Xaosflux

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My PGP public key ID is 0x2F0E92637366A6A9, expand for key:

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My Talk Archives:
Archive-01 ~ Archive-02 ~ Archive-03
Archive-04 ~ Archive-05 ~ Archive-06
Archive-07 ~ Archive-08 ~ Archive-09
Archive-10 ~ Archive-11 ~ Archive-12
Archive-13 ~ Archive-14 ~ Archive-15
Archive-16 ~ Archive-17 ~ Archive-18
Archive-19 ~ Archive-20 ~ Archive-21
Archive-22 ~ Archive-23 ~ Archive-24
Archive-25 ~ Archive-26 ~ Archive-27
Archive-28 ~ Archive-29 ~ Archive-30
Archive-31 ~ Archive-32 ~ Archive-33
Archive-34 ~ Archive-35 ~ Archive-36
Archive-37 ~ Archive-38 ~ Archive-39
Archive-40 ~ Archive-41 ~ Archive-42
Archive-43 ~ Archive-44 ~ Archive-45
Archive-46 ~ Archive-47 ~ Archive-48
Automatic list

A barnstar for your patience in helping people

		The Barnstar of Diligence
		You have the patience of Job when you help editors with technical problems, and I thought you deserved some formal recognition for it.--Bbb23 (talk) 12:29, 16 May 2023 (UTC)

A barnstar for you

		The Barnstar of Diligence
		I don't remember whether I've ever given you a barnstar before; if not, it's long overdue. Thank you so much for helping me time and time again, as well as helping many other users.--Bbb23 (talk) 17:19, 5 July 2023 (UTC)

Thank You

"Appreciation Knucks"

These knucks symbolize my appreciation for the Wiki teamsters, such as yourself, who create pathways to knowledge through their diligent efforts working quietly behind the scenes. As a user I am grateful, now more than ever, so I felt prompted to say hello and show gratitude by saying thanks for setting an example for users, such as myself, to contribute more. Stay blessed, Saint, Stephen Gunning (talk) 09:39, 28 July 2023 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Tireless Contributor Barnstar
	Thank you so much for all your work coordinating the elections. It couldn’t have happened without you. From helping with the guide to posting the final results, you did a great job running a smooth election. Thanks! - 🔥𝑰𝒍𝒍𝒖𝒔𝒊𝒐𝒏 𝑭𝒍𝒂𝒎𝒆 (𝒕𝒂𝒍𝒌)🔥 01:55, 30 December 2023 (UTC)

Hidden ToC dis-appeares on it's own during scrolling

[[1]]

Sorry, a little late.

With "Zebra 1" the scrolling is OK, i.e. I can scroll down to the bottom.

Steue (talk) 06:02, 30 December 2023 (UTC)

@Steue thanks for the update, this should have been rolled out for the fix without having to use the Zebra feature parameter now as well. — xaosflux ^Talk 11:37, 30 December 2023 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Teamwork Barnstar
	Thanks for all your work on the election! -- Asartea Talk | Contribs 09:27, 30 December 2023 (UTC)

