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Editing News #2—2018

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Did you know?

Did you know that you can use the visual editor on a mobile device?

Screenshot showing the location of the pencil icon

Tap on the pencil icon to start editing. The page will probably open in the wikitext editor.

You will see another pencil icon in the toolbar. Tap on that pencil icon to the switch between visual editing and wikitext editing.

Toolbar with menu opened

Remember to publish your changes when you're done.

You can read and help translate the user guide, which has more information about how to use the visual editor.

Since the last newsletter, the Editing Team has wrapped up most of their work on the 2017 wikitext editor and the visual diff tool. The team has begun investigating the needs of editors who use mobile devices. Their work board is available in Phabricator. Their current priorities are fixing bugs and improving mobile editing.

Recent changes

Let's work together

  • The Editing team wants to improve visual editing on the mobile website. Please read their ideas and tell the team what you think would help editors who use the mobile site.
  • The Community Wishlist Survey begins next week.
  • If you aren't reading this in your preferred language, then please help us with translations! Subscribe to the Translators mailing list or contact us directly. We will notify you when the next issue is ready for translation. Thank you!

— Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 17:12, 1 November 2018 (UTC)

I'd ask you to stop using your bot on the articles about the albums of this singer. Your domestic changes don't add anything except withdrawing a few things that were present before your edits [2] & [3]. I had to rectify the details that your presentation had erased, this must not happen again. Carliertwo (talk) 22:56, 26 October 2018 (UTC)

Hello Carliertwo, I believe you are referring to this task. In which case, what the bot is doing is updating the infobox album (and its redirect) templates as they contain what are called deprecated parameters. Deprecated parameters are issues to be resolved, and usually can be done so quite easily with a bot. The bot was officially approved to do this for all articles affected. While the changes were indeed not visual (which wasn't the point), they were still meaningful and removed the articles from Category:Music infoboxes with deprecated parameters. Just because a task has a negative edit summary (most bot tasks do), does not mean they are a mistake or need reverting based on that alone. I would encourage you to read the closed Bot Request For Approval, which is linked in the edit summaries and above. Please do not revert the bot, it is working as intended and doing sanctioned work. It is not "erasing" anything as there is no visual change to the articles in question. The bot works on all articles currently in that category, meaning that it is highly probable that the bot will come across it again on its own. I shall tag the people involved with the request if they wish to comment further on it. @Xaosflux, JJMC89, and SQL: --TheSandDoctor Talk 00:51, 27 October 2018 (UTC)
That said, I thank you for coming forward with this. Letting bot operator(s) know of issues when reverting is preferable as often times it is not possible to review every edit a bot makes and most often operators are not logged into the bot account itself to see such notifications (ie reverts) as the account's only purpose is automated editing. --TheSandDoctor Talk 01:21, 27 October 2018 (UTC)
Looks like it is working as intended to me. Those parameters were only meant to include the title and year. — JJMC89 (T·C) 06:17, 1 November 2018 (UTC)
Re your email: I am referring to edits like this being correct. |Last album= and |Next album= are only supposed to contain the album title and year (with markup), not the extra bits that are in there. — JJMC89 (T·C) 01:43, 2 November 2018 (UTC)

Show buttons on your user page

When I mouse over them I see a tooltip consisting of a #, not your username, and the size doesn't change. — JJMC89 (T·C) 01:49, 2 November 2018 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – November 2018

News and updates for administrators from the past month (October 2018).

Guideline and policy news

Technical news

  • Partial blocks is now available for testing on the Test Wikipedia. The new functionality allows you to block users from editing specific pages. Bugs may exist and can be reported on the local talk page or on Meta. A discussion regarding deployment to English Wikipedia will be started by community liaisons sometime in the near future.
  • A user script is now available to quickly review unblock requests.
  • The 2019 Community Wishlist Survey is now accepting new proposals until November 11, 2018. The results of this survey will determine what software the Wikimedia Foundation's Community Tech team will work on next year. Voting on the proposals will take place from November 16 to November 30, 2018. Specifically, there is a proposal category for admins and stewards that may be of interest.

Arbitration

  • Eligible editors will be invited to nominate themselves as candidates in the 2018 Arbitration Committee Elections starting on November 4 until November 13. Voting will begin on November 19 and last until December 2.
  • The Arbitration Committee's email address has changed to arbcom-en@wikimedia.org. Other email lists, such as functionaries-en and clerks-l, remain unchanged.
Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 07:19, 3 November 2018 (UTC)

Bot

Hi TSD,

DeprecatedFixerBot seems to be purging the format and filename data on Template:Infobox single instead of updating them to use Template:Audio sample with the misc parameter.

