User talk:K6ka/Archives/2021/October
Administrators' newsletter – October 2021
News and updates for administrators from the past month (September 2021).
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Guideline and policy news
- Following an RfC, extended confirmed protection may be used preemptively on certain high-risk templates.
- Following a discussion at the Village Pump, there is consensus to treat discord logs the same as IRC logs. This means that discord logs will be oversighted if posted onwiki.
Technical news
- DiscussionTools has superseded Enterprisey's reply-link script. Editors may switch using the "Discussion tools" checkbox under Preferences → Beta features.
Arbitration
- A motion has standardised the 500/30 (extended confirmed) restrictions placed by the Arbitration Committee. The standardised restriction is now listed in the Arbitration Committee's procedures.
- Following the closure of the Iranian politics case, standard discretionary sanctions are authorized for all edits about, and all pages related to, post-1978 Iranian politics, broadly construed.
- The Arbitration Committee encourages uninvolved administrators to use the discretionary sanctions procedure in topic areas where it is authorised to facilitate consensus in RfCs. This includes, but is not limited to, enforcing sectioned comments, word/diff limits and moratoriums on a particular topic from being brought in an RfC for up to a year.
Miscellaneous
- Editors have approved expanding the trial of Growth Features from 2% of new accounts to 25%, and the share of newcomers getting mentorship from 2% to 5%. Experienced editors are invited to add themselves to the mentor list.
- The community consultation phase of the 2021 CheckUser and Oversight appointments process is open for editors to provide comments and ask questions to candidates.
This week's article for improvement (week 40, 2021)
.jpg) A geographer is a physical scientist, social scientist or humanist whose area of study is geography, the study of Earth's natural environment and human society, including how society and nature interacts. Pictured is The Geographer (1668-69), by Johannes Vermeer.
Please be bold and help improve it! Previous selections: No such thing as a stupid question • Student exchange program Get involved with the AFI project: Nominate an article • Review nominations Posted by: MusikBot talk 00:05, 4 October 2021 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject AFI • |
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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
- A more efficient way of sending changes from Wikidata to Wikimedia wikis that show them has been enabled for the following 10 wikis: mediawiki.org, the Italian, Catalan, Hebrew and Vietnamese Wikipedias, French Wikisource, and English Wikivoygage, Wikibooks, Wiktionary and Wikinews. If you notice anything strange about how changes from Wikidata appear in recent changes or your watchlist on those wikis you can let the developers know.
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 5 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 6 October. It will be on all wikis from 7 October (calendar).
Some gadgets and bots that use the API to read the AbuseFilter log might break. The hiddenproperty will no longer say an entry isimplicitfor unsuppressed log entries about suppressed edits. If your bot needs to know this, do a separate revision query. Additionally, the property will have the valuefalsefor visible entries; previously, it wasn't included in the response. [1]- A more efficient way of sending changes from Wikidata to Wikimedia wikis that show them will be enabled for all production wikis. If you notice anything strange about how changes from Wikidata appear in recent changes or your watchlist you can let the developers know.
Future changes
- You can soon get cross-wiki notifications in the iOS Wikipedia app. You can also get notifications as push notifications. More notification updates will follow in later versions. [2]
- The JavaScript variables
wgExtraSignatureNamespaces,wgLegalTitleChars, andwgIllegalFileCharswill soon be removed frommw.config. These are not part of the "stable" variables available for use in wiki JavaScript. [3] - The JavaScript variables
wgCookiePrefix,wgCookieDomain,wgCookiePath, andwgCookieExpirationwill soon be removed from mw.config. Scripts should instead usemw.cookiefrom the "mediawiki.cookie" module. [4]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
16:28, 4 October 2021 (UTC)
This week's article for improvement (week 41, 2021)
.jpg) Fish sauce is a liquid condiment made from fish or krill that have been coated in salt and fermented for up to two years. Pictured is Cambodian sweet fish sauce mixed with chopped chili peppers and slices of garlic.
