This is an archive of past discussions with User:Courcelles. 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.
Information on how to proceed to have removal of a ban considered
Courcelles:
I am presently bound by an old ban that arose over controversy concerning the article Speed of light. This ban has led in recent years to actions brought by my addition of "See also" links, corrections of typos and other infractions of the ban that are not germane to disruption of WP. I think it may be time to broach the rescinding of this ban, and hope you can spell out how that can be done. I also would appreciate any advice you might have about the process.
The only way to do this is to file a request at WP:ARCA, though I'm not sure it would go anywhere given last week's AE thread. Were I you, I'd wait a few months and file a request. Courcelles (talk) 20:37, 7 April 2015 (UTC)
Thanks
Why did you have to make an issue out of it when it was clear that I had already settled on this account and was using it exclusively, per WP:VALIDALT; "Clean start under a new name"? There was no disruption being caused. It did not violate WP:SOCK as there was no intent to mislead, deceive, vandalize or disrupt. You could have just left it alone and it wouldn't have been a problem. Instead, you made an issue out of something so minor and non-disruptive and sullied this accounts reputation forever. I took a very long time to settle on this username and you ruined it. My Little Question Can't be This Interesting (talk) 23:20, 4 April 2015 (UTC)
With Holy Week having recently drawn to a close, it is an apt time to examine WikiProject Christianity, which was created in 2006, and boasts over 200 active members.
Hello Books & Bytes subscribers. There is a new Visual Editor reference feature in development called Citoid. It is designed to "auto-fill" references using a URL or DOI. We would really appreciate you testing whether TWL partners' references work in Citoid. Sharing your results will help the developers fix bugs and improve the system. If you have a few minutes, please visit the testing page for simple instructions on how to try this new tool. Regards, MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:47, 10 April 2015 (UTC)
Vacation
Saw you folks were headed out, and just wanted to drop a "have a good time" note. Leaving on the 12th myself for a while. Stay safe. — Ched : ? 22:39, 10 April 2015 (UTC)
We are going to change the way value suggestions are ranked when entering a new statement. This will help with "male" and "female" not showing up among the top suggestions. Previously we ranked by number of sitelinks. We will change this to the maximum of sitelinks and labels. So if an item has labels in many languages but no sitelinks like "male" and "female" it will still show up high in the suggestions. (phabricator:T94404)
Discussed how to move forward with identifiers. Outcome: They should get their own datatype. (phabricator:T95287)
Implemented arbitrary access for the {{#property:…}} parser function. This can be invoked on the wikis that have arbitrary access enabled by using {{#property:P123|from=Q42}}. So far this is only Wikidata itself.
Did further performance work on the client (Wikipedia and co) in preparation for arbitrary access
Improved the performance of wbgetentities significantly when loading a large number of entities
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 new version of MediaWiki has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since April 8. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from April 14. It will be on all Wikipedias from April 15 (calendar).
Developers will start to rename 1.5 million accounts on Wednesday. After that all accounts will be unique and will work on all wikis. [6][7]
All users can now test link previews ("Hovercards") on several Wikipedias. [8]
Meetings
You can join the next weekly meeting with the Editing team. During the meetings you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on April 15 at 18:00 (UTC). See how to join.
You are invited to join the Wikimedia NYC community for our inaugural evening "WikiWednesday" salon and knowledge-sharing workshop by 14th Street / Union Square in Manhattan.
We also hope for the participation of our friends from the Free Culture movement and from educational and cultural institutions interested in developing free knowledge projects. We will also follow up on plans for recent and upcoming editathons, and other outreach activities.
After the main meeting, pizza and refreshments and video games in the gallery!
7:00pm - 9:00 pm at Babycastles, 137 West 14th Street
Featuring a keynote talk this month on Lady Librarians & Feminist Epistemologies! We especially encourage folks to add your 5-minute lightning talks to our roster, and otherwise join in the "open space" experience! Newcomers are very welcome! Bring your friends and colleagues! --Pharos (talk) 18:28, 14 April 2015 (UTC)
(You can subscribe/unsubscribe from future notifications for NYC-area events by adding or removing your name from this list.)
Time profiles Lila Tretikov, executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation, and paints a grim picture of the challenges faced by Tretikov and the encyclopedia.
If it wasn't for Easter, Fast and Furious related articles would have taken the top four spots this week. The latest installment of the movie franchise, Furious 7, tops the chart for the second straight week.
Wikimedia's monthly GLAM (Galleries, Libraries, Archives, Museums) newsletter now includes a Wikidata report. The draft for the first edition, covering April, may be edited and your contributions will be welcome.
Made label, description and aliases special pages easier to use
Bene* created a new Special:ListProperties special page to list properties by data type
Expanded our set of automated browser tests
Made language fallbacks work in more situations and more consistently. In particular, the entity selector now uses language fallback. This should benefit especially people who want to use Wikidata in a variant such as en-gb.
Continued work on the planned DataModel 3.0 release
Continued discussing and documenting future calendar model support
Continued work on our RDF generator
Continued work on usage tracking for labels on multilingual sites
Addshore worked on various issues regarding redirects
Addshore worked on a special page to turn an item into a redirect
Work on showing entity labels in edit summaries on history pages
Implemented change dispatching based on the new usage tracking mechanism
Fixed issue with page deletions on some Wikipedias not being reported to Wikidata
More work on straightening out date formatting and parsing
Fixed handling of scientific notation for quantity values
Term box: fixed bug causing stale info to be show, and another bug causing babel languages to be ignored sometimes.
Implemented access to other arbitrary items via the #property parser function
Bene* implemented check to make sure two properties can not have the same alias only differing in capitalization
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
There was sometimes a problem when saving a page in VisualEditor. It is now fixed on all wikis. [9]
VisualEditor sometimes showed empty warnings for wikis using Flagged Revisions. This is now fixed on all wikis. [10]
You can get the new version of the Wikipedia app for iOS. With it you can share facts with your friends. [11]
If you write JavaScript, you should stop using importScript and importStylesheet. [12]
The new version of MediaWiki has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since April 15. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from April 21. It will be on all Wikipedias from April 22 (calendar).
Developers are renaming 1.5 million accounts. After that all accounts will be unique and will work on all wikis. [14][15][16]
If your wiki has the auto-fill tool for citations, you can now use it when you edit a reference. [17]
You can now give examples for template options in TemplateData. [18]
Meetings
You can join the next weekly meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on April 22 at 18:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
You will soon be able to add and remove tags on edits. [19][20]
A Signpost investigation of the released data has revealed Sony's corporate practices regarding Wikipedia and uncovered what appears to be undisclosed advocacy editing of Wikipedia by Sony employees and possibly by others.
The Affiliates Committee this week announced the organization of a community referral for comment, currently open on the meta-wiki, to address upcoming changes to the way that the Affiliations Committee will review movement-affiliated user-groups in the future.
2015 will see through the biennial community election for the three community-elected seats on the Board of Trustees—the "ultimate corporate authority" of the Wikimedia Foundation and the level at which the strategic decisions regarding the Wikimedia movement are made.
The Gallery is an occasional Signpost feature highlighting quality images and articles from Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons based on a particular theme.
There are a number of user boxes you can add to your user page to indicate interests and which wiki projects you belong to.
Development
On Tuesday, we are deploying usage tracking (no arbitrary access yet) to Dutch Wikipedia and French Wikisource, and subscription tracking on Wikidata. There should be no noticeable changes for users. These are necessary steps towards enabling arbitrary access in clients.
Worked on making language fallback work in the suggester (when adding a new statement or searching for an item)
More work on RDF output and the query service
Added Special:RedirectEntity for redirecting items
Investigated and working to fix JS bug on items with “invalid” values (phabricator:92975)
Did work towards having entity ids in revision histories and in diffs linked with their label (like on watchlists or in the recentchanges)
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
All accounts are now unique and work on all wikis. [21][22]
You can read a report from experts who tested the security of MediaWiki. [23]
There was a problem between VisualEditor and an antivirus software. It is now fixed. [24]
You can help test VisualEditor to see if it works in your language. [25]
Problems
Some Labs tools had problems due to a software bug. [26]
Changes this week
The new version of MediaWiki has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since April 22. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from April 28. It will be on all Wikipedias from April 29 (calendar).