Merry Christmas!

~~~ Merry Christmas! ~~~
Joyeux Noël! ~ Buon Natale! ~ Vrolijk Kerstfeest! ~ Frohe Weihnachten!
¡Feliz Navidad! ~ Feliz Natal! ~ Καλά Χριστούγεννα! ~ Hyvää Joulua!
God Jul! ~ Glædelig Jul! ~ Linksmų Kalėdų! ~ Priecīgus Ziemassvētkus!
Häid Jõule! ~ Wesołych Świąt! ~ Boldog Karácsonyt! ~ Veselé Vánoce!
Veselé Vianoce! ~ Crăciun Fericit! ~ Sretan Božić! ~ С Рождеством!
শুভ বড়দিন! ~ 圣诞节快乐！~ メリークリスマス！~ 메리 크리스마스!
สุขสันต์วันคริสต์มาส! ~ Selamat Hari Natal! ~ Giáng sinh an lành!
Весела Коледа! ~ Meri Kirihimete!

Hello, Xaosflux! Thank you for your work to maintain and improve Wikipedia! Wishing you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
CAPTAIN RAJU^(T) 18:02, 30 December 2023 (UTC)

Spread the WikiLove and leave other users this message by adding {{subst:Multi-language Season's Greetings}}

CAPTAIN RAJU^(T) 18:02, 30 December 2023 (UTC)

Happy New Year 2024!

	Happy New Year!
	Hello Xaosflux: Did you know ... that back in 1885, Wikipedia editors wrote Good Articles with axes, hammers and chisels? Thank you for your contributions to this encyclopedia using 21st century technology. I hope you don't get any unnecessary blisters. CAPTAIN RAJU(T) 18:56, 31 December 2023 (UTC)

Spread the WikiLove; use {{subst:Happy New Year elves}} to send this message

CAPTAIN RAJU^(T) 18:56, 31 December 2023 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – January 2024

News and updates for administrators from the past month (December 2023).

Administrator changes

Clovermoss

Dennis Brown

• Julia W
• Marasmusine
• PBS

CheckUser changes

• Aoidh
• HJ Mitchell
• Sdrqaz
• Spicy
• ToBeFree
• Vanamonde93
• Z1720

Maxim

• Enterprisey
• Izno
• SilkTork

Oversighter changes

• Aoidh
• Firefly
• Sdrqaz
• ToBeFree
• Z1720

Maxim

• Enterprisey
• Izno
• SilkTork

Arbitration

• Following the 2023 Arbitration Committee elections, the following editors have been appointed to the Arbitration Committee: Aoidh, Cabayi, Firefly, HJ Mitchell, Maxim, Sdrqaz, ToBeFree, Z1720.
• Following a motion, the Arbitration Committee rescinded the restrictions on the page name move discussions for the two Ireland pages that were enacted in June 2009.
• The arbitration case Industrial agriculture has been closed.

Miscellaneous

• The New Pages Patrol backlog drive is happening in January 2024 to reduce the backlog of articles in the new pages feed. Currently, there is a backlog of over 13,000 unreviewed articles awaiting review. Sign up here to participate!

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• Discuss this newsletter
• Subscribe
• Archive

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 11:54, 1 January 2024 (UTC)

Happy New Year, Xaosflux!

Happy New Year!

Xaosflux,
Have a prosperous, productive and enjoyable New Year, and thanks for your contributions to Wikipedia.
Abishe (talk) 13:58, 1 January 2024 (UTC)

   Send New Year cheer by adding {{subst:Happy New Year fireworks}} to user talk pages.

Abishe (talk) 13:58, 1 January 2024 (UTC)

Happy New Year!

Xaosflux,
Have a prosperous, productive and enjoyable New Year, and thanks for your contributions to Wikipedia.
Abishe (talk) 14:31, 1 January 2024 (UTC)

   Send New Year cheer by adding {{subst:Happy New Year fireworks}} to user talk pages.

Abishe (talk) 14:31, 1 January 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-02

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 is a tool that converts wiki content into the formats of LaTeX, PDF, ODT, and EPUB. The code now runs many times faster due to recent improvements. There is also an optional Docker container you can install on your local machine.
• The way that Random pages are selected has been updated. This will slowly reduce the problem of some pages having a lower chance of appearing. [2]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 9 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 10 January. It will be on all wikis from 11 January (calendar). [3][4]

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

MediaWiki message delivery 01:18, 9 January 2024 (UTC)

Transfer of user's right

Citing you (from here) that "There is no technical mechanism to "transfer" access from one account to another. Users with the ability to manage permissions may technically add and remove permissions groups from accounts individually. ..." That's what transfer means to my mind when submitting the question and the possibility of it was what I meant to ask. Thanks for ensuring that this is possible.
Moreover, I asked about that on Village pump (policy) because I guessed it's part of Wikipedia policy regarding the transfer possibility. It's not like I was asking if there's a magical button to enable instant transfer that could make me asking about this (possibility of right transfer) on Village pump (Technical) or Village pump (Idea lab). Natsuikomin (talk) 22:12, 11 January 2024 (UTC)

The Signpost: 10 January 2024

• From the editor: NINETEEN MORE YEARS! NINETEEN MORE YEARS!

• Special report: Public Domain Day 2024

• Technology report: Wikipedia: A Multigenerational Pursuit

• News and notes: In other news ... see ya in court!

• In focus: The long road of a featured article candidate

• In the media: What is plagiarism? Oklahoma Disneyland? Reaching a human being at Wikipedia?

• WikiProject report: WikiProjects Israel and Palestine

• Obituary: Anthony Bradbury

• Traffic report: The most viewed articles of 2023

• Crossword: everybody gangsta till the style sheets start cascading

• Comix: Conflict resolution

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 12:51, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

Response about my talk page

Hey, yeah sorry my talk page is large. I've been waiting on the mediawiki team working on enhancing talk page experience to roll out automated page management which preserved linking to the topic headers. Possibly that is supported now? Seeing now that my talk page can't be saved, I wouldn't mind the help. I still think this should be solved by the Mediawiki configuration and not by ad-hoc user scripts and bots as this is a core function of communication and linking should be preserved. See my previous note User talk:Wolfgang8741#Archiving though I'm not opposed to getting some help. I don't have time at the moment to move some of the automated newsletter posts like "Wikidata weekly summary #430" and " This Month in GLAM: September 2020" to their own subpages and probably the largest offenders for space. I don't link to those posts typically, but do reference them and do link to other conversation on and off wiki. I just don't remember where those newsletters are configured to fix where they post and would love if they linked back to manage that so users can find it easier. Sorry for not managing this, I was hoping it would be fixed by the system updating to something that didn't break links and broadly implement pagination. Wolfgang8741 says: If not you, then who? (talk) 19:52, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

@Wolfgang8741 it happens, and it isn't a huge deal. I agree that scripts and bots can be problematic in this matter! I can give your page a try to just get it easily usable in the short-term with a one-time archive (and if you don't like it just revert we are a wiki after all! Technically the mass-message newsletters reveal their list, but it is in the form of a hidden comment on the page source (e.g. that one is here). Hope you don't think I'm singling you out here, someone linked your page in an example of very large pages in another discussion and I thought you could use some help. Things are certainly easier if editors can just worry about making the encyclopedia better and not this technical stuff! — xaosflux ^Talk 20:06, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-03

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

• Pages that use the JSON contentmodel will now use tabs instead of spaces for auto-indentation. This will significantly reduce the page size. [5]
• Gadgets and personal user scripts may now use JavaScript syntax introduced in ES6 (also known as "ES2015") and ES7 ("ES2016"). MediaWiki validates the source code to protect other site functionality from syntax errors, and to ensure scripts are valid in all supported browsers. Previously, Gadgets could use the requiresES6 option. This option is no longer needed and will be removed in the future. [6]
• Bot passwords and owner-only OAuth consumers can now be restricted to allow editing only specific pages. [7]
• You can now thank edits made by bots. [8]
• An update on the status of the Community Wishlist Survey for 2024 has been published. Please read and give your feedback.

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 16 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 17 January. It will be on all wikis from 18 January (calendar). [9][10]
• Starting on January 17, it will not be possible to login to Wikimedia wikis from some specific old versions of the Chrome browser (versions 51–66, released between 2016 and 2018). Additionally, users of iOS 12, or Safari on Mac OS 10.14, may need to login to each wiki separately. [11]
• The jquery.cookie module was deprecated and replaced with the mediawiki.cookie module last year. A script has now been run to replace any remaining uses, and this week the temporary alias will be removed. [12]

Future changes

• Wikimedia Deutschland is working to make reusing references easier. They are looking for people who are interested in participating in individual video calls for user research in January and February.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 00:11, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-04

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

• A bug in UploadWizard prevented linking to the userpage of the uploader when uploading. It has now been fixed. [13]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 23 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 24 January. It will be on all wikis from 25 January (calendar). [14][15]

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

MediaWiki message delivery 01:02, 23 January 2024 (UTC)

Notification: Feedback request service is down

Hello, Xaosflux

You may have noticed that you have not received any messages from the Wikipedia:Feedback request service for over a month. Yapperbot appears to have stopped delivering messages. Until that can be resolved, please watch pages that interest you, such as Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Wikipedia policies and guidelines.

This notification has been sent to you as you are subscribed to the Feedback Request Service. - MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 08:11, 28 January 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-05

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

• Starting Monday January 29, all talk pages messages' timestamps will become a link. This link is a permanent link to the comment. It allows users to find the comment they are looking for, even if this comment was moved elsewhere. This will affect all wikis except for the English Wikipedia. You can read more about this change on Diff or on Mediawiki.org. [16]
• There are some improvements to the CAPTCHA to make it harder for spam bots and scripts to bypass it. If you have feedback on this change, please comment on the task. Staff are monitoring metrics related to the CAPTCHA, as well as secondary metrics such as account creations and edit counts.

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 30 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 31 January. It will be on all wikis from 1 February (calendar). [17][18]
• On February 1, a link will be added to the "Tools" menu to download a QR code that links to the page you are viewing. There will also be a new Special:QrCode page to create QR codes for any Wikimedia URL. This addresses the #19 most-voted wish from the 2023 Community Wishlist Survey. [19]
• Gadgets which only work in some skins have sometimes used the targets option to limit where you can use them. This will stop working this week. You should use the skins option instead. [20]

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

MediaWiki message delivery 19:29, 29 January 2024 (UTC)

You've got mail!

Hello, Xaosflux. Please check your email; you've got mail!
Message added 15:53, 30 January 2024 (UTC). It may take a few minutes from the time the email is sent for it to show up in your inbox. You can at any time by removing the {{You've got mail}} or {{ygm}} template.

– DreamRimmer (talk) 15:53, 30 January 2024 (UTC)

I didn't get an email, however if this is in reference to ticket:2024012510010752 - it is open and being discussed still. — xaosflux ^Talk 16:59, 30 January 2024 (UTC)

The Signpost: 31 January 2024

• News and notes: Wikipedian Osama Khalid celebrated his 30th birthday in jail

• Opinion: Until it happens to you

• Disinformation report: How paid editors squeeze you dry

• In the media: Katherine Maher new NPR CEO, go check Wikipedia, race in the race

• In focus: The long road of a featured article candidate, part 2

• Recent research: Croatian takeover was enabled by "lack of bureaucratic openness and rules constraining [admins]"

• Comix: We've all got to start somewhere

• Traffic report: DJ, gonna burn this goddamn house right down

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 15:15, 31 January 2024 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – February 2024

News and updates for administrators from the past month (January 2024).

Administrator changes

• Red-tailed hawk
• Robertsky

• Ameliorate!
• Ancheta Wis
• Anthony Bradbury (deceased)
• Cobi
• Ev
• Moondyne
• Worm That Turned

Bureaucrat changes

Worm That Turned

CheckUser changes

Wugapodes

Interface administrator changes

• Enterprisey
• Izno

Guideline and policy news

• An RfC about increasing the inactivity requirement for Interface administrators is open for feedback.

Technical news

• Pages that use the JSON contentmodel will now use tabs instead of spaces for auto-indentation. This will significantly reduce the page size. (T326065)

Arbitration

• Following a motion, the Arbitration Committee adopted a new enforcement restriction on January 4, 2024, wherein the Committee may apply the 'Reliable source consensus-required restriction' to specified topic areas.
• Community feedback is requested for a draft to replace the "Information for administrators processing requests" section at WP:AE.

Miscellaneous

• Voting in the 2024 Steward elections will begin on 06 February 2024, 14:00 (UTC) and end on 27 February 2024, 14:00 (UTC). The confirmation process of current stewards is being held in parallel. You can automatically check your eligibility to vote.
• A vote to ratify the charter for the Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee (U4C) is open till 2 February 2024, 23:59:59 (UTC) via Secure Poll. All eligible voters within the Wikimedia community have the opportunity to either support or oppose the adoption of the U4C Charter and share their reasons. The details of the voting process and voter eligibility can be found here.
• Community Tech has made some preliminary decisions about the future of the Community Wishlist Survey. In summary, they aim to develop a new, continuous intake system for community technical requests that improves prioritization, resource allocation, and communication regarding wishes. Read more
• The Unreferenced articles backlog drive is happening in February 2024 to reduce the backlog of articles tagged with {{Unreferenced}}. You can help reduce the backlog by adding citations to these articles. Sign up to participate!

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• Discuss this newsletter
• Subscribe
• Archive

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:01, 1 February 2024 (UTC)

SWMT

Dear Xaosflux, Hi and can you add my alternative account's name on SWMT Whitelist on per my request.😊~~ αvírαm|(tαlk) 14:25, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

That seems fine, but I don't normally deal with that - can you link me to the whitelist page you are referencing? — xaosflux ^Talk 14:30, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

Dear Xaosflux, thanks for reply, I've sending you an screenshort of SWMT whitelist My this account is added by mahler on my request before 1 year. 😊~~ αvírαm|(tαlk) 14:40, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

Sorry, I don't understand exactly what you are asking. Is there a page you want me to edit? If so, please provide a link. — xaosflux ^Talk 14:47, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

Dear Xaosflux,I'm talking about the whitelist that m:Small Wiki Monitoring Team looks like, which can only be put on the list by stewards, Bureucrats or administrators, you see at the top a picture of a Small Wiki Monitoring Team I see, I understand by giving you an example-On whitelist added by loftyabyss: No reason reason. 😊~~ αvírαm|(tαlk) 14:58, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

@Aviram7 if you don't give me a link to list you want me to edit, I can't do anything for you. If you don't know this, please follow up at meta:Talk:Small Wiki Monitoring Team. — xaosflux ^Talk 15:11, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

Ok, I'm ready to following you as you on meta:Talk:Small Wiki Monitoring Team. 😊~~ αvírαm|(tαlk) 15:20, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

AN/I report

Hi, User:GoutComplex has been reported at AN/I here and a month ago here, but neither the user or any admin have responded. I think that the user's continuing use of poor sources is a problem and that they should be encouraged to respond to the advice on User talk:GoutComplex. I have added some diffs to the latest report. Do you agree or am I expecting too much from them? I posted here because you were on the list of recently active admins. TSventon (talk) 15:01, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

@TSventon I'm not familiar with this issue and don't have time to work on it now. Other patrolling admins at ANI will check on it for you. — xaosflux ^Talk 15:12, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

Thank you, I fear that patrolling admins at AN/I have already indicated by their silence that they do not see a major problem. On the other hand, GoutComplex joined the AN/I discussion shortly after I mentioned them on your talk page. TSventon (talk) 15:59, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-06

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 site history pages now use the same HTML as the desktop history pages. If you hear of any problems relating to mobile history usage please point them to the phabricator task.
• On most wikis, admins can now block users from making specific actions. These actions are: uploading files, creating new pages, moving (renaming) pages, and sending thanks. The goal of this feature is to allow admins to apply blocks that are adequate to the blocked users' activity. Learn more about "action blocks". [21][22]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 6 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 7 February. It will be on all wikis from 8 February (calendar). [23][24]
• Talk pages permalinks that included diacritics and non-Latin script were malfunctioning. This issue is fixed. [25]

Future changes

• 24 Wikipedias with Reference Tooltips as a default gadget are encouraged to remove that default flag. This would make Reference Previews the new default for reference popups, leading to a more consistent experience across wikis. For 46 Wikipedias with less than 4 interface admins, the change is already scheduled for mid-February, unless there are concerns. The older Reference Tooltips gadget will still remain usable and will override this feature, if it is available on your wiki and you have enabled it in your settings. [26][27]

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MediaWiki message delivery 19:21, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

CSS help - section transclusion

Hey Xaos! Can you help me with something UI related?

In our Albanian village pump we have these "windows", called "Dritare", which you can check for yourself here, just below the main header. The idea is to have our VP act as a central hub where admins/experienced users can quickly check the main pages of our community through the so-called "windows" and interact with them to solve any issues without having to leave the page. This is achieved through section transclusion and it works rather fine on its own. Been using it for quite some months now. I was recently thinking to enhance it by introducing a new feature: "Non-empty" windows will have red backgrounds to indicate their backlog status and hopefully draw the attention of interested volunteers. Is there a way you think this can be achieved using only CSS? The problem lies on the "non-empty" part because they're never empty per se, having HTML tags and Mediawiki templates in them. I mean "non-empty" as in "not having any sections/issues open". I'm not sure how to handle targeting in this case or if it is even possible. Maybe that's not achievable using only CSS? - Klein Muçi (talk) 11:55, 8 February 2024 (UTC)

@Klein Muçi sorry, can't think of a pure CSS route for that. Also, it looks like you are really transcluding those entire page contents? (e.g. w:sq:Wikipedia:Administrata/Votimet/Kandidatura për administratorë/Kandidatura nga të tjerë not just a section of the page) - so page transclusion may be smoother then section tranclusion (which is known to be buggy). As you have these collapsed, I'm assuming you actually want to color the collapsed titles in w:sq:Wikipedia:Kuvendi/Hyrja? (Because otherwise the user still would have to bother expanding it to see the 'red' - and at that point they would already be seeing the 'empty'. So that means you'd be stuck with some javascript - to check for the presence of some sub.sub element, then have it change the class of the area to recolor. Short answer: CSS can't do complex conditionals. Potential workaround could be procedural, "when clearing this page, uncomment the {{empty}} line" - which could emmit something. — xaosflux ^Talk 13:27, 8 February 2024 (UTC)

The reason I went with sections instead of pages is because in that page you linked (admin-related one) the sections are supposed to always be there and that wouldn't show the usual "empty appearance" in the window while also showing the section titles forever in the VP's TOC. And yes, I want the background of the collapsed titles to be red. That's what I thought. Is there a way to have page-related JS instead of utilizing the common.js page? Similar to using page/styles.css for CSS styling? - Klein Muçi (talk) 13:51, 8 February 2024 (UTC)

Not yet. But if the target for who needs to see that color change is very low, you could use an opt-in gadget. — xaosflux ^Talk 14:14, 8 February 2024 (UTC)

Ah, interesting idea. Hadn't thought of that approach. Well, I guess that answers all my questions. Just one more thing out of personal curiosity: You say "not yet". Am I to understand there are on-going Phab requests about this? Or was it just in the general sense? - Klein Muçi (talk) 14:19, 8 February 2024 (UTC)

phab:T241524 is the closest. If you don't mind a button click, you could make a dashboard that you click a load button on the top of, and it can call a gadget with the load (sort of how this page works: WP:MYIP). — xaosflux ^Talk 14:30, 8 February 2024 (UTC)

Hmm... This goes a bit heavily on the gadget element. I was hoping for a more direct approach towards scripts in general. While one might argue that there isn't any difference between the two words, I believe in practice there is. For example, some time ago I was forced to use JS to solve an issue on our main page (removing some pipes and parentheses, we've talked about it together too). It would seem a bit weird to call this script "a gadget" and have it stand aside on the Mediawiki NS. It's just a script used to modify a single accompanying page. Anyway, this is just tangentially related to the topic's discussion.
Thank you for your suggestion! Unfortunately, knowing my community, any form of interaction diminishes the chance for help volunteering. The red background thing was thought precisely after the windows themselves still weren't enough to solve some issues which have been left open for years now. Nonetheless thank you for your help! — Klein Muçi (talk) 19:52, 8 February 2024 (UTC)

ITN recognition for Kelvin Kiptum

On 12 February 2024, In the news was updated with an item that involved the article Kelvin Kiptum, which you nominated and updated. If you know of another recently created or updated article suitable for inclusion in ITN, please suggest it on the candidates page. —Bagumba (talk) 10:43, 12 February 2024 (UTC)

The Signpost: 13 February 2024

• News and notes: Wikimedia Russia director declared "foreign agent" by Russian gov; EU prepares to pile on the papers

• Disinformation report: How low can the scammers go?

• Gallery: Before and After: Why you don't need to touch grass to dramatically improve images of flora and fauna

• In the media: Speaking in tongues, toeing the line, and dressing the part

• Serendipity: Is this guy the same as the one who was a Nazi?

• Traffic report: Griselda, Nikki, Carl, Jannik and two types of football

• Crossword: Our crossword to bear

• Comix: Strongly

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Tech News: 2024-07

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 WDQS Graph Split experiment is working and loaded onto 3 test servers. The team in charge is testing the split's impact and requires feedback from WDQS users through the UI or programmatically in different channels. [28][29][30] Users' feedback will validate the impact of various use cases and workflows around the Wikidata Query service. [31][32]

Problems

• There was a bug that affected the appearance of visited links when using mobile device to access wiki sites. It made the links appear black; this issue is fixed.

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 13 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 14 February. It will be on all wikis from 15 February (calendar). [33][34]
• As work continues on the grid engine deprecation,[35] tools on the grid engine will be stopped starting on February 14th, 2024. If you have tools actively migrating you can ask for an extension so they are not stopped. [36]

