User talk:Mojoworker - Wikipedia

1 person in discussion

Article Images

This user is busy in real life and may not respond swiftly to queries.

Hello Mojoworker, and Welcome to Wikipedia!

Please remember to sign your name on talk pages by clicking or using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically produce your username and the date. Also, please do your best to always fill in the edit summary field. Below are some useful links to facilitate your involvement.

Happy editing! VanTucky ^Talk 18:51, 9 October 2007 (UTC)Reply

Getting started
Introduction The five pillars of Wikipedia How to edit a page
Finding your way around
Table of contents Department directory
Editing articles
How to develop an article Manual of Style

Getting help
Frequently asked questions Cheatsheet Where to ask a question Help pages New contributors' help page
How you can help
Contributing to Wikipedia Community Portal Follow Wikipedia etiquette Practice civility

Hi, Mojoworker, welcome to the Article Rescue Squadron! We are a growing community of Wikipedia editors dedicated to identifying and rescuing articles and content that have been nominated for deletion. Every day hundreds of articles are deleted, many rightfully so. But many concern notable subjects and are poorly written, ergo fixable, and should not be deleted. We try to help these articles and content to quickly improve and address the concerns of why they are proposed for deletion. This covers a lot of ground and your help is appreciated!

Some points that may be helpful:
WikiProject Article rescue squadron's (ARS) main aim is to help improve Wikipedia articles and content. If someone seeks help, please try to assist if you are able. Likewise feel free to ask for help, advice and clarification. Sometimes we are asked to help rescue articles by people new to our notability and sourcing policies. If the article is not fixable we can help explain why and offer alternatives. Sometimes editors who are new to Wikipedia may perceive the deletion of "their" article as discouraging. Encourage civility and maybe even {{welcome}} them if they have only been templated with deletion messages. The Articles for deletion (AfD) discussion is where the concerns regarding each article are brought up and addressed. To be an effective member of the project you need to know how AfD works as well as how to improve articles. Introduction to deletion process gives a good overview and some good advice for newcomers to deletion. Our primary work is improving Wikipedia articles and content. A more dynamic list with article links and descriptions are located at our rescue list. If you have another language besides English, please consider adding yourself to the list of translators available. Articles and sources that use non-English languages often need translation for those of us who cannot translate for ourselves. Many important discussions take place on the project's main discussion page; it is recommended that you watchlist it.

Some points that may be helpful:

WikiProject Article rescue squadron's (ARS) main aim is to help improve Wikipedia articles and content. If someone seeks help, please try to assist if you are able. Likewise feel free to ask for help, advice and clarification.

Sometimes we are asked to help rescue articles by people new to our notability and sourcing policies. If the article is not fixable we can help explain why and offer alternatives. Sometimes editors who are new to Wikipedia may perceive the deletion of "their" article as discouraging. Encourage civility and maybe even {{welcome}} them if they have only been templated with deletion messages.

The Articles for deletion (AfD) discussion is where the concerns regarding each article are brought up and addressed. To be an effective member of the project you need to know how AfD works as well as how to improve articles. Introduction to deletion process gives a good overview and some good advice for newcomers to deletion.

Our primary work is improving Wikipedia articles and content. A more dynamic list with article links and descriptions are located at our rescue list.

If you have another language besides English, please consider adding yourself to the list of translators available. Articles and sources that use non-English languages often need translation for those of us who cannot translate for ourselves.

Many important discussions take place on the project's main discussion page; it is recommended that you watchlist it.

If you have any questions, feel free to ask on the talk page, and we will be happy to help you.

And once again — Welcome! Northamerica1000^(talk) 18:06, 29 March 2012 (UTC)Reply

		The Guidance Barnstar
		Dear Mojoworker, thanks for your kind words on my talk page, including your good faith and advice to make me a better Wikipedia editor. I wish the best to you and yours, Anupam^Talk 16:51, 9 May 2012 (UTC)Reply

You rock! – Ling.Nut3 (talk) 08:45, 11 May 2012 (UTC)Reply

Changed his name, issues came up again, [1], I had to block an IP who got rude with him over tagging as well. Just keeping you in the loop. Just not much I can do at this point.

Thanks Dennis. I'll try to keep an eye on him. Mojoworker (talk) 19:07, 6 June 2012 (UTC)Reply

I apologize for reverting edits that were constructive. I promise to be more careful from now on.--Scott Delaney (talk) 22:58, 6 June 2012 (UTC)Reply

Scott Delaney (talk) 00:41, 7 June 2012 (UTC) You will find there an Apology for All the vandalism mistakes I made.--Scott Delaney (talk) 00:43, 7 June 2012 (UTC)Reply

I'm about to file something at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard regarding our friend. Dennis Brown - 2¢ © 03:14, 9 June 2012 (UTC)Reply

I've added a plan at WP:AN#Disruptive Editing (CIR issue with) User:Scott Delaney that I think you will approve of. As before, it only requires you and I observe from a distance. It is a bit of a last chance, but perhaps it will work out well. Of course, we both hope so. Dennis Brown - 2¢ © 23:12, 12 June 2012 (UTC)Reply

Thanks for keeping me in the loop. I saw this morning on the AN thread that he's only 14. That explains much. And i saw that Adjwilley accepted your call for a mentor – I considered it, but I'm busy writing a proposal, so haven't been doing much else today, and If I get the work, I may be scarce for a bit... I'm heading out the door, but I'll read your latest update when I get back. Mojoworker (talk) 23:24, 12 June 2012 (UTC)Reply

Just got your message. Thank you, I knew there had to be a more formal way of doing it. Yes, I was the original creator of the template, but I have since found it unnecessary to have a template (at least a campaignbox template) for Indian wars/conflicts in specific states/territories. Often, Indian wars occurred in multiple states/territories. For example, I dont think it would be a good idea to have the "Indian wars in California" campaignbox template in addition to an "Indian Wars in Nevada" template on the same article since none are really needed in the first place. It could be misleading as well I suppose, but, again, they just arent needed. I may make a new template(s) for the information, which would go at the bottom of the article, but I have yet to decide if that is really necessary either. Apart from my thanking you, I left this message just in case you were interested in understanding why I wish to have the templates deleted (I am not the best at explaining things and I know I did not leave an explanation like this anywhere else). Thanks for your concern.--$1LENCE D00600D (talk) 22:49, 9 July 2012 (UTC)Reply

Calm As Midnight 23:51, 8 September 2012 (UTC)Reply

hi there, your vote in ArbCom elections triggered a spoof CSRF alarm. Would you be so kind as to please confirm that you actually voted? :) Apologies for the inconvenience. Pundit|utter 07:41, 12 December 2012 (UTC)Reply

Yes, I did vote for a small number of candidates - I think it was four in total. Mojoworker (talk) 14:50, 12 December 2012 (UTC)Reply

Thanks for contributing a dose of reality but don't accuse "both" of edit warring only to revert back to my original on identical grounds of BRD... the user has reverted twice as many times and has yet to justify 1) their original revert and 2) subsequent edit... on grounds other than what they wish WP:ERA says.—Machine Elf ¹⁷³⁵ 19:36, 10 January 2013 (UTC)Reply

Didn't mean to accuse you – just trying to be somewhat even–handed. Basically, just trying to get you guys to discuss things. Mojoworker (talk) 22:14, 10 January 2013 (UTC)Reply

Foremost, I appreciate your participation... Perhaps you hadn't noticed that I did wait for the user to reply... their accusation of personal attacks, WP:IDHT and failure to self-revert leave nothing to the imagination. Please note that you incorporated a rather significant proportion of the contentious edits into your own revert, which nearly tips the balance... probably why the user has acquiesced for the time being. Also note that they've yet to make a case, per the current WP:ERA, that a History of physics article should use BC/AD... surely if either, is not the secular qualifier to be expected? Absent any rational ground on which the current consensus could be reversed, entertaining their request for a delay as ideal, merely invites further obfuscation and disruption.—Machine Elf ¹⁷³⁵ 01:44, 11 January 2013 (UTC)Reply

I put a different list up for flist just to see how things work there. We'll see how it goes. Cheers. • Serviceable†Villain 09:12, 19 May 2013 (UTC)Reply

Thanks, I'll take a look at the list you nominated. Mojoworker (talk) 04:30, 22 May 2013 (UTC)Reply

