This is an archive of past discussions with User:Chess. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
A new 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. [1]
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. [2][3][4]
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.
As you will know, I got notified and pinged about the dispute between you and Locke Cole at AN/I, even though I wasn't "involved" in that dispute in any way. I've been wondering what to say since your post to my talk page, and decided to continue the approach I had taken at RSN of not engaging with you any further. But here I am and I hope I'm not going to regret it.
I'm going to ask Locke Cole, and other editors, if they are watching this page, not to engage in this conversation please. Also that you, Chess, humour me by briefly answering the questions rather bringing up something else or someone else. If you don't wish to do that, then fine, you can delete this post, and go our separate ways.
At the AN/I, when Locke Cole referred to our earlier dispute, he took a complaint I made about one specific issue and implied I was commenting generally on "the types of comments Chess makes regarding gender issues". I don't actually know you from Adam. I don't recall any prior conversations before that RSN discussion. Maybe we have and I've forgotten. I can't possibly be commenting on a pattern of comments. How did that make you feel for my remark to you to be mischaracterised?
Furthermore, the comment you made had been struck, you had apologised, and I had accepted your apology. Water under the bridge. Something that shouldn't be lightly brought up by anyone. Or if it was, brought up in its entirety as an example of how you fix things when you get it wrong. How does it make you feel that an example of something you thought you'd eventually resolved, was selectively reported and used against you?
That RSN disagreement was, AFAICS, entirely unrelated to whatever bad words have been said by editors on that Colorado Springs talk page. You had to spend a whole paragraph clarifying the selective version of events to include your strike and apology. It really isn't helping address the question of whether the behaviour at the Colorado Springs talk page was acceptable. How did it make you feel for an unrelated event that you'd fixed and apologised for to be brought up at AN/I in a complaint about the behaviour of another editor at the Colorado Springs talk page? -- Colin°Talk11:10, 28 November 2022 (UTC)
How did that make you feel for my remark to you to be mischaracterised? If I had to be honest, I don't feel like it was a mischaracterization. You had a problem with me then about the civility of my edits in the topic area. That's relevant information in a civility dispute, and much like how I used specific examples of warnings over discrete incidents to illustrate a pattern of behaviour, Locke used a specific example of a warning to say that I had a pattern of behaviour. I think they were wrong but they're entitled to say it at ANI.
Furthermore, the comment you made had been struck, you had apologised, and I had accepted your apology. Water under the bridge. Something that shouldn't be lightly brought up by anyone. That's not true. An apology + forgiveness doesn't erase past misdeeds. It's a statement of regret + an implicit promise not to do it again. If I act disruptively again, it's fair to bring up my previous misbehaviour even if I was forgiven for it. Someone with a pattern of misconduct should be treated that way even if they've apologized and were forgiven for every individual incident (WP:UNBLOCKABLE style) . I don't personally feel that I have a pattern of misconduct, but I don't feel indignant at the accusation that was made given that it's fair game. My actions have consequences and having to repeatedly explain myself is a pretty fair consequence all things considered.
That RSN disagreement was, AFAICS, entirely unrelated to whatever bad words have been said by editors on that Colorado Springs talk page... It really isn't helping address the question of whether the behaviour at the Colorado Springs talk page was acceptable. They're related inasmuch as they both have to do with an accusation that I'm pushing an agenda in that topic, and that's a core element of Locke's claims. In response to everything you said, I generally felt ambivalent about what was said at WP:ANI. I can see why Locke said what they said. It's a legitimate point of view on my behaviour, I don't personally agree with it (and I am somewhat miffed at being labelled incompetent) but if someone wants to bring up concerns about me, they can do so at my talk page or at ANI. I can't really ask for much more than that.
If the general point of this is to make me feel empathetic with your own situation after I warned you, I'd like to think that I applied the same standard to myself as I did to others. I don't think it's wrong to complain about someone at ANI or their user talk page. I do believe it's wrong to accuse people of things on article talk pages.
Or to put it succinctly, I mostly felt angry at Locke's comments because they were expressed on an article talk page and were meant to gain an advantage in the content dispute. I didn't have a problem when the same accusations were made at ANI, because while I believe the accusations are false, ANI was the correct place for them. Chess (talk) (please use {{reply to|Chess}} on reply) 23:55, 30 November 2022 (UTC)
Ok, you have a different idea of what is "fair game" and what people are "entitled" to bring up than me, and I'm hoping I can persuade you that is counterproductive. I'll try to explain. Sorry it requires so many words.
