This page is an archive of past discussions. 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.
The Wikimedia Foundation Community health initiative (led by the Safety and Support and Anti-Harassment Tools team) is conducting a survey for en.wikipedia contributors on their experience and satisfaction level with the Administrator’s Noticeboard/Incidents. This survey will be integral to gathering information about how this noticeboard works - which problems it deals with well, and which problems it struggles with.
The survey should take 10-20 minutes to answer, and your individual responses will not be made public. The survey is delivered through Google Forms. The privacy policy for the survey describes how and when Wikimedia collects, uses, and shares the information we receive from survey participants and can be found here:
Hello, K6ka. Voting in the 2017 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23.59 on Sunday, 10 December. All users who registered an account before Saturday, 28 October 2017, made at least 150 mainspace edits before Wednesday, 1 November 2017 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.
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 use live updates for recent changes if you use the new filters. This feature updates the filtered recent changes every three seconds when you activate it. [2]
There is an experimental onion service for Wikimedia projects. [3]
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 5 December. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 6 December. It will be on all wikis from 7 December (calendar).
Very old versions of the Opera Web browser are no longer supported. This means that technical development will not be tested to make sure it works with those Opera versions. Use Opera 15 or above or another browser if you have problems. [4]
Almost 170 wikis with no high-priority errors in Linter categories will switch to use the Remex parsing library. This is to replace Tidy. A few larger wikis such as German and Italian Wikipedia will also make this switch. It will happen on 5 December. Other wikis will be recommended to switch soon when they have fixed the errors that must be fixed. Tidy will be removed in the middle of 2018. [5][6]
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 December at 19:30 (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 December at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.
The Community Liaisons team at the Wikimedia Foundation is looking for active tech ambassadors. This is to make sure the Wikimedia communities get all the information they need about new features and can be involved in the technical development. [7]
Following a request for comment, a new section has been added to the username policy which disallows usernames containing emoji, emoticons or otherwise "decorative" usernames, and usernames that use any non-language symbols. Administrators should discuss issues related to these types of usernames before blocking.
Technical news
Wikimedians are now invited to vote on the proposals in the 2017 Community Wishlist Survey on Meta Wiki until 10 December 2017. In particular, there is a section of the survey regarding new tools for administrators and for anti-harassment.
A new function is available to edit filter managers which can be used to store matches from regular expressions.
Over the last few months, several users have reported backlogs that require administrator attention at WP:ANI, with the most common backlogs showing up on WP:SPI, WP:AIV and WP:RFPP. It is requested that all administrators take some time during this month to help clear backlogs wherever possible. It should be noted that AIV reports are not always valid; however, they still need to be cleared, which may include needing to remind users on what qualifies as vandalism.
The Wikimedia Foundation Community health initiative is conducting a survey for English Wikipedia contributors on their experience and satisfaction level with Administrator’s Noticeboard/Incidents. This survey will be integral to gathering information about how this noticeboard works (i.e. which problems it deals with well and which problems it struggles with). If you would like to take this survey, please sign up on this page, and a link for the survey will be emailed to you via Special:EmailUser.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
A new tag marks edits where a redirect was created or removed. This still works when the editor writes something else in the edit summary. You can see the tags for example in the recent changes feed, article history, user contributions or on your watchlist. [9]
If you use Chrome on Android, you can now use the print to PDF button to create a PDF of an article. [10]
Filter by number of edits or filter by time range have been grouped on a same menu on the recent changes page if you use the new filters. The "View new changes since $1" link is now more prominent. [11]
Some of the web fonts that were provided by the Universal Language Selector extension are being removed. This is to reduce the load time on pages. The web fonts were added many years ago to help users read text in scripts which did not have fonts or had broken fonts. This is not the case any more. You can check the status page for a list of all web fonts and whether they are currently being used and especially for special requirements. [12]
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 12 December. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 13 December. It will be on all wikis from 14 December (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 12 December at 19:30 (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 December at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.
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 8 January 2018.
Problems
When you import a page from another wiki the usernames of the users who edited the article on the wiki you imported it from are shown in the article history. This should link to the users on the original wiki. A script to fix this caused problems for Wikidata and German Wikipedia. It also created a large number of SUL accounts on wikis where editors had never edited. [13]
Some bot owners got email about their bots logging in from a new computer. If this is from one or a couple of wikis, you can turn these messages off in your preferences on those wikis until the problem has been solved. If not, you can report more about the problem in Phabricator.