- Alas, I was rather curt when I was a FAC reviewer. And just as I feared, the FLIST reviewers have gathered their hurt feelings and spoken from them. My list will not pass. So, if the Civil War list is ever nominated, it would be best if my name were not on the nom, despite the nontrivial effort I have expended upon it. • Serviceable†Villain 05:49, 31 May 2013 (UTC)Reply
  - Unfortunate – not much feedback there. I'm going to be pretty busy for the next month, but after that I was thinking of asking MILHIST to do an A Class List review. I'll see if I can split out the casualty list before then...if no one beats me to it. Mojoworker (talk) 06:17, 31 May 2013 (UTC)Reply
    - I didn't expect anything else. Well, maybe I had some small hopes, but only small ones. It does not matter. :-) I'm not going to engage in useless, protracted discussion.... As for the Civil war list, don't forget to add Dalton III some day soon. I may not be any help. I'm pretty busy. I am not doing anything on Wikipedia, no articles etc., and may drop off the radar completely again for a while. Good luck! • Serviceable†Villain 06:23, 31 May 2013 (UTC)Reply

(talk page stalker) My oppose has nothing to do with "hurt feelings", I didn't even know you'd reviewed any of my FACs? Perhaps it was with another account? The oppose has to do with my concerns that the list doesn't meet 3b. In all honesty, can you see the point of the main article, pretty much all of which is then repeated in the list article? That's what 3b is designed to avoid, particularly when the main article is barely a screen-length in size. And the opinion is of just one single editor (me, not "the FLIST reviewers" as you claim), we base our promotions on consensus, not one individual's opinion. If, User:ServiceableVillain, you're not going to try to work this through, I suggest you withdraw the nomination. The Rambling Man (talk) 15:51, 31 May 2013 (UTC)Reply

Ah. Of course I am willing to work with constructive comments. The examples I gave... should I look at the parent articles to see how tiny they are? The tingTings or whomever?... is that article large?... as for FAC, one reviewer at flist is the precise reason why I will never review at FAC again (well, him and the FAC delegate relevant to that thread). I also thought I remembered you from another time... but if not, then I am sorry. • Serviceable†Villain 04:33, 2 June 2013 (UTC)Reply

I've got no idea who you are or what your grievances in previous accounts have been. It's got nothing to do with me, nothing to do with FLC, nothing to do with nomination. I'm not sure how many times you need to be told that the Ting Tings discog was deemed to be a reasonable fork from the main Ting Tings article. Given the size of the main article, there is no need to fork out the list in the case of the Harmon award. One article with a list is perfectly adequate, see Sakharov Prize or 1st Academy Awards or PDSA Gold Medal.... These don't have a "list of x winners" and a main article of "x", because there's too much overlap and not enough to justify two articles. That's why we have 3b. The Rambling Man (talk) 15:15, 2 June 2013 (UTC)Reply

The snuggle logo

Snuggle, the newcomer socialization tool I've been building, is finally ready for general use. All you need to do to get started is point your browser to https://snuggle.grouplens.org. Let me know if you run into any trouble. I'll be watching WT:Snuggle. Or you can also just contact me directly. Thanks for your patience.

See also:

Documentation
Bug tracker
Open source code repository
My work log describing the last few months of work

--EpochFail^{(talk • work)} 19:46, 14 June 2013 (UTC)Reply

Start Snuggle

Hi. We're organizing an office hours session with the Teahouse to bring in mentors from across the wiki to try out Snuggle and discuss it's potential to support mentorship broadly. The Snuggle team would appreciate it if you would come and participate in the discussion. We'll be having it in #wikimedia-office ^connect on Wed. July 17th @ 1600 UTC. See the agenda for more info. --EpochFail^{(talk • work)}, Technical 13 (talk), TheOriginalSoni (talk) 18:30, 12 July 2013 (UTC)Reply

Hi! I just wanted to post a reminder that this discussion will be happening in about 24 hours. If you haven't already used Snuggle, I recommend giving it a try before the meeting. I'll be in #wikimedia-office ^connect a half hour early to answer any questions you have. --EpochFail^{(talk • work)} 15:50, 16 July 2013 (UTC)Reply

I have received notification of your message to Athollgoon concerning the redlinks in the American Civil War articles. Adamdaley (talk) 01:12, 16 July 2013 (UTC)Reply

I am very sorry if I have caused any inconveniences. I would love to help out with creating Regimental Articles. I am new here, and would love to learn how to create articles. Could one of you please help me in doing this? Athollgoon (talk) 01:27, 17 July 2013 (UTC)Reply

Sure, I'd be happy to help you. I'm pretty busy the rest of the week, but I should have some time next week. In the meantime, take a look at WP:Your first article, and WP:Article development, and take a look at some of the existing regimental articles as well, to get an idea of how they are structured. Most of them got their start with material from A Compendium of the War of the Rebellion by Frederick H. Dyer AKA Dyer's Compendium. Do you have any particular regiment in mind or a specific State or Territory? Let me know if you have any questions. Mojoworker (talk) 21:05, 17 July 2013 (UTC)Reply

I would love to help create the 109th New York, because that was the regiment in which my relatives served. I would also like to help out with Pennsylvania and Missouri regiments. And editing the First Washington. Athollgoon (talk) 22:06, 17 July 2013 (UTC)Reply

FYI (For your information).--Anderson I'm Willing To Help 20:59, 21 July 2013 (UTC)Reply

You were involved in a past discussion about this user, so you may be interested in this: WP:ANI#Request swift admin intervention to prevent further disruption to the Jesus article by User Strangesad.--FutureTrillionaire (talk) 00:06, 10 August 2013 (UTC)Reply

I'd forgotten about that conversation. It would seem though, that we have a different understanding of the results of the discussion. As I understand it, the England / Ireland / Scotland ensigns were to be replaced with the Union Flag and that the other flags would be the national flag, not the civil or maritime ensign. That is how the the table at Challengers and defenders is currently configured. Did we decide otherwise for the yacht articles?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 10:45, 26 September 2013 (UTC)Reply

I had noticed lots of America's Cup related editing recently, coinciding with the interest in the just–finished edition of the Cup. While examining some of them I noticed a discrepancy in how the ensigns were being handled in the individual yacht articles. For example, Sceptre (yacht) was using the red ensign, while Endeavour (yacht) was not. I noticed you created Sceptre on 26 April 2012. I looked a little further and noticed Alinghi using the Swiss maritime ensign and the Shamrock series (Shamrock (yacht), Shamrock IV, Shamrock V) were all using the red ensign. While (in addition to Endeavour, Galatea (yacht), Cambria (yacht), etc. were still using the England / Ireland / Scotland country flags.

So, remembering the discussion from that time, I went back and looked at it. There was a very clear consensus to use the UK flag – Mattlore's: "I think using UK and the home countries flags is confusing and we should pick either style and stick to it. Based on the argument above for Shamrock and the modern challenges I have been convinced during this argument that the UK flag is the appropriate one" and Nuttyrave's: "Irish, Scottish and English clubs all represented under the Union flag is the simplest way forward". And, while most of the discussion concerned the table in the America's Cup article (and I think we are all in agreement on the style in use there), there were some complaints about the civil ensigns being difficult to distinguish when they were small. I did notice a couple of references to the individual yacht articles: your "For the individual articles, I likewise agree that the appropriate flag template is {{flag|United Kingdom|civil|size=48px}}. United Kingdom" and my quote (discussing the table and the individual articles) "I would vote to use the for all the UK challenges and the civil ensigns on the individual yacht pages where the icons are larger." I didn't see any dissension there, and seeing that you changed the table and some of the individual yacht articles in that time-frame, I assumed that you just forgot about changing the others. So I went ahead and made them all consistently maritime ensigns (and UK where appropriate).

Now it's possible I misinterpreted something in the discussion, but I just went back and read through it all again, and I'm still coming to the same conclusion. Let me know what you think I've missed there. Oh, and congratulations on your adminship. I have a script that highlights the admin signatures and noticed yours was highlighted. I went and looked at your RfA, and it looked pretty close – sorry I didn't see it earlier, or I would've supported you. Glad you made it anyway. For all the talk about the Admin bit being no big deal, it sure seems some people think it is a big deal. I mean really, what did the people who !voted against you expect that you would do – start blocking people willy nilly? There's too much immaturity around here sometimes... I'm sure you'll "grow into" the other admin duties if you ever have the inclination, but I'm sure the project will be just fine either way. Mojoworker (talk) 17:50, 26 September 2013 (UTC)Reply

Thank you.

I think that the discussion worked because we were able to stay on track and decide the one issue and that was the flag icons in the Challengers and defenders table. Even though we mentioned the individual articles, I don't see them as part of the decision.

I suppose that the argument could be made that we should look at how flags and burgees are used throughout the whole range of America's Cup-related articles for reasons of consistency. If and when that happens, I'll be interested in participating.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 23:29, 26 September 2013 (UTC)Reply

I don't know which would be more correct – my goal was to make them consistent. It was my understanding that the reason for using the national flags instead of the ensigns in the table was because, at the small size used in the table it was easier to tell the difference between the UK, Australia, and New Zealand national flags than their ensigns, while that wasn't an issue at the 300px size used in the individual articles...

