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Tech News: 2024-28

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

Recent changes

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

Problems

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

Future changes

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

Tech News survey

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

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)

Nomination of Anton Rayne for deletion

A discussion is taking place as to whether the article Anton Rayne, to which you have significantly contributed, is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or if it should be deleted.

The discussion will take place at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Anton Rayne until a consensus is reached, and anyone, including you, is welcome to contribute to the discussion. Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion notice from the top of the article.

To customise your preferences for automated AfD notifications for articles to which you've significantly contributed (or to opt-out entirely), please visit the configuration page. Delivered by SDZeroBot (talk) 01:01, 14 July 2024 (UTC)

Edit regarding Davao Christian High School

Hello! I'm currently affiliated with Davao Christian High School and found that you've reverted an edit made by someone around two weeks ago. I'd like to inform you that I'll be adding these changes back considering there has actually been a change in management within the school which the changes you reverted actually addressed. If you do feel the need to state your reasons why you had reverted the said changes, please do inform me. Much thanks. 49.146.47.129 (talk) 17:31, 14 July 2024 (UTC)

Hi there! Welcome to Wikipedia. I appreciate your contributions, but please refrain from adding those details back yourself. Instead, kindly make a COI edit request on the article's talk page. I'd also appreciate it if you could take a moment to read our conflict of interest guidelines and disclose your COI on your user page and the article's talk page before making any edit requests. Thank you! – DreamRimmer (talk) 17:40, 14 July 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-29

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

Tech News survey

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

Recent changes

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

Changes later this week

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

Future changes

• Next week, functionaries, volunteers maintaining tools, and software development teams are invited to test the temporary accounts feature on testwiki. Temporary accounts is a feature that will help improve privacy on the wikis. No further temporary account deployments are scheduled yet. Please share your opinions and questions on the project talk page. [1]
• 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)

AfD round 2 on Khais Millen

An article that was soft-deleted in 2023 was immediately refunded and is now back at AfD. I am notifying all participants in the 2023 discussion in case any wish to engage again. New AfD is here: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Khais Millen (2nd nomination). Thanks! Dclemens1971 (talk) 16:28, 16 July 2024 (UTC)

Review

Hi, Can you please review my pages Emagadhagan ,Jama (film),14 (film),Monisha Blessy Monhiroe (talk) 15:22, 18 July 2024 (UTC)

@Monhiroe, thank you for creating these articles. I have gone ahead and marked Emagadhagan and Jama (film) as reviewed. 14 (film) was already reviewed. I didn't review the last one because I usually don't review biographies upon request. – DreamRimmer (talk) 15:37, 18 July 2024 (UTC)

Thank you Monhiroe (talk) 15:39, 18 July 2024 (UTC)

alternate account

In replying to this discussion, I wanted to see what it was that you claimed to have done. Surprisingly Special:Contributions/DreamRimmer showed nothing. So I looked at your userpage. No mention of alternate or other user accounts that you use. I even looked at the Special:Contributions/BaranBOT; nothing there either.

To learn what it was that you have done, I had to do a search for "Premier Atlas of the World" and then, one-by-one, look at the histories of the articles listed in the search results until I discovered one history that showed a recent edit by User:DreamRimmer Alt.

Editors should not have to do what I had to do in order to discover what you did. Please link to your alternate account(s) from your user page.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 14:28, 18 July 2024 (UTC)

@Trappist the monk, I have already mentioned these accounts here when I created them. I am sorry if you had trouble finding them. I'll make sure to add them to my user page now so that folkscan easily spot them. – DreamRimmer (talk) 14:46, 18 July 2024 (UTC)

Thank you. Nothing links to User:DreamRimmer/Discloser except this discussion so finding it would have been equally problematic; see Special:WhatLinksHere/User:DreamRimmer/Discloser. Did you really mean to use 'Discloser' (a person who discloses) instead of 'Disclosure' (3. That which is disclosed; a previously hidden fact or series of facts that is made known.)?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 15:47, 18 July 2024 (UTC)

I have now added this to my user page. The third line is just a note, posted on the same day. (I was talking about the third point on the User:DreamRimmer/Discloser page.) – DreamRimmer (talk) 16:05, 18 July 2024 (UTC)

Umm, what? You said that you have already mentioned these accounts here when I created them. I noted that [nothing] links to User:DreamRimmer/Discloser except this discussion so finding it would have been equally problematic. You then reply I have now added this to my user page. Not obvious because at this writing there has only been one edit to your user page today and still only this discussion links to User:DreamRimmer/Discloser. What do you really mean by this post? How is what you said there different from what you said at this post?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 16:40, 18 July 2024 (UTC)

@Trappist the monk, sorry for the confusion. What I meant was that I mentioned my bot and my alt account on a subpage when I created them. When you mentioned having trouble finding that alt account, I said that I have now added that account to my userpage.

Both of my accounts are now listed on my userpage, so this subpage is no longer necessary, and you can ignore it. – DreamRimmer (talk) 16:57, 18 July 2024 (UTC)

Roger that; thank you.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 17:14, 18 July 2024 (UTC)

Request review

Hi

I have worked on a new article around a show that releases tomorrow.

It is called Bahishkarana. It is a Telugu language show.

Request you to have a look into it.

Thank you Filmy World (talk) 18:04, 18 July 2024 (UTC)

Can I join your NPP training class?

Hi DreamRimmer, I recently got my NPP rights and made some mistakes with tagging. I saw on the NPP school page that you are available as a trainer in the Indian Standard Time zone. I am eager to learn and improve so I can get back to NPP. Would you be willing to train me? Charlie (talk) 03:17, 14 July 2024 (UTC)

@CharlieMehta, thanks for reaching out! I will set up your training page and will ping you there sometime today or tomorrow. – DreamRimmer (talk) 08:29, 14 July 2024 (UTC)

@DreamRimmer thank you. Charlie (talk) 10:45, 14 July 2024 (UTC)

Hey @CharlieMehta, sorry about the delay in your training. I got caught up with something, but I'll make sure to set up your training page tomorrow. – DreamRimmer (talk) 17:24, 17 July 2024 (UTC)

Thank you. I have reduced the pace of my NPP reviews and eagerly look forward to finishing this training with your assistance. Charlie (talk) 17:35, 17 July 2024 (UTC)

@CharlieMehta User:DreamRimmer/NPP-School/CharlieMehta – DreamRimmer (talk) 04:44, 20 July 2024 (UTC)

@DreamRimmer thank you. I am on to it. Charlie (talk) 11:59, 20 July 2024 (UTC)

