This is an archive of past discussions with User:Amorymeltzer. 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.
Hi. You mentioned the lack of edit summaries in the request for permission page earlier today, I guess that's because of a bug in Huggle. I am currently using macOS and Huggle 3.3.5. When I press the revert button (or revert and warn user button), the edit summary just showed ((HG) (3.3.5)) and the "Reverted edits by ........." summary disappeared. However, when I choose a reason to revert, the "Revert edits by......." summary appeared. I searched the Huggle feedback page but the problem was not solved. Any thoughts? Thanks. Abelmoschus Esculentus (talk to me) 15:01, 25 April 2018 (UTC)
Sorry, no idea Abelmoschus Esculentus. I actually just tried huggle out myself for the first time the other day, and had this same issue. I'm also on a mac, although an older operating system as I had to build it from the source myself. The only thing I can think of is that you appear to not have quit out of huggle yet, which would thus create your huggle3.css configuration page. Try quitting out then logging back in and making a revert. My edits without a message stopped once I'd done that. ~ Amory(u • t • c)15:14, 25 April 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 parameter for unpatrolled edits in recent changes filters changed name. You might need to update saved filters and links. [1]
Problems
We are migrating wikis from Tidy to Remex. Because of a bug the 250 wikis which do not yet use Remex were switched on 23 April. This is two months early. This meant that pages with broken wikitext showed wrongly to readers. The bug was undone the next day. You can help fix broken wikitext to avoid this problem when your wiki switches. Tidy will be removed on all wikis before July 2018. You can follow the process on Phabricator. [2]
When an administrator blocks someone they will have a calendar they can use to choose when the block ends. This is to make it easier to pick a specific date. [4]
You can soon turn on the Performance Inspector in the Editing section in your preferences. It shows information about the performance of pages. This could be the size of modules in the page, how many CSS selectors are defined on the page and how many are used, or the size of the images on the page. This tool is intended to help editors fix pages that load slowly. [5]
There is a new abuse filter function called equals_to_any. You can use it to check if its first argument is equal (===) to any of the following ones. For example you can use it to check if the page's namespace is amongst a given set of values in a more compact way than you could earlier. You can read more on mediawiki.org.
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 1 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 2 May. It will be on all wikis from 3 May (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 1 May 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 2 May at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
The Wikimedia Cloud Services team is working on a new project called Toolhub. The goal is to make it easier for Wikimedians to discover software tools they can use. You can leave feedback on the talk page or email jharewikimedia.org to leave private feedback.
All wikis with fewer than 100 high-priority linter errors in all namespaces will switch to use the Remex parsing library. This is to replace Tidy. It will happen on 2 May. Other wikis will be recommended to switch soon when they have fixed the errors that must be fixed. Wikibooks wikis with fewer than 100 high-priority linter errors in the main namespace will switch on 9 May. Tidy will be removed on all wikis before July 2018. [6][7][8]
Sorry for disrupting the Administrators' Noticeboard. I am editing from my phone, so I don't know if the format is the same. When I go to an article's edit history and click on a revision, it shows tags for all of the "groups" (ie. administrators, rollbackers, etc.) that the editor belongs to. When I click one of my own revisions, there are no tags. How do you tell if you are autoconfirmed? DangleSnipeCelly (talk) 22:22, 30 April 2018 (UTC)
@DangleSnipeCelly1: No worry at all — it wasn't too disruptive, just the wrong venue. Can you provide a link? I don't see those rights, but I have a very non-standard setup. Regardless, it's likely because autoconfirmed isn't a user right per se; it's sort of a default thing. By example, as a sysop, I can add or remove a number of user rights to an account, but I can't do anything with autoconfirmed. It's best to think of the autoconfirmed "permission" like the "user" permission — largely invisible and only there in technicality. If you go to Special:UserRights/DangleSnipeCelly1 it will show your autoconfirmed status. Also, it's okay to reply on your talkpage! People usually watch pages, and it's also helpful to use the {{ping}} template like I did here to notify you of this reply. ~ Amory(u • t • c)01:11, 1 May 2018 (UTC)
Please unprotect the C151A Page as the IP has been unblocked but i'm not gonna vandalise it thanks! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 111.65.34.100 (talk)
@Aceing Winter Snows Harsh Cold: I'm not 100% on exactly why, but as far as I know MusikBot removes the template only after someone edits the page. I think it's because the page in question needs an edit before it will populate the category. If you look around, I think you'll see that's how it works. MusikAnimal might be able to confirm or deny. ~ Amory(u • t • c)01:21, 1 May 2018 (UTC)
Yep! It goes off of the category. I hadn't even realized edits were required to repopulate categories (this is a MediaWiki thing, not MusikBot), but it makes sense that it works that way, and that would explain the bot's late arrival. — MusikAnimaltalk02:21, 1 May 2018 (UTC)
@MusikAnimal: They will refresh on their own but category refreshes are dependent on how busy the system is while running cache refreshes from the job queue. It could happen in an hour or 5 days. A null edit purge on a page will cause it to happen immediately. More at WP:NULLEDIT (Knowledge acquired when working with template maintenance categories and having to wait for them to populate). -- ferret (talk) 11:18, 1 May 2018 (UTC)
A proposal is being discussed which would create a new "event coordinator" right that would allow users to temporarily add the "confirmed" flag to new user accounts and to create many new user accounts without being hindered by a rate limit.
Technical news
AbuseFilter has received numerous improvements, including an OOUI overhaul, syntax highlighting, ability to search existing filters, and a few new functions. In particular, the search feature can be used to ensure there aren't existing filters for what you need, and the new equals_to_any function can be used when checking multiple namespaces. One major upcoming change is the ability to see which filters are the slowest. This information is currently only available to those with access to Logstash.
When blocking anonymous users, a cookie will be applied that reloads the block if the user changes their IP. 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. This currently only occurs when hard-blocking accounts.
The block notice shown on mobile will soon be more informative and point users to a help page on how to request an unblock, just as it currently does on desktop.
There will soon be a calendar widget at Special:Block, making it easier to set expiries for a specific date and time.
Lankiveil (Craig Franklin) passed away in mid-April. Lankiveil joined Wikipedia on 12 August 2004 and became an administrator on 31 August 2008. During his time with the Wikimedia community, Lankiveil served as an oversighter for the English Wikipedia and as president of Wikimedia Australia.
