User talk:Philosopher/Archive 9

Three years ago ...
reason together
	... you were recipient; no. 600 of Precious,; a prize of QAI!

This is an archive of past discussions with User:Philosopher. 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.

Archive 5

←

→

RfA

Can you transclude my RfA onto the main RfA page? It's semi protected... FredSmit (talk) 16:30, 13 April 2009 (UTC)

Done, but I'd like to warn you that passage is virtually impossible w/o some demonstration of your previous activity on Wikipedia. --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 16:36, 13 April 2009 (UTC)

Deletion

Can I request that we review why my Central Florida Law Journal page was deleted? The magazine which I publish each month is of importance to the 500 or so attorneys and law professionals who receive it. It covers stories and trends in the legal professions that are of interest to those in law in Florida. I would love to have a listing in Wikipedia and have been a journalist for more than 30 years. I have started this publication so that people in my state can have a way to keep in touch with each other and keep in touch with the issues in the field. Thanks -- Donna Balancia —Preceding unsigned comment added by Donnabalancia (talk • contribs) 14:57, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

I deleted it because it didn't make any assertion of importance. Interestingly enough, your comment here contains an assertion of importance (500 or so who receive it). I'll restore it for now, but warn you that it may be taken to Articles for deletion in the future. --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 14:38, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

Please be sure to put that assertion (sourced if possible) in the article. --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 14:42, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

Thank you so much, Philosopher, I will follow that instruction, much appreciated. I can document no. of pieces sent through the United States Postal Service at next mailing, do you think that will suffice as proof of circulation? Thanks, Donna —Preceding unsigned comment added by Donnabalancia (talk • contribs) 08:40, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

If you are discussing how to verify, make sure you cite the figures to a published source. Unfortunately, original (unpublished) research is not allowed b/c there is no way for other Wikipedians to verify such information. --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 13:36, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

Notable Iowans

Can you look at my second post here and tell me what you think of including just those notable Iowans, and shortening the list on the Iowa page. Please post on that page too. CTJF83Talk 06:41, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

LOL

I find it very funny how you are proud of all your wikipedia edits and even list your notable eits, and edit number. I don't mean to be offensive, but it appears that you have no-life. And by the way do you get paid from being an admin for wikipedia? --Manning38 (talk) 20:34, 25 April 2009 (UTC)

Thanks

...for the assist on my semi on Arlen Specter. That tag is important, sorry I forgot to include it!! -Pete (talk) 17:59, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

No problem! --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 23:19, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

Re: Sen-mccoy-2007.jpg

Added a link to the page I got the picture from; WHOIS ties the website to the State of Iowa Legislative Branch, so I'm assuming it's legit.

Thanks for your comment. - YB (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 15:01, 4 May 2009 (UTC).

Thank You

Thanks for un-protecting my talkpage. --→ Ãlways Ãhëad (talk) 02:15, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

No problem. --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 03:50, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

AIV report

I'm curious... what was this about? The IP didn't edit since 2005. -- Menti fisto 04:31, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

I meant to post it over at the Simple English Wikipedia's simple:WP:AIV. Then when I went back to fix my mistake the bot had beaten me to it. --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 04:38, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

Ah, I see. That explains why you had to report in the first place, as well. -- Menti fisto 04:42, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

1$ 1337 5p33|< ph1|\|3 \/\/17h j00?

411 1'/\/\ a$|<ing R, "1$ 17?" Written by T3h 1337 b0y (talk) 10:06, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

No, sorry. This is the English Wikipedia, not the 1337 encyclopedia. --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 11:22, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

Template:MP for Hexham

This template was put up for deletion, and your decision was delete. I am not going to dispute that. Would it be possible for someone who knows how to use a bot to change all the articles from {{MP for Hexham to {{subst:MP for Hexham That will leave all the articles with a valid statement. Also applies to Template:MP for Berwick, about 150 articles in all. I will then tidy up any loose ends. Please reply here - I have put a watch on. Twiceuponatime (talk) 12:39, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

Okay, I have requested that {{MP for Hexham}} be subst'ed. Assuming a bot doesn't do it sooner, I'll go through with AWB later and do it myself. I'll make the same request for Berwick (assuming it is also closed as delete). --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 13:15, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

Signature

Unfortunately I have been changing my signature font attributes the hard way, by going back in. The only automatic random colour selector I have been using is my brain, and if I can do it anybody can! ;-)
I go back in and copy over "B. Fairbairn" with " B. Fairbairn", and change the font/colour/size to whatever I want. Normally the colour is one of these:
Violet Fuchsia Red Crimson Maroon Purple Blue Navy Lime Green Teal Olive Gold Orange Chocolate Brown
B. Fairbairn (talk) 03:51, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 05:03, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

Could you please explain further...

Could you please explain your deletion of Ibrahim Mohammed Khalil? The record shows this was the conclusion of a {{prod}}. When concluding a {{prod}} is confirming that the nominator informed the person who started the article one of the administrator's responsibilities? Geo Swan (talk) 03:00, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

This was deleted over half a year ago - I suggest that in the future you watch the page - that way you will be able to see changes to the article and a notice will appear in your watchlist if the article is deleted.

If you would like the article restored, however, I would be glad to do that - articles deleted via prod are eligible for restoration on request. Note that the article may still be nominated for an WP:AfD. --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 03:18, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

I am prolific. I have edited over ten thousand articles. The watchlist system is not sufficient for warning prolific people of when their articles have been deleted -- particularly if someone else makes a minor edit to the article, after the tagging -- because then the watchlist shows their edit summary, and not that of the tagger.