July thanks

story · music · places

Thank you for improving article quality in July! - Today's story is about a photographer who took iconic pictures, especially View from Williamsburg, Brooklyn, on Manhattan, 9/11, yesterday's was a great mezzo, and on Thursday we watched a sublime ballerina. If that's not enough my talk offers chamber music from two amazing concerts. -- Gerda Arendt (talk) 14:16, 20 July 2024 (UTC)

The Signpost: 22 July 2024

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

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

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

• Essay: Reflections on editing and obsession

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

• Obituary: JamesR

• Crossword: Vaguely bird-shaped crossword

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

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 09:30, 22 July 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-30

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

Feature News

• Stewards can now globally block accounts. Before the change only IP addresses and IP ranges could be blocked globally. Global account blocks are useful when the blocked user should not be logged out. Global locks (a similar tool logging the user out of their account) are unaffected by this change. The new global account block feature is related to the Temporary Accounts project, which is a new type of user account that replaces IP addresses of unregistered editors that are no longer made public.
• Later this week, Wikimedia site users will notice that the Interface of FlaggedRevs (also known as "Pending Changes") is improved and consistent with the rest of the MediaWiki interface and Wikimedia's design system. The FlaggedRevs interface experience on mobile and Minerva skin was inconsistent before it was fixed and ported to Codex by the WMF Growth team and some volunteers. [2]
• 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. [3]
• 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. [4]

Project Updates

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

Learn more

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

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

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

Renames for outrageously libelous usernames

I asked about this at WP:BN a while ago and everyone just kind of shrugged and said "not our jurisdiction". Well, I see that you are processing a bunch of rename requests, so I figure I will ask you directly: what's the deal with these usernames? <-- See HTML note here with a few of them I found using SQL (e.g. "JIMBOWALES IS A NECRO-BESTIA-PEDOPHILIAC"), spanning the wide toilet language-ethnic slur continuum, et cetera. Is there anything we can do about this crap? jp×g🗯️ 10:05, 23 July 2024 (UTC)

@JPxG, I haven't come across these types of usernames while processing rename requests. Global renamers can't really do much about them. Outrageously libelous usernames can be hide locked, so I think hide locking is the best solution for those cases. However, just having a swear word or slur in a username isn't necessarily libelous. Generally, if a username has text that would qualify for oversight, it should be hide locked. I'm not sure if any of the mentioned usernames meet this criteria, so it would be best to ask the stewards. – DreamRimmer (talk) 13:22, 23 July 2024 (UTC)

Hmm. What the heck is a hide lock -- is there a page for that somewhere? I guess I will go mosey towards the stews then... jp×g🗯️ 13:24, 23 July 2024 (UTC)

Locking and suppressing. See meta:Steward requests/Global#Requests for global (un)lock and (un)hiding. – DreamRimmer (talk) 13:31, 23 July 2024 (UTC)

Don't the oversighters also have a hide username button ? Or am I hallucinating ? Sohom (talk) 13:40, 23 July 2024 (UTC)

They do, and we do as admins, but it's only for actions (edit, pagemove, etc). I can even revdel a name from an action done to it, I'm pretty sure (e.g. I can edit the block log entry to not show the user's name) -- but none of this actually changes the name of the account, so User:JPxG IS A NECRO-BESTIA-PEDOPHILIAC will still show up in Special:ListUsers and the user creation log et cetera. jp×g🗯️ 13:45, 23 July 2024 (UTC)

https://wiki.riteme.site/w/index.php?title=Special:Log&logid=5417192 has the username deleted. But then if you go to the user's page they are still blocked. It's just... the log entry is defaced? God, this is so inane and cursed. Yeah, so -- I think it has to be something central. jp×g🗯️ 13:54, 23 July 2024 (UTC)

Stewards have the centralauth-suppress right to suppress or hide global accounts, while Oversighters have the hideuser right to block or unblock a username, hiding or unhiding it from the public. I don't think hideuser is for suppressing a user account, or maybe it is for suppressing a local account. However, since these are global accounts, the centralauth-suppress right is the one that can do this. – DreamRimmer (talk) 13:51, 23 July 2024 (UTC)

Yeah, I'm not sure how hideuser interacts with centralauth-suppress, maybe there is some weird interaction that restricts this right to only stewards (and I really don't wanna setup CentralAuth locally to test it out) Sohom (talk) 14:02, 23 July 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-31

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

Feature news

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

Bugs status

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

Project updates

• There are new features and improvements to Phabricator from the Release Engineering and Collaboration Services teams, and some volunteers, including: the search systems, the new task creation system, the login systems, the translation setup which has resulted in support for more languages (thanks to Pppery), and fixes for many edge-case errors. You can read details about these and other improvements in this summary.
• There is an update on the Charts project. The team has decided which visualization library to use, which chart types to start focusing on, and where to store chart definitions.
• One new wiki has been created: a Wikivoyage in Czech (voy:cs:) [5]

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)

DCWC August update

The 2024 Developing Countries WikiContest has now been running for a month, and we've already seen some momentous improvement in the quality of many articles about underrepresented subjects! So far, our top-scoring participants are:

• Magentic Manifestations (submissions) – 338 points, mainly from nine good articles. He's a contender for the "most submissions for a single country" specialty award, with nine submissions for India.
• Arconning (submissions) – 305 points, including from six seasonally-appropriate Olympics-related good articles.
• Generalissima (submissions) – 290 points, the bulk from her featured article about Greenlandic interpreter Qalaherriaq and two China-related good articles.
• AirshipJungleman29 (submissions) – 245 points, mostly from the achievement of bringing Genghis Khan to featured status.
• Thebiguglyalien (submissions) – 144 points from three good articles, including two about Kiribati elections, and four reviews of good article nominees.

Looking for ways to climb up the leaderboard yourself? Help out your fellow participants by answering a few review requests, particularly the older entries. Several more nominations needing attention are listed at eligible reviews, and highlighed entries receive a 1.5× multiplier! The coordinators would like to extend a special thanks to Thebiguglyalien (submissions) for his commitment to keeping these review pages up to date.

If you have any questions, please leave a message on the contest talk page or ask one of the coordinators: Ixtal (talk · contribs), sawyer777 (talk · contribs), or TechnoSquirrel69 (talk · contribs). (To unsubscribe from these updates, remove yourself from this list.) Sent via MediaWiki message delivery (talk) —TechnoSquirrel69 (sigh) 14:24, 1 August 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-32

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

Feature news

• Two new parser functions will be available this week: {{#dir}} and {{#bcp47}}. These will reduce the need for Template:Dir and Template:BCP47 on Commons and allow us to drop 100 million rows from the "what links here" database. Editors at any wiki that use these templates, can help by replacing the templates with these new functions. The templates at Commons will be updated during the Hackathon at Wikimania. [6][7]
• 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)

A barnstar for you!

