User talk:SS49/Archive 22
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Growth team newsletter #27
Welcome to the twenty-seventh newsletter from the Growth team! Help with translations
Annual plan for Growth
We shared our annual plan, for the period July 2023 - June 2024.
Our first project of the year will be Community configuration 2.0, which helps editors with extended rights transparently and easily configure important on-wiki functionality.
After we finish work on Community configuration 2.0, we will hope to fit in one of the following projects:
- Article creation: This project aims to provide new editors with better guidance and guardrails in the article creation process, with the intention of lightening the load of new page reviewers.
- Non-editing participation: This project aims to create low-risk ways for readers to participate in Wikipedia with the intention of funneling more readers into contributing to the Wikimedia movement.
Please let us know what you think about these projects on the related talk page, or Growth's annual plan talk page.
Suggested edits
We released a new Section-level “add an image” structured task to Growth pilot wikis (Arabic, Bengali, Czech, and Spanish). This task was part of the Structured Data Across Wikipedia project. We are monitoring the edits made, and we look for community feedback as well.
Suggested Edits are now receiving topic predictions via the new Language-Agnostic Topic Classification. This change affects non-English Wikipedia wikis. It will ensure newcomers receive a greater diversity of task recommendations. Before, as this feature was a test, English Wikipedia was used to select topics. The change is gradual as lists of topics are refreshed when they become empty. The Research team will evaluate the impact in a few months. [1]
Starting on August 1, a new set of Wikipedias will get "Add a link": Georgian Wikipedia, Kara-Kalpak Wikipedia, Kabyle Wikipedia, Kabardian Wikipedia, Kabiyè Wikipedia, Kikuyu Wikipedia, Kazakh Wikipedia, Khmer Wikipedia, Kannada Wikipedia, Kashmiri Wikipedia, Colognian Wikipedia, Kurdish Wikipedia, Cornish Wikipedia, Cornish Wikipedia.
Mentorship
The Growth team provides dedicated features to establish a mentorship program for newcomers. Every newcomer gets a volunteer mentor who provides encouragement and answers questions. Communities can set up or join this mentorship system by visiting Special:ManageMentors. This mentorship system is configurable by the community at Special:EditGrowthConfig.
More communities have implemented mentorship. A Wikimedia Foundation data scientist will be looking at the impact of Mentorship. We will look at the impact on Spanish and English Wikipedia. [2]
The Growth team will also host a Mentoring new editors on Wikipedia session at Wikimania 2023 in Singapore. Workshop attendees will help brainstorm improvements to Growth’s mentorship features.
Positive reinforcement
We will share more complete experiment analysis for all the three parts of the Positive reinforcement project soon. At the moment, the new Impact module, Leveling up, and Personalized praise are still being A/B tested on the Growth team's pilot wikis.
In the meantime, initial leading indicators for the Personalized praise project have been published. Although this is still a relatively small sample, results seem healthy. They show that Mentors are indeed receiving notifications and clicking through to view their praise-worthy mentees.
Growth contributes to IP Editing migration
The Growth team is currently focusing on IP Editing: Privacy Enhancement and Abuse Mitigation. It is a project that touches many different Wikimedia Foundation teams. The Growth team will focus on temporary accounts through two main points:
- the user experience of a logged-out user, that switches to a temporary account,
- change Growth-owned extensions and features, so that they work as expected with temporary accounts. [3]
Community Configuration 2.0
We are still in the early planning stage of the Community Configuration 2.0 project:
- We are gathering internal Wikimedia Foundation teams' needs, so as community feedback. [4]
- We have started to investigate design improvements. [5]
- We are also reviewing similar tools that are part of other products. [6]
Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
Administrators' newsletter – August 2023
News and updates for administrators from the past month (July 2023).
Administrator changes
Interface administrator changes
Technical news
- The tag filter on Special:NewPages and revision history pages can now be inverted. This allows hiding edits made by automated tools. (T334338)
- Special:BlockedExternalDomains is a new tool that allows easier blocking of plain domains (and their subdomains). This is more easily searchable and is faster for the software to use than the existing MediaWiki:Spam-blacklist. It does not support regex (for complex cases), URL path-matching, or the MediaWiki:Spam-whitelist. (T337431)
Arbitration
- The arbitration cases named Scottywong and AlisonW closed 10 July and 16 July respectively.
- The SmallCat dispute arbitration case is in the workshop phase.
The Signpost: 15 August 2023
- News and notes: Dude, Where's My Donations? Wikimedia Foundation announces another million in grants for non-Wikimedia-related projects
- Tips and tricks: How to find images for your articles, check their copyright, upload them, and restore them
- Cobwebs: Getting serious about writing
- Serendipity: Why I stopped taking photographs almost altogether
- Featured content: Barbenheimer confirmed
- Traffic report: 'Cause today it just goes with the fashion
The Signpost: 31 August 2023
- From the editor: Beta version of signpost.news now online
- News and notes: You like RecentChanges?
- In the media: Taking it sleazy
- Recent research: The five barriers that impede "stitching" collaboration between Commons and Wikipedia
- Draftspace: Bad Jokes and Other Draftspace Novelties
- Humour: The Dehumourification Plan
- Traffic report: Raise your drinking glass, here's to yesterday
Administrators' newsletter – September 2023
News and updates for administrators from the past month (August 2023).
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Guideline and policy news
- Following an RfC, TFAs will be automatically semi-protected the day before it is on the main page and through the day after.
- A discussion at WP:VPP about revision deletion and oversight for dead names found that
[s]ysops can choose to use revdel if, in their view, it's the right tool for this situation, and they need not default to oversight. But oversight could well be right where there's a particularly high risk to the person. Use your judgment
.
Technical news
- Special:Contributions now shows the user's local edit count and the account's creation date. (T324166)
Arbitration
- The SmallCat dispute case has closed. As part of the final decision, editors participating in XfD have been reminded to be careful about forming
local consensus which may or may not reflect the broader community consensus
. Regular closers of XfD forums were also encouraged tonote when broader community discussion, or changes to policies and guidelines, would be helpful
.
Miscellaneous
- Tech tip: The "Browse history interactively" banner shown at the top of Special:Diff can be used to easily look through a history, assemble composite diffs, or find out what archive something wound up in.
