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Hi, and welcome to my talk page!
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If you are blocked, or want to contact me privately you can
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Hi Pete, I'm spamming everyone from the Portsmouth meetup last year. I'm hosting
a meetup in Brighton on 3 February 2024
if you're interested. Best,
HJ?Mitchell
|
Penny for your thoughts?
11:30, 27 December 2023 (UTC)
[
reply
]
- Great, thanks for organising that @
HJ Mitchell
! I should be able to make it, will be nice to visit Brighton again.
the wub
"?!"
21:09, 27 December 2023 (UTC)
[
reply
]
- Could you sort a Geonotice please? It's been years since I did one and I wouldn't want to muck something up. Perhaps something like "join us for a chat and a walk
in Brighton
on 3 February"? It might be a little early but I don't want to leave it too late for people who have to make arrangements. Don't know if there's a written or unwritten convention on how far in advance we do Geonotices? Best,
HJ?Mitchell
|
Penny for your thoughts?
17:20, 1 January 2024 (UTC)
[
reply
]
- @
HJ Mitchell
Geonotice is up, usually the convention is not more than 3 weeks in advance but I just tacked this and Oxford onto the existing London notice so it should be fine.
the wub
"?!"
22:35, 7 January 2024 (UTC)
[
reply
]
- Thank you!?:)
HJ?Mitchell
|
Penny for your thoughts?
22:38, 7 January 2024 (UTC)
[
reply
]
- Yes,
Thank you
, adding Oxford was on my to-do list for today but you beat me to it. --
Red
rose64
?? (
talk
) 23:19, 7 January 2024 (UTC)
[
reply
]
News and updates for administrators
from the past month (December 2023).
Arbitration
Miscellaneous
Latest
tech news
from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.
Translations
are available.
Recent changes
- 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.
[1]
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
).
[2]
[3]
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01:18, 9 January 2024 (UTC)
[
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Latest
tech news
from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.
Translations
are available.
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.
[4]
- 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.
[5]
- Bot passwords
and
owner-only OAuth consumers
can now be restricted to allow editing only specific pages.
[6]
- You can now
thank
edits made by bots.
[7]
- 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
).
[8]
[9]
- 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.
[10]
- 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.
[11]
Future changes
Tech news
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MediaWiki message delivery
00:11, 16 January 2024 (UTC)
[
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MediaWiki message delivery
01:02, 23 January 2024 (UTC)
[
reply
]
Latest
tech news
from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.
Translations
are available.
Recent changes
- 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
.
[15]
- 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
).
[16]
[17]
- 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
.
[18]
- 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.
[19]
Tech news
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MediaWiki message delivery
19:29, 29 January 2024 (UTC)
[
reply
]
News and updates for administrators
from the past month (January 2024).
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
Hi The wub! I've posted a
request for a Geonotice for our upcoming meetup
, but it hasn't been activated yet. As the last admin to post a Geonotice, could I please ask you to take a look at it and let me know if there's anything I can change? Thanks! --
Gaurav
(
talk
) 17:32, 2 February 2024 (UTC)
[
reply
]
- Hi @
Gaurav
, it looks like @
Pharos
actually added that one yesterday
[20]
, and I can see it on
Wikipedia:Geonotice/Map
. Is it still not showing up for you? Might be worth trying to clear your cookies.
the wub
"?!"
23:25, 2 February 2024 (UTC)
[
reply
]
Latest
tech news
from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.
Translations
are available.
Recent changes
- 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
19:20, 5 February 2024 (UTC)
[
reply
]
Hi there. Along with @
Alex26337
, I promoted
Society
to GA. I know you're offering an award. Thanks,
Of the universe
(
talk
) 16:48, 8 February 2024 (UTC)
[
reply
]
- @
Of the universe
@
Alex26337
Congratulations, that's a great achievement! Sorry for not noticing this earlier, I haven't really found a good way to monitor for potential awards. Can you both confirm if you're happy to share the reward 50:50, and where you would like your portion of it to go? You can
email me
if you prefer to keep it private.
the wub
"?!"
13:50, 9 February 2024 (UTC)
[
reply
]
- I'm happy to share 50:50!
Of the universe
(
talk
) 14:10, 9 February 2024 (UTC)
[
reply
]
- I’m also ok with equally sharing the reward!?? (I left you a more detailed response via email) ?
Alex26337
(
talk
) 16:34, 9 February 2024 (UTC)
[
reply
]
- Great! Replied to both of you via email.
the wub
"?!"
00:17, 10 February 2024 (UTC)
[
reply
]
Latest
tech news
from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.
Translations
are available.
Recent changes
- 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
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and posted by
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MediaWiki message delivery
05:47, 13 February 2024 (UTC)
[
reply
]
Precious
|
|
--
Gerda Arendt
(
talk
) 08:32, 14 February 2024 (UTC)
[
reply
]
Latest
tech news
from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.
Translations
are available.
Recent changes
- 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]
Tech news
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and posted by
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MediaWiki message delivery
15:35, 19 February 2024 (UTC)
[
reply
]
Latest
tech news
from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.
Translations
are available.
