User talk:Chlod/Newsletters/Archive 1

This page is an archive of past newsletter issues. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

The Signpost: 27 January 2020

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

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

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

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

Arbitration report: Three cases at ArbCom

Traffic report: The most viewed articles of 2019

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

WikiProject report: WikiProject Japan: a wikiProject Report

Humour: Predicting the 6,000,000th article

Obituary: Remembering Wikipedia contributor Brian Boulton

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

The Signpost: 1 March 2020

From the editor: The ball is in your court

News and notes: Alexa ranking down to 13th worldwide

Special report: More participation, more conversation, more pageviews

In the media: Mapping IP editors, Smithsonian open-access, and coronavirus disinformation

Discussion report: Do you prefer M or P?

Arbitration report: Two prominent administrators removed

By the numbers: How many actions by administrators does it take to clean up spam?

Community view: The Incredible Invisible Woman

In focus: History of The Signpost, 2015–2019

Recent research: Wikipedia generates $50 billion/year consumer surplus in the US alone

From the archives: Is Wikipedia for sale?

Traffic report: February articles, floating in the dark

Gallery: Feel the love

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

Op-Ed: What I learned as Wikimedia UK Communications Coordinator

Opinion: Wikipedia is another country

Humour: The Wilhelm scream

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:22, 1 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 29 March 2020

From the editors: The bad and the good

News and notes: 2018 Wikipedian of the year blocked

WikiProject report: WikiProject COVID-19: A WikiProject Report

Special report: Wikipedia on COVID-19: what we publish and why it matters

In the media: Blocked in Iran but still covering the big story

Discussion report: Rethinking draft space

Arbitration report: Unfinished business

In focus: "I have been asked by Jeffrey Epstein …"

Community view: Wikimedia community responds to COVID-19

Recent research: Disease outbreak uncertainties, AfD forecasting, auto-updating Wikipedia

From the archives: Text from Wikipedia good enough for Oxford University Press to claim as own

Traffic report: The only thing that matters in the world

Gallery: Visible Women on Wikipedia

News from the WMF: Amid COVID-19, Wikimedia Foundation offers full pay for reduced hours, mobilizes all staff to work remote, and waives sick time

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

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:42, 29 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 26 April 2020

News and notes: Unbiased information from Ukraine's government?

In the media: Coronavirus, again and again

Discussion report: Redesigning Wikipedia, bit by bit

Featured content: Featured content returns

Arbitration report: Two difficult cases

Traffic report: Disease the Rhythm of the Night

Gallery: Roy is doing fine and sending more photos

Recent research: Trending topics across languages; auto-detecting bias

Essay: Wikipedia:An article about yourself isn't necessarily a good thing

By the numbers: Open data and COVID-19: Wikipedia as an informational resource during the pandemic

Opinion: Trusting Everybody to Work Together

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

Interview: Health and RfA's: An interview with Guy Macon

In focus: Multilingual Wikipedia

WikiProject report: The Guild of Copy Editors

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:17, 26 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 31 May 2020

From the editor: Meltdown May?

News and notes: 2019 Picture of the Year, 200 French paid editing accounts blocked, 10 years of Guild Copyediting

In the media: CBS on COVID-19, Sanger on bias, false noses, and five prolific editors

Discussion report: WMF's Universal Code of Conduct

Special report: The sum of human knowledge? Not in one Wikipedia language edition

Featured content: Weathering the storm

Arbitration report: Board member likely to receive editing restriction

Traffic report: Come on and slam, and welcome to the jam

Op-Ed: Where Is Political Bias Taking Us?

Gallery: Wildlife photos by the book

News from the WMF: WMF Board announces Community Culture Statement

Recent research: Automatic detection of covert paid editing; Wiki Workshop 2020

Community view: Transit routes and mapping during stay-at-home order downtime

On video: COVID-19 spurs innovations in Wikimedia video and virtual programming

WikiProject report: Revitalizing good articles

On the bright side: 500,000 articles in the Egyptian Arabic Wikipedia

Obituaries: Dmitrismirnov, Kattenkruid, Muidlatif, Ronhjones, Tsirel

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 19:05, 31 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 28 June 2020

News and notes: Progress at Wikipedia Library and Wikijournal of Medicine

Community view: Community open letter on renaming

Gallery: After the killing of George Floyd

In the media: Part collaboration and part combat

Discussion report: Community reacts to WMF rebranding proposals

Featured content: Sports are returning, with a rainbow

Arbitration report: Anti-harassment RfC and a checkuser revocation

Traffic report: The pandemic, alleged murder, a massacre, and other deaths

News from the WMF: We stand for racial justice

Recent research: Wikipedia and COVID-19; automated Wikipedia-based fact-checking

Interview: What is wrong with rebranding to "Wikipedia Foundation"?

Humour: Cherchez une femme

Opinion: Trying to find COI or paid editors? Just read the news

On the bright side: For what are you grateful this month?

In focus: Edit Loud, Edit Proud: LGBTIQ+ Wikimedians and Global Information Activism

WikiProject report: WikiProject Black Lives Matter

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:53, 28 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 2 August 2020

Special report: Wikipedia and the End of Open Collaboration?

COI and paid editing: Some strange people edit Wikipedia for money

News and notes: Abstract Wikipedia, a hoax, sex symbols, and a new admin

In the media: Dog days gone bad

Discussion report: Fox News, a flight of RfAs, and banning policy

Featured content: Remembering Art, Valor, and Freedom

Traffic report: Now for something completely different

Gallery: Photos of threatened species from iNaturalist

News from the WMF: New Chinese national security law in Hong Kong could limit the privacy of Wikipedia users

Recent research: Receiving thanks increases retention, but not the time contributed to Wikipedia

Essay: Not compatible with a collaborative project

Obituaries: Hasteur and Brian McNeil

In focus: WikiLoop DoubleCheck, reviewing edits made easy

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:24, 2 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 30 August 2020

News and notes: The high road and the low road

In the media: Storytelling large and small

Featured content: Going for the goal

Special report: Wikipedia's not so little sister is finding its own way

Op-Ed: The longest-running hoax

Traffic report: Heart, soul, umbrellas, and politics

News from the WMF: Fourteen things we’ve learned by moving Polish Wikimedia conference online

Recent research: Detecting spam, and pages to protect; non-anonymous editors signal their intelligence with high-quality articles

Arbitration report: A slow couple of months

From the archives: Wikipedia for promotional purposes?

Obituaries: Marcus Sherman, Jerome West, and Pauline van Till

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:32, 30 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for the gold, kind stranger! Chlod (say hi!) 17:36, 30 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 27 September 2020

Special report: Paid editing with political connections

News and notes: More large-scale errors at a "small" wiki

In the media: WIPO, Seigenthaler incident 15 years later

Featured content: Life finds a Way

Arbitration report: Clarifications and requests

Traffic report: Is there no justice?

Recent research: Wikipedia's flood biases

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 22:47, 27 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 27 September 2020

Special report: Paid editing with political connections

News and notes: More large-scale errors at a "small" wiki

In the media: WIPO, Seigenthaler incident 15 years later

Featured content: Life finds a Way

Arbitration report: Clarifications and requests

Traffic report: Is there no justice?

Recent research: Wikipedia's flood biases

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 22:53, 27 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 1 November 2020

News and notes: Ban on IPs on ptwiki, paid editing for Tatarstan, IP masking

In the media: Murder, politics, religion, health and books

Book review: Review of Wikipedia @ 20

Op-Ed: Anti-vandalism with masked IPs: the steps forward

Discussion report: Proposal to change board composition, In The News dumps Trump story

Featured content: The "Green Terror" is neither green nor sufficiently terrifying. Worst Hallowe'en ever.

Traffic report: Jump back, what's that sound?

Interview: Joseph Reagle and Jackie Koerner

News from the WMF: Meet the 2020 Wikimedian of the Year

Recent research: OpenSym 2020: Deletions and gender, masses vs. elites, edit filters

In focus: The many (reported) deaths of Wikipedia

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 19:50, 1 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 29 November 2020

News and notes: Jimmy Wales "shouldn't be kicked out before he's ready"

Op-Ed: Re-righting Wikipedia

Opinion: How billionaires re-write Wikipedia

In the media: Relying on Wikipedia: voters, scientists, and a Canadian border guard

Featured content: Frontonia sp. is thankful for delicious cyanobacteria

Traffic report: 007 with Borat, the Queen, and an election

News from Wiki Education: An assignment that changed a life: Kasey Baker

GLAM plus: West Coast New Zealand's Wikipedian at Large

Wikicup report: Lee Vilenski wins the 2020 WikiCup

Recent research: Wikipedia's Shoah coverage succeeds where libraries fail

Essay: Writing about women

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:45, 29 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Scripts++ Newsletter – Issue 19

News and updates associated with user scripts from the past month (December 2020).

Hello everyone and welcome to the 19th issue of the Wikipedia Scripts++ Newsletter:

Scripts Submit your new/improved script here

Enterprisey's script-installer, a gadget that makes it easier to install scripts, is this month's featured script

Enterprisey's copy-section-link adds popups to section headers which has an appropriate wikilink and external link to the section.

DannyS712's FindBlacklistEntry can be used to figure out which line(s) in either the local or global spamblacklist prevent a particular url from being added.

Nardog's CodeEditorAssist allows customizing the code editor, including changing the color theme and enabling live autocompletion.

Cobaltcigs's IllWill allows searches wikidata.org for foreign-language sitelinks, to populate {{ill}} and replace plain red links.

Twinkle has made a number of improvements, most notably full support for expiring watchlist items.

Evad37's Signpost Publishing Script is now at version 2.4.2, with changes including a fix for calculating the size of pages with files.

Evad37's MoveToDraft is now at version 2.5.1, with changes including:

checks for move conflicts and better options if move fails
the addition of {{Drafts moved from mainspace}} after moves
updating the default move log and notification texts to be more in line with WP:DRAFTIFY

Enterprisey's cv-revdel now handles failures more cleanly, including reporting failures caused by the spam blacklist.

Bradv's Notepad.js script has been updated with new styles and a new launch button.

A beta version of XFDcloser is available for testing, and brings a new user interface for dialogs and some preferences for customization.

Open tasks

Voting in the m:Community Wishlist Survey 2021 is ongoing until December 21, 2020. There are 15 proposals in the "bots and gadgets" category that may be of interest.

Pending requests

A script to help list discussions at WP:ANRFC (request)
A script to allow undoing edits despite conflicting intermediary edits (request)
...and many more, all available at Wikipedia:User scripts/Requests

Miscellaneous

The Watchlist Expiry feature worked on by the Community Tech team has been enabled on Wikipedia. For scripts that include watching or unwatching pages, developers may want to update their code to take advantage of the new functionality. See the documentation on mediawiki.org.
As noted in the prior issue, Enterprisey's links-in-logs script has now been implemented as part of MediaWiki core. By my count, this is his third script that was replaced by implementing the code in MediaWiki core or an extension, along with link-section-edits and abusefilter-hide-search. Additionally, his reply-link script is being converted in part to mw:Extension:DiscussionTools. Are there any other scripts that might be worth integrating directly in MediaWiki? Thoughts would be welcome at Wikipedia talk:Scripts++.

As always, if anyone else would like to contribute, help is appreciated. Stay safe, and happy holidays! --DannyS712 (talk) 00:19, 18 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 28 December 2020

News and notes: Year-end legal surprises cause concern, but Public Domain Day is imminent

In the media: Concealment, data journalism, a non-pig farmer, and some Bluetick Hounds

Arbitration report: 2020 election results

Opinion: How to make your factory's safety and labor issues disappear

Featured content: Very nearly ringing in the New Year with "Blank Space" – but we got there in time.

Traffic report: 2020 wraps up

News from the WMF: What Wikipedia saw during election week in the U.S., and what we’re doing next

Recent research: Predicting the next move in Wikipedia discussions

Essay: Subjective importance

Op-Ed: An unforgettable year we might wish to forget

Gallery: Angels in the architecture

Humour: 'Twas the Night Before Wikimas

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 04:25, 28 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 31 January 2021

News and notes: 1,000,000,000 edits, board elections, virtual Wikimania 2021

Special report: Wiki reporting on the United States insurrection

In focus: From Anarchy to Wikiality, Glaring Bias to Good Cop: Press Coverage of Wikipedia's First Two Decades

Opinion: Wikipedia's war against scientific disinformation

In the media: The world's press says "Happy Birthday!" with a few twists

Technology report: The people who built Wikipedia, technically

Videos and podcasts: Celebrating 20 years

News from the WMF: Wikipedia celebrates 20 years of free, trusted information for the world

Recent research: Students still have a better opinion of Wikipedia than teachers

Humour: Dr. Seuss's Guide to Wikipedia

Featured content: New Year, same Featured Content report!

Traffic report: The most viewed articles of 2020

Obituary: Flyer22 Frozen

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 20:10, 31 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Administrators' newsletter – February 2021

News and updates for administrators from the past month (January 2021).

Administrator changes

Hog Farm

Mattflaschen • Nandesuka • Savidan • Wangi

CheckUser changes

Berean Hunter • Xeno

Oversight changes

Someguy1221 • Xeno

Arbitration

The standard discretionary sanctions authorized for American Politics were amended by motion to cover post-1992 politics of United States and closely related people, replacing the 1932 cutoff.

Miscellaneous

Voting in the 2021 Steward elections will begin on 05 February 2021, 14:00 (UTC) and end on 26 February 2021, 13:59 (UTC). The confirmation process of current stewards is being held in parallel. You can automatically check your eligibility to vote.
Wikipedia has now been around for 20 years, and recently saw its billionth edit!

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 19:09, 1 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Scripts++ Newsletter – Issue 20

News and updates associated with user scripts from the past month (January 2021).

Hello everyone and welcome to the 20th issue of the Wikipedia Scripts++ Newsletter:

Scripts Submit your new/improved script here

Ajbura's anrfc-lister assists with listing discussions at WP:ANRFC to request that they receive a formal close

Bradv's endlesscontribs provides for endless scrolling of contributions pages

Evad37's livenotifications displays notification alerts and messages in a little popup box, (almost) live as they happen

Terasail's Edit Request Tool allows users to reply to, close or remove protected edit requests

ToBeFree's clear-watchlist allows emptying your watchlist even if the watchlist is too full to be edited or cleared by conventional methods

Dentonius's GlobalRecentChanges allows you to monitor recent changes across various wikis.

Yahya's SNA (Start New Article) allows you to start a new article or draft from the navigation bar.

Nardog:

CatChangeLinker bluelinks the "(diff | hist)" part of category additions/removals on your watchlist.
CatChangesViewer lists recent category additions/removals on a category page.
Consecudiff adds links to diffs of consecutive edits by the same user on watchlist, history, etc.
DiffFontSwitcher allows you to toggle between fonts for diff by clicking a line number.
MoveHistory lists the past moves a page has gone through.

Novem Linguae:

UserHighlighterSimple is a fork of Chlod's UserHighlighter with a simplified color scheme.
VisualEditorEverywhere displays the Visual Editor edit tab and section links on pages that don't normally have them.

User:Evad37/TimestampDiffs – fixed compatibility issues with various scripts/gadgets, including Wikipedia:Comments in Local Time. For discussion archives, now looks for revisions on the base page.

User:Enterprisey/undo-last-edit.js - no longer tries to load on special pages.

User:Ahecht/Scripts/pageswap - version 1.4 fixes reading destination from form field if destination is not in article namespace, and fixes self redirects.

