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April 2020

Information icon Hello, I'm Gleeanon409. I wanted to let you know that one or more of your recent contributions have been undone because they did not appear constructive. If you would like to experiment, please use the sandbox. If you have any questions, you can ask for assistance at the Teahouse. Thanks. Gleeanon409 (talk) 01:55, 3 April 2020 (UTC)

They may not appear "constructive" to you, but are nevertheless useful for other readers. Normchou (talk) 02:44, 4 April 2020 (UTC)

Di Dongsheng ‎

I think you made a mistake on Di Dongsheng, Biden is not president until he is sworn in mid January 2020, so its wrong to say he is president. And the website is moreso People's republic of china run than chinese nationalism run. --2001:8003:59DB:4100:5805:5A75:B1F:7FF7 (talk) 01:09, 14 December 2020 (UTC)

It was already stated that Biden would be the incoming president. Also, the website has various attributes including its association with Chinese nationalism. Normchou (talk) 04:22, 14 December 2020 (UTC)

December 2020

It appears that you have been canvassing—leaving messages on a biased choice of users' talk pages to notify them of an ongoing community decision, debate, or vote—in order to influence User talk:Amigao. While friendly notices are allowed, they should be limited and nonpartisan in distribution and should reflect a neutral point of view. Please do not post notices which are indiscriminately cross-posted, which espouse a certain point of view or side of a debate, or which are selectively sent only to those who are believed to hold the same opinion as you. Remember to respect Wikipedia's principle of consensus-building by allowing decisions to reflect the prevailing opinion among the community at large. Thank you. In reference to this CaradhrasAiguo (leave language) 20:13, 16 December 2020 (UTC)

@CaradhrasAiguo: Per Wikipedia:Canvassing, in general it is perfectly acceptable to notify other editors of ongoing discussions, provided that it be done with the intent to improve the quality of the discussion by broadening participation to more fully achieve consensus. Inappropriate notification includes mass posting, campaigning, votestacking or stealth canvassing, none of which applies in this case. Please understand community policies fully before posting on others' talk pages. Normchou (talk) 20:23, 16 December 2020 (UTC)
1) You had stated I really appreciate your valuable contributions, which can reasonably be construed as an endorsement (any non-neutral discussion notification is by definition a violation of the canvassing policy); 2) You had not notified other participants in the prior WP:RS/N discussion nor posted at any of the relevant WikiProjects (WP:WPMEDIA, WP:CHINA, WP:HONGKONG, WP:TAIWAN, etc) CaradhrasAiguo (leave language) 20:30, 16 December 2020 (UTC)
@CaradhrasAiguo: Per Wikipedia:Neutral_point_of_view, there is no indication that showing personal appreciation for community contributions on a user's talk page shall be construed as a violation of neutrality when editing encyclopedic content or an endorsement in relation to the separate notification of a specific discussion, unless one has a very biased reading of "neutrality" in the first place. Re "you haven't notified other participants," the discussion was created merely a while ago; a "no canvassing" warning made in good faith per Wikipedia:Assume_good_faith would reasonably be warranted only after a certain period of time has passed to see if no additional participants are notified. Unfortunately, your posting above shows neither a good understanding of neutrality nor good faith. Normchou (talk) 20:51, 16 December 2020 (UTC)
This is just an incomprehensible word salad of policies. particularly ridiculous in that WP:NPOV is an article content policy only: it pertains to article content (or lack thereof in the case of undue omission), not personal assessments of other editors.
Drop the the discussion was created merely a while ago lard: WP:RS/N is heavily trafficked, you would have been better off not notifying any individual editors at all. CaradhrasAiguo (leave language) 21:30, 16 December 2020 (UTC)
@CaradhrasAiguo: Indeed, WP:CIR when you casually type up a word such as "neutral" without even thinking about its meaning, whereas the precise definition of that word with regard to community policy is only provided at WP:NPOV. But good luck with your endeavor of making up your own rules while acting as the police. Normchou (talk) 21:48, 16 December 2020 (UTC)
You were the one who first cited NPOV policy here, you were the one to raise insinuations against Xinhua (despite there having been a very recently concluded RfC), and you were the one who chose to notify anybody rather than trust that WP:RS/N is well-tended to. CaradhrasAiguo (leave language) 21:54, 16 December 2020 (UTC)
@CaradhrasAiguo: This is so funny. Anyone could use Ctrl+F on this page and type in "neutral" or "neutral point of view" to see who was the one that cited WP:NPOV first. Normchou (talk) 22:04, 16 December 2020 (UTC)

You currently appear to be engaged in an edit war according to the reverts you have made on Chang'e 5; that means that you are repeatedly changing content back to how you think it should be, when you have seen that other editors disagree. Users are expected to collaborate with others, to avoid editing disruptively, and to try to reach a consensus, rather than repeatedly undoing other users' edits once it is known that there is a disagreement.

Points to note:

  1. Edit warring is disruptive regardless of how many reverts you have made;
  2. Do not edit war even if you believe you are right.

If you find yourself in an editing dispute, use the article's talk page to discuss controversial changes and work towards a version that represents consensus among editors. You can post a request for help at an appropriate noticeboard or seek dispute resolution. In some cases, it may be appropriate to request temporary page protection. If you engage in an edit war, you may be blocked from editing. In particular, these two edit summaries (1 2) that include a false accusation of vandalism are unacceptable CaradhrasAiguo (leave language) 22:00, 16 December 2020 (UTC)

@CaradhrasAiguo: Okay you lost me. Smh. Normchou (talk) 22:04, 16 December 2020 (UTC)

Copyright problem icon Your edits to Sinovac Biotech and CoronaVac have been removed, as it appears you added copyrighted material to Wikipedia without evidence of permission from the copyright holder. If you are the copyright holder, please read Wikipedia:Donating copyrighted materials for more information on uploading your material to Wikipedia. For legal reasons, Wikipedia cannot accept copyrighted material, including text or images from print publications or from other websites, without an appropriate and verifiable license. All such contributions will be deleted. You may use external websites or publications as a source of information, but not as a source of content, such as sentences or images—you must write using your own words. Wikipedia takes copyright very seriously, and persistent violators of our copyright policy will be blocked from editing. See Wikipedia:Copying text from other sources for more information. — Diannaa (talk) 14:53, 17 December 2020 (UTC)