Recent changes
- 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
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and posted by
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MediaWiki message delivery
19:21, 26 February 2024 (UTC)
[
reply
]
News and updates for administrators
from the past month (February 2024).
Administrator changes
-
-
|
Bureaucrat changes
- SilkTork
|
Guideline and policy news
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
,
Do?u
,
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
.
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
).
Tech news
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and posted by
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MediaWiki message delivery
19:45, 4 March 2024 (UTC)
[
reply
]
The file
File:Debold main page headers.png
has been
proposed for deletion
because of the following concern:
unused Wikipedia screenshot, future use unlikely
While all constructive contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, pages may be
deleted for any of several reasons
.
You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the
{{proposed deletion/dated files}}
notice, but please explain why in your
edit summary
or on
the file's talk page
.
Please consider addressing the issues raised. Removing
{{proposed deletion/dated files}}
will stop the
proposed deletion process
, but other
deletion processes
exist. In particular, the
speedy deletion
process can result in deletion without discussion, and
files for discussion
allows discussion to reach
consensus
for deletion. --
TheImaCow
(
talk
) 21:17, 5 March 2024 (UTC)
[
reply
]
A tag has been placed on
Category:Wineries in Oklahoma
indicating that it is currently empty, and is not a
disambiguation category
, a
category redirect
, a
featured topics category
, under discussion at
Categories for discussion
, or a project category that by its nature may become empty on occasion. If it remains empty for seven days or more, it may be deleted under
section C1 of the criteria for speedy deletion
.
If you think this page should not be deleted for this reason you may
contest the nomination
by
visiting the page
and removing the speedy deletion tag.
L
iz
Read!
Talk!
01:19, 10 March 2024 (UTC)
[
reply
]
Latest
tech news
from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.
Translations
are available.
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]
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MediaWiki message delivery
23:02, 11 March 2024 (UTC)
[
reply
]
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)
[
reply
]
Latest
tech news
from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.
Translations
are available.
Recent changes
- 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]
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MediaWiki message delivery
17:38, 18 March 2024 (UTC)
[
reply
]
Hi, it has been a while. I have two more reward candidates for the Level 2 Vital Articles GA reward:
Ethics
and
Arithmetic
. The process for
Arithmetic
was a bit of a challenge since the first two reviews were found to be invalid, with the reviewer of one of them even posting here to claim the reward. But I hope everything is in order this time. If so, could you donate the reward again to the "All Grants Fund" by GiveWell?
Phlsph7
(
talk
) 10:15, 21 March 2024 (UTC)
[
reply
]
- @
Phlsph7
Donation made! Thanks for letting me know, and congratulations again! I had seen the two cancelled reviews for Arithmetic, glad it was able to get a real review in the end.
- That's the last of these rewards I have to give out for now, but you might be interested to see if you hadn't already that User:feminist has a similar reward for
getting a level 3 or less VA to FA
.
the wub
"?!"
20:44, 21 March 2024 (UTC)
[
reply
]
- Thanks a lot! I appreciate your earlier extension of the timeline, which made it possible for all the rewards to be claimed.
Phlsph7
(
talk
) 08:05, 22 March 2024 (UTC)
[
reply
]
MediaWiki message delivery
18:54, 25 March 2024 (UTC)
[
reply
]
Hallo, I seem to remember that some time you pointed out to me a bot or gadget which would archive the links in a page, to future-proof it. Having just spent ages sorting out
Mikron Theatre Company
after they redesigned their website, I'm going to try to remember to archive all links to websites other than books, newspapers etc. Could you remind me what that bot or gadget was? It would be good to be able to come to the end of initial creation of page and get all the links future-proofed at the click of a link. Thanks. And apologies if I've misremembered and it was someone else who knew about this!
Pam
D
11:41, 1 April 2024 (UTC)
[
reply
]
- Hi @
PamD
! I think it would have been the
InternetArchiveBot
which you can run on a given page from
here
.
the wub
"?!"
12:55, 1 April 2024 (UTC)
[
reply
]
- Ah thanks!
Pam
D
16:16, 1 April 2024 (UTC)
[
reply
]
News and updates for administrators
from the past month (March 2024).
Administrator changes
-
Guideline and policy news
Technical news
- The Toolforge Grid Engine services have been shut down after the final migration process from Grid Engine to Kubernetes. (
T313405
)
Arbitration
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.
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
.
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MediaWiki message delivery
03:34, 2 April 2024 (UTC)
[
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]
Hello there! Interested in having a chat with fellow Wikipedians? There's a meetup in
Leeds
on
Saturday 4th May 2024
, at the
Tiled Hall Cafe at Leeds Central Library
.
Full details here
.
You're receiving this one-off message as you're either a member of
WikiProject Yorkshire
, you've expressed an interest in a
previous Leeds meetup
years ago, or (for about 4 of you), we've met?:)
I plan to organise more in future, so if you'd like to be notified next time, please say so over on the
meetup page
.
Please also invite any Wikimedia people you know (or have had wiki dealings with) ?
spread the word
! Hope to see you there.
Jonathan Deamer
(
talk
)
20:36, 7 April 2024 (UTC)
Latest
tech news
from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.