New page patrol October 2023 Backlog drive
| New Page Patrol | October 2023 Backlog Drive |  |
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MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 09:14, 9 September 2023 (UTC)
Septermber GOCE newsletter
Guild of Copy Editors September 2023 Newsletter
  Hello and welcome to the September 2023 newsletter, a quarterly digest of Guild activities since June. Don't forget you can unsubscribe at any time; see below. David Thomsen: Prolific Wikipedian and Guild member David Thomsen (Dthomsen8) died in November 2022. He was a regular copy editor who took part in many of our Drives and Blitzes. An obituary was published in the mid-July issue of The Signpost. Tributes can be left on David's talk page. Election news: In our mid-year Election of Coordinators, Dhtwiki was chosen as lead coordinator, Miniapolis and Zippybonzo continue as assistant coordinators, and Baffle gab1978 stepped down from the role. If you're interested in helping out at the GOCE, please consider nominating yourself for our next election in December; it's your WikiProject and it doesn't organize itself! June Blitz: Of the 17 editors who signed up for our June Copy Editing Blitz, 12 copy-edited at least one article. 70,035 words comprising 26 articles were copy-edited. Barnstars awarded are here. July Drive: 34 of the 51 editors who took part in our July Backlog Elimination Drive copy-edited at least one article. They edited 276 articles and 683,633 words between them. Barnstars awarded are here. August Blitz: In our August Copy Editing Blitz, 13 of the 16 editors who signed up worked on at least one article. Between them, they copy-edited 79,608 words comprising 57 articles. Barnstars awarded are available here. September Drive: Sign up here for our month-long September Backlog Elimination Drive, which is now underway. Barnstars awarded will be posted here. Progress report: As of 14:29, 9 September 2023 (UTC), GOCE copy editors have processed 245 requests since 1 January. The backlog of tagged articles stands at 2,066. Thank you all again for your participation; we wouldn't be able to achieve what we have without you! Cheers from your GOCE coordinators, Dhtwiki, Miniapolis and Zippybonzo. To discontinue receiving GOCE newsletters, please remove your name from our mailing list.
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MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 13:55, 10 September 2023 (UTC)
Books & Bytes – Issue 58
The Wikipedia Library: Books & Bytes
Issue 58, July – August 2023
- New partners - De Standaard and Duncker & Humblot
- Tech tip: Filters
- Wikimania presentation
Sent by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of The Wikipedia Library team --14:27, 12 September 2023 (UTC)
The Signpost: 16 September 2023
- In the media: "Just flirting", going Dutch and Shapps for the defence?
- Obituary: Nosebagbear
- Featured content: Catching up
- Traffic report: Some of it's magic, some of it's tragic
New pages patrol newsletter
Hello SS49,
Backlog update: At the time of this message, there are 11,300 articles and 15,600 redirects awaiting review. This is the highest backlog in a long time. Please help out by doing additional reviews!
October backlog elimination drive: A one-month backlog drive for October will start in one week! Barnstars will be awarded based on the number of articles and redirects patrolled. Articles will earn 4x as many points compared to redirects. You can sign up here.
PageTriage code upgrades: Upgrades to the PageTriage code, initiated by the NPP open letter in 2022 and actioned by the WMF Moderator Tools Team in 2023, are ongoing. More information can be found here. As part of this work, the Special:NewPagesFeed now has a new version in beta! The update leaves the NewPagesFeed appearance and function mostly identical to the old one, but updates the underlying code, making it easier to maintain and helping make sure the extension is not decommissioned due to maintenance issues in the future. You can try out the new Special:NewPagesFeed here - it will replace the current version soon.
Notability tip: Professors can meet WP:PROF #1 by having their academic papers be widely cited by their peers. When reviewing professor articles, it is a good idea to find their Google Scholar or Scopus profile and take a look at their h-index and number of citations. As a very rough rule of thumb, for most fields, articles on people with a h-index of twenty or more, a first-authored paper with more than a thousand citations, or multiple papers each with more than a hundred citations are likely to be kept at AfD.
Reviewing tip: If you would like like a second opinion on your reviews or simply want another new page reviewer by your side when patrolling, we recommend pair reviewing! This is where two reviewers use Discord voice chat and screen sharing to communicate with each other while reviewing the same article simultaneously. This is a great way to learn and transfer knowledge.
Reminders:
- You can access live chat with patrollers on the New Page Patrol Discord.
- Consider adding the project discussion page to your watchlist.
- To opt out of future mailings, please remove yourself here.
MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:46, 22 September 2023 (UTC)
The Signpost: 3 October 2023
- News and notes: Wikimedia Endowment financial statement published
- Recent research: Readers prefer ChatGPT over Wikipedia; concerns about limiting "anyone can edit" principle "may be overstated"
- Featured content: By your logic,
- Poetry: "The Sight"
Administrators' newsletter – September 2023
News and updates for administrators from the past month (September 2023).
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Guideline and policy news
- An RfC is open regarding amending the paid-contribution disclosure policy to add the following text:
Any administrator soliciting clients for paid Wikipedia-related consulting or advising services not covered by other paid-contribution rules must disclose all clients on their userpage.
Technical news
- Administrators can now choose to add the user's user page to their watchlist when changing the usergroups for a user. This works both via Special:UserRights and via the API. (T272294)
Arbitration
Miscellaneous
- The 2023 CheckUser and Oversight appointments process has concluded with the appointment of one new CheckUser.
- Self-nominations for the electoral commission for the 2023 Arbitration Committee elections opens on 2 October and closes on 8 October.
Growth team newsletter #28
Welcome to the twenty-eighth newsletter from the Growth team! Help with translations
Community configuration 2.0
- Community Configuration 2.0 is a feature that will enable Wikimedia communities to easily customize and configure features to meet their unique needs. This approach provides non-technical moderators with more independence and control over enabling/disabling and customizing features for their communities.
- Technical approach and associated tasks are detailed in this Epic task on Phabricator.
- Initial designs are drafted for two different approaches (see images). We will soon demo interactive prototypes to interested admins, stewards, and experienced editors (T346109). Please let us know if you have feedback on the design approach, or want to participate in prototype testing.
IP Masking
- The Growth team has been working on several updates to ensure Growth maintained features will be compatible with future IP Masking changes. This work has included code changes to: Recent Changes (T343322), Echo notifications (T333531), the Thanks extension (T345679) and Mentorship (T341390).
- Before December, the Growth team will initiate community discussions with the goal of migrating communities from Flow to DiscussionTools. This move aims to minimize the necessity for additional engineering work to make Flow compatible with IP Masking. (T346108)
Mentorship
- We assembled some resources for mentors at Mediawiki wiki. This resource page is translatable and will be linked from the mentor dashboard.
- We are working to resolve a bug related to mentors properly returning after being marked as "Away". (T347024)
- Half of newcomers at English Wikipedia get a mentor assigned to them. To ensure every newcomer receives mentorship, we need additional volunteer mentors at English Wikipedia to achieve a 100% coverage rate. We also encourage experienced users from other wikis to help newcomers at their own community.
Scaling Growth features
- We continue the deployment of the structured task "add a link" to all Wikipedias. We plan to scale the task to all Wikipedias that have link suggestions available by the end of 2023.
- We plan to scale the new Impact Module to all Wikipedias soon, but first we are investigating a bug with the job that refreshes the Impact Module data. (T344428)
- At some wikis, newcomers have access to the "add an image" structured task. This task suggests images that may be relevant to add to unillustrated articles. Newcomers at these wikis can now add images to unillustrated articles sections. (T345940) The wikis that have this task are listed under "Images recommendations" at the Growth team deployment table.
Other news
- We disabled the “add an image” task temporarily (T345188) because there was a failure in the image suggestions pipeline (T345141). This is now fixed.