		The Random Acts of Kindness Barnstar
		Thanks for your efforts for reviewing articles on request and helping new users to overcome their difficulties. BhikhariInformer (talk) 10:31, 6 August 2024 (UTC)

Thank you! @BhikhariInformer – DreamRimmer (talk) 10:43, 6 August 2024 (UTC)

Collab

Hey, interested in any collab for GA or FA? — The Herald (Benison) (talk) 06:41, 4 August 2024 (UTC)

IAU designated constellations is something I'm working on for FL. Got it PRed. I'm not sure if it's up your alley, but lemme know if you wanna collab with that or any other article. Thanks. — The Herald (Benison) (talk) 06:44, 4 August 2024 (UTC)

@The Herald, I am definitely interested, but I am currently tied up with some real-life stuff. I will be back to regular editing after 25 August. If that timing works for you, I can join then. – DreamRimmer (talk) 10:42, 6 August 2024 (UTC)

Yea, sure. I'll be going for a holiday next week and will be back by August 20ish. So it's okay. — The Herald (Benison) (talk) 12:22, 6 August 2024 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – August 2024

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

Administrator changes

Isabelle Belato

• Ian.thomson
• Modussiccandi

Interface administrator changes

Izno

CheckUser changes

Barkeep49

Technical news

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

Arbitration

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

---

• Discuss this newsletter
• Subscribe
• Archive

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 15:59, 6 August 2024 (UTC)

Submission of Darft for Article Space

Dear @DreamRimmer Please check and approve Draft:Ajay Kumar Jha as and when your time permits. Amanatadverse17 (talk) 11:16, 9 August 2024 (UTC)

@Amanatadverse17: A reviewer has shared some feedback on your draft. Please take their suggestions into account and make the necessary improvements. If you have any questions or need help, don’t hesitate to reach out. – DreamRimmer (talk) 15:57, 9 August 2024 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Original Barnstar
	Thank you DreamRimmer, for your contributions, efforts to wikimedia. Youknow? (talk) 10:43, 10 August 2024 (UTC)

BAGBot: Your bot request BaranBOT 2

Someone has marked Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/BaranBOT 2 as needing your input. Please visit that page to reply to the requests. Thanks! AnomieBOT⚡ 13:15, 10 August 2024 (UTC) To opt out of these notifications, place {{bots|optout=operatorassistanceneeded}} anywhere on this page.

Tech News: 2024-33

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

Feature news

• AbuseFilter editors and maintainers can now make a CAPTCHA show if a filter matches an edit. This allows communities to quickly respond to spamming by automated bots. [8]
• Stewards can now specify if global blocks should prevent account creation. Before this change by the Trust and Safety Product Team, all global blocks would prevent account creation. This will allow stewards to reduce the unintended side-effects of global blocks on IP addresses.

Project updates

• Nominations are open on Wikitech for new members to refresh the Toolforge standards committee. The committee oversees the Toolforge Right to fork policy and Abandoned tool policy among other duties. Nominations will remain open until at least 2024-08-26.
• One new wiki has been created: a Wikipedia in West Coast Bajau (w:bdr:) [9]

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

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

Project Editor Retention

Thanks so much for joining our little corner of Wikipedia. I will return shortly with the Official Rules of Decorum, a gold embossed memdbership card {only $24.95 cash only) and a nice pin (also $24.95) for your new blazer (only $124.95). TA! Buster Seven Talk (UTC) 13:16, 11 August 2024 (UTC)

Just kidding of course. Welcome. Always love enlarging the circle! Buster Seven Talk (UTC) 13:18, 11 August 2024 (UTC)

@Buster7, I came across this project a while back and really liked it. When I noticed your block yesterday and saw you were feeling down about this week's award distribution, I thought I could step in and help out since I handle a similar kind of awards distribution (though not quite the same). It’s great to see you back, and I appreciate your message. I’ll do my best to help wherever I can, and thanks for all the amazing work you’ve done! – DreamRimmer (talk) 13:37, 11 August 2024 (UTC)

Check out the Wikipedia:The admin baton which is something that @Hey man im josh: suggested. Isaacl pitched in that if it happens it needs to come from Editor of the Week rather than Editor Retention. Back Burner for a while? Nomination and SUPPORT are always welcome. Buster Seven Talk (UTC) 03:39, 13 August 2024 (UTC)

No, what I said is that I originally thought you were referring to new members of the editor retention WikiProject, but I was mistaken, since you linked to the membership of the Editor of the Week initiative. (My suggestion was to post periodic welcomes on the Editor of the Week talk page, asking new members to find new nominations.) isaacl (talk) 06:58, 13 August 2024 (UTC)

Question from TriggercyLa (12:28, 13 August 2024)

how to wrewrite username? --TriggercyLa (talk) 12:28, 13 August 2024 (UTC)

@TriggercyLa, I assume you want to change your username. If so, you can request a rename here. – DreamRimmer (talk) 13:46, 13 August 2024 (UTC)

The Signpost: 14 August 2024

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

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

• In focus: Twitter marks the spot

• News and notes: Another Wikimania has concluded.

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

• Opinion: HouseBlaster's RfA debriefing

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

• Humour: I'm proud to be a template

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 22:47, 14 August 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-34

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

Feature news

• Editors who want to re-use references but with different details such as page numbers, will be able to do so by the end of 2024, using a new sub-referencing feature. You can read more about the project and how to test the prototype.
• Editors using tracking categories to identify which pages use specific extensions may notice that six of the categories have been renamed to make them more easily understood and consistent. These categories are automatically added to pages that use specialized MediaWiki extensions. The affected names are for: DynamicPageList, Kartographer, Phonos, RSS, Score, WikiHiero. Wikis that have created the category locally should rename their local creation to match. Thanks to Pppery for these improvements. [10]
• 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. [11][12]

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)

New pages patrol September 2024 Backlog drive

New pages patrol | September 2024 Backlog Drive
On 1 September 2024, a one-month backlog drive for new pages patrol will begin. Barnstars will be awarded based on the number of articles and redirects patrolled. Barnstars will also be granted for re-reviewing articles previously reviewed by other patrollers during the drive. Each article review will earn 1 point, and each redirect review will earn 0.2 points. Interested in taking part? Sign up here.
You're receiving this message because you are a new page patroller. To opt-out of future mailings, please remove yourself here.