Please userify the article, its revision history, and talk page, to User:Geo Swan/review/Ibrahim Mohammed Khalil. Geo Swan (talk) 03:42, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

Done --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 16:15, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

Canopy Group (disambiguation)

Hi, I'm also an admin and was clearing out the Candidate for Speedy Deletion backlog, when you deleted the article. I don't disagree with your deletion, however I was on the fence about it myself. I think that it may be that this group could rise to a level of significance, even if the article doesn't indicate it well. To this end I have userfied the text at the author's user page, and left a message on his talk page explaining how I think the article might be improved. I also explained how disambig pages are suppose to work, since he didn't seem to understand that. I thought you might like to know what I've done. Dsmdgold (talk) 23:27, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for letting me know! --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 23:29, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

My rollback

Could you please revoke my rollback privileges? Thanks. —Mythdon t/c 02:47, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

Done. --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 03:12, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

Thank you. If I were to request return of the feature, should I just ask you to return it, or should I go to Wikipedia:Requests for permissions for request of its return?. —Mythdon t/c 03:17, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

Feel free to come back to me - though if you prefer going to RfR you could do that, it's up to you. --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 03:22, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. —Mythdon t/c 03:25, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

Sig colors

Thanks Philosopher, I will take a look at User:Chenzw/Sig. B. Fairbairn Talk 10:23, 16 May 2009 (UTC)

Iowa

Phil- Could you please put a temp lock on Iowa? Lots of vandalism lately. Thanks, Bill Whittaker (talk) 12:56, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

Looks like someone beat me to it. --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 21:33, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

Poncho Taco

The most likely speedy deletion criterion for this lil' gem was WP:CSD#A1. See the search I used in the comments via the deletion log. Cheers! - CobaltBlueTony™ _talk 17:45, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

Patrick Henry College

"I undid an edit you made to Patrick Henry College's English motto - it is supposed to read "For Christ and for Liberty", as evidenced here and here." Your edit should stand as per the web page you have referenced. The college has translated the Latin wrong, but that is their business. Best wishes. Bigturtle (talk) 13:54, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

Wikitravel Iowa regions

Hello! I'm working on Wikitravel, and hoping to come up with well-defined travel regions for Iowa [1]. Unfortunately I haven't been able to find anyone with expertise to lend on Wikitravel itself, so I've wandered over here. I see you are active here on WikiProject Iowa, and wondered if you might be interested in contributing to the discussion. If not, feel free to pass on the idea to someone else who might be interested, or just ignore! Thanks, --Peter ^Talk 04:53, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

Regional vocabularies of American English

As you probably know, following AfD discussion the consensus was to keep and clean up Regional vocabularies of American English. This will require adding references where possible, and removing large amounts of unreferenced material. I have begun this process; your help would be greatly appreciated. Cnilep (talk) 15:03, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-34

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Tech News

There will be no Tech News issue next week. The next issue of Tech News will be sent out on 2 September 2019.

Problems

Some abuse filters stopped working because of a code change. Only variables for the current action will work. Variables defined inside a branch may not work outside of that branch. You can read more to see how to fix the filters.
Only six accounts can be created from one IP address per day. Between 12 August and August 15 this was two accounts per day. This was because of a security issue. It is now six accounts per day again. [2]

Changes later this week

Only a limited number of accounts can be created from one IP address. An IP address can be whitelisted so that it can create as many accounts as needed. This is useful at events where many new persons learn to edit. IP addresses that are whitelisted for this reason will also not show CAPTCHAs when you create accounts. This will happen on Wednesday. [3]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 20 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 21 August. It will be on all wikis from 22 August (calendar).

Meetings

You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 21 August at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

There is an RFC about creating a new global user group with the right to edit abuse filters. This will be used to fix broken filters and make sure all filters will still work when software changes happen. You can read more and comment.
Special:Contributions/newbies will no longer be working. This is because of performance reasons. It showed edits by new accounts. You can see this in the recent changes feed instead. [4]

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

15:21, 19 August 2019 (UTC)

The Signpost: 30 August 2019

News and notes: Documenting Wikimania and our beginnings

The oldest surviving Wikipedia edit restored to article history, Wikimania, and the mystery of a disappearing Funds Dissemination Committee.

In focus: Ryan Merkley joins WMF as Chief of Staff

Working with leadership and the community, taking on both operational and strategic responsibilities

In the media: Many layers of fake news: Fake fiction and fake news vandalism

And the media report it all

Discussion report: Meta proposals on partial bans and IP users

Can we survive without IP addresses?

Traffic report: Once upon a time in Greenland with Boris and cornflakes

And some summer flicks with the usual heroes and villains

Op-Ed: We couldn't have told you this, but Wikipedia was censored

Should we break the law or publish the truth?

Opinion: The Curious Case of Croatian Wikipedia

Or how to make a concentration camp disappear?

Community view: Chinese Wikipedia and the battle against extradition from Hong Kong

From streets to Wikipedia - What are editors from Hong Kong facing?

News from the WMF: Meet Emna Mizouni, the newly minted 2019 Wikimedian of the Year

Emna Mizouni was named the 2019 Wikimedian of the Year.

Recent research: Special issue on gender gap and gender bias research

A roundup of many recent publications examining Wikpedia's gender gaps in participation and content, and their possible reasons

On the bright side: What's making you happy this month?

A selection of good news and encouraging stories that are from the Wikiverse

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 23:42, 30 August 2019 (UTC)

WikiCup 2019 September newsletter

The fourth round of the competition has finished in a flurry of last minute activity, with 454 points being required to qualify for the final round. It was a hotly competitive round with two contestants with over 400 points being eliminated, and all but two of the finalists having achieved an FA during the round. Casliber, our 2016 winner, was the highest point-scorer, followed by Enwebb and Lee Vilenski, who are both new to the competition. In fourth place was SounderBruce, a finalist last year. But all those points are swept away as we start afresh for the final round.

Round 4 saw the achievement of 11 featured articles. In addition, Adam Cuerden scored with 18 FPs, Lee Vilenski led the GA score with 8 GAs while Kosack performed 15 GA reviews. There were around 40 DYKs, 40 GARs and 31 GAs overall during round 4. Even though contestants performed more GARs than they achieved GAs, there was still some frustration at the length of time taken to get articles reviewed.

