This is an archive of past discussions with User:Trialpears. 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.
I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your name on talk pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically produce your name and the date. If you need help, please see our help pages, and if you can't find what you are looking for there, please feel free to ask me on my talk page or place {{Help me}} on this page and someone will drop by to help. Red Director (talk) 02:55, 7 February 2019 (UTC)
Merging
A brief and informal thank-you from me for joining Wikiproject Merge, and helping to work on the backlog; your contributions are very welcome! Klbrain (talk) 06:55, 23 April 2019 (UTC)
I've really appreciated your comments on the old merge proposals I have also engaged with. You're also really great on policy, which is quite a relief. I mostly agree with you, but I hope you don't mind when I sometimes don't. Always happy to discuss differences of opinion, as we've been doing on the relevant article talk pages. Klbrain (talk) 10:44, 27 April 2019 (UTC)
A barnstar for you!
The Original Barnstar
Thank you for offering to help. I am trying to improve the page about Hayden Lockhart, ( an American POW from the Vietnam war ) and I keep messing up the references.
Is there a gadget or tool that helps clean up citations that are not done well?
Thank you for the barnstar! There are multiple tools to help with citations found here. The most convenient one of which probably is the automatic citations built into the ref button in the visual or 2017 wikitext editors where you can enter a URL, DOI or USBN and in most cases receive a mostly filled out citation. The other option I've used is the citation expander gadget which you can activate in preferences. After activating it you can press the "Expand citations" button in the tools section on the left side of the page. This tool goes through all citations on the page and suggest possible improvements, note that it currently doesn't perform the changes automatically. I hope that helps! Trialpears 18:47, 3 May 2019 (UTC)
I’m sorry if that was inappropriate and will stop if you believe I should. The reason I was removing the merge templates were because they added the pages to the backlog category Category:Items to be merged, since they did not actually suggest a merger I believed they shouldn’t be in the category. The most common reasons for the tags to be there in the first place was either because the sandbox was a copy of an old version of another page at that time undergoing a merger. If that was the case I always checked to make sure the merger had been dealt with before removing, I should also have controlled that the page wasn’t actively edited, which I didn’t do.
The other major reason was users collecting useful templates in which case I replaced them with {{merge}} or similar. This retains the functionality of having the template easily accessible without adding it to the maintenance category.
I believe this is useful because the category contain many very old mergers, mostly from the Wikipedia: namespace, which haven't been dealt with in many years, partly because the category is full with articles, such as the ones I removed tags from, that are not supposed to be there. This makes it difficult to navigate and reduce the amount of users actually seeing the real merge requests. Trialpears (talk) 10:50, 12 May 2019 (UTC)
Hello Trialpears, I have finished the merger of Spillaholle and Hulda into Frau Holle (with Frau Holle and Hulda being proposed for merger even seperately from the whole Spillaholle discussion), albeit with the exception of their talk pages what I will still do later as dinner is now immnent. Greetings,--Tarchunes (talk) 15:56, 16 June 2019 (UTC)
Thanks for fixing. I assume it's now displaying. I actually made the duplicate entry because I couldn't get it to display despite the diff being listed in the history. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 20:23, 1 July 2019 (UTC)
It's displaying for me, maybe try purging the cache? The link is in the text under the "discuss this story" heading or here. Hope it helps! Trialpears (talk) 21:00, 1 July 2019 (UTC)
Re:Category:All articles to be split admin backlog
Hi Trialpears, thanks for your message on my talk page. The only reason I added the admin backlog on Category:All articles to be split is because of multiple articles needed to be split dated back to more than 5-7 years and it's very long time it didn't make an attention to other users. So that, I decided to add the backlog to requires attention to admins. I don't know if this is bad or not, but hope you'll understand about it. Thanks!!! Movies Time (talk) 03:45, 4 July 2019 (UTC)
Infobox settlement
There is a lot to be improved with that box. I think language should be an extra parameter, or set of parameters and not be in demographics123. 77.183.70.51 (talk) 12:11, 31 July 2019 (UTC)
Would you be interested in getting that right? I would support it. You seem to understand template code, are careful, do testing, react to requests on template talk pages. TerraCyprus (talk) 20:55, 6 August 2019 (UTC)
TerraCyprus I don't feel ready to be honest. Just yesterday I messed up quite badly with an edit request. I will reconsider in a few months but until then I'm just happy to get an extra pair of eyes looking at my changes so I don't do anything stupid. Thanks for asking though! --Trialpears (talk) 21:10, 6 August 2019 (UTC)
I understand. I think even if you have the right, part of the procedure should be kept, e.g. let people look at your sandbox code. But in cases where several people agree on a change, be it coded by you, or by someone else, then you could help activating it. OK, maybe around X-mas then. TerraCyprus (talk) 21:24, 6 August 2019 (UTC)
Page mover granted
Hello, Trialpears. Your account has been granted the "extendedmover" user right, either following a request for it or demonstrating familiarity with working with article names and moving pages. You are now able to rename pages without leaving behind a redirect, move subpages when moving the parent page(s), and move category pages.