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:09, 26 August 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-35

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

Feature news

• Administrators can now test the temporary accounts feature on test2wiki. This was done to allow cross-wiki testing of temporary accounts, for when temporary accounts switch between projects. The feature was enabled on testwiki a few weeks ago. No further temporary account deployments are scheduled yet. Temporary Accounts is a project to create a new type of user account that replaces IP addresses of unregistered editors which are no longer made public. Please share your opinions and questions on the project talk page.
• Later this week, editors at wikis that use FlaggedRevs (also known as "Pending Changes") may notice that the indicators at the top of articles have changed. This change makes the system more consistent with the rest of the MediaWiki interface. [13]

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)

Administrators' newsletter – September 2024

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

Administrator changes

Pppery

Interface administrator changes

Pppery

Oversighter changes

Wugapodes

CheckUser changes

• Courcelles
• GeneralNotability

Guideline and policy news

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

Arbitration

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

Miscellaneous

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

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• Discuss this newsletter
• Subscribe
• Archive

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:43, 2 September 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-36

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

Weekly highlight

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

Feature news

• Editors who use the Special:UnusedTemplates page can now filter out pages which are expected to be there permanently, such as sandboxes, test-cases, and templates that are always substituted. Editors can add the new magic word __EXPECTUNUSEDTEMPLATE__ to a template page to hide it from the listing. Thanks to Sophivorus and DannyS712 for these improvements. [14]
• 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. [15]
• 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. [16]

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)

The Signpost: 4 September 2024

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

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

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

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

• Wikimania: A month after Wikimania 2024

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

• Traffic report: After the gold rush

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

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 13:25, 4 September 2024 (UTC)

DCWC September update

The Developing Countries WikiContest has now been running for two months, and we've seen tremendous improvement in the encyclopedic coverage of several underrepresented areas from a wide range of editors! The coordinators would like to highlght some of the newer faces who have been making notable contributions in the contest, including but by no means limited to:

• Arconning (submissions) – 386 points, with several good articles primarily relating to the Olympics
• Vigilantcosmicpenguin (submissions) – 141 points, who created multiple articles about abortion rights and laws in African countries
• TheNuggeteer (submissions) – 126 points, who has contributed to several articles associated with the Phillippines
• Jaguarnik (submissions) – 125 points, with several good article reviews and an appearance in the In the news section of the Main Page
• Averageuntitleduser (submissions) – 119 points, and has written about several Haitian topics and historical figures.

Only one month remains until the end of the contest, so it's time to make your remaining nominations! Please consider answering some review requests, particularly the older entries, as a way of helping out your fellow participants and moving up the leaderboard. Good luck!

If you have any questions, please leave a message on the contest talk page or ask one of the coordinators: Ixtal (talk · contribs), sawyer777 (talk · contribs), or TechnoSquirrel69 (talk · contribs). (To unsubscribe from these updates, remove yourself from this list.) Sent via MediaWiki message delivery (talk) —TechnoSquirrel69 (sigh) 22:00, 4 September 2024 (UTC)

Blanked user page?

I'm not sure why you blanked User:Ajay2287. The prior contents described the user and their interests as they related to Wikipedia editing. This is the very definition of what a user page should be used for. WikiDan61^ChatMe!_ReadMe!! 15:49, 5 September 2024 (UTC)

@WikiDan61, You are right; the user seems to be a good-faith editor. I ended up blanking their userpage because most of its content felt more like self-promotion rather than neutral info about themselves. Although, the last two sections were fine. I've never used a blank template on other userpages before, but I did here because I was a bit unsure about just blanking the page completely. I wanted them to see the policy I mentioned in the edit summary and read the notice I left on their userpage so they could make the necessary changes. – DreamRimmer (talk) 16:09, 5 September 2024 (UTC)

Renames

Hello, DreamRimmer,

When you are renaming editors, please leave a redirect from their old User pages to their new ones unless it is a Courtesy Vanishing. If you have doubts about this, please check with other renamers. But this is how it's always been done. Otherwise, we are left with a lot of broken redirects especially if the editor has more than one username change. Thank you. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 18:13, 8 September 2024 (UTC)

Liz, I always keep redirects when I rename users, but I make exceptions for cases like courtesy vanishing or when a rename is requested for privacy reasons. – DreamRimmer (talk) 18:25, 8 September 2024 (UTC)

Developing replacement patterns

Ways back in this discussion you said you might help if I could develop a list of files and replacement patterns. I don't have JWB access, which is the tool I'm aware of that would let me work on that. Do you know of another way? Perhaps an impotent version of JWB that would let me generate lists and preview changes but not actually do any edits? Or some script that would manage sets of regexes? Dicklyon (talk) 16:08, 7 September 2024 (UTC)

I am familiar with AWB/JWB, but I am not sure if there are any other tools that could help with this. – DreamRimmer (talk) 18:33, 8 September 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-37

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

Feature news

• Starting this week, the standard syntax highlighter will receive new colors that make them compatible in dark mode. This is the first of many changes to come as part of a major upgrade to syntax highlighting. You can learn more about what's to come on the help page. [17][18]
• 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. [19]

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. [20]
• 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). [21]

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)

Administrator Elections: Updates & Schedule

Administrator Elections | Updates & Schedule
Administrator elections are in the WMF Trust & Safety SecurePoll calendar and are all set to proceed. We plan to use the following schedule: Oct 8 – Oct 14: Candidate sign-up Oct 22 – Oct 24: Discussion phase Oct 25 – Oct 31: SecurePoll voting phase If you have any questions, concerns, or thoughts before we get started, please post at Wikipedia talk:Administrator elections. If you are interested in helping out, please post at Wikipedia talk:Administrator elections § Ways to help. There are many redlinked subpages that can be created.
You're receiving this message because you signed up for the mailing list. To opt-out of future mailings, please remove yourself from the list.

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 01:18, 10 September 2024 (UTC)

AFC stats

Can we move the AFC stats graph to a subpage to avoid having a bot notification every day? It's a minor enough change that it won't need any formal approval or anything. (please do not ping on reply) Primefac (talk) 10:29, 10 September 2024 (UTC)

I have moved the graph to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Articles for creation/stats page and transcluded it on WT:AFC. My apologies for not confirming the page name with you before creating it. – DreamRimmer (talk) 11:08, 10 September 2024 (UTC)

No worries, I guess I just figured it would be updated somewhere and transcluded since that's what I've seen in other places. Thanks for the change. Primefac (talk) 11:48, 10 September 2024 (UTC)

Backlog drive removal

Hi, you just removed me from the NPP backlog drive participation list (and got reverted by Josh). May I ask if this was accidental or if you see any reason to do so? Regards ...GELongstreet (talk) 17:07, 12 September 2024 (UTC)

@GELongstreet, my bad! I use a script that displays users' permissions next to their names, and it updates daily. When I removed you, it didn't show your permission badge, so I assumed you weren't an NPR. Sorry about that, I should have double-checked your permissions manually. – DreamRimmer (talk) 17:24, 12 September 2024 (UTC)

