User talk:Xaosflux/Archive37
 | This is an archive of past discussions about User:Xaosflux. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
A barnstar for you!
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The Technical Barnstar |
Awarded for your role in getting the mass message sent out to eligible voters in the 2017 Arbitration Committee elections. Thanks for your help in keeping the community informed!  Mz7 (talk) 00:06, 4 December 2017 (UTC)
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A barnstar for you!
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The Original Barnstar |
| You can guess what this is for - thank you so much for all of your help, it was invaluable. Yunshui 雲水 08:57, 4 December 2017 (UTC) |
Thanks
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For your help at Village pump (technical) |
| Thanks for your help & explanation at VP. Shearonink (talk) 16:32, 6 February 2018 (UTC) |
A barnstar for you!
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|
The Technical Barnstar |
| is hereby awarded to xaosflux for your diligent and honorable stewardship of the MassMessage system , the primary facility for keeping Wikipedians informed – Lionel(talk) 11:24, 8 April 2018 (UTC) |
Newsletter malfunction
Hi xaosflux, the July Ichthus sent out a duplicate. First I tested it here to a small test list (see User_talk:Lionelt/sandbox). It worked fine. I made a small edit to the newsletter, started the tool, previewed it, and then sent to the subscription. But it posted 2 copies to the distribution list. The log shows 2 send commands [1] both at the same timestamp but I'm certain that I only sent 1 newsletter. I don't know what happened. – Lionel(talk) 06:49, 3 July 2018 (UTC)
- @Lionelt: the only time I've seen that type of behavior is if the Special:MassMessage page was refreshed/reloaded while you were in the middle of it, or just error an accidentally hitting send, then back, then send (thinking you hit preview). Also, if you have multiple tabs with the same message in them. Keep an eye on it carefully next time you run it. — xaosflux Talk 11:26, 3 July 2018 (UTC)
Administrators' newsletter – July 2018
News and updates for administrators from the past month (June 2018).
Administrator changes
Pbsouthwood • TheSandDoctor
Gogo Dodo
Andrevan • Doug • EVula • KaisaL • Tony Fox • WilyD
Bureaucrat changes
Guideline and policy news
- An RfC about the deletion of drafts closed with a consensus to change the wording of WP:NMFD. Specifically, a draft that has been repeatedly resubmitted and declined at AfC without any substantial improvement may be deleted at MfD if consensus determines that it is unlikely to ever meet the requirements for mainspace and it otherwise meets one of the reasons for deletion outlined in the deletion policy.
- A request for comment closed with a consensus that the {{promising draft}} template cannot be used to indefinitely prevent a WP:G13 speedy deletion nomination.
Technical news
- Starting on July 9, the WMF Security team, Trust & Safety, and the broader technical community will be seeking input on an upcoming change that will restrict editing of site-wide JavaScript and CSS to a new technical administrators user group. Bureaucrats and stewards will be able to grant this right per a community-defined process. The intention is to reduce the number of accounts who can edit frontend code to those who actually need to, which in turn lessens the risk of malicious code being added that compromises the security and privacy of everyone who accesses Wikipedia. For more information, please review the FAQ.
- Syntax highlighting has been graduated from a Beta feature on the English Wikipedia. To enable this feature, click the highlighter icon (
) in your editing toolbar (or under the hamburger menu in the 2017 wikitext editor). This feature can help prevent you from making mistakes when editing complex templates. - IP-based cookie blocks should be deployed to English Wikipedia in July (previously scheduled for June). This will cause the block of a logged-out user to be reloaded if they change IPs. This means in most cases, you may no longer need to do /64 range blocks on residential IPv6 addresses in order to effectively block the end user. It will also help combat abuse from IP hoppers in general. For the time being, it only affects users of the desktop interface.
Miscellaneous
- Currently around 20% of admins have enabled two-factor authentication, up from 17% a year ago. If you haven't already enabled it, please consider doing so. Regardless if you use 2FA, please practice appropriate account security by ensuring your password is secure and unique to Wikimedia.
You've got mail!
Message added 23:25, 5 July 2018 (UTC). It may take a few minutes from the time the email is sent for it to show up in your inbox. You can at any time by removing the {{You've got mail}} or {{ygm}} template.
Home Lander (talk) 23:25, 5 July 2018 (UTC)
- @Home Lander: replied. — xaosflux Talk 23:46, 5 July 2018 (UTC)
- Ditto. Thanks. Home Lander (talk) 23:54, 5 July 2018 (UTC)
Yobot 59
I am in vacation. I'll resubmit when back home.Porbably by the end of this month. -- Magioladitis (talk) 15:22, 6 July 2018 (UTC)
- @Magioladitis: have a nice vacation, feel free to reopen that at any time in the future and we can schedule a new trial. — xaosflux Talk 15:24, 6 July 2018 (UTC)
Please comment on Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Biography
The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Biography. Legobot (talk) 04:30, 8 July 2018 (UTC)
Happy Bureaucratship
Fluxbot is adding unclosed italics
On 8 July 2018, Fluxbot added unclosed italics to
Please make it stop doing this. —Anomalocaris (talk) 08:28, 9 July 2018 (UTC)
- @Anomalocaris: already stopped and fixed, was part of a small trial run. — xaosflux Talk 12:06, 9 July 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
- WebM video files have smaller file size but still be of the same quality. Creating WebM files will take longer time. [2]
- The new filters for edit review tools and interface for watchlists will leave beta. This was supposed to already have happened but was delayed. For most wikis this will happen on 9 July. For the rest it will happen on 16 July. [3]
All wikis now use the Remex parsing library instead of Tidy. This could cause errors. You can help fix the errors. [4]
Problems
- When you rolled back an edit it could get both the
RollbackandUndotags. This has been fixed. [5] - Rollbacks from autopatrolled users were not marked as patrolled. This has been fixed. [6]
Changes later this week
- When you edit a link in the visual editor there will be two separate buttons to change which page the link goes to (target) or its text (label). [7][8]
- On the mobile version you can find a link to an editor's contributions from their user page. Now this will work even if they haven't created a user page. [9]
- When you edit a discussion on the mobile version you sometimes get your signature automatically added. This will now not happen if you have already added a signature manually. This is to avoid double signatures. [10]
- Structured discussions toolbars will have more style options. [11]
- When you look at Wikimedia code in Gerrit there will be a new interface. It is on by default for new users. This is also true for developers. This is to make it easier to understand what is happening. [12]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 10 July. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 11 July. It will be on all wikis from 12 July (calendar).
Meetings
- You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 10 July at 18:30 (UTC). See how to join.
- You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 11 July at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
- Today all administrators can edit CSS and JavaScript for the entire wiki. There will be a new user group for editing CSS and JavaScript. Administrators will no longer automatically be able to do this. This is because it is a security risk when all administrator accounts can edit JavaScript even if they never plan to or do not know how it works. You can read more. [13]
- Page previews will be on by default for new accounts. [14]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
23:09, 9 July 2018 (UTC)
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If you have feedback on how to make SuggestBot better, please let us know on SuggestBot's talk page. -- SuggestBot (talk) 11:54, 11 July 2018 (UTC)
Please comment on Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)
The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Wikipedia:Village pump (policy). Legobot (talk) 04:28, 15 July 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 now use global preferences on Wikimedia wikis. You can set them on the global preferences page. [15]
- You can now see a new log of pages being created at Special:Log/create. It includes pages which are later deleted. It is now available on all Wikimedia wikis except Commons and Wikidata. [16]
- You can see how many pageviews a wiki had from specific countries. The Wikistats2 maps have now been updated. [17]
Changes later this week
- Your watchlist will show changes from the last seven days instead of three. If you have already set a length preference it will not change. [18]
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from July 17. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from July 18. It will be on all wikis from July 19 (calendar).
Meetings
- You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on July 17 at 18:30 (UTC). See how to join.
- You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on July 18 at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
- Some articles have messages to readers about problems with the article. For example that it does not cite sources or might not be neutral. Readers do not see these messages on the mobile version. The developers now want to show them. You can read more and leave feedback.
- You can use
<inputbox>to create search boxes for specific pages. For example to search the archives of a community discussion page. Instead ofprefix:Page nameyou will see a text that explains which pages are being searched. You can read more and leave feedback.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
16:01, 16 July 2018 (UTC)
Please comment on Talk:Milwaukee Bucks
The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Talk:Milwaukee Bucks. Legobot (talk) 04:30, 21 July 2018 (UTC)
Query
This appears to be well within the threshold of automated/semiautomatic editing for requiring a bot-request given the amount of articles. Was there one do you know? Is there a reason it wouldn't require one? Because adding a template that makes no visible change to the output of an article (It didn't on any of the ones on my watchlist or some of the others I checked) on that many articles without a discussion seems odd. Only in death does duty end (talk) 02:18, 22 July 2018 (UTC)
- @Only in death: I think a lot of that editors runs would be better under a bot account but I'm not ready to start that fight. — xaosflux Talk 13:05, 22 July 2018 (UTC)
- The reason I am querying it with yourself is to find out if this specific task should have had a bot-request, being a high-speed automated/semi-automated change to many articles, my reading of BOTPOL was that it should, but I am unsure. If its not, its annoying but not prohibited by policy. If it should be, its both annoying and prohibited by policy... Would it be better to ask at BAG? Only in death does duty end (talk) 14:12, 22 July 2018 (UTC)
- @Only in death: first, note this ... BAG only has purview over actual bots, editors that are violating editing guidelines in general are a community/administrator matter. If this editor wants to file a BRFA, we would be happy to review it. — xaosflux Talk 14:30, 22 July 2018 (UTC)
- So to find out if a task *should* have required a bot request, I need to ask the community/administrators, rather than BAG who actually vet bot requests? That seems... backwards? Only in death does duty end (talk) 15:20, 22 July 2018 (UTC)
- @Only in death: first, note this ... BAG only has purview over actual bots, editors that are violating editing guidelines in general are a community/administrator matter. If this editor wants to file a BRFA, we would be happy to review it. — xaosflux Talk 14:30, 22 July 2018 (UTC)
- The reason I am querying it with yourself is to find out if this specific task should have had a bot-request, being a high-speed automated/semi-automated change to many articles, my reading of BOTPOL was that it should, but I am unsure. If its not, its annoying but not prohibited by policy. If it should be, its both annoying and prohibited by policy... Would it be better to ask at BAG? Only in death does duty end (talk) 14:12, 22 July 2018 (UTC)
- ..."anyone can edit"... ; if the edits are bad: revert, if they are causing other problems (like flooding recent changes or watchlists due to speed and volume) first discuss with the editor. Someone adding a template to say 100 articles with AWB probably doesn't need a bot task, adding it to 10000+ probably does - in between is a grey area for sure and edits-per-interval are a major factor. How to proceed depends a lot on what you want the outcome to be. — xaosflux Talk 16:20, 22 July 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
- When you log in to your account you can choose to keep being logged in. This checkbox now works better than before on the mobile version for users without JavaScript. [19]
- Wikis that use Citoid can automatically generate citations for Swedish news sites. This only works in the visual editor. This now works for Swedish public service radio. More will come. Others could use this to add news sites in other languages in the future. [20]
- Editors can do max 90 edits per minute. This is new since last month. This does not affect bots or administrators. [21]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 24 July. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 25 July. It will be on all wikis from 26 July (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 25 July at 15:00 (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.
09:44, 24 July 2018 (UTC)
Hi there. This sandbox article of mine was deleted while I was retired. I’ve since come back to editing and was curious if you could restore this for me?
Thanks!—White Shadows Let’s Talk 05:06, 25 July 2018 (UTC)
- @White Shadows: welcome back! I've restored your sandbox page, happy editing, — xaosflux Talk 11:19, 25 July 2018 (UTC)
Please comment on Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Television
The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Television. Legobot (talk) 04:28, 28 July 2018 (UTC)
It may take a few minutes from the time the email is sent for it to show up in your inbox. You can at any time by removing the {{You've got mail}} or {{ygm}} template.
Trijnsteltalk 20:22, 29 July 2018 (UTC)
- Replied. — xaosflux Talk 21:20, 29 July 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
- The design on Special:Log has changed. It will change again soon. Developers are working on fixing problems. [22]
Problems
- Deployment of 1.32.0-wmf.13 has been partially delayed. All deployments have been resumed and successfully done after bug fixes. [23][24]
- Deployment of 1.32.0-wmf.14 has been partially delayed. [25][26]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 31 July. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 1 August. It will be on all wikis from 2 August (calendar).
Meetings
- You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 31 July at 18:30 (UTC). See how to join.
- You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 1 August at 15:00 (UTC) as well as at 23:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
- After a community discussion, a new group for users will be created. "Interface administrators" will be the only users allowed to edit interface pages like MediaWiki:Common.css or MediaWiki:Common.js. This is done to avoid technical issues and improve security. That change will be effective by the end of August 2018.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
14:05, 30 July 2018 (UTC)
Filters 925 and 926
Hi. Can you email (or copy to the testwiki) filters 925/926? Another spree got through today and I want to see if my ideas are any different from what's already being done. Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 21:46, 31 July 2018 (UTC)
- @Suffusion of Yellow: send me a diff you think these filters might be useful for first please. — xaosflux Talk 22:20, 31 July 2018 (UTC)
- Special:Diff/852805327 and everything else from the same IP. Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 22:28, 31 July 2018 (UTC)
It may take a few minutes from the time the email is sent for it to show up in your inbox. You can at any time by removing the {{You've got mail}} or {{ygm}} template.
— xaosflux Talk 00:48, 1 August 2018 (UTC)
- Thanks. My own ideas would be a marginal improvement at best, but I may send something to MusikAnimal tomorrow if more gets through. Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 06:10, 1 August 2018 (UTC)
The Signpost: 31 July 2018
- From the editor: If only if
- Opinion: Wrestling with Wikipedia reality
- Discussion report: Wikipedias take action against EU copyright proposal, plus new user right proposals
- Featured content: Wikipedia's best content in images and prose
- Arbitration report: Status quo processes retained in two disputes
- Traffic report: Soccer, football, call it what you like – that and summer movies leave room for little else
- Technology report: New bots, new prefs
- Recent research: Different Wikipedias use different images; editing contests more successful than edit-a-thons
- Humour: It's all the same
- Essay: Wikipedia does not need you
Please comment on Help talk:Citation Style 1
The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Help talk:Citation Style 1. Legobot (talk) 04:30, 3 August 2018 (UTC)
Request for block
I just need to request you that please block user Mike V because that user is not editing as it is inactive. Mike V has not benn editing from December 2016 so that user needs to be blocked. Thank you. 171.79.23.108 (talk) 05:49, 4 August 2018 (UTC)
- We don't block users for "being inactive" but we do remove their advanced permissions as was already done for this user. — xaosflux Talk 14:06, 4 August 2018 (UTC)
Administrators' newsletter – August 2018
News and updates for administrators from the past month (July 2018).
Administrator changes
Guideline and policy news
- After a discussion at Meta, a new user group called "interface administrators" (formerly "technical administrator") has been created. Come the end of August, interface admins will be the only users able to edit site-wide JavaScript and CSS pages like MediaWiki:Common.js and MediaWiki:Common.css, or edit other user's personal JavaScript and CSS. The intention is to improve security and privacy by reducing the number of accounts which could be used to compromise the site or another user's account through malicious code. The new user group can be assigned and revoked by bureaucrats. Discussion is ongoing to establish details for implementing the group on the English Wikipedia.
- Following a request for comment, the WP:SISTER style guideline now states that in the mainspace, interwiki links to Wikinews should only be made as per the external links guideline. This generally means that within the body of an article, you should not link to Wikinews about a particular event that is only a part of the larger topic. Wikinews links in "external links" sections can be used where helpful, but not automatically if an equivalent article from a reliable news outlet could be linked in the same manner.
Technical news
- The WMF Anti-Harassment Tools team is seeking input on the second set of wireframes for the Special:Block redesign that will introduce partial blocks. The new functionality will allow you to block a user from editing a specific set of pages, pages in a category, a namespace, and for specific actions such as moving pages and uploading files.
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
- Special:NewPages now has the OOUI look. [27]
Problems
- The MediaWiki version that was released two weeks ago was late to some Wikimedia wikis. This was because of bugs. It was on all wikis 30 July. [28][29]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 7 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 8 August. It will be on all wikis from 9 August.
Meetings
- You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 7 August at 18:30 (UTC). See how to join.
