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We are about to enter the second week of the 2016 WikiCup. The most recent player to sign up brings the current total to 101 contestants. Signups close on 5 February. If you’re interested, you can join this year's WikiCup here.
We are about to enter the second week of the 2016 WikiCup. The most recent player to sign up brings the current total to 101 contestants. Signups close on 5 February. If you’re interested, you can join this year's WikiCup here.
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
Wikimedia no longer uses visitor statistics from comScore. [1]
Internet Explorer 8 will no longer have JavaScript support. You will still be able to browse and edit Wikipedia if you use Internet Explorer 8, but will not be able to use some features. This can be solved by upgrading to a newer version or switching to a different browser. [6][7]
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 12 January at 20:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
URLs in the recent changes IRC feed will no longer be rewritten to unencrypted HTTP. This could be a breaking change for bots dependent on the IRC feed. [8]
The edit tabs for the wikitext editor and the visual editor will be combined to one single edit tab. You will be able to choose which one you prefer. If you are not logged in, your choice will be saved as a cookie in your browser. You can test the single edit tab. [9][10]
There is a beta feature that adds links to the subject on other Wikimedia projects. This works much like the links to for example Wikipedia articles in other languages. It will go out of beta testing and be enabled for everyone in January. Wikis that don't want this can decide to have it disabled. [11][12]
The difference between "alerts" and "messages" notifications is unclear to some. The developers want feedback at the Phabricator task or on MediaWiki.org so they can make this better. You can give feedback in your language if you can't write in English.
Hi, Masssly,
I noticed that you signed up as a participant on Wikipedia:WikiProject Cameroon and had recently edited. I was doing some work on creating new categories and am confused by the assortment of different names of categories for Cameroon as can be seen at Category:Decades in Cameroon. A lot of these category names were devised by the use of a template and there might be some misidentification. It would be great if you could help me sort out the Kamerun, British Cameroons, French Cameroons and Cameroon categories so they accurately reflect the history of this country. Thanks for any help you can offer. LizRead!Talk!17:23, 11 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Hey Liz, I would be happy to help sort this out. I have had a look and I think you made a genuine observation - the name of the category is problematic in many ways; I wouldn't advocate for the existence of a category named Category:Decades in Cameroon simply because the German, French and English protectorates that once existed are not necessarily subsets of the present day Republic of Cameroon. Parts of those protectorates are now part of modern countries like Central African Republic, Gabon, Nigeria, etc. In other words, Republic of Cameroon does not completely encompass these past staes. Well, unless we can find another name for it, Decades in Cameroon is misleading and we should put them all in their separate categories; Decades in German Kamerun, Decades in French Cameroun, Decades in British Cameroons, and Decades in the Republic of Cameroon. What do u think?—M@sssly✉00:33, 12 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
That sounds good to me. What is confusing is that there are simultaneously categories for British Cameroons and French Cameroons for the same years. Looking over Cameroon article, I couldn't easily determine which decades were covered by which names. I should explain that oftentimes, red-link categories are created by editors who aren't particularly knowledgeable about the topic, they are just creating categories based on other categories in the same group. So, it is likely that not a lot of thought went into making sure the category structure is consistent.
For some of these categories, we can simply change the template to the correct one and change the categories on the child/subcategories. For others, we might have to post the changes at WP:CFD for speedy renames. This situation isn't an emergency, but if you had a little time to help me straighten this out, I think it would benefit the readers. Also, I think these territorial confusions exist for other geographic entities like Macau and other African countries. LizRead!Talk!01:11, 12 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I am actually not sure how the WP:AFC queue works, but somehow, I think the goal was to tag this draft so that it gets community review. I submitted the article for review, then I reviewed the article myself. I did this using the WP:Twinkle tools. I do not know if this is the best way, but it works for me, and it creates a record of submission and review on the page. I could be incorrect about the best way to do this.
The problem with your way was that whatever else happen, it did not seem to put the article in line to be reviewed. Your way seems reasonable because it was dated.