Let's look at the AN/I post. The title "User:Locke Cole accusing me of being disruptive" indicates this is (or mainly) a dispute between two users. You post a link to the talk page and some recent diffs about the dispute, all of which go to that talk page. You admit your own behaviour wasn't ideal and you need a break, and you indicate some respect for the other guy's contributions to the project. And then there's the "but": "but I believe these comments at that discussion crossed the line. They should not be allowed to use other editors of being incompetent or disruptive on article talk pages."
So you are asking others (especially admins) to view that discussion and consider if it crossed a line, and somehow make that "not allowed". Not sure what you wanted or expected? Just a stern telling off or an action that requires admin tools?
The AN/I page says it is for "discussion of urgent incidents and chronic, intractable behavioral problems" and recommends "Include diffs demonstrating the problem and be brief; concise reports get faster responses". Your post is a bit of a mix in that regard. There's one incident you want folk to look at, which fits the first scenario, and your request also seems to fit with that. But then you dump in a lot of diffs of past behaviour/warnings/blocks. You are no longer being brief or expecting admins to look at that one incident. It is starting to look like you are in a content dispute and want your opponent sanctioned. So, what you did was alert admins that you are escalating things beyond a content dispute where two people were unfriendly to each other.
One consequence of bringing up past behaviour is that your "opponent" also thinks this is "fair game" and does likewise. Hence, they brough up your behaviour at RSN and that distracted you into defending it. On that ground, you made zero progress in dealing with the original complaint, and both of you wasted everyone's time. You are fortunate they didn't go further and dump half a dozen diffs about you like you did, otherwise we could be reading paragraphs and paragraphs of defence and argument between the two of you about your past behaviours.
The primary goal of good admins is to encourage and enable editors to work together to build the encyclopaedia. The response you got from Cullen was to consider the content dispute issue itself to see if there is a way to find agreement that both parties can live with, and to consider both parties behaviour at that dispute. They did not comment on any of the past behaviour diffs you guys supplied.
So, supplying diffs about past behaviour wasn't useful. It got ignored and just wasted everyone's time. But I think there is a bigger problem with that. It signals that when Chess gets into an unfriendly dispute, they go nuclear. They will dig into someone's contrib history in order to find whatever dirt they can find, and fling it at AN/I or AE in the hope of taking down that opponent. That's behaviour one only does if one really has no intention or lost all hope of working cooperatively with someone any longer, perhaps never had any intention of working cooperatively with others at all. WP:BATTLEGROUND.
I tried to explain to you that you had misunderstood the situation. My response was somewhat aggressive I'll admit, but no more so than your outrageous and false allegation. I not only explained you'd got things wrong, but also that the right-great-wrongs aspect was also wrong, in that it was the journalists who were pushing a fringe agenda. This isn't my "personal opinion on transgender people" but a plain fact if you read the medical literature and consider reliable sources. I'm speaking as the guy who created WP:MEDRS and who has had plenty arguments with editors trying to fight the medical establishment to promote some fringe idea or discredit medical science. I also suggested you were making an embarrassment of yourself and should stop digging. For some very odd reason you thought that was "a thinly veiled threat to embarrass me on the internet". When I briefly responded to say I had done no such thing, you suggested I take you to WP:AE. At this point, as I mentioned earlier, I thought best to disengage from interacting further. You'd got some weird idea about threats that nobody made. Then you turn up on my talk page accusing me of making threats generally.
Let's consider the difference between a threat and a warning.
threat an occasion when someone says that they will cause you harm or problems, especially if you do not do what they tell you to do
warning an action or statement telling someone of a possible problem or danger
Of the diffs you dumped, only one contained a threat. It wasn't of a topic ban and was directed at an editor using multiple IPs who had made repeated personal attacks on the page. In the end it was resolved by someone else hatting the discussion. I was not alone in warning that IP editor. I have made no other threats, certainly not to take someone to AE or to get them banned. Whereas you were encouraging me to do so for you, and you did likewise for Cullen in the above dispute. It's like you want to keep escalating things till someone gets a block.
Posting a bunch of diffs about someone's past, especially when it shows you spent the evening trawling through contribs, about someone you'd never met before, and had crossed words with at one venue, and who already disengaged, is extremely, extremely creepy. And it signals that you have already assembled weaponry to use should we ever come into a dispute again. And from the AN/I post, it looks like you are prepared to do that even if someone is a little bit mean to you one day.