In any case, after making the England / Ireland / Scotland ensigns consistent with the other articles using the red ensign, there were only a handful of articles using national flags, so those were changed to be consistent with the other ensigns. Mojoworker (talk) 20:04, 29 September 2013 (UTC)Reply

Thanks for your messages Mojoworker & Stfg. Substitution or translusion (DEPRECATED) a part, there was a problem within the template footer message. Its code called BASEPAGENAME, which runs properly within the template page itself (and all of its subpages, sandbox included), of course, but not on user talk (and others) pages. I've fixed it by replacing
{{[[WP:SUBST|subst]]:[[Template:{{BASEPAGENAME}}|{{BASEPAGENAME}}]]}}
with
{{tls|Blank WikiLove}}
(as per other WikiLove templates). And, I've also added a default value→"this WikiLove template" for the "item" parameter (in case it is left blank by the poster).
I've made a series of tests here, and you can see the changes at http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template%3ABlank_WikiLove&diff=577741779&oldid=504554247.
Happy editing! –pjoef (talk • contribs) 07:51, 20 October 2013 (UTC)Reply

I appreciate your comments, but don't they belong on my talk page rather than the article's? Instaurare (talk) 05:53, 29 October 2013 (UTC)Reply

Also, the accusations of the other editors are largely unfounded. See the edit history rather than the other editors' unsubstantiated, undiscussed claims. Instaurare (talk) 05:53, 29 October 2013 (UTC)Reply

I was commenting on your editing of the McAuliffe‎ article – didn't look in depth at your edits at the Cuccinelli article, for example. Have you inserted similar criticisms there? Right or wrong, the other editors don't have the same clouded history that you do. Mojoworker (talk) 04:38, 30 October 2013 (UTC)Reply

You recently offered a statement in a request for arbitration. The Arbitration Committee has accepted that request for arbitration and an arbitration case has been opened at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Kafziel. Evidence that you wish the arbitrators to consider should be added to the evidence subpage, at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Kafziel/Evidence. Please add your evidence by December 29, 2013, which is when the evidence phase closes. You can also contribute to the case workshop subpage, Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Kafziel/Workshop. For a guide to the arbitration process, see Wikipedia:Arbitration/Guide to arbitration. For the Arbitration Committee, Callanecc (talk • contribs • logs) 22:33, 15 December 2013 (UTC)Reply

My apologies: I misread what was going on and had no intention of accusing User:Mojoworker of vandalism. I was in the middle of reverting a ton of very bad deletions sparked by 777sms's very bad tagging, and by the time I reached the Little Rock campaignbox, I'd gotten to the point that I was deeply doubting 777sms's good faith. Your tag is completely different: I disagree with it, but I do not doubt your good faith. I disagree with the deletion on three counts: (1) Copyright. This is the situation in which {{Copied}} is appropriate for the talk page, and the source page may not be deleted because it serves to provide attribution. (2) Speedy deletion criteria. When we merge page1 to page2, we normally turn page1 into a redirect, and redirects aren't eligible for any of the template criteria. (3) Since it had been used for 2+ years, it's better to leave it a redirect than to delete it, since deletion hurts the appearance of old revisions of pages using the original template, and even ignoring my other two "counts", there's nothing harmful that would necessitate deletion, so I don't see why we absolutely need to delete it. Nyttend (talk) 23:13, 21 December 2013 (UTC)Reply

@Nyttend:No problem. Thanks for the explanation. At the time, I wasn't sure which course of action made more sense. As I mentioned on your talk page, keeping it as a redirect might prevent someone from recreating the Campaignbox in the future, and as you point out preserves the history. On the other hand, the template was erroneously created with the wrong name by a problematic sock... That's why I consulted with Moonriddengirl. After giving it some more thought, I agree that the current state of the template (existing as a redirect) is better than it being deleted. Mojoworker (talk) 23:44, 21 December 2013 (UTC)Reply

Hello. Several new proposals have been submitted at Wikipedia:Pending changes/Request for Comment 2014 since you last commented on it. You are invited to return to comment on the new proposals. Jackmcbarn (talk) 01:14, 16 January 2014 (UTC)Reply

Medicine is available for hookworm. You are right in the sense that there is not now a world-wide eradication attempt going on against the disease. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.183.72.219 (talk) 10:52, 13 February 2014 (UTC)Reply

A year ago, you were the 836th recipient of my PumpkinSky Prize, --Gerda Arendt (talk) 09:59, 25 April 2015 (UTC)Reply

Six years ago, you were recipient no. 836 of Precious, a prize of QAI! --Gerda Arendt (talk) 09:11, 25 April 2020 (UTC)Reply

Hi. You contributed to a recent RFC about this topic area. This message is to notify you that the arbitration proceedings at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/American politics are underway, and evidence about all disruptive edits to articles within this topic is being accepted at the relevant case page. If you wish to submit evidence for the committee to consider in reaching its decision, please do so now. The evidence phase of the case ends soon, and evidence submitted after the deadline may not be considered. Further advice on submitting evidence, and what evidence the committee will accept, is linked at the top of the evidence page. Please contact me or the other drafting arbitrator if you require more time to submit evidence. Thank you. For the Arbitration Committee, AGK [•] 14:12, 10 May 2014 (UTC)Reply

Yes, Building C is still needed. Please check for a photo. Thanks! WhisperToMe (talk) 09:16, 12 May 2014 (UTC)Reply

Thank you so much! WhisperToMe (talk) 22:52, 12 May 2014 (UTC)Reply

... is what if one part of the previous change was correct, and another part wrong, and simply undoing it in whole is just as bad as the previous change.

They did:

"South African Defence Force" -> "South African Defense Force"

"US Department of Defence" -> "US Department of Defense"

You reversed this to:

"South African Defense Force" -> "South African Defence Force"

"US Department of Defense" -> "US Department of Defence"

Now "South African Defense Force" is wrong, but so is "US Department of Defence". These are names and so not an WP:ENGVAR or WP:RETAIN matter. So who is winning here? :)

And, hey, I'm an ENGVAR nut (see recent edit - and yet even there it is unclear, as a Canadian First Nation organisation mentioned in the article has a name with 'organization' in it - confusing, and makes me nervous enough to go back and check again!) Shenme (talk) 05:01, 5 June 2014 (UTC)Reply

Good catch. I didn't look at it closely enough. I had noticed the lede discussed Rhodesia and South Africa and so changed it back to British English (and the change I undid was linking to the redirect instead of South African Defence Force. I've changed the other one back to US Department of Defense. Mojoworker (talk) 05:24, 5 June 2014 (UTC)Reply

Hi Books & Bytes recipients: The Wikipedia Library has been expanding rapidly and we need some help! We currently have 10 signups for free account access open and several more in the works... In order to help with those signups, distribute access codes, and manage accounts we'll need 2-3 more Account Coordinators.

It takes about an hour to get up and running and then only takes a couple hours per week, flexible depending upon your schedule and routine. If you're interested in helping out, please drop a note in the next week at my talk page or shoot me an email at: jorlowitz gmail.com. Thanks and cheers, Jake Ocaasi via MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 23:41, 20 June 2014 (UTC)Reply

Hey, I notice that you have HighBeam access and you seem to have a few topicons. That being said, if you are interested, I've created {{Wikipedia:HighBeam/Topicon}}. No reply to this message is necessary (and I won't see it unless you ping me), just wanted to let you know it was available. Happy editing! — {{U|Technical 13}} ^{(e • t • c)} 23:58, 11 July 2014 (UTC)Reply

Hello. Was curious about where to post query regarding use of BCE/CE; BC/AD; BC/E AD/CE. Because in an article that uses BCE/CE (which isn't widely used), I tried to make adjustments and was reverted (it was all AD). Then thought I'd insert AD/CE. I don't presume that there are problems with that, is there? If so, where do I post to do a vote? Thanks for the input! 164.107.217.46 (talk) 00:16, 30 September 2014 (UTC)TomReply

Hi. I left the link to the relevant section of the Wikipedia Manual of Style in the edit summary when I undid your edit. The information is at WP:ERA. It's possible that CE can be removed if it doesn't result in ambiguity, but you should probably discuss it on the article talk page first. Let me know if you have any questions. Mojoworker (talk) 00:35, 30 September 2014 (UTC)Reply

Hello Wikimedians!

