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Tech News: 2021-31

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

Recent changes

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

Problems

  • Last week, all wikis had slow access or no access for 30 minutes. There was a problem with generating dynamic lists of articles on the Russian Wikinews, due to the bulk import of 200,000+ new articles over 3 days, which led to database problems. The problematic feature has been disabled on that wiki and developers are discussing if it can be fixed properly. [1][2]

Changes later this week

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

Future changes

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

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

20:45, 2 August 2021 (UTC)

Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/CheckPageJSON

I noticed you added yourself to the AWB checkpage after fiddeling with JWB. Did you experience any issues? The switch to the JSON checkpage was recent so we may have missed something. You shouldn't need to be on the list as an admin and the bot is likely to remove you. --Trialpears (talk) 15:20, 4 August 2021 (UTC)

Actually, I did have problems, thanks. I don't use AWB often, but was trying to use it to add a template to the talk pages of all the users mentioned in Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/JoannaLetren. When I go to Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/Script, I get the setup box, but don't get the toolbar that lets me actually start anything. I thought perhaps my not being on the whitelist was the problem. -- RoySmith (talk) 15:36, 4 August 2021 (UTC)
@Trialpears forgot to ping you. -- RoySmith (talk) 15:36, 4 August 2021 (UTC)
Hm, I'm unsure what toolbar you're referring to. Your screenshot looks just like I would expect. The layout of JWB is significantly different from AWB though, so perhaps that's the issue? Page lists are generated in the setup tab (above the edit summary) and the start button is at the right of the box above "more replace fields". If it was the checkpage that wasn't behaving it wouldn't let you see this at all and kick you out. --Trialpears (talk) 15:43, 4 August 2021 (UTC)
@Trialpears Ah, I see. Wow, that's some weird U/I design. A bunch of big buttons, and then the one that you need all the time is a smaller size? I didn't see it there. Thanks for your help.
I also see it automatically skips over pages that don't exist. Is there some option to auto-create pages if they don't exist? I ended up just doing those manually. -- RoySmith (talk) 16:10, 4 August 2021 (UTC)
Yep you can auto-create pages, but you have to untick the skip non-existent pages part in the skip tab. For prepend or create depending on context I would regex replace ^ which represents start of string with whatever content you want. --Trialpears (talk) 16:46, 4 August 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-32

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

Problems

  • You can read but not edit 17 wikis for a few minutes on 10 August. This is planned at 05:00 UTC. This is because of work on the database. [4]

Changes later this week

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

Future changes

  • The Wikipedia Library is a place for Wikipedia editors to get access to sources. There is an extension which has a new function to tell users when they can take part in it. It will use notifications. It will start pinging the first users in September. It will ping more users later. [5]
  • Advanced item Vue.js will be the JavaScript framework for MediaWiki in the future. [6]

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

16:19, 9 August 2021 (UTC)

Protection mistake

Fairly sure from what you said at AN that you didn't intend to fully edit protect this page for 3 months, only fully move protect it [7] Nil Einne (talk) 13:29, 10 August 2021 (UTC)

Yup, thanks for letting me know. I'm fixing it now. -- RoySmith (talk) 13:34, 10 August 2021 (UTC)

DYK for Leaders of the World

On 11 August 2021, Did you know was updated with a fact from the article Leaders of the World, which you recently created, substantially expanded, or brought to good article status. The fact was ... that Leaders of the World included 20-foot-tall (6 m) horses? The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Leaders of the World. You are welcome to check how many pageviews the nominated article or articles got while on the front page (here's how, Leaders of the World), and if they received a combined total of at least 416.7 views per hour (i.e., 5,000 views in 12 hours or 10,000 in 24), the hook may be added to the statistics page. 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.