As we start round 5, we say goodbye to the eight competitors who didn't quite make it; thank you for the useful contributions you have made to the Cup and Wikipedia, and we hope you will join us again next year. Remember that any content promoted after the end of round 4 but before the start of round 5 can be claimed in round 5. Remember too that you must claim your points within 14 days of "earning" them (some people have fallen foul of this rule and the points have been removed).

If you are concerned that your nomination, whether it be for a good article, a featured process, or anything else, will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews Needed (remember to remove your listing when no longer required). If you want to help out with the WikiCup, please do your bit to help keep down the review backlogs! Questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup, and the judges are reachable on their talk pages or by email. If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove yourself from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. Godot13, Sturmvogel 66, Vanamonde and Cwmhiraeth MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:44, 1 September 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-36

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes

You can use the new termbox interface if you edit Wikidata on a mobile device. This is to edit labels, descriptions and aliases easier on the mobile pages. [5]
The new version of MediaWiki has been deployed during the last week.
The previously announced change of positions of the "Wikidata item" link on all wikis has been rollbacked due to unexpected cache issues. [6]
The limit for rollbacks has been increased from 10 to 100 rollbacks per minute. [7]
The advanced version of the edit review pages (Recent Changes, Watchlist, and Related Changes) now include two new filters. These filters are for "All contents" and "All discussions". They will filter the view to just those namespaces. However the "All discussions" filter does not include pseudo talk pages, like discussions that are in the Project: or Wikipedia: namespaces. But it will include changes happening on Project talk: or the Wikipedia talk:. [8]

Changes later this week

The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 3 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 4 September. It will be on all wikis from 5 September (calendar).
When you log in, the software checks your password to see if it follows the Password policy. From this week, it will also complain if your password is one of the most common passwords in the world. If your password is not strong enough, please consider to change your password for a stronger password. [9]

Meetings

You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 4 September at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

You will be able to read but not to edit Wikidata for up to 30 minutes on September 10 at 05:00 (UTC). [10]
You will be able to read but not to edit some mid-sized wikis for up to 30 minutes September 17 at 05:00 (UTC). You can see which wikis. [11]
You will be able to read but not to edit some mid-sized wikis for up to 30 minutes September 24 at 05:00 (UTC). You can see which wikis. [12]
You will be able to read but not to edit Wikimedia Commons for up to 30 minutes on September 26 at 05:00 (UTC). [13]

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

09:07, 4 September 2019 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – September 2019

News and updates for administrators from the past month (August 2019).

Administrator changes

Bradv • Chetsford • Izno

Floquenbeam • Lectonar

DESiegel • Jake Wartenberg • Rjanag • Topbanana

CheckUser changes

Callanecc • LFaraone • There'sNoTime

Oversight changes

Callanecc • Fox • HJ Mitchell • LFaraone • There'sNoTime

Technical news

Editors using the mobile website on Wikipedia can opt-in to new advanced features via your settings page. This will give access to more interface links, special pages, and tools.
The advanced version of the edit review pages (recent changes, watchlist, and related changes) now includes two new filters. These filters are for "All contents" and "All discussions". They will filter the view to just those namespaces.

Arbitration

A request for comment is open to provide an opportunity to amend the structure, rules, and procedures of the 2019 English Wikipedia Arbitration Committee election and to resolve any issues not covered by existing rules.

Miscellaneous

A global request for comment is in progress regarding whether a user group should be created that could modify edit filters across all public Wikimedia wikis.

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:37, 7 September 2019 (UTC)

Precious anniversary

--Gerda Arendt (talk) 15:03, 10 September 2017 (UTC)

... and six! --Gerda Arendt (talk) 06:25, 10 September 2019 (UTC)

Precious anniversary

--Gerda Arendt (talk) 18:26, 11 September 2016 (UTC)

... and six! --Gerda Arendt (talk) 06:27, 10 September 2019 (UTC)

WikiProject X Newsletter • Issue 15

Newsletter • September 2019

A final update, for now:

The third grant-funded round of WikiProject X has been completed. Unfortunately, while this round has not resulted in a deployed product, I am not planning to resume working on the project for the foreseeable future. Please see the final report for more information.

Regards,

-— Isarra ༆ 19:24, 29 September 2019 (UTC)

The Signpost: 30 September 2019

From the editors: Where do we go from here?

Our constitutional crisis may continue

Special report: Post-Framgate wrapup

Summary of actions around a formerly banned former administrator: Arbitration Committee action and withdrawn request for adminship

In the media: A net loss: Wikipedia attacked, closing off Russia? welcoming back Turkey?

The internet may not be as stable as it seems

Traffic report: Varied and intriguing entries, less Luck, and some retreads

Luck, Serena, Bianca, 9/11, bad films, mass murderers and other good stuff

News from the WMF: How the Wikimedia Foundation is making efforts to go green

Wikipedia's footprint is equivalent to 251 average US homes’ energy use. Yes we can go green.

Recent research: Wikipedia's role in assessing credibility of news sources; using wikis against procrastination; OpenSym 2019 report

And other recent research publications

Gallery: Finding freely licensed photo collections

Wikimedia Commons is not the only place to find freely licensed photos

On the bright side: What's making you happy this month?

A selection of good news and encouraging stories that are from the Wikiverse

In focus: Wikidata & Wikibase for national libraries: the inaugural meeting

National libraries are planning to leverage Wikidata to interoperate and to bring information to the public

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 11:07, 30 September 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-40

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

Last week's Tech News had delivery problems. Some did not get the newsletter. Some got it more than one time. The problem where some pages got it three times should now be fixed. [14]

Changes later this week

The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 1 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 2 October. It will be on all wikis from 3 October (calendar).

Meetings

You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 2 October at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

The Wikimedia Foundation Community Tech team is working on a watchlist expiry feature. This means you can put things on your watchlist for a period of time instead of forever. They are looking for feedback on the questions they have.
Special:Contributions will get the standard OOUI look. This makes it easier to use on mobile and makes it look like other Special: pages. There is a script you can use to make the form smaller if you want to. [15]

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

16:50, 30 September 2019 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – October 2019

News and updates for administrators from the past month (September 2019).