- You can read a report about the Growth team’s representation at Wikimania in Singapore here. Growth team members presented two sessions at Wikimania Singapore.
- After a 2.5 years-long collaboration with Bangala Wikipedia, we have decided to start a collaboration with another wiki. Swahili Wikipedia is now a pilot wiki for Growth experiments.
Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
The Signpost: 23 October 2023
- News and notes: Where have all the administrators gone?
- In the media: Thirst traps, the fastest loading sites on the web, and the original collaborative writing
- Gallery: Before and After: Why you don't need to know how to restore images to make massive improvements
- Featured content: Yo, ho! Blow the man down!
- Traffic report: The calm and the storm
- News from Diff: Sawtpedia: Giving a Voice to Wikipedia Using QR Codes
November Articles for creation backlog drive
Hello SS49:
WikiProject Articles for creation is holding a month long Backlog Drive!
The goal of this drive is to reduce the backlog of unreviewed drafts to less than 2 months outstanding reviews from the current 4+ months. Bonus points will be given for reviewing drafts that have been waiting more than 30 days. The drive is running from 1 November 2023 through 30 November 2023.
You may find Category:AfC pending submissions by age or other categories and sorting helpful.
Barnstars will be given out as awards at the end of the drive.
The Signpost: 6 November 2023
- Arbitration report: Admin bewilderingly unmasks self as sockpuppet of other admin who was extremely banned in 2015
- In the media: UK shadow chancellor accused of ripping off WP articles for book, Wikipedians accused of being dicks by a rich man
- Opinion: An open letter to Elon Musk
- WikiCup report: The WikiCup 2023
- News from Wiki Ed: Equity lists on Wikipedia
- Recent research: How English Wikipedia drove out fringe editors over two decades
- Featured content: Like putting a golf course in a historic site.
- Traffic report: Cricket jumpscare
Administrators' newsletter – November 2023
News and updates for administrators from the past month (October 2023).
Administrator changes
Interface administrator changes
Guideline and policy news
Technical news
- The WMF is working on making it possible for administrators to edit MediaWiki configuration directly. This is similar to previous work on Special:EditGrowthConfig. A technical RfC is running until November 08, where you can provide feedback.
- There is a proposed plan for re-enabling the Graph Extension. Feedback on this proposal is requested.
Arbitration
- Eligible editors are invited to self-nominate themselves from 12 November 2023 until 21 November 2023 to stand in the 2023 Arbitration Committee elections.
- Xaosflux, RoySmith and Cyberpower678 have been appointed to the Electoral Commission for the 2023 Arbitration Committee Elections. BusterD is the reserve commissioner.
- Following a motion, the contentious topic designation of Prem Rawat has been struck. Actions previously taken using this contentious topic designation are still in force.
- Following several motions, multiple topic areas are no longer designated as a contentious topic. These contentious topic designations were from the Editor conduct in e-cigs articles, Liancourt Rocks, Longevity, Medicine, September 11 conspiracy theories, and Shakespeare authorship question cases.
- Following a motion, remedies 3.1 (All related articles under 1RR whenever the dispute over naming is concerned), 6 (Stalemate resolution) and 30 (Administrative supervision) of the Macedonia 2 case have been rescinded.
- Following a motion, remedy 6 (One-revert rule) of the The Troubles case has been amended.
- An arbitration case named Industrial agriculture has been opened. Evidence submissions in this case close 8 November.
Miscellaneous
- The Articles for Creation backlog drive is happening in November 2023, with 700+ drafts pending reviews for in the last 4 months or so. In addition to the AfC participants, all administrators and New Page Patrollers can conduct reviews using the helper script, Yet Another AFC Helper Script, which can be enabled in the Gadgets settings. Sign up here to participate!
The Signpost: 20 November 2023
- In the media: Propaganda and photos, lunatics and a lunar backup
- News and notes: Update on Wikimedia's financial health
- Traffic report: If it bleeds, it leads
- Recent research: Canceling disputes as the real function of ArbCom
- Wikimania: Wikimania 2024 scholarships
Books & Bytes – Issue 59
The Wikipedia Library: Books & Bytes
Issue 59, September – October 2023
- Spotlight: Introducing a repository of anti-disinformation projects
- Tech tip: Library access methods
Sent by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of The Wikipedia Library team --16:15, 27 November 2023 (UTC)
ArbCom 2023 Elections voter message
Hello! Voting in the 2023 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23:59 (UTC) on Monday, 11 December 2023. All eligible users are allowed to vote. Users with alternate accounts may only vote once.
The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail.
If you wish to participate in the 2023 election, please review the candidates and submit your choices on the voting page. If you no longer wish to receive these messages, you may add {{NoACEMM}} to your user talk page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:48, 28 November 2023 (UTC)
Growth team newsletter #29
Welcome to the twenty-ninth newsletter from the Growth team! Help with translations
Community Conversations
The Growth team will host its first community conversation Monday, 4 December (19:00 - 20:30 UTC). The topic for this meeting will be Mentorship.
This first meeting language will be English, but we plan to host conversations in other languages, and about other topics. Please visit the conversation page on-wiki for the details on how to join. You can also watch the page, or suggest ideas for upcoming conversations there.
Impact Module
At the beginning of November 2023, the Growth team deployed the New Impact Module to all Wikipedias. We recently released a follow up improvement to how edit data was displayed based on editor feedback. [7]
Add a Link
We released “add a link” to 35 more Wikipedias. [8] [9]
We have a few Wikipedias remaining:
- German and English Wikipedia will be contacted at the beginning of January 2024.
- There are a few small wikis that will not receive the task until they have enough articles for the algorithm to work properly.
Community Configuration
- We shared Community Configuration 2.0 plans with technical stakeholders. [10] 🖂
- Initial Community Configuration design ideas have been shared and discussed with community members.
- A basic Community Configuration 2.0 demo is released on ToolForge.
- Developers can find some initial proof of concept code shared on gitlab.
Mentorship
When a mentor marked themselves as "Away", they were not getting their name assigned to new accounts when they returned. This has been fixed. [11]
We improved the message received by newcomers when their mentor quits, to reduce confusion. [12]
We worked on ensuring that all mentees are assigned to an active mentor. This required reassigning mentees with no mentors to a new mentor. We paused this as the clean-up script confused some editors. We will resume it when the identified blockers are resolved. [13]
It is now possible to create an Abuse Filter to prevent one user from signing up as a mentor. [14]
Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
The Signpost: 4 December 2023
- In the media: Turmoil on Hebrew Wikipedia, grave dancing, Olga's impact and inspiring Bhutanese nuns
- Disinformation report: "Wikipedia and the assault on history"
- Comix: Bold comics for a new age
- Essay: I am going to die
- Featured content: Real gangsters move in silence
- Traffic report: And it's hard to watch some cricket, in the cold November Rain
- Humour: Mandy Rice-Davies Applies
Administrators' newsletter – December 2023
News and updates for administrators from the past month (November 2023).
