User talk:Avishai11
Hi! Avishai11 (talk) 17:38, 19 November 2020 (UTC)
- click this button if you need any help first, it's great, and has lots of links!
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Question from Mili Loves Ukraine (00:16, 18 August 2024)
[edit]Dear Avishai / Shalom lekha (I'm sure you are Israeli) I would like to ask youu how to start a new article. I know this does not consern editing in a direct manner, but perhaps you have more experience in this field than I. Please confirm as to weather you are from Israel; I would love to know; you see, my native tongue is Hebrew.
Thanks in advance, Mili Loves Ukraine.
GREETINGS!!! --Mili Loves Ukraine (talk) 00:16, 18 August 2024 (UTC)
- Shalom @Mili Loves Ukraine,
- Welcome to Wikipedia! I am so sorry for the late reply. Things have been pretty crazy in my life in the past 2 months, so I am sincerely sorry. I have noticed you have left Wikipedia, so you probably won't receive this message. If you are looking for info about how to start a new article, please see WP:NEW. If you ever have any more questions, or need help starting an article, or want to come back to Wikipedia, just message me. I will help you. Thank you for your contributions.
- Best,
- Avishai
- @Avishai11
- Avishai11 (talk) 00:11, 28 October 2024 (UTC)
New pages patrol September 2024 Backlog drive
[edit]New pages patrol | September 2024 Backlog Drive | |
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MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:09, 26 August 2024 (UTC)
Tech News: 2024-35
[edit]Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Feature news
- Administrators can now test the temporary accounts feature on test2wiki. This was done to allow cross-wiki testing of temporary accounts, for when temporary accounts switch between projects. The feature was enabled on testwiki a few weeks ago. No further temporary account deployments are scheduled yet. Temporary Accounts is a project to create a new type of user account that replaces IP addresses of unregistered editors which are no longer made public. Please share your opinions and questions on the project talk page.
- Later this week, editors at wikis that use FlaggedRevs (also known as "Pending Changes") may notice that the indicators at the top of articles have changed. This change makes the system more consistent with the rest of the MediaWiki interface. [1]
Bugs status
- Editors who use the 2010 wikitext editor, and use the Character Insert buttons, will no longer experience problems with the buttons adding content into the edit-summary instead of the edit-window. You can read more about that, and 26 other community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week.
Project updates
- Please review and vote on Focus Areas, which are groups of wishes that share a problem. Focus Areas were created for the newly reopened Community Wishlist, which is now open year-round for submissions. The first batch of focus areas are specific to moderator workflows, around welcoming newcomers, minimizing repetitive tasks, and prioritizing tasks. Once volunteers have reviewed and voted on focus areas, the Foundation will then review and select focus areas for prioritization.
- Do you have a project and are willing to provide a three (3) month mentorship for an intern? Outreachy is a twice a year program for people to participate in a paid internship that will start in December 2024 and end in early March 2025, and they need mentors and projects to work on. Projects can be focused on coding or non-coding (design, documentation, translation, research). See the Outreachy page for more details, and a list of past projects since 2013.
Learn more
- If you're curious about the product and technology improvements made by the Wikimedia Foundation last year, read this recent highlights summary on Diff.
- To learn more about the technology behind the Wikimedia projects, you can now watch sessions from the technology track at Wikimania 2024 on Commons. This week, check out:
- Community Configuration - Shaping On-Wiki Functionality Together (55 mins) - about the Community Configuration project.
- Future of MediaWiki. A sustainable platform to support a collaborative user base and billions of page views (30 mins) - an overview for both technical and non technical audiences, covering some of the challenges and open questions, related to the platform evolution, stewardship and developer experiences research.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 20:29, 26 August 2024 (UTC)
WikiCup 2024 August newsletter
[edit]The fourth round of the 2024 WikiCup ended on 29 August. Each of the 8 contestants who advanced to Round 4 scored at least 472 points, and the following contestants scored more than 700 points:
- Generalissima (submissions) with 1,150 points, mostly from 3 featured articles, 2 featured lists, 7 good articles, and 13 did you know nominations;
- Arconning (submissions) with 791 points, mostly from 2 featured lists, 8 good articles, 4 did you know nominations, and plenty of reviews;
- AirshipJungleman29 (submissions) with 718 points, mostly from a high-multiplier featured article on Genghis Khan and 2 good articles; and
- BennyOnTheLoose (submissions) with 714 points, mostly from 1 featured article on Susanna Hoffs, 2 featured lists, and 3 good articles.
Congratulations to our eight finalists and all who participated. Contestants put in extraordinary amounts of effort during this round, and their scores can be seen here. So far this year, competitors have gotten 36 featured articles, 55 featured lists, 15 good articles, 93 in the news credits, and at least 333 did you know credits. They have conducted 357 featured content reviews, as well as 553 good article reviews and peer reviews, and have added 30 articles to featured topics and good topics.
Any content promoted after 29 August but before the start of Round 5 can be claimed during Round 5, which starts on 1 September at 00:00 (UTC). Invitations for collaborative writing efforts or any other discussion of potentially interesting work is always welcome on the WikiCup talk page. If two or more WikiCup competitors have done significant work on an article, all can claim points. If you are concerned that your nomination—whether for a good article, featured content, or anything else—will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews Needed. Remember to claim your points within 14 days of earning them, and importantly, before the deadline on 31 October.
If you would like to learn more about rules and scoring for the 2024 WikiCup, please see this page. Further questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup and the judges (Cwmhiraeth (talk · contribs), Epicgenius (talk · contribs), and Frostly (talk · contribs)) are reachable on their talk pages. Good luck! If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove your name from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 03:11, 30 August 2024 (UTC)
Question from Mili Loves Ukraine on Draft:Jake Broe (11:13, 1 September 2024)
[edit]Hi there! I have an important question: I created a draft but I can't publish it; what should I do???
Mili Loves Ukraine --Mili Loves Ukraine (talk) 11:13, 1 September 2024 (UTC)
Administrators' newsletter – September 2024
[edit]News and updates for administrators from the past month (August 2024).
- Following an RfC, there is a new criterion for speedy deletion: C4, which
applies to unused maintenance categories, such as empty dated maintenance categories for dates in the past
. - A request for comment is open to discuss whether Notability (species) should be adopted as a subject-specific notability guideline.
- Following a motion, remedies 5.1 and 5.2 of World War II and the history of Jews in Poland (the topic and interaction bans on My very best wishes, respectively) were repealed.
- Remedy 3C of the German war effort case ("Cinderella157 German history topic ban") was suspended for a period of six months.
- The arbitration case Historical Elections is currently open. Proposed decision is expected by 3 September 2024 for this case.
- Editors can now enter into good article review circles, an alternative for informal quid pro quo arrangements, to have a GAN reviewed in return for reviewing a different editor's nomination.
- A New Pages Patrol backlog drive is happening in September 2024 to reduce the number of unreviewed articles and redirects in the new pages feed. Currently, there is a backlog of over 13,900 articles and 26,200 redirects awaiting review. Sign up here to participate!
Tech News: 2024-36
[edit]Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Weekly highlight
- Editors and volunteer developers interested in data visualisation can now test the new software for charts. Its early version is available on beta Commons and beta Wikipedia. This is an important milestone before making charts available on regular wikis. You can read more about this project update and help to test the charts.
Feature news
- Editors who use the Special:UnusedTemplates page can now filter out pages which are expected to be there permanently, such as sandboxes, test-cases, and templates that are always substituted. Editors can add the new magic word
__EXPECTUNUSEDTEMPLATE__
to a template page to hide it from the listing. Thanks to Sophivorus and DannyS712 for these improvements. [2] - Editors who use the New Topic tool on discussion pages, will now be reminded to add a section header, which should help reduce the quantity of newcomers who add sections without a header. You can read more about that, and 28 other community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week.
- Last week, some Toolforge tools had occasional connection problems. The cause is still being investigated, but the problems have been resolved for now. [3]
- Translation administrators at multilingual wikis, when editing multiple translation units, can now easily mark which changes require updates to the translation. This is possible with the new dropdown menu.
Project updates
- A new draft text of a policy discussing the use of Wikimedia's APIs has been published on Meta-Wiki. The draft text does not reflect a change in policy around the APIs; instead, it is an attempt to codify existing API rules. Comments, questions, and suggestions are welcome on the proposed update’s talk page until September 13 or until those discussions have concluded.
Learn more
- To learn more about the technology behind the Wikimedia projects, you can now watch sessions from the technology track at Wikimania 2024 on Commons. This week, check out:
- Charts, the successor of Graphs - A secure and extensible tool for data visualization (25 mins) – about the above-mentioned Charts project.
