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The Signpost: 30 August 2018

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Please comment on Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Words to watch

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Please comment on Wikipedia talk:Biographies of living persons

The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Wikipedia talk:Biographies of living persons. Legobot (talk) 04:33, 2 September 2018 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – September 2018

News and updates for administrators from the past month (August 2018).

Administrator changes

added None
removed Asterion • Crisco 1492 • KF • Kudpung • Liz • Randykitty • Spartaz
renamed Optimist on the run → Voice of Clam

Interface administrator changes

added Amorymeltzer • Mr. Stradivarius • MusikAnimal • MSGJ • TheDJ • Xaosflux

Guideline and policy news

  • Following a "stop-gap" discussion, six users have temporarily been made interface administrators while discussion is ongoing for a more permanent process for assigning the permission. Interface administrators are now the only editors allowed to edit sitewide CSS and JavaScript pages, as well as CSS/JS pages in another user's userspace. Previously, all administrators had this ability. The right can be granted and revoked by bureaucrats.

Technical news

  • Because of a data centre test you will be able to read but not edit the wikis for up to an hour on 12 September and 10 October. This will start at 14:00 (UTC). You might lose edits if you try to save during this time. The time when you can't edit might be shorter than an hour.
  • Some abuse filter variables have changed. They are now easier to understand for non-experts. The old variables will still work but filter editors are encouraged to replace them with the new ones. You can find the list of changed variables on mediawiki.org. They have a note which says Deprecated. Use ... instead. An example is article_text which is now page_title.
  • Abuse filters can now use how old a page is. The variable is page_age.

Arbitration

  • The Arbitration Committee has resolved to perform a round of Checkuser and Oversight appointments. The usernames of all applicants will be shared with the Functionaries team, and they will be requested to assist in the vetting process. The deadline to submit an application is 23:59 UTC, 12 September, and the candidates that move forward will be published on-wiki for community comments on 18 September.
Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 23:22, 2 September 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-36

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

  • There is a new user right for users who can edit CSS and JavaScript for the entire wiki. Before this all admins could edit CSS and JavaScript. This was a security risk. This group is called interface administrators. Administrators can delete user CSS and JavaScript pages. [1][2]
  • There will be an A/B test on the Wikipedia mobile website. It starts this week. It tests how we show templates that show information about an article. The test will last two weeks. [3][4]
  • You can now use different CSS rules for different skins when you edit templates. This is because of TemplateStyles. [5]
  • wp10 in ORES is now called articlequality. [6]
  • When you get a new message on your talk page you get a yellow message in the toolbar. The preference to show or not show this has been removed. [7]

Problems

  • UploadWizard had problems with campaigns. Users could not upload files. This has now been fixed. [8]
  • You can get a notification when a link is made to a page you created. This has not worked since June. It was fixed last week. [9]

Changes later this week

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

Meetings

Future changes

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

16:47, 3 September 2018 (UTC)

Please comment on Wikipedia talk:Usage of Machine Generated Content

The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Wikipedia talk:Usage of Machine Generated Content. Legobot (talk) 04:30, 6 September 2018 (UTC)

Good feedback re ‘something more complex’

Related to discussion at MediaWiki talk:Histlegend#Suggest shorten 'Revision history statistics' and 'Revision history search' labels to 'Statistics' and 'Search' ~ Amory (u • t • c) 10:45, 7 September 2018 (UTC)

You’re right — it’s searching for text insertion or deletion. This and your earlier comment got me musing about a more radical change:

Would it help to bring this search up into the top box … so that would look something like

Search revision history

By tag [tag edit box] no later than [year] [month]

For [radio buttons for ‘insertion’ or ‘deletion’] of this text: [text edit box].

If no on that, I’d go back to our current set to get one of those as a good-enough solution. Thx, Humanengr (talk) 10:09, 25 August 2018 (UTC)

Humanengr I think you're suggesting having the actual search boxes for the blame tool on the history page? That is indeed radical! I suppose it's technically possible, but it's a fair bit more complicated. I also don't think we need to give that much more real estate to an external, non-enWiki/WMF tool. As for moving it up with the date and tag selector, I'm not sure that's something we can do. That being said, I do see a potential issue with my preferred text of "revision search" and that top box, which says "search for revisions." That is a bit muddled. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 10:43, 25 August 2018 (UTC)
Yes, my idea was to populate the external tool with the entries here. The ‘political’ issues were my primary reason for holding off on this. But if the primary concern is usability, I wonder if ownership should take a back seat. Maybe we can ask others before we rule it out completely? Is it ok if reference this discussion for that purpose? Also, I agree re “search for revision” at top. Humanengr (talk) 14:31, 25 August 2018 (UTC)
Sure, but I'm still not entirely sure what you're asking. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 15:27, 25 August 2018 (UTC)

Apologies that the Histlegend voting has gotten bogged down in the details. I'm actually ok with your choice of opt 3 ('Revision search') if the top box was distinguished by relabeling it ‘Search for revision by tag’. Does that work for you? All seem to agree on cutting the external tool labels from 3 words down to 2 and no one has objected to the reordering. So I'm wondering how to finalize this. Humanengr (talk) 22:37, 6 September 2018 (UTC)

Basically, what Xaosflux said at his talkpage. I'd do it myself, but I'm involved in that conversation and would rather leave it for another. Regarding your new suggestion, the tag search is optional, so I don't think that'd work. Maybe "Search for revisions by date or tag?" That gets really wordy, and would probably be an eyesore. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 01:13, 7 September 2018 (UTC)
Oh my — <begin admission of oops> I hadn't realized that it was search by date and/or search by tag; I thought it was and — i.e., that one had to select both date and tag. I also hadn't noticed the 'Help' at the upper right until just now (which doesn't clarify this issue). Is that just my bad or is that indicative of something else to address? <\hopefully ending oops> Humanengr (talk) 02:02, 7 September 2018 (UTC)

Early request

I realise I literally only just created the request but I'm uncertain if I did it right and so thought I'd ask someone to come check it over and if possible then approve it as soon as possible so I can start advertising it and pushing it to see how many people we can reach. The request is at Wikipedia:Geonotice for a Wikipedia meet up and Dublin2019 Edit a thon in Cork on September 13. ☕ Antiqueight chatter 20:57, 7 September 2018 (UTC)

Was struck by user, referring to this ~ Amory (u • t • c) 01:22, 8 September 2018 (UTC)

Back at you. :)

Hello, Amorymeltzer. Please check your email; you've got mail!
It may take a few minutes from the time the email is sent for it to show up in your inbox. You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{You've got mail}} or {{ygm}} template.— Moonriddengirl (talk) 21:12, 9 September 2018 (UTC)
​Boom, replied. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 21:21, 9 September 2018 (UTC)

Please comment on Wikipedia talk:Interface administrators

The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Wikipedia talk:Interface administrators. Legobot (talk) 04:29, 10 September 2018 (UTC)

Bad bot. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 10:48, 10 September 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-37

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

  • When you added or edited a template with the visual editor the input boxes were very big. This has been fixed. The input boxes will now be smaller until you click on them. Then they will change size to fit the text. [11]

Problems

  • Some diffs showed lines in the wrong order. This was fixed last week. [12]
  • Marking a cross-wiki notification as read didn't work every time. The other wiki was not updated. This has now been fixed. [13]
  • <maplink> did not work for a few days. This was because of a bug. This has now been fixed. [14]
  • {{subst:REVISIONUSER}} is used by some templates. For a period edits saved with {{subst:REVISIONUSER}} would save the previous user's name and not your username. This is now fixed. Edits made before the bug was fixed will still be wrong and need to be corrected. [15]
  • When you move a page the title still shows the old page name. The developers are working on fixing this. [16]

Changes later this week

  • Because of a data centre test you will be able to read but not edit the wikis for up to an hour on 12 September and 10 October. This will start at 14:00 (UTC). You might lose edits if you try to save during this time. The time when you can't edit might be shorter than an hour. You can read more about this.
  • Because of the data centre test there will be no new version of MediaWiki this week. Changes for this week will come next week instead.

Meetings

  • Recurrent item You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 11 Septmber at 18:30 (UTC). See how to join.
  • Recurrent item Advanced item You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 12 September at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

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

22:35, 10 September 2018 (UTC)

Please comment on Talk:Machine Intelligence Research Institute

The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Talk:Machine Intelligence Research Institute. Legobot (talk) 04:30, 13 September 2018 (UTC)

Can you take away my Rollback?

No longer need as I am vanishing. Thank you The Kothlover|Speak to me!|Open the Records 20:11, 15 September 2018 (UTC)

 Done ~ Amory (u • t • c) 20:49, 15 September 2018 (UTC)

Please comment on Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)

The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Wikipedia:Village pump (policy). Legobot (talk) 04:28, 17 September 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-38

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 Wikimedia Commons mobile app has a new version. Images uploaded using Nearby are now automatically added to the associated Wikidata item. You can browse other images on Commons. You can see your achievements and your upload statistics. It has also fixed some bugs. [17]
  • Advanced item MediaWiki web requests now have a time limit of 60 seconds for GET requests and 200 seconds for POST requests. [18]

Problems

  • You could not see the menu on the notifications page on the mobile version. This has now been fixed. [19]

Changes later this week

  • Special:AncientPages can hide disambiguation pages. [20]
  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 18 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 19 September. It will be on all wikis from 20 September (calendar).

Meetings

Future changes

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

21:57, 17 September 2018 (UTC)

Please comment on Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)

The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Wikipedia:Village pump (policy). Legobot (talk) 04:30, 20 September 2018 (UTC)

Please comment on Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard

The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard. Legobot (talk) 04:32, 24 September 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-39

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 preferences form will change to use the standard look. If you see any problems please report them on Phabricator. [21]
  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 25 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 26 September. It will be on all wikis from 27 September (calendar).

Meetings

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

15:22, 24 September 2018 (UTC)

Reinstate the Janhvi Kapoor page, please?