The TWL OWL says sign up today :)

The Wikipedia Library is announcing signups today for, free, full-access accounts to published research as part of our Publisher Donation Program. You can sign up for:

Elsevier - science and medicine journals and books
Royal Society of Chemistry - chemistry journals
Pelican Books - ebook monographs
Public Catalogue Foundation- art books

Other partnerships with accounts available are listed on our partners page. Do better research and help expand the use of high quality references across Wikipedia projects: sign up today!
--The Wikipedia Library Team.00:25, 18 December 2014 (UTC)

You can host and coordinate signups for a Wikipedia Library branch in your own language. Please contact Ocaasi (WMF).

This message was delivered via the Mass Message tool to the Book & Bytes recipient list.

Hello Books & Bytes subscribers. There is a new Visual Editor reference feature in development called Citoid. It is designed to "auto-fill" references using a URL or DOI. We would really appreciate you testing whether TWL partners' references work in Citoid. Sharing your results will help the developers fix bugs and improve the system. If you have a few minutes, please visit the testing page for simple instructions on how to try this new tool. Regards, MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:47, 10 April 2015 (UTC)Reply

You asked to be notified here: User_talk:Padenton/adminhighlighter. Amalthea is back and has corrected the bug, so my version of the script and related pages are now deprecated. I'll probably CSD the scripts in about a week or so to give people some time to switch back to the script here: User:Amalthea/userhighlighter.js or here: User:Theopolisme/Scripts/adminhighlighter. ― Padenton|✉ 19:28, 15 May 2015 (UTC)Reply

See the talk page. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.111.54.141 (talk) 20:45, 25 August 2015 (UTC)Reply

A review of the WP:RS guidelines demonstrates very clearly that the Sorakonich piece fails that standard, as discussed on the talk page. You have also used a citation of the Austin Healy Restoration Guide incorrectly. An editor of your seniority should know better. Do you have a response?75.111.54.141 (talk) 21:12, 31 August 2015 (UTC)Reply

I'll respond there, but I will say here that I resent your accusation. You damn well ought to read WP:AGF and take it to heart, or your career at Wikipedia will be short-lived. You have a flawed understanding of WP:RS and WP:V. User "I dream of horses" was nice enough to leave you a welcome message with lots of links on your talk page – I suggest you follow those links and read Wikipedia's policies and guidelines more thoroughly. Mojoworker (talk) 14:53, 1 September 2015 (UTC)Reply

Warmest Wishes for Health, Wealth and Wisdom through the Holidays and the Coming Year! Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 12:40, 24 December 2015 (UTC)Reply

First let me say that your edits were not unconstructive, however the article has too much details and most of the information can only be ascertained by a person with technical expertise in the field. Your first edit, Special:Diff/696655546 restores off-topic information. The page is about CobraNet, not latency issues and even though latency issues factor within CobraNet's field of work, that certainly cannot be a reason to explain latency issues within the article. The article is very intricate as is and just any reader will not be able to understand the information conveyed by it. As, for your second edit, Special:Diff/696656747, it's completely fine as you've chose to explain why CobraNet's technologies are expensive. My bad. --QEDK (T ❄ C) 07:58, 25 December 2015 (UTC)Reply

Since, you've given me a second opinion, I've explained my stance here and also kept your edits. --QEDK (T ❄ C) 08:01, 25 December 2015 (UTC)Reply

CobraNet, an article that you or your project may be interested in, has been nominated for a community good article reassessment. If you are interested in the discussion, please participate by adding your comments to the reassessment page. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, the good article status may be removed from the article. --QEDK (T ❄ C) 13:16, 27 December 2015 (UTC)Reply

Hello, Mojoworker. This is Zee money. This is in response to the village pump forum. Please do not assume ip 119 is me because I talk directly to people and instead of through a forum. My points: 1. I think ip 223 exaggerates my work. I have created less than 1,000 articles (Lugnuts has almost 26,000). Nobody has told me that if I can do something on wikipedia, they can too. That has never happened. The concern about wikipedia being a soldier and politician 'database' and 'directory' is an overstatement. Let's take the American Civil War for example. The deaths for the years 1861-1865 has less than 5,000 articles. Over 99% of the people who died in that war do not have an article. World War I and II killed millions yet the number of articles for the deaths is less than 10,000 for 1914-1918 and less than 20,000 for 1939-1945. Again, over 99% of those who died in those wars do not have articles. 2. Every state governor, congressman and senator in the US has an article, along with the majority of the mayors. People in equivalent positions in other countries (eg China) do not (at least before I started creating them). I would to like to know if there is fairness in that. 3. Another user, Sander v. Ginkel, has been creating articles with brief summaries on LIVING people without creating talk pages, without putting up any photographs or without any links to other wikis. Myself and others have created talk pages for him and he puts up these articles at an incredibly fast pace. He goes from one article to the next without regard to what country his subject is from and rarely updates previously created articles. I suggest you speak with him about this. 4. Some of the articles were created to facilitate the creation of new categories (transferred from existent ones on other wikis), reduce the number of red links in other articles or templates or in response to an article request (eg Lu Dachang on WP China). They would have been created eventually by other users if I did not create them. My articles are generally not read, much less edited by others (there are a few exceptions). I do update them if I find new info (I just created 3 categories from ja wiki and added them to Takji Muranaka, an article that you brought up) Zee money (talk) 03:31, 21 January 2016 (UTC)Reply

As terrible as it is, lots of people have died in wars. But, according to the policies and guidelines of Wikipedia, not all of the people who served in the war are deemed notable, even if they died in action. Please try to adhere to WP:SOLDIER when creating articles. And please advise your associate, IP 119, to refrain from editing or removing the comments of other editors. Thanks. Mojoworker (talk) 05:40, 22 January 2016 (UTC)Reply

Well played We have a leader in the best post of 2017. Regards Aloha27 talk 03:20, 4 February 2017 (UTC)Reply

Hello Mojo,

Thanks for your helpful answer. I did visit the Vicksburg National Military Park long ago, but could not remember whether Snyder’s Bluff was within the main park or separate from it. I was shown round by the most charming lady tourist officer, with whom I am still in touch. And the atmosphere in Cedar Grove was so enchanting that I almost dropped down on one knee! Valetude (talk) 17:15, 19 June 2017 (UTC)Reply

Greetings,

"Military history" is one of the most important subjects when speak of sum of all human knowledge. To support contributors interested in the area over various language Wikipedias, we intend to form a user group. It also provides a platform to share the best practices between military historians, and various military related projects on Wikipedias. An initial discussion was has been done between the coordinators and members of WikiProject Military History on English Wikipedia. Now this discussion has been taken to Meta-Wiki. Contributors intrested in the area of military history are requested to share their feedback and give suggestions at Talk:Discussion to incubate a user group for Wikipedia Military Historians.

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 11:30, 21 December 2017 (UTC)Reply

Hi! The {{cnote}} templates has been nominated for merging with the {{efn}}/{{notelist}} family of templates. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. E to the Pi times i (talk | contribs) 06:29, 31 March 2018 (UTC)Reply

Thanks for reverting this article. The user doing this has been doing this for some time now, which I reported to the CVU and at Wikipedia:Administrator intervention against vandalism. Nothing has been done about it to date (except for someone trying to hack my account once I reported the vandalism...). If you know of any way of getting someone to take action, please do. I've linked some of the vandalism in the CVU request. -Yupik (talk) 20:35, 17 May 2018 (UTC)Reply

The Wikimedia Foundation is planning a global consultation about communication. The goal is to bring Wikimedians and wiki-minded people together to improve tools for communication.

We want all contributors to be able to talk to each other on the wikis, whatever their experience, their skills or their devices.

We are looking for input from as many different parts of the Wikimedia community as possible. It will come from multiple projects, in multiple languages, and with multiple perspectives.

We are currently planning the consultation. We need your help.

We need volunteers to help talk to their communities or user groups.

You can help by hosting a discussion at your wiki. Here's what to do:

First, sign up your group here.
Next, create a page (or a section on a Village pump, or an e-mail thread – whatever is natural for your group) to collect information from other people in your group. This is not a vote or decision-making discussion: we are just collecting feedback.
Then ask people what they think about communication processes. We want to hear stories and other information about how people communicate with each other on and off wiki. Please consider asking these five questions:
1. When you want to discuss a topic with your community, what tools work for you, and what problems block you?
2. What about talk pages works for newcomers, and what blocks them?
3. What do others struggle with in your community about talk pages?
4. What do you wish you could do on talk pages, but can't due to the technical limitations?
5. What are the important aspects of a "wiki discussion"?
Finally, please go to Talk pages consultation 2019 on Mediawiki.org and report what you learned from your group. Please include links if the discussion is available to the public.

You can also help build the list of the many different ways people talk to each other.

Not all groups active on wikis or around wikis use the same way to discuss things: it can happen on wiki, on social networks, through external tools... Tell us how your group communicates.