- State of Language Technology and Onboarding at Wikimedia (90 mins) – about some of the language tools that support Wikimedia sites, such as Content/Section Translation, MinT, and LanguageConverter; also the current state and future of languages onboarding. [4]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 01:03, 3 September 2024 (UTC)
The Signpost: 4 September 2024
[edit]- News and notes: WikiCup enters final round, MCDC wraps up activities, 17-year-old hoax article unmasked
- In the media: AI is not playing games anymore. Is Wikipedia ready?
- News from the WMF: Meet the 12 candidates running in the WMF Board of Trustees election
- Wikimania: A month after Wikimania 2024
- Serendipity: What it's like to be Wikimedian of the Year
- Traffic report: After the gold rush
Question from BlessedFire (03:19, 6 September 2024)
[edit]Hello is there a way to show all of my edit views instead of a few because I really want to see all my views of all my edits. --BlessedFire (talk) 03:20, 6 September 2024 (UTC)
- Hi @BlessedFire,
- I assume you are talking about finding how many people viewed your edits, and that feature does not exist. You cannot view whoever viewed your edits because you edit towards the same article as other people, so you can't isolate just your edits. I hope this was clarifying. If you have any more questions, feel free to contact me. Happy editing!
- Warm regards,
- Avishai
- @Avishai11
- Avishai11 (talk) 00:20, 28 October 2024 (UTC)
Tech News: 2024-37
[edit]Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Feature news
- Starting this week, the standard syntax highlighter will receive new colors that make them compatible in dark mode. This is the first of many changes to come as part of a major upgrade to syntax highlighting. You can learn more about what's to come on the help page. [5][6]
- Editors of wikis using Wikidata will now be notified of only relevant Wikidata changes in their watchlist. This is because the Lua functions
entity:getSitelink()
andmw.wikibase.getSitelink(qid)
will have their logic unified for tracking different aspects of sitelinks to reduce junk notifications from inconsistent sitelinks tracking. [7]
Project updates
- Users of all Wikis will have access to Wikimedia sites as read-only for a few minutes on September 25, starting at 15:00 UTC. This is a planned datacenter switchover for maintenance purposes. More information will be published in Tech News and will also be posted on individual wikis in the coming weeks. [8]
- Contributors of 11 Wikipedias, including English will have a new
MOS
namespace added to their Wikipedias. This improvement ensures that links beginning withMOS:
(usually shortcuts to the Manual of Style) are not broken by Mooré Wikipedia (language codemos
). [9]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 18:48, 9 September 2024 (UTC)
Tech News: 2024-38
[edit]Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Improvements and Maintenance
- Editors interested in templates can help by reading the latest Wishlist focus area, Template recall and discovery, and share your feedback on the talkpage. This input helps the Community Tech team to decide the right technical approach to build. Everyone is also encouraged to continue adding new wishes.
- The new automated Special:NamespaceInfo page helps editors understand which namespaces exist on each wiki, and some details about how they are configured. Thanks to DannyS712 for these improvements. [10]
- References Check is a feature that encourages editors to add a citation when they add a new paragraph to a Wikipedia article. For a short time, the corresponding tag "Edit Check (references) activated" was erroneously being applied to some edits outside of the main namespace. This has been fixed. [11]
- It is now possible for a wiki community to change the order in which a page’s categories are displayed on their wiki. By default, categories are displayed in the order they appear in the wikitext. Now, wikis with a consensus to do so can request a configuration change to display them in alphabetical order. [12]
- Tool authors can now access ToolsDB's public databases from both Quarry and Superset. Those databases have always been accessible to every Toolforge user, but they are now more broadly accessible, as Quarry can be accessed by anyone with a Wikimedia account. In addition, Quarry's internal database can now be queried from Quarry itself. This database contains information about all queries that are being run and starred by users in Quarry. This information was already public through the web interface, but you can now query it using SQL. You can read more about that, and 20 other community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week.
- Any pages or tools that still use the very old CSS classes
mw-message-box
need to be updated. These old classes will be removed next week or soon afterwards. Editors can use a global-search to determine what needs to be changed. It is possible to use the newercdx-message
group of classes as a replacement (see the relevant Codex documentation, and an example update), but using locally defined onwiki classes would be best. [13]
Technical project updates
- Next week, all Wikimedia wikis will be read-only for a few minutes. This will start on September 25 at 15:00 UTC. This is a planned datacenter switchover for maintenance purposes. This maintenance process also targets other services. The previous switchover took 3 minutes, and the Site Reliability Engineering teams use many tools to make sure that this essential maintenance work happens as quickly as possible. [14]
Tech in depth
- The latest monthly MediaWiki Product Insights newsletter is available. This edition includes details about: research about hook handlers to help simplify development, research about performance improvements, work to improve the REST API for end-users, and more.
- To learn more about the technology behind the Wikimedia projects, you can now watch sessions from the technology track at Wikimania 2024 on Commons. This week, check out:
- Hackathon Showcase (45 mins) - 19 short presentations by some of the Hackathon participants, describing some of the projects they worked on, such as automated testing of maintenance scripts, a video-cutting command line tool, and interface improvements for various tools. There are more details and links available in the Phabricator task.
- Co-Creating a Sustainable Future for the Toolforge Ecosystem (40 mins) - a roundtable discussion for tool-maintainers, users, and supporters of Toolforge about how to make the platform sustainable and how to evaluate the tools available there.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 23:58, 16 September 2024 (UTC)
hii --Surbhijsm (talk) 10:45, 23 September 2024 (UTC)
Tech News: 2024-39
[edit]Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Weekly highlight
- All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on Wednesday September 25 at 15:00 UTC. Reading the wikis will not be interrupted, but editing will be paused. These twice-yearly processes allow WMF's site reliability engineering teams to remain prepared to keep the wikis functioning even in the event of a major interruption to one of our data centers.
Updates for editors
- Editors who use the iOS Wikipedia app in Spanish, Portuguese, French, or Chinese, may see the Alt Text suggested-edit experiment after editing an article, or completing a suggested edit using "Add an image". Alt-text helps people with visual impairments to read Wikipedia articles. The team aims to learn if adding alt-text to images is a task that editors can be successful with. Please share any feedback on the discussion page.
- The Codex color palette has been updated with new and revised colors for the MediaWiki user interfaces. The most noticeable changes for editors include updates for: dark mode colors for Links and for quiet Buttons (progressive and destructive), visited Link colors for both light and dark modes, and background colors for system-messages in both light and dark modes.
- It is now possible to include clickable wikilinks and external links inside code blocks. This includes links that are used within
<syntaxhighlight>
tags and on code pages (JavaScript, CSS, Scribunto and Sanitized CSS). Uses of template syntax{{…}}
are also linked to the template page. Thanks to SD0001 for these improvements. [15] - Two bugs were fixed in the GlobalVanishRequest system by improving the logging and by removing an incorrect placeholder message. [16][17]
- View all 25 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week.
Updates for technical contributors
- From Wikimedia Enterprise:
- The API now enables 5,000 on-demand API requests per month and twice-monthly HTML snapshots freely (gratis and libre). More information on the updates and also improvements to the software development kits (SDK) are explained on the project's blog post. While Wikimedia Enterprise APIs are designed for high-volume commercial reusers, this change enables many more community use-cases to be built on the service too.
- The Snapshot API (html dumps) have added beta Structured Contents endpoints (blog post on that) as well as released two beta datasets (English and French Wikipedia) from that endpoint to Hugging Face for public use and feedback (blog post on that). These pre-parsed data sets enable new options for researchers, developers, and data scientists to use and study the content.
In depth
- The Wikidata Query Service (WDQS) is used to get answers to questions using the Wikidata data set. As Wikidata grows, we had to make a major architectural change so that WDQS could remain performant. As part of the WDQS Graph Split project, we have new SPARQL endpoints available for serving the "scholarly" and "main" subgraphs of Wikidata. The query.wikidata.org endpoint will continue to serve the full Wikidata graph until March 2025. After this date, it will only serve the main graph. For more information, please see the announcement on Wikidata.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 23:32, 23 September 2024 (UTC)
In a Wikipedia article on the University of the Wet Indies there is a list of notable persons. I was the first person to be appointed Professor of West Indian Literature at the University of the West Indies and a Wikipedia article about me refers to me as arguably the leading critic of West Indian Literature. I would like to insert my name thus: "Professor Emeritus Kenneth Ramchand, the First Professor of West Indian Literature of the University of the West Indies.” I would be grateful if you could make this addition for me. --Wickramji (talk) 17:31, 26 September 2024 (UTC)
- Hi @Wickramji,
- Please request this on the article's talk page and state the reason why you wish to change your description. Thank you! If you have any more questions, feel free to contact me!
