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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

  • When you use rollback you will be able to get a confirmation prompt on most wikis. It asks you if you wanted to do the rollback. This is to avoid misclicks. You will have to opt in to get it. On German Knowledge it will be an opt-out feature from 28 March.
  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 19 March. It will be on non-Knowledge wikis and some Wikipedias from 20 March. It will be on all wikis from 21 March (calendar).

Meetings

  • Recurrent item Advanced item You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 20 March at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

  • Admins will be able to block someone from editing a page or a namespace. This already works on a few Wikimedia wikis. You can read more. If your wiki wants to be an early tester of this, you can tell the developers.
  • Advanced item Toolforge will shut down the Ubuntu Trusty job grid. This will happen the week of 25 March. Tools that use this grid needs to be moved to the new Debian Stretch job grid. If they haven't, they will be taken offline. Maintainers can restart the tools later. Users may not be able to use them in the meanwhile. You can see a list of affected tools.

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19:43, 18 March 2019 (UTC)

March GOCE newsletter

Guild of Copy Editors March 2019 Newsletter

Hello and welcome to the March newsletter, a brief update of Guild activities since December 2018. All being well, we're planning to issue these quarterly in 2019, balancing the need to communicate widely with the avoidance of filling up talk pages. Don't forget you can unsubscribe at any time; see below.

January Drive: Thanks to everyone for the splendid work in January's Backlog Elimination Drive. We removed copyedit tags from all of the articles tagged in our original target months of June, July and August 2018, and by 24 January we ran out of articles. After adding September, we finished the month with 8 target articles remaining and 842 left in the backlog. GOCE copyeditors also completed 48 requests for copyedit in January. Of the 31 people who signed up for this drive, 24 copyedited at least one article. Final results, including barnstars awarded, are available here.

Blitz: Thanks to everyone who participated in the February Blitz. Of the 15 people who signed up, 13 copyedited at least one article. Participants claimed 32 copyedits, including 15 requests. Final results, including barnstars awarded, are available here.

Progress report: As of 23:39, 18 March 2019 (UTC), GOCE copyeditors have completed 108 requests since 1 January and the backlog stands at 851 articles.

March Drive: The month-long March drive is now underway; the target months are October and November 2018. Awards will be given to everyone who copyedits at least one article from the backlog. Sign up here!

Election reminder: It may only be March but don't forget our mid-year Election of Coordinators opens for nominations on 1 June. Coordinators normally serve a six-month term and are elected on an approval basis. Self-nominations are welcome. If you've thought of helping out at the Guild, or know of another editor who would make a good coordinator, please consider standing for election or nominating them here.

Thank you all again for your participation; we wouldn't be able to achieve what we have without you! Cheers from your GOCE coordinators Miniapolis, Baffle gab1978, Jonesey95, Reidgreg and Tdslk.

To discontinue receiving GOCE newsletters, please remove your name from our mailing list.

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 02:12, 19 March 2019 (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 new version of the content translation tool will be used for all new translations. The older version will still be used for translations that were started with it. Most users won’t see any change. More than 80% of the published translations are already using the new version.

Problems

  • There was a problem with editing with Safari on iOS. When you wrote an edit summary you couldn't save the edit. This has now been fixed.
  • The editing toolbar sometimes disappears when you scroll on iOS devices. This will be fixed soon.
  • Wikis can over-ride interface messages on-wiki. A problem meant that sometimes an old versions of any changed messages were shown instead. This included the sitenotice and other important parts of the interface. This was fixed at around 2019-03-22 16:00 (UTC). Logged-out users may still get the wrong message. Purging the page should fix it for them.

Changes later this week

  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 26 March. It will be on non-Knowledge wikis and some Wikipedias from 27 March. It will be on all wikis from 28 March (calendar).

Meetings

  • Recurrent item Advanced item You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 27 March at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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18:04, 25 March 2019 (UTC)

The Signpost: 31 March 2019

News, reports and features from the English Knowledge's weekly journal about Knowledge and 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.

Changes later this week

  • Notifications tell you about things that happen on the wiki. You can turn on notifications about new links to pages you created. For performance reasons you can no longer get e-mails about this.
  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 2 April. It will be on non-Knowledge wikis and some Wikipedias from 3 April. It will be on all wikis from 4 April (calendar).

Meetings

  • Recurrent item Advanced item You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 3 April at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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16:28, 1 April 2019 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – April 2019

News and updates for administrators from the past month (March 2019).

Technical news

Arbitration

Miscellaneous

  • Two more administrator accounts were compromised. Evidence has shown that these attacks, like previous incidents, were due to reusing a 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. All admins are strongly encouraged to enable two-factor authentication, please consider doing so. Please always practice appropriate account security by ensuring your password is secure and unique to Wikimedia.
  • As a reminder, according to WP:NOQUORUM, administrators looking to close or relist an AfD should evaluate a nomination that has received few or no comments as if it were a proposed deletion (PROD) prior to determining whether it should be relisted.

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

Problems

  • You will be able read but not edit most wikis for 30 minutes on 11 April at 05:00 (UTC). This is because of a hardware problem. You can see a list of the affected wikis.
  • A map update caused some problems on 29 March and 30 March. It was rolled back.
  • Pages on some Wikivoyages had problems with the top headline. This has been fixed.

Changes later this week

  • When you add an edit summary the VisualEditor will search your recent edit summaries in case you want to re-use one. This works in both the visual and wikitext modes on desktop. It also works on the mobile site.
  • The Wikimedia wikis will get a URL shortener. This will work from 11 April. You can read more.
  • Advanced item The {{REVISIONID}} magic word will no longer work. This is for performance reasons. When you preview a page it will return "" (empty string). When you read a page it will return "-" (dash). For now this will only affect content namespaces.
  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 9 April. It will be on non-Knowledge wikis and some Wikipedias from 10 April. It will be on all wikis from 11 April (calendar).

Meetings

  • Recurrent item Advanced item You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 10 April at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

  • You will be able to preview references. This means that when you hover over the link you will get a popup that shows you a preview of the reference. It will work much like page previews. This is so you don't have to go to the bottom of the page to see a reference. This will now be available as a beta feature on German and Arabic Knowledge.
  • Advanced item The Wikidata JSON output will change. Empty containers will be serialised as empty objects. This is a breaking change that will affect tools that use JSON outputs and APIs. It will happen on 30 April. You can read more and see how to test your code.

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18:24, 8 April 2019 (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

Changes later this week

  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 16 April. It will be on non-Knowledge wikis and some Wikipedias from 17 April. It will be on all wikis from 18 April (calendar).