Bluerasberry, thank you for reaching out. You're absolutely right; I should have handled it differently by making it visible to reviewers instead of simply including it a category, like you mentioned. I think placing {{subst:submit}} on the draft is enough to produce the desired result (see Wikipedia:Articles for creation), but I'm curios to find out more how to do that with twinkle. On the drop down list in twinkle, what particular command do you use? I'm happy to learn more.—M@sssly✉14:35, 14 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Help decide the future of Wikimania
The Wikimedia Foundation is currently running a consultation on the value and planning process of Wikimania, and is open until 18 January 2016. The goals are to (1) build a shared understanding of the value of Wikimania to help guide conference planning and evaluation, and (2) gather broad community input on what new form(s) Wikimania could take (starting in 2018).
I am a new user. Thank you for wiki page about the Ngizim people who up-to-date continue to raise above the oppression caused by colonial rule and changes in the region.
I want to let you know that most pages on wiki bearing Mai Potiskum Ibn Wuriwa are somewhat under attack and I noticed a page has been created called 'Potiskum Emirate' here to spite the works of this organisation as most newspaper related articles to the topic by daily trust are considerably misguiding and untrue. SchroCat and Aymatth2 (I notice are in control of the page and undo edits almost immediately.
Getting straight to the point - I am asking for your help and unbiased knowledge. I believe the page 'Potiskum Emirate' was created for some sort of campaign and to spite the restoration and social effort of the Ngizim people.
Hi Ga.gatto.sa, I have no knowledge about Potiskum Emirate and Ngizim people. I however noticed a lot of cut and paste material in the article in Ngizim people which I have since removed, (I hope that helps!). If you let me know what specifically the problem is, I could offer better advice. Regards and thanks for the baklava. —M@sssly✉14:43, 14 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Hello, thanks for feedback - Good to know that you are an administrator. I am in a talk with *@Aymatth2: about Potiskum Emirate page. I am not sure if *@Aymatth2:is collaborating. comment added by Ga.gatto.sa (talk
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Original delivery list for this newsletter is generated manually from publicly available data accumulated in and accessible through respective table, but anyone is welcome to join in. To receive this monthly bulletin into your personal talk page or that of one of the community pages in your language edition, please use the following syntax to add delivery target address in the subsections below. To unsubscribe, just remove it from the list.
Hi. Thank you for your recent edits. Wikipedia appreciates your help. We noticed though that when you edited Ahmed Ramadan, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Fuka. Such links are almost always unintended, since a disambiguation page is merely a list of "Did you mean..." article titles. Read the FAQ • Join us at the DPL WikiProject.
I don't quite understand the objection to the very existence of the Nanumba article. As a lexicographer I follow the principle of closure -- if a word is in an entry for another word, as definition or in an example, it should have an entry itself in the dictionary. Extending this to encyclopædic material is a bit less precise, but if (in this case) Bimbilla is stated to be the seat of the paramount of the Nanumba people, then I seems axiomatic to me that Nanumba people should have an entry. I am trying to fill in the coverage of the Western Oti-Volta languages and their speakers in a consistent and systematic manner. I feel that consistency is also a desirability for reference materials but it is difficult to achieve in the wiki paradigm. When I first started in the early days of Wikipedia there was a very good article on Dagbani which I wanted to clone as a pattern for entries on the other languages, but I didn't then know how to do it (and possibly the system didn't allow it at that time). Later the Dagbani entry was hijacked bu some Dagomba nationalists who made it a subjective pæan of praise for the Dagomba and their superiority to their neighbours -- nicely-done and very suitable for a website of something like a Dagomba Youth Association but not for an encyclopædia. The Dagbani entry has since been made more appropriate, and I have done some minor edits to follow its pattern in the entries for the related languages, and back-adjusted the Dagbani entry to match the more linguistically-accurate data on the comparative situation which is the area in which I am really one of the experts to go to. All this was filling out stubs: the Nanumba entry has been the first place where there was a gap needing a completely new entry, so I'm not sure how to meet the objections which have been raised to it. Tony Naden (talk) 09:40, 15 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Tony, from where you stand, ie coming from the academic world, I can understand how frustrating it must be for you stepping into the wiki world where things are done slight differently. Strong Regerences are not enough, they should be easily verifiable (and published by neutral medias) and come from multiple locations. I have expanded the references and added URL's to existing ones. I am pinging SwisterTwister to have a look again but that'd be after you've resubmitted the draft. So please go ahead and click the Resubmit button, I am confident it will be accepted this time.