Schwede66 12:02, 11 August 2021 (UTC)

Deleted soundtracks

Could you please temporarily restore those soundtracks you deleted (mainspace articles, not drafts) so I can properly merge the info in them with the main articles? That includes Ramanujan (soundtrack), Annaamalai (soundtrack), Minsara Kanavu (soundtrack), Cuckoo (soundtrack), Jigarthanda (soundtrack) and '96 (soundtrack). Kailash29792 (talk) 06:56, 7 August 2021 (UTC)

No, I'm sorry, I won't restore material created by socks. -- RoySmith (talk) 12:37, 7 August 2021 (UTC)
Ok. User:Satish Raman Nair, who created those soundtracks using IPs, has restored the info to their parent articles. But he has also created Draft:Asuran (soundtrack) in violation of WP:BLOCKEVADE. I am not Satish, but I created Asuran (soundtrack) so that all is not lost after you delete the aforementioned draft. Kailash29792 (talk) 05:30, 9 August 2021 (UTC)
User:Kailash29792 - I was about to ask User:RoySmith whether you should be reported at WP:ANI for a combination of strange behaviors, that appear to be trying to create articles as your own. So I will still ask User:RoySmith whether you should be reported or sanctioned. Over. Robert McClenon (talk) 18:20, 9 August 2021 (UTC)
I really would like to hear an explanation of what was going on here. I'll leave it to others to drag this to the dramah boards if they feel it's necessary. -- RoySmith (talk) 21:01, 9 August 2021 (UTC)
Just wanted to apologise because really I'm at fault here. I created Asuran (soundtrack) because I thought it would be inevitably deleted once the IP would be exposed as a sock of Satish. Though he is no doubt a good faith editor, he is committing the grave error of socking. And if I showed support for him I feared I'd get blocked for abetting him. So only I created Asuran (soundtrack) and Vendhu Thanindhadhu Kaadu so that the content would not be lost if deleted, like the above soundtracks since they were created by a sock. His latest IP is 223.178.74.91. Maybe I should have moved the drafts to the mainspace like I did with Annaamalai (soundtrack), and saved a copy somehow so that if it got deleted I could recreate. But would that be the right thing to do? Kailash29792 (talk) 03:10, 10 August 2021 (UTC)
  • I suggest stripping the references from all these articles (the references used are not creative content that requires attribution). Then delete all the articles and their copies. Then allow Kailash29792 to re-create the articles using just the references. Note for the record that as back as SOCK violations are, they are not as bad as the WP:COPYRIGHTS violation of denying required attribution. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 06:15, 10 August 2021 (UTC)
  • I have deleted the two mainspace copies. I took a quick look at the drafts; it's certainly plausible that these qualify for G5, but I didn't dig deep enough to convince myself of that. Since they're both at MfD, it seems easier to just let the MfDs run to their conclusion (although I wouldn't object if somebody else wanted to G5 them). Kailash29792 I'm going to assume that this was all just a one-time lapse of judgement on your part; please don't do this again. There's so many issues here. If you suspect somebody of socking, open a case at WP:SPI. Under no circumstances should you be doing copy-paste moves of pages, for all the reasons already noted in this thread. The fact that you did so as a deliberate end-run around the normal deletion process was extraordinarily poor judgement and really strained the limits of WP:AGF. -- RoySmith (talk) 13:23, 10 August 2021 (UTC)
    I have withdrawn my deletion requests at Asuran (soundtrack) and Nadhigalile Neeradum Suriyan. Also, WP:G5 says, "When a blocked or banned person uses an alternate account (sockpuppet) to avoid a restriction, any pages created via the sock account after the earliest block or ban of any of that person's accounts qualify for G5 (if not substantially edited by others)". So I can improve these drafts before taking them to the mainspace and they won't be deleted per G5? Kailash29792 (talk) 04:27, 11 August 2021 (UTC)
    WP:G5 is not necessarily a requirement to delete a banned user's later contribution. It is possible to for an editor in good standing to "take responsibility" for their ban-evading contributions, and for the article to continue.
    However, if the banned user's contributions are deleted, this means that we rejected them entirely and do not want to credit them for their creative input. This means that their draft may not be used, at all, for producing an improved version. This means that you cannot even use you memory of what their work looked like.
    Either we overlook the ban evasion, or the article needs to be restarted completely fresh. It is OK to preserve their list of references, because a list of references, even if expertly selected, is not a creative work requiring attribution.
    Given the mess already made, I suggest that you let them be deleted and walk away entirely and forever from these topics. SmokeyJoe (talk) 06:54, 11 August 2021 (UTC)
One can only hope Draft:Asuran (soundtrack) is accepted into the mainspace since I made multiple edits on it after Satish created it. Ditto with Draft:Nadhigalile Neeradum Suriyan. But it needs to be renamed to Draft:Vendhu Thanindhadhu Kaadu as the film was retitled, and I cannot rename it until the MfD is done. Kailash29792 (talk) 07:58, 11 August 2021 (UTC)
@Kailash29792 I've picked this up at WP:AN#Kailash29792 doing bizarre things with sock-drafts. -- RoySmith (talk) 13:40, 11 August 2021 (UTC)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draft:Hans_Georg_N%C3%A4der