Hi Amorymeltzer, why did you remove my petition? That was not very helpful, since it has not even been declined, just removed. Also, I have seen a temporary Full protection template for less in that very article. The article is subject to continuous irregular editing, so I request again to consider my request. Thanks Iñaki LL (talk) 22:20, 1 May 2018 (UTC)
@Iñaki LL: I'm not sure why you think I did anything, but you'll notice that your request was certainly not removed. It was moved by a bot to the bottom of the list, because that is where new entries go. It is still there. ~ Amory(u • t • c)00:29, 2 May 2018 (UTC)
O, I did not notice it had been taken to the bottom. The last time I saw the tag on top of the article, I think the decision was pretty quick. Anyways, sorry for the mistake. Regards Iñaki LL (talk) 15:16, 2 May 2018 (UTC)
@Amorymeltzer, Demands of the movement are very important as without them PTM movement will be sense less. Would you please help us to write it in more professional way as by simply deleting them will make the article a dump one. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 103.30.137.63 (talk) 07:23, 6 May 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. It is now easier to find nearby places that need pictures. It helps you with direct uploads and title and category suggestions. The app only works on Android phones. [9]
Problems
The abuse filters had a problem with blocks where you had changed how long they last. It used the default length everywhere. This was in late April. Abuse filter users should make sure the right block length is used and change them if needed. This is only for filters where how long blocks last had been changed. [10]
Changes later this week
The advanced search function beta feature will be on all Wikimedia wikis. It makes it easier to use some of the special search functions that most editors don't know exist. [11]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 8 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 9 May. It will be on all wikis from 10 May (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 8 May 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 9 May at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
All wikis with fewer than 100 high-priority linter errors in the main namespace will switch to use the Remex parsing library. This is to replace Tidy. It will happen on 16 May. Other wikis will switch soon when they have fixed the errors that must be fixed. Tidy will be removed on all wikis before July 2018. [12][13]
Hey, Amorymeltzer! This is zfJames! I wanted to let you know that the page Kirby (character) seems to be experiencing persistent vandalism even after temporary protection and it may be a candidate for a longer protection scheme. Let me know if you have any thoughts on that... I wanted to get your opinion instead of just posting it to another board so that I could learn more about the level of vandalism required before page protection should be requested (if that made any sense). Thanks! - zfJamesPlease ping me in your reply on this page (chat page , contribs) 20:18, 8 May 2018 (UTC)
Thanks for the heads up — I've gone and protected it for three months, 'til August. ~ Amory(u • t • c)20:46, 8 May 2018 (UTC)
@Tavix: A little eager with the date there, eh? I've gone and undone the close, and relisted it. I have yet to ping any of the previous participants, on the fence about that. ~ Amory(u • t • c)20:49, 13 May 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.
The new Advanced Search interface is now available as a Beta Feature on all wikis. This makes it easier to learn about and to use many of the powerful options in our search. Feedback is appreciated. [14]
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 15 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 16 May. It will be on all wikis from 17 May (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 16 May at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
In the mobile view, warnings for when something is wrong with a page are not as clear as they should be. The developers are working on this. You can give feedback and suggestions.
The developers are working on making the Wikipedia Android app available in more languages. You can give feedback, suggestions and help test it. Read more on mediawiki.org[15]
Hi Amorymeltzer. Re this, why would a piped link be preferable? It just redirects to Victoria Falls, which is extremely unlikely to ever be moved or replaced by a disambiguation page. RivertorchFIREWATER
Someone turned it into a dab the other day, I changed a few to avoid it. That's since been reverted, so, no, the pipe isn't preferable, but at least it ain't hurtin'. ~ Amory(u • t • c)10:23, 15 May 2018 (UTC)
I don't see how you could possible come to the conclusion that "folks find them useful (as evidenced by using them)" when all three of these redirects are unused! {{Cn-stalink}} has been unused for a year, since it was redirected (and then all instances of its use replaced), and {{sttnlnk}} only appeared on one page, almost ten years ago when it was first created! Useddenim (talk) 16:07, 14 May 2018 (UTC)
I'll admit I could've been more verbose and been a bit more specific with my pronouns and past/present tenses, but regardless, These are redirects, and redirects need to be useful, not used, to be kept.. Your nomination itself suggests two of the three were used. Perhaps things can be a bit different for redirects in templatespace, but I was not convinced of the harm in keeping or utility in deleting. ~ Amory(u • t • c)18:10, 14 May 2018 (UTC)
I guess it's a matter of tidyness vs. potential usefulness, with my preference leaning towards the former. Useddenim (talk) 20:44, 14 May 2018 (UTC)
While idly wandering through the backwoods of Wikipedia, I stumbled across this thread. As a full-time dabfixer, I can put my hand on my heart and say, that {{stnlnk}} and its cute relations are effing nightmares. They create bad links to DAB pages which are often impossible for humans to sort out, and which require intervention by a template expert. They are not the only templates which need such attention, but I've learned how to end-run around half-a-dozen of them; and, after 4 or 5 hours of wasted effort, I know who to ask (though I suspect that that template expert also has better things to do). Narky Blert (talk) 23:19, 15 May 2018 (UTC)
I had thought I done more than that in the last few months, how comes I keep getting page reviewed of late then? I thought I must of created over 50 pages or more in my time! Govvy (talk) 20:25, 16 May 2018 (UTC)
Indeed you have, but most were near a decade ago based on this. What pages are you getting notifications for? ~ Amory(u • t • c)01:01, 17 May 2018 (UTC)
Well I've had notifications for stuff I've created in my sandbox being reviewed, then when I've moved stuff over to mainspace being reviewed again like Abdel Qissi, APOEL FC in Europe etc. I plan to write some more footy bio for Tottenham academy players in prep for the next football (soccer) season. Maybe I don't create that much or prolific like others, I just thought it would of helped the project that's all I can say, cheers. Govvy (talk) 10:21, 17 May 2018 (UTC)
@ZI Jony:Curious about this and this, could you please explain your reasoning? Also, what does "unexpected" mean when you use it in an edit summary? ~ Amory(u • t • c)11:22, 16 May 2018 (UTC)
First reverted edit is types fixing, user was use "," with "and" which are not required to use also some internal pages link was updated wrong. Second reverted edit is wrong page link, internal page Pyongyang Standard Time is an Redirected page to Time in North Korea which also unnecessary creation. Unexpected use in an edit summary when reverted edits which should not update. Warm Regards, ZI Jony (talk) 19:20, 17 May 2018 (UTC)
ZI Jony I'm sorry but I've removed rollback rights. When I extended the trial run last time I specifically noted cases of improper rollback. As before, most of your reverts look fine, but again there are some that are inappropriate. Regarding the first link, I'm not sure I agree it needed reverting (oxford commas are fine), but you at least provided an edit summary, such as it is; at any rate, "unnecessary" isn't a reason to rollback edits. Regarding the second link, a redirect is a perfectly fine thing to add, and that was in no way vandalism — user shouldn't have been warned or reverted. Rollback is only for clear cases of vandalism, and is not to be used for trivial disagreements and certainly not for undoing positive contributions.As I've already said, most of your reverts are positive, so please keep doing good work with twinkle, but please be careful when reverting, and only revert clear cases of malicious intent. You should provide more clear edit summaries for non-vandalism reverts (I still don't know what you mean by "unexpected"). I'd suggest waiting at least 5 weeks before reapplying. Best, ~ Amory(u • t • c)01:05, 18 May 2018 (UTC)
An athlete is presumed to be notable if the person has actively participated in a major amateur or professional competition or won a significant honor. This persons wiki page included links to his ITU triathlon profile and won in 2016 the US Masters open water long distance swim championships. Wikijediknight (talk) 10:49, 18 May 2018 (UTC)Wikijediknight
I would talk with Fastily, who was the admin who actually deleted the page if you'd like to contest the PROD. At first blush, I'll add that the article included no such claim or evidence regarding the 2016 Masters. ~ Amory(u • t • c) 11:09, 18 May 2018 (UTC) Event results from 2017 Open Water National Championships, Lido Key, Sarasota, Florida, April 22, 2017. Wikijediknight (talk) 17:45, 18 May 2018 (UTC)Wikijediknight.