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

MediaWiki message delivery 05:47, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

Category:Spree killers has been nominated for merging

Category:Spree killers has been nominated for merging. A discussion is taking place to decide whether it complies with the categorization guidelines. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the categories for discussion page. Thank you. PARAKANYAA (talk) 15:33, 18 February 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-08

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 you have the "Email me when a page or a file on my watchlist is changed" option enabled, edits by bot accounts no longer trigger notification emails. Previously, only minor edits would not trigger the notification emails. [37]
• There are changes to how user and site scripts load for Vector 2022 on specific wikis. The changes impacted the following Wikis: all projects with Vector legacy as the default skin, Wikivoyage, and Wikibooks. Other wikis will be affected over the course of the next three months. Gadgets are not impacted. If you have been affected or want to minimize the impact on your project, see this ticket. Please coordinate and take action proactively.
• Newly auto-created accounts (the accounts you get when you visit a new wiki) now have the same local notification preferences as users who freshly register on that wiki. It is effected in four notification types listed in the task's description.
• The maximum file size when using Upload Wizard is now 5 GiB. [38]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 20 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 21 February. It will be on all wikis from 22 February (calendar). [39][40]

• Selected tools on the grid engine have been stopped as we prepare to shut down the grid on March 14th, 2024. The tool's code and data have not been deleted. If you are a maintainer and you want your tool re-enabled reach out to the team. Only tools that have asked for extension are still running on the grid.
• The CSS filter property can now be used in HTML style attributes in wikitext. [41]

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MediaWiki message delivery 15:35, 19 February 2024 (UTC)

Feedback request: Wikipedia policies and guidelines request for comment

Your feedback is requested at Wikipedia talk:Interface administrators on a "Wikipedia policies and guidelines" request for comment. Thank you for helping out!
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Hey there! Could you help me?

I have made a phylogeny tree for Jaklapallisaurus but I'm facing a couple problems:

1) I've tried SO HARD lol to get the basal most genus to be bagualosaurus but it doesn't show up :/

2) "Massopoda" should be sister to unaysauridae + plateosauridae BUT it doesn't wanna budge :/ it's right now sister to unaysauridae only DNB XD (talk) 14:31, 23 February 2024 (UTC)

@DNB XD I'm not very familiar with that template, however you need to avoid duplicating template variable values inside each template call (the x=y part). For example, you have {{clade}} being used, but have multiple "1=x" on the same entry. — xaosflux ^Talk 14:42, 23 February 2024 (UTC)

Oh, thank you! DNB XD (talk) 02:53, 24 February 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-09

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 visual editor is now the default editor for users who never edited before, at a small group of wikis. Research shows that users using this editor are slightly more successful publishing the edits they started, and slightly less successful publishing non-reverted edits. Users who defined the wikitext editor as their default on desktop will get the wikitext editor on mobile for their first edit on mobile as well. [42]
• The mw.config value wgGlobalGroups now only contains groups that are active in the wiki. Scripts no longer have to check whether the group is active on the wiki via an API request. A code example of the above is: if (/globalgroupname/.test(mw.config.get("wgGlobalGroups"))). [43]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 27 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 28 February. It will be on all wikis from 29 February (calendar). [44][45]

Future changes

• The right to change edit tags (changetags) will be removed from users in Wikimedia sites, keeping it by default for admins and bots only. Your community can ask to retain the old configuration on your wiki before this change happens. Please indicate in this ticket to keep it for your community before the end of March 2024.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 19:21, 26 February 2024 (UTC)

An early congratulations

Only one hour until the voting portion of the Steward elections end! I wanted to give you an early congratulations for the 100% keep ratio. You did a great job last year and I hope you continue with the amazing work! -- Grapefanatic (Talk) 13:14, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – March 2024

News and updates for administrators from the past month (February 2024).

Administrator changes

• Sdkb
• The Night Watch

• East718
• Isabelle Belato
• Mzajac
• Staecker
• Stan Shebs
• Sugarfish
• Tamzin

Bureaucrat changes

SilkTork

Guideline and policy news

• Phase I of the 2024 RfA review is now open for participation. Editors are invited to review, comment on, and propose improvements to the requests for adminship process.
• Following an RfC, the inactivity requirement for the removal of the interface administrator right increased from 6 months to 12 months.

Technical news

• The mobile site history pages now use the same HTML as the desktop history pages. (T353388)

Miscellaneous

• The 2024 appointees for the Ombuds commission are だ＊ぜ, AGK, Ameisenigel, Bennylin, Daniuu, Doǵu, Emufarmers, Faendalimas, MdsShakil, Minorax, Nehaoua, Renvoy and RoySmith as members, with Vermont serving as steward-observer.
• Following the 2024 Steward Elections, the following editors have been appointed as stewards: Ajraddatz, Albertoleoncio, EPIC, JJMC89, Johannnes89, Melos and Yahya.

---

• Discuss this newsletter
• Subscribe
• Archive

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 12:22, 1 March 2024 (UTC)

A kitten for you...

...for your wonderful work :)

– DreamRimmer (talk) 16:46, 1 March 2024 (UTC)

The Signpost: 2 March 2024

• News and notes: Wikimedia enters US Supreme court hearings as "the dolphin inadvertently caught in the net"

• Recent research: Images on Wikipedia "amplify gender bias"

• In the media: The Scottish Parliament gets involved, a wikirace on live TV, and the Foundation's CTO goes on record

• Obituary: Vami_IV

• Traffic report: Supervalentinefilmbowlday

• WikiCup report: High-scoring WikiCup first round comes to a close

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 11:03, 2 March 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-10

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 Special:Book page (as well as the associated "Create a book" functionality) provided by the old Collection extension has been removed from all Wikisource wikis, as it was broken. This does not affect the ability to download normal books, which is provided by the Wikisource extension. [46]
• Wikitech now uses the next-generation Parsoid wikitext parser by default to generate all pages in the Talk namespace. Report any problems on the Known Issues discussion page. You can use the ParserMigration extension to control the use of Parsoid; see the ParserMigration help documentation for more details.
• Maintenance on etherpad is completed. If you encounter any issues, please indicate in this ticket.
• Gadgets allow interface admins to create custom features with CSS and JavaScript. The Gadget and Gadget_definition namespaces and gadgets-definition-edit user right were reserved for an experiment in 2015, but were never used. These were visible on Special:Search and Special:ListGroupRights. The unused namespaces and user rights are now removed. No pages are moved, and no changes need to be made. [47]
• A usability improvement to the "Add a citation" in Wikipedia workflow has been made, the insert button was moved to the popup header. [48]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 5 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 6 March. It will be on all wikis from 7 March (calendar). [49][50]

Future changes

• All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on March 20. This is planned at 14:00 UTC. More information will be published in Tech News and will also be posted on individual wikis in the coming weeks. [51]
• The HTML markup of headings and section edit links will be changed later this year to improve accessibility. See Heading HTML changes for details. The new markup will be the same as in the new Parsoid wikitext parser. You can test your gadget or stylesheet with the new markup if you add ?useparsoid=1 to your URL (more info) or turn on Parsoid read views in your user options (more info).

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MediaWiki message delivery 19:45, 4 March 2024 (UTC)

New message from Aaron Liu

Hello, Xaosflux. You have new messages at MediaWiki talk:Gadget-watchlist-notice-core.js.
Message added 15:28, 8 March 2024 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

Aaron Liu (talk) 15:28, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

Editor experience invitation

Hi Xaosflux :) I'm looking for people to interview here. Feel free to pass if you're not interested. Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 17:15, 9 March 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-11

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 12 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 13 March. It will be on all wikis from 14 March (calendar). [52][53]
• After consulting with various communities, the line height of the text on the Minerva skin will be increased to its previous value of 1.65. Different options for typography can also be set using the options in the menu, as needed. [54]
• The active link color in Minerva will be changed to provide more consistency with our other platforms and best practices. [55]
• Structured data on Commons will no longer ask whether you want to leave the page without saving. This will prevent the “information you’ve entered may not be saved” popups from appearing when no information have been entered. It will also make file pages on Commons load faster in certain cases. However, the popups will be hidden even if information has indeed been entered. If you accidentally close the page before saving the structured data you entered, that data will be lost. [56]

Future changes

• All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on March 20. This is planned at 14:00 UTC. More information will be published in Tech News and will also be posted on individual wikis in the coming weeks. [57][58]

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

MediaWiki message delivery 23:02, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

RFA2024 update: no longer accepting new proposals in phase I

Hey there! This is to let you know that phase I of the 2024 requests for adminship (RfA) review is now no longer accepting new proposals. Lots of proposals remain open for discussion, and the current round of review looks to be on a good track towards making significant progress towards improving RfA's structure and environment. I'd like to give my heartfelt thanks to everyone who has given us their idea for change to make RfA better, and the same to everyone who has given the necessary feedback to improve those ideas. The following proposals remain open for discussion:

• Proposal 2, initiated by HouseBlaster, provides for the addition of a text box at Wikipedia:Requests for adminship reminding all editors of our policies and enforcement mechanisms around decorum.
• Proposals 3 and 3b, initiated by Barkeep49 and Usedtobecool, respectively, provide for trials of discussion-only periods at RfA. The first would add three extra discussion-only days to the beginning, while the second would convert the first two days to discussion-only.
• Proposal 5, initiated by SilkTork, provides for a trial of RfAs without threaded discussion in the voting sections.
• Proposals 6c and 6d, initiated by BilledMammal, provide for allowing users to be selected as provisional admins for a limited time through various concrete selection criteria and smaller-scale vetting.
• Proposal 7, initiated by Lee Vilenski, provides for the "General discussion" section being broken up with section headings.
• Proposal 9b, initiated by Reaper Eternal, provides for the requirement that allegations of policy violation be substantiated with appropriate links to where the alleged misconduct occured.
• Proposals 12c, 21, and 21b, initiated by City of Silver, Ritchie333, and HouseBlaster, respectively, provide for reducing the discretionary zone, which currently extends from 65% to 75%. The first would reduce it 65%–70%, the second would reduce it to 50%–66%, and the third would reduce it to 60%–70%.
• Proposal 13, initiated by Novem Lingaue, provides for periodic, privately balloted admin elections.
• Proposal 14, initiated by Kusma, provides for the creation of some minimum suffrage requirements to cast a vote.
• Proposals 16 and 16c, initiated by Thebiguglyalien and Soni, respectively, provide for community-based admin desysop procedures. 16 would desysop where consensus is established in favor at the administrators' noticeboard; 16c would allow a petition to force reconfirmation.
• Proposal 16e, initiated by BilledMammal, would extend the recall procedures of 16 to bureaucrats.
• Proposal 17, initiated by SchroCat, provides for "on-call" admins and 'crats to monitor RfAs for decorum.
• Proposal 18, initiated by theleekycauldron, provides for lowering the RfB target from 85% to 75%.
• Proposal 24, initiated by SportingFlyer, provides for a more robust alternate version of the optional candidate poll.
• Proposal 25, initiated by Femke, provides for the requirement that nominees be extended-confirmed in addition to their nominators.
• Proposal 27, initiated by WereSpielChequers, provides for the creation of a training course for admin hopefuls, as well as periodic retraining to keep admins from drifting out of sync with community norms.
• Proposal 28, initiated by HouseBlaster, tightens restrictions on multi-part questions.

To read proposals that were closed as unsuccessful, please see Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/2024 review/Phase I/Closed proposals. You are cordially invited once again to participate in the open discussions; when phase I ends, phase II will review the outcomes of trial proposals and refine the implementation details of other proposals. Another notification will be sent out when this phase begins, likely with the first successful close of a major proposal. Happy editing! theleekycauldron (talk • she/her), via:

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 10:53, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

Remove

@Samral is a sockpuppet pls remove extendedconfirmed rights. @Xaosflux 151.135.11.200 (talk) 13:01, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

We don't need to bother removing groups from blocked users. — xaosflux ^Talk 13:38, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

He annoys me and other users by cursing at you via email. Can you please turn off the email sending feature? 176.218.17.226 (talk) 14:06, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

As you are not a registered user, you wouldn't be getting email from us and we can't do anything about someone sending you email directly. If a registred user is having an issue, they can post at WP:ANI. — xaosflux ^Talk 14:09, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

I didn't log in so my username wouldn't show up. Pls turn off email sending. He's a sockpuppet and has no place here anymore. 176.218.17.226 (talk) 14:11, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

I'm not working on this, feel free to report to ANI, a checkuser may need to validate the claim. — xaosflux ^Talk 14:13, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

New message from ExclusiveEditor

 You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals) § AI for WP guidelines/ policies. ExclusiveEditor _{Notify Me!} 09:50, 17 March 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-12

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 notice "Language links are at the top of the page" that appears in the Vector 2022 skin main menu has been removed now that users have learned the new location of the Language switcher. [59]
• IP info feature displays data from Spur, an IP addresses database. Previously, the only data source for this feature was MaxMind. Now, IP info is more useful for patrollers. [60]
• The Toolforge Grid Engine services have been shut down after the final migration process from Grid Engine to Kubernetes. [61][62][63]
• Communities can now customize the default reasons for undeleting a page by creating MediaWiki:Undelete-comment-dropdown. [64]

Problems

• RevisionSlider is an interface to interactively browse a page's history. Users in right-to-left languages reported RevisionSlider reacting wrong to mouse clicks. This should be fixed now. [65]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 19 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 20 March. It will be on all wikis from 21 March (calendar). [66][67]
• All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on March 20. This is planned at 14:00 UTC. [68][69]

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

MediaWiki message delivery 17:38, 18 March 2024 (UTC)

Feedback request: Wikipedia policies and guidelines request for comment

Your feedback is requested at Wikipedia:Village pump (policy) on a "Wikipedia policies and guidelines" request for comment. Thank you for helping out!
You were randomly selected to receive this invitation from the list of Feedback Request Service subscribers. If you'd like not to receive these messages any more, you can opt out at any time by removing your name.

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Tech News: 2024-13

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

• An update was made on March 18th 2024 to how various projects load site, user JavaScript and CSS in Vector 2022 skin. A checklist is provided for site admins to follow.

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 26 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 27 March. It will be on all wikis from 28 March (calendar). [70][71]

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

MediaWiki message delivery 18:54, 25 March 2024 (UTC)

User Subpages deletion request.

Good day @Xaosflux please I would like to delete these redirect pages, some where created unintentionally. Please User:Thisasia/common.js/common.js, User:Thisasia/sandbox/common.js User:Thisasia/Status2User:Thisasia/sandbox and these sanebox doc pages, User:Thisasia/sandbox/Doc, User:Thisasia/sandbox/doc and then with User:Thisasia/StatusChanger.js Thanks very much.
Thisasia  (Talk) 01:16, 27 March 2024 (UTC)

@Thisasia looks like someone already did. — xaosflux ^Talk 09:03, 27 March 2024 (UTC)

Yes indeed. An admin has done that few hours ago, thanks very and have a good time.
Thisasia  ^(Talk) 09:09, 27 March 2024 (UTC)

The Signpost: 29 March 2024

• Technology report: Millions of readers still seeing broken pages as "temporary" disabling of graph extension nears its second year

• Interview: Interview on Wikimedia Foundation fundraising and finance strategy

• Special report: 19-page PDF accuses Wikipedia of bias against Israel, suggests editors be forced to reveal their real names, and demands a new feature allowing people to view the history of Wikipedia articles

• Op-Ed: Wikipedia in the age of personality-driven knowledge

• Recent research: "Newcomer Homepage" feature mostly fails to boost new editors

• News and notes: Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee Charter ratified

• In the media: "For me it’s the autism": AARoad editors on the fork more traveled

• Traffic report: He rules over everything, on the land called planet Dune

• Humour: Letters from the editors

• Comix: Layout issue

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 22:41, 29 March 2024 (UTC)

Hi

Hello @Xaosflux, no one is interested in my request. Could you please take a look? Lionel Cristiano^? 12:41, 30 March 2024 (UTC)

@Lionel Cristiano someone will get to it, as you can see there are much older requests backlogged on that page right now. — xaosflux ^Talk 17:36, 30 March 2024 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – April 2024

News and updates for administrators from the past month (March 2024).

Administrator changes

• Kbdank71
• Kosack
• NrDg
• TLSuda

Guideline and policy news

• An RfC is open to convert all current and future community discretionary sanctions to (community designated) contentious topics procedure.

Technical news

• The Toolforge Grid Engine services have been shut down after the final migration process from Grid Engine to Kubernetes. (T313405)

Arbitration

• An arbitration case has been opened to look into "the intersection of managing conflict of interest editing with the harassment (outing) policy".

Miscellaneous

• Editors are invited to sign up for The Core Contest, an initiative running from April 15 to May 31, which aims to improve vital and other core articles on Wikipedia.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:48, 1 April 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-14

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

• Users of the reading accessibility beta feature will notice that the default line height for the standard and large text options has changed. [72]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 2 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 3 April. It will be on all wikis from 4 April (calendar). [73][74]

Future changes

• The Wikimedia Foundation has an annual plan. The annual plan decides what the Wikimedia Foundation will work on. You can now read the draft key results for the Product and Technology department. They are suggestions for what results the Foundation wants from big technical changes from July 2024 to June 2025. You can comment on the talk page.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 03:34, 2 April 2024 (UTC)

Moomoo

About 4 years ago you put protection on this page as a redirect but the notes say it a was removed.. the redirect seems to be active and i was wondering if you could remove the protection? Thanks QuantWiz (talk) 18:26, 4 April 2024 (UTC)

@QuantWiz I actually lowered the protection, though consider it still a vandalism target. If you have an edit request for the page, please use the talk page. Feel free to appeal at WP:RFUP. — xaosflux ^Talk 18:29, 4 April 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for the quick reply.. the talk page mentions putting a page for Moomoo the trading app in there which is what i was considering. QuantWiz (talk) 18:32, 4 April 2024 (UTC)

@QuantWiz a good way to do that is to write the page at Draft:Moomoo then ask for it to be moved over when it is ready. — xaosflux ^Talk 18:36, 4 April 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-15

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

• Web browsers can use tools called extensions. There is now a Chrome extension called Citation Needed which you can use to see if an online statement is supported by a Wikipedia article. This is a small experiment to see if Wikipedia can be used this way. Because it is a small experiment, it can only be used in Chrome in English.
• A new Edit Recovery feature has been added to all wikis, available as a user preference. Once you enable it, your in-progress edits will be stored in your web browser, and if you accidentally close an editing window or your browser or computer crashes, you will be prompted to recover the unpublished text. Please leave any feedback on the project talk page. This was the #8 wish in the 2023 Community Wishlist Survey.
• Initial results of Edit check experiments have been published. Edit Check is now deployed as a default feature at the wikis that tested it. Let us know if you want your wiki to be part of the next deployment of Edit check. [75][76]
• Readers using the Minerva skin on mobile will notice there has been an improvement in the line height across all typography settings. [77]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 9 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 10 April. It will be on all wikis from 11 April (calendar). [78][79]
• New accounts and logged-out users will get the visual editor as their default editor on mobile. This deployment is made at all wikis except for the English Wikipedia. [80]

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

MediaWiki message delivery 23:35, 8 April 2024 (UTC)

Follow up from my edit request.

Could you make a similar adjustment on all of the other padlock pages? Geardona (talk to me?) 16:08, 10 April 2024 (UTC)

@Geardona please drop edit requests so your ask doesn't get lost. You don't have to "sandbox" them for just updating that file description - just put what you want in the ER. — xaosflux ^Talk 16:35, 10 April 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-16

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

• Between 2 April and 8 April, on wikis using Flagged Revisions, the "Reverted" tag was not applied to undone edits. In addition, page moves, protections and imports were not autoreviewed. This problem is now fixed. [81][82]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 16 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 17 April. It will be on all wikis from 18 April (calendar). [83][84]
• Default category sort keys will now affect categories added by templates placed in footnotes. Previously footnotes used the page title as the default sort key even if a different default sort key was specified (category-specific sort keys already worked). [85]
• A new variable page_last_edit_age will be added to abuse filters. It tells how many seconds ago the last edit to a page was made. [86]

Future changes

• Volunteer developers are kindly asked to update the code of their tools and features to handle temporary accounts. Learn more.