- You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 8 August at 15:00 (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.
19:39, 6 August 2018 (UTC)
Hello fellow bureaucrats, in regards to a current RfA that has met its time, I would like your assistance in judging the community consensus presented in the discussion at Jbhunley's RfA. Your input would be most welcome at Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Jbhunley/Bureaucrat chat. Best regards, MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 03:37, 7 August 2018 (UTC)
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SuggestBot picks articles in a number of ways based on other articles you've edited, including straight text similarity, following wikilinks, and matching your editing patterns against those of other Wikipedians. It tries to recommend only articles that other Wikipedians have marked as needing work. We appreciate that you have signed up to receive suggestions regularly; your contributions make Wikipedia better — thanks for helping!
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Please comment on Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Dates and numbers
The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Dates and numbers. Legobot (talk) 04:28, 10 August 2018 (UTC)
in the greatest artist of all time list Chris Brown should have 19 million units in the uk instead of 10 million i have source to support this claim chart data is also a music sale database also https://twitter.com/chartdata/status/982634107694919680 he also just got a new certification too https://twitter.com/chartdata/status/1028711464649904129 --User:Bhris breezy (talk) 09:59, 12 August 2018 (UTC
- Hello Bhris breezy To request an edit to the Chris Brown article go to: this link and click the request an edit button, it will leave a message for others to review. — xaosflux Talk 00:22, 13 August 2018 (UTC)
AWB
Hi. I hope you are well. Would please take a look at Wikipedia talk:AutoWikiBrowser#adding talkpage banner? Your help will be appreciated a lot. Thanks a lot in advance, —usernamekiran(talk) 22:13, 12 August 2018 (UTC)
- @Usernamekiran: I'm not sure what the best way to fix that is. — xaosflux Talk 00:23, 13 August 2018 (UTC)
- Thanks for looking into it :) —usernamekiran(talk) 00:48, 13 August 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
- CSS in templates can now be stored in a separate page on all wikis. This is called TemplateStyles. This is to make it easier to edit how templates look. [30]
Changes later this week
- There is no new MediaWiki version this week.
Meetings
- You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 14 August at 18:30 (UTC). See how to join.
- You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 15 August at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
- The developers are planning more ways to block users. This could be blocking someone from just a page or a namespace. You can read more. You can leave feedback on the talk page. [31]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
17:53, 13 August 2018 (UTC)
Recent reverts on WT:INTADMIN
Sorry about that, my finger slipped and hit the rollback button! Enterprisey (talk!) 02:25, 15 August 2018 (UTC)
Please comment on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Taiwan
The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Taiwan. Legobot (talk) 04:30, 17 August 2018 (UTC)
Bots Newsletter, August 2018
| Bots Newsletter, August 2018 | |
|---|---|
 Greetings! Here is the 6th issue of the Bots Newsletter. You can subscribe/unsubscribe from future newsletters by adding/removing your name from this list. Highlights for this newsletter include:
As of writing, we have...
Also
These are some of the discussions that happened / are still happening since the last Bots Newsletter. Many are stale, but some are still active.
Thank you! edited by: Headbomb 15:04, 18 August 2018 (UTC) (You can subscribe or unsubscribe from future newsletters by adding or removing your name from this list.) | |
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 21 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 22 August. It will be on all wikis from 23 August (calendar).
Meetings
- You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 22 August at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
- The 2018 Community Wishlist Survey begins on 29 October. The survey decides what the Community Tech team will work on. You can post proposals from 29 October to 11 November. You can vote on proposals from 16 November to 30 November.
- Legacy JavaScript global variables have been deprecated for seven years. They will soon be removed from all wikis. Gadgets and scripts that use them will stop working. You can test your community's gadgets on "group0" wikis. For example Test Wikipedia or mediawiki.org. The legacy JavaScript global variables are already disabled there. You can read the migration guide to fix old scripts. [32]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
16:46, 20 August 2018 (UTC)
Edit filter idea...
Sometime back, I asked, and I believe you replied, at VPT or somewhere about the idea of an edit filter that would trip when "{{User:" or "{{User talk:" was added to pages, to stop accidental transclusions of user and user talk pages. It happened again at ANI, fixed here. Would this filter be difficult to create/enable? Home Lander (talk) 23:00, 20 August 2018 (UTC) is it only a problem in certain namespaces? The narrower the better (e.g. watching in (article) space is expensive). — xaosflux Talk 00:26, 21 August 2018 (UTC)
- Particularly the WP namespace, where it would get flagged at AN/ANI, RPP, the help desk, and similar. Home Lander (talk) 01:19, 21 August 2018 (UTC)
- @Home Lander: OK, I created a filter - it is in log only right now, feel free to keep an eye on edits hitting 928's log after now. — xaosflux Talk 02:34, 21 August 2018 (UTC)
- Yes I was just watching that (actually managed to trip it already). Home Lander (talk) 02:36, 21 August 2018 (UTC)
- @Home Lander: I had some overly greedy regex in there at first, it shouldn't be hitting on that stuff anymore. — xaosflux Talk 02:37, 21 August 2018 (UTC)
- Yeah I figured it was picking up anything even without the ":". Home Lander (talk) 02:38, 21 August 2018 (UTC)
- @Home Lander: OK, I created a filter - it is in log only right now, feel free to keep an eye on edits hitting 928's log after now. — xaosflux Talk 02:34, 21 August 2018 (UTC)
- Particularly the WP namespace, where it would get flagged at AN/ANI, RPP, the help desk, and similar. Home Lander (talk) 01:19, 21 August 2018 (UTC)
It seems to be working. Note that "namespace" is misspelled in the filter description. 
Home Lander (talk) 02:41, 21 August 2018 (UTC)
- Thanks to Drmies for proving the purpose of this filter.
Home Lander (talk) 03:17, 21 August 2018 (UTC)
- Eh did it do something? I had to go and correct myself... Drmies (talk) 03:19, 21 August 2018 (UTC)
- @Drmies: It's just in testing at the moment. Home Lander (talk) 03:20, 21 August 2018 (UTC)
- Watching for FP's right now, then will give a "warn" on these actions. — xaosflux Talk 03:21, 21 August 2018 (UTC)
- Look, why don't y'all make a Nazi filter--that would be more useful to me. :) Drmies (talk) 03:22, 21 August 2018 (UTC)
- I know, we probably have a ton of those already, and I thank you for them. Sorry, that was dumb. Drmies (talk) 03:22, 21 August 2018 (UTC)
- Looks like there are at least 4 of them :D — xaosflux Talk 03:25, 21 August 2018 (UTC)
- Should we also check talk namespaces, except user talk? I imagine this happens a lot on mainspace talk pages, in particular — MusikAnimal talk 03:35, 21 August 2018 (UTC)
- Or frankly you might check user talk too. People do transclude parts of their userspace on their user page, but if all we're doing is showing a warning then this should be fine. Right? — MusikAnimal talk 03:39, 21 August 2018 (UTC)
- Looks like there are at least 4 of them :D — xaosflux Talk 03:25, 21 August 2018 (UTC)
- Watching for FP's right now, then will give a "warn" on these actions. — xaosflux Talk 03:21, 21 August 2018 (UTC)
- @Drmies: It's just in testing at the moment. Home Lander (talk) 03:20, 21 August 2018 (UTC)
- Eh did it do something? I had to go and correct myself... Drmies (talk) 03:19, 21 August 2018 (UTC)
- @MusikAnimal: maybe - seems like this happens mostly to the more "technical" editors that are in a hurry. @Home Lander: have you been seeing this elsewhere recently? — xaosflux Talk 03:41, 21 August 2018 (UTC)
- And I think there may be plenty of legit use cases, so would not want to set this to disallow. — xaosflux Talk 03:42, 21 August 2018 (UTC)
- It's not happening all the time, just one of those occasional things that when it does happen, no one seems to know how to fix it (typically a trip to ANI or VPT is the result). I agree that the talk namespace would probably be a good target for it. Home Lander (talk) 03:45, 21 August 2018 (UTC)
- And I think there may be plenty of legit use cases, so would not want to set this to disallow. — xaosflux Talk 03:42, 21 August 2018 (UTC)
IA nomination
Hello Xaosflux, I've nominated you for a temporary interface administrator access grant at Wikipedia_talk:Interface_administrators#Stop-gap_users_nominated. If you do not wish to have this foisted upon you, feel free to remove yourself from the listing. Thank you, — xaosflux Talk 02:49, 22 August 2018 (UTC)
Please comment on Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)
The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals). Legobot (talk) 04:30, 23 August 2018 (UTC)
Template help
Hello Xaosflux, I need some help with a custom user template User:FlightTime/Uw-Consensus. I have it loaded in my custom warning section of Twinkle and used Twinkle to post it on a page of my old account here User talk:Mlpearc Public. As you can see the template is posting two section headers, how can I remove the auto posting of == August 2018 == ? I have == Please seek consensus == hard coded in the template. If you have a moment your input would be appreciated, Thanx - FlightTime (open channel) 13:42, 26 August 2018 (UTC)
- @FlightTime: in general, Twinkle always make a "month" section to keep warning together so when you leave multiple messages, or multiple people leave message they can be grouped. Most twinkle message don't use section headers. I suggest you don't try to fight twinkle's process on this, but if you really want a section header use a lower level header like "===". — xaosflux Talk 14:45, 26 August 2018 (UTC)
- Thank you, no wonder I couldn't figure what was triggering the header, I thought it was the template, but its Twinkle thats posting the first header. Thanx for your time and your input. Cheers, - FlightTime (open channel) 14:51, 26 August 2018 (UTC)
Interface administrator
Hi Xaosflux, per Special:Diff/856641107, I have temporarily added the interface administrator user-right to your account. I'm sure the temporary part of that will change to permanent once we have a mechanism to agree it! WormTT(talk) 17:36, 26 August 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 now see moved paragraphs in diffs in the mobile view. It also works on all languages in the desktop view. [33]
- Bureaucrats on all Wikimedia wikis can now remove the interface admin user right. [34]
Problems
- Some diffs show lines in the wrong order. The developers are working on fixing it. [35]
Changes later this week
- The message you see when you thank a user will change. This is to make it easier to understand. [36]
- AWB will stop adding
using AWBin the edit summary. Instead it will add a tag that saysAWB. [37] - Some abuse filter variables have changed. They are now easier to understand for non-experts. The old variables will still work but filter editors are encouraged to replace them with the new ones. You can find the list of changed variables on mediawiki.org. They have a note which says
Deprecated. Use ... instead. An example isarticle_textwhich is nowpage_title. [38] - Abuse filters can now use how old a page is. The variable is
page_age. [39] - The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 28 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 29 August. It will be on all wikis from 30 August (calendar).
Meetings
- You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 28 August at 18:30 (UTC). See how to join.
- You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 29 August at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
- Because of a data centre test you will be able to read but not edit the wikis for up to an hour on 12 September and 10 October. This will start at 14:00 (UTC). You might lose edits if you try to save during this time. The time when you can't edit might be shorter than an hour. You can read more about this.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
16:16, 27 August 2018 (UTC)
Number of Redirects
Are redirects included in {{NUMBEROFARTICLES}}? —Eli355 (talk | contribs) 16:49, 28 August 2018 (UTC)
- (talk page watcher) eli355, No. One can see here for the number of redirects and pages per namespace Galobtter (pingó mió) 17:16, 28 August 2018 (UTC)
- @Eli355: see also mw:Manual:Article_count, to be counted it has to not be a redirect, and also contain at least one wikilink. — xaosflux Talk 17:18, 28 August 2018 (UTC)
- Does {{NUMBEROFPAGES}} only include pages with at least one wikilink? —Eli355 (talk | contribs) 16:54, 29 August 2018 (UTC)
- @Eli355: as far as I'm aware, it includes any page, regardless of content. See also mw:Help:Magic_words#Statistics. — xaosflux Talk 16:59, 29 August 2018 (UTC)
- Does {{NUMBEROFPAGES}} only include pages with at least one wikilink? —Eli355 (talk | contribs) 16:54, 29 August 2018 (UTC)
The Signpost: 30 August 2018
- From the editor: Today's young adults don't know a world without Wikipedia
- News and notes: Flying high; low practice from Wikipedia 'cleansing' agency; where do our donations go? RfA sees a new trend
- In the media: Quicksilver AI writes articles
- Discussion report: Drafting an interface administrator policy
- Featured content: Featured content selected by the community
- Special report: Wikimania 2018
- Traffic report: Aretha dies – getting just 2,000 short of 5 million hits
- Technology report: Technical enhancements and a request to prioritize upcoming work
- Recent research: Wehrmacht on Wikipedia, neural networks writing biographies
- Humour: Signpost editor censors herself
- From the archives: Playing with Wikipedia words
Please comment on Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style
The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style. Legobot (talk) 04:31, 30 August 2018 (UTC)
Courtesy message
It may take a few minutes from the time the email is sent for it to show up in your inbox. You can at any time by removing the {{You've got mail}} or {{ygm}} template.
Deryck C. 22:47, 31 August 2018 (UTC)
Curiosity
I just happened to glance at Special:Statistics and noticed that there is a user category for Copyright violation bots which red links to WP:Copyviobot. Do you know if this is something new? -- Dolotta (talk) 18:31, 1 September 2018 (UTC)
- @Dolotta: looks like this is part of phab:T199359 - it's not "live" yet, and I don't know much about it either (yet!). — xaosflux Talk 18:43, 1 September 2018 (UTC)
- I posted at WP:BOTN with pings to some related people. — xaosflux Talk 18:52, 1 September 2018 (UTC)
- Thanks, Xausflux. You are always amazingly great at finding the right page. Happy editing! -- Dolotta (talk) 19:02, 1 September 2018 (UTC)
- @Dolotta: Who is this "Xausflux" you speak of? SemiHypercube ✎ 20:02, 1 September 2018 (UTC)
- @SemiHypercube: Servs me write not botering to us spel chek! ;-) -- Dolotta (talk) 20:14, 1 September 2018 (UTC)
- I posted at WP:BOTN with pings to some related people. — xaosflux Talk 18:52, 1 September 2018 (UTC)
Administrators' newsletter – September 2018
News and updates for administrators from the past month (August 2018).
Administrator changes
- None
- Asterion • Crisco 1492 • KF • Kudpung • Liz • Randykitty • Spartaz
Optimist on the run → Voice of Clam
Interface administrator changes
- Amorymeltzer • Mr. Stradivarius • MusikAnimal • MSGJ • TheDJ • Xaosflux
Guideline and policy news
- Following a "stop-gap" discussion, six users have temporarily been made interface administrators while discussion is ongoing for a more permanent process for assigning the permission. Interface administrators are now the only editors allowed to edit sitewide CSS and JavaScript pages, as well as CSS/JS pages in another user's userspace. Previously, all administrators had this ability. The right can be granted and revoked by bureaucrats.
Technical news
- Because of a data centre test you will be able to read but not edit the wikis for up to an hour on 12 September and 10 October. This will start at 14:00 (UTC). You might lose edits if you try to save during this time. The time when you can't edit might be shorter than an hour.
- Some abuse filter variables have changed. They are now easier to understand for non-experts. The old variables will still work but filter editors are encouraged to replace them with the new ones. You can find the list of changed variables on mediawiki.org. They have a note which says
Deprecated. Use ... instead. An example isarticle_textwhich is nowpage_title. - Abuse filters can now use how old a page is. The variable is
page_age.
Arbitration
- The Arbitration Committee has resolved to perform a round of Checkuser and Oversight appointments. The usernames of all applicants will be shared with the Functionaries team, and they will be requested to assist in the vetting process. The deadline to submit an application is 23:59 UTC, 12 September, and the candidates that move forward will be published on-wiki for community comments on 18 September.
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
- There is a new user right for users who can edit CSS and JavaScript for the entire wiki. Before this all admins could edit CSS and JavaScript. This was a security risk. This group is called interface administrators. Administrators can delete user CSS and JavaScript pages. [40][41]
- There will be an A/B test on the Wikipedia mobile website. It starts this week. It tests how we show templates that show information about an article. The test will last two weeks. [42][43]
- You can now use different CSS rules for different skins when you edit templates. This is because of TemplateStyles. [44]
wp10in ORES is now calledarticlequality. [45]- When you get a new message on your talk page you get a yellow message in the toolbar. The preference to show or not show this has been removed. [46]
Problems
- UploadWizard had problems with campaigns. Users could not upload files. This has now been fixed. [47]
- You can get a notification when a link is made to a page you created. This has not worked since June. It was fixed last week. [48]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 4 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 5 September. It will be on all wikis from 6 September (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 5 September at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
- The Wikimedia Foundation Readers department will work on advanced mobile editing. You can read more about this and other things they plan to work on over the next year. You can also see the presentation.