@Diannaa: Thanks for the heads up. Will pay attention to this issue when making edits in the future. Normchou (talk) 15:57, 17 December 2020 (UTC)

Nyingchi "Tourism"

Hi and thanks! While reviewing the synth, there's the "Tourism" section also. Here's the first edit there, which was reedited contrary to RS and author here. Then, it was deleted here by same editor but the edit is fully relevant to the topic in the first paragraph, on 2012 investments in "prosperous model villages". The RS calls them "fake Tibetan 'model villages' ", and is a valid style of review often used in architectural projects in the west, among the RS's other attributes. Thoughts? (I'll copy some info from here to the talk there.) Pasdecomplot (talk) 13:16, 19 December 2020 (UTC)

Hi Pasdecomplot: If you look at the latest revision, I did a little write-up on the fake "model villages" in Nyingchi. Warren Smith seems to be reviewing Tsering Woeser's writings for Radio Free Asia regarding this part. I have found the source (a pdf file) and included it in my write-up. Please review it and see if there is something valuable. Normchou 💬 13:34, 19 December 2020 (UTC)

Thanks. The synth uses a different source, so now we have two sources on the edits. I blended the text. Pasdecomplot (talk) 14:04, 19 December 2020 (UTC)

Notice of edit warring noticeboard discussion

Information icon Hello. This message is being sent to inform you that there is currently a discussion involving you at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Edit warring regarding a possible violation of Wikipedia's policy on edit warring. The thread is Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Edit warring#User:Normchou reported by User:CaradhrasAiguo (Result: ). Thank you. CaradhrasAiguo (leave language) 22:02, 16 December 2020 (UTC)

Please see User_talk:Normchou#December_2020, [1] for my conversation with @CaradhrasAiguo: who created this report. I believe this act of that user was done in bad faith. Normchou (talk) 22:12, 16 December 2020 (UTC)
Hello User:Normchou. It appears that you have broken WP:3RR on this article. As an admin, I would like to avoid a block but you seem like someone who is very sure you are correct and is not easy to persuade. So I am wondering if it is worth the effort. If you would respond to the complaint and offer to wait for consensus before reverting again, you might be able to avoid a block. Thank you, EdJohnston (talk) 22:18, 16 December 2020 (UTC)
@EdJohnston: Thanks for the heads up. I have added my response to that complaint. Normchou (talk) 22:27, 16 December 2020 (UTC)
It's unclear if there is really an edit war[2] The admin above has made the right call regarding what I believe is a frivolous report made in bad faith and suspected of Wikipedia:Wikilawyering and Wikipedia:WikiBullying. Normchou (talk) 02:19, 19 December 2020 (UTC)
Update: The user who filed this frivolous report against me, CaradhrasAiguo, turned out to be a sockpuppet of "Lieutenant of Melkor" [3], who was blocked five years ago for "continued trolling, bullying, insulting, and edit warring" [4]. Normchou (talk) 23:29, 21 December 2020 (UTC)

2022 Winter Olympics Controversy

The edits made were in consensus with all previous and future Olympic articles, controversy belongs to the controversy subsection. You gave no explanation why the 2022 games are an exception to this. Do not make anymore reverts. Thank you. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Stonksboi (talk • contribs) 06:23, 22 December 2020 (UTC)

@Stonksboi: See Talk:2022 Winter Olympics#Iffy edits. It's not just about re-arranging the content. The onus is on you to demonstrate the stuff you add is supported by reliable sources WP:PROVEIT, or else you are just making it up. Normchou 💬 15:10, 22 December 2020 (UTC)

Subsection

Information icon There is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. Thank you. LemonadeDrinker (talk) 19:12, 22 December 2020 (UTC)

@LemonadeDrinker: Duly noted. Thanks for the heads up. Normchou 💬 19:41, 22 December 2020 (UTC)
Just commented on your speculative piece. It appears you created the LemonadeDrinker account today [5] for the sole purpose of making these speculations against me. Normchou 💬 20:52, 22 December 2020 (UTC)
Note: The report was closed with no action taken. [6] Per the closing admin, There is nothing actionable here, only vague speculation. An ANI report with no tangible evidence of actual misconduct is unlikely to result in any useful outcome.

Normchou 💬 21:22, 24 December 2020 (UTC)

Dec 2020

Warning icon Please stop your disruptive editing. If you continue to add unsourced or poorly sourced content, as you did at Australia–China relations, you may be blocked from editing.

All my edits are according to the existing source. If you disagree with any contents, open a specific section in the talk page. Do no leave disruptive message on other's personal page either.TranscendentMe (talk) 20:26, 23 December 2020 (UTC)

Note: The above user was blocked [7] for persistent disruptive behavior.

Normchou 💬 18:56, 2 January 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-02

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

Recent changes

  • You can choose to be reminded when you have not added an edit summary. This can be done in your preferences. This could conflict with the CAPTCHA. This has now been fixed. [8]
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  • Admins can use the abuse filter tool to automatically prevent bad edits. Three changes happened last week:
    • The filter editing interface now shows syntax errors while you type. This is similar to JavaScript pages. It also shows a warning for regular expressions that match the empty string. New warnings will be added later. [10]
    • Oversighters can now hide multiple filter log entries at once using checkboxes on Special:AbuseLog. This is how the usual revision deletion works. [11]
    • When a filter matches too many actions after it has been changed it is "throttled". The most powerful actions are disabled. This is to avoid many editors getting blocked when an administrator made a mistake. The administrator will now get a notification about this "throttle".
  • Advanced item There is a new tool to build new skins. You can also see existing skins. You can give feedback. [12]
  • Advanced item Bots using the API no longer watch pages automatically based on account preferences. Setting the watchlist to watch will still work. This is to reduce the size of the watchlist data in the database. [13]
  • Advanced item Scribunto's file metadata now includes length. [14]
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  • Recurrent item There was a new version of MediaWiki last week. You can read a detailed log of all 763 changes. Most of them are very small and will not affect you.

