User talk:K6ka/Archives/2018/November
Editing News #2—2018
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Did you know?
Did you know that you can use the visual editor on a mobile device?
Tap on the pencil icon to start editing. The page will probably open in the wikitext editor.
You will see another pencil icon in the toolbar. Tap on that pencil icon to the switch between visual editing and wikitext editing.
Remember to publish your changes when you're done.
You can read and help translate the user guide, which has more information about how to use the visual editor.
Since the last newsletter, the Editing Team has wrapped up most of their work on the 2017 wikitext editor and the visual diff tool. The team has begun investigating the needs of editors who use mobile devices. Their work board is available in Phabricator. Their current priorities are fixing bugs and improving mobile editing.
Recent changes
- The Editing team has published an initial report about mobile editing.
- The Editing team has begun a design study of visual editing on the mobile website. New editors have trouble doing basic tasks on a smartphone, such as adding links to Wikipedia articles. You can read the report.
- The Reading team is working on a separate mobile-based contributions project.
- The 2006 wikitext editor is no longer supported. If you used that toolbar, then you will no longer see any toolbar. You may choose another editing tool in your editing preferences, local gadgets, or beta features.
- The Editing team described the history and status of VisualEditor in this recorded public presentation (starting at 29 minutes, 30 seconds).
- The Language team released a new version of Content Translation (CX2) last month, on International Translation Day. It integrates the visual editor to support templates, tables, and images. It also produces better wikitext when the translated article is published. [1]
Let's work together
- The Editing team wants to improve visual editing on the mobile website. Please read their ideas and tell the team what you think would help editors who use the mobile site.
- The Community Wishlist Survey begins next week.
- If you aren't reading this in your preferred language, then please help us with translations! Subscribe to the Translators mailing list or contact us directly. We will notify you when the next issue is ready for translation. Thank you!
— Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 17:12, 1 November 2018 (UTC)
Administrators' newsletter – November 2018
News and updates for administrators from the past month (October 2018).
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Guideline and policy news
- A request for comment determined that non-administrators will not be able to request interface admin access.
- A request for comment is in progress to determine whether the Mediation Committee should be closed and marked as historical.
- A village pump discussion has been ongoing about whether the proposed deletion policy (PROD) should be clarified or amended.
- A request for comment is in progress to determine whether pending changes protection should be applied automatically to today's featured article (TFA) in order to mitigate a recent trend of severe image vandalism.
Technical news
- Partial blocks is now available for testing on the Test Wikipedia. The new functionality allows you to block users from editing specific pages. Bugs may exist and can be reported on the local talk page or on Meta. A discussion regarding deployment to English Wikipedia will be started by community liaisons sometime in the near future.
- A user script is now available to quickly review unblock requests.
- The 2019 Community Wishlist Survey is now accepting new proposals until November 11, 2018. The results of this survey will determine what software the Wikimedia Foundation's Community Tech team will work on next year. Voting on the proposals will take place from November 16 to November 30, 2018. Specifically, there is a proposal category for admins and stewards that may be of interest.
Arbitration
- Eligible editors will be invited to nominate themselves as candidates in the 2018 Arbitration Committee Elections starting on November 4 until November 13. Voting will begin on November 19 and last until December 2.
- The Arbitration Committee's email address has changed to arbcom-en
wikimedia.org. Other email lists, such as functionaries-en and clerks-l, remain unchanged.
Need guidance regarding people using wikipedia to create their own political narrative
I need some guidance regarding how wikipedia deals with situation wherein people insert their own political prejudice into encyclopedia articles.
I find that in lot of places, people insert their own political ideology as part of encyclopedia entry, and they give weak sources as evidence / source. Sources like newspapers, which are themselves very biased, are used to create political narratives. This is like rewriting history and using wikipedia as a tool for political propaganda.
Recently when I was pointed this out, I was threatened with banning. I wish to know how to resolve this problem. Please help me understand if you can.
User:Berzerker_king —Preceding undated comment added 04:39, 4 November 2018 (UTC)
This week's article for improvement (week 45, 2018)
Hello, K6ka.