Please take a moment to review Wikipedia:Page mover for more information on this user right, especially the criteria for moving pages without leaving redirect. Please remember to follow post-move cleanup procedures and make link corrections where necessary, including broken double-redirects when suppressredirect is used. This can be done using Special:WhatLinksHere. It is also very important that no one else be allowed to access your account, so you should consider taking a few moments to secure your password. As with all user rights, be aware that if abused, or used in controversial ways without consensus, your page mover status can be revoked.
If you do not want the page mover right anymore, just let me know, and I'll remove it. Thank you, and happy editing! Kevin (aka L235·t·c) 18:16, 16 August 2019 (UTC)
Pending changes reviewer granted
Hello. Your account has been granted the "pending changes reviewer" userright, allowing you to review other users' edits on pages protected by pending changes. The list of articles awaiting review is located at Special:PendingChanges, while the list of articles that have pending changes protection turned on is located at Special:StablePages.
Being granted reviewer rights neither grants you status nor changes how you can edit articles. If you do not want this user right, you may ask any administrator to remove it for you at any time.
What I did when I implemented a short description for a template, I looked at the redirects and those with only a handful of uses I converted to the non-redirect version. This way I had only a handful of redirects in the code. This, to me, is a much better solution than adding code for a redirect that is used only twice. --Gonnym (talk) 11:50, 25 August 2019 (UTC)
Steelpillow, I've now reversed the close, per your concerns. I'm sorry for not looking if the book maker community had been properly notified before closing, something I ensure you will never happen again. --Trialpears (talk) 20:26, 1 September 2019 (UTC)
General Ization, I have posted a message on their talk page with venues where they could discuss the issue if they want to. I think they're concern are legitimate, but I don't know how the best way of handling it would be. I do not think reverting the report and giving a level 3 warning is the right thing to do for any good faith edit though; especially since custom on WP:EFFPR is to respond to all reports, even blatant vandalism. --Trialpears (talk) 20:18, 11 September 2019 (UTC)
Image template question
Hello Trialpears, got a template question for you. Do you happen to know if there is any current template that would basically auto-purges my userpage? I would like to have the image on my main userpage change each time you visit it. TIA! -- LuK3(Talk)14:22, 16 September 2019 (UTC)
Hi Trialpears, you must have seen that PearBOT 3 has been approved for trial. Thanks again for your interest in creating this.
Please feel free to let me know if I can help in any way in the trial and testing. Arman(Talk)13:34, 16 September 2019 (UTC)
Armanaziz, I currently have some problems with tool forge, but hopefully will fix them tonight. I will set it to run once an hour and the trial should be completed 10 hours later. Sorry for the delay. --Trialpears (talk) 13:42, 16 September 2019 (UTC)
I've now started the trial, it should be going for 10 hours and could be fully approved tomorrow if I haven't messed up and we got some luck with BAG. --Trialpears (talk) 23:27, 17 September 2019 (UTC)
Thanks! I think I've fixed most of the script errors in the portal space using it, but many large portals still have load times of 7+ seconds, which is quite annoying, so I'm considering deploying it more widely. --Trialpears (talk) 15:56, 23 September 2019 (UTC)
Cabayi Thanks! I'll take a look at it! I've found it a bit frustrating trying to learn it, but I guess everything will be more complex than learning python, which was the last time I went through this process. --Trialpears (talk) 20:47, 24 September 2019 (UTC)
WTA Tour reverts
Hello, yeah, your changes are right, but please change style and size of text inside table as it was before, cause it looks ugly now. --OVVL (talk) 23:02, 27 September 2019 (UTC)
OVVL, looks like Fyunck(click) have restored it due to concerns with the styles, with which I agree. I see no reason to have these tables styled differently from every other table on Wikipedia, including others in the same article. --Trialpears (talk) 20:17, 27 September 2019 (UTC)
It is really against MOS to have tiny text except in the top infobox. Yeah, their are exceptions like when a table is so wide that making the font 85% helps with width issues, or subtext within a table, but usually the standard font is adequate. Fyunck(click) (talk) 21:24, 27 September 2019 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
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. [1]
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.
