User talk:TheSandDoctor/Archives/2024/May
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Administrators' newsletter – May 2024
News and updates for administrators from the past month (April 2024).
Guideline and policy news
- Phase I of the 2024 requests for adminship review has concluded. Several proposals have passed outright and will proceed to implementation, including creating a discussion-only period (3b) and administrator elections (13) on a trial basis. Other successful proposals, such as creating a reminder of civility norms (2), will undergo further refinement in Phase II. Proposals passed on a trial basis will be discussed in Phase II, after their trials conclude. Further details on specific proposals can be found in the full report.
Technical news
- Partial action blocks are now in effect on the English Wikipedia. This means that administrators have the ability to restrict users from certain actions, including uploading files, moving pages and files, creating new pages, and sending thanks. T280531
Arbitration
- The arbitration case Conflict of interest management has been closed.
Miscellaneous
- This may be a good time to reach out to potential nominees to ask if they would consider an RfA.
- A New Pages Patrol backlog drive is happening in May 2024 to reduce the number of unreviewed articles in the new pages feed. Currently, there is a backlog of over 15,000 articles awaiting review. Sign up here to participate!
- Voting for the Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee (U4C) election is open until 9 May 2024. Read the voting page on Meta-Wiki and cast your vote here!
Tech News: 2024-19
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
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- The appearance of talk pages changed for all wikis, except for Commons, Wikidata and most Wikipedias (a few have already received this design change). You can read the detail of the changes on Diff. It is possible to opt-out these changes in user preferences ("Show discussion activity"). The deployment will happen at remaining wikis in the coming weeks. [1][2]
Interface admins now have greater control over the styling of article components on mobile with the introduction of the SiteAdminHelper. More information on how styles can be disabled can be found at the extension's page. [3]- Wikimedia Enterprise has added article body sections in JSON format and a curated short description field to the existing parsed Infobox. This expansion to the API is also available via Wikimedia Cloud Services. [4]
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 7 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 8 May. It will be on all wikis from 9 May (calendar). [5][6]- When you look at the Special:Log page, the first view is labelled "All public logs", but it only shows some logs. This label will now say "Main public logs". [7]
Future changes
- A new service will be built to replace Extension:Graph. Details can be found in the latest update regarding this extension.
- Starting May 21, English Wikipedia and German Wikipedia will get the possibility to activate "Add a link". This is part of the progressive deployment of this tool to all Wikipedias. These communities can activate and configure the feature locally. [8]
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Question from D.Cappellano617 (03:16, 6 May 2024)
Hello! Recently, I discovered that I have some (distant) relatives who were quite involved in the silent film industry, one of which being Robert (Rocco) Vignola. After my grandparents died, my mother and I ended up with many photos and and several albums that he put together. Some of which are from his silent film sets. As far as I've researched, many of the photos that I have aren't anywhere online. I am curious as to how I should go about publishing these things. --D.Cappellano617 (talk) 03:16, 6 May 2024 (UTC)
- Hello @D.Cappellano617:! That is quite cool that you have a connection like that! How you publish these admittedly falls into a couple of different routes. Given the era in question, there is also a decent chance that the copyright on them may have already expired. You can ask for guidance at Commons:Village pump/Copyright if you wish to release these images under a Creative Commons license, just know that releasing that way is irrevocable (but this point isn't relevant if the copyright has already expired). If you wish to retain copyright (and it hasn't expired), then you would need to research other ways to publish them online with, for example, all rights reserved.
- Is your intent to have them in Wikipedia articles or just to publish where people can find them? TheSandDoctor Talk 18:14, 12 May 2024 (UTC)
Question from EliasRiveraReal (07:26, 9 May 2024)
I thought it's very cool what you did with your user page. How did you do it? Does it take a while? --EliasRiveraReal (talk) 07:26, 9 May 2024 (UTC)
- Hi @EliasRiveraReal:! My user page is collection of things that dates back to 2018. While I ask that you do not edit it, you can certainly look at the page's source and use it to learn how to build your own etc. Just be sure to change any details to reflect yourself as otherwise that would be impersonation, which is not allowed. If you wanted to copy something like the header on my user page, for example, that is located here (just be sure to replace any instances of my username with yours). If you have any questions about any particular components, please do let me know. TheSandDoctor Talk 18:06, 12 May 2024 (UTC)
Tech News: 2024-20
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- On Wikisource there is a special page listing pages of works without corresponding scan images. Now you can use the new magic word
__EXPECTWITHOUTSCANS__to exclude certain pages (list of editions or translations of works) from that list. [9] - If you use the user-preference "Show preview without reloading the page", then the template-page feature "Preview page with this template (what's this?)" will now also work without reloading the page. [10]
- Kartographer maps can now specify an alternative text via the
alt=attribute. This is identical in usage to thealt=attribute in the image and gallery syntax. An exception for this feature is wikis like Wikivoyage where the miniature maps are interactive. [11] - The old Guided Tour for the "New Filters for Edit Review" feature has been removed. It was created in 2017 to show people with older accounts how the interface had changed, and has now been seen by most of the intended people. [12]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 14 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 15 May. It will be on all wikis from 16 May (calendar). [13][14]
- The Special:Search results page will now use CSS flex attributes, for better accessibility, instead of a table. If you have a gadget or script that adjusts search results, you should update your script to the new HTML structure. [15]
Future changes