Placeholder for discussion after RfD, see also this conversation ~ Amory(u • t • c) 17:28, 18 May 2018 (UTC)
Only about 25000 out of 80000 transclusions are direct uses in articles, many others from templates - thus, I'm working through templates and replacing instances. I'm also thinking that all the instances of tooltip with a first parameter of "pos", "pld" or some other common abbreviation could be automatically replaced without checking. Galobtter (pingó mió) 18:01, 18 May 2018 (UTC)
I think my rollback right going to expire soon. Please review my contribution. I used rollback button properly. I got many thanks [:-D] from rollbacker during revert. Hope you will grant me rollback flag for permanent. Thank you, Siddiqsazzad001<Talk/>18:40, 20 May 2018 (UTC)
The right won't expire for almost another two weeks (7AM EDT on June 2nd) so let's keep it going until then; maybe check back around May 30th? A cursory scan of your reverts shows no complaints or major issues, so nice work! Glad to see you're keeping up with Mz7's CVUA and doing well there. ~ Amory(u • t • c)20:23, 20 May 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 22 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 23 May. It will be on all wikis from 24 May (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 May at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
It could become easier to reference different pages of a book in an article. You can give feedback. The last day for feedback is 27 May.
Indeed! A good lesson I've tried to learn in life is that if someone smarter than you is saying something relevant, listen. ~ Amory(u • t • c)19:24, 21 May 2018 (UTC)
My apologies about this, since I should have noticed this sooner: Could you please reopen Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2018 May 18#Foot file? I wanted to respond to the vote that came in after the initial relist, but apparently thought I did, but never actually did. My comment may or may not affect the outcome of the discussion and if it doesn't, I have no objection to it being re-closed in the same manner which you did. Steel1943 (talk) 21:41, 25 May 2018 (UTC)
Steel1943 Done. I'm not actually that inclined to do this sort of thing unless there's a great reason or no consensus or something, but I've gone and done this one. ~ Amory(u • t • c)01:09, 26 May 2018 (UTC)
Thanks. That, and I usually respond to discussions on RfD when I see something to respond to ... but I guess I had a bit of a memory lapse with this one. So, thank you again. Steel1943 (talk) 01:35, 26 May 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 most wikis. This means you can set preferences for all wikis at the same time. Before this you had to change them on each individual wiki. Global preferences will come to the Wikipedias later this week. [16][17]
It is now easier for blocked mobile users to see why they were blocked. [18]
There is now a checkbox on Special:ListUsers to let you see only users in temporary user groups. [19]
Some rare invisible Unicode characters have recently been banned from page titles. This includes soft hyphens (U+00AD) and left-to-right (U+2066) and right-to-left (U+2067) isolate markers. Existing pages with these characters will soon be moved by a script. [20]
There's a new Wikimedia Foundation team to support the Wikimedia technical communities. It's called the Technical Engagement team. Most of the team members did similar work in other teams before this. [21]
Problems
Some translatable pages are showing old translations instead of latest ones. The cause of this issue has been fixed. We will update all pages automatically to show the latest translations. [22]
Changes later this week
There will be a new special page named PasswordPolicies. This page gives information about the password rules for each user group on that wiki. [23]
A new way to see moved paragraphs in diffs is coming to most wikis. This is to make it easier to find the moved paragraphs and the changes in them. [24]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 29 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 30 May. It will be on all wikis from 31 May (calendar).
Wikis can enable Citoid to provide automatic reference look-up in the visual editor and the 2017 wikitext editor. This is complex. The tool will now disable itself if the configuration isn't correct. It has warned about this in the JavaScript console since February. Check that your wiki is configured correctly. You can ask for help if you need it. [25]
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 29 May 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 30 May at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
Content Translation drafts which have not been updated in over a year will be removed. This allows other users to translate those articles. [26]
A survey is collecting information on what users think about how Wikimedia wiki pages are loaded. This information could be used in future development. [27]
Some wikis will switch to use the Remex parsing library. This is to replace Tidy. It will happen on 30 May and 13 June. Wikis with fewer than 100 linter issues in the main namespace in all high-priority linter categories will switch. This includes Wikidata. Tidy will probably be removed on all wikis in the first week of July. [28][29]
Hi Dodilp — if you want a thorough review of your draft, may I suggest the Wikipedia:Articles for creation process? All you need to do is add {{subst:submit}} to the top of your draft and a seasoned reviewer will be along. They're backed up, so it might take a few weeks, but that's the easiest process. I'll add that I think you'll need more reliablethird-party sources; it's not clear to me that the links show general notability. ~ Amory(u • t • c)00:54, 30 May 2018 (UTC)
Thank you @Amorymeltzer -- given that this is a technical topic, there are citations from DZone, InfoQ and other technical sources that have good credibility. I saw how this aligns with other similar tech companies that have some Wikipedia entries, and looks like it is comparable. I have taken your feedback and put in the tag for review, but the wait period is 2 months now, looks like the review team has a big backlog. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dodilp (talk • contribs)
Not to be nit-picky, but...
"There is some evidence Pbsouthwood has at least thought about the concept of adminship..." (change as to has) (I am talking about your vote in this RfA.)