• Four database fields will be removed from database replicas (including Quarry). This affects only the abuse_filter and abuse_filter_history tables. Some queries might need to be updated. [87]

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

MediaWiki message delivery 23:27, 15 April 2024 (UTC)

Block me

Hello @Xaosflux, may you do me a favor and block me until May 10th? I have a few real-life obligations that Wikipedia is getting in the way of. Thanks! Bremps... 02:21, 16 April 2024 (UTC)

 Done — xaosflux ^Talk 09:15, 16 April 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-17

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

• Starting this week, newcomers editing Wikipedia will be encouraged to try structured tasks. Structured tasks have been shown to improve newcomer activation and retention. [88]
• You can nominate your favorite tools for the fifth edition of the Coolest Tool Award. Nominations will be open until May 10.

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 23 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 24 April. It will be on all wikis from 25 April (calendar). [89][90]

Future changes

• This is the last warning that by the end of May 2024 the Vector 2022 skin will no longer share site and user scripts/styles with old Vector. For user-scripts that you want to keep using on Vector 2022, copy the contents of Special:MyPage/vector.js to Special:MyPage/vector-2022.js. There are more technical details available. Interface administrators who foresee this leading to lots of technical support questions may wish to send a mass message to your community, as was done on French Wikipedia. [91]

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

MediaWiki message delivery 20:26, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

CHU help

Hey, I can't get any answer @ IRC, I'm working the new request at CHU/S and go a anti-spoof hit, if I had this hit at ACC I'd go ahead and create the account, but here (at rename) it seems different, does this request need to go to CHU/U? - FlightTime (open channel) 19:35, 24 April 2024 (UTC)

looking. — xaosflux ^Talk 19:39, 24 April 2024 (UTC)

@FlightTime 8 year old, never contributed - I'm not worried about the conflict. — xaosflux ^Talk 19:42, 24 April 2024 (UTC)

Great, that was my take also. - FlightTime (open channel) 19:52, 24 April 2024 (UTC)

JJMC89 says (via IRC) go ahead and rename. - FlightTime (open channel) 19:49, 24 April 2024 (UTC)

so thats +2 :) — xaosflux ^Talk 19:50, 24 April 2024 (UTC)

Thanx, - FlightTime (open channel) 19:52, 24 April 2024 (UTC)

The Signpost: 25 April 2024

• In the media: Censorship and wikiwashing looming over RuWiki, edit wars over San Francisco politics, and another wikirace on live TV

• News and notes: A sigh of relief for open access as Italy makes a slight U-turn on their cultural heritage reproduction law

• WikiConference report: WikiConference North America 2023 in Toronto recap

• WikiProject report: WikiProject Newspapers (Not WP:NOTNEWS)

• Recent research: New survey of over 100,000 Wikipedia users

• Traffic report: O.J., cricket and a three body problem

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 11:50, 25 April 2024 (UTC)

Sarcasm

Thank you for your sarcastic response to my mistake. I did not mean to press save on the main page in Rater. Ktkvtsh (talk) 22:31, 26 April 2024 (UTC)

@Ktkvtsh I saw you weren't a newbie so hope that didn't come of BITEy or callous - how about we both split this:

Whack! You've been whacked with a wet trout. Don't take this too seriously. Someone just wants to let you know that you did something silly.

? — xaosflux ^Talk 22:47, 26 April 2024 (UTC)

Haha sounds good. Just felt the need to explain myself. Glad we can both laugh about it.

have a great evening! Ktkvtsh (talk) 22:49, 26 April 2024 (UTC)

• Just wanted to say... we were all having a laugh about how our main page is just a weedy little stub on Discord. Perhaps we should work to get it to featured article status. I see it's severely lacking on sources! —k6ka 🍁 (Talk · Contributions) 03:09, 27 April 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-18

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

Example of a talk page with the new design, in French.

• The appearance of talk pages changed for the following wikis: Azerbaijani Wikipedia, Bengali Wikipedia, German Wikipedia, Persian Wikipedia, Hebrew Wikipedia, Hindi Wikipedia, Indonesian Wikipedia, Korean Wikipedia, Dutch Wikipedia, Portuguese Wikipedia, Romanian Wikipedia, Thai Wikipedia, Turkish Wikipedia, Ukrainian Wikipedia, Vietnamese Wikipedia. These wikis participated to a test, where 50% of users got the new design, for one year. As this test gave positive results, the new design is deployed on these wikis as the default design. It is possible to opt-out these changes in user preferences ("Show discussion activity"). The deployment will happen at all wikis in the coming weeks. [92]
• Seven new wikis have been created:
  • a Wikipedia in Betawi (w:bew:) [93]
  • a Wikipedia in Kusaal (w:kus:) [94]
  • a Wikipedia in Igala (w:igl:) [95]
  • a Wiktionary in Karakalpak (wikt:kaa:) [96]
  • a Wikisource in Burmese (s:my:) [97]
  • a Wikisource in Malay (s:ms:) [98]
  • a Wikisource in Georgian (s:ka:) [99]
• You can now watch message groups/projects on Translatewiki.net. Initially, this feature will notify you of added or deleted messages in these groups. [100]
• Dark mode is now available on all wikis, on mobile web for logged-in users who opt into the advanced mode. This is the early release of the feature. Technical editors are invited to check for accessibility issues on wikis. See more detailed guidelines.

Problems

• Kartographer maps can use an alternative visual style without labels, by using mapstyle="osm". This wasn't working in previews, creating the wrong impression that it wasn't supported. This has now been fixed. [101]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 30 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 1 May. It will be on all wikis from 2 May (calendar). [102][103]

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

MediaWiki message delivery 03:31, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – May 2024

News and updates for administrators from the past month (April 2024).

Administrator changes

Nyttend

• JohnOwens
• Killiondude
• MelanieN
• Nihonjoe

Bureaucrat changes

Nihonjoe

CheckUser changes

Joe Roe

Oversight changes

GeneralNotability

Guideline and policy news

• Phase I of the 2024 requests for adminship review has concluded. Several proposals have passed outright and will proceed to implementation, including creating a discussion-only period (3b) and administrator elections (13) on a trial basis. Other successful proposals, such as creating a reminder of civility norms (2), will undergo further refinement in Phase II. Proposals passed on a trial basis will be discussed in Phase II, after their trials conclude. Further details on specific proposals can be found in the full report.

Technical news

• Partial action blocks are now in effect on the English Wikipedia. This means that administrators have the ability to restrict users from certain actions, including uploading files, moving pages and files, creating new pages, and sending thanks. T280531

Arbitration

• The arbitration case Conflict of interest management has been closed.

Miscellaneous

• This may be a good time to reach out to potential nominees to ask if they would consider an RfA.
• A New Pages Patrol backlog drive is happening in May 2024 to reduce the number of unreviewed articles in the new pages feed. Currently, there is a backlog of over 15,000 articles awaiting review. Sign up here to participate!
• Voting for the Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee (U4C) election is open until 9 May 2024. Read the voting page on Meta-Wiki and cast your vote here!

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• Subscribe
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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:25, 2 May 2024 (UTC)

Reminder to vote now to select members of the first U4C

You can find this message translated into additional languages on Meta-wiki. Please help translate to other languages.

Dear Wikimedian,

You are receiving this message because you previously participated in the UCoC process.

This is a reminder that the voting period for the Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee (U4C) ends on May 9, 2024. Read the information on the voting page on Meta-wiki to learn more about voting and voter eligibility.

The Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee (U4C) is a global group dedicated to providing an equitable and consistent implementation of the UCoC. Community members were invited to submit their applications for the U4C. For more information and the responsibilities of the U4C, please review the U4C Charter.

Please share this message with members of your community so they can participate as well.

On behalf of the UCoC project team,

RamzyM (WMF) 23:10, 2 May 2024 (UTC)

Help for the lame

I have a script installed (somewhere) that allows me to click on "rollback all". I just invoked it at Special:contributions/GauMutra, and it didn't work. I tried it again in case I misclicked, and it still didn't work. Given that I'm not sure who wrote the script, I'm not sure to whom I should go for help. It might be User:Gracenotes, but if it is, they haven't edited in over a decade (a shame, it's a pretty username). Can you help? Sorry for my shortcomings in this area.--Bbb23 (talk) 13:39, 4 May 2024 (UTC)

@Bbb23: you have 2 rollback related userscripts:

1. User:Gracenotes/rollback.js via User:Bbb23/vector.js (should only load when your skin is set to vector) and
2. User:Writ Keeper/Scripts/massRollback.js via User:Bbb23/common.js

The second of those specifically inserts a "rollback all" link, so I'd start with asking Writ Keeper. — xaosflux ^Talk 15:06, 4 May 2024 (UTC)

Will do; thanks a lot! --Bbb23 (talk) 16:05, 4 May 2024 (UTC)

I tried it again just now just in case, and it worked. I don't suppose you know why it didn't work (I use it fairly frequently, so not working is more of an anomaly than working). Writ Keeper?--Bbb23 (talk) 16:06, 4 May 2024 (UTC)

Sorry no, scripts can be tricky - sometimes they race against each other and can cause oddities, especially if you have many scripts from different places. — xaosflux ^Talk 00:42, 6 May 2024 (UTC)

Would it be better to remove the Gracenotes script? I don't think it ever runs, it's not supported, and the WK script works anyway.--Bbb23 (talk) 01:01, 6 May 2024 (UTC)

If you're not using vector, it shouldn't run. But I suggest removing any script you are not using. Just put "//" at the front of the line to disable it in case you want to use it again later. — xaosflux ^Talk 01:09, 6 May 2024 (UTC)

I am using Vector (Vector Legacy), but I've disabled it anyway. Given that I don't know what it's supposed to do, I can't really know if it ever runs, but if I find I can't rollback the way I wish to, I can always re-enable it. This whole thing makes me tired, but I do appreciate your help.--Bbb23 (talk) 02:05, 6 May 2024 (UTC)

RFA2024 update: phase I concluded, phase II begins

Hi there! Phase I of the Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/2024 review has concluded, with several impactful changes gaining community consensus and proceeding to various stages of implementation. Some proposals will be implemented in full outright; others will be discussed at phase II before being implemented; and still others will proceed on a trial basis before being brought to phase II. The following proposals have gained consensus:

• Proposals 2 and 9b (phase II discussion): Add a reminder of civility norms at RfA and Require links for claims of specific policy violations
• Proposal 3b (in trial): Make the first two days discussion-only
• Proposal 13 (in trial): Admin elections
• Proposal 14 (implemented): Suffrage requirements
• Proposals 16 and 16c (phase II discussion): Allow the community to initiate recall RfAs and Community recall process based on dewiki
• Proposal 17 (phase II discussion): Have named Admins/crats to monitor infractions
• Proposal 24 (phase II discussion): Provide better mentoring for becoming an admin and the RfA process
• Proposal 25 (implemented): Require nominees to be extended confirmed

See the project page for a full list of proposals and their outcomes. A huge thank-you to everyone who has participated so far :) looking forward to seeing lots of hard work become a reality in phase II. theleekycauldron (talk), via MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 08:09, 5 May 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-19

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

Example of a talk page with the new design, in French.

• The appearance of talk pages changed for all wikis, except for Commons, Wikidata and most Wikipedias (a few have already received this design change). You can read the detail of the changes on Diff. It is possible to opt-out these changes in user preferences ("Show discussion activity"). The deployment will happen at remaining wikis in the coming weeks. [104][105]
• Interface admins now have greater control over the styling of article components on mobile with the introduction of the SiteAdminHelper. More information on how styles can be disabled can be found at the extension's page. [106]
• Wikimedia Enterprise has added article body sections in JSON format and a curated short description field to the existing parsed Infobox. This expansion to the API is also available via Wikimedia Cloud Services. [107]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 7 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 8 May. It will be on all wikis from 9 May (calendar). [108][109]
• When you look at the Special:Log page, the first view is labelled "All public logs", but it only shows some logs. This label will now say "Main public logs". [110]

Future changes

• A new service will be built to replace Extension:Graph. Details can be found in the latest update regarding this extension.
• Starting May 21, English Wikipedia and German Wikipedia will get the possibility to activate "Add a link". This is part of the progressive deployment of this tool to all Wikipedias. These communities can activate and configure the feature locally. [111]

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

MediaWiki message delivery 16:42, 6 May 2024 (UTC)

Feedback request: Wikipedia proposals request for comment

Your feedback is requested at Template talk:Infobox person on a "Wikipedia proposals" request for comment. Thank you for helping out!
You were randomly selected to receive this invitation from the list of Feedback Request Service subscribers. If you'd like not to receive these messages any more, you can opt out at any time by removing your name.

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Tech News: 2024-20

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

• On Wikisource there is a special page listing pages of works without corresponding scan images. Now you can use the new magic word __EXPECTWITHOUTSCANS__ to exclude certain pages (list of editions or translations of works) from that list. [112]
• If you use the user-preference "Show preview without reloading the page", then the template-page feature "Preview page with this template (what's this?)" will now also work without reloading the page. [113]
• Kartographer maps can now specify an alternative text via the alt= attribute. This is identical in usage to the alt= attribute in the image and gallery syntax. An exception for this feature is wikis like Wikivoyage where the miniature maps are interactive. [114]
• The old Guided Tour for the "New Filters for Edit Review" feature has been removed. It was created in 2017 to show people with older accounts how the interface had changed, and has now been seen by most of the intended people. [115]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 14 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 15 May. It will be on all wikis from 16 May (calendar). [116][117]
• The Special:Search results page will now use CSS flex attributes, for better accessibility, instead of a table. If you have a gadget or script that adjusts search results, you should update your script to the new HTML structure. [118]

Future changes

• In the Vector 2022 skin, main pages will be displayed at full width (like special pages). The goal is to keep the number of characters per line large enough. This is related to the coming changes to typography in Vector 2022. Learn more. [119]
• Two columns of the pagelinks database table (pl_namespace and pl_title) are being dropped soon. Users must use two columns of the new linktarget table instead (lt_namespace and lt_title). In your existing SQL queries:
  1. Replace JOIN pagelinks with JOIN linktarget and pl_ with lt_ in the ON statement
  2. Below that add JOIN pagelinks ON lt_id = pl_target_id
  • See phab:T222224 for technical reasoning. [120][121]

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

MediaWiki message delivery 23:56, 13 May 2024 (UTC)

Sorry for bothering you at trwiki

I felt the need to apologize after i removed your babel. 85.99.19.213 (talk) 17:39, 14 May 2024 (UTC)

No worries, I occasionally make technical edits there but want to be clear I don't understand the language. — xaosflux ^Talk 18:04, 14 May 2024 (UTC)

About informing people on a RfC

Hello. I messaged you because you are a steward and thus have more knowledge of policies than me, a commoner. I want to leave a message on a user’s talk page regarding the recent RfC on trwiki as I think he can shed some light to some problems trwiki has. Is such a thing allowed? 85.99.19.213 (talk) 14:16, 15 May 2024 (UTC)

As you are asking this here, on the English Wikipedia, I'm assuming you are talking about edits on this project. Sending a neutral advertisement of an RFC is generally fine here, provided you are not otherwise prevented from editing here (such as by logging out to edit while you are blocked on this project). If you are asking about trwiki, I have no idea what their policies are, I'm not part of that community. — xaosflux ^Talk 14:22, 15 May 2024 (UTC)

thank you. 85.99.19.213 (talk) 09:21, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

Feedback request: Wikipedia proposals request for comment

Your feedback is requested at Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/2024 review/Phase II/Designated RfA monitors on a "Wikipedia proposals" request for comment. Thank you for helping out!
You were randomly selected to receive this invitation from the list of Feedback Request Service subscribers. If you'd like not to receive these messages any more, you can opt out at any time by removing your name.

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The Signpost: 16 May 2024

• News and notes: Democracy in action: multiple elections

• Special report: Will the new RfA reform come to the rescue of administrators?

• Arbitration report: Ruined temples for posterity to ponder over – arbitration from '22 to '24

• In the media: Deadnames on the French Wikipedia, and a duel between Russian wikis

• Op-Ed: Wikidata to split as sheer volume of information overloads infrastructure

• Comix: Generations

• Traffic report: Crawl out through the fallout, baby

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 10:59, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

Block me forever

Just block me permanently. I have caused mass destruction in 2021-2022 as 2001:4454:600:0:0:0:0:0/40. Block params: (anon. only, account creation blocked, email disabled, cannot edit own talk page) 143.44.165.165 (talk) 23:37, 18 May 2024 (UTC)

 Not done we don't do self-requested IP address blocks. — xaosflux ^Talk 00:27, 19 May 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-21

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 Nuke feature, which enables administrators to mass delete pages, will now correctly delete pages which were moved to another title. [122]
• New changes have been made to the UploadWizard in Wikimedia Commons: the overall layout has been improved, by following new styling and spacing for the form and its fields; the headers and helper text for each of the fields was changed; the Caption field is now a required field, and there is an option for users to copy their caption into the media description. [123][124]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 21 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 22 May. It will be on all wikis from 23 May (calendar). [125][126]
• The HTML used to render all headings is being changed to improve accessibility. It will change on 22 May in some skins (Timeless, Modern, CologneBlue, Nostalgia, and Monobook). Please test gadgets on your wiki on these skins and report any related problems so that they can be resolved before this change is made in all other skins. The developers are also considering the introduction of a Gadget API for adding buttons to section titles if that would be helpful to tool creators, and would appreciate any input you have on that.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 23:02, 20 May 2024 (UTC)

article-section-source-editor in edit summaries

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T323875

Hi, remember Wikipedia:Village_pump_(miscellaneous)/Archive_77#Why_is_"#article-section-source-editor"_appearing_in_edit_summaries?? The question has come up again at Wikipedia:Help_desk#What_does_#article-section-source-editor_mean?. DuncanHill (talk) 11:19, 27 May 2024 (UTC)

• I replied there, its sloppy software tracking, being improved in phab:T323875 eventually. — xaosflux ^Talk 15:02, 27 May 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-22

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

• Several bugs related to the latest updates to the UploadWizard on Wikimedia Commons have been fixed. For more information, see T365107 and T365119.
• In March 2024 a new addPortlet API was added to allow gadgets to create new portlets (menus) in the skin. In certain skins this can be used to create dropdowns. Gadget developers are invited to try it and give feedback.
• Some CSS in the Minerva skin has been removed to enable easier community configuration. Interface editors should check the rendering on mobile devices for aspects related to the classes: .collapsible, .multicol, .reflist, .coordinates, .topicon. Further details are available on replacement CSS if it is needed.

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 28 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 29 May. It will be on all wikis from 30 May (calendar). [127][128]
• When you visit a wiki where you don't yet have a local account, local rules such as edit filters can sometimes prevent your account from being created. Starting this week, MediaWiki takes your global rights into account when evaluating whether you can override such local rules. [129]

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

MediaWiki message delivery 00:13, 28 May 2024 (UTC)

Langton's ant

Thank you again for your help in getting the Conway's Game of Life gadget going. I'd also like to add the mw:Template:Langton's ant gadget to the Langton's ant article. Do I need a separate edit request for that, or can I just ask you directly? (cc: Pppery.) 28bytes (talk) 16:04, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

This looks like another basic one. The general workflow for adding a new gadget it to propose it (it can be on the article talk in this case) - then to advertise it at WP:VPT. If the discussion is open for a reasonable period of time with no objection (perhaps a week) activate the edit request and a patrolling intadmin will likely come take care of it. If we run across something that will be complicated (like that xray viewer at VPT right now) or something that will have a large deployment scope (a certain chess game player comes to mind) - it will require more discussion. — xaosflux ^Talk 16:51, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

Sounds good, thanks. 28bytes (talk) 17:17, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

Another update

Can we get another update of the CT scan viewer? A number of the requested improvements were made. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 15:31, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

The JS was done, the CSS was not done. See MediaWiki talk:Gadget-ImageStackPopup.css. The best way to request sync updates for these is to file an edit request on the associated talk page. — xaosflux ^Talk 15:42, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

Hey Xaosflux What are next steps to expand use… we have solved the requests. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 19:28, 7 June 2024 (UTC)

@Doc James hmm, that's a great question. While this could be used for anything, I'm assuming your primary concern is on medical articles; and it would probably be a good idea to get some more eyes on the demo from people like you that are familiar with reading those pages. Perhaps bring it up at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Medicine, maybe make a small demo page in project space and point people to it with the parameter that will load the gadget when they follow the link? I don't see anything dangerous in this script, so not worried there - but could it hang up certain browsers, or break page layouts somehow - not sure. — xaosflux ^Talk 20:49, 7 June 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-23

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

• It is now possible for local administrators to add new links to the bottom of the site Tools menu without JavaScript. Documentation is available. [130]
• The message name for the definition of the tracking category of WikiHiero has changed from "MediaWiki:Wikhiero-usage-tracking-category" to "MediaWiki:Wikihiero-usage-tracking-category". [131]
• One new wiki has been created: a Wikipedia in Kadazandusun (w:dtp:) [132]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 4 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 5 June. It will be on all wikis from 6 June (calendar). [133][134]

Future changes

• Next week, on wikis with the Vector 2022 skin as the default, logged-out desktop users will be able to choose between different font sizes. The default font size will also be increased for them. This is to make Wikimedia projects easier to read. Learn more.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 22:33, 3 June 2024 (UTC)