You can read more about the overall process on mediawiki.org. If you have questions or ideas, you can leave feedback about the consultation process in the language you prefer.

Thank you! We're looking forward to talking with you.

Trizek (WMF) 15:08, 21 February 2019 (UTC)Reply

Ciao, Mojoworker,
please, it is possible can you help the Wikipedia Community to save this template from (senseless) deletion?
You give your help at Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2019 March 25#Template:Chronology of military events in the American Civil War.
Thank you and Ciao!! User talk:FDRMRZUSA (26 March 2019, 16:00, UTC+1).

Thank you for your comments!!! Ciao, User talk:FDRMRZUSA (26 March 2019, 18:35, UTC+1).

Ha ha seconded. :-) ♦ Lingzhi2 (talk) 13:41, 18 April 2019 (UTC)Reply

Template:Campaignbox Quantrill's Raid into Kansas has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. Hog Farm (talk) 20:50, 18 February 2020 (UTC)Reply

Boer war. I had the same reaction as you did when I saw it, but when I saw the Template:About, I saw the logic. Two pages, not really sufficient for a disambiguation page IMHO. I suspect we have a reason to believe which is the primary topic, but that's just my personal judgement and not based on any measurement of consensus. BusterD (talk) 17:21, 19 May 2020 (UTC)Reply

@BusterD: I hadn't noticed that. I was more worried about the fact that the talk page and the article had mismatched titles, so I needed to move one of them and it was pretty much a coin flip. I figured the title had been without the date all these years and there was no edit summary on the move… I had also just reverted the same editor's move of "Battle off Fairhaven" to "Battle of Fairhaven", so I thought he might be confused. Mojoworker (talk) 17:42, 19 May 2020 (UTC)Reply

I stand by my observations regarding who was the primary cause of that accident, but respect your professional viewpoint. I 99% expected that to be reverted. Regards,--Kieronoldham (talk) 22:13, 20 May 2020 (UTC)Reply

@Kieronoldham: You are certainly entitled to your opinion. We can't know for certain, and the drivers involved are long dead. But Wikipedia's reliance on WP:RS requires us to leave our opinions aside. You may find this analysis of those involved in the crash interesting: Le Mans 1955, A Lawyer’s View. Mojoworker (talk) 02:42, 21 May 2020 (UTC)Reply

@Mojoworker: Within seconds or a minute of making that edit, I regretted doing so. I appreciate the fact I temporarily deviated, and, from that tangent, am prepared to apologise. I just watched an interview of Macklin (from I believe 1978) on YT after making the edits I did on the 1955 Le Mans disaster article, and was struck by the callous attitude he displayed towards the fans that day, then recolected his claims as to what he states Hawthorn said to him. I am personally convinced he was largely to blame and formed a steel resolve to cope with guilt. If I had to affix ULTIMATE blame it would be on the track layout. Drivers? 89.9% Macklin, 10% Hawthorm, and 0.1% Leveigh.--Kieronoldham (talk) 02:53, 21 May 2020 (UTC)Reply

Hello there, Mojoworker!

In an attempt to standardize and shorten flag captions within the article itself (as there are so many), I made an edit to the "Flag of Mississippi" article that shortened a recent edit you made. I am hoping that my placing Clay Moss's actual words from the 2015 FOTW website article in a footnote might not only simplify the caption below the flag variant, but might better clarify that Moss wasn't certain if the flag was used by the post war U.C.V. (as there is no primary reference material to support the dubious claim).

I greatly appreciate your patience and cooperation in this matter. Thank you! Lieutcoluseng (talk) 21:51, 30 June 2020 (UTC)Reply

@Lieutcoluseng: Looks good. My main concern was that the unofficial status of that flag be made clear. Mojoworker (talk) 22:00, 30 June 2020 (UTC)Reply

Cool then. We "meet in the middle." Have a great day, Mojoworker! Lieutcoluseng (talk) 22:18, 30 June 2020 (UTC)Reply

https://www.greenbaypressgazette.com/story/sports/nfl/packers/2017/01/14/history-champions-packers-no-1-nfl/96552152/ According to this source the Packers have thirteen championships, and their champioships for 1966 and 1967 were won when they won the Super Bowl, not the NFL Championship. The Wikipedia article on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_National_Football_League_championship#NFL_championships_by_franchise also does not count NFL Championshps from 1966-1969 and gives the Vikings ZERO championships. The Vikings have zero championships (not one), Colts four (not five), Chiefs three (including one as the Dallas Texans in 1962 in the AFL)(not five), Raiders three (not four), and Jets one (not two). Their articles should reflect that in order to be consistent with the Packers article, which is sourced and credits them with thirteen (not fifteen) league championships. There needs to be, at the very least, a serious discussion on Wikipedia about creating a consensus on what constitutes a league championship, but the evidence suggests that 1966-1969 NFL/AFL Championships don't count.Politician818 (talk) 11:45, 21 July 2020 (UTC)Reply

@Politician818: Yes, the Wikipedia articles are inconsistent. And the Infobox is flawed. The problem is getting consensus on what it should say. There are literally hundreds (even thousands) of WP:RS references for the Vikings being the 1969 NFL champions or the Raiders being the 1967 AFL champions. I don't know how you can argue otherwise, Wikipedia lives or dies on WP:RS. Mojoworker (talk) 22:48, 21 July 2020 (UTC)Reply

Nobody denies the Raiders and Vikings winning those championships, just that they don't count as "league championships."Politician818 (talk) 04:45, 22 July 2020 (UTC)Reply

Politician818, please avoid stating your opinions as fact. Do you have a policy based argument to back your assertion "that they don't count as league championships" or is it WP:OR? They clearly were "league championships" as supported by the multitude of WP:RS. More like Superbowls I-IV were not "league championships", since they were inter-league games. Mojoworker (talk) 06:28, 22 July 2020 (UTC)Reply

Why does the Jets article state that the Jets won two championships in the same year? Why does the Chiefs article credit them with two league championships with 1969? If the Packers article doesn't double count, then neither should those articles.Politician818 (talk) 13:25, 22 July 2020 (UTC) Thanks for your feedback on the WT:NFL page.Politician818 (talk) 13:38, 22 July 2020 (UTC)Reply

I agree with you that the articles should not double count those seasons. Mojoworker (talk) 14:16, 22 July 2020 (UTC)Reply

It seems like the same user has been making disruptive edits to a number of pages, such as this edit and revert to Dakota War of 1862. See User talk:2600:1700:7270:2CB0:DD95:7CD3:6071:8A19 and User talk:2600:1700:7270:2CB0:592F:6D14:BAD8:DFA7 for a list of other edits by a very similar user. I'm not sure how to proceed. Do you or MarnetteD have any advice? Cxbrx (talk) 01:00, 11 February 2021 (UTC)Reply

You did the proper thing by starting the thread on the talk page Cxbrx. I have added a comment there. Now this is a content dispute rather than outright vandalism so you might want to change the header to your thread. If they persist we can make a request at WP:RFPP. I'm not sure if an admin would grant it but if they did it could make the person editing from the IPs join the conversation on the talk page. MarnetteD|Talk 02:23, 11 February 2021 (UTC)Reply

Thanks, I updated the header in User talk:2600:1700:7270:2CB0:DD95:7CD3:6071:8A19. Let me know if this was not the correct header. It looks like Dakota War of 1862 was protected, see Talk:Dakota_War_of_1862#Possible_Vandalism?. The edits in question came from a different IP address geolocated to the same city. It looks like these edits are similar, though from a different nearby city. If the editor would include WP:RS citations for their different numbers, I would have absolutely no issue with their edits. Cxbrx (talk) 16:02, 11 February 2021 (UTC)Reply

This user is editing warring on Dakota War of 1862 and I have started warning them about violating the 3RR rule. They will be blocked if they continue this disruptive editing elsewhere instead of engaging on talkpages and any of their sockpuppet IP accounts should be tagged as well. It's not that hard to use citations and they should figure that out. oncamera _{(talk page)} 16:21, 11 February 2021 (UTC)Reply

Yes, I tagged User talk:2600:1700:7270:2CB0:DD95:7CD3:6071:8A19 with {{uw-unsourced3}} but they switched IPs. If they persist (and there's not collateral damage to productive editors), perhaps we can get an admin to do a range block on the IPs. Mojoworker (talk) 21:23, 11 February 2021 (UTC)Reply

I reported their IP and it has been ranged blocked for 2 months. Hopefully that puts an end to it. oncamera _{(talk page)} 04:12, 14 February 2021 (UTC)Reply

Hey MJW, Have you ever considered getting more active in MILHIST? Maybe run for a coord position? It's a bit hypocritical of me to say that, 'cause I can't do anything there. Way too much bad history. But it's a thought for you. Cheers, ♦ Lingzhi.Random (talk) 00:02, 7 September 2021 (UTC)Reply