Changes later this week

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

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15:41, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

Declined speedy deletion nomination of 2011 Nanchang mass suicide protest

Hello Normchou. Speedy deletion work is important and I do appreciate the effort. I would just ask that you please review the criteria carefully because accuracy is also important. On that issue, I have declined your speedy deletion nomination of 2011 Nanchang mass suicide protest as pure vandalism or a blatant hoax under CSD G3. That criterion did not apply because the event is not a blatant hoax. Techie3 (talk) 08:28, 14 January 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for letting me know it, although I do think you've made a mistake by saying it is not a blatant hoax. The title of the article clearly says this event was based on "mass suicide", but there is no evidence this was the case if you trace the reliable sources (if any). I will propose via another channel the deletion of this article. Normchou 💬 08:35, 14 January 2021 (UTC)

The key word for declining is blatant. I do not think that the event is an blatant/obvious hoax, but I have no opinion about if this event is a hoax. Send it to WP:AFD for further discussion. Techie3 (talk) 08:59, 14 January 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-03

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

Changes later this week

  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 19 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 20 January. It will be on all wikis from 21 January (calendar).

Future changes

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16:09, 18 January 2021 (UTC)

Important message

This is a standard message to notify contributors about an administrative ruling in effect. It does not imply that there are any issues with your contributions to date.

You have shown interest in coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). Due to past disruption in this topic area, the community has enacted a more stringent set of rules. Any administrator may impose sanctions—such as editing restrictions, bans, or blocks—on editors who do not strictly follow Wikipedia's policies, or the page-specific restrictions, when making edits related to the topic.

For additional information, please see the guidance on these sanctions. If you have any questions, or any doubts regarding what edits are appropriate, you are welcome to discuss them with me or any other editor.

—PaleoNeonate – 08:38, 21 January 2021 (UTC)

Note: It is not clear why User:PaleoNeonate posted this alert here right after they made a reply to my comment on Talk:Investigations_into_the_origin_of_COVID-19, where I already had extensive participation. Based on my editing history, it should be self-evident that I am aware of WP:GS/COVID19. It should be noted that per Template:Gs/alert usage, Alerts are a neutral courtesy; never use them to intimidate, coerce, or shame another editor.

Normchou 💬 17:02, 21 January 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-04

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

Problems

Changes later this week

  • Bracket matching will be added to the CodeMirror syntax highlighter on the first wikis. The first wikis are German and Catalan Wikipedia and maybe other Wikimedia wikis. This will happen on 27 January. [19]
  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 26 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 27 January. It will be on all wikis from 28 January (calendar).

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18:29, 25 January 2021 (UTC)

Notice of topic ban

Hello Normchou, I've taken an administrative action on the basis of this ANI discussion. You may not edit or discuss articles, talk pages, or other content relating to Covid-19, broadly construed, for 90 days, lasting until April 26, 2021. This should be considered a community-imposed topic ban, so any appeals should be made at WP:AN not to me directly. If you have clarification questions, feel free to ask on my talk page.

Additionally, I'll note that while the topic ban does not include SPI, Sir Sputnik's warning there should be taken seriously; further misuse of SPI will likely result in a block. signed, Rosguill talk 06:29, 26 January 2021 (UTC)

Some food for thought: I have no dispute regarding the TBAN because it is indeed supported by my "uncivil" behavior. As far as the SPI is concerned, it is disappointing to see a number of admins arriving at their conclusions (e.g. the accusation of misuse of SPI) not based on the actual arguments and the weight of evidence submitted (which is now deleted), but merely because of the behavior of the user who submitted these. This is especially regretful since the ANI thread itself contributed to a piece of evidence that might be useful to the investigation. In other words, a different decision could have been made if there was another "uninvolved" user who initiated the same request.

Normchou 💬 19:39, 26 January 2021 (UTC)

The Signpost: 31 January 2021

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 20:11, 31 January 2021 (UTC)

I think there should be vote on the Talkpage before any drastic move on the contain China article

What do you think? 27.104.203.24 (talk) 15:55, 1 February 2021 (UTC)

Hi 27.104.203.24: I think the talk page is sufficient, but if you really want a "vote", you might consider initiating a WP:RFC. Normchou 💬 15:59, 1 February 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-05

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

Problems

Changes later this week

  • You can soon use Wikidata to link to pages on the multilingual Wikisource. [21]
  • Often editors use a "non-breaking space" to make a gap between two items when reading but still show them together. This can be used to avoid a line break. You will now be able to add new ones via the special character tool in the 2010, 2017, and visual editors. The character will be shown in the visual editor as a space with a grey background. [22][23]
  • Advanced item Wikis use abuse filters to stop bad edits being made. Filter maintainers can now use syntax like 1.2.3.4 - 1.2.3.55 as well as the 1.2.3.4/27 syntax for IP ranges. [24]
  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 2 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 3 February. It will be on all wikis from 4 February (calendar).

Future changes

  • Minerva is the skin Wikimedia wikis use for mobile traffic. When a page is protected and you can't edit it you can normally read the source wikicode. This doesn't work on Minerva on mobile devices. This is being fixed. Some text might overlap. This is because your community needs to update MediaWiki:Protectedpagetext to work on mobile. You can read more. [25][26]
  • Advanced item Cloud VPS and Toolforge will change the IP address they use to contact the wikis. The new IP address will be 185.15.56.1. This will happen on February 8. You can read more.

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22:38, 1 February 2021 (UTC)

Hi. Thank you for your recent edits. An automated process has detected that when you recently edited China containment policy, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Caucasian. Such links are usually incorrect, since a disambiguation page is merely a list of unrelated topics with similar titles. (Read the FAQ • Join us at the DPL WikiProject.)

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Tech News: 2021-06

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

Recent changes

Changes later this week

  • You can see edits to chosen pages on Special:Watchlist. You can add pages to your watchlist on every wiki you like. The GlobalWatchlist extension will come to Meta on 11 February. There you can see entries on watched pages on different wikis on the same page. The new watchlist will be found on Special:GlobalWatchlist on Meta. You can choose which wikis to watch and other preferences on Special:GlobalWatchlistSettings on Meta. You can watch up to five wikis. [28]
  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 9 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 10 February. It will be on all wikis from 11 February (calendar).

Future changes

  • When admins protect pages the form will use the OOUI look. Special:Import will also get the new look. This will make them easier to use on mobile phones. [29][30]
  • Some services will not work for a short period of time from 07:00 UTC on 17 February. There might be problems with new short links, new translations, new notifications, adding new items to your reading lists or recording email bounces. This is because of database maintenance. [31]
  • Advanced item Last week Tech News reported that the IP address Cloud VPS and Toolforge use to contact the wikis will change on 8 February. This is delayed. It will happen later instead. [32]

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17:41, 8 February 2021 (UTC)

An automated process has detected that when you recently edited American decline, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Nikkei.