It is now clearer that you can delete several rows and columns when you edit tables in VisualEditor. [27]
You now see more information when you search for a template in VisualEditor. [28]
You can now cancel when you add citations on desktop, or edit links on mobile, in VisualEditor. [29]
You can now see the list of other formats for videos only after they're ready. [30]
Meetings
You can join the next weekly meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on April 29 at 18:00 (UTC). See how to join.
I'll take a look when I'm home on Tuesday. Checkyser and on my phone in a foreign country is not going to work in any useful manner. Courcelles (talk) 09:10, 24 April 2015 (UTC)
I hope you enjoyed your holiday. There has been zero vandalism on Valentine's Day since it was unprotected apart from one contribution by our Brazilian friend. As both Passover and Easter are out of the way for another year please unprotect Easter. See the discussion at User talk:Lankiveil/Archive 9#Easter. 156.61.250.250 (talk) 10:42, 30 April 2015 (UTC)
Esino Lario is set to host Wikimania 2016, but volunteers and others have raised a host of concerns that raise serious questions about the town's suitability for hosting such a large conference.
David Coburn, a Member of the European Parliament for the Scotland region for the UK Independence Party, was blocked from editing Wikipedia on April 6.
Though the continued predominance of movies, TV, and sports noted in last week's report largely continues, three additional topics joined the Top 10 this week.
Reader demand for some topics (e.g. LGBT topics or pages about countries) is poorly satisfied, whereas there is over-abundance of quality on topics of comparatively little interest, such as military history.
Hi! Can you stop by Standard penetration test and have a look at the edits User:Yoshi123Yoshi has been making? I've tried to explain to him that he's placing undue weight on the material he wants to include, and that it's better to just summarize it and add it further down. Then he goes and adds it all back again. We're getting close to 3rr territory. Argyriou(talk)04:53, 30 April 2015 (UTC)
Also, unrelated except that it's hit the same article, someone from geotechdata.info has been spamming various articles related to geotechnical engineering. I've warned User talk:212.243.35.196, but this has been going on a while (I found another edit about a year old), from various IP addresses. Is there something that can be done other than just going through and cleaning up? Argyriou(talk)04:53, 30 April 2015 (UTC)
Seems like a matter for ANI to me. I just don't really have the time in the next 36 hours to deal with anything extra, sorry. Courcelles (talk) 00:55, 1 May 2015 (UTC)
I went to ANI about the spam, and Geni is now aware of that problem. Do you have any recommendation or advice about the other issue, which is much more a good-faith content dispute? Argyriou(talk)17:08, 1 May 2015 (UTC)
Wikidata weekly summary #156
Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week.
We rolled out usage tracking on the first two wikis (French Wikisource and Dutch Wikipedia). Users should not notice anything. More wikis will follow in the next weeks. This is the remaining step for enabling arbitrary access on wikis other than Commons.
The students team is working hard to get a first release of the improved constraint reports and checks against 3rd party databases out.
Ricordisamoa fixed the issue with long descriptions being cut off.
We fixed the focus flow in the property selector.
We improved the messages on Special:EntityData to make it more understandable.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
There was a rare problem with VisualEditor. The text of another wiki could be added to your edit. The issue is now fixed. [32][33]
Changes this week
The new version of MediaWiki has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since April 29. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from May 5. It will be on all Wikipedias from May 6 (calendar).
It is now easier to add a link in VisualEditor. You can see an image and a description about the page. [34]
Meetings
You can join a meeting with the Language team. The meeting will be on May 5 at 14:30 (UTC). [35]
You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on May 6 at 18:00 (UTC). See how to join.
You can join an event in France on May 22−25. You need to sign up before May 8. [36]
The second round one has all wrapped up, and round three has now begun! Congratulations to the 34 contestants who have made it through, but well done and thank you to all contestants who took part in our second round. Leading the way overall was Cas Liber (submissions) in Group B with a total of 777 points for a variety of contributions including Good Articles on Corona Borealis and Microscopium - both of which received the maximum bonus.
Special credit must be given to a number of high importance articles improved during the second round.
Coemgenus (submissions) was one of several users who worked on improving Ulysses S. Grant. Remember, you do not need to work on an article on your own - as long as each person has completed significant work on the article during 2015, multiple competitors can claim the same article.
The points varied across groups, with the lowest score required to gain automatic qualification was 68 in Group A - meanwhile the second place score in Group H was 404, which would have been high enough to win all but one of the other Groups! As well as the top two of each group automatically going through to the third round, a minimum score of 55 was required for a wildcard competitor to go through. We had a three-way tie at 55 points and all three have qualified for the next round, in the spirit of fairness. The third round ends on June 28, with the top two in each group progressing automatically while the remaining 16 highest scorers across all four groups go through as wildcards. Good luck to all competitors for the third round! Figureskatingfan (talk·contribs·email), Miyagawa (talk·contribs·email) and Sturmvogel 66 (talk·contribs·email) 16:28, 4 May 2015 (UTC)
artnet and The Next Web report (May 6) that the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum is releasing a hundred images of works in its collection under Creative Commons licences in conjunction with a May 19 editathon.
Elections have begun for five community members of the Funds Dissemination Committee, the Foundation's volunteer body for judging and recommending millions of dollars worth of annual grants to affiliates in the movement. The election lasts just eight days, from Sunday 3 May until 23:59 UTC on Sunday 10 May, so at the time of publication, voters will need to act promptly.
Like colliding ocean liners, rousing entertainment and harsh reality merged ungainly in this week's top 10 list. The much heralded pay-per-view pummeling of Manny Pacquiao by Floyd Mayweather, Jr. dominated the list's top slots, giving this list one of its highest total view counts in months.
A study has been published about how Wikidata can help significantly improve the quality of medical content on Wikipedia. This is why we do Wikidata! \o/
The Wikidata Menu Challenge has started and goes on to May 27. Add labels, images and pronunciation audio to a list of around 290 items to help show off the power of Wikidata at a food festival.
Hovercards also show the target's label and ID now. (Try them by turning them on in the beta features section of your preferences.)
Continued working on RDF export
More work on making it possible to add a reference right away when adding a statement (and allowing the full statement incl references to be edited at the same time)
Did more work to make usage tracking possible on multilingual wikis (namely Commons)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
You can now make charts and maps on your wiki with the new "graph" tool. If you have an old browser, you will see images instead. It uses a tool called Vega; you can learn how to use it and write help pages for your wiki. You can use the Vega edit tool to make charts and copy the code to your wiki. Charts and maps use complex code and you should put them into templates. In the future, you will be able to create charts with VisualEditor. [37][38][39]
You can apply for technical jobs to develop tools for the community. [40]
The logos of all wikis are now in a new place. It will make pages load faster. You can still ask to change the logo. You can also use local CSS for brief changes. [41][42]
Problems
There was a problem that caused slow editing. [43]
Pages were sometimes removed from your watchlist in VisualEditor. This problem is now fixed. [44]
Changes this week
The new version of MediaWiki has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since May 6. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from May 12. It will be on all Wikipedias from May 13 (calendar).
You can now use data from Wikidata on more pages. The page doesn't need to be linked to the Wikidata item. It works on a few wikis and more wikis will be added soon. [45][46]
You should get fewer errors when you add files to Commons. [47]
When you use an external link to link to a wiki page, VisualEditor now converts it to a wiki link. [48]
When you add a link in VisualEditor, you see pages that match what you type. It is now easier to see where they match. [49]
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on May 13 at 18:00 (UTC). See how to join.