Meetings

  • Recurrent item Advanced item You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 17 April at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

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23:00, 15 April 2019 (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 advanced search function URL now shows which namespaces you search in. The namespace field is collapsed by default on the search page. You can also add new fields to the search interface through a hook.
  • The wikis now look slightly different in the mobile web version.

Changes later this week

  • There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

Meetings

  • Recurrent item Advanced item You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 23 April at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

  • Knowledge articles will have the sameAs meta property. It adds structured data. This makes it easier for search engines to find Knowledge articles. It also makes it easier to reuse content. There will an A/B test.

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19:07, 23 April 2019 (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 Knowledge app for Android now invites users to add Wikidata descriptions to Wikidata objects that have Knowledge articles but no Wikidata descriptions. It will only invite users who have added a number of Wikidata descriptions in the app without being reverted. This is to avoid spam and bad edits.

Problems

  • Tech News was late last week because of a MassMessage bug. Other newsletters had the same problem.

Changes later this week

  • You will see when you last refreshed the recent changes page. This is so you can see how recent the changes are.
  • When you write a comment in Structured Discussions but have not posted it yet your web browser will save it in local storage instead of session storage. This means you do not lose them even if you close your web browser. Structured Discussions used to be called Flow.
  • You will be able to turn off milestone notifications. Milestone notifications congratulate you when you have made certain numbers of edits.
  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 30 April. It will be on non-Knowledge wikis and some Wikipedias from 1 May. It will be on all wikis from 2 May (calendar).

Meetings

  • Recurrent item Advanced item You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 1 May at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

  • Advanced item The Wikidata wb_terms table will be dropped. This will affect some Wikidata tools. They need to be updated. The table has become too big which is causing problems. This will happen on 29 May. You can read more. You can ask for help if you need it.
  • Advanced item Wikimedia wikis will soon use a token when you log out. This changes how the API works. Some tools might need to be updated.

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22:27, 29 April 2019 (UTC)

The Signpost: 30 April 2019

Administrators' newsletter – May 2019

News and updates for administrators from the past month (April 2019).

Guideline and policy news

Technical news

  • XTools Admin Stats, a tool to list admins by administrative actions, has been revamped to support more types of log entries such as AbuseFilter changes. Two additional tools have been integrated into it as well: Steward Stats and Patroller Stats.

Arbitration

  • In response to the continuing compromise of administrator accounts, the Arbitration Committee passed a motion amending the procedures for return of permissions (diff). In such cases, the committee will review all available information to determine whether the administrator followed "appropriate personal security practices" before restoring permissions; administrators found failing to have adequately done so will not be resysopped automatically. All current administrators have been notified of this change.
  • Following a formal ratification process, the arbitration policy has been amended (diff). Specifically, the two-thirds majority required to remove or suspend an arbitrator now excludes (1) the arbitrator facing suspension or removal, and (2) any inactive arbitrator who does not respond within 30 days to attempts to solicit their feedback on the resolution through all known methods of communication.

Miscellaneous

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

  • Special:Watchlist can show the wrong information. It does not always show which edits are read and which are unread. The developers are working on solving the problem.

Changes later this week

  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 7 May. It will be on non-Knowledge wikis and some Wikipedias from 8 May. It will be on all wikis from 9 May (calendar).

Meetings

  • Recurrent item Advanced item You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 8 May at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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16:27, 6 May 2019 (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

  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 14 May. It will be on non-Knowledge wikis and some Wikipedias from 15 May. It will be on all wikis from 16 May (calendar).

Meetings

  • Recurrent item Advanced item You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 15 May at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

00:48, 14 May 2019 (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

Problems

  • File descriptions for files from Commons were not shown properly on other Wikimedia wikis for a few days. For example the image descriptions and license information were missing. This has now been fixed.
  • Some diffs show an error message when you try to see them. The developers are working on fixing it. It could be because of some edit comments.

Changes later this week

  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 21 May. It will be on non-Knowledge wikis and some Wikipedias from 22 May. It will be on all wikis from 23 May (calendar).

Meetings

  • Recurrent item Advanced item You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 22 May at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

  • The content translation tool on Knowledge can use machine translations. There is a system to stop translations where the editors do not fix machine translation mistakes. This warns or stops them if they seem to just copy what the machine translation gives them. If this system is too strict or not strict enough you can tell the language team.
  • Advanced item The Wikidata wbeditentity API endpoint will remove all aliases if the request includes an empty alias. This is how it supposed to work. It has not been working this way because of a bug. This will start on 12 June.


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13:04, 20 May 2019 (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

  • Advanced item Big changes to the replica database will happen on 3 June. Some tools on Cloud Services will stop working if the maintainers do not update them to use the new schema. This probably affects tools that query for revisions or log entries made by a user.
  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 28 May. It will be on non-Knowledge wikis and some Wikipedias from 29 May. It will be on all wikis from 30 May (calendar).

Meetings

  • Recurrent item Advanced item You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 29 May at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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15:33, 27 May 2019 (UTC)

The Signpost: 31 May 2019

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 write all special letters in all African Knowledge languages. This works in the desktop version.
  • There is now a field called depicts on Commons. This is a way to show what is in a picture with the help of Wikidata. It is still in development.
  • Some tools on Toolforge may break on or after 3 June because of database changes. Maintainers should update their tools to use the new schema.

Problems

  • You will be able to read but not to edit Wikimedia Commons for 30 minutes on 19 June at 05:00 (UTC). This is to fix a hardware problem.

Changes later this week

  • Some wikis have one tab for the visual editor and one tab for a wikitext editor. Others wikis just have one tab. If your wiki has two tabs, clicking a link to create a new page has always opened a wikitext editor. It will now open the editor you used the last time you edited.
  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 4 May. It will be on non-Knowledge wikis and some Wikipedias from 5 May. It will be on all wikis from 6 May (calendar).

Meetings

  • Recurrent item Advanced item You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 5 May at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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15:24, 3 June 2019 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – June 2019

News and updates for administrators from the past month (May 2019).

Administrator changes

removed Andonic • Consumed Crustacean • Enigmaman • Euryalus • EWS23 • HereToHelp • Nv8200pa • Peripitus • StringTheory11 • Vejvančický

CheckUser changes

removed Ivanvector

Guideline and policy news

  • An RfC seeks to clarify whether WP:OUTING should include information on just the English Knowledge or any Wikimedia project.
  • An RfC on WT:RfA concluded that Requests for adminship and bureaucratship are discussions seeking to build consensus.
  • An RfC proposal to make the templates for discussion (TfD) process more like the requested moves (RM) process, i.e. "as a clearinghouse of template discussions", was closed as successful.

