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.
Thanks. I'm sure you could be a great admin as well some day, but I understand if you never want to try again. It was hard just to read it from my position, I can't imagine how it was for you. You know where to reach me if you want to talk. --Trialpears (talk) 20:24, 8 June 2021 (UTC)
MediaWiki changes
Anything specifically you're interested in working on / fixing? Always happy to help new interested people get started :) (P.S. I doubt most MediaWiki contributors have a computer degree, I certainly don't) Legoktm (talk) 02:24, 9 June 2021 (UTC)
Legoktm That would be amazing! I sadly don't have much time in the near future (I essentially have a week downtime between exams and a ton of summer projects starting for RfA), but I'll certainly take you up on it in a month or two. There are certainly a ton of things in MediaWiki that would be nice to have improved, but most of them look like very large projects but the tasks tagged as good first tasks look like reasonable ones. I haven't been thinking about what to do next much though since the main reason would be that it's fun to learn new stuff and be able to deal with simple things like the configuration changes I requested for the book namespace. I suspect that I have a few more of a similar nature coming up. --Trialpears (talk) 08:08, 9 June 2021 (UTC)
Just to let you know
Hey, i have hardly seen such a successful RFA before you, just to let you know about that. Sincere congrats.---Wikaviani (talk)(contribs)20:54, 8 June 2021 (UTC)
"Hey, i have hardly seen such a successful RFA before you, just to let you know about that. Sincere congrats." Seconded! Chetsford (talk) 04:51, 10 June 2021 (UTC)
Too close to call ...
Boy that RfA is a real nail biter. I'm hoping you can endure through this. Maybe if we can get just one more support in the next few hours you squeak by. Seriously though - Well done and congrats on an amazing RfA. Great responses to questions in tandem with an amazing edit history. Good luck. — Ched (talk) 05:53, 12 June 2021 (UTC)
Hello, Trialpears. You have new messages at Wikipedia talk:Twinkle. Message added 21:27, 13 June 2021 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.
You have been successfully nominated to receive a free t-shirt from the Wikimedia Foundation through our Merchandise Giveaway program. Congratulations and thank you for your hard work! Please email us at merchandisewikimedia.org and we will send you full details on how to accept your free shirt. Thanks!
I got this mop back in 2006 and it has served me well, so went to the store and got a brand new one for you! Welcome to the admin corps. — xaosfluxTalk17:40, 14 June 2021 (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
Logged-in users on the mobile web can choose to use the advanced mobile mode. They now see categories in a similar way as users on desktop do. This means that some gadgets that have just been for desktop users could work for users of the mobile site too. If your wiki has such gadgets you could decide to turn them on for the mobile site too. Some gadgets probably need to be fixed to look good on mobile. [1]
German Wikipedia, English Wikivoyage and 29 smaller wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on 22 June. This is planned between 5:00 and 5:30 UTC. [3]
All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes in the week of 28 June. More information will be published in Tech News later. It will also be posted on individual wikis in the coming weeks. [4][5]
I recently completed a PhD at UNSW, Australia on an unknown architectural sculptor b. Chichester 1832-1891, who came to Australia in 1870 and sculpted major buildings in the Sydney CBD. The has been little published on the subject of architectural sculpture (much on sculpture more generally, and I am the sole historian to publish on T.V. Wran. This presents a problem in as much as I cannot refer to an existing literature on Wran. My main purpose in researching Wran was to create an awareness of his contribution and establish his name in the art history of Australia and the UK.
How should I approach this in order for my entry to be accepted. My motive in creating an entry is to give due recognition to his sculpture and produce a biography of an English art worker in 19th C. society. Thomas Hardy, also and architect, in Jude the Obscure, supplied a portrait of the life and hardship of such an art worker. I have numerous images from UK and here in Sydney and Queensland. --Shepherd1943 (talk) 00:12, 17 June 2021 (UTC)
Articles from new users usually go through the Articles for creation process where a draft page is made and then submitted for review by an experienced volunteer. The easiest way to create the draft is to go through the Article wizard. Generally the standard for inclusion is that there is significant coverage of the topic in multiple reliable sources, which it looks like Thomas Vallence Wran probably satisfies based on a quick google search.
For academics like yourself it may be important to note that Wikipedia does not accept original research and all information should be in one of the sources without requiring deductions or further analysis.