Administrator changes

Barkeep49

Beetstra • KillerChihuahua • Kusma

Arcadian • Extraordinary Machine • Xeno

JamesBWatson → JBW

Interface administrator changes

Evad37

CheckUser changes

Courcelles • SilkTork • Timotheus Canens

Oversight changes

Courcelles • SilkTork • Timotheus Canens

Guideline and policy news

Following a discussion, a new criterion for speedy category renaming was added: C2F: One eponymous article, which applies if the category contains only an eponymous article or media file, provided that the category has not otherwise been emptied shortly before the nomination. The default outcome is an upmerge to the parent categories.

Technical news

As previously noted, tighter password requirements for Administrators were put in place last year. Wikipedia should now alert you if your password is less than 10 characters long and thus too short.

Arbitration

The 2019 CheckUser and Oversight appointment process has begun. The community consultation period will take place October 4th to 10th.
The arbitration case regarding Fram was closed. While there will be a local RfC focus[ing] on how harassment and private complaints should be handled in the future, there is currently a global community consultation on partial and temporary office actions in response to the incident. It will be open until October 30th.

Miscellaneous

The Community Tech team has been working on a system for temporarily watching pages, and welcomes feedback.

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 11:55, 2 October 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-41

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 abuse filter function now has a faster parser. This is to shorten the waiting time when you save an edit. [16]

Problems

There is a problem in the visual editor when you copy or delete text with footnotes. It will be fixed soon. [17]

Changes later this week

The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 8 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 9 October. It will be on all wikis from 10 October (calendar).

Meetings

You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 9 October at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

The Community Wishlist Survey has a new format. It will focus on wikis that typically get less support. It will probably go back to the normal format next year. It is not decided exactly how it will work this year. You can leave feedback.
The URL of the Wikimedia wiki main pages could be changed. This is because the current URLs cause several problems. For example https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:Main_Page would be https://www.wikidata.org/ instead. You can tell the developers if this would cause problems for your wiki.
There is a new technical community newsletter. You can read more about the work of Wikimedia's technical community. Subscribe to get the information in the future.
Outreachy is an internship program for groups who are underrepresented in free and open-source software. There are seven Wikimedia projects about coding, documentation and quality assurance in the next round. Persons who fit the criteria can apply. The last day to apply is 5 November.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

15:35, 7 October 2019 (UTC)

JzG (RevDel)

Hi, there's a Wikipedian (StoneRazor) who is speculating about the identity of someone from Reddit and trying to pin edits to Wikipedia to someone on Reddit. I think this goes against the privacy policies of Wikipedia. You can read his other less than civil comments on the talk page.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:JzG https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Intellectual_dark_web#UFMG_IDW_Study --Where be me spice (talk) 11:20, 11 October 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-42

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 more advanced editing tools on the mobile web. You can turn them on and off in your preferences in the mobile version. [18]

Changes later this week

The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 15 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 16 October. It will be on all wikis from 17 October (calendar).

Meetings

You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 16 October at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

Internet Explorer 6 and 7 are no longer supported. This means the browsers might start looking a bit weird. They will not get security support. You can't read Wikimedia wikis in Internet Explorer on Windows XP or Windows versions that are older than Windows XP. This is because almost no one uses the browsers anymore. Supporting them made the wikis less secure for everyone else. [19]
In the future section headings might have a share link. This is to make it easier to link to the section. You can read more and discuss.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

23:55, 14 October 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-43

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 API sandbox and help pages now show more clearly when API modules are marked as internal. API modules marked as internal were probably internal before. It was easier to miss. You should look for non-internal alternatives. [20]

Problems

There is a translation tool we use on wikis with more than one language. For a few days it did not create pages for new languages when someone translated a page. The languages did not show in the language bar. This has been fixed. [21]
The history and diffs can show wrong content. This is because of a cache problem. It will soon be fixed. [22]

Changes later this week

The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 22 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 23 October. It will be on all wikis from 24 October (calendar).
Reference Previews will be a beta feature on all Wikipedias and some Wikivoyages. It shows you a preview of the footnote when you hover over or click on the number. It has been a beta feature on German and Arabic Wikipedia since April.

Meetings

You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 23 October. See how to join.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

14:38, 21 October 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-44

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 post proposals for the Community Wishlist Survey. The survey decides what the Community Tech team will work on. You can post proposals until 11 November. You can vote on proposals from 20 November to 2 December. This year the wishlist will focus on Wikibooks, Wiktionary, Wikiquote, Wikisource, Wikiversity, Wikispecies, Wikivoyage and Wikinews. You can read more about the format for this year.
Mobile users now have a specific design for their Watchlist. [23][24]
You can share feedback and ideas on the Desktop Improvements project. The goal is to make the interface easier to use for readers and editors without removing any functionality. The Foundation's Readers Web team will work on this over the next two years.
OOUI now allows using px (pixels) instead of em (em) for some specific cases. [25][26]

Changes later this week

The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 29 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 30 October. It will be on all wikis from 31 October (calendar).

Meetings

You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 30 October at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

There will be no software changes from 19 December to 2 January. The first MediaWiki version next year will come the week of 6 January. [27]
Gadgets and user scripts can access variables about the current page in JavaScript. In 2015, this information was moved from global variables named wg* to mw.config. The old global variables will be removed later this year. You can know more about it and tell the developers if you want to try this out on your wiki first.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

16:16, 28 October 2019 (UTC)

The Signpost: 31 October 2019

In the media: How to use or abuse Wikipedia for fun or profit

Sweden, Poland, Armenia, Russia, the Vatican, and clueless English pubs.

Special report: “Catch and Kill” on Wikipedia: Paid editing and the suppression of material on alleged sexual abuse

"It's time for Wikipedia to grow up."

In focus: The BBC looks at Chinese government editing

But they aren't entirely sure they see it

Interview: Carl Miller on Wikipedia Wars

A discussion on info wars, government editing and our defences.