The following is WikiProject Today's articles for improvement's weekly selection: Please be bold and help to improve this article! Previous selections: Gulf of Alaska • Latin music (genre) Get involved with the TAFI project. You can: Nominate an article • Review nominations Posted by: MusikBot talk 00:05, 5 November 2018 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject TAFI • |
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Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- You can now use TemplateWizard to edit templates. This works only with the 2010 wikitext editor and not in the visual editor or the 2017 wikitext editor. If you click on
you can enter the information in a pop-up. You can turn on TemplateWizard in your beta feature preferences. [2]
Changes later this week
- You can choose to see edit conflicts in a two-column view. This is a beta feature. You can find it in your preferences. The interface for the two-column edit conflict will change. You can read more.
- When you edit with the visual editor you can use the "Automatic" citation tab. This helps you generate citations. You will now be able to write plain text citations or the title of a journal article or a book in this tab. This will search the Crossref and WorldCat databases and add the top result. [3]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 6 November. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 7 November. It will be on all wikis from 8 November (calendar).
Meetings
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You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 7 November at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
17:28, 5 November 2018 (UTC)
Growth team updates #3
Welcome to the third newsletter for the new Growth team!
The Growth team's objective is to work on software changes that help retain new contributors in mid-size Wikimedia projects.
Two Growth team projects to be deployed in next two weeks
We will be deploying the "Understanding first day" and "Personalized first day" projects on Czech and Korean Wikipedias in the coming weeks. See the new project pages below for full details on the projects, and our project updates page for their progress.
- Understanding first day: learn about the actions new editors take right after creating their accounts. We will be careful with user privacy, and we hope to share initial results in December.
- Personalized first day: learn about new editors' objectives by adding some optional questions to the new editor’s registration process, and personalizing their onboarding. We hope to share initial results in December.
Third Growth team project begins
- Focus on help desk: direct newcomers to the local help desks where they can ask questions to help them make their first edits. We hope to have an initial experiment running in December.
Best practices for helping newcomers
We are going to direct newcomers to help desks. But what's the best way to reply to a newcomer there? We have gathered some best practices for successful interactions, based on community experiences and some external documentation. The page has also been reviewed by some experienced community members who suggested some changes. That page is now open for translations. Comments and suggestions are still welcome!
We are still looking for volunteers
Do you want to participate to our experiments? We are looking for new communities to work with us (especially a new mid-size wiki), and people to become ambassadors to help us to communicate with the different communities. Discover how you can involve yourself or your community.
Also, please share this update with your community and interested people!
Learn more about us
You can visit our team page to find out why our team was formed and how we are thinking about new editors, and our project page for detailed updates on the projects we'll work on.
Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot, 13:30, 7 November 2018 (UTC) • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
This week's article for improvement (week 46, 2018)
 Distribution map of modern man (Horniman Museum)
The following is WikiProject Today's articles for improvement's weekly selection: Please be bold and help to improve this article! Previous selections: Civics • Gulf of Alaska Get involved with the TAFI project. You can: Nominate an article • Review nominations Posted by: MusikBot talk 00:05, 12 November 2018 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject TAFI • |
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Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- Some old mobile browsers can use the watchlist again. This has not worked for a while. These browsers are called grade C browsers. This helps for example Windows Phone 8.1 with Internet Explorer and Lumia 535 with Windows 10. [4]
Problems
- You can choose to see edit conflicts in a two-column view. This is a beta feature. You can find it in your preferences. Users who use this view saw the edit conflict resolution page when they wanted to see a preview. This has been fixed. [5][6][7]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 13 November. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 14 November. It will be on all wikis from 15 November (calendar).
Meetings
- You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 14 November at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
- You can use the content translation tool to translate articles. The developers are working on a new version. One of the changes will be a maintenance category. Articles where users add a lot of text from machine translation without changing it will be in that category. This is so the community can review it. The users will also have been warned before they publish the article that it has a lot of unchanged text from machine translations. [8]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
19:22, 12 November 2018 (UTC)
This week's article for improvement (week 47, 2018)
 The Equator on the world map of the Earth
The following is WikiProject Today's articles for improvement's weekly selection: Please be bold and help to improve this article! Previous selections: Mongoloid • Civics Get involved with the TAFI project. You can: Nominate an article • Review nominations Posted by: MusikBot talk 00:05, 19 November 2018 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject TAFI • |
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ArbCom 2018 election voter message
Hello, K6ka. Voting in the 2018 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23.59 on Sunday, 3 December. All users who registered an account before Sunday, 28 October 2018, made at least 150 mainspace edits before Thursday, 1 November 2018 and are not currently blocked are eligible to vote. Users with alternate accounts may only vote once.
The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail.