Hi Amorymeltzer,

(Please bear with me as I am going to explain a sequence of events here, including proper links for your convenience and verification)

I see that back in July 2018 you protected the actress' Janhvi Kapoor page for 'persistent disruptive editing:'

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Janhvi_Kapoor&action=edit

I understand that decision, since that was before her film released and thus she was not considered a 'notable' figure as per WP:NACTOR standards. However, since that time, her first film as a leading actress has released (Dhadak, in July 2018), and she is now confirmed to have signed a second film with a huge star-cast, Takht. She is also the new brand ambassador for a cosmetics company, Nykaa:

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/money/jhanvi-kapoor-seems-happy-as-brand-ambassador-of-the-popular-cosmetic-brand-nykaa-filmibeat/vp-BBNev4r

Those considerations, plus the fact that she has LONG since had a tremendous fan following amongst teenagers due to being the daughter of one of India's most famous actresses, Sridevi, (thus also fitting the WP:NACTOR criteria for "Has a large fan base or a significant "cult" following."), makes me believe she is more than ready to have her own page. I think common sense would dictate that she is; as a matter of fact, her Dhadak co-star, Ishaan Khatter, has long-since had his own page (since April 2018, after his first film but BEFORE his second film had released, just like Janhvi now) - and Khatter is himself far less popular visbility-wise in social media, than Janhvi is.

I recently tried to reinstate the page, but my edits were undone by User:GSS - see here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Janhvi_Kapoor&action=history

Looking at the recent contribution history, you can see that User:GSS first said that it was a case of WP:TOOSOON, to which I argued that it was not and backed up with facts. GSS then said it still didn't cover the WP:NACTOR rules and said that I could work on a draftspace and submit it for review. Personally, since I do believe it covers the WP:NACTOR rules, I don't believe I need to submit a draftspace for a review, as there is little to review in the first place. I initially was going to submit a 'Request for Undeletion,' but realized that I needed to first talk to the user who deleted/protected it first, which is you.

Looking at your protection log for the Janhvi Kapoor page (https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Janhvi_Kapoor&action=edit) I see that you put the date 15 October 2018 as the expiration date; however I see that date as arbitrary and don't know why it in particular was picked. I believe now is a good a time as any for her to have her own page.

So I please request you to unlock that page and allow me to create it. I have multiple news articles and interviews with her as verifiable sources, and she herself has done numerous interviews with reputed news sources (such as Bollywood Hungama, Film Companion, etc) to her credit. So let me know if you can help, thanks.

Rush922 (talk) 09:37, 24 September 2018 (UTC)

Amory, there is an ongoing discussion at GSS's t/p regarding this.Please decline.Thanks, :-) ∯WBGconverse 14:33, 24 September 2018 (UTC)
While I protected the page, that clearly is no impediment to your editing, and I am not "in charge" of whether it is an article or redirect. The AfD was closed by a different sysop, I merely protected the page to prevent edit warring. I have no particular authority here — rather, the controlling interest is the AfD, and whether the subject's notability has materially changed. You feel it has, and have been challenged on that front, so the correct thing to do is to discuss it, whether at User_talk:GSS#Reinvoking_a_deleted_page as WBG has noted or Talk:Janhvi_Kapoor. What would be best would be to draft an article in draft or userspace, and use that to show folks if notability has been met or not. Please do not continue to try and restore the article now that a discussion is underway. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 15:43, 24 September 2018 (UTC)
Amory, thank you for your helpful and unbiased answer, and for showing me who really has the final say on the matter, I was confused initially. Now that a discussion is underway, I will most certainly continue it and seek a response from the committee who deliberated on the deletion in the first place. I would rather move any further discussion away from User_talk:GSS#Reinvoking_a_deleted_page as that is User:GSS' personal space and I believe the issue warrants its own page. I am going to create a draft page soon and will notify anyone who would like to review it, to come do so, particularly those who deliberated for its deletion initially. After I create it, I will return to this space (and User:GSS' talk page) and inform you. Thanks again.
Rush922 (talk) 17:29, 24 September 2018 (UTC)
Amory, its me again. I created the subpage/draft to reinstate Janhvi Kapoor's page: here is the link:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Rush922/subpage/JanhviK
I couldn't open Kapoor's draft page, as it was blocked, and the talk-page on the original Janhvi Kapoor page wouldn't let me cite sources, so I had to use a subpage. I suppose we can use the Talk Page to discuss it. I am now going to invite the original delegators of the earlier deletion process to the page as well - but I'm not sure how it goes, how do I know when people are done discussing and ready to make a consensus? And how long does that usually take? Let me know if there is anything else I should know. Thanks.
Rush922 (talk) 20:31, 24 September 2018 (UTC)
It will take what it will take — remember, we are all volunteers here, editing as a hobby. I imagine any users opining will do so in the next few days. A consensus may emerge from the discussion; I also imagine it will be clear. More importantly, Rush922, where is the license for File:Janhvi Kapoor Nykaa launch event crop.jpg? You cropped it from Bollywood Hungama, but unless you can provide proof they specifically released it under the CC-BY-SA license, your cropping out their logo and uploading the file is a copyright violation, and you should request its removal from commons. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 20:52, 24 September 2018 (UTC)
Thanks for the clarification. I have already messaged the original page-lock admin User:Patar knight to invite him to the page, and will do so for the other deliberators soon. As for the cropped photo, I did indeed verify that it was released by Creative Commons before I cropped it- here is the original link below. I will add the code for the CC license and validation on its source page:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Janhvi_Kapoor_snapped_at_Nykaa_launch_event_(05).jpg
Thanks and happy discussing.
Rush922 (talk) 20:59, 24 September 2018 (UTC)
Great, thanks! There's a template you can used to link the original (I don't know which one offhand) which should make things easier. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 21:04, 24 September 2018 (UTC)
Got it. By the way, I've already pinged all the original deliberators to the talk page of the new draft page - but how can I invite fresh/new reviewers? Is there a page or a way to flag the page so as to invite people to come and review it freely? Thanks Rush922 (talk) 21:34, 24 September 2018 (UTC)
Leaving a note at Talk:Janhvi_Kapoor should be sufficient. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 21:37, 24 September 2018 (UTC)

Ready ...

.. whenever you have a moment. Thank you so much, Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 21:19, 24 September 2018 (UTC)

And we're off, bon chance! ~ Amory (u • t • c) 21:27, 24 September 2018 (UTC)
✅ Atsme✍🏻📧 21:53, 24 September 2018 (UTC)
I knew JLAN would succumb eventually ;-) Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 11:02, 25 September 2018 (UTC)
Awesome find btw. I definitely agree that ​MRG could be added to Category:Wikipedians that are always right. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 18:10, 25 September 2018 (UTC)
I have asked MRG if she can somehow persuade Crow to step up to the plate and get a mop and bucket too (I haven't named him directly, but it's pretty obvious that's who I'm talking about). I know he hasn't been particularly persuasive to either of us, but possibly the sheer gravitas of a MRG nomination will alleviate concerns. Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 19:23, 25 September 2018 (UTC)

Please comment on Wikipedia talk:Shortcut

The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Wikipedia talk:Shortcut. Legobot (talk) 04:29, 28 September 2018 (UTC)

The Signpost: 1 October 2018

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:44, 1 October 2018 (UTC)

Please comment on Template talk:Death year and age

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Tech News: 2018-40

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

Recent changes

  • Ordinary pages can no longer be loaded as javascript. You could do this using ?action=raw&ctype=text/javascript in the URL. Only fully protected pages in the MediaWiki: namespace or user javascript subpages can be loaded as javascript now. This is for better security. [22][23]

Problems

  • New and updated translations from translatewiki.net will not reach the wikis for a while. You can still translate messages on translatewiki.net. The Wikimedia wikis will be updated with the new translations later. This is because of work on the translation system. [24][25]

Changes later this week

  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 2 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 3 October. It will be on all wikis from 4 October (calendar).

Meetings

  • Recurrent item Advanced item You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 3 October at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.
  • You can join the meeting with the Wikimedia Foundation Search Platform team. The meeting will be on 3 October at 15:00 UTC. See how to join if you want to know how the search function works or have questions.

Future changes

  • Because of a data centre test you will be able to read but not edit the wikis for up to an hour on 10 October. This will start at 14:00 (UTC). You might lose edits if you try to save during this time. The time when you can't edit might be shorter than an hour. You can read more about this.

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

17:34, 1 October 2018 (UTC)

Results from global Wikimedia survey 2018 are published

Hello! A few months ago the Wikimedia Foundation invited you to take a survey about your experiences on Wikipedia. You signed up to receive the results. The report is now published on Meta-Wiki! We asked contributors 170 questions across many different topics like diversity, harassment, paid editing, Wikimedia events and many others.

Read the report or watch the presentation, which is available only in English. Add your thoughts and comments to the report talk page. Feel free to share the report on Wikipedia/Wikimedia or on your favorite social media. Thanks!
--EGalvez (WMF)

19:25, 1 October 2018 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – October 2018

News and updates for administrators from the past month (September 2018).

Administrator changes

added Justlettersandnumbers • L235
removed Bgwhite • HorsePunchKid • J Greb • KillerChihuahua • Rami R • Winhunter

Interface administrator changes

added Cyberpower678 • Deryck Chan • Oshwah • Pharos • Ragesoss • Ritchie333

Oversight changes

removed Guerillero • NativeForeigner • Snowolf • Xeno

Guideline and policy news

Technical news

  • Partial blocks should be available for testing in October on the Test Wikipedia and the Beta-Cluster. This new feature allows admins to block users from editing specific pages and in the near-future, namespaces and uploading files. You can expect more updates and an invitation to help with testing once it is available.
  • The Foundations' Anti-Harassment Tools team is currently looking for input on how to measure the effectiveness of blocks. This is in particular related to how they will measure the success of the aforementioned partial blocks.
  • Because of a data centre test, you will be able to read but not edit the Wikimedia projects for up to an hour on 10 October. This will start at 14:00 (UTC). You might lose edits if you try to save during this time.

Arbitration

  • The Arbitration Committee has, by motion, amended the procedure on functionary inactivity.
  • The community consultation for 2018 CheckUser and Oversight appointments has concluded. Appointments will be made by October 11.
  • Following a request for comment, the size of the Arbitration Committee will be decreased to 13 arbitrators, starting in 2019. Additionally, the minimum support percentage required to be appointed to a two-year term on ArbCom has been increased to 60%. ArbCom candidates who receive between 50% and 60% support will be appointed to one-year terms instead.
  • Nominations for the 2018 Arbitration Committee Electoral Commission are being accepted until 12 October. These are the editors who help run the ArbCom election smoothly. If you are interested in volunteering for this role, please consider nominating yourself.
Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 20:12, 5 October 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-41

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

Problems

  • There was a problem when you copied and pasted from a table with the visual editor. It could add href where it shouldn't be. This has now been fixed. [27]

Changes later this week

  • Because of a data centre test you will be able to read but not edit the wikis for up to an hour on 10 October. This will start at 14:00 (UTC). You might lose edits if you try to save during this time. The time when you can't edit might be shorter than an hour. You can read more about this.
  • Because of the data centre test there will be no new version of MediaWiki this week. Changes for this week will come next week instead.