This is a double whammy, because B-bot picks up on the aftermath and prods the audio file under CSD criteria, which means that (depending on how long this has been happening) a lot of fair use files may be in peril.

Best,

  — C M B J   02:58, 30 October 2018 (UTC)

@CMBJ: Hi there, the BRFA was to simply substitute Infobox single using the substitution trick, it shouldn't have removed that. I have deactivated the task in the bot's status page while I look into this, but I have a feeling it is more on the template's side than the bot itself (see "Task 3 Infobox album etc" section above as well). I am pinging Jc86035 as they are an active template editor and one that I frequently turn to with template related questions. Thank you for bringing this to my attention. In the case of that specific image, I have rolled back my bot and reverted the nomination by the other bot. If you are aware of any other instances, please feel free to do that same or tell me about them and I shall. The same goes for restorations if any were deleted as a direct result.
Jc, could we please have your input on this? Could the template subst trick be updated to take this into account or do you have any other suggestions etc? --TheSandDoctor Talk 03:08, 30 October 2018 (UTC)
@TheSandDoctor: I'm not sure why the substitution actually worked without any errors (it shouldn't have), but this is because the template was placed at the end of |Next single= instead of in |Misc=. The template should have been categorized into Category:Music infoboxes with malformed table placement, but it wasn't for some reason. Jc86035 (talk) 05:43, 30 October 2018 (UTC)
@Jc86035: This task does not run off any category, rather the transclusions. I shall add a check for that category the next time I am on tools (next day or two) if you feel that that would be necessary/beneficial. The task won't run between now and then, but based off your comments, it appears that it wouldn't be/isn't a widespread issue? --TheSandDoctor Talk 06:31, 30 October 2018 (UTC)
I don't know if it would have been widespread. For some reason, the chronology parameters were not included in the tracking for the table placement category, which is a little worrying. I have temporarily added tracking to {{Infobox single}}; assuming a random distribution, if there are more than a few entries in the category afterwards (of the yet-to-be-substituted transclusions) then there is probably a roughly equivalent proportion of the bot edits to be fixed. (Special:Contributions/B-bot conveniently lists a few other casualties, such as Divine Intervention (album)'s alternate cover image.) Jc86035 (talk) 08:00, 30 October 2018 (UTC)
46 pages have been newly placed in the category (there were 10 earlier today). I suspect you or someone else may have to go through all of the diffs to see if any subtemplates were removed. Sorry for not figuring out this would happen earlier (I don't really remember that much about working on these templates, to be honest). Jc86035 (talk) 10:57, 30 October 2018 (UTC)
@Jc86035: I shall go through that category. As for the alternative cover you mentioned, that was not the bot's doing. It was removed in this edit by an IP. --TheSandDoctor Talk 15:48, 30 October 2018 (UTC)
Oh, I didn't notice that. Presumably some of the other edits are about the accidental removals; there have probably been a few more, and the file-checking bots probably didn't catch all of the accidental removals (especially possible removals of {{External music video}}, which would be difficult to notice in passing). Jc86035 (talk) 15:51, 30 October 2018 (UTC)
Adding Infobox single to Category:Music infoboxes with malformed table placement (0) has bumped it up to 700+ pages, after I emptied it out a couple of weeks ago (I'm not complaining; thanks for fixing this oversight!). Bots and scripts that subst templates should avoid pages in that category. If I have time, I'll work on the pages. Pinging Zackmann08 as an FYI. – Jonesey95 (talk) 20:24, 3 November 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-45

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 choose to see edit conflicts in a two-column view. This is a beta feature. You can find it in your preferences. The interface for the two-column edit conflict will change. You can read more.
  • When you edit with the visual editor you can use the "Automatic" citation tab. This helps you generate citations. You will now be able to write plain text citations or the title of a journal article or a book in this tab. This will search the Crossref and WorldCat databases and add the top result. [5]
  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 6 November. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 7 November. It will be on all wikis from 8 November (calendar).

Meetings

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

17:28, 5 November 2018 (UTC)

mail call

Hello, TheSandDoctor/Archives/2018. Please check your email; you've got mail!
It may take a few minutes from the time the email is sent for it to show up in your inbox. You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{You've got mail}} or {{ygm}} template.

