User talk:Mz7/December 2021–February 2022
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Administrators' newsletter – December 2021
News and updates for administrators from the past month (November 2021).
Administrator changes
Technical news
- Unregistered editors using the mobile website are now able to receive notices to indicate they have talk page messages. The notice looks similar to what is already present on desktop, and will be displayed on when viewing any page except mainspace and when editing any page. (T284642)
- The limit on the number of emails a user can send per day has been made global instead of per-wiki to help prevent abuse. (T293866)
Arbitration
- Voting in the 2021 Arbitration Committee Elections is open until 23:59, 06 December 2021 (UTC).
- The already authorized standard discretionary sanctions for all pages relating to the Horn of Africa (defined as including Ethiopia, Somalia, Eritrea, Djibouti, and adjoining areas if involved in related disputes), broadly construed, have been made permanent.
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
- MediaWiki 1.38-wmf.11 was scheduled to be deployed on some wikis last week. The deployment was delayed because of unexpected problems.
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 7 December. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 8 December. It will be on all wikis from 9 December (calendar).- At all Wikipedias, a Mentor Dashboard is now available at
Special:MentorDashboard. It allows registered mentors, who take care of newcomers' first steps, to monitor their assigned newcomers' activity. It is part of the Growth features. You can learn more about activating the mentor list on your wiki and about the mentor dashboard project. 
The predecessor to the current MediaWiki Action API (which was created in 2008), action=ajax, will be removed this week. Any scripts or bots using it will need to switch to the corresponding API module. [1]- An old ResourceLoader module,
jquery.jStorage, which was deprecated in 2016, will be removed this week. Any scripts or bots using it will need to switch tomediawiki.storageinstead. [2]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
21:58, 6 December 2021 (UTC)
Administrators will no longer be autopatrolled
A recently closed Request for Comment (RFC) reached consensus to remove Autopatrolled from the administrator user group. You may, similarly as with Edit Filter Manager, choose to self-assign this permission to yourself. This will be implemented the week of December 13th, but if you wish to self-assign you may do so now. To find out when the change has gone live or if you have any questions please visit the Administrator's Noticeboard. 20:06, 7 December 2021 (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
- There are now default short aliases for the "Project:" namespace on most wikis. E.g. On Wikibooks wikis,
[[WB:]]will go to the local language default for the[[Project:]]namespace. This change is intended to help the smaller communities have easy access to this feature. Additional local aliases can still be requested via the usual process. [3]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 14 December. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 15 December. It will be on all wikis from 16 December (calendar).
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
22:26, 13 December 2021 (UTC)
Rockcreed
M, are you sure that Rockcreed (talk+ · tag · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log · CA · CheckUser(log) · investigate · cuwiki) is a sockpuppet of Heres The Dealio (Special:Permalink/1060363778)? Results from the CheckUser tool for Heres The Dealio have been not as useful as I'd like (cue calls of 
CheckUser is not magic pixie dust etc), and the behavioural elements aren't the same – while this may be a case of handing, I'm not terribly convinced. HTD has used and discarded socks in quick succession, creating attack redirects. While I wouldn't have made the redirects that Rockcreed made, they aren't completely outside the bounds of reason. Sdrqaz (talk) 11:12, 16 December 2021 (UTC)
- @Sdrqaz: Yes, I am relatively convinced that Rockcreed is a sockpuppet of Heres The Dealio. You're correct that CU results for this sockmaster have not been as conclusive as other sockmasters, and this particular account has not attacked specific individuals as previous accounts have. Nevertheless, there are several behavioral elements that are quite suspicious to me. Firstly, the account's early edits consist entirely of trivial edits (e.g. [4][5])—this is characteristic of the kind of autoconfirmed gaming that Heres The Dealio ordinarily performs in their userspace, but this time it seems like they could be putting in more effort to trying a new tactic. As soon as they made 12 edits in this fashion to become autoconfirmed, they created the following redirects:
