User talk:HouseBlaster/Archive 4

This is an archive of past discussions about User:HouseBlaster. 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.

Archive 1

Archive 2

Archive 3

Question from Nhennenfent (01:28, 13 July 2023)

Hello mentor. I am a retired linux kernel developer. I want to create a page for a small local company that buys and sells grain. --Nick Hennenfent (talk) 01:28, 13 July 2023 (UTC)

@Nhennenfent: Hi! I just logged on... don't expect answers this quickly in the future! The first thing I need to ask you is if you have any conflict of interest regarding the company. Then, we have to determine if the company is notable in the way Wikipedia uses the term. To demonstrate notability, you need at least 2 or 3 sources that are independent of the subject, reliable, and contain significant coverage of the topic – more than just a passing mention. You can see more information about this at our page on Wikipedia's "golden rule". Do you have multiple sources that meet this criteria? Best, House Blaster^talk 01:34, 13 July 2023 (UTC)

Feedback request: Wikipedia policies and guidelines request for comment

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The Signpost: 17 July 2023

News and notes: Big bux hidden beneath wine-dark sea as we wait for the Tides to go out?

In the media: Tentacles of Emirates plot attempt to ensnare Wikipedia

Obituary: David Thomsen (Dthomsen8) and Ingo Koll (Kipala)

News from the WMF: ABC for Fundraising: Advancing Banner Collaboration for fundraising campaigns

In focus: Are the children of celebrities over-represented in French cinema?

Tips and tricks: What automation can do for you (and your WikiProject)

Recent research: Wikipedia-grounded chatbot "outperforms all baselines" on factual accuracy

Humour: New fringe theories to be introduced

Cobwebs: If you're reading this, you're probably on a desktop

Featured content: Scrollin', scrollin', scrollin', keep those readers scrollin', got to keep on scrollin', Rawhide!

Traffic report: The Idol becomes the Master

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Tech News: 2023-29

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

We are now serving 1% of all global user traffic from Kubernetes (you can read more technical details). We are planning to increment this percentage regularly. You can follow the progress of this work.

Changes later this week

The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 18 July. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 19 July. It will be on all wikis from 20 July (calendar).
MediaWiki system messages will now look for available local fallbacks, instead of always using the default fallback defined by software. This means wikis no longer need to override each language on the fallback chain separately. For example, English Wikipedia doesn't have to create en-ca and en-gb subpages with a transclusion of the base pages anymore. This makes it easier to maintain local overrides. [1]
The action=growthsetmentorstatus API will be deprecated with the new MediaWiki version. Bots or scripts calling that API should use the action=growthmanagementorlist API now. [2]

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

MediaWiki message delivery 23:06, 17 July 2023 (UTC)

Books & Bytes – Issue 57

The Wikipedia Library: Books & Bytes
Issue 57, May – June 2023

Suggestion improvements
Favorite collections tips
Spotlight: Promoting Nigerian Books and Authors

Read the full newsletter

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of The Wikipedia Library team --11:22, 18 July 2023 (UTC)

Question from Mahendra Rasiklal Luniya (10:23, 18 July 2023)

Hi, I had created a page which is getting rejected. I need help in understanding why this is happening and what steps should I take to get the page published --Mahendra Rasiklal Luniya (talk) 10:23, 18 July 2023 (UTC)

@Mahendra Rasiklal Luniya: Hi, and welcome to Wikipedia. It is very strongly discouraged to write an article about yourself. In fact, an article about yourself isn't necessarily a good thing. If you wish to contribute in another way, please follow the instructions at the guide to appealing blocks. Best, House Blaster^talk 21:23, 18 July 2023 (UTC)

Feedback request: Politics, government, and law request for comment

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Feedback request: Wikipedia proposals request for comment

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Tech News: 2023-30

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

On July 18, the Wikimedia Foundation launched a survey about the technical decision making process for people who do technical work that relies on software that is maintained by the Foundation or affiliates. If this applies to you, please take part in the survey. The survey will be open for three weeks, until August 7. You can find more information in the announcement e-mail on wikitech-l.

Changes later this week

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

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

MediaWiki message delivery 02:18, 25 July 2023 (UTC)

Feedback request: Politics, government, and law request for comment

Your feedback is requested at Talk:Alliance for the Union of Romanians on a "Politics, government, and law" request for comment. Thank you for helping out!
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Tech News: 2023-31

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

The Synchronizer tool is now available to keep Lua modules synced across Wikimedia wikis, along with updated documentation to develop global Lua modules and templates.
The tag filter on Special:NewPages and revision history pages can now be inverted. For example, you can hide edits that were made using an automated tool. [3][4]
The Wikipedia ChatGPT plugin experiment can now be used by ChatGPT users who can use plugins. You can participate in a video call if you want to talk about this experiment or similar work. [5]

Problems

It was not possible to generate a PDF for pages with non-Latin characters in the title, for the last two weeks. This has now been fixed. [6]

Changes later this week

The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 1 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 2 August. It will be on all wikis from 3 August (calendar).
Starting on Tuesday, a new set of Wikipedias will get "Add a link" (Georgian Wikipedia, Kara-Kalpak Wikipedia, Kabyle Wikipedia, Kabardian Wikipedia, Kabiyè Wikipedia, Kikuyu Wikipedia, Kazakh Wikipedia, Khmer Wikipedia, Kannada Wikipedia, Kashmiri Wikipedia, Colognian Wikipedia, Kurdish Wikipedia, Cornish Wikipedia). This is part of the progressive deployment of this tool to more Wikipedias. The communities can configure how this feature works locally. [7]

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MediaWiki message delivery 23:52, 31 July 2023 (UTC)

The Signpost: 1 August 2023

News and notes: City officials attempt to doxx Wikipedians, Ruwiki founder banned, WMF launches Mastodon server

In the media: Truth, AI, bull from politicians, and climate change

Disinformation report: Hot climate, hot hit, hot money, hot news hot off the presses!

Obituary: Donald Cram, Peter McCawley, and Eagleash

Tips and tricks: Citation tools for dummies!

Humour: Does Wikipedia present neutral perspectives?

In focus: Journals cited by Wikipedia

Opinion: Are global bans the last step?

Featured content: Featured Content, 1 to 15 July

Traffic report: Come on Oppie, let's go party

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Growth team newsletter #27

Welcome to the twenty-seventh newsletter from the Growth team! Help with translations

Annual plan for Growth

We shared our annual plan, for the period July 2023 - June 2024.

Our first project of the year will be Community configuration 2.0, which helps editors with extended rights transparently and easily configure important on-wiki functionality.

After we finish work on Community configuration 2.0, we will hope to fit in one of the following projects:

Article creation: This project aims to provide new editors with better guidance and guardrails in the article creation process, with the intention of lightening the load of new page reviewers.
Non-editing participation: This project aims to create low-risk ways for readers to participate in Wikipedia with the intention of funneling more readers into contributing to the Wikimedia movement.

Please let us know what you think about these projects on the related talk page, or Growth's annual plan talk page.

Suggested edits

We released a new Section-level “add an image” structured task to Growth pilot wikis (Arabic, Bengali, Czech, and Spanish). This task was part of the Structured Data Across Wikipedia project. We are monitoring the edits made, and we look for community feedback as well.

Suggested Edits are now receiving topic predictions via the new Language-Agnostic Topic Classification. This change affects non-English Wikipedia wikis. It will ensure newcomers receive a greater diversity of task recommendations. Before, as this feature was a test, English Wikipedia was used to select topics. The change is gradual as lists of topics are refreshed when they become empty. The Research team will evaluate the impact in a few months. [8]

Starting on August 1, a new set of Wikipedias will get "Add a link": Georgian Wikipedia, Kara-Kalpak Wikipedia, Kabyle Wikipedia, Kabardian Wikipedia, Kabiyè Wikipedia, Kikuyu Wikipedia, Kazakh Wikipedia, Khmer Wikipedia, Kannada Wikipedia, Kashmiri Wikipedia, Colognian Wikipedia, Kurdish Wikipedia, Cornish Wikipedia, Cornish Wikipedia.

Mentorship

The Growth team provides dedicated features to establish a mentorship program for newcomers. Every newcomer gets a volunteer mentor who provides encouragement and answers questions. Communities can set up or join this mentorship system by visiting Special:ManageMentors. This mentorship system is configurable by the community at Special:EditGrowthConfig.

More communities have implemented mentorship. A Wikimedia Foundation data scientist will be looking at the impact of Mentorship. We will look at the impact on Spanish and English Wikipedia. [9]

The Growth team will also host a Mentoring new editors on Wikipedia session at Wikimania 2023 in Singapore. Workshop attendees will help brainstorm improvements to Growth’s mentorship features.

Positive reinforcement

We will share more complete experiment analysis for all the three parts of the Positive reinforcement project soon. At the moment, the new Impact module, Leveling up, and Personalized praise are still being A/B tested on the Growth team's pilot wikis.

In the meantime, initial leading indicators for the Personalized praise project have been published. Although this is still a relatively small sample, results seem healthy. They show that Mentors are indeed receiving notifications and clicking through to view their praise-worthy mentees.

Growth contributes to IP Editing migration

The Growth team is currently focusing on IP Editing: Privacy Enhancement and Abuse Mitigation. It is a project that touches many different Wikimedia Foundation teams. The Growth team will focus on temporary accounts through two main points:

the user experience of a logged-out user, that switches to a temporary account,
change Growth-owned extensions and features, so that they work as expected with temporary accounts. [10]

Community Configuration 2.0

We are still in the early planning stage of the Community Configuration 2.0 project:

We are gathering internal Wikimedia Foundation teams' needs, so as community feedback. [11]
We have started to investigate design improvements. [12]
We are also reviewing similar tools that are part of other products. [13]

Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

12:42, 1 August 2023 (UTC)

Feedback request: Wikipedia proposals request for comment

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File:Deepsea Challenger with fire damage.jpeg listed for discussion

A file that you uploaded or altered, File:Deepsea Challenger with fire damage.jpeg, has been listed at Wikipedia:Files for discussion. Please see the discussion to see why it has been listed (you may have to search for the title of the image to find its entry). Feel free to add your opinion on the matter below the nomination. Thank you. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Iruka13 (talk • contribs) 23:15, 28 July 2023 (UTC)

Birth year is wrong and is that really John Mackenzie in the picture?

I am just a person who likes to read things on Wikipedia. I do not have an account. I am also the grandson of John Mackenzie VC. I have a copy of his birth record. He was born on November 22 of 1870 not 1871. Also I have some pictures of John Mackenzie mostly from the last few years of his life. He married my grandmother in 1910 while he was based in Lucknow India. The picture on his Wikipedia page looks not much like the pictures I have of John. I realize this is a picture of a much younger man that most of what I have. If this picture is of John I would love to know where it came from. Thanks 76.67.79.77 (talk) 13:57, 1 August 2023 (UTC)

76.67.79.77, I think I perpetrated a mistake made by the original uploader of the image. The source says that this image depicts J McKenzie (note the lack of the letter "a").

About the birthday, that is interesting. His grave says he died at age 43, which would place his birthday in 1871. And Victoria Cross Medals, published by the UK military, says he was born in 1871. But other records such as Scotland, Births and Baptisms, 1564–1950 say 1870. I think the best thing to do is note the inconsistency in the article. I have run out of time for Wikipedia today, so I plan to get to this tomorrow. Best, House Blaster^talk 02:02, 3 August 2023 (UTC)

I have a hard time getting on to respond as most days I get the IP is blocked. I get whatever Bell Media my service provider assigns to me. I have lots of information about John Mackenzie VC including pictures and documents. I am willing to share these. I have a not much used email account ikemccaslin@ mail.com. If you let me know where I can contact you I will respond with my personal email. Thanks 76.67.79.77 (talk) 16:10, 6 August 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-32

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

Recent changes

Mobile Web editors can now edit a whole page at once. To use this feature, turn on "⧼Mobile-frontend-mobile-option-amc⧽" in your settings and use the "Edit full page" button in the "More" menu. [14]

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.

MediaWiki message delivery 21:19, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-33

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

The Content translation system is no longer using Youdao's machine translation service. The service was in place for several years, but due to no usage, and availability of alternatives, it was deprecated to reduce maintenance overheads. Other services which cover the same languages are still available. [15]

Changes later this week

The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 15 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 16 August. It will be on all wikis from 17 August (calendar).
Starting on Wednesday, a new set of Wikipedias will get "Add a link" (Latin Wikipedia, Ladino Wikipedia, Luxembourgish Wikipedia, Lak Wikipedia, Lezghian Wikipedia, Lingua Franca Nova Wikipedia, Ganda Wikipedia, Limburgish Wikipedia, Ligurian Wikipedia, Lombard Wikipedia, Lingala Wikipedia, Latgalian Wikipedia, Latvian Wikipedia, Maithili Wikipedia, Basa Banyumasan Wikipedia, Moksha Wikipedia, Malagasy Wikipedia, Armenian Wikipedia, Kyrgyz Wikipedia). This is part of the progressive deployment of this tool to more Wikipedias. The communities can configure how this feature works locally. [16]

Future changes

A few gadgets/user scripts which add icons to the Minerva skin need to have their CSS updated. There are more details available including a search for all existing instances and how to update them.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 05:58, 15 August 2023 (UTC)

The Signpost: 15 August 2023

News and notes: Dude, Where's My Donations? Wikimedia Foundation announces another million in grants for non-Wikimedia-related projects

In the media: An accusation of bias from Brazil, a lawsuit from Portugal, plagiarism from Florida

In focus: 2023 Good Article Nomination drive is underway: get your barnstars here!

Special report: Thirteen years later, why are most administrators still from 2005?

Tips and tricks: How to find images for your articles, check their copyright, upload them, and restore them

Cobwebs: Getting serious about writing

Opinion: Copyright trolls, or the last beautiful free souls on this planet?