Good to hear from you Lingzhi. Maybe someday I'll consider it – just don't think I have enough time to devote at present. Mojoworker (talk) 00:06, 7 September 2021 (UTC)Reply

Donner60 (talk) 01:07, 24 December 2022 (UTC)Reply

@Mojoworker: It appears you have at least a little interest in the Battle of Shiloh. You are probably aware that it was a featured article, and it has been demoted to a C-Class article. I suspect that, over the years, people kept adding to it until it had accumulated some serious "bloat". Citation procedure has also changed over the years. It still gets as much as 31,000 views in 30 days. I have rewritten the article, and I believe it is up to GA. I also had an informal Peer Review that I have preserved at User talk:TwoScars/sandbox2. Have you thought about doing the Good Article Review? It is a long article with lots of citations, but the informal Peer Review may have removed a lot of a reviewer's work. TwoScars (talk) 21:08, 18 March 2023 (UTC)Reply

@TwoScars, I'll take a look at the peer review, but I've never done an article review before. Lately, it's a challenge just to find the time to patrol my watchlist. That being said, if I am able to shake some time free, I guess it's something I could consider doing – might be a good skill to develop. Probably won't happen before I get my taxes done however. Mojoworker (talk) 00:24, 19 March 2023 (UTC)Reply

No worries. I don't like doing reviews either, and the two that I have reviewed have been on topics I am very familiar with—and they did not have 200+ citations. Peer reviews are more my style than a GA review. As always, family & real world come first. TwoScars (talk) 15:46, 19 March 2023 (UTC)Reply

Nominations for the upcoming project coordinator election have opened. A team of up to ten coordinators will be elected for the next coordination year. The project coordinators are the designated points of contact for issues concerning the project, and are responsible for maintaining our internal structure and processes. They do not, however, have any authority over article content or editor conduct, or any other special powers. More information on being a coordinator is available here. If you are interested in running, please sign up here by 23:59 UTC on 14 September! Voting will commence on 15 September. If you have any questions, you can contact any member of the current coord team. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 02:05, 2 September 2023 (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

EditInSequence, a feature that allows users to edit pages faster on Wikisource has been moved to a Beta Feature based on community feedback. To enable it, you can navigate to the beta features tab in Preferences. [2]
As part of the changes for the Generate Audio for IPA and Audio links that play on click wishlist proposals, the inline audio player mode of Phonos has been deployed to all projects. [3]
There is a new option for Administrators when they are changing the usergroups for a user, to add the user’s user page to their watchlist. This works both via Special:UserRights and via the API. [4]
One new wiki has been created:
- a Wikipedia in Talysh (w:tly:) [5]

Problems

The LoginNotify extension was not sending notifications since January. It has now been fixed, so going forward, you may see notifications for failed login attempts, and successful login attempts from a new device. [6]

Changes later this week

The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 5 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 6 September. It will be on all wikis from 7 September (calendar).
Starting on Wednesday, a new set of Wikipedias will get "Add a link" (Eastern Mari Wikipedia, Maori Wikipedia, Minangkabau Wikipedia, Macedonian Wikipedia, Malayalam Wikipedia, Mongolian Wikipedia, Marathi Wikipedia, Western Mari Wikipedia, Malay Wikipedia, Maltese Wikipedia, Mirandese Wikipedia, Erzya Wikipedia, Mazanderani Wikipedia, Nāhuatl Wikipedia, Neapolitan Wikipedia, Low German Wikipedia, Low Saxon Wikipedia, Nepali Wikipedia, Newari Wikipedia, Norwegian Nynorsk Wikipedia, Novial Wikipedia, N'Ko Wikipedia, Nouormand Wikipedia, Northern Sotho Wikipedia, Navajo Wikipedia, Nyanja Wikipedia, Occitan Wikipedia, Livvi-Karelian Wikipedia, Oromo Wikipedia, Oriya Wikipedia, Ossetic Wikipedia, Punjabi Wikipedia, Pangasinan Wikipedia, Pampanga Wikipedia, Papiamento Wikipedia, Picard Wikipedia, Pennsylvania German Wikipedia, Palatine German Wikipedia, Norfuk / Pitkern Wikipedia, Piedmontese Wikipedia, Western Punjabi Wikipedia, Pontic Wikipedia, Pashto Wikipedia). This is part of the progressive deployment of this tool to more Wikipedias. The communities can configure how this feature works locally. [7][8]

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

MediaWiki message delivery 23:31, 4 September 2023 (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

ORES, the revision evaluation service, is now using a new open-source infrastructure on all wikis except for English Wikipedia and Wikidata. These two will follow this week. If you notice any unusual results from the Recent Changes filters that are related to ORES (for example, "Contribution quality predictions" and "User intent predictions"), please report them. [9]
When you are logged in on one Wikimedia wiki and visit a different Wikimedia wiki, the system tries to log you in there automatically. This has been unreliable for a long time. You can now visit the login page to make the system try extra hard. If you feel that made logging in better or worse than it used to be, your feedback is appreciated. [10]

Changes later this week

The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 12 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 13 September. It will be on all wikis from 14 September (calendar).
The Technical Decision-Making Forum Retrospective team invites anyone involved in the technical field of Wikimedia projects to signup to and join one of their listening sessions on 13 September. Another date will be scheduled later. The goal is to improve the technical decision-making processes.
As part of the changes for the Better diff handling of paragraph splits wishlist proposal, the inline switch widget in diff pages is being rolled out this week to all wikis. The inline switch will allow viewers to toggle between a unified inline or two-column diff wikitext format. [11]

Future changes

All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on 20 September. 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. [12]
The Enterprise API is launching a new feature called "breaking news". Currently in BETA, this attempts to identify likely "newsworthy" topics as they are currently being written about in any Wikipedia. Your help is requested to improve the accuracy of its detection model, especially on smaller language editions, by recommending templates or identifiable editing patterns. See more information at the documentation page on MediaWiki or the FAQ on Meta.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 21:06, 11 September 2023 (UTC)Reply

The Wikipedia Library: Books & Bytes
Issue 58, July – August 2023

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of The Wikipedia Library team --14:27, 12 September 2023 (UTC)Reply

Your feedback is requested at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals) 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.

Message delivered to you with love by Yapperbot :) | Is this wrong? Contact my bot operator. | Sent at 05:30, 16 September 2023 (UTC)Reply

MediaWiki message delivery 19:18, 18 September 2023 (UTC)Reply

Your feedback is requested at Talk:Reuss-Lobenstein on a "History and geography" 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.

Message delivered to you with love by Yapperbot :) | Is this wrong? Contact my bot operator. | Sent at 09:30, 21 September 2023 (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 Vector 2022 skin will now remember the pinned/unpinned status for the Table of Contents for all logged-out users. [17]

Changes later this week

The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 26 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 27 September. It will be on all wikis from 28 September (calendar).
The ResourceLoader mediawiki.ui modules are now deprecated as part of the move to Vue.js and Codex. There is a guide for migrating from MediaWiki UI to Codex for any tools that use it. More details are available in the task and your questions are welcome there.
Gadget definitions will have a new "namespaces" option. The option takes a list of namespace IDs. Gadgets that use this option will only load on pages in the given namespaces.

Future changes

New variables will be added to AbuseFilter: global_account_groups and global_account_editcount. They are available only when an account is being created. You can use them to prevent blocking automatic creation of accounts when users with many edits elsewhere visit your wiki for the first time. [18][19]

Meetings

You can join the next meeting with the Wikipedia mobile apps teams. During the meeting, we will discuss the current features and future roadmap. The meeting will be on 27 October at 17:00 (UTC). See details and how to join.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 16:49, 26 September 2023 (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

There is a new user preference for "Always enable safe mode". This setting will make pages load without including any on-wiki JavaScript or on-wiki stylesheet pages. It can be useful for debugging broken JavaScript gadgets. [20]
Gadget definitions now have a new "contentModels" option. The option takes a list of page content models, like wikitext or css. Gadgets that use this option will only load on pages with the given content models.

Changes later this week

The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 3 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 4 October. It will be on all wikis from 5 October (calendar).