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. [2]
Emotioness Expression, I still think it has a problem with promotional language. As you can see in my recent edit removing promotional language from the organisation section. Talking about team synergy and custumer oriented approaches are promotional and there is similar concerns in the rest of the article. I have thus added back the tag. Feel free to look through it and remove it afterwards though! --Trialpears (talk) 09:30, 1 October 2019 (UTC)
Automatic short descriptions
Hi Trialpears, letting you know the automatic short descriptions you added does not work for some schools such as Auckland Grammar School. If you could have a look that would be really good, you'll need to submit an edit request. Thanks Steven (Editor) (talk) 04:58, 2 October 2019 (UTC)
Actually for that article above, it previously had the short description template which I removed for the automatic one, the template subpage is transcluded but not reflected in the short description and instead uses Wikidata Steven (Editor) (talk) 21:20, 2 October 2019 (UTC)
Steven (Editor), the issue is with Module:Is infobox in lead which is used to garuantee short descriptions only are generated for articles whose primary topic a school, not places that happen to use infobox school as well. As well as checking if the template is in the lead it also checks if it's the only infobox in lead which in this case fails due to infobox mapframe being used in the linked article. I will update that module to fix it. --Trialpears (talk) 21:42, 2 October 2019 (UTC)
Steven (Editor), I have now also excluded all embeded templates in the sandbox and put in an edit request to fix Infobox NRHP's shortdescriptions being applied indiscrimnatley even when embeded. --Trialpears (talk) 22:40, 2 October 2019 (UTC)
You can use this user right to perform maintenance, answer edit requests, and make any other simple and generally uncontroversial edits to templates, modules, and edinotices. You can also use it to enact more complex or controversial edits, after those edits are first made to a test sandbox, and their technical reliability as well as their consensus among other informed editors has been established. If you are willing to process edit requests on templates and modules, keep in mind that you are taking responsibility to ensure the edits have consensus and are technically sound.
This user right gives you access to some of Wikipedia's most important templates and modules; it is critical that you edit them wisely and that you only make edits that are backed up by consensus. It is also very important that no one else be allowed to access your account, so you should consider taking a few moments to secure your password.
If you do not want this user right, you may ask any administrator to remove it for you at any time.
If you were granted the permission on a temporary basis you will need to re-apply for the permission a few days before it expires including in your request a permalink to the discussion where it was granted and a {{ping}} for the administrator who granted the permission. You can find the permalink in your rights log.
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 is a problem in the visual editor when you copy or delete text with footnotes. It will be fixed soon. [4]
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.
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.
Hi Trialpears: I received your pings regarding the Portal:South Africa Selected biography subpages. I have worked on the portal already, so I'd rather not be involved in deletion matters regarding it. I may upgrade the portal using transclusions of the content on the Selected bio subpage with entries directly on the main portal page, using the {{Transclude random excerpt}} template, as has been done already with the Selected article section of the portal. If you'd like, you can consider doing it as well. North America100010:01, 8 October 2019 (UTC)
Northamerica1000, my problem was just that they were generating script errors which is a bad look when transcluded to the main page. I will CSD them as WP:G8 since they're dependant on having some article selected. Just wanted to let you know in case you had a plan for them. Sorry for the pings, I didn't know how many there were, should have checked first and asked you on your talk page. --Trialpears (talk) 10:10, 8 October 2019 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
You can now use more advanced editing tools on the mobile web. You can turn them on and off in your preferences in the mobile version. [5]
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. [6]
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.
Hi, Trialpears. Remember me? The one who removed the advertisement label because there were no promotional language and later got a message saying that someone put back the advertisement label because it still has a problem with promotional language? Sorry about that recap. By the way, can you help me improve the List of Presidents of the United States by name article with no original research and citing references to a reliable and published source? I saw a label that the previous one has been deleted. I rewrote it and I got a label that the article will speedily deleted because the article has original research and no sources to verify. Note that I'll not be here because I have other stuff to do. I hope you will respond because if not, it will quickly get deleted.