Technical news

  • The CSD feature of Twinkle now allows admins to notify page creators of deletion if the page had not been tagged. The default behavior matches that of tagging notifications, and replaces the ability to open the user talk page upon deletion. You can customize which criteria receive notifications in your Twinkle preferences: look for Notify page creator when deleting under these criteria.
  • Twinkle's d-batch (batch delete) feature now supports deleting subpages (and related redirects and talk pages) of each page. The pages will be listed first but use with caution! The und-batch (batch undelete) option can now also restore talk pages.

Miscellaneous

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 create a PDF from a page on the wiki this is now done by Proton. Before this we used Electron. It should look the same but work better. Both use Chromium. This is a different system from when you collect several articles into a book and make a PDF from them.
  • The Flagged Revisions extension now uses the standard OOUI icons. There will be additional minor fixes for positioning in the next deployment.
  • Advanced item Bots and other scripts that do not set an identifiable User-Agent may find their requests strictly rate-limited until they identify themselves properly.

Problems

  • Please check if the Flagged Revisions configuration on your wiki is as you expect (or as it was a few weeks ago). If not, please report it.

Changes later this week

  • There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

Meetings

  • Recurrent item Advanced item You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 12 June at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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17:06, 10 June 2019 (UTC)

GOCE June newsletter

Guild of Copy Editors June 2019 Newsletter

Hello and welcome to the June newsletter, a brief update of Guild activities since March 2019. You can unsubscribe from our mailings at any time; see below.

Election time: Nomination of candidates in our mid-year Election of Coordinators opened on 1 June, and voting will take place from 16 June. Coordinators normally serve a six-month term and are elected on an approval basis. Self-nominations are welcome. If you've thought of helping out at the Guild, or know of another editor who would make a good coordinator, please consider standing for election or nominating them here.

June Blitz: Our June blitz will soon be upon us; it will begin at 00:01 on 16 June (UTC) and will close at 23:59 on 22 June (UTC). The themes are "nature and the environment" and all requests.

March Drive: Thanks to everyone for their work in March's Backlog Elimination Drive. We removed copyedit tags from 182 of the articles tagged in our original target months October and November 2018, and the month finished with 64 target articles remaining from November and 811 in the backlog. GOCE copyeditors also completed 22 requests for copyedit in March; the month ended with 34 requests pending. Of the 32 people who signed up for this drive, 24 copyedited at least one article. Final results, including barnstars awarded, are available here.

April Blitz: Thanks to everyone who participated in the April Blitz; the blitz ran from 14 to 20 April (UTC) inclusive and the themes were Sports and Entertainment. Of the 15 people who signed up, 13 copyedited at least one article. Participants claimed 60 copyedits. Final results, including barnstars awarded, are available here.

Progress report: As of 04:36, 3 June 2019 (UTC), GOCE copyeditors have completed 267 requests since 1 January. The backlog of tagged articles stands at 605 articles.

May Drive: During the May Backlog Elimination Drive, Guild copy-editors removed copyedit tags from 191 of the 192 articles tagged in our original target months of November and December 2018, and January 2019 was added on 22 May. We finished the month with 81 target articles remaining and a record low of 598 articles in the backlog. GOCE copyeditors also completed 24 requests for copyedit during the May drive, and the month ended with 35 requests pending. Of the 26 people who signed up for this drive, 21 copyedited at least one article. Final results, including barnstars awarded, are available here.

Thank you all again for your participation; we wouldn't be able to achieve what we have without you! Cheers from your GOCE coordinators Miniapolis, Baffle gab1978, Jonesey95, Reidgreg and Tdslk.

To discontinue receiving GOCE newsletters, please remove your name from our mailing list.

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 19:29, 12 June 2019 (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

  • You will be able to read but not to edit Wikimedia Commons for 30 minutes on 19 June at 05:00 (UTC). This is to fix a hardware problem.

Changes later this week

  • MIDI files can soon be played without the Score extension. You can then add them with ]. Later override_midi and override_audio will stop working. Instead you will need to add the MIDI file below the music score.
  • A new video player will soon replace the old one. You will be able to enable it as a beta feature in your preferences. It will later be enabled for everyone if there are no big problems.
  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 18 June. It will be on non-Knowledge wikis and some Wikipedias from 19 June. It will be on all wikis from 20 June (calendar).

Meetings

  • Recurrent item Advanced item You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 19 June at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

  • Advanced item Some gadgets and user scripts still use the old wgEnableAPI and wgEnableWriteAPI values. These values are always true. They will soon be removed. This might break the gadgets and scripts. You should fix your gadgets to not use these values.

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20:37, 17 June 2019 (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

  • The new version of MediaWiki for last week was not fully released due to issues. It was removed from most wikis on Tuesday and from test wikis on Thursday.
  • Most wikis were slow and then briefly read-only last week due to one of the database servers having a problem. It is now replaced.

Changes later this week

  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 25 June. It will be on non-Knowledge wikis and some Wikipedias from 26 June. It will be on all wikis from 27 June (calendar).

Meetings

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17:29, 24 June 2019 (UTC)

The June 2019 Signpost is out!

Administrators' newsletter – July 2019

News and updates for administrators from the past month (June 2019).

Administrator changes

removed 28bytes • Ad Orientem • Ansh666 • Beeblebrox • Boing! said Zebedee • BU Rob13 • Dennis Brown • Deor • DoRD • Floquenbeam • Flyguy649 • Fram • Gadfium • GB fan • Jonathunder • Kusma • Lectonar • Moink • MSGJ • Nick • Od Mishehu • Rama • Spartaz • Syrthiss • TheDJ • WJBscribe
Floquenbeam's access was removed, then restored, then removed again.
Fram's access was removed, then restored, then removed again.

Guideline and policy news

  • In a related matter, the account throttle has been restored to six creations per day as the mitigation activity completed.

Technical news

  • The Wikimedia Foundation's Community health initiative plans to design and build a new user reporting system to make it easier for people experiencing harassment and other forms of abuse to provide accurate information to the appropriate channel for action to be taken. Community feedback is invited.

Miscellaneous

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 development of Wikidata Bridge has started. The goal is to allow Wikidata edits from Knowledge.

Problems

  • Sometimes pages load slowly for users routed to the Amsterdam data center. Investigation is in progress.
  • Wikidata query service was overloaded between 11:50 UTC until 13:15 UTC on June 24. It has been fixed.

Changes later this week

  • You will be able to read but not to edit all wikis for a short amount of time, on 3 July at 06:00 (UTC). This is to move a database.
  • There is no deployment of a new version of MediaWiki on the wikis this week (calendar).

Meetings

  • Recurrent item Advanced item You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 3 July at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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21:23, 1 July 2019 (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

  • For event organizers, if you request a temporary lift of the IP cap for mass account creation, this will now also raise the edit rate limit for those new accounts at the event, which will prevent another bottleneck.
  • Administrators at all Wiktionary, Wikivoyage, and Wikisource wikis are now able to use the new partial blocks feature.