Wikipedia:XFDcloser - version 4 brings a new user interface for dialogs, some preferences for customising XFDcloser, major behind-the-scenes coding changes, and resolves various issues raised on the talkpage. Also, since version 3.16.6 non-admin soft delete closure have been allowed at TfD.

Open tasks

As a reminder, the legacy javascript globals (like accessing wgPageName without first assigning it a value or using mw.config.get('wgPageName') instead) are deprecated. If your user scripts make use of the globals, please update them to use mw.config instead. Some global interface editors or local interface administrators may edit your user script to make these changes if you don't. See phab:T72470 for more.

Miscellaneous

For people interested in creating user scripts or gadgets using TypeScript, a types-mediawiki package (GitHub, NPM) is now available that provides type definitions for the MediaWiki JS interface and the API.
A GitHub organization has been created for hosting codebases of gadgets. Users who maintain gadgets using GitHub may choose to move their repos to this organization, to ensure continued maintenance by others even if the original maintainer becomes inactive.

Pending requests

A script to ease reviewing Good Article nominations
A script to help manage Z number templates
...and many more, all available at Wikipedia:User scripts/Requests

As always, if anyone else would like to contribute, including nominating a featured script, help is appreciated. Stay safe, and happy new year! --DannyS712 (talk) 01:17, 3 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2021-07

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

Problems

There were problems with recent versions of MediaWiki. Because the updates caused problems the developers rolled back to an earlier version. Some updates and new functions will come later than planned. [1][2]
Some services will not work for a short period of time from 07:00 UTC on 17 February. There might be problems with new short links, new translations, new notifications, adding new items to your reading lists or recording email bounces. This is because of database maintenance. [3]

Changes later this week

The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 16 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 17 February. It will be on all wikis from 18 February (calendar).

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

17:54, 15 February 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-08

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

Recent changes

The visual editor will now use MediaSearch to find images. You can search for images on Commons in the visual editor when you are looking for illustrations. This is to help editors find better images. [4]
The syntax highlighter now works with more languages: Futhark, Graphviz/DOT, CDDL and AMDGPU. [5]

Problems

Editing a timeline might have removed all text from it. This was because of a bug and has been fixed. You might need to edit the timeline again for it to show properly. [6]

Changes later this week

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

Future changes

There is a user group for developers and users interested in working on Wikimedia wikis with the Rust programming language. You can join or tell others who want to make your wiki better in the future.

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

00:16, 23 February 2021 (UTC)

The Signpost: 28 February 2021

News and notes: Maher stepping down

Disinformation report: A "billionaire battle" on Wikipedia: Sex, lies, and video

Opinion: The call for feedback on community seats is a distraction

In the media: Corporate influence at OSM, Fox watching the hen house

News from the WMF: Who tells your story on Wikipedia

Recent research: Take an AI-generated flashcard quiz about Wikipedia; Wikipedia's anti-feudalism

Featured content: A Love of Knowledge, for Valentine's Day

Traffic report: Does it almost feel like you've been here before?

Gallery: What is Black history and culture?

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 21:28, 28 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2021-09

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

Wikis using the Growth team tools can now show the name of a newcomer's mentor anywhere through a magic word. This can be used for welcome messages or userboxes.
A new version of the VideoCutTool is now available. It enables cropping, trimming, audio disabling, and rotating video content. It is being created as part of the developer outreach programs.

Problems

There was a problem with the job queue. This meant some functions did not save changes and mass messages were delayed. This did not affect wiki edits. [7]
Some editors may not be logged in to their accounts automatically in the latest versions of Firefox and Safari. [8]

Changes later this week

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

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

19:06, 1 March 2021 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – March 2021

News and updates for administrators from the past month (February 2021).

Administrator changes

TJMSmith

Boing! said Zebedee • Hiberniantears • Lear's Fool • Only • WGFinley

Interface administrator changes

AmandaNP

Guideline and policy news

A request for comment is open that proposes a process for the community to revoke administrative permissions. This follows a 2019 RfC in favor of creating one such a policy.
A request for comment is in progress to remove F7 (invalid fair-use claim) subcriterion a, which covers immediate deletion of non-free media with invalid fair-use tags.
A request for comment seeks to grant page movers the delete-redirect userright, which allows moving a page over a single-revision redirect, regardless of that redirect's target. The full proposal is at Wikipedia:Page mover/delete-redirect.
A request for comment asks if sysops may place the General sanctions/Coronavirus disease 2019 editnotice template on pages in scope that do not have page-specific sanctions?
There is a discussion in progress concerning automatic protection of each day's featured article with Pending Changes protection.

Technical news

When blocking an IPv6 address with Twinkle, there is now a checkbox with the option to just block the /64 range. When doing so, you can still leave a block template on the initial, single IP address' talkpage.
When protecting a page with Twinkle, you can now add a note if doing so was in response to a request at WP:RfPP, and even link to the specific revision.
There have been a number of reported issues with Pending Changes. Most problems setting protection appear to have been resolved (phab:T273317) but other issues with autoaccepting edits persist (phab:T275322).

Arbitration

By motion, the discretionary sanctions originally authorized under the GamerGate case are now authorized under a new Gender and sexuality case, with sanctions authorized for all edits about, and all pages related to, any gender-related dispute or controversy and associated people. Sanctions issued under GamerGate are now considered Gender and sexuality sanctions.
The Kurds and Kurdistan case was closed, authorizing standard discretionary sanctions for the topics of Kurds and Kurdistan, broadly construed.

Miscellaneous

Following the 2021 Steward Elections, the following editors have been appointed as stewards: AmandaNP, Operator873, Stanglavine, Teles, and Wiki13.

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 19:13, 1 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2021-10

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

Section translation now works on Bengali Wikipedia. It helps mobile editors translate sections of articles. It will come to more wikis later. The first focus is active wikis with a smaller number of articles. You can test it and leave feedback.
Flagged revisions now give admins the review right. [9]
When someone links to a Wikipedia article on Twitter this will now show a preview of the article. [10]

Problems

Many graphs have JavaScript errors. Graph editors can check their graphs in their browser's developer console after editing. [11]

Changes later this week

The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 9 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 10 March. It will be on all wikis from 11 March (calendar).
The New Discussion tool will soon be a new discussion tools beta feature for on most Wikipedias. The goal is to make it easier to start new discussions. [12]

Future changes

There will be a number of changes to make it easier to work with templates. Some will come to the first wikis in March. Other changes will come to the first wikis in June. This is both for those who use templates and those who create or maintain them. You can read more.
Reference Previews will become a default feature on some wikis on 17 March. They will share a setting with Page Previews. If you prefer the Reference Tooltips or Navigation-Popups gadget you can keep using them. If so Reference Previews won't be shown. [13][14]
New JavaScript-based functions will not work in Internet Explorer 11. This is because Internet Explorer is an old browser that doesn't work with how JavaScript is written today. Everything that works in Internet Explorer 11 today will continue working in Internet Explorer for now. You can read more.

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

17:50, 8 March 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-11

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

Wikis that are part of the desktop improvements project can now use a new search function. The desktop improvements and the new search will come to more wikis later. You can also test it early.
Editors who put up banners or change site-wide JavaScript code should use the client error graph to see that their changes has not caused problems. You can read more. [15]

Problems

Due to database issues the Wikimedia Beta Cluster was read-only for over a day.

Changes later this week

The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 16 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 17 March. It will be on all wikis from 18 March (calendar).

Future changes

You can add a newline or carriage return character to a custom signature if you use a template. There is a proposal to not allow them in the future. This is because they can cause formatting problems. [16][17]
You will be able to read but not edit 12 wikis for a short period of time on 23 March at 06:00 (UTC). This could take 30 minutes but will probably be much faster.
You can use Quarry for SQL queries to the Wiki Replicas. Cross-database JOINS will no longer work from 23 March. There will be a new field to specify the database to connect to. If you think this affects you and you need help you can post on Phabricator or on Wikitech. PAWS and other ways to do SQL queries to the Wiki Replicas will be affected later. [18]

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

23:20, 15 March 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-12

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 Wikipedia app for KaiOS phones. They don't have a touch screen so readers navigate with the phone keys. There is now a simulator so you can see what it looks like.
The reply tool and new discussion tool are now available as the "Discussion tools" beta feature in almost all wikis except German Wikipedia.

Problems

You will be able to read but not edit twelve wikis for a short period of time on 23 March at 06:00 (UTC). This can also affect password changes, logging in to new wikis, global renames and changing or confirming emails. This could take 30 minutes but will probably be much faster.

Changes later this week

The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 23 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 24 March. It will be on all wikis from 25 March (calendar).
Syntax highlighting colours will change to be easier to read. This will soon come to the first wikis. [19]

Future changes

Flagged revisions will no longer have multiple tags like "tone" or "depth". It will also only have one tier. This was changed because very few wikis used these features and they make the tool difficult to maintain. [20][21]
Gadgets and user scripts can access variables about the current page in JavaScript. In 2015 this was moved from wg* to mw.config. wg* will soon no longer work. [22]

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

16:51, 22 March 2021 (UTC)

The Signpost: 28 March 2021

News and notes: A future with a for-profit subsidiary?

Gallery: Wiki Loves Monuments

In the media: Wikimedia LLC and disinformation in Japan

News from the WMF: Project Rewrite: Tell the missing stories of women on Wikipedia and beyond

Recent research: 10%-30% of Wikipedia’s contributors have subject-matter expertise

From the archives: Google isn't responsible for Wikipedia's mistakes

Essay: Wikipedia:The Free Encyclopedia

Obituary: Yoninah

From the editor: What else can we say?

Arbitration report: Open letter to the Board of Trustees

Traffic report: Wanda, Meghan, Liz, Phil and Zack

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 20:43, 28 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2021-13

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 very old web browsers don’t work well with the Wikimedia wikis. Some old code for browsers that used to be supported is being removed. This could cause issues in those browsers. [23]
IRC recent changes feeds have been moved to a new server. Make sure all tools automatically reconnect to irc.wikimedia.org and not to the name of any specific server. Users should also consider switching to the more modern EventStreams. [24]

Problems

When you move a page that many editors have on their watchlist the history can be split. It might also not be possible to move it again for a while. This is because of a job queue problem. [25]
Some translatable pages on Meta could not be edited. This was because of a bug in the translation tool. The new MediaWiki version was delayed because of problems like this. [26][27]

Changes later this week

The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 30 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 31 March. It will be on all wikis from 1 April (calendar).

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

17:29, 29 March 2021 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – April 2021

News and updates for administrators from the past month (March 2021).

Administrator changes

Alexandria • Happyme22 • RexxS

Guideline and policy news

Following a request for comment, F7 (invalid fair-use claim) subcriterion a has been deprecated; it covered immediate deletion of non-free media with invalid fair-use tags.
Following a request for comment, page movers were granted the delete-redirect userright, which allows moving a page over a single-revision redirect, regardless of that redirect's target.

Technical news

When you move a page that many editors have on their watchlist the history can be split and it might also not be possible to move it again for a while. This is because of a job queue problem. (T278350)
Code to support some very old web browsers is being removed. This could cause issues in those browsers. (T277803)

Arbitration

A community consultation on the Arbitration Committee discretionary sanctions procedure is open until April 25.

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 22:20, 1 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2021-14

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

Editors can collapse part of an article so you have to click on it to see it. When you click a link to a section inside collapsed content it will now expand to show the section. The browser will scroll down to the section. Previously such links didn't work unless you manually expanded the content first. [28]

Changes later this week

The citoid API will use for example 2010-12-XX instead of 2010-12 for dates with a month but no days. This is because 2010-12 could be confused with 2010-2012 instead of December 2010. This is called level 1 instead of level 0 in the Extended Date/Time Format. [29]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 6 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 7 April. It will be on all wikis from 8 April (calendar).

Future changes

PAWS can now connect to the new Wiki Replicas. Cross-database JOINS will no longer work from 28 April. There is a new way to connect to the databases. Until 28 April both ways to connect to the databases will work. If you think this affects you and you need help you can post on Phabricator or on Wikitech.

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

19:38, 5 April 2021 (UTC)

Discontent Content Issue 1

Discontent Content Issue #1

Welcome, subscribers, to the inaugural Discontent Content newsletter! Discontent Content is a newsletter aiming to collate and improve Wikipedia articles in need of more eyes and hands to get them in shape. Its unique trimodal structure allows editors to work where they feel comfortable -- with stubs and starts needing to be brought to standard, mid-quality articles with Good or Featured potential, or quality-assessed articles needing help to maintain their status.

Category 1

Articles in this category are those that need to be brought up to a minimum quality standard. Some will be stubs; others will be longer articles that nonetheless have significant concerns putting them far below B- or C-class adequacy.

This issue's Category 1 articles are:

Community Outreach Academy Elementary: A recent AfD survivor, this is one of those entertaining exceptions to the 'primary schools aren't notable' rule. How many primary schools do you know of that host Cossack militias and are endorsed by foreign embassies? Sadly, the article itself is far from representative of the school's wealth of eccentric coverage. The AfD may provide a jumping-off point for an interested writer to cover a 'run-of-the-mill' topic that's anything but.
Holy Diver (song): One of the signatures of metal legend Ronnie James Dio, this start-class article barely touches on almost forty years of history, analysis, and veneration. With literally hundreds of interviews, pages upon pages of Google Books hits, and more than a few cover versions, there's enough sourcing to cover an article many times this one's size and status.
Character class: One of the most fundamental aspects of role-playing games, this is a sad case of "Start class/Top importance". A big topic with a big history, this article is just begging for some dedicated writers to sit down and shape it into something beautiful. According to the article's talk page, this is also mirrored on at least one Fandom wiki, so getting it into shape will have broader consequences outside Wikipedia alone.

Category 2

Articles in this category, while in better current shape than Category 1, are still missing something. They have the potential to be truly high-quality content, and may have been at one point. With work, they can be brought up to dizzying heights.

This issue's Category 2 articles are:

Border Collie: This article for one of the world's most popular dog breeds is a Million Award candidate. Now at B-class, it's had a few separate issues raised on the talk page throughout its history regarding various sorts of inter-owner drama. There's a good skeleton here, and some meat on its bones would make a comprehensive reference work.
Cool World: A former GA delisted just last month, Nathan Rabin's spectacular piece for The A.V. Club back in 2007 (quite the source in its own right) comments that Wikipedia has a great entry on this, and it can again. The story of this film's failure, notorious in animation circles, is chronicled in depth in as many sources as a curious writer looking to bring this article back to glory could want. Quarter Million-tier yearly pageviews sweeten the deal.
American poetry: This big topic was an early FA -- could you make it one again? Now stymied by unsourced and dated additions, this article deserves the same artistic virtue as the works it describes.

Category 3

Articles in this category have been assessed through a content review process in the past, but may require work to be brought up to current GA/FA standard. Editors can help bring them to a level where the star or plus near their names can once again shine.

This issue's Category 3 articles are:

Python (programming language): This 2007 GA (swept in 2009) has been recommended for reassessment, although no GAR has been opened. With over two and a half million views a year, the readers of this widely read article deserve the best they can get.
Grunge: The sound of the 1990s is an FA currently undergoing review. The FAR discusses overquoting, prose, cite formatting, and length as issues -- all matters a knowledgeable editor can help with. This important article has had a star since 2005, and deserves help to keep it.
Icelandic Naming Committee: A short GA on an oddball topic with outstanding maintenance tags, in need of updating and perhaps expansion. Editors interested in going into a unique subject are encouraged to get this one back up to standard.

