User talk:TheSandDoctor/Archives/2024/April
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Administrators' newsletter – April 2024
News and updates for administrators from the past month (March 2024).
Administrator changes
Guideline and policy news
- An RfC is open to convert all current and future community discretionary sanctions to (community designated) contentious topics procedure.
Technical news
- The Toolforge Grid Engine services have been shut down after the final migration process from Grid Engine to Kubernetes. (T313405)
Arbitration
- An arbitration case has been opened to look into "the intersection of managing conflict of interest editing with the harassment (outing) policy".
Miscellaneous
- Editors are invited to sign up for The Core Contest, an initiative running from April 15 to May 31, which aims to improve vital and other core articles on Wikipedia.
Tech News: 2024-14
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- Users of the reading accessibility beta feature will notice that the default line height for the standard and large text options has changed. [1]
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 2 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 3 April. It will be on all wikis from 4 April (calendar). [2][3]
Future changes
- The Wikimedia Foundation has an annual plan. The annual plan decides what the Wikimedia Foundation will work on. You can now read the draft key results for the Product and Technology department. They are suggestions for what results the Foundation wants from big technical changes from July 2024 to June 2025. You can comment on the talk page.
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New Pages Patrol newsletter April 2024
Hello TheSandDoctor/Archives/2024,
Backlog update: The October drive reduced the article backlog from 11,626 to 7,609 and the redirect backlog from 16,985 to 6,431! Congratulations to Schminnte, who led with over 2,300 points.
Following that, New Page Patrol organized another backlog drive for articles in January 2024. The January drive started with 13,650 articles and reduced the backlog to 7,430 articles. Congratulations to JTtheOG, who achieved first place with 1,340 points in this drive.
Looking at the graph, it seems like backlog drives are one of the only things keeping the backlog under control. Another backlog drive is being planned for May. Feel free to participate in the May backlog drive planning discussion.
It's worth noting that both queues are gradually increasing again and are nearing 14,034 articles and 22,540 redirects. We encourage you to keep contributing, even if it's just a single patrol per day. Your support is greatly appreciated!
2023 Awards
Onel5969 won the 2023 cup with 17,761 article reviews last year - that's an average of nearly 50/day. There was one Platinum Award (10,000+ reviews), 2 Gold Awards (5000+ reviews), 6 Silver (2000+), 8 Bronze (1000+), 30 Iron (360+) and 70 more for the 100+ barnstar. Hey man im josh led on redirect reviews by clearing 36,175 of them. For the full details, see the Awards page and the Hall of Fame. Congratulations everyone for their efforts in reviewing!
WMF work on PageTriage: The WMF Moderator Tools team and volunteer software developers deployed the rewritten NewPagesFeed in October, and then gave the NewPagesFeed a slight visual facelift in November. This concludes most major work to Special:NewPagesFeed, and most major work by the WMF Moderator Tools team, who wrapped up their major work on PageTriage in October. The WMF Moderator Tools team and volunteer software developers will continue small work on PageTriage as time permits.
Recruitment: A couple of the coordinators have been inviting editors to become reviewers, via mass-messages to their talk pages. If you know someone who you'd think would make a good reviewer, then a personal invitation to them would be great. Additionally, if there are Wikiprojects that you are active on, then you can add a post there asking participants to join NPP. Please be careful not to double invite folks that have already been invited.
Reviewing tip: Reviewers who prefer to patrol new pages within their most familiar subjects can use the regularly updated NPP Browser tool.
Reminders:
- You can access live chat with patrollers on the New Pages Patrol Discord.
- Consider adding the project discussion page to your watchlist.
- To opt out of future mailings, please remove yourself here.
Question from Linguinibrandini (18:42, 4 April 2024)
Can a person's official social media be used as a source for their biography page, and if so how would it be properly cited? --Linguinibrandini (talk) 18:42, 4 April 2024 (UTC)
Happy Birthday!
 | Happy birthday! Hi TheSandDoctor! On behalf of the Birthday Committee, I'd like to wish you a very happy birthday! Enjoy this special day! The Herald (Benison) (talk) 17:17, 5 April 2024 (UTC) |  |
Tech News: 2024-15
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- Web browsers can use tools called extensions. There is now a Chrome extension called Citation Needed which you can use to see if an online statement is supported by a Wikipedia article. This is a small experiment to see if Wikipedia can be used this way. Because it is a small experiment, it can only be used in Chrome in English.
