This is an archive of past discussions with User:DMacks. 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.
There was a problem with all types of CentralNotice banners still being shown to logged-in users even if they had turned off specific banner types. This has now been fixed. [3]
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 11 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 12 April. It will be on all wikis from 13 April (calendar).
Starting on Wednesday, a new set of Wikipedias will get "Add a link" (Moroccan Arabic Wikipedia, Danish Wikipedia, Dinka Wikipedia, Lower Sorbian Wikipedia, Ewe Wikipedia, Greek Wikipedia, Emiliano-Romagnolo Wikipedia, Esperanto Wikipedia, Estonian Wikipedia, Basque Wikipedia, Extremaduran Wikipedia, Tumbuka Wikipedia, Fulah Wikipedia, Finnish Wikipedia, Võro Wikipedia, Fijian Wikipedia, Faroese Wikipedia, Arpitan Wikipedia, Northern Frisian Wikipedia, Friulian Wikipedia, Irish Wikipedia, Guianan Creole Wikipedia, Scottish Gaelic Wikipedia, Galician Wikipedia, Gilaki Wikipedia, Guarani Wikipedia, Goan Konkani Wikipedia, Gothic Wikipedia, Gujarati Wikipedia, Manx Wikipedia). This is part of the progressive deployment of this tool to more Wikipedias. The communities can configure how this feature works locally. [4][5]
Hello. We both have just placed notices at User talk:Mudassarinternationevenblooing for the same reason. While I was typing a level 3 warning, you blocked said user for the same problem. In light of this, I was wondering how appropriate my warning is, or if our sections should merge and our templates swap sequence (noting the timestamps). Thoughts? — CJDOS, Sheridan, OR (talk) 04:38, 15 April 2023 (UTC)
Any solution you like is fine. In these sorts of cases when I am the "second" editor, I either post a followup to myself like "oops, didn't notice an admin already blocked you for this", or simply remove it altoether with a similar edit-summary. Given they are solely here to spam their own blog (notice the URL vs their username) and history on that talkpage, they are irredeemable anyway. DMacks (talk) 12:51, 15 April 2023 (UTC)
Tech News: 2023-16
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
You can now see nearby articles on a Kartographer map with the button for the new feature "Show nearby articles". Six wikis have been testing this feature since October. [6][7]
At Wikimedia Commons, some thumbnails have not been getting replaced correctly after a new version of the image is uploaded. This should be fixed later this week. [9][10]
For the last few weeks, some external tools had inconsistent problems with logging-in with OAuth. This has now been fixed. [11]
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 18 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 19 April. It will be on all wikis from 20 April (calendar).
Sorry, but I was also attracted to the same section for my quick edits. Ullmann has an overview of methods. One thing that I have noticed is that Industry does not like to use chloro-precursors in Friedel-Crafts whereas students and OChem teachers do like that approach. I think that disposal of HCl is a pain for industry, at least in places where it is regulated. --Smokefoot (talk) 17:55, 15 April 2023 (UTC)
No worries about that article. We gave them plenty of time and space to improve. They made some improvement and a lot of other messes:(
Interesting observation about that industrial preference! I agree that halogenated or halide-containing waste-streams can be problematic. And also the manufacture of halogenated precursors would have the same concern. And alkenes, alcohols, and especially carboxylic acid/anhydride can give easier purification of the eventual product. At least from my experience, albeit on only on "bench scale", the usual Friedel–Crafts catalysts (AlX3 and FeX3) are substantially harder to handle and get to work reliably than modern industrial ones (zeolites, ionic resins, metal-oxides). DMacks (talk) 14:36, 16 April 2023 (UTC)
@Smokefoot: You added "An alternative route is zeolite-catalyzed isomerization of phenylpropylene oxide." Is that an industrial method? I don't have Ullmann available. Do you know which constitutional isomer of that reactant is of special interest here? All three--the epoxides of allylbenzene, isopropenylbenzene, 1-propenylbenzene--are known to isomerize under various conditions, some obviously easier than others. DMacks (talk) 15:52, 20 April 2023 (UTC)
I wish that I knew which isomer of the epoxide. Here is a quote from Ullmann's chapter on Ketones under phenylaceton: "It may also be produced by the rearrangement of phenylpropylene oxide on zeolites [111] or oxidation of 2-phenylpropanol." I tried looking up the 1984 BASF patent but failed. So I punted, hoping someone would fill it in.--Smokefoot (talk) 16:44, 20 April 2023 (UTC)
Embryology
The Article of the embryology page was contribute by a self published anonymous user in that most of the article don't have reliable references on those statements.one of them is
The Indian medical tradition in the Ayurveda also has conceptions of embryology from antiquity. Then Dalhana, a medieval commentator on the Sushruta Samhita, also describes embryological development. Dalhana claims that in the first month, the fetus has a jelly-like form, whereas cold and heat cause a change to hardness during the second month. Limb differentiation occurs in the third to four months and intelligence even later.