PS. I've had access to your Dagbani Dictionary since last year, I was pointed to it by Roger Blench when I needed translations for medical terms to produce an article about Ebola in Dagbani during the crisis. I have since been referring to it to write others! But the Mampruli version is new to me. I am reading it now and I feel very excited. Thanks so much for your invaluable work! —M@sssly✉16:08, 15 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
The article will be discussed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Khalid Mohammed Salih al-Dhuby until a consensus is reached, and anyone is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.
Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion notice from the top of the article. Wikic¤l¤gyt@lk to M£11:02, 18 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Wikidata weekly summary #192
Here's your quick overview of what has been happening around Wikidata over the last week.
Students worked on new datatype to capture mathematical expressions (phabricator:T67397)
Updated property suggester data to give you more up-to-date suggestions when adding new statements
Pages in the module namespace now also get interwiki links (phabricator:T123234)
Reduced number of resource loader modules to improve performance (phabricator:T123233)
Started experimenting with showing an image in the header area (phabricator:T119493)
Fixed a bug where the query text would be moved off the screen on the query service website (phabricator:T120196)
Worked on the remaining blocker for taking the in other projects sidebar out of beta. We need to link to the Commons category and not gallery for articles without frying the servers (phabricator:T94989)
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 will be able to find or mark bugs and suggestions in Phabricator that are specific for your language or wiki. [13]
Notifications have been upgraded with more detailed and easier-to-access information. See the documentation. Cross-wiki notifications will be available soon on the two test wikis. [14]
Changes this week
The visual editor uses the TemplateData extension to make editing templates easier. You will now get a warning when you edit a TemplateData form and leave it without saving. [15]
MediaWiki will get a new authentication and authorization system called AuthManager. This is planned to happen in a month or two. Some bots will need to change how they log in. Two new and more stable authentication methods will be available now: Owner-only OAuth credentials and bot passwords. You can read more about the change. [16]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 19 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 20 January. It will be on all Wikipedias from 21 January (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 19 January at 20:00 (UTC). See how to join.
You can join the next meeting with the Architecture committee. The topic this week is governance model. The meeting will be on 20 January at 22:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Hello there! Happy to be writing this newsletter once more. This month:
What comes next
Some good news: the Wikimedia Foundation has renewed WikiProject X. This means we can continue focusing on making WikiProjects better.
During our first round of work, we created a prototype WikiProject based on two ideas: (1) WikiProjects should clearly present things for people to do, and (2) The content of WikiProjects should be automated as much as possible. We launched pilots, and for the most part it works. But this approach will not work for the long term. While it makes certain aspects of running a WikiProject easier, it makes the maintenance aspects harder.
We are working on a major overhaul that will address these issues. New features will include:
Creating WikiProjects by simply filling out a form, choosing which reports you want to generate for your project. This will work with existing bots in addition to the Reports Bot reports. (Of course, you can also have sections curated by humans.)
One-click button to join a WikiProject, with optional notifications.
Be able to define your WikiProject's scope within the WikiProject itself by listing relevant pages and categories, eliminating the need to tag every talk page with a banner. (You will still be allowed to do that, of course. It just won't be required.)
The end goal is a collaboration tool that can be used by WikiProjects but also by any edit-a-thon or group of people that want to coordinate on improving articles. Though implemented as an extension, the underlying content will be wikitext, meaning that you can continue to use categories, templates, and other features as you normally would.
This will take a lot of work, and we are just getting started. What would you like to see? I invite you to discuss on our talk page.
Note: All columns in this table are sortable, allowing you to rearrange the table so the articles most interesting to you are shown at the top. All images have mouse-over popups with more information. For more information about the columns and categories, please consult the documentation and please get in touch on SuggestBot's talk page with any questions you might have.