- Warm regards,
- Avishai
- @Avishai11
- Avishai11 (talk) 00:23, 28 October 2024 (UTC)
The Signpost: 26 September 2024
[edit]- In the media: Courts order Wikipedia to give up names of editors, legal strain anticipated from "online safety laws"
- Community view: Indian courts order Wikipedia to take down name of crime victim, editors strive towards consensus
- Serendipity: A Wikipedian at the 2024 Paralympics
- Opinion: asilvering's RfA debriefing
- News and notes: Are you ready for admin elections?
- Recent research: Article-writing AI is less "prone to reasoning errors (or hallucinations)" than human Wikipedia editors
- Traffic report: Jump in the line, rock your body in time
Tech News: 2024-40
[edit]Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Updates for editors
- Readers of 42 more wikis can now use Dark Mode. If the option is not yet available for logged-out users of your wiki, this is likely because many templates do not yet display well in Dark Mode. Please use the night-mode-checker tool if you are interested in helping to reduce the number of issues. The recommendations page provides guidance on this. Dark Mode is enabled on additional wikis once per month.
- Editors using the 2010 wikitext editor as their default can access features from the 2017 wikitext editor by adding
?veaction=editsource
to the URL. If you would like to enable the 2017 wikitext editor as your default, it can be set in your preferences. [18] - For logged-out readers using the Vector 2022 skin, the "donate" link has been moved from a collapsible menu next to the content area into a more prominent top menu, next to "Create an account". This restores the link to the level of prominence it had in the Vector 2010 skin. Learn more about the changes related to donor experiences. [19]
- The CampaignEvents extension provides tools for organizers to more easily manage events, communicate with participants, and promote their events on the wikis. The extension has been enabled on Arabic Wikipedia, Igbo Wikipedia, Swahili Wikipedia, and Meta-Wiki. Chinese Wikipedia has decided to enable the extension, and discussions on the extension are in progress on Spanish Wikipedia and on Wikidata. To learn how to enable the extension on your wiki, you can visit the CampaignEvents page on Meta-Wiki.
- View all 22 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week.
Updates for technical contributors
- Developers with an account on Wikitech-wiki should check if any action is required for their accounts. The wiki is being changed to use the single-user-login (SUL) system, and other configuration changes. This change will help reduce the overall complexity for the weekly software updates across all our wikis.
In depth
- The server switch was completed successfully last week with a read-only time of only 2 minutes 46 seconds. This periodic process makes sure that engineers can switch data centers and keep all of the wikis available for readers, even if there are major technical issues. It also gives engineers a chance to do maintenance and upgrades on systems that normally run 24 hours a day, and often helps to reveal weaknesses in the infrastructure. The process involves dozens of software services and hundreds of hardware servers, and requires multiple teams working together. Work over the past few years has reduced the time from 17 minutes down to 2–3 minutes. [20]
Meetings and events
- October 4–6: WikiIndaba Conference's Hackathon in Johannesburg, South Africa
- November 4–6: MediaWiki Users and Developers Conference Fall 2024 in Vienna, Austria
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 22:16, 30 September 2024 (UTC)
Administrators' newsletter – October 2024
[edit]News and updates for administrators from the past month (September 2024).
- Administrator elections are a proposed new process for selecting administrators, offering an alternative to requests for adminship (RfA). The first trial election will take place in October 2024, with candidate sign-up from October 8 to 14, a discussion phase from October 22 to 24, and SecurePoll voting from October 25 to 31. For questions or to help out, please visit the talk page at Wikipedia talk:Administrator elections.
- Following a discussion, the speedy deletion reason "File pages without a corresponding file" has been moved from criterion G8 to F2. This does not change what can be speedily deleted.
- A request for comment is open to discuss whether there is a consensus to have an administrator recall process.
- The arbitration case Historical elections has been closed.
- An arbitration case regarding Backlash to diversity and inclusion has been opened.
- Editors are invited to nominate themselves to serve on the 2024 Arbitration Committee Electoral Commission until 23:59 October 8, 2024 (UTC).
- If you are interested in stopping spammers, please put MediaWiki talk:Spam-whitelist and MediaWiki talk:Spam-blacklist on your watchlist, and help out when you can.
Tech News: 2024-41
[edit]Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Weekly highlight
- Communities can now request installation of Automoderator on their wiki. Automoderator is an automated anti-vandalism tool that reverts bad edits based on scores from the new "Revert Risk" machine learning model. You can read details about the necessary steps for installation and configuration. [21]
Updates for editors
- Translators in wikis where the mobile experience of Content Translation is available, can now customize their articles suggestion list from 41 filtering options when using the tool. This topic-based article suggestion feature makes it easy for translators to self-discover relevant articles based on their area of interest and translate them. You can try it with your mobile device. [22]
- View all 12 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week.
Updates for technical contributors
- It is now possible for
<syntaxhighlight>
code blocks to offer readers a "Copy" button if thecopy=1
attribute is set on the tag. Thanks to SD0001 for these improvements. [23] - Customized copyright footer messages on all wikis will be updated. The new versions will use wikitext markup instead of requiring editing raw HTML. [24]
- Later this month, temporary accounts will be rolled out on several pilot wikis. The final list of the wikis will be published in the second half of the month. If you maintain any tools, bots, or gadgets on these 11 wikis, and your software is using data about IP addresses or is available for logged-out users, please check if it needs to be updated to work with temporary accounts. Guidance on how to update the code is available.
- Rate limiting has been enabled for the code review tools Gerrit and GitLab to address ongoing issues caused by malicious traffic and scraping. Clients that open too many concurrent connections will be restricted for a few minutes. This rate limiting is managed through nftables firewall rules. For more details, see Wikitech's pages on Firewall, GitLab limits and Gerrit operations.
- Five new wikis have been created:
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 23:38, 7 October 2024 (UTC)
Tech News: 2024-42
[edit]Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Updates for editors
- The Structured Discussion extension (also known as Flow) is starting to be removed. This extension is unmaintained and causes issues. It will be replaced by DiscussionTools, which is used on any regular talk page. A first set of wikis are being contacted. These wikis are invited to stop using Flow, and to move all Flow boards to sub-pages, as archives. At these wikis, a script will move all Flow pages that aren't a sub-page to a sub-page automatically, starting on 22 October 2024. On 28 October 2024, all Flow boards at these wikis will be set in read-only mode. [30][31]
- WMF's Search Platform team is working on making it easier for readers to perform text searches in their language. A change last week on over 30 languages makes it easier to find words with accents and other diacritics. This applies to both full-text search and to types of advanced search such as the hastemplate and incategory keywords. More technical details (including a few other minor search upgrades) are available. [32]
- View all 20 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, EditCheck was installed at Russian Wikipedia, and fixes were made for some missing user interface styles.
Updates for technical contributors
- Editors who use the Toolforge tool Earwig's Copyright Violation Detector will now be required to log in with their Wikimedia account before running checks using the "search engine" option. This change is needed to help prevent external bots from misusing the system. Thanks to Chlod for these improvements. [33]
- Phabricator users can create tickets and add comments on existing tickets via Email again. Sending email to Phabricator has been fixed. [34]
- Some HTML elements in the interface are now wrapped with a
<bdi>
element, to make our HTML output more aligned with Web standards. More changes like this will be coming in future weeks. This change might break some tools that rely on the previous HTML structure of the interface. Note that relying on the HTML structure of the interface is not recommended and might break at any time. [35]
In depth
- The latest monthly MediaWiki Product Insights newsletter is available. This edition includes: updates on Wikimedia's authentication system, research to simplify feature development in the MediaWiki platform, updates on Parser Unification and MathML rollout, and more.
- The latest quarterly Technical Community Newsletter is now available. This edition include: research about improving topic suggestions related to countries, improvements to PHPUnit tests, and more.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 21:17, 14 October 2024 (UTC)
The Signpost: 19 October 2024
[edit]- News and notes: One election's end, another election's beginning
- Recent research: "As many as 5%" of new English Wikipedia articles "contain significant AI-generated content", says paper
- In the media: Off to the races! Wikipedia wins!
