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Growth team updates #12

Welcome to the twelfth newsletter from the Growth team!

The Growth team's objective is to work on software changes that help retain new contributors in mid-size Wikimedia projects.

General news

• A training for mentors has been published. The training was first tried with the Czech community, and went well.
• Growth team features have been deployed to Hungarian, Ukrainian, and Armenian Wikipedias. If your community is enthusiastic about welcoming newcomers, we encourage you to contact us so that we can verify together whether your wiki is eligible. Then you can go through the checklist to start the process of configuring the features.

Productive edits from newcomer tasks

We deployed the basic workflow for newcomer tasks to our target wikis on November 20, and the early results are exciting.

Suggested edits by type of edit.
Graph captions (top to bottom):
■ Copyedits
■ Add links
■ Expand article
■ Add reference
■ Advanced edits

• About 1.5% of newcomers who visit their homepage complete the workflow and save a suggested edit. So far, this has amounted to over 450 edits, on all wikis, coming from both desktop and mobile users.
• When we look at the edits that newcomers make, we see that they are largely positive! We are pleased to see that this feature does not appear to encourage vandals.
  • 75% of the edits are productive and unreverted.
  • 95% of the edits appear to be in good faith.
• Most of the edits include copyedits and adding links, with some newcomers also adding content and references. Copyedits are suggested most strongly.
• Click here to learn more specifics about the results so far.

Topic matching deployed

The results from our user tests showed us that newcomers are likely to do more suggested edits if they can choose articles related to a topic that they're interested in, such as "science", "music", or "sports".

• On January 21, we deployed topic matching on our pilot wikis. Newcomers are now using it. We expect it to cause more newcomers to try suggested edits, and to keep making more of them.
• In the coming weeks, we will be making improvements to the accuracy of the algorithm used to topic matching, which is part of the ORES project.

Next steps for newcomer tasks

Prototype of how the help panel will "peek" from the bottom of the page to offer guidance on mobile.

Because we are seeing positive results from newcomer tasks, the Growth team plans to concentrate our efforts on improving the workflow and encouraging more newcomers to use it.

• Guidance: next, we will be using the help panel to provide guidance to newcomers as they do suggested edits, and to prompt them to do another edit after completing their first one. In user tests for this feature, demo videos were one of the favorite features, and we will think about how these might be added.
• Starting the workflow: only about 20% of newcomer who visit their homepage begin the newcomer tasks workflow. We are going to be trying out different layouts of the homepage to encourage more newcomers to try newcomer tasks.
• Additional task types: we are researching methods to recommend more specific tasks to newcomers, such as specific links to add, or images that could be added to articles from Commons.

Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

17:39, 4 February 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-07

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

Recent changes

• There is a new version of the Wikimedia Commons app for Android. It should fix the failed uploads problem. [1]

Problems

• There was a problem with the new MediaWiki version last week. It deleted some messages by accident. The new version was late because it was stopped to fix things. [2]

Changes later this week

• The MediaWiki action API is used by various tools like bots and gadgets. Some error codes will change. Some parameter values that do not follow the standard will no longer work. [3]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 11 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 12 February. It will be on all wikis from 13 February (calendar).

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19:10, 10 February 2020 (UTC)

New Page Reviewer newsletter February 2020

Hello Alsee,

Source Guide Discussion

The first NPP source guide discussion is now underway. It covers a wide range of sources in Ghana with the goal of providing more guidance to reviewers about sources they might see when reviewing pages. Hopefully, new page reviewers will join others interested in reliable sources and those with expertise in these sources to make the discussion a success.

Redirects

New to NPP? Looking to try something a little different? Consider patrolling some redirects. Redirects are relatively easy to review, can be found easily through the New Pages Feed. You can find more information about how to patrol redirects at WP:RPATROL.

Discussions and Resources

• There is an ongoing discussion around changing notifications for new editors who attempt to write articles.
• A recent discussion of whether Michelin starred restraunts are notable was archived without closure.
• A resource page with links pertinent for reviewers was created this month.
• A proposal to increase the scope of G5 was withdrawn.

Refresher

Geographic regions, areas and places generally do not need general notability guideline type sourcing. When evaluating whether an article meets this notability guideline please also consider whether it might actually be a form of WP:SPAM for a development project (e.g. PR for a large luxury residential development) and not actually covered by the guideline.

Six Month Queue Data: Today – 7095 Low – 4991 High – 7095

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16:08, 13 February 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-08

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

Recent changes

• Pages on Wikidata and Commons now load faster. You can read more about page load performance. [4][5]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 18 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 19 February. It will be on all wikis from 20 February (calendar).

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16:17, 17 February 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-09

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

Changes later this week

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

Future changes

• There will be a reply button after each post on a talk page if you want one. This will soon be a beta feature on the Arabic, French, Dutch and Hungarian Wikipedias. You will have to turn it on if you want to use it. It will come to more wikis later. You can test the reply button. It was briefly shown earlier than planned by mistake on the four first wikis last week.