(Opt-out instructions.) --DPL bot (talk) 06:17, 11 February 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-07

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

Problems

  • There were problems with recent versions of MediaWiki. Because the updates caused problems the developers rolled back to an earlier version. Some updates and new functions will come later than planned. [33][34]
  • Some services will not work for a short period of time from 07:00 UTC on 17 February. There might be problems with new short links, new translations, new notifications, adding new items to your reading lists or recording email bounces. This is because of database maintenance. [35]

Changes later this week

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

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17:54, 15 February 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-08

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

Recent changes

  • The visual editor will now use MediaSearch to find images. You can search for images on Commons in the visual editor when you are looking for illustrations. This is to help editors find better images. [36]
  • Advanced item The syntax highlighter now works with more languages: Futhark, Graphviz/DOT, CDDL and AMDGPU. [37]

Problems

  • Editing a timeline might have removed all text from it. This was because of a bug and has been fixed. You might need to edit the timeline again for it to show properly. [38]

Changes later this week

  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 23 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 24 February. It will be on all wikis from 25 February (calendar).

Future changes

  • Advanced item There is a user group for developers and users interested in working on Wikimedia wikis with the Rust programming language. You can join or tell others who want to make your wiki better in the future.

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00:16, 23 February 2021 (UTC)

The Signpost: 28 February 2021

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 21:29, 28 February 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-09

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

Recent changes

  • Wikis using the Growth team tools can now show the name of a newcomer's mentor anywhere through a magic word. This can be used for welcome messages or userboxes.
  • A new version of the VideoCutTool is now available. It enables cropping, trimming, audio disabling, and rotating video content. It is being created as part of the developer outreach programs.

Problems

  • There was a problem with the job queue. This meant some functions did not save changes and mass messages were delayed. This did not affect wiki edits. [39]
  • Some editors may not be logged in to their accounts automatically in the latest versions of Firefox and Safari. [40]

Changes later this week

  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 2 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 3 March. It will be on all wikis from 4 March (calendar).

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19:06, 1 March 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-10

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

Recent changes

  • Section translation now works on Bengali Wikipedia. It helps mobile editors translate sections of articles. It will come to more wikis later. The first focus is active wikis with a smaller number of articles. You can test it and leave feedback.
  • Flagged revisions now give admins the review right. [41]
  • When someone links to a Wikipedia article on Twitter this will now show a preview of the article. [42]

Problems

  • Many graphs have JavaScript errors. Graph editors can check their graphs in their browser's developer console after editing. [43]

Changes later this week

  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 9 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 10 March. It will be on all wikis from 11 March (calendar).
  • The New Discussion tool will soon be a new discussion tools beta feature for on most Wikipedias. The goal is to make it easier to start new discussions. [44]

Future changes

  • There will be a number of changes to make it easier to work with templates. Some will come to the first wikis in March. Other changes will come to the first wikis in June. This is both for those who use templates and those who create or maintain them. You can read more.
  • Reference Previews will become a default feature on some wikis on 17 March. They will share a setting with Page Previews. If you prefer the Reference Tooltips or Navigation-Popups gadget you can keep using them. If so Reference Previews won't be shown. [45][46]
  • New JavaScript-based functions will not work in Internet Explorer 11. This is because Internet Explorer is an old browser that doesn't work with how JavaScript is written today. Everything that works in Internet Explorer 11 today will continue working in Internet Explorer for now. You can read more.

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17:50, 8 March 2021 (UTC)

An automated process has detected that when you recently edited Wang Linqing, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Weibo.

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Tech News: 2021-11

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

Recent changes

Problems

Changes later this week

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

Future changes

  • You can add a newline or carriage return character to a custom signature if you use a template. There is a proposal to not allow them in the future. This is because they can cause formatting problems. [48][49]
  • You will be able to read but not edit 12 wikis for a short period of time on 23 March at 06:00 (UTC). This could take 30 minutes but will probably be much faster.
  • Advanced item You can use Quarry for SQL queries to the Wiki Replicas. Cross-database JOINS will no longer work from 23 March. There will be a new field to specify the database to connect to. If you think this affects you and you need help you can post on Phabricator or on Wikitech. PAWS and other ways to do SQL queries to the Wiki Replicas will be affected later. [50]

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23:21, 15 March 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-12

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

Recent changes

Problems

  • You will be able to read but not edit twelve wikis for a short period of time on 23 March at 06:00 (UTC). This can also affect password changes, logging in to new wikis, global renames and changing or confirming emails. This could take 30 minutes but will probably be much faster.

Changes later this week

  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 23 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 24 March. It will be on all wikis from 25 March (calendar).
  • Syntax highlighting colours will change to be easier to read. This will soon come to the first wikis. [51]

Future changes

  • Flagged revisions will no longer have multiple tags like "tone" or "depth". It will also only have one tier. This was changed because very few wikis used these features and they make the tool difficult to maintain. [52][53]
  • Advanced item Gadgets and user scripts can access variables about the current page in JavaScript. In 2015 this was moved from wg* to mw.config. wg* will soon no longer work. [54]

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16:51, 22 March 2021 (UTC)

WP:MEDRS

You may be interested in ongoing discussion about WP:MEDRS abuse here: Wikipedia_talk:Identifying_reliable_sources_(medicine)#Primary_sources_usage.--AXONOV (talk) ⚑ 18:34, 25 March 2021 (UTC)

Hi Alexander_Davronov: Thanks for the heads up, but I cannot comment on this issue due to an active TBAN that is related to this topic. I have posted a similar argument on RSN before, which you might have seen already, and I believe there might be something useful in it to address some editors' seemingly logic but incorrect rationale. Normchou 💬 18:52, 25 March 2021 (UTC)
@Normchou: You are not barred from expressing your opinion on policy (Assuming that you don't mention COVID-19 alongside). Anyway, I suggest you to put it on your watchlist. Cheers. --AXONOV (talk) ⚑ 20:03, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

The Signpost: 28 March 2021

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 20:45, 28 March 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-13

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

Recent changes

  • Some very old web browsers don’t work well with the Wikimedia wikis. Some old code for browsers that used to be supported is being removed. This could cause issues in those browsers. [55]
  • Advanced item IRC recent changes feeds have been moved to a new server. Make sure all tools automatically reconnect to irc.wikimedia.org and not to the name of any specific server. Users should also consider switching to the more modern EventStreams. [56]

Problems

  • When you move a page that many editors have on their watchlist the history can be split. It might also not be possible to move it again for a while. This is because of a job queue problem. [57]
  • Some translatable pages on Meta could not be edited. This was because of a bug in the translation tool. The new MediaWiki version was delayed because of problems like this. [58][59]

Changes later this week

  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 30 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 31 March. It will be on all wikis from 1 April (calendar).

