User talk:John123521/News/2019/08

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The Signpost: 31 July 2019

News and notes: Wikimedia grants less accessible for travel, equipment, meetups, and India

In the media: Politics starts getting rough

Discussion report: New proposals in aftermath of Fram ban

Arbitration report: A month of reintegration

Gallery: Classic panoramas from Heinrich Berann

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

Community view: Video based summaries of Wikipedia articles. How and why?

News from the WMF: Designing ethically with AI: How Wikimedia can harness machine learning in a responsible and human-centered way

Recent research: Most influential medical journals; detecting pages to protect

Special report: Administrator cadre continues to contract

Traffic report: World cups, presidential candidates, and stranger things

In focus: The French Wikipedia is overtaking the German

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:17, 31 July 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-32

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

Changes later this week

The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 6 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 7 August. It will be on all wikis from 8 August (calendar).

Problems

A change in RelatedArticles extension accidentally enabled it for everyone, not just for mobile users. This has been fixed. [1][2]

Meetings

You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 7 August at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

Today everyone can see IP addresses if someone edits without an account. In the future this could be more hidden. This is to protect unregistered editors so fewer can see their IP address. This would only happen after we make sure the tools for vandal fighting can still be effective. You can read more and comment.

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

13:24, 5 August 2019 (UTC)

Bots Newsletter, August 2019

Bots Newsletter, August 2019

Greetings!

Here is the 7th issue of the Bots Newsletter, a lot happened since last year's newsletter! You can subscribe/unsubscribe from future newsletters by adding/removing your name from this list.

Highlights for this newsletter include:

ARBCOM

Nothing of note happened. Just like we like it.

BAG

Several (1 + 12 = 13) users have been retired/resigned from the BAG due to inactivity, per our new activity requirements (discussion).

BAG members are expected to be active on Wikipedia to have their finger on the pulse of the community. After two years without any bot-related activity (such as posting on bot-related pages, posting on a bot's talk page, or operating a bot), BAG members will be retired from BAG following a one-week notice. Retired members can re-apply for BAG membership as normal if they wish to rejoin the BAG.

Two BAG members retired
- Madman (talk · contribs) retired.
- BU Rob13 (talk · contribs) vanished and retired.
Three new BAG members have been voted in, welcome to the BAG!
- Primefac (talk · contribs) joined on 2018-12-12 (RfBAG). Primefac operates PrimeBOT (talk · contribs) which does a plethora of tasks.
- TheSandDoctor (talk · contribs) joined on 2019-01-21 (RfBAG). TheSandDoctor operates several bots including DeprecatedFixerBot (talk · contribs).
- Enterprisey (talk · contribs) joined on 2019-08-07 (RfBAG). Enterprisey operates EnterpriseyBot (talk · contribs), which does a plethora of tasks, RemindMeBot (talk · contribs) which posts reminders, and codes several scripts.

We thank former members for their service and wish Madman a happy retirement. We note that Madman and BU Rob13 were not inactive and could resume their BAG positions if they so wished, should their retirements happens to be temporary.

BOTDICT

Two new entries feature in the bots dictionary

Editor-hostile wikitext – describes wikitext structuring that is editor hostile, even if it renders correctly
Spectrum of usefulness – describes how tasks are deemed useful or not

BOTPOL

Activity requirements: BAG members now have an activity requirement. The requirements are very light, one only needs to be involved in a bot-related area at some point within the last two years. For purpose of meeting these requirements, discussing a bot-related matter anywhere on Wikipedia counts, as does operating a bot (RFC).
Copyvio flag: Bot accounts may be additionally marked by a bureaucrat upon BAG request as being in the "copyviobot" user group on Wikipedia. This flag allows using the API to add metadata to edits for use in the New pages feed (discussion). There is currently 1 bot using this functionality.
Mass creation: The restriction on mass-creation (semi-automated or automated) was extended from articles, to all content-pages. There are subtleties, but content here broadly means whatever a reader could land on when browsing the mainspace in normal circumstances (e.g. Mainspace, Books, most Categories, Portals, ...). There is also a warning that WP:MEATBOT still applies in other areas (e.g. Redirects, Wikipedia namespace, Help, maintenance categories, ...) not explicitely covered by WP:MASSCREATION.

BOTREQs and BRFAs

As of writing, we have...

20 active BOTREQs, please help if you can!
14 open BRFAs and 1 BRFA in need of BAG attention (see live status).
In 2018, 96 bot task were approved. An AWB search shows approximately 29 were withdrawn/expired, and 6 were denied.
Since the start of 2019, 97 bot task were approved. Logs show 15 were withdrawn/expired, and 15 were denied.
10 inactive bots have been deflagged (see discussion). 5 other bots have been deflagged per operator requests or similar (see discussion).