Unfortunately, embryology is not a field I know much about. Looking at the article and its history of that specific statement, I think your concern is with the "History" section, which was added in a series of edits 142.127.171.177 in May 2021 [12]? Anyone is welcome to edit wikipedia—"self published anonymous user" is an irrelevant detail. But if they do not cite sources, or cite poor sources, or sources that do not support the content, that is a problem. Is it totally bad enough to be fully removed? Maybe ask WT:MED for their expertise on this topic? DMacks (talk) 08:38, 24 April 2023 (UTC)
Tech News: 2023-17
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Due to security issues with the Graph extension, graphs have been disabled in all Wikimedia projects. Wikimedia Foundation teams are working to respond to these vulnerabilities. [14]
For a few days, it was not possible to save some kinds of edits on the mobile version of a wiki. This has been fixed. [15][16][17]
Changes later this week
All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on April 26. This is planned for 14:00 UTC. [18]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 25 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 26 April. It will be on all wikis from 27 April (calendar).
You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{proposed deletion/dated files}} notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the file's 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.
The Video2commons tool has been updated. This fixed several bugs related to YouTube uploads. [22]
The Special:Preferences page has been redesigned on mobile web. The new design makes it easier to browse the different categories and settings at low screen widths. You can also now access the page via a link in the Settings menu in the mobile web sidebar. [23]
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 2 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 3 May. It will be on all wikis from 4 May (calendar).
A request for comment about removing administrative privileges in specified situations is open for feedback.
Technical news
Progress has started on the Page Triage improvement project. This is to address the concerns raised by the community in their 2022 WMF letter that requested improvements be made to the tool.
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
Last week, Community Tech released the first update for providing better diffs, the #1 request in the 2022 Community Wishlist Survey. This update adds legends and tooltips to inline diffs so that users unfamiliar with the blue and yellow highlights can better understand the type of edits made.
When you close an image that is displayed via MediaViewer, it will now return to the wiki page instead of going back in your browser history. This feature request was voted #65 in the 2023 Community Wishlist Survey. [24]
The SyntaxHighlight extension now supports wikitext as a selected language. Old alternatives that were used to highlight wikitext, such as html5, moin, and html+handlebars, can now be replaced. [25]
Graph Extension update: Foundation developers have completed upgrading the visualization software to Vega5. Existing community graphs based on Vega2 are no longer compatible. Communities need to update local graphs and templates, and shared lua modules like de:Modul:Graph. The Vega Porting guide provides the most comprehensive detail on migration from Vega2 and here is an example migration. Vega5 has currently just been enabled on mediawiki.org to provide a test environment for communities. [27]
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 9 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 10 May. It will be on all wikis from 11 May (calendar).