Meetings

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

23:38, 8 October 2018 (UTC)

YGM

Hello, Amorymeltzer. Please check your email; you've got mail!
It may take a few minutes from the time the email is sent for it to show up in your inbox. You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{You've got mail}} or {{ygm}} template.

Trijnsteltalk 10:17, 9 October 2018 (UTC)

Question....

Hi, Amory - is Moonriddengirl on vacation or leave of absence? I left a comment on her TP and she hasn't responded. If she is away for a while, would you please take a look at my question?? Thank you. Atsme✍🏻📧 03:54, 19 September 2018 (UTC)

I wouldn't want to speak for her, but my understanding is that Moonriddengirl is somewhat busy so may not see or respond to messages for a while. I'm not sure what your actual question is; it seems you've raised the specter of copyright issues, but are more concerned with whether the article in questions meets notability guidelines rather than any particular issue with the editor, is that correct? They replied to your message, which I presume is what prompted this query to me, but I would think it more useful to first engage your concerns with them directly, there or at the article's talkpage. Are you asking me and MRG whether we think the article should go to AfD? ~ Amory (u • t • c) 13:17, 19 September 2018 (UTC)
Well, the copyright issue would probably prevail but yes to your last question, too. I prefer to not engage the user until after my other questions are answered. I first went to MRG because of her prior interaction here regarding a similar issue. Atsme✍🏻📧 11:54, 20 September 2018 (UTC)
Adding - this link also raised my concerns. I did some random checks using Earwig's Copyvio Detector, and got the following percentages as potential copyvios:
  1. 42.5%
  2. 21.3%
  3. 45.1%
  4. 62.9%
  5. 71%
  6. 59.5%
I think the links I've already provided, and the list just above needs admin attention rather than my engaging in a discussion with the editor but if you believe otherwise, I'll be happy to consider your recommendation. Atsme✍🏻📧 13:00, 20 September 2018 (UTC)
Atsme has no basis to call for the article to be deleted. On Moonriddengirl's talk page, she tried to suggest that Sexual Preference has not received significant coverage in reliable sources. I have no idea why a person would make such a claim, but it is obviously and blatantly wrong. Sexual Preference received many reviews, both in the popular press and in scientific and academic publications, as well as many subsequent discussions in scholarly literature. That should be immediately obvious simply from reading the article. The article has already passed through WP:GAN and achieved good article status, which makes it pretty incredible to claim that the book it is about is simply not notable. Claiming that it is not notable is not only a slur against my competence, but against the competence of Midnightblueowl as well. You will note that at no stage during the good article review did Midnightblueowl question the book's notability. She can speak for herself, but I presume the reason she did not do so is the obvious one: there was much more than enough evidence of the book's notability in the article. As for Atsme's refusal to respond to me directly, that's plain rude. FreeKnowledgeCreator (talk) 21:25, 20 September 2018 (UTC)

(edit conflict)@Atsme: I pretty much always favor engaging the user, but that's probably a fault of mine. In this case, I think the GNG arguments are muddying the waters, as seen above, since it seems the issue is ongoing copyright problems. From a quick perusal the second and fourth links look pretty blatant to me, and the fifth link is probably guilty of far too much over-quoting. Those are different articles (not listed at the CCI page, FWIW) than the initial one you raised, so I'm still a bit confused by what you mean by you "questions," since this would certainly seem to be about the editor and not the one page. The CCI page appears rather dormant, so I think the best thing would be to 1. Remove as much of the offending material as you can then 2. List one or two at WP:CP, noting the larger picture. The folks at CP should have a better feel for material on this scale, although AN is an option I suppose.

FreeKnowledgeCreator Ignoring the GNG arguments, can you explain the apparent copyright issues? I haven't seen anything from you on that topic, and it would seem there is a real concern here. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 21:35, 20 September 2018 (UTC)

If there are copyright issues, then we can discuss this like civilized people and get them resolved. Whatever changes are necessary to avoid copyright violation can be made. It is irritating, however, to see someone try to claim that a subject that it is overwhelmingly obviously notable is not notable. FreeKnowledgeCreator (talk) 21:41, 20 September 2018 (UTC)
The second link, mentioned above by Amorymeltzer, concerns Homosexuality: A Philosophical Inquiry. The apparent copyright violations are centered on its "summary" section. If someone wants to simply blank that section to deal with any possible copyright violations, they can go ahead. I wouldn't revert such an edit. A less drastic solution might be possible, but I would be willing to accept total removal of the section. I don't much like that section, in the way it is currently written, anyway, even aside from the risk of copyright violations. If need be I can write a completely new version free from copyright violations. FreeKnowledgeCreator (talk) 23:28, 20 September 2018 (UTC)
The fourth link concerns Violence and the Sacred. That one is difficult to make sense of, because the page the article is being compared with is a past version of the Goodreads.com page that can be found at goodreads.com/book/show/337521.Violence_and_the_Sacred, and I certainly didn't copy anything from that page, which I never saw until now. The article content was actually based on Chris Fleming's book René Girard: Violence and Mimesis. The current version of the Goodreads.com page does not contain the same material being compared to what is currently in the Violence and the Sacred article. I don't know what happened in this case, but possibly a past version of the Goodreads.com page copied from the Wikipedia article? Chronologically that is perfectly possible. The material was added to the Wikipedia article in 2013; following the paragraph of compared text in the past version of the Goodreads.com page you can find the text, "see review Jan 17, 2016". FreeKnowledgeCreator (talk) 00:21, 21 September 2018 (UTC)
The fifth link concerns The Structure of Science. If there is over-quoting there, it should be a simple matter to cut back on quotations. FreeKnowledgeCreator (talk) 00:25, 21 September 2018 (UTC)

I don't see any issues regarding NOTABILITY with the article in question, although if there are passages which appear to be directly drawn from other, external sources then those definitely should be altered. Midnightblueowl (talk) 10:18, 21 September 2018 (UTC)

Of course. I wouldn't suggest otherwise. I'm only sorry it is even necessary to point out that this article is about a notable subject. FreeKnowledgeCreator (talk) 10:23, 21 September 2018 (UTC)
Amory, Atsme, FKC, I had hoped to look at this fairly fully today, but other things got in the way; of the pages listed by Atsme as potentially problematic, I've so far identified two where copyvio was added by IP editors in about 2013 (only one of those two listed at WP:CP so far – the other may be more directly fixable); these are precisely the #2 and #4 identified by Amory as "pretty blatant" above. But I've exhausted my Wikipedia time for today, so the others will have to wait at least until tomorrow. Sorry! Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 21:50, 21 September 2018 (UTC)
Justlettersandnumbers, I accept that you made this edit at Violence and the Sacred in good faith. However, you clearly also made it without investigating the situation carefully first. The similarities between the material you removed from the article and the material at Goodreads.com are almost certainly a result of Wikipedia content being copied by another website. Wikipedia is one of the best known and most popular sites on the internet, and it should not be unduly difficult to believe that someone might copy something they read at Wikipedia and place it on another website. Goodreads.com allows its users to post material there. The material at Violence and the Sacred was added by me, using an IP address, in 2013. It was based on Chris Fleming's book René Girard: Violence and Mimesis, and not copied from the Goodreads.com page. Looking at that page, you will find evidence that the material on it was added years after 2013, in 2016 or later. FreeKnowledgeCreator (talk) 22:31, 21 September 2018 (UTC)
That'd be these edits, right? As noted, the source is in fact dated 2009, years before you added it in 2013. The review is dated 15 Jan 2009, at which time Violence_and_the_Sacred was a redirect. So what happened? ~ Amory (u • t • c) 01:31, 22 September 2018 (UTC)
The material was based largely on Chris Fleming's book René Girard: Violence and Mimesis, as I told you. An additional source was Margaret Whitford's book Luce Irigaray: Philosophy in the Feminine. Fleming's book was published as long ago as 2004 and Whitford's book as long ago as 1991. If need be I can quote the relevant passages of the books by Fleming and Whitford and show you how similar they are to what was in the article. I understand why someone would think I copied from the Goodreads article, but if you are familiar only with that source and not with the books I cited as sources for the content I added as an IP in 2013, then you do not have all the information you need to reach a conclusion. No one actually copying from Goodreads would have cited the material to scholarly books; anyone doing so would have had to find material in them written the same way as the Goodreads article. If you look through the edits I made as an IP, you will note that I added the material very gradually, making many small changes, modifications, and adjustments as I went. This is my usual editing style, and it is the behavior of someone gradually drawing on multiple sources - the books by Fleming and Whitford. It is not what someone copying from a single source would do. FreeKnowledgeCreator (talk) 03:44, 22 September 2018 (UTC)
FreeKnowledgeCreator, actually I did carefully investigate the situation at Violence and the Sacred – I spent a good bit of time on it, to be as sure as possible of the facts. I blanked it because it contains one or more copyright violations: content copied from an external site, created (as Amory says) in 2009, was added to the article in 2013 by an IP. It's worrying to hear that that IP was you, but perhaps not as worrying as it would have been if those edits had been made after your CCI was opened. It seems that some IP addresses are going to need to be added to that investigation. The single most useful thing you could do to help is to start going through those 200 articles, listing on your talk-page which of them contains copied content, where it was copied from, and in which edit. That would be particularly useful if you have borrowed content from print sources which the rest of us may not have easy access to. Is that something you could do? Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 10:00, 22 September 2018 (UTC)
Justlettersandnumbers: I was simply wrong about some of the facts initially, in part because I wasn't very familiar with the Goodreads site and found it difficult to read the material there correctly. I realize now that the Goodreads site I am alleged to have copied from dates to 2009. Nevertheless, as I have stressed, I did not copy the content from that or any other website. I understand why it might look that way, but it isn't true. The material was based on two books - if you look up the relevant passages, the similarity between the material on those pages and the article content should be perfectly clear. FreeKnowledgeCreator (talk) 11:15, 22 September 2018 (UTC)
Regarding "The single most useful thing you could do to help is to start going through those 200 articles, listing on your talk-page which of them contains copied content, where it was copied from, and in which edit" - let me be clear that nothing is copied without attribution from a website anywhere. The sources - generally an assortment of books, book reviews, and material published in newspapers or academic journals - are already listed in those articles. Where there are direct quotations of anything, they are identified as direct quotations. Of course I can and will provide additional details as needed. You could help me by explaining exactly what you mean by "copied". You could also help by commenting in the discussion at Talk:Sexual Preference (book), where an editor has repeatedly alleged the existence of copyright violations in the article but has failed to corroborate her claims. FreeKnowledgeCreator (talk) 11:29, 22 September 2018 (UTC)

There are two paragraphs you added that are exact copied of the text at Goodreads. Your addition cited two different sources, so as far as I see it there are two possibilities given the date of the Goodreads review:

  1. Both you and the Goodreads reviewer copied that text verbatim from each of those two sources.
  2. You copied the Goodreads reviewer verbatim.