Please be bold and help improve it! Previous selections: Geographer • No such thing as a stupid question Get involved with the AFI project: Nominate an article • Review nominations Posted by: MusikBot talk 00:05, 11 October 2021 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject AFI • |
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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.
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 12 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 13 October. It will be on all wikis from 14 October (calendar).
- The "auto-number headings" preference is being removed. You can read phab:T284921 for the reasons and discussion. This change was previously announced. A JavaScript snippet is available which can be used to create a Gadget on wikis that still want to support auto-numbering.
Meetings
- You can join a meeting about the Desktop Improvements. A demonstration version of the newest feature will be shown. The event will take place on Tuesday, 12 October at 16:00 UTC. See how to join.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
15:29, 11 October 2021 (UTC)
Username Clarification Response
Added a to my page to make my identity clear in response to [change] clarification notice. Thank you for all you do for the community! George Fulton (talk) 20:47, 13 October 2021 (UTC)
Help
Hi Czar. I need a help. How can I request to change my username without no reason? My name is Orbit Wharf. But I wanna change it to Golden Wing in my own wish. How can I do it? I hope that you'll help me. Thanks. || Golden Wing 06:29, 17 October 2021 (UTC)
- @Orbit Wharf: You can simply write "Personal preference" when asked for a reason. You don't need to be specific; "personal preference" is sufficient.
- Also, my name is not "Czar"; please don't call me that!
- —k6ka 🍁 (Talk · Contributions) 13:47, 17 October 2021 (UTC)
- Thank you so much! Ok! I won't call you Czar. :) || Orbit Wharf 13:49, 17 October 2021 (UTC)
This week's article for improvement (week 42, 2021)
 The Big Five personality traits is a suggested taxonomy, or grouping, for personality traits.
Please be bold and help improve it! Previous selections: Fish sauce • Geographer Get involved with the AFI project: Nominate an article • Review nominations Posted by: MusikBot talk 00:05, 18 October 2021 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject AFI • |
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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
- Toolhub is a catalogue to make it easier to find software tools that can be used for working on the Wikimedia projects. You can read more.
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 19 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 20 October. It will be on all wikis from 21 October (calendar).
Future changes
- The developers of the Wikipedia Android app are working on communication in the app. You can now answer questions in survey to help the development.
- 3–5% of editors may be blocked in the next few months. This is because of a new service in Safari, which is similar to a proxy or a VPN. It is called iCloud Private Relay. There is a discussion about this on Meta. The goal is to learn what iCloud Private Relay could mean for the communities.
- Wikimedia Enterprise is a new API for those who use a lot of information from the Wikimedia projects on other sites. It is a way to get big commercial users to pay for the data. There will soon be a copy of the Wikimedia Enterprise dataset. You can read more. You can also ask the team questions on Zoom on 22 October 15:00 UTC.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
20:52, 18 October 2021 (UTC)
This week's article for improvement (week 43, 2021)
 The Portland Building (1982) in Portland, Oregon by architect Michael Graves is an example of Postmodern architecture.
Please be bold and help improve it! Previous selections: Personality • Fish sauce Get involved with the AFI project: Nominate an article • Review nominations Posted by: MusikBot talk 00:05, 25 October 2021 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject AFI • |
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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
- The Coolest Tool Award 2021 is looking for nominations. You can recommend tools until 27 October.
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 26 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 27 October. It will be on all wikis from 28 October (calendar).
Future changes
- Diff pages will have an improved copy and pasting experience. The changes will allow the text in the diff for before and after to be treated as separate columns and will remove any unwanted syntax. [5]
- The version of the Liberation fonts used in SVG files will be upgraded. Only new thumbnails will be affected. Liberation Sans Narrow will not change. [6]
Meetings
- You can join a meeting about the Community Wishlist Survey. News about the disambiguation and the real-time preview wishes will be shown. The event will take place on Wednesday, 27 October at 14:30 UTC. See how to join.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
20:07, 25 October 2021 (UTC)
Growth Newsletter #19
Welcome to the nineteenth newsletter from the Growth team!