Changes later this week

  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 9 July. It will be on non-Knowledge wikis and some Wikipedias from 10 July. It will be on all wikis from 11 July (calendar).
  • The design of MediaWiki's software windows will change for desktop users. Layout will be simpler, buttons will be bolder and clearer, and close buttons will be just icons. This is like the mobile design. This will affect ContentTranslation, VisualEditor, TemplateWizard, and other tools.

Meetings

  • Recurrent item Advanced item You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 10 July at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

  • Wikidata will be in read-only mode on 30 July from 05:00 to 05:30 UTC because of a server switch.
  • Advanced item There will be a change in the name format of new Wikidata RDF dumps starting on 15 July.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

20:12, 8 July 2019 (UTC)

Three Days of the Condor

Hello, OhKayeSierra Thank you for your support of Knowledge's informational content and protection against propaganda. However, I respectfully submit that my entry regarding the theme of Three Days of the Condor, was not "Retro" but predictive. Mr. Pollock can say that he was only making a spy thriller film,, but subsequent historical events have proven his fiction described reality. The 2003 invasion of Iraq really was "all about the oil" as is quoted in the film, (and also by Donald Rumsfeld!). Respectfully, I would ask that you please post my addition to the Knowledge Three Days of the Condor page. Best wishes Mark Muhich Jackson MI — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2600:1702:4130:9A90:905A:645:2165:C58 (talk) 02:25, 14 July 2019 (UTC)

Hello. I reverted your edit because it wasn't written in a neutral way, per our neutral point-of-view policy and wasn't appropriate for inclusion in the encyclopedia. OhKayeSierra (talk) 07:55, 14 July 2019 (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 mobile web will get more advanced editing tools. Seven more Wikipedias can use them now. This works for Arabic, Indonesian, Italian, Persian, Japanese, Spanish and Thai Knowledge. You can try the tools on the mobile web and give feedback.

Changes later this week

  • Advanced item The abuse filter system user will soon do maintenance edits on broken abuse filters. This user is called Edit filter and has administrator rights. This is meant to fix technical problems. It will not do any other changes. You can read more.
  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 16 July. It will be on non-Knowledge wikis and some Wikipedias from 17 July. It will be on all wikis from 18 July (calendar).

Meetings

  • Recurrent item Advanced item You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 17 July at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

  • The Knowledge app for Android will invite users to add image captions to images on Commons. It will only invite users who have added a number of edits in the app without being reverted. This is to avoid spam and bad edits. You can read more and leave feedback.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

15:29, 15 July 2019 (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

  • Communities interested by easing newcomers' first steps can now benefit from the Growth team experiments on their wikis. Check the conditions and the request process.
  • The Coolest Tool Award 2019 is looking for nominations. You can recommend tools by July 29. The awarded tools will be presented at Wikimania.

Problems

  • The release of the last version of MediaWiki (1.34.0-wmf.14) has been blocked for groups 1 and 2.

Changes later this week

  • Phabricator database will be moved to a different server. Writes will be blocked on Thursday 25 July, between 05:30 and 06:00 AM UTC. Reads will remain unaffected.
  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 23 July. It will be on non-Knowledge wikis and some Wikipedias from 24 July. It will be on all wikis from 25 July (calendar).

Meetings

  • Recurrent item Advanced item You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 24 July at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

13:07, 22 July 2019 (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

  • Wikidata will be in read-only mode on 30 July from 05:00 to 05:30 UTC because of a server switch.

Changes later this week

  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 30 July. It will be on non-Knowledge wikis and some Wikipedias from 31 July. It will be on all wikis from 1 August (calendar).

Meetings

  • Recurrent item Advanced item You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 31 July at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

21:42, 29 July 2019 (UTC)

The Signpost: 31 July 2019

Administrators' newsletter – August 2019

News and updates for administrators from the past month (July 2019).

Guideline and policy news

Arbitration

Miscellaneous

  • Following a research project on masking IP addresses, the Foundation is starting a new project to improve the privacy of IP editors. The result of this project may significantly change administrative and counter-vandalism workflows. The project is in the very early stages of discussions and there is no concrete plan yet. Admins and the broader community are encouraged to leave feedback on the talk page.
  • The new page reviewer right is bundled with the admin tool set. Many admins regularly help out at Special:NewPagesFeed, but they may not be aware of improvements, changes, and new tools for the Curation system. Stay up to date by subscribing here to the NPP newsletter that appears every two months, and/or putting the reviewers' talk page on your watchlist.

    Since the introduction of temporary user rights, it is becoming more usual to accord the New Page Reviewer right on a probationary period of 3 to 6 months in the first instance. This avoids rights removal for inactivity at a later stage and enables a review of their work before according the right on a permanent basis.

Problem Editor

https://en.wikipedia.org/User:AvalerionV

I have a real problem with an editor who has libeled me in an article this week then used Knowledge to further promote these lies. I am Jesse LaBrocca the owner of HackForums.net. Unfortunately I have to be dramatic to deal with this issue. I'll try to provide the history.

1. AvalerionV originally created independently the Knowledge entry for HackForums.net some years ago. 2. Recently a member was banned on HF that turned out to be AvalerionV. 3. He has verbally threatened me in emails with edit the Knowledge article. 4. He wrote a libelous article at his website HackHex.com. 5. He has now linked and self-promoted that article at Knowledge on the Hackforums.net page.

As far as I know Knowledge doesn't allow editors to abuse their positions to self-promote or to libel others. This is exactly what has occured. I apologize if I'm not editing correctly but his edits need to be removed. I'm already discussing his blog post with my lawyer and our best course of action against him. He is in Pakistan but we still have remedies such as domain and income seizure. That's going to take some time.

Unfortunately this person has decided to become malicious all over a forum account and has abused his position at Knowledge. I'd like some guidance on how to deal with the Knowledge issue as I don't do edits or contributions normally. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Gotchynow (talk • contribs) 20:10, 3 August 2019 (UTC)

The owner published a thread on his website requiring assistance from anyone registered on Knowledge to revert the edit. Link: hackforums.net/showthread.php?tid=5995824 (Thread titled: Knowledge Editor Needed) His last statement on the thread was and I quote "EDIT: Looks like I finally got someone to deal with it at Knowledge. I gotta say that their whole system is NOT user friendly." If this is the case then definitely someone here (affiliated with Hack Forums) was/is reverting the edits. AvalerionV (talk) 12:03, 4 August 2019 (UTC)
@AvalerionV: I saw your message and the aforementioned thread. I’ll reply with my thoughts on the situation when I can. In the interest of keeping a unified discussion, I’ll comment at WP:ANI. OhKayeSierra (talk) 12:37, 4 August 2019 (UTC)
Thank you. AvalerionV (talk) 12:48, 4 August 2019 (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

  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 6 August. It will be on non-Knowledge wikis and some Wikipedias from 7 August. It will be on all wikis from 8 August (calendar).