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17:29, 29 March 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-14

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

Recent changes

  • Editors can collapse part of an article so you have to click on it to see it. When you click a link to a section inside collapsed content it will now expand to show the section. The browser will scroll down to the section. Previously such links didn't work unless you manually expanded the content first. [60]

Changes later this week

  • Advanced item The citoid API will use for example 2010-12-XX instead of 2010-12 for dates with a month but no days. This is because 2010-12 could be confused with 2010-2012 instead of December 2010. This is called level 1 instead of level 0 in the Extended Date/Time Format. [61]
  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 6 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 7 April. It will be on all wikis from 8 April (calendar).

Future changes

  • Advanced item PAWS can now connect to the new Wiki Replicas. Cross-database JOINS will no longer work from 28 April. There is a new way to connect to the databases. Until 28 April both ways to connect to the databases will work. If you think this affects you and you need help you can post on Phabricator or on Wikitech.

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19:38, 5 April 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-16

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

Recent changes

  • Email to the Wikimedia wikis are handled by groups of Wikimedia editors. These volunteer response teams now use Znuny instead of OTRS. The functions and interface remain the same. The volunteer administrators will give more details about the next steps soon. [62][63]
  • If you use syntax highlighting, you can see line numbers in the 2010 and 2017 wikitext editors when editing templates. This is to make it easier to see line breaks or talk about specific lines. Line numbers will soon come to all namespaces. [64][65][66]
  • Advanced item Because of a technical change there could be problems with gadgets and scripts that have an edit summary area that looks similar to this one. If they look strange they should use mw.loader.using('mediawiki.action.edit.styles') to go back to how they looked before. [67]
  • The latest version of MediaWiki came to the Wikimedia wikis last week. There was no Tech News issue last week.

Changes later this week

  • There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

Future changes

  • The user group oversight will be renamed suppress. This is for technical reasons. This is the technical name. It doesn't affect what you call the editors with this user right on your wiki. This is planned to happen in two weeks. You can comment in Phabricator if you have objections.

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16:47, 19 April 2021 (UTC)

Courtesy notice - sanctions for biographical articles and articles related to modern American politics

This is a standard message to notify contributors about an administrative ruling in effect. It does not imply that there are any issues with your contributions to date.

You have shown interest in articles about living or recently deceased people, and edits relating to the subject (living or recently deceased) of such biographical articles. Due to past disruption in this topic area, a more stringent set of rules called discretionary sanctions is in effect. Any administrator may impose sanctions on editors who do not strictly follow Wikipedia's policies, or the page-specific restrictions, when making edits related to the topic.

For additional information, please see the guidance on discretionary sanctions and the Arbitration Committee's decision here. If you have any questions, or any doubts regarding what edits are appropriate, you are welcome to discuss them with me or any other editor.

This is a standard message to notify contributors about an administrative ruling in effect. It does not imply that there are any issues with your contributions to date.

You have shown interest in post-1992 politics of the United States and closely related people. Due to past disruption in this topic area, a more stringent set of rules called discretionary sanctions is in effect. Any administrator may impose sanctions on editors who do not strictly follow Wikipedia's policies, or the page-specific restrictions, when making edits related to the topic.

For additional information, please see the guidance on discretionary sanctions and the Arbitration Committee's decision here. If you have any questions, or any doubts regarding what edits are appropriate, you are welcome to discuss them with me or any other editor.

--Hipal (talk) 16:33, 24 April 2021 (UTC)

The Signpost: 25 April 2021

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 22:33, 25 April 2021 (UTC)

The Signpost: 25 April 2021

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 04:30, 26 April 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-17

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

Recent changes

  • Templates have parameters that can have specific values. It is possible to suggest values for editors with TemplateData. You can soon see them as a drop-down list in the visual editor. This is to help template users find the right values faster. [68][69][70]

Changes later this week

  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 27 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 28 April. It will be on all wikis from 29 April (calendar).

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21:23, 26 April 2021 (UTC)

rollback

Hi Normchou. After reviewing your request for "rollbacker", I have enabled rollback on your account. Keep in mind these things when going to use rollback:

  • Getting rollback is no more momentous than installing Twinkle.
  • Rollback should be used to revert clear cases of vandalism only, and not good faith edits.
  • Rollback should never be used to edit war.
  • If abused, rollback rights can be revoked.
  • Use common sense.

If you no longer want rollback, contact me and I'll remove it. Also, for some more information on how to use rollback, see Wikipedia:Administrators' guide/Rollback (even though you're not an admin). I'm sure you'll do great with rollback, but feel free to leave me a message on my talk page if you run into troubles or have any questions about appropriate/inappropriate use of rollback. Thank you for helping to reduce vandalism. Happy editing! Beeblebrox (talk) 17:14, 1 May 2021 (UTC)

Thanks! Normchou 💬 17:47, 1 May 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-18

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

Recent changes

Problems

  • The content translation tool did not work for many articles for a little while. This was because of a bug. [71]
  • Some things will not work for about a minute on 5 May. This will happen around 06:00 UTC. This will affect the content translation tool and notifications among other things. This is because of an upgrade to avoid crashes. [72]

Changes later this week

  • Reference Previews will become a default feature on a number of wikis on 5 May. This is later than planned because of some changes. You can use it without using Page Previews if you want to. The earlier plan was to have the preference to use both or none. [73][74]
  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 4 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 5 May. It will be on all wikis from 6 May (calendar).

Future changes

  • Advanced item The CSS classes .error, .warning and .success do not work for mobile readers if they have not been specifically defined on your wiki. From June they will not work for desktop readers. This can affect gadgets and templates. The classes can be defined in MediaWiki:Common.css or template styles instead. [75]

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15:42, 3 May 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-19

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

Changes later this week

  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 11 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 12 May. It will be on all wikis from 13 May (calendar).