Okay. No worries, all good, just wanted to be sure. Indeed got the permission just earlier today after requesting it (my previous stint with RC/NP editing was a decade ago). Thanks for clarifying. ...GELongstreet (talk) 17:35, 12 September 2024 (UTC)

User renames

Hello, DreamRimmer,

When you rename an editor, like User:Taskyn7, you need to move all of their user pages to the new username so the pages at the old username don't show up for speedy deletion as nonexistent user pages. I moved this editor's User page to Draft space but this is a necessary step you must take when doing any editor username rename. Please don't forget to do this in the future. Thank you. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 20:48, 13 September 2024 (UTC)

Liz, we renamers do not manually move user pages; this is done automatically by the rename script. There is an option called 'Move user pages' that is checked by default, and I never uncheck it when renaming a user. It may be an issue with the rename script. I process hundreds of requests per week and have never left user pages behind. – DreamRimmer (talk) 00:58, 14 September 2024 (UTC)

Re: Edits made to the page of Suresh Prabhu

Hi DreamRimmer,

Thank you for your review of the edits I made yesterday - I am working on the issues that you pointed out and rewriting the same, especially wrt Wiki's BLP policy.

Post your edit, I have removed all matter that had no verifiable and reliable sources of information (several links were non-existent)/overly descriptive, "peacock" in nature. This page still needs a lot of work. something which I hope to help with as and when I find time.

In the meantime if you wish to discuss the changes I made this morning then do let me know :-)

Cheers

T4I Truth4India (talk) 01:50, 14 September 2024 (UTC)

Thanks so much for the AfD cleanup

if I can ever be of help, don't hesitate to reach out unless it's tech related ;-) Star Mississippi 03:05, 14 September 2024 (UTC)

Sure, thanks for the kind words :) – DreamRimmer (talk) 03:31, 14 September 2024 (UTC)

User:BaranBOT/Task 1/Drives/2024-09 New Page Patrol/leaderboard

Hi.DreamRimmer , I reviewed after completely renaming of my user account to new username this page and my old data are zero but I'm earned 90+ point during the time, but now it's is zero, what that means?If this a fault then I hope you fixing this probelm via bot as soon as possible. Happy editing! --- Bhairava7 • (@píng mє-tαlk mє) 12:35, 15 September 2024 (UTC)

Your points were updated in the last bot run. – DreamRimmer (talk) 12:48, 15 September 2024 (UTC)

Thanks a lot for update my points. Happy editing!--- Bhairava7 • (@píng mє-tαlk mє) 13:49, 15 September 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-38

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

Improvements and Maintenance

• Editors interested in templates can help by reading the latest Wishlist focus area, Template recall and discovery, and share your feedback on the talkpage. This input helps the Community Tech team to decide the right technical approach to build. Everyone is also encouraged to continue adding new wishes.
• The new automated Special:NamespaceInfo page helps editors understand which namespaces exist on each wiki, and some details about how they are configured. Thanks to DannyS712 for these improvements. [22]
• 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. [23]
• 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. [24]
• 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. [25]

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. [26]

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)

Packers All-Time Roster

Thank you again for your help in pulling this together! I have copied everything over, if you need to take back your sandbox. « Gonzo fan2007 (talk) @ 14:32, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

Gonzo fan2007: Glad to help! I went ahead and blanked the sandbox since your work is done. I don't use this sandbox much, so I am fine with keeping any data there. Feel free to restore or edit the page anytime if needed. – DreamRimmer (talk) 14:42, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

September thanks

story · music · places

Thank you for improving article quality in September! - Ach, lieben Christen, seid getrost, BWV 114, is one of the pieces in my topic of this year. -- Gerda Arendt (talk) 18:14, 22 September 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-39

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

Weekly highlight

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

Updates for editors

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

• Editors who use the iOS Wikipedia app in Spanish, Portuguese, French, or Chinese, may see the Alt Text suggested-edit experiment after editing an article, or completing a suggested edit using "Add an image". Alt-text helps people with visual impairments to read Wikipedia articles. The team aims to learn if adding alt-text to images is a task that editors can be successful with. Please share any feedback on the discussion page.
• The Codex color palette has been updated with new and revised colors for the MediaWiki user interfaces. The most noticeable changes for editors include updates for: dark mode colors for Links and for quiet Buttons (progressive and destructive), visited Link colors for both light and dark modes, and background colors for system-messages in both light and dark modes.
• It is now possible to include clickable wikilinks and external links inside code blocks. This includes links that are used within <syntaxhighlight> tags and on code pages (JavaScript, CSS, Scribunto and Sanitized CSS). Uses of template syntax {{…}} are also linked to the template page. Thanks to SD0001 for these improvements. [27]
• Two bugs were fixed in the GlobalVanishRequest system by improving the logging and by removing an incorrect placeholder message. [28][29]
• 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 23:32, 23 September 2024 (UTC)

UDRPC

Hi. DreaRimmer, Nice to meet you and I saw one month backlog of PCR has been completed, so, I thought if you clear this backlog then restart another months backlog. Happy editing! --- Bhairava7 • (@píng mє-tαlk mє) 12:14, 26 September 2024 (UTC)

Someone finally overtook CycloneYoris! Ah, that user definitely deserves a special barnstar, just as CY deserves one too :) Vanderwaalforces (talk) 12:32, 26 September 2024 (UTC)

Vanderwaalforces, I am currently traveling and won't have access to my PC for the next 48 hours. Could you please take care of this month's awards distribution and update the page? I would really appreciate it! – DreamRimmer (talk) 15:05, 26 September 2024 (UTC)

Done, sir! Vanderwaalforces (talk) 15:40, 26 September 2024 (UTC)

Yep! It's need to be granting the barnaster to top five reviewers for it's fantastic job. Happy editing --- Bhairava7 • (@píng mє-tαlk mє) 13:47, 26 September 2024 (UTC)

The Signpost: 26 September 2024

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

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

• Serendipity: A Wikipedian at the 2024 Paralympics

• Opinion: asilvering's RfA debriefing

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

• Gallery: Are Luddaites defending the English Wikipedia?

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

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

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 20:08, 26 September 2024 (UTC)

RFA2024 update: Discussion-only period now open for review

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

Tech News: 2024-40

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

Updates for editors

• Readers of 42 more wikis can now use Dark Mode. If the option is not yet available for logged-out users of your wiki, this is likely because many templates do not yet display well in Dark Mode. Please use the night-mode-checker tool if you are interested in helping to reduce the number of issues. The recommendations page provides guidance on this. Dark Mode is enabled on additional wikis once per month.
• Editors using the 2010 wikitext editor as their default can access features from the 2017 wikitext editor by adding ?veaction=editsource to the URL. If you would like to enable the 2017 wikitext editor as your default, it can be set in your preferences. [30]
• 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. [31]
• 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. [32]

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)

Hi. Glad to see you after a long time.