- In the Vector 2022 skin, main pages will be displayed at full width (like special pages). The goal is to keep the number of characters per line large enough. This is related to the coming changes to typography in Vector 2022. Learn more. [16]
- Two columns of the
pagelinksdatabase table (pl_namespaceandpl_title) are being dropped soon. Users must use two columns of the newlinktargettable instead (lt_namespaceandlt_title). In your existing SQL queries:- Replace
JOIN pagelinkswithJOIN linktargetandpl_withlt_in theONstatement - Below that add
JOIN pagelinks ON lt_id = pl_target_id
- See phab:T222224 for technical reasoning. [17][18]
- Replace
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Feedback request: All RFCs request for comment
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Feedback request: All RFCs request for comment
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Nomination for deletion of Template:R to sports team
Template:R to sports team has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the entry on the Templates for discussion page. voorts (talk/contributions) 01:25, 17 May 2024 (UTC)
Notification of administrators without tools
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Notification of administrators without tools
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Notification of administrators without tools
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Question from Afeandi mahmmed on Rifle (20:31, 20 May 2024)
Ethiopia 🇪🇹 people are very welcome and we can always get them connected --Afeandi mahmmed (talk) 20:31, 20 May 2024 (UTC)
Tech News: 2024-21
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- The Nuke feature, which enables administrators to mass delete pages, will now correctly delete pages which were moved to another title. [19]
- New changes have been made to the UploadWizard in Wikimedia Commons: the overall layout has been improved, by following new styling and spacing for the form and its fields; the headers and helper text for each of the fields was changed; the Caption field is now a required field, and there is an option for users to copy their caption into the media description. [20][21]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 21 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 22 May. It will be on all wikis from 23 May (calendar). [22][23]
- The HTML used to render all headings is being changed to improve accessibility. It will change on 22 May in some skins (Timeless, Modern, CologneBlue, Nostalgia, and Monobook). Please test gadgets on your wiki on these skins and report any related problems so that they can be resolved before this change is made in all other skins. The developers are also considering the introduction of a Gadget API for adding buttons to section titles if that would be helpful to tool creators, and would appreciate any input you have on that.
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Question from ExiaMesa (22:40, 21 May 2024)
Hi, I wanted to inquire as to the protocol/custom for editing pages where the neutrality/tone is challenged. Can the page just be revised or is there a form of review process? --ExiaMesa (talk) 22:40, 21 May 2024 (UTC)
- @ExiaMesa: If the tone or neutrality is challenged, typically we should come to a consensus on that article's talk page about how to proceed by following WP:BRD. What is this question pertaining to, though? Without that piece of information it is difficult to accurately advise. TheSandDoctor Talk 04:03, 22 May 2024 (UTC)
- My question was generalized, its one of the more common disclaimers I keep seeing and while I was aware of the guidelines for fixing it, I wanted to make sure there wasn't a form of unwritten custom for handling it. Thanks for the help. ExiaMesa (talk) 00:23, 23 May 2024 (UTC)
Question from Stephen Ini (03:23, 24 May 2024)
Please how can I add a biography on wikipedia (extensive article)? I have all the necessary information and links. --Stephen Ini (talk) 03:23, 24 May 2024 (UTC)
- Hi @Stephen Ini:! I would recommend looking at this guide, this notability policy, and this guide to referencing. TheSandDoctor Talk 05:03, 24 May 2024 (UTC)
Hello there
I see you've made a few contributions to the dumpster fire well-oiled machine that is DYK's prep sets and backrooms. Welcome! Prep setting is a job that earns you a lot of trouts, but also lots of thanks. One thing is WP:DYKVAR recommends against putting more than four biographies or four US-related hooks in one set, so try to keep that in mind. Also, I see you're an admin, which means you can also contribute by promoting preparation sets to the queue (see WP:DYKAI). Happy setting! ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 09:39, 24 May 2024 (UTC)
- @AirshipJungleman29: "Dumpster fire" hahahaha. Thanks for the tip! I will read up on that closer, I missed that guidelines page mention in Wikipedia:Did you know/Prep builder instructions and it wasn't in DYKAI. Starting slowly deliberately rather than diving in head-first so I learn without messing too much up. TheSandDoctor Talk 16:38, 24 May 2024 (UTC)
Question from Hestatus24 (01:03, 27 May 2024)
Hello! For semi-protected pages, what would be the best way to go about making edits to gain experience and be able to edit them? Also, how does one enter a "Talk" section? Thank you for your time. --Hestatus24 (talk) 01:03, 27 May 2024 (UTC)
- Hi @Hestatus24:! You're looking for Wikipedia:Edit requests. The talk page is accessed at the top of the article by clicking on the "Talk" link. TheSandDoctor Talk 23:17, 27 May 2024 (UTC)
Tech News: 2024-22
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- Several bugs related to the latest updates to the UploadWizard on Wikimedia Commons have been fixed. For more information, see T365107 and T365119.
- In March 2024 a new addPortlet API was added to allow gadgets to create new portlets (menus) in the skin. In certain skins this can be used to create dropdowns. Gadget developers are invited to try it and give feedback.
- Some CSS in the Minerva skin has been removed to enable easier community configuration. Interface editors should check the rendering on mobile devices for aspects related to the classes:
.collapsible,.multicol,.reflist,.coordinates,.topicon. Further details are available on replacement CSS if it is needed.
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 28 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 29 May. It will be on all wikis from 30 May (calendar). [24][25]
- When you visit a wiki where you don't yet have a local account, local rules such as edit filters can sometimes prevent your account from being created. Starting this week, MediaWiki takes your global rights into account when evaluating whether you can override such local rules. [26]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
Question from Logan is mad (21:37, 28 May 2024)
hey, how do i make an article --Logan is mad (talk) 21:37, 28 May 2024 (UTC)
- Hi @Logan is mad:! You are probably looking for this guide. TheSandDoctor Talk 17:06, 29 May 2024 (UTC)