CSS issue

The right sidebar goes underneath the main content in small screens

Hello Xaos! Hope you're doing okay. It's been a while without talking. Can you help me diagnose a CSS problem I'm having with the "new" Vector theme on my homewiki? As you can see from the image, the right sidebar goes underneath the main content on small screens. The same thing doesn't happen with the left sidebar. This is related to our grid (obviously) because when removing the CSS properties for it is starts behaving normally. Any idea what element do I need to target on the skin to handle this? - Klein Muçi (talk) 10:39, 4 June 2024 (UTC)

@Klein Muçi Are you using a fixed-width (or min-width) element in your localization? If so, take that off, it needs to be able to dynamically adjust. — xaosflux ^Talk 13:48, 4 June 2024 (UTC)

We do have fixed widths but that's not the problem because normally it would just change the layout configuration when it is exceeded. The issue is the way the sidebar is designed to behave, that is, to go underneath the other elements instead of pushing them so the layout changes. The left sidebar does that, the right doesn't. — Klein Muçi (talk) 17:21, 4 June 2024 (UTC)

Suggest you ask over at mw:Talk:Reading/Web/Desktop Improvements. — xaosflux ^Talk 18:04, 4 June 2024 (UTC)

Thank you! Just did. — Klein Muçi (talk) 08:14, 5 June 2024 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – June 2024

News and updates for administrators from the past month (May 2024).

Administrator changes

Graham Beards

• Deskana
• Mets501
• Staxringold

Bureaucrat changes

• Deskana
• Warofdreams

Oversight changes

Dreamy Jazz

Guideline and policy news

• Phase II of the 2024 RfA review has commenced to improve and refine the proposals passed in Phase I.

Technical news

• The Nuke feature, which enables administrators to mass delete pages, will now correctly delete pages which were moved to another title. T43351

Arbitration

• The arbitration case Venezuelan politics has been closed.
• The Committee is seeking volunteers for various roles, including access to the conflict of interest VRT queue.

Miscellaneous

• WikiProject Reliability's unsourced statements drive is happening in June 2024 to replace {{citation needed}} tags with references! Sign up here to participate!

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:45, 5 June 2024 (UTC)

The Signpost: 8 June 2024

• News and notes: Wikimedia Foundation publishes its Form 990 for fiscal year 2022-2023

• Technology report: New Page Patrol receives a much-needed software upgrade

• Deletion report: The lore of Kalloor

• In the media: National cable networks get in on the action arguing about what the first sentence of a Wikipedia article ought to say

• News from the WMF: Progress on the plan — how the Wikimedia Foundation advanced on its Annual Plan goals during the first half of fiscal year 2023-2024

• Opinion: Public response to the editors of Settler Colonial Studies

• Recent research: ChatGPT did not kill Wikipedia, but might have reduced its growth

• Featured content: We didn't start the wiki

• Essay: No queerphobia

• Special report: RetractionBot is back to life!

• Traffic report: Chimps, Eurovision, and the return of the Baby Reindeer

• Comix: The Wikipediholic Family

• Humour: Wikipedia rattled by sophisticated cyberattack of schoolboy typing "balls" in infobox

• Concept: Palimpsestuous

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 12:28, 8 June 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-24

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 software used to render SVG files has been updated to a new version, fixing many longstanding bugs in SVG rendering. [135]
• The HTML used to render all headings is being changed to improve accessibility. It was changed last week in some skins (Vector legacy and Minerva). Please test gadgets on your wiki on these skins and report any related problems so that they can be resolved before this change is made in Vector-2022. The developers are still considering the introduction of a Gadget API for adding buttons to section titles if that would be helpful to tool creators, and would appreciate any input you have on that.
• The HTML markup used for citations by Parsoid changed last week. In places where Parsoid previously added the mw-reference-text class, Parsoid now also adds the reference-text class for better compatibility with the legacy parser. More details are available. [136]

Problems

• There was a bug with the Content Translation interface that caused the tools menus to appear in the wrong location. This has now been fixed. [137]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 11 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 12 June. It will be on all wikis from 13 June (calendar). [138][139]
• The new version of MediaWiki includes another change to the HTML markup used for citations: Parsoid will now generate a <span class="mw-cite-backlink"> wrapper for both named and unnamed references for better compatibility with the legacy parser. Interface administrators should verify that gadgets that interact with citations are compatible with the new markup. More details are available. [140]
• On multilingual wikis that use the <translate> system, there is a feature that shows potentially-outdated translations with a pink background until they are updated or confirmed. From this week, confirming translations will be logged, and there is a new user-right that can be required for confirming translations if the community requests it. [141]

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

MediaWiki message delivery 20:18, 10 June 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-25

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

• People who attempt to add an external link in the visual editor will now receive immediate feedback if they attempt to link to a domain that a project has decided to block. Please see Edit check for more details. [142]
• The new Community Configuration extension is available on Test Wikipedia. This extension allows communities to customize specific features to meet their local needs. Currently only Growth features are configurable, but the extension will support other Community Configuration use cases in the future. [143][144]
• The dark mode beta feature is now available on category and help pages, as well as more special pages. There may be contrast issues. Please report bugs on the project talk page. [145]

Problems

• Cloud Services tools were not available for 25 minutes last week. This was caused by a faulty hardware cable in the data center. [146]
• Last week, styling updates were made to the Vector 2022 skin. This caused unforeseen issues with templates, hatnotes, and images. Changes to templates and hatnotes were reverted. Most issues with images were fixed. If you still see any, report them here. [147]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 18 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 19 June. It will be on all wikis from 20 June (calendar). [148][149]
• Starting June 18, the Reference Edit Check will be deployed to a new set of Wikipedias. This feature is intended to help newcomers and to assist edit-patrollers by inviting people who are adding new content to a Wikipedia article to add a citation when they do not do so themselves. During a test at 11 wikis, the number of citations added more than doubled when Reference Check was shown to people. Reference Check is community configurable. [150]
• Mailing lists will be unavailable for roughly two hours on Tuesday 10:00–12:00 UTC. This is to enable migration to a new server and upgrade its software. [151]

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

MediaWiki message delivery 23:47, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

Possibly inactive admin

• tóraí (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

Hi. Y in the world isn't this user listed in Wikipedia:List of administrators/Inactive?102.159.63.204 (talk) 14:18, 18 June 2024 (UTC)

Hi 102*, that page is maintained by a bot and is not used for any 'official' processing. You may contact the bot operator here: User talk:Rick Block; it could be missing the account due to the non-English username.

As far as Wikipedia:Administrators#Procedural_removal_for_inactive_administrators processing goes:

• Criteria 1: (SATISIFIED) - there has been an edit in the last 12 months
• Criteria 2: (SATISIFIED) - there have been over 100 edits in the last 60 months. Additionally they were warned of low editing averages as recently as Feb this year.

— xaosflux ^Talk 14:41, 18 June 2024 (UTC)

rick Block, can you make changes to your bot to insert usernames with diacritics?102.156.65.169 (talk) 11:52, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

I'll look into this. -- Rick Block (talk) 23:42, 20 September 2024 (UTC)

By the way, can you downgrade edit-protection for user:edit filter from template to semi? My reason is because the target page is semi-edit-protected, but also admin-move-protected.102.159.8.166 (talk) 12:33, 21 June 2024 (UTC)

You can request changes at WP:RFPP, also please do not use my talk page to follow up with other users. — xaosflux ^Talk 13:16, 21 June 2024 (UTC)

Bot access for SodiumBot

Hi, would it be possible for you to grant bot access to SodiumBot on test.wiki.x.io? I'd like to use it to test some issues surround pywikibot and it's interactions with the bot flag. Sohom (talk) 01:45, 23 June 2024 (UTC)

 Done — xaosflux ^Talk 02:18, 23 June 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-26

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 will notice that there have been some changes to the background color of text in the diff view, and the color of the byte-change numbers, last week. These changes are intended to make text more readable in both light mode and dark mode, and are part of a larger effort to increase accessibility. You can share your comments or questions on the project talkpage. [152]
• The text colors that are used for visited-links, hovered-links, and active-links, were also slightly changed last week to improve their accessibility in both light mode and dark mode. [153]

Problems

• You can copy permanent links to talk page comments by clicking on a comment's timestamp. This feature did not always work when the topic title was very long and the link was used as a wikitext link. This has been fixed. Thanks to Lofhi for submitting the bug. [154]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 25 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 26 June. It will be on all wikis from 27 June (calendar). [155][156]
• Starting 26 June, all talk pages messages' timestamps will become a link at English Wikipedia, making this feature available for you to use at all wikis. This link is a permanent link to the comment. It allows users to find the comment they were linked to, even if this comment has since been moved elsewhere. You can read more about this feature on Diff or on Mediawiki.org. [157]

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

MediaWiki message delivery 22:30, 24 June 2024 (UTC)

Unsalting of Wikipetan

You salted Wikipetan way back in 2007 because it was on the protected titles list. It is now mentioned at Moe anthropomorphism § Computers and a redirect was requested at AFCRD. Could you please unsalt it? Cheers, Queen of Hearts ^talk 01:01, 1 July 2024 (UTC)

 Done — xaosflux ^Talk 09:26, 1 July 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-27

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

• Over the next three weeks, dark mode will become available for all users, both logged-in and logged-out, starting with the mobile web version. This fulfils one of the top-requested community wishes, and improves low-contrast reading and usage in low-light settings. As part of these changes, dark mode will also work on User-pages and Portals. There is more information in the latest Web team update. [158]
• Logged-in users can now set global preferences for the text-size and dark-mode, thanks to a combined effort across Foundation teams. This allows Wikimedians using multiple wikis to set up a consistent reading experience easily, for example by switching between light and dark mode only once for all wikis. [159]
• If you use a very old web browser some features might not work on the Wikimedia wikis. This affects Internet Explorer 11 and versions of Chrome, Firefox and Safari older than 2016. This change makes it possible to use new CSS features and to send less code to all readers. [160][161]
• Wikipedia Admins can customize local wiki configuration options easily using Community Configuration. Community Configuration was created to allow communities to customize how some features work, because each language wiki has unique needs. At the moment, admins can configure Growth features on their home wikis, in order to better recruit and retain new editors. More options will be provided in the coming months. [162]
• Editors interested in language issues that are related to Unicode standards, can now discuss those topics at a new conversation space in MediaWiki.org. The Wikimedia Foundation is now a member of the Unicode Consortium, and the coordination group can collaboratively review the issues discussed and, where appropriate, bring them to the attention of the Unicode Consortium.
• One new wiki has been created: a Wikipedia in Mandailing (w:btm:) [163]

Problems

• Editors can once again click on links within the visual editor's citation-preview, thanks to a bug fix by the Editing Team. [164]

Future changes

• Please help us to improve Tech News by taking this short survey. The goal is to better meet the needs of the various types of people who read Tech News. The survey will be open for 2 weeks. The survey is covered by this privacy statement. Some translations are available.

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MediaWiki message delivery 23:57, 1 July 2024 (UTC)

The Signpost: 4 July 2024

• News and notes: WMF board elections and fundraising updates

• Special report: Wikimedia Movement Charter ratification vote underway, new Council may surpass power of Board

• In focus: How the Russian Wikipedia keeps it clean despite having just a couple dozen administrators

• Discussion report: Wikipedians are hung up on the meaning of Madonna

• In the media: War and information in war and politics

• Sister projects: On editing Wikisource

• Obituary: Hanif Al Husaini, Salazarov, Hyacinth, and PirjanovNurlan

• Opinion: Etika: a Pop Culture Champion

• Gallery: Spokane Willy's photos

• Op-Ed: Why you should not vote in the 2024 WMF BoT elections

• Crossword: On a day of independence, beat crosswords into crossploughshares

• Humour: A joke

• Cobwebs: Counting to a billion — manuscripts don't burn

• Recent research: Is Wikipedia Politically Biased? Perhaps

• Traffic report: Talking about you and me, and the games people play

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 13:41, 4 July 2024 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – July 2024

News and updates for administrators from the past month (June 2024).

Administrator changes

• Elli
• HouseBlaster
• Pickersgill-Cunliffe

• Brianga
• De728631
• Georgewilliamherbert
• Hyacinth (deceased)
• ProveIt
• The Night Watch

Technical news

• Local administrators can now add new links to the bottom of the site Tools menu without using JavaScript. Documentation is available on MediaWiki. (T6086)

Miscellaneous

• The Community Wishlist is re-opening on 15 July 2024. Read more

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 07:59, 6 July 2024 (UTC)

Request to Unblock a Global block

i Xaosflux. I recently found myself blocked from editing because of an issue with my IP range (135.226.0.0/16), and it said that you were the blocking admin. I am at a loss at what my options are. I hope you can help me with this problem. I make my edits to Wikipedia from my office at work (I am a disclosed paid editor), and it is my company's policy to use a proxy, and there is no option to disable the proxy when editing Wikipedia. Perhaps you can change the block from a total block to "anonymous only" which would allow me to continue editing in good faith as I have been for the past two years. Alternatively, could you possibly grant an exemption to the block of my IP? I appreciate your attention to this matter. Thank you. Cduffymul (talk) 12:27, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

Your first step should be to contact your network administrator. From your message above it sounds like services (i.e. making contributions to Wikipedia) that your company wants to provide is not working because of configuration that they control. Your network administrator should be able to configure a "split tunnel" for Wikipedia sites. This is a common fix for businesses that need to connect their business networks to restricted external networks. You may also apply for an account exemption from the local checkuser team by following the directions on this page: WP:IPBE. — xaosflux ^Talk 13:04, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-28

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 the Wikimedia Foundation a new task force was formed to replace the disabled Graph with more secure, easy to use, and extensible Chart. You can subscribe to the newsletter to get notified about new project updates and other news about Chart.
• The CampaignEvents extension is now available on Meta-wiki, Igbo Wikipedia, and Swahili Wikipedia, and can be requested on your wiki. This extension helps in managing and making events more visible, giving Event organizers the ability to use tools like the Event registration tool. To learn more about the deployment status and how to request this extension for your wiki, visit the CampaignEvents page on Meta-wiki.
• Editors using the iOS Wikipedia app who have more than 50 edits can now use the Add an Image feature. This feature presents opportunities for small but useful contributions to Wikipedia.
• Thank you to all of the authors who have contributed to MediaWiki Core. As a result of these contributions, the percentage of authors contributing more than 5 patches has increased by 25% since last year, which helps ensure the sustainability of the platform for the Wikimedia projects.

Problems

• A problem with the color of the talkpage tabs always showing as blue, even for non-existent pages which should have been red, affecting the Vector 2022 skin, has been fixed.

Future changes

• The Trust and Safety Product team wants to introduce temporary accounts with as little disruption to tools and workflows as possible. Volunteer developers, including gadget and user-script maintainers, are kindly asked to update the code of their tools and features to handle temporary accounts. The team has created documentation explaining how to do the update. Learn more.

Tech News survey

• Please help us to improve Tech News by taking this short survey. The goal is to better meet the needs of the various types of people who read Tech News. The survey will be open for 1 more week. The survey is covered by this privacy statement. Some translations are available.

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MediaWiki message delivery 21:30, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

Happy 'crat Anniversary!

  Wishing Xaosflux a very happy bureaucratship anniversary on behalf of the Birthday Committee! The Herald (Benison) (talk) 10:46, 9 July 2024 (UTC)

Testwiki

Hey, can you restore my +sysop again? I'd like to test phab:T20110#9968717 and a few other things. Thanks! Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 00:09, 12 July 2024 (UTC)

OK, be sure not not leave something like CAPTCHA on for everyone there! — xaosflux ^Talk 00:17, 12 July 2024 (UTC)

Yep. Right now you need to actually say "captcha" in the summary, which I hope shouldn't be too common... Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 00:24, 12 July 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-29

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 survey

• Please help us to improve Tech News by taking this short survey. The goal is to better meet the needs of the various types of people who read Tech News. The survey will be open for 3 more days. The survey is covered by this privacy statement. Some translations are available.

Recent changes

• Wikimedia developers can now officially continue to use both Gerrit and GitLab, due to a June 24 decision by the Wikimedia Foundation to support software development on both platforms. Gerrit and GitLab are both code repositories used by developers to write, review, and deploy the software code that supports the MediaWiki software that the wiki projects are built on, as well as the tools used by editors to create and improve content. This decision will safeguard the productivity of our developers and prevent problems in code review from affecting our users. More details are available in the Migration status page.
• The Wikimedia Foundation seeks applicants for the Product and Technology Advisory Council (PTAC). This group will bring technical contributors and Wikimedia Foundation together to co-define a more resilient, future-proof technological platform. Council members will evaluate and consult on the movement's product and technical activities, so that we develop multi-generational projects. We are looking for a range of technical contributors across the globe, from a variety of Wikimedia projects. Please apply here by August 10.
• Editors with rollback user-rights who use the Wikipedia App for Android can use the new Edit Patrol features. These features include a new feed of Recent Changes, related links such as Undo and Rollback, and the ability to create and save a personal library of user talk messages to use while patrolling. If your wiki wants to make these features available to users who do not have rollback rights but have reached a certain edit threshold, you can contact the team. You can read more about this project on Diff blog.
• Editors who have access to The Wikipedia Library can once again use non-open access content in SpringerLinks, after the Foundation contacted them to restore access. You can read more about this and 21 other community-submitted tasks that were completed last week.

Changes later this week

• This week, dark mode will be available on a number of Wikipedias, both desktop and mobile, for logged-in and logged-out users. Interface admins and user script maintainers are encouraged to check gadgets and user scripts in the dark mode, to find any hard-coded colors and fix them. There are some recommendations for dark mode compatibility to help.

Future changes

• Next week, functionaries, volunteers maintaining tools, and software development teams are invited to test the temporary accounts feature on testwiki. Temporary accounts is a feature that will help improve privacy on the wikis. No further temporary account deployments are scheduled yet. Please share your opinions and questions on the project talk page. [165]
• Editors who upload files cross-wiki, or teach other people how to do so, may wish to join a Wikimedia Commons discussion. The Commons community is discussing limiting who can upload files through the cross-wiki upload/Upload dialog feature to users auto-confirmed on Wikimedia Commons. This is due to the large amount of copyright violations uploaded this way. There is a short summary at Commons:Cross-wiki upload and discussion at Commons:Village Pump.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. You can also get other news from the Wikimedia Foundation Bulletin.

MediaWiki message delivery 01:29, 16 July 2024 (UTC)

The Signpost: 22 July 2024

• Discussion report: Internet users flock to Wikipedia to debate its image policy over Trump raised-fist photo

• News and notes: Wikimedia community votes to ratify Movement Charter; Wikimedia Foundation opposes ratification

• News from the WMF: Wikimedia Foundation Board resolution and vote on the proposed Movement Charter

• Essay: Reflections on editing and obsession

• In the media: What's on Putin's fork, the court's docket, and in Harrison's book?

• Obituary: JamesR

• Crossword: Vaguely bird-shaped crossword

• Humour: Joe Biden withdraws RfA, Donald Trump selects co-nom

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 09:33, 22 July 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-30

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Feature News

• Stewards can now globally block accounts. Before the change only IP addresses and IP ranges could be blocked globally. Global account blocks are useful when the blocked user should not be logged out. Global locks (a similar tool logging the user out of their account) are unaffected by this change. The new global account block feature is related to the Temporary Accounts project, which is a new type of user account that replaces IP addresses of unregistered editors that are no longer made public.
• Later this week, Wikimedia site users will notice that the Interface of FlaggedRevs (also known as "Pending Changes") is improved and consistent with the rest of the MediaWiki interface and Wikimedia's design system. The FlaggedRevs interface experience on mobile and Minerva skin was inconsistent before it was fixed and ported to Codex by the WMF Growth team and some volunteers. [166]
• Wikimedia site users can now submit account vanishing requests via GlobalVanishRequest. This feature is used when a contributor wishes to stop editing forever. It helps you hide your past association and edit to protect your privacy. Once processed, the account will be locked and renamed. [167]
• Have you tried monitoring and addressing vandalism in Wikipedia using your phone? A Diff blog post on Patrolling features in the Mobile App highlights some of the new capabilities of the feature, including swiping through a feed of recent changes and a personal library of user talk messages for use when patrolling from your phone.
• Wikimedia contributors and GLAM (galleries, libraries, archives, and museums) organisations can now learn and measure the impact Wikimedia Commons is having towards creating quality encyclopedic content using the Commons Impact Metrics analytics dashboard. The dashboard offers organizations analytics on things like monthly edits in a category, the most viewed files, and which Wikimedia articles are using Commons images. As a result of these new data dumps, GLAM organisation can more reliably measure their return on investment for programs bringing content into the digital Commons. [168]