You have made some insightful comments, and they should be read without such distractions! It relates to the question I posed earlier (#5) about AfD involvement and demonstrating knowledge/practical experience with deletions on the English Wikipedia. --JustBerry (talk) 14:36, 30 May 2018 (UTC)
I thought it over and I think it'd be good to go over to WP:PERM/R and request it there through the typical procedure. ~ Amory(u • t • c)00:52, 1 June 2018 (UTC)
Following a successful request for comment, administrators are now able to add and remove editors to the "event coordinator" group. Users in the event coordinator group have the ability to temporarily add the "confirmed" flag to new user accounts and to create many new user accounts without being hindered by a rate limit. Users will no longer need to be in the "account creator" group if they are in the event coordinator group.
IP-based cookie blocks should be deployed to English Wikipedia in 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.
The Wikimedia Foundation's Anti-Harassment Tools team will build granular types of blocks in 2018 (e.g. a block from uploading or editing specific pages, categories, or namespaces, as opposed to a full-site block). Feedback on the concept may be left at the talk page.
It is now easier for blocked mobile users to see why they were blocked.
Arbitration
A recent technical issue with the Arbitration Committee's spam filter inadvertently caused all messages sent to the committee through Wikipedia (i.e. Special:EmailUser/Arbitration Committee) to be discarded. If you attempted to send an email to the Arbitration Committee via Wikipedia between May 16 and May 31, your message was not received and you are encouraged to resend it. Messages sent outside of these dates or directly to the Arbitration Committee email address were not affected by this issue.
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 MonoBook skin has been optimised for mobile devices. It now looks different. [30]
Redirect links in Special:WhatLinksHere now link to the original page and not the target page. This was done earlier and changed the used messages on some pages. This was a problem for wikis that customized the message. A new change fixed this by using the old messages with one more parameter for customization. Wikis that already changed their customized messages will have to move the customization back again. [33]
Problems
You will not be able to edit some wikis between 06:00 and 06:30 UTC on 13 June. You can see if your wiki is one of them.
MassMessage did not work 24–28 May. This is also why last week's Tech News was late. [34]
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 5 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 6 June. It will be on all wikis from 7 June (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 5 June 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 6 June at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Welcome to the June 2018 GOCE newsletter, in which you will find Guild updates since the February edition.
Progress continues to be made on the copyediting backlog, which has been reduced to 7 months and reached a new all-time low. Requests continue to be handled efficiently this year, with 272 completed by the end of May (an average completion time of 10.5 days). Fewer than 10% of these waited longer than 20 days, and the longest wait time was 29 days.
Wikipedia in general, and the Guild in particular, experienced a deep loss with the death on 20 March of Corinne. Corinne (a GOCE coordinator since 1 July 2016) was a tireless aide on the requests page, and her peerless copyediting is a part of innumerable GAs and FAs. Her good cheer, courtesy and tact are very much missed.
March drive: The goal was to remove June, July and August 2017 from our backlog and all February 2018 Requests (a total of 219 articles). This drive was an outstanding success, and by the end of the month all but eight of these articles were cleared. Of the 33 editors who signed up, 19 recorded 277 copy edits (425,758 words).
April blitz: This one-week copy-editing blitz ran from 15 through 21 April, focusing on Requests and the last eight articles tagged in August 2017. At the end of the week there were only 17 pending requests, with none older than 17 days. Of the nine editors who signed up, eight editors completed 22 copy edits (62,412 words).
May drive: We set out to remove September, October and November 2017 from our backlog and all April 2018 Requests (a total of 298 articles). There was great success this month with the backlog more than halved from 1,449 articles at the beginning of the month to a record low of 716 articles. Officially, of the 20 who signed up, 15 editors recorded 151 copy edits (248,813 words).
Coordinator elections: It's election time again. Nominations for Guild coordinators (who will serve a six-month term for the second half of 2018) have begun, and will close at 23:59 UTC on 15 June. All Wikipedia editors in good standing are eligible, and self-nominations are encouraged. Voting will take place between 00:01 UTC on 16 June and 23:59 UTC on 30 June.
June blitz: Stay tuned for this one-week copy-editing blitz, which will take place in mid-June.
Thank you all again for your participation; we wouldn't be able to achieve what we have without you! Cheers from your GOCE coordinators: Corinne, Jonesey95, Miniapolis, Reidgreg and Tdslk.
Of the five people involved in the discussion (nom+4) you were the only one advocating it be kept as such. Your argument amounted to consensus can change, but nobody seemed to be convinced. Moreover, absent any evidence that consensus has or is likely to change, it's not a particularly strong argument. Thryduulf did !vote deprecate, but while I found that to be a strong argument, it was likewise unconvincing to other participants. I even went and relisted the discussion twice, on the chance that more folks (perhaps from your outreach) would participate and would might thus better weigh the proposed arguments, but that did not happen. I stand by my closing statement. ~ Amory(u • t • c)01:25, 8 June 2018 (UTC)
Hi, and thank you for writing about the topic. If you're interested in it, it has not been the first time there have been unverified suspicions about nuclear tests in North Korea. There has been speculation about test in, at least, 1991. Victor Cha writes: "During this period [around 1985 when the country withdrew from the NPT], the North also reportedly conducted underground nuclear tests, as it refused to fulfill the safeguards and inspection obligations of the NPT."[1] And "The nuclear tests took place in 1991, according to North Korean defector Hwang Chang-yŏp [Hwang Jang-yop]. See Bradley Martin, Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader: North Korea and the Kim Dynasty (New York: St. Martin's Press, 2004), p 436."[2]– Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 16:46, 8 June 2018 (UTC)
References
^Cha, Victor (2013). The Impossible State: North Korea, Past and Future. London: Vintage. pp. 86–87. ISBN978-0-099-57865-9.
^Cha, Victor (2013). The Impossible State: North Korea, Past and Future. London: Vintage. p. 87 footnote 38. ISBN978-0-099-57865-9.
@Godsy: Thanks for the thought, but could you clarify a bit? I've never experienced them as "inside the picture," in modern or any other skin. Maybe it's a browser/operating system thing? I'm on macOS, firefox and chrome. ~ Amory(u • t • c)10:57, 10 June 2018 (UTC)
Huh, weird. Thanks for the screensheet. I haven't been able to replicate it, even by spoofing useragents, but I'll try on a PC later this week. ~ Amory(u • t • c)20:16, 10 June 2018 (UTC)
Thanks for closing the discussions as keep. Your comment caught my eye, because until recently all the MOS redirects did look like that. When I started being unable to find stuff with my usual search terms (I'm an active copyeditor), I thought I was losing it :-). All the best, Miniapolis13:33, 11 June 2018 (UTC)
somethingsomethingallinaday'sworksomethingsomething. Glad you're not going off the rails! ~ Amory(u • t • c)14:10, 11 June 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
In the Wikipedia app for Android or iOS users can create reading lists. The reading lists can be seen on different devices if you are logged in to your account. There is now a browser extension so you can add pages to your reading list from a web browser. At the moment it works with Firefox and Chrome. [37]
There is a new version of Pywikibot. Pywikibot is a tool to automate tasks on MediaWiki wikis. [38]
Problems
The MonoBook skin was changed to make it work better for mobile users. This caused some problems. The change was rolled back to fix them. The new version is now back on the wikis. MonoBook users can opt out from the new responsive design. [39]
Changes later this week
The new filters for edit review tools and interface for watchlists will leave beta. For most wikis this will happen on 18 June. For the rest it will happen on 25 June. [40][41]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 12 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 13 June. It will be on all wikis from 14 June (calendar).