Letter from the Editor

Hello, wonderful people, and welcome to the very first Discontent Content! I'm glad you're here, and I'm looking forward to seeing what you can do. In future issues, I hope to use this section to brag about the achievements of subscribers -- so why not go do something worth bragging about?

Article improvement initiatives have a long and storied history on this project, and I'm honoured to add myself to the list of people trying to find one that works. My perhaps quixotic goal here is to unify a few different issues -- the maintenance of old quality-assessed articles (GAs in particular) and the sheer length of the long left tail -- in one fell swoop. I'd be happy if this ended in something like another GA sweep; I'd be happier if it ended in another GA sweep where those GAs got kept. I'd be even happier than that if this resulted in the improvement of our worst articles, not just our best. I believe in the project, and I believe in what we can be.

Most of all, I believe in you. Let's get out there and make this thing better.
Vaticidalprophet 06:35, 11 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

You have received this newsletter because you opted into the Discontent Content mailing list. To opt out from future newsletters, go to Wikipedia:Discontent Content/mailing list and remove your talk page.

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 15:26, 11 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2021-16

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

Email to the Wikimedia wikis are handled by groups of Wikimedia editors. These volunteer response teams now use Znuny instead of OTRS. The functions and interface remain the same. The volunteer administrators will give more details about the next steps soon. [30][31]
If you use syntax highlighting, you can see line numbers in the 2010 and 2017 wikitext editors when editing templates. This is to make it easier to see line breaks or talk about specific lines. Line numbers will soon come to all namespaces. [32][33][34]
Because of a technical change there could be problems with gadgets and scripts that have an edit summary area that looks similar to this one. If they look strange they should use mw.loader.using('mediawiki.action.edit.styles') to go back to how they looked before. [35]
The latest version of MediaWiki came to the Wikimedia wikis last week. There was no Tech News issue last week.

Changes later this week

There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

Future changes

The user group oversight will be renamed suppress. This is for technical reasons. This is the technical name. It doesn't affect what you call the editors with this user right on your wiki. This is planned to happen in two weeks. You can comment in Phabricator if you have objections.

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

16:47, 19 April 2021 (UTC)

The Signpost: 25 April 2021

From the editor: A change is gonna come

Disinformation report: Paid editing by a former head of state's business enterprise

In the media: Fernando, governance, and rugby

Opinion: The (Universal) Code of Conduct

Op-Ed: A Little Fun Goes A Long Way

Changing the world: The reach of protest images on Wikipedia

Recent research: Quality of aquatic and anatomical articles

Traffic report: The verdict is guilty, guilty, guilty

News from Wiki Education: Encouraging professional physicists to engage in outreach on Wikipedia

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 22:31, 25 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 25 April 2021

From the editor: A change is gonna come

Disinformation report: Paid editing by a former head of state's business enterprise

In the media: Fernando, governance, and rugby

Opinion: The (Universal) Code of Conduct

Op-Ed: A Little Fun Goes A Long Way

Changing the world: The reach of protest images on Wikipedia

Recent research: Quality of aquatic and anatomical articles

Traffic report: The verdict is guilty, guilty, guilty

News from Wiki Education: Encouraging professional physicists to engage in outreach on Wikipedia

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 04:29, 26 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2021-17

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

Templates have parameters that can have specific values. It is possible to suggest values for editors with TemplateData. You can soon see them as a drop-down list in the visual editor. This is to help template users find the right values faster. [36][37][38]

Changes later this week

The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 27 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 28 April. It will be on all wikis from 29 April (calendar).

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

21:23, 26 April 2021 (UTC)

Discontent Content Issue 2

Discontent Content Issue #2

Welcome, subscribers, to the second Discontent Content newsletter! Discontent Content is a newsletter aiming to collate and improve Wikipedia articles in need of more eyes and hands to get them in shape. Its unique trimodal structure allows editors to work where they feel comfortable -- with stubs and starts needing to be brought to standard, mid-quality articles with Good or Featured potential, or quality-assessed articles needing help to maintain their status.

Category 1

This issue's Category 1 articles are:

Michael Krasnow: A recent AfD survivor, this article is currently a single-paragraph stub, but has substantial expansion potential in online, print, and archival sources alike. This piece is a particularly useful starting point for such a unique article.
Injury: A start-class Vital Article with the common problem of medical articles of list-formatted content that'd work better as prose.
Fetish Con: This eccentric topic that I absolutely do not apologise for placing right under "Injury" survived AfD in March. Though currently in poor stub-and-table shape, the AfD made it clear substantial expansion potential exists.

Category 2

This issue's Category 2 articles are:

Home: Another start-class Vital Article, this one is at level 2, making it one of the 100 core topics. It's also...I think it's a Million Award candidate? Honestly, man, I don't know, I checked three years and they all had frankly weird charts. This one has good bones, but the internal sections are all in need of expansion. Someone able to work on them could certainly take this to GA.
Tea: The world's most popular drink (inb4 water) was an FA back in the Brilliant Prose era, but no longer. Attempts since to bring it back to standard have failed. Will you succeed?
Mazes and Monsters: Tom Hanks' first leading role, an early DYK, and an unusual quirky topic, this article bears real potential for expansion.

Category 3

This issue's Category 3 articles are:

Death Cab for Cutie: This GA is up for GAR primarily due to uncited text. A motivated editor could save this article's plus sign by hunting down verification.
Doctor Who missing episodes: An FA at FAR and in danger of moving to FARC without engagement. This significant chunk of television history has tons written on it, and yet a number of the sources in the article are subpar. Can you save it?
Windows RT: Though this GA has been recommended for GAR since last September, it hasn't been brought to the process. No reasons are given on the talk, but the lead looks in need of a trim to bring its information to the body, and there's more than a bit of WP:OVERCITE.

Letter from the Editor

Updates on articles from last issue:

Grunge has been delisted following an unsuccessful FAR. Anyone who wants to get this important article back to FAC is strongly encouraged.

Reader suggestion:
BOZ, a founding member of the new WikiProject Cemeteries, has an additional suggestion for anyone looking for further inspiration:

Bohemian National Cemetery (Chicago): A Czech cemetery in Chicago and the first I've heard of with an area dedicated specifically to fans of a given baseball team, this cemetery has ties to outsider art, historical shipwrecks, and one of the city's founding ethnic communities.

Thank you all, once again, for your subscription and your work on Wikipedia!
Vaticidalprophet 18:33, 26 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 21:40, 26 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2021-18

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

Twinkle is a gadget on English Wikipedia. It can help with maintenance and patrolling. It can now be used on other wikis. You can get Twinkle on your wiki using the twinkle-starter GitHub repository.

Problems

The content translation tool did not work for many articles for a little while. This was because of a bug. [39]
Some things will not work for about a minute on 5 May. This will happen around 06:00 UTC. This will affect the content translation tool and notifications among other things. This is because of an upgrade to avoid crashes. [40]

Changes later this week

Reference Previews will become a default feature on a number of wikis on 5 May. This is later than planned because of some changes. You can use it without using Page Previews if you want to. The earlier plan was to have the preference to use both or none. [41][42]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 4 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 5 May. It will be on all wikis from 6 May (calendar).

Future changes

The CSS classes .error, .warning and .success do not work for mobile readers if they have not been specifically defined on your wiki. From June they will not work for desktop readers. This can affect gadgets and templates. The classes can be defined in MediaWiki:Common.css or template styles instead. [43]

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

15:42, 3 May 2021 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – May 2021

News and updates for administrators from the past month (April 2021).

Administrator changes

Enchanter • Carlossuarez46

Interface administrator changes

Ragesoss

Guideline and policy news

Following an RfC, consensus was found that third party appeals are allowed but discouraged.
The 2021 Desysop Policy RfC was closed with no consensus. Consensus was found in a previous RfC for a community based desysop procedure, though the procedure proposed in the 2021 RfC did not gain consensus.

Technical news

The user group oversight will be renamed to suppress. This is for technical reasons. You can comment at T112147 if you have objections.

Arbitration

The community consultation on the Arbitration Committee discretionary sanctions procedure was closed, and an initial draft based on feedback from the now closed consultation is expected to be released in early June to early July for community review.

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 15:51, 7 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2021-19

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

Changes later this week

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

Future changes

You can see what participants plan to work on at the online Wikimedia hackathon 22–23 May.

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

15:08, 10 May 2021 (UTC)

Discontent Content Issue 3

Discontent Content Issue #3

Welcome, subscribers, to the third Discontent Content newsletter! Discontent Content is a newsletter aiming to collate and improve Wikipedia articles in need of more eyes and hands to get them in shape. Its unique trimodal structure allows editors to work where they feel comfortable -- with stubs and starts needing to be brought to standard, mid-quality articles with Good or Featured potential, or quality-assessed articles needing help to maintain their status.

Category 1

This issue's Category 1 articles are:

Gambling in Nevada: An unusual move -- a redirect? But if you look at the history, you'll see why. This sweeping and expansive topic about the home of Reno and Las Vegas was recently converted to a redirect due to its almost complete lack of useful content. Nonetheless, this subject is bursting with potential and can have a full article written about it.
SpongeBob SquarePants: Original Theme Highlights: This recent AfD survivor was the first soundtrack written for the popular series. More unorthodox, for a children's animation album, it features songs by Pantera and Ween and was given a vinyl re-release in 2016 for the...ironic market? Certainly some market. There's a fair amount of coverage here to write a solid article on.
Death by misadventure: A surprisingly major topic to be a one-paragraph stub, this is a legal and colloquial term both. The article is currently sourced in whole to a single page in a single book!

Category 2

This issue's Category 2 articles are:

Rope (film): Hitchcock's classic attempt to shoot an entire film in a single shot, Rope is both a significant note in cinematic history and, in recent years, conceptualized as an important piece of Hays Code-era gay cinema. It's a good watch, and the article should be just as solid. Currently it's a C-class with some unsourced content and an overreliance on block quotes.
Rachel Pollack: One of the major occult writers of the 20th and 21st centuries (a book of hers is prominently involved in my quixotic "bring the Major Arcana to FT" plan), not to mention a significant fiction and comics writer collaborating with names such as Neil Gaiman and Grant Morrison, Pollack's article has quite a bit of room for improvement to quality-assessed levels. Though her article's lead is short and the work as a whole underreferenced, plenty of opportunities exist to improve it.
Narrative paradigm: Despite this article's High or Top importance across multiple wikiprojects, it's in a sorry state. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it was subjected to a WikiEd course some time back. Significant potential lies within the idea that all human communication is narrative; the article must be accordingly strong.

Category 3

This issue's Category 3 articles are:

Jaime King: This GA on a famous model of the 1990s has been recommended for GAR. Unreferenced sections and low-quality references are a problem for this BLP.
Dartmouth College: This FA is at FARC and on the brink of delisting, but the issues mentioned -- accessibility, WP:LEADCITE compliance, and overreliance on primary sources -- are far from insurmountable, and an editor could certainly polish off this star.
Tamil language: Another FARC, this is the native language of 75 million people (including my own stepmother) and the language of one of the world's great classical traditions. It's afflicted by a lack of sourcing and particularly issues with inline citations.

Letter from the Editor

This issue's subscriber suggestion, again from BOZ, is:

Dice: This former GA was delisted in 2009. It's a big topic to a lot of different subjects, and deserves a top-quality article.

This is ridiculously late, and I apologise -- I've been writing articles :) I've also, excitingly, landed a couple 'real publishing' writing gigs, which I'll be plenty excited to talk about when they're published. Due to the current increased amount of writing I have to do on a regular basis both on- and off-wiki, I'm planning to drop this down to monthly so I can spread out my responsibilities a bit.
Vaticidalprophet 09:08, 15 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2021-20

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 toolbar in the Reply tool. It works in the wikitext source mode. You can enable it in your preferences. [44] [45] [46]
Wikimedia mailing lists are being moved to Mailman 3. This is a newer version. For the character encoding to work it will change from UTF-8 to utf8mb3. [47][48]
An earlier issue of Tech News said that the citoid API would handle dates with a month but no days in a new way. This has been reverted for now. There needs to be more discussion of how it affects different wikis first. [49]

Changes later this week

MediaWiki:Pageimages-blacklist will be renamed MediaWiki:Pageimages-denylist. The list can be copied to the new name. It will happen on 19 May for some wikis and 20 May for some wikis. Most wikis don't use it. It lists images that should never be used as thumbnails for articles. [50]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 18 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 19 May. It will be on all wikis from 20 May (calendar).

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

13:47, 17 May 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-21

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 movement has been using IRC on a network called Freenode. There have been changes around who is in control of the network. The Wikimedia IRC Group Contacts have decided to move to the new Libera Chat network instead. This is not a formal decision for the movement to move all channels but most Wikimedia IRC channels will probably leave Freenode. There is a migration guide and ongoing Wikimedia discussions about this.

Changes later this week

The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 25 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 26 May. It will be on all wikis from 27 May (calendar).

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

17:05, 24 May 2021 (UTC)

Discontent Content Issue 4

Discontent Content Issue #4

Welcome, subscribers, to the fourth Discontent Content newsletter! Discontent Content is a newsletter aiming to collate and improve Wikipedia articles in need of more eyes and hands to get them in shape. Its unique trimodal structure allows editors to work where they feel comfortable -- with stubs and starts needing to be brought to standard, mid-quality articles with Good or Featured potential, or quality-assessed articles needing help to maintain their status.

Category 1

This issue's Category 1 articles are:

Lineage (anthropology): A shocking subject to be a sourceless stub, this Vital 4 obviously has so much more to write about than its three sentences. In this state, even a basic improvement would do a ton.
Police memorabilia collecting: Survived AfD not long ago, with plenty of sources given in the discussion to use in the article. "Further reading" may in particular be of use.
Koror City: Palau may be a small island nation, but having its largest city by far be a stub is unacceptable. (We've managed to write much more about it over at Wikivoyage, where it's guide-class and about to make a Main Page appearance.) Vital 5 with a healthy couple hundred pageviews a day, the widespread use of English in its native land makes it a more accessible topic than editors afraid of working in countries they're unfamiliar with might worry.

Category 2

This issue's Category 2 articles are:

List of premature obituaries: A former FL, an eccentric and popular topic, and a refreshing change from the sports statistics and "list of awards received by X" that populate FLC. This list was demoted in 2009 for sourcing concerns, which even at the time were mentioned as potentially fixable.
War: Let's just jump straight into the Overtopics, shall we? This Vital 2 really shows what "Top-importance to the whole encyclopedia" means. Currently B-class -- more B- in my estimate, maybe -- it stands out that non-editor readers on the talk page have qualms with the scope, in particular omissions they expected to find.
The Picture of Dorian Gray: Once GA, now C. ~~Still relatable.~~ This seminal work of literature can certainly be returned to where it was.

Category 3

This issue's Category 3 articles are:

Byzantine Empire: From the metapedian perspective, this is perhaps our most important FA -- the oldest, promoted in 2001 (older than some of this newsletter's subscribers!), to retain FA status unbroken to the present day. Speaking exopedianly, it's still decidedly vital, with nearly three million page views in the last year. FAR was suggested late last year; it hasn't been brought to the chopping block yet, but an article this important both inside and outside of the project deserves to remain in top shape.
Underoath: This GA is recommended for GAR, with complaints about long-unaddressed maintenance tags and sections in dire need of updates. The article gets hundreds of views a day and is translated across plenty of projects.
Acute myeloid leukemia: Medical articles aren't scary! Really! They're not! If I can work on them, so can you! That aside, this FA was given a FAR notice in January. There are sourcing concerns, conveniently assisted by sources left on the talk page. Non-editor readers on the talk have raised concerns about inaccurate prognostic statements.