With regards to the images you mentioned they would be very appreciated at Wikimedia Commons if they are in he public domain (which they would be if they are taken in the 1800s) or appropriate licensed (CC-BY-SA or similar). Otherwise we can sadly not accept them there.
Xeno Thanks! Those words back then had a significant impact on me, it was the first time I thought about adminship more seriously and took me here in some roundabout way. Will probably write more about it in my debrief (coming to a WT:RFA near you in a day or two!). --Trialpears (talk) 15:06, 12 June 2021 (UTC)
Well done. If eventually you get bored scrabbling down the back of the sofa to find the right block message, some kind person put a bit of nifty code into my monobook that gives a dropdown menu for them. ϢereSpielChequers00:58, 13 June 2021 (UTC)
Congratulations! If you have any questions, don't hesitate to reach out to any one of us. I'd recommend going into other admins' common.js pages looking for useful scripts etc. Here's mine for an example. --TheSandDoctorTalk16:19, 13 June 2021 (UTC)
TheSandDoctor Good tip, will definitely check out a couple scripts as well as all the new buttons from ones I already use.
More belated congratulations. I was offline during your RFA so I missed the chance to support you. I am glad it went smoothly for you and wish you well. Donner60 (talk) 04:36, 20 June 2021 (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 otrs-member group name is now vrt-permissions. This could affect abuse filters. [6]
Problems
You will be able to read but not edit German Wikipedia, English Wikivoyage and 29 smaller wikis for a few minutes on 22 June. This is planned between 5:00 and 5:30 UTC. [7]
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 22 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 23 June. It will be on all wikis from 24 June (calendar).
Hi, I wanted to ask you about the book namespace. When will the deletion/moves of books begin? And where will the books be moved to?54nd60x (talk) 09:03, 22 June 2021 (UTC)
Thanks for adding the comment with AWB details on my Reward Board entry! I'm quite an active user of JWB/AWB but have absolutely 0 knowledge of regex, so that was really helpful. Thanks! 🐶 EpicPupper(he/him | talk, FAQ, contribs)16:15, 23 June 2021 (UTC)
EpicPupper No problem! I'll probably take on some of them myself, it was a while since I did a large and relaxing AWB project without a high error rate. If you want to learn regex https://regex101.com/ is an absolutely invaluable resource for trouble shooting. --Trialpears (talk) 16:36, 23 June 2021 (UTC)
Thanks so much Trialpears. If it's not too much trouble, would you be able to put together a regex search and replace that removes "." (at the end of the shortdesc)? Again, thanks so much! 🐶 EpicPupper(he/him | talk, FAQ, contribs)18:27, 23 June 2021 (UTC)
EpicPupper, Of course it should be as easy as replacing ({{[Ss]hort description\|[^}]*)\s*\.\s*}} with $1}}. Beware of U.S. and Inc. though. Here is a search that can find the pages as well. --Trialpears (talk) 18:35, 23 June 2021 (UTC)
Awesome, thanks! I'm so sorry to be asking again, and I promise this'll be the lsat of me for now, but is there a way to make sure that the shortdesc template is at the top, maybe through a regex? 🐶 EpicPupper(he/him | talk, FAQ, contribs)18:39, 23 June 2021 (UTC)
Replacing (^.+)({{[sS]hort description[^}]*}})\n? with $2\n$1 should move the short description to the top from wherever it is. Note that it has to be in single line mode (flag s) and can't have the multiline flag, m for it to work. Don't worry about asking too many questions, I don't mind at all! + you're basically just dealing with an item on my waaaaay too long to do list. --Trialpears (talk) 18:47, 23 June 2021 (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.
Wikisources have a new OCR tool. If you don't want to see the "extract text" button on Wikisource you can add .ext-wikisource-ExtractTextWidget { display: none; } to your common.css page. [9]
Problems
You will be able to read but not edit the Wikimedia wikis for a few minutes on 29 June. This is planned at 14:00 UTC. [10][11]
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 29 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 30 June. It will be on all wikis from 1 July (calendar).
Future changes
Threshold for stub link formatting, thumbnail size and auto-number headings can be set in preferences. They are expensive to maintain and few editors use them. The developers are planning to remove them. Removing them will make pages load faster. You can read more and give feedback.