You are invited to join the Wikimedia NYC community for our next evening "WikiWednesday" salon and knowledge-sharing workshop by 14th Street / Union Square in Manhattan.
This month will also feature on our agenda: recent and upcoming editathons, the organization's Annual Meeting, and Chapter board elections.
We also hope for the participation of our friends from the Free Culture movement and from educational and cultural institutions interested in developing free knowledge projects. We will also follow up on plans for recent and upcoming editathons, and other outreach activities.
After the main meeting, pizza and refreshments and video games in the gallery!
7:00pm - 9:00 pm at Babycastles, 137 West 14th Street
Featuring a keynote talk this month to be determined! We especially encourage folks to add your 5-minute lightning talks to our roster, and otherwise join in the "open space" experience! Newcomers are very welcome! Bring your friends and colleagues! --Pharos (talk) 16:00, 12 May 2015 (UTC)
(You can subscribe/unsubscribe from future notifications for NYC-area events by adding or removing your name from this list.)
MIDDAYEXPRESS: supposed involvement in MUSLIM TERRORISM SUPPORT
Middayexpress is supporting Al-Shabaab?
Hi, I have read that you blocked user:Middayexpress in 2011. But this user is becoming more and more "a real problem" and should be blocked again. Anyway, I want to add the following information, in case you want to investigate the "Al-Shabaab-ISIS" issue & presence on Wikipedia. This investigation is being done even on the blog of Mappista59 (read: https://www.blogger.com/profile/17629549463392207787 ). Thanks anyway:
She is a Somali woman (according to user Chuckupd and others) living in the UK, probably in London, who is accused to be with "pathological behavior" while controlling in en.wiki all articles on Somalia. She has caused to abandon Wikipedia at least one user (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Chuckupd), who wrote that "I'm not the only one being attacked (by Middayexpress) without mercy" and "Middayexpress, you are hopelessly insane " and finally "I give up on Wikipedia. Middayexpress has accused me with so many lies that it has become unbearably depressing. I'm not the only one being attacked without mercy. One of these days, I hope she will be banned and then I might consider returning here."
Another wiki user (Buckshot06 (talk) ) wrote that "Middayexpress is in long-standing, continual violation of WP:NPOV, continually rolls back edits that do not reflect his views (IDONTLIKEIT/Disruptive editing, plus WP:UNDUE over-positive views of the Somali situation), and continually attempts to WP:OWN a wide range of Somalia articles." And this statement was supported by User:Bobrayner, who wrote that "I share Buckshot06's concerns. However, I feel the problem may be more widespread, as I have seen Middayexpress doing the same kind of pov-pushing on other articles related to Somalia and the surrounding region".
Buckshot06 wrote (on 17 February 2014): "Middayexpress, I remain increasingly concerned about your distortions of sources in both these articles. Beyond the issue of the TFG's security forces in Mogadishu in December 2006-January 2007, these include putting words in the mouth of a senior Ethiopian official, who did not say that Ethiopia had 8,000 troops in Somalia in November 2013, distorting a meeting between Italian and Somali officials in 2012 into a claim that Somali had started rebuilding its air force in 2000-2010, and inventing aircraft numbers and entire aircraft from the Library of Congress Country Study. Why do you continually readd the SM-1019s that are not listed in the Country Study?".....and user Nick-D (talk) added:" I've noticed that your edits to these articles seem to put an unduly positive "spin" on things. For instance, in your most recent edit to the Somali Civil War article [1] you removed material sourced to a January 2013 academic journal article by Laura Hammond in which she argued that "[M]uch of rural Somalia remains in the hands of Al-Shabaab" and replaced it with more positive material sourced to a November 2012 news story which argues that 85% of the country was under government control at the time. You did not provide a rationale for this change (especially removing material outright rather than noting differing viewpoints) and I'm wondering why you made this change?"
User:Gobonobo added the negative comments that "Middayexpress can be a difficult editor to work with. Middayexpress tends to exert ownership over Somalia-related articles, employing an editing style that is combative and adversarial, often refactoring other's contributions and/or edit-warring to preserve their preferred version of an article. Sometimes Middayexpress exhibits tendentious behavior, removing sourced material that is critical of Somalia or Somali people". Additionally User:StoneProphet pinpointed that Middayexpress did "rampant cherry-picking of sources and content".
Middaexpress had fights from his first wiki-moments even with admins (like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Kwamikagami/old , who accused Middayexpress of "violating basic Wikipedia policy") and with many other users.
"Middayexpress is a meatpuppet master for Runehelmet as seen on Runehelmets talk page once middayexpress began into a dispute with me he went over to call runehelmet into the discussion 27 and rune also does the same vice versa 28..These two individuals would rather have a page dominated by somali-centric material and seem to turn a blind eye on other ethnic groups as seen here 29..Gyrofrog does not enter discussion on a wide scale like Runehelmet does so that is not comparable..If an editor pushes pov and seems to take your side in a discussion always and you go invite him then that is not acceptable..also your example about you and runehelmet disagreeing on article doesnt matter because that article is strictly somali oriented(squabbling in your own pot)..runehelmet would rather tag team if possible based on his behavior & he prefers to tag team strictly with Middayexpress....User Runehelmet also seems like a meatpuppet for User_talk:Middayexpress as clearly seen on runehelmets talk page [6]..midday passes on articles for runehelmet to add on his watchlist clearing way for both users to appear on WP:OBSART and wp:CAN..it seems other users have brought up their behavior in previous discussion 7..middayexpress invites runehelmet to discussions which is also clearly seen on the talk page..they back each other to push consensus seen here [8] & [9]..also the only time Runehelmet seems to accept consensus in a dispute is if middayexpress enters the discussion as seen here [10] & [11]" Baboon43 (talk) 09:35, 26 November 2012 (UTC). Furthermore, it seems that user AcidSnow is a "meatpuppet" of Middayexpress, because he always defends her POVs in all the Somalia discussions and "fights".
User:Bricology found that Middaexpress was "hiding it in a long, dense and relatively undifferentiated timeline" the issue of poaching as a source of funds for the Somalian terrorist group Al-Shabaab. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Al-Shabaab_(militant_group)#Moving_on...). He even wrote: "Middayexpress, you either presume that you have the power to unilaterally change other editors' work or you misunderstand the relevant issue, or both".
This tentative to "help" the image of Al-Shabaab in Wikipedia (similar to the one denounced by user Nick-D ) raises doubts, and creates the possibility that Middayexpress has a supposed involvement in Muslim terrorism support. Indeed she has an astonishing knowledge of Al-Shabaab activity in the last years: this knowledge can only be possessed by an insider (or a closely-related insider) of this terrorist organization!
Furthermore, Middayexpress has shown a "fanatical hate" (similar to the one of members of Al-Shabaab) against Christianity in Somalia, as is clearly evidenced from her cancellation of serious bibliography and data in the voice "Roman Catholicism in Somalia" (https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Roman_Catholicism_in_Somalia&oldid=320544261): she has made disappear that "The Bishop of Mogadishu, Franco Filippini, declared in 1940 that there were about 40,000 Somali Catholics due to the work of missionaries in the rural regions of Juba and Shebelle, but WWII damaged in an irreversibly way most of the catholic missions in Italian Somalia.[1] ". She angrily (as a possible al-Shabaab member or sympathizer) denied her POV-caused disappearances (https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Roman_Catholicism_in_Somalia&oldid=320948362).