Either one would be a problem. You are suggesting that both you and the Goodreads reviewer read the same two texts and came up with the exact same same word-for-word description, which I find rather unbelievable. Is there another explanation for how these two paragraphs came to be identical? ~ Amory (u • t • c) 12:15, 22 September 2018 (UTC)

(edit conflict) FreeKnowledgeCreator, do you not understand that if you copy from a copyright source, it just doesn't matter whether you provide attribution or not, it is still copyright violation? Exceptions are, of course, properly-identified quotations, and text that is for some reason free to re-use; in those cases attribution must be provided. It is simply unimaginable that you could have written the text highlighted here in red using nothing but your own words when the exact same text had already been published elsewhere four years earlier. The only conceivable explanations are that you copied it from Goodreads, or that both you and the Goodreads reviewer copied it from some common source such as the book you mention. In neither case is it acceptable. If you did the same thing elsewhere, we need to know about it so that it can be cleaned up.
Amory, Atsme, this seems to have gone beyond what is reasonable for a user-talk-page discussion (sorry, Amory!). Would one of you perhaps like to move or copy this to a more general forum such as WT:CP, in the hope of attracting some comment from others? Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 12:19, 22 September 2018 (UTC)
I’m fine with whatever you & Amory think is best, so please take the lead. It’s still a learning process for me. Atsme✍🏻📧 13:01, 22 September 2018 (UTC)
Amorymeltzer, I can see why you think possibility 1) is "rather unbelievable". However, if you haven't checked all the sources concerned, you can't really judge this. I agree that the text I added to Violence and the Sacred is similar to the Goodreads.com article. It also happens, however, to be similar to the relevant passages of the books I mentioned, which predate that article. Given its similarity to both the books and the article, there's no reason to automatically assume I copied from the latter. FreeKnowledgeCreator (talk) 21:47, 22 September 2018 (UTC)
Justlettersandnumbers, regarding: "do you not understand that if you copy from a copyright source, it just doesn't matter whether you provide attribution or not, it is still copyright violation" - consider the context of what I was saying. I was accused of copying from a particular website with no form of attribution whatever. I was explaining in response that I've never done anything like that. I do, in fact, understand the point you are making: that "if you copy from a copyright source, it just doesn't matter whether you provide attribution or not". In the past I've been less than careful, hence these old copyvios, but I've improved my understanding since then. You write, "If you did the same thing elsewhere, we need to know about it so that it can be cleaned up." Yes: and I'll carefully check the articles I've started. As for the books I cited at Violence and the Sacred, it might help if you let me describe the relevant passages I used. Someone can look them up independently to determine that I'm not misrepresenting them. FreeKnowledgeCreator (talk) 21:47, 22 September 2018 (UTC)
It might be noted that the Goodreads.com article could have been revised following its original publication in 2009. It is possible to revise Amazon.com reviews, for example. I actually went to the trouble of setting up a Goodreads.com account just to test this issue, and sure enough, just as with Amazon.com reviews, you can revise Goodreads.com articles you have written. FreeKnowledgeCreator (talk) 04:05, 23 September 2018 (UTC)

I'm afraid I really don't have much time to participate, but I did pull up Luce Irigaray: Philosophy in the Feminine, and I'm afraid that regardless of the status of Goodreads (even if backwards copying could be proven), the content is too closely paraphrased to be retained without rewriting. I'm bolding precise duplication to make the through-thread a little more clear.

Article text Source text
Religion is seen by Girard a way of regulating social violence and creating social cohesion. He argues that through sacrifice, the violence that threatens the community is ritually cast out, turned outwards rather than inwards on to the members of the community. Girard, who sees society as an affair of men and says this explicitly, relates sacrifice to religion: he sees the religion's function as keeping violence out of the community by means of the mechanism of the scapegoat, or the ritual which substitutes for it. Irigaray uses here the work of Rene Girard and follows his line that religion is a way of regulating social violence and creating social cohesion. In [title omitted], Girard makes a direct connection between violence and the role of religion. He argues that society is perpetually threatened by self-destructive violence, that all society is based on a founding sacrifice, and that through the sacrifice, the violence that threatens the community is ritually cast out, turned outwards rather than inwards on the members of the community. (It is clear that for Girard, society is an affair of men - he says this explicitly, 1972: 198.) Girard relates the phenomenon of sacrifice to religion; he claims that the function of religion is to keep violence out of the community by means of the mechanism of the scapegoat, or the ritual which substitutes for it. source

The problem, of course, is that what was placed into our article is an abridgment of the original passage, which is derivative. Aside from direct quotations, content on Wikipedia derived from copyrighted sources must be in our own words and construction. The citation does not substitute for that.

This is the kind of review that should be happening at the CCI, but due to volunteer shortages in the area is not.

It is possible that Goodreads may have copied from us. The method I use to determine this is laborious and not always conclusive, as I review changes to the article step by step to see whether the content evolved towards or away from - it our articles becomes "more like" Goodreads, reverse copying is more likely. If it becomes "less like", the copying is more likely to be the other way around. However, in this case, the article needs repair due to its similarity to the cited source, so I'm not sure if that laborious process is necessary, especially as it only works if the content has been substantially modified. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:18, 24 September 2018 (UTC)

Thank you for your comments, Moonriddengirl. To be completely clear about it, Goodreads.com reviews can be revised, and they retain their original date of publication following such revisions. I tested this myself. I wrote a Goodreads.com review, under my real-life name, and revised it numerous times, adding new content and making other changes. It still has its original date of publication - September 22, 2018 - even though I'm still revising it in October. FreeKnowledgeCreator (talk) 01:24, 2 October 2018 (UTC)
FreeKnowledgeCreator, while I understand that this is the case, I do not think that that is material here. What I have demonstrated above is that the content is unusable because it is a summary of the book. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 01:26, 2 October 2018 (UTC)
Thank you, I understand your point. I was simply noting that the accusation I copied from Goodreads.com is baseless. Given that its articles retain their original dates of publication despite subsequent revisions to them, it is entirely possible that the Goodreads.com article I was accused of copying from in fact copied from Wikipedia despite its original date of publication being 2009. FreeKnowledgeCreator (talk) 01:29, 2 October 2018 (UTC)
Yes, this is entirely possible; as I've explained, there are processes by which I, as an administrator who evaluates copyright, would assess such a concern. However, in this case it doesn't seem like a good use of time since we cannot retain the material anyway. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 01:34, 3 October 2018 (UTC)
I don't know if anyone is following this, but I believe you will find that the French Wikipedia's article on Violence and the Sacred is based on text taken from our article and therefore I assume has the same copyright problems. FreeKnowledgeCreator (talk) 21:41, 10 October 2018 (UTC)

OS

Congratulations! I have help you this edit Hhkohh (talk) 17:09, 9 October 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for the well wishes. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 01:18, 13 October 2018 (UTC)

topicon

You might want to add: {{Oversight topicon}} — Preceding unsigned comment added by Sphilbrick (talk • contribs) 18:35, 9 October 2018 (UTC)

 Indeed! ~ Amory (u • t • c) 01:18, 13 October 2018 (UTC)

You've got mail!

Hello, Amorymeltzer. Please check your email; you've got mail!
Message added 23:14, 13 October 2018 (UTC). It may take a few minutes from the time the email is sent for it to show up in your inbox. You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{You've got mail}} or {{ygm}} template.

Thegreatluigi (talk) 23:14, 13 October 2018 (UTC)

Replied. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 01:07, 14 October 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-42

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

Problems

  • Some pages, edits and users disappeared for a short while after the server switch. Missing content and users was fixed within a day. Some preferences and other things might take a few more days to fix. [28]
  • Wikis are updated with new and updated translations from translatewiki.net again. This will happen once a week. The developers are working on fixing the problem so we can have translation updates more often again. [29]

Changes later this week

  • When you create an abuse filter that prevents edits you can now write a specific error message for it. Before this all abuse filters that prevented edits had the same error message. [30]
  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 16 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 17 October. It will be on all wikis from 18 October (calendar).

Meetings

  • There will be no more meetings with the Editing team. This is because not enough Wikimedians were interested. To tell developers which bugs you think are the most important you can use Phabricator as normal. [31]
  • Recurrent item Advanced item You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 17 October 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.

22:40, 15 October 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-43

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

Changes later this week

  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 23 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 24 October. It will be on all wikis from 25 October (calendar).

Meetings

Future changes

  • The Community Wishlist Survey begins on 29 October. The survey decides what the Community Tech team will work on. You can post proposals from 29 October to 11 November. You can vote on proposals from 16 November to 30 November.

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

23:11, 22 October 2018 (UTC)

Nomination of Bandito Tour for deletion

A discussion is taking place as to whether the article Bandito Tour is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

The article will be discussed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Bandito Tour (2nd nomination) until a consensus is reached, and anyone, including you, is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.

Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion notice from the top of the article. --woodensuperman 12:41, 26 October 2018 (UTC)

@Woodensuperman: Thanks for the message, but I only created the redirect as a result of closing the first AfD; you should notify User:MikeOwen, who turned that redirect into an article. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 12:48, 26 October 2018 (UTC)

The Signpost: 28 October 2018

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 19:09, 28 October 2018 (UTC)

Interface Edit Requests - Bot Table

Hello Amorymeltzer, as an interface administrator I wanted to let you know that there are two pages you should consider watch-listing: Wikipedia:Interface administrators' noticeboard and User:AnomieBOT/IPERTable. The later is a bot-generated table of all outstanding interface edit requests that you may be able to handle. Thank you for your continuing support of Wikipedia! — xaosflux Talk 14:40, 29 October 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-44

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 16 November to 30 November.
  • Advanced item The wikis now have a content security policy report. This means that you might get a warning in your javascript console when you load external resources in your user scripts. For security reasons it is recommended that you don't do this. It might not be possible to load external resources in your scripts in the future. [32]

Problems

  • Your watchlist can show which changes you have already seen. This did not work for a few days. It has been fixed. [33]

Changes later this week

  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 30 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 31 October. It will be on all wikis from 1 November (calendar).
  • The 2006 wikitext editor is no longer available. It will be removed from Special:Preferences. It has not been the standard editor for a long time. It was replaced by the 2010 wikitext editor. [34][35]

Meetings

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

20:08, 29 October 2018 (UTC)

What I block from

I pretty much always block from a user's talk page. Best, Kevin (aka L235 · t · c) 02:57, 18 October 2018 (UTC)

Thanks! I presume you've usually been to their contribs page before that though, right? ~ Amory (u • t • c) 15:22, 18 October 2018 (UTC)
Yes, always, of course Kevin (aka L235 · t · c) 05:58, 2 November 2018 (UTC)

Self-Block Request

Over the past few days, I have engaged in some WP:EW behavior, especially with Drdpw. I am requesting this sysop to WP:BLOCKME for a period of two weeks because these activities have been on pages that lead to a previous block of this user in January 2017. I am trying to be proactive in correcting behavior so I can be the best and most valuable Wikipedia user possible. A unique extenuating circumstance that may warrant granting this request may be found on the user page Sleyece under the heading "FIRST." I don't know if that is the culprit, but two weeks would give me more that enough time to make some slight dietary changes if it is. If I am denied this request, I may simply take a WikiBreak in preparation for Thanksgiving. Thank you for the consideration. -- Sleyece (talk) 20:03, 2 November 2018 (UTC)

@Sleyece: Can you confirm that you do in fact want this? I'm asking because If I am denied this request, I may simply take a WikiBreak in preparation for Thanksgiving suggests you don't feel you need this. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 20:22, 2 November 2018 (UTC)
I'm sorry, I was simply implying an alternative. I am notoriously bad at keeping my hiatuses from English Wikipedia. If there is a medical issue that I need some time to address, I DO need this block because if I don't get it my behavior will get more erratic until my metabolism has time to adjust. -- Sleyece (talk) 20:28, 2 November 2018 (UTC)
 Done ~ Amory (u • t • c) 20:31, 2 November 2018 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – November 2018

News and updates for administrators from the past month (October 2018).

Guideline and policy news

Technical news

  • Partial blocks is now available for testing on the Test Wikipedia. The new functionality allows you to block users from editing specific pages. Bugs may exist and can be reported on the local talk page or on Meta. A discussion regarding deployment to English Wikipedia will be started by community liaisons sometime in the near future.
  • A user script is now available to quickly review unblock requests.
  • The 2019 Community Wishlist Survey is now accepting new proposals until November 11, 2018. The results of this survey will determine what software the Wikimedia Foundation's Community Tech team will work on next year. Voting on the proposals will take place from November 16 to November 30, 2018. Specifically, there is a proposal category for admins and stewards that may be of interest.

Arbitration

  • Eligible editors will be invited to nominate themselves as candidates in the 2018 Arbitration Committee Elections starting on November 4 until November 13. Voting will begin on November 19 and last until December 2.
  • The Arbitration Committee's email address has changed to arbcom-en@wikimedia.org. Other email lists, such as functionaries-en and clerks-l, remain unchanged.
Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 07:18, 3 November 2018 (UTC)

Soft redirects to Wiktionary in the mainspace

Further information: Special:Diff/866819295 and Special:Diff/866819408

{{Wiktionary redirect}} is indeed the appropriate template, see WP:SOFTSISTER. Plain {{soft redirect}} is not used in the mainspace. Warm regards, — Godsy (TALKCONT) 19:08, 3 November 2018 (UTC)

Thanks — I could have sworn I knew that, but it just looked... I dunno, wrong. Appreciate the correction. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 19:17, 3 November 2018 (UTC)

Arbitration clarification request archived

An arbitration clarification request concerning the Great Irish Famine arbitration case (t) (ev / t) (w / t) (pd / t) has been closed. For the Arbitration Committee, Kevin (aka L235 · t · c) 05:21, 5 November 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-45

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

Changes later this week

  • You can choose to see edit conflicts in a two-column view. This is a beta feature. You can find it in your preferences. The interface for the two-column edit conflict will change. You can read more.
  • When you edit with the visual editor you can use the "Automatic" citation tab. This helps you generate citations. You will now be able to write plain text citations or the title of a journal article or a book in this tab. This will search the Crossref and WorldCat databases and add the top result. [37]
  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 6 November. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 7 November. It will be on all wikis from 8 November (calendar).

Meetings

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17:28, 5 November 2018 (UTC)

Oops

Oops. Resetting block to 31 hours. Airplaneman ✈ 20:18, 5 November 2018 (UTC)

👍 ~ Amory (u • t • c) 20:20, 5 November 2018 (UTC)

User 195.11.204.67

My apologies if I am in the wrong place; if so please redirect. On August 6, you blocked User talk:195.11.204.67 for a period of 3 months. Yesterday, they have popped up again. Take a look at their edits since and see if further action is necessary. You might also consider a possible link to Special:Contributions/213.205.241.0. Emeraude (talk) 10:05, 7 November 2018 (UTC)

Thanks, done! ~ Amory (u • t • c) 11:41, 7 November 2018 (UTC)
Thank you. Emeraude (talk) 15:34, 7 November 2018 (UTC)

New Pages Patrol

Hey, would you mind re-adding me to the NPP group? I haven't been terribly active on the wiki lately, so I either didn't notice or forgot about NPP until now. Would you say I could be trusted with NPP? Thanks, PrussianOwl (talk) 21:22, 6 November 2018 (UTC)

Good to see you PrussianOwl! I think it'd be good to hold off a bit and get into the swings of tagging, AfD, etc. for a while before going back to NPP. There are some things on your talkpage that give me pause so that makes the most sense to me. Sound good? ~ Amory (u • t • c) 11:45, 7 November 2018 (UTC)
Yeah, seems fair enough. I'm a little rusty, admittedly. Thanks, PrussianOwl (talk) 18:53, 7 November 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-46

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

  • Some old mobile browsers can use the watchlist again. This has not worked for a while. These browsers are called grade C browsers. This helps for example Windows Phone 8.1 with Internet Explorer and Lumia 535 with Windows 10. [38]

Problems

  • You can choose to see edit conflicts in a two-column view. This is a beta feature. You can find it in your preferences. Users who use this view saw the edit conflict resolution page when they wanted to see a preview. This has been fixed. [39][40][41]

Changes later this week

  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 13 November. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 14 November. It will be on all wikis from 15 November (calendar).

Meetings

Future changes

  • You can use the content translation tool to translate articles. The developers are working on a new version. One of the changes will be a maintenance category. Articles where users add a lot of text from machine translation without changing it will be in that category. This is so the community can review it. The users will also have been warned before they publish the article that it has a lot of unchanged text from machine translations. [42]

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

19:21, 12 November 2018 (UTC)

Unprotection

I saw your ping earlier on the unprotection. Thanks for handling that for me. It's amazing all these years later that some pages I protected are just having protection removed. Keep up the good work! Mark Arsten (talk) 22:56, 14 November 2018 (UTC)

"List of Walt Disney and Buena Vista video releases"

Just want to point you to WT:DISNEY, since you have helped me in this in the past with this. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Username Needed (talk • contribs) 12:35, 18 November 2018 (UTC)

Replied there. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 12:41, 18 November 2018 (UTC)

ArbCom 2018 election voter message

Hello, Amorymeltzer. Voting in the 2018 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23.59 on Sunday, 2 December. All users who registered an account before Sunday, 28 October 2018, made at least 150 mainspace edits before Thursday, 1 November 2018 and are not currently blocked are eligible 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 2018 election, please review the candidates and submit your choices on the voting page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:42, 19 November 2018 (UTC)

ArbCom 2018 election voter message

Hello, Amorymeltzer. Voting in the 2018 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23.59 on Sunday, 3 December. All users who registered an account before Sunday, 28 October 2018, made at least 150 mainspace edits before Thursday, 1 November 2018 and are not currently blocked are eligible 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 2018 election, please review the candidates and submit your choices on the voting page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:42, 19 November 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-47

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

Recent changes

  • You can vote on proposals in the Community Wishlist Survey. The survey decides what the Community Tech team will work on. You can vote until 30 November.
  • Advanced item There is an A/B test for sameAs data. This is to make it easier to find the right information with a search engine. This changes the metadata for a wiki page. It doesn't change how the page looks. [43]

Changes later this week

  • There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

Meetings

Future changes

  • The Wikimedia wikis use templates to show readers there are problems with the content on some pages. For example if there are no sources or the page needs to be rewritten. The mobile website will soon show more information when you use these templates. Some templates may need to be updated. [44]
  • The Education Program extension was removed from all Wikimedia projects. The database tables used by the extension will be archived. This will happen in a month. If you want the information on your wiki you should move it to a normal wiki page. [45]

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

23:28, 19 November 2018 (UTC)

About Template:Did you know nominations/Joseph Forbes (educator), Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Joseph Barlow Forbes and so on

Hi Amory,

"If you are creating a new page with different content, please continue. If you are recreating a page similar to the previously deleted page, or are unsure, please first contact the user(s) who performed the action(s) listed below" says the pop-up message when I access both those now deleted mainspace articles.
I ask for your opinion and advice about this. Pete AU aka --Shirt58 (talk) 10:37, 21 November 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for the heads up — I replied at Template:Did you know nominations/Joseph Forbes (educator). ~ Amory (u • t • c) 16:18, 21 November 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-48

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

Recent changes

  • On wikis with translatable pages you could create a mess when you moved a page that had translatable subpages. A subpage is when you use / to create a new page: /wiki/Page/Subpage. The subpages would be moved but not the translations. The subpages are no longer automatically be moved. This is to make it safer to move pages. [46]

Changes later this week

  • The advanced search interface will be available by default on all Wikimedia wikis. It makes it easier to use some of the special search functions that most editors don't know exist. It's already active on German, Farsi, Arabic and Hungarian Wikipedia. [47]
  • Special:UnusedCategories show empty categories with no files or other categories. You can soon choose to not show soft redirect categories or some maintenance categories there. You can do this with the magic word __EXPECTUNUSEDCATEGORY__. [48]
  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 27 November. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 28 November. It will be on all wikis from 29 November (calendar).