Future changes

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15:08, 10 May 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-20

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

Recent changes

Changes later this week

  • Advanced item MediaWiki:Pageimages-blacklist will be renamed MediaWiki:Pageimages-denylist. The list can be copied to the new name. It will happen on 19 May for some wikis and 20 May for some wikis. Most wikis don't use it. It lists images that should never be used as thumbnails for articles. [82]
  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 18 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 19 May. It will be on all wikis from 20 May (calendar).

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

13:48, 17 May 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-21

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

Recent changes

Changes later this week

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

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17:05, 24 May 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-22

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

Problems

  • There was an issue on the Vector skin with the text size of categories and notices under the page title. It was fixed last Monday. [83]

Changes later this week

  • There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

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17:04, 31 May 2021 (UTC)

Investigations into the origin of COVID-19‎

Please stop adding weasel words and "scare tactics" into this article without discussing on the talk page. Wording like "seemed to" is virtually never appropriate in Wikipedia for the reasons stated in the linked guideline from the Manual of Style. Furthermore, words like "surmised" are less NPOV than words like "expected" or "assumed" even. Furthermore, you've been reverted now by two different editors - it is time for you to discuss on the talkpage if you really think that wording is appropriate. -bɜ:ʳkənhɪmez (User/say hi!) 03:11, 29 May 2021 (UTC)

I'll note that you were already advised within the past year about the general sanctions authorized for the COVID-19 topic area - I'll take this time to personally remind you of those sanctions in place and note that if you continue to edit war (even if not violating 3RR) or add "scare language" into articles that those sanctions may be applied to you. -bɜ:ʳkənhɪmez (User/say hi!) 03:14, 29 May 2021 (UTC)
Wow, a stern warning that made me so scared! As the top contributor of this article despite barely touching it in the last few months, how dare I made another edit to it!

Normchou 💬 02:40, 4 June 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-23

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

Changes later this week

  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 8 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 9 June. It will be on all wikis from 10 June (calendar).

Future changes

  • The Wikimedia movement uses Phabricator for technical tasks. This is where we collect technical suggestions, bugs and what developers are working on. The company behind Phabricator will stop working on it. This will not change anything for the Wikimedia movement now. It could lead to changes in the future. [84][85][86]
  • Searching on Wikipedia will find more results in some languages. This is mainly true for when those who search do not use the correct diacritics because they are not seen as necessary in that language. For example searching for Bedusz doesn't find Będusz on German Wikipedia. The character ę isn't used in German so many would write e instead. This will work better in the future in some languages. [87]
  • Advanced item The CSRF token parameters in the action API were changed in 2014. The old parameters from before 2014 will stop working soon. This can affect bots, gadgets and user scripts that still use the old parameters. [88][89]

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

20:01, 7 June 2021 (UTC)

Hello, after this interesting statement it would be good if you make a comment to this proposal at RFC. I think this need more clarification. Thank you--Empiricus-sextus (talk) 15:01, 8 June 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for the information, Empiricus-sextus. I already planned to make a comment regarding this issue. Normchou 💬 18:55, 8 June 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-24

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

Recent changes

  • Logged-in users on the mobile web can choose to use the advanced mobile mode. They now see categories in a similar way as users on desktop do. This means that some gadgets that have just been for desktop users could work for users of the mobile site too. If your wiki has such gadgets you could decide to turn them on for the mobile site too. Some gadgets probably need to be fixed to look good on mobile. [90]
  • Language links on Wikidata now works for multilingual Wikisource. [91]

Changes later this week

  • There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

Future changes

  • In the future we can't show the IP of unregistered editors to everyone. This is because privacy regulations and norms have changed. There is now a rough draft of how showing the IP to those who need to see it could work.
  • German Wikipedia, English Wikivoyage and 29 smaller wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on 22 June. This is planned between 5:00 and 5:30 UTC. [92]
  • All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes in the week of 28 June. More information will be published in Tech News later. It will also be posted on individual wikis in the coming weeks. [93][94]

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20:25, 14 June 2021 (UTC)

Notice of Arbitration Enforcement noticeboard discussion involving you at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Enforcement#Normchou

Hello. This message is being sent to inform you that there is currently a report involving you at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Enforcement regarding a possible violation of an Arbitration Committee decision. The thread is Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Enforcement#Normchou. Thank you.--Shibbolethink (♔ ♕) 23:46, 16 June 2021 (UTC)

"Wikipedia:LABLEAK" listed at Redirects for discussion

A discussion is taking place to address the redirect Wikipedia:LABLEAK. The discussion will occur at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2021 June 19#Wikipedia:LABLEAK until a consensus is reached, and anyone, including you, is welcome to contribute to the discussion. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 13:40, 19 June 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-25

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

Recent changes

  • Advanced item The otrs-member group name is now vrt-permissions. This could affect abuse filters. [95]

Problems

  • You will be able to read but not edit German Wikipedia, English Wikivoyage and 29 smaller wikis for a few minutes on 22 June. This is planned between 5:00 and 5:30 UTC. [96]

Changes later this week

  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 22 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 23 June. It will be on all wikis from 24 June (calendar).

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15:48, 21 June 2021 (UTC)

Notice that you are now subject to an arbitration enforcement sanction

The following sanction now applies to you:

You have been indefinitely topic banned from all pages and discussions concerning COVID-19, broadly construed. Please read WP:TBAN to see what "topic banned" means.

You have been sanctioned for the problems reported at WP:AE permalink.

This sanction is imposed in my capacity as an uninvolved administrator under the authority of the Arbitration Committee's decision at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/COVID-19#Final decision and, if applicable, the procedure described at Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Discretionary sanctions. This sanction has been recorded in the log of sanctions. If the sanction includes a ban, please read the banning policy to ensure you understand what this means. If you do not comply with this sanction, you may be blocked for an extended period, by way of enforcement of this sanction—and you may also be made subject to further sanctions.