- Contest: A WikiCup for the Global South
- Traffic report: A scream breaks the still of the night
- Book review: The Editors
- Humour: The Newspaper Editors
- Crossword: Spilled Coffee Mug
Tech News: 2024-43
[edit]Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Weekly highlight
- The Mobile Apps team has released an update to the iOS app's navigation, and it is now available in the latest App store version. The team added a new Profile menu that allows for easy access to editor features like Notifications and Watchlist from the Article view, and brings the "Donate" button into a more accessible place for users who are reading an article. This is the first phase of a larger planned navigation refresh to help the iOS app transition from a primarily reader-focused app, to an app that fully supports reading and editing. The Wikimedia Foundation has added more editing features and support for on-wiki communication based on volunteer requests in recent years.
Updates for editors
- Wikipedia readers can now download a browser extension to experiment with some early ideas on potential features that recommend articles for further reading, automatically summarize articles, and improve search functionality. For more details and to stay updated, check out the Web team's Content Discovery Experiments page and subscribe to their newsletter.
- Later this month, logged-out editors of these 12 wikis will start to have temporary accounts created. The list may slightly change - some wikis may be removed but none will be added. Temporary account is a new type of user account. It enhances the logged-out editors' privacy and makes it easier for community members to communicate with them. If you maintain any tools, bots, or gadgets on these 12 wikis, and your software is using data about IP addresses or is available for logged-out users, please check if it needs to be updated to work with temporary accounts. Guidance on how to update the code is available. Read more about the deployment plan across all wikis.
- View all 33 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, the South Ndebele, Pannonian Rusyn, Obolo, Iban and Tai Nüa Wikipedia languages were created last week. [36][37][38][39][40]
- It is now possible to create functions on Wikifunctions using Wikidata lexemes, through the new Wikidata lexeme type launched last week. When you go to one of these functions, the user interface provides a lexeme selector that helps you pick a lexeme from Wikidata that matches the word you type. After hitting run, your selected lexeme is retrieved from Wikidata, transformed into a Wikidata lexeme type, and passed into the selected function. Read more about this in the latest Wikifunctions newsletter.
Updates for technical contributors
- Users of the Wikimedia sites can now format dates more easily in different languages with the new
{{#timef:…}}
parser function. For example,{{#timef:now|date|en}}
will show as "20 November 2024". Previously,{{#time:…}}
could be used to format dates, but this required knowledge of the order of the time and date components and their intervening punctuation.#timef
(or#timefl
for local time) provides access to the standard date formats that MediaWiki uses in its user interface. This may help to simplify some templates on multi-lingual wikis like Commons and Meta. [41][42] - Commons and Meta users can now efficiently retrieve the user's language using
{{USERLANGUAGE}}
instead of using{{int:lang}}
. [43] - The Product and Tech Advisory Council (PTAC) now has its pilot members with representation across Africa, Asia, Europe, North America and South America. They will work to address the Movement Strategy's Technology Council initiative of having a co-defined and more resilient technological platform. [44]
In depth
- The latest quarterly Growth newsletter is available. It includes: an upcoming Newcomer Homepage Community Updates module, new Community Configuration options, and details on new projects.
- The Wikimedia Foundation is now an official partner of the CVE program, which is an international effort to catalog publicly disclosed cybersecurity vulnerabilities. This partnership will allow the Security Team to instantly publish common vulnerabilities and exposures (CVE) records that are affecting MediaWiki core, extensions, and skins, along with any other code the Foundation is a steward of.
- The Community Wishlist is now testing machine translations for Wishlist content. Volunteers can now read machine-translated versions of wishes and dive into discussions even before translators arrive to translate content.
Meetings and events
- 24 October - Wiki Education Speaker Series Webinar - Open Source Tech: Building the Wiki Education Dashboard, featuring Wikimedia interns and a Web developer in the panel.
- 20–22 December 2024 - Indic Wikimedia Hackathon Bhubaneswar 2024 in Odisha, India. A hackathon for community members, including developers, designers and content editors, to build technical solutions that improve contributors' experiences.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 20:49, 21 October 2024 (UTC)
Growth News, October 2024
[edit]Current work
[edit]Newcomer Homepage Community Updates module
We will add a new module to the Newcomer Homepage that will allow communities to highlight specific events, projects, campaigns, and initiatives. We have released a simple version on beta wikis and we will soon start an A/B test on our pilot wikis. This module will only display on the Newcomer Homepage if communities decide to utilize it, so learn how to configure the Community Updates module, or share your thoughts on the project's talk page.
Constructive activation experimentation
After showcasing early design ideas at Wikimania, we conducted user testing of design prototypes. We now aim to engage communities in further discussions and plan to run a targeted experiment, presenting a structured task within the reading view to logged-in new account holders with zero edits.
This Community Configuration extension was developed to help communities customize wiki features to meet their unique needs. The Growth team is now helping other Wikimedia Foundation teams make their products configurable:
- The Moderation Tools team now provides Community Configuration for Automoderator. (T365046)
- Certain Babel extension settings will be configurable soon. (T328171)
Future work
[edit]As part of the Growth team annual plan, we will continue to investigate ways to increase constructive activation on mobile, while also working with Data Products to move forward A/B testing functionality via the Metrics Platform.
Community events
[edit]- Growth team members presented Community Configuration: Shaping On-Wiki Functionality Together at Wikimania (slides). The session recording is available to watch on YouTube. This session provided an update on the Community Configuration project and introduced details about the upcoming features that communities will soon be able to configure. Representatives from the Moderator Tools, Editing, Web, and Campaigns teams shared their plans for utilizing Community Configuration in the future. Following these presentations, the WMF Growth team's Benoît Evellin and Martin Urbanec answered audience questions.
- Habib Mhenni gave a presentation of how mentorship works at WikiIndaba 2024. The recording is available.
Stay informed
[edit]Growth team weekly updates are available on wiki (in English) if you want to know more about our day-to-day work. If you want to receive more general updates about technical activity happening across the Wikimedia movement (including Growth work), we encourage you to subscribe to Tech News.
Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
Trizek_(WMF), 15:43, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
Hi Avishai I would like to create an article on IMU - CET examination. i just want to provide information related to it. I am not a paid editor. Kindly Guide me. --Wikiakgec (talk) 17:35, 27 October 2024 (UTC)
- Hi @Wikiakgec,
- In order to create an article, an article needs to meet the notability requirements laid out in WP:NOTABILITY. If you are sure your proposed article's topic meets those guidelines, please visit WP:NEW. I hope this was clarifying. If you have any more questions, please feel free to contact me!
- Warm regards,
- Avishai
- @Avishai11
- Avishai11 (talk) 00:28, 28 October 2024 (UTC)
- Thank you Avishai Wikiakgec (talk) 12:03, 28 October 2024 (UTC)
- @Wikiakgec You're welcome!
- Warm regards,
- Avishai
- @Avishai11
- Avishai11 (talk) 20:28, 31 October 2024 (UTC)
- Thank you Avishai Wikiakgec (talk) 12:03, 28 October 2024 (UTC)
User talk:TheSlaveryGirl
[edit]There is nothing you can do to help them. Drmies (talk) 01:57, 28 October 2024 (UTC)
- @Drmies, I know, it was the default! Wait, can you turn on Extended Protected for the page? Or block/ban them? Thank you for your help!!! Avishai11 (talk) 01:58, 28 October 2024 (UTC)
- It's already done. It's someone with nothing better to do. Look at their edits, next time, and report them--no need to revert or whatever, just leave that to the admins. Drmies (talk) 02:00, 28 October 2024 (UTC)
- @Drmies Great!
- Warm regards,
- Avishai Avishai11 (talk) 20:29, 31 October 2024 (UTC)
- It's already done. It's someone with nothing better to do. Look at their edits, next time, and report them--no need to revert or whatever, just leave that to the admins. Drmies (talk) 02:00, 28 October 2024 (UTC)
Tech News: 2024-44
[edit]Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Updates for editors
- Later in November, the Charts extension will be deployed to the test wikis in order to help identify and fix any issue. A security review is underway to then enable deployment to pilot wikis for broader testing. You can read the October project update and see the latest documentation and examples on Beta Wikipedia.