Serendipity: Why I stopped taking photographs almost altogether

Featured content: Barbenheimer confirmed

Humour: Arbitration Committee to accept case against Right Honorable Frimbley Cantingham, 15th Viscount Bellington-upon-Porkshire

Traffic report: 'Cause today it just goes with the fashion

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Tech News: 2023-34

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 GDrive to Commons Uploader tool is now available. It enables securely selecting and uploading files from your Google Drive directly to Wikimedia Commons. [17]
From now on, we will announce new Wikimedia wikis in Tech News, so you can update any tools or pages.
- Since the last edition, two new wikis have been created:
  - a Wiktionary in Pa'O (wikt:blk:) [18]
  - a Wikisource in Sundanese (s:su:) [19]
- To catch up, the next most recent six wikis are:
  - Wikifunctions (f:) [20]
  - a Wiktionary in Mandailing (wikt:btm:) [21]
  - a Wikipedia in Ghanaian Pidgin (w:gpe:) [22]
  - a Wikinews in Gungbe (n:guw:) [23]
  - a Wiktionary in Kabardian (wikt:kbd:) [24]
  - a Wikipedia in Fante (w:fat:) [25]

Changes later this week

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

Future changes

There is an existing stable interface policy for MediaWiki backend code. There is a proposed stable interface policy for frontend code. This is relevant for anyone who works on gadgets or Wikimedia frontend code. You can read it, discuss it, and let the proposer know if there are any problems. [26]

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15:23, 21 August 2023 (UTC)

Question from Tralim1997 (18:31, 13 August 2023)

How do I write my name? --Tralim1997 (talk) 18:31, 13 August 2023 (UTC)

@Tralim1997: Hello! I want to apologize for the wait for a response – real life unexpectedly sucked me away from Wikipedia for a while. I believe you are asking about how to sign a message. To do so, simply type ~~~~, which will automatically convert to your signature when you save the page. Let me know if you have any other questions, and happy editing! House Blaster^talk 03:22, 26 August 2023 (UTC)

Question from Elfiot (00:31, 19 August 2023)

Hi there, I am new to editing and have focused on an article Silver Point Capital based on recent reporting. Are you able to confirm that this kind of edit makes sense?

https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/drugmaker-mallinckrodt-talks-with-hedge-funds-avoid-opioid-settlements-wsj-2023-07-26/ --Elfiot (talk) 00:31, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

@Elfiot: Hello! A couple of notes. One, I see that another editor has objected to the edit on the grounds that it is not from a neutral point of view. When this happens, the best thing to do is to start a thread on the article's talk page (you can see instructions on how to do so at Wikipedia:Dispute resolution § Resolving content disputes).

I also noticed that your edit included the phrase "Critics argue this would...". These are called "weasel words", and should be avoided. Instead, specify which critics argued the bankruptcy would undermine recovery from the opioid epidemic.

Let me know if anything I said is unclear or if you have other questions. In any event, happy editing! House Blaster^talk 03:39, 26 August 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-35

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

As part of the changes for the better diff handling of paragraph splits, improved detection of splits is being rolled out. Over the last two weeks, we deployed this support to group0 and group1 wikis. This week it will be deployed to group2 wikis. [27]
All Special:Contributions pages now show the user's local edit count and the account's creation date. [28]
Wikisource users can now use the prpbengalicurrency label to denote Bengali currency characters as page numbers inside the <pagelist> tag. [29]
Two preferences have been relocated. The preference "Enable the visual editor" is now shown on the "Editing" tab at all wikis. Previously it was shown on the "Beta features" tab at some wikis. The preference "Use the wikitext mode inside the visual editor, instead of a different wikitext editor" is now also shown on the "Editing" tab at all wikis, instead of the "Beta features" tab. [30][31]

Changes later this week

The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 29 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 30 August. It will be on all wikis from 31 August (calendar).
New signups for a Wikimedia developer account will start being pushed towards idm.wikimedia.org, rather than going via Wikitech. Further information about the new system is available.
All right-to-left language wikis, plus Korean, Armenian, Ukrainian, Russian, and Bulgarian Wikipedias, will have a link in the sidebar that provides a short URL of that page, using the Wikimedia URL Shortener. This feature will come to more wikis in future weeks. [32]

Future changes

The removal of the DoubleWiki extension is being discussed. This extension currently allows Wikisource users to view articles from multiple language versions side by side when the <=> symbol next to a specific language edition is selected. Comments on this are welcomed at the phabricator task.
A proposal has been made to merge the second hidden-categories list (which appears below the wikitext editing form) with the main list of categories (which is further down the page). More information is available on Phabricator; feedback is welcome!

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

MediaWiki message delivery 13:58, 28 August 2023 (UTC)

Feedback request: Wikipedia policies and guidelines request for comment

Your feedback is requested at Wikipedia talk:Overcategorization/Small with no potential for growth on a "Wikipedia policies and guidelines" request for comment. Thank you for helping out!
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Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/John C. Erickson

I saw your comment on this discussion. I couldn't find anything that I though was fit to merge, so I turned the article into a redirect aiming at Erickson Living. If you want to wade into the pre-redirect version to find some material at the "biography" that should be transferred over, you're a better person than I am. :-) Joyous! | Talk 19:49, 17 November 2022 (UTC)

@Joyous!: I'll put in on my list when real life stuff slows down. Thank you for taking a look at the page! House Blaster^talk 00:31, 18 November 2022 (UTC)

I think you can safely put it veeerrrrrryy low on the list. Joyous! | Talk 01:11, 18 November 2022 (UTC)

@Joyous!: Just in case you were curious, I have no clue what I thought was mergable a year ago. House Blaster^talk 19:51, 29 August 2023 (UTC)

The Signpost: 31 August 2023

From the editor: Beta version of signpost.news now online

News and notes: You like RecentChanges?

In the media: Taking it sleazy

Recent research: The five barriers that impede "stitching" collaboration between Commons and Wikipedia

Draftspace: Bad Jokes and Other Draftspace Novelties

Humour: The Dehumourification Plan

Traffic report: Raise your drinking glass, here's to yesterday

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:43, 31 August 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-36

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

EditInSequence, a feature that allows users to edit pages faster on Wikisource has been moved to a Beta Feature based on community feedback. To enable it, you can navigate to the beta features tab in Preferences. [33]
As part of the changes for the Generate Audio for IPA and Audio links that play on click wishlist proposals, the inline audio player mode of Phonos has been deployed to all projects. [34]
There is a new option for Administrators when they are changing the usergroups for a user, to add the user’s user page to their watchlist. This works both via Special:UserRights and via the API. [35]
One new wiki has been created:
- a Wikipedia in Talysh (w:tly:) [36]

Problems

The LoginNotify extension was not sending notifications since January. It has now been fixed, so going forward, you may see notifications for failed login attempts, and successful login attempts from a new device. [37]

Changes later this week

The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 5 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 6 September. It will be on all wikis from 7 September (calendar).
Starting on Wednesday, a new set of Wikipedias will get "Add a link" (Eastern Mari Wikipedia, Maori Wikipedia, Minangkabau Wikipedia, Macedonian Wikipedia, Malayalam Wikipedia, Mongolian Wikipedia, Marathi Wikipedia, Western Mari Wikipedia, Malay Wikipedia, Maltese Wikipedia, Mirandese Wikipedia, Erzya Wikipedia, Mazanderani Wikipedia, Nāhuatl Wikipedia, Neapolitan Wikipedia, Low German Wikipedia, Low Saxon Wikipedia, Nepali Wikipedia, Newari Wikipedia, Norwegian Nynorsk Wikipedia, Novial Wikipedia, N'Ko Wikipedia, Nouormand Wikipedia, Northern Sotho Wikipedia, Navajo Wikipedia, Nyanja Wikipedia, Occitan Wikipedia, Livvi-Karelian Wikipedia, Oromo Wikipedia, Oriya Wikipedia, Ossetic Wikipedia, Punjabi Wikipedia, Pangasinan Wikipedia, Pampanga Wikipedia, Papiamento Wikipedia, Picard Wikipedia, Pennsylvania German Wikipedia, Palatine German Wikipedia, Norfuk / Pitkern Wikipedia, Piedmontese Wikipedia, Western Punjabi Wikipedia, Pontic Wikipedia, Pashto Wikipedia). This is part of the progressive deployment of this tool to more Wikipedias. The communities can configure how this feature works locally. [38][39]

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MediaWiki message delivery 23:31, 4 September 2023 (UTC)

TfD

I am not asking you to reopen [40]. However, I don't agree with your comment. Iterresise (talk) 04:40, 7 September 2023 (UTC)

New page patrol October 2023 Backlog drive

New Page Patrol \| October 2023 Backlog Drive
On 1 October, a one-month backlog drive for New Page Patrol will begin. Barnstars will be awarded based on the number of articles and redirects patrolled. Barnstars will also be granted for re-reviewing articles previously reviewed by other patrollers during the drive. Articles will earn 3x as many points compared to redirects. Interested in taking part? Sign up here.
You're receiving this message because you are a new page patroller. To opt-out of future mailings, please remove yourself here.

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 09:13, 9 September 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-37

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

ORES, the revision evaluation service, is now using a new open-source infrastructure on all wikis except for English Wikipedia and Wikidata. These two will follow this week. If you notice any unusual results from the Recent Changes filters that are related to ORES (for example, "Contribution quality predictions" and "User intent predictions"), please report them. [41]
When you are logged in on one Wikimedia wiki and visit a different Wikimedia wiki, the system tries to log you in there automatically. This has been unreliable for a long time. You can now visit the login page to make the system try extra hard. If you feel that made logging in better or worse than it used to be, your feedback is appreciated. [42]

Changes later this week

The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 12 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 13 September. It will be on all wikis from 14 September (calendar).
The Technical Decision-Making Forum Retrospective team invites anyone involved in the technical field of Wikimedia projects to signup to and join one of their listening sessions on 13 September. Another date will be scheduled later. The goal is to improve the technical decision-making processes.
As part of the changes for the Better diff handling of paragraph splits wishlist proposal, the inline switch widget in diff pages is being rolled out this week to all wikis. The inline switch will allow viewers to toggle between a unified inline or two-column diff wikitext format. [43]

Future changes

All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on 20 September. This is planned at 14:00 UTC. More information will be published in Tech News and will also be posted on individual wikis in the coming weeks. [44]
The Enterprise API is launching a new feature called "breaking news". Currently in BETA, this attempts to identify likely "newsworthy" topics as they are currently being written about in any Wikipedia. Your help is requested to improve the accuracy of its detection model, especially on smaller language editions, by recommending templates or identifiable editing patterns. See more information at the documentation page on MediaWiki or the FAQ on Meta.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 21:06, 11 September 2023 (UTC)

Books & Bytes – Issue 58

The Wikipedia Library: Books & Bytes
Issue 58, July – August 2023

New partners - De Standaard and Duncker & Humblot
Tech tip: Filters
Wikimania presentation

Read the full newsletter

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of The Wikipedia Library team --14:27, 12 September 2023 (UTC)

New Pages Patrol newsletter June 2023

Hello HouseBlaster,

Backlog

Redirect drive: In response to an unusually high redirect backlog, we held a redirect backlog drive in May. The drive completed with 23851 reviews done in total, bringing the redirect backlog to 0 (momentarily). Congratulations to Hey man im josh who led with a staggering 4316 points, followed by Meena and Greyzxq with 2868 and 2546 points respectively. See this page for more details. The redirect queue is steadily rising again and is steadily approaching 4,000. Please continue to help out, even if it's only for a few or even one review a day.

Redirect autopatrol: All administrators without autopatrol have now been added to the redirect autopatrol list. If you see any users who consistently create significant amounts of good quality redirects, consider requesting redirect autopatrol for them here.

WMF work on PageTriage: The WMF Moderator Tools team, consisting of Sam, Jason and Susana, and also some patches from Jon, has been hard at work updating PageTriage. They are focusing their efforts on modernising the extension's code rather than on bug fixes or new features, though some user-facing work will be prioritised. This will help make sure that this extension is not deprecated, and is easier to work on in the future. In the next month or so, we will have an opt-in beta test where new page patrollers can help test the rewrite of Special:NewPagesFeed, to help find bugs. We will post more details at WT:NPPR when we are ready for beta testers.

Articles for Creation (AFC): All new page reviewers are now automatically approved for Articles for Creation draft reviewing (you do not need to apply at WT:AFCP like was required previously). To install the AFC helper script, visit Special:Preferences, visit the Gadgets tab, tick "Yet Another AFC Helper Script", then click "Save". To find drafts to review, visit Special:NewPagesFeed, and at the top left, tick "Articles for Creation". To review a draft, visit a submitted draft, click on the "More" menu, then click "Review (AFCH)". You can also comment on and submit drafts that are unsubmitted using the script.

You can review the AFC workflow at WP:AFCR. It is up to you if you also want to mark your AFC accepts as NPP reviewed (this is allowed but optional, depends if you would like a second set of eyes on your accept). Don't forget that draftspace is optional, so moves of drafts to mainspace (even if they are not ready) should not be reverted, except possibly if there is conflict of interest.

Pro tip: Did you know that visual artists such as painters have their own SNG? The most common part of this "creative professionals" criteria that applies to artists is WP:ARTIST 4b (solo exhibition, not group exhibition, at a major museum) or 4d (being represented within the permanent collections of two museums).

Reminders

Newsletter feedback - please take this short poll about the newsletter.
There is live chat with patrollers on the New Page Patrol Discord and #wikimedia-npp ^connect on IRC.
Please add the project discussion page to your watchlist.
To opt out of future mailings, please remove yourself here.

The Signpost: 16 September 2023

News and notes: Wikimedia power sharing – just an advisory role for the volunteer community?

In the media: "Just flirting", going Dutch and Shapps for the defence?

Obituary: Nosebagbear

Serendipity: Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no paywall, for thou, Wikipedia Library, art with me

Featured content: Catching up

Concept: Strange portal opened by CERN researchers brings Wikipedia articles from "other worlds"

Traffic report: Some of it's magic, some of it's tragic

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 04:36, 16 September 2023 (UTC)

Feedback request: Politics, government, and law request for comment

Your feedback is requested at Talk:Biden–Ukraine conspiracy theory on a "Politics, government, and law" request for comment. Thank you for helping out!
You were randomly selected to receive this invitation from the list of Feedback Request Service subscribers. If you'd like not to receive these messages any more, you can opt out at any time by removing your name.