Middayexpress even attacked with continuous "malignity" user Oldsettler accusing him of sockpuppetry until she obtained the help of "wikimafia" user Vituzzu: she wanted and obtained to "decapitate without pity in Wikipedia" Oldsettler with the same kind of malignity & hate shown in Syria by ISIS terrorists. Oldsettler wrote "The malignity of this Middayexpress is unbelievable. Why against me? I have never done anything with him/her or against him/her, but -after obtaining to erase my dad's photo- now attacks me continuously repeating the same accusations again and again and again with his/her typical "byzantine phrases" full of the same things. I have read his/her 60 archives and I have found that he/she is a Somalian living in the UK (probably in the London area full of supporters of ISIS (read [46]) and that he/she has had "fightings" with many wikipedians. He/she has collected many blocks and menaces of blocks for his/her continuous edit-warrings and seems to promote muslim POVs in a way that remembers the religious fanatism: most important to me, he/she seems to "hate" colonialism and western colonialists, so probably he/she identifies me with the Italians who colonized Somalia....and this can explain his/her attacks against me."
Support request with team editing experiment project
Dear tech ambassadors, instead of spamming the Village Pump of each Wikipedia about my tiny project proposal for researching team editing (see here: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IdeaLab/Research_team_editing), I have decided to leave to your own discretion if the matter is relevant enough to inform a wider audience already. I would appreciate if you could appraise if the Wikipedia community you are more familiar with could have interest in testing group editing "on their own grounds" and with their own guidance. In a nutshell: it consists in editing pages as a group instead of as an individual. This social experiment might involve redefining some aspects of the workflow we are all used to, with the hope of creating a more friendly and collaborative environment since editing under a group umbrella creates less social exposure than traditional "individual editing". I send you this message also as a proof that the Inspire Campaign is already gearing up. As said I would appreciate of *you* just a comment on the talk page/endorsement of my project noting your general perception about the idea. Nothing else. Your contribution helps to shape the future! (which I hope it will be very bright, with colors, and Wikipedia everywhere) Regards from User:Micru on meta.
Three community-elected seats on the Board of Trustees—the ultimate governing authority of the Wikimedia Foundation—will be decided by Wikimedians in the election to be held 17–31 May.
Casual viewers may think I've posted the same list twice. But no, readers just happen to be really interested in May 2's Big Fight. In fact, last week was just the weigh-in and the trash talk. This week, the numbers actually increased.
Grant Shapps, who was the co-chairman of the UK's Conservative Party until this week, has been accused of maliciously editing the Wikipedia biographies of his party's rivals.
Past: Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing) spoke about authority control in Wikidata (and sister projects) at the World Digital Library's Arab Peninsula Regional Group Symposium, organised in conjunction with the Qatar National Library, in Doha on 13 May. His slides, with an Arabic translation, will be online soon.
Past: Wikidata editing workshop at the Wikimedia Conference in Berlin
Past: Wikidata workshop for archivists of Catalan City of Justice
Upcoming: MediaWiki hackathon in Lyon
Other Noteworthy Stuff
Elections for the board of the Wikimedia Foundation are ongoing. Wikidata should be well represented among the voters. Go and vote!
Dutch Wikipedia and French Wikisource now have the arbitrary access feature. Persian Wikipedia, English Wikivoyage and Hebrew Wikipedia are following today. Italian Wikipedia and all remaining Wikisource projects are following on June 1st.
English Wikipedia is running a bot to add authority control templates to many articles that are filled completely from Wikidata. Italian Wikipedia is doing so as well.
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 new version of MediaWiki has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since May 13. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from May 19. It will be on all Wikipedias from May 20 (calendar).
References are now always in the right order. Also, the reference list now only shows references used on the page. [50]
You can no longer create an account with a colon ':' in it. If you already have one, it still works. [51]
The toolbar in VisualEditor now looks different. It is easier to see the icons. [52]
You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on May 21 at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.
The Wikimedia Foundation's bi-annual Board of Trustees election is open for voting. Of the ten seats on the board, three are elected representatives of the global Wikimedia community—you.
The article counts of many Wikimedia wikis suddenly changed on 29 March 2015: as the Signpost reported at the time, sixty-five wikis fell below milestones tracked at the Wikimedia News Meta page, and three increased to new milestones.
The list is topped this week by Danish scientist Inge Lehmann, thanks to a Google Doodle celebrating her 127th birthday. Lehmann discovered in 1936 that the Earth has a solid inner core. It is sometimes surprising to realize how recently such basic scientific knowledge of the Earth, which we now take for granted, was discovered.
Wikipedia editors logging in on May 19 found themselves walking into an unexpected amount of anti-vandal work to keep the site in line with its extensive biographies of living persons policy. A plethora of Wikipedia articles related to the United States House Committee on Appropriations, and the fifty-one representatives serving on it, have been hit by a raft of anonymous editors making often vulgar edits referencing "chicken fucker," or more creative combinations: "sexual conduct", "sexual congress", "fornicator", "intimate relations", or "trysts with chickens."
Jimmy Wales and five others accepted the 2015 Dan David Prize at Tel Aviv University on May 17. The prize comes with US$1 million, ten percent of which goes to doctoral and postdoctoral scholarships.
This week, we had the pleasure of interviewing WikiProject Molecular and Cellular Biology, which has come a long way since our last interview in 2008. Like most projects, it has a long member list, but only a small subset of that group regularly contributes. With 28 featured articles and 58 top-importance start class ones, the project has clearly had some success, but has a ways to go. We talked to three regular project contributors.
The Arbitration Committee has an unusually large case load at present. Although perhaps not on a par with the high-profile, multi-party cases seen towards the end of last year and the beginning of this year, with five open cases the arbitrators are likely to be kept busy for the next several weeks.
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
VisualEditor was broken for 30 minutes on Tuesday. The problem was due to a tool it uses. [57]
The new version of MediaWiki has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since May 20. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from May 26. It will be on all Wikipedias from May 27 (calendar).
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on May 28 at 18:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Wikidata descriptions can be soon be edited in the Wikipedia iOS app.
A early preview of the official SPARQL endpoint for Wikidata has been created to query Wikidata. Remember that it is not stable and still beta. A short introduction to SPARQL can be found in Lucie's slides.
If you are not familiar with SPARQL yet, a tool has been created by Tpt and Bene* to generate SPARQL queries from natural language questions.
To do SPARQL queries from the command line, a command line tool was crafted by Marius.
The special page to query for badges is within reach.
A feedback session on the architecture of Wikibase was held.
We got a cool presentation by Maxime about inventaire.io.
We figured out the next steps to make Wikidata more mobile friendly.
Hi again. I found it now. It was just not under the Wikipedia header so that's why I did not find it. I can explain what happened. The house I rent is a house where many people live at, or stay (in fact tonight we have 6 people sleeping here plus the dogs) so many, many people have internet access through this computer, in fact, my dad, he does his edits from the same computer as me. My niece Isabel also has a Wikipedia membership that she created from here, but she doesn't come very often anymore so I know that was not her. So as far as "Pato Frances" now that one I don't know who made that but I suspect probably my sister or brother , or my mom, or one of my multiple nieces and nephews....the only ones I do not suspect of are my dad, my niece that has a user page, myself and my dog. All I can do is try to find out who did that because, even if he/she meant no harm to me or dad as far as Wikipedia is concerned, it still affects us. Sooo.....I guess I have not much else to say, and I do have to go get something from my room right now so the only thing left to say is, Thanks and God bless you! Antonio Cucaracha Venenosa Martin (haw haw!) 10:59, May 27, 2015 (UTC)
Smile
bzzt: "If after six months Gerda Arendt has not blocked under this motion" is probably not what you mean ;) - btw I have not been blocked (or even been warned), nor edit-warred, ever, - why should I now ;) --Gerda Arendt (talk) 09:52, 29 May 2015 (UTC)
Oops. I read that maybe half a dozen times, changing a word here or there, and completely managed to miss something glaring. Courcelles (talk) 15:59, 29 May 2015 (UTC)
Wikidata weekly summary #160
Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week.
The Wikipedia Library is expanding, and we need your help! With only a couple of hours per week, you can make a big difference in helping editors get access to reliable sources and other resources. Sign up for one of the following roles:
Account coordinators help distribute research accounts to editors.
Partner coordinators seek donations from new partners.