Letter from the Editor

This issue's reader suggestion is brought to you by Sennecaster:

Margery Wolf: Perhaps the fastest GA delist known to the project, this article was delisted two days after promotion upon discovery of foundational copyvio. Though it was reduced to just four short paragraphs, the sourcing obviously exists to create a high-quality article.

Yes, I know I said I was going to switch to monthly. Let's just go "Vat doesn't really Get Time" and run with it.

The Core Contest is on its last day of entries, and I've picked articles here with an eye to that. It's the first time it's running since 2017, and I for one am looking forward to overhauling Prehistoric religion. If you feel inspired by anything here, get in there quick!
Vaticidalprophet 17:06, 30 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2021-22

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

There was an issue on the Vector skin with the text size of categories and notices under the page title. It was fixed last Monday. [51]

Changes later this week

There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

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

17:04, 31 May 2021 (UTC)

Scripts++ Newsletter – Issue 21

News and updates associated with user scripts from the past four months (February through May 2021).

Hello everyone and welcome to the 21st issue of the Wikipedia Scripts++ Newsletter:

Scripts Submit your new/improved script here

New scripts

Alexander Davronov's HistoryHelper helps to copy diff links from the history display of a page
Aseleste's Purger makes it easier to purge or null edit a page
Awesome Aasim:
- CatMan adds a category manager to simplify interactions for adding and removing the categories of a page
- redirectcreator allows for easy creation of multiple redirects
Bop34's EasyDesc adds a link to the top navigation bar which allows you to add a short description without opening the edit menu
BrandonXLF's NullEdit adds a portlet link to perform a null edit on a page
Chlod:
- FoldArchives collapses archived talk page threads in order to reduce screen space
- GoToTitle converts the page title into an input field for navigating to other pages
- UserHighlighter adds highlighting to links to the userpages, talk pages, and contributions of administrators and other user groups as well as tooltips to indicate which groups a user is in
GhostInTheMachine:
- NoEditSummary adds a warning if an edit will be saved without an edit summary
- SortWhatLinksHere sorts the links shows on Special:WhatLinksHere
- WatchlistTidy moves the "new updates found" timestamp block from the bottom of the filter block to the top of the filter area on the watchlist
GorillaWarfare's curlies simplifies converting curly quotes to straight quotes while in the source editing mode
Nardog:
- AutoSectionLink corrects the /* section link */ every time you hit "Show changes"
- AutoTestcases autofills "Preview page with this template/module" with the most relevant /testcases page that exists
- SortCentralAuthByEditCount sorts the list of local accounts on CentralAuth by edit count
Novem Linguae:
- CiteHighlighter highlights 1800 sources green, yellow, or red depending on reliability.
- NPPLinks adds WP:BEFORE Google search links, copyvio check, duplicate article check, and other links to the left menu.
Ritenerek's goce_nav adds a link to Wikipedia:WikiProject Guild of Copy Editors to the navigation menu
Suffusion of Yellow:
- filterDiff: Adds a "Show changes" button to the filter editor.
- filterNotes: Parses filter notes as wikitext (so links are clickable), and signs and dates new comments for you.
- filterTest: Adds a "Test changes" button. Opens Special:AbuseFilter/test with what's currently in the edit form, not with what's saved in the database, so you don't have to copy-paste your changes.
Terasail's COI Request Tool allows users to reply to, close or remove conflict of interest edit requests

Updated scripts

Twinkle has a number of improvements, including that most watchlist defaults now make use of the new temporary watchlist feature. Other changes include rollbacks treating consecutive IPv6 editors in the same /64 range as the same user, adding a preview for shared IP tagging, a preference for watching users after CSD notification, and for sysops, the ability to block the /64 and link to a WP:RfPP request, and new copyright blocks default to indefinite.
Wikipedia:Shortdesc helper now v3.4.17, changes include minor fixes and preventing edits that don't change the description.
BrandonXLF's CitationStyleMarker now recognizes WP:CSLSA and WP:CSVAN styles, in addition to WP:CS1 and WP:CS2
Joeytje50's JWB now version 4.1.0, includes the ability to generate page lists from the search tool, major updates to the handling of regular expressions, the storing of user settings, the addition of upload protection, and an option to skip pages that belong to a specific category, among other changes. See User:Joeytje50/JWB/Changelog for a full list of recent changes.
User:SD0001/deleted-metadata-link.js – updated to include a link to snippet of deleted content, instead of just metadata.

Miscellaneous

Wikipedia:User scripts/List has been revamped to make it easier to find scripts suited for your needs. If you know of a cool script that is missing on the list, or a script on the list that is no longer working, please edit the list or let us know on the talk page.

Pending requests

A request for a script to help admins posting "recent death" items to Template:In the news
A request for a script to warn users about syntax and template errors
...and many more, all available at Wikipedia:User scripts/Requests

My apologies for this long-overdue issue, and if I missed any scripts.
Hopefully going forward we can go back to monthly releases - any help would be appreciated. Thanks, --DannyS712 (talk) 13:04, 2 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2021-23

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

Changes later this week

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

Future changes

The Wikimedia movement uses Phabricator for technical tasks. This is where we collect technical suggestions, bugs and what developers are working on. The company behind Phabricator will stop working on it. This will not change anything for the Wikimedia movement now. It could lead to changes in the future. [52][53][54]
Searching on Wikipedia will find more results in some languages. This is mainly true for when those who search do not use the correct diacritics because they are not seen as necessary in that language. For example searching for Bedusz doesn't find Będusz on German Wikipedia. The character ę isn't used in German so many would write e instead. This will work better in the future in some languages. [55]
The CSRF token parameters in the action API were changed in 2014. The old parameters from before 2014 will stop working soon. This can affect bots, gadgets and user scripts that still use the old parameters. [56][57]

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

20:01, 7 June 2021 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – June 2021

News and updates for administrators from the past month (May 2021).

Administrator changes

Ashleyyoursmile • Less Unless

Husond • MattWade • MJCdetroit • Carioca • Vague Rant • Kingboyk • Thunderboltz • Gwen Gale • AniMate • SlimVirgin (deceased)

Guideline and policy news

Consensus was reached to deprecate Wikipedia:Editor assistance.
Following a Request for Comment the Book namespace was deprecated.

Technical news

Wikimedia previously used the IRC network Freenode. However, due to changes over who controlled the network with reports of a forceful takeover by several ex-staff members, the Wikimedia IRC Group Contacts decided to move to the new Libera Chat network. It has been reported that Wikimedia related channels on Freenode have been forcibly taken over if they pointed members to Libera. There is a migration guide and Wikimedia discussions about this.

Arbitration

After a Clarification request, the Arbitration Committee modified Remedy 5 of the Antisemitism in Poland case. This means sourcing expectations are a discretionary sanction instead of being present on all articles. It also details using the talk page or the Reliable Sources Noticeboard to discuss disputed sources.

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 14:45, 9 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2021-24

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

Recent changes

Logged-in users on the mobile web can choose to use the advanced mobile mode. They now see categories in a similar way as users on desktop do. This means that some gadgets that have just been for desktop users could work for users of the mobile site too. If your wiki has such gadgets you could decide to turn them on for the mobile site too. Some gadgets probably need to be fixed to look good on mobile. [58]
Language links on Wikidata now works for multilingual Wikisource. [59]

Changes later this week

There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

Future changes

In the future we can't show the IP of unregistered editors to everyone. This is because privacy regulations and norms have changed. There is now a rough draft of how showing the IP to those who need to see it could work.
German Wikipedia, English Wikivoyage and 29 smaller wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on 22 June. This is planned between 5:00 and 5:30 UTC. [60]
All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes in the week of 28 June. More information will be published in Tech News later. It will also be posted on individual wikis in the coming weeks. [61][62]

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

20:25, 14 June 2021 (UTC)

Discontent Content Issue 5

Discontent Content Issue #5

Welcome, subscribers, to the fifth Discontent Content newsletter! Discontent Content is a newsletter aiming to collate and improve Wikipedia articles in need of more eyes and hands to get them in shape. Its unique trimodal structure allows editors to work where they feel comfortable -- with stubs and starts needing to be brought to standard, mid-quality articles with Good or Featured potential, or quality-assessed articles needing help to maintain their status.

Category 1

This issue's Category 1 articles are:

Isolar – 1976 Tour: A substantial musical event for one of the most influential albums of its era, but with a rather spindly, table-focused article (I also note no one seems to have given post-inflation numbers for any of the figures).
Occultism (Islam): "Major topic that's a literal stub because it's about something outside the comfort zone of the average editor" of the day. Esotericism in one of the world's major exoteric religions is, of course, something which can be written about extensively.
G & G v Wikimedia Foundation Inc: Going meta for a moment...This is an interesting case, and it's a shame we discuss it only as a paragraph. It would be fascinating to read further on this topic.

Category 2

This issue's Category 2 articles are:

Misophonia: A concept, symptom, or disorder -- no one's quite yet drawn the borderlands -- where people are unusually upset at noises such as chewing sounds. The idea may sound odd, but it does distress people with it and those around them. The subject is very popular, with Half Million Award-tier page views, but the readers are served by a rather weak article.
Sparks (band): This eccentric, creative band was a GA long ago, but delisted in 2010. Though undersourced, the article certainly has potential to return to its old status.
Han Xin: One of the great military leaders of ancient China is graced by a massively undersourced article. Several sections have none at all.

Category 3

This issue's Category 3 articles are:

Wind: This FA is on a huge, important topic, but its star needs some polishing. FAR notice has been given for significant uncited passages. To quote the talk page, the article has good bones, and it can certainly be restored to modern FA status if anyone is able to work on it.
Jeopardy!: The article for perhaps one of the most famous game shows of all time is at GAR for citation issues. Most of the issues brought up can be fixed quite easily, such as locating page numbers.
French fries: Tasty, but needs more sauce. The GAR discusses unsourced sections and unreliable sourcing; I also notice some pretty blatant prose issues and a spindly lead.

Letter from the Editor

This issue's reader suggestion from Sennecaster:

Maasai people: The Vital 4 article for this major East African ethnic group was recently significantly reduced due to copyvio. It needs urgent work to restore cored-out content, but the references are still available in the article to simplify the process.

One topic I've been broadly thinking about lately is the concept of GA sweeps. There hasn't been one in well over a decade; discussion of a new one is traditionally stymied by the sheer number of GAs that would need sweeping, considering there are over ten times as many as there were at the last sweep. Nonetheless, there's no dispute that many GAs don't really count as 99.5th percentile articles, or even decent-quality articles (whether one's own personal reading of WIAGA is closer to the former or the latter, and how different those things are, is an exercise for the reader).

I've been brainstorming ideas, and I've been wondering if we can tackle the problem with limited-scope sweeps. One idea would be sweeping popular or vital articles -- those that get enough views to make up a significant proportion of the "GA experience" to readers. Another would be focusing on shorter GAs, which might trend towards a less in-depth treatment of the topic than could really justify the rating. There may very well be a path here to maintaining GA standards, and either of those would have the benefit that they might be more likely to encourage people to work on rather than simply delist articles -- popular topics with lots of interested parties willing to help, or smaller topics that don't seem like too big a challenge to pick up.
Vaticidalprophet 04:16, 21 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2021-25

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

Recent changes

The otrs-member group name is now vrt-permissions. This could affect abuse filters. [63]

Problems

You will be able to read but not edit German Wikipedia, English Wikivoyage and 29 smaller wikis for a few minutes on 22 June. This is planned between 5:00 and 5:30 UTC. [64]

Changes later this week

The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 22 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 23 June. It will be on all wikis from 24 June (calendar).

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

15:48, 21 June 2021 (UTC)

The Signpost: 27 June 2021

News and notes: Elections, Wikimania, masking and more

In the media: Boris and Joe, reliability, love, and money

Disinformation report: Croatian Wikipedia: capture and release

Recent research: Feminist critique of Wikipedia's epistemology, Black Americans vastly underrepresented among editors, Wiki Workshop report

Traffic report: So no one told you life was gonna be this way

News from the WMF: Searching for Wikipedia

Humour: Wikipedia's best articles on the world's strangest things

WikiProject report: WikiProject on open proxies interview

Forum: Is WMF fundraising abusive?

Discussion report: Reliability of WikiLeaks discussed

Obituary: SarahSV

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 20:14, 27 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2021-26

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

Wikis with the Growth features now can configure Growth features directly on their wiki. This uses the new special page Special:EditGrowthConfig. [65]
Wikisources have a new OCR tool. If you don't want to see the "extract text" button on Wikisource you can add .ext-wikisource-ExtractTextWidget { display: none; } to your common.css page. [66]

Problems

You will be able to read but not edit the Wikimedia wikis for a few minutes on 29 June. This is planned at 14:00 UTC. [67][68]

Changes later this week

The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 29 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 30 June. It will be on all wikis from 1 July (calendar).

Future changes

Threshold for stub link formatting, thumbnail size and auto-number headings can be set in preferences. They are expensive to maintain and few editors use them. The developers are planning to remove them. Removing them will make pages load faster. You can read more and give feedback.
A toolbar will be added to the Reply tool's wikitext source mode. This will make it easier to link to pages and to ping other users. [69][70]

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

16:30, 28 June 2021 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – July 2021

News and updates for administrators from the past month (June 2021).

Administrator changes

Trialpears

AGK • Eliz81 • Mulad • ThaddeusB • Vianello • Who

Lacrimosus → Ikuzaf

Interface administrator changes

Ragesoss

CheckUser changes

AGK • DGG

Oversighter changes

AGK

Guideline and policy news

Consensus has been reached to delete all books in the book namespace. There was rough consensus that the deleted books should still be available on request at WP:REFUND even after the namespace is removed.
An RfC is open to discuss the next steps following a trial which automatically applied pending changes to TFAs.

Technical news

IP addresses of unregistered users are to be hidden from everyone. There is a rough draft of how IP addresses may be shown to users who need to see them. This currently details allowing administrators, checkusers, stewards and those with a new usergroup to view the full IP address of unregistered users. Editors with at least 500 edits and an account over a year old will be able to see all but the end of the IP address in the proposal. The ability to see the IP addresses hidden behind the mask would be dependent on agreeing to not share the parts of the IP address they can see with those who do not have access to the same information. Accessing part of or the full IP address of a masked editor would also be logged. Comments on the draft are being welcomed at the talk page.

Arbitration

The community authorised COVID-19 general sanctions have been superseded by the COVID-19 discretionary sanctions following a motion at a case request. Alerts given and sanctions placed under the community authorised general sanctions are now considered alerts for and sanctions under the new discretionary sanctions.

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 11:26, 3 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2021-27

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

Tech News

The next issue of Tech News will be sent out on 19 July.