Message delivered to you with love by Yapperbot :) | Is this wrong? Contact my bot operator. | Sent at 19:30, 16 September 2023 (UTC)

Question from Shan Ali Junejo (18:06, 18 September 2023)

How i can add my articles --Shan Ali Junejo (talk) 18:06, 18 September 2023 (UTC)

Question from Shan Ali Junejo (18:08, 18 September 2023)

Hello how i can add my article on Wikipedia --Shan Ali Junejo (talk) 18:08, 18 September 2023 (UTC)

@Shan Ali Junejo: Hello! To add an article to Wikipedia, you first want to make sure it qualifies for a Wikipedia article. What do you want to write an article about? House Blaster^talk 18:10, 18 September 2023 (UTC)

How to qualify for add article. I will add my articles and Information Shan Ali Junejo (talk) 18:24, 18 September 2023 (UTC)

@Shan Ali Junejo: unless you are notable because of significant coverage in third-party reliable sources, you cannot make an article about yourself. In fact, an article about yourself isn't necessarily a good thing. House Blaster^talk 18:28, 18 September 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-38

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

MediaWiki now has a stable interface policy for frontend code that more clearly defines how we deprecate MediaWiki code and wiki-based code (e.g. gadgets and user scripts). Thank you to everyone who contributed to the content and discussions. [45][46]

Changes later this week

The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 19 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 20 September. It will be on all wikis from 21 September (calendar).
All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on September 20. This is planned at 14:00 UTC. [47]
All wikis will have a link in the sidebar that provides a short URL of that page, using the Wikimedia URL Shortener. [48]

Future changes

The team investigating the Graph Extension posted a proposal for reenabling it and they need your input.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 19:18, 18 September 2023 (UTC)

New pages patrol newsletter

Hello HouseBlaster,

Backlog update: At the time of this message, there are 11,300 articles and 15,600 redirects awaiting review. This is the highest backlog in a long time. Please help out by doing additional reviews!

October backlog elimination drive: A one-month backlog drive for October will start in one week! Barnstars will be awarded based on the number of articles and redirects patrolled. Articles will earn 4x as many points compared to redirects. You can sign up here.

PageTriage code upgrades: Upgrades to the PageTriage code, initiated by the NPP open letter in 2022 and actioned by the WMF Moderator Tools Team in 2023, are ongoing. More information can be found here. As part of this work, the Special:NewPagesFeed now has a new version in beta! The update leaves the NewPagesFeed appearance and function mostly identical to the old one, but updates the underlying code, making it easier to maintain and helping make sure the extension is not decommissioned due to maintenance issues in the future. You can try out the new Special:NewPagesFeed here - it will replace the current version soon.

Notability tip: Professors can meet WP:PROF #1 by having their academic papers be widely cited by their peers. When reviewing professor articles, it is a good idea to find their Google Scholar or Scopus profile and take a look at their h-index and number of citations. As a very rough rule of thumb, for most fields, articles on people with a h-index of twenty or more, a first-authored paper with more than a thousand citations, or multiple papers each with more than a hundred citations are likely to be kept at AfD.

Reviewing tip: If you would like like a second opinion on your reviews or simply want another new page reviewer by your side when patrolling, we recommend pair reviewing! This is where two reviewers use Discord voice chat and screen sharing to communicate with each other while reviewing the same article simultaneously. This is a great way to learn and transfer knowledge.

Reminders:

You can access live chat with patrollers on the New Page Patrol Discord.
Consider adding the project discussion page to your watchlist.
To opt out of future mailings, please remove yourself here.

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:45, 22 September 2023 (UTC)

Question from Hstmd01 (20:20, 23 September 2023)

Hello. How do you search on Wikipedia now? A search box used to appear on the first page, but now I can't find anywhere --Hstmd01 (talk) 20:20, 23 September 2023 (UTC)

@Hstmd01: Hello! It should still be at the top of your screen. Have you tried bypassing your cache? That tends to fix a bunch of errors. Alternatively, you can access the search bar at Special:Search. House Blaster^talk 01:03, 24 September 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-39

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

The Vector 2022 skin will now remember the pinned/unpinned status for the Table of Contents for all logged-out users. [49]

Changes later this week

The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 26 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 27 September. It will be on all wikis from 28 September (calendar).
The ResourceLoader mediawiki.ui modules are now deprecated as part of the move to Vue.js and Codex. There is a guide for migrating from MediaWiki UI to Codex for any tools that use it. More details are available in the task and your questions are welcome there.
Gadget definitions will have a new "namespaces" option. The option takes a list of namespace IDs. Gadgets that use this option will only load on pages in the given namespaces.

Future changes

New variables will be added to AbuseFilter: global_account_groups and global_account_editcount. They are available only when an account is being created. You can use them to prevent blocking automatic creation of accounts when users with many edits elsewhere visit your wiki for the first time. [50][51]

Meetings

You can join the next meeting with the Wikipedia mobile apps teams. During the meeting, we will discuss the current features and future roadmap. The meeting will be on 27 October at 17:00 (UTC). See details and how to join.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 16:49, 26 September 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-40

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

There is a new user preference for "Always enable safe mode". This setting will make pages load without including any on-wiki JavaScript or on-wiki stylesheet pages. It can be useful for debugging broken JavaScript gadgets. [52]
Gadget definitions now have a new "contentModels" option. The option takes a list of page content models, like wikitext or css. Gadgets that use this option will only load on pages with the given content models.

Changes later this week

The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 3 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 4 October. It will be on all wikis from 5 October (calendar).

Future changes

The Vector 2022 skin will no longer use the custom styles and scripts of Vector legacy (2010). The change will be made later this year or in early 2024. See how to adjust the CSS and JS pages on your wiki. [53]

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

MediaWiki message delivery 01:25, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

The Signpost: 3 October 2023

News and notes: Wikimedia Endowment financial statement published

In the media: History is written by whoever can harness the most editors

Recent research: Readers prefer ChatGPT over Wikipedia; concerns about limiting "anyone can edit" principle "may be overstated"

Featured content: By your logic,

Concept: Wikipedia policies from other worlds: WP:NOANTLERS

Poetry: "The Sight"

Traffic report: There shall be no slaves in the land of lands, it's a Bollywood jam

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 20:30, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

Question from Shem Sybil Galloway Miller (18:34, 4 October 2023)

How to upload article? Hehehe --Shem Sybil Galloway Miller (talk) 18:34, 4 October 2023 (UTC)

@Shem Sybil Galloway Miller: Hello! Can you share with me two or three third-party reliable sources with significant coverage of the subject of the article? House Blaster^talk 23:03, 4 October 2023 (UTC)

Yes --Ajit Srinivas (talk) 10:29, 5 October 2023 (UTC)

@Ajit Srinivas: Great! Can you please send me a link to them? House Blaster^talk 14:11, 5 October 2023 (UTC)

Question from Sagar patel 19 on User:Sagar patel 19 (19:42, 5 October 2023)

Hello, I want help for making my Wikipedia page --Sagar patel 19 (talk) 19:42, 5 October 2023 (UTC)

@Sagar patel 19: Hello! It seems you want to write about yourself. This is strongly discouraged; it is almost impossible to write about yourself from a neutral point of view. We even have a guideline about this. If you are considered notable by Wikipedia's definition, someone will eventually write an article about you. House Blaster^talk 20:36, 5 October 2023 (UTC)

Question from Actorsaurabhsuman27 on Draft:Sparsh Suman (04:07, 6 October 2023)

Hello, How can I approve this article.? --Actorsaurabhsuman27 (talk) 04:07, 6 October 2023 (UTC)

@Actorsaurabhsuman27: Hello! Unfortunately, it does not appear that Sparsh is currently notable by Wikipedia's standards, which unfortunately means that the article would likely be deleted if published. You can see an excellent overview of what it takes to be notable here, and a more detailed discussion at Wikipedia:Notability (people). House Blaster^talk 20:48, 6 October 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-41

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

Recent changes

One new wiki has been created: a Wikipedia in Fon (w:fon:) [54]

Changes later this week

The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 10 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 11 October. It will be on all wikis from 12 October (calendar).
Starting on Wednesday, a new set of Wikipedias will get "Add a link" (Swahili Wikipedia, Walloon Wikipedia, Waray Wikipedia, Wolof Wikipedia, Kalmyk Wikipedia, Xhosa Wikipedia, Mingrelian Wikipedia, Yiddish Wikipedia, Yoruba Wikipedia, Zhuang Wikipedia, Zeelandic Wikipedia, Min Nan Wikipedia, Zulu Wikipedia). This is part of the progressive deployment of this tool to more Wikipedias. The communities can configure how this feature works locally. [55]
At some wikis, newcomers are suggested images from Commons to add to articles without any images. Starting on Tuesday, newcomers at these wikis will be able to add images to unillustrated article sections. The specific wikis are listed under "Images recommendations" at the Growth team deployment table. You can learn more about this feature. [56]
In the mobile web skin (Minerva) the CSS ID #page-actions will be replaced with #p-views. This change is to make it consistent with other skins and to improve support for gadgets and extensions in the mobile skin. A few gadgets may need to be updated; there are details and search-links in the task.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 14:37, 9 October 2023 (UTC)

Question from Babs Animator on Michael Ibru (17:06, 9 October 2023)

Hello why the second gulf war was fought and was between which countries --Babs Animator (talk) 17:06, 9 October 2023 (UTC)

@Babs Animator: Hello! I am not entirely sure; you could ask the reference desk. House Blaster^talk 19:21, 9 October 2023 (UTC)

Question from Jasmine Lawrence18 (13:18, 10 October 2023)

am i able to write an article straight away? --Jasmine Lawrence18 (talk) 13:18, 10 October 2023 (UTC)

@Jasmine Lawrence18: Yes! You can get one started in "draftspace". You can see more information at Help:Your first article. House Blaster^talk 15:45, 10 October 2023 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2023 September 29#Category:Burial sites of the House of Mecklenburg

Edit conflicted with you there. Keep up the good work! — Qwerfjkl talk 17:11, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

@Qwerfjkl: Thanks; you too! I also edit conf'd with you as you relisted the discussion on Wattpad :) House Blaster^talk 17:12, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

Question from Powarhistory (22:27, 16 October 2023)

I want to join in admin team. What is the procedure. --Powarhistory (talk) 22:27, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

@Powarhistory: Working in Wikipedia "administration" (i.e. "behind-the-scenes" work) is very simple. There is a long list of potential things you can volunteer to do at this page. You don't need to ask permission to help out, be bold and do it!

Becoming an administrator (a formal role which allows you to delete pages, block people, etc.) is a very difficult process. Generally, the community looks for at least 18 months of active editing before giving someone access to the administrator tool set. House Blaster^talk 22:34, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

Thank you for reply to me. I am regular reader of wiki since its starting time. Many time some users are adding wrong or inappropriate imformation which need to remove.Till being admin how I can report to adimn to change or midify the wrong information. Powarhistory (talk) 22:50, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

@Powarhistory: all you have to do is click the "edit" button at the top of the page, and fix it! If you are changing content, make sure whatever you say is verifiable by providing a citation to a reliable source. House Blaster^talk 23:03, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

Growth team newsletter #28

Welcome to the twenty-eighth newsletter from the Growth team! Help with translations

Community configuration 2.0

Community Configuration 2.0 is a feature that will enable Wikimedia communities to easily customize and configure features to meet their unique needs. This approach provides non-technical moderators with more independence and control over enabling/disabling and customizing features for their communities.
Technical approach and associated tasks are detailed in this Epic task on Phabricator.
Initial designs are drafted for two different approaches (see images). We will soon demo interactive prototypes to interested admins, stewards, and experienced editors (T346109). Please let us know if you have feedback on the design approach, or want to participate in prototype testing.

IP Masking

The Growth team has been working on several updates to ensure Growth maintained features will be compatible with future IP Masking changes. This work has included code changes to: Recent Changes (T343322), Echo notifications (T333531), the Thanks extension (T345679) and Mentorship (T341390).
Before December, the Growth team will initiate community discussions with the goal of migrating communities from Flow to DiscussionTools. This move aims to minimize the necessity for additional engineering work to make Flow compatible with IP Masking. (T346108)

Mentorship

We assembled some resources for mentors at Mediawiki wiki. This resource page is translatable and will be linked from the mentor dashboard.
We are working to resolve a bug related to mentors properly returning after being marked as "Away". (T347024)
Half of newcomers at English Wikipedia get a mentor assigned to them. To ensure every newcomer receives mentorship, we need additional volunteer mentors at English Wikipedia to achieve a 100% coverage rate. We also encourage experienced users from other wikis to help newcomers at their own community.

Scaling Growth features

We continue the deployment of the structured task "add a link" to all Wikipedias. We plan to scale the task to all Wikipedias that have link suggestions available by the end of 2023.
We plan to scale the new Impact Module to all Wikipedias soon, but first we are investigating a bug with the job that refreshes the Impact Module data. (T344428)
At some wikis, newcomers have access to the "add an image" structured task. This task suggests images that may be relevant to add to unillustrated articles. Newcomers at these wikis can now add images to unillustrated articles sections. (T345940) The wikis that have this task are listed under "Images recommendations" at the Growth team deployment table.

Other news

We disabled the “add an image” task temporarily (T345188) because there was a failure in the image suggestions pipeline (T345141). This is now fixed.
You can read a report about the Growth team’s representation at Wikimania in Singapore here. Growth team members presented two sessions at Wikimania Singapore.
After a 2.5 years-long collaboration with Bangala Wikipedia, we have decided to start a collaboration with another wiki. Swahili Wikipedia is now a pilot wiki for Growth experiments.

Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

Trizek_(WMF) Talk 23:16, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-42

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

The Unified login system's edge login should now be fixed for some browsers (Chrome, Edge, Opera). This means that if you visit a new sister project wiki, you should be logged in automatically without the need to click "Log in" or reload the page. Feedback on whether it's working for you is welcome. [57]
Edit notices are now available within the MobileFrontend/Minerva skin. This feature was inspired by the gadget on English Wikipedia. See more details in T316178.

Changes later this week

The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 17 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 18 October. It will be on all wikis from 19 October (calendar).