Hi. It's been a long time and it's nice to meet you again. I'm temporarily back for a while and noticed that Jishnu Raghavan still don't have an article. I have created a draft myself, but only an admin can move it to the mainspace. The subject easily passes GNG, but continuos socking made it into the present state. Do you know any admins who is very active at AFC reviewing so that they can take a look at this. Thilsebatti (talk) 15:50, 30 September 2024 (UTC)

(talk page stalker) Hi Thilsebatti, allow me ping @Asilvering ;) Vanderwaalforces (talk) 16:29, 30 September 2024 (UTC)

I'm happy to be pinged for an unprotect at any time if it gets accepted at AfC. I don't see WP:GNG in these sources yet, though. I didn't spot-check every one, but picked the four I thought were the most likely, and all of them were by "our correspondent", wire stories, etc. -- asilvering (talk) 18:11, 30 September 2024 (UTC)

wrong 112.201.182.104 (talk) 05:10, 1 October 2024 (UTC)

Hi Thilsebatti, It's great to have you back. I am sorry to hear that your draft has been rejected. Why not take some time to explore other topics? You can always come back to this draft later. If there is anything else I can help you with, please let me know. – DreamRimmer (talk) 15:43, 1 October 2024 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – October 2024

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

Administrator changes

• Asilvering
• Significa liberdade

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

CheckUser changes

• Barkeep49
• Izno

• Doug Weller
• Spicy

Guideline and policy news

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

Arbitration

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

Miscellaneous

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

---

• Discuss this newsletter
• Subscribe
• Archive

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 15:59, 2 October 2024 (UTC)

DCWC closing update

The 2024 Developing Countries WikiContest has come to a close! After a thrilling finish to the event with a slew of submissions on the final day, we have our winners. With 608 points, Thebiguglyalien (submissions) comes in third with his series of Kiribati and Botswanan submissions; BeanieFan11 (submissions) flies into second place at the last second with 771 points after a string of good articles about sportspersons; and after leading for much of contest's three months, Generalissima (submissions) finishes with a whopping 798 points to take home the Gold Belt Buckle. Congratulations to our winners!

In addition to his spot in the top three, BeanieFan11 (submissions) also wins the special awards for submitting under the most countries (44 countries) and for writing the most articles about women (15 Did you know? nominations)! Magentic Manifestations (submissions), after making 16 submissions under the Indian flag—15 of them good articles—receives the awards for most submissions for a single country and most featured or good articles promoted. For their submission of one FAC review, five FLC reviews, and 20 GAN reviews, Simongraham (submissions) wins for most article reviews.

The results of the contest have far exceeded any expectations the coordinators had for it at the beginning: among the submissions to the event were 3 FAs, 10 FLs, 88 GAs, dozens of article reviews of every kind, and more Did you know? submissions than we can count! Regardless of your level of participation, every contestant can be proud to have contributed towards a major step in countering the systemic bias on Wikipedia. Every year, millions of readers and editors around the globe use Wikipedia to educate themselves and communicate with others about parts of the world that often receive less attention than they deserve. Thank you for participating with us in the contest and contributing to this effort. The DCWC will return next year and we look forward to seeing you contribute again! However, before that...

We need your feedback! Join the conversation on the talk page to discuss your reflections on the contest (even if you didn't participate!) and help us make it better.

If you have any questions, please leave a message on the contest talk page or ask one of the coordinators: Ixtal (talk · contribs), sawyer777 (talk · contribs), or TechnoSquirrel69 (talk · contribs). (To unsubscribe from these updates, remove yourself from this list.) Sent via MediaWiki message delivery (talk) —TechnoSquirrel69 (sigh) 19:02, 3 October 2024 (UTC)

Notification of administrators without tools

	Greetings, DreamRimmer. You are receiving this notification because you've agreed to consider endorsing prospective admin candidates identified by the process outlined at Administrators without tools. Recently, the following editor(s) received this distinction and the associated endearing title: Vanderwaalforces
Thank you for supporting this effort. Your contributions are an integral part of overall success, and an example for others to follow. To stop receiving these notifications, remove your name from the list.

TolBot (talk) 21:00, 5 October 2024 (UTC)

September 2024 NPP backlog drive – Points award

		The Tireless Contributor Barnstar
		This award is given in recognition to DreamRimmer for accumulating at least 25 points during the September 2024 NPP backlog drive. Your contributions helped play a part in the 19,000+ articles and 35,000+ redirects reviewed (for a total of 26,884.6 points) completed during the drive. Thank you so much for taking part and contributing to help reduce the backlog! Hey man im josh (talk) 15:28, 7 October 2024 (UTC)

Thank you :) – DreamRimmer (talk) 15:29, 7 October 2024 (UTC)

lang-?? templates

The {{lang-??}} templates are being merged, per the TfD. Please use the correct template.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 13:56, 7 October 2024 (UTC)

Trappist the monk, I am doing this as requested here. Could you please let me know which template is the correct one? I will make the necessary adjustments. You can check the edits here. Just pinging Primefac since they requested this. – DreamRimmer (talk) 14:05, 7 October 2024 (UTC)

The TfD closure says: "The result of the discussion was merge to Template:Langx." It did not say delete; I know, ultimately these templates will be deleted after the merge, but for such a large scale process, I'd rather keep to the letter of the law. So, I've been replacing the TfD notices with this:

<noinclude>{{Being merged|spacetype=template|discuss=Wikipedia:Templates_for_discussion/Log/2024_September_27#Replace_and_delete_lang-??_templates|target=Template:Langx|nocat=yes}}</noinclude>

—Trappist the monk (talk) 14:13, 7 October 2024 (UTC)

Thanks. I stopped because you are already handling it. – DreamRimmer (talk) 14:39, 7 October 2024 (UTC)

Will you redo the templates that you touched, please?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 14:45, 7 October 2024 (UTC)

Sure – DreamRimmer (talk) 14:46, 7 October 2024 (UTC)

Thank you.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 14:47, 7 October 2024 (UTC)

Trappist the monk, Done – DreamRimmer (talk) 14:57, 7 October 2024 (UTC)

Thank you.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 14:59, 7 October 2024 (UTC)

Trappist the monk, you've been doing this for long enough - {{being deleted}} is the template that is used regardless of the outcome of the TFD. I'm not necessarily opposed to doing it another way, or even modifying the template to indicate a merge, but please don't make it sound like DR was doing something wrong. Primefac (talk) 17:02, 7 October 2024 (UTC)

Moved to User talk:Trappist the monk § lang-?? templates

Tech News: 2024-41

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

Weekly highlight

• Communities can now request installation of Automoderator on their wiki. Automoderator is an automated anti-vandalism tool that reverts bad edits based on scores from the new "Revert Risk" machine learning model. You can read details about the necessary steps for installation and configuration. [33]

Updates for editors

• Translators in wikis where the mobile experience of Content Translation is available, can now customize their articles suggestion list from 41 filtering options when using the tool. This topic-based article suggestion feature makes it easy for translators to self-discover relevant articles based on their area of interest and translate them. You can try it with your mobile device. [34]
• View all 12 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week.