Outreach coordinators reach out to the community through blog posts, social media, and newsletters or notifications.
Technical coordinators advise on building tools to support the library's work.
I don't understand your comment here, as you have just linked to his userpage on meta. Is there something I'm missing? — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 08:30, 8 June 2015 (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.
Changes this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from June 9. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from June 10. It will be on all Wikipedias from June 11 (calendar). [61][62]
If you use the Monobook skin, the buttons and other controls now look more the same in VisualEditor and other tools. [63]
When you edit links and other items in VisualEditor, you now need to apply your change before closing the tool. [64]
The title of dialogs is now easier to see when it is near long buttons. [65]
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on June 9 at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Wikidata has passed German Wikipedia in number of items with images (743850 dewp articles vs. 804885 items) - now only second to English-language Wikipedia.
Catalan Wikipedia is moving Taxon IDs to Wikidata.
Zolo did a comparison of English/French/German/Chinese and Cebuano Wikipedias in terms of main types of articles. Biographies were compared by period, nationality and occupation.
Italian Wikipedia and all remaining Wikisource projects now have arbitrary access. The rollout will continue. The schedule for the next projects is at d:Wikidata:Arbitrary access.
The Content Translation tool now automatically connects translated articles to Wikidata. (Thanks Content Translation developers!) Previously translated but unconnected articles have been connected by a bot. (Thanks Amir!)
Code review of the extensions written by a team of students to improve the constraint reports and make it possible to automatically check our data against other databases. A first version will go live soon pending further codereview and fixes.
Hello, Courcelles. Please check your email; you've got mail! It may take a few minutes from the time the email is sent for it to show up in your inbox. You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{You've got mail}} or {{ygm}} template.
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
Many wikis were slow for a few hours on Wednesday due to a code error. Sometimes the pages did not load at all and showed an error. [68]
Some tools in Labs were broken on Wednesday and Thursday. [69]
Edit tags added by the software were broken on all wikis from May 23 to May 28. [70][71]
Changes this week
The new version of MediaWiki has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since May 27. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from June 2. It will be on all Wikipedias from June 3 (calendar).
You won't be able to use e-mail lists for a few hours on Tuesday. [72]
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on June 3 at 18:00 (UTC). See how to join.
The Wikimedia Foundation's volunteer election committee has announced the election results for the three vacant seats on the Board of Trustees. Dariusz Jemielnak, James Heilman, and Denny Vrandečić are set to take up their two-year terms on the Board. They will replace the three incumbents, all of whom stood this time unsuccessfully: Phoebe Ayers, Samuel Klein, and María Sefidari.
Caitlyn Jenner—the American hero of the 1976 Olympics, a film actor, and prominent member of Keeping Up with the Kardashians—may now be the most famous openly transgender person in the world.
The traffic report is nothing unusual this week, with a Google Doodle for astronaut Sally Ride topping the list, the accidental death of famous mathematician John Forbes Nash, Jr. at #2, and the normal fare of recent popular American movies and television.
I left a sincere statement on the proposed decision talk page that I hope you'll read. I agree that I have been harsh with those I disagree with at times. I can adjust my tone so that this is no longer an issue. I almost never edit articles on subjects that I disagree with politically and have been somewhat overeager to defend those I do agree with. Over my ten plus years of work on this website a few of my articles have been on subjects that could be broadly construed as related to American Politics. Of course that would include 9/11 articles where I was at the forefront of keeping conspiracy theories at bay. I also as mentioned at the case talk page supported promotion of the Hillary Clinton article to FA even though I strongly disagree with her political platform. I cross party lines frequently in an effort to meet NPOV and while I may get it wrong at times, I'm anything but a threat to American Political articles. I have no topic bans nd haven't been blocked in 8 years. I'm dismayed that the bulk of my article work will be eliminated since so many of my articles could be conceived as having a relation to American Politics. Even my national park articles are in a way...my FA Yellowstone fires of 1988 were a highly politicized issue at that time. If the main issue based on the evidence isn't that I am a POV pusher or that I am ruining content but instead that I have a civility issue, a remedy along those lines would allow me to continue to contribute in a better way.--MONGO05:29, 1 June 2015 (UTC)
Something (offline) happened overnight, and I'm just a little shook up today. I'll get back on all this stuff tomorrow. Courcelles (talk) 21:27, 1 June 2015 (UTC)
This week saw the publication of the Chapter-wide Financial Trends Report 2013, a now-completed research project that examines the finances and outlays of the 36 movement-affiliated chapters.
The Medical Translation Project, an ambitious attempt to improve and translate Wikipedia’s medical content from English into other languages, began in 2012.
A challenge was raised to calculate the degrees of separation to Kevin Bacon. Already one routine has been produced, the next step is to use live data so that we can work on reducing the number of intermediary steps.
Deployed arbitrary access on all Wikivoyage and Wikiquote projects and announced the next ones. See d:Wikidata:Arbitrary access for more.
More fine tuning on entity usage tracking (relevant for arbitrary access)
Fixed bug that sometimes allowed multiple properties to have the same label in a given language (phabricator:T102148)
More work on automatically creating redirects when merging items
More code review of the Wikidata Quality extensions (improved constraint reports and checks against 3rd party databases). Starting to look good for a first deployment.
The sitelinks heading hierarchy changed and includes a “Site links” heading now that is only shown on mobile. This is a DOM change needed to make Wikidata work better on mobile.
Started working on having PHPCS coverage for the major Wikibase.git code base to find small code issues more easily
Prepared Wikibase.git for the DataModel 3.0 switch
Released Wikibase DataModel Serialization 1.4
Released Wikibase Internal Serialization 1.4
New releases of several DataValue components, including DataValues Number 0.5, DataValues JavaScript 0.7 and ValueView 0.14.5
A challenge was raised to calculate the degrees of separation to Kevin Bacon. Already one routine has been produced, the next step is to use live data so that we can work on reducing the number of intermediary steps.
Deployed arbitrary access on all Wikivoyage and Wikiquote projects and announced the next ones. See d:Wikidata:Arbitrary access for more.
More fine tuning on entity usage tracking (relevant for arbitrary access)
Fixed bug that sometimes allowed multiple properties to have the same label in a given language (phabricator:T102148)
More work on automatically creating redirects when merging items
More code review of the Wikidata Quality extensions (improved constraint reports and checks against 3rd party databases). Starting to look good for a first deployment.
The sitelinks heading hierarchy changed and includes a “Site links” heading now that is only shown on mobile. This is a DOM change needed to make Wikidata work better on mobile.
Started working on having PHPCS coverage for the major Wikibase.git code base to find small code issues more easily
Prepared Wikibase.git for the DataModel 3.0 switch
Released Wikibase DataModel Serialization 1.4
Released Wikibase Internal Serialization 1.4
New releases of several DataValue components, including DataValues Number 0.5, DataValues JavaScript 0.7 and ValueView 0.14.5
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 have created more than 5000 articles with the new translation tool. [73]
Editing a page is now faster. This is because some statistics about edit filters were removed. [74]
Changes this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 16 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from 17 June. It will be on all Wikipedias from 18 June (calendar).
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on June 16 at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Hi. You deleted the article Bárður Hansen in 2010. He has now played for the Faroe Islands national football team. Could you please undelete the article, if possible? Kind regards --EileenSanda (talk) 07:05, 15 June 2015 (UTC)
The Princess of Asturias Foundation announced that Wikipedia would be the recipient of the 2015 Princess of Asturias award in the category of International Cooperation.
We interviewed an Australian veteran who deployed to the region as a peacekeeper and now writes articles on the region's history to help him understand what he encountered there.
Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week.
Discussions
German language Wikipedia closed its RfC on usage of Wikidata data. As a result Wikidata data can be used on the project as long as it happens through a template and it has a non-Wikimedia reference.
Events/Blogs/Press
Past: Office hour on IRC. We talked about cool things that happened around Wikidata over the past 3 months got an update on upcoming developments and Freebase and more. You can read the log.