Future changes

In 3 weeks, in the Vector 2022 skin, code related to addPortletLink and #p-namespaces that was deprecated one year ago will be removed. If you notice tools that should appear next to the "Discussion" tab are then missing, please tell the gadget's maintainers to see instructions in the Phabricator task.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 23:45, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

Question from Minimonilife on User talk:Minimonilife (08:26, 3 October 2023)

Did anyone know about new girl group Mini Angel? --Minimonilife (talk) 08:26, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

@Minimonilife: I am not sure what you mean. Do you have a question about editing Wikipedia? House Blaster^talk 20:49, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

Yeah Minimonilife (talk) 02:58, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

@Minimonilife: My apologies; can you please try to rephrase it? House Blaster^talk 03:03, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

Category:Fictional humans

Hello, HouseBlaster,

I can't just move another category to this title, doing that won't move all of the category contents so we'd be left with a number of articles with red-link categories which, according to WP:REDNOT, need to be avoided. Please move the articles first to the redirect category and then the empty category can be moved. This is why closing CFDs are so complicated. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 02:20, 18 October 2023 (UTC)

Hi Liz! I realize that – I have listed that nomination at WT:CFDW. I just nominated the (empty) category redirect for CSD because I was unsure if having a category redirect there would break the bot in some way. IOW, I believe Category:Fictional humans should be deleted per {{db-move}}, but the move should be done by the bot at some point in the future. House Blaster^talk 02:27, 18 October 2023 (UTC)

Question from GSXO (01:18, 19 October 2023)

Hello! I have a fantasy wrestling league that I've been working on for 2017 and I feel like it would be cool to share it and explain it to the world, while there is no official "proof" that it exists since it is completely fantasy and only written on paper, with no actual live events being promoted or taking place. Will this be possible to even publish? --GSXO (talk) 01:18, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

@GSXO: Hello! Unfortunately, it does not seem like you would be able to publish something like that. Wikipedia's "golden rule" is that articles need to have significant coverage in independent, reliable sources. We have plenty of articles on things that do not exist (e.g. Harry Potter, Frodo Baggins), but they have to be covered by in detail by independent sources before they can have a Wikipedia article. House Blaster^talk 03:38, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

Question from Strutguard (05:02, 20 October 2023)

I can I use this account, this is my second account.. One is blocked. --Strutguard (talk) 05:02, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

Question from GSXO (22:32, 21 October 2023)

Hello again, I was editing a picture into my sandbox2 that I took myself, and it says "We could not determine whether this file is suitable for Wikimedia Commons. Please only upload photos that you took yourself with your camera, or see what else is acceptable. See the guide to make sure the file is acceptable and learn how to upload it on Wikimedia Commons." It is a 100% original image taken by me of just names written, if there is a way I could send you the picture, I would but I don't see anything really wrong with it. Can you explain to me why it can't be used.? <img src="https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/555908114331992074/1165415021375926322/IMG_20231021_1819594452.jpg?ex=6546c451&is=65344f51&hm=9bfb3c3836808039f984be16ffffe18e51e40ab64a514e411cbde85311ae4dbf&=&width=662&height=419" alt="Image"/> --GSXO (talk) 22:32, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

@GSXO: It appears the problem is that the file comes from Discord. What article do you want to use that image to illustrate? House Blaster^talk 22:46, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

I would like to use it on my User:GSXO/sandbox2 GSXO (talk) 22:50, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

Wait.. I was able to successfully upload it to wikimedia. Apologies for the inconvenience GSXO (talk) 22:51, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

Category:9th-century German women

Hello, HouseBlaster,

Your follow-up to closing CFDs is getting better but I see you moved this category but didn't move the contents of the category. They don't automatically move when you move the category page and, as a redirect category, it should be empty. I was alerted to this situation as the new category, Category:9th-century women from East Francia, showed as an empty category that should be tagged for CSD C1 speedy deletion.

Thank you for all of your help. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 21:48, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

@Liz: hi again! In this instance, a redirect was already going to be left so I figured the bot would do the moves for me. Should I do the moves manually? House Blaster^talk 21:53, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

Yes, if you don't request that the bot handle things, then the closer needs to take care of things. Really, ask Marco about doing this, he handles these closures all of the time and he executes these closures flawlessly. Right now, I've tagged Category:9th-century women from East Francia for CSD C1 because it still is empty. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 01:09, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

@Liz: I should have been more specific – I do/did not think that JJMC89 bot III would handle it. I thought that User:RussBot would handle it when it does its category redirect fixing. House Blaster^talk 01:13, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

Speedy deletion nomination of Talk:Carmel Valley Airport/archive01/

A tag has been placed on Talk:Carmel Valley Airport/archive01/ requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under section R3 of the criteria for speedy deletion, because it is a recently created redirect from an implausible typo or misnomer, or other unlikely search term.

If you think this page should not be deleted for this reason, you may contest the nomination by visiting the page and clicking the button labelled "Contest this speedy deletion". This will give you the opportunity to explain why you believe the page should not be deleted. However, be aware that once a page is tagged for speedy deletion, it may be deleted without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag from the page yourself, but do not hesitate to add information in line with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. jp×g 23:13, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

Sorry, there's not really a good reason to notify you about this, Twinkle did it by accident. jp×g 05:49, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

Feedback request: Wikipedia policies and guidelines request for comment

Your feedback is requested at Wikipedia:Village pump (policy) on a "Wikipedia policies and guidelines" request for comment. Thank you for helping out!
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The Signpost: 23 October 2023

News and notes: Where have all the administrators gone?

In the media: Thirst traps, the fastest loading sites on the web, and the original collaborative writing

Gallery: Before and After: Why you don't need to know how to restore images to make massive improvements

Featured content: Yo, ho! Blow the man down!

Traffic report: The calm and the storm

News from Diff: Sawtpedia: Giving a Voice to Wikipedia Using QR Codes

Humour: New citation template introduced for divine revelations, drug use, and really thinking about it

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Closing CFDs

If you're closing a category discussion can you please list the category at Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Working (you can put it on the talk page if you can't edit the main page). That way a bot can process it properly. Manually redirecting does not move the articles or the page history. Thanks in advance. Timrollpickering (talk) 11:52, 23 October 2023 (UTC)

@Timrollpickering: Hi! In this instance, I thought that User:RussBot (not the normal bot) would take care of it when it fixes links to category redirects. Is there a reason this is undesirable? House Blaster^talk 14:21, 23 October 2023 (UTC)

No, RussBot is set to ignore redirects of less than seven days old precisely to prevent tampering. Nor does it actually move the category & history. Timrollpickering (talk) 14:57, 23 October 2023 (UTC)

@Timrollpickering: I did not know that. Thank you for informing me; I will do so in the future. Best, House Blaster^talk 16:41, 23 October 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-43

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

There is a new Language and internationalization newsletter, written quarterly. It contains updates on new feature development, improvements in various language-related technical projects, and related support work.
Source map support has been enabled on all wikis. When you open the debugger in your browser's developer tools, you should be able to see the unminified JavaScript source code. [58]

Changes later this week

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

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

MediaWiki message delivery 23:14, 23 October 2023 (UTC)

Question from Azeb Clark on Wikipedia:Contact us (16:47, 24 October 2023)

I just signed up. However, I did not realize that my name will be public, so I need help in changing my user name. Thanks. --Azeb Clark (talk) 16:47, 24 October 2023 (UTC)

@Azeb Clark: You have two options. The first is to just request a rename at Special:GlobalRenameRequest. However, anyone will still be possible to see what your username was previously by looking at the rename log. Now, many people do not look at the rename log, but it will still be publicly accessible.

The second way is to log out first (you can click here to log out) and then create a brand new account (if you do not log out, people will be able to see that "Azeb Clark" created a new account). If you choose this option, only certain users will be able to see that your old account. These users are called "CheckUsers", and they are only allowed to "check" if they are investigating disruption to the project. And nobody – not even CheckUsers – will be able to see this after 90 days. If you choose this option, you probably will be assigned a new mentor. Do not try to contact me, because that will make it very easy for someone to figure out who you are. Best, House Blaster^talk 17:58, 24 October 2023 (UTC)

Thank you. I appreciate your help and the information. Hate not to have you as a mentor! Azeb Clark (talk) 01:20, 25 October 2023 (UTC)

Of course! Who knows... maybe your new account will randomly get assigned to me! In any event, you can always email me through Wikipedia; that you did so would not be publicly viewable. Best, House Blaster^talk 01:31, 25 October 2023 (UTC)

Feedback request: Politics, government, and law request for comment

Your feedback is requested at Talk:Yom Kippur War on a "Politics, government, and law" request for comment. Thank you for helping out!
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Question from CB70072 (20:47, 29 October 2023)

How do I add my photo to a list of persons? --CB70072 (talk) 20:47, 29 October 2023 (UTC)

@CB70072: Hello! Normally, editors are not allowed to edit articles about themselves due to our rules about conflicts of interest. What list do you want to add your photo to? House Blaster^talk 22:14, 29 October 2023 (UTC)

Thank you. I was able to figure it out. CB70072 (talk) 22:46, 29 October 2023 (UTC)

@CB70072: Hi! Did you personally take the picture? That is, were you the photographer? House Blaster^talk 23:19, 29 October 2023 (UTC)

Yes. Me and my wife CB70072 (talk) 23:30, 29 October 2023 (UTC)

Wife and I took the pictures which I uploaded to wiki commons CB70072 (talk) 23:33, 29 October 2023 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Technical Barnstar
	With love, for Special:Diff/1182535538. I'm always positively surprised when people are more pedantic about HTML semantics than me. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 01:55, 30 October 2023 (UTC)

By the way, wouldn't a "strong" tag fit the situation even better? ~ ToBeFree (talk) 01:57, 30 October 2023 (UTC)

Not super well versed in ArbCom proceedings, but now that you mention it, <strong>...</strong> seems more appropriate. And thank you for the barnstar! House Blaster^talk 01:59, 30 October 2023 (UTC)

Red links left after CFD

Hello!

Thanks for your involvement in closing CFD discussion. However I noticed that some back links are left.

E.g. after this discussion you closed, which led to the merger and subsequent deletion of Category:Armenian Oriental Orthodox Christians, this has produced a red link, and more generally a nonsensical notice, on linked Category:Armenian Apostolic Christians.

Is there not a process where the users or admins implementing the close check the incoming links? In my understanding it's never done automatically. Incoming category links are usually this kind of horizontal bridges placed to precise scope and avoid confusion, and a bot would not be able to adapt them. I'm not sure who does what in such case, so sorry if you're the wrong person. Place Clichy (talk) 10:42, 26 October 2023 (UTC)

@Place Clichy: Hi! The procedure I follow when closing CfDs – the NAC section of CFDAI – is silent on the matter, but it appears that the non-non-admin-closure directions include instructions to deal with backlinks. I think it makes the most sense to add a pointer in the NAC section saying that these things should be done by the closer before/in addition to listing at WT:CFDW. House Blaster^talk 23:29, 28 October 2023 (UTC)

In theory an admin is supposed to address any backlinks when they remove the entry from WP:CFDW. That process has been backlogged lately (like everything else CfD related) because of the high volume of CfDs and relatively few active admins there, so I didn't get around to backlink checking this entry until now (and thus saw this discussion). * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 03:05, 30 October 2023 (UTC)

Question from Topg1985 (12:54, 30 October 2023)

Hello! I hope you are well.

Would it be possible for you to have a look over my sandbox (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Topg1985/sandbox) and let me know what you think of the draft?

All good things --Topg1985 (talk) 12:54, 30 October 2023 (UTC)

@Topg1985: Hi! The draft is not overly promotional, and I have made some improvements/tagged some things that need fixing. However, I noticed that this was previously deleted at a deletion discussion. What has changed since September 2022? House Blaster^talk 16:27, 30 October 2023 (UTC)

Hi HouseBlaster and thank you for the suggested improvements! I have read over the deletion discussion that you mention and in this article it appears all prior concerns have been addressed and corrected accordingly. The artist’s career has progressed significantly since 2022 and the content is new :-)

All Good Things Topg1985 (talk) 16:48, 30 October 2023 (UTC)

One other question: did you personally take this picture that you uploaded? House Blaster^talk 16:29, 30 October 2023 (UTC)

This particular photo I had taken myself.

All good things, and thanks again for the feedback. Topg1985 (talk) 16:49, 30 October 2023 (UTC)

Question from QA2012 (17:49, 30 October 2023)

Hello, how do I create an article on Wikipedia? --QA2012 (talk) 17:49, 30 October 2023 (UTC)

@QA2012: hello, and welcome! To create an article, you can follow the directions at this page. Let me know if you have any questions! House Blaster^talk 17:51, 30 October 2023 (UTC)

Question from QA2012 (22:18, 30 October 2023)

How do I vote or apply for candidate for RFA? --QA2012 (talk) 22:18, 30 October 2023 (UTC)

@QA2012: to vote, you can read Wikipedia:Advice for RfA voters. However, I would strongly recommend you not run for adminship; successful candidates generally have thousands of edits and years of experience. House Blaster^talk 22:35, 30 October 2023 (UTC)

thank you for the advice QA2012 (talk) 23:00, 30 October 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-44

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

The Structured Content team, as part of its project of improving UploadWizard on Commons, made some UX improvements to the upload step of choosing own vs not own work (T347590), as well as to the licensing step for own work (T347756).
The Design Systems team has released version 1.0.0 of Codex, the new design system for Wikimedia. See the full announcement about the release of Codex 1.0.0.