A toolbar will be added to the Reply tool's wikitext source mode. This will make it easier to link to pages and to ping other users. [12][13]
Flame water46 New cannot create articles directly, but you can create a draft article that will be reviewed by a volunteer before being published if it meets the inclusion criteria. The page Help:Your first article does quite a good job at explaining the process. Creating new articles isn't the only way to contribute to the encyclopedia with improving existing articles being both easier and in my opinion more satisfying since they often are seen by a lot more people. If you have more questions feel free to ask me! --Trialpears (talk) 08:45, 28 June 2021 (UTC)
54nd60x there is still value in having this redirect and it can't be moved to another namespace. This was brought up at T285766 where it was decided that steward Urbanecm deletes the page just before namespace deletion. --Trialpears (talk) 00:11, 30 June 2021 (UTC)
54nd60x It probably shouldn't have been deleted. This was done before I knew Urbanecm could delete things on their own and I thought I might as well remove one page early. It didn't have much of a purpose as a redirect only editors would possibly use in a weird namespace. I don't feel it's worth restoring though, it will just be deleted again in a couple days. --Trialpears (talk) 00:33, 30 June 2021 (UTC)
Hi Premvicku01. I take it you're wondering about your drafts about the YouTube channel PremRaj Motivation? To get the draft published you would have to press the "Submit the draft for review" button and wait for a volunteer to review it to make sure it follows our most important policies and our inclusion criteria. In this case however I'm fairly certain PremRaj Motivation does not meet the inclusion criteria as it hasn't received any independent and reliable coverage. --Trialpears (talk) 23:18, 30 June 2021 (UTC)
Consensus has been reached to delete all books in the book namespace. There was rough consensus that the deleted books should still be available on request at WP:REFUND even after the namespace is removed.
An RfC is open to discuss the next steps following a trial which automatically applied pending changes to TFAs.
Technical news
IP addresses of unregistered users are to be hidden from everyone. There is a rough draft of how IP addresses may be shown to users who need to see them. This currently details allowing administrators, checkusers, stewards and those with a new usergroup to view the full IP address of unregistered users. Editors with at least 500 edits and an account over a year old will be able to see all but the end of the IP address in the proposal. The ability to see the IP addresses hidden behind the mask would be dependent on agreeing to not share the parts of the IP address they can see with those who do not have access to the same information. Accessing part of or the full IP address of a masked editor would also be logged. Comments on the draft are being welcomed at the talk page.
Arbitration
The community authorised COVID-19 general sanctions have been superseded by the COVID-19 discretionary sanctions following a motion at a case request. Alerts given and sanctions placed under the community authorised general sanctions are now considered alerts for and sanctions under the new discretionary sanctions.
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
The next issue of Tech News will be sent out on 19 July.
Recent changes
AutoWikiBrowser is a tool to make repetitive tasks easier. It now uses JSON. Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/CheckPage has moved to Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/CheckPageJSON and Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/Config. Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/CheckPage/Version has moved to Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/CheckPage/VersionJSON. The tool will eventually be configured on the wiki so that you don't have to wait until the new version to add templates or regular expression fixes. [14]
Problems
InternetArchiveBot helps saving online sources on some wikis. It adds them to Wayback Machine and links to them there. This is so they don't disappear if the page that was linked to is removed. It currently has a problem with linking to the wrong date when it moves pages from archive.is to web.archive.org. [15]
Changes later this week
The tool to find, add and remove templates will be updated. This is to make it easier to find and use the right templates. It will come to the first wikis on 7 July. It will come to more wikis later this year. [16][17]
There is no new MediaWiki version this week.
Future changes
Some Wikimedia wikis use Flagged Revisions or pending changes. It hides edits from new and unregistered accounts for readers until they have been patrolled. The auto review action in Flagged Revisions will no longer be logged. All old logs of auto-review will be removed. This is because it creates a lot of logs that are not very useful. [18]
One of my daily tasks is handling categories that become empty (exciting, huh?), which involves tagging empty categories CSD C1. If, over a week they are no longer empty, the tag is removed. If they are still empty after 7 days, I, or another admin, deletes them. I've been doing this now for 3 or 4 years. UnitedStatesian alerted me to the discussion about the Book space as they anticipate some empty Book categories popping up on the Empty Category List. He proposed in the Village Pump discussion that they be deleted as CSD G6 which is uncontroversial deletion which is what we use for maintenance categories that become empty and also Sockpuppet categories that frequently go empty as sockpuppets get moved around to different sockmaster categories.