Administrator changes
Guideline and policy news
- Following a talk page discussion, the Administrators' accountability policy has been updated to note that while it is considered best practice for administrators to have notifications (pings) enabled, this is not mandatory. Administrators who do not use notifications are now strongly encouraged to indicate this on their user page.
Arbitration
- Following a motion, the Extended Confirmed Restriction has been amended, removing the allowance for non-extended-confirmed editors to post constructive comments on the "Talk:" namespace. Now, non-extended-confirmed editors may use the "Talk:" namespace solely to make edit requests related to articles within the topic area, provided that their actions are not disruptive.
- The Arbitration Committee has announced a call for Checkusers and Oversighters, stating that it will currently be accepting applications for CheckUser and/or Oversight permissions at any point in the year.
- Eligible users are invited to vote on candidates for the Arbitration Committee until 23:59 December 11, 2023 (UTC). Candidate statements can be seen here.
Guild of Copy Editors December 2023 Newsletter
| Guild of Copy Editors December 2023 Newsletter
Hello, and welcome to the December 2023 newsletter, a quarterly digest of Guild activities since September. Don't forget that you can unsubscribe at any time; see below. Election news: The Guild needs coordinators! If you'd like to help out, you may nominate yourself or any suitable editor—with their permission—for the Election of Coordinators for the first half of 2024. Nominations will close at 23:59 on 15 December (UTC). Voting begins immediately after the close of nominations and closes at 23:59 on 31 December. All editors in good standing (not under current sanctions) are eligible, and self-nominations are welcome. Coordinators normally serve a six-month term that ends at 23:59 on 30 June. Drive: Of the 69 editors who signed up for the September Backlog Elimination Drive, 40 copy-edited at least one article. Between them, they copy-edited 661,214 words in 290 articles. Barnstars awarded are listed here. Blitz: Of the 22 editors who signed up for the October Copy Editing Blitz, 13 copy-edited at least one article. Between them, they copy-edited 109,327 words in 52 articles. Barnstars awarded are listed here. Drive: During the November Backlog Elimination Drive, 38 of the 58 editors who signed up copy-edited at least one article. Between them, they copy-edited 458,620 words in 234 articles. Barnstars awarded are listed here. Blitz: Our December Copy Editing Blitz will run from 10 to 16 December. Barnstars awarded will be posted here. Progress report: As of 20:33, 10 December 2023 (UTC), GOCE copyeditors have processed 344 requests since 1 January, and the backlog stands at 2,191 articles. Other news: Our Annual Report for 2023 is planned for release in the new year. Thank you all again for your participation; we wouldn't be able to achieve what we have without you! Cheers from your GOCE coordinators Dhtwiki, Miniapolis and Zippybonzo. To discontinue receiving GOCE newsletters, please remove your name from our mailing list.
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Message sent by Baffle gab1978 using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 20:54, 10 December 2023 (UTC)
New pages patrol January 2024 Backlog drive
| New Page Patrol | January 2024 Articles Backlog Drive | |
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MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 02:10, 20 December 2023 (UTC)
The Signpost: 24 December 2023
- Special report: Did the Chinese Communist Party send astroturfers to sabotage a hacktivist's Wikipedia article?
- News and notes: The Italian Public Domain wars continue, Wikimedia RU set to dissolve, and a recap of WLM 2023
- In the media: Consider the humble fork
- Discussion report: Arabic Wikipedia blackout; Wikimedians discuss SpongeBob, copyrights, and AI
- In focus: Liquidation of Wikimedia RU
- Technology report: Dark mode is coming
- Recent research: "LLMs Know More, Hallucinate Less" with Wikidata
- Gallery: A feast of holidays and carols
- Comix: Lollus lmaois 200C tincture
- Crossword: when the crossword is sus
- Traffic report: What's the big deal? I'm an animal!
- From the editor: A piccy iz worth OVAR 9000!!!11oneone! wordz ^_^
- Humour: Guess the joke contest
Administrators' newsletter – January 2024
News and updates for administrators from the past month (December 2023).
Administrator changes
CheckUser changes
Oversighter changes
Arbitration
- Following the 2023 Arbitration Committee elections, the following editors have been appointed to the Arbitration Committee: Aoidh, Cabayi, Firefly, HJ Mitchell, Maxim, Sdrqaz, ToBeFree, Z1720.
- Following a motion, the Arbitration Committee rescinded the restrictions on the page name move discussions for the two Ireland pages that were enacted in June 2009.
- The arbitration case Industrial agriculture has been closed.
Miscellaneous
- The New Pages Patrol backlog drive is happening in January 2024 to reduce the backlog of articles in the new pages feed. Currently, there is a backlog of over 13,000 unreviewed articles awaiting review. Sign up here to participate!
The Signpost: 10 January 2024
- From the editor: NINETEEN MORE YEARS! NINETEEN MORE YEARS!
- Special report: Public Domain Day 2024
- Technology report: Wikipedia: A Multigenerational Pursuit
- News and notes: In other news ... see ya in court!
- WikiProject report: WikiProjects Israel and Palestine
- Obituary: Anthony Bradbury
- Traffic report: The most viewed articles of 2023
- Comix: Conflict resolution
Books & Bytes – Issue 60
The Wikipedia Library: Books & Bytes
Issue 60, November – December 2023
- Three new partners
- Google Scholar integration
- How to track partner suggestions
Sent by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of The Wikipedia Library team --13:36, 24 January 2024 (UTC)
The Signpost: 31 January 2024
- News and notes: Wikipedian Osama Khalid celebrated his 30th birthday in jail
- Opinion: Until it happens to you
- Disinformation report: How paid editors squeeze you dry
- Recent research: Croatian takeover was enabled by "lack of bureaucratic openness and rules constraining [admins]"
- Traffic report: DJ, gonna burn this goddamn house right down
Administrators' newsletter – February 2024
News and updates for administrators from the past month (January 2024).
Administrator changes
Bureaucrat changes
Guideline and policy news
- An RfC about increasing the inactivity requirement for Interface administrators is open for feedback.
Technical news
- Pages that use the JSON contentmodel will now use tabs instead of spaces for auto-indentation. This will significantly reduce the page size. (T326065)
Arbitration
- Following a motion, the Arbitration Committee adopted a new enforcement restriction on January 4, 2024, wherein the Committee may apply the 'Reliable source consensus-required restriction' to specified topic areas.
- Community feedback is requested for a draft to replace the "Information for administrators processing requests" section at WP:AE.
Miscellaneous
- Voting in the 2024 Steward elections will begin on 06 February 2024, 14:00 (UTC) and end on 27 February 2024, 14:00 (UTC). The confirmation process of current stewards is being held in parallel. You can automatically check your eligibility to vote.
- A vote to ratify the charter for the Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee (U4C) is open till 2 February 2024, 23:59:59 (UTC) via Secure Poll. All eligible voters within the Wikimedia community have the opportunity to either support or oppose the adoption of the U4C Charter and share their reasons. The details of the voting process and voter eligibility can be found here.