Problems

Meetings

  • Recurrent item Advanced item You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 7 August at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

  • Today everyone can see IP addresses if someone edits without an account. In the future this could be more hidden. This is to protect unregistered editors so fewer can see their IP address. This would only happen after we make sure the tools for vandal fighting can still be effective. You can read more and comment.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

13:24, 5 August 2019 (UTC)

Bots Newsletter, August 2019

Bots Newsletter, August 2019

Greetings!

Here is the 7th issue of the Bots Newsletter, a lot happened since last year's newsletter! You can subscribe/unsubscribe from future newsletters by adding/removing your name from this list.

Highlights for this newsletter include:

ARBCOM
  • Nothing of note happened. Just like we like it.
BAG

BAG members are expected to be active on Knowledge to have their finger on the pulse of the community. After two years without any bot-related activity (such as posting on bot-related pages, posting on a bot's talk page, or operating a bot), BAG members will be retired from BAG following a one-week notice. Retired members can re-apply for BAG membership as normal if they wish to rejoin the BAG.

We thank former members for their service and wish Madman a happy retirement. We note that Madman and BU Rob13 were not inactive and could resume their BAG positions if they so wished, should their retirements happens to be temporary.

BOTDICT

Two new entries feature in the bots dictionary

BOTPOL
  • Activity requirements: BAG members now have an activity requirement. The requirements are very light, one only needs to be involved in a bot-related area at some point within the last two years. For purpose of meeting these requirements, discussing a bot-related matter anywhere on Knowledge counts, as does operating a bot (RFC).
  • Copyvio flag: Bot accounts may be additionally marked by a bureaucrat upon BAG request as being in the "copyviobot" user group on Knowledge. This flag allows using the API to add metadata to edits for use in the New pages feed (discussion). There is currently 1 bot using this functionality.
  • Mass creation: The restriction on mass-creation (semi-automated or automated) was extended from articles, to all content-pages. There are subtleties, but content here broadly means whatever a reader could land on when browsing the mainspace in normal circumstances (e.g. Mainspace, Books, most Categories, Portals, ...). There is also a warning that WP:MEATBOT still applies in other areas (e.g. Redirects, Knowledge namespace, Help, maintenance categories, ...) not explicitely covered by WP:MASSCREATION.
BOTREQs and BRFAs

As of writing, we have...

  • 20 active BOTREQs, please help if you can!
  • 14 open BRFAs and 1 BRFA in need of BAG attention (see live status).
  • In 2018, 96 bot task were approved. An AWB search shows approximately 29 were withdrawn/expired, and 6 were denied.
  • Since the start of 2019, 97 bot task were approved. Logs show 15 were withdrawn/expired, and 15 were denied.
  • 10 inactive bots have been deflagged (see discussion). 5 other bots have been deflagged per operator requests or similar (see discussion).
New things
Other discussions

These are some of the discussions that happened / are still happening since the last Bots Newsletter. Many are stale, but some are still active.

See also the latest discussions at the bot noticeboard.

Thank you! edited by: Headbomb 17:24, 7 August 2019 (UTC)

(You can subscribe or unsubscribe from future newsletters by adding or removing your name from this list.)

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

  • Editors using the mobile website on Knowledge can opt-in to new advanced features via your settings page. This will give access to more interface links, special pages, and tools. Feedback on the discussion page is appreciated.
  • Due to the absence of volunteer maintenance of Cologne Blue skin, the link to activate it will be hidden. The skin will still work, but editors using it are encouraged to switch to another skin.

Changes later this week

  • Due to Wikimania, there is no deployment this week.

Meetings

  • Recurrent item Advanced item You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 13 August at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

  • The "Wikidata item" link will be moved from "Tools" to "In other projects" section on all Wikimedia projects, starting on August 21. Full announcement, Phabricator task.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

18:19, 12 August 2019 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

The Anti-Vandalism Barnstar
Thank you for your diligent and dedicated efforts to combat vandalism! It's a pleasure to work recent changes and edit filter log patrol alongside you! Next256 (talk) 03:13, 14 August 2019 (UTC)
@Next256: Likewise! Thank you for the kind note! I was actually in the middle of typing up a barnstar of my own when you sent this to me. OhKayeSierra (talk) 03:15, 14 August 2019 (UTC)
Awesome! Great minds think alike! Next256 (talk) 14:30, 14 August 2019 (UTC)

Account creator granted

After reviewing your request for the "accountcreator" permission, I have enabled the flag on your account. Keep in mind these things:

  • The account creator right removes the limit on the maximum number of new accounts that can be created in a 24-hour period.
  • The account creator right is not a status symbol. If it remains unused, it is likely to be removed. Abuse of the account creator right will result in its removal by an administrator.

If you no longer require the right, let me know, or ask any other administrator. Drop a note on my talk page if you run into troubles or have any questions about appropriate/inappropriate use of the account creator right. Happy editing! stwalkerster (talk) 07:26, 15 August 2019 (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.

Tech News

  • There will be no Tech News issue next week. The next issue of Tech News will be sent out on 2 September 2019.

Problems

  • Advanced item Some abuse filters stopped working because of a code change. Only variables for the current action will work. Variables defined inside a branch may not work outside of that branch. You can read more to see how to fix the filters.
  • Only six accounts can be created from one IP address per day. Between 12 August and August 15 this was two accounts per day. This was because of a security issue. It is now six accounts per day again.

Changes later this week

  • Only a limited number of accounts can be created from one IP address. An IP address can be whitelisted so that it can create as many accounts as needed. This is useful at events where many new persons learn to edit. IP addresses that are whitelisted for this reason will also not show CAPTCHAs when you create accounts. This will happen on Wednesday.
  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 20 August. It will be on non-Knowledge wikis and some Wikipedias from 21 August. It will be on all wikis from 22 August (calendar).

Meetings

  • Recurrent item Advanced item You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 21 August at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

  • There is an RFC about creating a new global user group with the right to edit abuse filters. This will be used to fix broken filters and make sure all filters will still work when software changes happen. You can read more and comment.
  • Special:Contributions/newbies will no longer be working. This is because of performance reasons. It showed edits by new accounts. You can see this in the recent changes feed instead.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

15:21, 19 August 2019 (UTC)

Blocking of 61.68.33.226/User:zyrorl

Hi,

61.68.33.226 is the IP address of the business I, and the user zyrorl work for. Can you please provide the offending edits that he has made so that I can follow up on this if necessary?