Project Updates

• Come share your ideas for improving the wikis on the newly reopened Community Wishlist. The Community Wishlist is Wikimedia’s forum for volunteers to share ideas (called wishes) to improve how the wikis work. The new version of the wishlist is always open, works with both wikitext and Visual Editor, and allows wishes in any language.

Learn more

• Have you ever wondered how Wikimedia software works across over 300 languages? This is 253 languages more than the Google Chrome interface, and it's no accident. The Language and Product Localization Team at the Wikimedia Foundation supports your work by adapting all the tools and interfaces in the MediaWiki software so that contributors in our movement who translate pages and strings can translate them and have the sites in all languages. Read more about the team and their upcoming work on Diff.
• How can Wikimedia build innovative and experimental products while maintaining such heavily used websites? A recent blog post by WMF staff Johan Jönsson highlights the work of the WMF Future Audience initiative, where the goal is not to build polished products but test out new ideas, such as a ChatGPT plugin and Add a Fact, to help take Wikimedia into the future.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. You can also get other news from the Wikimedia Foundation Bulletin.

MediaWiki message delivery 00:02, 23 July 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-31

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Feature news

• Editors using the Visual Editor in languages that use non-Latin characters for numbers, such as Hindi, Manipuri and Eastern Arabic, may notice some changes in the formatting of reference numbers. This is a side effect of preparing a new sub-referencing feature, and will also allow fixing some general numbering issues in Visual Editor. If you notice any related problems on your wiki, please share details at the project talkpage.

Bugs status

• Some logged-in editors were briefly unable to edit or load pages last week. These errors were mainly due to the addition of new linter rules which led to caching problems. Fixes have been applied and investigations are continuing.
• Editors can use the IP Information tool to get information about IP addresses. This tool is available as a Beta Feature in your preferences. The tool was not available for a few days last week, but is now working again. Thank you to Shizhao for filing the bug report. You can read about that, and 28 other community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week.

Project updates

• There are new features and improvements to Phabricator from the Release Engineering and Collaboration Services teams, and some volunteers, including: the search systems, the new task creation system, the login systems, the translation setup which has resulted in support for more languages (thanks to Pppery), and fixes for many edge-case errors. You can read details about these and other improvements in this summary.
• There is an update on the Charts project. The team has decided which visualization library to use, which chart types to start focusing on, and where to store chart definitions.
• One new wiki has been created: a Wikivoyage in Czech (voy:cs:) [169]

Learn more

• There is a new Wikimedia Foundation data center in São Paulo, Brazil which helps to reduce load times.
• There is new user research on problems with the process of uploading images.
• Commons Impact Metrics are now available via data dumps and API.
• The latest quarterly Technical Community Newsletter is now available.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 23:09, 29 July 2024 (UTC)

You are a nice person

Hi Xaosflux. I just came to the main Wikipedia page and upon seeing you in it's recent edit history I thought to leave a message for you and luckily got the chance to say something to any known user after really long. I remember you always had been there to answer me whenever I had left some message for you basically my help requests for knowing something from you to get solution in my problems related to Wikipedia editing and blocks and as becoz I always try my best to never forget the names who ever helped me and their kind helpful responses I am expressing my thanks here and say that you are a nice person. May you stay happy always.Bye.😊❤️ 157.34.6.72 (talk) 19:29, 2 August 2024 (UTC)

Thanks, enjoy the site! — xaosflux ^Talk 20:43, 2 August 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-32

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Feature news

• Two new parser functions will be available this week: {{#dir}} and {{#bcp47}}. These will reduce the need for Template:Dir and Template:BCP47 on Commons and allow us to drop 100 million rows from the "what links here" database. Editors at any wiki that use these templates, can help by replacing the templates with these new functions. The templates at Commons will be updated during the Hackathon at Wikimania. [170][171]
• Communities can request the activation of the visual editor on entire namespaces where discussions sometimes happen (for instance Wikipedia: or Wikisource: namespaces) if they understand the known limitations. For discussions, users can already use DiscussionTools in these namespaces.
• The tracking category "Pages using Timeline" has been renamed to "Pages using the EasyTimeline extension" in TranslateWiki. Wikis that have created the category locally should rename their local creation to match.

Project updates

• Editors who help to organize WikiProjects and similar on-wiki collaborations, are invited to share ideas and examples of successful collaborations with the Campaigns and Programs teams. You can fill out a brief survey or share your thoughts on the talkpage. The teams are particularly looking for details about successful collaborations on non-English wikis.
• The new parser is being rolled out on Wikivoyage wikis over the next few months. The English Wikivoyage and Hebrew Wikivoyage were switched to Parsoid last week. For more information, see Parsoid/Parser Unification.

Learn more

• There will be more than 200 sessions at Wikimania this week. Here is a summary of some of the key sessions related to the product and technology area.
• The latest Wikimedia Foundation Bulletin is available.
• The latest quarterly Language and Internationalization newsletter is available. It includes: New design previews for Translatable pages; Updates about MinT for Wiki Readers; the release of Translation dumps; and more.
• The latest quarterly Growth newsletter is available.
• The latest monthly MediaWiki Product Insights newsletter is available.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 20:41, 5 August 2024 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – August 2024

News and updates for administrators from the past month (July 2024).

Administrator changes

Isabelle Belato

• Ian.thomson
• Modussiccandi

Interface administrator changes

Izno

CheckUser changes

Barkeep49

Technical news

• Global blocks may now target accounts as well as IP's. Administrators may locally unblock when appropriate.
• Users wishing to permanently leave may now request "vanishing" via Special:GlobalVanishRequest. Processed requests will result in the user being renamed, their recovery email being removed, and their account being globally locked.

Arbitration

• The Arbitration Committee appointed the following administrators to the conflict of interest volunteer response team: Bilby, Extraordinary Writ

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:01, 6 August 2024 (UTC)

question

Hi, I noticed you usually answer questions at Wikipedia talk:Growth Team features/Mentor list my mentor list is all of the sudden empty?, thanks --Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 15:58, 9 August 2024 (UTC)

@Ozzie10aaaa on Special:MentorDashboard it will only list mentees that have been "recently active" - do you have reason to think that you have a mentee that is recently active, but not showing? Can you provide an example? — xaosflux ^Talk 15:57, 10 August 2024 (UTC)

• [172]
• [173]
• [174]
• [175]
• [176]

these are just a few that have left questions (there are more) on my talk page that are 'fairly recently active'...additionally there are always brand new editors that are listed (which are currently not) that I place {{Mentor welcome}} on their page?, thank you--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 16:17, 10 August 2024 (UTC)

@Ozzie10aaaa in the mentor dashboard, at the top left, there is a pull down "filter", check that and try increasing the inactivity counter. — xaosflux ^Talk 19:14, 10 August 2024 (UTC)

[177] yes I had tried that...still blank--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 21:56, 10 August 2024 (UTC)

I triggered a refresh, please check again in 3 hours. Make sure in your filters you don't have "only starred" set. — xaosflux ^Talk 22:44, 10 August 2024 (UTC)

still blank,Ozzie--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 13:25, 11 August 2024 (UTC)

• update-its back working [178], thank you 😊 Ozzie--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 15:16, 12 August 2024 (UTC)

  Thanks for the update, seems there was a stuck update process on the server side. Best regards, — xaosflux ^Talk 15:18, 12 August 2024 (UTC)

Not enough privileges for AWB tool after 2 factor authentication

Hello Xaosflux. I'm a bureaucrat at mk.wiki. I had the same issue described on this discussion about the AWB given the 2 factor authentication I recently enabled. I have been using the tool for years for that wiki. I've done exactly as described at Wikipedia:Using AWB with 2FA, including ticking all the boxes (step no. 4 on the page). The tool still won't let me in, saying the user doesn't have enough privileges to make automatic edits. Should I do something on mk.wiki? I have no clue what to do next, but this tool is essential for our wiki. Help would be very much appreciated. --B. Jankuloski (talk) 11:42, 11 August 2024 (UTC)

@Bjankuloski06 first, make sure you are running the current release of AWB. Second, are you not able to log on at all, or are you just having a problem using the "bot" page of AWB? — xaosflux ^Talk 11:44, 11 August 2024 (UTC)

The current release is 6.3.1.1. — xaosflux ^Talk 11:45, 11 August 2024 (UTC)

Also, on your AWB logon (or more likely on your saved profiles) be sure to change the username, e.g. instead of it says "Fluxbot" on mine, it says "Fluxbot@FluxbotAWB" (my botpasswords names). And the password is the botpassword. — xaosflux ^Talk 11:47, 11 August 2024 (UTC)

Thank you very much! I was able to log in with the newest version. Perhaps this version has been created, among other things, to accommodate this need for admin authentication. I guess the need to have the latest version should be mentioned on the instructions page. B. Jankuloski (talk) 11:54, 11 August 2024 (UTC)

Good to hear! This doesn't seem to be a problem with BotPasswords or 2FA themselves, but with AWB. It seems to be somewhat recent and others have reported similar problems. Hopefully the AWB devs can improve error handling there. Best regards, — xaosflux ^Talk 11:58, 11 August 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-33

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Feature news

• AbuseFilter editors and maintainers can now make a CAPTCHA show if a filter matches an edit. This allows communities to quickly respond to spamming by automated bots. [179]
• Stewards can now specify if global blocks should prevent account creation. Before this change by the Trust and Safety Product Team, all global blocks would prevent account creation. This will allow stewards to reduce the unintended side-effects of global blocks on IP addresses.

Project updates

• Nominations are open on Wikitech for new members to refresh the Toolforge standards committee. The committee oversees the Toolforge Right to fork policy and Abandoned tool policy among other duties. Nominations will remain open until at least 2024-08-26.
• One new wiki has been created: a Wikipedia in West Coast Bajau (w:bdr:) [180]

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

MediaWiki message delivery 23:19, 12 August 2024 (UTC)

The Signpost: 14 August 2024

• In the media: Portland pol profile paid for from public purse

• Recent research: STORM: AI agents role-play as "Wikipedia editors" and "experts" to create Wikipedia-like articles, a more sophisticated effort than previous auto-generation systems

• In focus: Twitter marks the spot

• News and notes: Another Wikimania has concluded.

• Special report: Nano or just nothing: Will nano go nuclear?

• Opinion: HouseBlaster's RfA debriefing

• Traffic report: Ball games, movies, elections, but nothing really weird

• Humour: I'm proud to be a template

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 22:50, 14 August 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-34

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Feature news

• Editors who want to re-use references but with different details such as page numbers, will be able to do so by the end of 2024, using a new sub-referencing feature. You can read more about the project and how to test the prototype.
• Editors using tracking categories to identify which pages use specific extensions may notice that six of the categories have been renamed to make them more easily understood and consistent. These categories are automatically added to pages that use specialized MediaWiki extensions. The affected names are for: DynamicPageList, Kartographer, Phonos, RSS, Score, WikiHiero. Wikis that have created the category locally should rename their local creation to match. Thanks to Pppery for these improvements. [181]
• Technical volunteers who edit modules and want to get a list of the categories used on a page, can now do so using the categories property of mw.title objects. This enables wikis to configure workflows such as category-specific edit notices. Thanks to SD001 for these improvements. [182][183]

Bugs status

• Your help is needed to check if any pages need to be moved or deleted. A maintenance script was run to clean up unreachable pages (due to Unicode issues or introduction of new namespaces/namespace aliases). The script tried to find appropriate names for the pages (e.g. by following the Unicode changes or by moving pages whose titles on Wikipedia start with Talk:WP: so that their titles start with Wikipedia talk:), but it may have failed for some pages, and moved them to Special:PrefixIndex/T195546/ instead. Your community should check if any pages are listed there, and move them to the correct titles, or delete them if they are no longer needed. A full log (including pages for which appropriate names could be found) is available in phab:P67388.
• Editors who volunteer as mentors to newcomers on their wiki are once again able to access lists of potential mentees who they can connect with to offer help and guidance. This functionality was restored thanks to a bug fix. Thank you to Mbch331 for filing the bug report. You can read about that, and 18 other community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week.

Project updates

• The application deadline for the Product & Technology Advisory Council (PTAC) has been extended to September 16. Members will help by providing advice to Foundation Product and Technology leadership on short and long term plans, on complex strategic problems, and help to get feedback from more contributors and technical communities. Selected members should expect to spend roughly 5 hours per month for the Council, during the one year pilot. Please consider applying, and spread the word to volunteers you think would make a positive contribution to the committee.

Learn more

• The 2024 Coolest Tool Awards were awarded at Wikimania, in seven categories. For example, one award went to the ISA Tool, used for adding structured data to files on Commons, which was recently improved during the Wiki Mentor Africa Hackathon. You can see video demonstrations of each tool at the awards page. Congratulations to this year's recipients, and thank you to all tool creators and maintainers.
• The latest Wikimedia Foundation Bulletin is available, and includes some highlights from Wikimania, an upcoming Language community meeting, and other news from the movement.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 00:51, 20 August 2024 (UTC)

Pblock question

Is it possible to pblock someone from WP:SPI? In other words, I want to prevent the user from filing or editing any SPIs, like Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/ with a wildcard (like an asterisk), or maybe just blocking them from that page would do it. I don't see anything like that at WP:PBLOCK, but that doesn't necessarily mean it isn't possible. Thanks.--Bbb23 (talk) 00:00, 22 August 2024 (UTC)

@Bbb23 not currently, though that is an open feature request (T242670). The abusefilter could do this, but it's too expensive to make single user rules. As an softer alternative to a site-wide editing block, you could use a namespace block against the entire "Wikipedia:" namespace to curtail the disruptive behavior of an editor. — xaosflux ^Talk 00:09, 22 August 2024 (UTC)

I thought about the Wikipedia namespace block, but although the editor has problems with other administrative boards as well as SPI, I don't think it's sufficiently widespread to justify the wider block. Thanks for your quick response.--Bbb23 (talk) 00:38, 22 August 2024 (UTC)

"Wikipedia:Otrs members" listed at Redirects for discussion

The redirect Wikipedia:Otrs members has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Anyone, including you, is welcome to comment on this redirect at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2024 August 25 § Wikipedia:Otrs members until a consensus is reached. 1234qwer1234qwer4 17:50, 25 August 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-35

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Feature news

• Administrators can now test the temporary accounts feature on test2wiki. This was done to allow cross-wiki testing of temporary accounts, for when temporary accounts switch between projects. The feature was enabled on testwiki a few weeks ago. No further temporary account deployments are scheduled yet. Temporary Accounts is a project to create a new type of user account that replaces IP addresses of unregistered editors which are no longer made public. Please share your opinions and questions on the project talk page.
• Later this week, editors at wikis that use FlaggedRevs (also known as "Pending Changes") may notice that the indicators at the top of articles have changed. This change makes the system more consistent with the rest of the MediaWiki interface. [184]

Bugs status

• Editors who use the 2010 wikitext editor, and use the Character Insert buttons, will no longer experience problems with the buttons adding content into the edit-summary instead of the edit-window. You can read more about that, and 26 other community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week.

Project updates

• Please review and vote on Focus Areas, which are groups of wishes that share a problem. Focus Areas were created for the newly reopened Community Wishlist, which is now open year-round for submissions. The first batch of focus areas are specific to moderator workflows, around welcoming newcomers, minimizing repetitive tasks, and prioritizing tasks. Once volunteers have reviewed and voted on focus areas, the Foundation will then review and select focus areas for prioritization.
• Do you have a project and are willing to provide a three (3) month mentorship for an intern? Outreachy is a twice a year program for people to participate in a paid internship that will start in December 2024 and end in early March 2025, and they need mentors and projects to work on. Projects can be focused on coding or non-coding (design, documentation, translation, research). See the Outreachy page for more details, and a list of past projects since 2013.

Learn more

• If you're curious about the product and technology improvements made by the Wikimedia Foundation last year, read this recent highlights summary on Diff.
• To learn more about the technology behind the Wikimedia projects, you can now watch sessions from the technology track at Wikimania 2024 on Commons. This week, check out:
  • Community Configuration - Shaping On-Wiki Functionality Together (55 mins) - about the Community Configuration project.
  • Future of MediaWiki. A sustainable platform to support a collaborative user base and billions of page views (30 mins) - an overview for both technical and non technical audiences, covering some of the challenges and open questions, related to the platform evolution, stewardship and developer experiences research.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 20:30, 26 August 2024 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – September 2024

News and updates for administrators from the past month (August 2024).

Administrator changes

Pppery

Interface administrator changes

Pppery

Oversighter changes

Wugapodes

CheckUser changes

• Courcelles
• GeneralNotability

Guideline and policy news

• Following an RfC, there is a new criterion for speedy deletion: C4, which applies to unused maintenance categories, such as empty dated maintenance categories for dates in the past.
• A request for comment is open to discuss whether Notability (species) should be adopted as a subject-specific notability guideline.

Arbitration

• Following a motion, remedies 5.1 and 5.2 of World War II and the history of Jews in Poland (the topic and interaction bans on My very best wishes, respectively) were repealed.
• Remedy 3C of the German war effort case ("Cinderella157 German history topic ban") was suspended for a period of six months.
• The arbitration case Historical Elections is currently open. Proposed decision is expected by 3 September 2024 for this case.

Miscellaneous

• Editors can now enter into good article review circles, an alternative for informal quid pro quo arrangements, to have a GAN reviewed in return for reviewing a different editor's nomination.
• A New Pages Patrol backlog drive is happening in September 2024 to reduce the number of unreviewed articles and redirects in the new pages feed. Currently, there is a backlog of over 13,900 articles and 26,200 redirects awaiting review. Sign up here to participate!

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:45, 2 September 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-36

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Weekly highlight

• Editors and volunteer developers interested in data visualisation can now test the new software for charts. Its early version is available on beta Commons and beta Wikipedia. This is an important milestone before making charts available on regular wikis. You can read more about this project update and help to test the charts.

Feature news

• Editors who use the Special:UnusedTemplates page can now filter out pages which are expected to be there permanently, such as sandboxes, test-cases, and templates that are always substituted. Editors can add the new magic word __EXPECTUNUSEDTEMPLATE__ to a template page to hide it from the listing. Thanks to Sophivorus and DannyS712 for these improvements. [185]
• Editors who use the New Topic tool on discussion pages, will now be reminded to add a section header, which should help reduce the quantity of newcomers who add sections without a header. You can read more about that, and 28 other community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week.
• Last week, some Toolforge tools had occasional connection problems. The cause is still being investigated, but the problems have been resolved for now. [186]
• Translation administrators at multilingual wikis, when editing multiple translation units, can now easily mark which changes require updates to the translation. This is possible with the new dropdown menu.

Project updates

• A new draft text of a policy discussing the use of Wikimedia's APIs has been published on Meta-Wiki. The draft text does not reflect a change in policy around the APIs; instead, it is an attempt to codify existing API rules. Comments, questions, and suggestions are welcome on the proposed update’s talk page until September 13 or until those discussions have concluded.

Learn more

• To learn more about the technology behind the Wikimedia projects, you can now watch sessions from the technology track at Wikimania 2024 on Commons. This week, check out:
  • Charts, the successor of Graphs - A secure and extensible tool for data visualization (25 mins) – about the above-mentioned Charts project.
  • State of Language Technology and Onboarding at Wikimedia (90 mins) – about some of the language tools that support Wikimedia sites, such as Content/Section Translation, MinT, and LanguageConverter; also the current state and future of languages onboarding. [187]

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

MediaWiki message delivery 01:04, 3 September 2024 (UTC)

The Signpost: 4 September 2024

• News and notes: WikiCup enters final round, MCDC wraps up activities, 17-year-old hoax article unmasked

• In the media: AI is not playing games anymore. Is Wikipedia ready?

• Recent research: Simulated Wikipedia seen as less credible than ChatGPT and Alexa in experiment

• News from the WMF: Meet the 12 candidates running in the WMF Board of Trustees election

• Wikimania: A month after Wikimania 2024

• Serendipity: What it's like to be Wikimedian of the Year

• Traffic report: After the gold rush

• Humour: Local man halfway through rude reply no longer able to recall why he hates other editor

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 13:30, 4 September 2024 (UTC)

Request for rollback rights

I revert vandalism fairly often. Usually undo is enough, but it would be nice to have rollback for those multiple-revision reverts. MP1999 ❯❯❯ Talk 16:13, 5 September 2024 (UTC)

@MP1999 you may request at WP:PERM/R. — xaosflux ^Talk 16:58, 5 September 2024 (UTC)

@Xaosflux But i get declined there everytime.Everyone should get a chance at least once. MP1999 ❯❯❯ Talk 17:06, 5 September 2024 (UTC)