Meetings
You can join the Readers Web team IRC office hour. There you can discuss tools to contribute on the mobile web for the existing MediaWiki skins. The meeting will be on 18 June at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.
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 12 June 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 13 June at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Re: "Wikipedia:Shortcut#Pseudo-namespaces suggests MoS doesn't have strong support, and while I'm not about to change that based off of this result" – Yes, I would certainly hope not. I'll be bringing this up at Village Pump, because the community consensus was very clear by 2014 that we do not want a profusion of pseudo-namespaces clogging up mainspace. The "redirects are always cheap no matter what" reality-defying WP:LOCALCONSENSUS at RfD is ignoring that long round of much broader discussion. I seriously doubt that consensus beyond RfD's little insular microcosm has in fact changed at all. I'll let it lie for a while; people don't like to re-discuss the same matter repeatedly back-to-back. But we unmistakably have a WP:CONLEVEL conflict here, of a site-wide consensus of lengthy and many-editor input versus a tiny consensus of a few RfD regulars, so I think we can predict how this will ultimately go. It's worth reviewing a discussion not that long ago at WT:RM about closers mistaking a "consensus" among a few respondents to a move request for a WP:Consensus of the community. Often they coincide, and sometimes one of the former will resolve a matter not yet addressed by the latter (and even help the latter form), but the former isn't going to trump the latter when there's a direct conflict between them unless there a solid WP:IAR reason for it to happen in that particular case. Three or four editors saying, basically, "but I'm lazy and this is convenient for me" isn't good enough when the community is already clearly dead-set against clogging up mainspace with a profusion of convenience redirects to other namespaces. — SMcCandlish☏¢ 😼 22:32, 12 June 2018 (UTC)
That's fine — I think a broader discussion would be warranted, and would welcome it. That being said, I disagree with some of your characterizations here. None of these three discussions involved just tiny consensus of a few RfD regulars, they all received far more input than RfD discussions typically do and from a much wider variety of editors. Furthermore, I don't see them as directly contradicting the RfC. In particular, the RfC close indicates that new redirects should be discouraged, but previous ones should be limited and discouraged. More to the point, it also dealt more with the pseudo-namespaces and not with individual redirects in a given namespace; as I alluded to in the June 4 close, part of the issue is that some of these were created well before the RfC, and some after. By my read, it did not require all manual of style redirects to follow a given format, especially as different formats existed at the time. If it were me, that'd be my goal in an RfC or at RfD. At any rate, I stand by my closes. ~ Amory(u • t • c)11:07, 13 June 2018 (UTC)
I wasn't challenging the closes. The very slightly higher RfD turnout than usual is still only a tiny fraction of the volume of input we'd expect on pseudo-namespace matters. I don't buy that interpretation of the RfC, honestly. The clear intent was to stop the profusion of cross-namespace redirs in mainspace, by narrowly limiting them to a few community approved cases. RfD deciding to keep every single redundant-to-"MOS:" shortcut, regardless when it was created, is not "limiting and discouraging" them, it's giving them a green light, which is a reversal of the RfC outcome with far too local and small a consensus level to do that. Several of the supporters of these redirs at RfD were their creators, apparently completely unaware of the RfC and the discussions that led up to it. But, yes, the goal of a new RfC would be clearly to settle (again) on specified pseudo-namespaces (surely the ones previously chosen and identified as basically "the official version"), and to throw out the variants labeled as not having community support, plus discouragement of creating new ones, in clearer guidance wording. — SMcCandlish☏¢ 😼 04:03, 14 June 2018 (UTC)
Haha thanks, but absolutely an error on my part, thanks for the note. It may not have served a higher purpose, but it's in a better place now. ~ Amory(u • t • c)15:56, 17 June 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
Syntax highlighting has been a beta feature on Wikimedia wikis with text written from left to right. It is now a normal feature. It is based on CodeMirror. [42]
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 19 June 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 20 June at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
Some old web browsers will not be able to read the Wikimedia wikis. This is because they use an insecure way to connect to them. This means that we get less security for everyone else too. This affects about 0.08% of all traffic to the Wikimedia wikis. This affects for example those who read Wikipedia on a PlayStation 3. [43][44]
The new filters for edit review tools and interface for watchlists will leave beta. Because there is no new MediaWiki version this week it will happen on 25 June for most wikis. For the rest it will happen in early July. [45][46]
Amory,
Thanks for taking care of my report of User:MaybeWan at AIV. Can you take care of the IP s/he seems to be editing with as well: User talk:120.158.1.33? They've been vandalizing the same pages with the same terms, so it seems a pretty clear case of sockpuppetry to me. MarginalCost (talk) 14:21, 22 June 2018 (UTC)
It's actually unnecessary — blocks on an account usually (unless otherwise specified) include an autoblock on IP addresses used by the account. Still, I've gone and done one on the IP anyway, so that if they return logged out it will be clear. ~ Amory(u • t • c)14:27, 22 June 2018 (UTC)
No worries, I think you're only the the second person to ask! In short, I think sysop more accurately conveys who we are and what we do. A "Sysop" has some extra tools and fiddly bits, but they mostly just keep the system up and running smoothly. In most contexts an "Administrator" is someone with some level of power, often over you, and is someone part of an administation, whether at your school or your work or your government. I don't think "sysop" conveys that same sense of authority; "System Operator" might, but feels more like authority as in experience than authority as in power or control. It's just picking at nits and I'm sure it's a six/half-dozen situation, but hey, why not? If I had my way they'd have called it janitor! ~ Amory(u • t • c)16:45, 22 June 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.