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20:59, 24 February 2020 (UTC)

Discussion at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#Proposal to streamline the welcome template

 You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#Proposal to streamline the welcome template. Sdkb (talk) 07:12, 26 February 2020 (UTC)

Discussion at Wikipedia talk:Welcoming committee#Making the visual editor the default for new/IP users

 You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Welcoming committee#Making the visual editor the default for new/IP users. Sdkb (talk) 07:14, 26 February 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-10

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

Problems

• Readers who were not logged in briefly saw the interface in a language decided by their browser. It should normally be in the language of the wiki. This happened for a short period of time last week. This was because of a bug. [6]

Changes later this week

• If you forget your password you can ask for a new one to be sent to your email address. You need to know your email address or your username. You will now be able to choose that you need to enter both your email address and your username. This will be a preference. This is to get fewer password reset emails someone else asked for. [7]
• When you asked for a new password you could see if the username didn't exist on Special:PasswordReset. Now the page will show the username you entered and tell you an email has been sent if the username exists. This is for better security. [8]
• On Special:WhatLinksHere you can see what other pages link to a page. You can see if the link is from a redirect. You can now see which section the redirect links to. [9]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 3 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 4 March. It will be on all wikis from 5 March (calendar).

Future changes

• The developers are working on a new interface to solve edit conflicts on talk pages. You can give feedback. [10]
• There is a vote on the creation of a new user group called abuse filter manager. The vote runs from March 1 to March 31 on Meta.
• wgMFSpecialCaseMainPage was used for the mobile site. It was deprecated in 2017. It will stop working in April. Wikis should see if they use it. If they do they should fix it. You can read more and ask for help. This affects 183 wikis. There is a list. [11]

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00:35, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-11

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

Recent changes

• There is a new search word called articletopic. You can use it to search for articles on a specific topic. It is available on the Arabic, Czech, English and Vietnamese Wikipedias. It will come to more Wikipedias soon. [12][13][14]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 10 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 11 March. It will be on all wikis from 12 March (calendar).

Future changes

• There is a plan for new requirements for user signatures. You can give feedback.
• The Wikipedia Android app will do push notifications if users want them. This could help you see for example when someone wrote on your talk page or your edit was reverted. This will come later this year. [15]

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17:14, 9 March 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-12

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

Recent changes

• There is a new API module for changing the content model of existing pages. Use action=changecontentmodel to specify the new model. You can read the documentation on mediawiki.org. [16]

Changes later this week

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

Future changes

• If you edit a page at the same time as someone else you can get an edit conflict. There is a new two-column interface to make it easier to solve this. It will soon be active by default on the German, Arabic, and Farsi Wikipedias. It will be on by default on more wikis within the next months. You will be able to opt out of the new interface. [17][18]
• You can see a proposed design for replying to comments in an easier way.

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21:17, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-13

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

Problems

• Some development will be slower than planned. This is because of the current pandemic. You can see the new deployment guidelines. This is to avoid risks when some persons could be unavailable.
• There was a problem when adding interwiki links. The tool you use to add interwiki links could suggest the wrong project to link to. This has now been fixed. [19][20]

Changes later this week

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

Future changes

• There is a project to make editing easier for newcomers. The developers are trying to understand what initiatives different Wikipedias have to welcome newcomers. They also want to know which templates are often used for maintenance activities. You can help this project by checking if your wiki's pages are listed on Wikidata.

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17:07, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-14

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

Recent changes

• The beta version of the Wikipedia app for Android can now help users add tags on Commons. These tags are called depicts. [21]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 31 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 1 April. It will be on all wikis from 2 April (calendar).

Future changes

• The video player will change to be simpler and more modern. The current beta feature will become the video player for everyone. The old player will be removed. [22]
• There is a project to make templates easier to use. The next few weeks the developers will present ideas on the project page. You can watch that page if you are interested in giving feedback. [23]

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17:25, 30 March 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-15

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

Problems

• There was a problem with user pages not being shown properly on desktop. This was because of a bug. It will soon be fixed. [24]

Changes later this week

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

Future changes

• MediaWiki will use a newer version of Unicode. Some characters that did not have an upper case equivalent before do now. Titles beginning with one of these characters will be moved. A list of these titles can be seen on Phabricator. The titles will be renamed by the user Maintenance script. This will start on 13 April 2020. You can rename them before this if you wish and the new title can be different from the one the script would rename it to. [25]

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19:02, 6 April 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-16

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

Recent changes

• You can now use the articletopic search word on all Wikipedias. It searches articles by topic. [26]
• You can see wiki tools in the new Tools Gallery. [27]
• You can see edits from the Wikimedia Cloud Services in a new dashboard.
• When you use filters on a history page you sometimes don't see any edits. There is a text explaining this now. Before it was just empty. [28]
• There is a new Wikimedia Technical Blog. [29]

Problems

• There was a problem with the Wikidata database last week. Some wikis went down for twenty minutes. Wikidata and other projects showed error messages. Interwiki links were not shown, some tools did not work and other problems. Some of this was fixed quickly. The developers are working on fixing the rest. [30][31][32]

Changes later this week

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

Future changes

• Some graphs have not worked on mobile. This will soon be fixed. [33]
• The article tab on talk pages of redirects links to the target of the redirect. It could link to the redirect page itself instead. You can leave feedback on this.
• For pages using syntax highlighting, the use of the deprecated <source> tag, as well as the use of the deprecated enclose parameter, will add tracking categories.

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15:30, 13 April 2020 (UTC)

Editing news 2020 #1 – Discussion tools

Read this in another language • Subscription list

This early version of the Reply tool automatically signs and indents comments.

The Editing team has been working on the talk pages project. The goal of the talk pages project is to help contributors communicate on wiki more easily. This project is the result of the Talk pages consultation 2019.

In a future update, the team plans to test a tool for easily linking to another user's name, a rich-text editing option, and other tools.

The team is building a new tool for replying to comments now. This early version can sign and indent comments automatically. Please test the new Reply tool.