That's the process. If you want to challenge it you can raise a thread at WP:AN. — xaosflux ^Talk 17:45, 5 September 2024 (UTC)

Talk:Nicholas Conn

More IP-edits, I requested protection. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 15:59, 9 September 2024 (UTC)

Cleaned up, one gblock, +prot. — xaosflux ^Talk 16:21, 9 September 2024 (UTC)

Thanks! One more edit summary there you should perhaps deal with. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 16:26, 9 September 2024 (UTC)

Done. — xaosflux ^Talk 16:31, 9 September 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-37

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Feature news

• Starting this week, the standard syntax highlighter will receive new colors that make them compatible in dark mode. This is the first of many changes to come as part of a major upgrade to syntax highlighting. You can learn more about what's to come on the help page. [188][189]
• Editors of wikis using Wikidata will now be notified of only relevant Wikidata changes in their watchlist. This is because the Lua functions entity:getSitelink() and mw.wikibase.getSitelink(qid) will have their logic unified for tracking different aspects of sitelinks to reduce junk notifications from inconsistent sitelinks tracking. [190]

Project updates

• Users of all Wikis will have access to Wikimedia sites as read-only for a few minutes on September 25, starting at 15:00 UTC. This is a planned datacenter switchover for maintenance purposes. More information will be published in Tech News and will also be posted on individual wikis in the coming weeks. [191]
• Contributors of 11 Wikipedias, including English will have a new MOS namespace added to their Wikipedias. This improvement ensures that links beginning with MOS: (usually shortcuts to the Manual of Style) are not broken by Mooré Wikipedia (language code mos). [192]

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

MediaWiki message delivery 18:49, 9 September 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-38

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Improvements and Maintenance

• Editors interested in templates can help by reading the latest Wishlist focus area, Template recall and discovery, and share your feedback on the talkpage. This input helps the Community Tech team to decide the right technical approach to build. Everyone is also encouraged to continue adding new wishes.
• The new automated Special:NamespaceInfo page helps editors understand which namespaces exist on each wiki, and some details about how they are configured. Thanks to DannyS712 for these improvements. [193]
• References Check is a feature that encourages editors to add a citation when they add a new paragraph to a Wikipedia article. For a short time, the corresponding tag "Edit Check (references) activated" was erroneously being applied to some edits outside of the main namespace. This has been fixed. [194]
• It is now possible for a wiki community to change the order in which a page’s categories are displayed on their wiki. By default, categories are displayed in the order they appear in the wikitext. Now, wikis with a consensus to do so can request a configuration change to display them in alphabetical order. [195]
• Tool authors can now access ToolsDB's public databases from both Quarry and Superset. Those databases have always been accessible to every Toolforge user, but they are now more broadly accessible, as Quarry can be accessed by anyone with a Wikimedia account. In addition, Quarry's internal database can now be queried from Quarry itself. This database contains information about all queries that are being run and starred by users in Quarry. This information was already public through the web interface, but you can now query it using SQL. You can read more about that, and 20 other community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week.
• Any pages or tools that still use the very old CSS classes mw-message-box need to be updated. These old classes will be removed next week or soon afterwards. Editors can use a global-search to determine what needs to be changed. It is possible to use the newer cdx-message group of classes as a replacement (see the relevant Codex documentation, and an example update), but using locally defined onwiki classes would be best. [196]

Technical project updates

• Next week, all Wikimedia wikis will be read-only for a few minutes. This will start on September 25 at 15:00 UTC. This is a planned datacenter switchover for maintenance purposes. This maintenance process also targets other services. The previous switchover took 3 minutes, and the Site Reliability Engineering teams use many tools to make sure that this essential maintenance work happens as quickly as possible. [197]

Tech in depth

• The latest monthly MediaWiki Product Insights newsletter is available. This edition includes details about: research about hook handlers to help simplify development, research about performance improvements, work to improve the REST API for end-users, and more.
• To learn more about the technology behind the Wikimedia projects, you can now watch sessions from the technology track at Wikimania 2024 on Commons. This week, check out:
  • Hackathon Showcase (45 mins) - 19 short presentations by some of the Hackathon participants, describing some of the projects they worked on, such as automated testing of maintenance scripts, a video-cutting command line tool, and interface improvements for various tools. There are more details and links available in the Phabricator task.
  • Co-Creating a Sustainable Future for the Toolforge Ecosystem (40 mins) - a roundtable discussion for tool-maintainers, users, and supporters of Toolforge about how to make the platform sustainable and how to evaluate the tools available there.

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MediaWiki message delivery 23:59, 16 September 2024 (UTC)

Feedback request: Wikipedia proposals request for comment

Your feedback is requested at Template talk:Keep local on a "Wikipedia proposals" request for comment. Thank you for helping out!
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Tech News: 2024-39

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Weekly highlight

• All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on Wednesday September 25 at 15:00 UTC. Reading the wikis will not be interrupted, but editing will be paused. These twice-yearly processes allow WMF's site reliability engineering teams to remain prepared to keep the wikis functioning even in the event of a major interruption to one of our data centers.

Updates for editors

A screenshot of the interface for the Alt Text suggested-edit feature

• Editors who use the iOS Wikipedia app in Spanish, Portuguese, French, or Chinese, may see the Alt Text suggested-edit experiment after editing an article, or completing a suggested edit using "Add an image". Alt-text helps people with visual impairments to read Wikipedia articles. The team aims to learn if adding alt-text to images is a task that editors can be successful with. Please share any feedback on the discussion page.
• The Codex color palette has been updated with new and revised colors for the MediaWiki user interfaces. The most noticeable changes for editors include updates for: dark mode colors for Links and for quiet Buttons (progressive and destructive), visited Link colors for both light and dark modes, and background colors for system-messages in both light and dark modes.
• It is now possible to include clickable wikilinks and external links inside code blocks. This includes links that are used within <syntaxhighlight> tags and on code pages (JavaScript, CSS, Scribunto and Sanitized CSS). Uses of template syntax {{…}} are also linked to the template page. Thanks to SD0001 for these improvements. [198]
• Two bugs were fixed in the GlobalVanishRequest system by improving the logging and by removing an incorrect placeholder message. [199][200]
• View all 25 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week.

Updates for technical contributors

• From Wikimedia Enterprise:
  • The API now enables 5,000 on-demand API requests per month and twice-monthly HTML snapshots freely (gratis and libre). More information on the updates and also improvements to the software development kits (SDK) are explained on the project's blog post. While Wikimedia Enterprise APIs are designed for high-volume commercial reusers, this change enables many more community use-cases to be built on the service too.
  • The Snapshot API (html dumps) have added beta Structured Contents endpoints (blog post on that) as well as released two beta datasets (English and French Wikipedia) from that endpoint to Hugging Face for public use and feedback (blog post on that). These pre-parsed data sets enable new options for researchers, developers, and data scientists to use and study the content.

In depth

• The Wikidata Query Service (WDQS) is used to get answers to questions using the Wikidata data set. As Wikidata grows, we had to make a major architectural change so that WDQS could remain performant. As part of the WDQS Graph Split project, we have new SPARQL endpoints available for serving the "scholarly" and "main" subgraphs of Wikidata. The query.wikidata.org endpoint will continue to serve the full Wikidata graph until March 2025. After this date, it will only serve the main graph. For more information, please see the announcement on Wikidata.

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MediaWiki message delivery 23:33, 23 September 2024 (UTC)

Updating

Can you update the version here MediaWiki:Gadget-calculator.js

With the version here mdwiki:MediaWiki:Gadget-calculator.js

Thanks Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 23:08, 25 September 2024 (UTC)

 Done — xaosflux ^Talk 23:18, 25 September 2024 (UTC)

I actually just made some additional changes on mdwiki, so it needs to be resynced again, but i think after the most recent change i made the gadget will probably be stable until we get new feedback. Bawolff (talk) 06:58, 26 September 2024 (UTC)

 Done — xaosflux ^Talk 09:28, 26 September 2024 (UTC)

We have one in mainspace as a trial at Body roundness index. What are the next steps for getting this turned on by default? Like previously gadget should only load on pages in this category. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 18:15, 26 September 2024 (UTC)

Suggest you un-archive Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)/Archive_215#New_gadget_for_doing_user_entered_calculations and place the request there -- assuming nobody objects should be OK. — xaosflux ^Talk 18:24, 26 September 2024 (UTC)

Thanks started the discussion at Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)#Turning_on_the_Calculator_gadget_as_default Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 18:33, 26 September 2024 (UTC)

The Signpost: 26 September 2024

• In the media: Courts order Wikipedia to give up names of editors, legal strain anticipated from "online safety laws"

• Community view: Indian courts order Wikipedia to take down name of crime victim, editors strive towards consensus

• Serendipity: A Wikipedian at the 2024 Paralympics

• Opinion: asilvering's RfA debriefing

• News and notes: Are you ready for admin elections?

• Gallery: Are Luddaites defending the English Wikipedia?

• Recent research: Article-writing AI is less "prone to reasoning errors (or hallucinations)" than human Wikipedia editors

• Traffic report: Jump in the line, rock your body in time

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 20:12, 26 September 2024 (UTC)

RFA2024 update: Discussion-only period now open for review

Hi there! The trial of the RfA discussion-only period passed at WP:RFA2024 has concluded, and after open discussion, the RfC is now considering whether to retain, modify, or discontinue it. You are invited to participate at Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/2024 review/Phase II/Discussion-only period. Cheers, and happy editing! MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 09:38, 27 September 2024 (UTC)

Generating article lists

Hello, Xaos!

I am trying to generate a list of articles that have less than 1000 bytes of information for the Albanian Wikipedia. Any idea what would be the best approach to handle this? Special:ShortPages doesn't help much in that direction. - Klein Muçi (talk) 07:57, 30 September 2024 (UTC)

@Klein Muçi if you want it to be all inclusive, using a dump or using a replica would probably be the answer here. It looks like ptwiki does this on the tool server Artigos curtos (maintainer is Danilo.mac). Perhaps they could extend their tool to more projects? This seem possible from a Quarry report as well. An old example Quarry report is linked from phab:T218350. — xaosflux ^Talk 09:29, 30 September 2024 (UTC)

I forked this: https://quarry.wmcloud.org/query/86676

Not sure if I've done it right but I'm currently running it. - Klein Muçi (talk) 10:03, 30 September 2024 (UTC)

I think it worked. Thank you! :D - Klein Muçi (talk) 10:04, 30 September 2024 (UTC)

Welcome! — xaosflux ^Talk 10:10, 30 September 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-40

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Updates for editors

• Readers of 42 more wikis can now use Dark Mode. If the option is not yet available for logged-out users of your wiki, this is likely because many templates do not yet display well in Dark Mode. Please use the night-mode-checker tool if you are interested in helping to reduce the number of issues. The recommendations page provides guidance on this. Dark Mode is enabled on additional wikis once per month.
• Editors using the 2010 wikitext editor as their default can access features from the 2017 wikitext editor by adding ?veaction=editsource to the URL. If you would like to enable the 2017 wikitext editor as your default, it can be set in your preferences. [201]
• For logged-out readers using the Vector 2022 skin, the "donate" link has been moved from a collapsible menu next to the content area into a more prominent top menu, next to "Create an account". This restores the link to the level of prominence it had in the Vector 2010 skin. Learn more about the changes related to donor experiences. [202]
• The CampaignEvents extension provides tools for organizers to more easily manage events, communicate with participants, and promote their events on the wikis. The extension has been enabled on Arabic Wikipedia, Igbo Wikipedia, Swahili Wikipedia, and Meta-Wiki. Chinese Wikipedia has decided to enable the extension, and discussions on the extension are in progress on Spanish Wikipedia and on Wikidata. To learn how to enable the extension on your wiki, you can visit the CampaignEvents page on Meta-Wiki.
• View all 22 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week.

Updates for technical contributors

• Developers with an account on Wikitech-wiki should check if any action is required for their accounts. The wiki is being changed to use the single-user-login (SUL) system, and other configuration changes. This change will help reduce the overall complexity for the weekly software updates across all our wikis.

In depth

• The server switch was completed successfully last week with a read-only time of only 2 minutes 46 seconds. This periodic process makes sure that engineers can switch data centers and keep all of the wikis available for readers, even if there are major technical issues. It also gives engineers a chance to do maintenance and upgrades on systems that normally run 24 hours a day, and often helps to reveal weaknesses in the infrastructure. The process involves dozens of software services and hundreds of hardware servers, and requires multiple teams working together. Work over the past few years has reduced the time from 17 minutes down to 2–3 minutes. [203]

Meetings and events

• October 4–6: WikiIndaba Conference's Hackathon in Johannesburg, South Africa
• November 4–6: MediaWiki Users and Developers Conference Fall 2024 in Vienna, Austria

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

MediaWiki message delivery 22:17, 30 September 2024 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – October 2024

News and updates for administrators from the past month (September 2024).

Administrator changes

• Asilvering
• Significa liberdade

• Good Olfactory
• Hesperian
• I JethroBT
• TommyBoy
• Woody

CheckUser changes

• Barkeep49
• Izno

• Doug Weller
• Spicy

Guideline and policy news

• Administrator elections are a proposed new process for selecting administrators, offering an alternative to requests for adminship (RfA). The first trial election will take place in October 2024, with candidate sign-up from October 8 to 14, a discussion phase from October 22 to 24, and SecurePoll voting from October 25 to 31. For questions or to help out, please visit the talk page at Wikipedia talk:Administrator elections.
• Following a discussion, the speedy deletion reason "File pages without a corresponding file" has been moved from criterion G8 to F2. This does not change what can be speedily deleted.
• A request for comment is open to discuss whether there is a consensus to have an administrator recall process.

Arbitration

• The arbitration case Historical elections has been closed.
• An arbitration case regarding Backlash to diversity and inclusion has been opened.
• Editors are invited to nominate themselves to serve on the 2024 Arbitration Committee Electoral Commission until 23:59 October 8, 2024 (UTC).

Miscellaneous

• If you are interested in stopping spammers, please put MediaWiki talk:Spam-whitelist and MediaWiki talk:Spam-blacklist on your watchlist, and help out when you can.

---

• Discuss this newsletter
• Subscribe
• Archive

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:01, 2 October 2024 (UTC)

thank you for deal with my account problem!!!

thank you for deal with my account problem!!! i could create my wikipedia account because you solved this problem. thank you ;)

I'm sorry about my english is not good. のすけさん (talk) 09:18, 3 October 2024 (UTC)

You're welcome. — xaosflux ^Talk 19:37, 3 October 2024 (UTC)

Request

Hi, could you please complete this request? Thanks! – DreamRimmer (talk) 18:40, 4 October 2024 (UTC)

Could you please help me out?

Hi. I'm posting here what I posted on FormalDude's page. Please forgive me for not being super Wiki-literate yet. I was just looking for some help and noticed that FormalDude isn't an admin so I found your page, xaosflux:

Hi FormalDude. Could you take a look at the NYU Law Review's page? This user "Randykitty" for some reason feels the need to erroneously remove our logo from our page. You reversed him once already last year but he just removed the logo again (for the same reason you'd reversed him) claiming the logo isn't being used by the Law Review. Here is evidence of the Law Review using the logo that's on the Wiki page (that Randykitty will for some reason try to remove again): https://www.instagram.com/nyulawreview/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/nyulr/ https://twitter.com/nyulawreview Nyulrlogo (talk) 22:05, 4 October 2024 (UTC)

Administrator's deal with technical aspects of the site, and enforce certain behavior standards, however we have no special authority over article content at all. When there is disagreement with the content of an article, the article's talk place is where to start discussing it. See Wikipedia:BOLD, revert, discuss cycle for a way to begin. — xaosflux ^Talk 22:28, 4 October 2024 (UTC)

Requested Block

Hi @Xaosflux, hope you're doing alright. I have some important tasks coming up and I would sincerely appreciate you blocking me until October 17. Thank you, Bremps... 05:00, 7 October 2024 (UTC)

 Done — xaosflux ^Talk 09:49, 7 October 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-41

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Weekly highlight

• Communities can now request installation of Automoderator on their wiki. Automoderator is an automated anti-vandalism tool that reverts bad edits based on scores from the new "Revert Risk" machine learning model. You can read details about the necessary steps for installation and configuration. [204]

Updates for editors

• Translators in wikis where the mobile experience of Content Translation is available, can now customize their articles suggestion list from 41 filtering options when using the tool. This topic-based article suggestion feature makes it easy for translators to self-discover relevant articles based on their area of interest and translate them. You can try it with your mobile device. [205]
• View all 12 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week.

Updates for technical contributors

• It is now possible for <syntaxhighlight> code blocks to offer readers a "Copy" button if the copy=1 attribute is set on the tag. Thanks to SD0001 for these improvements. [206]
• Customized copyright footer messages on all wikis will be updated. The new versions will use wikitext markup instead of requiring editing raw HTML. [207]
• Later this month, temporary accounts will be rolled out on several pilot wikis. The final list of the wikis will be published in the second half of the month. If you maintain any tools, bots, or gadgets on these 11 wikis, and your software is using data about IP addresses or is available for logged-out users, please check if it needs to be updated to work with temporary accounts. Guidance on how to update the code is available.
• Rate limiting has been enabled for the code review tools Gerrit and GitLab to address ongoing issues caused by malicious traffic and scraping. Clients that open too many concurrent connections will be restricted for a few minutes. This rate limiting is managed through nftables firewall rules. For more details, see Wikitech's pages on Firewall, GitLab limits and Gerrit operations.
• Five new wikis have been created:
  • a Wikipedia in Komering (w:kge:) [208]
  • a Wikipedia in Mooré (m:mos:) [209]
  • a Wiktionary in Madurese (wikt:mad:) [210]
  • a Wikiquote in Gorontalo (q:gor:) [211]
  • a Wikinews in Shan (n:shn:) [212]

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

MediaWiki message delivery 23:39, 7 October 2024 (UTC)

Next steps

Regarding this [213]? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 16:56, 8 October 2024 (UTC)

@Doc James this has been promoted to production, appears to be working on articles now. — xaosflux ^Talk 20:09, 9 October 2024 (UTC)

Wonderful thanks as always. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 20:40, 9 October 2024 (UTC)

Resyncing calculator gadget

We made some improvements based on feedback to the calculator gadget. Would you be able to resync https://en.wiki.x.io/wiki/MediaWiki:Gadget-calculator.js with https://mdwiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Gadget-calculator.js? Thanks. Bawolff (talk) 17:21, 9 October 2024 (UTC)

 Done please just open edit requests on the associated talk page so these don't get overlooked in the future. — xaosflux ^Talk 19:58, 9 October 2024 (UTC)

Edit to review

Not sure if you missed this edit? isaacl (talk) 17:26, 9 October 2024 (UTC)

Thanks, removed. — xaosflux ^Talk 17:49, 9 October 2024 (UTC)

Always precious

Ten years ago, you were found precious. That's what you are, always. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 09:04, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

Import request

Hello, kindly import mw:Reading/Web/Accessibility for reading/Reporting/en.wiki.x.io to Wikipedia:Dark mode/Reporting per my rationale at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#Implementation. Please use the options "Copy all the revisions for this page" and "Assign edits to local users where the named user exists locally" on the import page. I think there is sufficient consensus. —Matrix(!) _{ping one}^{when replying} {user - talk? - _uselesscontributions} 09:08, 12 October 2024 (UTC)

Someone, that is not you, should close that discussion. No problems doing a transwiki import at that time, though we generally do not do the 'assign edit to local...' setting on purpose (it can confuse people as to why these edits aren't in contributions here, etc.). — xaosflux ^Talk 10:07, 12 October 2024 (UTC)

Fair enough. I thought the discussion can be closed by the person who started it if there isn't much opposition, but it's fine I can wait. —Matrix(!) _{ping one}^{when replying} {user - talk? - _uselesscontributions} 14:31, 12 October 2024 (UTC)

About your point that we shouldn't do it, we have to or else the automatic archiving will get confused, since there are no signatures. We can add a clarification header at the top. —Matrix(!) _{ping one}^{when replying} {user - talk? - _uselesscontributions} 14:33, 12 October 2024 (UTC)

That doesn't make sense, bot archiving works on page text not old revisions authors. Also, if a bot isn't working right, that's a problem for the bot operator - and would have no impact to future edits. — xaosflux ^Talk 14:45, 12 October 2024 (UTC)

User:ClueBot III/Documentation says in User:ClueBot III/Documentation#How does ClueBot III know when to archive my page? "ClueBot III works based on the revision history of the page in question". —Matrix(!) _{ping one}^{when replying} {user - talk? - _uselesscontributions} 15:50, 12 October 2024 (UTC)

Ok, so no part of that has any reference to the username styling. CBIII can even archive things from IP users, they just look like they do here. — xaosflux ^Talk 16:01, 12 October 2024 (UTC)

Ok so maybe the "Assign edits to local users where the named user exists locally" is unnecessary. But the other option still needs to be used for the archiving to work. —Matrix(!) _{ping one}^{when replying} {user - talk? - _uselesscontributions} 11:33, 13 October 2024 (UTC)

OK. I replied at Wikipedia:Village_pump_(proposals)#Implementation. — xaosflux ^Talk 11:43, 13 October 2024 (UTC)

Fixing category on ACE candidate statement template

Hi Xaosflux! In 2021, you made a series of edits like this one to fix an issue with the Category:Wikipedia Arbitration Committee Elections 2021 candidate statements category not appearing on candidate statement pages. The issue has continued throughout the years; do you have any ideas about how {{Arbitration Committee Elections statement}} could be modified to prevent this? I'm not super familiar with noinclude and includeonly. DanCherek (talk) 23:21, 12 October 2024 (UTC)