Fixed an issue where you'd sometimes select the wrong value when entering a statement unintentionally (phabricator:T98471)
Switched the whole code base to make use of DataModel 3.0
The concept of “claims” no longer exists in Wikibase, as all places in the software work with statements. We are making this more and more explicit in the code.
More work on getting the Wikibase Quality extensions ready for deployment. They'll improve constraint checking and provide checks against 3rd party databases.
Special:UnconnectedPages had to be reworked (thanks Amir!) because of huge performance issues. Because of this it loses some functionality (being able to specify where the list starts and limiting the list to pages that have local interwiki links). We're working on bringing functionality back without the performance penalty.
Enabled arbitrary access on arwiki, cawiki, eswiki, huwiki, kowiki, rowiki, ukwiki, viwiki, and usage tracking on dewiki, ruwiki, cswiki and all s3 wikis. (ruwiki and cswiki get arbitrary access on June 23)
Finishing work on improved handling “invalid” values and statements with deleted properties.
Small breaking DOM change: Wikibase no longer adds its own h1 tag but uses MediaWiki's default .firstHeading element. (phabricator:T93534)
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
Some wikis can now be used only with HTTPS. This includes the English, Russian and Chinese Wikipedias, among others. Soon all wikis will use only HTTPS for all users. [80][81]
You can't use HTTPS wikis with Internet Explorer 6 on Windows XP. You need to use another browser. [82]
Problems
On June 15, search was broken on all wikis for several hours. [83][84][85]
Many Labs tools were broken for several days. Almost all of them are back now. They may be missing some data for the last 10 days. [89][90][91]
Changes this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from June 23. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from June 24. It will be on all Wikipedias from June 25 (calendar).
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on June 23 at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Over more than a decade of weekly publication, The Signpost has accumulated an incredibly lengthy and detailed record about the issues, controversies, successes, and failures of the English Wikipedia community and the movement at large.
The Wikimedia Foundation's Language Engineering team plans to introduce Content Translation—a tool that makes it easier to translate Wikipedia articles into different languages—as a beta feature on the English Wikipedia.
During 2009–2011 Google ran the Google Translation Project (GTP), a program utilising paid translators to translate most popular English Wikipedia articles to various Indian language Wikipedias.
The Board of Trustees is the "ultimate corporate authority" of the Wikimedia Foundation and the level at which the strategic decisions regarding the Wikimedia movement are made ...
The Hürriyet Daily News reports that the Turkish Wikipedia has posted banners on the top of the encyclopedia to warn users that a number of articles are being blocked by the Turkish government.
After six years of work, a residency in the Canadian Rockies, endless debugging, and more than a little help from my friends, I have made Print Wikipedia.
You are invited to join the Wikimedia NYC community for our evening "WikiWednesday" salon and knowledge-sharing workshop by 14th Street / Union Square in Manhattan.
We also hope for the participation of our friends from the Free Culture movement and from educational and cultural institutions interested in developing free knowledge projects. We will also follow up on plans for recent and upcoming editathons, and other outreach activities.
After the main meeting, pizza and refreshments and video games in the gallery!
7:00pm - 9:00 pm at Babycastles, 137 West 14th Street
Featuring a keynote talk this month to be determined! We especially encourage folks to add your 5-minute lightning talks to our roster, and otherwise join in the "open space" experience! Newcomers are very welcome! Bring your friends and colleagues! --Pharos (talk) 05:45, 28 June 2015 (UTC)
(You can subscribe/unsubscribe from future notifications for NYC-area events by adding or removing your name from this list.)
Wikidata weekly summary #164
Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week.
Upcoming: Wikimania. There will be several talks and workshops related to Wikidata. Say hi at the "Ask Us Anything" session for Wikidata if you're there.
Machine readable versions (in various formats) of Wikibase entities will be advertised in their page heads as alternate link. (phabricator:T96298)
Fixed property label on item pages not scrolling anymore (phabricator:T94588)
More work on getting the Wikibase Quality extensions ready for release. The part doing constraint violation checks should go to test.wikidata.org next week. The part doing checks against 3rd party databases will still take a bit longer but is also shaping up nicely.
Made it possible to create items even when another user is mass-creating items (phabricator:T103796)
Bene* worked more on making Wikidata work nicely on mobile
Fixed weird issue with cursor jumping around in sitelink input field (phabricator:T103489)
Fixed an issue where it was not possible to edit a statement after you removed its only reference (phabricator:T103603)
Lydia will be traveling for much of July. Expect her to be a bit less responsive during that time.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
When you read a page on the mobile site, you can now see a link to go to its talk page. [94]
The code coloring tool has changed. You can now use many more languages. It now also works on mobile. [95][96][97]
You can look at a new site to learn how to reuse data from Wikimedia sites. [98]
Problems
JavaScript was broken on some wikis due to a code error. VisualEditor and other tools that use JavaScript were broken. [99]
Changes this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from June 30. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from July 1. It will be on all Wikipedias from July 2 (calendar).
You can now use a tool in VisualEditor to add and edit code in color. [100]
When you edit a sentence in the Translate tool, it can show you older translations. They help you save time if they look alike. The older translations should now work better. If you see problems, you should report them. [101]
If you are an admin or have other special rights, you now need a strong password. [102]
Bot and JavaScript coders: The old continuation mode of the API for action=query doesn't work any more. [103]
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on June 30 at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future
When you create a new account, it will also create one on Meta-Wiki and mediawiki.org. [104]
I fully give permission for another admin to do this, but I'm away from home until Sunday, and this is just more than I can manage from a phone or my tablet. Courcelles (talk) 20:07, 2 July 2015 (UTC)
Recusal
Hi Courcelles. I'm a little confused by your statement here. You say your "fingerprints were over it", but I'm trying to work out what it is? Do you mean the injunction? If so, I'm concerned that you were involved in the injunction, then just as it passes, you recuse. Sorry to labour the point, but there's something in that timeline that really doesn't feel right. WormTT(talk) 10:40, 3 July 2015 (UTC)
Wasn't the injunction I meant, I meant the history of the matter, specifically my comments on Adjwilly (can't remember the exact spelling of the username, or look it up on a phone) talk page. Even though he wasn't a named party, I was convinced to just get out of the way. Courcelles (talk) 20:22, 3 July 2015 (UTC)
This week The Center for Internet and Society published a promotional blog post highlighting the heritage of the center's creation of the Train the Trainer program.
A week now remains until the vote, expected on 9 July, when the European Parliament will express either its approval, disapproval, or lack of opinion on the question of freedom of panorama in the European Union.
Like many editors of the world's largest encyclopedia, Karanacs was browsing the site's articles and found that they were of relatively poor quality—and that the traditional narrative she'd learned was not necessarily accurate.
I see that you have deleted a previous page about SetupBuilder. I would like to create a new one. SetupBuilder is listed under List_of_installation_software and is a major competitor to Wise and InstallShield, both of which have Wiki entries.
I am a user of the product, not associated with it in any other way. But I would like the product I use to have a page as do the others. The company's client roster includes one-third of the Fortune Global 500 so it is worthy of mention in my view.
Upcoming: Wikimania. There will be several talks and workshops related to Wikidata. Say hi at the "Ask Us Anything" session for Wikidata if you're there.
Other Noteworthy Stuff
A new database report lists people categorized as dead in Wikipedia, but lacking Property:P570 (date of death). It's updated several times during the day. There are about 20 to 30 new entries each day. There is currently some backlog from the Arabic, Marathi, and Thai Wikipedias. Items updated first in Wikidata wont appear in the report. They are listed directly in Wikidata's recent deaths report.
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 the mobile site, you now see more information when you search for a page. It now shows the description from Wikidata. [105]
Problems
The code of long pages is not colored any more. You may see this problem on the pages of long gadgets. [106]
Changes this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from July 7. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from July 8. It will be on all Wikipedias from July 9 (calendar).