Until now, all new OAuth apps went through manual review. Starting this week, apps using identification-only or basic authorizations will not require review. [28]
There will be an A/B test on 10 Wikipedias where the Vector 2022 skin is the default skin. Half of logged-in desktop users will see an interface where the different parts of the page are more clearly separated. You can read more. [30][31]
jquery.tipsy will be removed from the MediaWiki core. This will affect some user scripts. Many lines with .tipsy( can be commented out. OO.ui.PopupWidget can be used to keep things working like they are now. You can read more and read about how to find broken scripts. [32]
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
Citations that are automatically generated based on ISBN are currently broken. This affects citations made with the VisualEditor Automatic tab, and the use of the citoid API in gadgets and user scripts. Work is ongoing to restore this feature. [33]
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 16 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 17 May. It will be on all wikis from 18 May (calendar).
Starting on Wednesday, a new set of Wikipedias will get "Add a link" (Gorontalo Wikipedia, Hausa Wikipedia, Hakka Chinese Wikipedia, Hawaiian Wikipedia, Fiji Hindi Wikipedia, Croatian Wikipedia, Upper Sorbian Wikipedia, Haitian Creole Wikipedia, Interlingua Wikipedia, Interlingue Wikipedia, Igbo Wikipedia, Iloko Wikipedia, Ingush Wikipedia, Ido Wikipedia, Icelandic Wikipedia, Inuktitut Wikipedia, Jamaican Patois Wikipedia, Javanese Wikipedia). This is part of the progressive deployment of this tool to more Wikipedias. The communities can configure how this feature works locally. [34]
Gadget and userscript developers should replace jquery.cookie with mediawiki.cookie. The jquery.cookie library will be removed in ~1 month, and staff developers will run a script to replace any remaining uses at that time. [35]
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
An improved impact module will be available at Wikipedias. The impact module is a feature available to newcomers at their personal homepage. It will show their number of edits, how many readers their edited pages have, how many thanks they have received and similar things. It is also accessible by accessing Special:Impact. [37]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 23 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 24 May. It will be on all wikis from 25 May (calendar).
You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{proposed deletion/dated}} notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the article's talk page.
The article will be discussed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Diana Barrett until a consensus is reached, and anyone, including you, is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.
Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion notice from the top of the article until the discussion has finished.
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
Citations can once again be added automatically from ISBNs, thanks to Zotero's ISBN searches. The current data sources are the Library of Congress (United States), the Bibliothèque nationale de France (French National Library), and K10plus ISBN (German repository). Additional data source searches can be proposed to Zotero. The ISBN labels in the VisualEditor Automatic tab will reappear later this week. [38]
For a few days earlier this month, the "Add interlanguage link" item in the Tools menu did not work properly. This has now been fixed. [40]
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 30 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 31 May. It will be on all wikis from 1 June (calendar).
VisualEditor will be switched to a new backend on small and medium wikis this week. Large wikis will follow in the coming weeks. This is part of the effort to move Parsoid into MediaWiki core. The change should have no noticeable effect on users, but if you experience any slow loading or other strangeness when using VisualEditor, please report it on the phabricator ticket linked here. [41]
Thanks for the feedback. I thought that dois should possibly get different treatment to typical URLs. It was probably for the best that BMK took me to ANI and I reverted the whole lot, since now I can go back, and either convert them to {{doi}} or bare them completely, then follow up with ReFill or Citation Bot (depending on circumstances). Mako001 (C) (T) 🇺🇦 23:03, 31 May 2023 (UTC)
You're welcome! I did not look for a wider pattern of your edits and I do not read ANI religiously, so I only focused on this one specific instance that landed on my watchlist. But by general consensus, DOIs generally get annotated as "doi" and the doi string is made explicitly visible. So the nice templates help with that. DMacks (talk) 05:43, 1 June 2023 (UTC)
vibration
I put a link to a FREE 400+ page engineering pdf book on mechanical vibration to the vibration page and the you delete it as spam? Did you even look at the pdf? Arikui999 (talk) 02:18, 2 June 2023 (UTC)
A new user adding lots of links to the same content on an anonymous filesharing website is a little suspicious. But I did look at the reference, and it seems like valid content, asserted to be uploaded by the actual book's author. But but, Wikipedia needs actual content, cited to sources, not just an unexplained collection of links to external content. I did not see this source as being substantially novel, or a reference that supports the existing article content. DMacks (talk) 13:35, 3 June 2023 (UTC)
Hi! I saw that you thanked me for this edit at Zara Hatke Zara Bachke. Just fyi, I have since self-reverted that edit because of a 3RR concern. That article is a mess right now. Still, I appreciate the... appreciation? Actualcpscm (talk) 13:54, 3 June 2023 (UTC)
I see that you just gave the article pending changes protection; again just for your information, I already opened a request (although for more extensive protection) at WP:RPP. Thanks for your work! Actualcpscm (talk) 15:58, 3 June 2023 (UTC)
And thank you for your work on that article. It will be an annoying mess for a few weeks, as typical for Bollywood films. DMacks (talk) 21:39, 3 June 2023 (UTC)
Following an RfC, editors indefinitely site-banned by community consensus will now have all rights, including sysop, removed.