Generally speaking, raising past behaviour issues is considered a personal attack (literally, an attack on the person, rather than dealing with the dispute at hand, who said or did what). Doing so at AN/I for some frankly trivial content dispute where both editors were being unpleasant to each other isn't a good tactic. Doing it to a complete stranger is just plain disturbing. I get you feel personal criticism belongs only on some venues and not others, but honestly, you are more than guilty of doing just that yourself, and you just look thin skinned if you fail to recognise that yet complain loudly about others.
I strongly advise you to stop doing this dirt digging in people's contribs thing, and instead demonstrate you are an editor who seeks to deescalate situations. Who can walk away if they spot they are getting hot headed. -- Colin°Talk11:50, 1 December 2022 (UTC)
WP:NPA says to ignore personal attacks if they're one-off incidents. [7] One would assume that it's necessary to prove that it wasn't a one-off incident to have action taken. Chess (talk) (please use {{reply to|Chess}} on reply) 13:06, 1 December 2022 (UTC)
Not necessarily and it depends what action you want taken. As you note, a good advice (though not the only rule to follow) is to de-escalate things by choosing to ignore it. As policy suggests, sometimes people say over-heated things and didn't mean a personal attack even if it was that or looks like that. It may be better to take it on the chin, especially if they are giving as good as they are getting (from you, say). If the attacks continued after trying to ignore it, then the next step is not AN/I but trying to deal directly with the other guy. And there are other options instead of AN/I such as just asking an uninvolved admin or wise editor directly. AN/I is a gamble, because you aren't necessarily going to get a wise admin. You could get all sorts of people turn up with motivations and agendas who don't have your interest or the project's interest at heart. Policy notes that really severe attack could go straight to AN/I, such as explicit hate language or legal or physical threats.
The "one off" vs "repeated" aspect for you personally to escalate things would be either if attacks continued on that article (in which case you could cite lots of recent diffs) or you had been attacked by them repeatedly at several articles. In terms of their disagreement with you, either they crossed a line in that recent incident or they didn't. Your background diffs didn't include any prior attacks by them against you. It sorta looks like you thought the case was weak, so went out to find some more dirt to throw at AN/I. Which was, rightly and fortunately, ignored.
One other thing. Many times the person making the complaint at AN/I is the one in the wrong (or more in the wrong, or at least equally in the wrong). Creating a section with "User:X accusing me of being disruptive" is only going to put the though into everyone's head that they are probably right. -- Colin°Talk14:44, 1 December 2022 (UTC)
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 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. [8][9]
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).
It's also not without irony that you refer to the findings of facts, and when you look closer you see that an arb voted to ban a friend of mine citing a diff. Which tells me they didn't look at facts then. So why should we look at their findings? --Gerda Arendt (talk) 09:43, 6 December 2022 (UTC)
@Gerda Arendt: I was mainly referring to point 1.1 in the first case where the same points about infoboxes were brought up and none of them were described as illegitimate. Not the stuff about you. Likewise how points 1-3 in the second case described incivility, and how editors may benefit from increased civility. I don't really want to see the infobox wars start again. Chess (talk) (please use {{reply to|Chess}} on reply) 17:55, 6 December 2022 (UTC)
Hello and welcome to our latest newsletter, a quarterly digest of Guild activities since October. Don't forget you can unsubscribe at any time; see below.
Blitz: Our October Copy Editing Blitz focused on July and August 2022 request months; and articles tagged for c/e in December 2021 and January 2022. Seventeen of those who signed up claimed at least one copy-edit, and between them copy-edited forty-six articles. Barnstars awarded are here.
Drive: In the November Backlog Elimination Drive, thirty editors signed up, twenty-two of whom claimed at least one copy-edit. Both target months—December 2021 and January 2022—were cleared, and February was added to the target months. Sixteen requests were copy-edited and 239 articles were removed from the backlog. Barnstars awarded are here.
Blitz: Our seven-day-long December 2022 Copy Editing Blitz begins on 17 December at 00:01 (UTC)*. It will focus on articles tagged for copy-edit in February 2022, and pending requests from September and October. Barnstars awarded will be available here.