Community view: Observations from the mainland

A different point of view

Arbitration report: October actions

An "unblockable" is blocked; a former arb resigns.

Traffic report: Wrestling with a couple of teenagers, a Nobelist, and a lot of jokers

Plus a few celebrities.

Gallery: Wiki Loves Broadcast

The future of public broadcasting has arrived.

Recent research: Research at Wikimania 2019: More communication doesn't make editors more productive; Tor users doing good work; harmful content rare on English Wikipedia

And other new research publications

Essay: Wikipedia is in the real world

Editing can have serious consequences.

News from the WMF: Welcome to Wikipedia! Here's what we're doing to help you stick around

Twenty questions to get you started.

On the bright side: What's making you happy this month?

A selection of good news and encouraging stories from the Wikiverse.

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:12, 31 October 2019 (UTC)

WikiCup 2019 November newsletter

The WikiCup is over for another year! Our Champion this year is Adam Cuerden (submissions), who over the course of the competition has amassed 91 featured pictures, including 32 in the final round. Our finalists this year were:

Adam Cuerden (submissions) with 964 points
Lee Vilenski (submissions) with 899 points
Casliber (submissions) with 817 points
Kosack (submissions) with 691 points
SounderBruce (submissions) with 388 points
Enwebb (submissions) with 146 points
Usernameunique (submissions) with 145 points
HaEr48 (submissions) with 74 points

All those who reached the final will win awards. The following special awards will be made based on high performance in particular areas of content creation. So that the finalists do not have an undue advantage, these prizes are awarded to the competitor who scored the highest in any particular field in a single round, or in the event of a tie, to the overall leader in this field. Awards will be handed out in the coming weeks. Please be patient!

Casliber (submissions) wins the featured article prize, for a total of 7 FAs during the course of the competition.
Lee Vilenski (submissions) wins the good article prize, for 14 GAs in round 5.
Yashthepunisher (submissions) wins the featured list prize, for 4 FLs overall.
Adam Cuerden (submissions) wins the featured picture prize, for 91 FPs overall.
MPJ-DK (submissions) wins the topic prize, for 7 articles in good topics in round 2.
Lee Vilenski (submissions) wins the DYK prize, for 14 did you know articles in round 5.
Muboshgu (submissions) wins the ITN prize, for 7 in the news articles in round 1.
Ed! (submissions) wins the reviewer prize, for 56 good article reviews in round 1.

Congratulations to everyone who participated in this year's WikiCup, whether you made it to the final rounds or not, and particular congratulations to the newcomers to the WikiCup who have achieved much this year. Thanks to all who have taken part and helped out with the competition, not forgetting User:Jarry1250, who runs the scoring bot.

We have opened a scoring discussion on whether the rules and scoring need adjustment. Please have your say. Next year's competition will begin on 1 January. You are invited to sign up to participate; the WikiCup is open to all Wikipedians, both novices and experienced editors, and we hope to see you all in the 2020 competition. Until then, it only remains to once again congratulate our worthy winners, and thank all participants for their involvement! If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove yourself from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. Godot13, Sturmvogel 66, Vanamonde and Cwmhiraeth 14:18, 2 November 2019 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – November 2019

News and updates for administrators from the past month (October 2019).

Administrator changes

GermanJoe • Girth Summit • Kees08 • Nosebagbear

DESiegel • GB fan • MSGJ • Voice of Clam • WilyD

DeltaQuad • Fang Aili • Pakaran

Bureaucrat changes

DeltaQuad • Pakaran

Interface administrator changes

MSGJ

CheckUser changes

L235 • Mz7 • SQL • ST47

Ivanvector

DeltaQuad

Oversight changes

L235 • Mz7 • ST47 • Stwalkerster • The Blade of the Northern Lights • Xaosflux

DeltaQuad • DGG • Julia W

Guideline and policy news

An RfC was closed with the consensus that the resysop criteria should be made stricter.

The follow-up RfC to develop that change is now open at Wikipedia:Requests for comment/2019 Resysop Criteria (2).

A related RfC is seeking the community's sentiment for a binding desysop procedure.

Arbitration

Eligible editors may now nominate themselves as candidates for the 2019 Arbitration Committee Elections. The self-nomination period will close November 12, with voting running from November 19 through December 2.

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 21:15, 3 November 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-45

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

At Special:Contributions you could see up to 5000 edits at the same time if you edited the URL. This has been lowered to 500. This is to stop requests which break the sites. [28]

Changes later this week

MediaWiki:ipb-default-expiry can set the default length to block a user for your wiki. You will be able to use MediaWiki:ipb-default-expiry-ip to set a different default block length for IP editors. [29]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 5 November. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 6 November. It will be on all wikis from 7 November (calendar).

Meetings

You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 6 November at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

16:48, 4 November 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-46

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

MediaWiki2LaTeX can put different pages from a Wikimedia wiki into a PDF. It can now make a PDF with around 5000 pages. Previously this was 800 pages.

Changes later this week

There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

Meetings

You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 13 November at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

Wikimedia will take part in Google Code-in. This is for young students who want to help with open source software. You can read more. Experienced technical Wikimedians can mentor students.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

22:03, 11 November 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-47

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

You will be able to read but not to edit some wikis for up to 30 minutes on 26 November at 06:00 (UTC). You can see which wikis. It will probably last much shorter than 30 minutes. This will also affect the centralauth database. This could for example affect changing passwords, logging in to new wikis, changing emails or global renames. [30]

Changes later this week

You can soon vote on proposals for the Community Wishlist Survey. The survey decides what the Community Tech team will work on. You can vote on proposals from 20 November to 2 December. This year the wishlist will focus on Wikibooks, Wiktionary, Wikiquote, Wikisource, Wikiversity, Wikispecies, Wikivoyage and Wikinews. You can read more about the format for this year.
There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

Meetings

You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 20 November at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

20:17, 18 November 2019 (UTC)

ArbCom 2019 election voter message

Hello! Voting in the 2019 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23:59 on Monday, 2 December 2019. All eligible users are allowed to vote. Users with alternate accounts may only vote once.