Translations
are available.
Recent changes
- 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]
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MediaWiki message delivery
23:35, 8 April 2024 (UTC)
[
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Latest
tech news
from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.
Translations
are available.
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]
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MediaWiki message delivery
23:27, 15 April 2024 (UTC)
[
reply
]
MediaWiki message delivery
20:26, 22 April 2024 (UTC)
[
reply
]
The Growth team will now send quarterly reports to keep you in the loop. Growth team weekly updates
are available on wiki
(in English) if you want to know more about our day-to-day work.
If you want to receive more general updates about technical activity happening across the Wikimedia movement (including Growth work), we encourage you to
subscribe to Tech News
.
Growth features are currently configurable at
Special:EditGrowthConfig
. This quarter we are working on making
Community Configuration
accessible for other MediaWiki developers while also moving Growth feature configuration to the new CommunityConfiguration extension.
An early version of Community Configuration can be tested at
Spanish Beta Wikipedia
. We plan to release the new Community Configuration extension to pilot wikis (Arabic and Spanish Wikipedia) in early May, 2024. The first non-Growth team feature to utilize Community Configuration will be
Automoderator
.
In parallel with the development, the Growth team will propose Community Configuration usage guidelines, Community Configuration design guidelines, and provide technical documentation.
Experiment Results
[
edit
]
Add a Image experiment analysis results
The Growth team conducted an experiment to assess the impact of the “
Add an Image
” structured task on the Newcomer Homepage's "Suggested Edits" module. This analysis finds that the Add an Image structured task leads to an increase in newcomer participation on the mobile web platform, particularly by making constructive (non-reverted) article edits:
- The likelihood that mobile web newcomers make their first article edit (+17.0% over baseline)
- The likelihood that they are retained as newcomers (+24.3% over baseline)
- The number of edits they make during their first two weeks on the wiki (+21.8% over baseline)
- A lower probability of the newcomers' edits will be reverted (-3.3% over baseline).
Personalized praise experiment results
This feature was developed for Mentors as part of the Growth team's
Positive Reinforcement project
. When A/B testing on Spanish Wikipedia, we found
no significant impact
on retention, but we found a
significant positive impact
on newcomer productivity. However, we concluded that the results weren’t positive enough to justify the time investment from Mentors. We plan to discuss this feature with our pilot wikis, and consider further improvements before scaling this feature further. Meanwhile, communities willing to test the feature can ask to have it deployed. (
T361763
)
English donors encouraged to try editing
As in previous years, donors were directed to a Thank you page after donation (
example
). However, this year we tested a new “Try editing Wikipedia,” call to action on the Thank You page. This call to action linked to a
unique account creation page
. From this account creation page we were able to track Registrations and Activation (editing for the first time). During the English banner campaign, the Donor Thank you page led to 4,398 new accounts, and 441 of those accounts went on to constructively edit within 24 hours. (
T352900
)
Future work
[
edit
]
Annual Plan
The Growth team and the Editing team will work on the
WE1.2 Key Result
in the coming fiscal year. We will start initial discussions with communities soon to help finalize our plans. (
T361657
)
Newcomer Homepage Community Updates module
We plan to A/B test adding a new Community Configurable module to the Newcomer Homepage that will allow communities to highlight specific events, projects, campaigns, and initiatives. We are early in the planning phase of this project that will take place first at our pilot wikis and wikis volunteering. We welcome community feedback on initial designs and plans, in any language at
our project talk page
.
Growth team's newsletter
prepared by
the Growth team
and posted by
bot
?
Give feedback
?
Subscribe or unsubscribe
.
18:55, 23 April 2024 (UTC)
Latest
tech news
from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.
Translations
are available.
Recent changes
- The 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:
- 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]
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MediaWiki message delivery
03:31, 30 April 2024 (UTC)
[
reply
]
News and updates for administrators
from the past month (April 2024).
Guideline and policy news
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
Miscellaneous
- 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)
[
reply
]
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:
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)
[
reply
]
Latest
tech news
from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.
Translations
are available.
Recent changes
- 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
Tech news
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MediaWiki message delivery
16:42, 6 May 2024 (UTC)
[
reply
]
Latest
tech news
from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.
Translations
are available.
Recent changes
- 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:
- Replace
JOIN pagelinks
with
JOIN linktarget
and
pl_
with
lt_
in the
ON
statement
- Below that add
JOIN pagelinks ON lt_id = pl_target_id
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MediaWiki message delivery
23:56, 13 May 2024 (UTC)
[
reply
]
Latest
tech news
from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.
Translations
are available.
Recent changes
- 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.
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MediaWiki message delivery
23:02, 20 May 2024 (UTC)
[
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]
Latest
tech news
from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.
Translations
are available.
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]
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MediaWiki message delivery
00:13, 28 May 2024 (UTC)
[
reply
]
- Thank you!
the wub
"?!"
23:08, 29 May 2024 (UTC)
[
reply
]
Latest
tech news
from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.
Translations
are available.
Recent changes
- 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
.
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MediaWiki message delivery
22:33, 3 June 2024 (UTC)
[
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]