- Accordingly, I see this conforming to a similar general pattern of "gaming autoconfirmed then creating nonsensical redirects" that Heres The Dealio socks tend to follow. Creating a redirect in itself is a rather technical action on Wikipedia that I would not expect a brand new editor to be familiar with on their first day, and after I blocked Rockcreed, in their unblock request they accused me of "wikihounding", which is a rather esoteric Wikipedia term that I would not expect an innocent, brand-new editor to be familiar with. Additionally, Rockcreed shares the same IP address that Quotemeyo (talk+ · tag · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log · CA · CheckUser(log) · investigate · cuwiki) used on November 19—admittedly, the IP address is shared and could be used by multiple people, but when combined with the behavioral idiosyncrasies, I think this is suspicious enough to block. Mz7 (talk) 18:46, 16 December 2021 (UTC)
- Hmm. Thank you for explaining, M. Part of me hopes that you're right, because the alternative is that an innocent person has been blocked with little chance of being unblocked: in the aftermath of the Eostrix motion, I indicated some of my scepticism with regards to our sockpuppetry blocks and how many of them are irreversible without admissions of guilt (as an aside, even Alford pleas would not work). Those redirects that Rockcreed created had come up on my radar, but they seemed to be South Park references and things more suited to RfD, which made me leave them alone.I'm not convinced that HTD would change tack. They've been doing the same thing over and over again for over two-and-a-half years, with very little variation – creation of their userpage and talk page, then eight (and only eight, unlike this account's twelve) edits to their sandbox. They're here purely for disruption, with zero attempts to mask their actions: an effort to pull the wool over our eyes seems out of the question to me. I'm not sure what I can say for the hounding allegations or other elements, but that's how it looks to me. Sdrqaz (talk) 02:35, 17 December 2021 (UTC)
- @Sdrqaz: I appreciate you reaching out to me with your concerns. I would agree that it's generally true that users who are blocked for sockpuppetry have very little chance of being unblocked without admitting guilt, but in this case, I feel open to being persuaded. If another administrator (preferably a checkuser) reviewing the block also feels that there is insufficient evidence here to sustain the block, I would not have loud objections to an unblock. You bring up valid points about how this account's behavior does not match the typical pattern of Heres The Dealio. For me, I felt that there were too many coincidences for my comfort, but on the other hand, there is indeed a possibility that the behavioral and technical similarities are just that: coincidences. I noticed that a couple checkusers have already reviewed Rockcreed's unblock requests, but I'll see if I can ping another one tomorrow morning for another look with your thoughts in mind. Mz7 (talk) 05:51, 17 December 2021 (UTC)
- Thank you for going the extra mile, Mz7. Sdrqaz (talk) 14:30, 17 December 2021 (UTC)
- Sdrqaz, Mz7 asked me to take a look at this. Technically, I'd say
Likely or better - they share an IP with an obvious HTD sock, though that IP could be fairly dynamic. Also, they have identical (reasonably common) useragents. On the surface the behavior is similar (gaming AC to make a redirect) though there are some key differences (prefer not to go into detail publicly) as well as the already-noted fact that they didn't create an attack redirect. I believe there is room for doubt as to whether they're the same person, but to be honest I probably would have made the same block on this evidence - again, shared IP, identical UA, similar behavior. It might be worth hearing an appeal from this person, but even if they aren't HTD, I have major doubts about whether there is any value in unblocking them given their obvious NOTHERE behavior. Of course, "we incorrectly blocked you as a sock but we're pretty sure you're guilty of something" isn't a great way to operate... GeneralNotability (talk) 02:10, 18 December 2021 (UTC)
- @GeneralNotability: Thank you both for looking (and re-looking) into the issue. To be honest, I don't think we'll be
"hearing an appeal from this person"
anymore. Two appeals have already been made and were rejected by different CheckUsers (as noted by Mz7 above); if a person reasonably familiar with SPI couldn't argue for their innocence, I doubt they'd make much headway (a sobering thought for me). Speaking of new accounts looking NOTHERE, it's led me to dig through my talk page history, which had an ignominious start, being reverted by ClueBot NG and getting into an edit war in the first fortnight. Sdrqaz (talk) 02:42, 18 December 2021 (UTC)