-- Dlohcierekim (talk) 04:43, 7 November 2018 (UTC)

Replied Dlohcierekim & emailed. --TheSandDoctor Talk 05:03, 7 November 2018 (UTC)

List of Xbox games with HD support

Deletion review for List of Xbox games with HD support

An editor has asked for a deletion review of List of Xbox games with HD support. Because you closed the deletion discussion for this page, speedily deleted it, or otherwise were interested in the page, you might want to participate in the deletion review. MechWarriorZero (talk) 00:32, 12 November 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-46

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 old mobile browsers can use the watchlist again. This has not worked for a while. These browsers are called grade C browsers. This helps for example Windows Phone 8.1 with Internet Explorer and Lumia 535 with Windows 10. [6]

Problems

  • You can choose to see edit conflicts in a two-column view. This is a beta feature. You can find it in your preferences. Users who use this view saw the edit conflict resolution page when they wanted to see a preview. This has been fixed. [7][8][9]

Changes later this week

  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 13 November. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 14 November. It will be on all wikis from 15 November (calendar).

Meetings

Future changes

  • You can use the content translation tool to translate articles. The developers are working on a new version. One of the changes will be a maintenance category. Articles where users add a lot of text from machine translation without changing it will be in that category. This is so the community can review it. The users will also have been warned before they publish the article that it has a lot of unchanged text from machine translations. [10]

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

19:21, 12 November 2018 (UTC)

How can I make article better

Hi TheSandDoctor!

I'm working on this article https://wiki.riteme.site/wiki/Draft:OnTheGoSystems. Can you please help me? It is hard to write an article about the company without referencing web site of that same company. It is very hard to write about history and of a company without using their own web as a reference. Same also goes for their products. I managed to do that by looking at various web site, I've found an interview with person that has founded the company, I've searched dozens of web sites so I would find those that are not affiliated with company. If you look at initial article you will see that it was much broader with lot. Can I use sites such as https://premium.wpmudev.org/blog/multilingual-wordpress-wpml/ and https://wpmayor.com/using-wpml-plugin-best-bet-building-multilingual-website/ as source of information and for reference? I have just now changed the tone of the article. Is it good enough now? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Flamdelaboyan (talk • contribs) 06:42, 13 November 2018 (UTC)

Issue in IRC

Hi! Are you one of the admins in wikipedia-en-help in IRC? If yes,why you banned this ip:183.78.95.171?Snoopy Jian (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 18:44, 9 November 2018 (UTC)

@Snoopy Jian: I am indeed, but did not ban any IPs recently so cannot answer that unfortunately. --TheSandDoctor Talk 17:38, 16 November 2018 (UTC)

Elton John

I know you love the Rolling Stones and I was wondering if you would review an article for an artists from the same era, Elton John, which I nominated for GA. Thanks for your consideration!MagicatthemovieS (talk) 17:23, 12 November 2018 (UTC)MagicatthemovieS

I am not sure if I will have time to do this until closer to Christmas. That said, I have had Keith Richards nominated for months, so it will probably still be free. --17:40, 16 November 2018 (UTC)

List of Xbox games with alternate display modes

Hello,

Just wondering why this page was deleted. Are you planning to combine it with the full list of games?

That page, while not always accurate, was very helpful to people looking for games with advanced display modes for the time on the Xbox. If possible, I would like it to be reinstated unless the information can be provided elsewhere.

Cheers for your time.

P4ngw4ng (talk) 17:16, 16 November 2018 (UTC)

@P4ngw4ng: Please see the discussion at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of Xbox games with alternate display modes for the explanation. In short, it was in violation of Wikipedia policy (specifically, the WP:NOTCATALOGUE and WP:NOTGAMEGUIDE sections of Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not). It was disputed at a deletion review, however, the close as "delete" was endorsed and the discussion closed as improper (read discussion linked for details). The page was indeed deleted by me, but was merely enacting the consensus of others. I am sure that there are Wikipedia mirrors that will still have it and sites such as deletionpedia and know for a fact that it is now here. --TheSandDoctor Talk 17:30, 16 November 2018 (UTC)

NPR Newsletter No.15 16 November 2018

Chart of the New Pages Patrol backlog for the past 6 months.