Recent changes

AutoWikiBrowser is a tool to make repetitive tasks easier. It now uses JSON. Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/CheckPage has moved to Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/CheckPageJSON and Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/Config. Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/CheckPage/Version has moved to Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/CheckPage/VersionJSON. The tool will eventually be configured on the wiki so that you don't have to wait until the new version to add templates or regular expression fixes. [71]

Problems

InternetArchiveBot helps saving online sources on some wikis. It adds them to Wayback Machine and links to them there. This is so they don't disappear if the page that was linked to is removed. It currently has a problem with linking to the wrong date when it moves pages from archive.is to web.archive.org. [72]

Changes later this week

The tool to find, add and remove templates will be updated. This is to make it easier to find and use the right templates. It will come to the first wikis on 7 July. It will come to more wikis later this year. [73][74]
There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

Future changes

Some Wikimedia wikis use Flagged Revisions or pending changes. It hides edits from new and unregistered accounts for readers until they have been patrolled. The auto review action in Flagged Revisions will no longer be logged. All old logs of auto-review will be removed. This is because it creates a lot of logs that are not very useful. [75]

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

17:31, 5 July 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-29

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

Recent changes

The tool to find, add and remove templates was updated. This is to make it easier to find and use the right templates. It was supposed to come to the first wikis on 7 July. It was delayed to 12 July instead. It will come to more wikis later this year. [76][77]
Special:UnconnectedPages lists pages that are not connected to Wikidata. This helps you find pages that can be connected to Wikidata items. Some pages should not be connected to Wikidata. You can use the magic word __EXPECTED_UNCONNECTED_PAGE__ on pages that should not be listed on the special page. [78]

Changes later this week

The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 20 July. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 21 July. It will be on all wikis from 22 July (calendar).

Future changes

How media is structured in the parser's HTML output will soon change. This can affect bots, gadgets, user scripts and extensions. You can read more. You can test it on Testwiki or Testwiki 2.
The parameters for how you obtain tokens in the MediaWiki API were changed in 2014. The old way will no longer work from 1 September. Scripts, bots and tools that use the parameters from before the 2014 change need to be updated. You can read more.

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

15:29, 19 July 2021 (UTC)

The Signpost: 25 July 2021

News and notes: Wikimania and a million other news stories

Special report: Hardball in Hong Kong

In the media: Larry is at it again

Board of Trustees candidates: See the candidates

Recent research: Gender bias and statistical fallacies, disinformation and mutual intelligibility

Traffic report: Football, tennis and marveling at Loki

News from the WMF: Uncapping our growth potential – interview with James Baldwin, Finance and Administration Department

Humour: A little verse

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 23:10, 25 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Discontent Content Issue 6

Discontent Content Issue #6

Welcome, subscribers, to the sixth Discontent Content newsletter! Discontent Content is a newsletter aiming to collate and improve Wikipedia articles in need of more eyes and hands to get them in shape. Its unique trimodal structure allows editors to work where they feel comfortable -- with stubs and starts needing to be brought to standard, mid-quality articles with Good or Featured potential, or quality-assessed articles needing help to maintain their status.

Category 1

This issue's Category 1 articles are:

Floating match on card: This famous magic trick is a microstub with an empty section and no meaningful discussion of its methods or effects. Some useful information is available on the talk page.
Erotic horror: A significant literary (or, well...look, you know) genre with significant academic and critical coverage, which you wouldn't know from reading its three-sentence article.
Black ribbon: Currently in poor shape, with unnecessary lists attracting spurious examples, this article nonetheless has potential to cover a coherent topic on a sensitive subject.

Category 2

This issue's Category 2 articles are:

Violin: This twice-candidate at GAN has good bones, but suffers from expanses of uncited content (and indeed expanses of "people slapping CN tags on literally every sentence"). Much of this information should be citable, and potential exists for this article to stand tall amongst other core music articles.
Art museum: Though this looks a little underrated as a soi-disant "Start", it's nonetheless an important cultural article with significant improvement potential. This was a former candidate for the Team-B-Vital campaign ran by members of the Wikimedia Discord to bring Vital Articles to B-class status, and while not selected, it has strong potential for anyone interested in working on it.
Grocery store: Daily life has always been one of Wikipedia's coverage gaps. Though this topic is something virtually anyone deals with on a regular basis, the article struggles with cleanup tags, sandwiching, and the weird fear of prose that drives people to put everything they can in a list. With hundreds of views a day, readers deserve an article with a stronger core.

Category 3

This issue's Category 3 articles are:

Slackers CDs and Games: This GA hasn't had significant content edits since 2008. As much of its content references then-recent controversies, it needs a good look for updating.
Potential superpowers: GA with a multiple issues template, with concerns of outdated information, lack of citations, and potential OR.
Alzheimer's disease: This major medical FA is at FAR due to outdated information, an unfortunately common scourge of medical articles over time. Such an important article needs people willing to get it in good shape.

Letter from the Editor

After my prior thoughts on GA sweeps and their viability, work is beginning to break down what parts of the backlog can be tackled. Planning is beginning at User:Vaticidalprophet/GA reform and its talk; feel free to give your opinion, participate in current GARs, and assess articles. The current plan is to look at GAs with outstanding cleanup tags as our first priority.

Sorry for the delay this time around -- I've been having A Month healthwise. I expect to maintain this at an approximately monthly schedule and will try not to let it slip further. I'm enthused by the work going on at GAR lately and hope to work something excellent out of it.
Vaticidalprophet 01:54, 26 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2021-30

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

Recent changes

A new version of MediaWiki came to the Wikimedia wikis the week before last week. This was not in Tech News because there was no newsletter that week.

Changes later this week

The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 27 July. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 28 July. It will be on all wikis from 29 July (calendar).

Future changes

If you use the Monobook skin you can choose to switch off responsive design on mobile. This will now work for more skins. If ⧼monobook-responsive-label⧽ is unticked you need to also untick the new preference Enable responsive mode. Otherwise it will stop working. Interface admins can automate this process on your wiki. You can read more.

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

21:09, 26 July 2021 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – July 2021

News and updates for administrators from the past month (July 2021).

Administrator changes

BusterD

Kees08 • Nickshanks • Protonk • Schissel • Ultraexactzz • Wknight94

CheckUser changes

TheresNoTime

Oversighter changes

TheresNoTime

ST47

Guideline and policy news

An RfC is open to add a delay of one week from nomination to deletion for G13 speedy deletions.

Technical news

Last week all wikis were very slow or not accessible for 30 minutes. This was due to server lag caused by regenerating dynamic lists on the Russian Wikinews after a large bulk import. (T287380)

Arbitration

Following an amendment request, the committee has clarified that the Talk page exception to the 500/30 rule in remedy 5 of the Palestine-Israel articles 4 case does not apply to requested move discussions.

Miscellaneous

You can vote for candidates in the 2021 Board of Trustees elections from 4 August to 17 August. Four community elected seats are up for election.

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 14:17, 1 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2021-31

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

Recent changes

If your wiki uses markup like <div class="mw-content-ltr"> or <div class="mw-content-rtl"> without the required dir attribute, then these will no longer work in 2 weeks. There is a short-term fix that can be added to your local wiki's Common.css page, which is explained at T287701. From now on, all usages should include the full attributes, for example: <div class="mw-content-ltr" dir="ltr" lang="en"> or <div class="mw-content-rtl" dir="rtl" lang="he">. This also applies to some other HTML tags, such as span or code. You can find existing examples on your wiki that need to be updated, using the instructions at T287701.
Reminder: Wikimedia has migrated to the Libera Chat IRC network, from the old Freenode network. Local documentation should be updated.

Problems

Last week, all wikis had slow access or no access for 30 minutes. There was a problem with generating dynamic lists of articles on the Russian Wikinews, due to the bulk import of 200,000+ new articles over 3 days, which led to database problems. The problematic feature has been disabled on that wiki and developers are discussing if it can be fixed properly. [79][80]

Changes later this week

When adding links to a page using VisualEditor or the 2017 wikitext editor, disambiguation pages will now only appear at the bottom of search results. This is because users do not often want to link to disambiguation pages. [81]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 3 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 4 August. It will be on all wikis from 5 August (calendar).

Future changes

The team of the Wikipedia app for Android is working on communication in the app. The developers are working on how to talk to other editors and get notifications. You can read more. They are looking for users who want to test the plans. Any editor who has an Android phone and is willing to download the app can do this.
The Beta Feature for Discussion tools will be updated in the coming weeks. You will be able to subscribe to individual sections on a talk page at more wikis. You can test this now by adding ?dtenable=1 to the end of the talk page's URL (example).

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

20:45, 2 August 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-32

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

Problems

You can read but not edit 17 wikis for a few minutes on 10 August. This is planned at 05:00 UTC. This is because of work on the database. [82]

Changes later this week

The Wikimania Hackathon will take place remotely on 13 August, starting at 5:00 UTC, for 24 hours. You can participate in many ways. You can still propose projects and sessions.
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 10 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 11 August. It will be on all wikis from 12 August (calendar).
The old CSS <div class="visualClear"></div> will not be supported after 12 August. Instead, templates and pages should use <div style="clear:both;"></div>. Please help to replace any existing uses on your wiki. There are global-search links available at T287962.

Future changes

The Wikipedia Library is a place for Wikipedia editors to get access to sources. There is an extension which has a new function to tell users when they can take part in it. It will use notifications. It will start pinging the first users in September. It will ping more users later. [83]
Vue.js will be the JavaScript framework for MediaWiki in the future. [84]

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

16:18, 9 August 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-33

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

Recent changes

You can add language links in the sidebar in the new Vector skin again. You do this by connecting the page to a Wikidata item. The new Vector skin has moved the language links but the new language selector cannot add language links yet. [85]

Problems

There was a problem on wikis which use the Translate extension. Translations were not updated or were replaced with the English text. The problems have been fixed. [86][87][88]

Changes later this week

A revision tag will soon be added to edits that add links to disambiguation pages. This is because these links are usually added by accident. The tag will allow editors to easily find the broken links and fix them. If your wiki does not like this feature, it can be hidden. [89]
Would you like to help improve the information about tools? Would you like to attend or help organize a small virtual meetup for your community to discuss the list of tools? Please get in touch on the Toolhub Quality Signal Sessions talk page. We are also looking for feedback from tool maintainers on some specific questions.
In the past, edits to any page in your user talk space ignored your mute list, e.g. sub-pages. Starting this week, this is only true for edits to your talk page. [90]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 17 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 18 August. It will be on all wikis from 19 August (calendar).

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

19:25, 16 August 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-34

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

Recent changes

The Score extension (<score> notation) has been re-enabled on public wikis and upgraded to a newer version. Some musical score functionality may no longer work because the extension is only enabled in "safe mode". The security issue has been fixed and an advisory published.

Problems

You will be able to read but not edit some wikis for a few minutes on 25 August. This will happen around 06:00 UTC. This is for database maintenance. During this time, operations on the CentralAuth will also not be possible.

Changes later this week

The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 24 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 25 August. It will be on all wikis from 26 August (calendar).

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

21:57, 23 August 2021 (UTC)

Read-only reminder

A maintenance operation will be performed on Wednesday August 25 06:00 UTC. It should only last for a few minutes.

Also during this time, operations on the CentralAuth will not be possible (GlobalRenames, changing/confirming e-mail addresses, logging into new wikis, password changes).

For more details about the operation and on all impacted services, please check on Phabricator.

A banner will be displayed 30 minutes before the operation.

Please help your community to be aware of this maintenance operation. Thank you!

20:33, 24 August 2021 (UTC)

The Signpost: 29 August 2021

News and notes: Enough time left to vote! IP ban

In the media: Vive la différence!

Wikimedians of the year: Seven Wikimedians of the year

Gallery: Our community in 20 graphs

News from Wiki Education: Changing the face of Wikipedia

Recent research: IP editors, inclusiveness and empathy, cyclones, and world heritage

WikiProject report: WikiProject Days of the Year Interview

Traffic report: Olympics, movies, and Afghanistan

Community view: Making Olympic history on Wikipedia

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 19:41, 29 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2021-35

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 musical score syntax no longer works and may needed to be updated, you can check Category:Pages with score rendering errors on your wiki for a list of pages with errors.

Problems

Musical scores were unable to render lyrics in some languages because of missing fonts. This has been fixed now. If your language would prefer a different font, please file a request in Phabricator. [91]

Changes later this week

The parameters for how you obtain tokens in the MediaWiki API were changed in 2014. The old way will no longer work from 1 September. Scripts, bots and tools that use the parameters from before the 2014 change need to be updated. You can read more about this.
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 31 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 1 September. It will be on all wikis from 2 September (calendar).

Future changes

You will be able to read but not edit Commons for a few minutes on 6 September. This will happen around 05:00 UTC. This is for database maintenance.
All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes in the week of 13 September. More information will be published in Tech News later. It will also be posted on individual wikis in the coming weeks. [92]

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

15:59, 30 August 2021 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – September 2021

News and updates for administrators from the past month (August 2021).

Administrator changes

Jake Wartenberg

Emperor • Viridian Bovary

Ashleyyoursmile → Viridian Bovary

Guideline and policy news

Feedback is requested on the Universal Code of Conduct enforcement draft by the Universal Code of Conduct Phase 2 drafting committee.
A RfC is open on whether to allow administrators to use extended confirmed protection on high-risk templates.
A discussion is open to decide when, if ever, should discord logs be eligible for removal when posted onwiki (including whether to oversight them)
A RfC on the next steps after the trial of pending changes on TFAs has resulted in a 30 day trial of automatic semi protection for TFAs.

Technical news

The Score extension has been re-enabled on public wikis. It has been updated, but has been placed in safe mode to address unresolved security issues. Further information on the security issues can be found on the mediawiki page.

Arbitration

A request for comment is in progress to provide an opportunity to amend the structure, rules, and procedures of the Arbitration Committee election and resolve any issues not covered by existing rules. Comments and new proposals are welcome.

Miscellaneous

The 2021 RfA review is now open for comments.

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 20:44, 3 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2021-36

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

The wikis that have Growth features deployed have been part of A/B testing since deployment, in which some newcomers did not receive the new features. Now, all of the newcomers on 21 of the smallest of those wikis will be receiving the features. [93]

Changes later this week

There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

Future changes

In 2017, the provided jQuery library was upgraded from version 1 to 3, with a compatibility layer. The migration will soon finish, to make the site load faster for everyone. If you maintain a gadget or user script, check if you have any JQMIGRATE errors and fix them, or they will break. [94][95]
Last year, the Portuguese Wikipedia community embarked on an experiment to make log-in compulsory for editing. The impact report of this trial is ready. Moving forward, the Anti-Harassment Tools team is looking for projects that are willing to experiment with restricting IP editing on their wiki for a short-term experiment. Learn more.

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

15:18, 6 September 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-37

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

45 new Wikipedias now have access to the Growth features. [96]
A majority of Wikipedias now have access to the Growth features. The Growth team has published an FAQ page about the features. This translatable FAQ covers the description of the features, how to use them, how to change the configuration, and more.

Problems

All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on 14 September. This is planned at 14:00 UTC. [97]

Changes later this week

The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 14 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 15 September. It will be on all wikis from 16 September (calendar).
Starting this week, Wikipedia in Italian will receive weekly software updates on Wednesdays. It used to receive the updates on Thursdays. Due to this change, bugs will be noticed and fixed sooner. [98]
You can add language links in the sidebar in the new Vector skin again. You do this by connecting the page to a Wikidata item. The new Vector skin has moved the language links but the new language selector cannot add language links yet. [99]
The syntax highlight tool marks up code with different colours. It now can highlight 23 new code languages. Additionally, golang can now be used as an alias for the Go programming language, and a special output mode has been added to show a program's output. [100][101]

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

15:31, 13 September 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-38

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

Growth features are now deployed to almost all Wikipedias. For the majority of small Wikipedias, the features are only available for experienced users, to test the features and configure them. Features will be available for newcomers starting on 20 September 2021.
MediaWiki had a feature that would highlight local links to short articles in a different style. Each user could pick the size at which "stubs" would be highlighted. This feature was very bad for performance, and following a consultation, has been removed. [102]
A technical change was made to the MonoBook skin to allow for easier maintenance and upkeep. This has resulted in some minor changes to HTML that make MonoBook's HTML consistent with other skins. Efforts have been made to minimize the impact on editors, but please ping Jon (WMF) on wiki or in phabricator if any problems are reported.