- @GeneralNotability: Thank you both for looking (and re-looking) into the issue. To be honest, I don't think we'll be
- Sdrqaz, Mz7 asked me to take a look at this. Technically, I'd say
- Thank you for going the extra mile, Mz7. Sdrqaz (talk) 14:30, 17 December 2021 (UTC)
- @Sdrqaz: I appreciate you reaching out to me with your concerns. I would agree that it's generally true that users who are blocked for sockpuppetry have very little chance of being unblocked without admitting guilt, but in this case, I feel open to being persuaded. If another administrator (preferably a checkuser) reviewing the block also feels that there is insufficient evidence here to sustain the block, I would not have loud objections to an unblock. You bring up valid points about how this account's behavior does not match the typical pattern of Heres The Dealio. For me, I felt that there were too many coincidences for my comfort, but on the other hand, there is indeed a possibility that the behavioral and technical similarities are just that: coincidences. I noticed that a couple checkusers have already reviewed Rockcreed's unblock requests, but I'll see if I can ping another one tomorrow morning for another look with your thoughts in mind. Mz7 (talk) 05:51, 17 December 2021 (UTC)
- Hmm. Thank you for explaining, M. Part of me hopes that you're right, because the alternative is that an innocent person has been blocked with little chance of being unblocked: in the aftermath of the Eostrix motion, I indicated some of my scepticism with regards to our sockpuppetry blocks and how many of them are irreversible without admissions of guilt (as an aside, even Alford pleas would not work). Those redirects that Rockcreed created had come up on my radar, but they seemed to be South Park references and things more suited to RfD, which made me leave them alone.I'm not convinced that HTD would change tack. They've been doing the same thing over and over again for over two-and-a-half years, with very little variation – creation of their userpage and talk page, then eight (and only eight, unlike this account's twelve) edits to their sandbox. They're here purely for disruption, with zero attempts to mask their actions: an effort to pull the wool over our eyes seems out of the question to me. I'm not sure what I can say for the hounding allegations or other elements, but that's how it looks to me. Sdrqaz (talk) 02:35, 17 December 2021 (UTC)
An IP sock
This IP 107.127.14.78 is a sockpuppet of this user 63.225.82.47. 68.193.199.8 (talk) 22:00, 18 December 2021 (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
- Because of the holidays the next issue of Tech News will be sent out on 10 January 2022.
Recent changes
- Queries made by the DynamicPageList extension (
<DynamicPageList>) are now only allowed to run for 10 seconds and error if they take longer. This is in response to multiple outages where long-running queries caused an outage on all wikis. [6]
Changes later this week
- There is no new MediaWiki version this week or next week.
Future changes
- The developers of the Wikipedia iOS app are looking for testers who edit in multiple languages. You can read more and let them know if you are interested.
- The Wikimedia Cloud VPS hosts technical projects for the Wikimedia movement. Developers need to claim projects they use. This is because old and unused projects are removed once a year. Unclaimed projects can be shut down from February. [7]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
22:04, 20 December 2021 (UTC)
Merry Christmas!
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Hello Mz7: Enjoy the holiday season and winter solstice if it's occurring in your area of the world, and thanks for your work to maintain, improve and expand Wikipedia. Cheers, CAPTAIN RAJU(T) 08:25, 22 December 2021 (UTC)
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Remitbuber
Elcobbola, who doesn't appear to be around, CU-blocked Kympubs as an unidentified LTA. I'm fairly certain Kympubs is Remitbuber but it's not as obvious as I'd like. Can you check? Thanks.--Bbb23 (talk) 00:11, 24 December 2021 (UTC)
- I found some intersection with Greta Thunberg and confirmed sock Gibra191, so I'm more satisfied now behaviorally and have blocked and tagged.--Bbb23 (talk) 01:08, 24 December 2021 (UTC)
- @Bbb23:
Confirmed to Remitbuber. I requested a global lock. Thanks, Mz7 (talk) 01:33, 24 December 2021 (UTC)
- Excellent, thanks.--Bbb23 (talk) 01:55, 24 December 2021 (UTC)
- @Bbb23:
Yo Ho Ho
TheSandDoctor Talk is wishing you a griffin's claw full of Seasons Greetings! Whether you celebrate your hemisphere's Solstice or Christmas, Diwali, Hogmanay, Hanukkah, Lenaia, Festivus or even the Saturnalia, this is a special time of year for almost everyone!