When a link text was in italics or had other formatting you could sometimes not edit it in the visual editor. This has now been fixed. [48][49]
Changes later this week
Content translation users who translate between any two of Arabic, English, French, Japanese and Russian will be asked to be part of a research project. This is to create better tools for translating articles. [50]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 26 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 27 June. It will be on all wikis from 28 June (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 26 June 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 27 June at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Usually not too long, just whenever passing sysops go by and have the time to review candidates. I've just done that, so you should be all set! Holla if you have any questions. ~ Amory(u • t • c)20:45, 28 June 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 database for tags will be changed. This will happen on 2 July on French Wikipedia and 9 July on all other wikis. Please report if recent changes get slower or you can't save edits. This could especially affect editors who use the database on ToolForge. [52]
Problems
Last week's MediaWiki update was rolled back. This was because of a database problem. [53]
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 3 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 4 July at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Asking you because you closed this page's RFD; I've also asked the nominator.
Steel1943 proposed that this title be kept if someone were to create Super Smash Bros. universe, since that's a plausible redirect, and this is a plausible capitalisation variant thereof. Someone has since created "universe". Do you have any objection if I restore "Universe" and then make its contents identical to those of "universe"? Nyttend (talk) 23:17, 2 July 2018 (UTC)
I don't know that I would call it an objection, but that discussion got an odd amount of input for an RfD, nearly all voicing delete, so I'd say delete was a pretty strong consensus and this would go against that. Steel was the only one really in support of that idea — most nobody mentioned it and two editors explicitly dismissed it as an option. ~ Amory(u • t • c)00:49, 3 July 2018 (UTC)
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.
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.
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. [54]
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. [55]
When you rolled back an edit it could get both the Rollback and Undo tags. This has been fixed. [57]
Rollbacks from autopatrolled users were not marked as patrolled. This has been fixed. [58]
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). [59][60]
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. [61]
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. [62]
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. [64]
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. [65]
@Cynko: Are you sure? If you reply that you do indeed want it removed, I'll do it, but I think you're fine to keep using it and it seems Ritchie and Tony are similarly inclined. Why don't you take a bit and think it over? Reverts have been good, and today aside I'm not aware of any issues. ~ Amory(u • t • c)19:21, 11 July 2018 (UTC)
Yes, I'm sure. I don't want to be blocked for reporting IP vandals anymore. Just Twinkle will be fine for me. Regards. Cynko (talk) 03:10, 12 July 2018 (UTC)
Because I did not feel the arguments were equally in favor of both. Why do you think that to be the case? ~ Amory(u • t • c)18:45, 13 July 2018 (UTC)
Reply - There were votes for both keep and delete. There is no good reason to delete something that has no higher use, especially when "J" and "N" are next to each other on a keyboard. --Jax 0677 (talk) 01:59, 14 July 2018 (UTC)
And I did not find that argument to hold sway. The argument for keep was that it was a plausible typo, but the (greater number) of delete !votes suggested it was not only not plausible, but possibly even misleading (e.g., for cult) and that the search engine would be quite capable of resolving the issue. I wasn't wild about DC's argument, but others were. In short, there were more folks suggesting delete, and they provided more diverse and better arguments. ~ Amory(u • t • c)15:55, 14 July 2018 (UTC)
An editor has asked for a deletion review of Anal Cujt. Because you closed the deletion discussion for this page, speedily deleted it, or otherwise were interested in the page, you might want to participate in the deletion review. Jax 0677 (talk) 17:38, 14 July 2018 (UTC)
First of all - thanks for reviewing my request... I have a firm rule in life: never go back to fireworks that did not light the first time. So I guess we both got it the way we wanted :-)
That being said, I suggest Wikipedia adjust settings for when to show the add for admin requests... I have received this add more than once on my Watchlist and although I do not think of myself as a candidate with my lower level of Wikipedian skills and knowledge, I will say it appears "odd" to have a request for rollback turned down while at the same being pointed to WP:RFA. As I already said back then, I respected your call... and I still do... but maybe a little missing consistency - do you see my point?
Anyway, I will make a slow start with Huggle - I think I need to adjust my mindset before "pushing" on Huggle.
The manual is not really the best... or maybe my IQ needs an upgrade:
I struggle with the ORES numbers for both "Score" and "Goodfaith" - what does negative and positive values signal? Does the value of 0 mean "neutral" (not good, not bad)?
Hi Baerentp, I'm glad it all worked out. Regarding the watchlist, that wasn't and "ad" for you but an alert that someone else was undergoing an RfA. The idea a few years ago was to encourage broader participation in the RfA process by making users more aware of ongoing requests. As for the huggle scores, the higher the score the greater the likelihood it is a problematic edit. They aren't ORES, they're part of a huggle configuration. I'm not sure what you specifically mean by the goodfaith number, do you mean when you mark something as "good" and it subtracts 200 from the score? As for the manual, it's a WIP, but that'd be worth pointing out I think. ~ Amory(u • t • c)12:17, 10 July 2018 (UTC)
Hi Amorymeltzer, You really made me laugh there and I need to go back to school and learn my English again... I totally misunderstood that add! Thanks for clarifying!
About the Goodfaith... in Huggle, center screen, it will show (e.g.) like this:
Summary: nominating page for AFD Size change: Unknown
Meta information - ORES Score: -506 ORES Goodfaith: 555
Ah. Yeah I have no idea — my huggle doesn't show those for anything. Maybe it's a version difference? I have a weird build. Can you give a page name/diff you were looking at? Then I can at least see if it shows that stuff for me. ~ Amory(u • t • c)13:13, 10 July 2018 (UTC)
But of course! My Huggle is version 3.4.4 build: 3607 3.4.4, compiled using QT 5.10.1 Running on QT 5.10.1, based on Chromium, target platform: mac.
Try look at this diff (another example, but the Goodfaith number is there too in Huggle). As you are already aware, these numbers only show as long as the edit is the current version - I get you another diff if it went missing. --Baerentp (talk) 13:42, 10 July 2018 (UTC)
Sorry, no idea, I don't see those numbers. I've got 3.4.0, so perhaps it's something added recently. If I get a chance tomorrow I can try and rebuild with a new version (I recall it took a while last time) so until then, might be better to ask someone else! ~ Amory(u • t • c)13:52, 10 July 2018 (UTC)
No problem - its not the end of the world :-) Thanks for trying. Do you build binary from a Git repository? --Baerentp (talk) 14:26, 10 July 2018 (UTC)
Yeah — the distributed 3.4 didn't load properly for OSX 10.11.6. I had to edit a bunch of source files, but don't remember which or what... ~ Amory(u • t • c)21:07, 10 July 2018 (UTC)
FYI, I run OSX 10.13.5 with the before mentioned Huggle build. I'm not to say if it works as intended but it appears to work ok (you know, I really dont have any reference as to judge this)... The only thing I have noticed is a lot of time-outs in the system log.--Baerentp (talk) 05:17, 11 July 2018 (UTC)
@Baerentp: I just rebuilt Huggle 3.4.4 with qt5.10, and I don't see the numbers you're referring to, either in that diff or elsewhere. Sorry I can be of more help! How's huggle otherwise? ~ Amory(u • t • c)14:36, 12 July 2018 (UTC)
Hi Amorymeltzer, That is really odd - I wonder, who is the "nut-case" here? Anyway, Huggle is doing fine - it does offer a smoother way of working with edits. --Baerentp (talk) 19:24, 14 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.