Since it appears that you are leading this project, I just thought I'd check in with you to double-check about this process before anything was done. I assume these would be uncontroversial deletion as the Books are being moved, archived or deleted and any empty Book categories will not be filled at a future date so they don't need to sit around for a week. Let me know what you think. LizRead!Talk!00:16, 28 June 2021 (UTC)
Hello, Trialpears,
I don't know how much work your bot still has to do with Book pages but it would be helpful if it also deleted redirects and redirect talk pages. I'm in the middle of deleting hundreds of broken redirects (see this edit). Twinkle's batch deletion was able to handle about half of these but for some reason couldn't delete them all so I'm doing the rest manually which is pretty time-consuming. LizRead!Talk!03:00, 28 June 2021 (UTC)
I'm very sorry about the redirects that should have been handled by me and not been left for you to clean up. I'm very sorry about that. My plan was to do that along with the bot running but due to there being some quite active discussion about the bot and some issues with blacklisted pages it completely slipped my mind with me dealing with that instead.
That sounds great, I see via the Deletion Log that you are getting to some of the broken redirects so thank you. Last night Explicit was able to get Twinkle's batch deletion to take care of the remaining broken redirects so they didn't need to be taken care of manually. I'd inquire about why this feature didn't work completely for me but the need for mass deletions doesn't happen very often. Thanks again for seeing this proposal through, from beginning to end. LizRead!Talk!18:07, 28 June 2021 (UTC)
Liz Yep I made sure to take care of all redirects in the namespace to make sure we wouldn't get any more broken ones. For the twinkle dbatch issue I can't see any obvious issues. You don't manually import any old version of twinkle and your twinkleoptions don't have anything that should trip up the script. How exactly does it fail? Perhaps I can find the problem, otherwise I'm sure the regular twinkle developers could help out at WT:TW.
For the categories it will probably be a month before the actual deletion occurs so the categories can't go before then either if we don't (ab)use the WP:CFDW bot to remove them before deletion. I plan on taking care of the template defined ones now though. --Trialpears (talk) 14:16, 29 June 2021 (UTC)
Just circling back to this discussion. I'm not sure what it is about Twinkle batch deletion, it works best with a smaller number of pages than a larger number. But sometimes it just doesn't display any pages at all even when there are appropriate ones listed on the page or in the category. I don't do many batch deletions unless there are a large number of obviously broken redirects but I look at the Deletion log and I see some admins use it regularly to delete hundreds of files so it must work for them. LizRead!Talk!04:55, 11 July 2021 (UTC)
I am trying to make a certain image appear to the right of the "Culture" section. I have been suggested multiple things on the Wikipedia Discord, which have some sort of problem. Could you help me with this problem? Thanks. RealKnockout (talk) 02:51, 12 July 2021 (UTC)
RealKnockout That's a tough one actually. If you just direct it to float right it will end up below the infobox and sidebar and getting it to float outside it is quite hard (and likely to cause problems for use on other platforms). It would also cause WP:SANDWICH problems between as would floating left. My general thought is that this perhaps is a case where a gallery is justified. I'm not much of an image editor though, so perhaps there's something clever I'm missing. --Trialpears (talk) 07:59, 12 July 2021 (UTC)
This page is used to substitute the template Ordnance Survey coordinates when creating a [[Help:Books|PDF or a Book]] of an article. For more information please see the documentation.
[...]
(?!(?:Talk:|(?:User|Wikipedia|File|MediaWiki|Template|Help|Category|Portal|Book|Draft|TimedText|Module) talk:)).*\/Print <noedit|errmsg=titleblacklist-custom-print>
The second part mentions the Book namespace which should be removed, but the link to Help:Books might also be worth removing. Additionally, while searching for the page that generates the above, I found the following which still mention the book namespace or related entities which might also need to be deleted or edited:
Thanks Gonnym! I was not aware of some of these pages! Print subpages are weird and I'm honestly not sure if they are in use anywhere now a days. I will need to do some research and testing, but I will take care of it. I deleted the editnotice and plan on updating titleblacklist notices with proper information as things progress. The collection pages should probably be preserved as used for userbooks. The right description shouldn't be used anywhere (I think) but I've added a not enabled to it. There's a task on github for the twinkle updates and I believe I have a working patch, but have had some testing difficulties. I intend on checking links today and make sure no issues come from the ns parser function today. --Trialpears (talk) 09:12, 10 July 2021 (UTC)
Pppery I'm also essentially certain about this from both my own testing and seeing the distinct lack of mentions. I can't find it stated explicitly anywhere though. I'll start a mass TfD nom during the day. --Trialpears (talk) 08:08, 13 July 2021 (UTC)
A barnstar for you!