The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail.

If you wish to participate in the 2019 election, please review the candidates and submit your choices on the voting page. If you no longer wish to receive these messages, you may add {{NoACEMM}} to your user talk page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:05, 19 November 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-48

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 later this week

The mobile beta mode will be disabled to have less maintenance. The developers will focus on the desktop improvements project. You can turn on advanced mobile contributions mode if you want to see the categories. You could also jump back to the top. This can instead be done with a gadget or user script. [31]
Parsoid is software we use for the visual editor, content translation, Flow and the Android app. This has been rewritten. It will come to the wikis gradually over the next two weeks. It has been tested, but there could be some diffs or previews that don't look right. If you see any you can report them. [32]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 26 November. It will be on the other wikis next week (calendar). This is because of holidays.

Meetings

You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 27 November at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

You will switch between the article and the talk page in a new way in the mobile view in the future. It will use tabs. This is more like in the desktop view. [33]

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

16:52, 25 November 2019 (UTC)

The Signpost: 29 November 2019

From the editor: Put on your birthday best

"We get by with a little help from our friends"

News and notes: How soon for the next million articles?

And when will we get the second extraterrestrial edit?

In the media: You say you want a revolution

Everybody wants to change Wikipedia.

On the bright side: What's making you happy this month?

A selection of good news and encouraging stories from the Wikiverse.

Arbitration report: Two requests for arbitration cases

Important or imprudent? Pondering portals. And an editor gets transported off-wiki for good.

Traffic report: The queen and the princess meet the king and the joker

Could this be the end of the Terminator?

Technology report: Reference things, sister things, stranger things

The latest tech news and updates.

Gallery: Winter and holidays

Some interesting and unusual winter and holiday images.

Recent research: Bot census; discussions differ on Spanish and English Wikipedia; how nature's seasons affect pageviews

And other new research publications.

Essay: Adminitis

Some humor about the otherwise serious subject of burnout.

From the archives: WikiProject Spam, revisited

Veteran editor: Wikipedia is losing existential battle against spam.

In focus: An update on the Wikimedia Movement 2030 Strategy

Coming to the end of a long road formulating the strategy.

Special report: How many people edit in your favorite language? Where are they from?

Only now can we say!

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 22:24, 29 November 2019 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – December 2019

News and updates for administrators from the past month (November 2019).

Administrator changes

EvergreenFir • ToBeFree

Akhilleus • Athaenara • John Vandenberg • Melchoir • MichaelQSchmidt • NeilN • Youngamerican • 😂

CheckUser changes

Beeblebrox

Deskana

Interface administrator changes

Evad37

Guideline and policy news

An RfC on the administrator resysop criteria was closed. 18 proposals have been summarised with a variety of supported and opposed statements. The inactivity grace period within which a new request for adminship is not required has been reduced from three years to two. Additionally, Bureaucrats are permitted to use their discretion when returning administrator rights.
Following a proposal, the edit filter mailing list has been opened up to users with the Edit Filter Helper right.

Technical news

Wikimedia projects can set a default block length for users via MediaWiki:ipb-default-expiry. A new page, MediaWiki:ipb-default-expiry-ip, allows the setting of a different default block length for IP editors. Neither is currently used. (T219126)

Arbitration

Voting in the 2019 Arbitration Committee Elections is open to eligible editors until Monday 23:59, 2 December 2018 UTC. Please review the candidates and, if you wish to do so, submit your choices on the voting page.

Miscellaneous

The global consultation on partial and temporary office actions that ended in October received a closing statement from staff concluding, among other things, that the WMF will no longer use partial or temporary Office Action bans... until and unless community consensus that they are of value or Board directive.

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 02:48, 2 December 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-49

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

Mix'n'match is a tool to connect Wikidata items to information in other databases. It can be used to find subjects that are missing in a Wikipedia. It now has more than 3000 datasets. Before it was closer to 2000.

Changes later this week

The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 3 December. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 4 December. It will be on all wikis from 5 December (calendar).

Meetings

You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 4 December at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

There will be a new schema for XML dumps. Scripts and apps that use them will need to be updated. If they are not updated they will no longer work. [34]
The {{REVISIONID}} magic word will no longer work in the content namespaces. This is for performance reasons. When you preview a page it returns "" (empty string). When you read a page it returns "-" (dash). In the future this will also affect other namespaces. The next ones are file and category namespaces. [35]

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

16:58, 2 December 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-50

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

Wikimedia projects use Translatewiki to translate the wiki interface. You can now use WatchTranslations to watch projects there. You would get an email if there are missing translations to your language. [36]
There is a new dataset you can use. It shows the number of editors per country per month for a number of countries. You can read the documentation and download the dataset.

Changes later this week

The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 10 December. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 11 December. It will be on all wikis from 12 December (calendar).

Meetings

You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 11 December at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

You can test a new reference tool. It makes it possible to reference different parts of a source without repeating all information. You can test it on the beta cluster. You can see an example article. [37]

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

16:38, 9 December 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-51

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Problems

The Linter extension helps you find technical errors in articles. It did not show new changes last week. This was because of an API problem. It is now working again. [38]
Special:Watchlist can show the wrong information again. It does not always show which edits are read and which are unread. This is because of a database problem. The developers are working on solving the problem. [39]

Changes later this week

You can get email notifications. You can get them immediately, a summary every day or a summary once every week. If you choose a summary you can soon choose not to get notifications you have already marked as read on the wiki. [40]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 17 December. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 18 December. It will be on all wikis from 19 December (calendar).

Meetings

You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 18 December at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

The partial blocks feature is now stable. It will come to most wikis on 6 January. Your wiki can ask to wait. Contact NKohli (WMF) if you don't want it now. [41]

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

00:16, 17 December 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-52

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Tech News

Because of the holidays the next issue of Tech News will be sent out on 6 January 2020.