Meetings

Future changes

  • Advanced item The mw.util.jsMessage() function was deprecated in 2012. It will be removed next week. Look for the warning Use of "mw.util.jsMessage" is deprecated in the JavaScript console to know if you use an affected script or gadget. If you are a gadget maintainer you should check if your JavaScript code contains mw.util.jsMessage. There is a migration guide. It explains how to use mw.notify instead. [49]

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

22:22, 26 November 2018 (UTC)

Blocked

Thanks for the help! Can you imagine a way to get the name of the new interface message? I searched for the text You are not allowed to unblock yourself, but all I got were a few discussion pages where someone was stating that as a summary of the policy. I also tried to change my preferences so that qqx was my default language, but it's not an option. Nyttend (talk) 02:25, 27 November 2018 (UTC)

@Nyttend: It's MediaWiki:ipbnounblockself ~ Amory (u • t • c) 02:30, 27 November 2018 (UTC)
I've added a link to my comment at WP:VP. Thanks! Curious, how did you get the name? Nyttend (talk) 02:33, 27 November 2018 (UTC)
From experience I know that a lot of the block messages start with ip, but in this case rather than guess/search I went to mw:Manual:User_rights and looked at the code. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 11:17, 27 November 2018 (UTC)

Provided Southwick

Hi! I am new to Wikipedia and got a notice that you deleted a page you made about Provided Southwick. The notification said to first contact you to see what the content was before I make a new one. -Slfarooqui (talk) 17:33, 28 November 2018 (UTC)

Hi Slfarooqui, this is about Draft:Provided Southwick right? There was only one edit, but I can restore it if you'd like to use that draft as a starting off point. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 18:40, 28 November 2018 (UTC)

Request for Rollback Permission

Hi! I'm requesting rollback permissions because I think I've got Twinkle down and I would like to move on to using huggle so I can fight vandals more efficiently. Thanks!! Philipnelson99 (talk) 07:44, 28 November 2018 (UTC)

Hey Philipnelson99 I'm glad you're so enthusiastic — I've taken a look at a bunch of your reverts, and they all look good so far! Still, nearly all of your edits have been made in the past three days, so I think it'd be good if you spent some more time being active to get a feel for some of the more complex cases and policies. You just started leaving messages for users yesterday, but I think if you keep up the good work, rollback's a sure thing. Does that sound good? ~ Amory (u • t • c) 18:52, 28 November 2018 (UTC)
Hi Amorymeltzer I understand, I'm just really eager haha. I didn't realize the reply thing was part of twinkle, so it's probably best to wait a little bit ~ Philipnelson99 (talk) 18:56, 28 November 2018 (UTC)

Revdel

Could you remove my edit at Backup please. [Username Needed] 15:24, 29 November 2018 (UTC)

The Signpost: 1 December 2018

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 04:46, 1 December 2018 (UTC)

The Oversighter's Barnstar

The (information removed) Barnstar
For your tireless work handling the cleanup and oversight of various time-sensitive revisions. I am happy to present you The Oversighter's Barnstar! Congratulations, Mifter (talk) 20:26, 2 December 2018 (UTC)
(Redacted) ~ Amory (u • t • c) 01:43, 3 December 2018 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – December 2018

News and updates for administrators from the past month (November 2018).

Administrator changes

readded Al Ameer son • Randykitty • Spartaz
removed Boson • Daniel J. Leivick • Efe • Esanchez7587 • Fred Bauder • Garzo • Martijn Hoekstra • Orangemike

Interface administrator changes

removedDeryck Chan

Guideline and policy news

  • Following a request for comment, the Mediation Committee is now closed and will no longer be accepting case requests.
  • A request for comment is in progress to determine whether members of the Bot Approvals Group should satisfy activity requirements in order to remain in that role.
  • A request for comment is in progress regarding whether to change the administrator inactivity policy, such that administrators "who have made no logged administrative actions for at least 12 months may be desysopped". Currently, the policy states that administrators "who have made neither edits nor administrative actions for at least 12 months may be desysopped".
  • A proposal has been made to temporarily restrict editing of the Main Page to interface administrators in order to mitigate the impact of compromised accounts.

Technical news

Arbitration

Miscellaneous

  • In late November, an attacker compromised multiple accounts, including at least four administrator accounts, and used them to vandalize Wikipedia. If you have ever used your current password on any other website, you should change it immediately. Sharing the same password across multiple websites makes your account vulnerable, especially if your password was used on a website that suffered a data breach. As these incidents have shown, these concerns are not pure fantasies.
  • Wikipedia policy requires administrators to have strong passwords. To further reinforce security, administrators should also consider enabling two-factor authentication. A committed identity can be used to verify that you are the true account owner in the event that your account is compromised and/or you are unable to log in.

Obituaries

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 03:36, 3 December 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-49

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

  • Admins will not be able to unblock themselves if they are blocked by someone other than themselves. This is because it can cause damage if someone else takes over an admin account and other admins can't block them. If this is a problem for your community you can report it on Phabricator. You can also ask questions on Meta. There is a discussion on Phabricator about how to solve this if two admins fight with each other on a small wiki. [50]
  • Small SVG images are now bigger when you see them in MediaViewer. [51]
  • You can go to a section from the edit summary by clicking on the section name. Before this you had to click on the arrow. [52]
  • When you jumped to a footnote that was referenced several times in an article it could be difficult to see where you were in the text. Now there are jump marks and highlights to help you find your way back. [53][54]

Changes later this week

  • There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

Meetings

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

16:12, 3 December 2018 (UTC)

December 2018 GOCE newsletter

Guild of Copy Editors December 2018 Newsletter

Hello and welcome to the December 2018 GOCE newsletter. Here is what's been happening since the August edition.

Thanks to everyone who participated in the August blitz (results), which focused on Requests and the oldest backlog month. Of the twenty editors who signed up, eleven editors recorded 37 copy edits.

For the September drive (results), of the twenty-three people who signed up, nineteen editors completed 294 copy edits.

Our October blitz (results) focused on Requests, geography, and food and drink articles. Of the fourteen people who signed up, eleven recorded a total of 57 copy edits.

For the November drive (results), twenty-two people signed up, and eighteen editors recorded 273 copy edits. This helped to bring the backlog to a six-month low of 825 articles.

The December blitz will run for one week, from 16 to 22 December. Sign up now!

Elections: Nominations for the Guild's coordinators for the first half of 2019 will be open from 1 to 15 December. Voting will then take place and the election will close on 31 December at 23:59 UTC. Positions for Guild coordinators, who perform the important behind-the-scenes tasks that keep our project running smoothly, are open to all Wikipedians in good standing. We welcome self-nominations, so please consider nominating yourself if you've ever thought about helping out; it's your Guild and it doesn't run itself!

Thank you all again for your participation; we wouldn't be able to achieve what we have without you! Cheers from your GOCE coordinators; Reidgreg, Baffle gab1978, Jonesey95, Miniapolis and Tdslk.

>>> Sign up for the December blitz! <<<
>>> Participate in the Coordinator elections! <<<
To discontinue receiving GOCE newsletters, please remove your name from our mailing list.

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:04, 3 December 2018 (UTC)

You've got mail

Hello, Amorymeltzer. Please check your email; you've got mail!
It may take a few minutes from the time the email is sent for it to show up in your inbox. You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{You've got mail}} or {{ygm}} template. — JJMC89 (T·C) 23:46, 2 December 2018 (UTC)
​Received and replied. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 01:43, 3 December 2018 (UTC)
Replied — JJMC89 (T·C) 05:40, 3 December 2018 (UTC)

I saw your ping on IRC a few hours after you had logged off. I'm usually around in the evening, (I'm a few hours behind you.) or you can shoot me an email. — JJMC89 (T·C) 07:06, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

Replied. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 11:42, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

Userpage

Why can I not edit my userpage now? I can surely write whatever i want on there The Earth is Flat and stupid (talk) 20:31, 3 December 2018 (UTC)

@The Earth is Flat and stupid: You are blocked and are not allowed to edit your userpage. That is all. Kb03 (talk) 20:33, 3 December 2018 (UTC)

Whack!

You've been whacked with a wet trout.

Don't take this too seriously. Someone just wants to let you know that you did something silly.

The Earth is Flat and stupid (talk) 20:33, 3 December 2018 (UTC)

Why am I blocked. The Earth is Flat and stupid (talk) 20:35, 3 December 2018 (UTC)

Sorry, I read your userpage wrong. It was deleted as pure vandalism. Kb03 (talk) 20:35, 3 December 2018 (UTC)

Merry Christmas :) ho,ho,ho The Earth is Flat and stupid (talk) 20:48, 3 December 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for being so helpful. The Earth is Flat and stupid (talk) 22:07, 3 December 2018 (UTC)
Blocked now. Dumb time waster. Legacypac (talk) 21:29, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-50

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

Changes later this week

  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 11 December. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 12 December. It will be on all wikis from 13 December (calendar).

Meetings

Future changes

  • New accounts will need passwords that are at least 8 characters long. Admins, interface admins, bureaucrats, oversighters, CentralNotice admins, global renamers, check users, stewards and some other user groups will need passwords that are at least 10 characters long. This is because an attacker could cause damage to the wikis if they took over these accounts. [55][56]
  • When you hover over a footnote it will show you the reference as a pop-up. This is so you don't have to jump down to the bottom of the page to see a reference. This will happen in 2019. Some wikis already have gadgets that do this. You will be able to turn it off. [57]

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

17:33, 10 December 2018 (UTC)

A cup of coffee for you!

Your dedication and work on important matters is much appreciated. Mifter (talk) 20:08, 10 December 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-51

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

Tech News

  • Because of the holidays the next issue of Tech News will be sent out on 7 January 2019.

Recent changes

  • Some templates that show notices about the content of the page will now be shown on the mobile website. In many cases they were hidden before. [58][59]
  • Admins can no longer unblock themselves, except for self-blocks. A blocked admin can block the user who blocked them but no one else. This is so no one can block all admins on a wiki without being stopped. [60]
  • Advanced item The ParserMigration extension has been removed. It compared the result of two versions of the MediaWiki wikitext parsing pipeline. It was used when we moved to the Remex parsing library instead of Tidy.

Problems

  • <ref> tags can use parameters such as "name" or "group". For example <ref name="adams" group="books">. If a <ref> tag has more than two parameters all parameters are ignored. You don't get a warning that they don't work. This will soon be fixed. [61]

Changes later this week

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

Meetings

Future changes

  • The Wikimedia Foundation Android app team are working on making it easier to edit on mobile phones. You can read more about these plans. If you have an Android phone and speak at least two languages you can help testing in English. Tell Dchen (WMF) you want to be part of the testing by writing on her talk page or email her.
  • Advanced item tiles.wmflabs.org and wma.wmflabs.org will stop working. They have no maintainers and run an old operating system. Tools which use it could stop working. This includes the mapnik gadget, hill shading, and hike and bike layers. New maintainers could help out and keep it going. [62]

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

20:34, 17 December 2018 (UTC)

Null edit request

A null edit to User:Amorymeltzer/regex.js should remove that page from Category:Long monitored short pages, since I edited {{short pages monitor}} to use {{main other}} so that only pages in mainspace populate that category. Also, as you're an interface admin, maybe you can also take care of User:JalenFolf/twinkleoptions.js for me as well? Thanks, wbm1058 (talk) 13:42, 19 December 2018 (UTC)

☒N Deleted and  Done. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 15:00, 19 December 2018 (UTC)

The Signpost: 24 December 2018

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 13:35, 24 December 2018 (UTC)

Merry Christmas!