The Technical Barnstar
For all your tedious works in technical aspects of Wikipedia, I’m in awe of the work you coders(technical editors) do. That I’m very much envious of you guys is open knowledge. Thank you for all your technical related works and in advance, for the greater works you’d invariably continue doing. Celestina007 (talk) 21:49, 13 July 2021 (UTC)
Hey, could your bot tag all the sub templates of Template:Subatomic particle for a TfD? Probably better as a sub-page as that's around 500 pages I think. I've converted the template to use a module with all the data from the templates, so they are now all unused and not needed. Gonnym (talk) 18:14, 16 July 2021 (UTC)
The reason for the subpage is that huge lists break the page with post-expand issues. This has been going on most of last week, and 500 items will probably cause it again. Gonnym (talk) 18:18, 16 July 2021 (UTC)
Yes, when I said around 500 I forgot to multiply by 2 (links and symbols), so that sounds about right. Thank for you help! Gonnym (talk) 19:21, 16 July 2021 (UTC)
Great! I've started tagging with the header "Subatomic particle subpages". I also split it over 2 subpages as it, like Elli said, breaks PEIS otherwise. It will take a while for obvious reasons though. --Trialpears (talk) 19:32, 16 July 2021 (UTC)
Another thing you might be able to help me with. There seems to be (unsurprisingly) a desync between the link and symbol templates of 20 templates (see symbol and link). Have any idea how to find which 20 without manually going over the list? Gonnym (talk) 20:49, 16 July 2021 (UTC)
My check indicates there may be issues with the following particles: Axino, axion, bottom top omega', bottom top omega'0, bottom top xi', bottom top xi'+, bottom top xi'0, charmed antit*, charmed top omega', charmed top omega'+, charmed top xi', charmed top xi'+, charmed top xi'++, deuterium, electron+-, graviton, helium, hydrogen, majorino, top xi', top xi'+, top xi'0, tritium, xino and yino. My method probably gives false positives, but there should be no false negatives. --Trialpears (talk) 21:30, 16 July 2021 (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 tool to find, add and remove templates was updated. This is to make it easier to find and use the right templates. It was supposed to come to the first wikis on 7 July. It was delayed to 12 July instead. It will come to more wikis later this year. [19][20]
Special:UnconnectedPages lists pages that are not connected to Wikidata. This helps you find pages that can be connected to Wikidata items. Some pages should not be connected to Wikidata. You can use the magic word __EXPECTED_UNCONNECTED_PAGE__ on pages that should not be listed on the special page. [21]
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 20 July. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 21 July. It will be on all wikis from 22 July (calendar).
Future changes
How media is structured in the parser's HTML output will soon change. This can affect bots, gadgets, user scripts and extensions. You can read more. You can test it on Testwiki or Testwiki 2.
The parameters for how you obtain tokens in the MediaWiki API were changed in 2014. The old way will no longer work from 1 September. Scripts, bots and tools that use the parameters from before the 2014 change need to be updated. You can read more.
Hi Trialpears, as you already know I just started using AWB, and I am unable to understand what should I do to make the following changes, and if they are even possible
{{Party shading/Republican}} data-sort-value=[var1] | R+[var2] => {{Shading PVI|R|[var1]}}, here [var1], [var2] are supposed to be 1 or 2 numeric digits. When [var1]=[var2], make the changes, else add a {{Inconsistent}} template, so that I could later manually recheck the actual values, and make the required changes. Thanks! ---CX Zoom(he/him)(let's talk|contribs)13:14, 24 July 2021 (UTC)
CX Zoom You definitely can do that with RegEx, it's not trivial though. Something like {{Party shading\/Democratic}}\s*data-sort-value\s*=\s*-(\d{1,2})\s*\|\s*D\+\1 -> {{Shading PVI|D|34}} should do it though with minor modification required for republicans. If var1 and var2 doesn't match it does nothing. If you want to add a template if they don't match I would suggest doing that in a second slightly modified regex instead of cramming it in here.