Problems

There was a problem with search last week. Many search requests did not work for 2 hours because of an accidental restart of the search servers. [103]

Changes later this week

The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 21 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 22 September. It will be on all wikis from 23 September (calendar).
The meta=proofreadpage API has changed. The piprop parameter has been renamed to prpiprop. API users should update their code to avoid unrecognized parameter warnings. Pywikibot users should upgrade to 6.6.0. [104]

Future changes

The Reply tool will be deployed to the remaining wikis in the coming weeks. It is currently part of "Discussion tools" in Beta features at most wikis. You will be able to turn it off in Editing Preferences. [105]
The previously announced change to how you obtain tokens from the API has been delayed to September 21 because of an incompatibility with Pywikibot. Bot operators using Pywikibot can follow T291202 for progress on a fix, and should plan to upgrade to 6.6.1 when it is released.

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

18:29, 20 September 2021 (UTC)

The Signpost: 26 September 2021

News and notes: New CEO, new board members, China bans

In the media: The future of Wikipedia

Opinion: Wikimedians of Mainland China were warned

Op-Ed: I've been desysopped

Disinformation report: Paid promotional paragraphs in German parliamentary pages

Discussion report: Editors discuss Wikipedia's vetting process for administrators

Recent research: Wikipedia images for machine learning; Experiment justifies Wikipedia's high search rankings

Community view: Is writing Wikipedia like making a quilt?

Traffic report: Kanye, Emma Raducanu and 9/11

News from Diff: Welcome to the first grantees of the Knowledge Equity Fund

WikiProject report: The Random and the Beautiful

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 20:53, 26 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2021-39

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

Recent changes

iOS 15 has a new function called Private Relay (Apple website). This can hide the user's IP when they use Safari browser. This is like using a VPN in that we see another IP address instead. It is opt-in and only for those who pay extra for iCloud. It will come to Safari users on OSX later. There is a technical discussion about what this means for the Wikimedia wikis.

Problems

Some gadgets and user-scripts add items to the portlets (article tools) part of the skin. A recent change to the HTML may have made those links a different font-size. This can be fixed by adding the CSS class .vector-menu-dropdown-noicon. [106]

Changes later this week

The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 28 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 29 September. It will be on all wikis from 30 September (calendar).
The GettingStarted extension was built in 2013, and provides an onboarding process for new account holders in a few versions of Wikipedia. However, the recently developed Growth features provide a better onboarding experience. Since the vast majority of Wikipedias now have access to the Growth features, GettingStarted will be deactivated starting on 4 October. [107]
A small number of users will not be able to connect to the Wikimedia wikis after 30 September. This is because an old root certificate will no longer work. They will also have problems with many other websites. Users who have updated their software in the last five years are unlikely to have problems. Users in Europe, Africa and Asia are less likely to have immediate problems even if their software is too old. You can read more.
You can receive notifications when someone leaves a comment on user talk page or mentions you in a talk page comment. Clicking the notification link will now bring you to the comment and highlight it. Previously, doing so brought you to the top of the section that contained the comment. You can find more information in T282029.

Future changes

The Reply tool will be deployed to the remaining wikis in the coming weeks. It is currently part of "Discussion tools" in Beta features at most wikis. You will be able to turn it off in Editing Preferences. See the list of wikis. [108]

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

22:20, 27 September 2021 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – October 2021

News and updates for administrators from the past month (September 2021).

Administrator changes

Blablubbs

Alvestrand • Black Falcon • Deathphoenix • Dppowell • Mark Arsten • JGHowes (deceased)

Oversighter changes

Callanecc

Mkdw

Interface administrator changes

Galobtter

Guideline and policy news

Following an RfC, extended confirmed protection may be used preemptively on certain high-risk templates.
Following a discussion at the Village Pump, there is consensus to treat discord logs the same as IRC logs. This means that discord logs will be oversighted if posted onwiki.

Technical news

DiscussionTools has superseded Enterprisey's reply-link script. Editors may switch using the "Discussion tools" checkbox under Preferences → Beta features.

Arbitration

A motion has standardised the 500/30 (extended confirmed) restrictions placed by the Arbitration Committee. The standardised restriction is now listed in the Arbitration Committee's procedures.
Following the closure of the Iranian politics case, standard discretionary sanctions are authorized for all edits about, and all pages related to, post-1978 Iranian politics, broadly construed.
The Arbitration Committee encourages uninvolved administrators to use the discretionary sanctions procedure in topic areas where it is authorised to facilitate consensus in RfCs. This includes, but is not limited to, enforcing sectioned comments, word/diff limits and moratoriums on a particular topic from being brought in an RfC for up to a year.

Miscellaneous

Editors have approved expanding the trial of Growth Features from 2% of new accounts to 25%, and the share of newcomers getting mentorship from 2% to 5%. Experienced editors are invited to add themselves to the mentor list.
The community consultation phase of the 2021 CheckUser and Oversight appointments process is open for editors to provide comments and ask questions to candidates.

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:03, 1 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2021-40

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

A more efficient way of sending changes from Wikidata to Wikimedia wikis that show them has been enabled for the following 10 wikis: mediawiki.org, the Italian, Catalan, Hebrew and Vietnamese Wikipedias, French Wikisource, and English Wikivoygage, Wikibooks, Wiktionary and Wikinews. If you notice anything strange about how changes from Wikidata appear in recent changes or your watchlist on those wikis you can let the developers know.

Changes later this week

The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 5 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 6 October. It will be on all wikis from 7 October (calendar).
Some gadgets and bots that use the API to read the AbuseFilter log might break. The hidden property will no longer say an entry is implicit for unsuppressed log entries about suppressed edits. If your bot needs to know this, do a separate revision query. Additionally, the property will have the value false for visible entries; previously, it wasn't included in the response. [109]
A more efficient way of sending changes from Wikidata to Wikimedia wikis that show them will be enabled for all production wikis. If you notice anything strange about how changes from Wikidata appear in recent changes or your watchlist you can let the developers know.

Future changes

You can soon get cross-wiki notifications in the iOS Wikipedia app. You can also get notifications as push notifications. More notification updates will follow in later versions. [110]
The JavaScript variables wgExtraSignatureNamespaces, wgLegalTitleChars, and wgIllegalFileChars will soon be removed from mw.config. These are not part of the "stable" variables available for use in wiki JavaScript. [111]
The JavaScript variables wgCookiePrefix, wgCookieDomain, wgCookiePath, and wgCookieExpiration will soon be removed from mw.config. Scripts should instead use mw.cookie from the "mediawiki.cookie" module. [112]

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

16:28, 4 October 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-41

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

Changes later this week

The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 12 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 13 October. It will be on all wikis from 14 October (calendar).

The "auto-number headings" preference is being removed. You can read phab:T284921 for the reasons and discussion. This change was previously announced. A JavaScript snippet is available which can be used to create a Gadget on wikis that still want to support auto-numbering.

Meetings

You can join a meeting about the Desktop Improvements. A demonstration version of the newest feature will be shown. The event will take place on Tuesday, 12 October at 16:00 UTC. See how to join.

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

15:28, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-42

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

Recent changes

Toolhub is a catalogue to make it easier to find software tools that can be used for working on the Wikimedia projects. You can read more.

Changes later this week

The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 19 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 20 October. It will be on all wikis from 21 October (calendar).

Future changes

The developers of the Wikipedia Android app are working on communication in the app. You can now answer questions in survey to help the development.
3–5% of editors may be blocked in the next few months. This is because of a new service in Safari, which is similar to a proxy or a VPN. It is called iCloud Private Relay. There is a discussion about this on Meta. The goal is to learn what iCloud Private Relay could mean for the communities.
Wikimedia Enterprise is a new API for those who use a lot of information from the Wikimedia projects on other sites. It is a way to get big commercial users to pay for the data. There will soon be a copy of the Wikimedia Enterprise dataset. You can read more. You can also ask the team questions on Zoom on 22 October 15:00 UTC.

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

20:52, 18 October 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-43

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

Recent changes

The Coolest Tool Award 2021 is looking for nominations. You can recommend tools until 27 October.

Changes later this week

The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 26 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 27 October. It will be on all wikis from 28 October (calendar).

Future changes

Diff pages will have an improved copy and pasting experience. The changes will allow the text in the diff for before and after to be treated as separate columns and will remove any unwanted syntax. [113]
The version of the Liberation fonts used in SVG files will be upgraded. Only new thumbnails will be affected. Liberation Sans Narrow will not change. [114]

Meetings

You can join a meeting about the Community Wishlist Survey. News about the disambiguation and the real-time preview wishes will be shown. The event will take place on Wednesday, 27 October at 14:30 UTC. See how to join.

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

20:06, 25 October 2021 (UTC)

The Signpost: 31 October 2021

From the editor: Different stories, same place

News and notes: The sockpuppet who ran for adminship and almost succeeded

In the media: China bans, and is there intelligent life on this planet?

Opinion: A photo on Wikipedia can ruin your life

Discussion report: Editors brainstorm and propose changes to the Requests for adminship process

Recent research: Welcome messages fail to improve newbie retention

Community view: Reflections on the Chinese Wikipedia

Traffic report: James Bond and the Giant Squid Game

Technology report: Wikimedia Toolhub, winners of the Coolest Tool Award, and more

Serendipity: How Wikipedia helped create a Serbian stamp

Book review: Wikipedia and the Representation of Reality

WikiProject report: Redirection

Humour: A very Wiki crossword

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 20:12, 31 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Administrators' newsletter – November 2021

News and updates for administrators from the past month (October 2021).

Administrator changes

Clpo13

Brian0918 • JDoorjam • Karanacs • MrDarcy • Mindspillage

Interface administrator changes

Evad37

CheckUser changes

Dreamy Jazz • Ferret • GeneralNotability • Girth Summit • RoySmith

Oversight changes

Dreamy Jazz • LuK3

Guideline and policy news

Phase 2 of the 2021 RfA review has commenced which will discuss potential solutions to address the 8 issues found in Phase 1. Proposed solutions that achieve consensus will be implemented and you may propose solutions till 07 November 2021.

Technical news

Toolhub is a catalogue of tools which can be used on Wikimedia wikis. It is at https://toolhub.wikimedia.org/.

Arbitration

GeneralNotability, Mz7 and Cyberpower678 have been appointed to the Electoral Commission for the 2021 Arbitration Committee Elections. Ivanvector and John M Wolfson are reserve commissioners.
Eligible editors are invited to self-nominate themselves to stand in the 2021 Arbitration Committee elections from 07 November 2021 until 16 November 2021.

Miscellaneous

The 2021 CheckUser and Oversight appointments process has concluded with the appointment of five new CheckUsers and two new Oversighters.

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:43, 1 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2021-44

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

There is a limit on the amount of emails a user can send each day. This limit is now global instead of per-wiki. This change is to prevent abuse. [115]

Changes later this week

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

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

20:26, 1 November 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-45

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

Mobile IP editors are now able to receive warning notices indicating they have a talk page message on the mobile website (similar to the orange banners available on desktop). These notices will be displayed on every page outside of the main namespace and every time the user attempts to edit. The notice on desktop now has a slightly different colour. [116][117]

Changes later this week

Wikidata will be read-only for a few minutes on 11 November. This will happen around 06:00 UTC. This is for database maintenance. [118]
There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

Future changes

In the future, unregistered editors will be given an identity that is not their IP address. This is for legal reasons. A new user right will let editors who need to know the IPs of unregistered accounts to fight vandalism, spam, and harassment, see the IP. You can read the suggestions for how that identity could work and discuss on the talk page.

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

20:35, 8 November 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-46

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

Most large file uploads errors that had messages like "stashfailed" or "DBQueryError" have now been fixed. An incident report is available.

Problems

Sometimes, edits made on iOS using the visual editor save groups of numbers as telephone number links, because of a feature in the operating system. This problem is under investigation. [119]
There was a problem with search last week. Many search requests did not work for 2 hours because of a configuration error. [120]

Changes later this week

The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 16 November. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 17 November. It will be on all wikis from 18 November (calendar).

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

22:05, 15 November 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-47

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

Changes later this week

There is no new MediaWiki version this week.
The template dialog in VisualEditor and in the new wikitext mode Beta feature will be heavily improved on a few wikis. Your feedback is welcome.

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

20:01, 22 November 2021 (UTC)

The Signpost: 29 November 2021

In the media: Denial: climate change, mass killings and pornography

WikiCup report: The WikiCup 2021

Deletion report: What we lost, what we gained

From a Wikipedia reader: What's Matt Amodio?

Arbitration report: ArbCom in 2021

Discussion report: On the brink of change – RFA reforms appear imminent

Technology report: What does it take to upload a file?

WikiProject report: Interview with contributors to WikiProject Actors and Filmmakers

Serendipity: "Did You Know ..." featured a photo of the wrong female WWII pilot

News from Diff: Content translation tool helps create one million Wikipedia articles

Traffic report: Reporting ticket sales on the edge of the Wiki, if Eternals should fail

Recent research: Vandalizing Wikipedia as rational behavior

Humour: A very new very Wiki crossword

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:45, 29 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2021-48

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

Changes later this week

The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 30 November. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 1 December. It will be on all wikis from 2 December (calendar).

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

21:13, 29 November 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-49

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

Problems

MediaWiki 1.38-wmf.11 was scheduled to be deployed on some wikis last week. The deployment was delayed because of unexpected problems.

Changes later this week

The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 7 December. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 8 December. It will be on all wikis from 9 December (calendar).
At all Wikipedias, a Mentor Dashboard is now available at Special:MentorDashboard. It allows registered mentors, who take care of newcomers' first steps, to monitor their assigned newcomers' activity. It is part of the Growth features. You can learn more about activating the mentor list on your wiki and about the mentor dashboard project.
The predecessor to the current MediaWiki Action API (which was created in 2008), action=ajax, will be removed this week. Any scripts or bots using it will need to switch to the corresponding API module. [121]
An old ResourceLoader module, jquery.jStorage, which was deprecated in 2016, will be removed this week. Any scripts or bots using it will need to switch to mediawiki.storage instead. [122]

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

21:57, 6 December 2021 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – December 2021

News and updates for administrators from the past month (November 2021).

Administrator changes

A Train • Berean Hunter • Epbr123 • GermanJoe • Sanchom • Mysid

Technical news

Unregistered editors using the mobile website are now able to receive notices to indicate they have talk page messages. The notice looks similar to what is already present on desktop, and will be displayed on when viewing any page except mainspace and when editing any page. (T284642)
The limit on the number of emails a user can send per day has been made global instead of per-wiki to help prevent abuse. (T293866)

Arbitration

Voting in the 2021 Arbitration Committee Elections is open until 23:59, 06 December 2021 (UTC).
The already authorized standard discretionary sanctions for all pages relating to the Horn of Africa (defined as including Ethiopia, Somalia, Eritrea, Djibouti, and adjoining areas if involved in related disputes), broadly construed, have been made permanent.

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:24, 3 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Bots Newsletter, December 2021

Bots Newsletter, December 2021

Graphs are unavailable due to technical issues. There is more info on Phabricator and on MediaWiki.org.

BRFA activity by month

Welcome to the eighth issue of the English Wikipedia's Bots Newsletter, your source for all things bot. Maintainers disappeared to parts unknown... bots awakening from the slumber of æons... hundreds of thousands of short descriptions... these stories, and more, are brought to you by Wikipedia's most distinguished newsletter about bots.

