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Administrators' newsletter – July 2020

News and updates for administrators from the past month (June 2020).

Guideline and policy news

Technical news

Arbitration

  • Following the banning of an editor by the WMF last year, the Arbitration Committee resolved to hold an RfC regarding on-wiki harassment. The RfC has been posted at Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Anti-harassment RfC and is open to comments from the community.
  • The Medicine case was closed, with a remedy authorizing standard discretionary sanctions for all discussions about pharmaceutical drug prices and pricing and for edits adding, changing, or removing pharmaceutical drug prices or pricing from articles.
Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 10:26, 1 July 2020 (UTC)

More socking

Hope you are well. Seems like a rather quick turn-around on this one, please take a look when you get a chance Wikipedia:Sockpuppet_investigations/Middayexpress. Much appreciated! Best regards --Kzl55 (talk) 22:14, 1 July 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for alerting me to this, Kzl55, I have requested that a checkuser take a look. --TheSandDoctor Talk 23:36, 1 July 2020 (UTC)
Many thanks! --Kzl55 (talk) 00:07, 2 July 2020 (UTC)

Editing news 2020 #3

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

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

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

Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 02:06, 3 July 2020 (UTC)

MNALHR

Hi TheSandDoctor. I saw that you tagged MNALHR (talk · contribs) as a sockpuppet of "Timlaieditor". I'm not familiar with that case but I came across MNAHLR while tracking a spam link for:

Added by

Any thoughts? @GeneralNotability:-KH-1 (talk) 13:27, 5 July 2020 (UTC)

KH-1, PPP786 certainly looks possible to MNALHR. SMTP Service and Tenant Migration I'm less sure of, they look more like spambots to me, and they would have been active when MNALHR got checkusered during the Timlaieditor SPI. I've blocked all three as promo-only/suspected UPE or spambots. I recommend reporting PPP786 as a suspected Timlaieditor sock and requesting a sleeper check, and requesting duocircle be added to the spam blacklist (along with pretty much anything that MNALHR and PPP786 have tried to insert as a ref). The IPs are probably related as well, but they're a month stale so not much to do there. GeneralNotability (talk) 16:56, 5 July 2020 (UTC)
Actually, don't worry about requesting blacklisting - I'm working on that myself now. GeneralNotability (talk) 17:05, 5 July 2020 (UTC)
...don't worry about requesting an SPI either, this is getting complicated, I'll take care of it. (Sorry for all the messages TSD!) GeneralNotability (talk) 17:27, 5 July 2020 (UTC)
@GeneralNotability: No problem! This is as busy as my talk page has been in months hehe. . Just to clarify...there is nothing for me to do now regarding this thread, right? --TheSandDoctor Talk 18:14, 5 July 2020 (UTC)
Don't think so, you were brought into this because you tagged MNALHR as a sock, but I think I've handled everything here - blacklisted the spam domains and opened an SPI about these accounts and others being possible Timlaieditor socks. GeneralNotability (talk) 18:16, 5 July 2020 (UTC)
Thanks for your help. I think that just about covers it (for now). -KH-1 (talk) 04:19, 6 July 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-28

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

Problems

  • The Score extension has been disabled for now. This is because of a security issue. It will work again as soon as the security issue has been fixed. [1]

Changes later this week

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

Future changes

  • Abstract Wikipedia is a new Wikimedia project. It will collect language-independent information that can be easily read in different languages. It builds on Wikidata. The name is preliminary. You can read more. [2]
  • The iOS Wikipedia app developers are thinking about new experimental tools. If you use an iPhone you can help them by answering the survey.
  • Some rules for user signatures will soon be enforced. Lint errors and invalid HTML will no longer be allowed in user signatures. Nested substitution will not be allowed. A link to your user page, user talk page or user contributions will be required. You can check if your signature works with the new rules. This is because the signatures can cause problems for tools or other text on the page.

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

20:18, 6 July 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-29

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

Recent changes

  • Users can thank others for their edits. Checkusers can now see user data related to that action. This can help identify sock puppets who harass others using thanks. [3]

Problems

  • Everyone was logged out a couple of weeks ago to fix a security problem. The problem was not entirely fixed. Because of this everyone was logged out once again last week. [4][5]

Changes later this week

  • Wikis that are not for one specific language can translate pages. Sometimes parts of translations are outdated or missing. Outdated translations are marked with a pink background. Missing translations will also be marked in the future. This markup can sometimes break things. It can soon be disabled by using <translate nowrap></translate> on the source page. [6]
  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 14 July. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 15 July. It will be on all wikis from 16 July (calendar).

Future changes

  • Advanced item Wikimedia code review plans to use GitLab. It would be hosted on Wikimedia servers. [7][8][9][10]

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

16:30, 13 July 2020 (UTC)

Questions re: ban lifting

Hello Sanddoctor,

I guess I'd like a 2nd opinion, since you closed my last request to lift a ban. And as I recently asked another editor about my chances, to no benefit, I'll ask for your opinion. And they're really two different questions: the first is the same as the one I asked User Masem in the link. The other is whether I could have an exception made for edits I make to bios, namely being allowed to add citations where needed.

Since I occasionally comment on nominations for recent deaths being posted on the main page, it's been a common problem that any famous movie actors, composers, directors, etc. will usually be delayed for days while their long lists of credits get verified by a citation. Few editors bother, even for well-known figures, so it takes days. I can try to help. Any thoughts would be appreciated. --Light show (talk) 06:32, 16 July 2020 (UTC)

@Light show: Bans must be lifted by community discussion. You are not barred from appealing you ban and discussing it in the context. (Well) Over six months have passed, so feel free to appeal it again at WP:AN. --TheSandDoctor Talk 03:04, 17 July 2020 (UTC)
Just adding that I would also recommend following my advice (or, rather, Winkelvi's) from the time about appealing. --TheSandDoctor Talk 03:06, 17 July 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-30

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

Recent changes

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

Problems

  • There is a problem with the interlanguage links. The interlanguage links are the links that help you find a specific page in a different language. The sorting is broken. The developers are working on a solution. [11]
  • Some users keep getting the notifications for the same event. Some of these are old events. [12]
  • Some users have trouble logging in. This is probably a browser cookie problem. The developers are working on understanding the problem. If you have trouble logging in you can see the details on Phabricator. [13]

Changes later this week

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

Future changes

  • There is a Printable version link. This will disappear. That is because web browsers today can create a printable version or show how it will look in print anyway. [14]

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

19:05, 20 July 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-31

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

Recent changes

  • The Starter kit is now available for wiki communities. This page lists technical resources, tools, and recommendations. These are essential to operate a wiki project. This is mostly useful for smaller wikis where the community has limited experience with this. [15]
  • The first features of the Desktop Improvements project are available for logged-in users on all wikis. In order to use them, uncheck Use Legacy Vector in your local or global preferences in section Skin preferences. More improvements are planned. Feedback is welcome.
  • Advanced item On multiple wikis, a UTCLiveClock gadget is available. For wikis that import the gadget directly from mediawiki.org, end users can now choose a different timezone to show instead of UTC.

Problems

  • Advanced item The deployment train for MediaWiki has been blocked this week. [16][17]
  • Translation Notification Bot was sending the same message multiple times to every translator. This has been fixed. [18]
  • Some users were receiving the same notification multiple times. This has been fixed. [19]

Changes later this week

  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from July 28. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from July 29. It will be on all wikis from JUly 30 (calendar).

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

13:53, 27 July 2020 (UTC)

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