- Community Tech has made some preliminary decisions about the future of the Community Wishlist Survey. In summary, they aim to develop a new, continuous intake system for community technical requests that improves prioritization, resource allocation, and communication regarding wishes. Read more
- The Unreferenced articles backlog drive is happening in February 2024 to reduce the backlog of articles tagged with {{Unreferenced}}. You can help reduce the backlog by adding citations to these articles. Sign up to participate!
The Signpost: 13 February 2024
- News and notes: Wikimedia Russia director declared "foreign agent" by Russian gov; EU prepares to pile on the papers
- Disinformation report: How low can the scammers go?
- Serendipity: Is this guy the same as the one who was a Nazi?
- Traffic report: Griselda, Nikki, Carl, Jannik and two types of football
- Crossword: Our crossword to bear
- Comix: Strongly
Happy First Edit Day!
 | Happy First Edit Day! Hi SS49! On behalf of the Birthday Committee, I'd like to wish you a very happy anniversary of the day you made your first edit and became a Wikipedian! The Herald (Benison) (talk) 02:41, 21 February 2024 (UTC) |  |
Administrators' newsletter – March 2024
News and updates for administrators from the past month (February 2024).
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Guideline and policy news
- Phase I of the 2024 RfA review is now open for participation. Editors are invited to review, comment on, and propose improvements to the requests for adminship process.
- Following an RfC, the inactivity requirement for the removal of the interface administrator right increased from 6 months to 12 months.
Technical news
- The mobile site history pages now use the same HTML as the desktop history pages. (T353388)
Miscellaneous
- The 2024 appointees for the Ombuds commission are だ＊ぜ, AGK, Ameisenigel, Bennylin, Daniuu, Doǵu, Emufarmers, Faendalimas, MdsShakil, Minorax, Nehaoua, Renvoy and RoySmith as members, with Vermont serving as steward-observer.
- Following the 2024 Steward Elections, the following editors have been appointed as stewards: Ajraddatz, Albertoleoncio, EPIC, JJMC89, Johannnes89, Melos and Yahya.
The Signpost: 2 March 2024
- News and notes: Wikimedia enters US Supreme court hearings as "the dolphin inadvertently caught in the net"
- Recent research: Images on Wikipedia "amplify gender bias"
- In the media: The Scottish Parliament gets involved, a wikirace on live TV, and the Foundation's CTO goes on record
- Obituary: Vami_IV
- Traffic report: Supervalentinefilmbowlday
- WikiCup report: High-scoring WikiCup first round comes to a close
Books & Bytes – Issue 61
The Wikipedia Library: Books & Bytes
Issue 61, January – February 2024
- Bristol University Press and British Online Archives now available
- 1Lib1Ref results
Sent by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of The Wikipedia Library team --16:32, 5 March 2024 (UTC)
The Signpost: 29 March 2024
- Technology report: Millions of readers still seeing broken pages as "temporary" disabling of graph extension nears its second year
- Recent research: "Newcomer Homepage" feature mostly fails to boost new editors
- Traffic report: He rules over everything, on the land called planet Dune
- Humour: Letters from the editors
- Comix: Layout issue
Administrators' newsletter – April 2024
News and updates for administrators from the past month (March 2024).
Administrator changes
Guideline and policy news
- An RfC is open to convert all current and future community discretionary sanctions to (community designated) contentious topics procedure.
Technical news
- The Toolforge Grid Engine services have been shut down after the final migration process from Grid Engine to Kubernetes. (T313405)
Arbitration
- An arbitration case has been opened to look into "the intersection of managing conflict of interest editing with the harassment (outing) policy".
Miscellaneous
- Editors are invited to sign up for The Core Contest, an initiative running from April 15 to May 31, which aims to improve vital and other core articles on Wikipedia.
New Pages Patrol newsletter April 2024
Hello SS49,
Backlog update: The October drive reduced the article backlog from 11,626 to 7,609 and the redirect backlog from 16,985 to 6,431! Congratulations to Schminnte, who led with over 2,300 points.
Following that, New Page Patrol organized another backlog drive for articles in January 2024. The January drive started with 13,650 articles and reduced the backlog to 7,430 articles. Congratulations to JTtheOG, who achieved first place with 1,340 points in this drive.
Looking at the graph, it seems like backlog drives are one of the only things keeping the backlog under control. Another backlog drive is being planned for May. Feel free to participate in the May backlog drive planning discussion.
It's worth noting that both queues are gradually increasing again and are nearing 14,034 articles and 22,540 redirects. We encourage you to keep contributing, even if it's just a single patrol per day. Your support is greatly appreciated!
2023 Awards
Onel5969 won the 2023 cup with 17,761 article reviews last year - that's an average of nearly 50/day. There was one Platinum Award (10,000+ reviews), 2 Gold Awards (5000+ reviews), 6 Silver (2000+), 8 Bronze (1000+), 30 Iron (360+) and 70 more for the 100+ barnstar. Hey man im josh led on redirect reviews by clearing 36,175 of them. For the full details, see the Awards page and the Hall of Fame. Congratulations everyone for their efforts in reviewing!
WMF work on PageTriage: The WMF Moderator Tools team and volunteer software developers deployed the rewritten NewPagesFeed in October, and then gave the NewPagesFeed a slight visual facelift in November. This concludes most major work to Special:NewPagesFeed, and most major work by the WMF Moderator Tools team, who wrapped up their major work on PageTriage in October. The WMF Moderator Tools team and volunteer software developers will continue small work on PageTriage as time permits.
Recruitment: A couple of the coordinators have been inviting editors to become reviewers, via mass-messages to their talk pages. If you know someone who you'd think would make a good reviewer, then a personal invitation to them would be great. Additionally, if there are Wikiprojects that you are active on, then you can add a post there asking participants to join NPP. Please be careful not to double invite folks that have already been invited.
Reviewing tip: Reviewers who prefer to patrol new pages within their most familiar subjects can use the regularly updated NPP Browser tool.
Reminders:
- You can access live chat with patrollers on the New Pages Patrol Discord.
- Consider adding the project discussion page to your watchlist.
- To opt out of future mailings, please remove yourself here.
MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:27, 2 April 2024 (UTC)
Guild of Copy Editors April 2024 Newsletter
| Guild of Copy Editors April 2024 Newsletter
Hello and welcome to the April 2024 newsletter, a quarterly digest of Guild activities since December. Don't forget you can unsubscribe at any time; see below. We extend a warm welcome to all of our new members. We wish you all happy copy-editing. Election results: In our December 2023 coordinator election, Zippybonzo stepped down as coordinator; we thank them for their service. Incumbents Dhtwiki and Miniapolis were reelected coordinators, and Wracking was newly elected coordinator, to serve through 30 June. Nominations for our mid-year Election of Coordinators will open on 1 June (UTC). Drive: 46 editors signed up for our January Backlog Elimination Drive, 32 of whom claimed at least one copy-edit. Between them, they copy-edited 289 articles totaling 626,729 words. Barnstars awarded are here. Blitz: 23 editors signed up for our February Copy Editing Blitz. 18 claimed at least one copy-edit and between them, they copy-edited 100,293 words in 32 articles. Barnstars awarded are here. Drive: 53 editors signed up for our March Backlog Elimination Drive, 34 of whom claimed at least one copy-edit. Between them, they copy-edited 300 articles totaling 587,828 words. Barnstars awarded are here. Blitz: Sign up for our April Copy Editing Blitz, which runs from 14 to 20 April. Barnstars will be awarded here. Progress report: As of 23:17, 11 April 2024 (UTC), GOCE copyeditors have processed 109 requests since 1 January 2024, and the backlog stands at 2,480 articles. Thank you all again for your participation; we wouldn't be able to achieve what we have without you! Cheers from Baffle gab1978 and your GOCE coordinators Dhtwiki, Miniapolis and Wracking. To discontinue receiving GOCE newsletters, please remove your name from our mailing list.