You may appeal this sanction using the process described here. I recommend that you use the arbitration enforcement appeals template if you wish to submit an appeal to the arbitration enforcement noticeboard. You may also appeal directly to me (on my talk page), before or instead of appealing to the noticeboard. Even if you appeal this sanction, you remain bound by it until you are notified by an uninvolved administrator that the appeal has been successful. You are also free to contact me on my talk page if anything of the above is unclear to you. Johnuniq (talk) 10:23, 22 June 2021 (UTC)

The Signpost: 27 June 2021

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 20:15, 27 June 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-26

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

Recent changes

Problems

  • You will be able to read but not edit the Wikimedia wikis for a few minutes on 29 June. This is planned at 14:00 UTC. [99][100]

Changes later this week

  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 29 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 30 June. It will be on all wikis from 1 July (calendar).

Future changes

  • Threshold for stub link formatting, thumbnail size and auto-number headings can be set in preferences. They are expensive to maintain and few editors use them. The developers are planning to remove them. Removing them will make pages load faster. You can read more and give feedback.
  • A toolbar will be added to the Reply tool's wikitext source mode. This will make it easier to link to pages and to ping other users. [101][102]

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16:31, 28 June 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-27

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

Tech News

  • The next issue of Tech News will be sent out on 19 July.

Recent changes

  • AutoWikiBrowser is a tool to make repetitive tasks easier. It now uses JSON. Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/CheckPage has moved to Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/CheckPageJSON and Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/Config. Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/CheckPage/Version has moved to Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/CheckPage/VersionJSON. The tool will eventually be configured on the wiki so that you don't have to wait until the new version to add templates or regular expression fixes. [103]

Problems

  • InternetArchiveBot helps saving online sources on some wikis. It adds them to Wayback Machine and links to them there. This is so they don't disappear if the page that was linked to is removed. It currently has a problem with linking to the wrong date when it moves pages from archive.is to web.archive.org. [104]

Changes later this week

  • The tool to find, add and remove templates will be updated. This is to make it easier to find and use the right templates. It will come to the first wikis on 7 July. It will come to more wikis later this year. [105][106]
  • There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

Future changes

  • Some Wikimedia wikis use Flagged Revisions or pending changes. It hides edits from new and unregistered accounts for readers until they have been patrolled. The auto review action in Flagged Revisions will no longer be logged. All old logs of auto-review will be removed. This is because it creates a lot of logs that are not very useful. [107]

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17:31, 5 July 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-29

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

Recent changes

  • The tool to find, add and remove templates was updated. This is to make it easier to find and use the right templates. It was supposed to come to the first wikis on 7 July. It was delayed to 12 July instead. It will come to more wikis later this year. [108][109]
  • Special:UnconnectedPages lists pages that are not connected to Wikidata. This helps you find pages that can be connected to Wikidata items. Some pages should not be connected to Wikidata. You can use the magic word __EXPECTED_UNCONNECTED_PAGE__ on pages that should not be listed on the special page. [110]

Changes later this week

  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 20 July. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 21 July. It will be on all wikis from 22 July (calendar).

Future changes

  • Advanced item How media is structured in the parser's HTML output will soon change. This can affect bots, gadgets, user scripts and extensions. You can read more. You can test it on Testwiki or Testwiki 2.
  • Advanced item The parameters for how you obtain tokens in the MediaWiki API were changed in 2014. The old way will no longer work from 1 September. Scripts, bots and tools that use the parameters from before the 2014 change need to be updated. You can read more.

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

15:30, 19 July 2021 (UTC)

The Signpost: 25 July 2021

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 23:12, 25 July 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-30

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

Recent changes

  • A new version of MediaWiki came to the Wikimedia wikis the week before last week. This was not in Tech News because there was no newsletter that week.

Changes later this week

  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 27 July. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 28 July. It will be on all wikis from 29 July (calendar).

Future changes

  • If you use the Monobook skin you can choose to switch off responsive design on mobile. This will now work for more skins. If ⧼monobook-responsive-label⧽ is unticked you need to also untick the new preference Enable responsive mode. Otherwise it will stop working. Interface admins can automate this process on your wiki. You can read more.

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21:10, 26 July 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-31

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

Recent changes

  • Advanced item If your wiki uses markup like <div class="mw-content-ltr"> or <div class="mw-content-rtl"> without the required dir attribute, then these will no longer work in 2 weeks. There is a short-term fix that can be added to your local wiki's Common.css page, which is explained at T287701. From now on, all usages should include the full attributes, for example: <div class="mw-content-ltr" dir="ltr" lang="en"> or <div class="mw-content-rtl" dir="rtl" lang="he">. This also applies to some other HTML tags, such as span or code. You can find existing examples on your wiki that need to be updated, using the instructions at T287701.
  • Reminder: Wikimedia has migrated to the Libera Chat IRC network, from the old Freenode network. Local documentation should be updated.

Problems

  • Last week, all wikis had slow access or no access for 30 minutes. There was a problem with generating dynamic lists of articles on the Russian Wikinews, due to the bulk import of 200,000+ new articles over 3 days, which led to database problems. The problematic feature has been disabled on that wiki and developers are discussing if it can be fixed properly. [111][112]

Changes later this week

  • When adding links to a page using VisualEditor or the 2017 wikitext editor, disambiguation pages will now only appear at the bottom of search results. This is because users do not often want to link to disambiguation pages. [113]
  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 3 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 4 August. It will be on all wikis from 5 August (calendar).

Future changes

  • The team of the Wikipedia app for Android is working on communication in the app. The developers are working on how to talk to other editors and get notifications. You can read more. They are looking for users who want to test the plans. Any editor who has an Android phone and is willing to download the app can do this.
  • The Beta Feature for Discussion tools will be updated in the coming weeks. You will be able to subscribe to individual sections on a talk page at more wikis. You can test this now by adding ?dtenable=1 to the end of the talk page's URL (example).

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20:45, 2 August 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-32

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

Problems

  • You can read but not edit 17 wikis for a few minutes on 10 August. This is planned at 05:00 UTC. This is because of work on the database. [114]

Changes later this week

  • The Wikimania Hackathon will take place remotely on 13 August, starting at 5:00 UTC, for 24 hours. You can participate in many ways. You can still propose projects and sessions.
  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 10 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 11 August. It will be on all wikis from 12 August (calendar).
  • Advanced item The old CSS <div class="visualClear"></div> will not be supported after 12 August. Instead, templates and pages should use <div style="clear:both;"></div>. Please help to replace any existing uses on your wiki. There are global-search links available at T287962.