Emotioness Expression, I've taken a look at the article and the biggest problem is the lack of sources. Taking a look at the ones in the article, all of them are 404s, unregistered domains, search bars or otherwise unreliable. If you have some reliable sources for the information it may be possible to save it. --Trialpears (talk) 08:37, 17 October 2019 (UTC)
Trialpears, like I said, I'll not be here because I have other stuff to do (VERY important stuff). But let me know if the article has improved or not, though. --Emotioness Expression (talk) 04:57, 17 October 2019 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
The 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. [7]
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. [8]
The history and diffs can show wrong content. This is because of a cache problem. It will soon be fixed. [9]
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.
Moxy, seems like me performing a trial using AWB stopped all Toolforge tasks. It would take less than 5 min to fix if I had access to my computer with my ssh key, but since I'm currently in an airport and will be away for over a week. Your implementation looks correct though. --Trialpears (talk) 06:15, 19 October 2019 (UTC)
Moxy Finally got home again and reenabled the bot. You did indeed implement it correctly. This won't happen again since I've now set up a way for me to do it on the road. --Trialpears (talk) 19:52, 27 October 2019 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
You can 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. [10][11]
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. [12][13]
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. [14]
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.
Hello, Trialpears. Your account has been granted the "extendedmover" user right, either following a request for it or demonstrating familiarity with working with article names and moving pages. You are now able to rename pages without leaving behind a redirect, move subpages when moving the parent page(s), and move category pages.
Please take a moment to review Wikipedia:Page mover for more information on this user right, especially the criteria for moving pages without leaving redirect. Please remember to follow post-move cleanup procedures and make link corrections where necessary, including broken double-redirects when suppressredirect is used. This can be done using Special:WhatLinksHere. It is also very important that no one else be allowed to access your account, so you should consider taking a few moments to secure your password. As with all user rights, be aware that if abused, or used in controversial ways without consensus, your page mover status can be revoked.
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. [15]
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. [16]
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.
Sean Connery was nót the first James Bond. American actor Barry Nelson was the first to portray Bond on screen, in a 1954 television adaptation.
The page is protected against vandalisme?!! I cannot add the information to the page. Can you acces it? Ted1957 (talk) 23:08, 4 November 2019 (UTC)
Ted1957, I'm sorry, but I don't know anything about the subject. Your best bet would be adding an edit request, instructions are found in the view source tab on the page. It's important that you have a reliable source for your claim, otherwise it won't be implemented. ‑‑Trialpears (talk) 23:30, 4 November 2019 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
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.
Why did you say that User:4o4NotFound Bot was violating bot rules? Most bots that are even approved are don’t have a name with their owner’s username or task. A very good example of this is User:CluebotNG.
E Super Maker, my first impression when seeing the name was that it was a self referential joke about the bot not being created yet, but now that I read it again it may be fine if it's a dead link repair bot. I don't know the story about cluebot's name but the vast majority has the operator name in full or in part (User:GreenC bot, User:AnomieBOT, User:PearBOT, User:PrimeBOT etc.) or the task such as User:Sinebot and User:SportsStatsBot. I would recommend a WP:RENAME, but I guess you could consult a bag member if you think the current name is fine. ‑‑Trialpears (talk) 00:45, 13 November 2019 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
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. [17]
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.
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.
Google Code-In 2019 is coming - please mentor some documentation tasks!
Hello,
Google Code-In, Google-organized contest in which the Wikimedia Foundation participates, starts in a few weeks. This contest is about taking high school students into the world of opensource. I'm sending you this message because you recently edited a documentation page at the English Wikipedia.
I would like to ask you to take part in Google Code-In as a mentor. That would mean to prepare at least one task (it can be documentation related, or something else - the other categories are Code, Design, Quality Assurance and Outreach) for the participants, and help the student to complete it. Please sign up at the contest page and send us your Google account address to [email protected], so we can invite you in!