You will likely want to make some modifications to deal with slightly different formatting though, that's almost always the case when dealing with templates. My best tip for learning RegEx is https://regex101.com/. It makes debugging a lot easier and explain what a regex does in real time. It also has solid syntax documentation. --Trialpears (talk) 13:31, 24 July 2021 (UTC)
Hi, I just tested it and itworks perfectly. Thanks for the help. One more thing. What option should I be using which creates a list of titles, such that all articles of the format 20[X] United States House of Representatives elections, where 5<X<22? Thanks! ---CX Zoom(he/him)(let's talk|contribs)13:56, 24 July 2021 (UTC)
Thank you very much!Trialpears. To be honest, the first time I opened AWB I was overwhelmed by all those buttons and tabs, but couldn't make out anything from them. Now I am confident that I can handle all those edits. Thanks again! ---CX Zoom(he/him)(let's talk|contribs)14:22, 24 July 2021 (UTC)
For now, it will just be the non-tropical one. It has already been merged for over a month now without any objection. For the others, I am navigating a slippery slope even with consensus to merge and I honestly don't know whether they will be merged or not as I have heard off-wiki that a couple of people want to overturn the consensus that took months to get. We are trying to figure out what exactly we are going to do (for implementing the merger) and I think some kind of a subproject deal will likely ensue for the two largest projects. The only objections that were raised in the discussion were related to WPTC and WP Severe. NoahTalk22:22, 24 June 2021 (UTC)
Okay... there is no opposition regarding template mergers, just whether or not the project pages will remain at their current location or be listed underneath the weather project. Everyone is fine with us merging templates. Template:WikiProject Severe weather can now be merged to Template:WikiProject Weather as well (parameter is thunderstorms-and-tornadoes-task-force). Template:WikiProject Tropical cyclones will have to merged as well, but it is a bit tricky. tropical-cyclones-project is now a parameter underneath the weather template. EVERY article has to have this added to it. We also want to keep 5 of the taskforces that WPTC had (Atlantic hurricanes, Pacific hurricanes, Pacific typhoons, Northern Indian Ocean, and Southern Hemisphere). The parameters for these also exist underneath weather now. All of the articles are currently in category. I believe as long as you don't remove the existing taskforce parameters for those ones I mentioned, they should be fine since I just copied over the existing code. Let me know if anything here is unclear. NoahTalk18:29, 25 June 2021 (UTC)
Hurricane Noah Yep I know, I've been quite preoccupied with the whole book namespace deletion thing so both me and my bot have been busy. On top of that I have some exams coming up so I will be quite busy in the coming week. I won't forget this but it will probably take about another week before I can start in earnest. Sorry for the wait. --Trialpears (talk) 23:23, 29 June 2021 (UTC)
I believe every WPTC task force that we want to keep wikiwork for will automatically be called since I copied and pasted the code into the weather template (no change). There are multiple deprecated taskforces that will no longer need wikiwork. Would keeping those harm anything or would it just be extra code? Otherwise, the only thing that has to change is making it the weather template and adding the tropical cyclone project code. NoahTalk21:25, 5 July 2021 (UTC)
Hurricane Noah when there's just one of {{WikiProject Tropical cyclones}} and {{WikiProject weather}} it is indeed as simple as you say. The problem is when both are on the same page which is the case for a few hundred pages. I thought WPTC had separate importances for the taskforces which would make it a lot more difficult. Given that isn't the case it should be fine. If it's ready to merge I should be able to take a look this week. --Trialpears (talk) 22:06, 5 July 2021 (UTC)
Hey, I just wanted to ask about merging over the 232 remaining transclusions for the tropical cyclone template. I really appreciate all the time and effort you have put into helping us merge the projects. Thank you. NoahTalk17:38, 20 July 2021 (UTC)
Hurricane Noah Finally done! All that's left is getting them deleted which probably should go through TfD even though there's been related discussion. You are probably the best person to start it since you're an actual WikiProject member. --Trialpears (talk) 17:09, 24 July 2021 (UTC)
Aza24 If you're just referring to selected articles and similar templates I don't think that would be particularly controversial now a days, but for {{oldportalpeerreview}}, {{portal talk}} and likely a few more I don't really see a good rationale. I also think it's worth looking at other similar templates not showing up in the category. This naive search should catch most of them. --Trialpears (talk) 21:03, 3 July 2021 (UTC)
Those are indeed weird and could use their own discussion. I won't add any more now, but will perhaps make a follow up when this one is closed. --Trialpears (talk) 17:37, 25 July 2021 (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
A new version of MediaWiki came to the Wikimedia wikis the week before last week. This was not in Tech News because there was no newsletter that week.