Our last issue was in August 2019, so there's quite a bit of catching up to do. Due to the vast quantity of things that have happened, the next few issues will only cover a few months at a time. This month, we'll go from September 2019 through the end of the year. I won't bore you with further introductions — instead, I'll bore you with a newsletter about bots.

Overall

Between September and December 2019, there were 33 BRFAs. Of these, Y 25 were approved, and 8 were unsuccessful (N2 3 denied, ? 3 withdrawn, and 2 expired).

September 2019

Y Monkbot 16, DannyS712 bot 60, Ahechtbot 6, PearBOT 3, Qbugbot 3 · N2 DannyS712 bot 5, PkbwcgsBot 24 · ? DannyS712 bot 61, TheSandBot 4
TParis goes away, UTRSBot goes kaput: Beeblebrox noted that the bot for maintaining on-wiki records of UTRS appeals stopped working a while ago. TParis, the semi-retired user who had previously run it, said they were "unlikely to return to actively editing Wikipedia", and the bot had been vanquished by trolls submitting bogus UTRS requests on behalf of real blocked users. While OAuth was a potential fix, neither maintainer had time to implement it. TParis offered to access to the UTRS WMFLabs account to any admin identified with the WMF: "I miss you guys a whole lot [...] but I've also moved on with my life. Good luck, let me know how I can help". Ultimately, SQL ended up in charge. Some progress was made, and the bot continued to work another couple months — but as of press time, UTRSBot has not edited since November 2019.
Article-measuring contest resumed: The list of Wikipedians by article count, which had lain dead for several years, was triumphantly resurrected by GreenC following a bot request.

October 2019

Y OAbot 3, DannyS712 bot 47, Pathbot 2, PearBOT 2, DannyS712 bot 59, DannyS712 bot 62, HasteurBot 14, PearBOT 4, WOSlinkerBot 4, MilHistBot 5
Curb Safe Charmer adopts reFill: TAnthony pointed out that reFill 2's bug reports were going unanswered; creator Zhaofeng Li had retired from Wikipedia, and a maintainer was needed. As of June 2021, Curb Safe Charmer had taken up the mantle, saying: "Not that I have all the skills needed but better me than nobody! 'Maintainer' might be too strong a term though. Volunteers welcome!"

November 2019

Y BHGbot 4, YiFeiBot 2, DannyS712 bot III 64 · ? PearBOT
Old bots do new tricks: DannyS712 bot III 64 prowled redirects, YiFeiBot 2 archived GoCE requests, and BHGbot 4 removed links to portals deleted at MfD (until its authorization was revoked in January at operator BrownHairedGirl's request).

December 2019

Y DemonDays64 Bot, DannyS712 bot III 66, Bot1058 6, Monkbot 15, MilHistBot 6, PearBOT 5, DannyS712 bot IV 65 · N2 SportsStatsBot · Xinbenlv bot, SteveBot 8
Redirects to be autopatrolled: A RfC took place at WP:NPP, closing with unanimous consensus that new redirects should be automatically marked as patrolled by bot. DannyS712 wasted no time, and submitted DannyS712 bot III 66 the next day; it passed two days after that.
200,000 bios get short descs: Along a similar vein, Bot1058 6 was approved to remove disambiguation pages from Category:Monitored short pages and a new bot (DemonDays64 Bot) changed lots of http links to https using JavaScript Wiki Browser. One particularly neat task, PearBOT 5, automatically generated short descriptions for more than 200,000 biographies.

In the next issue of Bots Newsletter:
What's next for our intrepid band of coders, maintainers and approvers?

What happens when two bots want to clerk the same page?
What happens when an adminbot goes hog wild?
Will reFill ever get fixed?
What's up with ListeriaBot, anyway?
Python 3.4 deprecation? In my PyWikiBot? (It's more likely than you think!)

These questions will be answered — and new questions raised — by the January 2022 Bots Newsletter. Tune in, or miss out!

Signing off... jp×g 04:29, 10 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

(You can subscribe or unsubscribe from future newsletters by adding or removing your name from this list.)

Tech News: 2021-50

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

Recent changes

There are now default short aliases for the "Project:" namespace on most wikis. E.g. On Wikibooks wikis, [[WB:]] will go to the local language default for the [[Project:]] namespace. This change is intended to help the smaller communities have easy access to this feature. Additional local aliases can still be requested via the usual process. [123]

Changes later this week

The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 14 December. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 15 December. It will be on all wikis from 16 December (calendar).

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

22:26, 13 December 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-51

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 10 January 2022.

Recent changes

Queries made by the DynamicPageList extension (<DynamicPageList>) are now only allowed to run for 10 seconds and error if they take longer. This is in response to multiple outages where long-running queries caused an outage on all wikis. [124]

Changes later this week

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

Future changes

The developers of the Wikipedia iOS app are looking for testers who edit in multiple languages. You can read more and let them know if you are interested.
The Wikimedia Cloud VPS hosts technical projects for the Wikimedia movement. Developers need to claim projects they use. This is because old and unused projects are removed once a year. Unclaimed projects can be shut down from February. [125]

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

22:04, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

Scripts++ Newsletter – Issue 22

Hello everyone, and welcome to the 22nd issue of the Wikipedia Scripts++ Newsletter. This issue will be covering new and updated user scripts from the past seven months (June through December 2021).

Got anything good? Tell us about your new, improved, old, or messed-up script here!

Featured script

LuckyRename, by Alexis Jazz, is this month's featured script. LuckyRename makes requesting file moves easier, and automates the many steps in file moving (including automatic replacement of existing usage). Give it a shot!

Updated scripts

SD0001: hide-reverted-edits has been updated to take into account changes in reversion tools like Twinkle and RedWarn.
Writ Keeper: massRollback.js has added a rollback-some option (missed in last issue).
ClaudineChionh: SkinSwitcher (a fork and update of Eizen's script) provides an options menu/toolbox/toolbar allowing users to view a given page in MediaWiki's default skins.

Pending requests

Mass-patrolling at Special:NewPages
Taking up the mantle of an almost completed peer review javascript bot
Restore the Wikipedia Citation Tool for Google Books
Autohighlighting specific characters (Greek)
...and many more, all available at Wikipedia:User scripts/Requests

Miscellaneous

Wikipedia:User scripts/Ranking is a sortable table of Wikipedia's thousand-or-so most commonly used scripts; it includes their author, last modification date, installation count, and sometimes a short description.
Toolhub is a community managed catalog of software tools used in the Wikimedia movement. Technical volunteers can use Toolhub to document the tools that they create or maintain. All Wikimedians can use Toolhub to search for tools to help with their workflows and to create lists of useful tools to share with others.

New scripts

Ahecht:
- draft-sorter sorts AfC drafts by adding WikiProject banners to their talk pages. It supersedes User:Enterprisey/draft-sorter, adding a few features and fixing some bugs.
- massmove, a modified User:Plastikspork/massmove.js that adds a link to the left column, allows adding and removing both prefixes and suffixes.
- watchlistcleaner removes missing pages (redlinks), redirects, pages you haven't edited recently, and/or pages you've never edited from your watchlist.
Awesome Aasim:
- Infiniscroll adds infinite scrolling to user contributions, page histories, and log pages.
- Quick create allows for the fast creation of red-linked pages with two clicks.
Caburum:
- UTCclock adds a clock displaying the current UTC time.
Chlod:
- CopiedTemplateEditor, mainly for CCI case handlers, allows graphically editing a talk page's {{copied}} templates.
DaxServer:
- BooksToSfn adds a portlet link in Visual Editor's source mode editing, in main namespace articles or in the user's Sandbox. When clicked, it converts one {{cite book}} inside a <ref>...</ref> tag block into an {{Sfn}}.
FlightTime:
- OneClickArchiver is a custom version of User:Technical_13/Scripts/OneClickArchiver which doesn't prepend {{Clear}} to the top of each section on the archive page.
Jon Harald Søby:
- diffedit enables editing directly from viewing a diff "when, for instance, you notice a tiny mistake deep into an article, and don't want to edit the entire article and re-find that one line to fix that tiny mistake".
- warnOnLargeFile warns you if you're about to open a very large file (width/height >10,000px or file size >100 MB) from a file page.
JPxG:
- PressPass adds a collection of tools for Newspapers.com including configurable automatic citation generation in five different formats.
- CurrentSwitcher gives you links on the contribs page to hide duplicate entries, current revisions, rollbacks, huggles, twinkles, and redwarns.
- TrackSum lets you automatically sum the lengths of tracks in templates like {{track listing}} and get total runtimes.
Nardog:
- CopySectLink adds a button to copy the unencoded page title or section path next to each heading.
- IPAInput allows you to type in IPA symbols by directly looking at an IPA key like Help:IPA/English and clicking on the symbols.
- TemplatePreviewGuard warns when you try to use "Preview page with this template" with a page that doesn't transclude the template.
NguoiDungKhongDinhDanh:
- ContribsTabVector adds "Contributions" and "Statistics" tabs to user and user talk pages on the Vector skin.
- CopyvioChecker adds a "CopyvioCheck" tab to all pages, except Special (Vector skin only).
- LiveDiffLink is a version of Equazcion's LiveDiffLink which shows a wikilink instead of a URL.
- QuickDiff (by OneTwoThreeFall at Fandom) lets you quickly view any diff link on a wiki, whether on Recent Changes, contribs pages, history pages, the diff view itself, or elsewhere. For more information, view its page on Fandom.
Novem Linguae:
- DetectSNG scans a list of 1,600 SNG keywords and displays them at the top of the article.
- NotSoFast highlights recently created articles in the new pages feed, to discourage patrolling them too quickly.
- UserRightsDiff concisely displays what perm was added or removed when viewing Special:UserRights.
- VoteCounter displays a rough count of keeps and deletes at XFDs, RFCs, etc.
- WatchlistAFD automatically watchlists the AFDs of any pages you AFC accept or NPP patrol, to help you calibrate your reviewing.
P.T.Đ:
- TwinkleMobile enables Twinkle on mobile view (Minerva skin).
Qwerfjkl:
- editRedirect adds a → link after redirects to edit them.
- RegExTypoFix, a script for fixing typos, is a wrapper for User:Joeytje50/RETF.js.
- talkback creates links after user talk page links like this: |C|TB (with the first linking to the user's contributions, and the latter giving the option of sending a {{talkback}} notice). It also adds a [copy] link next to section headers.
Rublov:
- diff-link shows "copy" links on history and contributions pages that copy an internal link to the diff (e.g., Special:Diff/1026402230) to your clipboard when clicked.
Rummskartoffel:
- auto-watchlist-expiry automatically watchlists every page you edit for a user-definable duration (you can still pick a different time using the dropdown, though).
- generate pings generates the wikitext needed to ping all members of a category, up to 50 editors (the limit defined by MediaWiki).
- share ExpandTemplates url allows for easy sharing of your inputs to Special:ExpandTemplates. It adds a button that, when clicked, copies a shareable URL to your exact invocation of the page, like this. Other editors do not need to have this script installed in order to access the URL generated.
- show tag names shows the real names of tags next to their display names in places such as page revision histories or the watchlist.
Tol:
- VisualEditor Citation Needed adds a button (under "Insert") in VisualEditor to add a {{citation needed}} tag.
Venkat TL:
- ColourContrib color-codes the user contributions page so that pages you've edited last are sharply distinguished from pages where another editor was the last to edit the page.
Vukky:
- StatusChanger is a fork of Enterprisey's Status Changer, which adds a UI to the script. (using Morebits, so you'll need to have Twinkle enabled to use it).

All in all, some very neat scripts were written in these last few months. Hoping to see many more in the next issue -- drop us a line on the talk page if you've been writing (or seeing) anything cool and good. Filling in for DannyS712, this has been jp×g. Take care, and merry Christmas! jp×g 07:30, 24 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 28 December 2021

From the editor: Here is the news

News and notes: Jimbo's NFT, new arbs, fixing RfA, and financial statements

Serendipity: Born three months before her brother?

In the media: The past is not even past

Recent research: STEM articles judged unsuitable for undergraduates below the first paragraph

Arbitration report: A new crew for '22

By the numbers: Four billion words and a few numbers

Deletion report: We laughed, we cried, we closed as "no consensus"

Gallery: Wikicommons presents: 2021

Traffic report: Spider-Man, football and the departed

Crossword: Another Wiki crossword for one and all

Humour: Buying Wikipedia

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 21:06, 28 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Administrators' newsletter – January 2022

News and updates for administrators from the past month (December 2021).

Administrator changes

Amalthea • Ihcoyc (deceased) • Kateshortforbob • Kirill Lokshin • Rifleman 82 • Ryan Norton • Wrp103

Interface administrator changes

Mr. Stradivarius

CheckUser changes

Cabayi • Donald Albury • Enterprisey • Izno • Wugapodes

Opabinia regalis

Casliber • David Fuchs • Newyorkbrad • SoWhy

Oversighter changes

Cabayi • Donald Albury • Enterprisey • Izno • Wugapodes

Opabinia regalis

Casliber • David Fuchs • Newyorkbrad • SoWhy

Guideline and policy news

Following consensus at the 2021 RfA review, the autopatrolled user right has been removed from the administrators user group; admins can grant themselves the autopatrolled permission if they wish to remain autopatrolled.

Additionally, consensus for proposal 6C of the 2021 RfA review has led to the creation of an administrative action review process. The purpose of this process will be to review individual administrator actions and individual actions taken by users holding advanced permissions.

Arbitration

Following the 2021 Arbitration Committee elections, the following editors have been appointed to the Arbitration Committee: Beeblebrox, Cabayi, Donald Albury, Enterprisey, Izno, Opabinia regalis, Worm That Turned, Wugapodes.

Miscellaneous

The functionaries email list (functionaries-enlists.wikimedia.org) will no longer accept incoming emails apart from those sent by list members and WMF staff. Private concerns, apart from those requiring oversight, should be directly sent to the Arbitration Committee.

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:24, 3 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2022-02

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

Recent changes

A oauth_consumer variable has been added to the AbuseFilter to enable identifying changes made by specific tools. [126]
Gadgets are now able to directly include JSON pages. This means some gadgets can now be configured by administrators without needing the interface administrator permission, such as with the Geonotice gadget. [127]
Gadgets can now specify page actions on which they are available. For example, |actions=edit,history will load a gadget only while editing and on history pages. [128]
Gadgets can now be loaded on demand with the withgadget URL parameter. This can be used to replace an earlier snippet that typically looks like withJS or withCSS. [129]
At wikis where the Mentorship system is configured, you can now use the Action API to get a list of a mentor's mentees. [130]
The heading on the main page can now be configured using MediaWiki:Mainpage-title-loggedin for logged-in users and MediaWiki:Mainpage-title for logged-out users. Any CSS that was previously used to hide the heading should be removed. [131] [132]
Four special pages (and their API counterparts) now have a maximum database query execution time of 30 seconds. These special pages are: RecentChanges, Watchlist, Contributions, and Log. This change will help with site performance and stability. You can read more details about this change including some possible solutions if this affects your workflows. [133]
The sticky header has been deployed for 50% of logged-in users on more than 10 wikis. This is part of the Desktop Improvements. See how to take part in the project.

Changes later this week

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

Events

Community Wishlist Survey 2022 begins. All contributors to the Wikimedia projects can propose for tools and platform improvements. The proposal phase takes place from 10 January 18:00 UTC to 23 January 18:00 UTC. Learn more.