Changes later this week

The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 31 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 1 November. It will be on all wikis from 2 November (calendar).
Listings on category pages are sorted on each wiki for that language using a library. For a brief period on 2 November, changes to categories will not be sorted correctly for many languages. This is because the developers are upgrading to a new version of the library. They will then use a script to fix the existing categories. This will take a few hours or a few days depending on how big the wiki is. You can read more. [59][60]
Starting November 1, the impact module (Special:Impact) will be upgraded by the Growth team. The new impact module shows newcomers more data regarding their impact on the wiki. It was tested by a few wikis during the last few months. [61]

Future changes

There is a proposed plan for re-enabling the Graph Extension. You can help by reviewing this proposal and sharing what you think about it.
The WMF is working on making it possible for administrators to edit MediaWiki configuration directly. This is similar to previous work on Special:EditGrowthConfig. A technical RfC is running until November 08, where you can provide feedback.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 23:19, 30 October 2023 (UTC)

November Articles for creation backlog drive

Hello HouseBlaster:

WikiProject Articles for creation is holding a month long Backlog Drive!
The goal of this drive is to reduce the backlog of unreviewed drafts to less than 2 months outstanding reviews from the current 4+ months. Bonus points will be given for reviewing drafts that have been waiting more than 30 days. The drive is running from 1 November 2023 through 30 November 2023.

You may find Category:AfC pending submissions by age or other categories and sorting helpful.

Barnstars will be given out as awards at the end of the drive.

There is a backlog of over 1200 pages, so start reviewing drafts. We're looking forward to your help! MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 13:24, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

Draft: William John Titus Bishop

Hi HouseBlaster,

Thanks for your advice so far!

With regards to this draft, would you advise submitting it for review as part of the Articles for Creation process, or moving it into the mainspace myself? I hesitate to move the draft only because I am still a fairly new editor.

All good things Topg1985 (talk) 15:23, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

@Topg1985: I would strongly recommend you submit it for review. Editors with a conflict of interest are strongly encouraged to use the process. House Blaster^talk 16:33, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

CfD

Hi, thanks for closing the CfD for Category:American Meteorological Society journal image covers. However, you forgot to finish this, the cat is still tagged with the CfD Notice and the close is not implemented. Could you have a look at this? Thanks! --Randykitty (talk) 17:52, 1 November 2023 (UTC)

@Randykitty: Hi! It is listed at WT:CFDW (it is the very last item); it will be processed once an admin adds it to WP:CFDW. Once the bot does the move, it detags the article. House Blaster^talk 17:58, 1 November 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for enlightening me. I don't come too often at CfD, so am less familiar with its procedures as, say, AfD. Cheers! --Randykitty (talk) 18:15, 1 November 2023 (UTC)

Question from Big kesh on History of the United States (20:19, 3 November 2023)

Hello --Big kesh (talk) 20:19, 3 November 2023 (UTC)

@Big kesh: Hello, and welcome to Wikipedia! Please let me know if you have any questions. House Blaster^talk 20:40, 3 November 2023 (UTC)

Please add Charles Ballay, MD to the Libertarian Candidates for President 2024

Can you please add Charles Ballay, MD for President in the Libertarian Candidates for President 2024. I am new to wikipedia editing and the information that I added was deleted. I will admit, I am not widely known on wikipedia or the internet. My website is www.Ballay2024.com. I can be referenced through the declared candidates on the FEC website. I can be searched on internet for as Dr Charles Ballay, an Otolaryngology doctor, practicing in Marrero, Louisiana.

Thank You! CB70072 (talk) 17:47, 4 November 2023 (UTC)

@CB70072: Hi! I have tagged your edit request on the talk page so that someone familiar with the criteria for inclusion on the list can take a look. Best, House Blaster^talk 01:30, 5 November 2023 (UTC)

Thank you very much CB70072 (talk) 01:33, 5 November 2023 (UTC)

The Signpost: 6 November 2023

Arbitration report: Admin bewilderingly unmasks self as sockpuppet of other admin who was extremely banned in 2015

In the media: UK shadow chancellor accused of ripping off WP articles for book, Wikipedians accused of being dicks by a rich man

News and notes: Board candidacy process posted, editors protest WMF privacy measure, sweet meetups

Opinion: An open letter to Elon Musk

WikiCup report: The WikiCup 2023

News from Wiki Ed: Equity lists on Wikipedia

Recent research: How English Wikipedia drove out fringe editors over two decades

Featured content: Like putting a golf course in a historic site.

Wikidata: Evaluating qualitative systemic bias in large article sets on Wikipedia

Traffic report: Cricket jumpscare

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 03:43, 6 November 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-45

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

In the Vector 2022 skin, the default font-size of a number of navigational elements (tagline, tools menu, navigational links, and more) has been increased slightly to match the font size used in page content. [62]

Problems

Last week, there was a problem displaying some recent edits on a few wikis, for 1-6 hours. The edits were saved but not immediately shown. This was due to a database problem. [63]

Changes later this week

The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 7 November. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 8 November. It will be on all wikis from 9 November (calendar).
The Growth team will reassign newcomers from former mentors to the currently active mentors. They have also changed the notification language to be more user-friendly. [64][65]

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

MediaWiki message delivery 21:03, 6 November 2023 (UTC)

List of Filipino representatives at international male beauty pageants

...is back. If you're minded to take it to AFD again, I'd !vote to delete based on your previous rationale. Wikishovel (talk) 14:36, 8 November 2023 (UTC)

Question from 14ti4ma4 (07:51, 13 November 2023)

Hello, how do I make my artist page unique and visible? --14ti4ma4 (talk) 07:51, 13 November 2023 (UTC)

@14ti4ma4: Hello, and welcome! Unfortunately, the answer is you can't. Wikipedia is not to be used for promoting anything (be it a person, a company, or even a charitable cause). Wikipedia will only host an article about subjects which have received detailed coverage in reliable, independent sources (this is sometimes called Wikipedia's "golden rule").

Additionally, if you are writing about yourself, you need to follow the rather strict guidelines for editors with a "conflict of interest". House Blaster^talk 15:29, 13 November 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-46

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

Four new wikis have been created:
- a Wikipedia in Moroccan Amazigh (w:zgh:) [66]
- a Wikipedia in Dagaare (w:dga:) [67]
- a Wikipedia in Toba Batak (w:bbc:) [68]
- a Wikiquote in Banjar (q:bjn:) [69]

Problems

Last week, users who previously visited Meta-Wiki or Wikimedia Commons and then became logged out on those wikis could not log in again. The problem is now resolved. [70]
Last week, some pop-up dialogs and menus were shown with the wrong font size. The problem is now resolved. [71]

Changes later this week

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

Future changes

Reference Previews are coming to many wikis as a default feature. They are popups for references, similar to the PagePreviews feature. You can opt out of seeing them. If you are using the gadgets Reference Tooltips or Navigation Popups, you won’t see Reference Previews. Deployment is planned for November 22, 2023.
Canary (also known as heartbeat) events will be produced into Wikimedia event streams from December 11. Streams users are advised to filter out these events, by discarding all events where meta.domain == "canary". Updates to Pywikibot or wikimedia-streams will discard these events by default. [72]

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

MediaWiki message delivery 23:50, 13 November 2023 (UTC)

Question from User toolbox on User:HouseBlaster (23:17, 14 November 2023)

Test question? --User toolbox (talk) 23:17, 14 November 2023 (UTC)

Question from CELBANPrep Publishing (17:54, 15 November 2023)

Hello. I am new to Wikipedia. I saw you are my mentor. I want to thank you for being there, and wanted to introduce myself.

How many people do you mentor? How long have you been mentoring? --CELBANPrep Publishing (talk) 17:54, 15 November 2023 (UTC)

@CELBANPrep Publishing: Hello, and welcome! Great questions. I have been "officially" mentoring since April. I currently mentor a little over 500 users, but only 25ish have actually asked me a question. Let me know if you need any other help! House Blaster^talk 00:36, 16 November 2023 (UTC)

The Signpost: 20 November 2023

In the media: Propaganda and photos, lunatics and a lunar backup

News and notes: Update on Wikimedia's financial health

Traffic report: If it bleeds, it leads

Recent research: Canceling disputes as the real function of ArbCom

Wikimania: Wikimania 2024 scholarships

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 09:43, 20 November 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-47

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. [73][74]
Starting on Wednesday, a new set of Wikipedias will get "Add a link" (Quechua Wikipedia, Romansh Wikipedia, Romani Wikipedia, Rundi Wikipedia, Aromanian Wikipedia, Tarandíne Wikipedia, Rusyn Wikipedia, Kinyarwanda Wikipedia, Sanskrit Wikipedia, Sakha Wikipedia, Santali Wikipedia, Sardinian Wikipedia, Sicilian Wikipedia, Scots Wikipedia, Sindhi Wikipedia, Northern Sami Wikipedia, Sango Wikipedia, Serbo-Croatian Wikipedia, Sinhala Wikipedia, Slovak Wikipedia, Slovenian Wikipedia, Samoan Wikipedia, Somali Wikipedia, Albanian Wikipedia, Serbian Wikipedia, Sranan Tongo Wikipedia, Swati Wikipedia, Southern Sotho Wikipedia, Saterland Frisian Wikipedia, Sundanese Wikipedia, Silesian Wikipedia, Tamil Wikipedia, Tulu Wikipedia, Telugu Wikipedia, Tetum Wikipedia, Tajik Wikipedia, Thai Wikipedia, Turkmen Wikipedia, Tagalog Wikipedia, Tswana Wikipedia, Tongan Wikipedia, Tok Pisin Wikipedia, Turkish Wikipedia, Tsonga Wikipedia, Tatar Wikipedia, Twi Wikipedia, Tahitian Wikipedia, Tuvinian Wikipedia, Udmurt Wikipedia, Uyghur Wikipedia, Uzbek Wikipedia, Venda Wikipedia, Venetian Wikipedia, Veps Wikipedia, West Flemish Wikipedia, Volapük Wikipedia). This is part of the progressive deployment of this tool to more Wikipedias. The communities can configure how this feature works locally. [75][76][77]
The Vector 2022 skin will have some minor visual changes to drop-down menus, column widths, and more. These changes were added to four Wikipedias last week. If no issues are found, these changes will proceed to all wikis this week. These changes will make it possible to add new menus for readability and dark mode. Learn more. [78]

Future changes

There is an update on re-enabling the Graph Extension. To speed up the process, Vega 2 will not be supported and only some protocols will be available at launch. You can help by sharing what you think about the plan.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 00:53, 21 November 2023 (UTC)

Feedback request: Politics, government, and law request for comment

Your feedback is requested at Talk:List of hereditary peers removed under the House of Lords Act 1999 on a "Politics, government, and law" request for comment. Thank you for helping out!
You were randomly selected to receive this invitation from the list of Feedback Request Service subscribers. If you'd like not to receive these messages any more, you can opt out at any time by removing your name.

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Feedback request: Politics, government, and law request for comment

Your feedback is requested at Talk:Israel on a "Politics, government, and law" request for comment. Thank you for helping out!
You were randomly selected to receive this invitation from the list of Feedback Request Service subscribers. If you'd like not to receive these messages any more, you can opt out at any time by removing your name.

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Question from Geomarni (01:53, 25 November 2023)

Hello --Geomarni (talk) 01:53, 25 November 2023 (UTC)

@Geomarni: Hello, and welcome to Wikipedia! Let me know if you have any questions

House Blaster^talk 20:36, 25 November 2023 (UTC)

Question from Bad teacher 13 (08:36, 25 November 2023)

Hi, how do I create a new entry not an edit? --Bad teacher 13 (talk) 08:36, 25 November 2023 (UTC)

@Bad teacher 13: Hello, and welcome to Wikipedia! Writing an article is not an easy task. What do you want to write an article about? House Blaster^talk 20:36, 25 November 2023 (UTC)

Question from Drolma108 (17:12, 23 November 2023)

HI

I accidentally edited a page without being logged in and now my ip address is showing. I logged in and tried deleting myself but it is not removed - can you help? --Drolma108 (talk) 17:12, 23 November 2023 (UTC)

@Drolma108: Hello! To handle things like this, you should email the oversight team. They can "oversight" edits, which hides them from everyone – including administrators. I have done so in this case, and the details in question have already been removed. Do not request oversight by making a post on Wikipedia, as that draws attention to the information (see the Streisand effect). Best, House Blaster^talk 20:45, 25 November 2023 (UTC)

Question from Bad teacher 13 (01:38, 26 November 2023)

Hi, how do I create a new entry not an edit? --Bad teacher 13 (talk) 01:38, 26 November 2023 (UTC)

@Bad teacher 13: Hi! You can see my response earlier. Sorry if you didn't get a notification about my response! House Blaster^talk 01:42, 26 November 2023 (UTC)

Books & Bytes – Issue 59

The Wikipedia Library: Books & Bytes
Issue 59, September – October 2023

Spotlight: Introducing a repository of anti-disinformation projects
Tech tip: Library access methods

Read the full newsletter

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of The Wikipedia Library team --16:16, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-48

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 28 November. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 29 November. It will be on all wikis from 30 November (calendar). There is no new MediaWiki version next week. [79][80]
MediaWiki's JavaScript system will now allow async/await syntax in gadgets and user scripts. Gadget authors should remember that users' browsers may not support it, so it should be used appropriately. [81]
The deployment of "Add a link" announced last week was postponed. It will resume this week.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 23:06, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

ArbCom 2023 Elections voter message

Hello! Voting in the 2023 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23:59 (UTC) on Monday, 11 December 2023. All eligible users are allowed to vote. Users with alternate accounts may only vote once.

The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail.

If you wish to participate in the 2023 election, please review the candidates and submit your choices on the voting page. If you no longer wish to receive these messages, you may add {{NoACEMM}} to your user talk page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:52, 28 November 2023 (UTC)

Question from Ahmad Aminu Bukar (10:59, 29 November 2023)

Hello What is your name --Ahmad Aminu Bukar (talk) 10:59, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

@Ahmad Aminu Bukar: Hello! I am HouseBlaster. Let me know if you have any questions about editing Wikipedia! House Blaster^talk 12:40, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

Editor experience invitation

Hi HouseBlaster. :) I'm looking for people to interview here. Feel free to pass if you're not interested. Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 13:11, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

@Clovermoss: I've already been drafting a response ;). It is a wonderful idea, and thank you! House Blaster^talk 13:14, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

Altered speedy deletion rationale: Draft:Move/Dutch people of Assyrian descent

Hello HouseBlaster. I am just letting you know that I deleted Draft:Move/Dutch people of Assyrian descent, a page you tagged for speedy deletion, under a different criterion from the one you provided, which didn't fit the page in question. Thank you. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 18:57, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

Question from Rabeeh wiki (14:32, 1 December 2023)

hello i want to know some tech articles on wikipedia that have some mistake --Rabeeh wiki (talk) 14:32, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

@Rabeeh wiki: Hi! You might be interested in Wikipedia:WikiProject Technology ("WikiProjects" are groups of editors dedicated to improving specific types of articles). I will also leave a message on your talk page which will automatically be replaced by a bot with a list of potential articles to work on. Best, House Blaster^talk 14:49, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

Growth team newsletter #29

Welcome to the twenty-ninth newsletter from the Growth team! Help with translations

Community Conversations

The Growth team will host its first community conversation Monday, 4 December (19:00 - 20:30 UTC). The topic for this meeting will be Mentorship.