Spread the holiday cheer by adding {{subst:User:WereSpielChequers/Dec21}} to your friends' talk pages.
The Signpost: 28 December 2021
- From the editor: Here is the news
- News and notes: Jimbo's NFT, new arbs, fixing RfA, and financial statements
- Serendipity: Born three months before her brother?
- In the media: The past is not even past
- Arbitration report: A new crew for '22
- By the numbers: Four billion words and a few numbers
- Deletion report: We laughed, we cried, we closed as "no consensus"
- Gallery: Wikicommons presents: 2021
- Traffic report: Spider-Man, football and the departed
- Crossword: Another Wiki crossword for one and all
- Humour: Buying Wikipedia
RFA 2021 Completed
The 2021 re-examination of RFA has been completed. 23 (plus 2 variants) ideas were proposed. Over 200 editors participated in this final phase. Three changes gained consensus and two proposals were identified by the closers as having the potential to gain consensus with some further discussion and iteration. Thanks to all who helped to close the discussion, and in particular Primefac, Lee Vilenski, and Ymblanter for closing the most difficult conversations and for TonyBallioni for closing the review of one of the closes.
The following proposals gained consensus and have all been implemented:
- Revision of standard question 1 to
Why are you interested in becoming an administrator?
Special thanks to xaosflux for help with implementation. - A new process, Administrative Action Review (XRV) designed to review if an editor's specific use of an advanced permission, including the admin tools, is consistent with policy in a process similar to that of deletion review and move review. Thanks to all the editors who contributed (and are continuing to contribute) to the discussion of how to implement this proposal.
- Removal of autopatrol from the administrator's toolkit. Special thanks to Wugapodes and Seddon for their help with implementation.
The following proposals were identified by the closers as having the potential to gain consensus with some further discussion and iteration:
- An option for people to run for temporary adminship (proposal, discussion, & close)
- An optional election process (proposal & discussion and close review & re-close)
Editors who wish to discuss these ideas or other ideas on how to try to address any of the six issues identified during phase 1 for which no proposal gained are encouraged to do so at RFA's talk page or an appropriate village pump.
A final and huge thanks all those who participated in this effort to improve our RFA process over the last 4 months.
This is the final update with no further talk page messages planned.
01:46, 30 December 2021 (UTC)
GAN Backlog Drive – January 2022
| Good article nominations | January 2022 Backlog Drive |  |
January 2022 Backlog Drive:
| |
| Other ways to participate: | |
| You're receiving this message because you have conducted 10+ good article reviews or participated in the March backlog drive.
Click here and remove your username from the mailing list to opt out of any future messages. | |
Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of Wikipedia:WikiProject Good articles at 21:18, 31 December 2021 (UTC).
Merchandise giveaway nomination
|
A token of thanks
Hi Mz7! I've nominated you (along with all other active admins) to receive a solstice season gift from the WMF. Talk page stalkers are invited to comment at the nomination. Enjoy! Cheers, {{u|Sdkb}} talk ~~~~~
|
 |
MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 23:50, 31 December 2021 (UTC)
Administrators' newsletter – January 2022
News and updates for administrators from the past month (December 2021).
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Guideline and policy news
- Following consensus at the 2021 RfA review, the autopatrolled user right has been removed from the administrators user group; admins can grant themselves the autopatrolled permission if they wish to remain autopatrolled.
- Additionally, consensus for proposal 6C of the 2021 RfA review has led to the creation of an administrative action review process. The purpose of this process will be to review individual administrator actions and individual actions taken by users holding advanced permissions.
Arbitration
- Following the 2021 Arbitration Committee elections, the following editors have been appointed to the Arbitration Committee: Beeblebrox, Cabayi, Donald Albury, Enterprisey, Izno, Opabinia regalis, Worm That Turned, Wugapodes.