Hello RoySmith,

My Draft has been declined earlier because of tone and references. I have improved it as much as I could. I have also put WP:THREE on the talk page. Can you please have a look? He is the 775th richest person in the world and the 90th in Germany. So, I believe he is notable and I just need to work on it better.

Thank you Centrereded (talk) 15:50, 11 August 2021 (UTC)

Sat Aug 14: Wikimania Wiknic NYC

August 14, 12-5pm: Wikimania Wiknic NYC
Wikimania 2021
Welcome to Wikimedia New York City!

You are invited to join the Wikimedia NYC community for a planned socially-distanced Wiknic ("the picnic anyone can edit") in Brooklyn's Prospect Park to coincide with the virtual Wikimania 2021.

For this occasion, and to allow more space as desired, we have individually packed lunches provided by the chapter, and attendees are encouraged to RSVP at Eventbrite and give sandwich/entree orders.

12:00pm - 5:00 pm in a shaded grove in front of the Picnic House
(Prospect Park, Brooklyn)
Long Meadow of Prospect Park

(You can subscribe/unsubscribe from future notifications for NYC-area events by adding or removing your name from this list.)

--Wikimedia New York City Team 18:48, 11 August 2021 (UTC)

DYK for South Bronx Greenway

On 16 August 2021, Did you know was updated with a fact from the article South Bronx Greenway, which you recently created, substantially expanded, or brought to good article status. The fact was ... that the South Bronx Greenway includes recycled granite from the Willis Avenue Bridge? The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/South Bronx Greenway. You are welcome to check how many pageviews the nominated article or articles got while on the front page (here's how, South Bronx Greenway), and if they received a combined total of at least 416.7 views per hour (i.e., 5,000 views in 12 hours or 10,000 in 24), the hook may be added to the statistics page. 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.

—valereee (talk) 12:04, 16 August 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-33

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

Recent changes

  • You can add language links in the sidebar in the new Vector skin again. You do this by connecting the page to a Wikidata item. The new Vector skin has moved the language links but the new language selector cannot add language links yet. [8]

Problems

  • There was a problem on wikis which use the Translate extension. Translations were not updated or were replaced with the English text. The problems have been fixed. [9][10][11]

Changes later this week

  • A revision tag will soon be added to edits that add links to disambiguation pages. This is because these links are usually added by accident. The tag will allow editors to easily find the broken links and fix them. If your wiki does not like this feature, it can be hidden. [12]
  • Would you like to help improve the information about tools? Would you like to attend or help organize a small virtual meetup for your community to discuss the list of tools? Please get in touch on the Toolhub Quality Signal Sessions talk page. We are also looking for feedback from tool maintainers on some specific questions.
  • In the past, edits to any page in your user talk space ignored your mute list, e.g. sub-pages. Starting this week, this is only true for edits to your talk page. [13]
  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 17 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 18 August. It will be on all wikis from 19 August (calendar).