Recent changes

All mobile site users now have new features. Features include: tabs for page/discussion; an expanded user-menu; direct access to history pages. These features were initially part of the "advanced mode".

Changes later this week

There is no new MediaWiki version this week or next week.

Future changes

You can use setlang in the URL to change the user interface language. This will no longer happen automatically. When you open the link you will be asked to confirm the language change. This will not happen if Javascript is not working in your browser. [42]

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

20:06, 23 December 2019 (UTC)

The Signpost: 27 December 2019

From the editors: Caught with their hands in the cookie jar, again

You can buy "cleaners" but you might not come away clean.

News and notes: What's up (and down) with administrators, articles and languages

Active administrators and articles achieved are marking milestone metrics, but in diverging directions. Plus, the first time any court has found there exists a constitutional right to read Wikipedia.

Special report: Are reputation management operatives scrubbing Wikipedia articles?

Son of Wiki-PR.

In the media: "The fulfillment of the dream of humanity" or a nightmare of PR whitewashing on behalf of one-percenters?

Praise for possibly pansophic Wikipedia from a Nobel laureate collides head-on with real-world events in December.

Discussion report: December discussions around the wiki

Regarding integrity of information presented by Wikipedia, as well as the processes and people who ensure it remains trustworthy.

Arbitration report: Announcement of 2020 Arbitration Committee

ArbCom election results and status of open and requested cases.

Traffic report: Queens and aliens, exactly alike, once upon a December

We may have scrambled the headlines a bit.

Technology report: User scripts and more

Customise your Wikipedia experience

Gallery: Holiday wishes

Messages of holiday cheer from us to you.

Recent research: Acoustics and Wikipedia; Wiki Workshop 2019 summary

16 recent papers, and other research news

From the archives: The 2002 Spanish fork and ads revisited (re-revisited?)

A look at different approaches taken by Wikipedia's founders in 2002, as seen from the perspective of nine years when it was written; nearly twenty years ago now.

On the bright side: What's making you happy this month?

A selection of good news and encouraging stories from the Wikiverse.

Op-Ed: Why we need to keep talking about Wikipedia's gender gap

There's still a long way to go.

WikiProject report: Wikiproject Tree of Life: A Wikiproject report

Eight years after our last interview, WikiProject Tree of Life continues to thrive.

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 12:38, 27 December 2019 (UTC)

Welcome to the 2020 WikiCup!

Happy New Year, Happy New Decade and Happy New WikiCup! The competition begins today and all article creators, expanders and improvers are welcome to take part. If you have already signed up, your submissions page can be found here. If you have not yet signed up, you can add your name here and the judges will set up your submissions page. We are relaxing the rule that only content on which you have completed significant work during 2020 will count; now to be eligible for points in the competition, you must have completed significant work on the content at some time! Any questions on the rules or on anything else connected to the Cup should be directed to one of the judges, or posted to the WikiCup talk page. Signups will close at the end of January, and the first round will end on 26 February; the 64 highest scorers at that time will move on to round 2. Good luck! The judges for the WikiCup are Sturmvogel 66 (talk · contribs · email), Godot13 (talk · contribs · email), Vanamonde93 (talk · contribs · email) and Cwmhiraeth (talk) 11:43, 1 January 2020 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – January 2020

News and updates for administrators from the past month (December 2019).

Administrator changes

Dreamy Jazz • Newslinger • Rosguill

Deor • Spartaz • Xeno

Angusmclellan • clpo13 • Edgar181 • Matthewedwards • NCurse

CheckUser changes

Bradv • Casliber • David Fuchs • Maxim • Newyorkbrad • SoWhy • Xeno

Oversight changes

Bradv • Casliber • DGG • David Fuchs • Maxim • Newyorkbrad • SoWhy • Xeno

Someguy1221

Guideline and policy news

A request for comment asks whether partial blocks should be enabled on the English Wikipedia. If enabled, this functionality would allow administrators to block users from editing specific pages or namespaces, rather than the entire site.
A proposal asks whether admins who don't use their tools for a significant period of time (e.g. five years) should have the toolset procedurally removed.
Following a successful RfC, a whitelist is now available for users whose redirects will be autopatrolled by a bot, removing them from the new pages patrol queue. Admins can add such users to Wikipedia:New pages patrol/Redirect whitelist after a discussion following the guidelines at Wikipedia talk:New pages patrol/Redirect whitelist.

Arbitration

The fourth case on Palestine-Israel articles was closed. The case consolidated all previous remedies under one heading, which should make them easier to understand, apply, and enforce. In particular, the distinction between "primary articles" and "related content" has been clarified, with the former being the entire set of articles whose topic relates to the Arab-Israeli conflict, broadly interpreted rather than reasonably construed.
Following the 2019 Arbitration Committee elections, the following editors have been appointed to the Arbitration Committee: Beeblebrox, Bradv, Casliber, David Fuchs, DGG, KrakatoaKatie, Maxim, Newyorkbrad, SoWhy, Worm That Turned, Xeno.

Miscellaneous

This issue marks three full years of the Admin newsletter. Thanks for reading!

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 20:06, 4 January 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-02

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 later this week

When trying to move a page, if the target title already exists then a warning message is shown. The warning message will now include a link to the target title. [43]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 7 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 8 January. It will be on all wikis from 9 January (calendar).

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

21:21, 6 January 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-03

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 no longer read Wikimedia wikis if your browser use very old TLS. This is because it is a security problem for everyone. It can lead to downgrade attacks. Since 9 December you just see a warning. Soon the browser will not connect to the wikis at all. Most are users on Android systems older than 4.4. You can read the browser recommendations. [44]
Special:LinkSearch has been moved from the "Redirecting special pages" section on Special:SpecialPages to the "Lists of pages" section. [45]

Changes later this week

Wikis can protect pages so that only some users can edit them. The standard protection levels are Require autoconfirmed or confirmed access and Require administrator access. If your wiki use more protection levels the technical name might be renamed for standardisation. This doesn't affect what users see. [46]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 14 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 15 January. It will be on all wikis from 16 January (calendar).