The "Page information" tool shows how many users watch the page. You can now see how many are active. [107][108]
You can now translate articles into English with the new translation tool. [109]
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on July 7 at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
You're invited to the Ally Skills Workshop at Wikimania!
You were suggested as someone who might be interested in the Ally Skills Training Workshop at Wikimania! The workshop is designed to train Wikipedia admins to be more aware of sexism and is funded by an Inspire grant. The workshop will focus on teaching specific skills and techniques directly relevant to Wikipedia admins and editors, and in particular will teach people about the psychology of trolls. The workshop will be on Thursday July 16 from 2pm to 5pm in Don Diego 3.
If you are attending Wikimania, you are invited to apply to the Ally Skills Workshop! Space is limited and we may not be able to accept all applications, so apply now. More information, including a link to the application form, is here:
People of all genders are welcome to attend. Unfortunately, travel scholarships for Wikimania are already closed and we don't know of any other sources of travel funding. If you know anyone else attending Wikimania who might be interested in attending this workshop, please encourage them to apply!
Thank you for your time,
Valerie Aurora (Instructor and Interim Executive Director of the Ada Initiative)
Lila Tretikov this week posted an email to the wikimedia-l mailing list announcing the final publication of the Wikimedia Foundation's 2015 annual plan.
It's July 4 weekend and on this list that means only one thing: Wimbledon. Sure, the American Independence Day gets noticed too, but it can't hold a candle to that staggeringly British sporting event.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
There was a problem with editing on Thursday. Some tools like bots and VisualEditor were broken on all wikis for 10 minutes. [111]
There was a problem with images on Thursday. They were broken on all wikis for 15 minutes. [112]
Changes this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from July 14. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from July 15. It will be on all Wikipedias from July 16 (calendar).
Meetings
You can join a technical meeting at Wikimania in Mexico City this week. [113]
I nominated Batavia, NY μSA for deletion, and found this diff [114], where you closed via AWB. It looks like this might have been a prevalent problem given your comment, but I can't locate the discussion. Is there some reason this was kept? MSJapan (talk) 04:03, 13 July 2015 (UTC)
"How long will this take?" This is one of the first questions new clients ask. They come to us because the Wikipedia entry about the company at which they work is wrong, incomplete, or even just outdated. The answer varies ...
In The Register, Andrew Orlowski reports that three weeks ago, Grant Shapps filed a request with Wikimedia UK (WMUK) under the Data Protection Act 1998 "for all data relating to him".
Wikimania 2015 is underway in Mexico City, and one of its sessions—a scheduled follow-up to the annual Wikimedia Conference that was held in Berlin in May—is good reason to provide a retrospective of that Conference.
Attending Wikimania 2015 in Mexico City right now, meeting awesome people that already use or want to know everything about Wikidata.
After the next deployment, redirects will be automatically created when merging items.
Special:UnconnectedPages can now be queried via the query API, thanks to Ladsgroup.
Migrating away from an older serializer to the DataModel Serialization component.
Worked on a new time parser that can parse formats like M/D/Y, Y M D and so on.
Fixed a bug where a value could not be edited when save failed.
Made the snak type, badge and rank selectors position themselves after resizing the browser window and introduced a possibility to collapse the sitelinks sections.
Worked on a change in editing to be able to edit a statement and it’s references in one step.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Changes this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from July 21. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from July 22. It will be on all Wikipedias from July 23 (calendar).
You now see more warnings in the image viewer. They tell you to be careful when using the image, for example if it shows a person. [115]
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on July 21 at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
Soon you won't be able to use MathJax to display math. [116]
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
You can now use redirects to link to JavaScript pages. [117]
There was a problem with some Lua modules on July 22 and 23. Some pages using them did not list them in "what links here". You can fix those pages with a null edit: edit and save the page without making any change.
There was a problem with the abuse filter page on big wikis on July 23. It was due to a code error. [122]
Changes this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from July 28. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from July 29. It will be on all Wikipedias from July 30 (calendar).
JavaScript authors: You cannot use wgNoticeUserData to get edit counts anymore. [123]
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on July 28 at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
You are invited to join us the "picnic anyone can edit" in Brooklyn's Prospect Park, as part of the Great American Wiknic celebrations being held across the USA. Remember it's a wiki-picnic, which means potluck.
1pm–7pm - come by any time! @ Bartel-Pritchard Square entrance (Prospect Park West and 15th St), immediately on the lawn to your left as you walk through the lovely lotus columns.
"Editors representing rival political tribes [are] frequently attempting to impose their respective narratives as the official version of one or another cultural controversy."
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 ContentTranslation extension has been updated:
You can now type in list paragraphs on wikis with right-to-left scripts. [124]
Some user interface updates changed how details in the ContentTranslation extension look. [125][126][127][128]
The error page you see when the sites are not working is now simpler and easier to read. It also shows the Wikimedia logo. [129]
MediaWiki now supports redirects for CSS pages. [130]
Bots can't guess captchas unlimited times anymore. [131]
Problems
There was a problem with thumbnails on wikis with local images on July 24 and 25. It was due to a code error. [132]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from August 4. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from August 5. It will be on all Wikipedias from August 6 (calendar).
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on August 4 at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
That particular artists would be omitted through oversight or happenstance is reasonable, but that one of the world's leading publishers of art books is completely unaware of their major omissions is startling.
Death is no stranger to this list, but it has never cast such a pall as this week, when for the first time half the slots in the top 10 were devoted to it, including the top 3.
Made some small changes to the style of the edit warning and sitelinks so they are easier to notice and understand
Added error messages for Special:GoToLinkedPage and Special:ItemByTitle so you get a useful message in case no result is found
The Entity Selector now displays alias in brackets behind label
The number of entities loaded via the {{#property:…}} parser function and via Lua will be reported in the “Parser profiling data” (which can be found below a page preview or within the Html of a page)
Prepared for next rounds of arbitrary access rollout
Investigated growing lag of dispatching of changes to Wikipedia and co. We'll need to investigate further and change things so the lag between an edit on Wikidata and it being send to the Wikipedias and other projects is not too high.
Added the property ID to Special:ListProperties
Moved two extensions (Wikidata.org and WikimediaBadges) from Github to Gerrit. More will follow.
You are invited to join the Wikimedia NYC community for our evening "WikiWednesday" salon and knowledge-sharing workshop by 14th Street / Union Square in Manhattan.
We also hope for the participation of our friends from the Free Culture movement and from educational and cultural institutions interested in developing free knowledge projects. We will also follow up on plans for recent and upcoming editathons, and other outreach activities.
After the main meeting, pizza and refreshments and video games in the gallery!
7:00pm - 9:00 pm at Babycastles, 137 West 14th Street
Featuring a keynote talk this month to be determined! We especially encourage folks to add your 5-minute lightning talks to our roster, and otherwise join in the "open space" experience! Newcomers are very welcome! Bring your friends and colleagues! --Pharos (talk) 15:58, 11 August 2015 (UTC)
(You can subscribe/unsubscribe from future notifications for NYC-area events by adding or removing your name from this 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.
Recent changes
MediaWiki can now hide the signature button when you edit a content page. [134]
The "Your preferences have been saved" message has changed. You can now see more easily what was saved when you change preferences several times. [135]
You can now play Ogg video files in some browsers that don't support this format. This solution uses JavaScript and works on desktop browsers only for now. It will work on mobile later. [136]
You can now use the same tools to edit style in VisualEditor on mobile as in desktop browsers. [137]
It is now easier to see if there is a JavaScript error in a user or site script. [138]
JavaScript authors:
You can no longer use the Sajax library. You can see a list of pages to fix. [139][140]
You can no longer use document.write on Wikimedia wikis. You can see a list of pages to fix. [141][142]
The content translation tool now works better. It is easier to use math, and useless tags are no longer added. [143]
Problems
More edits have been rejected due to loss of session data lately. This is now fixed. [144]
Importing a Lua module sometimes didn't work. This is now fixed. [145]
Text was sometimes lost in the content translation tool. One part of the problem is now fixed. [146]
Changes this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from August 11. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from August 12. It will be on all Wikipedias from August 13 (calendar).