From my own experience, Google Code-In can be fun, you can make several new friends, attract new people to your wiki and make them part of your community.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
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. [19]
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. [20]
It's been a while since the bot ran on journal articles and update the infobox needed thing. It would be nice if the bot ran daily/weekly/monthly to take care of those. Headbomb {t · c · p · b}11:52, 28 November 2019 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
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. [21]
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. [22]
AlanM1, very sorry about that. I forgot to fix double redirects after redirecting per TfD which broke your box. It's now fixed and should be back to normal. Thanks for telling me; I won't do it again! ‑‑Trialpears (talk) 08:14, 8 December 2019 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
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. [23]
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. [24]
Mu301, not much I mainly wanted to make sure that there wasn't anything special with these specific categories. I've seen many cases where these categories are customized in ways that would a bot run inappropriate. Some include infobox conversions where another infobox should be used, one had a competition where removal from the category was used to earn points, some projects use infobox templates not in the infobox pseudo namespace and some others have several conditionals for when they categorize it as an infobox request or even hardcoded the category. Since nothing strange seems to be going on for the three categories you mentioned I've added them to the list. It should do the first run this weekend. It will only look for {{Infobox radio station}} for WikiProject Radio Stations, but left the other to look for any infobox since they have a lot more diverse content. ‑‑Trialpears (talk) 22:51, 12 December 2019 (UTC)
Thanks, I'll take a look after the bot runs. Let me know if there is anything I can clarify about usage in those projects. --mikeutalk23:39, 12 December 2019 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
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. [25]
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. [26]
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. [27]
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. [28]
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. [29]
Dirk Hünniger, thanks for telling me! Just wondering if the File: namespace here on the English Wikipedia would be an acceptable location? It can host fair use content and wouldn't have any of the external link concerns. ‑‑Trialpears (talk) 18:46, 30 December 2019 (UTC)
I discussed that already without any result. But you are welcome to restart the discussion. See here
Dirk Hünniger, that could potentially be a bit of a problem for the pdf plan. Perhaps we could ask Newslinger to clarify the closure with regards to the I'm thinking suppression of the template(s) is better than outright deletion in case the WMF finally does come up with something part of the proposal which seem to allow the decision to be reversed when a better system, such as the PDFs, is in place. ‑‑Trialpears (talk) 10:30, 2 January 2020 (UTC)
Hi Dirk Hünniger and Trialpears, since the proposal in the RfC statement included suppression (and not deletion) of the templates, and the editors in the discussion did not explicitly discuss whether the templates should be deleted, I did not mention deletion in the closing summary. If you or another editor would like to delete the templates, the deletion can be evaluated through another village pump technical discussion or a template deletion discussion. Does this adequately explain the closure, or are there any additional areas that need to be clarified? — Newslingertalk15:34, 5 January 2020 (UTC)
I am currently generating a PDF for each community maintained Book on Wikipedia. The progress has reached about 25%. I shall be finished in late July. I will make them publicly available and start a discussion on the unsuppression of the template by then. The next interesting point is the removal of the book creator from the sidebar. It is stated in the closing statement of the RFC that it is to be removed. But currently it is still in place. To me it is of no importance whether it is kept or not. I am just unhappy with the inconsistency. So please either change the closing statement of the RFC to "book creator it kept in the sidebar" or remove the book creator from the sidebar. There may be many ways of removing the book creator from the sidebar. To me just modifying MediaWiki:Common.js looks like the easiest. Dirk Hünniger (talk) 16:33, 5 January 2020 (UTC)
Hi there, I've been checking a few of the short descriptions added by the bot and I have to say many of them are all as they should be, thanks for the efforts here :) I found a few that may indicate something that's worth reviewing for future runs, it seems to pick up words at the end in some cases:
Simeon, thanks! I've now made sure that there are no nationality only descriptions, fixed the riding for bug caused by {{ct}} and improved the trailing words checks. All these changes have been manually applied retroactively as well. I also did some tweaking to removed "former" and "born in", but left in "from" since I'm worried about excluding such a common word without major testing and the descriptions are acceptable with it as well. I've also checked another 100 descriptions using these new modifications and they all look fine. Again thank you for telling me about these issues! ‑‑Trialpears (talk) 18:11, 5 January 2020 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Changes 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. [30]
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).
You can use this user right to perform maintenance, answer edit requests, and make any other simple and generally uncontroversial edits to templates, modules, and edinotices. You can also use it to enact more complex or controversial edits, after those edits are first made to a test sandbox, and their technical reliability as well as their consensus among other informed editors has been established. If you are willing to process edit requests on templates and modules, keep in mind that you are taking responsibility to ensure the edits have consensus and are technically sound.
This user right gives you access to some of Wikipedia's most important templates and modules; it is critical that you edit them wisely and that you only make edits that are backed up by consensus. It is also very important that no one else be allowed to access your account, so you should consider taking a few moments to secure your password.
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If you were granted the permission on a temporary basis you will need to re-apply for the permission a few days before it expires including in your request a permalink to the discussion where it was granted and a {{ping}} for the administrator who granted the permission. You can find the permalink in your rights log.