This is an archive of past discussions with User:MBlaze Lightning. 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.
Worked more on support for lexicographical data (specifically support for lexicographic category and statements on forms)
Dealt with issues after the deployment of automatic interwiki links for Wiktionary
Worked on constraint violation user script based on your feedback (improving messages to make it more understandable, layout, etc)
Add support for the following new language codes for monolingual text properties: brx, chn, cop, gez, quc, kjh, nr (will become available in a few days)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Problems
Some users have a problem with the watchlist. Some changes in categories make the watchlist a blank page. The developers are working on this. Until this is fixed you can try some things that have helped other editors if you have this problem. You can turn on Hide categorization of pages in your watchlist preferences. You can turn off Expand watchlist to show all changes, not just the most recent in your watchlist preferences. You can remove problematic categories from Special:EditWatchlist/raw. [1]
There was a problem with the visual editor for several days. You could not save edits that triggered a CAPTCHA. This would for example be when a new user added external links in references. This was fixed on 2 May. [2]
Changes this week
When you edit you can switch between the visual editor and the wikitext editor. This works if the wiki you edit has the visual editor. The menu will now say Visual editing and Source editing instead of Switch to visual editing and Switch to code editing. This is because it was confusing when the menu said you could switch to the editor you were already using. [3]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 9 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 10 May. It will be on all wikis from 11 May (calendar).
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 9 May at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
You will be able to get a notification when a page you created is connected to a Wikidata item. This will come to Wikivoyage on 9 May. If there are no problems it will come to most Wikipedias on 30 May. It will come to other projects and English, French and German Wikipedia later in the summer. It will be opt-in for existing users and opt-out for new users. [4][5]
Markup that looks like code for language variants might need to be fixed. If -{ is used in transclusions or web addresses it has to be escaped appropriately. You can use -<nowiki/>{ for transclusions and %2D{ in web addresses. A transclusion could for example be when you use -{ in a template: {{1x| sad :-{ face }}. This is because of some code fixes to the preprocessor and affects all wikis. [6][7]
Netherlands report: The Netherlands and the World: Photo hunt Chinsurah; Photohunt public library Tilburg; Wikipedian in Residence for UNESCO's Memory of the World programme in the Netherlands; Picture books from Koninklijke Bibliotheek
Spain report: Management and dissemination of cultural heritage
Sweden report: GLAM-EduWiki collaboration awarded Pedagogy Award of the year at Swedish museums; Connected Open Heritage
I've noticed that you have reverted edits by Faizan, who's account is now blocked, on multiple articles. Could you please take a step back and consider if the content in question is actually useful for these articles, regardless of who wrote them? WP:BANREVERT doesn't obligate removal of edits just because a blocked editor made them. In this case, I generally oppose large-scale removals and believe it is not in the encylopedia's interests, especially when the edits in question appear to improve the quality/referenced content of articles. This revert in particular is huge. This G5 tag is also problematic because Faizan/TH is not the only one who edited that article. Having participated in that article's talk, you should know better. I haven't gone through the rest of reverts yet. Pinging @RegentsPark: for 2 cents. Mar4d (talk) 06:41, 13 May 2017 (UTC)
Policy is to simply revert all edits made by the banned user and his socks in violation of his ban regardless of whether they're constructive or not. "Bans apply to all editing, good or bad". That's the only way to discourage further sock puppetry by this user. You should refrain from restoring banned user's content. Doing so means you "take complete responsibility for the content". —MBlaze LightningT08:32, 13 May 2017 (UTC)
I agree with both of you. It is going to be difficult to clean up after Towns Hill, given how extensive his contributions were. But, let us not bring down Wikipedia in the process! -- Kautilya3 (talk) 09:02, 13 May 2017 (UTC)
I know what vouching for the content means, it's why I cited WP:BANREVERT. To repeat, reverting a blocked editor is not an obligation. And until Kautilya filed that SPI, no one was aware the accounts were linked - neither were any blocked. I'm not here to talk about the editor, but just had to relay my concerns about the mass reverts and believe they might actually be disruptive to the project. The G5 tag on Rape in Kashmir conflict made no sense. Neither did the revert on Kashmiris removing 105,000 bits of content. Let's not be reckless in the name of WP:BAN. I will review the other reverts shortly, and if that entails WP:BANREVERT, WP:IAR and WP:BOLD, then let that be it. Mar4d (talk) 09:44, 13 May 2017 (UTC)
My understanding is that, from the point when Towns Hill was topic-banned, any edits made by all four accounts are considered "banned user edits". The edits before that point are not. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 10:07, 13 May 2017 (UTC)
It is, partly. Those 105,000 bytes were written by Towns Hill before his block. We can check if the Losthistory9's edits afterwards were reasonable. If they are, we can reinstate them. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 00:57, 14 May 2017 (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 ISBNs to automatically generate citations in the visual editor. This works on wikis that have enabled Citoid. [8]
The mediawiki.util library does not load automatically any more. Your Special:MyPage/common.js may use it. If you have technical problems that started a couple of weeks ago you can try adding mw.loader.using('mediawiki.util').done(function(){ as the first line in the file and }); as a last one. Tech News wrote about this in the 2017/18 issue. [10]
Changes this week
The RevisionSlider extension will be a default feature on all wikis. RevisionSlider is an easier way to move between changes in the page history. It has been a default feature on German, Arabic and Hebrew Wikipedia and a beta feature on all wikis. You will be able to turn it off in your preferences. [11]
There is no new MediaWiki version this week.