This first meeting language will be English, but we plan to host conversations in other languages, and about other topics. Please visit the conversation page on-wiki for the details on how to join. You can also watch the page, or suggest ideas for upcoming conversations there.

Impact Module

At the beginning of November 2023, the Growth team deployed the New Impact Module to all Wikipedias. We recently released a follow up improvement to how edit data was displayed based on editor feedback. [82]

Add a Link

We released “add a link” to 35 more Wikipedias. [83] [84]

We have a few Wikipedias remaining:

German and English Wikipedia will be contacted at the beginning of January 2024.
There are a few small wikis that will not receive the task until they have enough articles for the algorithm to work properly.

Community Configuration

We shared Community Configuration 2.0 plans with technical stakeholders. [85] 🖂
Initial Community Configuration design ideas have been shared and discussed with community members.
A basic Community Configuration 2.0 demo is released on ToolForge.
Developers can find some initial proof of concept code shared on gitlab.

Mentorship

When a mentor marked themselves as "Away", they were not getting their name assigned to new accounts when they returned. This has been fixed. [86]

We improved the message received by newcomers when their mentor quits, to reduce confusion. [87]

We worked on ensuring that all mentees are assigned to an active mentor. This required reassigning mentees with no mentors to a new mentor. We paused this as the clean-up script confused some editors. We will resume it when the identified blockers are resolved. [88]

It is now possible to create an Abuse Filter to prevent one user from signing up as a mentor. [89]

Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

18:04, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

The Signpost: 4 December 2023

News and notes: Beeblebrox ejected from Arbitration Committee following posts on Wikipediocracy

In the media: Turmoil on Hebrew Wikipedia, grave dancing, Olga's impact and inspiring Bhutanese nuns

Disinformation report: "Wikipedia and the assault on history"

In focus: Tens of thousands of freely available sources flagged

Comix: Bold comics for a new age

Essay: I am going to die

Featured content: Real gangsters move in silence

Traffic report: And it's hard to watch some cricket, in the cold November Rain

Humour: Mandy Rice-Davies Applies

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 10:08, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

Question from Andazimeta (22:48, 30 November 2023)

Hi! Do you have any suggestions on how many references are ideal to have when writing an article? --Andazimeta (talk) 22:48, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

@Andazimeta: that is a really good question! Two or three good quality sources are required to establish "notability" (this is sometimes called the "golden rule of Wikipedia"). However, any information within an article needs to be verifiable. So: at least two or three, but really as many as are needed to verify everything in the article. When in doubt, cite!

I would be more than happy to take a look at any specific article you have a question about. Best, House Blaster^talk 03:57, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

Hi! Thank you so much, I appreciate it. I'll let you know when I have an article ready, thanks for offering to take a look at it. Andazimeta (talk) 17:05, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

Question from Huntdailynews (22:50, 4 December 2023)

Sir, I want to change my username. Can you suggest to me how? I added a person's information here. I found the information about that person not available anywhere. So I try to add it here. Now how can I add the person's information here? --Huntdailynews (talk) 22:50, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

@Huntdailynews: Hello, and welcome to Wikipedia! Click here to change your username.

Wikipedia does not host original content. To be published on Wikipedia, it must have already been published in a reliable source. Sincerely, House Blaster^talk 23:06, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-49

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

Recent changes

The spacing between paragraphs on Vector 2022 has been changed from 7px to 14px to match the size of the text. This will make it easier to distinguish paragraphs from sentences. [90]
The "Sort this page by default as" feature in VisualEditor is working again. You no longer need to switch to source editing to edit {{DEFAULTSORT:...}} keywords. [91]

Changes later this week

There is no new MediaWiki version this week. [92][93]
On 6 December, people who have the enabled the preference for "Show discussion activity" will notice the talk page usability improvements appear on pages that include the __NEWSECTIONLINK__ magic word. If you notice any issues, please share them with the team on Phabricator.

Future changes

The Toolforge Grid Engine shutdown process will start on December 14. Maintainers of tools that still use this old system should plan to migrate to Kubernetes, or tell the team your plans on Phabricator in the task about your tool, before that date. [94]
Communities using Structured Discussions are being contacted regarding the upcoming deprecation of Structured Discussions. You can read more about this project, and share your comments, on the project's page.

Events

Registration & Scholarship applications are now open for the Wikimedia Hackathon 2024 that will take place from 3–5 May in Tallinn, Estonia. Scholarship applications are open until 5 January 2024.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 23:48, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

Question from MissMoochie1952 (12:09, 5 December 2023)

Hi there, I am a retired (old school) NP editor. Not sure I know how to get started and how to interact. Any "let's get started" advice would be appreciated. --MissMoochie1952 (talk) 12:09, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

@MissMoochie1952: hello, and welcome! I have sent you a "welcome" message which contains a bunch of helpful links. The best advice I can give you is to be bold in improving Wikipedia!

To get started, there are a bunch of "tasks" listed at the task center. I would also recommend checking out Category:All articles needing copy edit, which lists articles that, well, need a copy edit. You can click the "random page in this category" button, or you can filter by a specific genre of article.

If you have any other questions please do not hesitate to ask. I am more than happy to help! Best, House Blaster^talk 12:33, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

Deletion review for Category:Films about fratricide and sororicide

An editor has asked for a deletion review of Category:Films about fratricide and sororicide. Because you closed the deletion discussion for this page, speedily deleted it, or otherwise were interested in the page, you might want to participate in the deletion review. Naraht (talk) 13:55, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

Acknowledged; I have no views on the merits of the challenge. House Blaster^talk 14:19, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

DYK for Daniel McCaffery

On 8 December 2023, Did you know was updated with a fact from the article Daniel McCaffery, which you recently created, substantially expanded, or brought to good article status. The fact was ... that Daniel McCaffery campaigned on protecting abortion rights in the 2023 Pennsylvania Supreme Court election, even though judicial candidates typically avoid commenting on specific issues? The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Daniel McCaffery. You are welcome to check how many pageviews the nominated article or articles got while on the front page (here's how, Daniel McCaffery), and the hook may be added to the statistics page after its run on the Main Page has completed. Finally, if you know of an interesting fact from another recently created article, then please feel free to suggest it on the Did you know talk page.

Z1720 (talk) 00:02, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

Closure of thread Category:Politicians' topics

Hello. I noticed you closed the discussion Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2023 November 11#Category:Politicians' topics. It was a contentious discussion. I don't really agree with the outcome, as editors didn't refute nor reply my argument about set and topic categories. Given that consensus is not about a majority vote, I will request at least the rationale behind your closure. Regards, Thinker78 (talk) 17:39, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

@Thinker78: I'd be happy to elaborate. Editors do not need to rebut every point raised in opposition to a proposal for it to succeed. Your reference to WP:PARENTCAT was fully rebutted: WP:PARENTCAT is a guideline cautioning against putting an article in a category and one of its parents, which had nothing to do with the categories under discussion. You quoted from WP:EPONYMOUS and WP:CATMAIN, but did not explain why they were relevant. You cited WP:CATDEF, but that also was not a strong argument. Indeed, you rebutted it yourself later in the discussion when you quoted WP:CAT#TREE: For example, Category:France contains articles relating to the topic France. Outline of France is not "a France" (c.f. "awards honoring politicians" are not "a politician"), but is still in Category:France. In your last argument, you cited WP:CAT#TREE. Your quote missed the ending of that section: Sometimes, for convenience, the two types can be combined, to create a set-and-topic category. With all due respect, the reason people did not fully engage with your arguments is because they were not valid arguments. If you still disagree with my close, feel free to take it to WP:DRV.

On a separate but related note, I disagree that it was a contentious discussion, given you were the only one opposed to the merge. Best, House Blaster^talk 18:53, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

I requested the rationale of your closure, it was unnecessary your speculation that "the reason people did not fully engage with your arguments is because they were not valid arguments". If you are saying that my arguments are not valid, that actually requires a discussion of its own. Because it makes me wonder whether you or other editors spent a while as I did analyzing the context or was it just passing 5-minute comments.

If it is the latter I would think your judgment may be due to lack of more in-depth analysis than my arguments not being valid. In that situation, your argument could be not valid and actually could be lacking. Not saying that's the case, but it is a possibility. I think it would have been more appropriate and neutral if you said something like, "After analyzing the thread, I found other editors having more weight in their arguments. The reason being...".

There was a whole context that I linked that I thought I didn't need to duplicate in the discussion. I did say, "It was precisely to try to solve a problem that I created the category. Check the thread at Category talk:Political families of the United States#Political families are not politicians." I don't know if you were able to check that because that was the motivation I created the category at hand.

It is unclear why you think my explanation of CATDFEF is rebutted by myself later in the discussion with CAT#TREE. You are quoting the info about a "topic category", which I included for context but I did not say Category:Politicians is a topic category. On the contrary, I said it is a "set category". Therefore, Category:Politicians, should not contain tangentially related topics as Category:France does. So I am left wondering if your argument is valid.

"Sometimes, for convenience, the two types can be combined, to create a set-and-topic category." Yes, but I don't think it is the case in Category:Politicians, which is why I created Category:Politicians' topics. And at the end I wasn't opposed to the category being deleted (Category:Politics could serve the purpose) but I do oppose the merge. Thinker78 (talk) 21:04, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

I fully realize that this is a good-faith disagreement; I am not trying to be difficult.

You just identified the problem, twice: On the contrary, I said it is a "set category" and I don't think it is the case in Category:Politicians (emphasis mine). Consensus, in this instance, is that Category:Politicians ought to be a set-and-topic category. House Blaster^talk 23:39, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

As one of the people who tried to engage with Thinker78, I think that HouseBlaster drew the correct inference.

> With all due respect, the reason people did not fully engage with your arguments is because they were not valid arguments.

I *really* tried to engage, but felt like I was hitting a brick wall. As good-faith as Thinker was intended to be, they didn't really engage with the criticisms/concerns being raised by others. Mason (talk) 03:04, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

The problem of your approach Mason is that you were trying to use a discussion thread in CfD to in effect (not saying you intended to do so) publicly belittle me by stating how I was misinterpreting things, that I wasn't getting it, that you have superior knowledge (no you did not literally said this but it was in essence how you were stating things) and that you were going to teach me how things work. That to me was highly inappropriate the way you stated it. As I indicated before, you have your interpretation, I have mine interpretations, others have theirs and discussion threads are to seek consensus not to preach how much superior is your knowledge and how much inferior is mine.

Others have approached me in my talk page with due respect and I have been opened to their teachings, even though they didn't said they were going to teach me. They advised, they shared insights. And I welcome them. That's how I even learned about PetScan, from Oculi. But if you come at me in a CfD berating me or belittling me, you are getting the cold shoulder. It really amazes me I have to point this out. Sincerely, Thinker78 (talk) 04:27, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

Well, its unfortunate that you're interpreting my questions as belittling or that you're inferring that I think I have superior knowledge. I am/was trying to understand your argument and get you to consider other people's. But, every time I tried, you didn't engage with the argument and instead seemed to take it as a personal affront. I appricaite you explaining your perspective, even if you seem "amazed" that it is neccessary. I had not considered the distinction between the CfD and a talk page, because I tend to view them as equally public. Mason (talk) 00:08, 11 December 2023 (UTC)

Regardless, in the future, I will try to be more mindful of my word choice as I am sorry that you drew an inference that I thought you to be incompetant, by using the word competent (or something to that effect). It was a poor word choice. I don't view you that way; I just don't understand your perspective on categories, as it seems to be extremely different. Typically, my approach is to ask questions to gauge what the other person's understanding/perspective is based on. But, well, I guess your interpretation will remain a mystery to me. Mason (talk) 00:21, 11 December 2023 (UTC)

Concern regarding Draft:Amgen Inc. v. Sanofi

Hello, HouseBlaster. This is a bot-delivered message letting you know that Draft:Amgen Inc. v. Sanofi, a page you created, has not been edited in at least 5 months. Drafts that have not been edited for six months may be deleted, so if you wish to retain the page, please edit it again or request that it be moved to your userspace.

If the page has already been deleted, you can request it be undeleted so you can continue working on it.

Thank you for your submission to Wikipedia. FireflyBot (talk) 02:05, 11 December 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-50

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

On Wikimedia Commons, there are some minor user-interface improvements for the "choosing own vs not own work" step in the UploadWizard. This is part of the Structured Content team's project of improving UploadWizard on Commons. [95][96]

Problems

There was a problem showing the Newcomer homepage feature with the "impact module" and their page-view graphs, for a few days in early December. This has now been fixed. [97][98]

Changes later this week

The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 12 December. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 13 December. It will be on all wikis from 14 December (calendar). [99][100]

Future changes

The 2023 Developer Satisfaction Survey is seeking the opinions of the Wikimedia developer community. Please take the survey if you have any role in developing software for the Wikimedia ecosystem. The survey is open until 5 January 2024, and has an associated privacy statement.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 02:10, 12 December 2023 (UTC)

Category:Sin Chaeho

Hello, you marked this cat for moving to "Shin Chae-ho" and it hasn't yet been moved. I'm not sure if you're the right person to contact, but just wanted to get the ball rolling on it. toobigtokale (talk) 12:05, 12 December 2023 (UTC)

@Toobigtokale: hi! Normally these eventually get processed by a bot (like everything at CfD, there is a chronic backlog...). Since it is such a small category, I have gone ahead and done this one manually. House Blaster^talk 13:41, 12 December 2023 (UTC)

Feedback request: Wikipedia policies and guidelines request for comment

Your feedback is requested at Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion on a "Wikipedia policies and guidelines" request for comment. Thank you for helping out!
You were randomly selected to receive this invitation from the list of Feedback Request Service subscribers. If you'd like not to receive these messages any more, you can opt out at any time by removing your name.