• On 31 March 2020, the new reply tool was offered as a Beta Feature editors at four Wikipedias: Arabic, Dutch, French, and Hungarian. If your community also wants early access to the new tool, contact User:Whatamidoing (WMF).
• The team is planning some upcoming changes. Please review the proposed design and share your thoughts on the talk page. The team will test features such as:
  • an easy way to mention another editor ("pinging"),
  • a rich-text visual editing option, and
  • other features identified through user testing or recommended by editors.

To hear more about Editing Team updates, please add your name to the "Get involved" section of the project page. You can also watch these pages: the main project page, Updates, Replying, and User testing.

– PPelberg (WMF) (talk) & Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 15:45, 13 April 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-17

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

Tech News

• The next issue of Tech News will be sent out on 4 May 2020.

Recent changes

• The small wiki toolkits is to help smaller wikis that need technical skills. They can learn and share technical skills. [34]
• Over-qualified CSS selectors in Wikimedia skins have been removed. div#content is now .mw-body. div.portal is now .portal. div#footer is now #footer. This is so the skins can use HTML5 elements. If your gadgets or user styles used them you will have to update them. [35]

Changes later this week

• There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

Future changes

• Some things on the wikis might look weird or not work in Internet Explorer 8 in the future. Internet Explorer 8 was replaced in 2011. [36]
• The font in the diffs will change. [37]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 28 April next week. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 29 April next week. It will be on all wikis from 30 April next week (calendar).

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18:44, 20 April 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-19

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

Problems

• Some wikis will be on read-only for a few minutes on 5 May. This will happen around 05:00 UTC. This is for database maintenance. [38]
• Some wikis will be on read-only for a few minutes on 7 May. This will also affect CentralAuth. This can for example affect global renames, password changes, changing or confirming your email address and logging in to new wikis. This will happen around 05:00 UTC. This is for database maintenance. [39]

Changes later this week

• You can get a notification when someone links to a page you created. You can soon turn these notifications off for individual pages. [40]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 5 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 6 May. It will be on all wikis from 7 May (calendar).

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16:59, 4 May 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-20

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

Recent changes

• Everyone can now import photos from Flickr to Commons with the UploadWizard. Before this only autopatrollers on Commons could import photos from Flickr. [41]

Problems

• Commons will be on read-only for a few minutes on 12 May. This will happen around 05:00 UTC. This is for database maintenance. [42]
• Several wikis including Wikidata will be on read-only for a few minutes on 19 May. This will happen around 05:00 UTC. English Wikipedia will be on read-only for a few minutes on 21 May 05:00 UTC. This is for database maintenance. [43][44]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 12 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 13 May. It will be on all wikis from 14 May (calendar).

Future changes

• JavaScript scripts and gadgets can no longer check multiple keys at once via mw.config.exists() or mw.user.tokens.exists(). You can use exists() or get() to check one at a time instead. [45]

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20:40, 11 May 2020 (UTC)

Growth team newsletter #13

Welcome to the thirteenth newsletter from the Growth team!

The Growth team's objective is to work on software changes that help retain new contributors in mid-size Wikimedia projects.

Join the conversation: structured tasks

Sketch of an idea for a structured workflow for adding links to an article. The goal is to help newcomers edit at high volume.

We are looking for community input on a new project to make it easy for newcomers to make real article edits.

In our previous newsletter, we talked about the productive edits coming from the newcomer tasks feature. Those good results have continued: about 900 newcomers made over 5,000 suggested edits so far. We've learned that newcomers are interested in receiving suggested edits.

Now, we are thinking about how to supply them a feed of easy edits that will help more of them be successful quickly. We have a new idea called "structured tasks". This would aim to break down edits into steps that are easy for newcomers and easy on mobile devices.

In the past, certain kinds of editing tasks have been structured. For instance, adding categories through HotCat. Now, we are thinking about how to structure the editing of articles. The goal is to allow newcomers can make large content additions, especially from their mobile devices.

Please visit the project page and respond to the discussion questions listed on the talk page. You are welcome to show this project to others in your community. You can help by translating the materials to your language so that more voices can join in. We will be having this conversation until June 18.

Expanding to more wikis

We have expanded to six new wikis, and are looking for more interested communities.

In the last two months, we deployed Growth features to six new wikis: Ukrainian, Serbian, Hungarian, Armenian, and Basque Wikipedias, and French Wiktionary. Newcomers from these wikis have already contributed over 600 edits through Growth features.

We want to expand to more wikis in the coming months, and we are looking for interested communities. French Wikipedia already agreed and will be the next one to join the experiment. We will contact several other wikis in the coming weeks to offer them to participate.

Do you think the Growth Team features would be a good addition to your wiki? Please see this translatable summary of Growth features. You can share with your communities and start a discussion. Then, please contact us to begin the process!

Other updates

39 topics are now available for newcomer tasks

Work continues on improving newcomer tasks and the homepage.

• In March, we deployed an upgrade to the topic matching in newcomer tasks. The current version offers 39 different topics using new ORES models.
• In April, we completed an A/B test of two homepage configurations. We learned that more newcomers will attempt suggested edits if the module is made more prominent. We are implementing those learnings in our next test. See the full results here.
• We are currently working on guidance for newcomer tasks. It will use the help panel to guide newcomers through completing easy edits.
• Our next step is to create new configurations of the homepage. The goal is to encourage more newcomers to begin doing suggested edits.