- The RelatedSites extension will be removed from Wikivoyage.
- Unused projects on the Wikimedia Cloud virtual private server will be removed. This will happen in October. Projects can be marked if they are being used. [49]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
16:47, 3 September 2018 (UTC)
Navbox templates
Is adding a Navbox templates to the bottom of a page a minor edit? —Eli355 (talk | contribs) 19:35, 3 September 2018 (UTC)
- @Eli355: according to the guidance at Help:Minor edit, adding new content-containing material should not be considered "minor" in general. — xaosflux Talk 20:11, 3 September 2018 (UTC)
Articles you might like to edit, from SuggestBot
Note: All columns in this table are sortable, allowing you to rearrange the table so the articles most interesting to you are shown at the top. All images have mouse-over popups with more information. For more information about the columns and categories, please consult the documentation and please get in touch on SuggestBot's talk page with any questions you might have.
SuggestBot picks articles in a number of ways based on other articles you've edited, including straight text similarity, following wikilinks, and matching your editing patterns against those of other Wikipedians. It tries to recommend only articles that other Wikipedians have marked as needing work. We appreciate that you have signed up to receive suggestions regularly; your contributions make Wikipedia better — thanks for helping!
If you have feedback on how to make SuggestBot better, please let us know on SuggestBot's talk page. -- SuggestBot (talk) 11:47, 5 September 2018 (UTC)
Requests for permissions
You reorganised {{Requests for permissions}} into Common & Uncommon a while back. Unless you have some strange criteria in mind I think Event Coordinator & Extended Confirmed need to be switched, as everyone (eventually) gets Extended Confirmed while needs to be applied for & a reason given. I'll go ahead & make the change but feel free to revert if I've got something wrong. Regards, Cabayi (talk) 16:23, 5 September 2018 (UTC)
- @Cabayi: no big deal for me. It is unusual for editors to "request" extended confirmed, specifically because it is automatically assigned. I moved EVC up to encourage people to use it over the older "account creator" since it is now better suited for event management. — xaosflux Talk 16:58, 5 September 2018 (UTC)
Please comment on Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Dates and numbers
The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Dates and numbers. Legobot (talk) 04:29, 6 September 2018 (UTC)
Moving the revision search along
Apologies that this has gotten bogged down in the details. Don’t know if you saw I’m ok w your ‘Change search ’. And I’m actually ok with ‘Revision search’ if the top box was labeled ‘Search for revision by tag’. Given that all seem to agree on cutting down the verbiage (3 words to 2) in the external tool labels and no one has objected to the reordering, how can we best move ahead from here? Also I have a minor related suggestion if you have the bandwidth for that. Humanengr (talk) 19:23, 6 September 2018 (UTC)
- @Humanengr: hi, I haven't really been following up on this - if a consensus has been reached on the talk page, just reactivate the edit-request by changing "answered=yes" to "answered=no" and one of the patrolling admins will pick it up. Best regards, — xaosflux Talk 21:31, 6 September 2018 (UTC)
Oops!
Hello Xaosflux!
It's been a while since I've been around these parts; I apologize for missing your message. It seems I've been marked as inactive in regard to several tools/permissions (rightfully so). I do intend to be more active in the near future—I've been missing Wikipedia! I noticed you removed my account creator right due to inactivity for over a year; out of curiosity, does inactivity only count edits and not log actions? The reason I ask is because I last worked at ACC on 29 April 2018.
I hope you're well! MJ94 (talk) 00:53, 9 September 2018 (UTC)
- @MJ94: I've restored your ACC flag, I do so many of these I don't think I even remembered sending you that message! Drop a note at WP:PERM/AWB if you still have use for AWB (just say you removed for 'inactivity' but are now back to avoid a long discussion and to get that bot off your back). To answer your question, your "logged actions" should count towards activity - but many of the reports/bots/etc that look for inactivity usually only check edits since they are much more common. Thanks for taking this in stride, please note nothing was meant as a judgement against you. If you need anything else, please let me know. — xaosflux Talk 01:03, 9 September 2018 (UTC)
2FA tester group
Can you please add me to the 2FA tester group? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Lucent (talk • contribs) 17:59, 10 September 2018 (UTC)
- @Lucent: you have to request this on meta at this page: meta:Steward_requests/Global_permissions#Requests_for_other_global_permissions. — xaosflux Talk 18:08, 10 September 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
- When you added or edited a template with the visual editor the input boxes were very big. This has been fixed. The input boxes will now be smaller until you click on them. Then they will change size to fit the text. [50]
Problems
- Some diffs showed lines in the wrong order. This was fixed last week. [51]
- Marking a cross-wiki notification as read didn't work every time. The other wiki was not updated. This has now been fixed. [52]
<maplink>did not work for a few days. This was because of a bug. This has now been fixed. [53]{{subst:REVISIONUSER}}is used by some templates. For a period edits saved with{{subst:REVISIONUSER}}would save the previous user's name and not your username. This is now fixed. Edits made before the bug was fixed will still be wrong and need to be corrected. [54]- When you move a page the title still shows the old page name. The developers are working on fixing this. [55]
Changes later this week
- Because of a data centre test you will be able to read but not edit the wikis for up to an hour on 12 September and 10 October. This will start at 14:00 (UTC). You might lose edits if you try to save during this time. The time when you can't edit might be shorter than an hour. You can read more about this.
- Because of the data centre test there will be no new version of MediaWiki this week. Changes for this week will come next week instead.
Meetings
- You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 11 Septmber at 18:30 (UTC). See how to join.
- You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 12 September at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
- The developers work on making the wikis work better on mobile phones. There is a list of common problems when making content easier to read in the mobile view. You can add things to the page and ask others to help.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
22:35, 10 September 2018 (UTC)
Do the div id's and other tags look ok?
If so, I'll proceed as you indicated on Histlegend talk. Thx for your help and guidance. Humanengr (talk) 18:54, 12 September 2018 (UTC)
- Can't check right now, just work on the sandbox and leave a note, several people are looking at it. — xaosflux Talk 19:00, 12 September 2018 (UTC)
Please comment on Wikipedia talk:Shortcut
The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Wikipedia talk:Shortcut. Legobot (talk) 04:28, 13 September 2018 (UTC)
To make the Histlegend discussion threads more intelligible
For ease of reading, I should have split the proposals.
At this point, maybe I should go ahead and do some paragraph-level strikethroughs on some of both your and my comments in the two current sections; create a new section, etc., so folks can track it all better. Ok? Apologies for the confusion. Humanengr (talk) 18:09, 14 September 2018 (UTC)
- As long as it is very clear what you want the final result to look like, that should be fine. — xaosflux Talk 18:38, 14 September 2018 (UTC)
page history
Hi. I hope you are well.
Could you please take a look at User talk:Path slopu#Speedy deletion nomination of Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/Script? I thought Path slopu created AutoWikiBrowser/Script as a test, so I moved it to his userspace. But after he commented on his talkpage, I realised the page might have existed once as it is mentioned/linked on WP:JWB page. Would you please take a look at the history of Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/Script, and tell if it existed before? I think i did something wrong by suppressing the redirect. 
—usernamekiran(talk) 19:47, 14 September 2018 (UTC)
- pinging GAB —usernamekiran(talk) 19:51, 14 September 2018 (UTC)
- @Usernamekiran: I think it is OK, from a quick look Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/Script doesn't need to actually exist to use the script once you install it. — xaosflux Talk 19:59, 14 September 2018 (UTC)
- Thanks. But did it exist before? —usernamekiran(talk) 20:03, 14 September 2018 (UTC)
- @Usernamekiran: The earliest I saw was (diff) 2018-07-31T13:42:19 . . Path slopu (talk | contribs | block) (95 bytes) (←Created page with '{{subst:iusc|User:Joeytje50/JWB.js/load.js}}'). — xaosflux Talk 22:22, 14 September 2018 (UTC)
- Thanks. But did it exist before? —usernamekiran(talk) 20:03, 14 September 2018 (UTC)
Bot Ahechtbot
I see you approved Task 3 for User:Ahechtbot. This bot is making edits that are in violation of the bot policy. Why was it approved? Pinging bot owner @Ahecht: as well. This bot made an edit to move the bold ''' tags outside of a font tag. That's cosmetic at best. The change isn't visible to the reader.--v/r - TP 00:54, 15 September 2018 (UTC)
- Nevermind. I see that the WMF has implemented some dumb parser that breaks with old wiki syntax.--v/r - TP 00:57, 15 September 2018 (UTC)
- @TParis: thanks for bringing up the concern, but yes it's part of the Special:LintErrors cleanup due to that parser change, on some pages the fixes may be less noticeable, on some they break formatting for the whole page - its a major pain! This is running with both 'bot' and 'minor' to try to minimize any disruption to watchlists, etc. For the most part, once these are done they shouldn't be repeated. Best regards, — xaosflux Talk 04:03, 15 September 2018 (UTC)
- I'd also note that WP:COSMETICBOT does not consider fixing "invalid HTML such as unclosed tags, even if it does not affect browsers' display" to be a cosmetic change. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 05:21, 15 September 2018 (UTC)
Sandbox
One of my sanboxes I am not using anymore, User:Eli355/Orders of magnitude (mass flow rate), so would like it to be deleted. —Eli355 (talk | contribs) 00:14, 17 September 2018 (UTC)
- @Eli355:
Done — xaosflux Talk 00:22, 17 September 2018 (UTC)
- Thanks —Eli355 (talk | contribs) 00:28, 17 September 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
- The Wikimedia Commons mobile app has a new version. Images uploaded using Nearby are now automatically added to the associated Wikidata item. You can browse other images on Commons. You can see your achievements and your upload statistics. It has also fixed some bugs. [56]
- MediaWiki web requests now have a time limit of 60 seconds for GET requests and 200 seconds for POST requests. [57]
Problems
- You could not see the menu on the notifications page on the mobile version. This has now been fixed. [58]
Changes later this week
- Special:AncientPages can hide disambiguation pages. [59]
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 18 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 19 September. It will be on all wikis from 20 September (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 19 September at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
- The developers are testing new mobile web navigation. You can use it and give feedback.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
21:58, 17 September 2018 (UTC)
Please comment on Template talk:Iobdb name
The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Template talk:Iobdb name. Legobot (talk) 04:29, 19 September 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.
Changes later this week
- The preferences form will change to use the standard look. If you see any problems please report them on Phabricator. [60]
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 25 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 26 September. It will be on all wikis from 27 September (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 26 September at 15:00 (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.
15:23, 24 September 2018 (UTC)
Please comment on Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Video games
The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Video games. Legobot (talk) 04:29, 26 September 2018 (UTC)
Edit summaries for visual editing
Is it possible to write edit summaries for visual edits? —Eli355 ( 
talk 
contribs ) 16:19, 26 September 2018 (UTC)
- Replied on your talk. — xaosflux Talk 17:18, 26 September 2018 (UTC)
Old geezer needs help again
Howdy Xaosflux. You were so helpful last month in getting my password restored, I thought maybe you could likewise help me with a new difficulty. I haven't uploaded images to WP in years, but yesterday I created a new stub article about a forgotten celebrity and came across a great image to go with it. To my horror, though, the metadata on the file page displays my real name - not sure how that happened, as I certainly didn't type it in. Can you or somebody quickly delete this image page? It's File:Frances_Robinson-Duff_ad_1922.jpg Textorus (talk) 17:27, 27 September 2018 (UTC)
- @Textorus: this is done. If you don't mind random websites you could try verexif.com to strip the EXIF data fields before reuploading. — xaosflux Talk 18:07, 27 September 2018 (UTC)
- Thank you so much! And thanks for the verexif link too - I have bookmarked it and will try it sometime. Right now, I'm feeling a little gun-shy. I've been a very competent end-user of computers and the internet since 1977 - but in the last year or so it all seems to be turning into a hot digital mess I can't get my head around.Textorus (talk) 20:29, 27 September 2018 (UTC)
- This is for you:
|
The Special Barnstar | |
| To Xaosflux for help and kindness to an old wikigeezer. Textorus (talk) 20:29, 27 September 2018 (UTC) |
The Signpost: 1 October 2018
- From the editor: Is this the new normal?
- News and notes: European copyright law moves forward
- In the media: Knowledge under fire
- Discussion report: Interface Admin policy proposal, part 2
- Arbitration report: A quiet month for Arbcom
- Technology report: Paying attention to your mobile
- Gallery: A pat on the back
- Recent research: How talk page use has changed since 2005; censorship shocks lead to centralization; is vandalism caused by workplace boredom?
- Humour: Signpost Crossword Puzzle
- Essay: Expressing thanks
Edit protected request
Thank you for granting my edit request, Xaosflux! I would have thanked you on that talk page; however, I thought it best to return the page to a redirect since it is used on many pages that way. Thanks again! Paine Ellsworth put'r there 15:34, 1 October 2018 (UTC)
- Noticed on the same day I thanked you, you also notified Jackmcbarn of the consequences of inactivity. Don't suppose you have heard anything about ol' Jack, have you? Paine Ellsworth put'r there 18:41, 1 November 2018 (UTC)
- @Paine Ellsworth: nope, Jack appears to have left the project, he is of course welcome back and upon return can just ask for this admin access back (if it's not too long away). — xaosflux Talk 18:45, 1 November 2018 (UTC)
- Jack is one of the editors who has helped me for years, esp. with modules and templates. Looking over his contributions, I don't see anything to indicate why he would leave the project. If you concur, do you know of any way we can find out anything about his situation? Paine Ellsworth put'r there 19:43, 1 November 2018 (UTC)
- @Paine Ellsworth: feel free to use Email to try to contact him. — xaosflux Talk 19:48, 1 November 2018 (UTC)
- Well, no response from him yet. Paine
- @Paine Ellsworth: feel free to use Email to try to contact him. — xaosflux Talk 19:48, 1 November 2018 (UTC)
- Jack is one of the editors who has helped me for years, esp. with modules and templates. Looking over his contributions, I don't see anything to indicate why he would leave the project. If you concur, do you know of any way we can find out anything about his situation? Paine Ellsworth put'r there 19:43, 1 November 2018 (UTC)
- @Paine Ellsworth: nope, Jack appears to have left the project, he is of course welcome back and upon return can just ask for this admin access back (if it's not too long away). — xaosflux Talk 18:45, 1 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
- Ordinary pages can no longer be loaded as javascript. You could do this using
?action=raw&ctype=text/javascriptin the URL. Only fully protected pages in the MediaWiki: namespace or user javascript subpages can be loaded as javascript now. This is for better security. [61][62]
Problems
- New and updated translations from translatewiki.net will not reach the wikis for a while. You can still translate messages on translatewiki.net. The Wikimedia wikis will be updated with the new translations later. This is because of work on the translation system. [63][64]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 2 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 3 October. It will be on all wikis from 4 October (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 3 October at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.
- You can join the meeting with the Wikimedia Foundation Search Platform team. The meeting will be on 3 October at 15:00 UTC. See how to join if you want to know how the search function works or have questions.
Future changes
- Because of a data centre test you will be able to read but not edit the wikis for up to an hour on 10 October. This will start at 14:00 (UTC). You might lose edits if you try to save during this time. The time when you can't edit might be shorter than an hour. You can read more about this.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
17:34, 1 October 2018 (UTC)
Please comment on Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Infoboxes
The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Infoboxes. Legobot (talk) 04:30, 2 October 2018 (UTC)
I'm guessing you didn't mean to assign MMS here, so I've removed it. If I was wrong, please feel free to revert. Best, Kevin (aka L235 · t · c) 21:15, 2 October 2018 (UTC)
- @L235: thanks good catch, that was certainly in error. — xaosflux Talk 22:05, 2 October 2018 (UTC)
Articles you might like to edit, from SuggestBot
Note: All columns in this table are sortable, allowing you to rearrange the table so the articles most interesting to you are shown at the top. All images have mouse-over popups with more information. For more information about the columns and categories, please consult the documentation and please get in touch on SuggestBot's talk page with any questions you might have.