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

19:26, 16 August 2021 (UTC)

Follow up and follow follow up

I reviewed the list you posted here, and G5 tagged several (mainly Sorrow3 creations, who was blocked last week as a Bodiadub sock).

I do have follow on notes on my follow up, and it depends what led to your suspicion here.

A1 (4): File:Mykhailo Verykivsky.jpg, Anna Durytska, Vitaly Kyreiko, Forest Song (opera). A1 is listed in the archives (due to me, they jumped into a sock revert spree), though I am not so certain they are Bodiadub as they are very established on ukwiki. Is there something behavioral that led to these files? Or is this solely due to A1 being in the archives?

Wellring: Reanimation Package of Reforms. Wellring is in the archives at 3 July 2020, interestingly reported together with the now blocked Sorrow3. At the time GeneralNotability was not convinced of the behavioral link. I looked at one of their recent creations Ruxandra Lupu, and it sure looks to me like that I saw from Bodiadub socks. There is an in use tag on creation and the same pattern of chain edits. This might be due for re-evaluation.

Aside from those two, there was Lainingthou Sanamahi that appears to be a sockpuppet convention. with Goutamkumar Oinam (indef as sock), Goutamkumar Oinam 2 (indef for disruption, though the link to the former (blocked later) is obvious), Awangba Mangang (indef as UPE), Amudon Nongyai (blocked as Goutamkumar Oinam 2's sock), Kangleingakpa (blocked as sock). However, it is not G5able per my reading as there isn't an old enough sockmaster and some of the users (2) aren't blocked as socks. However, if this group were to be linked to Bodiadub there would be G5able articles, but I am not up to speed on Bodiadub's behavior in 2019, I know them from 2021.

Wellring is worth a hard second look (due to Sorrow3 subsequently being blocked + recent behavior), and A1 depends on what you filtered/searched for in preparing the list.--Eostrix  (🦉 hoot hoot🦉) 19:51, 18 August 2021 (UTC)

Thanks, I really appreciate the time you took to slog through all this. THe tool I use (https://spi-tools.toolforge.org) grabs all the users mentioned in either the active or archive SPI page, looks at all the pages those users created, and works from there. It's pretty stupid about users that were mentioned in SPI reports but later found not actually to be socks, so I'm not at all surprised there's lots of false hits. -- RoySmith (talk) 01:21, 19 August 2021 (UTC)

Article removing

Hi I created the article more than a month ago after a great effort and suffering in order to develop and improve it in order to be eligible for acceptance I have used some editors to help me on this article Indeed, as a result of this work, the article was accepted after review And make sure So far, everything is fine and normal But after more than a month, the article was deleted, and I was surprised by this decision, which I see as unjust according to logic Because the article has been reviewed by an expert and has been accepted, which means that it meets all the criteria link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abdullah_Bin_Sulaiman_Al_Rajhi Elshitaq (talk) 11:13, 19 August 2021 (UTC)

(talk page stalker) Elshitaq: The page appears to have been moved, without discussion, to Draft:Abdullah Bin Sulaiman Al Rajhi(2) for further work. Similar content exists at Draft:Abdullah Sulaiman Al Rajhi. Perhaps MrsSnoozyTurtle would be able to explain why. – Jonesey95 (talk) 15:16, 19 August 2021 (UTC)
(talk page stalker) Follow-up: this draft is related to Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/RedX8. – Jonesey95 (talk) 15:21, 19 August 2021 (UTC)