Hello Amorymeltzer: Enjoy the holiday season, and thanks for your work to maintain, improve and expand Wikipedia. Cheers, TheSandDoctor Talk 07:54, 25 December 2018 (UTC)

Spread the WikiLove; use {{subst:Season's Greetings1}} to send this message

Merry Christmas! -Fwth

File:Restaurant Bob l'éponge (1).jpg
Merry Chr1stmas and Happy H0lidays, Amorymeltzer!


Hey Amorymeltzer, i lOvE yOu and wish you a pleasant Merry Christmas and a wonderful New Year.
Thanks for all you do on Wikipedia. 🐇🐇🐇
Flooded with them hundreds 09:37, 25 December 2018 (UTC)

Template:Rnd

Can you please remove Template:Rnd from Wikipedia:Cascade-protected items/content and then move Template:Rnd down to template protection. It is going to be merged soon and I want to try merging it. Once I am done with merging, you can move the new Template:Round back to Wikipedia:Cascade-protected items/content. Thanks. Pkbwcgs (talk) 09:42, 25 December 2018 (UTC)

@Pkbwcgs:  Done and  Done ~ Amory (u • t • c) 13:09, 26 December 2018 (UTC)

Happy holidays!

Hello Amorymeltzer: Enjoy the holiday season, and thanks for your work to maintain, improve and expand Wikipedia. Cheers, Hhkohh (talk) 13:23, 26 December 2018 (UTC)

Spread the WikiLove; use {{subst:Season's Greetings1}} to send this message

Happy New Year, Amorymeltzer!

Happy New Year!

Amorymeltzer,
Have a prosperous, productive and enjoyable New Year, and thanks for your contributions to Wikipedia.
Donner60 (talk) 06:36, 31 December 2018 (UTC)

   Send New Year cheer by adding {{subst:Happy New Year fireworks}} to user talk pages.


Administrators' newsletter – January 2019

News and updates for administrators from the past month (December 2018).

Guideline and policy news

  1. G14 (new): Disambiguation pages that disambiguate only zero or one existing pages are now covered under the new G14 criterion (discussion). This is {{db-disambig}}; the text is unchanged and candidates may be found in Category:Candidates for speedy deletion as unnecessary disambiguation pages.
  2. R4 (new): Redirects in the file namespace (and no file links) that have the same name as a file or redirect at Commons are now covered under the new R4 criterion (discussion). This is {{db-redircom}}; the text is unchanged.
  3. G13 (expanded): Userspace drafts containing only the default Article Wizard text are now covered under G13 along with other drafts (discussion). Such blank drafts are now eligible after six months rather than one year, and taggers continue to use {{db-blankdraft}}.

Technical news

  • Starting on December 13, the Wikimedia Foundation security team implemented new password policy and requirements. Privileged accounts (administrators, bureaucrats, checkusers, oversighters, interface administrators, bots, edit filter managers/helpers, template editors, et al.) must have a password at least 10 characters in length. All accounts must have a password:
  1. At least 8 characters in length
  2. Not in the 100,000 most popular passwords (defined by the Password Blacklist library)
  3. Different from their username
User accounts not meeting these requirements will be prompted to update their password accordingly. More information is available on MediaWiki.org.
  • Blocked administrators may now block the administrator that blocked them. This was done to mitigate the possibility that a compromised administrator account would block all other active administrators, complementing the removal of the ability to unblock oneself outside of self-imposed blocks. A request for comment is currently in progress to determine whether the blocking policy should be updated regarding this change.
  • {{Copyvio-revdel}} now has a link to open the history with the RevDel checkboxes already filled in.

Arbitration

Miscellaneous

  • Accounts continue to be compromised on a regular basis. Evidence shows this is entirely due to the accounts having the same password that was used on another website that suffered a data breach. If you have ever used your current password on any other website, you should change it immediately.
  • Around 22% of admins have enabled two-factor authentication, up from 20% in June 2018. If you haven't already enabled it, please consider doing so. Regardless of whether you use 2FA, please practice appropriate account security by ensuring your password is secure and unique to Wikimedia.
Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 21:38, 1 January 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-02

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

Tech News writers, editors and translators wish you a pleasant 2019 year.

Recent changes

  • RelatedSites extension has been undeployed. It was used to create interwiki links on Wikivoyage, now handled by Wikidata. [63]
  • Advanced item MediaWiki logstash logging is moving to a new infrastructure. This is an ongoing deployment. [64]
  • Advanced item codesearch.wmflabs.org has been updated, with new and updated repositories and a new search options for code. [65]
  • Advanced item On several wikis, an account named "Edit filter" has been created on December 17 to perform some technical maintenance on AbuseFilter. This account has sysop rights but it's a system user and no human can use it. The account already existed on wikis where AbuseFilter can perform blocks, which are issued using this account. See T212268 for more information and future plans.

Problems

  • Advanced item In AbuseFilter, the "Throttle" action takes three parameters: count, period and groups. They must now strictly respect the requirements listed on mediawiki.org. A list of broken filters is on Phabricator. If you're familiar with AbuseFilter, please take a look and fix them. [66]

Changes later this week

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

Meetings

  • Search Platform Office Hours is rescheduled to January 9. Check the details for time and date.

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

18:29, 7 January 2019 (UTC)

Help

I recently created the draft article for Arado E.654 in my sandbox, then moved it across to mainspace when I was done, forgetting that that moved all of the previous sandbox testing I had done. Facepalm Facepalm What should I do? [Username Needed] 10:56, 11 January 2019 (UTC)

No problem Username Needed, I've brought out the old history, it should be back in your sandbox. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 12:45, 11 January 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-03

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 now use Google Translate in the content translation tool. [67][68]
  • You can now add captions to files on Commons. Captions are short descriptions of the file. They can be translated to all languages we use. They can't use wikitext markup.
  • Earlier a quoted HTML attribute had to be followed by a space. Now it doesn't. This means that some pages could look different when you save them even if you didn't edit that part of the text. [69][70]
  • Advanced item Templates with <templatestyles> could not show the difference between the live template and the sandbox version when they were tested. This has now been fixed. <templatestyles> has a new wrapper parameter now. You can use it for selectors like .mw-parser-output <wrapper parameter value> <selector from CSS page>. [71]

Problems

  • When you see an edit in the recent changes feed or in the history of a page some of them have tags. Some tags are added automatically. You can also add tags manually. Tags for edits that have been added manually can be edited. This didn't work for a little while. This has now been fixed. [72]

Changes later this week

  • You can move files from your wiki to Wikimedia Commons and keep the file history with the new FileExporter. It will be a beta feature on all wikis from 16 January. If you want to test it you activate it and check your wiki's configuration file.
  • Users who could cause more damage to the wikis if someone took over their account have to have more secure passwords. This includes administrators and other user groups. They can't use passwords that are in a list of common passwords. Accounts with common passwords are easy to take over. The list of common passwords was made longer a few weeks ago and has a different error message. Some user groups have been added to those who can't use common passwords. This is to protect all accounts with user rights that could cause damage. [73]
  • Advanced item The AbuseFilter variable minor_edit has been removed. It was deprecated in 2016. Now you can't use it. You can fix the filters using it. You can find them if you use the search bar on Special:AbuseFilter.
  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from January 15

17:54, 14 January 2019 (UTC)

Another copyvio

Found another copyvio on Peter Droege through the AfD, could you revdel my edit and the ones before it. [Username Needed] 14:06, 11 January 2019 (UTC)

 Done a few days ago! ~ Amory (u • t • c) 20:27, 14 January 2019 (UTC)

markAdmin.js

Hey Amorymeltzer,

I don’t know if your aware of this script. c:MediaWiki:Gadget-markAdmins.js and c:MediaWiki:Gadget-markAdmins-data.js lists the permissions by letter in the user page, signature, etc. I tried to bring it here back in 2016 but didn’t get much luck. I figured when you have free time, you could bring it here if you’d like. -- 1989 (talk) 13:00, 9 January 2019 (UTC)

Interesting! Very different way of doing things than here, although most folks here have only really been interested in sysops, so the highlighting works. I thought about trying to create something similar for User:Amorymeltzer/crathighlighter, but ended up thinking the single highlight would work best; letters get lost. You can get at least some of that styling back if you like by removing the highlighting colors in your css page and adding something like .userhighlighter_oversight:after {content:" OS" !important;} for each. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 16:29, 9 January 2019 (UTC)
Ok. For the user info script, is there a way to change the link for the edit count? I see it’s always set to this wiki. I use it globally. -- 1989 (talk) 17:30, 9 January 2019 (UTC)
Yeah super easy, good idea! It should now be specific to whatever project you're on, though might take a few to refresh your cache, etc. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 17:50, 9 January 2019 (UTC)
I notice something strange going on in Chrome. On Safari, I see "Last edited 1 hour ago". On Chrome, I see "Last edited -475,754 seconds ago". It's on the PleaseStand one too. Can this be fixed? -- 1989 (talk) 19:51, 9 January 2019 (UTC)
Weird, I use chrome and don't have that problem. Are you on a windows machine, and what version of chrome? All users or just some? What wiki? If you open up the javascript console (Ctrl+Shift+J) can you paste the contents here? ~ Amory (u • t • c) 20:12, 9 January 2019 (UTC)
Yes, I use Windows 10. Lastest version of Chrome (Version 71.0.3578.98). I'm the only user. All wikis. [74] -- 1989 (talk) 20:27, 9 January 2019 (UTC)
I don't know what happened, but now it wants to work properly. -- 1989 (talk) 20:39, 9 January 2019 (UTC)
Glad to hear it! I had another user on windows/chrome 71 test it out and they had no issues; I had an idea about what it could be, though, so I made that fix anyway. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 21:04, 9 January 2019 (UTC)
Is there a way to have the text be updated after a few moments so it won’t need a reload for an update? -- 1989 (talk) 16:38, 14 January 2019 (UTC)