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. [68]
You can see how many pageviews a wiki had from specific countries. The Wikistats2 maps have now been updated. [69]
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. [70]
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 of prefix:Page name you will see a text that explains which pages are being searched. You can read more and leave feedback.
I don't think you meant to delete that. It's not a valid WP:CSD#G8, unless I'm missing something. Strangely, three people have made the same mistake in less than a year. Is some bot or database report flagging it somewhere? Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 15:49, 19 July 2018 (UTC)
Yeah, totally correct. If you check the logs, I even restored it after another sysop had done the same thing, so I should have known better. In fact, I had salted Wikipedia:Administrator intervention against vandalism/Archive 1, but it was a sysop who accidentally recreated it (via a tool, so I don't think they were aware of it). That lead the protection to be removed, the page to be created, and I "helpfully" deleted the talkpage as well. Alas. Anyway, thanks for the heads up, I've (re)restored the archive and (re)salted the nonexistent project page. ~ Amory(u • t • c)16:18, 19 July 2018 (UTC)
Can't say I agree with the outcome but your closure rationale was quite honestly beautiful!, Certainly well thought out and certainly well done,
Don't think I've ever given a barnstar for a closure rationale before ... first time for every thing :),
Anyway yeah just wanted to say thank you for your well thought closure rationale :), Cheers, –Davey2010Talk20:19, 19 July 2018 (UTC)
Thanks! Looking over it now, between reading, writing, and (de)tagging, it looks like I spent about three hours there, so I appreciate the star. ~ Amory(u • t • c)00:53, 20 July 2018 (UTC)
You're welcome :), Jeeeeeeeeeeesus christ I had no idea there was that many!! I thought there were only like 40 odd .... Jesus 847!, Well Amorymeltzer you're certainly braver than me that's all I can say :),
Thanks to both of you! Honestly I think the long, complex ones are more fun, I always feel like I learn something writing those. ~ Amory(u • t • c)13:46, 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. [71]
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. [72]
Editors can do max 90 edits per minute. This is new since last month. This does not affect bots or administrators. [73]
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.
Hello. Zhaofeng Li hasn't edited en.wikipedia since December and hasn't responded to talk page messages in over a year, and I noticed your name here. ReFill's doing something that results in CS1 errors. I hope you can help, or draw Zhaofeng Li's attention to this. Usually it's invisible characters, as here, for example, but in this case it added an external link in the title. This has been going on for at least six months. Thanks, BlackcurrantTea (talk) 11:49, 24 July 2018 (UTC)
Thanks for message but sorry, I won't be able to be much help — I only opened a pull request on the github, which ZL merged, I don't have extra access or anything. As far as I can tell it looks like the issues all stem from the title parameter? Seems that a number of websites have "names" that don't work with our citation templates, especially RTL languages. I suppose reFill could try to sanitize the title text a little better, so if you or someone else can make specific changes in the code, I'd suggest that. Until then, though,or ZL returns, I think this falls into the "always preview your edits" category. They shouldn't be too hard to clean up. ~ Amory(u • t • c)13:27, 24 July 2018 (UTC)
Oh well. They aren't my edits; I've been cleaning up CS1 errors and seeing the results of other editors' work. I can make a list of frequent users and ask them. As it's been ages since I've touched js, I'll ask at the Village Pump rather than fiddling with the code myself. Thanks, BlackcurrantTea (talk) 03:38, 25 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. [74]
Problems
Deployment of 1.32.0-wmf.13 has been partially delayed. All deployments have been resumed and successfully done after bug fixes. [75][76]
Deployment of 1.32.0-wmf.14 has been partially delayed. [77][78]
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.
Hi. I notice that you drew attention to some edits by a user (today, reptiles) and got an immediate response. I have been doing the same without reply, yet the errors created remain. You seemed to give the recent edits the okay, is this because their contributions are known to be acceptable and I am missing something, or out of touch? cygnis insignis14:36, 30 July 2018 (UTC)
From your comments it seems we were talking about different issues, but you'll have to give me more to go on, as I don't have any idea what your issue is or what pages you're referring to. ~ Amory(u • t • c)15:57, 30 July 2018 (UTC)
Ta. No, it is the same 'issue' with the contributions, the latest example is the snake taxa you asked about and appeared to greenlight. I can clarify any particular point I have unsuccessfully raised with the user, if you wish to be involved and have some interest in the articles or repairing the errors. Were you already familiar with the user's contributions? cygnis insignis16:52, 30 July 2018 (UTC)
I was only really looking at the presence of broken redirects, which would have made the articles eligible for WP:CSD#G8, not at any content or titling issues. I'd suggest being more clear with the editor, but consider that if they are not engaging with you it is intentional. ~ Amory(u • t • c)18:24, 30 July 2018 (UTC)
Thanks for clarifying what you interest was, I needed to establish that before taking up your time. I have been clear enough in the comments on talk pages of articles, step 1 and in asking the user to reply, step 2. I have considered that ignoring me was intentional, and the possible motives for doing that, not useful in solving what I think are contributions damaging our document. Suggestions on what to do next are welcome, cygnis insignis19:26, 30 July 2018 (UTC)
Can you bring my draft back so I can make the edits for the errors? Also I am pretty sure I cited what was claimed to be copyrighted, can you advise if I did it correctly. Kevins5w (talk) 13:13, 3 August 2018 (UTC)
Hi Kevins5w, thanks for the message. You provided a link "citing" the material, but you can't cite material that isn't yours. The copy-paste of the BI article is a copyright violation, so providing the link as a citation won't ever help, you have to write about the article using your own, neutral language. The BI article can be one source, but it can't be copied. You can read the copyright FAQs here as well as some information about writing Your first article. ~ Amory(u • t • c)14:00, 3 August 2018 (UTC)
As DBigXray copied content from that page, shouldn't it be kept (as a redirect, possibly under a more neutral name) for attribution? 97.125.203.68 (talk) 16:40, 3 August 2018 (UTC)
That's what I was getting at in my closing note. My hope with this rewording was to give credit to the sole creator of the content. As there were no other editors needing attribution, I felt doing that would satisfy the spirit of Wikipedia:Copying within Wikipedia. ~ Amory(u • t • c)17:58, 3 August 2018 (UTC)
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.