PHP wiki parser

Hi Roy. I totally missed your reply (tbh, I forgot to check back after AKlapper's response.) I'm starting from scratch and looked at the Parsoid, among all the parsers in that list. And quite confusing to start with, for sure. I'm wondering if you've published any code or scripts with Parsoid, so that I can refer to your code, replicate and learn. I'm a PHP developer, so wouldn't be a hassle to read thru other's code 🙈I wondered if I could use it instead of mwparserfromhell, or Python for the sake, as I'm a total newbie in Python and switching from PHP at work during daytime to Python in the evenings for wikiparsing isn't, let's say, a fun thing to do! For the moment, I used Pywikibot for my BRFA, but really hope to stick with one programming language. Thanks for your help! -Srihari :) -- DaxServer (talk) 17:37, 19 August 2021 (UTC)

I'm not an expert at this, but take a look at my tag-check.js, particularly getParseTree() which makes the actual API call to parsoid, and findSpiTemplate() which uses jquery to search what's returned. I don't have any PHP code which uses it, but the basic should be the same. Do a HTTP get on https://en.wikipedia.org/api/rest_v1/page/html/$pageTitle and parse the returned HTTP. Once you understand what it's doing, it's not so bad, but it can be difficult to grasp because it's not (I think) what most people would expect and it's not well documented.
As for sticking with one language, I can certainly understand that it's easier to just keep using what you know (even if it's that abomination called PHP), but it's good to explore other languages. Different languages have different ways of doing things, and it's good to expose yourself to new ideas. Over the years, I've done Basic, Fortran, Ratfor, Perl, Tkl, a bunch of different assemblers, lisp, C, C++, Python, Java, Javascript, PHP, Go, Kotlin, and probably a few others I can't think of right now. Each one taught me something useful and interesting. -- RoySmith (talk) 20:06, 19 August 2021 (UTC)
abomination called PHP ouch, shots fired!!! I've worked[/tried] in the past on Java, Javascript, Go, Kotlin and now Python. I particularly liked the data classes in Kotlin, which doesn't require any setters and getters, which's a boon. I also liked Go for its speed, surely it's a bit closers to the low-level programming languages. But it was complicated and I never had any professional experience. I had C and C++ in a couple of semesters and way too complicated for me. I think PHP came naturally to me, never had to bang my head on the wall to learn new concepts related to it! However, I never had any chance to do anything with Basic, Fortran or Perl and others, as they are a bit "old" languages (shots fired back :P).
Thanks for the links! -- DaxServer (talk) 12:21, 21 August 2021 (UTC)

IP-only SPI

Hi Roy. Can you help me understand why my behavioral sockpuppet investigation request was deleted without (proper) explanation, and how are we supposed to know how many users support or oppose an idea if a single user with many IPs can create the illusion of support for their idea? I need to be able to tell that all those IPs are the same person, but how am I supposed to do that if IPs cannot be checked? How and why was your deletion of my request a WP:G6? Ponor (talk) 05:07, 21 August 2021 (UTC)

@Ponor thanks for your note. I feel your pain, I really do. If it were up to me, we wouldn't allow anonymous editing at all, but we need to work within the constraints handed to us by the WMF. Unfortunately, there's not a lot that can be done to deal with abuse from dynamic IPs such as these. And, as noted in the closing statement, WMF privacy rules make it impossible to go fishing looking for which user might be using these IP addresses.
It might not even be socking at all. All of these IPs geolocate to different areas of New York City. This could legitimately be a single person working on a mobile device and moving around, using different cellular connections as they move, or even public hotspots.
What I just realized was that only a short time passed between when @Blablubbs closed it and when I deleted it, so you may not have even seen the closing comments. I've temporarily restored it to give you a chance to see the whole thing. -- RoySmith (talk) 14:15, 21 August 2021 (UTC)
Oh, I should add, the reason cases like this get deleted is because we only archive cases that are likely to help in future investigations. In a case that just mentions a bunch of dynamic IP's, there's not any point in saving it in the archives. -- RoySmith (talk) 14:19, 21 August 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-34

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

Recent changes

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

Problems

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

Changes later this week

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

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

21:57, 23 August 2021 (UTC)

spi-tools and OAuth question

Is there a guide or something you followed to set up spi-tools's integration with Wikipedia OAuth? Working on a secret project of my own and I'd like to do a similar setup. GeneralNotability (talk) 22:43, 23 August 2021 (UTC)