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 27 July. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 28 July. It will be on all wikis from 29 July (calendar).
Future changes
If you use the Monobook skin you can choose to switch off responsive design on mobile. This will now work for more skins. If ⧼monobook-responsive-label⧽ is unticked you need to also untick the new preferenceEnable responsive mode. Otherwise it will stop working. Interface admins can automate this process on your wiki. You can read more.
An RfC is open to add a delay of one week from nomination to deletion for G13 speedy deletions.
Technical news
Last week all wikis were very slow or not accessible for 30 minutes. This was due to server lag caused by regenerating dynamic lists on the Russian Wikinews after a large bulk import. (T287380)
Hello Richard.reive! Please excuse my late reply, I've been traveling for the first time since the start of all this =). To upload files I would recommend the Upload Wizard which helps you through the process, but it seems you've already figured that part out. Making sure the image is acceptable from a copyright perspective though is really quite tricky though. As AndyTheGrump said, File:South-Africa-MOU-2-prem-rawat.jpeg doesn't seem to be freely licensed. If you want to talk to the copyright holder (TPRF in this case) about releasing the image I suggest reading Wikipedia:Donating copyrighted materials and especially the "Granting us permission to copy material already online" section. --Trialpears (talk) 14:03, 1 August 2021 (UTC)
Hello Trialpears,
Thank you for this helpful reply. I will check it out.
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
If your wiki uses markup like <div class="mw-content-ltr"> or <div class="mw-content-rtl"> without the required dir attribute, then these will no longer work in 2 weeks. There is a short-term fix that can be added to your local wiki's Common.css page, which is explained at T287701. From now on, all usages should include the full attributes, for example: <div class="mw-content-ltr" dir="ltr" lang="en"> or <div class="mw-content-rtl" dir="rtl" lang="he">. This also applies to some other HTML tags, such as span or code. You can find existing examples on your wiki that need to be updated, using the instructions at T287701.
Last week, all wikis had slow access or no access for 30 minutes. There was a problem with generating dynamic lists of articles on the Russian Wikinews, due to the bulk import of 200,000+ new articles over 3 days, which led to database problems. The problematic feature has been disabled on that wiki and developers are discussing if it can be fixed properly. [23][24]
Changes later this week
When adding links to a page using VisualEditor or the 2017 wikitext editor, disambiguation pages will now only appear at the bottom of search results. This is because users do not often want to link to disambiguation pages. [25]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 3 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 4 August. It will be on all wikis from 5 August (calendar).
Future changes
The team of the Wikipedia app for Android is working on communication in the app. The developers are working on how to talk to other editors and get notifications. You can read more. They are looking for users who want to test the plans. Any editor who has an Android phone and is willing to download the app can do this.
The Beta Feature for Discussion tools will be updated in the coming weeks. You will be able to subscribe to individual sections on a talk page at more wikis. You can test this now by adding ?dtenable=1 to the end of the talk page's URL (example).
I noticed you recently deleted a lot of book categories (whew!) but there are a few remaining in Category:Wikipedia book tool. Do you want to take care of these, too? If some categories should remain even though they are empty, just tag them with {{emptycat}} and then they won't show up on the empty category list where they might be tagged for deletion.