As a part of the Wikimedia Foundation's IP Masking project, a new policy has been created that governs the access to temporary account IP addresses. An associated FAQ has been created and individual communities can increase the requirements to view temporary account IP addresses.
Technical news
Bot operators and tool maintainers should schedule time in the coming months to test and update their tools for the effects of IP masking. IP masking will not be deployed to any content wiki until at least October 2023 and is unlikely to be deployed to the English Wikipedia until some time in 2024.
Arbitration
The arbitration case World War II and the history of Jews in Poland has been closed. The topic area of Polish history during World War II (1933-1945) and the history of Jews in Poland is subject to a "reliable source consensus-required" contentious topic restriction.
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 RealMe extension allows you to mark URLs on your user page as verified for Mastodon and similar software.
Previously, clicking on someone else's link to Recent Changes with filters applied within the URL could unintentionally change your preference for "Group results by page". This has now been fixed. [43]
Problems
For a few days last week, some tools and bots returned outdated information due to database replication problems, and may have been down entirely while it was being fixed. These issues have now been fixed. [44]
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 6 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 7 June. It will be on all wikis from 8 June (calendar).
Bots will no longer be prevented from making edits because of URLs that match the spam blacklist. [45]
Hi, my apologies for not understanding the tone and style of Wikipedia, I understand that my contributions were not line with the standard and I have now read and understood the appropriate formatting and style for editing Wikipedia. However, I do have a few questions since the source that I was referencing is a literature review, which would make it a secondary source and according to this page, it would qualify as a sufficient reference. I further checked the other sources present on the Wikipedia page detailing Tetrahydrocannabinol (one of the pages that I edited), and I found a couple of citations (specifically citation 25 and 27) that are of similar quality to the paper that I am referencing. I understand that I got off on the wrong foot and the contributions I added made it seem like I am advertising, but I am only just trying to raise awareness on a contentious subject. My apologies for the inconvenience caused and thank you for your time. Jj too small (talk) 04:25, 6 June 2023 (UTC)
Tech News: 2023-24
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 Search Preview panel has been deployed on four Wikipedias (Catalan, Dutch, Hungarian and Norwegian). The panel will show an image related to the article (if existing), the top sections of the article, related images (coming from MediaSearch on Commons), and eventually the sister projects associated with the article. [47]
The RealMe extension now allows administrators to verify URLs for any page, for Mastodon and similar software. [48]
The default project license has been officially upgraded to CC BY-SA 4.0. The software interface messages have been updated. Communities should feel free to start updating any mentions of the old CC BY-SA 3.0 licensing within policies and related documentation pages. [49]
Problems
For three days last month, some Wikipedia pages edited with VisualEditor or DiscussionTools had an unintended __TOC__ (or its localized form) added during an edit. There is a listing of affected pages sorted by wiki, that may still need to be fixed. [50]
Currently, the "Sort this page by default as" feature in VisualEditor is broken. Existing {{DEFAULTSORT:...}} keywords incorrectly appear as missing templates in VisualEditor. Developers are exploring how to fix this. In the meantime, those wishing to edit the default sortkey of a page are advised to switch to source editing. [51]
Last week, an update to the delete form may have broken some gadgets or user scripts. If you need to manipulate (empty) the reason field, replace #wpReason with #wpReason > input. See an example fix. [52]
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 13 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 14 June. It will be on all wikis from 15 June (calendar).