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New page patrol May 2024 Backlog drive
| New Page Patrol | May 2024 Articles Backlog Drive | |
| |
| 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) 16:15, 17 April 2024 (UTC)
Books & Bytes – Issue 62
The Wikipedia Library: Books & Bytes
Issue 62, March – April 2024
- IEEE and Haaretz now available
- Let's Connect Clinics about The Wikipedia Library
- Spotlight and Wikipedia Library tips
Sent by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of The Wikipedia Library team --11:03, 23 April 2024 (UTC)
Growth News, April 2024
The Growth team will now send quarterly reports to keep you in the loop. Growth team weekly updates are available on wiki (in English) if you want to know more about our day-to-day work.
If you want to receive more general updates about technical activity happening across the Wikimedia movement (including Growth work), we encourage you to subscribe to Tech News.
Community Configuration
Growth features are currently configurable at Special:EditGrowthConfig. This quarter we are working on making Community Configuration accessible for other MediaWiki developers while also moving Growth feature configuration to the new CommunityConfiguration extension.
An early version of Community Configuration can be tested at Spanish Beta Wikipedia. We plan to release the new Community Configuration extension to pilot wikis (Arabic and Spanish Wikipedia) in early May, 2024. The first non-Growth team feature to utilize Community Configuration will be Automoderator.
In parallel with the development, the Growth team will propose Community Configuration usage guidelines, Community Configuration design guidelines, and provide technical documentation.
Experiment Results
Add a Image experiment analysis results
The Growth team conducted an experiment to assess the impact of the “Add an Image” structured task on the Newcomer Homepage's "Suggested Edits" module. This analysis finds that the Add an Image structured task leads to an increase in newcomer participation on the mobile web platform, particularly by making constructive (non-reverted) article edits:
- The likelihood that mobile web newcomers make their first article edit (+17.0% over baseline)
- The likelihood that they are retained as newcomers (+24.3% over baseline)
- The number of edits they make during their first two weeks on the wiki (+21.8% over baseline)
- A lower probability of the newcomers' edits will be reverted (-3.3% over baseline).
Personalized praise experiment results
This feature was developed for Mentors as part of the Growth team's Positive Reinforcement project. When A/B testing on Spanish Wikipedia, we found no significant impact on retention, but we found a significant positive impact on newcomer productivity. However, we concluded that the results weren’t positive enough to justify the time investment from Mentors. We plan to discuss this feature with our pilot wikis, and consider further improvements before scaling this feature further. Meanwhile, communities willing to test the feature can ask to have it deployed. (T361763)
English donors encouraged to try editing
As in previous years, donors were directed to a Thank you page after donation (example). However, this year we tested a new “Try editing Wikipedia,” call to action on the Thank You page. This call to action linked to a unique account creation page. From this account creation page we were able to track Registrations and Activation (editing for the first time). During the English banner campaign, the Donor Thank you page led to 4,398 new accounts, and 441 of those accounts went on to constructively edit within 24 hours. (T352900)
Future work
Annual Plan
The Growth team and the Editing team will work on the WE1.2 Key Result in the coming fiscal year. We will start initial discussions with communities soon to help finalize our plans. (T361657)
Newcomer Homepage Community Updates module
We plan to A/B test adding a new Community Configurable module to the Newcomer Homepage that will allow communities to highlight specific events, projects, campaigns, and initiatives. We are early in the planning phase of this project that will take place first at our pilot wikis and wikis volunteering. We welcome community feedback on initial designs and plans, in any language at our project talk page.
Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
18:55, 23 April 2024 (UTC)
The Signpost: 25 April 2024
- In the media: Censorship and wikiwashing looming over RuWiki, edit wars over San Francisco politics, and another wikirace on live TV
- News and notes: A sigh of relief for open access as Italy makes a slight U-turn on their cultural heritage reproduction law
- WikiConference report: WikiConference North America 2023 in Toronto recap
- WikiProject report: WikiProject Newspapers (Not WP:NOTNEWS)
- Recent research: New survey of over 100,000 Wikipedia users
- Traffic report: O.J., cricket and a three body problem
Administrators' newsletter – May 2024
News and updates for administrators from the past month (April 2024).
Guideline and policy news
- Phase I of the 2024 requests for adminship review has concluded. Several proposals have passed outright and will proceed to implementation, including creating a discussion-only period (3b) and administrator elections (13) on a trial basis. Other successful proposals, such as creating a reminder of civility norms (2), will undergo further refinement in Phase II. Proposals passed on a trial basis will be discussed in Phase II, after their trials conclude. Further details on specific proposals can be found in the full report.
Technical news
- Partial action blocks are now in effect on the English Wikipedia. This means that administrators have the ability to restrict users from certain actions, including uploading files, moving pages and files, creating new pages, and sending thanks. T280531
Arbitration
- The arbitration case Conflict of interest management has been closed.
Miscellaneous
- This may be a good time to reach out to potential nominees to ask if they would consider an RfA.
- A New Pages Patrol backlog drive is happening in May 2024 to reduce the number of unreviewed articles in the new pages feed. Currently, there is a backlog of over 15,000 articles awaiting review. Sign up here to participate!
- Voting for the Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee (U4C) election is open until 9 May 2024. Read the voting page on Meta-Wiki and cast your vote here!
The Signpost: 16 May 2024
- News and notes: Democracy in action: multiple elections
- Special report: Will the new RfA reform come to the rescue of administrators?
- Arbitration report: Ruined temples for posterity to ponder over – arbitration from '22 to '24
- Comix: Generations
- Traffic report: Crawl out through the fallout, baby
Administrators' newsletter – June 2024
News and updates for administrators from the past month (May 2024).
Administrator changes
Bureaucrat changes
Guideline and policy news
- Phase II of the 2024 RfA review has commenced to improve and refine the proposals passed in Phase I.
Technical news
- The Nuke feature, which enables administrators to mass delete pages, will now correctly delete pages which were moved to another title. T43351
Arbitration
- The arbitration case Venezuelan politics has been closed.
- The Committee is seeking volunteers for various roles, including access to the conflict of interest VRT queue.
Miscellaneous
- WikiProject Reliability's unsourced statements drive is happening in June 2024 to replace {{citation needed}} tags with references! Sign up here to participate!