Changes later this week
There is no new MediaWiki version this week. There will be no new MediaWiki version next week either.
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 December at 19:30 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
Files on Commons will have structured metadata in the future. The developers are now looking for examples of different kinds of metadata to make sure they are aware of them when they build prototypes for structured data on Commons. You can read more and help by giving examples of interesting media files.
The Structured Commons team are making sure Commons work with structured data. If you regularly contribute to Commons and Wikidata you can answer a survey that helps the team prioritise the tools that are important for the Commons and Wikidata communities. The survey ends on 22 December. You can read more on Commons. You can also help the team decide on better names for "captions" and "descriptions". This ends on 3 January 2018.
The filters are now deployed as a default feature on all wikis on RecentChanges and RecentChangesLinked pages.
The filters are still available as a Beta feature on all wikis on Watchlists. Please try them!
LiveUpdates have been deployed as a default feature for all wikis.
On wikis using Extension:Translate, translated messages can now be filtered. System messages can be filtered as well, on all wikis. [14]
"View new changes since $1" link is now more prominent, to invite users to use that native feature to update the list of results. [15]
Pagination and time period selectors are now combined and located on the right on left-to-right wikis. [16]
When a user wanted to click outside of the filter menu to close it, it was possible to click on "revert" link by accident. It is not possible anymore. [17]
It is now possible to filter the following events using the Tags menu: Making a page a redirect, Changing redirect target, Changing an existing redirect into a non-redirect, Blanking of the page, Removing more than 90% of a page content, Rolling back an edit. [18]
Some design improvements have been done to Related Changes page to integrate the new filters. [19]
"Save current filter settings" menu and legend overlapped the results. This is now fixed. [20]
Some small design improvements have been done. [21]
Now Content Translation prevents source and target language to be set to same language. [22]
The dialog for selecting article to translate is standardized. It introduces a new component that is used for the selected page on both the "New translation" dialog and the "Suggested pages" list. [23]
More space is given to the language filter, to increase responsiveness and show more language names without truncation. [24]
While searching for a new page to translate, duplicates are not shown anymore for user search input. [25]
Various PHP warnings and JavaScript errors have been fixed. [26][27]
Thanks for uploading File:PointerWare logo.png. The image description page currently specifies that the image is non-free and may only be used on Wikipedia under a claim of fair use. However, the image is currently not used in any articles on Wikipedia. If the image was previously in an article, please go to the article and see why it was removed. You may add it back if you think that that will be useful. However, please note that images for which a replacement could be created are not acceptable for use on Wikipedia (see our policy for non-free media).
Hello copy editors! Welcome to the December 2017 GOCE newsletter, which contains nine months(!) of updates. The Guild has been busy and successful; your diligent efforts in 2017 has brought the backlog of articles requiring copy edit to below 1,000 articles for the first time. Thanks to all editors who have contributed their time and energy to help make this happen.
Our copy-editing drives (month-long backlog-reduction drives held in odd-numbered months) and blitzes (week-long themed editing in even-numbered months) have been very successful this year.
March drive: We set out to remove April, May, and June 2016 from our backlog and all February 2017 Requests (a total of 304 articles). By the end of the month, all but 22 of these articles were cleared. Officially, of the 28 who signed up, 22 editors recorded 257 copy edits (439,952 words). (These numbers do not always make sense when you compare them to the overall reduction in the backlog, because not all editors record every copy edit on the drive page.)
April blitz: This one-week copy-editing blitz ran from 16 through 22 April; the theme was Requests. Of the 15 who signed up, 9 editors completed 43 articles (81,822 words).
May drive: The goals were to remove July, August, and September 2016 from the backlog and to complete all March 2017 Requests (a total of 300 articles). By the end of the month, we had reduced our overall backlog to an all-time low of 1,388 articles. Of the 28 who signed up, 17 editors completed 187 articles (321,810 words).
June blitz: This one-week copy-editing blitz ran from 18 through 24 June; the theme was Requests. Of the 16 who signed up, 9 editors completed 28 copy edits (117,089 words).