SuggestBot picks articles in a number of ways based on other articles you've edited, including straight text similarity, following wikilinks, and matching your editing patterns against those of other Wikipedians. It tries to recommend only articles that other Wikipedians have marked as needing work. We appreciate that you have signed up to receive suggestions regularly; your contributions make Wikipedia better — thanks for helping!
Hi, Nkansahrexford (see here) was blocked some 10 months ago and as such is left with no opportunity to request an unblock and learn from their mistakes them self. My question has to do with requesting for an unblock on their behalf. I am seeking a second opinion since I have not seen anybody do this before. Thanks.}} —M@sssly✉13:02, 23 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Masssly, thanks for your willingness to help Nkansahrexford return to Wikipedia. However, your talk page is not the appropriate page to request unblock for a blocked user, instead you can contact the blocking admin directly on their talk page. Pinging Wizardman who issued the block but Nkansahrexford may request an unblock via the Unblock Ticket Request System (UTRS), provided they now have an understanding of the principle of WP:CV. Wikic¤l¤gyt@lk to M£13:47, 23 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Wikicology I don't think my help me inquiry suggests I am requesting for an unblock on my talk page, not sure though why you would think so or how you read it but thanks anyway for your response. I am well aware its not used for that purpose. My request actually was intended to seek a second opinion. —M@sssly✉19:08, 23 January 2016 (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.
Recent changes
You can now follow when pages are added or removed from a category on German Wikipedia. The plan is to add it to Wikimedia Commons and other Wikipedias this week. [17][18]
Administrators can hide individual entries of a page with RevisionDelete. There is now a button to choose "all", "none" or "inverse" in Special:Log. The article history will get the same buttons soon. Wikis that have done this locally with JavaScript will be able to remove that code. [19]
Changes this week
You will be able to see the references when you preview a section you are editing. This will happen even if there is no <references /> tag in that section. [20]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 26 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 27 January. It will be on all wikis from 28 January (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 26 January at 20:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
There is now an extension called ArticlePlaceholder. It can automatically generate content on Wikipedia with data from Wikidata if there is no Wikipedia article. It will have a tag to remind the reader it is not an article and ask the reader to create one. The developer is now looking for smaller Wikipedias that want to try the extension. [21]
The OTRS system will be upgraded. The plan is to do this on 3 February at 08:00 (UTC). It will probably take 6 to 8 hours. OTRS will be down during the upgrade. [22]
Users will soon be automatically congratulated when they reach some edit count milestones. [23]
Changes in how authentication in MediaWiki is handled are being rolled out (and more coming). [24] Ordinary users and gadgets / user scripts should not be affected but bots may need to be adjusted. pywikibot already supports [25] OAuth authentication, though bot operators need to set that up for their bot.
Investigated language support in MediaWiki and Wikibase to allow more languages in monolingual text and disallow some non-sense for label/descriptions/aliases (phabricator:T78006)
Fixed missing license info and broken links for Wikibase libraries on Special:Version
Working on improving scoring of search results on Wikidata, on Special:Search
Preparing to take the "in other projects" sidebar out of beta features, with the Wikimedia Commons link going to the Commons category (phabricator:T103102, phabricator:T94989)
Amir and Aaron are turning ORES into an extension to make it easier for you to spot bad edits \o/
Final touches on putting identifiers into their own section (phabricator:T117421)
Switching the in other languages box to be expanded by default for new people (phabricator:T92387)
More experimenting with adding an image to the header area (phabricator:T119493)
Note: All columns in this table are sortable, allowing you to rearrange the table so the articles most interesting to you are shown at the top. All images have mouse-over popups with more information. For more information about the columns and categories, please consult the documentation and please get in touch on SuggestBot's talk page with any questions you might have.
SuggestBot picks articles in a number of ways based on other articles you've edited, including straight text similarity, following wikilinks, and matching your editing patterns against those of other Wikipedians. It tries to recommend only articles that other Wikipedians have marked as needing work. We appreciate that you have signed up to receive suggestions regularly; your contributions make Wikipedia better — thanks for helping!