Kind Regards JohnWTemando (talk) 22:51, 19 August 2019 (UTC)

@JohnWTemando: Hello! zyrorl (talk · contribs) repeatedly recreated attack pages with his user account, so an administrator blocked him for it. The first one that he made was a page named Amy Crackhouse sometime in 2011. The most recent one and what prompted his block was redirecting Fredo Cuomo to Chris Cuomo. When another user messaged him to warn him about creating attack pages and vandalizing on Knowledge, rather than acknowledging the user, he simply blanked his talk page, as you can see at Special:Diff/910737517. Reaper Eternal (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA) then blocked him indefinitely for repeatedly creating the attack pages. With respect to the IP address 61.68.33.226 (talk · contribs · WHOIS), I left a warning on User talk:61.68.33.226 after he made two attempts to blank User talk:Zyrorl. The aforementioned IP address isn't currently blocked, according to the block log. I hope this helps, and please feel free to reach out again if you have any additional questions that I can answer! OhKayeSierra (talk) 23:17, 19 August 2019 (UTC)
Thank you for the information. Can you please provide a time stamp of when the attack page was created? — Preceding unsigned comment added by JohnWTemando (talk • contribs) 23:45, 19 August 2019 (UTC) made some minor formatting changes to keep a cohesive discussion. OhKayeSierra (talk) 23:52, 19 August 2019 (UTC)
@JohnWTemando: That would be yesterday at 12:44 AEST. It'll show as 02:44 UTC in our logs. Special:Log/Zyrorl OhKayeSierra (talk) 23:52, 19 August 2019 (UTC)

A cup of tea for you!

Thanks for your support in my recent unsuccessful RfA. Keep up your own good work. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 21:12, 25 August 2019 (UTC)

The Signpost: 30 August 2019

2019 Arbitration Committee pre-election RfC

A request for comment is now open to provide an opportunity to amend the structure, rules, and procedures of the 2019 English Knowledge Arbitration Committee election and resolve any issues not covered by existing rules. You are receiving this message because you were listed as a user who would like to be notified when the 2019 RfC begins. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 21:52, 31 August 2019 (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 use the new termbox interface if you edit Wikidata on a mobile device. This is to edit labels, descriptions and aliases easier on the mobile pages.
  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki has been deployed during the last week.
  • The previously announced change of positions of the "Wikidata item" link on all wikis has been rollbacked due to unexpected cache issues.
  • The limit for rollbacks has been increased from 10 to 100 rollbacks per minute.
  • The advanced version of the edit review pages (Recent Changes, Watchlist, and Related Changes) now include two new filters. These filters are for "All contents" and "All discussions". They will filter the view to just those namespaces. However the "All discussions" filter does not include pseudo talk pages, like discussions that are in the Project: or Knowledge: namespaces. But it will include changes happening on Project talk: or the Knowledge talk:.

Changes later this week

  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 3 September. It will be on non-Knowledge wikis and some Wikipedias from 4 September. It will be on all wikis from 5 September (calendar).
  • When you log in, the software checks your password to see if it follows the Password policy. From this week, it will also complain if your password is one of the most common passwords in the world. If your password is not strong enough, please consider to change your password for a stronger password.

Meetings

Future changes

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

09:07, 4 September 2019 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – September 2019

News and updates for administrators from the past month (August 2019).

Administrator changes

added Bradv • Chetsford • Izno
readded Floquenbeam • Lectonar
removed DESiegel • Jake Wartenberg • Rjanag • Topbanana

CheckUser changes

removed Callanecc • LFaraone • There'sNoTime

Oversight changes

removed Callanecc • Fox • HJ Mitchell • LFaraone • There'sNoTime

Technical news

  • Editors using the mobile website on Knowledge can opt-in to new advanced features via your settings page. This will give access to more interface links, special pages, and tools.
  • The advanced version of the edit review pages (recent changes, watchlist, and related changes) now includes two new filters. These filters are for "All contents" and "All discussions". They will filter the view to just those namespaces.

Arbitration

Miscellaneous

September 2019 GOCE Newsletter

Guild of Copy Editors September 2019 Newsletter

Hello and welcome to the September newsletter, a brief update of Guild activities since June 2019.

June election: Reidgreg was chosen as lead coordinator, and is being assisted by Baffle gab1978, Miniapolis, Tdslk, and first-time coordinator Twofingered Typist. Jonesey95 took a respite after serving for six years. Thanks to everyone who participated!

June Blitz: From 16 to 22 June, we copy edited articles on the themes of nature and the environment along with requests. 12 participating editors completed 35 copy edits. Final results, including barnstars awarded, are available here.

July Drive: The year's fourth backlog-elimination drive was a great success, clearing all articles tagged in January and February, and bringing the copy-editing backlog to a low of five months and a record low of 585 articles while also completing 48 requests. Of the 30 people who signed up, 29 copyedited at least one article, a participation level last matched in May 2015. Final results and awards are listed here.

August Blitz: From 18 to 24 August, we copy edited articles tagged in March 2019 and requests. 12 participating editors completed 26 copy edits on the blitz. Final results, including barnstars awarded, are available here.

Progress report: As of 03:00, 23 September 2019 (UTC), GOCE copyeditors had processed 413 requests since 1 January. The backlog of tagged articles stood at 599 articles, close to our record month-end low of 585.

Requests page: We are experimenting with automated archiving of copy edit requests; a discussion on REQ Talk (permalinked) initiated by Bobbychan193 has resulted in Zhuyifei1999 writing a bot script for the Guild. Testing is now underway and is expected to be completed by 3 October; for this reason, no manual archiving of requests should be done until the testing period is over. We will then assess the bot's performance and discuss whether to make this arrangement permanent.

September Drive: Our current backlog-elimination drive is open until 23:59 on 30 September (UTC) and is open to all copy editors. Sign up today!

Thank you all again for your participation; we wouldn't be able to achieve what we have without you! Cheers from your GOCE coordinators, Baffle gab1978, Miniapolis, Reidgreg, Tdslk and Twofingered Typist.

To discontinue receiving GOCE newsletters, please remove your name from our mailing list.

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 03:58, 24 September 2019 (UTC)

The Signpost: 30 September 2019

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 Tech News had delivery problems. Some did not get the newsletter. Some got it more than one time. The problem where some pages got it three times should now be fixed.

Changes later this week

  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 1 October. It will be on non-Knowledge wikis and some Wikipedias from 2 October. It will be on all wikis from 3 October (calendar).

Meetings

  • Recurrent item Advanced item You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 2 October at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

16:50, 30 September 2019 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – October 2019

News and updates for administrators from the past month (September 2019).