SuggestBot picks articles in a number of ways based on other articles you've edited, including straight text similarity, following wikilinks, and matching your editing patterns against those of other Wikipedians. It tries to recommend only articles that other Wikipedians have marked as needing work. We appreciate that you have signed up to receive suggestions regularly; your contributions make Wikipedia better — thanks for helping!
If you have feedback on how to make SuggestBot better, please let us know on SuggestBot's talk page. -- SuggestBot (talk) 11:42, 3 October 2018 (UTC)
Administrators' newsletter – October 2018
News and updates for administrators from the past month (September 2018).
Administrator changes
- Justlettersandnumbers • L235
- Bgwhite • HorsePunchKid • J Greb • KillerChihuahua • Rami R • Winhunter
Interface administrator changes
- Cyberpower678 • Deryck Chan • Oshwah • Pharos • Ragesoss • Ritchie333
Oversight changes
- Guerillero • NativeForeigner • Snowolf • Xeno
Guideline and policy news
- Following a request for comment, the process for appointing interface administrators has been established. Currently only existing admins can request these rights, while a new RfC has begun on whether it should be available to non-admins.
- There is an open request for comment on Meta regarding the creation a new user group for global edit filter management.
Technical news
- Partial blocks should be available for testing in October on the Test Wikipedia and the Beta-Cluster. This new feature allows admins to block users from editing specific pages and in the near-future, namespaces and uploading files. You can expect more updates and an invitation to help with testing once it is available.
- The Foundations' Anti-Harassment Tools team is currently looking for input on how to measure the effectiveness of blocks. This is in particular related to how they will measure the success of the aforementioned partial blocks.
- Because of a data centre test, you will be able to read but not edit the Wikimedia projects for up to an hour on 10 October. This will start at 14:00 (UTC). You might lose edits if you try to save during this time.
Arbitration
- The Arbitration Committee has, by motion, amended the procedure on functionary inactivity.
- The community consultation for 2018 CheckUser and Oversight appointments has concluded. Appointments will be made by October 11.
- Following a request for comment, the size of the Arbitration Committee will be decreased to 13 arbitrators, starting in 2019. Additionally, the minimum support percentage required to be appointed to a two-year term on ArbCom has been increased to 60%. ArbCom candidates who receive between 50% and 60% support will be appointed to one-year terms instead.
- Nominations for the 2018 Arbitration Committee Electoral Commission are being accepted until 12 October. These are the editors who help run the ArbCom election smoothly. If you are interested in volunteering for this role, please consider nominating yourself.
File protection
Greetings,
I wanted to note that normally sensitive files such as File:Wiktionary-logo-v2.svg and File:Octagon-warning.svg are only upload protected. Edits to the file page do nothing to the file itself and the maintenance burden in form of edit requests is not negligible. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 13:18, 6 October 2018 (UTC)
- I removed the 'edit' protection on those, thanks for the note. — xaosflux Talk 19:21, 6 October 2018 (UTC)
Filter 930
Hey, you probably aren't online as I'm posting this, but do you think you could set filter 930 to disallow as you said you would? Thanks. SemiHypercube ✎ 16:27, 8 October 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
- The Education Program extension was removed from all Wikimedia projects. You can use the Programs and Events Dashboard or the Fountain instead. [65]
Problems
- There was a problem when you copied and pasted from a table with the visual editor. It could add
hrefwhere it shouldn't be. This has now been fixed. [66]
Changes later this week
- Because of a data centre test you will be able to read but not edit the wikis for up to an hour on 10 October. This will start at 14:00 (UTC). You might lose edits if you try to save during this time. The time when you can't edit might be shorter than an hour. You can read more about this.
- Because of the data centre test there will be no new version of MediaWiki this week. Changes for this week will come next week instead.
Meetings
- You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 10 October at 15:00 (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.
23:38, 8 October 2018 (UTC)
Please comment on Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (use English)
The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (use English). Legobot (talk) 04:33, 9 October 2018 (UTC)
Precious anniversary
 | |
| Four years! |
|---|
--Gerda Arendt (talk) 06:24, 10 October 2018 (UTC)
Can you take a look at Histlegend?
I think everything has been addressed per here. Can you check that so we can reset the edit request? Thx for your help. Humanengr (talk) 23:03, 12 October 2018 (UTC)
- @Humanengr: if you think its ready to go, go for it! — xaosflux Talk 23:20, 12 October 2018 (UTC)
00000000 listed at Redirects for discussion
An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect 00000000. Since you had some involvement with the 00000000 redirect, you might want to participate in the redirect discussion if you have not already done so. {{3x|p}}ery (talk) 03:43, 15 October 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.
Problems
- Some pages, edits and users disappeared for a short while after the server switch. Missing content and users was fixed within a day. Some preferences and other things might take a few more days to fix. [67]
- Wikis are updated with new and updated translations from translatewiki.net again. This will happen once a week. The developers are working on fixing the problem so we can have translation updates more often again. [68]
Changes later this week
- When you create an abuse filter that prevents edits you can now write a specific error message for it. Before this all abuse filters that prevented edits had the same error message. [69]
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 16 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 17 October. It will be on all wikis from 18 October (calendar).
Meetings
- There will be no more meetings with the Editing team. This is because not enough Wikimedians were interested. To tell developers which bugs you think are the most important you can use Phabricator as normal. [70]
- You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 17 October at 15:00 (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.
22:40, 15 October 2018 (UTC)
13 years of editing
|
Hey, Xaosflux. I'd like to wish you a wonderful First Edit Day on behalf of the Wikipedia Birthday Committee! Have a great day! Chris Troutman (talk) 00:25, 16 October 2018 (UTC) |
|
Please comment on Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (broadcasting)
The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (broadcasting). Legobot (talk) 04:27, 16 October 2018 (UTC)
Delete a mailing list page
Hi Xaos, please delete this page that you've created long back Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Indian military history task force/Mailing list. It is confusing to have a separate mailing list apart from the members page, so we'll use the latter. Thank You, KCVelaga (talk) 16:10, 21 October 2018 (UTC)
Please comment on Wikipedia talk:Article titles
The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Wikipedia talk:Article titles. Legobot (talk) 04:31, 22 October 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.
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 23 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 24 October. It will be on all wikis from 25 October (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 24 October at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
- The Community Wishlist Survey begins on 29 October. The survey decides what the Community Tech team will work on. You can post proposals from 29 October to 11 November. You can vote on proposals from 16 November to 30 November.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
23:11, 22 October 2018 (UTC)
Wikiquote
Like it should be!--Risto hot sir (talk) 20:30, 23 October 2018 (UTC)
Baffled by edit filter trigger
I reported a false positive that disallowed my edit of 18 October and see that there's still no response. In no way did my edit match the filter description "Multiple Obscenities", and I can't find a public filter matching the filter description. In the interest of "assume good faith", should I post to the article's talk page the edit I was attempting and explain what happened? Or might that trigger the same edit filter again?
If it helps to resolve whatever's at issue, I've pasted below the original text and the text edit I was attempting, which at least to my eyes is an improvement:
Original Text
- In 1984, British journalist and political commentator Polly Toynbee visited Ikeda at the invitation of the SGI. According to Peter Popham, writing about Tokyo architecture and culture, Ikeda "was hoping to tighten the public connection between himself and Polly Toynbee's famous grandfather, Arnold Toynbee, the prophet of the rise of the East."[163] Polly Toynbeee wrote that she had never met "anyone who exudes such an aura of absolute power as Mr. Ikeda" and others she had talked to “felt they had been drawn into endorsing [Ikeda]."[164][165] In The Guardian in May 1984, she wrote that she wished that her grandfather had not endorsed Choose Life: A Dialogue, his dialogue with Ikeda.[165]
Edited Text (Triggered Edit Filter)
(Italics = Struck out text from the Original Text Section , Bold = text added to improve the Original Text section above) :In 1984, British journalist and political commentator [[Polly Toynbee]] visited Ikeda '''in Japan''' at ''the'' '''his''' invitation ''of the SGI'' '''conveyed by Dick Causton, SGI leader of the UK'''. According to Peter Popham, writing about Tokyo architecture and culture, ''Ikeda "was hoping to tighten the public connection between himself and Polly Toynbee's famous grandfather, Arnold Toynbee, the prophet of the rise of the East."<ref>Peter Popham, ''Tokyo: The City at the End of the World'' (Tokyo: Kodansha International, 1985; ISBN 4-7700-1226-8), p. 64.</ref>'' Polly ''Toynbeee'' '''Toynbee once''' wrote that she had never met "anyone who exudes such an aura of absolute power as Mr. Ikeda" ''and others she had talked to “felt they had been drawn into endorsing [Ikeda]."'' '''to describe an unsettling opulence with which she was received by him.'''<ref>''Toynbee, "Soka Gakkai and the Toynbee 'Endorsement'"; quoted in Popham, ''Tokyo'', '' '''{{cite book |last=Popham |first=Peter |date=1985 |title=Tokyo: The City at the End of the World |location=Tokyo |publisher=Kodansha International |page=65 |isbn=4-7700-1226-8}}'''</ref>''<ref name="grandfather">{{cite news |title=The Value of a Grandfather Figure |work=The Guardian |author=Polly Toynbee |date=19 May 1984}}</ref>'' In The Guardian in May 1984, she wrote that '''others she had talked to about Ikeda "felt they had been drawn into endorsing him" and that''' she wished ''that'' her grandfather had not '''similarly''' endorsed Choose Life: A Dialogue, his dialogue with Ikeda.''<ref name="grandfather"/>'' '''<ref>{{cite news |title=The value of a grandfather figure |work=The Guardian |author=Polly Toynbee |date=19 May 1984}}</ref> In his response letter to ''The Guardian'', Dick Causton described her reflections as honest and understandable, given the "culture shock" of being hosted as a distinguished guest by Ikeda in a Japanese cultural setting and the "religious shock" of encountering Buddhists as ordinary people, all during a hectic 10-day schedule of interviews with prominent figures arranged by Soka Gakkai at her request.<ref>{{cite news| title=The double shock of Japanese culture |author=Dick Causton |work=The Guardian |date=28 May 1984}}</ref>'''
Tacktician (talk) 16:06, 25 October 2018 (UTC)
- Hi @Tacktician:, I just left a note at the FP board. This is certainly a false positive but one that will be challenging to fix programmatically. That filter is somewhat complicated and private, but I suspect it hit on your addition of the phrase "dick" 3 three times. This is a false positive as it is a proper name as well as a common vandal term. That specific filter only looks at 'articles', so you can leave an edit request on the associated talk page (use the {{edit semi-protected}} template) and someone will process it for you. — xaosflux Talk 17:04, 25 October 2018 (UTC)
- Thanks for your help. Just to follow up, the protection level on the Daisaku Ikeda page remains intact. I got the edit through by changing "Dick Causton" to "Richard Causton". Conveyed the same to DBigXrayᗙ , who responded to my request for edit on the Daisaku Ikeda Talk page.Tacktician (talk) 17:49, 9 November 2018 (UTC)
- Tacktician, thank you for the WP:Ping. Yes, I can now understand why you were unable to edit the said page. User:Xaosflux May I know how the "edit request" template will help Tacktician, because AFAIK even if I make the edit on behalf of him, it will still hit the edit filter. (Please note, I am not fully aware of how edit filters work, so please be kind if you find my question, silly
). --DBigXrayᗙ 18:16, 9 November 2018 (UTC)
- @DBigXray: Special:AbuseFilter/380 only applies to 'newer' editors. — xaosflux Talk 18:19, 9 November 2018 (UTC)
- I see, thank you for the clarification. Tacktician I will make this edit on your behalf now. --DBigXrayᗙ 18:23, 9 November 2018 (UTC)
- @DBigXray: Special:AbuseFilter/380 only applies to 'newer' editors. — xaosflux Talk 18:19, 9 November 2018 (UTC)
- Tacktician, thank you for the WP:Ping. Yes, I can now understand why you were unable to edit the said page. User:Xaosflux May I know how the "edit request" template will help Tacktician, because AFAIK even if I make the edit on behalf of him, it will still hit the edit filter. (Please note, I am not fully aware of how edit filters work, so please be kind if you find my question, silly
- Thanks for your help. Just to follow up, the protection level on the Daisaku Ikeda page remains intact. I got the edit through by changing "Dick Causton" to "Richard Causton". Conveyed the same to DBigXrayᗙ , who responded to my request for edit on the Daisaku Ikeda Talk page.Tacktician (talk) 17:49, 9 November 2018 (UTC)
Confirmed user reversal
Hi,
I am currently working on a proposed sister project called VideoWiki where we allow to collaboratively edit a video file for Wikipedia.
You can verify about Videowiki at:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wiki_Video
Kindly request you to mark me confirmed as this account is connected to Wikipedia's OAuth and VideoWiki's features will be disrupted.
--Videowiki123 (talk) 17:14, 25 October 2018 (UTC)
- @Videowiki123: the 'confirmed' flag is normally a temporary flag for very new accounts and gets replaced by the 'autoconfirmed' flag which is now on your account. You should be able to see you have this access now in Special:UserRights/Videowiki123. Are you having any current issues? — xaosflux Talk 17:18, 25 October 2018 (UTC)
Yes, I am getting an error saying "user is blocked from editing". Did not face this error before. So pretty sure this is because of removal of this username from "confirmed" list. However, IF you could switch this user back to "confirmed" temporarily, then I can try to see if this error still persists. That way, we can be 100 percent sure about whether the removal of "confirmed" user has caused this error. --Videowiki123 (talk) 17:50, 25 October 2018 (UTC)
- @Videowiki123: I added that flag (you may confirm at Special:UserRights/Videowiki123) - if you keep getting this error, some screen shots may help us figure out how to fix it for you and other that could have the same issue. — xaosflux Talk 18:16, 25 October 2018 (UTC)
The reason for the unexpected error message is due to a block of this user-account by a user (Vituzzu). This block has disabled the OAuth associated with this account, resulting in VideoWiki not working. Could you please "unblock" this user account? Is there a permanent way where this user account cannot get blocked by other users? This is important because VideoWiki will stop working if some user ends up blocking this user account in the future again. Please find the Commons link which shows the screenshot of the error message for your verification. The description in the Commons link provides more context. https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Videowiki_OAuth_API_error.png --Videowiki123 (talk) 07:03, 26 October 2018 (UTC)
- This may be an autoblock on meta or commons, you will need to follow up with Vituzzu. — xaosflux Talk 11:48, 26 October 2018 (UTC)
- @VideoWiki123: and any account may be blocked, if your edits don't follow community policies blocking could be used. — xaosflux Talk 11:49, 26 October 2018 (UTC)
NPP: new copyvio bot
Ni. Thanks for the heads up, indeed I wasn't aware of it. I expect Insertcleverphrasehere will mention it in his next NPP newsletter. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 19:16, 25 October 2018 (UTC)
ZackBot 12
Howdy. I'm sure you have plenty on your plate, but would be wonderful if you could take a look at Wikipedia:Bots/Requests_for_approval/ZackBot_12 when you have time. :-) --Zackmann (Talk to me/What I been doing) 17:18, 27 October 2018 (UTC)
The Signpost: 28 October 2018
- From the editors: The Signpost is still afloat, just barely
- News and notes: WMF gets a million bucks
- In the media: Bans, celebs, and bias
- Discussion report: Mediation Committee and proposed deletion reform
- Traffic report: Unsurprisingly, sport leads the field – or the ring
- Technology report: Bots galore!
- Special report: NPP needs you
- Special report 2: Now Wikidata is six
- In focus: Alexa
- Gallery: Out of this world!
