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.
R4 (new): Redirects in the file namespace (and no file links) that have the same name as a file or redirect at Commons are now covered under the new R4 criterion (discussion). This is {{db-redircom}}; the text is unchanged.
G13 (expanded): Userspace drafts containing only the default Article Wizard text are now covered under G13 along with other drafts (discussion). Such blank drafts are now eligible after six months rather than one year, and taggers continue to use {{db-blankdraft}}.
Members of the Bot Approvals Group (BAG) are now subject to an activity requirement. After two years without any bot-related activity (e.g. operating a bot, posting on a bot-related talk page), BAG members will be retired from BAG following a one-week notice.
Technical news
Starting on December 13, the Wikimedia Foundation security team implemented new password policy and requirements. Privileged accounts (administrators, bureaucrats, checkusers, oversighters, interface administrators, bots, edit filter managers/helpers, template editors, et al.) must have a password at least 10 characters in length. All accounts must have a password:
User accounts not meeting these requirements will be prompted to update their password accordingly. More information is available on MediaWiki.org.
Blocked administrators may now block the administrator that blocked them. This was done to mitigate the possibility that a compromised administrator account would block all other active administrators, complementing the removal of the ability to unblock oneself outside of self-imposed blocks. A request for comment is currently in progress to determine whether the blocking policy should be updated regarding this change.
{{Copyvio-revdel}} now has a link to open the history with the RevDel checkboxes already filled in.
Accounts continue to be compromised on a regular basis. Evidence shows this is entirely due to the accounts having the same password that was used on another website that suffered a data breach. If you have ever used your current password on any other website, you should change it immediately.
Around 22% of admins have enabled two-factor authentication, up from 20% in June 2018. If you haven't already enabled it, please consider doing so. Regardless of whether you use 2FA, please practice appropriate account security by ensuring your password is secure and unique to Wikimedia.
Thank you for talking to me before unblocking the user. I appreciate the courtesy, not to mention the compliance with policy.--Bbb23 (talk) 17:50, 5 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I apologize for the dripping sarcasm. Regardless of my irritation, it was uncalled for. I would like to know, though, why you didn't first talk to me before unblocking. My assumption is I would not have objected to the unblock. Just so you know, the reason I picked a week is because much of the disruption, etc., was occurring at the AfD, so I figured a week would prevent the user from editing the AfD, which, of course, usually lasts a week. Otherwise, the block would have been shorter, and there is a good argument that it should have been shorter anyway. Thanks.--Bbb23 (talk) 02:00, 6 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Hi Bbb23, and thanks for your apology. Perhaps I should apologize too for not pinging you first before unblocking. I had initially thought about doing so, but after reviewing the user's edits carefully, I felt that a week seemed a little too excessive; if a block was warranted, I might've expected 24 to 48 hours as being the appropriate duration. Since the user had already been blocked for a little over 72 hours, I decided that, given how I felt the block should've been shorter (and I think 72 hours would be the appropriate maximum duration) I decided to unblock. The user had actually come onto #wikipedia-en-unblockconnect asking for someone to review the request which is how it came to my attention; I would probably not have even known about this incident otherwise. Thanks, —k6ka🍁 (Talk · Contributions) 02:44, 6 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Tech News writers, editors and translators wish you a pleasant 2019 year.
Recent changes
RelatedSites extension has been undeployed. It was used to create interwiki links on Wikivoyage, now handled by Wikidata. [2]
MediaWiki logstash logging is moving to a new infrastructure. This is an ongoing deployment. [3]
codesearch.wmflabs.org has been updated, with new and updated repositories and a new search options for code. [4]
On several wikis, an account named "Edit filter" has been created on December 17 to perform some technical maintenance on AbuseFilter. This account has sysop rights but it's a system user and no human can use it. The account already existed on wikis where AbuseFilter can perform blocks, which are issued using this account. See T212268 for more information and future plans.
Problems
In AbuseFilter, the "Throttle" action takes three parameters: count, period and groups. They must now strictly respect the requirements listed on mediawiki.org. A list of broken filters is on Phabricator. If you're familiar with AbuseFilter, please take a look and fix them. [5]
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from January 8. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from January 9. It will be on all wikis from January 10 (calendar).
Meetings
Search Platform Office Hours is rescheduled to January 9. Check the details for time and date.
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 add captions to files on Commons. Captions are short descriptions of the file. They can be translated to all languages we use. They can't use wikitext markup.
Earlier a quoted HTML attribute had to be followed by a space. Now it doesn't. This means that some pages could look different when you save them even if you didn't edit that part of the text. [8][9]
Templates with <templatestyles> could not show the difference between the live template and the sandbox version when they were tested. This has now been fixed. <templatestyles> has a new wrapper parameter now. You can use it for selectors like .mw-parser-output <wrapper parameter value> <selector from CSS page>. [10]
Problems
When you see an edit in the recent changes feed or in the history of a page some of them have tags. Some tags are added automatically. You can also add tags manually. Tags for edits that have been added manually can be edited. This didn't work for a little while. This has now been fixed. [11]
Users who could cause more damage to the wikis if someone took over their account have to have more secure passwords. This includes administrators and other user groups. They can't use passwords that are in a list of common passwords. Accounts with common passwords are easy to take over. The list of common passwords was made longer a few weeks ago and has a different error message. Some user groups have been added to those who can't use common passwords. This is to protect all accounts with user rights that could cause damage. [12]
The AbuseFilter variable minor_edit has been removed. It was deprecated in 2016. Now you can't use it. You can fix the filters using it. You can find them if you use the search bar on Special:AbuseFilter.