Progress report: As of 22:40, 8 December 2022, GOCE copyeditors have processed 357 requests since 1 January, there were seventy-four requests outstanding and the backlog stands at 1,791 articles. We always need skilled copy-editors; please help out if you can.
Election news: Nomination of candidates for the GOCE's Election of Coordinators for the first half of 2023 is open and continues until 23:59 on 15 December. Voting begins at 00:01 on 16 December and closes at 23:59 on 31 December. All editors in good standing (not under ArbCom or community sanctions) are eligible and self-nominations are welcomed. Coordinators serve a six-month term that ends at 23:59 on June 30. If you've thought about helping out at the Guild, please nominate yourself or any editor you consider suitable—with their permission, of course!. It's your Guild and it doesn't coordinate itself.
Thank you all again for your participation; we wouldn't be able to achieve what we have without you! Cheers and best seasonal wishes from your GOCE coordinators, Baffle gab1978, Dhtwiki, Miniapolis, Tenryuu, and Zippybonzo.
*All times and dates on this newsletter are UTC. To discontinue receiving GOCE newsletters, please remove your name from our mailing list.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
The character = cannot be used in new usernames, to make usernames work better with templates. Existing usernames are not affected. [11]
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 Arbitration Committee has concluded the 2021-22 review of the contentious topics system (formerly known as discretionary sanctions), and its final decision is viewable at the revision process page. As part of the review process, the Arbitration Committee has resolved by motion that:
The above proposals that are supported by an absolute majority of unrecused active arbitrators are hereby enacted. The drafting arbitrators (CaptainEek, L235, and Wugapodes) are directed to take the actions necessary to bring the proposals enacted by this motion into effect, including by amending the procedures at WP:AC/P and WP:AC/DS. The authority granted to the drafting arbitrators by this motion expires one month after enactment.
The Arbitration Committee thanks all those who have participated in the 2021-22 discretionary sanctions review process and all who have helped bring it to a successful conclusion. This motion concludes the 2021-22 discretionary sanctions review process.
This motion initiates a one-month implementation period for the updates to the contentious topics system. The Arbitration Committee will announce when the initial implementation of the Committee's decision has concluded and the amendments made by the drafting arbitrators in accordance with the Committee's decision take effect. Any editors interested in the implementation process are invited to assist at the implementation talk page, and editors interested in updates may subscribe to the update list.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Tech News
Because of the holidays the next issue of Tech News will be sent out on 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. [13]
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. [14]
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. [15]
Problems
Last week, all wikis had no edit access for 9 minutes. This was caused by a database problem. [16]
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. [17][18]
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. [19]
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.
You head into the featured content report. Amongst the features you see astronauts, both Gilbert and Sullivan, Ursula K. Le Guin's incredibly talented mother, and Billboard charts. It is pitch black, you are likely to be eaten by a grue.
Happy New Year and Happy New WikiCup! The 2023 competition has just begun and all article creators, expanders, improvers and reviewers are welcome to take part. Even if you are a novice editor you should be able to advance to at least the second round, improving your editing skills as you go. If you have already signed up, your submissions page can be found here. If you have not yet signed up, you can add your name here and the judges will set up your submissions page ready for you to take part. Any questions on the scoring, rules or anything else should be directed to one of the judges, or posted to the WikiCup talk page. Signups will close at the end of January, and the first round will end on 26 February; the 64 highest scorers at that time will move on to round 2. The judges for the WikiCup this year are: Sturmvogel 66 (talk·contribs·email) and Cwmhiraeth (talk·contribs·email). Good luck! MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 14:16, 1 January 2023 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
You can 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. [20]
You can now use the thanks function on your watchlist and the user contribution page. [21]
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. [22]
Matrix is a chat tool. You can now use matrix: to create Matrix links on wiki pages. [23]
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. [24]
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).
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Problems
The URLs in "prev" links on page history now contain diff=prev&oldid=[revision ID] in place of diff=[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. [25]
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: and User talk: namespaces. These will be extended to other talk namespaces, such as Wikipedia talk:. They will continue to be unavailable in non-talk namespaces, including Wikipedia: pages (e.g., at the Village Pump). You can change your preferences (beta feature). [26]
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. [27]
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.
Suggestions and concerns may be directed to the arbitration clerk team at WT:AC/C.
The drafting arbitrators warmly thank all those who have worked to implement the new procedure during this implementation period and beyond. KevinL (aka L235·t·c) 19:44, 17 January 2023 (UTC)