Miscellaneous
- The functionaries email list (functionaries-en
lists.wikimedia.org) will no longer accept incoming emails apart from those sent by list members and WMF staff. Private concerns, apart from those requiring oversight, should be directly sent to the Arbitration Committee.
How we will see unregistered users
Hi!
You get this message because you are an admin on a Wikimedia wiki.
When someone edits a Wikimedia wiki without being logged in today, we show their IP address. As you may already know, we will not be able to do this in the future. This is a decision by the Wikimedia Foundation Legal department, because norms and regulations for privacy online have changed.
Instead of the IP we will show a masked identity. You as an admin will still be able to access the IP. There will also be a new user right for those who need to see the full IPs of unregistered users to fight vandalism, harassment and spam without being admins. Patrollers will also see part of the IP even without this user right. We are also working on better tools to help.
If you have not seen it before, you can read more on Meta. If you want to make sure you don’t miss technical changes on the Wikimedia wikis, you can subscribe to the weekly technical newsletter.
We have two suggested ways this identity could work. We would appreciate your feedback on which way you think would work best for you and your wiki, now and in the future. You can let us know on the talk page. You can write in your language. The suggestions were posted in October and we will decide after 17 January.
Thank you. /Johan (WMF)
18:14, 4 January 2022 (UTC)
Express regret
Hello, sir. I wanted to ask a question about blocking people and users on Wikipedia. If a user on Wikipedia behaves illegally and is blocked, is there a way to fix this block? It is possible for him to make a commitment that he will no longer behave illegally and to express remorse 31.184.141.70 (talk) 10:55, 5 January 2022 (UTC)
- For more information about requesting that blocks be lifted, please see Wikipedia:Appealing a block and Wikipedia:Guide to appealing blocks. Mz7 (talk) 09:32, 7 January 2022 (UTC)
Hi
Just dropping in to say hello Dreameditsbrooklyn (talk) 03:43, 10 January 2022 (UTC)
- Mz7, do you know this person?--Bbb23 (talk) 13:50, 10 January 2022 (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
- A
oauth_consumervariable has been added to the AbuseFilter to enable identifying changes made by specific tools. [8] - Gadgets are now able to directly include JSON pages. This means some gadgets can now be configured by administrators without needing the interface administrator permission, such as with the Geonotice gadget. [9]
- Gadgets can now specify page actions on which they are available. For example,
|actions=edit,historywill load a gadget only while editing and on history pages. [10] - Gadgets can now be loaded on demand with the
withgadgetURL parameter. This can be used to replace an earlier snippet that typically looks likewithJSorwithCSS. [11] - At wikis where the Mentorship system is configured, you can now use the Action API to get a list of a mentor's mentees. [12]
- The heading on the main page can now be configured using MediaWiki:Mainpage-title-loggedin for logged-in users and MediaWiki:Mainpage-title for logged-out users. Any CSS that was previously used to hide the heading should be removed. [13] [14]
- Four special pages (and their API counterparts) now have a maximum database query execution time of 30 seconds. These special pages are: RecentChanges, Watchlist, Contributions, and Log. This change will help with site performance and stability. You can read more details about this change including some possible solutions if this affects your workflows. [15]
- The sticky header has been deployed for 50% of logged-in users on more than 10 wikis. This is part of the Desktop Improvements. See how to take part in the project.
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 11 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 12 January. It will be on all wikis from 13 January (calendar).