Future changes

  • The Wikipedia Library is a place for Wikipedia editors to get access to sources. There is an extension which has a new function to tell users when they can take part in it. It will use notifications. It will start pinging the first users in September. It will ping more users later. [115]
  • Advanced item Vue.js will be the JavaScript framework for MediaWiki in the future. [116]

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

16:19, 9 August 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-33

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

Recent changes

  • You can add language links in the sidebar in the new Vector skin again. You do this by connecting the page to a Wikidata item. The new Vector skin has moved the language links but the new language selector cannot add language links yet. [117]

Problems

  • There was a problem on wikis which use the Translate extension. Translations were not updated or were replaced with the English text. The problems have been fixed. [118][119][120]

Changes later this week

  • A revision tag will soon be added to edits that add links to disambiguation pages. This is because these links are usually added by accident. The tag will allow editors to easily find the broken links and fix them. If your wiki does not like this feature, it can be hidden. [121]
  • Would you like to help improve the information about tools? Would you like to attend or help organize a small virtual meetup for your community to discuss the list of tools? Please get in touch on the Toolhub Quality Signal Sessions talk page. We are also looking for feedback from tool maintainers on some specific questions.
  • In the past, edits to any page in your user talk space ignored your mute list, e.g. sub-pages. Starting this week, this is only true for edits to your talk page. [122]
  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 17 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 18 August. It will be on all wikis from 19 August (calendar).

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

19:25, 16 August 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-34

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

Recent changes

  • The Score extension (<score> notation) has been re-enabled on public wikis and upgraded to a newer version. Some musical score functionality may no longer work because the extension is only enabled in "safe mode". The security issue has been fixed and an advisory published.

Problems

  • You will be able to read but not edit some wikis for a few minutes on 25 August. This will happen around 06:00 UTC. This is for database maintenance. During this time, operations on the CentralAuth will also not be possible.

Changes later this week

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

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

21:57, 23 August 2021 (UTC)

Read-only reminder

A maintenance operation will be performed on Wednesday August 25 06:00 UTC. It should only last for a few minutes.

Also during this time, operations on the CentralAuth will not be possible (GlobalRenames, changing/confirming e-mail addresses, logging into new wikis, password changes).

For more details about the operation and on all impacted services, please check on Phabricator.

A banner will be displayed 30 minutes before the operation.

Please help your community to be aware of this maintenance operation. Thank you!

20:33, 24 August 2021 (UTC)

The Signpost: 29 August 2021

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 19:44, 29 August 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-35

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

Recent changes

Problems

  • Musical scores were unable to render lyrics in some languages because of missing fonts. This has been fixed now. If your language would prefer a different font, please file a request in Phabricator. [123]

Changes later this week

  • Advanced item The parameters for how you obtain tokens in the MediaWiki API were changed in 2014. The old way will no longer work from 1 September. Scripts, bots and tools that use the parameters from before the 2014 change need to be updated. You can read more about this.
  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 31 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 1 September. It will be on all wikis from 2 September (calendar).

Future changes

  • You will be able to read but not edit Commons for a few minutes on 6 September. This will happen around 05:00 UTC. This is for database maintenance.
  • All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes in the week of 13 September. More information will be published in Tech News later. It will also be posted on individual wikis in the coming weeks. [124]

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

15:59, 30 August 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-36

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

Recent changes

  • The wikis that have Growth features deployed have been part of A/B testing since deployment, in which some newcomers did not receive the new features. Now, all of the newcomers on 21 of the smallest of those wikis will be receiving the features. [125]

Changes later this week

  • There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

Future changes

  • Advanced item In 2017, the provided jQuery library was upgraded from version 1 to 3, with a compatibility layer. The migration will soon finish, to make the site load faster for everyone. If you maintain a gadget or user script, check if you have any JQMIGRATE errors and fix them, or they will break. [126][127]
  • Last year, the Portuguese Wikipedia community embarked on an experiment to make log-in compulsory for editing.  The impact report of this trial is ready. Moving forward, the Anti-Harassment Tools team is looking for projects that are willing to experiment with restricting IP editing on their wiki for a short-term experiment. Learn more.

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

15:19, 6 September 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-37

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

Recent changes

Problems

Changes later this week

  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 14 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 15 September. It will be on all wikis from 16 September (calendar).
  • Starting this week, Wikipedia in Italian will receive weekly software updates on Wednesdays. It used to receive the updates on Thursdays. Due to this change, bugs will be noticed and fixed sooner. [130]
  • You can add language links in the sidebar in the new Vector skin again. You do this by connecting the page to a Wikidata item. The new Vector skin has moved the language links but the new language selector cannot add language links yet. [131]
  • The syntax highlight tool marks up code with different colours. It now can highlight 23 new code languages. Additionally, golang can now be used as an alias for the Go programming language, and a special output mode has been added to show a program's output. [132][133]

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

15:32, 13 September 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-38

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

Recent changes

  • Growth features are now deployed to almost all Wikipedias. For the majority of small Wikipedias, the features are only available for experienced users, to test the features and configure them. Features will be available for newcomers starting on 20 September 2021.
  • MediaWiki had a feature that would highlight local links to short articles in a different style. Each user could pick the size at which "stubs" would be highlighted. This feature was very bad for performance, and following a consultation, has been removed. [134]
  • A technical change was made to the MonoBook skin to allow for easier maintenance and upkeep. This has resulted in some minor changes to HTML that make MonoBook's HTML consistent with other skins. Efforts have been made to minimize the impact on editors, but please ping Jon (WMF) on wiki or in phabricator if any problems are reported.

Problems

  • There was a problem with search last week. Many search requests did not work for 2 hours because of an accidental restart of the search servers. [135]

Changes later this week

  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 21 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 22 September. It will be on all wikis from 23 September (calendar).
  • Advanced item The meta=proofreadpage API has changed. The piprop parameter has been renamed to prpiprop. API users should update their code to avoid unrecognized parameter warnings. Pywikibot users should upgrade to 6.6.0. [136]

Future changes

  • The Reply tool will be deployed to the remaining wikis in the coming weeks. It is currently part of "Discussion tools" in Beta features at most wikis. You will be able to turn it off in Editing Preferences. [137]
  • Advanced item The previously announced change to how you obtain tokens from the API has been delayed to September 21 because of an incompatibility with Pywikibot. Bot operators using Pywikibot can follow T291202 for progress on a fix, and should plan to upgrade to 6.6.1 when it is released.

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18:30, 20 September 2021 (UTC)

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