User talk:TheSandDoctor/Archives/2021/January
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The WikiProject Video Games Newsletter, Q4 2020
The WikiProject Video Games Newsletter
Volume 12, No. 4 — 4th Quarter, 2020
Previous issue | Index | Next issue 
Project At a Glance
As of Q4 2020, the project has:
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Content
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(Delivered 08:33, 4 January 2021 (UTC))
--MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 08:33, 4 January 2021 (UTC)
Administrators' newsletter – January 2021
News and updates for administrators from the past month (December 2020).
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Guideline and policy news
- Speedy deletion criterion T3 (duplication and hardcoded instances) has been repealed following a request for comment.
Technical news
- You can now put pages on your watchlist for a limited period of time.
Arbitration
- By motion, standard discretionary sanctions have been temporarily authorized
for all pages relating to the Horn of Africa (defined as including Ethiopia, Somalia, Eritrea, Djibouti, and adjoining areas if involved in related disputes)
. The effectiveness of the discretionary sanctions can be evaluated on the request by any editor after March 1, 2021 (or sooner if for a good reason). - Following the 2020 Arbitration Committee elections, the following editors have been appointed to the Arbitration Committee: Barkeep49, BDD, Bradv, CaptainEek, L235, Maxim, Primefac.
- By motion, standard discretionary sanctions have been temporarily authorized
Hi, TheSandDoctor. An AfD discussion for Harajuku Girls (song) has started. Please feel free to comment if you are interested. Thank you very much, HĐ (talk) 16:13, 7 January 2021 (UTC)
Happy First Edit Day!
Have a very happy first edit anniversary!
From the Birthday Committee, CAPTAIN RAJU(T) 00:46, 8 January 2021 (UTC)
- @CAPTAIN RAJU: It's that time of year again already?! Been a while since that faithful edit that started it all.
--TheSandDoctor Talk 05:34, 8 January 2021 (UTC)
Happy New Year, TheSandDoctor!
TheSandDoctor,
Have a prosperous, productive and enjoyable New Year, and thanks for your contributions to Wikipedia.
–Davey2010Talk 00:36, 1 January 2021 (UTC)
Send New Year cheer by adding {{subst:Happy New Year fireworks}} to user talk pages.
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 choose to be reminded when you have not added an edit summary. This can be done in your preferences. This could conflict with the CAPTCHA. This has now been fixed. [1]
- You can link to specific log entries. You can get these links for example by clicking the timestamps in the log. Until now, such links to private log entries showed no entry even if you had permission to view private log entries. The links now show the entry. [2]
- Admins can use the abuse filter tool to automatically prevent bad edits. Three changes happened last week:
- The filter editing interface now shows syntax errors while you type. This is similar to JavaScript pages. It also shows a warning for regular expressions that match the empty string. New warnings will be added later. [3]
- Oversighters can now hide multiple filter log entries at once using checkboxes on Special:AbuseLog. This is how the usual revision deletion works. [4]
- When a filter matches too many actions after it has been changed it is "throttled". The most powerful actions are disabled. This is to avoid many editors getting blocked when an administrator made a mistake. The administrator will now get a notification about this "throttle".
There is a new tool to build new skins. You can also see existing skins. You can give feedback. [5]- Bots using the API no longer watch pages automatically based on account preferences. Setting the
watchlisttowatchwill still work. This is to reduce the size of the watchlist data in the database. [6] - Scribunto's file metadata now includes length. [7]
- CSS and JavaScript code pages now have link anchors to line numbers. You can use wikilinks like w:en:MediaWiki:Common.js#L-50. [8]
There was a new version of MediaWiki last week. You can read a detailed log of all 763 changes. Most of them are very small and will not affect you.
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 12 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 13 January. It will be on all wikis from 14 January (calendar).
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
15:41, 11 January 2021 (UTC)
Your GA nomination of Paint It Black
Hi there, I'm pleased to inform you that I've begun reviewing the article Paint It Black 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 Legobot, on behalf of Kyle Peake -- Kyle Peake (talk) 19:01, 13 January 2021 (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.
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 19 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 20 January. It will be on all wikis from 21 January (calendar).
Future changes
- The Growth team plans to add features to get more visitors to edit to more Wikipedias. You can help translating the interface.
- You will be able to read but not to edit Wikimedia Commons for a short time on 26 January at 07:00 (UTC). [9]
- MassMessage posts could be automatically timestamped in the future. This is because MassMessage senders can now send pages using MassMessage. Pages are more difficult to sign. If there are times when a MassMessage post should not be timestamped you can let the developers know.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
16:09, 18 January 2021 (UTC)
Editing news 2021 #1
Read this in another language • Subscription list for this newsletter
Reply tool
The Reply tool is available at most other Wikipedias.
- The Reply tool has been deployed as an opt-out preference to all editors at the Arabic, Czech, and Hungarian Wikipedias.
- It is also available as a Beta Feature at almost all Wikipedias except for the English, Russian, and German-language Wikipedias. If it is not available at your wiki, you can request it by following these simple instructions.
Research notes:
- As of January 2021, more than 3,500 editors have used the Reply tool to post about 70,000 comments.
- There is preliminary data from the Arabic, Czech, and Hungarian Wikipedia on the Reply tool. Junior Contributors who use the Reply tool are more likely to publish the comments that they start writing than those who use full-page wikitext editing.[10]
- The Editing and Parsing teams have significantly reduced the number of edits that affect other parts of the page. About 0.3% of edits did this during the last month.[11] Some of the remaining changes are automatic corrections for Special:LintErrors.