- View all 32 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, Pediapress.com, an external service that creates books from Wikipedia, can now use Wikimedia Maps to include existing pre-rendered infobox map images in their printed books on Wikipedia. [45]
Updates for technical contributors
- Wikis can use the Guided Tour extension to help newcomers understand how to edit. The Guided Tours extension now works with dark mode. Guided Tour maintainers can check their tours to see that nothing looks odd. They can also set
emitTransitionOnStep
totrue
to fix an old bug. They can use the new flagallowAutomaticBack
to avoid back-buttons they don't want. [46] - Administrators in the Wikimedia projects who use the Nuke Extension will notice that mass deletions done with this tool have the "Nuke" tag. This change will make reviewing and analyzing deletions performed with the tool easier. [47]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 20:53, 28 October 2024 (UTC)
WikiCup 2024 November newsletter
[edit]The 2024 WikiCup has come to an end, with the final round being a very tight race. Our new champion is AirshipJungleman29 (submissions), who scored 2,283 points mainly through 3 high-multiplier FAs and 3 GAs on military history topics. By a 1% margin, Airship beat out last year's champion, BeanieFan11 (submissions), who scored second with 2,264 points, mainly from an impressive 58 GAs about athletes. In third place, Generalissima (submissions) scored 1,528 points, primarily from two FAs on U.S. Librarians of Congress and 20 GAs about various historical topics. Our other finalists are: Sammi Brie (submissions) with 879 points, Hey man im josh (submissions) with 533 points, BennyOnTheLoose (submissions) with 432 points, Arconning (submissions) with 244 points, and AryKun (submissions) with 15 points. Congratulations to our finalists and all who participated!
The final round was very productive, and contestants had 7 FAs, 9 FLs, 94 GAs, 73 FAC reviews, and 79 GAN reviews and peer reviews. Altogether, Wikipedia has benefited greatly from the activities of WikiCup competitors all through the contest. Well done everyone!
All those who reached the final will receive awards and the following special awards will be made, based on high performance in particular areas of content creation. So that the finalists do not have an undue advantage, these prizes are awarded to the competitor who scored the highest in any particular field in a single round, or in the event of a tie, to the overall leader in this field.
- Generalissima (submissions) wins the featured article prize for 3 FAs in round 4, and 7 FAs overall.
- Hey man im josh (submissions) wins the featured list prize for 23 FLs overall.
- MaranoFan (submissions) wins the featured topic prize for 9 articles in featured topics in round 1.
- Hey man im josh (submissions) wins the featured content reviewer prize for 110 FA/FL reviews overall.
- BeanieFan11 (submissions) wins the good article prize for 58 GAs in round 5, and 70 GAs overall.
- Fritzmann (submissions) wins the good topic prize for 6 articles in good topics in round 2.
- Sammi Brie (submissions) wins the good article reviewer prize for 45 GA reviews in round 2, and 78 GA reviews overall.
- BeanieFan11 (submissions) wins the DYK prize, for 131 Did you know articles overall.
- Muboshgu (submissions) wins the ITN prize, for 15 In the news articles in round 1, and 36 overall.
Next year's competition will begin on 1 January. You are invited to sign up to participate; the WikiCup is open to all Wikipedians, both novices and experienced editors, and we hope to see you all in the 2025 competition. Until then, it only remains to once again congratulate our worthy winners, and thank all participants for their involvement!
If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove yourself from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. Cwmhiraeth (talk · contribs), Epicgenius (talk · contribs), and Frostly (talk · contribs). MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 13:48, 1 November 2024 (UTC)
Administrators' newsletter – November 2024
[edit]News and updates for administrators from the past month (October 2024).
- Following a discussion, the discussion-only period proposal that went for a trial to refine the requests for adminship (RfA) process has been discontinued.
- Following a request for comment, Administrator recall is adopted as a policy.
- Mass deletions done with the Nuke tool now have the 'Nuke' tag. This change will make reviewing and analyzing deletions performed with the tool easier. T366068
- RoySmith, Barkeep49 and Cyberpower678 have been appointed to the Electoral Commission for the 2024 Arbitration Committee Elections. ThadeusOfNazereth and Dr vulpes are reserve commissioners.
- Eligible editors are invited to self-nominate from 3 November 2024 until 12 November 2024 to stand in the 2024 Arbitration Committee elections.
- The Arbitration Committee is seeking volunteers for roles such as clerks, access to the COI queue, checkuser, and oversight.
- An unreferenced articles backlog drive is happening in November 2024 to reduce the backlog of articles tagged with {{Unreferenced}}. You can help reduce the backlog by adding citations to these articles. Sign up to participate!
Tech News: 2024-45
[edit]Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Updates for editors
- Stewards can now make global account blocks cause global autoblocks. This will assist stewards in preventing abuse from users who have been globally blocked. This includes preventing globally blocked temporary accounts from exiting their session or switching browsers to make subsequent edits for 24 hours. Previously, temporary accounts could exit their current session or switch browsers to continue editing. This is an anti-abuse tool improvement for the Temporary Accounts project. You can read more about the progress on key features for temporary accounts. [48]
- Wikis that have the CampaignEvents extension enabled can now use the Collaboration List feature. This list provides a new, easy way for contributors to learn about WikiProjects on their wikis. Thanks to the Campaign team for this work that is part of the 2024/25 annual plan. If you are interested in bringing the CampaignEvents extension to your wiki, you can follow these steps or you can reach out to User:Udehb-WMF for help.
- The text color for red links will be slightly changed later this week to improve their contrast in light mode. [49]
- View all 32 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, on multilingual wikis, users can now hide translations from the WhatLinksHere special page.
Updates for technical contributors
- XML data dumps have been temporarily paused whilst a bug is investigated. [50]
In depth
- Temporary Accounts have been deployed to six wikis; thanks to the Trust and Safety Product team for this work, you can read about the deployment plans. Beginning next week, Temporary Accounts will also be enabled on seven other projects. If you are active on these wikis and need help migrating your tools, please reach out to User:Udehb-WMF for assistance.
- The latest quarterly Language and Internationalization newsletter is available. It includes: New languages supported in translatewiki or in MediaWiki; New keyboard input methods for some languages; details about recent and upcoming meetings, and more.
Meetings and events
- MediaWiki Users and Developers Conference Fall 2024 is happening in Vienna, Austria and online from 4 to 6 November 2024. The conference will feature discussions around the usage of MediaWiki software by and within companies in different industries and will inspire and onboard new users.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 20:47, 4 November 2024 (UTC)
Pending changes reviewer granted
[edit]Hello. Your account has been granted the "pending changes reviewer" userright, allowing you to review other users' edits on pages protected by pending changes. The list of articles awaiting review is located at Special:PendingChanges, while the list of articles that have pending changes protection turned on is located at Special:StablePages.
Being granted reviewer rights neither grants you status nor changes how you can edit articles. If you do not want this user right, you may ask any administrator to remove it for you at any time.
See also:
- Wikipedia:Reviewing pending changes, the guideline on reviewing
- Wikipedia:Reviewing pending changes#Requirements to accept an edit, when to accept an edit
Dr vulpes (Talk) 05:49, 6 November 2024 (UTC)
The Signpost: 6 November 2024
[edit]- From the editors: Editing Wikipedia should not be a crime
- In the media: An old scrimmage, politics and purported libel
- Special report: Wikipedia editors face litigation, censorship
- Traffic report: Twisted tricks or tempting treats?
Tech News: 2024-46
[edit]Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Updates for editors
- On wikis with the Translate extension enabled, users will notice that the FuzzyBot will now automatically create translated versions of categories used on translated pages. [51]
- View all 29 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, the submitted task to use the SecurePoll extension for English Wikipedia's special administrator election was resolved on time. [52]
Updates for technical contributors
- In
1.44.0-wmf-2
, the logic of Wikibase functiongetAllStatements
changed to behave likegetBestStatements
. Invoking the function now returns a copy of values which are immutable. [53] - Wikimedia REST API users, such as bot operators and tool maintainers, may be affected by ongoing upgrades. The API will be rerouting some page content endpoints from RESTbase to the newer MediaWiki REST API endpoints. The impacted endpoints include getting page/revision metadata and rendered HTML content. These changes will be available on testwiki later this week, with other projects to follow. This change should not affect existing functionality, but active users of the impacted endpoints should verify behavior on testwiki, and raise any concerns on the related Phabricator ticket.