2017 Coordinator elections: In June, coordinators for the second half of 2017 were elected. Jonesey95 moved back into the lead coordinator position, with Miniapolis stepping down to remain as coordinator; Tdslk and Corinne returned as coordinators, and Keira1996 rejoined after an extended absence. Thanks to all who participated!
July drive: We set out to remove August, September, October, and November 2016 from the backlog and to complete all May and June 2017 Requests (a total of 242 articles). The drive was an enormous success, and the target was nearly achieved within three weeks, so that December 2016 was added to the "old articles" list used as a goal for the drive. By the end of the month, only three articles from 2016 remained, and for the second drive in a row, the backlog was reduced to a new all-time low, this time to 1,363 articles. Of the 33 who signed up, 21 editors completed 337 articles (556,482 words).
August blitz: This one-week copy-editing blitz ran from 20 through 26 August; the theme was biographical articles tagged for copy editing for more than six months (47 articles). Of the 13 who signed up, 11 editors completed 38 copy edits (42,589 words).
September drive: The goals were to remove January, February, and March 2017 from the backlog and to complete all August 2017 Requests (a total of 338 articles). Of the 19 who signed up, 14 editors completed 121 copy edits (267,227 words).
October blitz: This one-week copy-editing blitz ran from 22 through 28 October; the theme was Requests. Of the 14 who signed up, 8 editors completed 20 articles (55,642 words).
November drive: We set out again to remove January, February, and March 2017 from the backlog and to complete all October 2017 Requests (a total of 207 articles). By the end of the month, these goals were reached and the backlog shrank to its lowest total ever, 997 articles, the first time it had fallen under one thousand (click on the graph above to see this amazing feat in graphical form). It was also the first time that the oldest copy-edit tag was less than eight months old. Of the 25 who signed up, 16 editors completed 159 articles (285,929 words).
2018 Coordinator elections: Voting is open for the election of coordinators for the first half of 2018. Please visit the election page to vote between now and December 31 at 23:59 (UTC). Thanks for participating!
Housekeeping note: We do not send a newsletter before (or after) every drive or blitz. To have a better chance of knowing when the next event will start, add the GOCE's message box to your watchlist.
Thank you all again for your participation; we wouldn't be able to achieve what we have without you! Cheers from your GOCE coordinators: Jonesey95, Miniapolis, Corinne, Tdslk, and Keira1996.
The white snow and the cool breeze beckon a festive mood, And the sweet aroma wafting from eateries wreathes the mind. Lights, stars, colour and jollity abound 'round each bend, I wish you a happy holiday season, dear friend.
Thank you for your contributions to Wikipedia! Editing can get tough and frustrating at times, but we've come a long way in this project and that is a grand achievement. Hope you have a good time this festive season! :) Jiten talk contribs23:54, 24 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Old Marley was as dead as a door-nail. Mind! I don’t mean to say that I know, of my own knowledge, what there is particularly dead about a door-nail. I might have been inclined, myself, to regard a coffin-nail as the deadest piece of ironmongery in the trade. But the wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile; and my unhallowed hands shall not disturb it, or the Country’s done for. You will therefore permit me to repeat, emphatically, that Marley was as dead as a door-nail.
Hello K6ka, may you be surrounded by peace, success and happiness on this seasonal occasion Sending you a heartfelt and warm greetings for Christmas and New Year 2018. May you and your family have a Happy, Safe and Prosperous New Year!
Happy editing,
--Cameron11598(Talk)05:15, 25 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Hmm... that's odd. Commons should have caught the duplicate, as it caught a few that you had already uploaded before I starting pushing buttons. Nominated the duplicate for deletion, despite meddling by pesky enwiki admins. Also, just as an FYI, you gotta be careful with images of art like this one, which as far as I know, isn't allowed under Canadian freedom of panorama. GMGtalk16:25, 27 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
hi there - diff it was clearly patent nonsense and you have removed it but it wasn't outing or anything evil, simply as you say patent nonsense, I left if as such for you to remove if you wanted as there was actually no pressing need for me to remove it, thanks and a happy new year to you. Govindaharihari (talk) 22:38, 29 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]