A large A/B test will start soon.[12] This is part of the process to offer the Reply tool to everyone. During this test, half of all editors at 24 Wikipedias (not including the English Wikipedia) will have the Reply tool automatically enabled, and half will not. Editors at those Wikipeedias can still turn it on or off for their own accounts in Special:Preferences.
New discussion tool
The new tool for starting new discussions (new sections) will join the Discussion tools in Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-betafeatures at the end of January. You can try the tool for yourself.[13] You can leave feedback in this thread or on the talk page.
Next: Notifications
During Talk pages consultation 2019, editors said that it should be easier to know about new activity in conversations they are interested in. The Notifications project is just beginning. What would help you become aware of new comments? What's working with the current system? Which pages at your wiki should the team look at? Please post your advice at mw:Talk:Talk pages project/Notifications.
–Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 01:02, 23 January 2021 (UTC)
Hey, just to let you know that I have overhauled the article. Though I think it is suitable for GA now (it's still quite a long way for FA), I don't think I'll have enough time to carry on the GAN as I'm retiring in the near future soon... It would be great if you could nominate the article. How do you think? HĐ (talk) 03:54, 18 January 2021 (UTC)
- I would be honoured, though I am still saddened by your retirement. I hope we cross paths again. TheSandDoctor Talk 04:45, 18 January 2021 (UTC)
- @HĐ: What would you think it needs to bring it up to FA quality? Just curious as I probably will want to do that some time. --TheSandDoctor Talk 05:08, 18 January 2021 (UTC)
- I do hope we could cross paths! If possible, just drop me an email via my Wikipedia email and I'm more than happy to have a convo. Regarding Red for FA, I think more substance should be added to the "Music and lyrics" section (for which I have requested a book source from a music professor here). Perhaps more of the "Legacy" section should also be expanded so that the impact of Red on Swift's subsequent pop albums is discussed thoroughly. The rest is okay-ish, I think. HĐ (talk) 13:50, 18 January 2021 (UTC)
- @HĐ: Emailed!
Fingers crossed that that book source arrives soon! Those are good notes for me to go off of, thank you. I have made some edits to the page to improve some of the references from a technical standpoint and will probably do that again later today. I will probably nominate it for GA within a week or 2. --TheSandDoctor Talk 14:16, 18 January 2021 (UTC)
- @HĐ: Emailed!
- I do hope we could cross paths! If possible, just drop me an email via my Wikipedia email and I'm more than happy to have a convo. Regarding Red for FA, I think more substance should be added to the "Music and lyrics" section (for which I have requested a book source from a music professor here). Perhaps more of the "Legacy" section should also be expanded so that the impact of Red on Swift's subsequent pop albums is discussed thoroughly. The rest is okay-ish, I think. HĐ (talk) 13:50, 18 January 2021 (UTC)
- @HĐ: What would you think it needs to bring it up to FA quality? Just curious as I probably will want to do that some time. --TheSandDoctor Talk 05:08, 18 January 2021 (UTC)
Emailed you back! Thank you for reaching me out :) The book source has arrived, so I'll forward it to you in the next few days.
- Another note, I saw you de-italicizing certain sources (i.e. Billboard, Rolling Stone). Although web sources are usually not italicized, I would say that it is better (and more appropriate) to italicize them, given that the "work" parameter of {{Cite web}} is automatically italicized; furthermore, since all paper magazines now all have digital websites, it may be unfair to judge that all content on the web has not been published physically beforehand (I believe interviews and album reviews must have been published on paper before going digital). Just my two cents HĐ (talk) 13:56, 23 January 2021 (UTC)
- @HĐ: I was made aware of that misunderstanding between "work"/website and publisher and shall go back through and revert. --TheSandDoctor Talk 22:02, 23 January 2021 (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.
Problems
- You will be able to read but not to edit Wikimedia Commons for a short time on 26 January at 07:00 (UTC). You will not be able to read or edit Wikitech for a short time on 28 January at 09:00 (UTC). [14][15]
Changes later this week
- Bracket matching will be added to the CodeMirror syntax highlighter on the first wikis. The first wikis are German and Catalan Wikipedia and maybe other Wikimedia wikis. This will happen on 27 January. [16]
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 26 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 27 January. It will be on all wikis from 28 January (calendar).
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
18:30, 25 January 2021 (UTC)
Ted Kaczynski Peer Review
Hello! You have roughly 10% authorship on Ted Kaczynski, which I am currently working on promoting to FA. I plan on going to FAC after this peer review is completed, so if you would like to look over the article and make suggestions it would be appreciated. Thanks! AviationFreak💬 21:04, 25 January 2021 (UTC)
DYK for New Year's Day (Taylor Swift song)
 | On 27 January 2021, Did you know was updated with a fact from the article New Year's Day (Taylor Swift song), which you recently nominated. The fact was ... that "New Year's Day" by Taylor Swift was recorded in "scratch takes" that did not filter out unwanted sounds from the outside environment? The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/New Year's Day (Taylor Swift song). You are welcome to check how many page hits the article got while on the front page (here's how, daily totals), and it may be added to the statistics page if it received over 400 views per hour. 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. |
— Maile (talk) 00:03, 27 January 2021 (UTC)
DYK for Paint It Black
On 31 January 2021, Did you know was updated with a fact from the article Paint It Black, which you recently created, substantially expanded, or brought to good article status. The fact was ... that "Paint It Black" by the Rolling Stones, which was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame, was almost scrapped? The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Paint It Black. You are welcome to check how many pageviews the nominated article or articles got while on the front page (here's how, Paint It Black), and if they received a combined total of at least 416.7 views per hour (ie, 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.