Guideline and policy news

  • Following a discussion, a new criterion for speedy category renaming was added: C2F: One eponymous article, which applies if the category contains only an eponymous article or media file, provided that the category has not otherwise been emptied shortly before the nomination. The default outcome is an upmerge to the parent categories.

Technical news

  • As previously noted, tighter password requirements for Administrators were put in place last year. Knowledge should now alert you if your password is less than 10 characters long and thus too short.

Arbitration

Miscellaneous

  • The Community Tech team has been working on a system for temporarily watching pages, and welcomes feedback.

Teahouse

Teahouse logo
Dear OhKayeSierra, thank you for volunteering as a host at the Teahouse. Knowledge is a community of people working together to make knowledge free. You are an important part of that effort! By joining as a Host, and by following our expectations, you are helping new users get a hold of the ropes here at Knowledge, and helping experienced users that just have a question about how something works. We appreciate your willingness to help!

Here are some links you may find helpful as a Host:

Editors who have signed up as hosts, but who have not contributed at the Teahouse for six months or so may be removed from the list of hosts.

Regards, Nick Moyes (talk) 07:40, 5 October 2019 (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

Problems

  • There is a problem in the visual editor when you copy or delete text with footnotes. It will be fixed soon.

Changes later this week

  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 8 October. It will be on non-Knowledge wikis and some Wikipedias from 9 October. It will be on all wikis from 10 October (calendar).

Meetings

  • Recurrent item Advanced item You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 9 October at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

  • The Community Wishlist Survey has a new format. It will focus on wikis that typically get less support. It will probably go back to the normal format next year. It is not decided exactly how it will work this year. You can leave feedback.
  • The URL of the Wikimedia wiki main pages could be changed. This is because the current URLs cause several problems. For example https://www.wikidata.org/Wikidata:Main_Page would be https://www.wikidata.org/ instead. You can tell the developers if this would cause problems for your wiki.
  • There is a new technical community newsletter. You can read more about the work of Wikimedia's technical community. Subscribe to get the information in the future.
  • Advanced item Outreachy is an internship program for groups who are underrepresented in free and open-source software. There are seven Wikimedia projects about coding, documentation and quality assurance in the next round. Persons who fit the criteria can apply. The last day to apply is 5 November.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

15:36, 7 October 2019 (UTC)

MaxTCC (talk) 20:38, 11 October 2019 (UTC)== MaxTCC ==

MaxTCC disclosure of working for Candid Camera (Peter Funt) has been noted on the Webpage. — Preceding unsigned comment added by MaxTCC (talk • contribs) 20:23, 11 October 2019 (UTC)

Typo?

On your Teahouse host profile, specifically after the wikilink to Theatre, there isn't a period. Since "Please" is capitalized, was this a typo? I thought I should let you know in case it was and you wanted to fix it. Clovermoss (talk) 21:35, 12 October 2019 (UTC)

@Clovermoss: Thanks for the heads-up about my typo! I went ahead and fixed it. That's what I get for editing in the middle of the night. 😬 OhKayeSierra (talk) 00:40, 13 October 2019 (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 more advanced editing tools on the mobile web. You can turn them on and off in your preferences in the mobile version.

Changes later this week

  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 15 October. It will be on non-Knowledge wikis and some Wikipedias from 16 October. It will be on all wikis from 17 October (calendar).

Meetings

Future changes

  • Internet Explorer 6 and 7 are no longer supported. This means the browsers might start looking a bit weird. They will not get security support. You can't read Wikimedia wikis in Internet Explorer on Windows XP or Windows versions that are older than Windows XP. This is because almost no one uses the browsers anymore. Supporting them made the wikis less secure for everyone else.
  • In the future section headings might have a share link. This is to make it easier to link to the section. You can read more and discuss.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

23:55, 14 October 2019 (UTC)

You have been mentioned on the talk page at child sexual abuse requesting that you respond with respect to clarifying your denial of an edit request there. If you fail to reasonably respond, I will have no choice but to remove your denial of the request in its entirety and resubmit the request as a new semi-protected edit request. 66.90.153.184 (talk) 23:03, 17 October 2019 (UTC)

@66.90.153.184: I saw your edit request when you added it. I elected to abstain from handling your edit request further, and to let another willing user handle it, should they feel inclined to do so. It doesn't look like anyone has been willing to handle it, though. Please note that, per WP:TPG, it's almost always frowned upon to reformat or refactor other user's talk page comments. You're more than welcome to resubmit your request, but I ask that you not delete other's edits from the talk page. OhKayeSierra (talk) 23:10, 17 October 2019 (UTC)

Gotcha. I was for a moment thinking you weren't aware of the mention, not so much of a big deal if you think you should abstain from handing the issue, which is fine with me. And as to the other thing- I wasn't aware there was any set policy on that- thanks for clarifying that point. 66.90.153.184 (talk) 23:17, 17 October 2019 (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

  • Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. The API sandbox and help pages now show more clearly when API modules are marked as internal. API modules marked as internal were probably internal before. It was easier to miss. You should look for non-internal alternatives.

Problems

  • There is a translation tool we use on wikis with more than one language. For a few days it did not create pages for new languages when someone translated a page. The languages did not show in the language bar. This has been fixed.
  • The history and diffs can show wrong content. This is because of a cache problem. It will soon be fixed.

Changes later this week

  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 22 October. It will be on non-Knowledge wikis and some Wikipedias from 23 October. It will be on all wikis from 24 October (calendar).
  • Reference Previews will be a beta feature on all Wikipedias and some Wikivoyages. It shows you a preview of the footnote when you hover over or click on the number. It has been a beta feature on German and Arabic Knowledge since April.

Meetings

  • Recurrent item Advanced item You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 23 October. See how to join.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

14:39, 21 October 2019 (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 post proposals for the Community Wishlist Survey. The survey decides what the Community Tech team will work on. You can post proposals until 11 November. You can vote on proposals from 20 November to 2 December. This year the wishlist will focus on Wikibooks, Wiktionary, Wikiquote, Wikisource, Wikiversity, Wikispecies, Wikivoyage and Wikinews. You can read more about the format for this year.
  • Mobile users now have a specific design for their Watchlist.
  • You can share feedback and ideas on the Desktop Improvements project. The goal is to make the interface easier to use for readers and editors without removing any functionality. The Foundation's Readers Web team will work on this over the next two years.
  • Advanced item OOUI now allows using px (pixels) instead of em (em) for some specific cases.

Changes later this week

  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 29 October. It will be on non-Knowledge wikis and some Wikipedias from 30 October. It will be on all wikis from 31 October (calendar).