Guild of Copy Editors June 2024 Newsletter
| Guild of Copy Editors June 2024 Newsletter
Hello and welcome to the June 2024 newsletter, a quarterly-ish digest of Guild activities since April. Don't forget you can unsubscribe at any time; see below. Election news: Wanted: new Guild coordinators! If you value and enjoy the GOCE, why not help out behind the scenes? Nominations for our mid-year coordinator election are now open until 23:59 on 15 June (UTC). Self-nominations are welcome. Voting commences at 00:01 on 16 June and continues until 23:50 on 30 June. Results will be announced at the election page. Blitz: Nine of the fourteen editors who signed up for the April 2024 Copy Editing Blitz copy edited at least one article. Between them, they copy edited 55,853 words comprising twenty articles. Barnstars awarded are available here. Drive: 58 editors signed up for our May 2024 Backlog Elimination Drive and 33 of those completed at least one copy edit. 251 articles and 475,952 words were copy edited. Barnstars awarded are here. Blitz: Our June 2024 Copy Editing Blitz will begin on 16 June and finish on 22 June. Barnstars awarded will be posted here. Progress report: As of 05:23, 8 June 2024 (UTC) , GOCE copyeditors have completed 161 requests since 1 January and the backlog stands at 2,779 articles. Thank you all again for your participation; we wouldn't be able to achieve what we have without you! Cheers from Baffle gab1978 and your GOCE coordinators Dhtwiki, Miniapolis and Wracking. To discontinue receiving GOCE newsletters, please remove your name from our mailing list.
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The Signpost: 8 June 2024
- Technology report: New Page Patrol receives a much-needed software upgrade
- Deletion report: The lore of Kalloor
- In the media: National cable networks get in on the action arguing about what the first sentence of a Wikipedia article ought to say
- News from the WMF: Progress on the plan — how the Wikimedia Foundation advanced on its Annual Plan goals during the first half of fiscal year 2023-2024
- Recent research: ChatGPT did not kill Wikipedia, but might have reduced its growth
- Featured content: We didn't start the wiki
- Essay: No queerphobia
- Special report: RetractionBot is back to life!
- Traffic report: Chimps, Eurovision, and the return of the Baby Reindeer
- Comix: The Wikipediholic Family
- Concept: Palimpsestuous
The Signpost: 4 July 2024
- News and notes: WMF board elections and fundraising updates
- Special report: Wikimedia Movement Charter ratification vote underway, new Council may surpass power of Board
- In focus: How the Russian Wikipedia keeps it clean despite having just a couple dozen administrators
- Discussion report: Wikipedians are hung up on the meaning of Madonna
- In the media: War and information in war and politics
- Sister projects: On editing Wikisource
- Opinion: Etika: a Pop Culture Champion
- Gallery: Spokane Willy's photos
- Humour: A joke
- Recent research: Is Wikipedia Politically Biased? Perhaps
- Traffic report: Talking about you and me, and the games people play
Administrators' newsletter – July 2024
News and updates for administrators from the past month (June 2024).
Administrator changes
Technical news
- Local administrators can now add new links to the bottom of the site Tools menu without using JavaScript. Documentation is available on MediaWiki. (T6086)
Miscellaneous
- The Community Wishlist is re-opening on 15 July 2024. Read more
Books & Bytes – Issue 63
The Wikipedia Library: Books & Bytes
Issue 63, May – June 2024
- One new partner
- 1Lib1Ref
- Spotlight: References check
Sent by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of The Wikipedia Library team --12:16, 18 July 2024 (UTC)
Happy Birthday!
 | Happy birthday! Hi SS49! On behalf of the Birthday Committee, I'd like to wish you a very happy birthday! Enjoy this special day! The Herald (Benison) (talk) 07:06, 22 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
- Obituary: JamesR
- Crossword: Vaguely bird-shaped crossword
Growth News, July 2024
Community Configuration
The Growth team released Community Configuration at all Wikipedias. You can access it at Special:CommunityConfiguration.
This new special page replaces Special:EditGrowthConfig. For now, all Growth features can be configured using Community Configuration. Configuration for AutoModerator (T365046) and other features will be available in the future.
You can help with translations. The interface translation is done at Translatewiki.net. You can also help translate the documentation.
If you attend Wikimania 2024, please join us for the session about Community configuration's future!
Current work
Newcomer Homepage Community Updates module
We will add a new Community Configurable module to the Newcomer Homepage that will allow communities to highlight specific events, projects, campaigns, and initiatives. We have released a simple version available to beta wikis. We will conduct an A/B test at our pilot wikis using the new Metrics Platform. We still welcome community feedback on initial designs and plans, in any language at our project talk page.
Future work
Increase constructive activation on mobile
As part of the Growth team 2024/2025 Annual Plan, the Growth team will explore various ways to increase the percentage of newcomers who successfully start editing.
Editing a Wikipedia page requires too much context and patience. It means many trial and error for newcomers to contribute, meaning a steeper learning curve and potential discouraging reverts. To support a new generation of volunteers, we will increase the number and availability of smaller, structured, and more task-specific editing workflows (E.g. Edit Check and Structured Tasks). The Growth team will primarily focus on Structured Tasks, while working closely with the Editing team to ensure our work integrates well with Edit Check.
Stay informed
Growth team weekly updates are available on wiki (in English) if you want to know more about our day-to-day work. If you want to receive more general updates about technical activity happening across the Wikimedia movement (including Growth work), we encourage you to subscribe to Tech News.
Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
15:08, 30 July 2024 (UTC)
Administrators' newsletter – August 2024
News and updates for administrators from the past month (July 2024).
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
The Signpost: 14 August 2024
- In the media: Portland pol profile paid for from public purse
- 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
New pages patrol September 2024 Backlog drive
| New pages patrol | September 2024 Backlog Drive | |
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| 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) 17:10, 26 August 2024 (UTC)
Administrators' newsletter – September 2024
News and updates for administrators from the past month (August 2024).
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!
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?