If you wish to participate in the 2018 election, please review the candidates and submit your choices on the voting page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:42, 19 November 2018 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- You can vote on proposals in the Community Wishlist Survey. The survey decides what the Community Tech team will work on. You can vote until 30 November.
- There is an A/B test for
sameAsdata. This is to make it easier to find the right information with a search engine. This changes the metadata for a wiki page. It doesn't change how the page looks. [9]
Changes later this week
- There is no new MediaWiki version this week.
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 November at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
- The Wikimedia wikis use templates to show readers there are problems with the content on some pages. For example if there are no sources or the page needs to be rewritten. The mobile website will soon show more information when you use these templates. Some templates may need to be updated. [10]
- The Education Program extension was removed from all Wikimedia projects. The database tables used by the extension will be archived. This will happen in a month. If you want the information on your wiki you should move it to a normal wiki page. [11]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
23:28, 19 November 2018 (UTC)
Thank You
Hi Admin,
Thank you for your help :). May I ask on how do I issue a warning (if I can do it)?
Venomous Sniper (talk) 16:07, 24 November 2018 (UTC)
- Venomous Sniper, a list of templated warning messages can be found here. Simply substitute those templates onto the user talk page of the user you would like to warn to send them a warning. Most warning messages can be issued by anybody.
- If you have not already, I would encourage you to check out the Counter-Vandalism Unit Academy to learn more about combating vandalism on Wikipedia. —k6ka 🍁 (Talk · Contributions) 16:10, 24 November 2018 (UTC)
Main Page
There is a big red link on the main page. --Thegooduser Let's Chat 🍁 20:22, 24 November 2018 (UTC)
- --Thegooduser Let's Chat 🍁 20:23, 24 November 2018 (UTC)
Resolved
- @Thegooduser: Even though I got blocked for it, I feel at least honoured to have edited the Main Page for the first time.
—k6ka 🍁 (Talk · Contributions) 01:28, 25 November 2018 (UTC)
- @Thegooduser: Even though I got blocked for it, I feel at least honoured to have edited the Main Page for the first time.
This week's article for improvement (week 48, 2018)
 Siri is a virtual assistant part of Apple Inc.'s iOS, watchOS, macOS, HomePod, and tvOS operating systems.
The following is WikiProject Today's articles for improvement's weekly selection: Please be bold and help to improve this article! Previous selections: Equator • Mongoloid Get involved with the TAFI project. You can: Nominate an article • Review nominations Posted by: MusikBot talk 00:05, 26 November 2018 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject TAFI • |
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Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- On wikis with translatable pages you could create a mess when you moved a page that had translatable subpages. A subpage is when you use
/to create a new page:/wiki/Page/Subpage. The subpages would be moved but not the translations. The subpages are no longer automatically be moved. This is to make it safer to move pages. [12]
Changes later this week
- The advanced search interface will be available by default on all Wikimedia wikis. It makes it easier to use some of the special search functions that most editors don't know exist. It's already active on German, Farsi, Arabic and Hungarian Wikipedia. [13]
- Special:UnusedCategories show empty categories with no files or other categories. You can soon choose to not show soft redirect categories or some maintenance categories there. You can do this with the magic word
__EXPECTUNUSEDCATEGORY__. [14] - The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 27 November. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 28 November. It will be on all wikis from 29 November (calendar).
Meetings
- You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 28 November at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
- The
mw.util.jsMessage()function was deprecated in 2012. It will be removed next week. Look for the warningUse of "mw.util.jsMessage" is deprecatedin the JavaScript console to know if you use an affected script or gadget. If you are a gadget maintainer you should check if your JavaScript code containsmw.util.jsMessage. There is a migration guide. It explains how to usemw.notifyinstead. [15]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
22:22, 26 November 2018 (UTC)
National Archives of Ireland
Hi there! I was looking through the edit history of the National Archives of Ireland and I noticed you undid my edits to the page and then put them back the next minute. I'm a student doing this for a class and for the sake of learning, and sheer curiosity, can you tell me why that was done? Is there something I can correct on the edits? A better way to format them? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Archivesjam (talk • contribs) 01:04, 28 November 2018 (UTC)
- Hi Archivesjam, that revert was made by simple accident. I undid my own edit a minute later when I realized my mistake. Sorry if it caused any confusion! —k6ka 🍁 (Talk · Contributions) 01:31, 28 November 2018 (UTC)