As usual, we are still welcoming your feedback and questions about our features. Please contact us on the project talk page!

Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

14:29, 18 May 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-21

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

Recent changes

• If you forget your password you can ask for a new one to be sent to your email address. You need to know your email address or your username. You can choose that you need to enter both your email address and your username. This is a preference. This is to get fewer password reset emails someone else asked for. This is now available on all Wikimedia wikis. [46][47]

Problems

• There is a bug that creates problems for iPhone users with iOS 13 and Safari. If you use an iPhone to read or edit Wikipedia and see bugs on the mobile site you can report them. [48]
• Several wikis including Wikidata will be on read-only for a few minutes on 19 May. This will happen around 05:00 UTC. English Wikipedia will be on read-only for a few minutes on 21 May 05:00 UTC. This is for database maintenance. [49][50]

Changes later this week

• The Wikipedia app for Android can let users add depicts on Commons. The beta version used computer-aided tagging. This was removed to get more specific depicts. [51]
• There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

Future changes

• Graphs will be rendered in the reader's browser. This will use Javascript. Graphs will hopefully work better for everyone who uses Javascript. It will not work for users who don't use Javascript. This will not affect diagrams in image files. [52]
• Some CSS for the skins has been simplified. This affects div#p-personal, div#p-navigation, div#p-interaction, div#p-tb, div#p-lang, div#p-namespaces, div#p-variants and div#footer. They will have to remove div. You will have to update your gadgets, scripts or user styles. This is so we can use HTML5. [53]
• Some CSS for the Vector skin has been changed. This affects #p-variants, #p-namespaces, #p-personal, #p-views and #p-cactions. They can no longer use > ul. You might need to update your gadgets, scripts or user styles. See how.

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17:18, 18 May 2020 (UTC)

Re: Loop

Continuing from Here (the last part). The topic is related to ShortDescription and Wikipedia, attracting WMF attention. We have already 2 off-topic posts, after User:RexxS's last post I was thinking not to post, however, ended up posting one more time. Now, I won't post there about this topic further. Wanted to inform you that I have read your post. As you have suggested you can actually move that part of discussion anywhere else (or ping me if you find a similar one).

So, what is the order? Wikidata imports a value (such as IMDb, official website) from English Wikipedia (or any Wikipedia) and stores the value on a Wikidata item. Now we show that Wikidata item link on Wikipedia. However, why? Earlier interwikis were taken and stored on Wikidata (the first phase of Wikidata).

Now, as a Wikidata item is showing a statement is imported from English Wikipedia, the statement was definitely correct on English Wikipedia. Now there are 2 possibilities:

1. the data was incorrect on English Wikipedia. In that case, the data, which is imported from Wikipedia is incorrect as well, and should not be used on English Wikipedia.
2. the data was correct on English Wikipedia. In that case, we exported data to Wikidata, and then decided to rely on Wikidata for this field.

However why? There was not anything broken per #1, and #2 above. The only logic I can find here, treating these fields as "interwiki" to be managed on Wikidata only. However, I don't think there is a community consensus on it, and it is definitely not a practice. What is really lacking: a clear understanding and guideline "why" and "when"? --Titodutta (talk) 11:31, 17 May 2020 (UTC)

Titodutta the situation is definitely a mess. You pretty much already figured out the answer to "why". There is a significant group (including the Foundation, the Wikidata community, and a significant number of EnWiki editors) who want to use Wikidata as an interwiki repository for... well pretty much anything and everything that could plausibly be managed in that fashion. Wikidata isn't a wiki, it's basically a database. Wikidata doesn't have much of a community, it's largely a bot-farm. They don't care about sources or reliability of anything or BPL issues - they're a bot farm with a mission of inhaling as much raw data as possible from anywhere and everywhere. A handful of Wikidata-enthusiasts eagerly began switching infoboxes and other templates to remote-display of Wikidata values. In some cases they engaged in bulk-deletion of content from Wikipedia, so that the newly-empty Wikipedia templates would pull and display nothing but Wikidata values.

Some editors began to object and push back. Everything was in chaos and things got ugly.

• May 2013 WP:Requests_for_comment/Wikidata_Phase_2 was the beginning. The Foundation gave a sales-pitch of awesome new features we could use (or not-use) however we wanted. A no-strings-attached "gift". The community allowed Wikidata to be enabled on Wikipedia, so we could try it out. The RFC issued an ambiguous consensus somewhere between "allowing" infoboxes to be converted to wikidata and requiring consensus to convert, it banned Wikidata in article text, and other parts of the article (like external link templates) were overlooked/indeterminate.
• The 2016 RFC WP:Village_pump_(policy)/Archive_128#RfC:_Wikidata_in_infoboxes,_opt-in_or_opt-out? closure basically said there was widespread confusion, split views, and that we'd need another RFC to produce any meaningful outcome.
• November 2017 WP:Arbitration_Committee/Noticeboard/Archive_11#Motion:_Crosswiki_issues. The community was in open warfare. Wikidata advocates were running around converting everything to Wikidata, and critics were seeking-and-achieving consensus to roll back case-by-case. Massive wasted-work and disruption as data-enthusiasts wiped out the content from THOUSANDS of pages, replacing them with empty infoboxes-pulling-values-from-wikidata and per-consensus other editors had to rollback and reconstruct all of those pages. Tempers flared, ARBCOM case filed, ARBCOM declares Wikidata to be a a Discretionary Sanctions area, ARBCOM orders that we develop an RFC to deal with it, and both sides are ordered to halt any large-scale efforts to roll-forwards or roll-back the Wikidata situation.
• Feb 2018 RFC WT:Manual_of_Style/Archive_202#RfC:_Linking_to_wikidata was "no consensus" and tells us to run another RFC later.
• April 2018 - the Really Big RFC that ARBCOM told us to run. You're welcome to try reading the close at WP:Wikidata/2018_Infobox_RfC#Discussion, but it's a long rambling "no consensus, go run another RFC". If I may offer my personal summary: One third of the community wants to largely scrap use of Wikidata. One third want as much Wikidata possible, everywhere possible. And approximately one third were (in my opinion) confused-as-fuck and tried to agree with both sides. Basically the middle-third said enthusiasts were right about the benefits and critics were right about the problems. They sorta said we should use Wikidata if we can magically get all of the benefits and none of the problems. Maybe I am biased, but all of my logic classes taught me that "we can use Wikidata if impossible magic" has a logic-value of nope.