VisualEditor will be switched to a new backend on English Wikipedia on Monday, and all other large wikis on Thursday. The change should have no noticeable effect on users, but if you experience any slow loading or other strangeness when using VisualEditor, please report it on the phabricator ticket linked here. [53]
Future changes
From 5 June to 17 July, the Foundation's Security team is holding a consultation with contributors regarding a draft policy to govern the use of third-party resources in volunteer-developed gadgets and scripts. Feedback and suggestions are warmly welcome at Third-party resources policy on meta-wiki.
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
Flame graphs are now available in WikimediaDebug. [54][55]
Changes later this week
There is no new MediaWiki version this week.
There is now a toolbar search popup in the visual editor. You can trigger it by typing \ or pressing ctrl + shift + p. It can help you quickly access most tools in the editor. [56][57]
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 Action API modules and Special:LinkSearch will now add a trailing / to all prop=extlinks responses for bare domains. This is part of the work to remove duplication in the externallinks database table. [58]
Problems
Last week, search was broken on Commons and Wikidata for 23 hours. [59][60]
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 27 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 28 June. It will be on all wikis from 29 June (calendar).
The Minerva skin now applies more predefined styles to the .mbox-text CSS class. This enables support for mbox templates that use divs instead of tables. Please make sure that the new styles won't affect other templates in your wiki. [61][62]
Gadgets will now load on both desktop and mobile by default. Previously, gadgets loaded only on desktop by default. Changing this default using the |targets= parameter is also deprecated and should not be used. You should make gadgets work on mobile or disable them based on the skin (with the |skins= parameter in MediaWiki:Gadgets-definition) rather than whether the user uses the mobile or the desktop website. Popular gadgets that create errors on mobile will be disabled by developers on the Minerva skin as a temporary solution. [63]
All namespace tabs now have the same browser access key by default. Previously, custom and extension-defined namespaces would have to have their access keys set manually on-wiki, but that is no longer necessary. [64]
Hi DMacks, this is to inform you that you had infinitely blocked my account on Wiki Commons back in August 2021 on the grounds of consistent uploading of non-free images. Since 2021, I've been a member of Wiki Project Saudi Arabia and have been continuously enriching content pertaining to Riyadh. I was given access to Wikipedia Library but was unable to access it, thanks to the block. I have a collection of several old pictures of Riyadh that are of high historical importance and are in public domain but I have been unable to upload it. I agree 2 years ago I wasn't aware of Wikimedia's image policies, but now I've come to know a lot in this journey of 100 weeks. I urge you to reverse my block and I assure you that such mistakes won't be repeated. Regards. Derivator2017 (talk) 16:23, 28 June 2023 (UTC)
Everyone deserves second chances and to grow and move beyond a rough start. I unblocked you. Wikipedia Library is a great resource and I know our Mideast articles can benefit from reliable sources. Welcome! DMacks (talk) 00:08, 30 June 2023 (UTC)
That was an odd one. I wasn't looking out for that particular situation (so didn't notice that it had broken), not something I had seen before or had ever expected to see! Well, time to make some additions to my negative lookbehinds and lookaheads to prevent that from happening again. Either option is good, but I prefer to err on the side of caution when changing ref styles, and not change them from the current style, as I gather from what I've read on the matter that the safest option is to leave the existing format intact. Mako001 (C) (T) 🇺🇦 05:24, 2 July 2023 (UTC)
Tech News: 2023-27
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
From this week all gadgets automatically load on mobile and desktop sites. If you see any problems with gadgets on your wikis, please adjust the gadget options in your gadget definitions file. [68]
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 4 July. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 5 July. It will be on all wikis from 6 July (calendar).
![[56]](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Visual_editor_toolbar_search_feature.png){kind=link}