The Growth team's objective is to work on software changes that help retain new contributors in Wikimedia projects.
Structured tasks
- "Add a link" is the team's first structured task. It uses machine-learning to suggest wikilinks as easy edits for newcomers. It was deployed in May 2021 on four Wikipedias and then in July on eight more Wikipedias after we evaluated the initial results. So far, we've seen a high level of engagement from newcomers. Communities that have the feature suggested valuable ideas for improvement. We'll work on improvements and then contact more communities to deploy it.
- "Add an image" is the team's second structured task, currently in development. It is an editing task that suggests Commons images for unillustrated Wikipedia articles. We have conducted many community discussions and tests. Then, we've decided to build a first prototype. We'll first deploy it only to our pilot Wikipedias, to learn whether newcomers can be successful with the task. The project page contains links to interactive prototypes. We are very interested to hear your thoughts on this idea as we build and test the early versions. These prototypes have already been tested by newcomers, in English and Spanish.
News for mentors
- The Mentor dashboard is available at our pilot wikis: Arabic, Czech, and Bengali Wikipedias. It will soon be available at a few more volunteering wikis, as a test. [7]
- At wikis where the mentor dashboard is deployed, a new filter is available for mentors. Mentors can monitor their mentees' activity in Watchlist and RecentChanges, so they can help support their mentees' work. For privacy reasons, this filter can't be accessed by someone else than the mentor itself. This filter only filters mentees assigned to the mentor. This filter is not visible for people who are not listed as mentors [8]
Community configuration
- Communities now have the ability to configure how Growth features behave on their own wikis. At Special:EditGrowthConfig, community members can add a list of volunteer mentors, alter the templates used for suggested edits, update help links, and more. This special page is editable by administrators and interface admins.
Scaling
- We are proud to announce that all Wikipedias now have the Growth features! Thank you to all the community members who helped the team build the features and bring them to their wikis. The only exception is Chinese Wikipedia (zh), for technical reasons. [9]
- The wikis that have Growth features deployed have been part of A/B testing since deployment, in which some newcomers did not receive the new features. Now, all of the newcomers on 280 of the smallest of those Wikipedias have the features. [10][11]
- A test is undergoing at English Wikipedia: 25% of newcomers receive the Growth features. The results from this test will be part of a discussion of how to proceed on that wiki.
- Now that Growth features are available at Wikipedia, the Growth team considers to extend them to other projects. Some Wikisource users have expressed some interest in getting Growth features. There is currently a discussion about implementing them on Wikisource.
News for communities
- Do you have questions about the Growth features? This translatable FAQ contains answers to the most common questions about the Growth team work.
- The Growth features were recently used in a test amongst Latin American donors to give donors the opportunity to learn to edit. You can see the results here.
- Interface translations are important for newcomers. Please help for your language, by translating or copyediting interface translations for the Growth features.
- Help:GettingStarted was a feature developed in 2013, which directed newcomers to articles that needed editing. We recently removed this feature from all wikis, because it has been replaced by the Growth features.
Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
18:36, 26 October 2021 (UTC)
The Signpost: 31 October 2021
- From the editor: Different stories, same place
- News and notes: The sockpuppet who ran for adminship and almost succeeded
- Discussion report: Editors brainstorm and propose changes to the Requests for adminship process
- Recent research: Welcome messages fail to improve newbie retention
- Community view: Reflections on the Chinese Wikipedia
- Traffic report: James Bond and the Giant Squid Game
- Technology report: Wikimedia Toolhub, winners of the Coolest Tool Award, and more
- Serendipity: How Wikipedia helped create a Serbian stamp
- Book review: Wikipedia and the Representation of Reality
- WikiProject report: Redirection
- Humour: A very Wiki crossword