The status quo is, approximately, both sides abandoning any systematic efforts to roll forwards or roll back. Revised: looking around, I'm finding that the Wikidata-crusaders have broken the truce. I see they have gone back to spamming Wikidata into thousands and thousand of article at a shot. Ugh! I've got a mountain of WMF-related matters to attend to, and the last thing I need right now is massive work trying to search-out and deal with THIS crap. Alsee (talk) 16:57, 17 May 2020 (UTC)

The other points that need adding include:

• The English Wikipedia (enwiki) is by far the largest Wikipedia, but there also another 300 language Wikipedias. Every piece of data we exported from enwiki into Wikidata became available for use on those 300 other Wikipedias, and much of it has been used. The other large wikipedias also contributed to the datatabase. It is true that enwiki gets the least benefit from that because much of the information is already present on enwiki, so we don't have as much to gain in terms of new information, but we still benefit from having data stored and updated in one place.
• I've spent a considerable amount of my wiki-time over the last seven years working on the code that pulls information from Wikidata into an infobox on enwiki, and dealing with the problems and complaints generated over that time. I think I can claim to have a reasonable overview of the issues. I completely agree that we need to move toward getting the benefits and eliminating the problems. But that doesn't happen through magic. It happens by developing the tools to enable editors to reap the benefits and minimise the problems.
• By default, infoboxes constructed using Module:WikidataIB never replace any value that is already supplied locally with one from Wikidata.
• By default, calls to the module filter out values that are not referenced to something other than a Wikipedia project (the WP:V problem).
• By default, calls to the module don't add any new fields to an existing infobox in any article unless an editor deliberately enables fetching wikidata in that article (the opt-in problem).
• By default, calls to the module display an "edit" icon (the blue pen) at the end of each value fetched from Wikidata which takes an editor directly to the Wikidata statement that's used, facilitating finding where the value came from and what their references are.
• By default, calls to the module don't display the contents of the Wikidata label which is very prone to vandalism; they use the sitelink to the enwiki article which is much harder to vandalise.

Can these measures be circumvented? Of course, nothing is foolproof. Can they be improved? Yes, but you'll be very hard-pushed to find any sensible suggestions for improvement that haven't been implemented.

New editors are arriving on enwiki all the time, and a lot of them are more inclined (in my experience) to want to make changes like automatically-generated infoboxes. Nobody wants to see conflict break out, so we need the two extreme "thirds" to start working with the middle "third" to make sure that when changes get consensus, they can be implemented seamlessly. --RexxS (talk) 16:15, 18 May 2020 (UTC)

Hi RexxS. Most of your points above I would summarize by saying that I think you do a great job making the wikidata stuff work as well as possible. I do get it why some people support the wikidata approach. The issue is the things you can't fix or and can't meaningfully improve. That's where discussions break down. The pro side wants to talk about the things you can do and you can improve. The con side wants to talk about the things you can't fix. The two sides see approximately nil value re-re-re-discussing the opposite (irrelevant) topic. To oversimplify, it's a question of whether Wikipedia should be handling the content as remote data. There's a lot of unavoidable baggage that comes with doing it that way.

While we may be on opposite sides of this issue I do hope for the ideal that we both want the "middle third" to express a resolution, and that we collaborate whichever way it turns out.

What upsets me is when it appears the 'truce' is being violated. (Note: I'm not pointing at you.) To quote ARBCOM: editors should refrain from taking any steps that might create a fait accompli situation (i.e., systematic Wikidata-related edits on English Wikipedia that would be difficult to reverse without undue effort if the RfC were to decide that a different approach should be used). That ARBCOM directive has technically expired. When I see a wikidata-advocate WP:Boldly make a large scale roll-forwards of wikidata negligible or no consensus, I feel a strong urge to declare an equal right for wikidata-critics to WP:Boldly preform large scale roll-backs of wikidata with negligible or no consensus. That's not how we should do things. Alsee (talk) 19:52, 18 May 2020 (UTC)