In depth
- Admins and users of the Wikimedia projects where Automoderator is enabled can now monitor and evaluate important metrics related to Automoderator's actions. This Superset dashboard calculates and aggregates metrics about Automoderator's behaviour on the projects in which it is deployed. Thanks to the Moderator Tools team for this Dashboard; you can visit the documentation page for more information about this work. [54]
Meetings and events
- 21 November 2024 (8:00 UTC & 16:00 UTC) - Community call with Wikimedia Commons volunteers and stakeholders to help prioritize support efforts for 2025-2026 Fiscal Year. The theme of this call is how content should be organised on Wikimedia Commons.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 00:04, 12 November 2024 (UTC)
Thanks
[edit]Thank you for the barnstar. Iljhgtn (talk) 23:14, 14 November 2024 (UTC)
- @Iljhgtn you are very welcome - you totally deserve it!!! Avishai - @Avishai11 Avishai11 (talk) 23:18, 14 November 2024 (UTC)
- May I ask how you noticed? Iljhgtn (talk) 00:08, 15 November 2024 (UTC)
- @Iljhgtn I saw your profile on the Teahouse, and I clicked on it, and I clicked on Contributions! Great work! @Avishai11 Avishai11 (talk) 03:06, 15 November 2024 (UTC)
- May I ask how you noticed? Iljhgtn (talk) 00:08, 15 November 2024 (UTC)
Editing the Checkuser policy
[edit]Please do not edit the policy directly; take any proposed changes to the talk page. I will be removing your new shortcuts; they are not needed, and can be confusing. Risker (talk) 23:25, 14 November 2024 (UTC)
- [NOTE: Sorry for the super long message!]
- Hi @Risker,
- It's a pleasure meeting you. I hope you are doing great! I hope not to come off as rude, but did you actually read my edits? All of them were not policy changes. Check the history. The only other way you could mean "do not edit the policy directly" would be saying that I can't/shouldn't edit the policy, no matter what (even minor edits), without approval. That's not Wikipedia policy (which you should be very familiar with, sitting on the Arb Committee). There are so many other policies that statement would violate if so. For starters, a classic WP:OWNERSHIP, discouraging Wikipedia:BOLD, and not doing WP:GF. Plus, if we weren't allowed to make minor edits to policies, it would have a super high protection level. It doesn't; it has autoconfirmed.
- For "take any proposed changes to the talk page", we all know (and it literally says it when you edit the page): minor edits or non-policy changes (which I did) do NOT require consensus or "approval". Do you disagree?
- On "I will be removing your new shortcuts": this is a helpful edit that you decided, unilaterally, scrolling through Wikipedia, decided to revert, not thinking about for probably more than 2 minutes, decided to do, but it was very rude. I added helpful shortcuts! And there is room in the box. We have so many strange or "confusing" shortcuts, like Wikipedia:CHAR/A, that's very confusing. We have H:SPCHAR (which goes to WP:SEARCH). There was no reason for your removals.
- About "they are not needed": respectfully, that's actually not for you to decide. Sorry, but it isn't. Please actually cite ANY applicable policy. ANY. None, right?
- Regarding "and can be confusing": Do you call WP:CHE for WP:CHECKUSER CONFUSING? How is that confusing? Most editors would probably agree: it's not. If you need help understanding why it isn't confusing: the first 3 letters of CheckUser are: CHE. Hence WP:CHE. And you call WP:CHK NOT CONFUSING? What? WP:CHK is very confusing, much more than WP:CHE.
- Also, "shortcut not needed" is not a valid reason for deletion (as I would have expected you to know) per WP:SPEEDY. Your deletion was against all of Wikipedia's deletion policies. Let's go through CSD codes as well as the general and redirects deletion codes:
- "G1. Patent nonsense
- This applies to pages consisting entirely of incoherent text or gibberish with no meaningful content or history. It does not cover poor writing, partisan screeds, obscene remarks, implausible theories, vandalism, hoaxes, fictional material, coherent non-English material, or poorly translated material. In short, if it is understandable, G1 does not apply. It also does not apply to pages in the user namespace." There's no way this could be seen as that. The text was completely coherent and understandable.
- "G2. Test pages
- This applies to pages created to test editing or other Wikipedia functions. It applies to subpages of the Wikipedia Sandbox created as tests, but does not apply to the Sandbox itself, pages in the user namespace, or valid but unused or duplicate templates." These redirects were definitely NOT "tests".
- "G3. Pure vandalism and blatant hoaxes
- Further information: Wikipedia:Vandalism and Wikipedia:Do not create hoaxes
- This applies to pages that are blatant and obvious misinformation, blatant hoaxes (including files intended to misinform), and redirects created by cleanup from page-move vandalism. Articles about notable hoaxes are acceptable if it is clear that they are describing a hoax." Not possible.
- "G4. Recreation of a page that was deleted per a deletion discussion
- This applies to sufficiently identical copies, having any title, of a page deleted via its most recent deletion discussion. It excludes pages that are not substantially identical to the deleted version, and pages to which the reason for the deletion no longer applies. It excludes pages in userspace and draftspace where the content was converted to a draft for explicit improvement (but not simply to circumvent Wikipedia's deletion policy). This criterion also does not cover content undeleted via a deletion review, or that was only deleted via proposed deletion (including deletion discussions closed as "soft delete") or speedy deletion." Not possible.
- "G5. Creations by banned or blocked users, or in violation of general sanctions
- This applies to pages created by banned or blocked users in violation of their ban or block, as well as pages created in violation of general sanctions, and that have no substantial edits by others not subject to the ban or sanctions." I wasn't blocked or banned, was I?
- "G6. Technical deletions
- This is for uncontroversial maintenance, including:
- Deleting redirects or other pages which prevent page moves. Administrators should be aware of the proper procedures where a redirect or page holding up a page move has a non-trivial page history. An administrator who deletes a page that is blocking a move should ensure that the move is completed after deleting it." [Note: There was more criteria, but that would be much longer.] There was NO WAY this counts as "uncontroversial". No one would agree with that assessment.
- "G7. Author requests deletion
- If requested in good faith and provided that the only substantial content of the page was added by its author. For redirects created as a result of a page move, the mover must also have been the only substantive contributor to the pages before the move. If the sole author blanks a page other than a userspace page, a category page, or any type of talk page, this can be taken as a deletion request. If an author requests deletion of a page currently undergoing a deletion discussion, the closing admin may interpret that request as agreement with the deletion rationale." Question: Did I request deletion? Answer: No, I didn't.
- "G8. Pages dependent on a non-existent or deleted page
- Examples include, but are not limited to:
- Talk pages with no corresponding subject page
- Subpages with no parent page
- TimedText pages without a corresponding file (or when the file has been moved to Commons)
- Redirects to target pages that never existed or were deleted
- Editnotices of non-existent or unsalted deleted pages" Does WP:CHECKUSER still exist? Please, tell me.
- "G9. Office actions
- Main page: Wikipedia:Office actions
- In exceptional circumstances, the Wikimedia Foundation office reserves the right to speedy-delete a page. Deletions of this type must not be reversed without permission from the Foundation." Are you a WMF staff member? I don't believe so.
- "G10. Pages that disparage, threaten, intimidate, or harass their subject or some other entity, and serve no other purpose
- Examples of "attack pages" may include: libel, legal threats, material intended purely to harass or intimidate a person, or biographical material about a living person that is entirely negative in tone and unsourced. These pages should be speedily deleted when there is no neutral version in the page history to revert to. Both the page title and page content may be taken into account in assessing an attack. Articles about living people deleted under this criterion should not be restored or recreated by any editor until the biographical article standards are met. Other pages violating the Biographies of living persons policy might be eligible for deletion under the conditions stipulated at Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons § Summary deletion, creation prevention, and courtesy blanking, although in most cases a deletion discussion should be initiated instead.
- Redirects from plausible search terms are not eligible under this criterion. For example, a term used on the target page to refer to its subject is often a plausible redirect – see Wikipedia:RNEUTRAL." Definitely not an attack page, or an intimidation page. Also, see the very last sentence. Perfect for this situation, isn't it?
- "G11. Unambiguous advertising or promotion
- Main page: Wikipedia:Spam
- This applies to pages that are exclusively promotional and would need to be fundamentally rewritten to serve as encyclopedia articles, rather than advertisements. If a subject is notable and the content could plausibly be replaced with text written from a neutral point of view, this is preferable to deletion. Note: Any article that describes its subject from a neutral point of view does not qualify for this criterion. However, "promotion" does not necessarily mean commercial promotion: anything can be promoted, including a person, a non-commercial organization, a point of view, etc." Please answer: was the redirect advertising something? Or promoting something? NO.
- "G12. Unambiguous copyright infringement
- Main page:
- Wikipedia:Copyright violations
- This applies to text pages that contain copyrighted material with no credible assertion of public domain, fair use, or a compatible free license, where there is no non-infringing content on the page worth saving. Only if the history is unsalvageably corrupted should it be deleted in its entirety; earlier versions without infringement should be retained. For equivocal cases that do not meet speedy deletion criteria (such as where there is a dubious assertion of permission, where free-content edits overlie the infringement, or where there is only partial infringement or close paraphrasing), the article or the appropriate section should be blanked with {{subst:Copyvio|url=insert URL here}}, and the page should be listed at Wikipedia:Copyright problems. Please consult Wikipedia:Copyright violations for other instructions." Not applicable!