Events
- Community Wishlist Survey 2022 begins. All contributors to the Wikimedia projects can propose for tools and platform improvements. The proposal phase takes place from 10 January 18:00 UTC to 23 January 18:00 UTC. Learn more.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
01:22, 11 January 2022 (UTC)
Thetruthisthere13 sockpuppet investiation
Hi, I recently came across this edit from Thetruthisthere13, which seems to prove that Thetruthisthere13 is indeed another sockpuppet of RK777713 / Ryan Kavanaugh, as he states that the Ryan Kavanaugh article "created a false narrative and false image of me". The account has been classified as possilikely a sockpuppet, but I believe this new evidence could classify it as confirmed. I'm not sure if it warrants reopening the investigation so I'd like to get advice from you on what to do about it, if anything at all. Thanks. --Swift502 (talk) 12:52, 12 January 2022 (UTC)
- I'm only commenting here because it appears you closed the investigation. I hope it's not inappropriate. --Swift502 (talk) 13:02, 12 January 2022 (UTC)
- Hi Swift502, I have already blocked the Thetruthisthere13 account as a suspected sockpuppet, so I don’t think any additional action is needed. Please let me know if you identify any other accounts that may be sockpuppets. Mz7 (talk) 18:08, 12 January 2022 (UTC)
- @Mz7: 👍 --Swift502 (talk) 18:31, 12 January 2022 (UTC)
- Hi Swift502, I have already blocked the Thetruthisthere13 account as a suspected sockpuppet, so I don’t think any additional action is needed. Please let me know if you identify any other accounts that may be sockpuppets. Mz7 (talk) 18:08, 12 January 2022 (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
- When using WikiEditor (also known as the 2010 wikitext editor), people will now see a warning if they link to disambiguation pages. If you click "Review link" in the warning, it will ask you to correct the link to a more specific term. You can read more information about this completed 2021 Community Wishlist item.
- You can automatically subscribe to all of the talk page discussions that you start or comment in using DiscussionTools. You will receive notifications when another editor replies. This is available at most wikis. Go to your Preferences and turn on "Automatically subscribe to topics". [16]
- When asked to create a new page or talk page section, input fields can be "preloaded" with some text. This feature is now limited to wikitext pages. This is so users can't be tricked into making malicious edits. There is a discussion about if this feature should be re-enabled for some content types.
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 18 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 19 January. It will be on all wikis from 20 January (calendar).
Events
- Community Wishlist Survey 2022 continues. All contributors to the Wikimedia projects can propose for tools and platform improvements. The proposal phase takes place from 10 January 18:00 UTC to 23 January 18:00 UTC. Learn more.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
19:53, 17 January 2022 (UTC)
27.63.192.154
Am I being overly suspicious or does this IP match Phoenix man? HickoryOughtShirt?4 (talk) 03:36, 19 January 2022 (UTC)
- Hmm, yeah, I agree, inquiring about a long-deleted article about an obscure topic created by a sockpuppet does indeed look suspicious. I would keep an eye on the IP, and if it becomes clearer through the behavior that this is more block evasion, we can give a block. Mz7 (talk) 09:55, 19 January 2022 (UTC)
- Mz7, I thought it was also weird that they did a successful ping and signed their comments. HickoryOughtShirt?4 (talk) 13:56, 19 January 2022 (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 new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 25 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 26 January. It will be on all wikis from 27 January (calendar).
- The following languages can now be used with syntax highlighting: BDD, Elpi, LilyPond, Maxima, Rita, Savi, Sed, Sophia, Spice, .SRCINFO.
- You can now access your watchlist from outside of the user menu in the new Vector skin. The watchlist link appears next to the notification icons if you are at the top of the page. [17]
Events
- You can see the results of the Coolest Tool Award 2021 and learn more about 14 tools which were selected this year.
- You can translate, promote, or comment on the proposals in the Community Wishlist Survey. Voting will begin on 28 January.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
21:37, 24 January 2022 (UTC)
Some stroopwafels for you!
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Thanks for the perm added. I appreciate it. Have a good day. ♥Th78blue (talk)♥ 20:55, 27 January 2022 (UTC) |
Impressively worded, thoughtful !vote.--Bbb23 (talk) 01:47, 29 January 2022 (UTC)
The Signpost: 30 January 2022
- Special report: WikiEd course leads to Twitter harassment
- News and notes: Feedback for Board of Trustees election
- Interview: CEO Maryana Iskander "four weeks in"
- Black History Month: What are you doing for Black History Month?