I agree with you absolutely (apart from the bit about me - I just code stuff that people ask me to). I suspect that the drive to draw more and more information from Wikidata is irresistible – Module:WikidataIB is in use on over 60 Wikipedias as well as Commons. But converting from a plain infobox to a Wikidata-enabled one is something that ought to be done with consensus. I don't mean that everybody has to go and get permission before making an edit – that is anathema to me – but I do think that bold edits that are reverted for good reason should immediately trigger a discussion and a consensus genuinely sought by both sides of the discussion. BRD should work just as well there as in any edit. I see my part in that as someone who can sometimes offer a solution that folks can agree on after they become aware of the technical capabilities and limitations. I'm more than happy to advise editors on how to structure work-flows to ensure that bringing in Wikidata meets the demands of as many interested editors as possible, but I don't think the stance of "no Wikidata anywhere" is tenable any longer. I do want to see us using Wikidata more, but we already have an example of WMF developers imposing information from Wikidata into the English Wikipedia, and that was sub-optimally done. The last thing I want is to move the responsibility for content away from enwiki editors to unaccountable WMF staff, if they decide it would be a good idea to make infoboxes automatically draw from Wikidata, for example. --RexxS (talk) 20:15, 18 May 2020 (UTC)

Feedback request: All RFCs request for comment

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Tech News: 2020-22

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

Changes later this week

• The visual editor will now work in the Modern skin. The changes that needed to happen for this to work could cause problems for some scripts or gadgets. [54]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from May 26. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from May 27. It will be on all wikis from May 28 (calendar).

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14:17, 25 May 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-23

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

Recent changes

• There is a new beta version of the Wikimedia Commons app for Android. It has a new zoom function when you look at images. It can also suggest places when you upload geotagged photos. [55]

Problems

• There was a problem with the Commons database on 27 May. Commons could not be edited for eight minutes. Because of this problem the database was moved. This caused another short read-only time on 29 May. [56][57][58]
• The Vector skin had a problem where you couldn't add links to the article in other languages. You couldn't see the section if there were no links to other languages already. It also removed content translation links and links to language settings. This has now been fixed. [59]

Changes later this week

• You can get a notification when someone links to a page you created. You can turn these notifications off for individual pages. You can soon turn them off also in the notifications you get. [60]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 2 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 3 June. It will be on all wikis from 4 June (calendar).

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22:31, 1 June 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-24

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

Recent changes

• Some articles have tables that can be sorted in different ways. For example a list of countries can be sorted alphabetically but you can click on the size column to sort them by size. If you clicked on the column a second time it would sort the countries from the bottom to the top instead. A third click will now take you back to the original sorting. [61]
• Self-closed tags now work as in the HTML5 specifications. This means you should stop using some of them. <b/> is an example of a self-closed tag that won't work. area, base, br, col, embed, hr, img, input, keygen, link, meta, param, source, track, wbr can be self-closed. Pages with tags that should not be self-closed have been listed in a tracking category since 2016. They will be listed in Special:LintErrors/self-closed-tag. This doesn't affect <references /> or <ref />. [62]
• There is a banner called WikidataPageBanner. It is for example used by the Wikivoyages, Wikimedia Russia and the Catalan, Basque, Galician and Turkish Wikipedias. It will now been seen by mobile visitors too. Before this it was only seen on desktop. The wikis should update instructions on MediaWiki:Sitenotice so that editors know to test and style for mobile too. [63][64]

Changes later this week

• You can now edit MassMessage descriptions through the API. This is useful for tools and gadgets. [65]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 9 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 10 June. It will be on all wikis from 11 June (calendar).

Future changes

• A temporary fix helped wikis make their main pages more mobile friendly. This was in 2012. It has not been recommended since 2017. It will not work after 13 July. Wikis should use TemplateStyles instead. 118 wikis need to fix this. You can read more and see if your wiki is affected. [66]

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21:11, 8 June 2020 (UTC)

Editing news 2020 #2 – Quick updates

Read this in another language • Subscription list

The new features include a toolbar. What do you think should be in the toolbar?

This edition of the Editing newsletter includes information the Wikipedia:Talk pages project, an effort to help contributors communicate on wiki more easily. The central project page is on MediaWiki.org.

• Reply tool: This is available as a Beta Feature at the four partner wikis (Arabic, Dutch, French, and Hungarian Wikipedias). The Beta Feature will get new features soon. The new features include writing comments in a new visual editing mode and pinging other users by typing @. You can test the new features on the Beta Cluster. Some other wikis will have a chance to try the Beta Feature in the coming months.
• New requirements for user signatures: Soon, users will not be able to save invalid custom signatures in Special:Preferences. This will reduce signature spoofing, prevent page corruption, and make new talk page tools more reliable. Most editors will not be affected.
• New discussion tool: The Editing team is beginning work on a simpler process for starting new discussions. You can see the initial design on the project page.
• Research on the use of talk pages: The Editing team worked with the Wikimedia research team to study how talk pages help editors improve articles. We learned that new editors who use talk pages make more edits to the main namespace than new editors who don't use talk pages.

– Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:11, 15 June 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-25

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

Recent changes

• Toolforge hosts several tools created by the Wikimedia community like edit counters or enhanced editors. It is changing the domain from tools.wmflabs.org to toolforge.org. The routing scheme is moving from tools.wmflabs.org/toolname to toolname.toolforge.org. You can read the details. Tools that use OAuth will have to be updated to keep working. You can ask for help.