@DanCherek I made a few tweaks, now using {{subst:Arbitration Committee Elections statement|Xaosflux|Your statement~~~~}} produces this on the page: Special:PermaLink/1250863321. Is that what you are wanting? — xaosflux ^Talk 00:18, 13 October 2024 (UTC)

Yes, that looks great. Thank you!!! DanCherek (talk) 00:22, 13 October 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-42

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Updates for editors

• The Structured Discussion extension (also known as Flow) is starting to be removed. This extension is unmaintained and causes issues. It will be replaced by DiscussionTools, which is used on any regular talk page. A first set of wikis are being contacted. These wikis are invited to stop using Flow, and to move all Flow boards to sub-pages, as archives. At these wikis, a script will move all Flow pages that aren't a sub-page to a sub-page automatically, starting on 22 October 2024. On 28 October 2024, all Flow boards at these wikis will be set in read-only mode. [214][215]
• WMF's Search Platform team is working on making it easier for readers to perform text searches in their language. A change last week on over 30 languages makes it easier to find words with accents and other diacritics. This applies to both full-text search and to types of advanced search such as the hastemplate and incategory keywords. More technical details (including a few other minor search upgrades) are available. [216]
• View all 20 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, EditCheck was installed at Russian Wikipedia, and fixes were made for some missing user interface styles.

Updates for technical contributors

• Editors who use the Toolforge tool Earwig's Copyright Violation Detector will now be required to log in with their Wikimedia account before running checks using the "search engine" option. This change is needed to help prevent external bots from misusing the system. Thanks to Chlod for these improvements. [217]
• Phabricator users can create tickets and add comments on existing tickets via Email again. Sending email to Phabricator has been fixed. [218]
• Some HTML elements in the interface are now wrapped with a <bdi> element, to make our HTML output more aligned with Web standards. More changes like this will be coming in future weeks. This change might break some tools that rely on the previous HTML structure of the interface. Note that relying on the HTML structure of the interface is not recommended and might break at any time. [219]

In depth

• The latest monthly MediaWiki Product Insights newsletter is available. This edition includes: updates on Wikimedia's authentication system, research to simplify feature development in the MediaWiki platform, updates on Parser Unification and MathML rollout, and more.
• The latest quarterly Technical Community Newsletter is now available. This edition include: research about improving topic suggestions related to countries, improvements to PHPUnit tests, and more.

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MediaWiki message delivery 21:18, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

Feedback request: Wikipedia proposals request for comment

Your feedback is requested at Template talk:Infobox aircraft occurrence on a "Wikipedia proposals" request for comment. Thank you for helping out!
You were randomly selected to receive this invitation from the list of Feedback Request Service subscribers. If you'd like not to receive these messages any more, you can opt out at any time by removing your name.

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The Signpost: 19 October 2024

• News and notes: One election's end, another election's beginning

• Recent research: "As many as 5%" of new English Wikipedia articles "contain significant AI-generated content", says paper

• In the media: Off to the races! Wikipedia wins!

• Contest: A WikiCup for the Global South

• Traffic report: A scream breaks the still of the night

• Book review: The Editors

• Humour: The Newspaper Editors

• Crossword: Spilled Coffee Mug

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 11:16, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-43

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Weekly highlight

• The Mobile Apps team has released an update to the iOS app's navigation, and it is now available in the latest App store version. The team added a new Profile menu that allows for easy access to editor features like Notifications and Watchlist from the Article view, and brings the "Donate" button into a more accessible place for users who are reading an article. This is the first phase of a larger planned navigation refresh to help the iOS app transition from a primarily reader-focused app, to an app that fully supports reading and editing. The Wikimedia Foundation has added more editing features and support for on-wiki communication based on volunteer requests in recent years.

iOS Wikipedia App's profile menu and contents

Updates for editors

• Wikipedia readers can now download a browser extension to experiment with some early ideas on potential features that recommend articles for further reading, automatically summarize articles, and improve search functionality. For more details and to stay updated, check out the Web team's Content Discovery Experiments page and subscribe to their newsletter.
• Later this month, logged-out editors of these 12 wikis will start to have temporary accounts created. The list may slightly change - some wikis may be removed but none will be added. Temporary account is a new type of user account. It enhances the logged-out editors' privacy and makes it easier for community members to communicate with them. If you maintain any tools, bots, or gadgets on these 12 wikis, and your software is using data about IP addresses or is available for logged-out users, please check if it needs to be updated to work with temporary accounts. Guidance on how to update the code is available. Read more about the deployment plan across all wikis.
• View all 33 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, the South Ndebele, Pannonian Rusyn, Obolo, Iban and Tai Nüa Wikipedia languages were created last week. [220][221][222][223][224]
• It is now possible to create functions on Wikifunctions using Wikidata lexemes, through the new Wikidata lexeme type launched last week. When you go to one of these functions, the user interface provides a lexeme selector that helps you pick a lexeme from Wikidata that matches the word you type. After hitting run, your selected lexeme is retrieved from Wikidata, transformed into a Wikidata lexeme type, and passed into the selected function. Read more about this in the latest Wikifunctions newsletter.

Updates for technical contributors

• Users of the Wikimedia sites can now format dates more easily in different languages with the new {{#timef:…}} parser function. For example, {{#timef:now|date|en}} will show as "22 November 2024". Previously, {{#time:…}} could be used to format dates, but this required knowledge of the order of the time and date components and their intervening punctuation. #timef (or #timefl for local time) provides access to the standard date formats that MediaWiki uses in its user interface. This may help to simplify some templates on multi-lingual wikis like Commons and Meta. [225][226]
• Commons and Meta users can now efficiently retrieve the user's language using {{USERLANGUAGE}} instead of using {{int:lang}}. [227]
• The Product and Tech Advisory Council (PTAC) now has its pilot members with representation across Africa, Asia, Europe, North America and South America. They will work to address the Movement Strategy's Technology Council initiative of having a co-defined and more resilient technological platform. [228]

In depth

• The latest quarterly Growth newsletter is available. It includes: an upcoming Newcomer Homepage Community Updates module, new Community Configuration options, and details on new projects.
• The Wikimedia Foundation is now an official partner of the CVE program, which is an international effort to catalog publicly disclosed cybersecurity vulnerabilities. This partnership will allow the Security Team to instantly publish common vulnerabilities and exposures (CVE) records that are affecting MediaWiki core, extensions, and skins, along with any other code the Foundation is a steward of.
• The Community Wishlist is now testing machine translations for Wishlist content. Volunteers can now read machine-translated versions of wishes and dive into discussions even before translators arrive to translate content.

Meetings and events

• 24 October - Wiki Education Speaker Series Webinar - Open Source Tech: Building the Wiki Education Dashboard, featuring Wikimedia interns and a Web developer in the panel.
• 20–22 December 2024 - Indic Wikimedia Hackathon Bhubaneswar 2024 in Odisha, India. A hackathon for community members, including developers, designers and content editors, to build technical solutions that improve contributors' experiences.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 20:50, 21 October 2024 (UTC)

Invitation to participate in a research

Hello,

The Wikimedia Foundation is conducting a survey of Wikipedians to better understand what draws administrators to contribute to Wikipedia, and what affects administrator retention. We will use this research to improve experiences for Wikipedians, and address common problems and needs. We have identified you as a good candidate for this research, and would greatly appreciate your participation in this anonymous survey.

You do not have to be an Administrator to participate.

The survey should take around 10-15 minutes to complete. You may read more about the study on its Meta page and view its privacy statement .

Please find our contact on the project Meta page if you have any questions or concerns.

Kind Regards,

WMF Research Team

BGerdemann (WMF) (talk) 19:22, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-44

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Updates for editors

• Later in November, the Charts extension will be deployed to the test wikis in order to help identify and fix any issue. A security review is underway to then enable deployment to pilot wikis for broader testing. You can read the October project update and see the latest documentation and examples on Beta Wikipedia.
• View all 32 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, Pediapress.com, an external service that creates books from Wikipedia, can now use Wikimedia Maps to include existing pre-rendered infobox map images in their printed books on Wikipedia. [229]

Updates for technical contributors

• Wikis can use the Guided Tour extension to help newcomers understand how to edit. The Guided Tours extension now works with dark mode. Guided Tour maintainers can check their tours to see that nothing looks odd. They can also set emitTransitionOnStep to true to fix an old bug. They can use the new flag allowAutomaticBack to avoid back-buttons they don't want. [230]
• Administrators in the Wikimedia projects who use the Nuke Extension will notice that mass deletions done with this tool have the "Nuke" tag. This change will make reviewing and analyzing deletions performed with the tool easier. [231]

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

MediaWiki message delivery 20:54, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – November 2024

News and updates for administrators from the past month (October 2024).

Administrator changes

• Crisco 1492

• Babajobu
• Daniel
• Elf
• Jayron32
• Thue
• Wugapodes

CheckUser changes

Maxim

Oversighter changes

Maxim

Guideline and policy news

• Following a discussion, the discussion-only period proposal that went for a trial to refine the requests for adminship (RfA) process has been discontinued.
• Following a request for comment, Administrator recall is adopted as a policy.

Technical news

• Mass deletions done with the Nuke tool now have the 'Nuke' tag. This change will make reviewing and analyzing deletions performed with the tool easier. T366068

Arbitration

• RoySmith, Barkeep49 and Cyberpower678 have been appointed to the Electoral Commission for the 2024 Arbitration Committee Elections. ThadeusOfNazereth and Dr vulpes are reserve commissioners.
• Eligible editors are invited to self-nominate from 3 November 2024 until 12 November 2024 to stand in the 2024 Arbitration Committee elections.
• The Arbitration Committee is seeking volunteers for roles such as clerks, access to the COI queue, checkuser, and oversight.

Miscellaneous

• An unreferenced articles backlog drive is happening in November 2024 to reduce the backlog of articles tagged with {{Unreferenced}}. You can help reduce the backlog by adding citations to these articles. Sign up to participate!

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 10:22, 3 November 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-45

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Updates for editors

• Stewards can now make global account blocks cause global autoblocks. This will assist stewards in preventing abuse from users who have been globally blocked. This includes preventing globally blocked temporary accounts from exiting their session or switching browsers to make subsequent edits for 24 hours. Previously, temporary accounts could exit their current session or switch browsers to continue editing. This is an anti-abuse tool improvement for the Temporary Accounts project. You can read more about the progress on key features for temporary accounts. [232]
• Wikis that have the CampaignEvents extension enabled can now use the Collaboration List feature. This list provides a new, easy way for contributors to learn about WikiProjects on their wikis. Thanks to the Campaign team for this work that is part of the 2024/25 annual plan. If you are interested in bringing the CampaignEvents extension to your wiki, you can follow these steps or you can reach out to User:Udehb-WMF for help.
• The text color for red links will be slightly changed later this week to improve their contrast in light mode. [233]
• View all 32 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, on multilingual wikis, users can now hide translations from the WhatLinksHere special page.

Updates for technical contributors

• XML data dumps have been temporarily paused whilst a bug is investigated. [234]

In depth

• Temporary Accounts have been deployed to six wikis; thanks to the Trust and Safety Product team for this work, you can read about the deployment plans. Beginning next week, Temporary Accounts will also be enabled on seven other projects. If you are active on these wikis and need help migrating your tools, please reach out to User:Udehb-WMF for assistance.
• The latest quarterly Language and Internationalization newsletter is available. It includes: New languages supported in translatewiki or in MediaWiki; New keyboard input methods for some languages; details about recent and upcoming meetings, and more.

Meetings and events

• MediaWiki Users and Developers Conference Fall 2024 is happening in Vienna, Austria and online from 4 to 6 November 2024. The conference will feature discussions around the usage of MediaWiki software by and within companies in different industries and will inspire and onboard new users.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 20:48, 4 November 2024 (UTC)

The Signpost: 6 November 2024

• From the editors: Editing Wikipedia should not be a crime

• News and notes: Wikimedia Foundation shares ANI lawsuit updates; first admin elections appoint eleven sysops; first admin recalls opened; temporary accounts coming soon?

• In the media: An old scrimmage, politics and purported libel

• Special report: Wikipedia editors face litigation, censorship

• Gallery: Why you should take more photos and upload them

• In focus: Questions and answers about the court case

• Traffic report: Twisted tricks or tempting treats?

• Technology report: Wikimedia tech, the Asian News International case, and the ultra-rare BLACKLOCK

• Humour: Man quietly slinks away from talk page argument after realizing his argument dumb, wrong

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twinkle batch delete

Hello. I hope you are doing well. Have you used twinkle's batch delete module on somewhere other than enwiki? The Wikipedia:Twinkle/doc#Modules for administrators is not much helpful. I am not sure if global twinkle supports that either. —usernamekiran (talk) 13:17, 8 November 2024 (UTC)

@Usernamekiran no, I only use TW on enwiki. — xaosflux ^Talk 14:05, 8 November 2024 (UTC)

thanks. any suggestions/ideas/workaround on how to mass/batch delete pages on somewhere other than enwiki? —usernamekiran (talk) 14:13, 8 November 2024 (UTC)

AWB? —usernamekiran (talk) 14:16, 8 November 2024 (UTC)

It depends on how big of a job it is, and how they were made. If someone is making lots of bad pages, Special:Nuke can be used. — xaosflux ^Talk 14:23, 8 November 2024 (UTC)

special:nuke is giving me two options, "Username, IP address or blank", and "SQL LIKE pattern (e.g. %) for the page name:". But I want to delete all the pages from the category "empty mainspace pages". for example, the corresponding page for 1940 in film in Marathi — mr:इ.स. १९४० मधील चित्रपट has been empty since 2009. Currently there are ~2,700 pages in that category. Even if we use nuke, it might delete some salvageable articles. AWB seems to be a safer choice, but the "delete" button stays greyed out for me. I tried a few things, cant seem to enable the option. I think I will have to do it manually over the course of couple of months. —usernamekiran (talk) 16:45, 8 November 2024 (UTC)

OK, Nuke is not suitable for that purpose. I'm a bit lost on your source, where is the list of all the pages you want to delete? — xaosflux ^Talk 16:52, 8 November 2024 (UTC)

oh, I didn't think of mentioning the source, it is mr:वर्ग:रिकामी पाने. It is not a maintenance/hidden category, just a plain old regular category. The title literally means "empty pages", but some articles have infoboxes in them, and some other can be expanded/or are of interest of mrwiki. —usernamekiran (talk) 22:23, 8 November 2024 (UTC)

You could try getting twinkle going, pywikibot has a module for this as well. For medium-speed batch deletions I've used meta:MediaWiki:Gadget-autodel.js before. — xaosflux ^Talk 23:47, 8 November 2024 (UTC)

Also regarding AWB "delete" - it isn't a batch tool, you'd have to click on it and give a reason each time. If you don't see it and you aren't using webauth, ensure your grant has delete enabled. — xaosflux ^Talk 00:20, 9 November 2024 (UTC)

Question

I tried to enable WP:Visual editor but it's not working. It said to try it out in my sandbox, but when I went to the sandbox, I got this message. Please explain. Atsme 💬 📧 13:20, 10 November 2024 (UTC)

To try the current version of VE, it's best to try it with the current skin as well. In Special:Preferences pick "Vector (2022)" in the Appearance menu; in the Editing menu enable "Enable the visual editor"; make sure you do not have "Use the wikitext mode inside the visual editor, instead of a different wikitext editor" enabled.

To try it one time only on your sandbox, try using this link. — xaosflux ^Talk 14:51, 10 November 2024 (UTC)

It worked! Thank you! Atsme 💬 📧 15:08, 10 November 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-46

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Updates for editors

• On wikis with the Translate extension enabled, users will notice that the FuzzyBot will now automatically create translated versions of categories used on translated pages. [235]
• View all 29 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, the submitted task to use the SecurePoll extension for English Wikipedia's special administrator election was resolved on time. [236]

Updates for technical contributors

• In 1.44.0-wmf-2, the logic of Wikibase function getAllStatements changed to behave like getBestStatements. Invoking the function now returns a copy of values which are immutable. [237]
• Wikimedia REST API users, such as bot operators and tool maintainers, may be affected by ongoing upgrades. The API will be rerouting some page content endpoints from RESTbase to the newer MediaWiki REST API endpoints. The impacted endpoints include getting page/revision metadata and rendered HTML content. These changes will be available on testwiki later this week, with other projects to follow. This change should not affect existing functionality, but active users of the impacted endpoints should verify behavior on testwiki, and raise any concerns on the related Phabricator ticket.

In depth

• Admins and users of the Wikimedia projects where Automoderator is enabled can now monitor and evaluate important metrics related to Automoderator's actions. This Superset dashboard calculates and aggregates metrics about Automoderator's behaviour on the projects in which it is deployed. Thanks to the Moderator Tools team for this Dashboard; you can visit the documentation page for more information about this work. [238]

Meetings and events

• 21 November 2024 (8:00 UTC & 16:00 UTC) - Community call with Wikimedia Commons volunteers and stakeholders to help prioritize support efforts for 2025-2026 Fiscal Year. The theme of this call is how content should be organised on Wikimedia Commons.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 00:05, 12 November 2024 (UTC)

Bot transcluding requests

Hello, Xaos!

When making requests for adminship or for choosing an article as a featured/good article or for flagging a new bot (the list goes on), one has to create a request and then transclude that request on a specific page. In SqWiki this step, being a bit unintuitive, is always forgotten by users which expect to be done with the request once they create the page with all the info for it and then wonder why it is not showing up anywhere. Is there a bot that you use to handle such cases in EnWiki? Maybe I could ask its operator to lend a hand even on our community. - Klein Muçi (talk) 09:01, 12 November 2024 (UTC)

No we don't. It's sort of a feature, if someone can't follow a simple direction like "transclude your request" - they likely shouldn't be running a bot here or be an admin here. For lightweight requests, perhaps you should have requesters make a new section rather than a new page. If you did want to do it, you could build something to look for, such as have the new page creation workflow inlcude Category:OPEN requests for XXXYYYZZZ, then your bot could patrol the listing page for pages missing (and make the request closing process remove that category). We thought about doing that one time, but found that often people would make their requests, but not be finished making them - or just not be ready to fully commit to their request yet. — xaosflux ^Talk 10:33, 12 November 2024 (UTC)

I see. As always, thank you for your insight! :-) - Klein Muçi (talk) 12:50, 12 November 2024 (UTC)

Reminder to participate in Wikipedia research

Hello,

I recently invited you to take a survey about administration on Wikipedia. If you haven’t yet had a chance, there is still time to participate– we’d truly appreciate your feedback. The survey is anonymous and should take about 10-15 minutes to complete. You may read more about the study on its Meta page and view its privacy statement.

Take the survey here.

Kind Regards,

WMF Research Team

BGerdemann (WMF) (talk) 00:18, 13 November 2024 (UTC)

Feedback request: Wikipedia proposals request for comment

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The Signpost: 18 November 2024

• News and notes: Open letter to WMF about court case breaks one thousand signatures, big arb case declined, U4C begins accepting cases

• In the media: Summons issued for Wikipedia editors by Indian court, "Gaza genocide" RfC close in news, old admin Gwern now big AI guy, and a "spectrum of reluctance" over Australian place names

• Recent research: SPINACH: AI help for asking Wikidata "challenging real-world questions"

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ArbCom 2024 Elections voter message

Hello! Voting in the 2024 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23:59 (UTC) on Monday, 2 December 2024. 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 Wikipedia 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.

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Tech News: 2024-47

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Updates for editors

• Users of Wikimedia sites will now be warned when they create a redirect to a page that doesn't exist. This will reduce the number of broken redirects to red links in our projects. [239]
• View all 42 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, Pywikibot, which automates work on MediaWiki sites, was upgraded to 9.5.0 on Toolforge. [240]

Updates for technical contributors

• On wikis that use the FlaggedRevs extension, pages created or moved by users with the appropriate permissions are marked as flagged automatically. This feature has not been working recently, and changes fixing it should be deployed this week. Thanks to Daniel and Wargo for working on this. [241][242]

In depth

• There is a new Diff post about Temporary Accounts, available in more than 15 languages. Read it to learn about what Temporary Accounts are, their impact on different groups of users, and the plan to introduce the change on all wikis.

Meetings and events

• Technical volunteers can now register for the 2025 Wikimedia Hackathon, which will take place in Istanbul, Turkey. Application for travel and accommodation scholarships is open from November 12 to December 10 2024. The registration for the event will close in mid-April 2025. The Wikimedia Hackathon is an annual gathering that unites the global technical community to collaborate on existing projects and explore new ideas.
• Join the Wikimedia Commons community calls this week to help prioritize support for Commons which will be planned for 2025–2026. The theme will be how content should be organised on Wikimedia Commons. This is an opportunity for volunteers who work on different things to come together and talk about what matters for the future of the project. The calls will take place November 21, 2024, 8:00 UTC and 16:00 UTC.
• A Language community meeting will take place November 29, 16:00 UTC to discuss updates and technical problem-solving.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 01:58, 19 November 2024 (UTC)