- Recent research: Wikimedia Commons worth $28.9 billion
- Humour: Talk page humour
- Opinion: Strickland incident
- From the archives: The Gardner Interview
Relisted AFD discussions
If I vote in an AFD discussion, can I vote again after it gets relisted? —Eli355 (talk • contribs) 21:21, 28 October 2018 (UTC)
- Hi @Eli355:, AfD's are not votes, you are welcome to continue discussing it after relisting. — xaosflux Talk 21:26, 28 October 2018 (UTC)
- What do you mean by "AfD's are not votes"? —Eli355 (talk • contribs) 21:36, 28 October 2018 (UTC)
- @Eli355: see Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion#Contributing_to_AfD_discussions, when XfD's are closed and acted upon a numerical count of the participants is not a primary factor in the decision. — xaosflux Talk 22:52, 28 October 2018 (UTC)
- Suppose I vote in an AFD discussion. After that, the discussion relisted. Can I vote for a second time after the relisting? —Eli355 (talk • contribs) 23:42, 28 October 2018 (UTC)
- @Eli355: AfD's are discussions. You are welcome to continue to add to the discussion while it is open (or reopened), you may make 1 comment on it, you may make 10 comments on it. — xaosflux Talk 00:56, 29 October 2018 (UTC)
- @Eli355: AfD is a venue where it is discussed if an article should be kept or deleted. You can comment, and present your arguments numerous times in the said discussion. You should see some previous AfDs for example. At the top of my head, you can see it in Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Hyperbolic asteroid. —usernamekiran(talk) 07:02, 29 October 2018 (UTC)
- @Eli355: see Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion#Contributing_to_AfD_discussions, when XfD's are closed and acted upon a numerical count of the participants is not a primary factor in the decision. — xaosflux Talk 22:52, 28 October 2018 (UTC)
- What do you mean by "AfD's are not votes"? —Eli355 (talk • contribs) 21:36, 28 October 2018 (UTC)
Boo!
Hello Xaosflux:
Thanks for all of your contributions to improve Wikipedia, and have a happy and enjoyable Halloween!
– —usernamekiran(talk) 07:02, 29 October 2018 (UTC)
Interface Edit Requests - Bot Table
Hello Xaosflux, as an interface administrator I wanted to let you know that there are two pages you should consider watch-listing: Wikipedia:Interface administrators' noticeboard and User:AnomieBOT/IPERTable. The later is a bot-generated table of all outstanding interface edit requests that you may be able to handle. Thank you for your continuing support of Wikipedia! MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 14:40, 29 October 2018 (UTC)
- Maybe an idea in future to mention who the message is from. I had to check the logs to see that it was from you! Cheers — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 14:55, 29 October 2018 (UTC)
- @MSGJ: you'd think after sending MMS for other people forever I'd actually get mine right! — xaosflux Talk 14:57, 29 October 2018 (UTC)
- Fixed them with a cleanup job. FWIW @MSGJ: mass-message "senders" should also have their name in the HTML comments of a message. — xaosflux Talk 15:03, 29 October 2018 (UTC)
- @MSGJ: you'd think after sending MMS for other people forever I'd actually get mine right! — xaosflux Talk 14:57, 29 October 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 post proposals for the Community Wishlist Survey. The survey decides what the Community Tech team will work on. You can post proposals until 11 November. You can vote on proposals from 16 November to 30 November.
- The wikis now have a content security policy report. This means that you might get a warning in your javascript console when you load external resources in your user scripts. For security reasons it is recommended that you don't do this. It might not be possible to load external resources in your scripts in the future. [71]
Problems
- Your watchlist can show which changes you have already seen. This did not work for a few days. It has been fixed. [72]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 30 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 31 October. It will be on all wikis from 1 November (calendar).
- The 2006 wikitext editor is no longer available. It will be removed from Special:Preferences. It has not been the standard editor for a long time. It was replaced by the 2010 wikitext editor. [73][74]
Meetings
- You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 31 October at 15:00 (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.
20:08, 29 October 2018 (UTC)
Articles you might like to edit, from SuggestBot
Note: All columns in this table are sortable, allowing you to rearrange the table so the articles most interesting to you are shown at the top. All images have mouse-over popups with more information. For more information about the columns and categories, please consult the documentation and please get in touch on SuggestBot's talk page with any questions you might have.
SuggestBot picks articles in a number of ways based on other articles you've edited, including straight text similarity, following wikilinks, and matching your editing patterns against those of other Wikipedians. It tries to recommend only articles that other Wikipedians have marked as needing work. We appreciate that you have signed up to receive suggestions regularly; your contributions make Wikipedia better — thanks for helping!
If you have feedback on how to make SuggestBot better, please let us know on SuggestBot's talk page. -- SuggestBot (talk) 12:31, 31 October 2018 (UTC)
Administrators' newsletter – November 2018
News and updates for administrators from the past month (October 2018).
|
|
|
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.
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. [75]
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. [76]
- 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
- 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.
17:29, 5 November 2018 (UTC)
Thanks
Hi Xaosflux. Thanks for your help, I'll put in the request there soon. CatonMA2 (talk) 18:26, 7 November 2018 (UTC)
User:PrimeBOT
Could I ask you, as an administrator that is active with the WP:BRFA process, to please take a look at User:PrimeBOT? There are some major issues with their latest run and it concerns me that they are referencing a WP:BRFA from February that seems not to relate to the current task at hand. The script is severely broken and is dumping pages into error categories by the thousands. --Zackmann (Talk to me/What I been doing) 07:25, 11 November 2018 (UTC)
- @Zackmann08: if you have already tried to contact the operator and are still in disagreement with the bot edits, please open a section at WP:BOTN for review. — xaosflux Talk 13:35, 11 November 2018 (UTC)
ARBCOM
Have you considered running? It's thankless task, but one which I think you'd excel at - TNT 💖 16:50, 11 November 2018 (UTC)
- ...although that does rather come across as "it's a thankless task and so you'll excel at it" :) ——SerialNumber54129 16:53, 11 November 2018 (UTC)
- @There'sNoTime: thanks for the nod of confidence, but I don't have the time to commit to that committee in the upcoming year. — xaosflux Talk 17:20, 11 November 2018 (UTC)
- I was hoping he would go for different elections instead... --Rschen7754 17:55, 11 November 2018 (UTC)
- Thanks @Rschen7754:, but I won't be able to take on any more heavy commitment items until at least next summer. — xaosflux Talk 19:47, 11 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
- 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. [77]
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. [78][79][80]
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. [81]
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)
Good Guess!
Looks like you are right SQLQuery me! 19:06, 13 November 2018 (UTC)
Request de. Wiki Jiny Lan
Hallo Xaosflux, thank you for your suggestion. You wrote: ″...would you like us to import it to your personal sandbox for you to work on first?″ If I understood you right, did you ask me, if you could import to my personal sandbox. Yes of course. This would be very helpful for me. Please let me know, if I misunderstood you and I have to do the import by myself. Thanks a lot and kind regards from GermanyGauthier W. de Reymaker (talk) 21:39, 15 November 2018 (UTC)
YGM
Message added 19:29, 18 November 2018 (UTC). It may take a few minutes from the time the email is sent for it to show up in your inbox. You can at any time by removing the {{You've got mail}} or {{ygm}} template.
- @Meno25: this is Done — xaosflux Talk 20:26, 18 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. [82]
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. [83]
- 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. [84]
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)
ArbCom 2018 election voter message
Hello, Xaosflux. 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)
Grateful if you can cease the unwanted spam to my talk page
Hchc2009 (talk) 22:21, 21 November 2018 (UTC)
- @Hchc2009: I added a category and template that should reduce most distributions to that page. If you are getting email notifications you can turn them off in Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-echo. Hope that helps! Best regards, — xaosflux Talk 22:41, 21 November 2018 (UTC)
- very many thanks. If you could turn off the unwanted automated messages being posted to my talk page, I’d apreciate it. I’ve retired from the wiki, and no longer wish to relieve them. Hchc2009 (talk)
- cheers! Hchc2009 (talk) 22:58, 21 November 2018 (UTC)
- very many thanks. If you could turn off the unwanted automated messages being posted to my talk page, I’d apreciate it. I’ve retired from the wiki, and no longer wish to relieve them. Hchc2009 (talk)
- To others, no idea what was going on there - but if Hchc is leaving the project and doesn't want bot deliveries anymore I'm fine with it. — xaosflux Talk 23:06, 21 November 2018 (UTC)
Signature
Is there any problem with coloring the link to my user talk page in my signature red? —Eli355 (talk • contribs) 22:30, 22 November 2018 (UTC)
- @Eli355: Wikipedia:Signatures#Appearance_and_color has the guidance on this. It may be considered confusing to some people as it can appear as a WP:REDLINK as well as cause some contrast issues. One way could improve that would be by also adding a background color, for example: talk. — xaosflux Talk 00:16, 23 November 2018 (UTC)
?
Probably odds checker ring him odd ohh haha Am in my was really don't so stop smokingo people who don't she will "going back from work — Preceding unsigned comment added by 5.70.188.95 (talk) 23:25, 22 November 2018 (UTC)
- Why does the narwhal bacon? — xaosflux Talk 00:16, 23 November 2018 (UTC)
- eh? —usernamekiran(talk) 08:46, 25 November 2018 (UTC)
Regarding event coordinator rights and how to use them?
Thanks a lot for granting the rights of event coordinator. But I am not aware how to give permission to create multiple accounts from the same IP address. Do I need to write something at the talk page of that IP address? Kindly guide. Thank you very much. -- Abhijeet Safai (talk) 06:17, 24 November 2018 (UTC)
- @Abhijeet Safai: to create accounts first log on, then go to Special:CreateAccount. More details are here: Wikipedia:Event_coordinator#Use. — xaosflux Talk 14:23, 24 November 2018 (UTC)
- Thanks a lot. But I could not do it yesterday when I needed this information the most. But no problem. I will use it for the next time. Thanks a lot once again for sharing the information. -- Abhijeet Safai (talk) 07:09, 25 November 2018 (UTC)
Can you please close this bot request. It looks completely abandoned and it has barely been filled in. The requester create a bot account but they haven't filled anything in so I think it is abandoned. Pkbwcgs (talk) 21:34, 26 November 2018 (UTC)
- @Pkbwcgs: I deleted it, it was empty and never submitted. — xaosflux Talk 21:52, 26 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
- 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. [85]
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. [86]
- 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__. [87] - 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. [88]
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)
Block me (for science)?
Hey, Xaosflux, would you mind blocking my account as well as User:WK-test, my testing account, for a short time (5-10 minutes should do)? I'd like to test something. Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 14:32, 27 November 2018 (UTC)
- Done — xaosflux Talk 14:34, 27 November 2018 (UTC)
- @Writ Keeper: done, if you want to do more extensive testing I can make you a temp 'crat account on test.wikipedia, just let me know. — xaosflux Talk 14:36, 27 November 2018 (UTC)
You've got mail!
Message added 23:06, 27 November 2018 (UTC). It may take a few minutes from the time the email is sent for it to show up in your inbox. You can at any time by removing the {{You've got mail}} or {{ygm}} template.
TheSandDoctor Talk 23:06, 27 November 2018 (UTC)
- @TheSandDoctor: Done — xaosflux Talk 01:43, 28 November 2018 (UTC)
- Thanks! --TheSandDoctor Talk 02:20, 28 November 2018 (UTC)
You've got mail!
Message added 16:50, 29 November 2018 (UTC). It may take a few minutes from the time the email is sent for it to show up in your inbox. You can at any time by removing the {{You've got mail}} or {{ygm}} template.
Thanks TheSandDoctor Talk 16:50, 29 November 2018 (UTC)
- @TheSandDoctor: Please note: I do not normally check my e-mail account for wikipedia, and prefer User talk: unless you have something private. The area you asked about is currently backlogged, but someone should address in a bit. — xaosflux Talk 21:57, 29 November 2018 (UTC)
Winona, Michigan
Hi, I have been semi-active recently, and I have enough sources to add to content on Winona, Michigan, and a lot of other places in the region. Please allow me to add to the page, I can cite my sources~
Thanks~ The Copper Miner
- @The Copper Miner: go right ahead, my update was only because you left the page completely blank. Happy editing, — xaosflux Talk 18:32, 29 November 2018 (UTC)
Why me?
Could I ask why you added me as a subscriber to this? I do not recall having anything to do with it. DuncanHill (talk) 21:00, 30 November 2018 (UTC)
- @DuncanHill: I actually have no idea, must have accidentally picked you, I've removed you from the notices on that task. Sorry for any confusion! — xaosflux Talk 21:29, 30 November 2018 (UTC)
- Thanks. As you may have noticed I've had rather a busy day with one thing and another, I just wanted to make sure it was only a slip. DuncanHill (talk) 21:33, 30 November 2018 (UTC)
The Signpost: 1 December 2018
- From the editor: Time for a truce
- Special report: The Christmas wishlist
- Discussion report: Farewell, Mediation Committee
- Arbitration report: A long break ends
- Traffic report: Queen reigns for four weeks straight
- Gallery: Intersections
- From the archives: Ars longa, vita brevis
Administrators' newsletter – December 2018
News and updates for administrators from the past month (November 2018).
Administrator changes
- Al Ameer son • Randykitty • Spartaz
- Boson • Daniel J. Leivick • Efe • Esanchez7587 • Fred Bauder • Garzo • Martijn Hoekstra • Orangemike
Interface administrator changes
Guideline and policy news
- Following a request for comment, the Mediation Committee is now closed and will no longer be accepting case requests.
- A request for comment is in progress to determine whether members of the Bot Approvals Group should satisfy activity requirements in order to remain in that role.
- A request for comment is in progress regarding whether to change the administrator inactivity policy, such that administrators "who have made no logged administrative actions for at least 12 months may be desysopped". Currently, the policy states that administrators "who have made neither edits nor administrative actions for at least 12 months may be desysopped".
- A proposal has been made to temporarily restrict editing of the Main Page to interface administrators in order to mitigate the impact of compromised accounts.
Technical news
- Administrators and bureaucrats can no longer unblock themselves unless they placed the block initially. This change has been implemented globally. See also this ongoing village pump discussion (permalink).
- To complement the aforementioned change, blocked administrators will soon have the ability to block the administrator that placed their block to mitigate the possibility of a compromised administrator account blocking all other active administrators.
- Since deployment of Partial blocks on Test Wikipedia, several bugs were identified. Most of them are now fixed. Administrators are encouraged to test the new deployment and report new bugs on Phabricator or leave feedback on the Project's talk page. You can request administrator access on the Test Wiki here.
Arbitration
- Voting in the 2018 Arbitration Committee Elections is open to eligible editors until Monday 23:59, 3 December 2018. Please review the candidates and, if you wish to do so, submit your choices on the voting page.
Miscellaneous
- In late November, an attacker compromised multiple accounts, including at least four administrator accounts, and used them to vandalize Wikipedia. If you have ever used your current password on any other website, you should change it immediately. Sharing the same password across multiple websites makes your account vulnerable, especially if your password was used on a website that suffered a data breach. As these incidents have shown, these concerns are not pure fantasies.
- Wikipedia policy requires administrators to have strong passwords. To further reinforce security, administrators should also consider enabling two-factor authentication. A committed identity can be used to verify that you are the true account owner in the event that your account is compromised and/or you are unable to log in.
Obituaries
- Shock Brigade Harvester Boris (Raymond Arritt) passed away on 14 November 2018. Boris joined Wikipedia as Raymond arritt on 8 May 2006 and was an administrator from 30 July 2007 to 2 June 2008.
Account Control
Extended content
|
|---|
|
BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 As of 20181202 I am still in control of my account. - From TFA's wikidata entry: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q888048 Wikipedia(16 entries) bs Wihtred ca Wihtred cs Wihtred de Wihtred en Wihtred of Kent eo Wihtred (Kent) es Wihtred de Kent fr Wihtred gl Wihtred de Kent it Wihtred del Kent lt Vitredas nl Wihtred pl Wihtred ru Витред (король Кента) sh Wihtred od Kenta uk Вітред (король Кенту)
BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: Encryption Desktop 10.3.1 (Build 13100) Charset: utf-8 wj8DBQFcBLJW1FANkJA0rpgRAqgJAKDRbnoCz6ZB+d8LhbjcUzk50HbswwCeOKec s71JFc6pJBTTUFHCJZKLmVg= =ivSL END PGP SIGNATURE----- |
— xaosflux Talk 04:31, 3 December 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
- Admins will not be able to unblock themselves if they are blocked by someone other than themselves. This is because it can cause damage if someone else takes over an admin account and other admins can't block them. If this is a problem for your community you can report it on Phabricator. You can also ask questions on Meta. There is a discussion on Phabricator about how to solve this if two admins fight with each other on a small wiki. [89]
- Small SVG images are now bigger when you see them in MediaViewer. [90]
- You can go to a section from the edit summary by clicking on the section name. Before this you had to click on the arrow. [91]
- When you jumped to a footnote that was referenced several times in an article it could be difficult to see where you were in the text. Now there are jump marks and highlights to help you find your way back. [92][93]
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 5 December at 16:00 (UTC) and at 23:00 (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.