Problems

• There is a Wikidata item link in the sidebar on many pages. This disappeared for a couple of days for users who have the Monobook skin. This was because of a bug. It has now been fixed. [67]
• Editing, logging in and logging out didn't work properly for a short period of time last week. It was soon fixed. [68]

Changes later this week

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

Future changes

• Pywikibot is a Python library to automate work on wikis. It will not support Python 2 after the new version in July. Support for Python 3.4 and MediaWiki below 1.19 will also be dropped. You should migrate to Python 3. You can ask for help. [69]
• The selectors .menu and .vectorMenu will no longer work in the Vector skin. This can affect gadgets and user scripts. .menu should be replaced by ul. .vectorMenu should be replaced by .vector-menu. [70]

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21:37, 15 June 2020 (UTC)

Feedback request: All RFCs request for comment

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New Page Reviewer newsletter June 2020

Hello Alsee,

Your help can make a difference

NPP Sorting can be a great way to find pages needing new page patrolling that match your strengths and interests. Using ORES, it divides articles into topics such as Literature or Chemistry and on Geography. Take a look and see if you can find time to patrol a couple pages a day. With over 10,000 pages in the queue, the highest it's been since ACPERM, your help could really make a difference.

Google Adds New Languages to Google Translate

In late February, Google added 5 new languages to Google Translate: Kinyarwanda, Odia (Oriya), Tatar, Turkmen and Uyghur. This expands our ability to find and evaluate sources in those languages.

Discussions and Resources

• A discussion on handling new article creation by paid editors is ongoing at the Village Pump.
• Also at the Village Pump is a discussion about limiting participation at Articles for Deletion discussion.
• A proposed new speedy deletion criteria for certain kinds of redirects ended with no consensus.
• Also ending with no change was a proposal to change how we handle certain kinds of vector images.

Six Month Queue Data: Today – 10271 Low – 4991 High – 10271

To opt-out of future mailings, please remove yourself here

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 02:52, 18 June 2020 (UTC)

Feedback request: Politics, government, and law request for comment

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Tech News: 2020-26

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

Problems

• There are some new tools to make it easier for newcomers to start editing. They are available on some wikis. These wikis had a problem with the visual editor for a short period of time last week. This was because of a bug in the new tools. It was soon fixed. [71]
• Some user scripts and gadgets stopped working because of a change to CSS selectors. .vectorTabs should be replaced with .vector-menu-tabs to fix this. [72]

Changes later this week

• The developers are working on a new interface to solve edit conflicts on talk pages. This will be released on 24 June. You can give feedback. [73]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 23 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 24 June. It will be on all wikis from 25 June (calendar).

Future changes

• A temporary fix helped wikis make their main pages more mobile friendly. This was in 2012. It has not been recommended since 2017. It will not work after 13 July. Wikis should use TemplateStyles instead. 91 wikis still need to fix this. You can read more and see if your wiki is affected. [74]

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18:48, 22 June 2020 (UTC)

Feedback request: Wikipedia proposals request for comment

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Tech News: 2020-27

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

Problems

• Everyone was logged out. This was because a few users saw the wikis as if they were logged in to someone else's account. The problem should be fixed now. [75]
• Some readers didn't see new edits to pages. If the page had been recently changed they saw an older version of the page instead. This only affected readers who were logged out. It lasted for ten days. It has been fixed. [76]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 30 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 1 July. It will be on all wikis from 1 July (calendar).

Future changes

• The Modern and Monobook skins use the ID searchGoButton for the go button. This is searchButton for Vector. To have the same ID for all skins it will change to searchButton in Monobook and Modern too. This will affect gadgets and user scripts. It will happen on 23 July. They should be updated to use searchButton. You can read more and see a list of affected scripts.

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16:30, 29 June 2020 (UTC)

WikiLoop Battlefield new name vote

Dear Alsee,

Thank you for your interest and contributions to WikiLoop Battlefield. We are holding a voting for proposed new name. We would like to invite you to this voting. The voting is held at m:WikiProject_WikiLoop/New_name_vote and ends on July 13th 00:00 UTC.

xinbenlv ^{Talk, Remember to "ping" me} 04:56, 30 June 2020 (UTC)

Editing news 2020 #3

On 16 March 2020, the 50 millionth edit was made using the visual editor on desktop.

Seven years ago this week, the Editing team made the visual editor available by default to all logged-in editors using the desktop site at the English Wikipedia. Here's what happened since its introduction:

• The 50 millionth edit using the visual editor on desktop was made this year. More than 10 million edits have been made here at the English Wikipedia.
• More than 2 million new articles have been created in the visual editor. More than 600,000 of these new articles were created during 2019.
• Almost 5 million edits on the mobile site have been made with the visual editor. Most of these edits have been made since the Editing team started improving the mobile visual editor in 2018.
• The proportion of all edits made using the visual editor has been increasing every year.
• Editors have made more than 7 million edits in the 2017 wikitext editor, including starting 600,000 new articles in it. The 2017 wikitext editor is VisualEditor's built-in wikitext mode. You can enable it in your preferences.
• On 17 November 2019, the first edit from outer space was made in the mobile visual editor.
• In 2019, 35% of the edits by newcomers, and half of their first edits, were made using the visual editor. This percentage has been increasing every year since the tool became available.

Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 02:05, 3 July 2020 (UTC)

Feedback request: All RFCs request for comment

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Tech News: 2020-28

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

Problems

• The Score extension has been disabled for now. This is because of a security issue. It will work again as soon as the security issue has been fixed. [77]

Changes later this week

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

Future changes

• Abstract Wikipedia is a new Wikimedia project. It will collect language-independent information that can be easily read in different languages. It builds on Wikidata. The name is preliminary. You can read more. [78]
• The iOS Wikipedia app developers are thinking about new experimental tools. If you use an iPhone you can help them by answering the survey.
• Some rules for user signatures will soon be enforced. Lint errors and invalid HTML will no longer be allowed in user signatures. Nested substitution will not be allowed. A link to your user page, user talk page or user contributions will be required. You can check if your signature works with the new rules. This is because the signatures can cause problems for tools or other text on the page.