Ugh. That was (surprise!) kind of not well documented, I'm afraid. I'm assuming you're familiar with OAuth in general?
First you need to register an OAuth consumer and get your keys. Start with OAuth/For Developers, scroll down to "Registration". This will point you to meta:Special:OAuthConsumerRegistration/propose. Fill out the form. I don't honestly remember the difference between the various choices for "OAuth protocol version". Looking at my old keys, I see I tried both 1.0a and 2.0 at various times. The production key I'm using now is 1.0a, so I guess just use that :-) I seem to remember approval turnaround was pretty quick, like the next business day. And they didn't seem to have any problem with registering additional consumers as I worked through various experiments.
You'll get back a private/public key pair. Obviously, you'll need to keep the private key secret (i.e. not put it into version control, etc). I keep mine in a read-protected file:
-rw------- 1 tools.spi-tools-dev tools.spi-tools-dev 764 Jul 15 2020 config.ini
which my django app reads on startup (here and here), but there's lots of possibilities.
The next question is how you use those keys. That will depend on what host language and client library you're using. I'm using Python and Django and Social Auth with mwclient. The social auth library handles all the OAuth flow stuff. See Wiki._get_mw_site() for how I use it (which probably won't make much sense if you're not familiar with both Django and mwclient. Feel free to ask questions.
I strongly urge you to use some pre-canned library that handles the OAuth flow. The first time I encountered OAuth many years ago, I ended up rolling my own low-level OAuth code because I didn't know better. I eventually got it to work, but wouldn't recommend it. -- RoySmith (talk) 23:33, 23 August 2021 (UTC)

August 25: ONLINE WikiWednesday Salon NYC

August 25, 7pm: ONLINE WikiWednesday Salon NYC
Welcome to Wikimedia New York City!

You are invited to join the Wikimedia NYC community for our monthly "WikiWednesday" evening salon (7-8pm) and knowledge-sharing workshop. To join the meeting from your computer or smartphone, just visit this link. More information about how to connect is available on the meetup page.

We look forward to seeing local Wikimedians, but would also like to invite folks from the greater New York metropolitan area (and beyond!) who might not typically be able to join us in person!

If there's a project you'd like to share or a question you'd like answered, just let us know by adding it to the agenda or the talk page.

7:00pm - 8:00 pm online via Zoom (optional breakout rooms from 8:00-8:30)

(You can subscribe/unsubscribe from future notifications for NYC-area events by adding or removing your name from this list.)

--Wikimedia New York City Team 14:20, 24 August 2021 (UTC)

Read-only reminder

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

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

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

A banner will be displayed 30 minutes before the operation.

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

20:33, 24 August 2021 (UTC)

since people won't stop misquoting it, why not change it a bit to avoid confussion?

User:RoySmith/Three best sources/notes you mention the link to another essay, which actually was written after yours, and wrote "three good in-depth references" in bold letters because of your often mentioned essay. Anyway, since people are going to misquote your essay no matter what, why not change it "best sources first"? Plenty of articles are kept with just two, since multiple means more than one so that's all you need, so perhaps mention that. In https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Wikimedia_movement even when you tried to clarify your essay, someone else, not having read what you wrote, just posted "I'm not convinced that WP:GNG has been met with WP:THREE sources. If three sources that each meet GNG can be provided, I will happily switch my !vote". I have seen far too many AFDs with people linking to your essay and insisting three sources are needed. Dream Focus 03:57, 26 August 2021 (UTC)

The problem is, as you say, people cite it without reading it. No amount of editing on my part is going to change that. You can't cure stupidity. Or lazyness. -- RoySmith (talk) 12:44, 26 August 2021 (UTC)

Check

Hello RoySmith! I have a new report which is the same [14] can you check it later if you have time? Thanks! Cornerstone2.0 (talk) 10:36, 27 August 2021 (UTC)