- "G13. Abandoned drafts and Articles for creation submissions
- Further information: Wikipedia:Articles for creation
- This applies to any pages that have not been edited by a human in six months found in:
- Draft namespace,
- Userspace with an {{AFC submission}} template
- Userspace with no content except the article wizard placeholder text." Was it in the draftspace?
- "G14. Unnecessary disambiguation pages
- This applies to the following disambiguation pages and redirects:
- Disambiguation pages that have titles ending in "(disambiguation)" but disambiguate only one extant Wikipedia page.
- Regardless of title, disambiguation pages that disambiguate zero extant Wikipedia pages.
- A redirect that ends in "(disambiguation)" but does not redirect to a disambiguation page or a page that performs a disambiguation-like function (such as set index articles or lists)." Not a disambiguation.
- SO, I've proved that there was absolutely no policy allowing the SPEEDY deletion of those redirects.
- Now, I'm going to prove that there was no reason for deletion even under the non-CSD criteria:
- "The redirect page makes it unreasonably difficult for users to locate similarly named articles via the search engine. For example, if the user searches for "New Articles", and is redirected to a disambiguation page for "Articles", it would take much longer to get to the newly added articles on Wikipedia." Not applicable.
- "The redirect might cause confusion. For example, if "Adam B. Smith" was redirected to "Andrew B. Smith", because Andrew was accidentally called Adam in one source, this could cause confusion with the article on Adam Smith, so the redirect should be deleted." Nope.
- "The redirect is offensive or abusive, such as redirecting "Joe Bloggs is a Loser" to "Joe Bloggs" (unless "Joe Bloggs is a Loser" is legitimately discussed in the article), or "Joe Bloggs" to "Loser". (Speedy deletion criterion G10 and G3 may apply.) See also § Neutrality of redirects." Were the redirects offensive to you? Or to anyone?
- "The redirect constitutes self-promotion or spam. (Speedy deletion criterion G11 may apply.)" NO.
- "The redirect makes no sense, such as redirecting "Apple" to "Orange". (Speedy deletion criterion G1 may apply.)" I'm pretty sure "CHE" to "CHECKUSER" makes perfect sense.
- "It is a cross-namespace redirect out of article space, such as one pointing into the User or Wikipedia namespace. The major exception to this rule are the pseudo-namespace shortcut redirects, which technically are in the main article space. Some long-standing cross-namespace redirects are also kept because of their long-standing history and potential usefulness. "MOS:" redirects, for example, were an exception to this rule until they became their own namespace in 2024." Were the redirects pointing to the article space?
- "If the redirect is broken, meaning it redirects to an article that does not exist, it can be immediately deleted under speedy deletion criterion G8. You should check that there is not an alternative place it could be appropriately redirected to first and that it has not become broken through vandalism." I don't remember the direct being broken, do you?
- "If the redirect is a novel or very obscure synonym for an article name that is not mentioned in the target, it is unlikely to be useful. In particular, redirects in a language other than English to a page whose subject is unrelated to that language (or a culture that speaks that language) should generally not be created. (Implausible typos or misnomers are candidates for speedy deletion criterion R3, if recently created.)" Not a synonym. Or in another language. Or an impossible typo!
- "If the target article needs to be moved to the redirect title, but the redirect has been edited before and has a history of its own, then the title needs to be freed up to make way for the move. If the move is uncontroversial, tag the redirect for G6 speedy deletion, or alternatively (with the
suppressredirect
user right; available to page movers and admins), perform a round-robin move. If not, take the article to Requested moves." Not applicable. - "If the redirect could plausibly be expanded into an article, and the target article contains virtually no information on the subject." Could it have been?
- Now, we've determined you had no right to delete the redirects, remove them from the list of shortcuts, and to use the edit summary(s) so improperly.
- I sincerely hope we can find a solution together before something else happens. I really don't want to get anyone else involved in this. I actually don't, that wasn't a threat, I swear. But I will if this isn't solved soon, we may need to see a third-party(s). I look forward to your reading your response soon. I hope you have a great rest of your day!
- Warm regards,
- Avishai
- @Avishai11
- Avishai11 (talk) 21:46, 15 November 2024 (UTC)
I am sure you mean well, Avishai11. The bottom line is that you are not in a position to understand the policies you are trying to edit. That is okay, you simply haven't been here long enough to know that the CheckUser policy has been carefully crafted over almost 20 years to read the way that it is. The policy doesn't really apply to you, except in that you could request that a checkuser look at a suspected sockpuppet that you've come across. Over that nearly 20 years of the policy's existence, many editors who are not checkusers or do not have sufficient experience have tried to "improve" it, only to be promptly reverted because their seemingly minor changes have definitely impacted the content and effect of the policy. This is actually common to a lot of other policies, as well. It is perfectly reasonable to suggest even minor modifications to a policy on the talk page of the policy. What some people consider minor edits turn out to be massively changing to the meaning of a policy. It is expected by the community that only very experienced editors who work with a particular policy regularly will make even minor changes, and often even experienced editors will discuss minor changes on the talk page of the policy. An editor with 600 live edits is not the best person to be editing policy.
The shortcuts and redirects you are suggesting on various pages are not particularly plausible, and in some cases are quite problematic due to historical reasons of which you are not aware. Deleting the redirect pages is housekeeping (G6); the shortcuts aren't appropriate for use in the places to which you have redirected, so the redirect pages are no longer needed and could potentially prevent someone else from using that redirect for something more plausible.
I suggest you spend the next year editing content and applying the existing policies before you start trying to reword policies to your preferred form. Try to get your percentage of edits to content higher than your percentage of edits to any other namespace; the way to understand Wikipedia is to edit its content. Perhaps you might want to subscribe to SuggestBot to get ideas on articles you can edit. Risker (talk) 22:17, 15 November 2024 (UTC)
- @Risker: Thank you for your faith in me. That might not sound right, sorry - I genuinely am thankful that you aren't a mean person! Thanks! I am also so sorry for making you read all of that. However, I still have many issues with your message. "The bottom line is that you are not in a position to understand the policies you are trying to edit." First of all, I fully understand the CheckUser policy and most other Wikipedia policies (that aren't extremely technical, such as specifically the steps to delete pages or how to build and publish bots, nor do I need to) don't try to gaslight me (respectfully). Secondly, I wasn't editing the policy's CONTENT. However, if I'm missing the point, I'm sorry. I've been here, learning, for over 4 1/2 years. There's still things for me to learn; everyone can learn new things. I did know that the CheckUser policy was created in 2005, around 19 years ago. I could say that off of the top of my head. You are correct in that the CheckUser policy does NOT currently apply to me (except that I could request a CheckUser to investigate a suspected sockpuppet). Also, if you look at what the CheckUser policy looked like in 2005, or even 2008, or 2011, or even in 2020 (there were still HUGE changes from 2020). I consider myself a semi-experienced editor (not as much as you, of course!), and I used to be (until around 20 hours ago) a mentor in Wikipedia's Mentorship Program. I was qualified then, and I promptly (except when I had a family issue and needed to take a 2 week break this summer) answered all of their questions, and helped them. Some of my (former) mentors even have 400, 500, and even 700 edits! Even more than me! They have created many new articles with my help. Do you think I should be a mentor? Back to the main point, as of right now, my main issues aren't with your reverts of the shortcuts, my problem is with your deletion of the shortcuts. I actually was writing a message to answer a question at the Help Desk when I got the notice that it was deleted from my watchlist. I USE it, and I think it would be helpful for some people, at least. So, I was wondering if you could "revive" the shortcuts. I also just want to say that I really, truly appreciate you taking the time to explain your side to me. Also, I am unaware of your "historical reasons". What does that even mean? From what I saw, nothing was created on those pages. If I'm wrong, please explain. Plus, if someone DID want to create something with that redirect, they would be welcome to do so. I would like to use the redirects for something useful, too. And how exactly aren't they appropriate? Please, explain. Now onto your last paragraph. I have spent many years editing and learning. 4 1/2 years, to be exact. You've definitely had a LOT more experience than me, but I have a strong amount (not enough to do an RFA, but I don't want that right now, I know I need to learn more myself). Also, I actually enjoy working "behind the scenes" as well as on the "front-end". It just so happens I prefer helping other people edit. That's ok; many admins and editors prefer this as well. I like keeping Wikipedia "tidy and organized". I look forward to your reply. @Avishai11 Avishai11 (talk) 01:17, 17 November 2024 (UTC)
- @Risker: Just checking in, did you read this? Best, @Avishai11 Avishai11 (talk) 01:47, 19 November 2024 (UTC)
- Yes, I saw it, Avishai11. I am kind of at a loss that someone who had 42 edits over 4 months in 2020-21, then two years without a single edit, then 564 edits this year (which included a two month break) really wants to claim 4-1/2 years' experience editing. I just don't know what to say to that at all. What I do know is that when I look at Pinhoe railway station, you deliberately ignored the hatnote that says "use dd/mm/yy dates", which is the usual standard for articles involving British topics, and completely changed the dating protocol to "mm/dd/yy" which is the usual standard for American topics. It would be nice if you returned that to the correct format. Incidentally, "station master" is the normal usage; "stationmaster" is a secondary way of spelling things. In looking through your contributions, I can see that you have tried your hand at a lot of things: categorization, article deficiency tagging, some PRODs, and of course a few other things, with mixed feedback or results. It's normal that it takes a while for an editor to find their niche. But you're doing a lot of what we could call "maintenance work" without doing much content improvement. No, I don't expect you to be writing fully-fledged articles; I admire your restraint in that. But I'd expect to see you doing some of the tasks that are recommended by the Growth Team as good tasks for low-experience editors. I think you would be familiar with them, as you had previously volunteered as a Growth Team mentor. The irony is that I still do several of those very tasks even now, almost 20 years after I created my account. It is a good way to keep in touch with the real purpose of Wikipedia, which is its content. I really urge you to try out some of those tasks, because it will get you better rooted into what we really do here. (At less than 700 edits, you are a low experience editor, no matter when you created your account. It's not a slight. The majority of Wikipedia accounts have fewer than 100 edits, often spread out over a decade or more.)