Updates for technical contributors

• It is now possible for <syntaxhighlight> code blocks to offer readers a "Copy" button if the copy=1 attribute is set on the tag. Thanks to SD0001 for these improvements. [35]
• Customized copyright footer messages on all wikis will be updated. The new versions will use wikitext markup instead of requiring editing raw HTML. [36]
• Later this month, temporary accounts will be rolled out on several pilot wikis. The final list of the wikis will be published in the second half of the month. If you maintain any tools, bots, or gadgets on these 11 wikis, and your software is using data about IP addresses or is available for logged-out users, please check if it needs to be updated to work with temporary accounts. Guidance on how to update the code is available.
• Rate limiting has been enabled for the code review tools Gerrit and GitLab to address ongoing issues caused by malicious traffic and scraping. Clients that open too many concurrent connections will be restricted for a few minutes. This rate limiting is managed through nftables firewall rules. For more details, see Wikitech's pages on Firewall, GitLab limits and Gerrit operations.
• Five new wikis have been created:
  • a Wikipedia in Komering (w:kge:) [37]
  • a Wikipedia in Mooré (m:mos:) [38]
  • a Wiktionary in Madurese (wikt:mad:) [39]
  • a Wikiquote in Gorontalo (q:gor:) [40]
  • a Wikinews in Shan (n:shn:) [41]

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

MediaWiki message delivery 23:38, 7 October 2024 (UTC)

Administrator Elections: Call for Candidates

Administrator Elections | Call for Candidates

The administrator elections process has officially started! Interested editors are encouraged to self-nominate or arrange to be nominated by reviewing the instructions at Wikipedia:Administrator elections/October 2024/Call for candidates.

Here is the schedule:

• October 8–14 - Candidate sign-up (we are here)
• October 22–24 - Discussion phase
• October 25–31 - SecurePoll voting phase

Please note the following:

• The requirements to run are identical to RFA—a prospective candidate must be extended confirmed.
• Prospective candidates are advised to become familar with the community's expectations of adminstrators, which are much higher than the minimum requirement of having extended confirmed status. This includes reviewing successful and unsuccessful RFAs, reading the essay Wikipedia:Advice for RfA candidates, and possibly requesting an optional poll on their chances of passing.
• The process will have a one week call for candidates phase, a one week pause to set up SecurePoll, a three-day period of public discussion, followed by 7 days of no public discussion and a private vote using SecurePoll.
• The outcomes of this process are identical to making requests for adminship. There is no official difference between an administrator appointed through RFA or administrator elections.
• Administrator elections are also a valid means of regaining adminship for de-sysopped editors.

Ask any questions about the process at the talk page. A separate user talk message will be sent to official candidates with additional information about the process.

To avoid sending too many messages, this will be the last mass message sent about administrator elections. If you are interested in the process, please make sure to watchlist the appropriate pages. A watchlist notice will be added when the discussion phase opens, and again when the voting phase opens.

You're receiving this message because you signed up for the mailing list. To opt-out of future mailings, please remove yourself from the list.

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 02:35, 8 October 2024 (UTC)

Signature

Hello! Please add class="skin-invert" to the <b> tag of your signature; it is invisible in Vector dark mode. Thanks, Charlotte (Queen of Hearts • talk) 20:42, 8 October 2024 (UTC)

Done, thanks! – DreamRimmer (talk) 11:32, 9 October 2024 (UTC)

DR bot

Thanks for the new bot, it seems to be working very well. This file seems to need a User: prefix though. Cheers! Wikishovel (talk) 15:24, 13 October 2024 (UTC)

Wikishovel, thanks for the heads-up. It was created in error. I was testing in the bot's user space but forgot to add the prefix. – DreamRimmer (talk) 15:46, 13 October 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-42

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

Updates for editors

• The Structured Discussion extension (also known as Flow) is starting to be removed. This extension is unmaintained and causes issues. It will be replaced by DiscussionTools, which is used on any regular talk page. A first set of wikis are being contacted. These wikis are invited to stop using Flow, and to move all Flow boards to sub-pages, as archives. At these wikis, a script will move all Flow pages that aren't a sub-page to a sub-page automatically, starting on 22 October 2024. On 28 October 2024, all Flow boards at these wikis will be set in read-only mode. [42][43]
• WMF's Search Platform team is working on making it easier for readers to perform text searches in their language. A change last week on over 30 languages makes it easier to find words with accents and other diacritics. This applies to both full-text search and to types of advanced search such as the hastemplate and incategory keywords. More technical details (including a few other minor search upgrades) are available. [44]
• View all 20 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, EditCheck was installed at Russian Wikipedia, and fixes were made for some missing user interface styles.

Updates for technical contributors

• Editors who use the Toolforge tool Earwig's Copyright Violation Detector will now be required to log in with their Wikimedia account before running checks using the "search engine" option. This change is needed to help prevent external bots from misusing the system. Thanks to Chlod for these improvements. [45]
• Phabricator users can create tickets and add comments on existing tickets via Email again. Sending email to Phabricator has been fixed. [46]
• Some HTML elements in the interface are now wrapped with a <bdi> element, to make our HTML output more aligned with Web standards. More changes like this will be coming in future weeks. This change might break some tools that rely on the previous HTML structure of the interface. Note that relying on the HTML structure of the interface is not recommended and might break at any time. [47]

In depth

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

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

MediaWiki message delivery 21:17, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Technical Barnstar
	I only recently noticed how many technical aspects of Wikipedia you're involved in. I encourage you to run for the administrator elections if there's still time when you read this because I think you'd probably pass. Zippybonzo | talk | contribs (they/them) 17:26, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for the encouragement, Zippy. I currently don't have any plans for RfA. – DreamRimmer (talk) 01:00, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

Your guidance required

I hope you're doing great. I wanted to let you know that I completed the NPP assignment on September 15th. Could you kindly inform me about the next steps or the upcoming task? Your guidance on what I should focus on next would be greatly appreciated. Looking forward to your response. -Charlie (talk) 14:39, 17 October 2024 (UTC)