Message delivered to you with love by Yapperbot :) | Is this wrong? Contact my bot operator. | Sent at 16:30, 12 December 2023 (UTC)

Request regarding CFD

Hi HouseBlaster, thank you for closing the CFD I nominated, I was hoping to action on the result (dabify) and was wondering how exactly to go about doing that. I had a read of the disambiguation guidance but it doesn't say much about categories. Since it's a category would the disam. page just include links to the other "Children's Books set in New York..." categories? Thanks, Lewcm Talk to me! 21:14, 15 December 2023 (UTC)

Hi! The guidance for category disambiguation pages is (rather unhelpfully) placed at Template:Category disambiguation/doc. It is fairly straightforward: empty the category and fill out the template. Best, House Blaster^talk 21:21, 15 December 2023 (UTC)

Category:Fair use images of three-dimensional art

Hello, HouseBlaster,

You have this empty category listed for a speedy rename but I don't see it listed at that CFD section. Did you change your mind? If so, could you untag it for a rename and instead tag it for CSD C1? Thank you. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 20:43, 17 December 2023 (UTC)

@Liz: Hi! It seems to have been sorted out now? The category has been moved to Category:Non-free images of three-dimensional art. Best, House Blaster^talk 22:07, 17 December 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-51

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

The next issue of Tech News will be sent out on 8 January 2024 because of the holidays.

Changes later this week

The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 19 December. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 20 December. It will be on all wikis from 21 December (calendar). There is no new MediaWiki version next week. [101][102]
Starting December 18, it won't be possible to activate Structured Discussions on a user's own talk page using the Beta feature. The Beta feature option remains available for users who want to deactivate Structured Discussions. This is part of Structured Discussions' deprecation work. [103]
There will be full support for redirects in the Module namespace. The "Move Page" feature will leave an appropriate redirect behind, and such redirects will be appropriately recognized by the software (e.g. hidden from Special:UnconnectedPages). There will also be support for manual redirects. [104]

Future changes

The MediaWiki JavaScript documentation is moving to a new format. During the move, you can read the old docs using version 1.41. Feedback about the new site is welcome on the project talk page.
The Wishathon is a new initiative that encourages collaboration across the Wikimedia community to develop solutions for wishes collected through the Community Wishlist Survey. The first community Wishathon will take place from 15–17 March. If you are interested in a project proposal as a user, developer, designer, or product lead, you can register for the event and read more.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 16:16, 18 December 2023 (UTC)

New pages patrol January 2024 Backlog drive

New Page Patrol \| January 2024 Articles Backlog Drive
On 1 January 2024, a one-month backlog drive for New Page Patrol will begin. Barnstars will be awarded based on the number of articles patrolled. Barnstars will also be granted for re-reviewing articles previously reviewed by other patrollers during the drive. Each review will earn 1 point. Interested in taking part? Sign up here.
You're receiving this message because you are a new page patroller. To opt-out of future mailings, please remove yourself here.

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 02:10, 20 December 2023 (UTC)

Thoma Bravo

Hi HouseBlaster! I found your name on the participants list at WikiProject Edit requests and was hoping you could get involved at an edit request of mine where the ensuing discussion has stalled for lack of participation, here: Talk:Thoma Bravo#Next few requests.

For context, one part of the request was declined without a given reason. Additionally, in this edit, several well-sourced pieces of information were removed from the article, for reasons that I believe are off-base (I explain in greater detail in the talk page discussion). I pinged the editor who initially answered the request, but he did not respond. Thanks a lot! JBarTB (talk) 14:49, 20 December 2023 (UTC)

@JBarTB: Hi! The source you provided for the second edit is "dead", so I am unable to assess whether it ought to be included.

As for the information that was removed, I am going to leave Spintendo a note. He does respond to a lot of edit requests, so I would assume he missed the ping. Looking at the removals, I agree with some of them and disagree with others. For example, the sentence

In October 2019, Thoma Bravo’s co-founder and managing partner, Orlando Bravo, was named the first Puerto Rican-born billionaire as he debuted at 287th place on the Forbes 400 ranking of the wealthiest Americans.

is a textbook case of a WP:COATRACK. On the other hand,

According to public data analyzed by Forbes, its funds returned 30% net annually. Since 2015, Thoma Bravo has sold or listed 25 investments worth $20 billion, four times their cost.

seems fine. Best, House Blaster^talk 21:57, 21 December 2023 (UTC)

Category:Fair use Ladies' Home Journal magazine covers

Hello, HouseBlaster,

You tagged this category for a speedy rename but it is empty and it hasn't been renamed. Do you want to remove this CFD tag and retag it CSD C1? Just wondering what to do in the middle of another process that no longer seems necessary. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 01:24, 23 December 2023 (UTC)

@Liz: I've gone ahead and retagged it as C1. Would you be able to remove it from WP:CFDW? Thanks, House Blaster^talk 02:29, 23 December 2023 (UTC)

The Signpost: 24 December 2023

Special report: Did the Chinese Communist Party send astroturfers to sabotage a hacktivist's Wikipedia article?

News and notes: The Italian Public Domain wars continue, Wikimedia RU set to dissolve, and a recap of WLM 2023

In the media: Consider the humble fork

Discussion report: Arabic Wikipedia blackout; Wikimedians discuss SpongeBob, copyrights, and AI

In focus: Liquidation of Wikimedia RU

Technology report: Dark mode is coming

Recent research: "LLMs Know More, Hallucinate Less" with Wikidata

Gallery: A feast of holidays and carols

Comix: Lollus lmaois 200C tincture

Crossword: when the crossword is sus

Traffic report: What's the big deal? I'm an animal!

From the editor: A piccy iz worth OVAR 9000!!!11oneone! wordz ^_^

Apocrypha: Local editor discovered 1,380 lost subheadings in ancient Signpost scrolls. And what he found was shocking.

Humour: Guess the joke contest

BJAODN: Bad jokes and other deleted nonsense

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 09:57, 24 December 2023 (UTC)

Cheers!

Merry Christmas and a Prosperous 2024!

Hello HouseBlaster, may you be surrounded by peace, success and happiness on this seasonal occasion. Spread the WikiLove by wishing another user a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past, a good friend, or just some random person. Sending you heartfelt and warm greetings for Christmas and New Year 2024.
Happy editing,
— Qwerfjkl talk 08:32, 25 December 2023 (UTC)

Spread the love by adding {{subst:Seasonal Greetings}} to other user talk pages.

Likewise! Best to you and yours in the new year. And thank you! House Blaster^talk 01:21, 26 December 2023 (UTC)

"This should be resolved soon"

Yeah okay, that was optimistic. — Scott • talk 18:26, 28 December 2023 (UTC)

Just a tad ;) House Blaster^talk 18:28, 28 December 2023 (UTC)

Scripts++ Newsletter – Issue 23

New year, new scripts. Welcome to the 23rd issue of the Wikipedia Scripts++ Newsletter, covering around 39% of our favorite new and updated user scripts since 24 December 2021. That’s right, we haven’t published in two years! Can you believe it? Did you miss us?

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

Featured script

RefRenamer by Nardog is this issue's featured script. For whatever reason, the foundation will only give us better reference names in VisualEditor if we wish for it in the next survey. Nardog to the rescue! This script has a ton of options to satisfy almost anyone who wishes to use better refnames than ":0" and ":418".

Updated scripts

Nardog: MoveHistory can now look up the move history of any page from anywhere on the site.
User:Enterprisey/diff-permalink now has a version that copies the Special:Diff link with square brackets.
User:GhostInTheMachine/WatchlistTidy now moves the Active Filters panel to the right so that the Show/Hide button doesn't constantly jump.
User:Alexander Davronov/HistoryHelper has now become stable with some bugfixes and features such as automatically highlighting potentially uncivil edit summaries and automatically pinging all the users selected.
Wikipedia:AutoEd/unicodehex.js will no longer replace legacy MediaWiki dot-entities (dot followed by two uppercase alphanumeric characters) in article links, which caused several links to become broken.

Improve a script

Many of our favorite scripts such as User:Fred Gandt/userResourceManager, User:Guarapiranga/search-shortcuts and User:Bradv/Scripts/Superlinks haven't been updated for Vector 2022. You could be the one to change that!
User:Elominius/gadget/media timer works, but its UI looks alien. Someone could improve it...
To a lesser extent, the same goes for User:PrimeHunter/Search sort.js. I wish someone would integrate the sorts into the sort menu instead of adding 11 portlet links.
We want...

...a mark-as-read button for Watchlyst Greybar Unsin
...a tool to automatically fix CAT:BROKENREFs, preferably a fork/addition to User:TheJJJunk/ARA
...a fix/fork of User:DannyS712/SectionRemover.js to make it work

Requested scripts

A WP:3O requesting and responding tool, similar to Terasil's classic edit request tool
A "bytes removed"/"added" filter on the user contribs page
A review tool for WP:proposed deletions
Mass patrol new pages by a user for use in WP:RFP/A
...and many more, all available at Wikipedia:User scripts/Requests

New scripts

Aaron Liu: Watchlyst Greybar Unsin is a rewrite of Ais's Watchlist Notifier with modern APIs and several new features such as not displaying watchlist items marked as seen (hence the name), not bolding diffs of unseen watchlist elements which doesn’t work properly anyways, displaying the rendered edit summary, proper display of log and creation actions and more links.
Alexis Jazz: Factotum is a spiritual successor to reply-link with a host of extra features like section adding, link rewriting, regular expressions and more.
User:Aveaoz/AutoMobileRedirect: This script will automatically redirect MobileFrontend (en.m.wikipedia) to normal Wikipedia. Unlike existing scripts, this one will actually check if your browser is mobile or not through its secret agent string, so you can stay logged in on mobile! Hooray screen estate!
Chlod:
- Deputy is a first-of-its-kind copyright cleanup toolkit. It overrides the interface for Wikipedia:Contributor copyright investigations for easy case processing. It also includes the functionality of the following (also new) scripts:
  - Attribution Notice Template Editor (ANTE) graphically modifies content attribution notices. It is the successor to User:Chlod/Scripts/CopiedTemplateEditor and supports more templates than {{copied}} ones.
  - Infringement Assistant allows a user to hide sections of a page for suspected copyright violations and report the page to the appropriate Wikipedia:Copyright problems noticeboard.
User:Elominius/gadget/diff arrow keys allows navigation between diffs with the arrow keys. It also has a version that requires holding Ctrl with the arrow key.
Enterprisey
- diff-permalink-2 allows quickly copying wikilinks to diff and permalink pages from those pages, a variation of existing script User:Enterprisey/diff-permalink
- archiver is a fork of Σ's Archiver with several bugfixes.
- /parent-cats highlights categories that are a subcategory of a category already included in a page's categories.
User:Guarapiranga/accessKeysCheatSheet adds an access key shortcut to display all shortcuts based on code provided by Nardog and NguoiDungKhongDinhDanh.
User:HungKhanh0106/ProperDisplay loads a bunch of fonts to add correct rendering supports for "esoteric" languages.
User:Jeeputer/highlightPiped will make piped links irresistible (or else).
User:Jerome Frank Disciple/curlyfixer.js adds an WP:AutoEd function that straightens curly quotes per MOS. That's right! Such a module was only made in the 14th year of AutoEd's existence! Configure away!
Frequently link to Wikipedia on your websites yet find generating CC-BY credits to be such a hassle? Say no more! User:Luke10.27/attribute will automatically do it for ya and copy the credit to yer clipboard.
User:MPGuy2824/MoveToDraft, a spiritual successor (i.e. fork) to Evad37's script, with a few bugs solved, and a host of extra features like check-boxes for choosing draftification reasons, multi-contributor notification, and appropriate warnings based on last edit time.
Nardog
- /CopyCodeBlock: one of the most important operations for any scripter and script-user is to copy and paste. This script adds a copy button in the top right of every code block (not to be confused with <code>) that will, well, copy it to your clipboard!
- /RCMuter: Hide specific users, perhaps User:MediaWiki message delivery, from the Watchlist and Recent Changes.
- /VitalTopicon makes you see the vital article topicon on WP:vital articles.
m:User:NguoiDungKhongDinhDanh/AceForLuaDebugConsole.js adds the Ace editor (a.k.a. the editor you see when editing JS, CSS and Lua on Wikimedia wikis) to the Lua debug console. "In my opinion, whoever designed it to be a plain <textarea> needs to seriously reconsider their decision."
Novem Linguae
- DraftCleaner fixes formatting of new articles.
- GANReviewTool quickly and easily closes good article nominations.
- ReviewStatus displays whether or not a mainspace page is marked as reviewed.
- SpeciesHelper tries to add the correct speciesbox, category, taxonbar, and stub template to species articles.
User:Opencooper/svgReplace and Tol's fork replaces all rasterized SVGs with their original SVG codes for your loading pleasures. Tell us which one is better!
User:Phlsph7/HighlightUnreferencedPassages adds a button to highlight all unreferenced paragraphs in reds, and can even do it automatically.
Still hate Vector 2022's floating TOC? User:Phlsph7/UnfoldedNumberedTOC(Vector2022) might make you give it a try.
Quite a bit of pages at Special:WantedCategories either exist now or got removed. User:Qwerfjkl/scripts/hideUnwantedCategories automatically hides those.
User:SuperHamster's Wikipedia:Tools/View it! generates a gallery of images for a given subject on any Wikimedia project utilizing Structured Data on Commons. Images can then be added as needed.
Terasail
- ArticleInfo displays page information at the top of the page, directly below the title.
- /HeaderIcons takes away the Vector 2022 user dropdown and replaces it with all of the icons within, top level, right next to the Watchlist. One less click away! There's also an alternate version that uses text links instead of icons.
...and any more, all available at WP:US/L.