Hello TheSandDoctor/Archives/2018,

Community Wishlist Survey – NPP needs you – Vote NOW
  • Community Wishlist Voting takes place 16 to 30 November for the Page Curation and New Pages Feed improvements, and other software requests. The NPP community is hoping for a good turnout in support of the requests to Santa for the tools we need. This is very important as we have been asking the Foundation for these upgrades for 4 years.
If this proposal does not make it into the top ten, it is likely that the tools will be given no support at all for the foreseeable future. So please put in a vote today.
We are counting on significant support not only from our own ranks, but from everyone who is concerned with maintaining a Wikipedia that is free of vandalism, promotion, flagrant financial exploitation and other pollution.
With all 650 reviewers voting for these urgently needed improvements, our requests would be unlikely to fail. See also The Signpost Special report: 'NPP: This could be heaven or this could be hell for new users – and for the reviewers', and if you are not sure what the wish list is all about, take a sneak peek at an article in this month's upcoming issue of The Signpost which unfortunately due to staff holidays and an impending US holiday will probably not be published until after voting has closed.

Go here to remove your name if you wish to opt-out of future mailings. — Insertcleverphrasehere (or here)18:37, 16 November 2018 (UTC)

You've got mail

Hello, TheSandDoctor/Archives/2018. Please check your email; you've got mail!
It may take a few minutes from the time the email is sent for it to show up in your inbox. You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{You've got mail}} or {{ygm}} template.

 TheRedBox (Talk) 23:15, 16 November 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-47

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 vote on proposals in the Community Wishlist Survey. The survey decides what the Community Tech team will work on. You can vote until 30 November.
  • Advanced item There is an A/B test for sameAs data. This is to make it easier to find the right information with a search engine. This changes the metadata for a wiki page. It doesn't change how the page looks. [11]

Changes later this week

  • There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

Meetings

Future changes

  • The Wikimedia wikis use templates to show readers there are problems with the content on some pages. For example if there are no sources or the page needs to be rewritten. The mobile website will soon show more information when you use these templates. Some templates may need to be updated. [12]
  • The Education Program extension was removed from all Wikimedia projects. The database tables used by the extension will be archived. This will happen in a month. If you want the information on your wiki you should move it to a normal wiki page. [13]

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

23:28, 19 November 2018 (UTC)

ArbCom 2018 election voter message

Hello, TheSandDoctor. Voting in the 2018 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23.59 on Sunday, 3 December. All users who registered an account before Sunday, 28 October 2018, made at least 150 mainspace edits before Thursday, 1 November 2018 and are not currently blocked are eligible 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 2018 election, please review the candidates and submit your choices on the voting page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:42, 19 November 2018 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

The Press Barnstar
A bunch of other people already beat me to it, but after seeing your comments in the Gizmodo and Newsweek articles, I also wanted to mention that it’s refreshing to see an admin represent Wikipedia and what we do well to the news media, and when I found out that you’ve only been in role as an admin for only 5 or so months, I wanted to say thank you for that and everything that you’re doing so far! OhKayeSierra (talk) 04:35, 24 November 2018 (UTC)
Thank you very much! My goal here is just to help out. If I can help out by answering questions or filling in on context that press@wikimedia.org may or may not be able to help with, I will definitely consider reaching out. Obviously, I do not want to step on anyone's toes and would defer/refer to press@wikimedia.org when appropriate, but simple stuff like updating them that the situation was now under control/resolved when they were still reporting it underway I didn't see an issue with. Thanks again OhKayeSierra. --TheSandDoctor Talk 04:47, 24 November 2018 (UTC)

You're in the news!

I'm not sure how involved you were in fighting the vandalism on Donald Trump today, but Gizmodo mentioned you in their coverage of the incident. Good job reaching out to them and helping them get their story straight. Thanks! Bradv 03:47, 23 November 2018 (UTC)

@Bradv: That was fairly surprising. Was surprised today to also learn I was also quoted in Newsweek (link) and USA Today (link), with a few other articles quoting me, but not directly naming (started by The Verge, who referred to me as "an editor"). All I did was let the Verge and a couple that quoted them know that the vandalism had ceased as they were reporting it as still ongoing. I was not expecting to be quoted in all these articles, so that was a surprise. I'd be lying if I didn't say it was somewhat exciting and an entirely new experience for me. --TheSandDoctor Talk 04:14, 24 November 2018 (UTC)
Well, good work on reaching out and helping improve their coverage. I really think there's no such thing as negative publicity for Wikipedia — every time we're in the news people get inspired to come and help. And I have to say, I'm envious of the positive coverage you're getting. ;) Bradv 04:21, 24 November 2018 (UTC)
Well done! So, are you notable yet? Shall we start writing an article about you? Or is this a case of WP:BLP1E? 0;-D -- MelanieN (talk) 23:03, 24 November 2018 (UTC)
@MelanieN: Haha, if that ever happens, I promise I won't edit the article :P --TheSandDoctor Talk 23:17, 24 November 2018 (UTC)
@MelanieN and Bradv: Back in the Verge now [14]. --TheSandDoctor Talk 08:35, 25 November 2018 (UTC)
We may soon have more articles about the Trump thing at Press coverage 2018 than about Donna Strickland. Oh well, what can you do. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 12:55, 25 November 2018 (UTC)

Implementing results of Rfc.