- WikiProject report: The Forgotten Featured
- Arbitration report: New arbitrators look at new case and antediluvian sanctions
- Traffic report: The most viewed articles of 2021
- Obituary: Twofingered Typist
- Essay: The prime directive
- In the media: Fuzzy-headed government editing
- Recent research: Articles with higher quality ratings have fewer "knowledge gaps"
- Crossword: Cross swords with a crossword
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
- If a gadget should support the new
?withgadgetURL parameter that was announced 3 weeks ago, then it must now also specifysupportsUrlLoadin the gadget definition (documentation). [18]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 1 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 2 February. It will be on all wikis from 3 February (calendar).
Future changes
- A change that was announced last year was delayed. It is now ready to move ahead:
- The user group
oversightwill be renamedsuppress. This is for technical reasons. This is the technical name. It doesn't affect what you call the editors with this user right on your wiki. This is planned to happen in three weeks. You can comment in Phabricator if you have objections. As usual, these labels can be translated on translatewiki (direct links are available) or by administrators on your wiki.
- The user group
Events
- You can vote on proposals in the Community Wishlist Survey between 28 January and 11 February. The survey decides what the Community Tech team will work on.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
17:41, 31 January 2022 (UTC)
Administrators' newsletter – February 2022
News and updates for administrators from the past month (January 2022).
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Guideline and policy news
- The Universal Code of Conduct enforcement guidelines have been published for consideration. Voting to ratify this guideline is planned to take place 7 March to 21 March. Comments can be made on the talk page.
Technical news
- The user group
oversightwill be renamedsuppressin around 3 weeks. This will not affect the name shown to users and is simply a change in the technical name of the user group. The change is being made for technical reasons. You can comment in Phabricator if you have objections. - The Reply Tool feature, which is a part of Discussion Tools, will be opt-out for everyone logged in or logged out starting 7 February 2022. Editors wishing to comment on this can do so in the relevant Village Pump discussion.
- The user group
Arbitration
- Community input is requested on several motions aimed at addressing discretionary sanctions that are no longer needed or overly broad.
- The Arbitration Committee has published a generalised comment regarding successful appeals of sanctions that it can review (such as checkuser blocks).
- A motion related to the Antisemitism in Poland case was passed following a declined case request.
Miscellaneous
- Voting in the 2022 Steward elections will begin on 07 February 2022, 14:00 (UTC) and end on 26 February 2022, 13:59 (UTC). The confirmation process of current stewards is being held in parallel. You can automatically check your eligibility to vote.
- Voting in the 2022 Community Wishlist Survey is open until 11 February 2022.
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
- English Wikipedia recently set up a gadget for dark mode. You can enable it there, or request help from an interface administrator to set it up on your wiki (instructions and screenshot).
- Category counts are sometimes wrong. They will now be completely recounted at the beginning of every month. [19]
Problems
- A code-change last week to fix a bug with Live Preview may have caused problems with some local gadgets and user-scripts. Any code with skin-specific behaviour for
vectorshould be updated to also check forvector-2022. A code-snippet, global search, and example are available.
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 8 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 9 February. It will be on all wikis from 10 February (calendar).
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
21:14, 7 February 2022 (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
- Purging a category page with fewer than 5,000 members will now recount it completely. This will allow editors to fix incorrect counts when it is wrong. [20]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 15 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 16 February. It will be on all wikis from 17 February (calendar).
- In the AbuseFilter extension, the
rmspecials()function has been updated so that it does not remove the "space" character. Wikis are advised to wrap all the uses ofrmspecials()withrmwhitespace()wherever necessary to keep filters' behavior unchanged. You can use the search function on Special:AbuseFilter to locate its usage. [21]
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
19:17, 14 February 2022 (UTC)
WP:AFC Helper News
Hello! I wanted to drop a quick note for all of our AFC participants; nothing huge and fancy like a newsletter, but a few points of interest.
- AFCH will now show live previews of the comment to be left on a decline.
- The template {{db-afc-move}} has been created - this template is similar to {{db-move}} when there is a redirect in the way of an acceptance, but specifically tells the patrolling admin to let you (the draft reviewer) take care of the actual move.