Meetings

Future changes

  • There will be no software changes from 19 December to 2 January. The first MediaWiki version next year will come the week of 6 January.
  • Advanced item Gadgets and user scripts can access variables about the current page in JavaScript. In 2015, this information was moved from global variables named wg* to mw.config. The old global variables will be removed later this year. You can know more about it and tell the developers if you want to try this out on your wiki first.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

16:17, 28 October 2019 (UTC)

The Signpost: 31 October 2019

Administrators' newsletter – November 2019

News and updates for administrators from the past month (October 2019).

Guideline and policy news

  • A related RfC is seeking the community's sentiment for a binding desysop procedure.

Arbitration

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

  • At Special:Contributions you could see up to 5000 edits at the same time if you edited the URL. This has been lowered to 500. This is to stop requests which break the sites.

Changes later this week

  • MediaWiki:ipb-default-expiry can set the default length to block a user for your wiki. You will be able to use MediaWiki:ipb-default-expiry-ip to set a different default block length for IP editors.
  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 5 November. It will be on non-Knowledge wikis and some Wikipedias from 6 November. It will be on all wikis from 7 November (calendar).

Meetings

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16:48, 4 November 2019 (UTC)

Welcome ...

October
Cassia javanica, Torremolinos
... with thanks from QAI

... to QAI, aka the cabal as the outcast. You say you are willing to copy-edit, - chances are unlimited, with the most urgent cases listed on the project talk, on top where the nominations for higher quality are, and in the LouisAlain section. LouisAlain is French, I am German, we can use some help by an English speaker with a red pen ;) - Feel free to go over the new articles I create - on my user page - and to follow me anywhere and make corrections! Feel free also to explain where you think that I misunderstod something. You made my day, did you know, twice, first when I saw Wehwalt on your user page (a founding member of the cabal), second when I read "beloved by ..." - suddenly November was brighter! --Gerda Arendt (talk) 10:33, 8 November 2019 (UTC)

@Gerda Arendt: Thank you for the kind welcome! I'm eager to help out wherever I can, and I look forward to helping out QAI wherever I can. As far as my userpage goes, I can't think of a better word to describe Mistbreeze (my spouse) than "beloved." :) OhKayeSierra (talk) 11:35, 8 November 2019 (UTC)
Great, all of it. Clara Schumann, devoted wife, great artist (one of the 5 best pianists of her time, the other four male), eight children, influential pedagogue of international students, - looks like your topic ;) --Gerda Arendt (talk) 12:16, 8 November 2019 (UTC)
Gerda Arendt Thanks for the suggestion! I'll be happy to take a look at it tomorrow or Monday. Unfortunately, I've got a mountain of student essays to grade, so I won't be able to get to it tonight. OhKayeSierra (talk) 21:37, 9 November 2019 (UTC)
No rush whatsoever, I have plenty to do, and her birthday is in September ;) --Gerda Arendt (talk) 21:43, 9 November 2019 (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

  • MediaWiki2LaTeX can put different pages from a Wikimedia wiki into a PDF. It can now make a PDF with around 5000 pages. Previously this was 800 pages.

Changes later this week

  • There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

Meetings

Future changes

  • Wikimedia will take part in Google Code-in. This is for young students who want to help with open source software. You can read more. Experienced technical Wikimedians can mentor students.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

22:03, 11 November 2019 (UTC)

Welcome to Milhist!

Hello OhKayeSierra and welcome to the Military history WikiProject! As you may have guessed, we're a group of editors working to improve Knowledge's coverage of topics related to military history.

A few features that you might find helpful:

If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to ask any of the project coordinators or any other experienced member of the project, and we'll be happy to help you. Again, welcome, and we are looking forward to seeing you around! Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 03:40, 13 November 2019 (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

Changes later this week

  • You can soon vote on proposals for the Community Wishlist Survey. The survey decides what the Community Tech team will work on. You can vote on proposals from 20 November to 2 December. This year the wishlist will focus on Wikibooks, Wiktionary, Wikiquote, Wikisource, Wikiversity, Wikispecies, Wikivoyage and Wikinews. You can read more about the format for this year.
  • There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

Meetings

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20:17, 18 November 2019 (UTC)

ArbCom 2019 election voter message

Hello! Voting in the 2019 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23:59 on Monday, 2 December 2019. All eligible users are allowed to vote. Users with alternate accounts may only vote once.

The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Knowledge 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.

If you wish to participate in the 2019 election, please review the candidates and submit your choices on the voting page. If you no longer wish to receive these messages, you may add {{NoACEMM}} to your user talk page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:23, 19 November 2019 (UTC)

Google Code-In 2019 is coming - please mentor some documentation tasks!

Hello,

Google Code-In, Google-organized contest in which the Wikimedia Foundation participates, starts in a few weeks. This contest is about taking high school students into the world of opensource. I'm sending you this message because you recently edited a documentation page at the English Knowledge.

I would like to ask you to take part in Google Code-In as a mentor. That would mean to prepare at least one task (it can be documentation related, or something else - the other categories are Code, Design, Quality Assurance and Outreach) for the participants, and help the student to complete it. Please sign up at the contest page and send us your Google account address to google-code-in-admins@lists.wikimedia.org, so we can invite you in!

From my own experience, Google Code-In can be fun, you can make several new friends, attract new people to your wiki and make them part of your community.

If you have any questions, please let us know at google-code-in-admins@lists.wikimedia.org.

Thank you!

--User:Martin Urbanec (talk) 21:59, 23 November 2019 (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 mobile beta mode will be disabled to have less maintenance. The developers will focus on the desktop improvements project. You can turn on advanced mobile contributions mode if you want to see the categories. You could also jump back to the top. This can instead be done with a gadget or user script.
  • Parsoid is software we use for the visual editor, content translation, Flow and the Android app. This has been rewritten. It will come to the wikis gradually over the next two weeks. It has been tested, but there could be some diffs or previews that don't look right. If you see any you can report them.
  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 26 November. It will be on the other wikis next week (calendar). This is because of holidays.

Meetings

Future changes

  • You will switch between the article and the talk page in a new way in the mobile view in the future. It will use tabs. This is more like in the desktop view.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

16:52, 25 November 2019 (UTC)

Giving thanks

Thanksgiving
Cassia javanica, Torremolinos
... with thanks from QAI

Happy Thanksgiving! --Gerda Arendt (talk) 16:32, 28 November 2019 (UTC)

The Signpost: 29 November 2019

Administrators' newsletter – December 2019

News and updates for administrators from the past month (November 2019).

Administrator changes

added EvergreenFir • ToBeFree
removed Akhilleus • Athaenara • John Vandenberg • Melchoir • MichaelQSchmidt • NeilN • Youngamerican • 😂

CheckUser changes

readded Beeblebrox
removed Deskana

Interface administrator changes

readded Evad37

Guideline and policy news

Technical news

Arbitration

Miscellaneous

Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. Additional terms may apply.

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