CharlieMehta,sorry for the delay in getting back to you about your training. You are almost done. I will add 5-6 more pages for you to assess, and after you finish those, I will share my final statement. – DreamRimmer (talk) 14:52, 17 October 2024 (UTC)

Barnstar

	The Admin Elections barnstar
	Thank you for all your help creating pages and other help you've provided to WP:AELECT within the last 24 hours. I really appreciate us all working as a team to take care of all the nitty gritty tasks that people don't think about. –Novem Linguae (talk) 21:37, 17 October 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for the barnstar :) – DreamRimmer (talk) 23:59, 17 October 2024 (UTC)

The Signpost: 19 October 2024

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

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

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

• Contest: A WikiCup for the Global South

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

• Book review: The Editors

• Humour: The Newspaper Editors

• Crossword: Spilled Coffee Mug

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 11:13, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

WikiProject Unreferenced articles November 2024 backlog drive

WikiProject Unreferenced articles | November 2024 Backlog Drive
There is a substantial backlog of unsourced articles on Wikipedia, and we need your help! The purpose of this drive is to add sources to these unsourced articles and make a meaningful impact. Barnstars will be awarded based on the number of articles cited. Remember to tag your edit summary with #NOV24, both to advertise the event and tally the points later using Hashtag Summary Search. Interested in taking part? Sign up here.
You're receiving this message because you have subscribed to the mailing list. To opt-out of future mailings, please remove yourself here.

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 01:06, 20 October 2024 (UTC)

October thanks

story · music · places

Thank you for improving articles on October! - My story today is a cantata 300 years old, based on a hymn 200 years old when the cantata was composed, based on a psalm some thousand years old, - so said the 2015 DYK hook. I had forgotten the discussion on the talk. -- Gerda Arendt (talk) 16:38, 20 October 2024 (UTC)

Question

First time seeing this "This user has more than 100,000 edits. Please confirm that you are sure that you want to rename this user and that a system administrator is available to monitor this rename. " Do I need to make an appointment with a "system administrator" ? or just do it Wikipedia:Changing_username/Simple#Wolverine XI → Wolverine X-eye. - FlightTime (open channel) 16:45, 20 October 2024 (UTC)

@FlightTime, I am also seeing this type of request for the first time. It might be a good idea to ask on the mailing list since the high number of edits could cause the rename to get stuck. It's probably best to handle this with care. Just so you know, I tried to reach out to the sysadmins, but they are unavailable at the moment. – DreamRimmer (talk) 17:03, 20 October 2024 (UTC)

Thanx. I need to do some stuff for awhile, so I'll leave it for someone else, but I'm very interested how to work these types of request. BBL. - FlightTime (open channel) 17:06, 20 October 2024 (UTC)

There is nothing different about this request, but due to the high number of edits, the rename could get stuck, so if there are system administrators available, they can run a maintenance script to fix it. Since you are busy, I'll take care of it. – DreamRimmer (talk) 17:19, 20 October 2024 (UTC)

Done. – DreamRimmer (talk) 17:22, 20 October 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-43

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

Weekly highlight

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

iOS Wikipedia App's profile menu and contents

Updates for editors

• Wikipedia readers can now download a browser extension to experiment with some early ideas on potential features that recommend articles for further reading, automatically summarize articles, and improve search functionality. For more details and to stay updated, check out the Web team's Content Discovery Experiments page and subscribe to their newsletter.
• Later this month, logged-out editors of these 12 wikis will start to have temporary accounts created. The list may slightly change - some wikis may be removed but none will be added. Temporary account is a new type of user account. It enhances the logged-out editors' privacy and makes it easier for community members to communicate with them. If you maintain any tools, bots, or gadgets on these 12 wikis, and your software is using data about IP addresses or is available for logged-out users, please check if it needs to be updated to work with temporary accounts. Guidance on how to update the code is available. Read more about the deployment plan across all wikis.
• View all 33 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, the South Ndebele, Pannonian Rusyn, Obolo, Iban and Tai Nüa Wikipedia languages were created last week. [48][49][50][51][52]
• It is now possible to create functions on Wikifunctions using Wikidata lexemes, through the new Wikidata lexeme type launched last week. When you go to one of these functions, the user interface provides a lexeme selector that helps you pick a lexeme from Wikidata that matches the word you type. After hitting run, your selected lexeme is retrieved from Wikidata, transformed into a Wikidata lexeme type, and passed into the selected function. Read more about this in the latest Wikifunctions newsletter.

Updates for technical contributors

• Users of the Wikimedia sites can now format dates more easily in different languages with the new {{#timef:…}} parser function. For example, {{#timef:now|date|en}} will show as "14 November 2024". Previously, {{#time:…}} could be used to format dates, but this required knowledge of the order of the time and date components and their intervening punctuation. #timef (or #timefl for local time) provides access to the standard date formats that MediaWiki uses in its user interface. This may help to simplify some templates on multi-lingual wikis like Commons and Meta. [53][54]
• Commons and Meta users can now efficiently retrieve the user's language using {{USERLANGUAGE}} instead of using {{int:lang}}. [55]
• The Product and Tech Advisory Council (PTAC) now has its pilot members with representation across Africa, Asia, Europe, North America and South America. They will work to address the Movement Strategy's Technology Council initiative of having a co-defined and more resilient technological platform. [56]

In depth

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

Meetings and events

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

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

MediaWiki message delivery 20:49, 21 October 2024 (UTC)

Administrator Elections: Discussion phase

Administrator Elections | Discussion phase

The discussion phase of the October 2024 administrator elections is officially open. As a reminder, the schedule of the election is:

• October 22–24 - Discussion phase
• October 25–31 - SecurePoll voting phase
• November 1–? - Scrutineering phase

During October 22–24, we will be in the discussion phase. The candidate subpages will open to questions and comments from everyone, in the same style as a request for adminship. You may discuss the candidates at Wikipedia:Administrator elections/October 2024/Discussion phase.

On October 25, we will start the voting phase. The candidate subpages will close again to public questions and discussion, and everyone will have a week to use the SecurePoll software to vote, which uses a secret ballot. You can see who voted, but not who they voted for. Please note that the vote tallies cannot be made public until after voting has ended and as such, it will not be possible for you to see an individual candidate's tally during the election. The suffrage requirements are different from those at RFA.

Once voting concludes, we will begin the scrutineering phase, which will last for an indeterminate amount of time, perhaps a week or two. Once everything is certified, the results will be posted on the main election page. In order to be granted adminship, a candidate must have received at least 70.0% support, calculated as Support / (Support + Oppose). As this is a vote and not a consensus, there are no bureaucrat discussions ("crat chats").

Any questions or issues can be asked on the election talk page. Thank you for your participation. Happy electing.

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MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:23, 22 October 2024 (UTC)