See also:
Tip of the month:
Other ways to participate:
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--Lajmmoore (talk) 12:55, 26 February 2023 (UTC) via MassMessaging
Administrators' newsletter – March 2023
editNews and updates for administrators from the past month (February 2023).
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Guideline and policy news
- Following a request for comment, F10 (useless non-media files) has been deprecated.
- Following a request for comment, the Portal CSD criteria (P1 (portal subject to CSD as an article) and P2 (underpopulated portal)) have been deprecated.
- A request for comment is open to discuss making the closing instructions for the requested moves process a guideline.
Technical news
- The results of the 2023 Community Wishlist Survey have been posted.
Arbitration
- Remedy 11 ("Request for Comment") of the Conduct in deletion-related editing case has been rescinded.
- The proposed decision for the Armenia-Azerbaijan 3 case is expected 7 March 2023.
- A case related to the Holocaust in Poland is expected to be opened soon.
Miscellaneous
- The 2023 appointees for the Ombuds commission are AGK, Ameisenigel, Bennylin, Daniuu, Emufarmers, Faendalimas, JJMC89, MdsShakil, Minorax and Renvoy as regular members and Zabe as advisory members.
- Following the 2023 Steward Elections, the following editors have been appointed as stewards: Mykola7, Superpes15, and Xaosflux.
- The Terms of Use update cycle has started, which includes a
[p]roposal for better addressing undisclosed paid editing
. Feedback is being accepted until 24 April 2023.
Latest (and most likely final) issue of the WP:VG newsletter
edit
The WikiProject Video Games Newsletter
Volume 14, No. 1 — 1st Quarter, 2023
Previous issue | Index
Project At a Glance
As of Q4 2022, the project has:
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Content
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Delivered by: MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 09:41, 8 March 2023 (UTC)
Latest (and most likely final) issue of the WP:VG newsletter
edit The WikiProject Video Games Newsletter
Volume 14, No. 1 — 1st Quarter, 2023
Previous issue | Index
Project At a Glance
As of Q4 2022, the project has:
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Content
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Delivered by: MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 19:38, 8 March 2023 (UTC)
The Signpost: 9 March 2023
edit- News and notes: What's going on with the Wikimedia Endowment?
- Technology report: Second flight of the Soviet space bears: Testing ChatGPT's accuracy
- In the media: What should Wikipedia do? Publish Russian propaganda? Be less woke? Cover the Holocaust in Poland differently?
- Featured content: In which over two-thirds of the featured articles section needs to be copied over to WikiProject Military History's newsletter
- Recent research: "Wikipedia's Intentional Distortion of the Holocaust" in Poland and "self-focus bias" in coverage of global events
- From the archives: Five, ten, and fifteen years ago
Books & Bytes – Issue 55
edit The Wikipedia Library: Books & Bytes
Issue 55, January – February 2023
- New bundle partners:
- Newspapers.com
- Fold3
- 1Lib1Ref January report
- Spotlight: EDS SmartText Searching
Sent by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of The Wikipedia Library team --12:45, 16 March 2023 (UTC)
The Signpost: 20 March 2023
edit- News and notes: Wikimania submissions deadline looms, Russian government after our lucky charms, AI woes nix CNET from RS slate
- Eyewitness: Three more stories from Ukrainian Wikimedians
- In the media: Paid editing, plagiarism payouts, proponents of a ploy, and people peeved at perceived preferences
- Featured content: Way too many featured articles
- Interview: 228/2/1: the inside scoop on Aoidh's RfA
- Traffic report: Who died? Who won? Who lost?
Women in Red April 2023
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See also:
Tip of the month:
Other ways to participate:
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--Lajmmoore (talk) MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 07:53, 27 March 2023 (UTC) via MassMessaging
Copyvios tool usage
editHey there. I reviewed the logs from the past half year and tool usage is pretty consistently around 100k uses/month. This includes both the API and human usage, and full Google searches as well as direct article-to-URL comparisons. (It's about 25%/75% API/human, and 48%/52% searches/comparisons.) I'm not sure how I got that 300k uses/month number from 2016, but I don't have the raw data anymore. I might have been less careful, counting total hits instead of actual tool usage. — The Earwig (talk) 04:46, 28 March 2023 (UTC)
- Thanks very much @The Earwig! Samwalton9 (WMF) (talk) 09:07, 28 March 2023 (UTC)
TFA
editThank you today for Proteus (video game), "about the 2013 exploration game Proteus. The game was central to debates around video games as art and contributed to discussions around whether walking simulators could be considered 'video games'. Well received and the recipient of many awards, I think it's high time this article became featured."! -- Gerda Arendt (talk) 07:47, 29 March 2023 (UTC)