A new Edit Recovery feature has been added to all wikis, available as a user preference. Once you enable it, your in-progress edits will be stored in your web browser, and if you accidentally close an editing window or your browser or computer crashes, you will be prompted to recover the unpublished text. Please leave any feedback on the project talk page. This was the #8 wish in the 2023 Community Wishlist Survey.- Initial results of Edit check experiments have been published. Edit Check is now deployed as a default feature at the wikis that tested it. Let us know if you want your wiki to be part of the next deployment of Edit check. [4][5]
- Readers using the Minerva skin on mobile will notice there has been an improvement in the line height across all typography settings. [6]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 9 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 10 April. It will be on all wikis from 11 April (calendar). [7][8]
- New accounts and logged-out users will get the visual editor as their default editor on mobile. This deployment is made at all wikis except for the English Wikipedia. [9]
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Question from KatiePaty on Béla Balázs (06:03, 9 April 2024)
Hello, How do I create a citation? --KatiePaty (talk) 06:03, 9 April 2024 (UTC)
- Hi @KatiePaty:! Please see WP:REFB; I would recommend the visual editor method. TheSandDoctor Talk 03:50, 14 April 2024 (UTC)
Question from Helloworldagain42 (05:31, 12 April 2024)
how do i edit a table cell --Helloworldagain42 (talk) 05:31, 12 April 2024 (UTC)
- Hi @Helloworldagain42:! I would recommend using the visual editor if at all possible as tables are definitely pretty daunting without it — I even do my best to avoid manually editing them and use the editor instead. Are you experiencing issues despite using the visual editor? TheSandDoctor Talk 03:51, 14 April 2024 (UTC)
Feedback request: All RFCs request for comment
Your feedback is requested at Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard on a "All RFCs" request for comment. Thank you for helping out!
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Tech News: 2024-16
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Problems
- Between 2 April and 8 April, on wikis using Flagged Revisions, the "Reverted" tag was not applied to undone edits. In addition, page moves, protections and imports were not autoreviewed. This problem is now fixed. [10][11]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 16 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 17 April. It will be on all wikis from 18 April (calendar). [12][13]
- Default category sort keys will now affect categories added by templates placed in footnotes. Previously footnotes used the page title as the default sort key even if a different default sort key was specified (category-specific sort keys already worked). [14]
- A new variable
page_last_edit_agewill be added to abuse filters. It tells how many seconds ago the last edit to a page was made. [15]
Future changes
- Volunteer developers are kindly asked to update the code of their tools and features to handle temporary accounts. Learn more.
Four database fields will be removed from database replicas (including Quarry). This affects only the abuse_filterandabuse_filter_historytables. Some queries might need to be updated. [16]
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New page patrol May 2024 Backlog drive
| New Page Patrol | May 2024 Articles Backlog Drive |  |
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| You're receiving this message because you are a new page patroller. To opt-out of future mailings, please remove yourself here. | |
MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:15, 17 April 2024 (UTC)
Notification of administrators without tools
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Greetings, TheSandDoctor. You are receiving this notification because you've agreed to consider endorsing prospective admin candidates identified by the process outlined at Administrators without tools. Recently, the following editor(s) received this distinction and the associated endearing title: |
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Notification of administrators without tools
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Greetings, TheSandDoctor. You are receiving this notification because you've agreed to consider endorsing prospective admin candidates identified by the process outlined at Administrators without tools. Recently, the following editor(s) received this distinction and the associated endearing title: |
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Tech News: 2024-17
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- Starting this week, newcomers editing Wikipedia will be encouraged to try structured tasks. Structured tasks have been shown to improve newcomer activation and retention. [17]
- You can nominate your favorite tools for the fifth edition of the Coolest Tool Award. Nominations will be open until May 10.
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 23 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 24 April. It will be on all wikis from 25 April (calendar). [18][19]
Future changes
- This is the last warning that by the end of May 2024 the Vector 2022 skin will no longer share site and user scripts/styles with old Vector. For user-scripts that you want to keep using on Vector 2022, copy the contents of Special:MyPage/vector.js to Special:MyPage/vector-2022.js. There are more technical details available. Interface administrators who foresee this leading to lots of technical support questions may wish to send a mass message to your community, as was done on French Wikipedia. [20]
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Tech News: 2024-18
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
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- The appearance of talk pages changed for the following wikis: Azerbaijani Wikipedia, Bengali Wikipedia, German Wikipedia, Persian Wikipedia, Hebrew Wikipedia, Hindi Wikipedia, Indonesian Wikipedia, Korean Wikipedia, Dutch Wikipedia, Portuguese Wikipedia, Romanian Wikipedia, Thai Wikipedia, Turkish Wikipedia, Ukrainian Wikipedia, Vietnamese Wikipedia. These wikis participated to a test, where 50% of users got the new design, for one year. As this test gave positive results, the new design is deployed on these wikis as the default design. It is possible to opt-out these changes in user preferences ("Show discussion activity"). The deployment will happen at all wikis in the coming weeks. [21]
- Seven new wikis have been created:
- You can now watch message groups/projects on Translatewiki.net. Initially, this feature will notify you of added or deleted messages in these groups. [29]
- Dark mode is now available on all wikis, on mobile web for logged-in users who opt into the advanced mode. This is the early release of the feature. Technical editors are invited to check for accessibility issues on wikis. See more detailed guidelines.
Problems
- Kartographer maps can use an alternative visual style without labels, by using
mapstyle="osm". This wasn't working in previews, creating the wrong impression that it wasn't supported. This has now been fixed. [30]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 30 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 1 May. It will be on all wikis from 2 May (calendar). [31][32]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.