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from January 15
17:54, 14 January 2019 (UTC)
Protection of Raashi Bawa
Yesturday night , you took the advantage of being an admin by protecting my sister ( Raashi Bawa) 's Wikipedia Page. You have power , it's your decision , I will not say anything , but... do you know her page was deleted with false conditions? You really made her upset . I will do nothing to you , but god is there and he will definitely protect my sister and give her justice one day... And before deleting this message , think what would you do if the same happened to your sister , hoping that you respect girls in your country.Thank you for reading this message.Jcphfc0001 (talk) 02:09, 17 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Jcphfc0001, Wikipedia's goals are not to make people happy or to give justice to people. Our goal is to build an encyclopedia, and there are things that we can and can not accept. We can only accept articles about figures who meet our standards for notability. You should be aware that the article was deleted after a community discussion, which formed the consensus that the subject was not notable for a Wikipedia article at this time. We consider going against consensus to be a form of disruption that prevents us from focusing on our goal of creating an encyclopedia, which is why the article was deleted after being recreated, and which is why I create protected the page to prevent further inappropriate recreations. You should also be aware that comments like "You made [someone] upset" or "you should respect [people] in your country" are off-topic and irrelevant to the very reason as to why the article was deleted, which was that the subject in question was not notable; making these comments serve no purpose other than to frustrate other people and don't address any of the reasons why the article was deleted. Lastly, you must remember to comment on content and not contributors, which includes avoiding religious threats or even suggestions that you will do something to an editor in real life in response to something they did on Wikipedia; these will not solve the problem and may result in blocks from editing or even local authorities being contacted if necessary. —k6ka🍁 (Talk · Contributions) 03:27, 17 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
User:K6ka
I think you didn't get what I said . Firstly , I clearly specified thaylt I am nOT giving any Threat , so please don't comment on that. Secondly , I said that her page was deleted with reason that she worked in only one sitcom show , whereas the reality is that she has worked on 3 television shows , so the condition of deleting her page was totally false. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 59.88.26.236 (talk) 04:37, 17 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I will do nothing to you , but god is there and he will definitely protect my sister and give her justice one day sounds like you were implying a threat, which in any case is off-topic and should never have been mentioned in the first place. Secondly, nowhere in your first message did you ever mention the number of TV shows she worked on. Thirdly, you are not even logged in right now, so I am not even sure if I am responding to the right person. I won't continue this absurd discussion any longer. —k6ka🍁 (Talk · Contributions) 15:26, 17 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
♪♪You wanted a hippopotamus for christmas♪♪
Smash!
You've been squished by a whale!
Don't take this too seriously. Someone just wants to let you know you did something really silly.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Tech News
Some people did not get last week's issue of Tech News. This was because of a problem with MassMessage. If you did not get last week's issue, you can read it on Meta. [13]
Recent changes
The content translation tool can now use version 2 as the default version for users who turned on the beta feature. For example it adds the tracking category Pages with unreviewed translations to translations that might have used machine translations without fixing the problems. This is so others can find them. You can find this category in Special:TrackingCategories on Wikipedias.
When a template was edited with the visual editor, it would sometimes put all information on one line. This makes it difficult to read for editors who use the wikitext editor. It also makes it more difficult to see what happened in a diff. This problem affected edits made between 8 and 17 January and is now fixed. [14]
MassMessage is used to post a message to many pages. It has not been working reliably. Some messages have not been posted to everyone. [15][16]
Because of a database problem that had to be fixed immediately you could not edit most wikis for a couple of minutes on 17 January (UTC). This has now been fixed. [17]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 22 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 23 January. It will be on all wikis from 24 January (calendar).
Meetings
You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 23 January at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Hi K6ka,
I have seen you are dealing with my user renaming. For what I've seen, the user that holds the other username has no activity and has not been active since 2009. Is there some way to somehow reclaim that unused username? By the way, that user was most probably me making some tests with a now extinct e-mail account, but I am not sure of that.
The username is eligible for usurpation, which you can request here. However, you only have three edits made over the course of nine years, so you would almost certainly not be considered eligible to request usurpation of another user account. In general, we prefer only granting usurpations to established editors, usually those with at least 400 total edits and be registered for at least six months. Usurpation would be the way of reclaiming unused usernames, but as of now you're not eligible to request for that at this time. —k6ka🍁 (Talk · Contributions) 01:46, 24 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
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 someone moves a page to a name that already exists that page that had the name the article is moved to is deleted. For a couple of months this didn't always work. Some users saw an error message instead. This has now been fixed. [19]
Changes later this week
There is no new MediaWiki version this week.
Meetings
You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 30 January at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.
@Qwerty3.141592: You have been renamed less than 24 hours ago. We won't accept repeated or frivolous requests, sorry. Please wait six months before making another request. You should not make requests for username changes without having thought it through. —k6ka🍁 (Talk · Contributions) 10:54, 29 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