Due to budget and procrastination limitations, we've only had time to review the first ~39% of the scripts since last issue. Help us out here! Aaron Liu (talk) 13:24, 29 December 2023 (UTC)

Thoma Bravo follow-up

Hi HouseBlaster. Following up from this conversation we had a few weeks ago, I recently responded at Talk:Thoma Bravo#Next few requests, in case you missed my ping. I sent a similar message just now to Spintendo - it would be great to have both your voices involved in the discussion. Thanks, JBarTB (talk) 16:26, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-02

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

mediawiki2latex is a tool that converts wiki content into the formats of LaTeX, PDF, ODT, and EPUB. The code now runs many times faster due to recent improvements. There is also an optional Docker container you can install on your local machine.
The way that Random pages are selected has been updated. This will slowly reduce the problem of some pages having a lower chance of appearing. [105]

Changes later this week

The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 9 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 10 January. It will be on all wikis from 11 January (calendar). [106][107]

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

MediaWiki message delivery 01:18, 9 January 2024 (UTC)

Uploading a Movie Poster

Dear @HouseBlaster, Can you please guide me how to add a Movie Poster without Copyright. Milli's Boy (talk) 16:39, 9 January 2024 (UTC)

@Milli's Boy: which poster are you talking about? House Blaster^talk 19:36, 11 January 2024 (UTC)

I have a question, can you help me?

I created an article for the 2024 Curitiba mayoral elections but I had a draft of this article in my personal page before I published it (User:Sailoratlantis/2024 Curitiba mayoral election).

I want to know how do I delete the draft, since I already published the full article?

~~~ Sailoratlantis ^{talk page} 05:02, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

@Sailoratlantis: hi! Just add the text {{db-u1}} above everything else on the page. Best, House Blaster^talk 19:38, 11 January 2024 (UTC)

The Signpost: 10 January 2024

From the editor: NINETEEN MORE YEARS! NINETEEN MORE YEARS!

Special report: Public Domain Day 2024

Technology report: Wikipedia: A Multigenerational Pursuit

News and notes: In other news ... see ya in court!

In focus: The long road of a featured article candidate

In the media: What is plagiarism? Oklahoma Disneyland? Reaching a human being at Wikipedia?

WikiProject report: WikiProjects Israel and Palestine

Obituary: Anthony Bradbury

Traffic report: The most viewed articles of 2023

Crossword: everybody gangsta till the style sheets start cascading

Comix: Conflict resolution

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 12:49, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2023 November 28#Category:Avatar (2009 film)

Really late, but why did you close this as "no consensus but leaning towards keep" when there was unanimous opposition to the nomination? InfiniteNexus (talk) 06:07, 15 January 2024 (UTC)

No idea. Amended my close. House Blaster (talk · he/him) 17:06, 15 January 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-03

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

Pages that use the JSON contentmodel will now use tabs instead of spaces for auto-indentation. This will significantly reduce the page size. [108]
Gadgets and personal user scripts may now use JavaScript syntax introduced in ES6 (also known as "ES2015") and ES7 ("ES2016"). MediaWiki validates the source code to protect other site functionality from syntax errors, and to ensure scripts are valid in all supported browsers. Previously, Gadgets could use the requiresES6 option. This option is no longer needed and will be removed in the future. [109]
Bot passwords and owner-only OAuth consumers can now be restricted to allow editing only specific pages. [110]
You can now thank edits made by bots. [111]
An update on the status of the Community Wishlist Survey for 2024 has been published. Please read and give your feedback.

Changes later this week

The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 16 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 17 January. It will be on all wikis from 18 January (calendar). [112][113]
Starting on January 17, it will not be possible to login to Wikimedia wikis from some specific old versions of the Chrome browser (versions 51–66, released between 2016 and 2018). Additionally, users of iOS 12, or Safari on Mac OS 10.14, may need to login to each wiki separately. [114]
The jquery.cookie module was deprecated and replaced with the mediawiki.cookie module last year. A script has now been run to replace any remaining uses, and this week the temporary alias will be removed. [115]

Future changes

Wikimedia Deutschland is working to make reusing references easier. They are looking for people who are interested in participating in individual video calls for user research in January and February.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 00:11, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

Thoma Bravo reminder

Hi HouseBlaster, this is a gentle reminder to please see my response at Talk:Thoma Bravo#Next few requests. If you agree with the points I raised, would you consider implementing those changes? Thank you. JBarTB (talk) 14:51, 17 January 2024 (UTC)

@JBarTB: hi! Sorry about not responding earlier – I was unexpectedly out of town for a week. I will take a look in a moment. Best, House Blaster (talk · he/him) 00:55, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

Question from ChappellRoanFan (17:23, 17 January 2024)

Hi HouseBlaster! I joined Wikipedia today because I am a fan of a specific pop artist. I managed to fix a table to match the format, but I wasn't able to figure out how to make the table match in terms of formatting the year correctly. On the Chappell Roan page, in the Music Video section, I added the music video and the director, but I couldn't merge it into the '2023' year, and accidentally duplicated the 2023 year. Here is the link. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chappell_Roan#:~:text=She%20writes%20most%20of%20her,dark%20pop%20with%20ballad%20undertones%22.&text=Willard%2C%20Missouri%2C%20U.S.&text=When%20she%20was%2017%20years,sign%20her%20to%20the%20label. Please be patient with me, I have a learning disability and have trouble reading large blocks of text, and I am still learning! Thank you! --ChappellRoanFan (talk) 17:23, 17 January 2024 (UTC)

@ChappellRoanFan: hi! Thank you so much for your contributions to Wikipedia – truly. It is because of efforts just like yours that we have such an amazing resource. I have gone ahead and made the edit to fix the problem. The keyword "rowspan" determines how many "rows" a piece of text "spans", so I increased its value by one so it would "span" an additional row. Please let me know if you have any additional questions, because the only way a question is stupid is if you don't ask it! Best, House Blaster (talk · he/him) 01:04, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

Question from Stephen097 on User:Stephen097/sandbox (08:13, 18 January 2024)

How to create a soccer player profile? --Stephen097 (talk) 08:13, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

@Stephen097: hi! Which soccer player would you like to create an article about? House Blaster (talk · he/him) 21:22, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

How to/should I reopen?

Hey there @HouseBlaster. So I did something incorrectly but only realized AFTER I did so. There were quite a few open Cfds and I decided to close the ones where there was a clear opinion. However, I closed two where I myself had given an opinion. I only realized afterwards. My fault entirely, I completely missed my vote on those Cfds and I will take care in future.

I usually tend not to close Cfds (I know you and one other handle it) but there were a lot of them open for the past two days which should have been closed. So my question is should I reopen the ones I closed where I had given an opinion and if so how can I? Or should I leave them be? Omnis Scientia (talk) 20:18, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

@Omnis Scientia: I would reopen them, there is no rush for them to be closed. Thank you for helping out at CfD! House Blaster (talk · he/him) 20:20, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

Can you guide me as to how to open them? Omnis Scientia (talk) 20:27, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

Sure! You should be able to simply "undo" the edit from the page history. House Blaster (talk · he/him) 20:30, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

Thank you for the help! Much appreciated!

Omnis Scientia (talk) 20:31, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

Question from Creative Lizzie on Land-grant university (23:29, 20 January 2024)

Hi! I actually tried to write on the "Land Grant for colleges and Universities". I don't know if you got it or not....probably the wrong spot.....sorry. My concern is that Jonathan Baldwin Turner is really the founder and "Father of the Land Grant System". Too much credit is given to the legislator, and not enough to the conceptual inventor of the idea. Coincidentally, he is my 2nd great grandfather. All of us, and related to him, know that he was a professor of agriculture and protecting the farms with the orange hedge, which was popularly planted.My great great grandfather was a very vocal person and definitely got up and gave speeches and I would think probably contacted Lincoln or Morrill. Turner is well-known in Nebraska as the father of the Land Grant system. There are a couple of beautiful murals of Turner, Morrill, and Lincoln in a couple of college libraries I believe. I do have a photo of one or both of these murals I believe when you talked about the Morrill and the wonderful college system, my great great grandfather probably the founder of the idea being he was in a college. He is really the brains behind the creation and espoused it before a bill was even passed. This is what I think, have heard and really it makes sense. I believe that you should check Nebraska for the true history about this man, Jonathan Baldwin, Turner. He was a huge thinker, and was always getting up given speeches. He was a true abolitionist, and was at the end of the underground railroad. This was not a man who stepped back and let things happen, he was probably more than likely the originator of the concept. Please check this out. I believe that the articles/biographies connected to the Land grant system should ALL initially be connected to Turner first and then related to the support team which brought the whole idea to fruition. Thank you so much for your thoughts/ research on this issue! I believe my 2nd great grandfather was probably the initiator of the land grant idea. --Creative Lizzie (talk) 23:29, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

@Creative Lizzie: hi! First, welcome to Wikipedia! Land-grant university says that The concept of publicly funded agricultural and technical educational institutions first rose to national attention through the efforts of Jonathan Baldwin Turner in the late 1840s, but we would need reliable sources to confirm that Turner created the idea. We have a policy against original research, so we cannot go through primary sources ourselves to determine who came up with the idea. House Blaster (talk · he/him) 00:44, 21 January 2024 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2024_January_12#Category:School_buildings_in_Oregon

Your decision to close as no consensus is not accurate of the conversation. The reasoning of the "keep" votes was addressed and they were not invited back to address the counterpoints. I'd seriously consider re-opening this discussion and pinging the participants or I'm going to just nominate them again. –Aidan721 (talk) 02:23, 21 January 2024 (UTC)

@Aidan721: When I closed the discussion, I read the !votes made by @Namiba and Aboutmovies as opposition to dealing with just some of the categories in the school buildings tree. Upon re-reading the discussion, my initial assessment stands. I think a (re)nomination of the entire tree would address both of their concerns. (Discussions at XfD are rarely relisted three times.) House Blaster (talk · he/him) 02:41, 21 January 2024 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2024 January 12#Category:Level-unknown vital articles by quality

Thank you for closing this discussion. Would you mind also closing the one immediately above and also the one two down, because then I can update the template in one step to stop these being populated. Cheers! — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 21:01, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

@MSGJ:

DoneHouse Blaster (talk · he/him) 21:19, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

Thanks again — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 08:35, 21 January 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-04

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

Problems

A bug in UploadWizard prevented linking to the userpage of the uploader when uploading. It has now been fixed. [116]

Changes later this week

The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 23 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 24 January. It will be on all wikis from 25 January (calendar). [117][118]

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

MediaWiki message delivery 01:02, 23 January 2024 (UTC)

Books & Bytes – Issue 60

The Wikipedia Library: Books & Bytes
Issue 60, November – December 2023

Three new partners
Google Scholar integration
How to track partner suggestions

Read the full newsletter

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of The Wikipedia Library team --13:36, 24 January 2024 (UTC)

Question from Maka fast on Keg (15:37, 24 January 2024)

What is kegs --Maka fast (talk) 15:37, 24 January 2024 (UTC)

@Maka fast: hi! The page you were reading should contain that information, but if you have more questions you can try asking at the reference desk. Best, House Blaster (talk · he/him) 22:16, 24 January 2024 (UTC)

Notification: Feedback request service is down

Hello, HouseBlaster

You may have noticed that you have not received any messages from the Wikipedia:Feedback request service for over a month. Yapperbot appears to have stopped delivering messages. Until that can be resolved, please watch pages that interest you, such as Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Wikipedia policies and guidelines.

This notification has been sent to you as you are subscribed to the Feedback Request Service. - MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 08:11, 28 January 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-05

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

Starting Monday January 29, all talk pages messages' timestamps will become a link. This link is a permanent link to the comment. It allows users to find the comment they are looking for, even if this comment was moved elsewhere. This will affect all wikis except for the English Wikipedia. You can read more about this change on Diff or on Mediawiki.org. [119]
There are some improvements to the CAPTCHA to make it harder for spam bots and scripts to bypass it. If you have feedback on this change, please comment on the task. Staff are monitoring metrics related to the CAPTCHA, as well as secondary metrics such as account creations and edit counts.

Changes later this week

The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 30 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 31 January. It will be on all wikis from 1 February (calendar). [120][121]
On February 1, a link will be added to the "Tools" menu to download a QR code that links to the page you are viewing. There will also be a new Special:QrCode page to create QR codes for any Wikimedia URL. This addresses the #19 most-voted wish from the 2023 Community Wishlist Survey. [122]
Gadgets which only work in some skins have sometimes used the targets option to limit where you can use them. This will stop working this week. You should use the skins option instead. [123]

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

MediaWiki message delivery 19:29, 29 January 2024 (UTC)

Your GA nomination of 1934 German referendum

Hi there, I'm pleased to inform you that I've begun reviewing the article 1934 German referendum you nominated for GA-status according to the criteria. This process may take up to 7 days. Feel free to contact me with any questions or comments you might have during this period. Message delivered by ChristieBot, on behalf of Elli -- Elli (talk) 21:01, 29 January 2024 (UTC)

The Signpost: 31 January 2024

News and notes: Wikipedian Osama Khalid celebrated his 30th birthday in jail

Opinion: Until it happens to you

Disinformation report: How paid editors squeeze you dry

In the media: Katherine Maher new NPR CEO, go check Wikipedia, race in the race

In focus: The long road of a featured article candidate, part 2

Recent research: Croatian takeover was enabled by "lack of bureaucratic openness and rules constraining [admins]"

Comix: We've all got to start somewhere

Traffic report: DJ, gonna burn this goddamn house right down

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 15:13, 31 January 2024 (UTC)

Happy First Edit Day!

Hey, HouseBlaster. I'd like to wish you a wonderful First Edit Day on behalf of the Wikipedia Birthday Committee!
Have a great day! CAPTAIN RAJU^(T) 18:22, 31 January 2024 (UTC)

Question from Andrapple.mhtml (19:48, 3 February 2024)

How to make a walking desktop? --Andrapple.mhtml (talk) 19:48, 3 February 2024 (UTC)

@Andrapple.mhtml: hello, and welcome to Wikipedia. I am afraid I do not understand your question. Would you be able to rephrase it? Best, House Blaster (talk · he/him) 19:50, 3 February 2024 (UTC)