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20:18, 6 July 2020 (UTC)

Feedback request: All RFCs request for comment

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Tech News: 2020-29

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

Recent changes

• Users can thank others for their edits. Checkusers can now see user data related to that action. This can help identify sock puppets who harass others using thanks. [79]

Problems

• Everyone was logged out a couple of weeks ago to fix a security problem. The problem was not entirely fixed. Because of this everyone was logged out once again last week. [80][81]

Changes later this week

• Wikis that are not for one specific language can translate pages. Sometimes parts of translations are outdated or missing. Outdated translations are marked with a pink background. Missing translations will also be marked in the future. This markup can sometimes break things. It can soon be disabled by using <translate nowrap></translate> on the source page. [82]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 14 July. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 15 July. It will be on all wikis from 16 July (calendar).

Future changes

• Wikimedia code review plans to use GitLab. It would be hosted on Wikimedia servers. [83][84][85][86]

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16:29, 13 July 2020 (UTC)

Feedback request: Wikipedia style and naming request for comment

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Re: Loop 2

Sometime ago we had a discussion which is now at User_talk:Alsee/Archive_13#Re:_Loop. User:RexxS participated at both the VP discussion and on your talk page. I have found a couple of more examples (among others)

• GitLab, repository, website...
• COVID-19 pandemic in India, go to "edit" mode and find #invoke

--Titodutta (talk) 13:38, 14 July 2020 (UTC)

The first case is an implementation of Template:Infobox software which has apparently fetched info from Wikidata for several years. There is discussion at its talk page and it might be worth raising the issue of importing unsourced data there.

The second case is indeed novel and I've just made changes to it to ensure it only imports sourced data. I've opened a talk page discussion at Talk:COVID-19 pandemic in India #Fetching sourced data from Wikidata and other views would be welcome. Cheers --RexxS (talk) 15:54, 14 July 2020 (UTC)

• Thanks User:RexxS. You may also see "en" column of d:Wikidata:WikiProject_India/COVID-19_task_force#Add_Wikidata_values_to_Wikipedia_Infobox. Hopefully the articles won't break if changes are made and provide correct information. Regards, --Titodutta (talk) 16:31, 14 July 2020 (UTC)
  • I've amended the instructions at d:Wikidata:WikiProject_India/COVID-19_task_force#Add_Wikidata_values_to_Wikipedia_Infobox. Hopefully, the implementers here will take note of the message I left at Talk:COVID-19 pandemic in India and update the others. Once the use of sourced data only becomes routine, it will ease the "loop" problems considerably. --RexxS (talk) 17:01, 14 July 2020 (UTC)
    • You were not logged in. :( Hope the edit won't be reverted. (I guess User:Ymblanter can hide the IP if needed). Regards --Titodutta (talk) 17:07, 14 July 2020 (UTC)
    • Note: I have also pinged a chat group about this discussion on FB where that project leads are active. Regards --Titodutta (talk) 17:30, 14 July 2020 (UTC)
      • There's a bug that logs people out regularly at present, but I don't worry about having my IP exposed. It just geolocates to my ISP, Virgin Media in Wolverhampton and everybody who reads my talk page knows I live in the West Midlands, but thanks for your concern. I hope it won't be reverted, as it's best practice to require sourced data even on smaller Wikipedias where they may be less strict. --RexxS (talk) 17:47, 14 July 2020 (UTC)

Thanx Titodutta. The #invoke calls in the body of the Covid article are especially egregious and explicitly violate the consensus against using wikidata in the body of articles. I've commented on the talk page there. Ordinarily I'd want to act on this, but my computer is causing headaches at the moment and I'm feeling very burned out with a pile of Foundation-level problems. Please keep me informed if there's any RFC or big discussion on this. Alsee (talk) 23:34, 14 July 2020 (UTC)

Feedback request: All RFCs request for comment

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Tech News: 2020-30

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

Recent changes

• A temporary fix helped wikis make their main pages more mobile friendly. This was in 2012. It has not been recommended since 2017. The mobile main page special casing stopped working 14 July. 60 wikis now have main pages that don't work well on mobile. You can see which ones, how to fix it and how to get help in Phabricator. This is the same problem that was reported in Tech News 2020/24 and 2020/26.

Problems

• There is a problem with the interlanguage links. The interlanguage links are the links that help you find a specific page in a different language. The sorting is broken. The developers are working on a solution. [87]
• Some users keep getting the notifications for the same event. Some of these are old events. [88]
• Some users have trouble logging in. This is probably a browser cookie problem. The developers are working on understanding the problem. If you have trouble logging in you can see the details on Phabricator. [89]

Changes later this week

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

Future changes

• There is a Printable version link. This will disappear. That is because web browsers today can create a printable version or show how it will look in print anyway. [90]

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19:13, 20 July 2020 (UTC)

Feedback request: Wikipedia proposals request for comment

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Announcing WikiLoop DoubleCheck

Dear Wikipedians and contributors, the open source Wikipedia review tool, previously "WikiLoop Battlefield" has completed its name vote and is announcing its new name: WikiLoop DoubleCheck. Read the full story on the program page on Meta-wiki, learn about ways to support this tool, and find out what future developments are coming for this tool.

Thank you to everyone who took part in the vote!

xinbenlv ^{Talk, Remember to "ping" me} 18:25, 23 July 2020 (UTC)