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

01:22, 11 January 2022 (UTC)

Tech News: 2022-03

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

When using WikiEditor (also known as the 2010 wikitext editor), people will now see a warning if they link to disambiguation pages. If you click "Review link" in the warning, it will ask you to correct the link to a more specific term. You can read more information about this completed 2021 Community Wishlist item.
You can automatically subscribe to all of the talk page discussions that you start or comment in using DiscussionTools. You will receive notifications when another editor replies. This is available at most wikis. Go to your Preferences and turn on "Automatically subscribe to topics". [134]
When asked to create a new page or talk page section, input fields can be "preloaded" with some text. This feature is now limited to wikitext pages. This is so users can't be tricked into making malicious edits. There is a discussion about if this feature should be re-enabled for some content types.

Changes later this week

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

Events

Community Wishlist Survey 2022 continues. All contributors to the Wikimedia projects can propose for tools and platform improvements. The proposal phase takes place from 10 January 18:00 UTC to 23 January 18:00 UTC. Learn more.

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

19:53, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Tech News: 2022-04

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

Changes later this week

The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 25 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 26 January. It will be on all wikis from 27 January (calendar).
The following languages can now be used with syntax highlighting: BDD, Elpi, LilyPond, Maxima, Rita, Savi, Sed, Sophia, Spice, .SRCINFO.
You can now access your watchlist from outside of the user menu in the new Vector skin. The watchlist link appears next to the notification icons if you are at the top of the page. [135]

Events

You can see the results of the Coolest Tool Award 2021 and learn more about 14 tools which were selected this year.
You can translate, promote, or comment on the proposals in the Community Wishlist Survey. Voting will begin on 28 January.

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

21:36, 24 January 2022 (UTC)

The Signpost: 30 January 2022

Special report: WikiEd course leads to Twitter harassment

News and notes: Feedback for Board of Trustees election

Interview: CEO Maryana Iskander "four weeks in"

Black History Month: What are you doing for Black History Month?

Deletion report: Ringing in the new year: Subject notability guideline under discussion

WikiProject report: The Forgotten Featured

Arbitration report: New arbitrators look at new case and antediluvian sanctions

Traffic report: The most viewed articles of 2021

Gallery: No Spanish municipality without a photograph

Obituary: Twofingered Typist

Op-Ed: Identifying and rooting out climate change denial

Essay: The prime directive

Opinion: Should the Wikimedia Foundation continue to accept cryptocurrency donations?

In the media: Fuzzy-headed government editing

Recent research: Articles with higher quality ratings have fewer "knowledge gaps"

Serendipity: Pooh entered the Public Domain – but Tigger has to wait two more years

Crossword: Cross swords with a crossword

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 20:20, 30 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2022-05

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

If a gadget should support the new ?withgadget URL parameter that was announced 3 weeks ago, then it must now also specify supportsUrlLoad in the gadget definition (documentation). [136]

Changes later this week

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

Future changes

A change that was announced last year was delayed. It is now ready to move ahead:
- The user group oversight will be renamed suppress. This is for technical reasons. This is the technical name. It doesn't affect what you call the editors with this user right on your wiki. This is planned to happen in three weeks. You can comment in Phabricator if you have objections. As usual, these labels can be translated on translatewiki (direct links are available) or by administrators on your wiki.

Events

You can vote on proposals in the Community Wishlist Survey between 28 January and 11 February. The survey decides what the Community Tech team will work on.

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

17:41, 31 January 2022 (UTC)

Bots Newsletter, January 2022

Bots Newsletter, January 2022

Graphs are unavailable due to technical issues. There is more info on Phabricator and on MediaWiki.org.

BRFA activity by month

Welcome to the ninth issue of the English Wikipedia's Bots Newsletter, your source for all things bot. Vicious bot-on-bot edit warring... superseded tasks... policy proposals... these stories, and more, are brought to you by Wikipedia's most distinguished newsletter about bots.

After a long hiatus between August 2019 and December 2021, there's quite a bit of ground to cover. Due to the vastness, I decided in December to split the coverage up into a few installments that covered six months each. Some people thought this was a good idea, since covering an entire year in a single issue would make it unmanageably large. Others thought this was stupid, since they were getting talk page messages about crap from almost three years ago. Ultimately, the question of whether each issue covers six months or a year is only relevant for a couple more of them, and then the problem will be behind us forever.

Of course, you can also look on the bright side – we are making progress, and this issue will only be about crap from almost two years ago. Today we will pick up where we left off in December, and go through the first half of 2020.

Overall
In the first half of 2020, there were 71 BRFAs. Of these, Y 59 were approved, and 12 were unsuccessful (with N2 8 denied, ? 2 withdrawn, and 2 expired).

January 2020

Yeah, you're not gonna be able to get away with this anymore.

Y ST47Bot, Seppi333Bot, Qbugbot 4 · N2 PkbwcgsBot 25, PkbwcgsBot 26
A new Pywikibot release dropped support for Python 3.4, and it was expected that support for Python 2.7 would be removed in coming updates. Toolforge itself planned to drop Python 2 support in 2022.
Two new bots dropped in January 2020: ST47Bot, the successor to STBot, and Seppi333Bot, whose task was to perform a weekly update of four "massive" wikitables for WikiProject Molecular Biology.
Cydebot, an adminbot operated by Cyde since 2006, was blocked after going berserk on categories that hadn't yet been CfD'd.

February 2020

Y AnomieBOT 78, Cewbot 2, DannyS712 bot 67, DannyS712 bot III 63, PearBOT 6, DemonDays64 Bot 2 · N2 PearBOT
On February 1, some concerns were raised about ListeriaBot performing "nonsense" edits. Semi-active operator Magnus Manske (who originally coded the Phase II software|precursor of MediaWiki) was pinged. Meanwhile, the bot was temporarily blocked for several hours until the issue was diagnosed and resolved.
On February 18, ST47Bot got into a tussle with Amalthea (bot), and had to be partially-blocked from Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Cases/Overview.

March 2020

Y MajavahBot, SDZeroBot, TheSandBot 6, TheSandBot 7, Bitbotje, FACBot 6, TheSandBot 8, Qbugbot 5, Cewbot 3, SDZeroBot 2, PrimeBOT 31, WikiCleanerBot 12 · AntiCompositeBot
In March, a long discussion was started at Wikipedia talk:Bot policy by Skdb about the troubling trend of bots "expiring" without explanation after their owners became inactive. This can happen for a variety of reasons -- API changes break code, hosting providers' software updates break code, hosting accounts lapse, software changes make bots' edits unnecessary, and policy changes make bots' edits unwanted. The most promising solution seemed to be Toolforge hosting (although it has some problems of its own, like the occasional necessity of refactoring code).
Some of the twelve bot tasks approved this month were TheSandBot 6 (removing blocked users from Category:Wikipedia usernames with possible policy issues), and TheSandBot 7 (removing unblocked users from Category:Wikipedians who are indefinitely blocked for promotional user names). SDZeroBot 2 was approved to refine geographic stub tags. New bots approved this month were MajavahBot (to patrol WP:EFFPR), SDZeroBot (to merge stub tags), and Bitbotje (fixing DISPLAYTITLE modifications, DEFAULTSORT errors and broken behavior switches in draftspace).

April 2020

Y TheSandBot 9, BHGbot 5, DannyS712 bot 69, SDZeroBot 3, ST47ProxyBot, WugBot 4, SDZeroBot 4, DatBot 10, WikiCleanerBot 11, WikiCleanerBot 13, WikiCleanerBot 14, AntiCompositeBot 2, Cewbot 4 · N2 DaedanBot 1 · Creffbot
A discussion on the bot noticeboard, "Re-examination of ListeriaBot", was started by Barkeep49, who pointed out repeated operation outside the scope of its BRFA (i.e. editing pages in mainspace, and adding non-free images to others). Some said it was doing good work, and others said it was operating beyond its remit. It was blocked on April 10; the next day it was unblocked, reblocked from article space, reblocked "for specified non-editing actions", unblocked, and indeffed. The next week, several safeguards were implemented in its code by Magnus; the bot was allowed to roam free once more on April 18.
ST47ProxyBot joined the stable in April, after a BRFA started in December was finally completed. As an adminbot, it was authorized to block IP addresses belonging to open proxies, public VPN services, and web hosts. New tasks approved for existing bots included BHGbot 5 (diffusing categories), TheSandBot 9 (taking over some tasks from the inactive RonBot), and WugBot 4 (updating data at {{Interactive COVID-19 maps}}). Also, DatBot 10 was approved to scale down non-free SVGs — I didn't even know that was a thing.
A discussion at Wikipedia talk:Bot policy was started by Thryduulf about whether WP:BOTCOMM should explicitly specify that bot operators must be responsive to concerns raised on English Wikipedia specifically (as opposed to Phabricator, SourceForge, Toolforge, et cetera). Eventually, the policy was amended to its current form:

Issues and enquiries are typically expected to be handled on the English Wikipedia. Pages reachable via unified login, like a talk page at Commons or at Italian Wikipedia could also be acceptable [...] External sites like Phabricator or GitHub (which require separate registration or do not allow for IP comments) and email (which can compromise anonymity) can supplement on-wiki communication, but do not replace it.

May 2020

Y MajavahBot 3, DannyS712 bot 70, CitationCleanerBot 5, Dreamy Jazz Bot 4, QEDKbot, William Avery Bot 2, DannyS712 bot 68, PrimeBOT 32, TheSandBot 10, Bot1058 7, BHGbot 6, EaglesBot 2, Cewbot 5, WikiCleanerBot 17 · N2 MDanielsBot, PhuzBot 3, Gedimon · ? PearBOT 7
MajavahBot 3, an impressively meta bot task, was approved this month for maintaining a list of bots running on the English Wikipedia. The page, located at User:MajavahBot/Bot status report, is updated every 24 hours; it contains a list of all accounts with the bot flag, as well as their operator, edit count, last activity date, last edit date, last logged action date, user groups and block status.
Other approvals for this month were William Avery Bot 2 (processing redirects in {{R from scientific name}}), DannyS712 bot 68 (allowing users to schedule bot reminders for themselves), TheSandBot 10 (removing blocked/locked users from Category:User talk pages with conflict of interest notices), Bot1058 7 (updating Wikipedia:Requested moves/Technical requests/Permalink), Dreamy Jazz Bot 4 (adding {{WikiProject Biography|living=no}} to talk pages where their associated article is in a year of death category), and QEDKbot (deleting and nominating empty categories).
General syntax fixing tasks were approved for DannyS712 bot 70, CitationCleanerBot 5, PrimeBOT 32, BHGbot 6, Cewbot 5, and EaglesBot 2, as well as WikiCleanerBot 15, 16, and 17.
Seven bots who fell below activity requirements (with neither the bots nor their operators having any edits or logged actions in two years) had their bot flags removed. They were NekoBot, Robert SkyBot, DASHBotAV, VoxelBot, JackieBot, ReferenceBot, and CensusBot.
On May 12, EmausBot was blocked.

June 2020

Y QEDKbot 2, AnomieBOT 79, WOSlinkerBot 6, Yapperbot 2, Yapperbot, AnomieBOT 80, Dreamy Jazz Bot 5, WikiCleanerBot 18, HasteurBot 15, MusikBot II 4, NoSandboxesHere · N2 RedWarn · ? Seppi333Bot 2
In July 2017, Headbomb made a proposal that a section of the Wikipedia:Dashboard be devoted to bots and technical issues. In November 2019, Lua code was written superseding Legobot's tasks on that page, and operator Legoktm was asked to stop them so that the new code could be deployed. After no response to pings, a partial-block of Legobot for the dashboard was proposed. Some months later, on June 16, Headbomb said: "A full block serves nothing. A partial block solves all current issues [...] Just fucking do it. It's been 3 years now." The next day, however, Legoktm disabled the task, and the dashboard was successfully refactored.
On June 7, RexxS blocked Citation bot for disruptive editing, saying it was "still removing links after request to stop". A couple weeks later, a discussion on the bots noticeboard was opened, saying "it is a widely-used and useful bot, but it has one of the longest block logs for any recently-operating bot on Wikipedia". While its last BRFA approval was in 2011, its code and functionality had changed dramatically since then, and AntiCompositeNumber requested that BAG require a new BRFA. Maintainer AManWithNoPlan responded that most blocks were from years ago (when it lacked a proper test suite), and problems since then had mostly been one-off errors (like a June 2019 incident in which a LTA had "weaponized" the bot to harass editors).
David Tornheim opened a discussion about whether bots based on closed-source code should be permitted, and proposed that they not. He cited a recent case in which a maintainer had said "I can only suppose that the code that is available on GitHub is not the actual code that was running on [the bot]". Some disagreed: Naypta said that "I like free software as much as the next person, and I strongly believe that bot operators should make their bot code public, but I don't think it should be that they must do so".
Two new bots had their first BRFAs approved: Yapperbot, to replace Legobot for handling the Feedback Request Service, and NoSandboxesHere, to remove {{user sandbox}} from articles in draftspace using Category:Non-userspace pages using User sandbox.

Conclusion

What's next for our intrepid band of coders, maintainers and approvers?

Will Citation bot ever be set free to roam the project?
What's the deal with all those book links that InternetArchiveBot is adding to articles?
Should we keep using Gerrit for MediaWiki?
What if we had a day for bots to make cosmetic edits?

These questions will be answered — and new questions raised — by the February 2022 Bots Newsletter. Tune in, or miss out!

Signing off... jp×g 23:22, 31 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

(You can subscribe or unsubscribe from future newsletters by adding or removing your name from this list.)

Administrators' newsletter – February 2022

News and updates for administrators from the past month (January 2022).

Administrator changes

AustralianRupert • Cimon Avaro • Euryalus • Jehochman • Nunh-huh

28bytes

Bureaucrat changes

28bytes

Interface administrator changes

Evad37 • Galobtter

Ragesoss

Guideline and policy news

The Universal Code of Conduct enforcement guidelines have been published for consideration. Voting to ratify this guideline is planned to take place 7 March to 21 March. Comments can be made on the talk page.

Technical news

The user group oversight will be renamed suppress in around 3 weeks. This will not affect the name shown to users and is simply a change in the technical name of the user group. The change is being made for technical reasons. You can comment in Phabricator if you have objections.
The Reply Tool feature, which is a part of Discussion Tools, will be opt-out for everyone logged in or logged out starting 7 February 2022. Editors wishing to comment on this can do so in the relevant Village Pump discussion.

Arbitration

Community input is requested on several motions aimed at addressing discretionary sanctions that are no longer needed or overly broad.
The Arbitration Committee has published a generalised comment regarding successful appeals of sanctions that it can review (such as checkuser blocks).
A motion related to the Antisemitism in Poland case was passed following a declined case request.

Miscellaneous

Voting in the 2022 Steward elections will begin on 07 February 2022, 14:00 (UTC) and end on 26 February 2022, 13:59 (UTC). The confirmation process of current stewards is being held in parallel. You can automatically check your eligibility to vote.
Voting in the 2022 Community Wishlist Survey is open until 11 February 2022.

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 03:01, 3 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2022-06

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

Recent changes

English Wikipedia recently set up a gadget for dark mode. You can enable it there, or request help from an interface administrator to set it up on your wiki (instructions and screenshot).
Category counts are sometimes wrong. They will now be completely recounted at the beginning of every month. [137]

Problems

A code-change last week to fix a bug with Live Preview may have caused problems with some local gadgets and user-scripts. Any code with skin-specific behaviour for vector should be updated to also check for vector-2022. A code-snippet, global search, and example are available.

Changes later this week

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

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

21:14, 7 February 2022 (UTC)