Liz I definitely plan on taking care of them! There are just a lot of them and I need to check some backlinks for some of the ones I just deleted. Hopefully all book related categories that don't apply anymore, including assessment ones, should be gone by this time tomorrow. --Trialpears (talk) 21:41, 3 August 2021 (UTC)
Okay. A few empty book categories did show up on the Empty Category list a day ago and I deleted them as uncontroversial deletion. There weren't as many as you have been tackling though. LizRead!Talk!23:57, 3 August 2021 (UTC)
FYI, PearBOT screwed up this talk page header archive merge
Pre-merge: 14 day limit. [27] Post-merge: 1 day limit. [28]
Seems like it might just be an edge case. I fixed the header, but I also thought you would want to know! Thanks for all your excellent mopping and botting.--Shibbolethink(♔♕)23:52, 5 August 2021 (UTC)
Shibbolethink Ugh, I thought that was fixed. The issue is that |units=14 days should be |age=14 and |units=days. Apparently I only solved the issue for |age=14 days. I will of course fix all other cases this occurred, if any and make sure it never happens again. Sorry about that! --Trialpears (talk) 17:50, 6 August 2021 (UTC)
The real issue turns out to be that I missed on character in a regex resulting in it only capturing the first digit. That also explains why my |units=1 month testcase worked. --Trialpears (talk) 21:09, 6 August 2021 (UTC)
Because I delete a lot of expiring drafts, I frequent WP:REFUND to see what kind of pages editors are asking to restore, in case any problems show up. Lately, some editors are asking for book restorations and I was wondering if the Village Pump discussion had any policy about these restorations. Do we just restore them under the name they were deleted under or do they need to be moved, say to Draft or User space? LizRead!Talk!23:43, 5 August 2021 (UTC)
Liz Not really, my opinion is that they can be restored wherever the person requesting it wants, presumably that would either be as a Wikipedia:Books/archive subpage or in their userspace. I'll put WP:REFUND on my watchlist for the next few weeks so I can help out. --Trialpears (talk) 17:53, 6 August 2021 (UTC)
@Funandtrvl It is displayed in a tool tip when hovering over auto archiving notice. The tool tip should be indicated by a dotted line, but I've learned that in new vector it isn't. I'm working on fixing that. --Trialpears (talk) 08:11, 7 August 2021 (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 can read but not edit 17 wikis for a few minutes on 10 August. This is planned at 05:00 UTC. This is because of work on the database. [29]
Changes later this week
The Wikimania Hackathon will take place remotely on 13 August, starting at 5:00 UTC, for 24 hours. You can participate in many ways. You can still propose projects and sessions.
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 10 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 11 August. It will be on all wikis from 12 August (calendar).
The old CSS <div class="visualClear"></div> will not be supported after 12 August. Instead, templates and pages should use <div style="clear:both;"></div>. Please help to replace any existing uses on your wiki. There are global-search links available at T287962.
Future changes
The Wikipedia Library is a place for Wikipedia editors to get access to sources. There is an extension which has a new function to tell users when they can take part in it. It will use notifications. It will start pinging the first users in September. It will ping more users later. [30]
Hello Pranithraj! I see that you've tried expanding Walter Nandalike from a redirect to an article. The article does not look ready for Wikipedia quite yet though. The main issue is that the sourcing is almost entirely to Daijiworld.com which is not an independent source. Sources like other Wikipedia articles and fandom articles are also not acceptable. My recommendation is that you create a draft using the Article Wizard if you can find multiple independent and reliable sources with significant coverage about Walter Nandalike. If there aren't sources Walter Nandalike doesn't meet Wikipedias inclusion criteria and the page will be kept a redirect. Wikipedia:Your first article is also likely to be helpful for you. --Trialpears (talk) 17:53, 9 August 2021 (UTC)
It looks like you're trying to make an autobiography, which is highly discouraged and likely to be deleted. User pages are a thing, but their main purpose has to be improving Wikipedia and not promotion. A quick Google search also gave me no indication that there are multiple reliable sources with significant coverage about you, such as news articles. You are therefore very likely wasting your time if you try again. --Trialpears (talk) 14:28, 12 August 2021 (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 add language links in the sidebar in the new Vector skin again. You do this by connecting the page to a Wikidata item. The new Vector skin has moved the language links but the new language selector cannot add language links yet. [32]
Problems
There was a problem on wikis which use the Translate extension. Translations were not updated or were replaced with the English text. The problems have been fixed. [33][34][35]
Changes later this week
A revision tag will soon be added to edits that add links to disambiguation pages. This is because these links are usually added by accident. The tag will allow editors to easily find the broken links and fix them. If your wiki does not like this feature, it can be hidden. [36]
Would you like to help improve the information about tools? Would you like to attend or help organize a small virtual meetup for your community to discuss the list of tools? Please get in touch on the Toolhub Quality Signal Sessions talk page. We are also looking for feedback from tool maintainers on some specific questions.
In the past, edits to any page in your user talk space ignored your mute list, e.g. sub-pages. Starting this week, this is only true for edits to your talk page. [37]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 17 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 18 August. It will be on all wikis from 19 August (calendar).