Future changes

The Vector 2022 skin will no longer use the custom styles and scripts of Vector legacy (2010). The change will be made later this year or in early 2024. See how to adjust the CSS and JS pages on your wiki. [21]

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

MediaWiki message delivery 01:25, 3 October 2023 (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

One new wiki has been created: a Wikipedia in Fon (w:fon:) [22]

Changes later this week

The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 10 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 11 October. It will be on all wikis from 12 October (calendar).
Starting on Wednesday, a new set of Wikipedias will get "Add a link" (Swahili Wikipedia, Walloon Wikipedia, Waray Wikipedia, Wolof Wikipedia, Kalmyk Wikipedia, Xhosa Wikipedia, Mingrelian Wikipedia, Yiddish Wikipedia, Yoruba Wikipedia, Zhuang Wikipedia, Zeelandic Wikipedia, Min Nan Wikipedia, Zulu Wikipedia). This is part of the progressive deployment of this tool to more Wikipedias. The communities can configure how this feature works locally. [23]
At some wikis, newcomers are suggested images from Commons to add to articles without any images. Starting on Tuesday, newcomers at these wikis will be able to add images to unillustrated article sections. The specific wikis are listed under "Images recommendations" at the Growth team deployment table. You can learn more about this feature. [24]
In the mobile web skin (Minerva) the CSS ID #page-actions will be replaced with #p-views. This change is to make it consistent with other skins and to improve support for gadgets and extensions in the mobile skin. A few gadgets may need to be updated; there are details and search-links in the task.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 14:37, 9 October 2023 (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 Unified login system's edge login should now be fixed for some browsers (Chrome, Edge, Opera). This means that if you visit a new sister project wiki, you should be logged in automatically without the need to click "Log in" or reload the page. Feedback on whether it's working for you is welcome. [25]
Edit notices are now available within the MobileFrontend/Minerva skin. This feature was inspired by the gadget on English Wikipedia. See more details in T316178.

Changes later this week

The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 17 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 18 October. It will be on all wikis from 19 October (calendar).

Future changes

In 3 weeks, in the Vector 2022 skin, code related to addPortletLink and #p-namespaces that was deprecated one year ago will be removed. If you notice tools that should appear next to the "Discussion" tab are then missing, please tell the gadget's maintainers to see instructions in the Phabricator task.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 23:45, 16 October 2023 (UTC)Reply

Your feedback is requested at Talk:Cleveland Elementary School shooting (San Diego) on a "History and geography" 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.

Message delivered to you with love by Yapperbot :) | Is this wrong? Contact my bot operator. | Sent at 12:30, 20 October 2023 (UTC)Reply

Your feedback is requested at Talk:Persian Gulf on a "History and geography" 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.

Message delivered to you with love by Yapperbot :) | Is this wrong? Contact my bot operator. | Sent at 12:31, 21 October 2023 (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

There is a new Language and internationalization newsletter, written quarterly. It contains updates on new feature development, improvements in various language-related technical projects, and related support work.
Source map support has been enabled on all wikis. When you open the debugger in your browser's developer tools, you should be able to see the unminified JavaScript source code. [26]

Changes later this week

The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 24 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 25 October. It will be on all wikis from 26 October (calendar).

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

MediaWiki message delivery 23:14, 23 October 2023 (UTC)Reply

MediaWiki message delivery 23:19, 30 October 2023 (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

In the Vector 2022 skin, the default font-size of a number of navigational elements (tagline, tools menu, navigational links, and more) has been increased slightly to match the font size used in page content. [30]

Problems

Last week, there was a problem displaying some recent edits on a few wikis, for 1-6 hours. The edits were saved but not immediately shown. This was due to a database problem. [31]

Changes later this week

The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 7 November. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 8 November. It will be on all wikis from 9 November (calendar).
The Growth team will reassign newcomers from former mentors to the currently active mentors. They have also changed the notification language to be more user-friendly. [32][33]

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

MediaWiki message delivery 21:03, 6 November 2023 (UTC)Reply

MediaWiki message delivery 23:50, 13 November 2023 (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

There is no new MediaWiki version this week. [41][42]
Starting on Wednesday, a new set of Wikipedias will get "Add a link" (Quechua Wikipedia, Romansh Wikipedia, Romani Wikipedia, Rundi Wikipedia, Aromanian Wikipedia, Tarandíne Wikipedia, Rusyn Wikipedia, Kinyarwanda Wikipedia, Sanskrit Wikipedia, Sakha Wikipedia, Santali Wikipedia, Sardinian Wikipedia, Sicilian Wikipedia, Scots Wikipedia, Sindhi Wikipedia, Northern Sami Wikipedia, Sango Wikipedia, Serbo-Croatian Wikipedia, Sinhala Wikipedia, Slovak Wikipedia, Slovenian Wikipedia, Samoan Wikipedia, Somali Wikipedia, Albanian Wikipedia, Serbian Wikipedia, Sranan Tongo Wikipedia, Swati Wikipedia, Southern Sotho Wikipedia, Saterland Frisian Wikipedia, Sundanese Wikipedia, Silesian Wikipedia, Tamil Wikipedia, Tulu Wikipedia, Telugu Wikipedia, Tetum Wikipedia, Tajik Wikipedia, Thai Wikipedia, Turkmen Wikipedia, Tagalog Wikipedia, Tswana Wikipedia, Tongan Wikipedia, Tok Pisin Wikipedia, Turkish Wikipedia, Tsonga Wikipedia, Tatar Wikipedia, Twi Wikipedia, Tahitian Wikipedia, Tuvinian Wikipedia, Udmurt Wikipedia, Uyghur Wikipedia, Uzbek Wikipedia, Venda Wikipedia, Venetian Wikipedia, Veps Wikipedia, West Flemish Wikipedia, Volapük Wikipedia). This is part of the progressive deployment of this tool to more Wikipedias. The communities can configure how this feature works locally. [43][44][45]
The Vector 2022 skin will have some minor visual changes to drop-down menus, column widths, and more. These changes were added to four Wikipedias last week. If no issues are found, these changes will proceed to all wikis this week. These changes will make it possible to add new menus for readability and dark mode. Learn more. [46]

Future changes

There is an update on re-enabling the Graph Extension. To speed up the process, Vega 2 will not be supported and only some protocols will be available at launch. You can help by sharing what you think about the plan.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 00:53, 21 November 2023 (UTC)Reply

Your feedback is requested at Talk:Horst Wessel on a "History and geography" 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.

Message delivered to you with love by Yapperbot :) | Is this wrong? Contact my bot operator. | Sent at 05:31, 23 November 2023 (UTC)Reply

The Wikipedia Library: Books & Bytes
Issue 59, September – October 2023

Spotlight: Introducing a repository of anti-disinformation projects
Tech tip: Library access methods

Read the full newsletter

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of The Wikipedia Library team --16:15, 27 November 2023 (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 28 November. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 29 November. It will be on all wikis from 30 November (calendar). There is no new MediaWiki version next week. [47][48]
MediaWiki's JavaScript system will now allow async/await syntax in gadgets and user scripts. Gadget authors should remember that users' browsers may not support it, so it should be used appropriately. [49]
The deployment of "Add a link" announced last week was postponed. It will resume this week.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 23:06, 27 November 2023 (UTC)Reply

Your feedback is requested at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals) 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.

Message delivered to you with love by Yapperbot :) | Is this wrong? Contact my bot operator. | Sent at 02:31, 3 December 2023 (UTC)Reply

MediaWiki message delivery 23:48, 4 December 2023 (UTC)Reply

MediaWiki message delivery 02:10, 12 December 2023 (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.

Tech News

The next issue of Tech News will be sent out on 8 January 2024 because of the holidays.

Changes later this week

The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 19 December. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 20 December. It will be on all wikis from 21 December (calendar). There is no new MediaWiki version next week. [61][62]
Starting December 18, it won't be possible to activate Structured Discussions on a user's own talk page using the Beta feature. The Beta feature option remains available for users who want to deactivate Structured Discussions. This is part of Structured Discussions' deprecation work. [63]
There will be full support for redirects in the Module namespace. The "Move Page" feature will leave an appropriate redirect behind, and such redirects will be appropriately recognized by the software (e.g. hidden from Special:UnconnectedPages). There will also be support for manual redirects. [64]

Future changes

The MediaWiki JavaScript documentation is moving to a new format. During the move, you can read the old docs using version 1.41. Feedback about the new site is welcome on the project talk page.
The Wishathon is a new initiative that encourages collaboration across the Wikimedia community to develop solutions for wishes collected through the Community Wishlist Survey. The first community Wishathon will take place from 15–17 March. If you are interested in a project proposal as a user, developer, designer, or product lead, you can register for the event and read more.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 16:16, 18 December 2023 (UTC)Reply

Voting is now open for the WikiProject Military History newcomer of the year and military historian of the year awards for 2023! The the top editors will be awarded the coveted Gold Wiki . Cast your votes vote here and here respectively. Voting closes at 23:59 on 30 December 2023. On behalf of the coordinators, wishing you the very best for the festive season and the new year. Hawkeye7 (talk · contribs) via MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 23:56, 22 December 2023 (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

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. [65]

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). [66][67]