Sorry, I don't understand what you're asking — what "need[s] a reload for an update?" ~ Amory (u • t • c) 20:29, 14 January 2019 (UTC)

The last edit text. -- 1989 (talk) 20:33, 14 January 2019 (UTC)
You want to know if the "Last edit X minutes ago" text can auto update whenever the user makes an edit? That's not really possible without constantly running javascript checks on the API in the background, which isn't what this is intended to do. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 20:37, 14 January 2019 (UTC)
Ok. -- 1989 (talk) 20:38, 14 January 2019 (UTC)

Administrator scope

Hi there. May I know what should an admin do if there's a user who create their account just to promote about their stuff like business things and etc in the userpage. They don't even contribute anything in Wikipedia. They misused the userpage for promotion. Please respond ASAP. CyberTroopers (talk) 11:26, 15 January 2019 (UTC)

(talk page watcher) CyberTroopers, who is the user? If they've done that enough/had enough warnings they would be blocked. Galobtter (pingó mió) 11:38, 15 January 2019 (UTC)
Basically what Galobtter said. If they're here, you could tag the page for WP:CSD#U5 or WP:CSD#G11 if their page meets either criteria. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 11:51, 15 January 2019 (UTC)
@Galobtter: Even though it's a userpage? It need to be deleted? CyberTroopers (talk) 17:48, 15 January 2019 (UTC)
CyberTroopers, Userpages qualify for WP:U5 and WP:G11 speedy deletion. Galobtter (pingó mió) 17:50, 15 January 2019 (UTC)
Galobtter Ah yes I forgot about it. Thanks for your response. CyberTroopers (talk) 17:52, 15 January 2019 (UTC)
@CyberTroopers: Halo treat? Natureium (talk) 17:57, 15 January 2019 (UTC)
Another citrus fan! ~ Amory (u • t • c) 18:35, 15 January 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-04

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

Tech News

  • Some people did not get last week's issue of Tech News. This was because of a problem with MassMessage. If you did not get last week's issue, you can read it on Meta. [75]

Recent changes

  • The content translation tool can now use version 2 as the default version for users who turned on the beta feature. For example it adds the tracking category Pages with unreviewed translations to translations that might have used machine translations without fixing the problems. This is so others can find them. You can find this category in Special:TrackingCategories on Wikipedias.
  • https://mediawiki2latex-large.wmflabs.org can now convert collects of up to 800 pages to PDF, EPUB or ODT. Previously this was 200 pages.

Problems

  • When a template was edited with the visual editor, it would sometimes put all information on one line. This makes it difficult to read for editors who use the wikitext editor. It also makes it more difficult to see what happened in a diff. This problem affected edits made between 8 and 17 January and is now fixed. [76]
  • MassMessage is used to post a message to many pages. It has not been working reliably. Some messages have not been posted to everyone. [77][78]
  • Because of a database problem that had to be fixed immediately you could not edit most wikis for a couple of minutes on 17 January (UTC). This has now been fixed. [79]

Changes later this week

  • You will be able to use template styles in the Module namespace. [80]
  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 22 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 23 January. It will be on all wikis from 24 January (calendar).

Meetings

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

20:34, 21 January 2019 (UTC)

Rollback

Hey there, I have seen that you have reviewed a request for rollback, so can you review my request there as well?

Cheers! SR4 ☎ 21:32, 21 January 2019 (UTC)

Replied there. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 12:12, 22 January 2019 (UTC)

Move request by IP

Please move my request [81] onto the main Wikipedia page please, thank you. 194.207.146.167 (talk) 13:30, 22 January 2019 (UTC)

RfD closure: Sdesc

Amory, with respect I think you intended to close this RfD as "delete", not "keep". At any rate there were no "keep" votes and you just deleted a link to it: Bhunacat10 (talk), 09:39, 23 January 2019 (UTC)

​Oh boy you got that right! Thanks for the heads up and keeping me honest — I must've hit the wrong button. It should be fixed now, thanks again for the backup! ~ Amory (u • t • c) 11:15, 23 January 2019 (UTC)

Thanks

Thanks - both for sorting out the Twinkle AfD issue, and for dealing with my apparent inability to sign my own name. It's been a long day... Cheers GirthSummit (blether) 19:53, 24 January 2019 (UTC)

Some stroopwafels for you!

Thank you for stepping in where Twinkle failed me! Appreciate it. Marquardtika (talk) 00:23, 25 January 2019 (UTC)

A bit of advice please!

Hi, Amory! I've come across something (minor) that I don't know how to handle, wondered if you could advise? I deleted this as G5, and expected to quick-close the deletion discussion as a result; but I chickened out when I got dire "too soon" warning messages from Twinkle. Am I supposed to close that or let it run? I know there's just been a discussion about early closes, but I don't seem to have paid enough attention to it ... Thanks, regards, Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 22:34, 23 January 2019 (UTC)

I closed it because the article has already been deleted and it's silly to have an AfD for an article that is no longer there. I'm not scared of twinkle. I'm bigger than it. Natureium (talk) 23:52, 23 January 2019 (UTC)
@Justlettersandnumbers: Those messages are actually from XFDCloser, not Twinkle. The colors and warning are a new features (discussed/implemented here) by Evad37. In general, discussions should go the fully allotted time, but if there are good reasons for an early close, that's quite fine. The idea of the colors/notice was just to give folks a head's up. A G5 deletion is a good time for a Wikipedia:SPEEDYCLOSE. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 01:04, 24 January 2019 (UTC)
Perhaps the message (currently It has not yet been 7 days since the discussion was listed.) could be improved. Any suggestions, @Justlettersandnumbers, Natureium, Amorymeltzer? - Evad37 [talk] 01:25, 24 January 2019 (UTC)
I think it's fine. It's accurate, and if you're closing an AfD early, you shouldn't be surprised that it's been less than 7 days. Natureium (talk) 01:28, 24 January 2019 (UTC)
Same, although perhaps a leading Note: might help clarify things a bit. I think it's just a new feature that might take some folks by surprise at first, but then again that's sort of the point. (That being said, I think I'm in the minority in thinking that the notification is unnecessary and that the colors are sufficient). ~ Amory (u • t • c)
Thanks, everyone – and yes, I was slightly taken by surprise, but won't be a second time. Evad37, is there a way to quick-close with a custom rationale? In this particular case I'd already deleted the page, so neither keep nor delete was an ideal choice. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 12:39, 24 January 2019 (UTC)
@Justlettersandnumbers: No, to use a rationale you need to open the Close dialog (so you have somewhere to type! ), and then you can enter a custom result and/or rationale. - Evad37 [talk] 01:17, 25 January 2019 (UTC)

qrfpp.js request

First off: Great job with that script, really useful. Just a small request: Could you add a variable that users can set to prevent automatic reloading after responding? When handling multiple requests at RFPP, it would be easier not to have the page reload each time. Regards SoWhy 10:22, 25 January 2019 (UTC)

Easy to do, and honestly it used to do that; I liked it much better that way myself! But I ran into issues where someone else would edit the page in the mean time. Sometimes it meant I over-wrote another sysop's protection/decision — not good — and sometimes the bot would archive things and I'd respond in the wrong section — very not good! I put the reload back in as part of a naïve set of edit-conflict detection; basically, it checks to see if the page has been edited since you first arrived, and refreshes if there has been an intervening edit. I've been meaning to make a bunch of fixes/changes to it, though with the holidays and twinkle I haven't found the time. I plan on setting it up to not refresh if you were the last editor, which should both avoid edit conflicts and allow you to handle multiple requests at once. Would that be sufficient? ~ Amory (u • t • c) 12:06, 25 January 2019 (UTC)
That sounds like a good solution. Looking forward to it! Regards SoWhy 13:09, 25 January 2019 (UTC)

Notice of noticeboard discussion

Information icon There is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. The thread is "Odd closure". Thank you. --Guy Macon (talk) 06:53, 26 January 2019 (UTC)

Revdel request

Could you please revision delete the second version of this image? It is a separate image that may not be free. Thanks! buidhe 22:12, 26 January 2019 (UTC)

​(talk page watcher) Deleted — JJMC89 (T·C) 23:11, 26 January 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-05

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

Recent changes

Problems

  • When someone moves a page to a name that already exists that page that had the name the article is moved to is deleted. For a couple of months this didn't always work. Some users saw an error message instead. This has now been fixed. [82]

Changes later this week

  • There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

Meetings

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

18:15, 28 January 2019 (UTC)

Hi! Welcome to the new reply-link newsletter, which I made because the ol' list on the reply-link talk page was unwieldy. In case you haven't been following development recently, I've sent out some new updates that should let it reply basically anywhere, even in transcluded pages or under hatted discussions (two locations people have been wanting for a while). Reliability has also gone way up, as I've implemented a couple of sanity checks that help prevent the script from responding to the wrong message. Unfortunately, that means the script fails a bit more often. Anyway, try it out if you haven't done so in a while, and let me know what you think! I always appreciate feature requests or bug reports on the talk page. Happy replying! (Signup list/Unsubscribe) MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 02:23, 30 January 2019 (UTC)

The Signpost: 31 January 2019

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 06:49, 31 January 2019 (UTC)

GOCE 2018 Annual Report

Guild of Copy Editors 2018 Annual Report
Our 2018 Annual Report is now ready for review.

Highlights:

  • Overview of Backlog-reduction progress;
  • Summary of Drives, Blitzes, and the Requests page;
  • Membership news and results of elections;
  • Annual leaderboard;
  • Plans for 2019.
– Your project coordinators: Miniapolis, Baffle gab1978, Jonesey95, Reidgreg and Tdslk.
To discontinue receiving GOCE newsletters, please remove your name from our mailing list.


MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 21:30, 31 January 2019 (UTC)

Spezial:Beobachtungsliste target status quo

In regard to Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2019 January 24#Spezial:Beobachtungsliste: Any objection to restoring the target of Spezial:Beobachtungsliste to Wikipedia:Spezial:Beobachtungsliste? Plain {{soft redirect}} is not used in the mainspace. It targeted there from March 10, 2017‎ until January 6, 2019 (the day the most recent rfd started) with no complaints from anyone using it, so I believe this action would be maintaining the status quo. Had the target not been changed immediately before the rfd nomination, I believe the discussion would have likely played out just the same (keeps in this case relating to a preference to retain the redirect and not a consideration on which target is appropriate). — Godsy (TALKCONT) 07:24, 3 February 2019 (UTC)

I don't really care, and I don't think there was really enough discussion there to make a call one way or the other. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 10:56, 3 February 2019 (UTC)
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