It looks like somebody has already taken care of it. -- RoySmith (talk) 15:13, 27 August 2021 (UTC)
Oh I hope that user will definitely blocked.. I bet he/she won't give up on editing Wikipedia, even some of the edits are so similar to the previous accounts. Cornerstone2.0 (talk) 16:50, 27 August 2021 (UTC)

The Signpost: 29 August 2021

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Tech News: 2021-35

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

Recent changes

Problems

  • Musical scores were unable to render lyrics in some languages because of missing fonts. This has been fixed now. If your language would prefer a different font, please file a request in Phabricator. [15]

Changes later this week

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

Future changes

  • You will be able to read but not edit Commons for a few minutes on 6 September. This will happen around 05:00 UTC. This is for database maintenance.
  • All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes in the week of 13 September. More information will be published in Tech News later. It will also be posted on individual wikis in the coming weeks. [16]

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

15:59, 30 August 2021 (UTC)

account may be operated by real person

Hello, I was perusing Huggle and came across an account RealTravisWalden, who purports to be the mayor of Rock Spring, Georgia and has been adding unencyclopedic material to the article. Because they claim to be a real politician, if I recall correctly they are supposed to be blocked as impersonation until UTRS can determine their identity. However, I cannot find where I should report this account. Any assistance in this matter is appreciated. Thanks,L3X1 ◊distænt write◊ 15:55, 2 September 2021 (UTC)

Hi, and thanks for your note. I'm not an expert in that area, but I suspect WP:COIN might be a good place. The folks who work there are probably more familiar with this kind of thing. -- RoySmith (talk) 16:03, 2 September 2021 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – September 2021

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

Administrator changes

readded Jake Wartenberg
removed Emperor • Viridian Bovary
renamed Ashleyyoursmile → Viridian Bovary

Guideline and policy news

Technical news

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

Arbitration

Miscellaneous

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 20:46, 3 September 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-36

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

Recent changes

  • The wikis that have Growth features deployed have been part of A/B testing since deployment, in which some newcomers did not receive the new features. Now, all of the newcomers on 21 of the smallest of those wikis will be receiving the features. [17]

Changes later this week

  • There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

Future changes

  • Advanced item In 2017, the provided jQuery library was upgraded from version 1 to 3, with a compatibility layer. The migration will soon finish, to make the site load faster for everyone. If you maintain a gadget or user script, check if you have any JQMIGRATE errors and fix them, or they will break. [18][19]
  • Last year, the Portuguese Wikipedia community embarked on an experiment to make log-in compulsory for editing.  The impact report of this trial is ready. Moving forward, the Anti-Harassment Tools team is looking for projects that are willing to experiment with restricting IP editing on their wiki for a short-term experiment. Learn more.

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

15:19, 6 September 2021 (UTC)

WP:LTA/GF36

I think you need to reblock the IP range 72.68.0.0/20 associated with Gabriella. After their block which expired nearly a year ago, they're back to doing the same thing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?target=72.68.0.0%2F20&namespace=all&tagfilter=&start=&end=&limit=50&title=Special%3AContributions

wizzito | say hello! 06:11, 9 September 2021 (UTC)

I certainly see that the range became active again as soon as the block expired, but it's a mobile carrier; that's to be expected. Can you show some examples of edits which make you think it's Gabby again? -- RoySmith (talk) 13:14, 9 September 2021 (UTC)
She's edited Monster High articles as recently as November, but seems to largely be more interested in other subjects.
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Monster_High&diff=prev&oldid=988529384
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Monster_High&diff=prev&oldid=988529148
One of her IP addresses was blocked for 6 months in November, but she went right to editing on another IP address in the same range later. wizzito | say hello! 02:33, 10 September 2021 (UTC)
Also, her typing style and behavior on talk pages seems largely the same; putting personal comments that have nothing to do with editing the article in question. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Luca_(2021_film)&diff=prev&oldid=1028587375 wizzito | say hello! 02:35, 10 September 2021 (UTC)
I'm a bit swamped right now and don't know when I'll be able to get into this. Could I ask you to just open an SPI report so it gets on the queue? Thanks. -- RoySmith (talk) 13:19, 10 September 2021 (UTC)