- 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
Guild of Copy Editors September Newsletter
| Guild of Copy Editors September Newsletter
Hello and welcome to the September newsletter, a quarterly digest of Guild activities since June. Don't forget you can unsubscribe at any time; see below. Election news: Project coordinators play an important role in our WikiProject. Following the mid-year Election of Coordinators, we welcomed Mox Eden to the coordinator team. Dhtwiki remains as Lead Coordinator, and Miniapolis and Wracking returned as assistant coordinators. If you'd like to help out behind the scenes, please consider taking part in our December election – watchlist our ombox for updates. Information about the role of coordinators can be found here. Blitz: 13 of the 24 editors who signed up for the June 2024 Copy Editing Blitz copy edited at least one article. Between them, they copy edited 169,404 words comprising 41 articles. Barnstars awarded are here. Drive: 38 of the 59 editors who signed up for the July 2024 Backlog Elimination Drive copy edited at least one article. Between them, they copy edited 482,133 words comprising 293 articles. Barnstars awarded are here. Blitz: 10 of the 15 editors who signed up for the August 2024 Copy Editing Blitz copy edited at least one article. Between them, they copy edited 71,294 words comprising 31 articles. Barnstars awarded are here. Drive: Sign up here to earn barnstars in our month-long, in-progress September Backlog Elimination Drive. Progress report: As of 05:14, 11 September 2024 (UTC), GOCE copyeditors have processed 233 requests since 1 January, and the backlog of tagged articles stands at 2,824 articles. Thank you all again for your participation; we wouldn't be able to achieve what we do without you! Cheers from Baffle gab1978 and your GOCE coordinators Dhtwiki, Miniapolis, Mox Eden and Wracking. To discontinue receiving GOCE newsletters, please remove your name from our mailing list.
|
Message sent by Baffle gab1978 (talk) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 05:54, 11 September 2024 (UTC)
Books & Bytes – Issue 64
The Wikipedia Library: Books & Bytes
Issue 64, July – August 2024
- The Hindu Group joins The Wikipedia Library
- Wikimania presentation
- New user script for easily searching The Wikipedia Library
Sent by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of The Wikipedia Library team --16:34, 11 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?
- 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
Administrators' newsletter – October 2024
News and updates for administrators from the past month (September 2024).
Administrator changes
CheckUser changes
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.
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
Growth News, October 2024
Current work
Newcomer Homepage Community Updates module
We will add a new module to the Newcomer Homepage that will allow communities to highlight specific events, projects, campaigns, and initiatives. We have released a simple version on beta wikis and we will soon start an A/B test on our pilot wikis. This module will only display on the Newcomer Homepage if communities decide to utilize it, so learn how to configure the Community Updates module, or share your thoughts on the project's talk page.
Constructive activation experimentation
After showcasing early design ideas at Wikimania, we conducted user testing of design prototypes. We now aim to engage communities in further discussions and plan to run a targeted experiment, presenting a structured task within the reading view to logged-in new account holders with zero edits.
This Community Configuration extension was developed to help communities customize wiki features to meet their unique needs. The Growth team is now helping other Wikimedia Foundation teams make their products configurable:
- The Moderation Tools team now provides Community Configuration for Automoderator. (T365046)
- Certain Babel extension settings will be configurable soon. (T328171)
Future work
As part of the Growth team annual plan, we will continue to investigate ways to increase constructive activation on mobile, while also working with Data Products to move forward A/B testing functionality via the Metrics Platform.
Community events
- Growth team members presented Community Configuration: Shaping On-Wiki Functionality Together at Wikimania (slides). The session recording is available to watch on YouTube. This session provided an update on the Community Configuration project and introduced details about the upcoming features that communities will soon be able to configure. Representatives from the Moderator Tools, Editing, Web, and Campaigns teams shared their plans for utilizing Community Configuration in the future. Following these presentations, the WMF Growth team's Benoît Evellin and Martin Urbanec answered audience questions.
- Habib Mhenni gave a presentation of how mentorship works at WikiIndaba 2024. The recording is available.
Stay informed
Growth team weekly updates are available on wiki (in English) if you want to know more about our day-to-day work. If you want to receive more general updates about technical activity happening across the Wikimedia movement (including Growth work), we encourage you to subscribe to Tech News.
Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
Trizek_(WMF), 15:43, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
Invitation to participate in a research
Hello,
The Wikimedia Foundation is conducting a survey of Wikipedians to better understand what draws administrators to contribute to Wikipedia, and what affects administrator retention. We will use this research to improve experiences for Wikipedians, and address common problems and needs. We have identified you as a good candidate for this research, and would greatly appreciate your participation in this anonymous survey.
You do not have to be an Administrator to participate.
The survey should take around 10-15 minutes to complete. You may read more about the study on its Meta page and view its privacy statement .
Please find our contact on the project Meta page if you have any questions or concerns.
Kind Regards,
BGerdemann (WMF) (talk) 19:27, 23 October 2024 (UTC)
Important: Please update user script installation
Hi there, you currently have a user script installed from Anne drew Andrew and Drew. Several weeks ago, I changed my username to Anne drew, and unfortunately, due to an issue with script redirects, the scripts you have installed under my old username no longer function.
To fix this, please update your JavaScript pages (Special:MyPage/common.js or Special:MyPage/skin.js) by replacing all instances of Anne drew Andrew and Drew with Anne drew.
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MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:11, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
Administrators' newsletter – November 2024
News and updates for administrators from the past month (October 2024).
Administrator changes
CheckUser changes
Oversighter changes
Guideline and policy news
- Following a discussion, the discussion-only period proposal that went for a trial to refine the requests for adminship (RfA) process has been discontinued.
- Following a request for comment, Administrator recall is adopted as a policy.
Technical news
- Mass deletions done with the Nuke tool now have the 'Nuke' tag. This change will make reviewing and analyzing deletions performed with the tool easier. T366068
Arbitration
- RoySmith, Barkeep49 and Cyberpower678 have been appointed to the Electoral Commission for the 2024 Arbitration Committee Elections. ThadeusOfNazereth and Dr vulpes are reserve commissioners.
- Eligible editors are invited to self-nominate from 3 November 2024 until 12 November 2024 to stand in the 2024 Arbitration Committee elections.
- The Arbitration Committee is seeking volunteers for roles such as clerks, access to the COI queue, checkuser, and oversight.
Miscellaneous
- An unreferenced articles backlog drive is happening in November 2024 to reduce the backlog of articles tagged with {{Unreferenced}}. You can help reduce the backlog by adding citations to these articles. Sign up to participate!
The Signpost: 6 November 2024
- From the editors: Editing Wikipedia should not be a crime
- In the media: An old scrimmage, politics and purported libel
- Special report: Wikipedia editors face litigation, censorship
- Traffic report: Twisted tricks or tempting treats?
Books & Bytes – Issue 65
The Wikipedia Library: Books & Bytes
Issue 65, September – October 2024
- Hindu Tamil Thisai joins The Wikipedia Library
- Frankfurt Book Fair 2024 report
- Tech tip: Mass downloads
Sent by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of The Wikipedia Library team --12:49, 12 November 2024 (UTC)
Reminder to participate in Wikipedia research
Hello,
I recently invited you to take a survey about administration on Wikipedia. If you haven’t yet had a chance, there is still time to participate– we’d truly appreciate your feedback. The survey is anonymous and should take about 10-15 minutes to complete. You may read more about the study on its Meta page and view its privacy statement.
Take the survey here.
Kind Regards,
BGerdemann (WMF) (talk) 00:40, 13 November 2024 (UTC)
The Signpost: 18 November 2024
ArbCom 2024 Elections voter message
Hello! Voting in the 2024 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23:59 (UTC) on Monday, 2 December 2024. All eligible users are allowed to vote. Users with alternate accounts may only vote once.
The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail.
If you wish to participate in the 2024 election, please review the candidates and submit your choices on the voting page. If you no longer wish to receive these messages, you may add {{NoACEMM}} to your user talk page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:39, 19 November 2024 (UTC)