Howdy. When is the 'page move' bot suppose to be going around? GoodDay (talk) 20:47, 25 November 2018 (UTC)

@GoodDay: Whenever the BRFA is approved. --TheSandDoctor Talk 21:56, 25 November 2018 (UTC)
Ok. GoodDay (talk) 21:56, 25 November 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-48

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

Recent changes

  • On wikis with translatable pages you could create a mess when you moved a page that had translatable subpages. A subpage is when you use / to create a new page: /wiki/Page/Subpage. The subpages would be moved but not the translations. The subpages are no longer automatically be moved. This is to make it safer to move pages. [15]

Changes later this week

  • The advanced search interface will be available by default on all Wikimedia wikis. It makes it easier to use some of the special search functions that most editors don't know exist. It's already active on German, Farsi, Arabic and Hungarian Wikipedia. [16]
  • Special:UnusedCategories show empty categories with no files or other categories. You can soon choose to not show soft redirect categories or some maintenance categories there. You can do this with the magic word __EXPECTUNUSEDCATEGORY__. [17]
  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 27 November. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 28 November. It will be on all wikis from 29 November (calendar).

Meetings

Future changes

  • Advanced item The mw.util.jsMessage() function was deprecated in 2012. It will be removed next week. Look for the warning Use of "mw.util.jsMessage" is deprecated in the JavaScript console to know if you use an affected script or gadget. If you are a gadget maintainer you should check if your JavaScript code contains mw.util.jsMessage. There is a migration guide. It explains how to use mw.notify instead. [18]

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

22:22, 26 November 2018 (UTC)

Just a thought

Do you think the bot could move categorised redirects? I was having a look at which articles hadn't been moved, and this was the most common reason. Banffshire by-election, 1882 is an example – it (and a few others) appear in Category:1882 elections in the United Kingdom and Category:By-elections to the Parliament of the United Kingdom in Scottish constituencies. Not moving them is going to make for some odd discrepancies in the categories.

This can be fixed manually, but I was just wondering whether it was something the bot could do, especially as there are absolutely tonnes of the American-style ones. This will of course create a double redirect, but would a bot be clever enough to edit the newly-created redirect and point it to the same location as the moved categorised redirect? Another bot goes round fixing double redirects, but it might make a bit of work for it (although some higher profile election articles are likely to have multiple redirects already that it will have to fix).

Appreciate this possibly counts as scope creep outside of the bounds of the bot's approved run, so no problems if it's not possible. And of course thanks for getting it off the ground! Cheers, Number 57 21:52, 28 November 2018 (UTC)

@Number 57: So create the new redirect then go back and edit it, copying the contents of the other to the new one? It could theoretically be done, but I would be concerned that that is outside the scope of its approval. I would rather have some BAG input before doing anything. Also, isn't it correct that another bot will correct this? SQL, what do you think of the suggestion?. --TheSandDoctor Talk 22:11, 28 November 2018 (UTC)
If it were to happen, it should copy the redirect target, but not the categorisation of the redirect. But as you say, there is a bot that goes round fixing double redirects anyway, so it needn't be your one doing that element of the work. Regarding the scope issue, there is an argument that these are quasi-articles as they have been categorised with the intention of appearing like articles in categories. Number 57 22:13, 28 November 2018 (UTC)

Extra comma in page move

TheSandBot moved the page List of United States presidential electors, 2012 to List of 2012 United States presidential electors, (note the comma at the end). I don't know how it happened, but I wanted to let you know in case the bot makes other errors like that. I fixed this one. Jonathunder (talk) 23:07, 29 November 2018 (UTC)

@Jonathunder: Thanks, sorry. The bot runs off of lists provided by Number 57, as can be seen in the BRFA. The issue would have been on the list. --TheSandDoctor Talk 23:18, 29 November 2018 (UTC)
(e/c) Sorry, that was my bad. I've fixed the other electors articles, which all had the same error. Thankfully these were the only seven proposed moves that had this error (I've just checked all the others). Number 57 23:19, 29 November 2018 (UTC)
Thanks Number 57, cc Jonathunder --TheSandDoctor Talk 23:28, 29 November 2018 (UTC)
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