Image without license

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For more information on using images, see the following pages:

This is an automated notice by MifterBot. For assistance on the image use policy, see Wikipedia:Media copyright questions. NOTE: Once you correct this, please remove the tag from the image's page. --MifterBot (Talk • Contribs • Owner) 01:00, 13 September 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-37

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

Recent changes

Problems

Changes later this week

  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 14 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 15 September. It will be on all wikis from 16 September (calendar).
  • Starting this week, Wikipedia in Italian will receive weekly software updates on Wednesdays. It used to receive the updates on Thursdays. Due to this change, bugs will be noticed and fixed sooner. [22]
  • You can add language links in the sidebar in the new Vector skin again. You do this by connecting the page to a Wikidata item. The new Vector skin has moved the language links but the new language selector cannot add language links yet. [23]
  • The syntax highlight tool marks up code with different colours. It now can highlight 23 new code languages. Additionally, golang can now be used as an alias for the Go programming language, and a special output mode has been added to show a program's output. [24][25]

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

15:32, 13 September 2021 (UTC)

Moles

United Kingdom Internal Market Act 2020 (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) has got more moles that caused you to semi-protect it in May. In the last few days we've seen attempts by 212.187.244.81, 185.104.136.29 and 78.149.2.89 to remove the factual sentence PlainAndSimpleTailor fought so hard against. FDW777 (talk) 07:48, 15 September 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for your note. Could I ask that you file a new SPI report; that will make it easier to process and track. Thanks. -- RoySmith (talk) 16:38, 15 September 2021 (UTC)
Filed a few minutes ago at Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/PlainAndSimpleTailor. FDW777 (talk) 16:39, 15 September 2021 (UTC)

Another report

Hey @RoySmith:! I have another report from this [26] if you want kindly check it? The user keep changing the report, dates and etc and trying to delete his own account. Thanks! Cornerstone2.0 (talk) 16:41, 15 September 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-38

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

Recent changes

  • Growth features are now deployed to almost all Wikipedias. For the majority of small Wikipedias, the features are only available for experienced users, to test the features and configure them. Features will be available for newcomers starting on 20 September 2021.
  • MediaWiki had a feature that would highlight local links to short articles in a different style. Each user could pick the size at which "stubs" would be highlighted. This feature was very bad for performance, and following a consultation, has been removed. [27]
  • A technical change was made to the MonoBook skin to allow for easier maintenance and upkeep. This has resulted in some minor changes to HTML that make MonoBook's HTML consistent with other skins. Efforts have been made to minimize the impact on editors, but please ping Jon (WMF) on wiki or in phabricator if any problems are reported.

Problems

  • There was a problem with search last week. Many search requests did not work for 2 hours because of an accidental restart of the search servers. [28]

Changes later this week

  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 21 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 22 September. It will be on all wikis from 23 September (calendar).
  • Advanced item The meta=proofreadpage API has changed. The piprop parameter has been renamed to prpiprop. API users should update their code to avoid unrecognized parameter warnings. Pywikibot users should upgrade to 6.6.0. [29]

Future changes

  • The Reply tool will be deployed to the remaining wikis in the coming weeks. It is currently part of "Discussion tools" in Beta features at most wikis. You will be able to turn it off in Editing Preferences. [30]
  • Advanced item The previously announced change to how you obtain tokens from the API has been delayed to September 21 because of an incompatibility with Pywikibot. Bot operators using Pywikibot can follow T291202 for progress on a fix, and should plan to upgrade to 6.6.1 when it is released.

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

18:30, 20 September 2021 (UTC)

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