16:12, 3 December 2018 (UTC)
Template edit requests from User:BrandonXLF
Hi xaosflux-
How should the requests from User:BrandonXLF be handled? He's been making requests that land at WP:SPER, but I don't think that most of the editors regularly responding there are too familiar with templates and modules and things. I foresee such requests sitting for a good long while if left there, so I've been shifting most of his requests over to WP:TPER when I see them. I understand that there's no technical requirement for a TE to be involved, but it doesn't really fit as a semi-protected request either. How should requests such as those at Template talk:Module link and Template talk:Jcon be handled with Brandon being restricted from editing in those namespaces, the editors at WP:SPER being largely uncomfortable assisting, and it not belonging at WP:TPER either? Thanks! ‑‑ElHef (Meep?) 15:38, 7 December 2018 (UTC)
- I'm fine with either, but I figured more people would be looking at semi request? – BrandonXLF (t@lk) 15:55, 7 December 2018 (UTC)
- @ElHef and BrandonXLF: I've been pushing them away from TPROT queue if they don't require it. I see these mostly along the lines of conflict-of-interest edit requests, they need to be requested and someone may or may not get around to them. There is no deadline. I find a very important part of the protection policy is that legitimate requests against protected pages should be swiftly evaluated an executed when possible, in this case this is not a PP issue. Perhaps {{Request edit}} should be used instead if the SPROT queue is also getting flooded here. — xaosflux Talk 16:59, 7 December 2018 (UTC)
- But {{Request edit}} implies it's a COI edit, which it's not.– BrandonXLF (t@lk) 17:03, 7 December 2018 (UTC)
- Right, these are editing restrictions - and pretty much anyone can handle them that is why I put in the SPROT queue as it contains immensely more editors than the wrongly selected template editors. Basically, please don't flood the TPOT queue, feel free to create a new category and request system to track edit requests by sanctioned editors, but I suspect it will get even less attention than the SPROT queue. Another possible solution is that you could ask (ping?) recent editors of templates to consider your suggestions. — xaosflux Talk 17:07, 7 December 2018 (UTC)
- The issue isn't so much that the queue is getting flooded (the SPER queue is backlogged more than it's not, to be honest) - it's more an issue of expertise. Pretty much anyone could handle them, but the average TPER patroller is going to have a much better shot at having the technical expertise to understand the request than the average SPER patroller will. I can't speak for anyone else that looks at semi requests, but I know virtually nothing about template coding, so if a request like this goes anything beyond the simplest formatting fix or somesuch, I'm skipping it or sending it to the TPER queue. If the requests get to sit at SPER until someone with that expertise can handle it then I'm fine ignoring it, but these are an even worse fit at SPER than they are at TPER. ‑‑ElHef (Meep?) 17:56, 7 December 2018 (UTC)
- Since they are not actually protected, they don't really need protected edit requests at all though, do they? These are just suggestions for improvements being made on the talk pages right? @Primefac: you implemented this situation - what did you envision was going to be the go-forward process? — xaosflux Talk 18:50, 7 December 2018 (UTC)
- The unblock restriction was put in place because Brandon was making dozens of edits without edit summaries to templates and frequently broke or unilaterally changed the template's function or purpose. However, there were some cases where he was actively (and productively) improving templates and modules, hence the allowance to continue to work in the sandboxes. There just simply isn't a good template to fit this situation, but I mostly agree with ElHef's logic above - if the request is a simple "please change X to Y because Z" and it's straight-forward, there' no need to get a template editor involved; on the other hand, a more technical SPER like at the Modules linked above probably should have a TE look at it. Primefac (talk) 17:55, 9 December 2018 (UTC) (please ping on reply)
- Since they are not actually protected, they don't really need protected edit requests at all though, do they? These are just suggestions for improvements being made on the talk pages right? @Primefac: you implemented this situation - what did you envision was going to be the go-forward process? — xaosflux Talk 18:50, 7 December 2018 (UTC)
- The issue isn't so much that the queue is getting flooded (the SPER queue is backlogged more than it's not, to be honest) - it's more an issue of expertise. Pretty much anyone could handle them, but the average TPER patroller is going to have a much better shot at having the technical expertise to understand the request than the average SPER patroller will. I can't speak for anyone else that looks at semi requests, but I know virtually nothing about template coding, so if a request like this goes anything beyond the simplest formatting fix or somesuch, I'm skipping it or sending it to the TPER queue. If the requests get to sit at SPER until someone with that expertise can handle it then I'm fine ignoring it, but these are an even worse fit at SPER than they are at TPER. ‑‑ElHef (Meep?) 17:56, 7 December 2018 (UTC)
- Right, these are editing restrictions - and pretty much anyone can handle them that is why I put in the SPROT queue as it contains immensely more editors than the wrongly selected template editors. Basically, please don't flood the TPOT queue, feel free to create a new category and request system to track edit requests by sanctioned editors, but I suspect it will get even less attention than the SPROT queue. Another possible solution is that you could ask (ping?) recent editors of templates to consider your suggestions. — xaosflux Talk 17:07, 7 December 2018 (UTC)
- But {{Request edit}} implies it's a COI edit, which it's not.– BrandonXLF (t@lk) 17:03, 7 December 2018 (UTC)
- @ElHef and BrandonXLF: I've been pushing them away from TPROT queue if they don't require it. I see these mostly along the lines of conflict-of-interest edit requests, they need to be requested and someone may or may not get around to them. There is no deadline. I find a very important part of the protection policy is that legitimate requests against protected pages should be swiftly evaluated an executed when possible, in this case this is not a PP issue. Perhaps {{Request edit}} should be used instead if the SPROT queue is also getting flooded here. — xaosflux Talk 16:59, 7 December 2018 (UTC)
- See also Template_talk:Request_edit#Other_reasons_for_edit_request. — xaosflux Talk 14:54, 11 December 2018 (UTC)
My watchlist
Hi xaosflux, this is a courtesy message to let you know that i watch your talk page in order to fight vandalism (i do the same for other high profile users). Please let me know if you want me to remove you from my watchlist. Wish you a great rest of your day.---Wikaviani (talk) (contribs) 04:46, 8 December 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.
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 11 December. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 12 December. It will be on all wikis from 13 December (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 12 December at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
- New accounts will need passwords that are at least 8 characters long. Admins, interface admins, bureaucrats, oversighters, CentralNotice admins, global renamers, check users, stewards and some other user groups will need passwords that are at least 10 characters long. This is because an attacker could cause damage to the wikis if they took over these accounts. [94][95]
- When you hover over a footnote it will show you the reference as a pop-up. This is so you don't have to jump down to the bottom of the page to see a reference. This will happen in 2019. Some wikis already have gadgets that do this. You will be able to turn it off. [96]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
17:33, 10 December 2018 (UTC)
Copper Country Strike, 1913-1914
Hi, sorry to bother you again, but I am under the impression that you know how Wikipedia works quite more well than I do. I am writing to you today to ask if it is acceptable to rewrite the page on the Copper Country strike of 1913–14~ I have amassed a wealth of knowledge and both primary and secondary sources on this topic over the years and it has particularly peaked my interest as I'm from the region, embedded in the culture, and it impacted my family quite a lot. I have made friends with a best-selling author on the topic, Steve Lehto, who can possibly even help oversee it if necessary.
Anyways, I await your response. Sorry for the long post on your talk page,
--The Copper Miner (talk) 06:04, 12 December 2018 (UTC)
- Hello @The Copper Miner: in general you should feel free to be bold in updating articles. Check out Wikipedia:Identifying reliable sources to help ensure you are using good sources. While a complete rewrite can be done of any page, updating or adding sections at a time is usually has less resistance from other editors (who may take issue with you discarding all of "their work"). That being said, articles are suppose to change and constantly get better and sometimes that means replacing the whole thing! To not impact readers during major changes, you can use your personal sandbox to build the article without any editing conflicts then copy in all of the new material. Happy editing, — xaosflux Talk 12:05, 12 December 2018 (UTC)
Extension to PkbwcgsBot's task 2
I need a bit of an extension to this task. The bot will need to add | religion = Islam so that it displays the religion correctly. It is not feasible to merge this to Template:Infobox religious biography because Template:Infobox religious biography is used for all religions so they would all display the religion as "Islam" if they use Template:Infobox religious biography with the religion parameter. Are you okay with that? Pkbwcgs (talk) 19:49, 14 December 2018 (UTC)
- Replied at Wikipedia talk:Bots/Requests for approval/PkbwcgsBot 2. — xaosflux Talk 21:10, 14 December 2018 (UTC)
Huge Amount of Paid Editing and Paid article creation is done in India.
Please Take a look at these articles most of the artcles are just "GRADE SCHOOLS" and we all know that grade schools are not notable at all. The citation provided are not independent, and grades school are not notable these types of articles are created by such private school to attract students so they can increase their PROFITS, it's a very common practice in india. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Criteria_for_speedy_deletion#G11 And also check who creates such advertisements he should be banned from editing Wikipedia there are more than 1000s of such non-notable paid advertisements in English Wikipedia.
You are my last hope for Independent Wikipedia in India. parents are forced to pay high fees in these schools as we all trust wikipedia, and these schools take advantage of it.
i am just a user with no rights like you, so i can not delete them all requested for deletion of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delhi_Public_School_Ghaziabad and it got deleted.
LIST OF SUCH SCHOOLS BY STATE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_schools_in_India
Nuksanhai (talk) 11:02, 17 December 2018 (UTC)
- @Nuksanhai: you can report these at Wikipedia:Conflict of interest/Noticeboard. — xaosflux Talk 14:40, 17 December 2018 (UTC)
thanks for your suggestion Nuksanhai (talk) 14:45, 17 December 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.
Tech News
- Because of the holidays the next issue of Tech News will be sent out on 7 January 2019.
Recent changes
- Some templates that show notices about the content of the page will now be shown on the mobile website. In many cases they were hidden before. [97][98]
- Admins can no longer unblock themselves, except for self-blocks. A blocked admin can block the user who blocked them but no one else. This is so no one can block all admins on a wiki without being stopped. [99]
- The ParserMigration extension has been removed. It compared the result of two versions of the MediaWiki wikitext parsing pipeline. It was used when we moved to the Remex parsing library instead of Tidy.
Problems
<ref>tags can use parameters such as "name" or "group". For example<ref name="adams" group="books">. If a<ref>tag has more than two parameters all parameters are ignored. You don't get a warning that they don't work. This will soon be fixed. [100]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 18 December. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 19 December. It will be on all wikis from 20 December (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 19 December at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
- The Wikimedia Foundation Android app team are working on making it easier to edit on mobile phones. You can read more about these plans. If you have an Android phone and speak at least two languages you can help testing in English. Tell Dchen (WMF) you want to be part of the testing by writing on her talk page or email her.
-
tiles.wmflabs.organdwma.wmflabs.orgwill stop working. They have no maintainers and run an old operating system. Tools which use it could stop working. This includes the mapnik gadget, hill shading, and hike and bike layers. New maintainers could help out and keep it going. [101]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
20:34, 17 December 2018 (UTC)
Edit-count
Hi, Xaosflux!
Do you know of any means to develop a template that renders itself in two different forms based on the edit-count of the user's t/p where it's substituted? Basically, a parser that pulled the edit-count would have done my job coupled with but AFAIS, that's missing:(∯WBGconverse 07:38, 19 December 2018 (UTC)
- @Winged Blades of Godric: regarding
edit-count of the user's t/p
you want the number of revisions of the users talk page? (e.g. this page is ~5606) — xaosflux Talk 14:32, 19 December 2018 (UTC)- Apologies for a poor phrasing. The appropriate phrasing will be:- 'Edit-count of the user; whose t/p the template is substituted in.' ∯WBGconverse 14:40, 19 December 2018 (UTC)
- @Winged Blades of Godric: I'm not aware of a way to do that, primarily because "edit count of the user associated with this page" (and actually "edit count" of anything) is not a variable you use an input to a parser function. — xaosflux Talk 15:04, 19 December 2018 (UTC)
- Apologies for a poor phrasing. The appropriate phrasing will be:- 'Edit-count of the user; whose t/p the template is substituted in.' ∯WBGconverse 14:40, 19 December 2018 (UTC)
Merry Christmas
It may take a few minutes from the time the email is sent for it to show up in your inbox. You can at any time by removing the {{You've got mail}} or {{ygm}} template.
- hope you don't mind. Best, Risker (talk) 06:01, 21 December 2018 (UTC)
Merry Christmas !!!
CAPTAIN RAJU(T) is wishing you a Merry Christmas (quite possibly a White Christmas).
This greeting (and season) promotes WikiLove.
Spread the Christmas spirit by adding {{subst:User:Matty.007/template/Christmas}} to someone's talk page with a friendly message. If everyone who got this put it on two talk pages, we would have... lots of Christmas spirit! Have fun finding links in this message!
— 19:45, 23 December 2018 (UTC)
Happy Holidays!
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Merry Christmas and a Prosperous 2019! |
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Hello Xaosflux, may you be surrounded by peace, success and happiness on this seasonal occasion. Spread the WikiLove by wishing another user a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past, a good friend, or just some random person. Sending you a heartfelt and warm greetings for Christmas and New Year 2019. Spread the love by adding {{subst:Seasonal Greetings}} to other user talk pages. |
Thanks
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Merry Christmas and a Prosperous 2019! |
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Hello Xaosflux, may you be surrounded by peace, success and happiness on this seasonal occasion. Thank you so much for all of the help this year. Spread the WikiLove by wishing another user a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past, a good friend, or just some random person. Sending you a heartfelt and warm greetings for Christmas and New Year 2019. Spread the love by adding {{subst:Seasonal Greetings}} to other user talk pages. |
The Signpost: 24 December 2018
- From the editors: Where to draw the line in reporting?
- News and notes: Some wishes do come true
- In the media: Political hijinks
- Discussion report: A new record low for RfA
- WikiProject report: Articlegenesis
- Arbitration report: Year ends with one active case
- Traffic report: Queen dethroned by U.S. presidents
- Gallery: Sun and Moon, water and stone
- Blog: News from the WMF
- Humour: I believe in Bigfoot
- Essay: Requests for medication
- From the archives: Compromised admin accounts – again
Merry Christmas!
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Merry Christmas and a Prosperous 2019! |
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Hello Xaosflux, may you be surrounded by peace, success and happiness on this seasonal occasion. Spread the WikiLove by wishing another user a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past, a good friend, or just some random person. Sending you heartfelt and warm greetings for Christmas and New Year 2019. Spread the love by adding {{subst:Seasonal Greetings}} to other user talk pages. |
Merry Christmas!
|
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Merry Christmas and a Prosperous 2019! |
|
Hello Xaosflux, may you be surrounded by peace, success and happiness on this seasonal occasion. Spread the WikiLove by wishing another user a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past, a good friend, or just some random person. Sending you heartfelt and warm greetings for Christmas and New Year 2019. Spread the love by adding {{subst:Seasonal Greetings}} to other user talk pages. |
Greetings !