UploadWizard is getting a new look. The look of buttons and checkboxes has already changed. This week, UploadWizard gets a new date picker. The other text fields will change soon. [147]
You can now test VisualEditor on mobile devices of all sizes. [148]
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on August 11 at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
Some things in the watchlist will get a new look. [149]
Given that the information, new to me, came from a book, not a breaking news story, I thought I could wait for you to return from your trip. It looks like you assumed someone else took care of the userification.
Yeah, I thought you would have either pinged another admin or gone to WP:REFUND (DRV would be if I objected to the action, I don't). Since you haven't, let me get to work... Courcelles (talk) 23:52, 27 July 2015 (UTC)
Since you protected Dialogic Inc. after the SPI was closed, would you be so kind as to take a look at WP:COIN#NeuLion? I filed it over a week ago, but no response so far. The activity on NeuLion is fairly stale now, so PP might not be worth it, but NeuLion seems to be PR/puffery stretching back to 2009, when NeuLion2009 created it. NPP must have been pretty bad then. —George8211 / T14:37, 5 August 2015 (UTC)
Yeah, that's stale at this point, and the last account is autoconfirmed anyhow, so page protection wouldn't actually do much. (Dialogic I cleaned out a sock drawer, which made protection more useful.) Courcelles (talk) 03:56, 10 August 2015 (UTC)
Wikidata weekly summary #171
Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week.
You have a bunch of names etc. and want to find Wikidata items with those labels/aliases? Try relabel!
SourcererBot is adding lots of references to existing statements on several thousand items.
Mix-n-Match has new catalogs including the National Library of Australia.
Deaths at Wikipedia are a series of reports comparing items at Wikidata with death-by-year-categories of Wikipedia. For the years since 2000, only about 15% of items at Wikidata lack d:Property:P570 (date of death).
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
Many Wikipedias can now use information from any Wikidata item in any Wikipedia article. Before they could only use the Wikidata item that matched the subject of the article. [150][151][152]
Some auto-saving problems and other issues in the Content Translation tool are now fixed. Please report to the Content Translation feedback page if you still have problems. [153]
Problems
Older gadgets that are not using ResourceLoader are not loading anymore. They need to be updated. [154][155]
On August 12 the machine translation servers and the Content Translation tool didn't work. This was fixed on the same day. [156]
Changes this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from August 18. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from August 19. It will be on all Wikipedias from August 20 (calendar).
You can soon watch when something is added to or removed from a category. [157]
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on August 18 at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
In this case, I have absolutely no doubt that all three accounts, including the one Gameroffun one, are operated by the same person. Courcelles (talk) 23:21, 19 August 2015 (UTC)
Regarding my infoboxes parole to which you helped: I like cantatas to look like this (which you may have seen as TFA), therefore I tried to add an infobox in 2013 to one by Benjamin Britten, to improve the composer's works for the (then) upcoming centenary. It's on the talk, because it was reverted by Nikkimaria. We both edited the article before, which none of us started. - I suggested now to revive the infobox, - see talk, and see the article. How does what we have now help a reader (!) to understand at a glance where to put that article in time and place? - I am happy with all other discussions on the matter, btw. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 21:21, 4 August 2015 (UTC)
That's what I came for ;) - late here as I said at the other end. Did you know the curse on me mentioning granularity again? --Gerda Arendt (talk) 22:21, 4 August 2015 (UTC)
Yeah, but what this needs is other opinions from someone who hasn't written proposed decisions and motions in this topic area. ;) Courcelles (talk) 22:24, 4 August 2015 (UTC)
Do you know anybody without a bias when it comes to infoboxes? Two things I learned in the process: let go and patience. Next life I will possibly find out why infoboxes cause more conflict than images ;) --Gerda Arendt (talk) 22:32, 4 August 2015 (UTC)
I know a lot of people whose opinion about infoboxes is not known -- likely the vast majority of users have never sat down and had a think about the things. The usual places should yield a couple. Courcelles (talk) 03:53, 5 August 2015 (UTC)
I think we had a misunderstanding. (Some days I feel more than others that I am not a native speaker.) When I said eyes I meant eyes, don't think I wanted you to comment. Just look. What I see: I added to an article in good faith. Imagine: there were options to react. It could have been ignored, or thanked for, or discussed. Instead it was reverted. A sum of these reverts made the infoboxes case. But what would life be without without it ;) - Life is too short to continue that "discussion", with the one voice of objection, --Gerda Arendt (talk) 12:20, 5 August 2015 (UTC)
ps: I just returned from a remarkable concert with Bach's cantata BWV 105. That is a different story. The creator of the article saying this, also banned and unable to defend his creation: I have no problem to respect that. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 22:08, 5 August 2015 (UTC)
I had no idea someone so highly ranked in the Russian nobility; Royal patrons are common enough, but Royals who actually produce art. Fascinating. Courcelles (talk) 18:07, 13 August 2015 (UTC)
Fascinating. If the so-called "Great Infobox War" is over one way or the other, perhaps we will never see this back at Arbcom, something I rejoice in. Courcelles (talk) 17:37, 15 August 2015 (UTC)
I believe that without arbitration, we might have been there sooner, but never mind. I was late to the wars, miss victims (GFHandel most), wasn't in a single battle, was astonished about arbitration, requested to look into too many reverts of infoboxes (I named 59, numbered), deciding to restrict those who requested, possibly as the easier "solution"? Of the 59, there are still a few without (Bach and Verdi, for example), but most have been settled. On the Main page now a cantata without one, but I have no intention to take the bait, decided to find it amusing ;) --Gerda Arendt (talk) 08:40, 16 August 2015 (UTC)
very nice, though I did find two things in the table that should be changed. I have no idea what the "FS" column is for. Also, the "time" column should be renamed "year" or "date", given the confusion with Time signature. Courcelles (talk) 23:39, 19 August 2015 (UTC)
"The FS catalogue was first compiled in 1965 by Dan Fog and Torben Schousboe.", infobox: "Catalogue FS 1 to 403", summarized in the lead as "other catalogue numbers". The correct label for "Time" would be "Composition period" - way too long. If you think it's unclear feel free to explain, but it is like that since the composer's 150th birthday 8 June. - I need sleep ;) --Gerda Arendt (talk) 23:50, 19 August 2015 (UTC)
Another cantata is now a GA: Geist und Seele wird verwirret, BWV 35, after a long history from 2002 with several editors. I believe that our readers would be helped best if it had a detailed infobox as other GAs on the topic but one of the former editors disagrees, please look at the talk, --Gerda Arendt (talk) 22:06, 21 August 2015 (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
Disambiguation pages are now excluded from the random page function. [158]
Problems
There was a problem with CAPTCHAs in VisualEditor. This has now been fixed. [159]
Changes this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from August 25. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from August 26. It will be on all Wikipedias from August 27 (calendar).
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on August 25 at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Soon the edit summary for edits through the API will also contain the automatic edit summary that you are used to for edits done through the website. The summary given by the API user will be appended to the automatic summary. (phabricator:T97247)
Addressed performance issues in usage tracking updates and had to delay the latest round of rollouts because of it
Fixed a bug where suggestions would show up twice in item and property selectors (phabricator:T109697)
Improved performance of the mw.wikibase.sitelink Lua method
Made final changes so we can redirect mobile users to the mobile version by default
Evaluated the remaining steps to get the extension deployed that lets you do checks against 3rd party databases. Not much left it seems and we'll tackle that in one of the next sprints. Getting the new features deployed for the constraints checks will still take a bit longer.
More work on making the edit summaries in the watchlist on Wikipedia and co more meaningful