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)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

Pages that use the JSON contentmodel will now use tabs instead of spaces for auto-indentation. This will significantly reduce the page size. [68]
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. [69]
Bot passwords and owner-only OAuth consumers can now be restricted to allow editing only specific pages. [70]
You can now thank edits made by bots. [71]
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). [72][73]
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. [74]
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. [75]

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)Reply

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

The Wikipedia Library: Books & Bytes
Issue 60, November – December 2023

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of The Wikipedia Library team --13:36, 24 January 2024 (UTC)Reply

Hello, Mojoworker

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)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. [79]
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). [80][81]
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. [82]
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. [83]

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)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". [84][85]

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). [86][87]
Talk pages permalinks that included diacritics and non-Latin script were malfunctioning. This issue is fixed. [88]

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. [89][90]

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

MediaWiki message delivery 19:20, 5 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. [91][92][93] Users' feedback will validate the impact of various use cases and workflows around the Wikidata Query service. [94][95]

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). [96][97]
As work continues on the grid engine deprecation,[98] 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. [99]

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)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. [100]
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. [101]

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). [102][103]

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. [104]

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

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

Message delivered to you with love by Yapperbot :) | Is this wrong? Contact my bot operator. | Sent at 07:52, 21 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. [105]
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"))). [106]

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). [107][108]

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)Reply

Your feedback is requested at Wikipedia talk:Categories, lists, and navigation templates on a "Wikipedia style and naming" 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.

Message delivered to you with love by Yapperbot :) | Is this wrong? Contact my bot operator. | Sent at 05:31, 1 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 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. [109]
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. [110]
A usability improvement to the "Add a citation" in Wikipedia workflow has been made, the insert button was moved to the popup header. [111]

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). [112][113]

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. [114]
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 prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

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

The Wikipedia Library: Books & Bytes
Issue 61, January – February 2024

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of The Wikipedia Library team --16:32, 5 March 2024 (UTC)Reply

Message delivered to you with love by Yapperbot :) | Is this wrong? Contact my bot operator. | Sent at 02:30, 8 March 2024 (UTC)Reply

Your feedback is requested at Talk:Maersk Hangzhou 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.

Message delivered to you with love by Yapperbot :) | Is this wrong? Contact my bot operator. | Sent at 22:30, 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). [115][116]
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. [117]
The active link color in Minerva will be changed to provide more consistency with our other platforms and best practices. [118]
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. [119]

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. [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 23:02, 11 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. [122]
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. [123]
The Toolforge Grid Engine services have been shut down after the final migration process from Grid Engine to Kubernetes. [124][125][126]
Communities can now customize the default reasons for undeleting a page by creating MediaWiki:Undelete-comment-dropdown. [127]

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. [128]

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). [129][130]
All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on March 20. This is planned at 14:00 UTC. [131][132]

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

MediaWiki message delivery 17:37, 18 March 2024 (UTC)Reply

Your feedback is requested at Talk:Sri Lanka Armed Forces on a "History and geography" 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.

Message delivered to you with love by Yapperbot :) | Is this wrong? Contact my bot operator. | Sent at 00:31, 19 March 2024 (UTC)Reply

Your feedback is requested at Talk:Minneapolis on a "History and geography" 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.

Message delivered to you with love by Yapperbot :) | Is this wrong? Contact my bot operator. | Sent at 00:30, 24 March 2024 (UTC)Reply

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

Your feedback is requested at Wikipedia talk:Citing sources on a "Wikipedia technical issues and templates" 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.

Message delivered to you with love by Yapperbot :) | Is this wrong? Contact my bot operator. | Sent at 05:30, 27 March 2024 (UTC)Reply

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

Your Military History Newsletter

Project news: From the editors; awards and honours; contest results
Articles: Last month's new featured and A-class content
Book review: Hawkeye7, Nick-D and Pickersgill-Cunliffe discuss six (count 'em, six!) works comprising eight volumes
Op-ed: Hawkeye7 on a lecture by the Australian official historian

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. [138][139]
Readers using the Minerva skin on mobile will notice there has been an improvement in the line height across all typography settings. [140]

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). [141][142]
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. [143]

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)Reply

Your feedback is requested at Template talk:Infobox person on a "Wikipedia technical issues and templates" 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.

Message delivered to you with love by Yapperbot :) | Is this wrong? Contact my bot operator. | Sent at 02:30, 9 April 2024 (UTC)Reply

Your feedback is requested at Talk:Estonia on a "History and geography" 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.

Message delivered to you with love by Yapperbot :) | Is this wrong? Contact my bot operator. | Sent at 16:31, 15 April 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.

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. [144][145]

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). [146][147]
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). [148]
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. [149]

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. [150]

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)Reply

MediaWiki message delivery 20:25, 22 April 2024 (UTC)Reply

The Wikipedia Library: Books & Bytes
Issue 62, March – April 2024

IEEE and Haaretz now available
Let's Connect Clinics about The Wikipedia Library
Spotlight and Wikipedia Library tips

Read the full newsletter

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of The Wikipedia Library team --11:02, 23 April 2024 (UTC)Reply

Ten years ago, you were found precious. That's what you are, always. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 07:30, 25 April 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

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. [155]
Seven new wikis have been created:
- a Wikipedia in Betawi (w:bew:) [156]
- a Wikipedia in Kusaal (w:kus:) [157]
- a Wikipedia in Igala (w:igl:) [158]
- a Wiktionary in Karakalpak (wikt:kaa:) [159]
- a Wikisource in Burmese (s:my:) [160]
- a Wikisource in Malay (s:ms:) [161]
- a Wikisource in Georgian (s:ka:) [162]
You can now watch message groups/projects on Translatewiki.net. Initially, this feature will notify you of added or deleted messages in these groups. [163]
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. [164]

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). [165][166]

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)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

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. [167][168]
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. [169]
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. [170]

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). [171][172]
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". [173]

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. [174]

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)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. [175]
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. [176]
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. [177]
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. [178]

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). [179][180]
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. [181]

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. [182]
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. [183][184]

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)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. [185]
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. [186][187]

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). [188][189]
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)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

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). [190][191]
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. [192]

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)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. [193]
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". [194]
One new wiki has been created: a Wikipedia in Kadazandusun (w:dtp:) [195]

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). [196][197]

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 22:32, 3 June 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 software used to render SVG files has been updated to a new version, fixing many longstanding bugs in SVG rendering. [198]
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. [199]

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. [200]

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). [201][202]
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. [203]
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. [204]

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)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

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. [205]
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. [206][207]
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. [208]

Problems

Cloud Services tools were not available for 25 minutes last week. This was caused by a faulty hardware cable in the data center. [209]
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. [210]

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). [211][212]
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. [213]
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. [214]

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

MediaWiki message delivery 23:46, 17 June 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

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. [215]
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. [216]

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. [217]

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). [218][219]
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. [220]

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)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

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. [221]
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. [222]
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. [223][224]
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. [225]
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:) [226]

Problems

Editors can once again click on links within the visual editor's citation-preview, thanks to a bug fix by the Editing Team. [227]

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.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 23:57, 1 July 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

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.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 21:29, 8 July 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.

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. [228]
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 01:28, 16 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

The Wikipedia Library: Books & Bytes
Issue 63, May – June 2024

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of The Wikipedia Library team --12:15, 18 July 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.

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. [229]
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. [230]
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. [231]

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.

MediaWiki message delivery 00:02, 23 July 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.

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:) [232]

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 23:08, 29 July 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.

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. [233][234]
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)Reply

MediaWiki message delivery 23:19, 12 August 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.

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. [237]
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. [238][239]

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 00:50, 20 August 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.

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. [240]

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 20:29, 26 August 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.

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. [241]
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. [242]
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. [243]

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

MediaWiki message delivery 01:03, 3 September 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.

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. [244][245]
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. [246]

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. [247]
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). [248]

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)Reply

The Wikipedia Library: Books & Bytes
Issue 64, July – August 2024

The Hindu Group joins The Wikipedia Library
Wikimania presentation
New user script for easily searching The Wikipedia Library

Read the full newsletter

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of The Wikipedia Library team --16:33, 11 September 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.

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. [249]
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. [250]
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. [251]
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. [252]

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. [253]

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.

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

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

Voting for WikiProject Military history coordinators is now open! A team of up to ten coordinators will be elected for the next coordination year. Register your vote here by 23:59 UTC on 29 September! MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:35, 18 September 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.

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. [254]
Two bugs were fixed in the GlobalVanishRequest system by improving the logging and by removing an incorrect placeholder message. [255][256]
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.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 23:33, 23 September 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.

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. [257]
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. [258]
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. [259]

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 22:16, 30 September 2024 (UTC)Reply