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Merry Christmas and a Prosperous 2019! |
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Hello Xaosflux, may you be surrounded by peace, success and happiness on this seasonal occasion. Spread the WikiLove by wishing another user a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past, a good friend, or just some random person. Sending you heartfelt and warm greetings for Christmas and New Year 2019. Spread the love by adding {{subst:Seasonal Greetings}} to other user talk pages. |
---Wikaviani (talk) (contribs) 18:15, 25 December 2018 (UTC)
You've got mail
It may take a few minutes from the time the email is sent for it to show up in your inbox. You can at any time by removing the {{You've got mail}} or {{ygm}} template.–Ammarpad (talk) 03:52, 27 December 2018 (UTC)
- @Ammarpad: done for 1 week, if you need more please follow up at WP:PERM. Best of luck with your event, — xaosflux Talk 04:32, 27 December 2018 (UTC)
- @TonyBallioni: CU request, very misc - in trying to solve the EVC issue we're hitting. Can you check if: the account creation of Drahsakdr by Ammarpad was from the same IP as Ammarpad's recent edits, or it was from: 208.80.155.156 (or 208.80.155.0/24) (the outreachdashboard.wmflabs.org server). Thanks, — xaosflux Talk 04:36, 27 December 2018 (UTC)
- Actually, less info - only want to know if it was from that 208.80.155.0/24 subnet or not that subnet, Ammarpad could have multiple addresses and I don't care if they correlate. — xaosflux Talk 04:39, 27 December 2018 (UTC)
- That’d be one I’d think would be better to go through devs than CU on since the local policy only allows the use of the tool for disruption on this or another Wikimedia project. I’m a bit cautious since I’m relatively new, so someone else may be willing to. TonyBallioni (talk) 05:07, 27 December 2018 (UTC)
- @TonyBallioni: thanks for the reply, I left it at Wikipedia:Sockpuppet_investigations#outreachdashboard for the larger team. — xaosflux Talk 06:10, 27 December 2018 (UTC)
- That’d be one I’d think would be better to go through devs than CU on since the local policy only allows the use of the tool for disruption on this or another Wikimedia project. I’m a bit cautious since I’m relatively new, so someone else may be willing to. TonyBallioni (talk) 05:07, 27 December 2018 (UTC)
- Actually, less info - only want to know if it was from that 208.80.155.0/24 subnet or not that subnet, Ammarpad could have multiple addresses and I don't care if they correlate. — xaosflux Talk 04:39, 27 December 2018 (UTC)
Edit filter helper
I have been requested by a trusted user on my talk page the userright of edit filter helper. Am I empowered as admin to grant it or should I suggest he apply for it?--Wehwalt (talk) 20:13, 27 December 2018 (UTC)
- (talk page stalker) My understanding of the policy is that they have to make a request at the EFN; point 3 only applies if they already hold edit filter manager and want it reduced to EFH. Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 20:32, 27 December 2018 (UTC)
- @Wehwalt: Wikipedia:Edit filter helper outlines the process, it is fairly light-weight. You should not issue this access without following the process unless you have some strong IAR reason. One thing that could help it along is after the editor places their request you could endorse them if you think it is a good idea. Hope that helps, — xaosflux Talk 20:35, 27 December 2018 (UTC)
- Thank you.--Wehwalt (talk) 21:08, 27 December 2018 (UTC)
Translation of the article about Jiny Lan in German Wikipedia
Hello Xaosflux, thank you very much for providing my german article about Jiny Lan for translation into the English edition of Wikipedia. Unfortunately, I was ill for a longer time and could only start translating now. One question: how do I best save my progress? I will need several days and steps to translate the whole article. Many thanks for your response. Happy New Year! --Gauthier W. de Reymaker (talk) 15:53, 31 December 2018 (UTC)
- @Gauthier W. de Reymaker: hello, as the content is in your sandbox (User:Gauthier W. de Reymaker/Jiny Lan) there really isn't much of a time limit. I suggest you just go to that sandbox page and use the normal edit functions right where it is, make as many edits and save as often as you would like. Once the article is in English you can use the move funtion (Special:MovePage/User:Gauthier_W._de_Reymaker/Jiny_Lan) to move it to Jiny Lan (this function will become available after you make about 5 edits). Hope that helps, — xaosflux Talk 16:53, 31 December 2018 (UTC)
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If you have feedback on how to make SuggestBot better, please let us know on SuggestBot's talk page. -- SuggestBot (talk) 23:55, 31 December 2018 (UTC)
Happy New Year, Xaosflux!
Xaosflux,
Have a prosperous, productive and enjoyable New Year, and thanks for your contributions to Wikipedia.
Hhkohh (talk) 02:19, 1 January 2019 (UTC)
Send New Year cheer by adding {{subst:Happy New Year fireworks}} to user talk pages.
Happy New Year, Xaos!
Some celestial fireworks to herald another year of progress for mankind and Wikipedia. All the very best , Xaos,
Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 02:18, 1 January 2019 (UTC)
February inactive Admins
Shouldn't the Bot have listed the inactive Admins for February already? Probably broken. JMHamo (talk) 14:08, 1 January 2019 (UTC)
- JMHamo, pinging JJMC89, bot operator Hhkohh (talk) 14:38, 1 January 2019 (UTC)
- Think the bot is stalled, will run a manual list if it doesn't recover. — xaosflux Talk 16:50, 1 January 2019 (UTC)
Administrators' newsletter – January 2019
News and updates for administrators from the past month (December 2018).
|
|
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Guideline and policy news
- There are a number of new or changed speedy deletion criteria, each previously part of WP:CSD#G6:
- G14 (new): Disambiguation pages that disambiguate only zero or one existing pages are now covered under the new G14 criterion (discussion). This is {{db-disambig}}; the text is unchanged and candidates may be found in Category:Candidates for speedy deletion as unnecessary disambiguation pages.
- R4 (new): Redirects in the file namespace (and no file links) that have the same name as a file or redirect at Commons are now covered under the new R4 criterion (discussion). This is {{db-redircom}}; the text is unchanged.
- G13 (expanded): Userspace drafts containing only the default Article Wizard text are now covered under G13 along with other drafts (discussion). Such blank drafts are now eligible after six months rather than one year, and taggers continue to use {{db-blankdraft}}.
- The Wikimedia Foundation now requires all interface administrators to enable two-factor authentication.
- Members of the Bot Approvals Group (BAG) are now subject to an activity requirement. After two years without any bot-related activity (e.g. operating a bot, posting on a bot-related talk page), BAG members will be retired from BAG following a one-week notice.
Technical news
- Starting on December 13, the Wikimedia Foundation security team implemented new password policy and requirements. Privileged accounts (administrators, bureaucrats, checkusers, oversighters, interface administrators, bots, edit filter managers/helpers, template editors, et al.) must have a password at least 10 characters in length. All accounts must have a password:
- At least 8 characters in length
- Not in the 100,000 most popular passwords (defined by the Password Blacklist library)
- Different from their username
- User accounts not meeting these requirements will be prompted to update their password accordingly. More information is available on MediaWiki.org.
- Blocked administrators may now block the administrator that blocked them. This was done to mitigate the possibility that a compromised administrator account would block all other active administrators, complementing the removal of the ability to unblock oneself outside of self-imposed blocks. A request for comment is currently in progress to determine whether the blocking policy should be updated regarding this change.
- {{Copyvio-revdel}} now has a link to open the history with the RevDel checkboxes already filled in.
Arbitration
- Following the 2018 Arbitration Committee elections, the following editors have been appointed to the Arbitration Committee: AGK, Courcelles, GorillaWarfare, Joe Roe, Mkdw, SilkTork.
Miscellaneous
- Accounts continue to be compromised on a regular basis. Evidence shows this is entirely due to the accounts having the same password that was used on another website that suffered a data breach. If you have ever used your current password on any other website, you should change it immediately.
- Around 22% of admins have enabled two-factor authentication, up from 20% in June 2018. If you haven't already enabled it, please consider doing so. Regardless of whether you use 2FA, please practice appropriate account security by ensuring your password is secure and unique to Wikimedia.
You've got mail
It may take a few minutes from the time the email is sent for it to show up in your inbox. You can at any time by removing the {{You've got mail}} or {{ygm}} template.
Wugapodes [thɑk] [ˈkan.ˌʧɹɪbz] 21:46, 1 January 2019 (UTC)
- @Wugapodes: Done — xaosflux Talk 00:27, 2 January 2019 (UTC)
Disambiguation link notification for January 4
An automated process has detected that when you recently edited OSTO System Model, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Bidirectional (check to confirm | fix with Dab solver).
(Opt-out instructions.) --DPL bot (talk) 10:04, 4 January 2019 (UTC)
A question aside
Hello Xaosflux, I have a question regarding Phabricator Task T213003. When JJMC89 moved this task from Unsorted to Single wikis on the Community-consensus-needed board, does this mean a full blown RfC is now needed locally to demonstrate a consensus before the task can be acted on? I'm not understanding the action otherwise and am asking you here: what it implies? Thank you.--John Cline (talk) 20:45, 5 January 2019 (UTC)
- No, it doesn't. I just sorted the task on the workboard to indicate that it only impacts a single wiki. — JJMC89 (T·C) 20:50, 5 January 2019 (UTC)
- @John Cline: also no, the main point of that phab tag is that devs will keep a task on hold until it is removed. — xaosflux Talk 20:52, 5 January 2019 (UTC)
- I understand. My thanks to both of you, and my esteem.--John Cline (talk) 20:59, 5 January 2019 (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.
Tech News writers, editors and translators wish you a pleasant 2019 year.
Recent changes
- RelatedSites extension has been undeployed. It was used to create interwiki links on Wikivoyage, now handled by Wikidata. [102]
- MediaWiki logstash logging is moving to a new infrastructure. This is an ongoing deployment. [103]
- codesearch.wmflabs.org has been updated, with new and updated repositories and a new search options for code. [104]
- On several wikis, an account named "Edit filter" has been created on December 17 to perform some technical maintenance on AbuseFilter. This account has sysop rights but it's a system user and no human can use it. The account already existed on wikis where AbuseFilter can perform blocks, which are issued using this account. See T212268 for more information and future plans.
Problems
- In AbuseFilter, the "Throttle" action takes three parameters: count, period and groups. They must now strictly respect the requirements listed on mediawiki.org. A list of broken filters is on Phabricator. If you're familiar with AbuseFilter, please take a look and fix them. [105]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from January 8. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from January 9. It will be on all wikis from January 10 (calendar).
Meetings
- Search Platform Office Hours is rescheduled to January 9. Check the details for time and date.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
18:29, 7 January 2019 (UTC)
An issue with a template
Please do check the issue which I have mentioned in the page Template talk:National squad. That page has been viewed by just 3 people which was the reason why I ask you to interfere/respond.Adithyak1997 (talk) 06:08, 9 January 2019 (UTC)
You've got mail
It may take a few minutes from the time the email is sent for it to show up in your inbox. You can at any time by removing the {{You've got mail}} or {{ygm}} template.SITH (talk) 21:42, 11 January 2019 (UTC)
Category:Real Madrid presidents has been nominated for discussion
Category:Real Madrid presidents, which you created, has been nominated for possible deletion, merging, or renaming. A discussion is taking place to decide whether this proposal complies with the categorization guidelines. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the categories for discussion page. Thank you. Matthew hk (talk) 02:38, 13 January 2019 (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 now use Google Translate in the content translation tool. [106][107]
- You can now add captions to files on Commons. Captions are short descriptions of the file. They can be translated to all languages we use. They can't use wikitext markup.
- Earlier a quoted HTML attribute had to be followed by a space. Now it doesn't. This means that some pages could look different when you save them even if you didn't edit that part of the text. [108][109]
- Templates with <templatestyles> could not show the difference between the live template and the sandbox version when they were tested. This has now been fixed. <templatestyles> has a new
wrapperparameter now. You can use it for selectors like.mw-parser-output <wrapper parameter value> <selector from CSS page>. [110]
Problems
- When you see an edit in the recent changes feed or in the history of a page some of them have tags. Some tags are added automatically. You can also add tags manually. Tags for edits that have been added manually can be edited. This didn't work for a little while. This has now been fixed. [111]
Changes later this week
- You can move files from your wiki to Wikimedia Commons and keep the file history with the new FileExporter. It will be a beta feature on all wikis from 16 January. If you want to test it you activate it and check your wiki's configuration file.
- Users who could cause more damage to the wikis if someone took over their account have to have more secure passwords. This includes administrators and other user groups. They can't use passwords that are in a list of common passwords. Accounts with common passwords are easy to take over. The list of common passwords was made longer a few weeks ago and has a different error message. Some user groups have been added to those who can't use common passwords. This is to protect all accounts with user rights that could cause damage. [112]
- The AbuseFilter variable
minor_edithas been removed. It was deprecated in 2016. Now you can't use it. You can fix the filters using it. You can find them if you use the search bar on Special:AbuseFilter. - The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from January 15
17:54, 14 January 2019 (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.
Tech News
- Some people did not get last week's issue of Tech News. This was because of a problem with MassMessage. If you did not get last week's issue, you can read it on Meta. [113]
Recent changes
- The content translation tool can now use version 2 as the default version for users who turned on the beta feature. For example it adds the tracking category
Pages with unreviewed translationsto translations that might have used machine translations without fixing the problems. This is so others can find them. You can find this category inSpecial:TrackingCategorieson Wikipedias. - https://mediawiki2latex-large.wmflabs.org can now convert collects of up to 800 pages to PDF, EPUB or ODT. Previously this was 200 pages.
Problems
- When a template was edited with the visual editor, it would sometimes put all information on one line. This makes it difficult to read for editors who use the wikitext editor. It also makes it more difficult to see what happened in a diff. This problem affected edits made between 8 and 17 January and is now fixed. [114]
- MassMessage is used to post a message to many pages. It has not been working reliably. Some messages have not been posted to everyone. [115][116]
- Because of a database problem that had to be fixed immediately you could not edit most wikis for a couple of minutes on 17 January (UTC). This has now been fixed. [117]
Changes later this week
- You will be able to use template styles in the
Modulenamespace. [118] - The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 22 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 23 January. It will be on all wikis from 24 January (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 23 January 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.
20:36, 21 January 2019 (UTC)
Move request by IP
Please move my request [119] onto the main Wikipedia page please, thank you. 194.207.146.167 (talk) 13:30, 22 January 2019 (UTC)
- 194..., that page was already created, please see Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Elm Guest House claims and controversy. — xaosflux Talk 13:57, 22 January 2019 (UTC)
Request English language wikiblock for 1 month
To enforce a much needed English language wiki break as I am very emotionally distressed. With thanks for your kind consideration. E.3 (talk) 02:52, 23 January 2019 (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
- The Wikimedia servers use HHVM to run the PHP code. They are going to use PHP7 and stop using HHVM. You can test PHP7 with a new beta feature. That way you can help find and report problems.
Problems
- When someone moves a page to a name that already exists that page that had the name the article is moved to is deleted. For a couple of months this didn't always work. Some users saw an error message instead. This has now been fixed. [120]
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 30 January 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.
18:15, 28 January 2019 (UTC)
Bot approval
I've approved your bot. You know the drill, and the routing number to my swiss bank account. SQLQuery me! 18:18, 29 January 2019 (UTC)
The Signpost: 31 January 2019
- Op-Ed: Random Rewards Rejected
- News and notes: WMF staff turntable continues to spin; Endowment gets more cash; RfA continues to be a pit of steely knives
- Discussion report: The future of the reference desk
- Featured content: Don't miss your great opportunity
- Arbitration report: An admin under the microscope
- Traffic report: Death, royals and superheroes: Avengers, Black Panther
- Technology report: When broken is easily fixed
- News from the WMF: News from WMF
- Recent research: Ad revenue from reused Wikipedia articles; are Wikipedia researchers asking the right questions?
- Essay: How
- Humour: Village pump
- From the archives: An editorial board that includes you
If I may
Follow on; I felt that you believed my edit this morning at the Arbcom talk page was in some way untoward?[121] I would much rather have your confidence that I did endeavor diligence, and any closing advice you'd be willing to share. The fault may have been in the asking, but; as it is: I didn't find the answer I was seeking. And believed the question fair. Thank you.--John Cline (talk) 03:51, 3 February 2019 (UTC)
- Hello @John Cline:, certainly not! I try to provide helpful responses in lots of forums, and often the original asking person is just in the wrong forum to get a good response. Your original post wasn't very clear of the context of the concern, so I recommended the general forum for COI assistance. Since your question has further developed in to relating to sanction in specific, following up at WP:AN may be the next best step. I suggest closing and noting the old discussion if doing so to prevent a forked conversation. Best regards, — xaosflux Talk 04:38, 3 February 2019 (UTC)
- Thank you Xaosflux, I appreciate your reply and will follow its wise counsel. I can certainly say, without equivocation, that you provide extremely helpful responses across many forums. This I have repeatedly observed and yours is among the usernames I most respect; I'd be honored to break bread with you. Best wishes and regards.--John Cline (talk) 06:24, 3 February 2019 (UTC)
Administrators' newsletter – February 2019
News and updates for administrators from the past month (January 2019).
Administrator changes
Interface administrator changes
Guideline and policy news
- A request for comment is currently open to reevaluate the activity requirements for administrators.
- Administrators who are blocked have the technical ability to block the administrator who blocked their own account. A recent request for comment has amended the blocking policy to clarify that this ability should only be used in exceptional circumstances, such as account compromises, where there is a clear and immediate need.
- A request for comment closed with a consensus in favor of deprecating The Sun as a permissible reference, and creating an edit filter to warn users who attempt to cite it.