Short and sweet, but there's always more to discuss at WT:AFC. Stop on by, maybe review a draft on the way? Whether you're one of our top reviewers, or haven't reviewed in a while, I want to thank you for helping out in the past and in the future. Cheers, Primefac, via MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:00, 16 February 2022 (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
- Special:Nuke will now provide the standard deletion reasons (editable at MediaWiki:Deletereason-dropdown) to use when mass-deleting pages. This was a request in the 2022 Community Wishlist Survey. [22]
- At Wikipedias, all new accounts now get the Growth features by default when creating an account. Communities are encouraged to update their help resources. Previously, only 80% of new accounts would get the Growth features. A few Wikipedias remain unaffected by this change. [23]
- You can now prevent specific images that are used in a page from appearing in other locations, such as within PagePreviews or Search results. This is done with the markup
class=notpageimage. For example,[[File:Example.png|class=notpageimage]]. [24] - There has been a change to the HTML of Special:Contributions, Special:MergeHistory, and History pages, to support the grouping of changes by date in the mobile skin. While unlikely, this may affect gadgets and user scripts. A list of all the HTML changes is on Phabricator.
Events
- Community Wishlist Survey results have been published. The ranking of prioritized proposals is also available.
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 22 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 23 February. It will be on all wikis from 24 February (calendar).
Future changes
- The software to play videos and audio files on pages will change soon on all wikis. The old player will be removed. Some audio players will become wider after this change. The new player has been a beta feature for over four years. [25][26]
- Toolforge's underlying operating system is being updated. If you maintain any tools there, there are two options for migrating your tools into the new system. There are details, deadlines, and instructions on Wikitech. [27]
- Administrators will soon have the option to delete/undelete the associated "talk" page when they are deleting a given page. An API endpoint with this option will also be available. This was a request from the 2021 Wishlist Survey.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
19:10, 21 February 2022 (UTC)
The Signpost: 27 February 2022
- From the team: Selection of a new Signpost Editor-in-Chief
- News and notes: Impacts of Russian invasion of Ukraine
- Special report: A presidential candidate's team takes on Wikipedia
- In the media: Wiki-drama in the UK House of Commons
- Technology report: Community Wishlist Survey results
- WikiProject report: 10 years of tea
- Featured content: Featured Content returns
- Deletion report: The 10 most SHOCKING deletion discussions of February
- Recent research: How editors and readers may be emotionally affected by disasters and terrorist attacks
- Arbitration report: Parties remonstrate, arbs contemplate, skeptics coordinate
- Gallery: The vintage exhibit
- Traffic report: Euphoria, Pamela Anderson, lies and Netflix
- News from Diff: The Wikimania 2022 Core Organizing Team
- Crossword: A Crossword, featuring Featured Articles
- Humour: Notability of mailboxes
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 searching for edits by change tags, e.g. in page history or user contributions, there is now a dropdown list of possible tags. This was a request in the 2022 Community Wishlist Survey. [28]
- Mentors using the Growth Mentor dashboard will now see newcomers assigned to them who have made at least one edit, up to 200 edits. Previously, all newcomers assigned to the mentor were visible on the dashboard, even ones without any edit or ones who made hundred of edits. Mentors can still change these values using the filters on their dashboard. Also, the last choice of filters will now be saved. [29][30]
- The user group
oversightwas renamedsuppress. This is for technical reasons. You may need to update any local references to the old name, e.g. gadgets, links to Special:Listusers, or uses of NUMBERINGROUP.
Problems
- The recent change to the HTML of tracking changes pages caused some problems for screenreaders. This is being fixed. [31]
Changes later this week
- The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 1 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 2 March. It will be on all wikis from 3 March (calendar).
Future changes
- Working with templates will become easier. Several improvements are planned for March 9 on most wikis and on March 16 on English Wikipedia. The improvements include: Bracket matching, syntax highlighting colors, finding and inserting templates, and related visual editor features.
- If you are a template developer or an interface administrator, and you are intentionally overriding or using the default CSS styles of user feedback boxes (the classes:
successbox, messagebox, errorbox, warningbox), please note that these classes and associated CSS will soon be removed from MediaWiki core. This is to prevent problems when the same class-names are also used on a wiki. Please let us know by commenting at phab:T300314 if you think you might be affected.
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
22:58, 28 February 2022 (UTC)