Future changes

Deepcat and Catgraph will stop working. This will happen at the end of January. This is because you can now use the normal search function instead. [47]
You can use <ref follow="…"> to merge footnotes that follow each other. It is meant to be used for digitised books on Wikisource. If the order of the footnotes is wrong no error was shown but the bad <ref> was shown outside the <references /> list. This will change and you will see an error message instead. [48]

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:40, 13 January 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-04

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 later this week

The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 21 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 22 January. It will be on all wikis from 23 January (calendar).

Future changes

There is a new suggestion for what to show when someone edits without registering an account. This is to give unregistered editors better privacy and make some anti-vandalism work go faster. You can give feedback.
Pywikibot is a Python library to automate work on wikis. It will no longer support Python 2. Use the python2 tag if you need to continue running Python 2 scripts. The Pywikibot team strongly recommends to migrate to Python 3. You can get help to do so. [49]
The weekly MediaWiki branch cut will soon become automated. The timing for this cut may change. You can discuss in Phabricator if this affects you. [50]
You can read about coming technical events and mentoring interns.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

19:41, 20 January 2020 (UTC)

The Signpost: 27 January 2020

From the editor: Reaching six million articles is great, but we need a moratorium

How long can we ignore Wiki-PR?

News and notes: Six million articles on the English language Wikipedia

You ain't seen nothing yet.

Special report: The limits of volunteerism and the gatekeepers of Team Encarta

How to survive the asshole consensus.

In the media: Turkey's back up, but what's happening with Dot-org and a new visual identity?

Plus politics and other oddities.

Arbitration report: Three cases at ArbCom

The new arbs have a big load.

Traffic report: The most viewed articles of 2019

As only The Signpost can describe them.

Gallery: Wiki Loves Monuments 2019, we're all winners

The top 15 international photos.

News from the WMF: Capacity Building: Top 5 Themes from Community Conversations

Growing our community and our abilities.

Community view: Our most important new article since November 1, 2015

Well, it's a bit subjective.

In focus: Cryptos and bitcoins and blockchains, oh no!

Everybody needs to make a buck somehow — just not here, thanks.

Recent research: How useful is Wikipedia for novice programmers trying to learn computing concepts?

And other new research publications.

From the archives: A decade of The Signpost, 2005-2015

The first 10 years are the hardest.

On the bright side: What's making you happy this month?

A selection of good news and encouraging stories from the Wikiverse.

WikiProject report: WikiProject Japan: a wikiProject Report

An interview with four members of the WikiProject Japan.

Humour: Predicting the 6,000,000th article

I may fall in love all over again!

Obituary: Remembering Wikipedia contributor Brian Boulton

A mentor to us all

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 02:09, 27 January 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-05

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

Some mobile diffs have problems. A couple of buttons are not shown. Structured data diffs on Commons are confusing. The developers are working on fixing it. [51][52]
Administrators on wikis that use Structured Discussions can't move discussion pages. This is a bug. The developers are working on fixing it. [53]

Changes later this week

There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

Future changes

There is JavaScript code on Special:Undelete for administrators that makes it possible to automatically select multiple checkboxes by holding the "Shift" key and clicking. This code is also loaded by accident on other special pages and on articles. This makes pages slower to load. This will be fixed. If you know of other special pages where this is useful please tell the developers at phab:T232688.

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18:53, 27 January 2020 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – February 2020

News and updates for administrators from the past month (January 2020).

Administrator changes

Ergo Sum • Nick Moyes • QEDK • Wugapodes

Dennis Brown

Aude • BrownHairedGirl • CALR • Jengod • John Reaves • J.smith • Kim Dent-Brown • K1Bond007 • MECU • Refdoc • RHaworth

CheckUser changes

Opabinia regalis • Premeditated Chaos

Interface administrator changes

Ragesoss

Guideline and policy news

Following a request for comment, partial blocks are now enabled on the English Wikipedia. This functionality allows administrators to block users from editing specific pages or namespaces rather than the entire site. A draft policy is being workshopped at Wikipedia:Partial blocks.
The request for comment seeking the community's sentiment for a binding desysop procedure closed with wide-spread support for an alternative desysoping procedure based on community input. No proposed process received consensus.

Technical news

Twinkle now supports partial blocking. There is a small checkbox that toggles the "partial" status for both blocks and templating. There is currently one template: {{uw-pblock}}.
When trying to move a page, if the target title already exists then a warning message is shown. The warning message will now include a link to the target title. [54]

Arbitration

Following a recent arbitration case, the Arbitration Committee reminded administrators that checkuser and oversight blocks must not be reversed or modified without prior consultation with the checkuser or oversighter who placed the block, the respective functionary team, or the Arbitration Committee.

Miscellaneous

Voting in the 2020 Steward elections will begin on 08 February 2020, 14:00 (UTC) and end on 28 February 2020, 13:59 (UTC). The confirmation process of current stewards is being held in parallel. You can automatically check your eligibility to vote.
The English Wikipedia has reached six million articles. Thank you everyone for your contributions!

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 15:06, 1 February 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-06

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 later this week

The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 4 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 5 February. It will be on all wikis from 6 February (calendar).

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

20:05, 3 February 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-07

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 is a new version of the Wikimedia Commons app for Android. It should fix the failed uploads problem. [55]

Problems

There was a problem with the new MediaWiki version last week. It deleted some messages by accident. The new version was late because it was stopped to fix things. [56]

Changes later this week

The MediaWiki action API is used by various tools like bots and gadgets. Some error codes will change. Some parameter values that do not follow the standard will no longer work. [57]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 11 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 12 February. It will be on all wikis from 13 February (calendar).

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

19:12, 10 February 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-08

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

Pages on Wikidata and Commons now load faster. You can read more about page load performance. [58][59]

Changes later this week

The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 18 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 19 February. It will be on all wikis from 20 February (calendar).

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

16:17, 17 February 2020 (UTC)