Technical news
- A discussion regarding an overhaul of the format and appearance of Wikipedia:Requests for page protection is in progress (permalink). The proposed changes will make it easier to create requests for those who are not using Twinkle. The workflow for administrators at this venue will largely be unchanged. Additionally, there are plans to archive requests similar to how it is done at WP:PERM, where historical records are kept so that prior requests can more easily be searched for.
Miscellaneous
- Voting in the 2019 Steward elections will begin on 08 February 2019, 14:00 (UTC) and end on 28 February 2019, 13:59 (UTC). The confirmation process of current stewards is being held in parallel. You can automatically check your eligibility to vote.
- A new IRC bot is available that allows you to subscribe to notifications when specific filters are tripped. This requires that your IRC handle be identified.
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
- It was easy to untick a box by accident in Special:Preferences. This will now be fixed. [122]
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 5 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 6 February. It will be on all wikis from 7 February (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 6 February 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.
17:12, 4 February 2019 (UTC)
RfAWB
Sorry to bother you xaosflux, but I've recently submitted a request at WP:RFP/AWB but nobody has seen it yet. I'm contacting different admins over this because I stopped manually editing Wikipedia, partly because it takes a long time, and you don't want to know what happens to me if I stop editing. Anyways, can you review my request? Thanks, GN-z11 ☎ ★ 17:54, 8 February 2019 (UTC)
- PERM requests are normally processed in 1-3 days - it should be gotten to soon. — xaosflux Talk 18:15, 8 February 2019 (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 use the
amboxCSS class to show page issues to mobile readers. When you useamboxthere are classes you can use.
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 12 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 13 February. It will be on all wikis from 14 February (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 13 February 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.
18:45, 11 February 2019 (UTC)
thank you re: account creation privileges
Dear Xaosflux,
Thanks so much for giving me the right to create accounts for new users. Because of you, I created accounts for 5-6 new Wikipedia editors for the edit-a-thon I hosted yesterday to celebrate Black History Month.
Our edit-a-thon is now over, so I no longer need these privileges. Just wanted to let you know, so you can revert the permissions on my account to their usual status.
Many thanks, Meg Meiman — Preceding unsigned comment added by Meg Meiman (talk • contribs) 18:20, 17 February 2019 (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
- When you thank someone on the mobile web you will now have two seconds to cancel the thank. This is in case you clicked on the thank button by accident. [123]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 19 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 20 February. It will be on all wikis from 21 February (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 20 February at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
- There is a proposal to add a red link to mobile search results if there is no page with that name. This is how it works on desktop. You can leave feedback. [124]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
23:13, 18 February 2019 (UTC)
Deletion Question 2
Hi. Recently I asked at BN if something should be deleted, and you said no. Before I post again, can you take a look at Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Modernmotem? The user has made a total of 13 edits, with this edit (subsequently reverted) being their only edit outside of the user/user talk namespaces. Thanks, --DannyS712 (talk) 03:19, 20 February 2019 (UTC)
- @DannyS712: us 'crats don't really have any special jurisdiction over RfA's that never started. You can feel free to nominate misc. pages to WP:MFD or suggest the page creator to nominate it for WP:CSD#U1 speedy deletion. Pages like that really aren't causing any trouble, and unless they have gotten quite dusty (e.g. if both the page has been abandoned and the editor has been away for a while) I don't think really need any housekeeping. — xaosflux Talk 04:27, 20 February 2019 (UTC)
- Thanks --DannyS712 (talk) 18:45, 20 February 2019 (UTC)
You've got mail!
Message added 15:00, 20 February 2019 (UTC). It may take a few minutes from the time the email is sent for it to show up in your inbox. You can at any time by removing the {{You've got mail}} or {{ygm}} template.
——SerialNumber54129 15:00, 20 February 2019 (UTC)
- @Serial Number 54129: FYI - I won't be able to get to my email on this for up to a day, but will check. — xaosflux Talk 15:12, 20 February 2019 (UTC)
- "No problem whatsoever" :) just sticking my nose in. ——SerialNumber54129 15:17, 20 February 2019 (UTC)
Talk to us about talking
The Wikimedia Foundation is planning a global consultation about communication. The goal is to bring Wikimedians and wiki-minded people together to improve tools for communication.
We want all contributors to be able to talk to each other on the wikis, whatever their experience, their skills or their devices.
We are looking for input from as many different parts of the Wikimedia community as possible. It will come from multiple projects, in multiple languages, and with multiple perspectives.
We are currently planning the consultation. We need your help.
We need volunteers to help talk to their communities or user groups.
You can help by hosting a discussion at your wiki. Here's what to do:
- First, sign up your group here.
- Next, create a page (or a section on a Village pump, or an e-mail thread – whatever is natural for your group) to collect information from other people in your group. This is not a vote or decision-making discussion: we are just collecting feedback.
- Then ask people what they think about communication processes. We want to hear stories and other information about how people communicate with each other on and off wiki. Please consider asking these five questions:
- When you want to discuss a topic with your community, what tools work for you, and what problems block you?
- What about talk pages works for newcomers, and what blocks them?
- What do others struggle with in your community about talk pages?
- What do you wish you could do on talk pages, but can't due to the technical limitations?
- What are the important aspects of a "wiki discussion"?
- Finally, please go to Talk pages consultation 2019 on Mediawiki.org and report what you learned from your group. Please include links if the discussion is available to the public.
You can also help build the list of the many different ways people talk to each other.
Not all groups active on wikis or around wikis use the same way to discuss things: it can happen on wiki, on social networks, through external tools... Tell us how your group communicates.
You can read more about the overall process on mediawiki.org. If you have questions or ideas, you can leave feedback about the consultation process in the language you prefer.
Thank you! We're looking forward to talking with you.
Trizek (WMF) 15:08, 21 February 2019 (UTC)
Talk pages consultation 2019
The Wikimedia Foundation has invited the various Wikimedia communities, including the English Wikipedia, to participate in a consultation on improving communication methods within the Wikimedia projects. As such, a request for comment has been created at Wikipedia:Talk pages consultation 2019. You are invited to express your views in the discussion. ~ Winged BladesGodric 05:23, 24 February 2019 (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
- There is a new version of the iOS Wikipedia app. It has for example syntax highlighting and new toolbars to make it easier to write wikitext. It also has night mode, a find-on-page function and other things. You can give feedback and suggestions. [125]
Changes later this week
- When you look at your watchlist or the recent changes page you can use the new filters for edit review. There you can choose tags to filter different edits. Empty tags will no longer be shown. [126]
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 26 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 27 February. It will be on all wikis from 28 February (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 27 February at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
- The Wikipedia app for Android will invite users to add Wikidata descriptions to Wikidata objects that have Wikipedia articles but no Wikidata descriptions. It will only invite users who have added a number of Wikidata descriptions in the app without being reverted. This is to avoid spam and bad edits. You can read more and leave feedback.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
21:17, 25 February 2019 (UTC)
The Signpost: 28 February 2019
- From the editors: Help wanted (still)
- News and notes: Front-page issues for the community
- Discussion report: Talking about talk pages
- Featured content: Conquest, War, Famine, Death, and more!
- Arbitration report: A quiet month for Arbitration Committee
- Traffic report: Binge-watching
- Technology report: Tool labs casters-up
- Gallery: Signed with pride
- From the archives: New group aims to promote Wiki-Love
- Humour: Pesky Pronouns
Links to logs
Hi. I saw at WP:IANB that you linked to the log of removing Mr. Stradivarius's IAdmin rights using an external link. I just wanted to alert you to the existence of {{Logid}}, which makes linking to logs easier as well as formatting them as wikilinks. In this case, you could have put {{Logid|97373926|removed}} to get removed, linking directly to the log of the removal. Just an fyi. Thanks, --DannyS712 (talk) 00:45, 1 March 2019 (UTC)
- @DannyS712: thanks for the note, I always forget about that syntax, we should probably ask for a Special:Logid/nnnnn creation just like Diff/ and PermaLink/ over at phab. — xaosflux Talk 01:03, 1 March 2019 (UTC)
- We can ask, but what do you mean you always forget? {{Logid}} is template I made a month ago. --DannyS712 (talk) 01:05, 1 March 2019 (UTC)
- Y'all know about Special:Redirect/logid/12345, yes? Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 01:09, 1 March 2019 (UTC)
- @DannyS712: I always forget
&logid=argument is available on Special:Log since it isn't represented in the GUI. — xaosflux Talk 01:11, 1 March 2019 (UTC)- @Suffusion of Yellow: even more obscure :D — xaosflux Talk 01:11, 1 March 2019 (UTC)
- @Suffusion of Yellow: Yes but that produces the ugly
%3Ain the url. Also, my template can do other stuff; if you want to take a look at what the last entry at WP:EFFPR was about, just use{{logid|log=abuse|23375692}}to get: details • examine. --DannyS712 (talk) 01:14, 1 March 2019 (UTC)- Of course, getting the logid is enough of a pain, so as long as we're listing options, the corrrect™ way is to use Enterprisey's links-in-logs. It makes the dates clickable to the exact log link, then do whatever you like. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 02:05, 1 March 2019 (UTC)
- @Amorymeltzer: Lol I forgot I had that installed - I thought the links were there by default. Maybe we (by which I mean @Enterprisey) should propose it as a gadget? --DannyS712 (talk) 02:09, 1 March 2019 (UTC)
- phab:T207569, specifically phab:T207562. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 02:11, 1 March 2019 (UTC)
- @Amorymeltzer: Lol I forgot I had that installed - I thought the links were there by default. Maybe we (by which I mean @Enterprisey) should propose it as a gadget? --DannyS712 (talk) 02:09, 1 March 2019 (UTC)
- Of course, getting the logid is enough of a pain, so as long as we're listing options, the corrrect™ way is to use Enterprisey's links-in-logs. It makes the dates clickable to the exact log link, then do whatever you like. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 02:05, 1 March 2019 (UTC)
- @DannyS712: I always forget
Hi Xaosflux, sorry to ask for help but this BRFA is in need of expert intervention. The BAG operator Headbomb withdrew from participation far into the process which makes it difficult for new BAG operators to come up to speed. If you are interested, I've written a summary of the history:
3 months ago, a BOTREQ was made to tag articles with {{unreferenced}}. I responded, and wrote the bot. Because there is a chance of false positives, trial edits are not the best method due to a long tail of edge cases, it requires too many trials. So the bot instead posted a list of articles it would tag (without actually tagging) so they can be reviewed. It processed 18,000 articles and posted the list (a "dry run") in userspace. I started a BRFA #7 with the dry run results. Headbomb became involved and approved 10 live trial edits, however another editor intervened and requested an RfC because the bot was too controversial etc.. I had not yet written the code to make live edits, and given the developing controversy over a possible RFC, decided to wait for more clarity before investing time in coding further (and I had other commitments). The RFC at Village Pump went on for a long time with high participation and finally closed in favor of the bot, and meanwhile I wrote the code needed for live edits and made the 10 trial edits initially approved by Headbomb. At this point - despite full support from the community with a freshly closed RFC, and 10 successful trial edits - the BRFA went off the rails. Headbomb resigned from the BRFA (for unimportant reasons); and, there are a couple ideas on how to implement the RFC close. I believe an experienced and responsible BAG operator who is able to see it through would easily solve these issues.
Is this something you could or would help us with? -- GreenC 05:00, 2 March 2019 (UTC)
- @GreenC: OK so I was just looking over all of this. Here are my thoughts:
- Withdraw that BRFA and submit a replacement one that is very clear about the new scope (the 'footnotes' thing is a lightning rod, so take it all out). (Prior discussion people can be pinged to the new BRFA). (Don't withdraw until you are ready to replace though) - we can put the current one 'on hold'). This is mostly cosmetic, but may help (optional)
- The RfC seems to be OK with bot tagging in general but make sure again the scope is very clearly defined (for one this is only going to be articles as the BRFA says, not 'pages' as the RFC says)
- The RfC suggests that a discussion should be had at Template talk:Unreferenced about adding a source parameter, you can open that now. I don't think making a new category is a good idea (especially not the monthly ones), but it needs to at least be brought up. I really don't think making a specific-bot category is a good idea, so perhaps they could do "|source=bot" and also add to a hidden category like Category:Articles lacking sources detected by bot or something.
- This needs more live edits, and likely an extended ramp-up trial with batches and pauses; we've done these before and as long as you are ok with it, should help (e.g. 500 edits, then a 1 week pause for comment, ... 1000 edits, another week pause....).
- For the FUD issue: write up an easy to understand list of conditions (such as at User:GreenC bot/Job 7 or what ever the number is). Link to this in all edit summaries, make it clear what you are looking for and how to contact you for false positives. Unreferenced is a "serious" issue to be wrong about, I accidentally claimed an article was unreferenced just the other day (Goliath Goli) - even though I really don't like the manner it is referenced.
- What do you think? — xaosflux Talk 16:08, 2 March 2019 (UTC)
This is awesome! A plan of action. #1: withdrawn. Will work on a new BRFA. #3: discussion is started. #5: will try to create a page how the bot makes decisions. #4: no problem good idea. Thanks! Will keep you updated. -- GreenC 17:56, 2 March 2019 (UTC)
Nomination for deletion of Module:Multilingual
Module:Multilingual has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the module's entry on the Templates for discussion page. {{3x|p}}ery (talk) 16:04, 4 March 2019 (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 5 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 6 March. It will be on all wikis from 7 March (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 6 March at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
- You can give feedback on the future of talk pages.
- The mobile website will use the standard fonts on your computer or phone instead of a generic font. This will make it easier to read text in many scripts. [127][128]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
16:38, 4 March 2019 (UTC)
Administrators' newsletter – March 2019
News and updates for administrators from the past month (February 2019).
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Guideline and policy news
- The RfC on administrator activity requirements failed to reach consensus for any proposal.
- Following discussions at the Bureaucrats' noticeboard and Wikipedia talk:Administrators, an earlier change to the restoration of adminship policy was reverted. If requested, bureaucrats will not restore administrator permissions removed due to inactivity if there have been five years without a logged administrator action; this "five year rule" does not apply to permissions removed voluntarily.
Technical news
- A new tool is available to help determine if a given IP is an open proxy/VPN/webhost/compromised host.
Arbitration
- The Arbitration Committee announced two new OTRS queues. Both are meant solely for cases involving private information; other cases will continue to be handled at the appropriate venues (e.g., WP:COIN or WP:SPI).
- paid-en-wpwikipedia.org has been set up to receive private evidence related to abusive paid editing.
- checkuser-en-wpwikipedia.org has been set up to receive private requests for CheckUser. For instance, requests for IP block exemption for anonymous proxy editing should now be sent to this address instead of the functionaries-en list.
- paid-en-wp
- The Arbitration Committee announced two new OTRS queues. Both are meant solely for cases involving private information; other cases will continue to be handled at the appropriate venues (e.g., WP:COIN or WP:SPI).
Miscellaneous
- Following the 2019 Steward Elections, the following editors have been appointed as stewards: Base, Einsbor, Jon Kolbert, Schniggendiller, and Wim b.
Event Coordinator StatusErinamukuta
Hi the events are done , just wanted to let you know.--Erina Mukuta 08:30, 11 March 2019 (UTC)
- @Erinamukuta: thanks for the note, hope it went well! If you have more, feel free to stop by WP:PERM again. — xaosflux Talk 11:47, 11 March 2019 (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
- Pages can use geocoordinates from Wikidata with the
mw.wikibase.entity:formatStatementsLua function or the#statementsparser function. If they do, they will now be shown using a Kartographer<maplink>if the wiki can use Kartographer. You can report bugs or ask questions on Phabricator. - There is now an EventStream to see when links are added or removed on Wikimedia wikis. You can read the discussions and plans.
Problems
- Some wikis will not be able to edit for a short period of time on 19 March (UTC). This will start at 15:00 UTC. It will last up to 15 minutes but probably shorter. You can see the list of affected wikis. This is because of network maintenance. You can still read the wikis.
- Editors who use Firefox to edit with the visual editor had a problem with copying text. When they tried to select text that included footnotes, templates or block images in the middle they would often only get part of the text. This has now been fixed. [129]
- Some maps didn't work for a while on 8 March. This has been fixed. [130][131]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 12 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 13 March. It will be on all wikis from 14 March (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 13 March 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.
19:29, 11 March 2019 (UTC)