New things

All bot-related discussion pages now have a centralized and searchable archive box (see discussion). Discussions are searchable per noticeboard, or globally.
{{Bot}} now supports |status=expired (see discussion). This led to the deletion of Category:Indefinitely blocked Wikipedia bots as useless (see discussion).
WP:BOTREQ now mentions WP:SCRIPTREQ and WP:AWBTASKS as alternatives to bot requests.
The bot creation guide now mentions bot flags, and two new languages Awk and MATLAB. Other minor tweaks have been made.
AAlertBot has received major code updates. In particular, WP:AALERTS will now report splits, mergers, and AFC submissions.
Citation bot has received several updates (User talk:Citation bot/Archive 10/11/12/13/14/15/16/17). In particular, the bot stopped the automated removal of |publisher= from {{cite journal}}, and stopped the automated addition of CiteSeerX links, and now uses OAuth to authenticate those who make requests of the bot.

Other discussions

These are some of the discussions that happened / are still happening since the last Bots Newsletter. Many are stale, but some are still active.

See also the latest discussions at the bot noticeboard.

Thank you! edited by: Headbomb 17:24, 7 August 2019 (UTC)

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

This Month in GLAM: July 2019

This Month in GLAM – Volume IX, Issue VII, July 2019
Headlines
Armenia report: Members of the National Assembly of Armenia Australia report: Staying warm over winter Germany report: Heidelberg symposium Indonesia report: Cultural Gardener Summer Project in Indonesia Ireland report: Collaboration with the PhotoIreland Foundation Italy report: Archeology in alpine valleys Norway report: Sámi place names – collaboration with the Sámi Várdobáiki Language Center Sweden report: More bibliographic data on Wikidata; National Library of Sweden; GLAM activities Wikimania UK report: Oxford and Coventry Updates Uganda report: #1Lib1Ref Uganda 2019 USA report: Summer meetups and Picnics Map the GLAM report: Visualising the status and the spread of a cultural collection in Wikipedia Structured Data on Wikimedia Commons report: Other statements; Wikimania; blog posts on SDC Wikipedia Library report: Books & Bytes–Issue 34, May–June 2019 Wikidata report: I ain't no square with my corkscrew hair WMF GLAM report: OpenGLAM, Wikimania and Structured Commons Calendar: August's GLAM events
Read this edition in full • Single-page
To assist with preparing the newsletter, please visit the newsroom. Past editions may be viewed here.

About This Month in GLAM · Subscribe/Unsubscribe · Global message delivery · Romaine 08:20, 10 August 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-33

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

Editors using the mobile website on Wikipedia can opt-in to new advanced features via your settings page. This will give access to more interface links, special pages, and tools. Feedback on the discussion page is appreciated. [3]
Due to the absence of volunteer maintenance of Cologne Blue skin, the link to activate it will be hidden. The skin will still work, but editors using it are encouraged to switch to another skin. [4]

Changes later this week

Due to Wikimania, there is no deployment this week. [5]

Meetings

You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 13 August at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

The "Wikidata item" link will be moved from "Tools" to "In other projects" section on all Wikimedia projects, starting on August 21. Full announcement, Phabricator task.

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

18:19, 12 August 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-34

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

Tech News

There will be no Tech News issue next week. The next issue of Tech News will be sent out on 2 September 2019.

Problems

Some abuse filters stopped working because of a code change. Only variables for the current action will work. Variables defined inside a branch may not work outside of that branch. You can read more to see how to fix the filters.
Only six accounts can be created from one IP address per day. Between 12 August and August 15 this was two accounts per day. This was because of a security issue. It is now six accounts per day again. [6]

Changes later this week

Only a limited number of accounts can be created from one IP address. An IP address can be whitelisted so that it can create as many accounts as needed. This is useful at events where many new persons learn to edit. IP addresses that are whitelisted for this reason will also not show CAPTCHAs when you create accounts. This will happen on Wednesday. [7]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 20 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 21 August. It will be on all wikis from 22 August (calendar).

Meetings

You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 21 August at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

There is an RFC about creating a new global user group with the right to edit abuse filters. This will be used to fix broken filters and make sure all filters will still work when software changes happen. You can read more and comment.
Special:Contributions/newbies will no longer be working. This is because of performance reasons. It showed edits by new accounts. You can see this in the recent changes feed instead. [8]

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

15:21, 19 August 2019 (UTC)