I won't be reviving the shortcuts; it's very bad when every user feels empowered to add their own favourite ways of getting to a page, because then we'd have hundreds, if not thousands, of shortcuts to every Wikipedia-space page. Instead, make your case for the shortcut on the talk page of the page to which you want to attach it. This is a place where others in the community can also chime in, and a consensus can be reached. Lots of people have a subpage in their userspace with links to pages they find useful, or alternately they just keep them on their userpage.
I know it may sound a bit rich that I'm urging you to work on content when I've done so little in recent times. I was, however, "seconded" to a global committee for 2.5 years, and have only come "home" to English Wikipedia in the last couple of months. My first priority was taking care of a very large backlog in the checkuser/administrator area. I'm just now really starting to sink my teeth back into content. I'm starting the way that I often recommend to new editors: just keep hitting "random article", reading each one, and making minor improvements if needed. Eventually, we stumble into an article that needs more serious work, whether copy-editing or improving references or rewriting entirely. I encourage you to keep working on the encyclopedia. Risker (talk) 04:49, 19 November 2024 (UTC)
- Yes, I saw it, Avishai11. I am kind of at a loss that someone who had 42 edits over 4 months in 2020-21, then two years without a single edit, then 564 edits this year (which included a two month break) really wants to claim 4-1/2 years' experience editing. I just don't know what to say to that at all. What I do know is that when I look at Pinhoe railway station, you deliberately ignored the hatnote that says "use dd/mm/yy dates", which is the usual standard for articles involving British topics, and completely changed the dating protocol to "mm/dd/yy" which is the usual standard for American topics. It would be nice if you returned that to the correct format. Incidentally, "station master" is the normal usage; "stationmaster" is a secondary way of spelling things. In looking through your contributions, I can see that you have tried your hand at a lot of things: categorization, article deficiency tagging, some PRODs, and of course a few other things, with mixed feedback or results. It's normal that it takes a while for an editor to find their niche. But you're doing a lot of what we could call "maintenance work" without doing much content improvement. No, I don't expect you to be writing fully-fledged articles; I admire your restraint in that. But I'd expect to see you doing some of the tasks that are recommended by the Growth Team as good tasks for low-experience editors. I think you would be familiar with them, as you had previously volunteered as a Growth Team mentor. The irony is that I still do several of those very tasks even now, almost 20 years after I created my account. It is a good way to keep in touch with the real purpose of Wikipedia, which is its content. I really urge you to try out some of those tasks, because it will get you better rooted into what we really do here. (At less than 700 edits, you are a low experience editor, no matter when you created your account. It's not a slight. The majority of Wikipedia accounts have fewer than 100 edits, often spread out over a decade or more.)
- @Risker: Just checking in, did you read this? Best, @Avishai11 Avishai11 (talk) 01:47, 19 November 2024 (UTC)
Speedy deletion nomination of Wikipedia:!!!
[edit]A tag has been placed on Wikipedia:!!! requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under section R3 of the criteria for speedy deletion, because it is a recently created redirect from an implausible typo or misnomer, or other unlikely search term.
If you think this page should not be deleted for this reason, you may contest the nomination by visiting the page and clicking the button labelled "Contest this speedy deletion". This will give you the opportunity to explain why you believe the page should not be deleted. However, be aware that once a page is tagged for speedy deletion, it may be deleted without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag from the page yourself, but do not hesitate to add information in line with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. Bbb23 (talk) 22:19, 15 November 2024 (UTC)
Mentor
[edit]I've removed you from the list of mentors. You are insufficiently experienced to be a mentor, and you do not meet the criteria.--Bbb23 (talk) 22:42, 15 November 2024 (UTC)
Speedy deletion nomination of Wikipedia:BUTTON
[edit]A tag has been placed on Wikipedia:BUTTON requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under section R3 of the criteria for speedy deletion, because it is a recently created redirect from an implausible typo or misnomer, or other unlikely search term.
If you think this page should not be deleted for this reason, you may contest the nomination by visiting the page and clicking the button labelled "Contest this speedy deletion". This will give you the opportunity to explain why you believe the page should not be deleted. However, be aware that once a page is tagged for speedy deletion, it may be deleted without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag from the page yourself, but do not hesitate to add information in line with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. Bbb23 (talk) 22:43, 15 November 2024 (UTC)
- You're making things worse for yourself. I just deleted the MfD you created. If you wish to contest the speedy deletion, nominating it for deletion and then opposing your own nomination is disruptive.--Bbb23 (talk) 23:41, 15 November 2024 (UTC)
Speedy deletion nomination of Wikipedia:HEBU
[edit]A tag has been placed on Wikipedia:HEBU requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under section R3 of the criteria for speedy deletion, because it is a recently created redirect from an implausible typo or misnomer, or other unlikely search term.
If you think this page should not be deleted for this reason, you may contest the nomination by visiting the page and clicking the button labelled "Contest this speedy deletion". This will give you the opportunity to explain why you believe the page should not be deleted. However, be aware that once a page is tagged for speedy deletion, it may be deleted without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag from the page yourself, but do not hesitate to add information in line with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. Bbb23 (talk) 22:44, 15 November 2024 (UTC)
The Signpost: 18 November 2024
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Tech News: 2024-47
[edit]Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Updates for editors
- Users of Wikimedia sites will now be warned when they create a redirect to a page that doesn't exist. This will reduce the number of broken redirects to red links in our projects. [55]
- View all 42 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, Pywikibot, which automates work on MediaWiki sites, was upgraded to 9.5.0 on Toolforge. [56]
Updates for technical contributors
- On wikis that use the FlaggedRevs extension, pages created or moved by users with the appropriate permissions are marked as flagged automatically. This feature has not been working recently, and changes fixing it should be deployed this week. Thanks to Daniel and Wargo for working on this. [57][58]
In depth
- There is a new Diff post about Temporary Accounts, available in more than 15 languages. Read it to learn about what Temporary Accounts are, their impact on different groups of users, and the plan to introduce the change on all wikis.
Meetings and events
- Technical volunteers can now register for the 2025 Wikimedia Hackathon, which will take place in Istanbul, Turkey. Application for travel and accommodation scholarships is open from November 12 to December 10 2024. The registration for the event will close in mid-April 2025. The Wikimedia Hackathon is an annual gathering that unites the global technical community to collaborate on existing projects and explore new ideas.
- Join the Wikimedia Commons community calls this week to help prioritize support for Commons which will be planned for 2025–2026. The theme will be how content should be organised on Wikimedia Commons. This is an opportunity for volunteers who work on different things to come together and talk about what matters for the future of the project. The calls will take place November 21, 2024, 8:00 UTC and 16:00 UTC.
- A Language community meeting will take place November 29, 16:00 UTC to discuss updates and technical problem-solving.
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