Future changes
Administrators will soon be able to search through deleted pages. [12][13]
Markup that looks like code for language variants might need to be fixed. Tech News wrote about this last week. If -{ is used in transclusions or web addresses it has to be escaped appropriately. You can use -<nowiki/>{ for transclusions and %2D{ in web addresses. This is because of some code fixes to the preprocessor and affects all wikis. You can now see the full list of wikis with this problem and help fix them to avoid that things break later this month. You might find false positives. You can read more about what to fix. [14][15]
Older unreported changes
Your Meta user page is shown on all wikis where you don't have a local user page. You can now add the magic word __NOGLOBAL__ to your Meta user page to stop this. [16][17]
Hi there, I'm pleased to inform you that I've begun reviewing the article William Peter Blatty you nominated for GA-status according to the criteria. This process may take up to 7 days. Feel free to contact me with any questions or comments you might have during this period. Message delivered by Legobot, on behalf of Casliber -- Casliber (talk) 10:40, 20 May 2017 (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 this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 23 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 24 May. It will be on all wikis from 25 May (calendar).
There will be a <div> tag around HTML from the MediaWiki wikitext parser. Gadgets with code that does not follow recommendations could have problems with this. You can report new problems you think are related to this. [18]
Hi MBlaze, welcome back! Please look through the edits done for various Indo-Pakistani war pages. I wasn't monitoring that closely. Cheers, Kautilya3 (talk) 09:48, 28 May 2017 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Problems
Last week’s MediaWiki version was rolled back from some wikis because of a problem. This means planned changes did not happen. [19]
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 30 May at 19:00 (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.
Recent changes
You can see new files on Special:NewFiles. You can now pick which dates you want to see files from. [21]
When you read Wikipedia on a mobile device the first paragraph now comes before the infobox. [22]
You can now remove navigation elements from your results when you search. This could for example be part of an infobox that is only there to help you find the previous or next article. [23]
New users on Wikivoyages and Wikipedias (except French, English and German) now get a notification when a page they created is connected to Wikidata. Other wikis will get it 13 June. [24]
Problems
The MediaWiki version from two weeks ago was rolled back. It was fixed late last week. Changes that were planned to go out last week did not happen. [25]
Changes this week
Wikimedia wikis can show fewer links to articles in other languages. This is to make it easier to find the languages likely to be useful to the reader or editor. Everyone can still click to see the full list. Logged-in users who use the compact language links will see languages they have in their Babel box on their user page in the first, shorter list. You can turn the compact language list off or on in your preferences. [26]
You can choose what dates to look at when you look at a user's contributions. [27]
When you click on your watchlist in the mobile view you get a list of all pages in the watchlist instead of the latest changes to them. Logged-in users with at least ten edits will now get the latest changes instead. [28]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 6 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 7 June. It will be on all wikis from 8 June (calendar).
String comparisons in Scribunto modules are now always done case-insensitively by byte order. Before they were sometimes in a case-sensitive US-English collation order. This could break some modules. [29]
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 6 June at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
The 2006 wikitext editor will be removed the week of 27 June. This is the old toolbar with small square blue buttons. You can see a picture of it. 0.03% of active Wikimedia editors use this old tool. They will not see a toolbar at all. [30][31]
Wikimedia wikis use OCG to create PDFs. The OCG code has a lot of problems and will stop working. It has to be replaced. An alternative is Electron. You can tell the developers what you need the PDF service to be able to do. Electron already works on German Wikipedia. It will be on English Wikipedia later this week so you can test it there too. [32]
The Architecture Committee will change and get a new name. You can read and comment on the draft that describes the new committee.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
Some wikis have the larger and brighter OOjs UI edit page buttons. When you write an edit summary there you can now see how many bytes you have left before the summary is too long. [33]
When you search on Wikipedia you can now find pages on other Wikimedia projects that could be relevant. You see them next to the search results. [34]
Changes this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 13 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 14 June. It will be on all wikis from 15 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 13 June at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
You will soon be able to get a notification when someone tries to log in to your account. You can test this on the test wiki. This will only work if they fail to log in to your account. [35]
Wikimedia wikis use OCG to create PDFs. The OCG code has a lot of problems and will stop working. It has to be replaced. An alternative is Electron. You can tell the developers what you need the PDF service to be able to do. Electron now works on all Wikimedia projects. [36]
Administrators can soon search for deleted page titles and find results that are similar to what they searched for. Today the search only finds pages that are exactly the same as what you search for. This is to make it easier to find pages when you don't know the exact title. Administrators on Arabic, Catalan, English, Persian, German, Italian, Polish, and Russian Wikipedia and on mediawiki.org can test this by adding &fuzzy=1 to the end of the web address when looking at Special:Undelete. [37][38]
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