Hi Amorymeltzer, i asked for page protection at Caucher Birkar's article because of persistent addition of "Kurdish" as a nationality for this mathematician by IP/new accounts editors. You removed my demand saying "rm dupe". I was wondering what you meant by that, do yo think i'm trying to dupe you ? this is clearly not the case, this article really needs protection from users using Vimeo and Facebook as sources to support their POV. Correct me if i'm mistaken, but as far as i know, we don't add ethnicities in the lead of articles when the nationality is given and by the way, the Kurdish background of Caucher Birkar is already detailed in another section of the article. for ewample, we don't say the "Jewish German scholar Albert Einstein" or the "Alsatian French mathematician Laurent Schwartz" in the lead of theit articles. Also, i find it quite disconcerting that this kind of edit summaries is tolerated : [79]. I would appreciate a clarifying. thank you. Cheers.---Wikaviani (talk) 02:05, 5 August 2018 (UTC)
Sorry if my edit summary was a tad inartful, when I said the latter of which is a CC-BY-NC license I was referring to the other source I linked in the edit summary, also provided in the revdel log. The CDC material is indeed PD, but I removed it as it wasn't describing delivery of fluoride therapy, but rather side effects, a section that already existed and links to the main article Dental fluorosis. I thought I'd noted that in the edit summary, but apparently forgot to copy that over, sorry for the confusion. In hindsight, I should have probably removed it in a separate edit for this precise reason. ~ Amory(u • t • c)15:28, 5 August 2018 (UTC)
Thanks for the clarification - I just wanted to make sure there wasn't something I was missing there. And thanks for cleaning that up! Ian (Wiki Ed) (talk) 15:50, 5 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.
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. [81][82]
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.
I'm not sure why you contacted me (or the other two sysops), but Conjoint R was deleted under the G11 criteria of the Criteria for Speedy Deletion, which applies to pages that are exclusively promotional and would need to be fundamentally rewritten to conform with Wikipedia:NOTFORPROMOTION. Basically, your article is too promotional, which makes sense given your conflict of interest. In order to be an article, something needs to have notability that is established by multiple independent reliable sources; none of your sources meet that criteria. Without any of that, it is sure to get deleted again. I suggest you read those links, as well as Wikipedia:Your first article. I'll also add that this isn't cran but an encyclopedia, so the majority of what you wrote wouldn't be appropriate for inclusion. Hope that helps! ~ Amory(u • t • c)01:13, 8 August 2018 (UTC)
Deleted page: Michael Reeves (theologian)
Hi, you deleted this page I was working on while I was on vacation and unable to make changes or know there was a deletion discussion. Can I please access the original material on the page in order to bring it up to scratch? I understand that you're able to view deleted pages, but I am not.
Thanks. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Th3ologian (talk • contribs) 10:20, 8 August 2018 (UTC)
Hhkohh (and Tyw7): Those should be kept for now. They are both former sysops, and there's been no consensus that once someone is desysopped the project doesn't want to retain the stats. I've submitted a pull request to Cyberpower678 that would solve the issue of empty templates for former sysops, but until then or there is a discussion that says all former sysop templates should immediately be deleted, there's no reason to delete these. ~ Amory(u • t • c)14:50, 9 August 2018 (UTC)
I have taken an initiative to create Omer Aftab page as my first project on Wikipedia. After thorough research, I found Omer Aftab to be one of a selfless person fighting for violence against women and specifically breast cancer awareness in Pakistan. And he has not been listed in Wikipedia although his achievements are worthy of being on Wikipedia.You can search "Omer Aftab Breast Cancer" or "Omer Aftab Violence Against Women" on google or youtube to see him in action. He has been internationally recognized and also received an award for his work from IPRA Golden Awared (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPRA_Golden_World_Awards) you can also check their website as well as the Wikipedia page that mentions his award.
Kindly guide me how to best achieve success of creating this biography page for Omer Aftab and avoid continuous deletion.
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. [83]
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. [84]
Hello and welcome to the August 2018 GOCE newsletter. Thanks to everyone who participated in the Guild's June election; your new and returning coordinators are listed below. The next election will occur in December 2018; all Wikipedia editors in good standing may take part.
Our June blitz focused on Requests and articles tagged for copy edit in October 2017. Of the eleven people who signed up, eight editors recorded a total of 28 copy edits, including 3 articles of more than 10,000 words. Complete results, including barnstars awarded, are available here.
Thanks to everyone who participated in the July drive. Of the seventeen people who signed up, thirteen editors completed 194 copy edits, successfully removing all articles tagged in the last three months of 2017. Final results, including barnstars awarded, are here.
The August blitz will run for one week, from 19 to 25 August. Sign up now!
Thank you all again for your participation; we wouldn't be able to achieve what we have without you! Cheers from your GOCE coordinators, Reidgreg, Baffle gab1978, Jonesey95, Miniapolis and Tdslk.
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:
ARBCOM
Nothing particular important happened. Those who care already know, those who don't know wouldn't care. The curious can dig ARBCOM archives themselves.
BAG
There were no changes in BAG membership since the last Bots Newsletter. Headbomb went from semi-active to active.
In the last 3 months, only 3 BAG members have closed requests - help is needed with the backlog.
{{Automated tools}}, a new template linking to user-activated tools and scripts has been created. It can be used in articles previews, and can be placed on any non-mainspace page/template (e.g. {{Draft article}}) to provide convenient links to editors.
AWB 5.10.0.0 is out, after nearly 20 months without updates. If you run an old version, you will be prompted to install the new version automatically. See the changelog for what's new. Note that the next version will require .NET Framework 4.5. Many thanks to Reedy and the AWB team.
BotWatch, "a listing of editors that have made >2 edits per minute [without] a bot flag", is being developed by SQL (see discussion).
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. [85]
You recently protected Template:Columns/styles.css with TE protection (as "same level" protection), but all of its parent templates are semid, not TEd.
Hi Amorymeltzer, 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) 17:37, 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. [86]
Bureaucrats on all Wikimedia wikis can now remove the interface admin user right. [87]
Problems
Some diffs show lines in the wrong order. The developers are working on fixing it. [88]
Changes later this week
The message you see when you thank a user will change. This is to make it easier to understand. [89]
AWB will stop adding using AWB in the edit summary. Instead it will add a tag that says AWB. [90]
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 is article_text which is now page_title. [91]
Abuse filters can now use how old a page is. The variable is page_age. [92]
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.
